Counterfeit Wife

by Brett Halliday

Mrs. Dawson swung the steering wheel violently to the right and stepped hard on the gas to avoid a collision. There were confused shouts behind them as she swerved to the left into 36th Street in second gear. She sat erect with both hands loosely on the steering wheel. The sedan got up to fifty in second gear and was tearing itself to pieces before she shifted into high.

  Shayne was doing some fast figuring on how long it would take Bates to give the reinforcements the hundred-dollar bill and send them racing after the gray sedan.

  They heard a few scattered shots from the direction of the Fun Club. The woman looked up at the mirror and said, “My God! They’re coming—but fast.” She switched off her lights and added calmly, “We may make it yet, big boy.”

  In the light of the moon, now shining in a pool of unclouded sky, the straight black macadam had a grayish sheen. The way the sedan trembled, Shayne knew it must be making more than seventy. He grinned into the dark and said wonderingly, “You’re doing all right. If you pull this one out of the bag I’ll owe you a lot of drinks.”

  “I’ll be able to use a lot.” Her eyes were on the road ahead; she was gripping the wheel tighter. Lights flashed by on either side of the street, and Shayne realized that they were approaching the more thickly populated section of the city proper. The headlights of the pursuing car were relentlessly gaining.

  “What kind of jam you in?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. I think they’d rather get me alive, though.”

  She lifted her foot from the accelerator and put it on the brake. The sedan settled back on its haunches with tires screaming. She said nothing but suddenly swung the wheel hard to turn into a side street. The sedan skidded and the left side rose from the ground. Then it crashed into a concrete guard rail of a bridge.

  The car turned over on its side, and the big blonde was on top of Shayne, pinning him against the door beneath.

  She was inert and heavy, and blood trickled down on his cheek and seeped under his collar as he tried to push up against her dead weight.

  He could hear shouting voices and running feet. Then someone was climbing up on the overturned car, and the left-hand door was opened. He twisted and lifted the solid hulk of the woman upward toward the opening, calling out hoarsely, “Take her out, quick. I’m afraid she’s badly hurt.”

  A flashlight glared down from above. Shayne pushed from below as someone above dragged the woman out.

  He then managed to stand up and pull himself from the tangled wreckage of the sedan.

  There were men and women and a few children swarming around in various states of disarray, and in the midst of them the big blonde’s body was outstretched on the roadside a few feet away. A man bent over her with a flashlight.

  Shayne took a couple of steps toward her, but was halted by the feel of a gun in his ribs and a harsh voice in his ear.

  “This way, bud. Keep it quiet.”

  Shayne turned slowly and saw a big black sedan parked on the other side of the bridge with headlights burning brightly. He knew by the intonation and by the feel of the gun that he couldn’t bluff this off as he had bluffed Bates.

  On his way to the black car he thought, morosely, that he had encountered three very chummy guys within a couple of hours. He had been called “brother” and “pal” and now “bud,” and two of these chums had held pistols on him, and one had stuffed two, probably counterfeit, hundred-dollar bills into his hand.

  He hoped the woman wasn’t badly hurt.

  Chapter Four

  THE SENATOR ENTERTAINS

  THEY REACHED THE SIDE of the black sedan, and the man with the gun swung an ape-like arm past Shayne to open the rear door. He stood back and said, “Get in.”

  Shayne got in; the man followed, closing the door.

  The man in the driver’s seat wore a stiff straw hat tipped far back on his head. Shayne could see the profile of a flat, black face, but that was all.

  The man beside Shayne said, “Get rolling, Getchie,” and the car moved smoothly forward.

  The man sat quietly for a moment, then said, “I reckon you’re not carryin’ anything or you would’ve showed it. But I’m not taking chances. Twist down with your face against the seat and put your hands behind you. If you move, I’ll split your head open.”

  Shayne followed directions and got his hands clasped behind his neck with an effort. His left shoulder had been wrenched in the accident. At first it had felt numb, but in this uncomfortable position it began to ache. His head ached, too. The blood on his face was beginning to clot, and it itched.

  He lay very still and tried not to think about things. The car was being driven smoothly on paved streets, making a lot of turns which Shayne made no effort to memorize. He wasn’t familiar with this northeast section of the city, and he had a feeling that he wasn’t going to have any particular desire to retrace the route even if he did have a chance to do so later.

  It wasn’t more than fifteen minutes later that the car turned off the street and went down a steep incline into a place that smelled strongly of grease and gasoline. Shayne guessed that it was a basement garage. The man beside him said, “End of the line, bud. Get out that door.”

  Shayne sat up and unlatched the door and got out. They were in a big concrete-walled and concrete floored room and there were half a dozen other cars parked around the walls. A twenty-watt, fly-specked bulb in the ceiling gave off a dim light.

  The man with the gun followed Shayne out of the car; the driver came around to stand beside him. The gun was poked in Shayne’s ribs, and he was told to go straight up the stairs.

  The stairs were wooden and shaky, ending at a small landing faced by a closed wooden door with a bar across it. Shayne lifted the bar and stepped into a narrow, dark passageway. The men stayed close behind him and the gun stayed against his back. He bumped into another door in the dark, found a knob and opened it onto a brightly lit room with a Persian rug on the floor and overstuffed furniture around the walls. The men closed the door when they entered, and Shayne turned to look at them.

  The driver, Getchie, was a Negro. His nose had been smashed flat against his broad face, and he had a long grayish scar on one cheek. His forehead was low, and he looked mean and sullen.

  His companion was white, rather tall, and fairly bulky. He gestured toward a davenport with his .38 and said, “Sit down there an’ I’ll tell the boss you’re here. But wait a minute,” he added, as Shayne started toward the long couch. “Shake him down, Getchie.”

  Shayne stopped and lifted his right arm high. But his left arm balked when pain shot through his shoulder. The Negro frisked him carefully, stepped back with a grunt and a negative shake of his head. “He ain’t totin’ nothin’, Mistuh Perry.”

  Perry nodded. “Watch him, Getchie.” He went to a door at the end of the room, opened it and called, “We got that guy from the Fun Club, boss.”

  He stood in the doorway until a bulky man came in belting a black silk robe about his protuberant middle. He was bald with a fringe of gray hair around the back of his head. His face was plump and rosy and he had the placid, satisfied manner of a pastor of a wealthy congregation. He scuffed in past Perry, wearing a pair of rope sandals with heavy cork soles.

  When he saw Shayne, the man stopped suddenly, his bleary eyes staring in blank amazement.

  Shayne stared back at him and grinned. The grin broke the dried blood on his face into innumerable little cracks. He said, “Senator Irvin, by God.”

  The ex-state senator said, “Shayne!” in a high, squeaky voice apparently gone completely out of control. His florid face became mottled with anxiety. He clasped his pudgy hands together over his belly and forced his voice down the scale by several notes when he asked, “What are you doing here?”

  The grin stayed on Shayne’s face. He said, “I heard that you’d beat that Raiford rap, Senator, but I didn’t think you’d have guts enough to show your face in Miami again.”

  “Mike Shayne,” Perry said softly. “That tough shamus I bee
n readin’ about in the papers? Maybe you want Getchie should soften him up, boss?”

  “Wait a minute, Perry.” The senator scuffed forward and seated himself in a comfortable chair opposite Shayne, who sprawled on the davenport. “Bring us something to drink, Getchie. Mineral water for me. Scotch, Shayne?”

  “If you haven’t any cognac.”

  “I’m afraid it’ll have to be Scotch.” The senator got a white linen handkerchief from a pocket of his robe and blew his nose resoundingly as the Negro left the room. “I’m really amazed, Shayne. I had no idea when Bates telephoned—But you’ve been hurt,” he went on with concern. “I’m sorry—”

  “He got that in a car crack-up,” Perry said sourly. “Some blonde dame at the Fun Club took him for a ride and piled up on Thirty-sixth.”

  “But I understood Bates to say he would hold the man for your arrival,” the senator said in a tone of extreme irritation.

  “That Bates,” Perry spat out. “He don’t know which way is up. This mug walks out on him with the dame ’fore we get there.”

  Getchie came back into the room with a wooden tray containing a decanter of mineral water, a bucket of ice cubes, a bottle of Scotch, two glasses, and a siphon of soda. He set it on a table, put ice cubes and water from the decanter in one glass and handed it to the senator, put two ice cubes in the other glass, and took the cork out of the whisky bottle.

  “A steady hand does it. I’ll say when,” said Shayne, leaning forward as the Negro began pouring. The glass was full to the brim before he said, “When,” and then added, “never mind the soda,” as the man looked questioningly at the siphon.

  Shayne drank half of the whisky and felt a lot better. “Nice of you to have me here at this time of night,” he told the senator.

  “How do you figure in this, Shayne?” Irvin asked.

  Shayne said irritably, “In what?”

  The senator sighed and looked at Perry. Perry stepped forward to hand him a hundred-dollar bill. Irvin smoothed it out on his knee. “Bates says you tried to buy some drinks with this.”

  “What’s the matter with it?” asked Shayne.

  “I didn’t say anything was the matter with it. I simply want to know where you got it,” Irvin countered.

  “I cashed a check at the bank this afternoon.”

  “Perhaps. But the bank didn’t give you this bill.”

  “How in hell do you know it didn’t?”

  “Please, Shayne,” said the senator patiently, “let’s not talk in circles.”

  “Then tell me what it’s all about.” Shayne lifted the glass to his lips and took a long drink.

  Irvin sighed and said, “Hit him, Getchie.”

  The Negro hit Shayne in the face with his open palm.

  “That was just to convince you that we’re not fooling,” the ex-senator explained quietly, pinching the pendulous flesh of his third chin. “Where did you get the bill, and how many of them have you?”

  Shayne got up and walked to the tray holding the whisky bottle. Blood oozed from his upper lip where his teeth had cut through from the Negro’s blow. He picked up the decanter of mineral water, poured his cupped palm full, and, bending forward, dashed it over his face. He repeated the performance until his face felt free of the blood, then wet his handkerchief thoroughly and mopped around his neck.

  The trio watched him in stony silence. Then Perry said, “They say this mug is plenty tough. Whyn’t you let Getchie work him over some more, an’ then we can—”

  “I think Shayne will tell us what we want to know,” said the senator quietly.

  Shayne strolled back to the davenport. The Negro took the detective’s wallet from his hip pocket. Shayne sat down again and nursed the bottle of Scotch which he had brought with him, watching the senator with an oddly abstracted expression on his gaunt face.

  Irvin opened the wallet and fanned through the contents. He studied one bill and nodded, placed it with the other one on his knee and returned the balance to the billfold. “Two of them. Why did you try to pass one at Bates’s place? What did you expect to find out?”

  “To hell with this,” Shayne exploded angrily. “If those bills are phonies, I’m the one who should be sore about it. I sold my car this afternoon for cash. Those bills are part of the price I got.”

  “Who bought your car?” The senator’s voice was smooth as silk.

  “I don’t know his name. I met him in a garage on Flagler.”

  “We’ll find out his name,” the senator said. “There has to be a record of the bill of sale. We’ll keep you till tomorrow morning, and if you’re lying, Shayne—”

  Shayne took a long drink from the bottle while he thought rapidly. “All right,” he admitted. “I was lying. But I don’t see why I have to stick my neck out for a guy I never saw before. Particularly if the bastard slipped me a couple of queer ones. I intended to leave town tonight on the midnight plane. You can check that easily enough. I missed the damned plane and came back in a taxi. I felt like a drink and dropped off at the Fun Club on the way to town.”

  That, he thought, would cover the blonde’s angle, if she were in on it somehow and told her story.

  “All right. But where did the bills come from?”

  “I’m getting to that. I checked out of my apartment at noon, and—well, you know how things are in Miami right now. I happened to meet a guy that was yelling his head off about not having any place to stay. I didn’t see any reason not to pick up a piece of change so I slipped him a tip on my apartment, and he gave me those two C’s for the dope.” He dabbed at his cut and bleeding lip with the wet handkerchief.

  “You’re probably still lying,” said Irvin. “What apartment house?”

  Shayne gave the apartment name and the room number, hoping to God they had rented it that afternoon and feeling vaguely sorry for whoever had rented it.

  The senator nodded to Perry. “Check on that.”

  Perry went out of the room. Shayne set the whisky bottle on the floor and pressed the handkerchief to his lips again. He said to the Negro, “Next time we meet I’m going to slice the other side of your face to match that scar.”

  The Negro’s arms remained insolently folded, and his eyes were low-lidded. He pushed his thick lips out at Shayne but said nothing.

  Irvin irritably drummed fat fingertips on the arm of his chair and said placatingly, “Getchie simply did what he was told to do, Shayne. I had to convince you this was serious business.”

  Perry came back into the room. He said, “Could be, boss. The shamus checked out at noon like he said, and sent his suitcase to the airport. His apartment was rented again right afterward, but the clerk don’t think the new fellow has moved in yet. By the name of Slocum. He didn’t answer his phone.”

  Irvin said, “We’ll check with Mr. Slocum in the morning.” To Shayne he added, “I’m sure you won’t object to being my guest until we can hear Slocum’s story.”

  “Do you expect him to tell you the truth about paying a bribe with phony money?”

  “I think Mr. Slocum will tell what we want to know. If you’ve told the truth you’ll be in the clear, Shayne. If not—”

  Shayne took another drink of Scotch and dangled the bottle by the neck between his knobby knees. “I hope you’ve got a comfortable bed for me to sleep on.”

  “Perry and Getchie will see to that.” He nodded to them and got to his feet. “For your sake I hope you’re telling the truth this time.” He turned and scuffed out of the room.

  Chapter Five

  SHAYNE BLOWS A FUSE

  SHAYNE’S LEFT SHOULDER was hurting badly, and a little blood still oozed from his cut lip. He said, “That davenport looks good to me.”

  “Damned sight too good for you,” Perry snarled. “We’re going back down to the garage where there’s a nice little place all fixed up for you.”

  The whisky bottle was a little more than half full. Shayne hefted the weight of it and figured his chances of slugging Perry with it before he could g
et going with his gun. Perry was ten feet away and the .38 was lax in his fingers, but he didn’t look like a man who’d be easy to take. Ever since the ex-senator had spoken Shayne’s name, the man had shown his respect for the detective’s reputation by keeping a good distance between them. Getchie wasn’t any pushover either. It was a cinch he had a shiv where he could get at it fast, and a further cinch that he would enjoy using it if Shayne started anything.

  All in all, Shayne decided it would be much more sensible to drink the whisky and play along for better odds. He put the bottle to his lips, and Perry said to the Negro, “Shove him along down the stairs, Getchie.”

  Getchie took a step forward, put his hand between Shayne’s shoulder blades and shoved. Shayne reeled forward and didn’t look back. He was getting damned tired of being pushed around, but he didn’t say so.

  They stopped at the bottom and waited for Perry to come down. Shayne was breathing hard and fighting back the anger that threatened to possess him. He had stayed alive a lot of years by holding his anger in check and waiting for at least a fifty-fifty chance before striking out. Such a chance generally came to a man if he waited long enough.

  Perry reached the bottom of the stairs and circled around them on the greasy floor. “Bring him over here to the can. It’s quiet in there and the door’s a double thickness.”

  “Ain’ no lock to it,” Getchie objected, pushing Shayne forward.

  “We’ll fix that,” Perry assured him. He stood back ten feet from the door of the small square alcove built into a corner of the room.

  There was a concrete wall jutting out from the corner and a heavy wooden door that opened outward. Getchie stopped beside the door and reached inside to switch on a ceiling light. There was a dirty lavatory and a dirtier toilet inside the four-by-six room.

  Perry said, “Wait a minute,” as the Negro started to push Shayne inside. “Take off your clothes,” he told Shayne. “Every damned stitch down to the skin.”

  Shayne turned his head to glare at him and asked thickly, “What’s the idea of that?”