Counterfeit Wife

by Brett Halliday

  “Dawson knew it,” Shayne reminded him. “And Irvin. And maybe Fred Gurney—though I didn’t think Gurney recognized me at the Fun Club.”

  “Hale and Deland came home together a little after four,” Rourke told him, glancing at his sheet of paper again. “Hale was fairly tight, but Deland appeared cold sober. He claimed he’d picked Hale up in some joint and persuaded him to come home with him.”

  “When?” asked Shayne sharply.

  “They didn’t say when they met. I got the impression that it wasn’t long after Deland found him that they got home.”

  Shayne said, “Arthur Deland was at Papa La Tour’s rest home asking for Fred Gurney shortly after two o’clock this morning, and Papa told him that he might find Fred at the Fun Club.”

  Rourke’s jaw gaped open and his feverish and bloodshot eyes held disbelief. “Good God, Mike! Then Deland could have made the phone call that sent Gurney to the Tower Cottages to be killed.”

  “He could have,” Shayne agreed morosely. “And here’s something else to chew on—both Dawson and Deland knew Greerson, which is the name Irvin used on Thirty-eighth Street. Or at least they knew of him,” he amended. “Something screwy about a plumbing repair job that Greerson was never billed for.” He went on to give Rourke a brief account of the rambling monologue Miss Morrison had given him.

  When he finished, Rourke said, “Dawson’s announced intention of buying his partner out after he received an expected legacy sounds like another angle. Could the ransom money have been the legacy he hoped to get?”

  “Dawson fits perfectly,” Shayne admitted, “if it weren’t for that goddamned counterfeit money. That doesn’t fit anywhere.”

  “Seems to me Bates is the man to give you the low-down on that,” suggested Rourke eagerly. “If Irvin has disappeared—”

  Shayne looked at his watch and nodded. “Bates should just about be reaching the Fun Club. Want to go along while I ask him?”

  “I wouldn’t miss it.” Rourke downed the rest of his rye. “Want another shot before we go?”

  “No more for me. Bates owes me a few drinks and I think it’s time I collected.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  READY TO CRACK WIDE OPEN

  THE FUN CLUB LOOKED DRAB and lifeless with the hot afternoon sun revealing its ugly architecture and peeling paint. There was one car parked in front of the entrance. Shayne pulled in beside it and stopped.

  Inside, the place was even drearier. Window shades were drawn, and the dead air still held the stench of last night’s liquor and smoke. Two men wearing overalls were drinking beer at the bar, and a bartender leaned against the cash register, picking his teeth with a sharpened matchstick. He was not the same man who had been on duty the previous night, and he looked at Shayne and Rourke without recognition and without interest.

  They chose two stools near the end. Shayne said, “Hennessy. Two double shots.” He turned the revolving stool to look across the gloomy interior toward the door leading into Bates’s office. It stood ajar a few inches, and light showed through the opening.

  The bartender set two glasses in front of them and turned to get a bottle of cognac.

  Shayne said, “Never mind pouring it. Just set it down. I like to pour my own.”

  The man apathetically set the bottle on the counter. Shayne picked it up by the neck with his right hand and, taking an empty glass with the other, said to Rourke, “Bring your glass along and we’ll have a drink with the boss.”

  They crossed over to the office door, and Shayne pushed it wide open. A bright ceiling globe illuminated Bates’s desk. He was evidently going over some accounts. An open ledger was at his right hand, and there were bills spread out in front of him. His large ears protruded more grotesquely than Shayne remembered, and his big mouth tightened into a straight line across his square face when he looked up and saw the detective.

  He didn’t say anything, but made an involuntary movement with his right hand toward the half-open drawer of the desk.

  Shayne advanced swiftly, swinging the cognac bottle. “Don’t try it, Bates. You might get hurt.”

  Bates put his hands on top of the desk, his worried gaze moving from Shayne’s face to the pleased grin Rourke wore.

  Shayne set his glass down on a corner of the desk, reached inside the open drawer and withdrew the .45 with which Bates had menaced him the preceding night. He slid it into his hip pocket, then poured his glass full of cognac, glanced at Rourke, and said, “Hold out your glass, Tim. I’ve got lots of credit here, haven’t I, Bates?”

  “What credit?” growled Bates.

  “Don’t you remember? I left something behind last night,” said Shayne cheerfully.

  “A phony C-note,” the square man charged.

  “But a sweet job. You said so yourself. Worth at least forty bucks in the open market, and I only had a couple of drinks out of it.”

  Bates folded the fingers of both hands together and didn’t say anything. Shayne moved back to sit in one of the cane-bottomed chairs, and Rourke folded his stringy body into the other.

  Shayne set the uncorked bottle on the floor beside him, took a sip of cognac from his glass, then asked Bates, “Heard anything from the senator this morning?”

  “I don’t know any politicians,” said Bates stoically.

  “Senator Irvin.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Could be you think his name is really Greerson,” Shayne admitted. “The big shot to you.”

  Bates sat stolidly silent, his mouth a closed vise and his cold eyes slitted.

  Shayne lifted himself and leaned forward with his left hand supporting his weight on the desk between them. With his open right hand he slapped Bates’s square face. The blow sounded loud in the office.

  Bates cursed in a low tone, shoved back his chair, and stood with knotted fists in an attitude of self-defense.

  Shayne remained leaning forward with both hands on the desk. He said, “Getchie got himself killed last night. Sit down in that chair and start talking before something like that happens to you.”

  In a voice choked with impotent rage, Bates said, “You can’t slap me around like that, damn you.”

  “The hell I can’t.” Shayne straightened up and started to move around the desk.

  Bates dropped back into his chair. His face was darkly flushed, and he was breathing hard. He looked down at the papers in front of him and said thickly, “I read in the paper about the fire last night. I swear it’s the first I knew what had happened after Perry and Getchie took out after you last night. I was just—”

  “Obeying orders,” Shayne prodded him. “I know that. How did you recognize that bill you took off me?”

  “Serial number,” mumbled Bates. “Look, I didn’t know what I was mixin’ up in,” he went on rapidly and earnestly. “I thought you were just one of the mob. If I’d known you were a dick I wouldn’t of jumped you like I did.”

  “How’d you find out I was a dick?”

  “Somebody that was in here last night after you beat it. Said you were Mike Shayne. God! how was I to know?”

  “You know now,” Shayne reminded him sharply. “Give me the low-down on Irvin and the counterfeit racket.”

  “I don’t know anything about that. I swear I don’t. I got this steer about a month ago, see? If any of the queer turned up, I was to call that telephone number like I did last night.”

  “You’re a liar. You called Perry by name and asked for the big shot,” Shayne raged. He returned to his chair and picked up his drink.

  “Yeh. Perry was the one that tipped me off. Told me to call that number and ask for the big shot.”

  Shayne took Bates’s .45 out of his pocket and rested the muzzle on the edge of the desk. His eyes were bleak and his voice harsh.

  “I know all about the racket and the queer stuff. How the mob has played it smart for a couple of years by planting wads of it in dumps like this where it can be shoved in a hurry onto a spor
ting crowd. I know they’re about ready to start an operation in Miami and that you’re one of the shovers. Was the stuff being rockered in that Thirty-eighth Street house?”

  Bates looked blank. “I don’t know anything about that. I only know—”

  “That you’ll get a hole the size of my fist blasted in your belly if you don’t talk,” Shayne interrupted savagely. “Never mind that last question. I’m pretty sure it was being worked at Irvin’s place, because that would account for the repair shop in the basement without any repair equipment—a cover-up for running a rocker. That doesn’t matter. You spoke to Irvin about the fifty grand he was looking for.”

  “That’s it,” said Bates desperately. “That’s what I’m telling you. About a month ago it was, Perry dropped in and says there’s fifty grand in C-notes that may be dumped any time. Consecutive serial numbers, and he gave me the numbers so I’d know the stuff right away. For my own protection so I wouldn’t get stuck with any of it.”

  “Nuts,” said Shayne. “The truth of it is the mob was worried sick for fear it would begin turning up here in Miami before the date set for the heavy shoving to start. That would have warned the Feds to be on the lookout. That’s why Irvin was so damned anxious to get hold of any of it that showed up. That’s why you had orders to use a gun, if necessary, to hang onto the guy passing the phony bills.”

  “Might’ve been that way,” said Bates hurriedly. “I didn’t ask too many questions. But from something Perry said, I figured it’d be one of the gang passing it, and that’s why I was rough with you last night. Honest to God I didn’t know you were the law.”

  Shayne grunted sourly and returned the .45 to his pocket. He drank the rest of his cognac and pulled on his ear lobe for a moment. He asked suddenly, “How much of the stuff were you going to take when the time came?”

  “I swear I wasn’t taking any. I don’t mix in anything like that. You can’t prove anything like that on me.”

  “Probably not,” Shayne agreed. He turned to look at Rourke’s glass. “Want another shot, Tim?”

  “Sure. Why not? It’s free, isn’t it?” He extended his empty glass.

  “It’s free,” Shayne told him, filling the glass, and repeating the process with his own. “Bates is happy to see us enjoying ourselves.”

  “Go right ahead,” Bates said uneasily. “I didn’t mean to get mixed up in any trouble. A man’s got a right to kick about having bad money passed on him,” he added righteously.

  “That’s right. And I bet you’ve got a permit to carry this gun.” Shayne emptied his glass and stood up. He took the .45 from his pocket, broke it and pushed the plunger and extracted six cartridges which he dropped into his pocket. He laid the empty gun on the desk and turned to Rourke. “Let’s get going.”

  When they reached the car and got in, Rourke stretched out his thin legs and, after a moment’s silence, asked Shayne doubtfully, “Do you think he was telling the truth?”

  “To a certain extent.” Shayne put the car in gear and wheeled it out of the driveway. “I think he’s in with the counterfeit gang and was slated to shove a bunch of the stuff when the right time came. The way it adds up,” he went on meditatively, “is that somewhere along the line those five hundred consecutive bills turned up missing. Maybe the big boys didn’t know whose fingers were sticky; and maybe they guessed. Anyhow, they didn’t want the stuff to show up here in Miami before they started their own cleanup. So word was passed around to everyone who could be trusted, and I picked the wrong place to break one last night.”

  “Could Hale have got hold of the counterfeit somehow in New York?” asked Rourke. “Without even knowing it was queer, maybe?”

  “Not from any bank,” Shayne assured him grimly. “As for his not knowing it, don’t forget the list of serial numbers he handed over to Painter.”

  “Maybe he switched the money after he got it from the bank,” suggested Rourke.

  “Maybe. I’m hoping Gentry will have an answer for that by the time we get there.”

  He drove east to Miami Avenue, turned south to Fifth Street, and went west around the traffic circle that skirted the west side of the courthouse. Across Flagler, he parked opposite police headquarters and Rourke got out with him to go into Chief Gentry’s office.

  Gentry looked up with a grimace when they entered his office together. He craned his head suspiciously, as though trying to see out in the corridor behind them, then grunted, “Well, where’s the corpse this time?”

  Shayne said, “We checked it outside.” He walked on and eased one hip down on the chief’s desk. Rourke crossed the room and slumped into a chair.

  “I called your apartment ten minutes ago,” Gentry said. “A couple of things have popped.”

  Shayne tugged at his ear lobe and waited.

  “They finally got Gerta Ross’s stomach pumped out. When she sobered up, she told a very interesting story, Mike. I haven’t given it to Painter yet.”

  Shayne shrugged. “Thanks for that, Will. But it’s hardly necessary to keep anything under cover much longer.”

  “No?” Gentry looked relieved. “She makes out a fairly good case for herself, and with Gurney dead, she’ll probably have a chance to make it stick. Claims she didn’t know Kathleen Deland was kidnaped at first and that Gurney brought her to the nursing home doped up. She says the girl was on the verge of hysterics and needed to stay doped up for a couple of days. Then yesterday afternoon Gurney told her the truth, pointed out that she was an accomplice, and offered her five grand to keep her mouth shut and help him collect the ransom.”

  “How much?”

  “That’s a funny thing,” said Gentry. “Seems Gurney told her he was collecting twenty grand instead of the fifty he had demanded from Deland.”

  Shayne murmured, “Forty cents on the dollar.” Then he said to Gentry, “Go ahead.”

  “You’d already told me most of the rest of it,” Gentry went on sourly, “except the part about Dawson. Ross claims she and Gurney were in her car with the girl in the trunk—drugged but with plenty of air to breathe—watching when Deland delivered the money to Dawson near the causeway. She says they followed Dawson across but that, instead of following instructions and driving slowly up the boulevard, he double-crossed them by going like a bat out of Bimini, cutting around corners—and they finally lost him heading toward the airport a little before twelve.

  “They suspected he might be trying to jump town with the money and went to the airport to check on him, but found he hadn’t gotten out of town by air.”

  Shayne said gravely, “We might as well straighten things out right now. Dawson did leave on the midnight plane, Will. I was there and helped him catch it.”

  “The same plane you were on?”

  “He used my ticket.”

  Gentry drew in a long breath and studied Shayne with worried eyes. “You helped him jump town with the ransom money, Mike? Then you were the redheaded guy who bought Gerta Ross a drink at the Fun Club later and who was seen leaving the wrecked car. Chick Farrel’s identification was correct.”

  Shayne nodded and said easily, “You see what a spot I’ve been in, Will. If I told Painter that Dawson was actually the guy he traced to Palm Beach with my ticket, he’d have known I was in the wreck and would have arrested me on sight.”

  Gentry’s big florid face flushed dangerously red.

  “Watch that apoplexy, Will,” Rourke said, with a chuckle.

  “I’m watching it,” Gentry said angrily. “If I weren’t, I’d blow up like an atom bomb right now.”

  “Go on with Gerta’s story,” Shayne urged him placidly.

  “It’s about like you said. She had a call from Gurney after she got home telling her to meet him at the Tower Cottages for the pay-off. That was a little before two-thirty. She called a cab and cruised all over town looking for an all-night drugstore where she could pick up some laudanum to mix with a bottle of gin.

  “By the time she found that, and reached the Tower, she claims
Gurney had already got paid off in full. She says she took a couple of swigs and passed out and dreamt about a big redheaded mug trying to roll her. She isn’t quite sure whether he succeeded or not,” Gentry ended with a grin.

  “That doesn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know or guess,” Shayne grumbled. “You mentioned a couple of things—”

  “That’s right. Some day I wish you’d tell me where you get your hunches.”

  “I had a Dutch grandmother,” Shayne told him. “She knew the secret of talking to the wee folk. Now about Hale—”

  “Emory Hale,” Gentry grunted, picking up a teletype sheet from his desk and studying it. “Park Avenue and all that. On the surface he’s okay, but, unofficially, he heads a gambling syndicate that runs the biggest baseball book in the city. He was a tinhorn until a couple of years ago when he finally hit the big-time.”

  Shayne shook his head. “That doesn’t prove much.”

  “He gave his bank as the Guaranty Trust on Forty-fourth, and claims they made up the packet of ransom money he brought down with him. He does carry a sizable account in that bank, but not nearly fifty grand, and the last withdrawal he made was for eight hundred dollars almost two weeks ago.”

  “That’s it!” Rourke yelled excitedly, leaping up from his chair and coming over to slap Shayne on the back. “That explains the counterfeit money. Big New York gambler. The rest of it is straight enough. Dawson planned the deal, not knowing Hale would try to slip over a wad of phony stuff.”

  “It’s time Dawson answered some questions,” Shayne agreed grimly. “Is he still in the hospital on the Beach?”

  “I think he is. Resting well, the last I heard.”

  “Let’s disturb his rest. Call Painter and have him pick up Hale and Deland and meet us at the hospital. This thing is ready to crack wide open.”

  “Deland, too? Do we need to bother him?”

  “I want to ask how he got acquainted with Gurney and whether he got hold of Gurney last night.”

  “Do you mean that Arthur Deland knew Fred Gurney?” asked Gentry incredulously.