Heads You Lose ms-8

by Brett Halliday

  “It’s very important for me not to tell what Clem told me,” Shayne said. “I couldn’t even tell Chief Gentry for fear he might bungle things trying to do his duty.”

  “Why are you so dead set on keeping it to yourself?” she asked after a brief silence. “If anything happens to you there’d be nobody else could do much.”

  “You’ll have to trust me.”

  “You’ve been a good friend to us, Mr. Shayne. Clem was always that proud of the way you’d set and talk with ’im, and you were mighty good that time when Bob got in trouble. Oh, I do trust you.” Her voice shook with sincerity.

  “Then let me handle this my own way. I’ve got the others to fight, and I know what I’m doing.”

  Mrs. Wilson suddenly relaxed and her slight weight leaned against Shayne as though she sought warmth and strength from his body. “Tell me one thing,” she whispered. “You’re not keeping nothin’ back on account of friendship for Clem and me? Swear you’re not.”

  Shayne felt her tense again and grow rigid against him. He frowned and said slowly, “I don’t believe I understand exactly what you mean, Mrs. Wilson.”

  “Maybe you don’t, but I want to tell you this. Clem was a mighty good man. I reckon just about the best man any woman ever had to do for her. I don’t care who killed him. Do you hear me? I don’t care who done it… you’re not to protect ’im. I want he should pay for it.” Her voice rose to a hysterical note and she moved away from him, crouching against the opposite car door.

  Shayne said soothingly, “Of course they will pay. I’ll see to that.”

  His answer appeared to satisfy her. She sighed deeply and made herself comfortable against the cushions, drying her eyes with a man’s cotton handkerchief.

  Shayne turned to the right off Tamiami Trail. He said, “How about Bob, Mrs. Wilson?”

  “Bob? What… about Bob?” She stiffened to an upright position and her voice had a sharp ring.

  “I mean about notifying him of his father’s death. If you’ll give me his address I’ll take care of it for you. Maybe he could get a furlough and come home.”

  “I… I don’t know his address.” Her voice trembled and she continued to sit stiffly, her body bent slightly forward with her hands tightly clasped. “Bob was due to be shipped out to God knows where. That’s what he said in his last letter.”

  “Yeh. I know. Clem told me a couple of weeks ago. But you have some address where he could be reached.”

  “There’s a letter and some figures after his name,” she mumbled vaguely. “Care of the postmaster in New York, I think ’twas. But there’s no use tryin’ to let Bob know. He’s… most likely on the ocean right now.”

  “He may not have been shipped yet,” Shayne said gently. “Maybe I can get in touch with his outfit and find out. Wasn’t he at a camp in Georgia?”

  “Y-e-e-s.” She gave him the name of the camp reluctantly. “But you got enough on your mind ’thout botherin’ about Bob, Mr. Shayne. I’ll get a telegram off to ’im right away.”

  Shayne said, “You do that. It’ll be better that way.” He slowed and stopped in front of a small stucco bungalow on 14th Street. “I believe this is the number,” he said doubtfully.

  “This is it.” She had the door open, ready to get out, but Shayne detained her.

  “There’s one thing I want to warn you about, Mrs. Wilson.” He paused thoughtfully and phrased his words carefully. “They may suspect Clem told you more than he did before he telephoned me. There’s a chance they’ll try to harm you… try to find out how much you know. I’m going to ask Gentry to post a police guard over you and your daughter-in-law.”

  “You won’t do no such thing,” she responded with spirit. “Sarah’s got Joe’s pistol and I’d be proud of a chance to use it on whoever killed Clem.”

  Shayne studied her thin face in the dim light. “Well, promise me one thing,” he said earnestly. “If you notice the least thing… anyone hanging around or following you… anything of a suspicious nature… call the police at once. Don’t go out by yourself at night, and above all, don’t let yourself be lured away by any fake telephone calls or messages.”

  “Don’t you worry about me. You go right out and get them crooks.” She got out and Shayne lifted her suitcase from the rear of the car and went up the walk with her. There was no electric button, so he knocked loudly on the door.

  A light came on and after a moment the door opened. The young girl standing in the opening was quite obviously and proudly pregnant. She exclaimed, “Why… Mother! What on earth…?”

  Shayne slid the suitcase inside the door and went back to his car. He had a sour taste in his mouth as he drove away. He slumped low under the wheel. He had inured himself against hurt. Sorrow and grief were for lesser men than he, but as he drove toward Miami in the bright moonlight an acute pain gripped him. Sarah Wilson, the widow of Joe Wilson, carrying his child so proudly within her slender body, and Shayne suffered the agony of the damned, remembering his own slender, dark-eyed wife who had not been so fortunate as the humble wife of Joe Wilson.

  With all his strength he pulled himself erect. He was nearing the outskirts of the business section of Miami. He squinted at the numbers on buildings and realized that the one he sought was in the next block.

  CHAPTER 3

  He stopped in front of a downtown office building and went in. A night light burned in the foyer, but the elevators were not running after midnight. He walked up two flights of stairs and down the corridor to an office door with only a number on it.

  He rapped, then turned the knob. It opened and he stepped inside a large room containing two big flat-topped desks, several armchairs, and a number of filing cabinets.

  A tall man with alert blue eyes sat in a swivel chair behind one of the desks. He wore the uniform of a United States Army Captain, with the blouse unbuttoned and his tie askew. He took a cigar from his mouth and waved a hearty greeting.

  “Hello there, Shayne. Come in.”

  Shayne grinned and asked, “Don’t you ever sleep, Captain?”

  Captain Ott yawned. “The Military Intelligence never sleeps. Bad conscience keeping you awake, Mike?”

  “A conscience is a luxury no private dick can afford.” He unbuttoned his trench coat and shrugged it off. He took the bottle of cognac from a pocket before throwing the coat over the back of a chair. Arching bushy red brows quizzically, he invited, “Join me in a nip?”

  “Sorry,” the captain said regretfully. “Not while I’m on duty.” He opened the center drawer of the desk and took out a paper cup which he tossed to Shayne. “Go ahead. Don’t mind me. They tell me you drink your clues out of a bottle.”

  Shayne said, “I’ve got a clue, so I’ll wait till I catch you off duty,” as he returned the bottle to the pocket. He sat down across from the captain.

  “What’s on your mind?” Ott asked. “Got something for us?”

  Shayne tugged at his earlobe, frowned, and said, “I’m not sure. I hope maybe you’ve got something for me. That is… maybe I hope you haven’t.”

  “Now I’ll tell one,” Captain Ott said approvingly. “Riddles are a swell way to pass the time on night duty.”

  Shayne leaned forward and said, “Let’s take a hypothetical case.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Suppose a soldier whose home is in Miami gets into some sort of trouble with the Army. As a routine matter, would your office get a report on that soldier?”

  Captain Ott’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully, then he said, “What sort of hypothetical trouble would you have in mind?”

  “I’m not sure. Something rather serious.”

  “It isn’t likely we’d know about it. There isn’t any reason why we should receive a report on it.”

  Shayne scowled at his knobby fingers. “I was afraid of that.”

  “If you have a reason to check on some soldier,” the captain offered with brisk interest, “I can get in touch with his commanding officer and get the details. Is that wh
at you have in mind?”

  “That might be difficult. This man is presumed to have been shipped overseas a couple of weeks ago.”

  “There are always ways of contacting him, of course. But I would want to know how serious the necessity before sending a request through official channels.”

  “What about desertion?” Shayne asked.

  “In a case of desertion we would be notified at once if his home is here. It’s routine to interview the family and associates of a deserter… keep some sort of surveillance on his home in case he tries to contact them.”

  Shayne massaged his angular chin and said, “U-m-m.” He lit a cigarette, tossed the match toward a wastebasket. “My hypothetical soldier is named Robert Wilson.”

  “Wilson?” Captain Ott swung around in the swivel chair and reached for one of the files behind him. He pulled a drawer half-way out, lifted a large folder from the front, and turned back. “I don’t have to look that one up. I made the investigation myself a few days ago.”

  Shayne looked at the closed folder. “Then it is desertion?”

  “A bad case,” Captain Ott told him. “Wilson deserted his outfit on the eve of their embarkation for foreign service. That places his action in the same class as desertion on the field of battle.”

  Shayne leaned back in his chair and said, “That’s what I thought you might have on Wilson.”

  “See here, if you’ve got anything on this deserter, give it to me,” the captain warned sternly. “He’s nineteen years of age, and…”

  “I know.” Shayne held up a big hand. “I know Bob Wilson and his parents.”

  “That’s a pitiable case, Shayne. As I say, I made the investigation and had to inform his parents. It would have been more merciful to shoot them. Particularly the father. He impressed me as being a fine man. Runs a little filling station out on the Trail.”

  Shayne said, “Clem Wilson was a fine man. I can imagine how it hit him.”

  Captain Ott did not notice his use of the past tense. “They have another son who was killed in a naval action recently,” the captain said. “Damn these thoughtless youngsters. If they could know the heartbreak they bring to parents they might think twice before doing some of the things they do.”

  “Have you been keeping watch on the home?”

  “Only in a cursory way. I’ve kept in touch with Mr. Wilson. If I’m any judge of character he can be trusted to turn his son in if he comes home. Wilson gave me his word of honor he’d let me know if he heard from the boy. I felt that I could trust him to handle the situation.”

  “That’s too bad,” Shayne muttered, his gray eyes morose and his voice glum.

  Captain Ott’s keen eyes snapped. “Why? Don’t tell me I was mistaken in the old man,” he grated. “If he has crossed me up I’ll never trust another human being to play fair.”

  Shayne squinted at him through smoke roiling from flared nostrils. “You weren’t mistaken in Clem Wilson,” he said. “He hasn’t crossed you up.” He crushed his cigarette out viciously. “If you had had a guard over the house you might have prevented murder tonight.”

  “Murder? Who?”

  “Clem Wilson. He was shot down in his filling station at midnight.”

  Captain Ott sprang up and paced the floor, came back to the desk and demanded, “Did the boy have anything to do with it? What do you know about it?”

  Shayne crossed his knobby knees, leaned back in his chair and calmly gave a detailed recital of all that had happened, beginning with the urgent telephone call from Clem Wilson.

  “I’m explaining this to you,” he ended with a rueful grin, “because I don’t want the Army on my neck when the morning paper comes out. Actually, that telephone conversation told me nothing. But as long as I can make the murderer think it did…” His broad shoulders lifted in a significant shrug.

  Captain Ott resumed his seat after listening to Shayne with intense interest. He nodded approvingly and said, “Using yourself for killer-bait, eh? It might smoke them out at that. But what’s this about Bob Wilson? Why did you come here to inquire about him?”

  “Two or three small things that added up into a hunch. In the first place, I know Bob. He’s weak. I pulled him out of a jam about a year ago. And tonight Mrs. Wilson seemed to be suffering from something more than grief over her husband’s death. She was deeply troubled and anxious. Then… there was a photograph of the boys taken together. Bob’s picture had been cut away. After talking with her, I made up my mind that Bob…”

  “I remember that picture,” Captain Ott broke in soberly. “Mr. Wilson showed it to me when I first started discussing the boys… before I had told him the truth. His pride in them was extraordinary.”

  “That’s what started me thinking,” Shayne admitted. “I couldn’t conceive of Clem destroying the picture of Bob unless he had brought some drastic disgrace on the family. Mrs. Wilson seemed afraid of something Clem might have told me over the telephone, and when I asked for Bob’s present address, she pretended she didn’t know.”

  Captain Ott emerged from deep and furrowed contemplation to ask, “Do you think the son might have murdered his father?”

  “I’m pretty sure Mrs. Wilson thinks he may have,” Shayne admitted heavily.

  The captain stood up and began buttoning the neck of his blouse and straightening his tie. “I’d better see Mrs. Wilson at once. If that boy is in Miami…”

  “Wait a minute,” Shayne said swiftly. “Will you let me handle it?”

  Captain Ott looked at Shayne in astonishment. “You should know the Military Intelligence handles its own cases, Shayne. You work on your murder case. The Army is after a deserter.” He spoke bluntly and with authority.

  Shayne stood up. “I appreciate all that fully,” he said placatingly, “but hear me out before you see Mrs. Wilson. You see, Ott, I know Miami. And I know Mrs. Wilson. I’ll grant you this… she’s a mother and would probably do everything in her power to protect a deserting son, but she wouldn’t protect her husband’s murderer. I don’t believe any of this necessarily means that Bob is here,” he went on slowly. “Bob’s desertion is preying on her mind, of course. It may be that she just fears he might have returned and gone to his father… had an argument with him and shot him.”

  Captain Ott sat down on the edge of the desk and lighted a cigar. He asked, “What do you propose to do?”

  “If I tie Bob up to the murder or make Mrs. Wilson think he’s mixed in it, then she’ll spill everything.”

  “You’re still solving a murder, and I’ve…”

  “You won’t get anything out of her,” Shayne cut in warningly, “as long as she believes Bob is innocent.”

  Captain Ott was silently thoughtful for a long moment, then said, “Your treatment is pretty rough for an old lady who’s trying to protect her son.”

  “You want him for desertion, don’t you?”

  The captain’s expression hardened. “We do. All right, I’ll let you handle it. We haven’t forgot your cooperation on the Nicholson case. Any time you want a commission, Shayne…”

  Shayne’s gaunt features contorted in a wry grin. “Thanks. But I’m not cut out for a uniform, and certain of your regulations might cramp my style. I think I’m worth more on the outside.”

  “There’s something in what you say.” Captain Ott lifted himself from the table and Shayne put on his trench coat.

  They shook hands and Shayne promised, “I’ll notify you the moment I get anything definite.”

  Shayne went swiftly and purposefully down the two flights of stairs, through the foyer, and outside. The un-blackened side of a few street lights shone dimly through the before-daylight mist and the streets were tomblike with utter silence. His trench coat felt snug and warm against the damp chill in the air, for in spite of the resort’s slogan of “June in Miami the year around” early spring nights were chilly in the semi-tropics.

  His big shoes made a loud tramping sound on the pavement as he made his way to police headquarters.
He went directly back to the file room and spoke cheerfully to a gray-haired man in uniform drowsing in a cushioned chair. “Hi, Pop,” he called, and closed the door. “Brought you something to keep you awake.”

  The old man’s ruddy, seamed face broke into pleasurable wrinkles when Shayne pulled out his bottle. “’Tis a fine lad you are, Mike, to be thinkin’ of old Pop Gans on a night like this.”

  He took the bottle and tilted it to his lips, let a generous portion of the liquor trickle down his throat. His red-rimmed eyes beamed when he handed the depleted bottle back to Shayne. “And what was that bribe for?”

  “Just want you to look up an old case for me, Pop. Or maybe you’ll remember. About a year ago… three punks robbing a drugstore on the corner of Miami Avenue and Sixth.”

  Pop Gans squinted at him with rheumy eyes. “About a year ago, you say?”

  “Yeh.” Shayne frowned. “One of the men was named Willie Garson. And there was…”

  “The others were Red Axtell and Peewee Dimoff. Sure, I’ve got it now. What is it you’re wantin’ to know, Mike?”

  “What disposition was made of the case. What came out at the trial… whether anyone was back of them… any mob.”

  “The three of them took a guilty plea,” Pop told him. “There wasn’t any trial. But here’s something for you to chew on, Mike. Manny Markle appeared for them.”

  “Manny Markle? Where’d those three amateurs get the money for Manny’s fee?”

  The old man cackled loudly. “That’s the morsel you’re to chew on.”

  “I get it,” Shayne said slowly. “If Manny was fronting for them they must have had the right sort of connections. Thanks, Pop. That’s what I needed. Know what they drew?”

  “Five to eight years.”

  Shayne said, “I don’t see why the hell they keep any files in here,” and went out to his car.

  CHAPTER 4

  From the police department Shayne drove to the garage of his apartment hotel, got out wearily and went around to the front door and into the lobby.