Heads You Lose ms-8

by Brett Halliday

  Tommy was alone, dozing behind the desk. His head jerked up and his eyes popped open when Shayne’s heels thudded across the tiled floor. He jumped up and asked eagerly, “What happened, Mr. Shayne? Did everything turn out all right?”

  “Everything turned out lousy, Tommy,” Shayne said. He leaned both elbows on the desk and morosely tugged at the lobe of his left ear. “I’m sort of on the spot. You’ve got to keep your eyes open and help me.”

  “You bet I will.” The clerk’s blue eyes sparkled.

  “Certain people are going to have a yen to wipe me out,” Shayne explained. “They’re liable to come around here. You’ll have to be on your toes to warn me of anybody or anything that looks a bit off-color.”

  “You bet, Mr. Shayne. Say!” Tommy lowered his voice to a confidential pitch. “You reckon they could be after you already?”

  “I doubt it. Not quite so soon. Why?”

  “Well, couple of fellows came in about twenty minutes ago. Real toughies they looked like. They asked about rooms and apartments, then asked if you stayed here. I told them you did.” Tommy paused to catch his breath.

  “And?” Shayne prompted.

  “And they wanted to know the number of your apartment. To tell the truth, Mr. Shayne, I guess I was sort of sleepy, and I gave them the number of your upstairs apartment. The one you haven’t used much since…”

  “Yeh,” Shayne said roughly. “What else?”

  “Well, they said they were friends of yours and asked if I had a vacancy near to it. So I rented them the one right across the hall. Said they wanted to surprise you and gave me a five-spot to not mention them to you.”

  Shayne kept on tugging at his earlobe. “What names did they give?”

  The young clerk went over and took a card from the file. “Here it is. L. J. Martin and John Anderson. City.”

  Shayne said, “Thanks, Tommy. That may be it, though I don’t see…” His voice trailed off. “Anyway, it won’t take long to find out.” He took a bill from his wallet and shoved it across to the clerk. “Maybe you won’t be getting in any naps at night for a while.” He started toward the elevator.

  Tommy called out, “You want me to do anything, Mr. Shayne? Should I call the police?”

  Shayne grinned reassuringly over his shoulder. “We’ll keep the police out of this.” He stepped into the elevator and went up to his office-apartment on the second floor.

  Everything was as it had been when he had left hastily after Clem Wilson’s telephone call. Shayne hung his hat up after looking carefully around, then took the cognac bottle from his pocket and set it on the center table. He shucked off his coat and dropped it on a chair, went into the kitchenette whistling a tuneless air.

  He put ice cubes in a tall goblet, filled it with water, and got a wine glass from a shelf above the sink. Back in the living room he filled the wine glass with cognac and stood on widespread legs while he drank half of it slowly. He washed it down with ice water, yawned and rumpled his red hair, then drank the rest of the liquor.

  Going to a drawer, he took out a. 38 revolver, spun the cylinder to make certain it was fully loaded, tucked it into the waistband of his trousers and went out.

  Shayne climbed one flight of stairs and went down the hallway to the corner apartment, which he had not entered since his wife’s death. There was no light in the apartment across the way, but the transom was open and the door stood ajar a crack. A sardonic grin flitted across his gaunt features as he got out a keyring and jingled it loudly, pushing each key around until he came to the one which fitted the lock. Inserting the key, he turned it, glancing over his shoulder as he stepped inside.

  He saw the opposite door edge open a trifle wider.

  Closing his door, he turned on the lights and stood looking about the beautifully appointed and restful living room with an expression of acute sorrow tightening his face. Everything reminded him of Phyllis. Never would there be a wife like her again. She had selected the rugs and the furniture, had sewed the bright curtains herself. There was the deep chair she had loved to sit in, facing east, to watch the colors on Biscayne Bay flashed back by the setting sun. There was the hassock she dragged close to his own chair and curled up on like a little girl…

  Shayne set his teeth and turned his back on the room. He dropped to his knees and peered through the keyhole at the door across the hall.

  It was tightly closed, and light showed around the transom. He stayed on his knees, watching through the keyhole for a long time. The door stayed shut and the light stayed on.

  He got to his feet and removed the. 38 from under his belt, cocked the double-action weapon, and opened his door very softly.

  With the cocked gun in his hand he took one long step across the carpeted hall and knocked lightly on the door, standing back against the wall in order not to be seen unless the door was opened wide. His eyes were very bright and a muscle quivered in the hollows of his cheeks as he waited.

  He heard a chair being pushed back inside the room, then a gruff voice asked, “Who’s there… what do you want?”

  Shayne muttered something that could be heard through the closed door without forming any definite words. There was a moment’s hesitation before the door started to open.

  He hit it with his shoulder low and his legs driving him into the room. The man who had hold of the knob was flung violently backward, and another man in shirtsleeves sitting at a card-littered table looked up with a grunt of surprise.

  Shayne plowed to a stop in a low crouch with his gun covering both men. He straightened slowly and said, “Well, I’ll be damned,” when he recognized two members of the Miami detective force. “Playing games, huh? For chrissake, McNulty, is this all you and Peterson have got to do?”

  The man who had stumbled to the floor was long and gangling, with a bushy black mustache adorning his horse-shaped face. He got to his feet with a look of injured dignity, and Peterson growled, “Is that the way you always come into a room?”

  “It’s God’s mercy you haven’t got lead in your guts,” Shayne snorted, heeling the door shut. “What the devil…”

  “Can we help it if the chief has a crazy idea the world would be better off with you alive?” McNulty complained from the table. He scratched a four-finger area of his bald head. His square face was wholly expressionless. “We didn’t pick the job.”

  “’Tain’t my idea of a good time,” Peterson grumbled. He stalked to the table and sat down opposite his partner.

  Shayne uncocked his gun and dropped it in his pocket. He muttered, “You’d think, by God, I was still in rompers.”

  “What’s it all about, Mike?” McNulty rolled a frayed cheap cigar around in his mouth, squinting through the smoke. “You been playing around in the wrong bedroom?”

  “Nothing like that,” Shayne said ironically. “Hadn’t you heard? I just inherited a million dollars and the bad old kidnappers are after me.”

  “How’d you know we was here, anyhow?” Peterson demanded. “Gentry told us to keep out of sight or you might try to shake us.”

  “Will Gentry is a damned fool,” Shayne muttered. “With you two birds hanging around my neck I’ll never get a nibble. How’s for beating it and leaving me to hatch my own eggs?”

  “We can’t do it, Mike,” McNulty said, shaking his bald head sadly. “It’s back to the beat for us if we let you out of our sight. Gentry didn’t stutter when he handed us this job.”

  “C’mon, Mike, and make it three-handed,” Peterson urged. “You’re stuck with us whether you like it or not.”

  “No thanks. You two go ahead and cut each other’s throats. I’m going to get some sleep.”

  He went out and closed the door, re-entered his apartment and slammed the door loudly. Striding to a wall mirror, he swung it out, took a bottle of cognac and a glass from the built-in liquor cabinet on the reverse side. He poured a drink and set the bottle back, wandered into the bathroom and flushed the toilet. He came back and finished his drink, puffed on a
cigarette for a few minutes, then turned out the lights and went into the kitchen.

  Unlatching a rear door leading out onto a fire escape, he went out and down one flight to the kitchen door of his office-apartment. He unlocked the door with a key from his ring, went through the kitchen to the living room and lifted the receiver of the wall telephone. When Tommy answered, Shayne said:

  “That was a false alarm, Tommy. Those boys are a couple of cops sent here to prevent something I don’t want prevented. They think I’m still in the apartment opposite them, but I sneaked down here. Now listen carefully, Tommy. I’m going to stay here, and I don’t want those bird dogs to be pointing at this door. But if anyone else comes, shoot them up here. But call me first, see? If you go off duty before anything breaks, tell the day clerk what the deal is.”

  “Sure, Mr. Shayne,” Tommy breathed into the phone. “You don’t want the cops to know about the other apartment?”

  “No. Let them amuse themselves up there. That’ll keep them busy and out of the way.”

  Tommy chuckled. “And I’ll call you if anything happens.”

  Shayne hung up and put his revolver on the center table. He looked at his watch. The time was a quarter to three. The ice cubes were melted in the water glass. After replenishing the ice cubes and pouring another drink, he settled himself in a chair and lit a cigarette, moving the gun so that the butt was in a position to be grabbed without fumbling. He stretched his legs out and relaxed, his head lolling comfortably against the cushion, lighting one cigarette from the glowing butt of another and sipping, alternately, cognac and ice water.

  The procedure kept him awake. He did a lot of thinking without reaching any definite conclusions. There wasn’t much to go on. The facts and the theory of Clem Wilson’s death pointed to some kind of gasoline racket. Approached with any sort of proposition, Clem wouldn’t have left any doubt about his position.

  It was a cinch his murderers weren’t professional killers. Men who lived by killing didn’t employ a. 32 for their work. There wasn’t anything else to put your finger on. They must have suspected Clem was reporting them, and they had no way of knowing how much he had told over the phone before a bullet silenced him.

  That was his only trump card.

  Blurred, grayish light pressed against the living-room windows. Shayne’s half-closed eyes stared as objects in the room swam into cloudy view out of the darkness. There was the desk near the door, the filing case for which he had no use. Sleepily he recalled that a man had died on the floor just inside the threshold, and at his left was the studio couch on which he had slept that first night while he hid Phyllis from arrest in his bedroom.

  That was a long time ago.

  The strident ringing of the telephone brought him to his feet. He reached it in two long strides.

  Tommy said, “There’s a messenger boy on his way up, Mr. Shayne. He acted funny. Said he had a letter to deliver to you personally and wouldn’t leave it at the desk. I gave Joe the wink to stall him in the elevator while I called you.”

  Shayne said, “Good work, Tommy,” and hung up.

  He took his gun and went to the door, unlatched it, and left it open a crack. The elevator doors clanged in the hall as he pressed back against the wall beside the door. He held the cocked gun in his right hand.

  Footsteps approached his door and stopped. There was a light, hesitant knock.

  Shayne said, “Come in.”

  Nothing happened for a moment. The immediate response appeared to have startled the messenger. Then the door was cautiously pushed open and a peaked face peered in.

  Shayne gave a snort of disgust and lowered his gun. The boy was about nineteen, thin and ill clad, with a limp cap pulled low on his pimpled forehead. His teeth chattered when he saw Shayne’s grim visage and the gun in his hand. He gave a violent start and almost dropped a white envelope clutched in one grimy hand.

  Pocketing the gun, Shayne said, “Come on in,” and closed the door.

  “Gee, Mister,” the lad whined, “what was you pointin’ that gun at me for? I ain’t done nothin’.”

  “I was expecting someone else,” Shayne explained, and held out his hand for the letter. “That for me?”

  “Is your name Shayne?” The boy looked around the room with bulging eyes and ejaculated, “Gee, looks like you been settin’ up all night.”

  Shayne took the envelope from his lax fingers. “Where’d you get this?”

  “Feller give it to me on the street while ago. Give me a buck to deliver it an’ get a answer.” The boy strode insolently past Shayne to the table and clutched a cigarette which extended from the opened pack. He struck a match to it and wandered to the windows to peer out while Shayne tore the envelope open.

  “Gee, you got a good view here,” the boy said, his back toward Shayne.

  Shayne was turning a blank sheet of paper over and over in his big hands. He scowled and looked inside the envelope again, but there was nothing more inside. He turned on the light and held the blank sheet up to it to make certain he wasn’t missing any trick writing.

  The paper was completely blank.

  Shayne asked angrily, “What’s the gag?”

  The boy whirled around with a bewildered expression on his face. “What kinda gag? I was s’posed to get a answer.”

  “Do you know what was in the envelope?”

  “Nope. I sure don’t. It was all sealed up.”

  “Where’d you get it?”

  “Down on Flagler.” He gestured vaguely out the window and as he did so, a spasm of coughing shook his thin body. “I slep’ in the park an’ was wonderin’ could I find a joint open where I could get a cup of Java when this guy walks up to me an’ ast me did I wanta make a buck. Did I wanna make a buck!” An attempt to laugh choked him again, and he finally sputtered, “He gimme that an’ tol’ me to deliver it to you personal and get a answer.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “I dunno. Sorta medium, dressed good, but I didn’t see his face so good,” he ended defensively.

  “Where are you supposed to meet him to give my answer?”

  “Same place… right there on Flagler.”

  Shayne said, “I don’t get it.”

  “Me neither, Mister. Gee, I dunno. Is anything wrong?”

  “Maybe I’m nuts,” Shayne told the boy, scowling heavily. “Go on back and tell him that’s my answer.”

  The youth’s jaw sagged. “Did you say you’re nuts, Mister? You want I should tell him that’s what…”

  “It’s as good as any. Go on. Tell him that.”

  The ragged boy edged toward the door, watching Shayne with round, frightened eyes, darted out and ran down the hall.

  Shayne waited until he heard the elevator stop and start again. He then raced down the hall to a stairway and down to a side entrance. He stepped out on the sidewalk and checked his speed, sauntering toward the corner around which was the main entrance to the apartment building.

  He heard the roar of a motor as he neared the corner. A sedan shot past in low gear, careened north on Third Avenue. The license plate was splashed with mud and was indecipherable.

  Shayne ran around the corner and into the lobby. Tommy blinked and looked at him with excited eyes.

  “Gee, Mr. Shayne,” he said breathlessly, “something awful funny just happened. That kid that went up to your room… he came down, and when he went out a guy grabbed him and threw him in the back of a car that was parked in front of the door. It dashed away like a bat out of Bimini.”

  “Yeh. I saw it,” Shayne said absently. His eyes were on the lobby clock and the time was five forty-five. “Keep on keeping your eyes open, Tommy,” he grinned, and went to the elevator.

  In his apartment he hesitated about taking another drink and decided against it. He studied the envelope and blank sheet of paper, but they told him no more than they had before. He yawned and rubbed his hand over a sprouting stubble of red whiskers.

  Deciding that a shave might re
fresh him, he stripped to the waist and went into the bathroom, lathered his face and shaved, then doused cold water over his head and torso.

  Still stripped to the waist, he went to the kitchenette and put on a percolator of coffee to brew, turning the gas low under it.

  In the bedroom he took out a clean shirt and undershirt. As he pulled the undershirt over his head he stepped to the window and let the shade up all the way to allow the morning light to stream into the room.

  Before he could pick up his shirt there was a spanking sound on the pane of glass above his head. Glass clattered and broke into pieces around his feet. His muscles went lax and he slithered to the floor in a heap before the window.

  Glancing upward at the opposite wall he saw a lead bullet flattened in the chipped plaster above his bed, about head high. He wriggled upward cautiously and peered over the window sill.

  Directly across the street he looked at the windows of a three-story building. A dingy lace curtain fluttered out of an open window almost directly opposite his own. All the other windows were closed.

  Hunching along the floor to the door of his bedroom, he ran out and grabbed his coat, buttoned it up over his undershirt and sprinted out the door and down the stairs to the lobby.

  He grinned at Tommy’s sleepily startled face and waved to him as he ran swiftly through the deserted lobby and across the street.

  The small, ornate lobby of the hotel opposite his own was deserted except for an alert clerk. He was a severe young man with nose glasses and a receding chin. He was startled when Shayne barged in and demanded harshly:

  “Has anybody checked into one of your front rooms in the last couple of hours?”

  “May I ask why you want to know?” the clerk asked in a cold, authoritative tone.

  Shayne pounded a hard fist on the desk and growled, “Somebody just took a pot-shot at me from about the middle room on the second floor facing south.”

  “A shot? At you? But I’m sure…”

  “Which room has just been rented?” Shayne reached across the desk and caught the clerk’s shoulders in a hard grip. “Goddammit, man, don’t argue with me.”