Heads You Lose ms-8

by Brett Halliday

  “Whyn’t you say so?” the man grumbled. “Two gallons all you need?”

  “That’ll be plenty.”

  He hurried around to the pump and rang up two gallons, came back and said, “That’ll be one-fifty. You know we got to be almighty careful who we sell it to.”

  Shayne said, “Sure. I know.” He paid for the bootleg gas and drove on into town, stopping in front of the police station on Flagler Street.

  Will Gentry looked up with a suspicious grunt when Shayne walked in. The detective grinned and said, “It’s all over but a few details, Will. Got those men rounded up?”

  “Three squad cars. That enough?”

  “It should be. Did you get that list of stations Dennis Kline has been buying up?”

  “Yep. Fifteen of them. Mostly little stations around on the outskirts.”

  “Those are the ones that would be easiest to work in his racket. They’re your meat. Start your men raiding them. Don’t waste any time looking for bootleg stuff. Search the operators and stations thoroughly for forged coupons or ration books.”

  Gentry’s jaw sagged. “That the way he was working it?”

  “I hope so. And I’ve got another job.” He described Gene and his pal who had signed the hotel register under the alias of B. Antrim and whom Gene called Mark. He told Gentry where to look for them, then said:

  “I guess the Army will want the next assignment.”

  He lifted Gentry’s telephone and called Captain Ott at Military Intelligence. “Shayne talking. I’ve got something for you on Bob Wilson. He’s in the city being hidden out by a local racketeer named Dennis Kline. Why don’t you get together with Will Gentry and raid Kline’s dives? You’ll find him in one of them.”

  After listening a moment, Shayne went on, “That’s right. You can call Gentry when you’re ready.” He hung up and turned to the Chief of Detectives. “Ott will call you in a few minutes. You’d better pick up Kline and a man named P. T. Brannigan. His number is in the phone book. And send a car out for Carlton in Coral Gables. I doubt whether he’ll stick his nose out without an escort. Bring them all to Edna Taylor’s place. You know where it is.”

  “My God,” Gentry complained, “we’ll have half the city out there. Do you know what you’re doing, Mike?”

  “I hope so.” Shayne got up wearily. The tight tape around his sore and swollen ribs was growing very painful. He promised, “I’ll see you at Edna Taylor’s,” and went out.

  CHAPTER 16

  There was no light in Edna Taylor’s living room when Shayne parked out front. He got out stiffly and walked around the side, saw a light in the bedroom, and went back to rap on the door.

  Nothing happened for a couple of minutes. Then he heard a window in the living room being cautiously opened. Edna Taylor asked, “Who’s there?”

  “Michael Shayne,” he answered.

  She made no reply. The window went down and he waited another full minute. Then the door swung open. Shayne pushed it wide on his way in.

  There was no light in the living room, but a faint glow came through the open bedroom door. In the dim light he watched her back away from him. She had removed her suit coat and wore a white blouse with the tweed skirt. The blouse had short puff sleeves with a flattering shirred neck. She looked younger and more appealing than at any other time he had seen her.

  “Why did you come here?” Her voice was a nervous whisper.

  “Didn’t you suspect I’d be back?”

  “No. I… I wish you’d go.”

  Shayne shook his head. He tossed his hat on a chair and said, “We’ve got a lot of things to talk about.”

  Her left hand clutched at the shirred neck of her blouse. “I suppose you still think I murdered that Seeney man in cold blood… and that I’m a gasoline bootlegger.”

  “I’m tired of thinking,” he told her. “Can’t we sit down and take it easy for a while?” He moved past her toward the hearth and stood with his elbows resting on the mantel to ease the pressure from his throbbing ribs. The bedroom light touched the right side of his gaunt face, leaving the other side shadowed.

  Edna looked at him searchingly for a time, then asked, “Would you like a drink?”

  “Not now. I want to relax and forget there are such things as murder and racketeering in the world.”

  She moved to the couch and sat down at one end of it, folded her arms, and leaned forward to gaze pensively at the white fluff of ashes on the hearth left by the burnt driftwood.

  “Things could be so different, Michael… if you’d just let them be.” Her voice was troubled.

  “I’m in a mood to let them be right now.” He went over and lowered his body to the couch a couple of feet from her, then carefully and painfully arranged his torso on the couch, draping his knees over one end and letting his head down on her lap. He closed his eyes and lay still.

  He felt her thigh muscles tighten under his head. Then she relaxed and her lap was soft and warm.

  When she spoke after a time her voice was troubled again. “Why do you drive yourself so, Michael? One would think you expect every hour to be your last.”

  He mumbled, “I never know.”

  “But you can’t go on that way forever. Always in the present… just for the moment.” One of her fingers lightly traced the line of a deep groove in his cheek downward to the point of his chin.

  “I don’t expect to go on forever.” His voice was relaxed. “As long as I can have moments like this…”

  “You don’t trust me, do you?”

  “I don’t trust any clever woman.”

  “That isn’t fair, Michael.” Her voice throbbed with sincerity. “Don’t you see what we could be to each other? What we could accomplish working together?”

  He opened his eyes and looked up into her face, said gravely, “There you go away from the present.”

  She tried to smile, but her eyes were tortured in the dim light streaming from the bedroom. “I suppose I want too much.”

  Shayne closed his eyes again. He said, “All women want too much.”

  Her muscles tightened beneath his head again. He felt her slowly leaning downward, was conscious of the flat, hard warmth of her stomach pressing his cheek. Her fingers tangled his hair, tightened suddenly, and a tremor shook her. Her voice was low and clear when she said, “I love you, Michael. Do you hear me! I love you. What are we going to do?”

  Shayne said, “This,” without moving his lips.

  “Can’t we go away together?” A hot tear splashed down on his face, “Now… tonight!”

  Shayne heard an automobile coming into the driveway. He pulled himself up and away from her, eased his feet off the end of the sofa to the floor. He said, “You’d better turn on a light. We’re going to have company.”

  “Company?” She shrank back from him.

  “I invited a few people to meet me here.” He turned away without looking at her, stepped around the couch and switched on the two ship’s lanterns swinging from the overhead beam.

  She remained where she was while he went to the front door and opened it. Chief Gentry and three detectives were getting out of a police sedan with Mr. Brannigan and Dennis Kline.

  Shayne called, “Come on in.”

  Brannigan entered first, pale and fuming. “It’s you, Shayne. Is this your idea of a practical joke?”

  Shayne grinned and shook his head. He said, “Hello, Kline,” as the other man stepped in behind Brannigan.

  Kline appeared, as he had that morning, wholly unperturbed. He said, “My pal,” and clasped his hands behind his back as he wandered in and looked about the unusual room with interest.

  Gentry said to his men, “You boys spread out around the house. No one leaves till I say so.” He nodded to Shayne and stepped in heavily. “Couple of other boys are fetching Carlton.”

  Shayne said, “We won’t need him at the moment.” He started to close the door when a coupe rattled into the drive and parked behind the police car.

  T
imothy Rourke fell out of the door and ran up the walk. “A hell of a guy you are,” Rourke complained. “If Gentry hadn’t tipped me off…”

  “I was just going to phone you.” Shayne grinned. He closed the door and turned to survey the gathered crowd.

  Brannigan had gone directly to the couch, and his vice-president had risen and was talking with him in a low tone. They both looked at Shayne.

  Brannigan squared his shoulders and said querulously, “I presume this meeting is the result of your decision to accept my offer of the morning, Mr. Shayne.”

  “What offer?”

  “To accept a position as special investigator for the Association… on the new membership basis you mentioned.”

  Shayne said shortly, “You don’t need an investigator.”

  “But I assure you…”

  Shayne shook his red head. “The last thing in the world your association can stand is investigation.” He turned to Gentry and explained, “The Motorist Protective Association is nothing but a racket. I don’t know all the details, but you can sweat them out of Brannigan.”

  “That’s a libelous statement,” Edna Taylor said crisply. “You’ll be held accountable for it.”

  Shayne said, “I’ll do better than that. I’ll prove it.” He addressed Gentry again. “They work through selected filling stations, though whether they actually furnish the bootleg stuff or not I don’t know. It’s a beautiful set-up. They get members by posing as a benevolent organization offering legal advice on rationing problems too complex for the average citizen to comprehend. They have men who contact these members, talk things over with them, and find the ones who are eager to chisel a little. These people are given a list of filling stations handling Black Market stuff. Their membership card assures the bootlegger they have been investigated and can be trusted not to talk.”

  Gentry nodded. “Sounds all right the way you tell it.”

  “It’s a pack of nonsense,” Edna Taylor said heatedly. “You haven’t a particle of evidence.”

  “I’ve got plenty.” He went on to Gentry: “They have other field men who go around sounding out service-station operators. Edward Seeney was one of those men.”

  “So that’s why Miss Taylor shot Eddie Seeney,” Gentry growled.

  “That’s right.” Shayne didn’t look at Edna. “Remember that list of names Eddie was carrying? I haven’t checked them all, but all whom I’ve contacted run service stations. Remember, Gentry? Two names on that list were crossed out. Others were checked.”

  Gentry nodded. “Clem Wilson was one of the men crossed off.”

  “And you know how Clem stood on bootlegging gas. Clem’s dead now. The other name was Felix Ponti. I talked to Ponti and found him the same type as Clem Wilson. On the other hand, the names that were checked were all sympathetic, but none of them would let me have gas without a coupon.”

  “You’re contradicting yourself,” Miss Taylor said quickly, “If those checkmarks meant anything…”

  Shayne stopped her with a short laugh. “Let me finish. They wouldn’t sell me any illicit stuff until I flashed a Motorist Protective Association membership card. That made the difference and they weren’t afraid of me.”

  He glanced at Edna and met a venomous glare from her hazel eyes. He said, “Don’t blame yourself for giving me that card. After all, you could hardly refuse without arousing more suspicion. I had already guessed the angle and it simply made proving it easier.”

  “How about Seeney?” Gentry put in impatiently. “Did he kill Clem Wilson?”

  “I’m coming to that. When Brannigan read about Wilson’s murder last night he was scared. He didn’t know whether one of his men had found it necessary to kill Wilson or not. If not, it meant there was another gas racket operating in town in competition with him. In either case he was damned anxious to know who’d killed Wilson… and how much I knew.

  “So he called me to his office and tried to find out what I knew by claiming his association wanted to help stamp out gas racketeering. He was partially truthful. It was to his interest to stamp out any competitive organization.”

  Shayne paused to draw a long breath. “When I wouldn’t play ball, he sicked his vice-president onto me. She tried to wangle it out of me. Eddie Seeney came to the door while we were having fun. He was scared, too, because he’d been to see Wilson lately with a proposition. Wilson cussed him out and he crossed Wilson off the list. But he was afraid Wilson might have described him to me over the phone. His wife had accused him of the murder, too. He tried to see Brannigan, but Brannigan put him off… fired him. So he tried to turn to Miss Taylor. As soon as she saw him in the doorway drunk, she knew she had to shut him up before he spilled things in front of me. So she grabbed my gun and let him have it, her brilliant legalistic mind realizing she could claim self-defense. Mrs. Seeney, by the way,” he ended, turning his eyes on Edna Taylor, “has a very young baby.”

  Edna gave a little gasp and swayed to the couch, burying her face in her hands.

  Gentry growled, “All right. That’s one murder. But who did kill Clem Wilson? Seeney? And what about those hoods that have been trying to rub you out?”

  “I’m coming to that.” Shayne paused at the sound of a car pulling up outside. He looked relieved and said, “That must be our missing witness.”

  He strode to the door and opened it, caught Mr. Carlton by the arm and drew him inside, saying cheerfully, “Everything is under control, Carlton, and you’re not going to get hurt.”

  Herbert Carlton nodded nervously to Chief Gentry and his gaze flickered over Brannigan and Dennis Kline with no show of recognition.

  Shayne said, “Just take it easy, Carlton,” and asked Gentry, “Did you find any evidence of ration-book forging in Carlton’s printing office when you picked up Donald Frazier’s body?”

  “Plenty. We found the plates used for the coupons, but we didn’t find any of the printed stuff.”

  Shayne said, “Carlton’s trusted employee, whom we know as Bartel, was an ace counterfeiter. Working alone at night, he has been forging gas coupons and books. And that’s where you come in, Kline.”

  Dennis Kline smiled coldly and fingered his gray mustache. “You’ll have one hell of a time proving anything, Shamus.”

  “I don’t think so. Gentry has a dozen men out raiding your string of outlying service stations.”

  “They won’t find anything. Not a drop of bootleg.”

  “They’re not looking for that. We knew you were too smart to take a chance that way. With your reputation, it was a cinch your stations would be closely checked. But forged coupons are a different matter. They’re easily concealed, and there’s no way in God’s world to prove they’re not legitimate once they’re torn from a book and put with the others. You thought it was foolproof, didn’t you, Kline? There’d always be the exact number of coupons to match the amount of gas sold.”

  Kline grated, “You’re crazy. I don’t know anything about any forged coupons. Those stations are legitimate business.”

  Shayne turned to Gentry. “Can you get a report on that raiding squad?”

  “I’ll call in and see,” Gentry answered. He heaved himself from the deep chair and looked around for a telephone.

  “It’s in the bedroom,” Shayne told him. He preceded Gentry into the room and tested the instrument, nodded with satisfaction, and said, “It’s okay. See what you can get.”

  Gentry dialed a number and consulted briefly with headquarters, hung up and turned with a glint of satisfaction in his eyes. “I got plenty,” he said and they went back to the living room.

  Gentry confronted Kline and growled, “You’ve tangled with the Feds this time, Denny. Three of your stations raided. One drew a blank, but the other two were lousy with loose coupons.”

  “Can I help it if some of my men don’t have any better sense?”

  “With coupons turning up at enough of your stations, it’s going to make a federal grand jury suspect that you might have a hand in it,”
Gentry said. An expression faintly resembling a smile spread over his beefy face. Turning to Shayne, he went on: “By God, Mike! I’ve been waiting for years for Kline to get careless enough so that Manny Markle couldn’t push him through a loophole. This is it.”

  “And that isn’t all,” Shayne said. He heard another car stop outside and strode to the door, yanked it open and said, “Come in and join the gathering,” to Captain Ott and the shrinking youth whom the officer pushed in front of him.

  Shayne caught Bob Wilson’s arm and straightened him up. The Army deserter cowered away from him, but Shayne turned him around to face the others, ordering, “Point out the man who’s been hiding you here in town.”

  Bob Wilson drew in a long breath and blurted out, “Nobody’s been hiding me.”

  Shayne said, “You know you went to Dennis Kline as soon as you hit town. Kline got you into that drugstore holdup a year ago and you knew he would help you because you kept your mouth shut. Isn’t that it?” He pressed hard on the youth’s shoulders.

  Kline took a step forward, his eyes leering angrily. “You’re putting words into his mouth, Shayne. I don’t even know who this boy is.”

  “How about it, Captain Ott?” Shayne glanced at the Army officer. “Where’d you pick him up?”

  “Just where you said we would find him, Shayne. With the help of Gentry’s men we raided a night-club owned by Kline. This lad was hiding there.”

  Kline blustered, “That doesn’t prove anything against me. I’m not responsible…”

  “I can prove that you sent a man to Clem Wilson offering to protect his son from arrest if Wilson would sell out to you. Wilson refused and threatened to notify the authorities last midnight unless Bob gave himself up. You knew Wilson would do it, didn’t you, Kline? So you couldn’t afford to let Clem live until midnight.”

  Bob Wilson was suddenly standing erect of his own accord. He fought Shayne’s arm from his shoulder, took two steps toward Kline with his face contorted and his fists doubled. “Did you murder my father, Dennis Kline? Did you?”