Never Kill a Client

by Brett Halliday

  She recovered her balance and lowered her long lashes while she rubbed her bruised wrists. “I don’t know what’s happened,” she said in a low voice. “I don’t understand. I promised to tell you the truth this time, and I’m just waiting for you to let me do it.”

  “No more carefully rehearsed stories,” he warned her angrily, turning aside to splash cognac into his glass. “I think I’ve been taken, goddamn it. I think you’ve made a Patsy of me. Trailing you around all over this town like a tame puppy while all hell was breaking loose back in Miami.

  “You know what I think right now?” He swung around on his heel to glare at her. “I think this whole thing from the cute Special Delivery letter was a carefully calculated plan to get me out of Miami and away from my office today. That’s the way it looks right now. And, by God, I fell for it,” he added wonderingly.

  “Oh no, Mike!” She shrank away from him, moved back across the rug on her bare feet to the sofa where she dropped down again and covered her face for a moment. Her features were composed and set when she looked at him again and said quietly, “Please sit down with your drink and listen to me. I admit I made up the Cuban and communist part of it, but if you’ll just help me get that dispatch case back from Tijuana…”

  He said, “Nuts on Tijuana. I’m interested in Miami, Mary… if you are Mary Devon, which I’m beginning to doubt.”

  “What about Miami? I haven’t been there for years.”

  “There’s this about Miami.” He strode across to stand over her, holding his glass of cognac in his left hand with the big palm of his right hand held open and swung back menacingly to indicate that he had meant his former threat. “My secretary has vanished. She’s been missing for hours, and there’s the body of a dead man in my office.”

  “A dead man?” She shrank back, aghast. “Who?”

  “They don’t know yet, but the theory right now is that Lucy Hamilton murdered him.”

  “But what has the body of a dead man got to do with you, Mike? You can prove you’ve been here all day.”

  “That’s right,” he said bitterly. “Being diddled all over Los Angeles on a wild goose chase that would stink like hell even to a rookie cop while a murder is being committed in my office and God knows what has happened to my secretary while I’m out here playing games with you.

  “That’s why you’re going to start talking, and tell the truth this time,” he told her implacably. “Let’s not have any more crap about a dispatch case in Tijuana and taxi drivers spying on you all over the city. I tell you this: If anything happens to Lucy from now on because you keep lying to me, I’ll…” He paused and dropped his voice. “I’ll see that you regret it. Now start talking. It was a hoax from the beginning, wasn’t it?”

  “I didn’t know anything about murder, Mike. Or your secretary. I swear I didn’t. I still don’t see…” She shuddered and shrank farther away from the anger in his eyes, “You’ve got to believe me. It was just a job. They said it was a practical joke and it sounded like fun. I still can’t believe…”

  “Who said it was a practical joke?”

  “Joe did. Joe… Morrison,” she babbled. “He’s a producer here that I do some work for. Bit parts. I just can’t think that he… that your being here has anything to do with what happened in Miami today.”

  Shayne dropped into the chair close to the sofa and said, “Give it to me, Mary. The whole thing… and straight.”

  “In the first place,” she admitted, biting her full lower lip, “my name isn’t Mary Devon. Joe suggested I tell you that. He gave me a copy of that book your friend wrote about the Wanda Weatherby case so I could read up on it and pretend I was Helen Taylor’s room-mate and met you briefly that one time ten years ago. He said you’d never remember what Mary Devon looked like and it would make the whole thing sound that much more convincing… a logical reason for me to call on you for help now that I was supposed to be in trouble ten years later.”

  “All right,” said Shayne. “I don’t give a damn what your name is. You say a producer named Joe Morrison suggested this to you… hired you to do it. When was this?”

  “About a week ago. Joe said they needed an actress to pull a practical joke on the private detective in Miami. Michael Shayne. Of course, I knew all about you from watching the TeeVee series.”

  “Who is ‘they’?” demanded Shayne. “The ones Joe said needed an actress?”

  “I don’t know,” she faltered. “He never said. I just assumed it was some friends of yours that had planned it for a joke. It all sounded pretty silly to me, but they offered me five hundred dollars and I didn’t see what harm it could do. In fact… well, I guess I might as well admit I was intrigued by the idea of spending the night with you.”

  She lifted her chin defiantly. “And if you’re interested, I still am… only more so now that I’ve met you. If you’ll cancel that damned airplane reservation…”

  Shayne said wearily, “Get back onto the subject. Who dreamed up all the hocus-pocus about Castro and so forth?”

  “Joe did. He dictated the letter I wrote you, and gave me the torn thousand-dollar bill and all. Spilling the perfume on it was my idea. He had a script all written out that I memorized. I told him it sounded pretty silly and I didn’t believe you’d fall for it, and so he fixed up a second story for me to tell to get you to go to Tijuana with me tomorrow if you didn’t fall for the first one. The whole idea was that I was to keep you here at least until tomorrow noon and then it wouldn’t matter if you caught on and went back.”

  “Then someone wanted me out of Miami for at least two days,” Shayne muttered. “That’s why you went through all that silly business at the Plaza Terrace and the Brown Derby and the other restaurant on Sunset Strip?”

  She nodded, smiling weakly. “The Cock and Bull. That was Joe’s idea of a gimmick, what some of the TeeVee people call a bubble when they stick it into a script. He said a cock-and-bull story like that should have its climax at a place of the same name.”

  Shayne said angrily, “It was worth a pretty good hunk of money for someone to get me away from my office. Assuming those two halves of the bill in my pocket aren’t counterfeit, and adding in my airplane fare and your five-hundred-dollar fee for the job… that’s close to two grand altogether.”

  She said, “I asked Joe who was putting out that kind of dough on a practical joke, and he just grinned and said airily that it was going to be worth every penny of it when you found out how easy it had been to fool you.”

  Shayne said, “I’d like to have a little talk with your Joe Morrison. Where can I find him?”

  “Gosh, I don’t know. Not in the evening like this. He’s a producer and you can get him at his studio mostly in the daytime, but I don’t know where he lives. He’s got an unlisted telephone number in Beverly Hills that he never did give to me. Not that I wanted it, but I did try to call him one night and couldn’t reach him by phone. If you do stay over tonight, I’ll take you out to the lot and introduce you to him tomorrow.”

  Shayne looked at his watch and said grimly, “I’m boarding a plane for Miami in just a little over an hour from now.” He emptied his glass of cognac, stared at the glass for a moment, then drew back his arm and threw it across the room with all his strength.

  He laughed unpleasantly at the expression on the blonde’s face as the glass shattered in fragments against the wall. “You’re still lying to me,” he told her flatly. “This isn’t any goddamned practical joke. This is for real. In place of your commies in the FBI and the CIA, you’ve substituted a television producer named Joe Morrison who conveniently has an unlisted telephone and can’t be reached for confirmation until some time tomorrow. Let’s have the truth now. What in hell went on in Miami today and is going on in Miami tomorrow that made it worth two grand to somebody to keep me out of town?”

  “I don’t know.” She shuddered and drew her robe tightly about her body. “Go on and catch your jet-liner and get back there and find out,” she advised him t
hinly. “What have I got to do with missing secretaries and dead men?”

  “That’s what I intend to find out.” Shayne got to his feet, his nostrils flaring widely. She remained crouched back on the sofa and watched fearfully as he strode into the bedroom where she had opened her suitcase on the bed to take out the robe she had changed into while he watched her in the mirror.

  From where she sat, she couldn’t see him through the bedroom door as he picked up the open suitcase and dumped the contents onto the bed. He pawed through the dresses, blouses and skirts, picking out half a dozen which he draped over his arm and carried back into the sitting room and dropped on a heap on the floor in front of her.

  “Now, let’s talk turkey, whatever-the-hell-your-name-is. Every article of clothing on the floor here carries a label from an expensive Lincoln Road shop in Miami Beach. You said you hadn’t been there for years. So you lied. So what?”

  “I didn’t lie. I… those aren’t even my own clothes,” she told him glibly. “They belong to a girl I know. I’m married to a very jealous man and I couldn’t pack a bag to bring with me today and so I borrowed a suitcase of clothes from her…”

  “Shut up!” said Shayne in a voice that shut her up. “You’re going back to Miami with me.”

  “No, I… I can’t, Mike. My husband…”

  “To hell with your husband,” he said deliberately. “I don’t think you’ve got one in the first place. In the second place, I don’t give a damn whether you have or not. I’m catching that nine-forty plane and you’re going with me. You’ve lied to me from the word go, and you’re coming back with me to straighten this thing out.”

  “I won’t,” she said desperately. “You can’t force me to go. I’ll scream and call the police if you try to force me.”

  He laughed at her happily. “That, I want to see. You screaming and calling the police. You’ve got two choices: Either come back to Miami with me or by God I’ll call the police and have them come up here to get you.”

  “You can’t. You don’t dare.” She lay back on the sofa panting. “What would you tell them?”

  Again he laughed happily. “Plenty. I can think up all sorts of charges that will keep you safely in jail for a few days. Remember, baby. I’m Michael Shayne.” He bared his teeth at her wolfishly. “I’ve got connections with the L.A. police department.” He didn’t have, but she had no way of knowing that. “We’ll start out with simple prostitution and work our way up from there. Look at you. Half-undressed in your own hotel room with a man! Christ, I can think of a dozen charges that’ll stick for a few days at least while they check you out. I don’t think you want any of them, because I don’t believe any of your story will check out. You’re on the hot-seat, and you know it. You’re coming back to Miami with me or you’re going to rot in a jail cell right here in L.A.”

  He whirled about and strode to the telephone and again asked the operator for United Airlines. When he got them, he said curtly, “Michael Shayne, with a reservation to Miami on Flight Seventeen. Can you make that for two? I have a friend who wants to go to Miami with me.”

  When he was assured that there would be space held for two of them to Miami on Flight Seventeen, he swung about and consulted his watch.

  “We’ve got about an hour to reach the airport. Make up your mind. Get some clothes on and come back to Miami with me, or stay the way you are and I’ll have the Los Angeles vice squad up here in five minutes. You’ve got just thirty seconds to make up your mind which you want it to be.”

  She looked up at him from the sofa for a long moment, calculatingly, obviously trying to read his mind, to determine whether he was bluffing of whether he actually meant what he said.

  She appeared to make up her mind, and she stood up slowly and reached down to fumble with the knotted cord at her waist.

  She loosened it and let the robe fall apart, and then shrugged herself out of it while it fell to the floor at her feet.

  Naked and white-bodied, and unashamedly offering herself to him, she said, “We don’t have to go, Mike. I’d rather stay here with you. Let the airplane go to hell. Let Miami go to hell. The two of us…? Mike!” She swayed toward him, sobbing.

  Michael Shayne stepped to one side, away from her, caught her shoulder and swung her about toward the bedroom.

  “Get some clothes on and we’ll catch that plane. After we get things straightened out in Miami…?”

  She stood naked and tall in front of him, and said over her shoulder with a queer sort of dignity, “It will be too late then, Mike. Don’t throw this away.”

  He turned aside and fumbled for a cigarette. “Get your clothes on. We haven’t got any time to waste.”

  8

  When Shayne got his cigarette going, she had gathered up the clothes he had thrown on the floor and was disappearing through the open door into the bedroom. He called after her, “In just five minutes I’m taking you downstairs to check out and catch a cab. Don’t get any cute ideas about stalling so we’ll miss the plane.” She kept on going into the bedroom without answering him or looking back.

  He stared after her balefully, then glanced at the uncorked bottle of cognac and across the room at the broken pieces of his glass on the floor. Her glass stood empty on the table in front of the sofa. He stepped over to pick it up, and saw her handbag pushed partly down between the cushion and the end of the sofa. He reached down to pull it out, unsnapped the clasp and turned it upside down to spill the contents out on the table.

  There was a cigarette case he had seen before, a compact and lipstick and small comb, a folded handkerchief which proved to have no monogram or initials on it when he shook it out, but did exude a strong whiff of her perfume. There was also a bulging coin purse which came out and dangled at the end of a silk cord attached to the inside of the bag.

  He unsnapped the purse and found a wad of bills and some silver. There were two fifties and other, smaller bills, making up a total of about three hundred dollars. But there was no clue at all to the woman’s real identity.

  Shayne put the money back in the purse and snapped it shut, then felt inside the bag and found a pocket in the lining that yielded a folded United Airlines ticket envelope. Inside the envelope was the return half of a round-trip ticket from Miami to Los Angeles. It had been issued in Miami two days previously to Elsa Cornell.

  He dropped the handbag on the table and strode to the bedroom door carrying the ticket. She had quickly donned a serviceable dark gray dress (which he recognized as one of those he had found that bore a Miami label… part of the wardrobe which she had claimed belonged to a friend… and which fit her perfectly) and she was leaning over the bed packing the other things back into her suitcase with perfect self-possession.

  “What sort of story have you got to explain this, Elsa?” He held the ticket up for her to see. “I found it tucked into a pocket in your handbag.”

  She glanced at it and said coldly, “I don’t intend to explain anything more to you, Mike Shayne. From here on out, make your own smart deductions. I’m going back with you and you should be satisfied. Did you steal the money from my handbag, too?” she added scornfully.

  “No. I’m going to leave you that to pay your hotel bill with.” He glanced at his watch and said, “We’re walking out of this room in exactly three minutes.”

  “Then get out and let me finish packing.”

  He raised his eyebrows at the gray dress she had changed into, and said, “Aren’t you lucky that your friend’s clothes fit you so well? Okay, Elsa. Make it snappy or we’ll miss our plane.”

  He went back and snatched up her empty glass, poured a couple of fingers of cognac into it and recapped the bottle which was still half full. He opened his briefcase and dropped it inside to replace the one he had left with Pat Ryan at the Plaza Terrace, and was moodily sipping his drink when she came marching out of the bedroom with her head held high, and went to pick up her handbag and replace her meager belongings in it, saying over her shoulder, “If you want to
bring my bags, I’m ready to get out of this joint.”

  He grinned sourly and tossed the rest of the liquor down. In spite of himself, he had to admit she was quite a gal. Nothing seemed to faze her, by God. Under other circumstances, Elsa Cornell was decidedly the sort of female who appealed to Michael Shayne.

  She was waiting composedly for him at the door with her handbag tucked under her arm when he came out of the bedroom with her bags. She opened the door and held it for him while he paused and awkwardly picked up his briefcase also, and she followed him out and walked down the corridor to the elevator beside him with all the aplomb of a married woman checking out of a hotel room with her husband to whom she has been married for twenty years.

  Nor did her aplomb desert her in the lobby. She went directly to the cashier’s desk with her room key in her hand, said icily, “I have to leave town unexpectedly. May I have my bill? There was a room-service charge about half an hour ago,” she added.

  Shayne handed the three bags over to a bellboy who hurried up to him, and said, “We need a cab to catch a plane.”

  The boy told him, “I’ll have one waiting,” and took the bags out the front door. Shayne stood behind Elsa and sardonically watched her pay her bill with cash. He didn’t know what the exact amount was, but observed that she received a few ones and some silver back from a fifty and twenty which she pushed under the grille. Her suite at a hotel like the Perriepont would run between twenty-five and thirty dollars a day, Shayne guessed, which meant that she was paying for two days’ occupancy and must have checked in on her arrival from Miami the day before yesterday.

  Just one more lie to chalk up against her, he thought with grim amusement, remembering the unpacked bags standing so revealingly inside the bedroom when they entered the suite earlier. She must have packed them and set them there that day when she started out to find Joe Pelter’s cab and write the note that was to be delivered to him at the Plaza Terrace and start him out following a will-of-the-wisp.