Murder by Proxy

by Brett Halliday

  “Right now? I don’t know. We gave him another room… right across the hall from his wife’s… when it kind of gave him the jimmies to stay in her room. At no charge, of course,” he added hastily. “You want me to check?”

  “I wish you would. If he’s in, I think you should talk to him, Tim. Sort of slant your story the way you feel it after sizing the guy up yourself.”

  Merrill had lifted the phone on his desk, and he spoke into it. He listened a moment and then said, “Mr. Harris? Mr. Shayne would like a word with you.” He passed the instrument to the detective.

  Shayne said, “Harris? I haven’t got anything definite yet, but I do have a couple of leads. In my office earlier, I mentioned getting a story in the News as a possible help. I have their top reporter downstairs with me right now and I’d like to have you talk to him. Timothy Rourke. He’s not only a fine reporter, but he also happens to be a hell of a decent guy and one of my closest friends. Don’t be afraid to tell him anything… and trust him to write the kind of story you’d like to see printed.”

  “Of course, Shayne. I’ll be happy to see him. Have you… do you… my God, Shayne! what have you found out?”

  “Nothing definite.” Michael Shayne grimaced as he made his voice sound cheerful and optimistic, neither of which he felt at the moment. “Just hold on tight and give us a few hours. In the meantime, Mr. Rourke will be right up.”

  He shook his head as he put the phone down and said, “Poor devil. What can you say in a case like this?”

  “You can hang up the phone,” said Rourke cynically. “I have to go up and face him… knowing what I do.”

  “You’re a reporter,” Shayne reminded him. “You make your living out of the tragedies in the lives of other people. Thanks for everything, Bob.” He swung toward the door.

  “Where are you off to?” demanded Rourke.

  Shayne paused with his hand on the knob. “Nothing for your story, Tim. Willy Arentz is manager of the Gray Gull, and he owes me a couple of favors. He just might be in his office this time of the afternoon. Then I think I’d better drop in on Petey Painter and see if I can stir him up a little by letting him know he can’t sit on this indefinitely. In the meantime, Bob. I don’t want it now, but maybe later. Get me up a complete dossier on your desk clerk… Lawford, was it… and your athletic young Bill Thompson.”

  “Good God, Mike! You don’t suspect either of them?”

  Shayne said, “I don’t suspect anyone. On the other hand, all we have at this point is their unsupported word about what happened last Monday. The more I look at Ellen Harris’ picture and hear about the way she was tossing her sex around last Monday, the more I think I’d like to check both of them.” He went out and closed the door quietly behind him.

  9.

  The Gray Gull was several miles northward on the beach, well beyond the concentration of luxury hotels. It did not open for business until the dinner hour, but there were six or eight cars in the parking lot when Shayne turned in, and the front doors stood open.

  He went through them into a wide, empty hallway that separated the bar from the big dining room on the right where he could hear voices and the clatter of silverware. No one showed up to stop him as he climbed the wide stairway to the gaming room on the second floor and stopped in front of an unmarked door.

  He heard voices inside the room, and turned the knob and the door swung open. The air conditioner was going, and two men in their shirtsleeves were bent over a desk littered with papers. The man seated behind the desk was Willy Arentz, slender and dapper, with a small, blond mustache and very cold, blue eyes. He had a reputation around town for being a square shooter—insofar as a man in his business can be and remain successful, and Shayne’s previous dealings with him had given the detective no reason to think otherwise. Leaning over his shoulder and making penciled notations on a sheet of paper covered with figures was a young man wearing glasses and a green eyeshade.

  Arentz looked up with an expression of annoyance when he heard the door open, which changed to one of pleasant though restrained welcome when he recognized the redhead. He said, “Mike Shayne,” with practically no inflection. “Just a minute, huh, while I check this?”

  Shayne said, “Sure,” and wandered past the desk to stand in front of a window looking down on the ocean and light a cigarette.

  There was the low murmur of voices behind him, and finally the creak of Arentz’s chair, and his voice saying, “All right, Henry. We’ll do it that way if you’re sure it’s okay.” Shayne turned from the window to see the young man gather up some papers and go through a side door which he closed behind him. Arentz swung around and said affably, “Take the load off your feet, Mike.” He gestured toward a chair at the end of the desk. “Trade that cigarette in for a cigar? Stand a drink?”

  “Neither, thanks.” Shayne settled his rangy body in the chair and crossed his long legs. “I’m looking for some information, Willy.”

  “If I’ve got it, it’s yours.”

  “First off… have you ever seen this woman in your place?” Shayne took Ellen Harris’ picture from his pocket and put it in front of the gambler. Arentz studied it appreciatively, pursing his lips and touching the tip of his left forefinger to his mustache. “Can’t say that I have, right off. But she’ll be welcome any time she wants to come. A real looker.”

  “One you’d be likely to remember if she had been in?” Shayne prompted him.

  “You know how it is… there’s hundreds in and out every night. Not in her class, I’ll agree, but it’s hard to say. Actually, Mike, I have a feeling she does ring a bell. But that’s as far as I can go. Can you place her any better?”

  “Maybe. Do you have a shill working here named Gene?”

  “We don’t have any shills working here, Mike. I like to feel people come to my place because they want to gamble and know they’ll get a fair run for their money… not lambs being led to the slaughter like some other places I could name. On the other hand,” he went on, and a faint twinkle warmed his eyes, “we do have a sort of percentage arrangement with a few people who sometimes steer a customer here instead of some other joint where they’ll really get rooked. Would that be Gene Blake you’re asking about?”

  “I don’t know his last name. About thirty, with brown hair and a lean, well-tanned face. Dresses quietly and well. Has a way with women.” Shayne frowned as he repeated Tiny’s description of the man last seen with Ellen Harris.

  “That fits Blake to a T.” Arentz leaned back and made a tent of his fingers, his eyes hooded and speculative. “Has Gene stepped out of line?”

  “I don’t know. What sort of character reference does he get from you?”

  “I couldn’t say personally. Everything I’ve heard about him is okay… for a guy that makes his living that way. Let’s just say I don’t know anything bad about him, but you already know that, Mike. He wouldn’t be coming here if I did.”

  Shayne tapped the picture in front of Arentz and told him, “Gene walked out of the Beachhaven bar with this woman last Monday evening after picking her up there, and the bartender heard some mention of gambling as they went out. She didn’t return to the hotel that night… hasn’t been seen since. Did he bring her here, Willy?”

  The gambler lifted the picture again and studied it more carefully. He frowned, half-closing his eyes.

  “Monday night? It wasn’t very fast… Mondays never are. I was out on the floor from about ten o’clock on. Gene Blake? H-m-m.” He touched his mustache reflectively. “Would she have been a plunger, Mike?”

  “I don’t know how much cash she was carrying. Her husband is a New York stockbroker… fairly up in the chips I’d guess, though probably not really loaded.”

  “Reason I ask… if she dropped a wad, Gene would have been around to collect his cut. I just can’t remember Mike. I’ve got a feeling Gene was in about then… a few nights ago, anyhow… I don’t remember seeing him around since. Later in the evening, I can show that picture around and
maybe get a real make for you. If she was in, one of the boys will surely place her.”

  “In the meantime, can you check and see if Gene did collect a percentage for someone Monday night?”

  “Sure, I can do that.” He pressed a button on his desk. “It’s all kind of guesswork, you know. Anything under five hundred doesn’t count…”

  He broke off as the door opened and the spectacled young man asked deferentially, “You want me, Chief?”

  “Take a look and see if we paid out anything to Gene Blake this week.”

  Henry nodded and disappeared into the inner office. Arentz studied Shayne shrewdly and asked, “You think this dame has been shacked up with Gene since Monday night?”

  Shayne spread out his hands. “For her husband’s sake, I hope not. On the other hand… hell!” he ended explosively, “I don’t know what I think about it, or what I want to think.”

  Henry reappeared in the doorway and said, “There is no record of any payment to Gene Blake for the past two weeks.”

  Arentz nodded and dismissed him. “There you are,” he told Shayne. “That doesn’t mean he didn’t steer her here Monday night. It just means she didn’t drop as much as five hundred… or that Gene has been so busy since then that he hasn’t been around to collect.”

  “You know where I could find him?”

  “We wouldn’t have any record of that, Mike. Like I said, he isn’t on the payroll or like that. I can ask around tonight and probably get a line for you.”

  Shayne said, “Thanks, Willy,” and got up. He hesitated, and then said, “This is the only copy I’ve got at the moment,” and pocketed Ellen’s picture. “Let it ride, if you don’t hear from me, Willy.” He went to the door and opened it, then turned back, “The cops are liable to be around asking the same questions. Right now Painter is trying to pretend nothing has happened, but there’s going to be a front-page story in tonight’s News that will make him get off his ass and start asking questions.”

  “The Gray Gull won’t be mentioned by name in that newspaper story?”

  Shayne shook his red head. “Not in this one, Willy. The faster we clear it up the better chance we can keep you out of it.”

  Arentz said reproachfully, “You know if I had anything… ?”

  Shayne said, “Sure,” and went out of the gambler’s office.

  Arentz sat very quietly and stared after him, then lifted a telephone and began dialling a number.

  In the wide hallway downstairs a colored man was indolently moving a vacuum cleaner over the rug. Shayne headed for the open front door in long strides, then slowed suddenly and stopped beside a public telephone booth. There were Miami and Miami Beach telephone directories on a shelf beside the booth. He tried the Beach directory first, and found one Eugene Blake listed with an address on 12th Street. He left the book open at that page, and checked the Miami directory. There were a number of Blakes, but no Genes or Eugenes.

  He went into the booth and closed the door tightly to shut out the whir of the vacuum cleaner, and dialled the number listed in the Beach book. He listened to the telephone ring four times, and then there was a click and a brisk feminine voice repeated the number he had dialled.

  Shayne asked, “Is Mr. Blake in?”

  “Not at the moment,” she replied. “May I take a message for him?”

  Shayne said awkwardly, “Well, I… this is an old friend of Gene’s from out of town. I’ve been out of touch for a long time. Is this… Mrs. Blake?”

  The faint suggestion of a chuckle came over the wire. “This is the Professional Answering Service. If you wish to leave a message for Mr. Blake, I will be glad to take it.”

  Shayne said, “Don’t bother,” and hung up. He sat there for a moment looking at the wall, and then went back to the telephone booth and verified Eugene Blake’s street address. He went out and got into his car and headed south toward 12th Street.

  Blake’s street address brought him to a square, two-storied stucco apartment building in the cheaper section of the Beach. Shayne parked outside and went in to a foyer with sixteen mailboxes on each side of it. He found “Blake, E.” on number twelve, and pushed open a door and went down the left-hand corridor where the apartments were numbered 9, 10, etc. He stopped in front of 12, and knocked.

  He expected no answer, and received none. He took a well-filled key-ring from his pocket while he studied the lock, and the first key he tried went into the lock and turned it part way, but stopped there. He withdrew the key and studied it, selected another one which unlocked Blake’s apartment smoothly.

  Shayne stepped inside and drew the door shut behind him. He stood in a small entryway, with an open door on his left leading into a kitchen, and an archway in front of him. A faintly damp, unventilated smell came from the interior of the apartment.

  Shayne went through the archway into a small and littered living room. The windows were tightly closed, and the smell of stale cigarette smoke lingered in the air. There was a shabby sofa along one wall, and beyond it a matching overstuffed chair with a newspaper lying on the floor beside it. On a coffee table, in front of the sofa, there were two glasses and a half bottle of cheap bourbon. One was an empty highball glass, and the other a cocktail glass with a tiny portion of faintly milky residue in the bottom. Shayne leaned over to sniff it, but he wasn’t expert enough to determine whether it had contained a daiquiri or not. An ashtray beside the two glasses overflowed with cigarette butts, at least half of them carrying lipstick stains. Shayne studied them and wondered what shade of lipstick a blonde like Ellen Harris normally wore.

  He moved on to the chair beyond the sofa, and checked the date of the paper lying on the floor beside it. It was dated the preceding Tuesday.

  Shayne went on into the rear bedroom and found an unmade double bed with a bedside ashtray containing also an almost equal number of lipsticked and unlipsticked cigarette butts. There was the same smell of stale air in the bedroom that indicated it had been unused for several days.

  Shayne turned back and glanced into the bathroom without seeing anything of interest, retraced his steps through the living room and paused in the door of the kitchen without entering it.

  Two empty ashtrays stood on the drainboard beside the sink, and tiny gnats buzzed over the carcasses of two squeezed lemons in the sink.

  He went out of the apartment and closed the door tightly behind him, went back to his car parked outside and drove to the first sign he saw indicating a public telephone.

  There, he turned to the yellow pages and looked up the address of the Professional Answering Service, which proved to be less than four blocks away. He went back to his car and drove there, and went in.

  10.

  The office of the Professional Answering Service was located on the ground floor of a building on 14th Street. The anteroom was presided over by a pleasant-faced, elderly lady, and there were no switchboards or telephone operators in evidence so Shayne concluded that the actual work was done elsewhere.

  When she turned from her desk to ask what she could do for him, Shayne put on his most disarming smile and told her, “It’s probably against all your rules, but I’m a detective trying to locate a woman who has been missing for several days from one of the hotels here. I think one of your customers can give me information about her, and it’s imperative that I contact him at once. The woman may be in great danger,” he added gravely.

  “Does his telephone number not answer?”

  “Your service answered when I tried to call him a short time ago. I know that he hasn’t been home for several days, and I assume you have been transferring calls to some other number.”

  “Not necessarily. Mostly, we simply take any messages that are left for a subscriber, and give them to him the next time he calls in.”

  “You mean you wouldn’t know how to reach him in the interim?” Shayne showed his disappointment clearly.

  “Normally not.” She hesitated. “Of course, if he knew he was going to be away from his own tele
phone for several days, and could be reached at some other number, he might inform us in advance, so that calls could be transferred at once and he wouldn’t have to be continually calling in to check. That’s one of our regular services.”

  “In that case, would you give the caller his new number, or simply take the message and then call him?”

  “Whichever way he preferred it handled.”

  “Would you have a record of it here if this subscriber had made such an arrangement?” Shayne persisted.

  Her eyes twinkled faintly. She said, “Yes. But I could not possibly give the information out unless I were authorized to do so.”

  Shayne said ingratiatingly. “But you could check, couldn’t you, and see if my hunch is right. This may very well be a matter of life and death,” he urged her. “Just knowing that he had arranged to be reached at another phone would be of great importance.”

  She said, “I don’t see… that that would be a violation of privacy.”

  “His name is Gene Blake,” Shayne told her quickly, and added the telephone number of Blake’s apartment.

  She turned to a large alphabetical card-file on the left side of her desk and efficiently took out a card. Shayne moved slightly and unobtrusively so he could look over her shoulder at the card carrying the name: BLAKE, Gene. There were several notations on the card behind penciled dates on the left side, and Shayne concentrated on the last one. He couldn’t interpret the cryptic notation, but it ended with a local telephone number followed by #410.

  He memorized the number and looked down guilelessly into her eyes as she replaced the card and turned to tell him, “Mr. Blake did ask us to transfer any calls to another telephone number last Tuesday until further notice. He asked that the new number not be given to anyone, and it would be a breach of confidence for me to give it to you.” She spoke with firm severity and Shayne didn’t know whether she realized he’d read the number over her shoulder or not. He rather suspected she did, and he thanked her gravely. “You’ve been a great help, and I certainly wouldn’t want to urge you to give away your client’s secrets.”