Shayne muttered, “I know you told me that. It just occurred to me you might be holding something back. Don’t do it, Carla. If I’m going to go on helping you I’ve got to know exactly where I stand.”
She lifted her chin and met his steady, probing gaze unflinchingly. “Every word I’ve told you is the truth, Mike. I’m not surprised if Al is in trouble with the law. If he’s a fugitive, won’t that… help some when his body is found? I mean, won’t the police be more inclined to say good riddance and not work too hard to find out who shot him?”
“That’s partially true,” Shayne agreed. “However, it doesn’t change anything too much. What I was thinking, Carla, is about this man who called you. Did he seem to assume that you were close to Al… that you were aware of his current situation? In other words, thinking back on the telephone conversation and knowing, now, that Al is in some very recent and very bad trouble with the law… is it your impression that this man thought you knew about it… that he may be an accomplice or something?”
“I honestly don’t know how to answer that, Mike. He sounded very much as though he thought I knew exactly what he had to sell me, and as though I should be very glad to buy it for ten thousand dollars. I just didn’t know how to answer him.” She shuddered openly and drank the last of the small amount of liquor she had poured into her glass.
“What do all these questions matter now?” she asked passionately as she set the glass down hard on the table. “Our only concern is Vicky… and keeping her out of this. If we can manage that by paying him off… isn’t that worthwhile?”
“We’re both in the middle of it along with Vicky,” Shayne reminded her soberly. “If the truth about tonight’s shenanigans ever comes out into the open, you and I are both subject to very serious charges.”
“All the more reason for hushing it up if we can,” she cried out excitedly. “Look!” She snatched up her handbag and extracted a leather wallet which she opened and from which she took a sheaf of bills. She spread them out on the table in front of him. Nine hundred-dollar bills, a fifty, two twenties, and a ten. There were a few other twenties and tens which she separated from the others and put back into her wallet.
“There’s an even thousand, Mike,” she breathed, pushing the pile of bills toward him. “That’s practically all the cash I brought with me. Take it. And I’ll give you an IOU for the other nine thousand. Please don’t argue about it any more. Have you got a blank sheet of paper?” She scrabbled inside her bag, came up with a ballpoint pen and looked at him hopefully.
Keeping his gaunt face expressionless, Shayne opened the center drawer of the table and pulled out a blank sheet of writing paper. She pulled it toward her and scribbled on it: “Mike Shayne. IOU Nine Thousand Dollars ($9,000.00). Payable on demand.” And she signed it, “Carla Andrews.”
“There,” she breathed, pushing it toward him. “Will you please get the rest of the money in cash, Mike?”
Shayne carefully folded the bills comprising her thousand dollars lengthwise, and picked up her signed IOU. He studied it for a moment, then folded it around the bills and put the small packet in his pocket. “All right, Carla. Much as I dislike blackmail…” He shrugged his broad shoulders with a grimace of repugnance, and then looked at his watch. “How long ago was it when this character telephoned you?”
“It seems like a long time. It was… something after one o’clock, I know. About one-thirty or a quarter of two. I left the hotel and came straight over here.”
Shayne said briskly, “It’s almost two-thirty now. He should be calling you pretty soon.” He hesitated, frowning down at the floor. “When you gave him this number, you didn’t tell him it was my phone, did you?”
“No. I just said I was going to see a friend who might help me get the money. I thought maybe it would be better if he didn’t know I was coming straight to you.”
“You were probably right. When he calls, you answer the phone. Just tell him you’re with a friend who’s getting the money together for you… and turn the phone over to me. I’ll arrange to meet him somewhere and give him the cash.”
“Can you get it all right? At this time of night?”
Shayne said, “I can get it. Right now I’m more worried about the Ford that’s rolling around town with your husband’s body in the trunk than I am about this other deal. Fixing one still isn’t going to fix the other.”
“Oh?” She looked quite dismayed, then said faintly, “I…”
Shayne shook his red head wearily. “I’m hoping the brother-in-law will come to me. Otherwise, I’ve got to try and get my hands on that Ford somehow…”
He was interrupted by the ringing of the telephone. He instinctively reached a hand out for it, then checked himself and nodded to her. “You take it and see if it’s your man.”
Fearfully, she lifted the receiver and said, “Hello,” into the mouthpiece. Watching her while she listened, Shayne saw the strained look fade from her face. “Yes,” she said briskly. “I’ve got everything arranged. My friend, Mr… Jones, is helping me get the money. Why don’t you… talk to him and fix things between you?”
She lifted her head and thrust the instrument at Shayne. “He wants to know when and where you’ll make the pay-off.”
Shayne took it and said drily, “Jones speaking.” He stiffened as he recognized the voice that came over the wire. It was George Duclos, whom he had heard talking with Sergeant Loomis at police headquarters:
“You got the money, huh? In cash?”
Shayne said, “I’m getting it together. It takes a little time… two-thirty in the morning like this. I’ll have all of it ready in… oh… half an hour.”
“Ten thousand. Right?”
Shayne said, “Right. Where do I deliver it?”
“I been thinking about that. This is on the up-and-up, huh? No angles. No cops?”
“No angles and no cops,” Shayne assured the man. “You set it up to suit yourself.”
“Fair enough. Half an hour, huh?”
“Make it three-quarters,” Shayne hedged. “I’m still waiting to get my hands on the last two grand.”
“Okay. Forty-five minutes. You come alone with the money. Northeast 64th Terrace where it deadends against the Bay. You got that?”
Shayne said, “I’ve got it.” He looked at his watch. “In exactly forty-five minutes. The east end of 64th Terrace against the bayfront. I expect you to be alone, too.”
“Sure. This is a strictly private deal, Jones.” Duclos chuckled nervously. “You don’t bring the money… tell the dame she’s S.O.L.”
Shayne said, “I’ll tell her,” and hung up. He looked across with a reassuring grin at the woman who was leaning toward him eagerly.
“Everything’s okay. All I’ve got to do is deliver ten grand to him in three-quarters of an hour.”
“Can you get the rest of it together, Mike? In that short time?”
“No trouble at all.” He waved a big hand reassuringly. “Relax. Take another drink now. Everything’s going to be okay.”
“I don’t think I… want a drink right now,” she said tremulously. She got to her feet, smoothing down her dress self-consciously. “Could I… go to the little girl’s room?”
Shayne said, “The bathroom’s right there.” He pointed to a closed door at the back next to the bedroom, and sat rigidly with his forehead furrowed while she went inside and closed the door tightly behind her.
Then he leaned forward and picked up her handbag where she had left it sitting beside her chair, unsnapped it and hurriedly rummaged inside.
His hand came out holding a hotel room key with a metal tag attached and the number 810 stamped on it. He dropped it into his pocket, closed the bag and replaced it on the floor where it had been.
When she came out of the bathroom, he was leaning back blandly smoking a cigarette and studying the ceiling through the blue smoke that twirled upward.
She sat down diffidently in her chair and hesitated, and then said in a small voi
ce, “Forty-five minutes isn’t very much time, Mike… if you’re going to get all that money together.”
He grinned at her and said, “I made a telephone call while you were in the bathroom. I’m expecting a call back… and everything will be set.”
She said, “Oh,” and then happily, “I guess I will have another little drink before I go.”
Shayne said, “Sure. Make it a big one, if you like. Nothing for you to worry about now.” He hesitated and added thoughtfully, “I think you’d better sit tight right here, Carla, while I make this contact. I don’t expect anything to go wrong, but you’d better be here where I can reach you, if anything does. Keep Vicky out of it altogether.”
She said, “All right. But you let me know?”
“I’ll come straight back.” He looked at his watch and muttered, “I expect a call right back.”
At that instant his telephone rang. He grabbed it up and said, “Mike Shayne,” into the mouthpiece.
As he had expected, Timothy Rourke’s voice came over the wire, bubbling with exultancy, “Got it, Mike. Hit it on the head, by God. Our boy is really on the wanted list. Want me to give it to you over the phone?”
“No. I’d rather stop by and pick it up,” Shayne told him. “You’ve got all of it, huh?”
“Plenty.”
“Fine. Where’ll I meet you in ten minutes?”
“How about my place, Mike? I’m at the office now, but I’m bushed.”
“Right. I’ll be along in about ten minutes.” Shayne hung up and said, “That was easy. He’s got the whole nine grand waiting. All I have to do is pick it up and deliver it to your friend. I should be back here inside of an hour.”
He got up as he spoke, opened a drawer of the table and lifted out a short-barrelled. 38 which he dropped into a side pocket She watched him with wide, troubled eyes and said fearfully, “Do you think there’s any danger?”
“It’s always dangerous to make a deal with a blackmailer. Don’t worry. I can take care of myself.”
“I know you can.” She got up swiftly and pressed herself close against him, looking up into his face with shining eyes and parted lips. “I’ll be waiting right here for you, Mike. I’ll be praying to God that nothing goes wrong.”
He lowered his head and kissed her lips firmly. “Leave everything to me and don’t worry.” He patted her shoulder, grabbed his Panama and hurried out.
13
Timothy Rourke was slouched back comfortably on a sagging sofa in the disordered sitting room of his bachelor apartment when Shayne entered ten minutes later. He had a highball glass in one hand and a cigarette in the other, and he grinned cheerfully at the detective and waved toward a bottle of bourbon and another glass on a table beside him. “I’m clean out of cognac, but this isn’t bad stuff in a pinch.”
Shayne said, “I’ll skip the drink, Tim. What’s the story on our dead man?”
Rourke pointed proudly to a folded newspaper on a chair under a lighted reading lamp. “Read it for yourself in the Montgomery paper. I picked up that copy after checking out a shorter version we ran on Friday from the wire report. We didn’t use that picture, but I’d seen it when it came in and that’s how I recognized it in the Duclos house.”
Shayne sank into the chair and unfolded the Montgomery paper to a front page story headlined: BLOODY BANK ROBBERY.
Beneath was a two-column cut showing the head and shoulders of the dead man he had last seen in the trunk of a Ford car. It was captioned: Killer Believed Drowned.
The story was datelined Eureka, Alabama, the previous Thursday. The lead paragraph read:
“Late today the sun-laden somnolence of this peaceful farming community was shattered by blazing guns and bloodshed which erupted in the wake of the armed robbery of Eureka’s only bank.” Shayne laid the paper aside and reached for a cigarette. “Why don’t you give me the facts, Tim, and save me the trouble of wading through the literary effusions of a small-town reporter?”
Rourke grinned widely. “Don’t blame the guy. He doesn’t often get a chance to see his immortal prose spread over the front page of a big city daily. Here it is in a Rourkian nutshell:
“Just before closing time two guys walked into the only bank on Eureka’s Main Street, population two thousand, where there were half a dozen customers. They got in line and waited until the guard locked the front door and drew the shades on the windows. Then they pulled guns and announced it was a stick-up. They made everybody lie flat on the floor, including the single guard whose gun they lifted.
“All except one teller, a young fellow named Harvey Giles. They handed him a croker sack and ordered him to fill it with all the big bills available. He was scared stiff and did so, gathering up about forty thousand according to a later estimate. Then they ordered Giles to carry the sack out of the bank in front of them, telling the others that if anybody moved or turned in an alarm they’d shoot their hostage.
“The whole deal went off like clockwork, and they went out the front door and started across the street toward a get-away car at the curb with a woman driver behind the wheel and the motor turning over.
“They evidently kept their guns out of sight and no one paid any attention until they were almost to the car. Then a fool vice-president came running out the door of the bank waving a Banker’s Special he
had grabbed up, and started shooting. One of them shot back… our friend Al there, according to the report… and killed the V.P.
“Then they jerked open the front door of the car and shoved the teller inside, and threw the money bag in the back seat and started to jump in themselves when… whoosh! Away went the getaway car down the street with the money and Harvey Giles inside.
“By that time the bank alarm was sounding off and citizens were running for guns, and the two deserted bandits grabbed a parked car and took off in the same direction as the money car on the highway leading to Montgomery, about twenty miles away.
“By that time a deputy sheriff had got himself organized and took off after them on an eighty-mile-an-hour chase that lasted about five miles until the lead car failed to straighten out on a curve leading to a bridge over the Eureka River, went through the guard rail and about forty feet down into the flood-swollen stream. There was at least ten feet of fast water, and by the time the deputy got stopped and back to the scene the car was out of sight. They recovered it later that evening a few hundred feet downstream with nobody inside.
“Nobody that saw it believes either of the robbers could have survived, and it’s generally expected that their bodies will be found miles away from the scene.”
“But one of them, at least, didn’t drown.” Shayne gestured toward the picture.
“That’s right. And you and I are the only ones who know that, Mike. He’s Al Newman, by the way. His partner in the robbery hasn’t been identified. Al was recognized in the bank as a character who had been shacked up in a motel on the outside of town for a week with the woman who drove the getaway car. They found that picture of him in the motel room. They were both complete strangers in town, apparently spent a week casing the bank job before pulling it off.”
“What about the money and the bank teller?”
“Poor Harvey Giles. He was picked up on a lonely side road about dark that same night, all bruised up and practically incoherent. As that paper went to press he had told a garbled story about the woman holding a gun on him while she drove away like a bat out of hell, circling off the main highway onto side roads, and finally stopping to tie him up and leave him miles from anywhere. He managed to get loose and make it to the road where he was found.
“The car was found late that night on the outskirts of Montgomery, but the woman and the money had vanished. They’re still vanished, so far as any report we’ve had here shows.” Rourke stopped talking and took a long drink from his highball, his sunken eyes glittering and bright.
“So where does that leave us, Mike?”
“I’ll be goddamned if I know at this point. I t
hink I will have a drink after all.” Shayne got up and poured bourbon into the glass on the table, carried it out to Rourke’s kitchenette to get ice and add some water to it. He came back, sipping it and grimacing.
Studying his face carefully, Rourke asked, “Does any of this throw any light on the story you haven’t told me about tonight?”
“I don’t see how it does,” Shayne told him moodily. “It all seems to fit in, more or less. Al Newman’s real name is probably Al Donlin… for whatever that’s worth. An ex-con who’s been in and out of trouble all his life. It explains why he turned up in Miami desperate for money and went to his sister’s house. If you didn’t run his picture in the local paper it’s perfectly possible that Mr. and Mrs. Duclos didn’t know anything about his present trouble. Or he may have told Duclos… at least hinted he was hot. That would explain why Duclos didn’t want to admit loaning him his car… if he did loan it to him to drive to the Encanto.”
“What about your… friend? Carla, you said her name is.”
“Brett’s friend,” Shayne corrected him. “No reason for her to know about this either, I guess.” He paused, sipping his drink and pondering the problem.
“There’s been another development since I saw you. She was waiting at my place when I got home. Frightened half out of her wits. She had a telephone call… soon after that newscast which she hadn’t even heard. Some guy who was a complete stranger, but appeared to know that Al had been to see her tonight. He demanded to know what she and I had done with Al, and then demanded ten thousand bucks… in cash… tonight… for which he offered to sell her something which he claimed Al had given him for safe-keeping before he went to see her.”
“What kind of a something?”
“She insists she hasn’t any idea what he was talking about. Can’t even guess. But he is in a position to put her and her daughter on the spot in connection with Al’s death, and she’s frantic to pay him the money to keep his mouth shut.”
He looked at his watch and added grimly, “I’m on my way to make the pay-off in about twenty minutes.”
The Body Came Back ms-46 Page 10
