Never Kill a Client ms-43
Page 5
“Look…” She spread out her hands unhappily. “I don’t think you’re interested in the intimate details of my life with Fidel. It was flattering and exciting in the beginning… all the intrigue and the back-stage goings-on. I was in on it. You had a feeling that he was a man of destiny. That he was sincerely interested in doing a wonderful job in Cuba… and God knows those poor peons who suffered under Batista deserved a new deal.
“But things got different. He’s a sour, embittered man. The communists have moved in and taken control. And he hates it because he was the movement in the beginning. He was the revolution. Of course he’s a megalomaniac,” she went on bitterly. “That’s why it’s so hard for him now. I’m not making excuses for him, but I did see a lot of it happen. I realized I had to get out, but I also realized they weren’t going to let me just walk out. I knew too much. I’d been too close to so many things. They didn’t trust me.
“Oh, not Fidel,” she went on swiftly. “He’s really quite naive about politics. But he’s not in charge any more.” She put down her drink abruptly and got up and began striding up and down the room like a caged animal.
“I’m not saying this well,” she burst out. “I don’t know whether he ever actually loved me. I’m not sure he’s capable of loving anyone but himself… and Cuba. At any rate, little Mary Devon saw the handwriting on the wall. I made plans to get out of there while the going was good. I found a pilot… an American… who agreed to fly me secretly to Mexico. For a price.”
She stopped in the middle of the floor with her hands on her hips and regarded Shayne belligerently. “It was a high price,” she told him in a subdued voice, “but well worth it. I got out of Cuba with some clothes, a few thousand dollars in American currency… and a small dispatch case. Right now I wish to God I’d had the good sense to leave the dispatch case behind, but I didn’t. I’m still an American. And I hate the communists and what they’ve done to Fidel. Do you know what is inside that dispatch case, Mr. Shayne?”
He said, “I haven’t the faintest idea… and why don’t you call me Mike at this point?”
“All right, Mike. It’s a complete and detailed plan for the take-over of Guantanamo. They’ve got key men infiltrated into our Navy personnel there. It’s all worked out, and I flew into Mexico with it.”
“Where is it?” he asked curiously, looking around the room as though he expected to see a dispatch case standing there.
“It’s hidden on the other side of the Border… where you and I are going to get it tomorrow and you’re going to take it to Washington and see that it gets into the hands of J. Edgar Hoover, or the top man of the CIA… whichever. I guess they’re not a part of the Communist Conspiracy,” she added tautly. “Although right now I’m not too sure about that. I’ve been through hell with that damned dispatch case.”
Her composure broke suddenly and she twisted her hands together in front of her and tears appeared on her cheeks. “Who can you trust today? I had a contact in Mexico City. He was murdered before I could reach him and there was a trap laid for me that I just escaped by the skin of my teeth. I miraculously escaped death twice more before I managed to reach the Border. I didn’t dare try to bring it across with me. I didn’t dare try to turn it over to anyone, because how do you know whom you can trust today? They’ve got their agents everywhere. That’s one of the things I learned in Cuba. What do you suppose went wrong with our carefully planned invasion a year ago? They knew all about it beforehand from trusted and high-up agents of the CIA. I’ve heard them boasting about how stupid and complacent Americans are.”
She stalked back to her end of the sofa and dropped down, lifted her glass of watered cognac and took a long drink. “All right, Mike. You didn’t come all the way to Los Angeles to listen to a lecture on the danger of communist infiltration here. But I’ve been hounded and deviled ever since I crossed the border from Mexico. My hotel room and bags have been searched twice. I can’t make a move on the streets without one of them right behind me. You may think I’m imagining all of it, and I don’t care what you think if you’ll just go down to Tijuana tomorrow and recover that dispatch case and see it gets into the right hands in Washington. That’s all I ask. Then let me go back to being Mary Devon and forget there ever was a woman named Marianne Devlin.”
He sucked the last drops of cognac from his glass, got up and went across to pour out some more. With his back to her, he observed mildly, “I think you’ll do all right as Mary Devon. You impress me as being quite a competent actress.” He turned back with an approving smile. “How much rehearsing did you do on that story before you tried it out on me?”
“Mike!” she cried in a stricken voice. “Don’t say that! You’ve got to believe me and help me. You’re the one person in the world I could think of whom I could call on.”
“I may be willing to help you,” he told her, reseating himself and pleasurably taking a sip of cognac, “after you tell me the truth. There may be a dispatch case hidden in Tijuana,” he agreed judicially. “Perhaps I’ll help you get hold of it… after you tell me what’s in it. But all this other stuff, Mary. For God’s sake!” He shook his head in disgust.
“If any of this wild story were true why the devil haven’t you gone to the police here in L.A.? Or the local office of the FBI? You didn’t have to send for a private detective from Miami to help you prevent a communist takeover of a Naval base in Cuba.”
“But I’ve told you,” she appealed to him tremulously. “How do you know whom you can trust these days? Even Mr. Hoover boasts publicly that about half his agents are members of the Communist Party. He thinks they are spying for him, of course, but how does he know which side they’re really on? I’ve just gotten to the point where I don’t trust anybody.”
“I know,” said Shayne with withering sarcasm. “Not even the local taxi drivers. A guy like Joe Pelter, for instance, who delivered your note to me today. You think he’s a commie and read your note and sent a cable to Moscow warning them that you planned to meet me at the Brown Derby. Nuts! What kind of a simpleton do you take me for?”
Mary Devon put her hands over her face and began crying quietly. “What am I going to do?” she sobbed. What am I going to do?”
“Start telling the truth,” he advised her coldly. “I don’t know what you’ve got yourself into, but it’s evidently something you can’t go to the police with. Maybe you have been sleeping with Fidel Castro. I wouldn’t blame you… and I certainly wouldn’t blame him. If you come clean with me and it’s something I can touch without losing my Florida license, I’ll be glad to consider it. Otherwise, I’ll finish up this glass of excellent cognac and be on my way.”
He raised the glass to his lips and grinned over the top of it at her.
She pulled her hands away from her tear-stained face and regarded him with a strange look of near-exaltation. “Will you, Mike?” she breathed hopefully. “Will you truly promise to help me if I tell you the real truth?” She got to her feet and glided toward him as though in a sort of trance.
He said gruffly, “If I can. Practically anything short of murder.”
She dropped to her knees beside his chair and clutched his thigh with both hands while she looked up at him imploringly. “I’m going to trust you, Mike. I’ll tell you the real truth this time. But it is a long story, and we might as well be relaxed. Do you mind if I… slip into the bedroom and get into something more comfortable?”
He said, “I don’t mind at all,” and pretended to hide a yawn while he glanced at his watch. “As a matter of fact, I’ll use your phone to make a collect call to my secretary in Miami while you’re doing that.”
She got up and said simply, “You won’t be disappointed, I promise you,” and he watched her go toward the bedroom and wondered fleetingly just what he was getting himself into.
He shrugged the question away, got up and carried his cognac over to the telephone stand where he sat down and put in his call to Lucy.
While the operator repeated t
he Miami telephone number, he glanced across the room and noticed that Mary had carelessly neglected to close the bedroom door all the way and that a full-length mirror set in a closet door inside the room afforded him an excellent view of the juicy body of the honey-haired blonde emerging from a black sheath dress.
She didn’t face the mirror directly so he wasn’t sure whether she was aware that he could see her in the glass or not, and he struggled with his gentlemanly instincts while he waited for Lucy to come on the line.
His baser instincts won the struggle without much difficulty. Actually, he thought, a woman who had been Castro’s mistress… or who had calmly claimed to be his mistress for purposes of her own, would think it pretty childish of him if he called out to warn her to close the bedroom door.
And he wondered with a grin how Lucy would react in Miami if he told her he was sitting up in a woman’s hotel room watching a disrobing act being put on for his special benefit.
Then he realized, suddenly, that Lucy still wasn’t answering her phone. He had been too absorbed in other things to count the number of rings, but now the operator was announcing crisply, “That number does not answer, sir. Do you wish me to try again in…”
He growled, “Cancel the call,” and hung up. When he looked up at the bedroom door with a scowl, Mary was walking through it placidly, bare-footed and wearing a long, full-skirted silken robe of pale yellow that was belted tightly at the waist and rustled suggestively against her limbs.
She stopped short at sight of his scowling countenance. “Don’t you like it?” she asked anxiously. “I thought…”
“I like it fine,” he told her shortly. “I’m just worried about my secretary. Her telephone doesn’t answer.”
“But, goodness, what’s that to worry about?” She glided sinuously to the sofa and patted the cushion beside her. “Why don’t you bring your drink over and relax?”
“But it’s after ten o’clock in Miami. Lucy wouldn’t normally be out so late.”
“Pooh! What’s ten o’clock? I bet she’s an attractive doll, isn’t she? I can’t imagine Mike Shayne having a secretary who isn’t. You know the old saying: When the boss is away the secretaries play. Come on, darling, and this time I’ll tell you the real truth about that old dispatch case.”
Shayne shook his head stubbornly. “You don’t know Lucy Hamilton. She was expecting me to call. She just wouldn’t do this.”
He picked up the telephone book and ruffled through it, found the number for the Plaza Terrace Hotel and gave it to the switchboard.
When it answered, he said, “Pat Ryan, please. Security,” hoping that Ryan would still be on duty.
The operator said, “Certainly,” and a moment later a voice said, “Ryan speaking.”
“Mike Shayne, Pat.”
“Hey. How you doing, Mike? Caught up with that juicy blonde yet?”
“I’m just about to.” Shayne lifted his eyebrows at Mary, who reclined on the sofa with her robe carefully arranged to show the smooth line of long, well-fleshed legs. “What I wondered, Pats” he went on hastily. “Has there been any call for me? I haven’t been able to get hold of my secretary.”
“Not a thing, Mike.” Pat Ryan chuckled lewdly. “Why worry about a secretary in Miami when you’re about to catch up with something juicy out here?”
Shayne said, “Thanks,” and hung up. His scowl deepened and he drummed blunt fingertips on the telephone table beside him.
Why, indeed? But none of these people knew Lucy. That was why. He didn’t even bother to look at Mary when her voice floated to him provocatively from the sofa, “For goodness sake, you can call her later, Mike. After she gets home from her date. Remember that kiss I promised you.”
Shayne said coldly, “I still haven’t earned it.” He lifted the telephone again and directed the operator to put through a collect, person-to-person call to Timothy Rourke in Miami, giving her both the Daily News number and Rourke’s home number.
It was some time before they succeeded in locating the reporter, and his voice sounded queer when it finally came over three thousand miles of telephone wire: “Mike? The operator said Los Angeles. Is that right?”
“Yeh. I’m in L.A. Tim, I’m beginning to get worried about Lucy. I can’t locate her, and…”
“You’re getting worried about Lucy?” Tim Rourke seemed about to choke over the words. “You can’t locate her? Neither can the whole goddamned Miami police department… or you either for that matter. What are you doing…?”
“What are you talking about, Tim?”
“About a dead man in your office, Mike. Stabbed in the heart with that filing spindle off Lucy’s desk. And she seems to have vanished into thin air.”
7
“Wait a minute, Tim,” Shayne implored his old friend. “What’s all this…?”
“Did Lucy go out there with you, Mike?” interrupted Rourke in Miami.
“No. She was in the office when I left about noon. I’ve been trying to call her apartment and getting no answer. Start from the beginning and make sense, Tim. Remember, I’ve had no contact with Miami since eleven o’clock this morning.”
“I’ll start at the beginning, but I don’t know how much sense I’ll make,” Rourke told him gloomily. “Here’s the way it stacks up. About eight o’clock this evening your cleaning woman unlocked the door of your office and found a dead man lying on the floor right in front of Lucy’s desk… with that long, steel spindle, off Lucy’s desk, rammed all the way into his heart.”
“Who is he?”
“No identification on the body. Middle-aged. Sort of nondescript. They’ve found no one who saw him go in or out of the building. They figure he got it between four and five this afternoon.”
“Go on,” grated Shayne. “What about Lucy?”
“Nothing. That’s the hell of it. Of course they tried to reach you first, but they couldn’t get any line on you. No one knew where the hell you were.”
“Pete did,” Shayne said angrily. “Clerk at my hotel. I told him I was leaving.”
“Probably gone off duty by the time they got to him. Anyhow, Mike, they started looking for Lucy then. Her phone didn’t answer. I went up to her place with Will Gentry to check. Nothing disturbed. Everything spick and span there… just the way Lucy always leaves her place so meticulously in the morning. You know… you and I have kidded her…”
“I know,” Shayne said impatiently. “How about the office, Tim? Anything out of the way there?”
“No sign of a struggle at all. Nothing. Just a dead man lying on the floor… boss and secretary both inexplicably vanished.” Timothy Rourke paused to draw in a deep breath. “They’ve got an All Points out for both of you, Mike. Gentry couldn’t afford not to. I’ll have to report this call, Mike, as soon as I hang up. Right now you’re a Wanted Man.”
“Sure, report it,” Shayne told him harshly. “Tell Will exactly what I’ve told you. And tell him I’ll be back on the first jet I can get out of here. I’ll wire him as soon as I get a reservation.” He put the receiver down and stood up, his eyes bleak and unseeing, his jaw set hard and cheeks deeply trenched.
“Mike,” cried Mary in fright from across the room. “What is it? You look so… strange. You don’t have to leave tonight, do you?”
He blinked his eyes and he saw her reclining there on the sofa; voluptuous, beautiful… and available. “Yeh,” he said slowly. “I’ve got to get back.” He looked at his watch and saw it was almost eight o’clock, Los Angeles time.
“But what about me?” wailed Mary. “You promised you’d help me.”
“I promised I’d listen to you,” Shayne said shortly. “I have. To a pack of lies.” He paused, looking at her coldly and appraisingly. “Now, I wonder, by God…?”
She squirmed under his gaze. “At least take time to let me tell you the truth. There can’t anything so terrible have happened in Miami that you have to rush back at a moment’s notice. Tomorrow morning will certainly be time enough…”
“I want space on it,” he said. “First-class. I have a return ticket. Michael Shayne.”
“One moment, Mr. Shayne.” He waited, and thirty seconds later was assured that space was available and would be held for him on Flight Seventeen, scheduled to reach Miami at six o’clock the next morning, Eastern Standard Time.
He hadn’t heard her movements or the rustle of her robe, but the smell of her perfume and the woman smell of her body was strong and close to him when he put the receiver down. He turned slowly and Mary pressed herself against him hungrily, twining her arms about his neck and looking up into his face beseechingly with parted lips and imploring eyes.
“Don’t leave me, Mike,” she whispered. “Not tonight. I need you so. I can make you… need me, too.”
The length of her well-fleshed body pressed against him warmly, and he knew she wore nothing beneath the silken robe. He looked down at her broodingly and agreed, “Yeh. I think you could do that all right… if things were different. But the way things are…” He sighed deeply, reached up and caught hold of both her wrists at the back of his neck, pulled them apart and pressed them down against her sides, put pressure on both of them so pain showed on her face.
“No, Mike,” she whimpered. “Don’t do this to me. I’ve been so alone and frightened. You don’t know…”
Looking bleakly down into her eyes, he said brutally, “Now is a good time for you to get frightened again. I’m going to have the truth out of you this time… if I have to slap it out of you.” His voice turned into a snarl on the last words, and he thrust her away from him so she almost fell.