Gerlach bumped along the dirt road behind the pickup, leaving the farms behind and passing through an area of low swampland, and finally to a wide, clear space on the river’s bank surrounded by willows, where the road led down to a shallow ford across the Rio Grande into Mexico.
Three other cars were parked in a semicircle, with their headlights shining down on a group of men squatting about the corpse.
A yellow moon shed blurred light through a haze of corrugated clouds, and when Gerlach shut off his motor, they could hear a pair of iron-lunged frogs protesting the intrusion in the willows beside the road.
One of the men beside the body got up and came toward them stiffly as they got out. He was a portly man with a bald head shining in the headlights above a fringe of gray hair. He looked like a small-town shopkeeper, but a sheriff’s star was pinned on his unbuttoned vest.
He held out his hand to Gerlach and said in a hoarsely subdued voice, “Glad you came down, Captain. This is sort of outta my line.”
Gerlach shook hands with him and explained Shayne by saying, “Brought a friend along for company.” The three of them walked slowly through the loose sand to look down at the body of a dead man.
He was completely naked, and the body was hideously bloated and looked greenish in the yellow light of the automobile lamps. A heavy, sweetish odor rose from the body. Shayne took a step backward to avoid the odor and thrust his hands deep in his pockets and watched while Gerlach knelt with the sheriff and examined the head wounds that had evidently caused death.
They straightened up and stepped back beside Shayne after a few moments, and the sheriff drew in a deep breath of clean air and said, “Hard to figure how long he’s been in the water, I reckon. Some of the fellows here have been guessing a week. They claim the alkali in the water keeps a body from rotting.”
Gerlach shook his head. “Not more than three or four days, I’d say.” He looked inquiringly at Shayne.
The redhead nodded. “Unless there’s a hell of a lot of alkali.”
“Anyhow,” said Sheriff Craven, “that’d be plenty of time for him to float down here from El Paso.”
Gerlach nodded. “You can send him in to the morgue if you want, and we’ll try to identify him. Fix him up the best we can.”
The sheriff plainly showed his relief. He mumbled, “We haven’t got much of a place for that kind of work.” He turned to a boy of about fourteen and beckoned to him with a forefinger. “Come here, Pete, and tell the captain how you come to find the body.”
The boy came sidling toward them, keeping his face averted from the corpse on the sand. “I–I was jest settin’ out some throw-lines fer catfish,” he stammered. “There’s a good deep hole right up yonder above the ford, an’ I fish here lots.”
“Ever catch anything?” Gerlach asked.
“Sure. You betcha.” The enthusiasm died in the lad’s voice. “Like I say, I was settin’ out my throw-lines tonight an’ one of ‘em hooked somethin’. I thought my floats wasn’t workin’ an’ I’d snagged a branch on the bottom, an’ I pulled in an’- an’ there he was. God’lmighty, I was scared. I run a mile ‘thout stoppin’, to where I could phone the sheriff to come quick.”
“Was he floating when you hooked him?” Shayne asked.
“Not on top, I don’t reckon. Leastwise, I didn’t see him. Water’s pretty deep there an’ I use ‘bout four feet of line off my floats.”
Captain Gerlach looked at Shayne and shrugged. They went back to his car and he called to the sheriff, “We’ll take care of fingerprints and all if you send him in.” They got in and he backed around in the sand and drove toward the highway.
“What killed him?” Shayne asked abruptly.
“I’ll leave that to Doc Thompson. He’s been beaten around the head and there are neck lacerations that look as though he might have been hung by the neck.”
“Young fellow, wasn’t he?”
“I’ll leave that to the doc, too. Around twenty-five, I’d say.” He pulled up onto the pavement and headed the sedan back toward the city.
Shayne leaned back and lit a cigarette. “Naked as a jaybird,” he mused. “That’s a funny one. I’ve seen girls come out of the water naked, but-” He let the sentence die unfinished.
“Could have been swimming and hit something when he dived,” Gerlach offered half-heartedly. He shook his head and admitted, “It’s murder, Mike. Those head wounds didn’t come from any diving accident.”
“Maybe the murderer needed some clothes.” Gerlach said, “Maybe. But I can think up easier ways of getting them.”
“Stripped his victim to hide his identity,” Shayne suggested.
Gerlach said, “Maybe,” again, but his tone remained pessimistic. “Lots easier to empty his pockets and cut off laundry marks.”
“Unless he happened to be wearing a particular kind of clothes,” Shayne said in a peculiar tone.
Gerlach turned to look at him slowly. “What do you mean by that?”
“Just a thought.” Shayne shrugged. “If he was a cop, for instance, and his killer for some reason didn’t want him to be identified as a cop. Or wanted to delay identification as long as possible. It wouldn’t do to just cut off the brass buttons. The uniform would still be recognizable as such.”
“We don’t have any youngsters like that on the Force,” Gerlach protested. “Not any more. The army’s got ‘em.”
“That,” said Shayne quietly, “is what I was getting around to.”
Gerlach puzzled over the matter for a moment, then said, “I’m beginning to get you. You’re guessing he was a soldier and was stripped of everything so we wouldn’t know it when his body turned up.”
Shayne said again, “It’s a thought. A soldier’s clothes are issue all the way down to underwear and socks. And as you say, there aren’t too many men of his age out of the army nowadays.”
“It is an angle,” Gerlach agreed. “It’s the only one that makes sense. I’ll call Fort Bliss and check on any missing soldiers as soon as I get in.”
“If we’re right, that makes two of them in a few days.”
A thoughtful frown creased Gerlach’s pudgy face. “Maybe that spy talk isn’t so wild, after all, Mike.”
“How do you mean?” Shayne asked.
“That stuff the boy wrote to his mother in New Orleans. Look — did he say it was the spies that got him to enlist under an alias, or some undercover outfit trying to catch some spies?”
Shayne shook his head and said slowly, “I don’t think Jimmie Delray himself knew when he wrote that letter. In fact, I think he was doing some wishful guessing about the whole thing. Maybe it was just his imagination, and enlisting under an alias didn’t have any connection with spying at all, but he simply hoped it did to clear him of a feeling of guilt because he’d stayed out of the country all these years while it was at war.”
“I’m not so sure he didn’t know what he was talking about,” Gerlach argued. “The FBI and Army Intelligence have been pretty active around El Paso. There was a good organization already set up here for getting stuff back and forth across the border before the war ever started.”
“Smuggling?”
“Sure. We’ve always had more or less of that. Dope and anything else with a high import tax.”
“Would Manny Holden have been in on that organization?”
“If there was a crooked dollar to be made, Manny was in on it,” Gerlach assured him cheerfully. “And now that you’ve thrown the election to Carter, we’ll never be able to touch Manny.”
Shayne sighed. He admitted, “Much as I hate Towne’s guts, I’m sorry I’ve put him on the spot,”
They were approaching the lights of the city. Captain Gerlach slowed to the municipal speed limit and asked, “Where shall I drop you?”
“At the police garage if you don’t mind.” Shayne felt his pocket and nodded. “I’ve still got the key to that crate you loaned me today. Mind if I take it out again?”
Gerlach told him he di
dn’t mind, that he would be happy to have the detective keep the key and use the coupe as he wished while he was in the city.
Shayne grinned and thanked him. “It’s not bad to be on the legal side of the fence for once,” he admitted.
He got out when the captain pulled up in front of the police garage, and hesitated for a moment “Mind if I make a suggestion?”
“Let’s have it.”
“When Thompson looks over that body from the river, have him check the head wounds closely to see if he finds one corresponding with the hammer blow that killed the soldier.”
The homicide captain nodded. “You think they tie together?”
Shayne said morosely, “I think we’ll know more about it when we find out if there’s another soldier missing.” He went in the garage and wheeled the coupe out and drove off in the direction of Jefferson Towne’s house on the slope of Mount Franklin.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The police coupe was laboring up the slope a block from the arched entrance to Towne’s estate when the lights of a parked car blinked on from a point just this side of the driveway. Shayne eased up on his accelerator and heard the motor of the parked car roar into life. The headlights turned sharply onto the pavement, and the car rolled toward him.
They passed in about the middle of the block. Shayne had his spotlight off, but he kept it trained on the front seat of the other car as they approached.
He flashed the spotlight on momentarily as they passed each other, and caught a brief glimpse of the other driver alone in the car. He blinked the spot off and kept driving. He rolled past the arched entrance without slacking speed, watching the taillight of the other car in his rearview mirror. It continued down the hill toward town.
The face he had seen in the brief glare of the police spotlight was that of Lance Bayliss, crouching behind the steering-wheel and staring straight ahead, a pinched look of anger on his features.
Feeling quite certain that Lance had not recognized him as they passed, Shayne nevertheless took the precaution of driving around the block before turning into the curving driveway leading to Towne’s house.
The lower windows were dark, but there were lights on the second floor. Shayne looked at his watch as he cut off the motor. It was a little after eleven o’clock. He got out and went up to the front door and put his finger on the electric button. The ringing of the chimes sounded sepulchral and far away.
Nothing happened for fully two minutes. He kept his finger patiently on the button, and finally a night light came on over his head. He took his finger from the button when he heard a bolt being withdrawn inside.
One of the doors opened inward a few inches, and Carmela’s husky voice called out, “Who is it?”
“Mike Shayne.” He pushed against the door, but a chain held it. Carmela said, “Michael!” sobbing out his name in three syllables, and the chain rattled free. He stepped inside, where the big hallway was dimly lit by a single bulb in a wall bracket.
Carmela’s arms were tightly around his neck before he could turn to look at her. She pressed her long body against him and pulled his face down to hers. Her body trembled and her lips were dry and cold, and a strong odor of whisky was on her breath. She wore a quilted dressing gown and her hair was brushed back from her face.
She pressed her lips against Shayne’s and they softened and became warm. He put his arms around her and his hands felt the hard outline of backbone and rib structure beneath the quilted robe.
When she took her arms from his neck she said, “I’ve been waiting for you to come, Michael.” She closed the door and threw the bolt, took Shayne’s hand, and led him along the hallway toward a wide stairway. “I’m all alone and was waiting for you,” she said again. “I gave the servants a night off after I found out — Father wouldn’t be home.”
She started up the stairway. She didn’t look at him again, but hurried up the steps as though there was little time.
Shayne hurried beside her, his big hand tightly clutched in hers. Here in her home, seeing her dressed as she was, he was more fully aware of the change ten years had made in her. She looked older than her years, and he wondered what she had been doing since she deserted the only man she would ever love.
They reached the top of the stairway, and she turned through curtained glass doors into a sitting room which was thickly carpeted from wall to wall and lighted with one tall floor lamp by the side of a silk-covered chaise longue. The room was done in pastel shades, cream and pink. It didn’t match Carmela’s temperament. It fitted the girl he had known ten years ago, before her father sent her off to Europe, a pathetic reminder of all the things Carmela Towne had been. He knew she had clung desperately to the soft beauty of her suite here on the second floor of the ugly stone house just as she had tried to cling to the love that had been denied her.
Shayne had a sour taste in his mouth as he looked around and let his gaze finally come to rest upon a low lacquered table beside the chaise longue gleaming in a circle of illumination from the floor lamp.
Hammered silver ice tongs lay beside a silver ice bucket. There was an uncorked bottle of Scotch and a silver siphon, and a tall glass held two inches of the amber liquid with three partially melted ice cubes floating in it. An ashtray was almost filled with halfsmoked cigarettes, and a second glass, unused, stood behind the ice bucket.
Carmela had stopped beside him just inside the doorway, her fingers still clutching his hand. She looked defiant and determined, as she said suddenly, “I need another drink — and you need one, too, Michael.” She let go of his hand and went to the low table beside the lounge.
Shayne stood where he was and watched her put ice cubes and whisky in the empty glass, then splash soda into it. He felt sorry as hell for Carmela Towne.
She had sent the servants away and settled herself here with whisky and cigarettes to wait. He didn’t think she had expected him. Now she was through waiting. Everything she did, every intonation of her voice, told of her defiant resolve to wait no longer for Lance Bayliss.
Yet he had just seen Lance drive away from the house. He remembered how Lance had looked at her in the hotel room that day, and he felt sorrier than ever for her.
She poured more whisky into her glass, sat down on the lounge, and beckoned to him, holding out the freshly filled glass. He went across and took it from her. She brushed her long hair back from her face and said, “I must look a perfect fright.”
Shayne said gravely, “You look very attractive.”
She trembled a little and put her hand on his arm. She said, “I’m glad — I want to look attractive for you, Michael. You see — I hoped you would — be nice — to me,” she ended in a nervous stammering voice.
She looked up at him and smiled, but her eyes were miserable. Shayne bent down and kissed her lips lightly, He said, “We’ve got all night. You’re not quite drunk yet.”
She said, “No,” and laughed. “Drinking does help, though, doesn’t it?”
Shayne took a long drink, set his glass on the table, and pulled up an ottoman and sat down. A silver cigarette box stood open on the table. He took two cigarettes from it and reached a long arm out to put one between her lips. She lay back and watched with halfclosed eyes as he struck a match. After he put the flame to her cigarette she said softly, “I’ve been lonely, Michael. So damned lonely.”
He asked abruptly, “How did your father take the news tonight?”
“I wasn’t here when they came for him.” She pushed herself up with both hands on the arms of the lounge. “Don’t tell me,” she said drearily, “you came here just to talk about Father and the case, Michael.”
“Was that all Lance wanted tonight?”
She winced, and her black eyes widened to stare at him. “What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean, Carmela.”
She said vehemently, “I haven’t seen Lance — since today in your hotel room. You saw how he looked at me then. He hates me. He thought he had caught us having an ass
ignation.”
“I met Lance driving away as I came up.” She lowered her eyes until her long black lashes veiled them. “You’re mistaken,” she said. “Lance hasn’t been here. No one has been here. I waited-” She reached for her glass and emptied it without opening up her eyes, set it on the table, and folded her hands laxly in her lap.
“What do you think of Josiah Riley’s story?”
She twisted her mouth bitterly. “Do we have to talk about that?”
“I’ve got it on my mind,” Shayne confessed. “It’ll stay on my mind until you’ve answered a few questions — and I don’t want anything else on my mind when I kiss you again.”
“Are you going to kiss me?”
“Let’s talk about Josiah Riley first. Do you know him?”
She moved restively. “I used to know him quite well. Pour me another drink, Michael.”
He put ice and a lot of whisky in her glass, and a little soda. He put the glass in her outstretched hand.
“When he was working for your father?” he prompted.
“Yes. Just a little while before I went to Europe. I remember when he reported to Father that the vein had mined out, and how low Father was. And how angry he got when he investigated personally and discovered Joe Riley was mistaken.” She drank half the whisky from her glass and relaxed against the cushions.
“Do you think it was an honest mistake?”
“I think so. Father didn’t. He was convinced that Joe hoped he would abandon the property so he could later buy it cheaply and pretend to rediscover the vein.”
“That has been done,” Shayne agreed.
“But not by men like Joe Riley.” She opened her eyes wide, but her voice was thick and lifeless. “I’m sure he was honest in his report.”
“All the more reason for Joe to hate your father for ruining him in the mining business.”
“He does hate Father. He has never tried to hide that.”
Murder Is My Business ms-11 Page 8
