Shayne disregarded her outstretched hand. He turned on his heel without a word and went back to pick up his drink. Wearily, Lucy dragged herself to her feet and stood watching him, wondering what to say next, how to make him understand that she hadn’t really meant to harbor a fugitive, that she had believed Jack when he protested his innocence, that, if she’d had the slightest idea he was involved in anything as serious as murder, she certainly wouldn’t have—
Murder! For the first time in the hectic series of events, the word actually impinged on her consciousness.
“He isn’t, of course,” she cried out happily. “There’s some mistake. Not Jack. A purse-snatching or burglary, maybe. But not—murder.”
“This Jack,” he said slowly. “Bristow, was it? How long was he with you, Lucy?”
“Not long. Not more than half an hour before you came.”
“What did he tell you to get you to take him in?”
“That he was in trouble and needed time to stay free of the police to avoid being framed for something he hadn’t done. I wasn’t sure about his innocence at first when I thought it was something minor,” she hurried on ingenuously, “but I know he’d never kill anybody.”
“What makes you so positive?” Shayne drained his glass while he waited for her reply, his eyes cold and oddly speculative.
“He just isn’t the type.”
Shayne shook his head in sudden irritation while three deep creases formed between his eyes. He moved toward the kitchen and Lucy was forced to step aside out of his path. He muttered, “I think I’d like to hear a lot more about this Jack Bristow, but I also feel I’ll need another drink in order to take it.”
Lucy gazed after him despairingly, then took two tottering steps to let her trembling body sink onto the divan. She knew she was making a mess of everything. That she was saying exactly the wrong things to gain Shayne’s sympathy and understanding. Yet what, she wondered miserably, could she tell him to make him understand? The truth, of course. Yet the truth was so fantastic and unbelievable. How could she make him understand why she hadn’t told him about Jack the moment he arrived? By repeating his threat to lie to Shayne about her if she did? That would arouse only disbelief and contempt in her employer. Lucy was still casting about wildly for a lie that would be more believable than the truth when Shayne stalked back with another straight drink of cognac.
He looked at his watch as he settled himself, said quietly, “First, I want a complete physical description of Bristow, how badly he was wounded and any ideas you may have about where he might have gone.”
“Wait a minute,” he said sharply, when Lucy started to protest. “I admit you’ve got me in a hell of a spot, and that I pulled Will Gentry into it with me when I chased the sergeant and his men away. If I decide it will really accomplish anything to tell the exact truth about your pulling the wool over my eyes, I’ll do so. But if an anonymous phone call will bring the same results, I’ll try to keep you out of it. And myself and Gentry, incidentally. So don’t waste time with any explanations. Give me his description and what you know about him.”
Holding herself in check and keeping her voice as flatly unemotional as she could, Lucy complied. She heard a disbelieving grunt from Shayne when she explained that she hadn’t seen Jack for years—and then only once briefly in New Orleans, and had no idea where he might go to in Miami. She did explain that he claimed to have been shot by a dead man and had come to her for help because he knew no one else, and knew her address from his sister.
Shayne nodded curtly when she finished. He got up with a glance at her ruined phone and said, “I’ll go downstairs to call that information in. Don’t go in the bedroom. If they don’t pick him up fast, I’ll try to lift his prints from in there for the police to work on.”
Lucy sat huddled miserably on the divan while he was gone. His set face told her nothing when he returned, but he sat down and took a sip of cognac and told her matter-of-factly, “It’s pretty bad. There’s a city-wide alarm out for him, and your description may help. A girl,” he went on moodily, “strangled in a rooming-house on Eighteenth Street. A taxi driver picked the fool up a block from the girl, and brought him directly to this address. He remembered him and how oddly he acted, and when he heard about the girl later over the radio, he told the police. There was nothing about any shooting,” he added, “no gun found on the girl nor any blood around.”
“I know there’s some mistake, Michael. I just know he wouldn’t strangle a girl.”
“Nuts! No one ever knows,” Shayne shook his red head angrily. “It isn’t that easy, Lucy. And now, just between the two of us, why in the name of God did you hold out on me? I can maybe understand you’re not calling a doctor after the story he told you. But why not me? I’d have listened to him. If he was in trouble and innocent, I might even have helped him.”
“I know, Michael.” Lucy’s head was hanging down and she was staring with absorption at the tips of her mules. “It all happened so suddenly. I don’t know how to explain it. I warned him I’d tell you as soon as you came, and now I suppose that’s why he went out the window and down the fire escape. Because he’ was afraid I would.”
She drew in a long breath and lifted round, luminous eyes to Shayne’s intent gaze. “I guess it doesn’t matter now,” she said simply, “but he threatened to tell you we were lovers if I brought you into it.”
“Do you think for a minute,” Shayne asked shortly, “that I care if you’ve had fifty lovers?”
“I guess not.” She looked away from him again. “I guess I was a fool to think you’d care one single goddamn.”
“Or would have believed a word of it,” stormed Shayne, getting up to stride back and forth in front of her, rumpling his hair violently with both hands.
“My God, Lucy! What sort of heel do you take me for? If you can’t trust me any further than that—”
“What?” she asked faintly.
“Then it’s time you started looking for another job.”
“I will,” she agreed. “Tomorrow morning.”
He stopped abruptly in his pacing to glare at her. “Not without giving me two weeks notice, you won’t. You listen to me, Lucy—”
“I’ll not listen to you,” she interrupted defiantly. “I think it is time I got another job, and you don’t need any notice. I meant to tell you about Jack. I didn’t know about any murder, and I still don’t believe he did it.”
She turned away from him despairingly, and Shayne slowly got to his feet. There were deep trenches in his cheeks as he looked down at her bowed head, and he made a motion to touch her hair, but checked himself. He waited a moment and then spoke flatly.
“We’re both saying things we don’t mean. I’m going out to check the Eighteenth Street killing and see what the Bristow situation actually is. You sit tight and stay out of the bedroom until I come back. That’s an order, and don’t forget you’re still working for me.”
He hesitated a further moment, but Lucy did not look up or reply. He turned and jammed his hat down on bristly red hair, stalked out of the room.
Chapter Four
Michael Shayne’s car was parked in front of Lucy’s apartment house, and he gunned it around in a U-Turn with wholly unnecessary violence to head toward the 18th Street address he had been given when he made the anonymous call to police headquarters. He was seething inwardly, and his big hands gripped the wheel hard as he sent the heavy car leaping crosstown. Inside, he was all mixed up and in a turmoil about his feelings toward Lucy.
Part of his anger, he tried to tell himself honestly, was probably jealousy. He just didn’t know. He’d never taken time out to objectively define his feelings toward his secretary. Until tonight, he hadn’t’ realized just how possessive they were. When this was over, he promised himself, he’d sit down quietly with a long drink and think things out. But right now he had inadvertently assisted her to help a suspected murderer escape, and the pressing thing was to rectify that as best he could.
The Northwest section where the murder had occurred was one of the older sections of the city, one of the better residential sections many years previously, consisting mostly of old two and three-story residences which had beep converted into rooming-houses to meet the servant problem and the high cost of upkeep.
The block that Shayne sought was quiet and tree-shaded, inadequately lighted with street lamps two blocks apart.
Half a dozen police cars and an ambulance were parked at the curb in front of a big house near the center of the block. Little groups of curious onlookers were gathered on the sidewalk, and two uniformed men were in the street impatiently waving traffic onward.
As Shayne slid past slowly, he noted Chief Will Gentry’s private car wedged between two radio cars. His features tightened, and he continued to the end of the block, pulling in unobtrusively to the curb in the deep shadow of two trees.
He got out and sauntered back, wondering how best to explain his own interest in the case without revealing the truth about Jack Bristow. A policeman stood at the head of the walk leaning in to the house, waving back those morbidly curious who were intent on getting closer, and he recognized the redhead with a grin when Shayne came up.
“Chief Gentry’s inside, Mr. Shayne. You mixed up in this?”
Shayne halted and shook his head. “Heard a radio broadcast and was just driving by.” He dropped his voice. “You know the name of the girl that got it?”
“Heard someone say they called her Trixie.” The policeman lowered his left eyelid lewdly. “One of your girl friends?”
Shayne grinned and managed to look slightly abashed and a good deal relieved. “Trixie, eh? No friend of mine, thank God. How did it happen?”
“Nobody knows much, I guess. Another girl found her dead about an hour ago. Is this here a cat-house like they say?”
Shayne grinned and shrugged. “As if I’d know anything about that.” He slapped the man on the shoulder as a squat figure in plain clothes stepped out the front door and lit a cigarette. He said, “There’s Bentley just come out. Mind if I ask him about it?”
“Go ahead. Stand back, the rest of you,” ordered the patrolman as Shayne sauntered up the walk. “Nobody goes in that hasn’t got business.”
Detective Bentley scowled as Shayne walked up. “What’s on your mind, shamus?”
“Used to know one of the girls who lived here,” Shayne told him mildly. “She was a good kid and I hoped nothing had happened to her.”
“This one is new, I guess. Only been here a few weeks. Name of Trixie.” The detective drew in a deep gulp of smoke and exhaled slowly. “Not more’n twenty, by God. Supposed to be occupying the room alone, but looks like she was keeping a man with her.”
“He do it?”
“Nobody knows from nothing. He’s missing. May be the one a taxi driver reported picking up in front of here who acted hurt and left blood in the cab when he got out. Chief’s in there now. You got any ideas?”
Michael Shayne shook his head slowly. “Just so her name wasn’t Adele. Think she shot the guy while he was choking her?”
“Nothing to show it,” grunted Bentley. “No one heard a shot and no evidence a gun was fired in the room. But hell,” he went on disgustedly, “no one hears a damn thing in a joint like this. Girl gets beat up by some drunken bum, nobody interferes.”
Shayne agreed idly that it was tough on Homicide to work on a case like that, and when the detective spun his cigarette butt away and turned to re-enter, Shayne told him good night and crossed the lawn to walk toward his car.
As he neared the corner, he heard the light, fast clack of high heels on the sidewalk behind him. He crossed the street slowly and she came up behind him as he reached the shadows on the other side. A low, tremulous voice said, “Wait a minute, mister,” and Shayne turned to see a small, pinched face with big eyes and an over-lipsticked mouth.
She was thin and young and shabbily dressed in a gray sweater and short tweed skirt, and thin fingers clutched tightly at his forearm as she said, “I saw you talking to the cops back there. What’s happened? Nobody seems to know. For the love of holy Christ, mister, tell me what’s happened?”
Shayne looked down at her consideringly. “Why don’t you ask the police?”
“I can’t. I’m afraid to.” Her thin voice rose abjectly. “You know how cops are. They’d ask me all sorts of questions. Just tell me, mister. I saw the ambulance. Is there somebody—killed?”
Shayne said, “Here’s my car.” He opened the door and put a big hand under her elbow to urge her in. “Why don’t we go some place for a drink and talk about it?”
“Tell me one thing first.” Her voice was fierce. “Who was it? I got to know.”
Shayne closed her door firmly and went around to slide under the wheel beside her. “A girl who called herself Trixie was strangled there tonight.”
“Oh!” She exhaled a great sigh of relief and slumped limply back against the cushion. “Thank God, mister. I just didn’t know. You see, I’m a stranger here. Just hit town tonight. I didn’t know—what to do.” Her voice cracked on the final words and she compressed her garish lips tightly.
Shayne started the motor and the big car pulled ahead smoothly. “Where are you from?”
“New Orleans. I hitchhiked all the way. Look, mister, I’m just about nuts. I don’t know what to do. I was to meet my husband there tonight, see? We fixed it up two days ago. I had that address, and he promised to meet me there outside if I made it by tonight. So when I got there, there was cops all around. I was afraid to ask questions, and I just didn’t know. If he was there waiting and saw the cops, he’d of blown. So, now what do I do? How’ll I ever find him now?” Tears ran down her pinched cheeks and she made no move to wipe them away.
Shayne turned south on an avenue without saying anything, and stopped in front of a bar and lunchroom a few blocks away. He said gruffly, “Let’s go in and talk it over. Maybe I can think of some way to help.”
She laxly let him help her out, and went in beside him. There were a few men at the bar, an empty booth at the rear. Shayne steered her into it, told the waiter to bring him a double brandy and ice-water, and looked inquiringly at the girl across from him.
She looked doubtful and frightened and said, “I don’t drink much. I dunno—on an empty stomach—” Her voice trailed off thinly.
She was under twenty, Shayne thought, obviously undernourished and anemic. She would be quite pretty, he thought, with the hollows in her cheeks filled out, and her gray eyes were nice though now they were hauntingly remindful of those of a wounded fawn.
He said, “Better have something to eat first. Bring us a menu, waiter.”
“If I could just have a sandwich,” she said doubtfully. “And maybe a glass of milk. But I’m flat broke,” she went on fiercely with a swift pride in her voice, “and I can’t pay you back until I find my husband, and I don’t want you to be thinking—”
Shayne said, “I’m not thinking anything. How about hot roast beef—a couple of them,” he told the waiter when she nodded eagerly, “and a big glass of milk.”
“I don’t suppose you know how it is with a girl out on the road.” She dropped her eyelids and clenched her hands together tightly on the table in front of her. Her voice was low and throbbed with a genuine note of desperation. “Every man that picks you up thinks—you know? And if you let ’em buy you a meal they think they’ve bought you.” She paused and gulped, still with downcast lids. “I never—I never did try hitchhiking before. I don’t want you to think—”
“I’m not thinking anything,” Shayne told her heartily as the waiter set a platter in front of her with two open beef sandwiches smothered in steaming gravy, “except that you’ll feel better after a little food. And it’s not going to cost me any more than the price of a drink, so forget it.” He settled back and lifted his double brandy while she grasped her fork and wolfed into the food, washing it down with long gulps of milk.
He ordered her a second
glass of milk, and she emptied that and scraped her plate clean before another word was spoken between them. She sighed deeply and rested both elbows on the table and confessed with a little-girl grimace, “That’s the first I had since a doughnut this morning. Honest, mister, I never was so hungry in all my life. I just thought if I could wait until tonight and meet—my husband—like he promised, that everything would be all right. He’s got plenty money,” she went on proudly. “He’ll pay you back double, I promise you that.”
“Is Jack in some trouble with the police?”
“Ja—ak?” Shayne couldn’t tell whether her involuntary start was from surprise or fear. “What do you mean—Jack?”
“Didn’t you say that was your husband’s name?”
“I didn’t say,” she told him with dignity. “Anyhow, it isn’t Jack. It’s—Pete. Peter Smith,” she added bravely. “And he’s not in any real trouble at all. It’s just that—you know how cops are. A person’s a stranger in town, he doesn’t want to get mixed up in a murder. If he was hanging around waiting for me, would they believe him?” Her lips curled derisively. “You bet they wouldn’t. They’d drag him right off to the hoosegow and work him over with rubber hoses and like that. They treat you different if you’re respectable and all.”
Shayne said, “I’ve heard about things like that, and I think it’s a lousy deal. The thing is now—what are you going to do about meeting your husband? Sure you don’t know any other place you might contact him?”
She shook her head decidedly. “I just had that one address. We fixed it up over the phone that I was to come, and the way he talked I thought he had a friend lived there. Neither of us have ever been in Miami before and he didn’t know where else to say. I guess I’ll just have to go back and hang around outside until he shows.”
Death Has Three Lives Page 3
