Shoot to Kill ms-49

by Brett Halliday

  “I certainly do. That is privileged information and completely immaterial.”

  “What time did you reach Miami?”

  “About five o’clock. I took a taxi direct from the airport with every expectation of conferring with Mr. Ames immediately and I had hoped to return to New York by a later flight tonight. Instead I was greeted on my arrival by the man’s secretary, a Mr. Conroy, I believe, who explained that his employer might not be available to me for several hours and suggested that I remain in the house as a guest until such time as Mr. Ames should deign to give me an interview.”

  “And that made you sore?” suggested Griggs.

  “I was naturally indignant, and I protested, but to no avail. I was assigned a guest-room across the hall from Conroy’s quarters, and there I cooled my heels until Ames was shot to death.”

  “Did you have any discussion with him during dinner?”

  “He didn’t come to dinner. Confound it, the man made no appearance whatsoever. I was served dinner with Mrs. Ames and the secretary, and given to understand that Ames never joined them at the evening meal. That he didn’t arise until lour or five in the afternoon and secluded himself in his study with only coffee until he went out later in the evening to spend the rest of the night in night-clubs gathering gossip items for his notorious newspaper column. Soon after dinner I went up to my room and tried to nap with the understanding that Conroy would call me the moment Ames was available.”

  “Did you sleep?”

  “Not really. I was naturally quite irritated by the cavalier manner in which I was being treated, and anxious to get the conference over with. After about an hour I came out of my room to the head of the stairs, noting that the confounded Do Not Disturb sign still hung outside Ames’ study, and I called down for the houseboy to bring a bottle of Scotch to my room.”

  “Loudly enough for Ames to hear you inside his closed study?”

  “He should have heard me if he wasn’t deaf. I intended him to be reminded of my presence and my purpose in his house, but he calmly disregarded that and I went back to my room and shut the door again.

  “It was a short time later… perhaps five or six minutes… when I heard a commotion downstairs and people running about, and I came out of my room to see this private detective and the houseboy outside his door. Then there was a shot from inside, and this man broke the door down with his shoulder. Thus my trip becomes a complete waste of time, and I am informed by the airport that there are no further New York flights available until tomorrow morning. I would like to call a taxi now and go to a hotel in the hope of getting a few hours rest. I certainly don’t wish to spend the night under this roof.”

  Griggs nodded. “In just a few minutes… after I clear the rest of this up. Why don’t you relax and have another drink?” He turned his head toward Powers who appeared in the doorway, and the young patrolman reported, “Your men say they’re through upstairs, Sergeant. And there’s an ambulance and stretcher here.”

  Griggs got up and followed Sutter out, and they heard him conferring briefly in the living room with his technicians, and there were heavy footsteps up and down the stairs, sounds of the outer doors opening and closing, car doors slamming and motors starting.

  Griggs returned in a few minutes followed by the houseman who held himself stiffly and self-consciously in the presence of the police. He sat primly erect in the straight chair with knees together and brown hands folded tightly in his lap, and answered Griggs’ questions in excellent English.

  His name was Alfredo Sanchez, he said, he had been born in New York and held his present position for five years. He was thirty-four years old, unmarried, and claimed he had no police record at all. The household consisted of himself and a colored housekeeper-cook who slept out, Mr. and Mrs. Ames and Mr. Conroy.

  He confirmed Wesley Ames’ habit of staying out practically all night and generally sleeping until late in the afternoon, and that the columnist seldom took a meal at home. Today he had arisen about four-thirty, Alfred said, and gone directly to his study after he had bathed and dressed, and hung the sign on his door which was supposed to exclude everyone except Mrs. Ames. The cook had prepared a pot of coffee about five, and Mrs. Ames had taken it in to him with a cup and saucer. So far as Alfred knew, no one else had entered the study from the hallway until Ralph Larson had forced his way up the stairs and bolted the door. It was normally never locked on the inside, Alfred explained, because the Do Not Disturb sign was sufficient to insure privacy.

  Other visitors who came in the evening were always checked at the front door by Conroy and sent around to the outside entrance where Ames admitted them himself, and he believed there had been at least one such visitor tonight, but he did not know his identity nor whether there had been others or not.

  He briefly confirmed the time of Sutter’s arrival from the airport, serving dinner to the three of them, Mark Ames’ arrival after dinner, and Sutter’s retirement to his room some time around seven o’clock.

  He had cleared the table and helped cook with the dishes, he said, and she had gone out the back way about seven-thirty as was her custom. He knew that Mrs. Ames and Mr. Conroy had left the house together a little before eight o’clock, though neither had spoken to him or mentioned their plans for the evening.

  He had been in his pantry when Sutter called down for a bottle from the top of the stairs, and Mark Ames was alone in the living room still waiting to see his brother when he asked Alfred to also bring him a bottle of bourbon.

  He was just emerging from the pantry with the silver tray containing two bottles and four glasses, two of them containing ice cubes, when the front door was flung open and Ralph Larson ran inside brandishing a revolver. He had brushed Mark Ames aside, and Alfred got in front of him as he made for the stairs. He had knocked Alfred and the tray down and run up the stairs, and Alfred followed as fast as he could, but too late to prevent him from entering the study and slamming the door in Alfred’s face. Shayne had arrived at that moment, and the rest of it was known to them.

  Sergeant Griggs thanked him when he finished his concise recital, and asked him to send Ralph Larson in.

  Patrolman Powers escorted the young reporter to the door. Ralph Larson stalked in defiantly and glared at Griggs. “Why can’t we get this over with?” he demanded witheringly. “I told you I killed him. Isn’t that enough?”

  “You haven’t told me anything yet,” Sergeant Griggs pointed out coldly. “State your name and occupation for the record.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake. I’m Ralph Larson. I work on the News with Tim Rourke. I shot and killed Wesley Ames upstairs in his study half an hour ago. Is that what you want?”

  “There’s the question of motive and premeditation,” Griggs told him, still coldly. “I understand that you threatened to kill him last night.”

  “What does that mailer now? I was having some drinks with Tim and I shot my mouth off. I’m sure Tim has told you all about it with embellishments.” His mouth twisted and he shot a baleful glance across the room at the other reporter. “What the hell does my motive have to do with it? Do we have to drag my wife’s name through the mud? I killed him because he was a louse and didn’t deserve to live. Isn’t that enough?”

  “Where did you get the murder gun?”

  “It’s mine. I’ve got a permit for it.”

  “And you came here tonight and burst into the house with a loaded gun, and you planned to kill him?” Griggs said inexorably. “It wasn’t a crime of impulse… a spur-of-the-moment thing. You’ve been planning it all day. Is that what we’re to understand?”

  “I don’t give a damn what you understand. I’ve told you…”

  “Don’t be a complete goddamned idiot, Ralph,” Rourke swore at him. “It wasn’t quite as coldblooded as that. Something triggered you off. Was it something Dorothy said?”

  “Dorothy? No. It was that bastard Ames. Sitting there in his chair and laughing in my face when I told him to stay away from Dorothy. I to
ld him I’d kill him and he kept on laughing. So I got my gun and did it, goddamnit.”

  “Wait a minute.” Griggs looked puzzled. “When did he laugh at you?”

  “This evening. Sitting there at his desk wearing that silly red vest with a row of silver buttons down the front. He didn’t even stop opening his mail long enough to listen to me. Sitting there slitting open the envelopes meticulously as though I was dirt under his damned feet. If I’d had a gun then I would have shot him.”

  “This evening? You mean you were here earlier and threatened him and then went home to get your gun and came back to kill him?”

  “Of course. When do you think I’m talking about? Didn’t they tell you I was here earlier? I had an appointment with him, and I didn’t bring a gun with me, damn it, so you can’t prove I was planning it all day. I was determined to have it out with him, and all I asked him was to promise to leave Dorothy alone in the future. That’s when he laughed at me and I decided to kill him.”

  Sergeant Griggs said, “I think we’d better go back and sort of start over, Mr. Larson. Now then: You had an appointment with Wesley Ames this evening? What time, and what was it about?”

  “I was supposed to be here at seven-fifteen to discuss an assignment for tonight. I work… have been working… for him on the side. Checking out stories from him about celebrities and getting facts for him to use in his column. I left the office a little early, a few minutes before seven, and drove out here. Vic Conroy came to the front door as usual when I drove up, saw who it was and waved me around to the side of the house where an outside staircase leads up to Ames’ study. I rang the bell at the top and he came to the door and looked through the glass, and unbolted it to let me in. He always keeps that door bolted,” Ralph went on. He seemed eager to talk now, to make them understand exactly what had happened. “I know that, and that’s the reason I didn’t go around that way later when I came back. I knew he wouldn’t let me in after I’d threatened to kill him, so I came in the front way instead.

  “Anyhow, it was about seven-fifteen and he was in his study alone opening his mail and reading it… or at least glancing at each letter as he took it out of the envelope. I had it all planned… what I was going to say… and I started right in as soon as he sat back down at his desk. I told him I knew he was seeing Dorothy at night when he sent me out on assignments, and I asked him… man-to-man… to leave her alone. I reminded him that she was young and impressionable, and that he had lots of other women to play around with, and told him he was wrecking our marriage.

  “And he sat there in his chair slitting open his goddamned letters and he laughed at me. He said if Dorothy wanted to pass it around he didn’t see why he shouldn’t get in line for it.

  “I would have killed him then and there if I’d had a gun. I told him so. And he laughed in my face. So I went back out and down to my car and drove straight home and got my gun and came back. I hardly remember driving either way or anything.” Ralph Larson looked distraught and rubbed a hand vaguely across his forehead.

  “Dorothy was there,” he said in a perplexed voice. “I remember she tried to stop me from getting my gun. She tried to tell me that Wesley Ames meant nothing to her and that I had no reason to be jealous of him. But I was halfway out of my mind, I guess. It’s all sort of blank until I was here suddenly and running up the stairs and that Puerto Rican tried to stop me. Even then I might not have done it. I don’t know,” Larson said in a troubled voice. “If he’d just begged me not to. If he’d just paid attention to me and promised, even then, that he wouldn’t see Dorothy again. But he was so goddamned superior. He just sat there leaning back in his chair looking at me and not saying a word even when I waved the gun in his face. So I shot him. What else could you do with a man like that? He slid sideways half out of his chair when the bullet hit him, and he still didn’t say anything. So, now then!” Ralph Larson lifted his head defiantly and glared at Griggs. “Does that spell everything out for you? I wish I’d had the guts to use another bullet on myself, but I didn’t.” He dropped his face into his hands suddenly and began weeping.

  Sergeant Griggs stood up, looking tired and not particularly happy. He shrugged as Rourke went across the room to stand beside Ralph’s chair and put his hand on his shoulder, and walked out of the room and Shayne followed him.

  He hesitated outside the door and told the detective, “I guess that ties it up in a neat bundle. You think Tim will be willing to go out with us and break it to Larson’s wife? She must be in a hell of a shape, not knowing what’s happened to her husband.”

  Shayne said, “I’ll drive Tim to the Larson apartment. It’s on Northeast Sixty-First. Are you coming too?”

  “Hell, I may as well get her statement for the record, and close it out,” Griggs said. “You and Tim go ahead if you like. Get the hysterics over with before I get there.”

  8

  As Michael Shayne drove out of the floodlighted area down to the open gate, Timothy Rourke settled back on the seat beside him and sighed feelingly. “Poor punk,” he muttered. “What’ll become of him, Mike?”

  “Ralph Larson? Chances are good he’ll burn. You’ve got premeditation. Actually a killing in cold blood. It’s Murder One right on the nose.”

  “What about the unwritten law?” demanded Rourke. “A man has a right to defend his home… his wife. This is Florida, after all. Temporary insanity, damn it.”

  “If he’d done it on the spur of the moment, sure. If he’d just walked in there and shot Ames tonight as we first thought, having worked himself into a state of homicidal jealousy, a jury would probably take a lenient view. If he’d had a gun in his pocket and blasted Ames on his first trip at seven o’clock… okay. But he left that house determined to get a gun and kill Ames according to his own statement. Half an hour is a long time for temporary insanity to prevail. No, Tim. Any way you look at it your young friend is in a very bad spot. You and I are both to blame for not taking his threat more seriously and stepping in faster.”

  “Yeh,” muttered Rourke. “I’d rather cut off my right arm than break the news to Dorothy. No matter how it looks, I tell you she was really in love with Ralph. Think what she must have gone through this last hour. Ralph dashing out with a gun. She not hearing a word… not knowing what’s happened.”

  “There may have been a flash on TV,” Shayne suggested. “One of the boys at headquarters may have picked it up.” He slid past the traffic light at 79th and eased over into the outer lane to prepare for the turn onto 61st.

  “In that case we’ll find her hysterical.”

  “Or under sedation,” Shayne suggested hopefully. There were fewer cars parked along the quiet street at this hour than when the detective had stopped by earlier, and he had no difficulty finding a parking place directly in front of the apartment building. He got out with Rourke and they went up the walk together and through the empty entrance hall to the stairway. The doors of both apartments at the top of the stairs were closed and there was silence in the upper hall. Shayne turned to 3-B on the right and pressed the button as he had done on his first visit, but this time he didn’t bother to get a pleasant smile ready to greet the occupant when she opened the door.

  As before, there was no response to his ring. Shayne hesitated and glanced aside at Rourke with ragged red eyebrows raised questioningly, and pressed the bell again. Involuntarily he caught himself glancing over his shoulder at 4-B, half-expecting that door to open and reveal May Graham, still bare-footed and still welcoming.

  But both doors remained shut and only silence answered his second ring. He hunched down and studied the keyhole and jingled a ring of keys in his pocket, and absently tried the knob as he straightened up.

  It turned and the door to the Larson apartment swung open. There were lights inside but only silence greeted the opening of the door. Shayne stepped over the threshold, calling, “Mrs. Larson?” and he hesitated only a moment at the entrance to the empty living room before striding in.

  The int
erior arrangement of the apartment was a replica of the one across the hall, with a closed door directly in front of him which he knew, opened into a bedroom, and an open door on the right through which he could see a small, neat kitchen.

  He heard Rourke enter behind him, and the reporter muttered uneasily, “What the hell do you suppose…?”

  Shayne crossed the sitting room in four long, fast strides and jerked open the bedroom door. The overhead light was on in this room also and neatly made twin beds stood side by side, but there were articles of feminine clothing tossed in disarray on one of the beds, a half-packed suitcase stood open near the head of it, and bureau drawers were pulled open haphazardly with contents rumpled and dangling over the edges of the drawers.

  Shayne took in the scene with one swift glance, then strode to the open door of a bathroom on the right and switched on the light. Rourke saw him straighten and his shoulders stiffen as he looked inside the bathroom.

  Fearful of what he might see inside the bathroom, the reporter edged up behind the rangy detective and peered past his shoulder.

  There was no body in the bathroom, as he had instinctively feared. But there was blood on the washbasin and on the floor. And a damp handtowel was wadded up on the floor, liberally smeared with blood.

  Shayne turned slowly, shaking his head and looking at Rourke with a deep frown of puzzlement. “I don’t get it, Tim. What the hell do you suppose happened here? When she phoned me… it was after Ralph had run out with his gun… so she said.” He paused, thinking deeply. “And Ralph verified that, didn’t he? He said Dorothy was here when he came home, and she tried to stop him. Isn’t that the way it was?”

  “That’s what he said. That she tried to tell him there was nothing between Wesley Ames and her. But he also claimed he had pulled sort of a blank and doesn’t remember much until he was suddenly at the Ames’ house. Do you suppose they actually had a fight and he slugged Dorothy, and…?”

  “And did away with her somehow?” Shayne shrugged and turned back into the bedroom, tugging at his ear lobe in deep perplexity.