The Careless Corpse ms-41

by Brett Halliday

  Shayne realized it would be utterly hopeless to face the roomful of excited and vengeful Latins at the end of the corridor. He drew back and slammed the door shut instead, throwing the latch on the inside to gain a few moments before they could break it in, and then whirled about to look at the cubicle in which he was imprisoned.

  There was a urinary on one side and a wash-bowl on the other. Beyond was a sagging door leading into a toilet stall, and shoulder-high on the far wall was a window about two feet square.

  There was an excited babble of voices and a rush of feet outside the door behind Shayne. It rattled and shook as angry fists began pounding on it.

  Shayne hesitated one brief moment while he tried to orient himself and judge whether the rear window overlooked the river or not.

  Before he could decide, he knew that the question had become academic. The door was straining inward now, and the latch would give way at any moment.

  Shayne leaped forward and caught the crosspiece above the sagging inner door with both hands. Using the impetus of his leap, he swung his legs and lower body high off the floor and drove feet-first at the window, arching his body to carry him through the aperture and downward, accompanied by fragments of broken glass.

  He went into the muddy water of the Miami River feet-first, and sank into soft mud before he was waist-deep.

  Three strides carried him to the bank where he scrambled up behind the kitchen just as there was a crash inside the restroom and excited shouts came out the broken window.

  Shayne loped around the side of the kitchen to the parking lot, darted to Rourke’s car and leaped inside. There was no Cadillac convertible parked in the lot.

  He got the key in the ignition and the motor roared to life just as the vanguard of the angry mob poured out of the front door.

  He went away with screaming tires and with his lights off, and drove several blocks before he eased into a stream of traffic and turned them on.

  He drove west a dozen blocks, heard a siren racing in the opposite direction behind him, and then north a few blocks until he found a small bar with an empty parking space in front. He got out and went in with his muddy shoes and his clothing dripping from the waist down, and pushed up against the end of the bar where the lower portion of his body was hidden from the bartender’s sight.

  He said, “A double cognac straight,” and then motioned to the telephone behind the bar just out of his reach. “Would you push that a little closer, please?”

  The bartender set the phone where he could reach it, and got down a bottle of cognac. Shayne dialed the Peralta number from memory. It rang six times before Freed’s unctuous voice answered, “Mr. Peralta’s residence.”

  “Mrs. Peralta, please. Sergeant Olson from police headquarters.”

  “One moment, Sergeant. I believe she just returned.”

  Shayne held the receiver to his ear and gratefully sipped the body-warming liquor. When Laura Peralta’s voice said “Yes?” over the wire, he put the telephone down thoughtfully without replying. There was a black scowl on his trenched face as he toyed with his drink. Right now, Laura Peralta was a bigger question mark than before. He smoked a cigarette and had another, single, cognac without coming to any conclusion about her.

  The scowl remained on his face when he finally clumped out in wet shoes and got into Rourke’s car. He drove to his apartment hotel and parked outside, grinned reassuringly at the expression on the desk clerk’s face as he crossed the lobby. “I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow, Dick. Right now I need some dry clothes.”

  “Sure. That’s okay, Mr. Shayne. But I gotta tell you. That reporter friend of yours, Tim Rourke, and the chief of police, are up in your apartment… with some other guy I don’t know.”

  Shayne stiffened. He asked with a frown, “How long ago?”

  “About five minutes. Mr. Rourke’s got a key, you know.”

  Shayne said absently, “I know.” He went to the open elevator wondering what in hell this visit portended.

  TEN

  Shayne had his key-ring out when he approached the door of his second-floor apartment, and he turned his key in the lock and pretended surprise to find the living room brightly lighted and Tim Rourke in the act of pouring a drink at the center table. He also pretended not to notice the presence of Chief Will Gentry and another man seated on the divan back against the wall on his right.

  He turned slightly to the left to close the door, and said heartily, “Pour one for me out of my own bottle while you’re at it, Tim.”

  “Hey! Where the devil have you been?” Rourke held a bottle tilted over a glass and stared at Shayne’s wet pants and shoes.

  “Her husband came back unexpectedly. Thank God there was a swimming pool directly underneath the balcony off her bedroom.” Shayne shucked off hat and coat and started forward, reaching down to unbuckle his belt. He stopped with a start of surprise as though seeing his other visitors for the first time. “Will! Don’t tell me that’s the husband… come up to have me arrested for jumping out of his wife’s bedroom. If you are,” he told Gentry’s companion seriously, “and if I catch my death of pneumonia out of this, I’m going to sue you for not keeping your pool heated at night.”

  “Cut out the gags, Mike,” Will Gentry said heavily. “This is Mr. Erskine and we’re here on a serious matter.”

  Mr. Erskine was smaller than Miami’s Chief of Police, and at least ten years younger, built with the same solidity and wearing a look of portentous gravity. He wore a dark, neatly pressed business suit, a dark blue bow-tie, and dark, horn-rimmed glasses.

  Shayne acknowledged the introduction with a breezy nod of his head. He said, “Let it wait three minutes, Will, while I get out of these wet clothes.” He went on toward Rourke at the center table, unbuttoning his shirt. “Pour the gentlemen a drink, Tim, and make mine straight.”

  Timothy Rourke said, “Sure,” and Shayne passed him into the bedroom with a wink, stripping off his shirt and dropping it on the floor as he entered. He emerged in a moment with a bathrobe flapping about his bare shanks, went into the bathroom where he took a quick, warm shower.

  Both Gentry and Erskine sat stolidly on the sofa with drinks in their hands when he came out wearing the robe again. He paused by the table to pick up a glass of cognac Rourke had poured, and sipped it as he went back into the bedroom.

  The glass was half empty when he came out a few minutes later wearing dry slacks and slippers and a tan sport shirt. Tim Rourke was slumped down in a deep chair across the room from the others, his eyes half-closed and his cadaverous features relaxed while he nursed a tall glass of bourbon and water.

  Shayne set his glass down on the table and went into the kitchen to bring back a glass of ice water which he set down beside it, then he sank into a chair and sighed deeply and said, “All right, Will. What is it?”

  “Where have you been all evening?”

  “Working. Ever since Tim’s lawyer sprang me from Painter’s jail.”

  “On the Peralta case?” demanded Gentry.

  “Sure on the Peralta case. Did you think I was going to let that little twerp scare me off it?”

  “It might have been better if you had, Mike. If you and he would just talk together instead of butting your heads every time you meet.”

  “Talk?” Shayne demanded angrily. “Listen. Has Tim told you how those two goons of Painter’s grabbed me off the street on phony charges and kept me locked up in a lousy cell for three hours before Tim could arrange bail?”

  “I know all about that,” Gentry told him heavily. “But answer me this one question honestly, Mike. What would you have done if Painter had asked you nicely to stay out of the Peralta case?”

  Shayne hesitated. “I expect I would have told him to go to hell. Why shouldn’t I take on a case he’s messed with for three weeks? Who the hell is he to tell me…?”

  “That’s what Mr. Erskine is here to tell you, Mike. But before we get into that… have you seen Lucy or heard from her this evening?
”

  “Not since I left the office about four o’clock.”

  “She was trying desperately to get in touch with you… I guess while Painter had you locked up. That’s the one place she wouldn’t think to try.”

  “What did Lucy want?”

  “She finally phoned me about eight o’clock, Mike. She talked fast and then the connection was broken before I could ask any questions. She said she was all right and would keep on being all right, if you’d stop trying to recover the Peralta bracelet. But that she wouldn’t be all right if you refused to lay off.”

  “My God!” Shayne’s face was suddenly angry. “You don’t think that Painter…”

  “No,” said Gentry scathingly, “I don’t think that Peter Painter would kidnap your secretary and threaten her with harm just to frighten you off. But this thing has ramifications, Mike. Mr. Erskine here is from the State Department in Washington. Painter sent him to me after your run-in this afternoon, to see if the two of us could pound some sense into your thick head.”

  “Wait a minute.” Shayne’s face was deeply trenched and very grim. “What about Lucy? What have you done about her?”

  “What can we do about her? I checked your office and her apartment. Both are in perfect order. Looks as though she closed up the office with her usual efficiency, but there’s no sign at all that she ever got home. Ashtrays clean… everything tidied up the way I’d expect Lucy to leave it in the morning.”

  “What’s all this pressure from various sources to lay off the Peralta bracelet?” demanded Shayne.

  “That’s what Mr. Erskine is here to tell you. What Painter should have explained to you this afternoon if you would have listened.”

  The telephone rang at Shayne’s elbow. He scooped it up and said, “Shayne speaking,” and listened a moment before holding it out to Gentry. “For you, Will.” He sank back and picked up his drink moodily while the chief took the instrument and said, “Yes.”

  He finished the cognac and took a sip of ice water while Gentry held the phone to his ear and listened. He finally said, “I got all that. Mike Shayne’s here now. I’ll probably bring him in.”

  He leaned over the detective’s long legs to replace the telephone, and commented morosely, “You do have a way of getting around, don’t you, Mike?”

  “What was that?”

  “Just a report on a little ruckus in a river-front bar.” Gentry went back to sit on the sofa. “Place called Las Putas Buenas.”

  Erskine sat up alertly and spoke for the first time since Shayne had entered the apartment. “That’s one of their meeting places, Chief Gentry. We’ve had it under surveillance for some time.”

  “I’m not surprised,” said Gentry grimly. “My sergeant reports that about half an hour ago a big drunken redhead blustered into the place and started a fight with a couple of customers who were quietly minding their own business. He broke the arm of one of them, trying to drag him into the men’s room for some unknown purpose. Then he locked himself in and got away from the infuriated mob by jumping out a window into the Miami River where it’s about waist-deep. I thought your shoes looked pretty muddy for coming out of a swimming pool, Mike.”

  “Good heavens!” exclaimed Mr. Erskine in earnest dismay. “You have stirred up a hornet’s nest, Mr. Shayne. If you were recognized…”

  “He was recognized, all right,” said Gentry flatly.

  “Look, Will.” Shayne spoke very quietly and disregarded Erskine. “I dropped into that bar for a nightcap, and ordered one drink for myself and one for a gal who sat beside me and whom I didn’t even look at. Two men came up behind me while I was quietly drinking my brandy. They held pig-stickers on either side of me at my gut-line. I didn’t see their faces, but from their voices one was Spanish and one wasn’t. They told me to walk back to the rest-room. Which I did. I slammed the door on one of them and broke his arm. Then I went out the window and away from there fast. Are you going to arrest me for that?”

  “I don’t know yet. I think maybe I will.”

  “What the hell is this all about?” demanded Shayne, fiercely. “Should I have sat there and let them spill my guts all over the floor?”

  “You should not have ventured there in the first place,” Erskine told him severely. “If you had heeded Chief Painter this afternoon, all this could have been avoided.”

  “All what?” Shayne’s voice was harsher than before.

  Mr. Erskine put the tips of his fingers together precisely in front of him and blinked at Shayne behind his hornrimmed glasses.

  “Julio Peralta is a dangerous Communist conspirator, Mr. Shayne. We have a long dossier on his affiliation with various subversive organizations over the years, both in this country and in Latin America. He was one of the architects and the principal financial backer of the Castro revolution, while cleverly remaining in the background, and left Cuba before Castro took over on the pretense that he was a refugee from the Communistic forces which he had helped into power.

  “In Miami, he has played a double role among the various Cuban factions who are feverishly plotting to extend the Communist conspiracy to other Latin American countries and those patriotic groups who are appalled by the turn events have taken in their war-torn country and are determined to overthrow the tyrannical Castro government and bring peace and prosperity back to their land.

  “Our government… your government, Mr. Shayne… is not asleep during this crisis, as so many people mistakenly assume. Julio Peralta has been under constant and careful surveillance by our counter-espionage agents since the first day he settled in Miami. We have dedicated and expert operatives planted in his camp who furnish daily reports of his activities, and whose presence he does not remotely suspect. For the past few months there has been a vast build-up of the most modern munitions to equip a trained expeditionary force that is being gathered in Cuba now under the leadership of Russian officers.

  “It is only a matter of days before we will be ready to swoop down and confiscate this vast store of arms and arrest the ringleaders, including Peralta. But these are anxious days, Mr. Shayne, and a very delicate balance must be maintained. The slightest intimation of their danger to the conspirators could easily wreck all our carefully laid plans. Thus, it was a great misfortune from our viewpoint when the Peralta bracelet was stolen two weeks ago.

  “Ironically enough, I should add, it was just as great a blow to the Communist conspiracy.” Mr. Erskine smiled thinly and his eyes gleamed owlishly behind his glasses. “They wanted nothing in the world less than to call police attention to Peralta, his household and his associates. Someone blundered when the theft of the bracelet was even reported to the police, and Peralta quickly tried to rectify that mistake by requesting Chief Painter on the Beach to drop the investigation at once… even going so far, I believe, as to assure the insurance company that a claim for loss would be waived.

  “Naturally, however, as an energetic police official, the Miami Beach Chief of Detectives was loath to give up the effort to recover the stolen bracelet. At that point, I stepped into the picture. You can readily see that we, no less than Peralta and his fellow-conspirators, did not want the boat rocked by any overt prying into Peralta’s affairs, interrogating his servants, and so forth. They must be made to feel that they are wholly in the clear… that there is no danger whatsoever of official interference… in seeking to solve the loss of a paltry emerald bracelet.

  “In seeking this end, I had a long and secret conference with Chief Peter Painter. As soon as he understood the situation, he patriotically agreed to put his personal feelings aside and allow the robbery investigation to fizzle out… even though people who did not understand his real motives would consider it sheer incompetence on his part.

  “That was the situation until today, Mr. Shayne. I do not know, I cannot even hazard a guess, as to why Peralta called you in to the case today. Up to this point, so far as we know, he has been delighted to let the matter rest with no further police investigation. But for
some reason, he did call you in for consultation. Chief Painter, I may say, has a very high opinion of your ability as an investigator. He was worried about the possible consequences as soon as he learned of Peralta’s decision. He first attempted to persuade Peralta to cancel the appointment… and then took matters into his own hands by intercepting you while you were on your way to the Peralta house.”

  Shayne said slowly, “I take it that you view the bracelet snatch as something entirely outside the political situation.”

  “I think the bracelet may well have been stolen by someone who was sufficiently on the inside to hope that Peralta wouldn’t even report the loss to the police.”

  Shayne nodded. “Like the poisoning of the two Boxers wasn’t reported.”

  “What’s that about two Boxers?” asked Chief Gentry with sudden interest.

  “Mrs. Peralta’s pets who ran loose around the place at night. I can see why Peralta and his friends might have been glad to get them out of the way. But, listen to this, Will. You say Lucy phoned you at eight o’clock. I talked to Peralta about eight-thirty, and at that time he was still eager to retain me on the case. It doesn’t make sense to suppose that he’d have Lucy grabbed to persuade me to lay off the case when he was trying to hire me to take it.”

  “I would suggest it wasn’t Peralta himself who kidnaped your secretary, or had her kidnaped, Mr. Shayne. He has various associates who are in as much danger as he from a police investigation, and I think it might well have been one of them who took matters in his own hands to attempt to forestall you. What I cannot understand yet,” Erskine went on worriedly, “is why Peralta suddenly decided to call you in at this late date. He was apparently perfectly pleased with the manner in which Chief Painter was cooperating by not pressing the investigation.”

  Shayne hesitated a moment, weighing the question of whether to tell them about the anonymous letter Peralta had received or not. He decided that nothing would be gained by giving out the information at this point. Something about Erskine’s didactic and faintly pompous manner irked hell out of him.