Brett Halliday - Mike Shayne's Torrid Twelve

“Mike Davis in?” he asked.

The blonde nodded. “Who shall I say?”

“Johnny Liddell. He expects me.”

The blonde consulted an appointment pad on her desk, frowning slightly. “So you’re a detective?” She studied the heavy shoulders, the square jaw and the thick hair flecked with white. “I thought all private detectives were skinny guys like William Powell.”

She got up from her desk, and moved toward the small gate in the waist-high partition. The sweater failed to disguise the fact that she had assets like the Chase Manhattan Bank, and when she walked the sway indicated they were just as liquid.

“Davis’s office is the third door down the corridor,” she said. She stood so he had to brush past her to get through the gate. She held it open for him, grinning up at him saucily.

“Remind me to come peek through your keyhole sometime,” he told her in passing. “Right now I’m twenty minutes late.”

The blonde wrinkled up her nose, shrugged. “I’ll be around.”

Liddell walked down the corridor, stopped in front of a door that was labeled SEAWAY INDEMNITY — Investigation Bureau. He pushed open the door and walked in.

Mike Davis stood at the window against the far wall, staring down into 51st Street, twenty stories below. He turned at the sound of the opened door, his battered face twisting into a grin. “Better late than never,” he said. He crossed the room, his hand extended in front of him.

“You want people to be on time, you’d better get rid of that traffic stopper in the outer office,” Liddell said, grinning. He pumped the man’s hand, and tossed his hat at a coat tree. “It sounded important.”

Mike Davis had been an amateur boxer, and had made the early mistake of trying to trade his silver watches and medals for a regular Saturday night purse at the Ridgewood Grove. A scrappy little port-sider from Coney Island who showed a curious disaffection for ending the fight before the tenth round had changed his mind. The left hander’s hook had also changed the contour of Davis’s nose and eyebrows. He peered at Liddell from under lowering brows.

“How busy are you, Johnny?” he asked.

Liddell shrugged. He walked over to the leather armchair near the desk, and dropped into it. “The usual. We’ve been running down a Portchester kid who tried to parlay the fact that she was Ed Sullivan’s neighbor into a movie career. We just located her working in a drive-in in L.A. Soon’s we turn her over to her old man I’m finished.”

He dug a cigarette from his pocket, and stuck it in the corner of his mouth where it waggled when he talked. “What’s the job you’re peddling?” he asked.

“A weirdie, Johnny.” Davis walked over to the desk, jabbed at a button on the base of the phone, held it to his ear. “Pull the package on Robert Horton and bring it in, will you, Lee?”

He dropped the receiver back on its hook, and returned to his chair. “We had this one marked closed as a hit-and-run job. But now we’re not so sure. Before we pay off we’d like to be.”

A short, fat man walked in, and dropped an envelope on Davis’s desk. He favored Liddell with an incurious glance, and walked right out again.

“What changed your mind?” Johnny asked.

The insurance man emptied the contents of the envelope on his desk, scowling a little. “The guy’s sister-in-law — a Mrs. Sally Horton.” He picked a flimsy from the pile on his desk, ran his eyes over it. “She says it was murder.”

“She know who did it?”

Davis rolled his eyes from the paper up to Liddell’s face. “Yeah. She says it was her husband.”

“Any reason why Horton should kill his brother?”

“Two. First, he was the beneficiary of the insurance policy. Second, his wife says he knew she was trading him in for the brother-in-law as soon as she could get a divorce.”

Johnny Liddell followed the dusty looking hall carpet to the second apartment from the rear. A tarnished 2B was stenciled on it. He knocked, his eyes wandering idly up and down the dismal hallway as he waited for some sign of life behind the door. When it was finally opened, he was surprised by the woman who stood in the doorway.

She was strictly not the run-down apartment house type. Her burnished copper hair was piled on the top of her head, and her face was devoid of any make-up except for the sensuous red smear that was her mouth. She wore a sheer dressing gown that made only an indifferent attempt to hide her full-blown charms.

“You want something, or are you just taking in the sights?” she asked, staring at Liddell with bland eyes.

“I’m looking for a Mrs. Horton. A Mrs. Sally Horton.”

She permitted herself a brief inventory of the man’s thick shoulders, rugged face. “That’s me,” she conceded. “Who’re you?”

“Name’s Liddell. I’m an investigator for the insurance company.”

“How nice for you.” She stepped aside. “Come in.” As she flattened against the wall for him to pass, her bosom jutted against the robe. “I wasn’t expecting company, but it’s no more gruesome than usual.”

The living room furniture made a pathetic effort to brighten the dullness of the small room, but didn’t quite make it. The carpet that covered most of the floor was beginning to show signs of wear. A pile of papers lay beside the couch, a half-finished highball on the coffee table.

Liddell tossed his hat on a small table in the foyer, and ambled into the living room. “Nice place you’ve got here.”

“It’s a dump and you know it.” the blonde complained. She walked over to the table, and picked up her drink. “I was just having a short one. Join me?”

“Bourbon if you have it.”

Sally Horton headed for the small kitchenette, her full hips swaying smoothly against the fabric of her gown. When she returned with a bottle and glass, the effect was equally satisfying from the front. She set the glass down on the coffee table, and tilted the bottle over it. “You work fast.” She glanced up at him through her eyelashes. “Your company, that is.”

“I don’t get many complaints. The company, that is.”

The blonde grinned at him, handed him the glass. “Maybe you haven’t been dealing with very particular people.”

“Are you particular?”

Sally Horton shrugged and pursed her full lips wryly. “Very particular.”

Liddell held his glass up in a toast. “Then I’ll try to be extra good in your case.” He sipped the bourbon slowly, savoring its taste. “Now about this brother-in-law of yours. You don’t think it was an accident?”

“I know it wasn’t. My husband killed his brother.”

“You haven’t told the police?”

The blonde dropped into a chair. As she crossed her legs the gown fell away exposing a wide expanse of leg and thigh. “Not yet. I wanted to know where I stand. On the insurance, that is.” She sipped at her glass, giving him the full effect of her eyes over the rim. “Bob was insured for twenty-five thousand dollars at double indemnity. If my husband did kill him, do I get the insurance?”

Liddell considered that for a moment. Finally he said, “I guess so. Certainly your husband wouldn’t have any use for it where he’d be going.”

He dropped onto the couch, pulled a folded sheet of paper from his inside pocket, found a pencil. “Suppose you tell me what you think happened and I’ll take it from there.”

“It’s like I told the man over the phone. George was violently jealous of Bob. When he found out I was going to get a divorce so that Bob and I could get married, he acted like a crazy man.”

She drained her glass, leaned forward with startling effect to place it on the coffee table. “He threatened to kill us both.”