Brett Halliday: Bodies Are Where You Find Them

During his bachelor years he had taken his women in his stride. They had been a part of the bold, rough life he led. Was it possible that he was the victim of a subconscious urge which he wouldn’t even admit to himself, in spite of a year of marriage to a girl like Phyllis? He didn’t honestly think so. Yet, what man ever really knows his inward motivations?

He became conscious of the movement and commotion around him, the rattling of express carts on gravel, the puffing of engines and clanging of bells, the milling throng of people. He shrugged off a baffled sense of irritation and went to his car.

The sun was setting in a gray-blue mist as he stepped on the starter. He remembered suddenly that he had not locked the door of his office in his frantic haste to get Phyllis away from the scene. He slipped the car into gear and pressed the accelerator to the floor board, driving the six blocks to his apartment in four minutes. He parked at a side entrance just in front of a drawbridge over the Miami River.

He went through the private entrance and up the service stairs with a queer feeling of elation which shamed him. He had done this often in the past — before Phyllis — when every feminine face was a challenge, every meeting in his bachelor apartment holding the promise of an assignation.

He whistled a gay off-key melody as he approached the door. He ran water over a glass of ice cubes in the kitchen, poured a glass of cognac from a bottle in the wall cabinet, then went into the bedroom with a glass in each hand.

Twilight darkened the room, but not enough to hide the grotesquely twisted posture of the girl on the bed. He bent over her, spilling cognac on the floor.

Sightless eyes stared up at him. One of the girl’s stockings was tightly knotted about her throat.

Shayne stepped back and emptied the glass of cognac down his dry throat. He hesitated only an instant before going to the telephone. He picked it up and said, “Police Headquarters,” but the clerk’s excited voice broke in on the line.

“Mr. Shayne! I thought you’d left town. I just told Chief Gentry you had. He and another man are on their way up there. They’re waiting for an elevator now.”

Shayne cut off the connection.

SHAYNE WHIRLED ABOUT and ran to the death room. With swift precision of movement he stripped the sheet and bedspread from under the girl, drew them up to cover her clothed body. Leaning close, he pressed her head sideways so that her cheek was on the pillow and turned away from him. He crooked her right arm upward, spreading the flaccid fingers out to coyly cover her upturned cheek, then tucked the spread down tightly about her neck to hide the knotted stocking that had throttled her.

Stepping back he surveyed the bed and body searchingly, nodding with grim satisfaction as he unbuttoned his coat and vest, stripped them off, and dropped them to the floor beside the bed. He loosened his soft collar and jerked his tie awry, then ran for a bottle of cognac. He splashed liquor from the bottle on the spread near the girl’s face.

Heady, pungent fumes roiled up from the liquor. He put the bottle to his lips and drank as an authoritative knock sounded on the outer door.

He didn’t hurry to answer. He made his grim features go lax and practiced staggering to the bedroom doorway. He lolled against the threshold in view of the outer door, holding the bottle by the neck, calling thickly, “Yeh? Who th’ hell izh it?”

The outer door opened, and Will Gentry advanced solidly into the room, followed by a tall, lean man with deep-set cynical eyes.

The chief of the Miami detective bureau was a burly man with heavy features and a slow impassive manner. He had been a close friend of Michael Shayne’s for many years, and the two had worked together with congenial expediency.

Gentry frowned and raised grizzled eyebrows at Shayne. “I thought you and Phyllis had left town on the five-forty.”

Shayne grinned idiotically and defensively. He waggled a long forefinger at Chief Gentry. “Phyl caught the train. I shtayed here. Rizhness — y’know — ol’ shaying — bizhness ’fore pleasure.” He drew himself erect slowly, putting his left hand against the wall for aid. He narrowed his eyes at the two men, fought for a moment to attain a dignified posture, then advanced stiffly, with the exaggerated tread of a man who is very drunk and conscious of his condition.

Behind Gentry, Timothy Rourke laughed shortly. “Drunk as a coot,” Rourke marveled. “Damned if I ever thought I’d see the day you couldn’t hold your liquor, Mike.” Rourke was another old and trusted friend, reporter on the Miami Daily News and recipient of many exclusive headlines from the redheaded detective.

“I’m holding it now,” Shayne announced belligerently. He swayed a little, holding out the bottle to Gentry. “Have a shnort with me.”

Will Gentry shook his head, folded his arms across his barrel-like chest. “Not this time, Mike.” There was a sharp edge of contempt in his rumbling voice.

Shayne grinned loosely and tilted the bottle toward Rourke. He pleaded, “Take one with me, Tim. Y’know — moral shupport.”

Some of the amber fluid spilled from the tilted bottle. Rourke grabbed it and swore as he set it down on the desk. There was genuine concern in his eyes. “What the hell are you pulling off, Mike? I never saw you go to pieces this way before.”

Shayne giggled. Curiously, his drunken mirth had an obscene sound before the hostile glares of his two friends. “M’wife’s gone to the country, hooray, hooray,” he burst forth tunelessly. He rounded his eyes into an owlish stare, swayed, and put out a hand to Gentry’s shoulder for support.

Gentry elbowed him aside. Shayne stumbled and collapsed into a chair, frowning. “You both ac’ like — like shompin’ wash wrong,” he complained.

Gentry thrust both hands in his coat pockets and stared at him. “Where’s the body?”

“Body?” Shayne blinked his eyelids down and peered at Gentry through narrow slits. “Whatcha mean — body?”

“Just what I said.” Gentry pounded the words at him in an effort to penetrate the alcoholic stupor of the detective’s brain. “We just had an anonymous tip that a murder was being committed in this apartment.”

Shayne laughed thickly. He shifted his narrow gaze to Rourke, then let it wander around the empty office. “I don’ shee a body. You shee a body?” He fixed his wavering eyes on Rourke again.

Chief Gentry stood on widespread legs in front of Shayne and shook his head at Rourke. “Damned if I would have believed this if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes. Thank God, Phyllis isn’t here to see him.”

“She must have cramped his style more than any of us guessed,” Rourke commented sagely. “Looks like he sent her out of town just so he could go on a binge.”

Shayne reached for the cognac bottle and missed it. Rourke handed it to him with a disgusted snort. “Go ahead and pass yourself out.” He turned to Gentry. “Looks like that phone call was phony, chief.”

Both men spoke without regard for Shayne, as though he had ceased to count as an animate human being.

Shayne showed no objection to being openly discussed. He sat slumped in the swivel chair behind the desk with his eyes closed, holding the bottle rigidly with both hands.

“There must have been some basis for that phone call we received,” Gentry contended. “Maybe he had a fight with his wife before she left. Someone might have heard them battling in here and thought it was murder.”

“Sounds reasonable. God knows, he couldn’t have got this way in the short time since the train left. He must’ve been working up to this for several hours.”