Robert Bloch - Michael Shayne Mystery Magazine. Vol. 1, No. 1. September 1956

“She’s over there — waiting,” Lucy nodded toward a shadowy corner forty feet away.

“Waiting — for what?” asked Shayne.

“For Homer,” said Lucy. “Mike, you have no idea of the deal he gave her. Ben Felton protected her for years, but now Ben’s dead and...”

“I know,” said Shayne. “Where’s the trunk?”

“That’s what she’s waiting for,” said Lucy. “After what happened to Felton, she’s willing to confront Homer and implicate herself just to ruin him. She hates him, but she loves him. And she’s really nice. Mike, you’ve got to do something before she...”

“Maybe I can,” he said. “How’d you find her, Angel?”

Lucy’s eyes glowed in the darkness. “You know that old story about the man who found the lost mule by pretending he was a mule and going where a mule would go? Well, I tried to think what a girl like Jeanie Williams would do if she were planning to confront a man like Homer. The answer was — a beauty parlor. A brown-haired girl would never want to show herself to her old lover as a phoney blonde. So I just went to the beauty parlor show people use in Miami, and there she was. I’ve been trying everywhere to find you, Mike. How was the party?”

“It was over when I got there,” said Mike. “Look out!”

Homer Wilde had seen them. He was moving briskly toward them. Out of the building behind him came a string of porters pushing luggage toward the waiting plane. Homer was effusive to Shayne’s secretary.

“You let me down, baby,” he complained, holding her hand in both of his. “I had a lot of things planned for you.”

“I’ll just bet you did!” The ever-watchful Monica appeared at Homer’s side, breaking up the scene.

Homer laughed at her, and Lucy managed to get her hand free.

“There it is now, Mike!” she whispered, pointing at a load pushed by one of the porters. “She left it in the luggage room at the airport this evening, and got one of her old pals in the show to put it in with Homer’s luggage when it got here tonight.”

“Now I see what you mean by ‘confront’,” Shayne whispered in return. “Try to keep her out of this.”

“I will, Mike.” Lucy slipped away in the shadows.

Homer’s eyes were on Shayne. He said, “Well, what about Felton?”

“Your worries,” said Mike, “are just about over. Or maybe they’re just beginning.” He moved toward the plane, calling, “Will — Will Gentry. Something funny here.”

He reached the trunk and bent over it, as Will Gentry joined him. He pointed to a small spot of rust on the foot-locker. “Looks like blood to me, Will. Better open this one up.”

Gentry gave Shayne a long, level look. “I’d say it was rust,” he said quietly, “But — under the circumstances...” The chief of police gave the order to open the trunk.

Later, at Police Headquarters, Gentry said, “Hell, Mike, we’ve got Homer cold — motive, opportunity, even concealing and trying to remove the corpse. Cottrell is caught, too, as a material witness. He’ll be bailed out, of course, but he’ll have to testify or take a powder. You know how characters like him hate the limelight. Mike, you’ve done a good night’s work.”

He paused to fix the detective with a saturnine gaze, added, “Mind you, there are some elements I don’t yet understand in this business. But the Air Force has asked me to soft-pedal investigation in certain directions. I’m not even going to ask you how you knew there was a body in that foot-locker, Mike...”

“Thanks, Will,” said Shayne, reaching for his hat. “Maybe I’ll tell you when you’ve got Homer put away for keeps.”

Lucy and Jeanie Williams were waiting for Shayne at his apartment. Jeanie, much younger with brown hair, stood up with tears in her eyes. “You — did a wonderful thing, Mike Shayne, saving me from turning in a man I once loved. It would have exposed my whole sordid story to the tabloids.”

He grinned. “I ought to thank you, Jeanie Williams, for snatching that body for me. Did you know Ben Felton was planning to have it out with Homer Wilde in Tyndale’s suite yesterday morning?”

She shook her head. “Did Homer plan to kill Ben there?” Her anxiety was evident.

Shayne nodded. “That’s why Homer tried to hire me to find Felton the night before he took off in an Air Force jet-plane for Mitchel Field. I was part of his alibi. The Air Force brass thought he was just a reserve officer getting in some flying time when and where he could. Actually, he wanted to stop Ben before Ben got to Harry Tyndale, and he thought that I and the jet-flight together would give him an unbreakable alibi.

“Ben must have told Homer he was taking you to Tyndale’s. When you were separated from Ben in the crowd left over from Harry’s party, Ben met Homer and Homer took him into Harry’s bedroom, knowing Harry would be dead to the world until noon after that drugged drink. Wilde hit Ben and killed him. Then he went back to Mitchel, where his plane had been fueled and flew back to Eglin in time for a late lunch — and damned near hit the plane I was in, leaving Miami on my way to help Harry.

“That writer, Greg Jarvis, was right. Supersonic jet-planes have messed up all the unities, to say nothing of the alibis. It’s almost possible for a man to be in two places at once now, and that’s going to make life a lot harder for detectives.”

Shayne sighed and reached for the brandy.

The little lawyer was suffering from humanity’s most dangerous ailment — he was bored. Chicago was lamentably law-abiding, not even a blonde promised action. But then he met Sam the Finder and bis brand new black eye, and before he could order another whiskey, Malone had bid farewell to...

“Thank you very kindly, sir, I am honored,” said John J. Malone, signaling the bartender. “Rye and a beer chaser, please.” He turned around to thank the source of the unexpected invitation.

The voice had been smooth, mellifluous, even cultured. It had sounded as though it belonged to a Harvard educated judge, a British motion picture star, perhaps the model of distinction for a talking whiskey ad. However, the dulcet syllables were the property of a smallish, nondescript-looking man, slightly bald, with a fringe of greyish-brownish hair, pale blue eyes behind rimless glasses, and a prominent, pinkish nose. The smallish man’s coat and pants didn’t quite match, instead of a vest he wore a dingy brown buttoned sweater, and a faded knit scarf concealed whatever collar or tie he might have been wearing — if any. The drink-buyer was further adorned by a truly splendid black eye.

Malone recognized him immediately as Sam “The Finder” Fliegle. The little lawyer held out a cordial hand in greeting. By way of conversation, he uttered a few routine pleasantries about the weather and the coming fights, and tactfully refrained from asking questions about the colorful optic. One of the many things he had learned, in long years of practicing criminal law in Chicago, was that a man’s black eye was his own private business — also, that questions or comments concerning such a shaded lamp seldom created a friendly or pleasant atmosphere.

But Sam the Finder was not in a reticent mood. “Charlie Binkley gave it to me,” he said, pointing to the royal purple orb. “He was trying to serve me with a paper.”

Malone’s eyebrows rose a half-inch. While Charlie Binkley was a most unpopular man, even for a process server, he had never been known as a belligerent one. Furthermore, whenever belligerence was involved, Charlie, like other members of his profession, was usually on the receiving end.