Brett Halliday - Shoot the Works

“That’s what I’m assuming,” said Gentry stolidly. He put flame to the end of his cigar and expelled a cloud of noxious smoke. “I’m assuming Lola was dead before the call was made, and that the person who answered the phone had gone there with the same gun that she killed Wallace with last night to put a slug between Lola’s eyes. And I’m also assuming this, Mike…” Gentry leaned forward and pointed the glowing end of his cigar at the private detective, “… that you either knew or suspected the truth all the time.”

“Those are a lot of assumptions, Will.”

“I think I can prove them all.” Gentry sank back and puffed angrily on his cigar. “So I’m giving you this one chance to come clean. I know the way you work, and I know how you’ll cover up for a client. You’ve stuck your stubborn neck out in the past and I’ve admired you for it. But that doesn’t extend to covering up murder. I’ve given you half an hour to think it over and realize the spot you’re getting yourself in. If you want to walk out of this office without handcuffs on, you’ll tell me every damned thing you know about this case.”

“Those are harsh words, Will.”

“Think them over,” said Gentry. “This time I mean it, Mike.”

“Who do you think killed Lola and answered her telephone?”

“Myra Wallace. And I think you know it as well as I do.”

“My God, Will!” Michael Shayne was genuinely shocked and surprised. He narrowed his eyes to study the beefy face of his old friend through a drifting haze of cigar smoke. “Mrs. Wallace? In the name of God, why?”

Gentry said, “It’s perfectly obvious to me. She returned unexpectedly last night and found her husband packing for a trip she knew nothing about. Maybe Lola was with him. Maybe not. If not, there must have been an argument during which Wallace mentioned her name. So she shot the two-timing bastard. Today, the first chance she gets, she finishes up the job by bumping his lady-friend. What could be more cut and dried?”

Shayne said, “I thought you had a man on Mrs. Wallace.”

“I thought so, too,” grumbled Gentry. “But she drove away from her daughter’s house on the Beach about one o’clock and came across the Venetian Causeway. He stuck along until she managed to lose him in Miami traffic by very skillful maneuvering. We haven’t picked her up yet,” he ended morosely, “but we will. And she’ll face two murder raps when we do. So I’m giving you this chance to get on the band-wagon, Mike. You can’t help Myra Wallace any further. You must realize that now.”

“She didn’t have any gun last night,” said Shayne slowly. “You know that. You checked her out. Yet you say the same gun killed both Wallace and Lola. How did Mrs. Wallace get hold of it?”

“I expect you to put me straight on that, Mike.”

“Me?”

“You.” Gentry’s voice was ominously quiet. “I know Myra Wallace is very close to Lucy Hamilton, and I know how Lucy twists you around her little finger. All right. She’s twisted me around her little finger in the past, and I don’t blame you. But you’re not going to do Lucy any favor by going to jail, Mike. She won’t like that. She’d be the first one to tell you to go ahead and tell us the whole story if she were here and realized the truth.”

“Wait a minute,” said Shayne angrily. “Are you accusing Lucy and me of knowing Mrs. Wallace killed her husband last night, and conniving to protect her?”

“Not quite that, Mike.” Gentry’s voice was fatherly and placating. His smile was reassuring. “I don’t think either one of you realized the truth last night. I do know some sort of shenanigans went on between the time Myra Wallace killed her husband and the moment that Lucy reported his death. I think Mrs. Wallace pulled the wool over Lucy’s eyes, and Lucy somehow pulled it over yours. I don’t accuse either of you of deliberately protecting a woman you knew or even suspected of having committed murder. But now that you do know she’s a murderer, I expect you and Lucy both to come clean and tell me exactly what did happen last night.”

“But I don’t know she’s a murderer,” protested Shayne. “You’re trying to build a case against her out of a thin tissue of suspicions. I’m getting goddamned sick of you accusing Lucy and me without anything to go on.”

Gentry sighed unhappily. He lowered rumpled eyelids and took a long pull on his cigar. Then he sat erect and demanded in measured tones: “Will you sit there and state unequivocally that you and Lucy told me the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about last night?”

Shayne hesitated before replying. This was the question he had avoided, the moment he had feared.

Noting his hesitation, Will Gentry pressed the issue. “That’s all I ask of you right now, Mike. Come absolutely clean with me. Don’t think for one moment I haven’t known, ever since last night, that you and Lucy were playing some sort of game to protect Mrs. Wallace. The time for that is past. I swear before God that if you don’t start talking right now, I’m going to pull Lucy in and put her in the cell next to you until one of you comes clean.”

In a strangled voice, Shayne said, “You wouldn’t do that, Will.”

“The hell I wouldn’t!” Will Gentry jerked the cigar from his mouth and glared at it for a moment. Then he flung the soggily chewed butt toward a cuspidor in one corner of the office, pushed back his chair and strode wrathfully toward the outer door. “I’ll give you five minutes alone with Tim Rourke. For Christ’s sake, talk to the guy like a Dutch Uncle, Tim. I’m having Lucy picked up and brought in for questioning.” He went out and slammed the door.

The sound echoed loudly in the office behind him. Shayne turned slowly to the News reporter and said, “All right, Tim. Start making like a Dutch Uncle.”

Rourke said, “I think maybe I better. I never saw Will just like this before. Right now he feels that Lola Berger would still be alive if you’d told him everything you know.”

“Do you believe that, Tim?”

“How do I know?” said Rourke explosively. “I’m sitting on the edge of the volcano, too. What is it with a visa for Brazil and some guy named James Richards you asked me to check on? I haven’t mentioned this to Will, but I’m going to pretty soon if this keeps on. Even if you do want to spend the rest of your life in Will’s jail. I’m damned if I do.”

Shayne’s gray eyes widened. “What about the visas, Tim? I forgot to ask you.”

“Nothing. Neither Wallace nor anybody named James Richards has applied for a Brazilian visa recently.”

The glow faded from Shayne’s eyes and he tugged thoughtfully at his ear-lobe. He said, “The hell of it is, Tim, I don’t know one damned thing that will put Will any closer to the truth than he is already. And I’ll violate a couple of confidences if I do tell him.”

“Go ahead and violate them,” advised Rourke urgently. “There has been a second murder already.”

Shayne looked at him queerly. “You don’t think Lola committed suicide either?”

“I don’t know. I’ve stayed with Will since you left the apartment and heard what the doctor and Martin had to say. There wasn’t any suicide note, Mike. And a woman like Lola… would she shoot herself? Or would she even, for Christ’s sake, shoot a guy like Jim Wallace just because he was maybe getting ready to sluff her off and go back to his wife? It doesn’t seem in character to me. Not after what you told us about Lola. And if she didn’t kill Wallace, why in hell would she kill herself today?”

“That,” said Shayne slowly, “is one of the things that sticks in my craw too, Tim. Frankly, I agree with you. I don’t think Lola did kill herself.”