Brett Halliday - Shoot the Works

“I’ll handle Donovan as I see fit,” said Gentry inflexibly, studying the note in green ink. “You did lie to me, Mike, when you explained that you’d got onto Lola through a telephone number in Wallace’s address book.”

“Not exactly,” Shayne argued. “Martin did look in the book as a result of my showing him this note. That’s all. Remember, at the time I had no idea the girl I visited this morning was named Lola. I only knew she was a girl who had once met Wallace for lunch. It was pure hunch, as I told you, that sent me rushing to her place while Martin called in the phone number for a check.

“And that’s everything, Will,” he ended. “Those are the three things I held back.” He stood up. “While you’re sitting here deciding what they mean, I’m going out to find Lucy.”

Gentry said nothing and made no move to stop him as he strode to the door. Shayne expelled a deep breath as he stepped into the hall and closed the door behind him. Up to that moment he hadn’t the faintest idea whether Gentry would release him or keep him under arrest. But now he was on his own and he hadn’t the foggiest idea where to start looking for Lucy or for Myra Wallace.

He tried his office first. Knowing Lucy so well, and knowing the almost unreasoning devotion to duty that lay behind her absolute insistence that the office must never be left empty between nine in the morning and five in the afternoon lest an important call be missed, he knew it had to be something extremely important that had caused her to break her rule today, and that she would almost certainly have left some message for him, explaining her absence.

Somehow though, he was unable to actually believe Lucy wouldn’t be there to greet him with her bright smile until he stood in front of the locked, outer door and got out a key to open it.

It was the first time since he had installed Lucy in this office as his secretary that he had needed a key to get in during office hours.

And when he opened the door, the emptiness and the silence of the reception room struck him with such force that he had a leaden feeling in his belly.

He stood inside the door and looked across the low railing at Lucy’s neat desk, noting that her hat and her handbag were missing from their accustomed places, and noting also (with a faint and almost subconscious sense of relief) that there was no sign of disturbance or struggle in the outer office, nothing at all out of the way to indicate that Lucy had left hurriedly or under duress.

He strode across the small room to look down at her desk and typewriter without finding the message he was looking for, then turned and went into his private office on the left.

It was there on his desk. He knew it was a note from Lucy the moment he stepped through the doorway and saw the sheet of paper lying in the exact center of the desk.

He leaned forward with both palms flat on the mahogany surface and read the neatly typed words:

Dear Michael:

I know you’ll wonder where I am if you come in and find me gone. Don’t worry. I’ve gone to meet Mrs. Wallace. She just telephoned, all excited about something that she thinks is important. She wouldn’t tell me what because she is afraid the police have our telephone tapped, the way they have Helen’s. I’m meeting her on the street downstairs and I’ll let you know what it’s all about just as soon as I find out.

Michael Shayne read the whole message through twice without blinking his eyes. Then he straightened slowly and closed his eyes tightly. “Don’t worry. I’ve gone to meet Mrs. Wallace. Don’t worry. I’ve gone to meet…”

The trenches in his cheeks deepened and he doubled both hands into big fists, holding them out in front of him stiffly. He opened his eyes and studied his fists bleakly.

Then he moved like an automaton around the desk to a filing cabinet against the wall. He pulled out the second drawer and reached behind cardboard folders to lift out a bottle of cognac. He uncorked it as he went to the water cooler at the end of the room. He carefully fitted one paper cup inside another and filled it with cognac. He ran ice water into another cup, carried them both back to the desk and placed them side by side in front of the swivel chair with the bottle beside them, and then sank into the chair.

He lifted the two cups fitted together and drank half the contents, then took a sip of water. Staring straight ahead across the emptiness of the office, with the silence beating against his eardrums, he lit a cigarette and then lifted the telephone and dialed Chief Will Gentry’s private office number.

When Gentry’s voice came over the wire, he said: “I’m in my office, Will. Your hunch is right. A note from Lucy says Mrs. Wallace phoned her and Lucy has gone out with her.”

Gentry said briskly, “Don’t worry, Mike. We’ve already got a pick-up on Mrs. Wallace. I’ll put another one through, urgent.”

Shayne said, “Thanks, Will.”

He hung up. Don’t worry. Of course not. Why should he worry? Lucy Hamilton was perfectly capable of taking care of herself, wasn’t she? Well, wasn’t she? And Myra Wallace was Lucy’s very good friend… wasn’t she?

Myra Wallace couldn’t possibly have killed her husband and Lola Berger… could she?

Of course not. The idea was preposterous. Why was it preposterous? Because a very smart private detective named Michael Shayne had decided it was… that’s why. A red headed, hard-boiled shamus named Michael Shayne who knew more than the chief of police and the whole damned Miami police department. That’s why.

So… don’t worry. Lucy has just gone out for an innocent ride with a bereaved widow who happened to be the mother of one of Lucy’s very best friends. That’s all.

Shayne drank the rest of the cognac in the paper cup with cold deliberation. He sat for a long time enveloped in brooding silence while he reviewed every facet of the case and waited for the telephone to ring and bring him Lucy’s lilting voice over the wire or a gruff reassurance from Will Gentry.

But the telephone did not ring and the brooding silence continued.

He stood up after a time and went out through the door into the empty reception room and out to the elevator.

The pert redhead on the fourth floor of the Weymore looked up in pleased surprise when he strode toward her desk five minutes later.

“I don’t know how you ever found out my name is Alice, but…”

Shayne said, “Tompkins in?”

“Mr. Tompkins?” She flushed faintly at his abrupt tone, and dropped her eyelids defensively. “Not at the moment, Mr. Shayne,” she told him in a formal voice. “But Mr. Martin is.”

Shayne nodded and went past her to open the door and stride down the hall to Martin’s office. The broker was seated at his big desk making pencilled notations on some papers, and he looked up petulantly at Shayne’s unannounced entrance. “I’ve wondered where you were, Shayne. No news about the money?”

“No news about the money.” Shayne stood flat-footed in front of the financier, his bleak gray eyes boring into his. “Where is Tompkins?”

“I believe he had an outside appointment. See here, Shayne. I feel that you blame me, somehow, for that unfortunate girl’s suicide. I assure you that when I made that telephone call to her, I had no idea in the world that…”

Shayne brushed his explanation aside with a savage gesture. “Has Tompkins told you privately what sort of alibi he has for last night?”

“His alibi? No. That is…” Martin paused with a troubled frown. “I don’t believe it is a breach of confidence to say it concerns a married woman with whom he spent the night.”