Brett Halliday - The Violent World of Michael Shayne

Eddie drove slowly to the corner. At a signal from Shayne he turned off into Ninth Street. Shayne studied the cheap storefronts and hallways. Two middle-aged women holding beer cans sat on a low stoop, talking. A drunk lay curled up on newspapers in front of a dark candy store. Eddie turned again at the next corner.

“They wouldn’t bring him this far.”

Shayne pointed to a narrow opening between a warehouse and a blighted tenement. “What’s in there?”

“Don’t ask me. And I’m not going in to find out.”

“I want to take a look. I’ll need your headlights.”

Eddie maneuvered the cab around and flicked his lights up to high beam when they pointed into the opening. It was five feet wide, littered with bottles, old tires, parts of cars and other debris. Ten feet or so in, Shayne saw what seemed to be a long heap of rags.

“If you get in any trouble,” Eddie said as Shayne got out, “don’t expect me to wait for you. I’m taking off.”

The detective’s enormous shadow filled the opening. A huge gray rat leaped at him from the shadows, scraped his leg, and was gone. His foot clanged against a rusty oil drum. As he moved closer to the pile of rags it turned into a man’s body, fully dressed but without shoes. One of the feet pointed straight upward, the other was twisted at an awkward angle.

Shayne had been in the presence of violent death often enough so he knew at a glance that this was no sleeping drunk. Glass crunched under his feet. The smell of liquor was very strong. He squatted beside the body, taking his lighter out of his coat pocket. He spun the wheel and a little flare of light fell on the dead man’s face.

It was Ronald Bixler.

3:35 A.M.

Shayne’s eyes were hard and dangerous. If he had moved faster, if he had told Bixler flatly to be satisfied with what he had cleared and not try for any more, the little man might still be alive. Shayne checked his watch to see how much time had passed since he left Bixler being sick in the bathroom. Half an hour at the most.

Bixler’s face was bruised and there was a smear of drying blood beneath one eye, another bloody area on the side of his head. Shayne brushed his fingers lightly across the temple, turning the head so he could examine the wound. It was several inches long, with clearly marked edges, deep enough to have driven bone-splinters into the brain. It had been inflicted with something long and flat, with a blunted cutting edge.

He moved the lighter. The dead man’s pants pockets had been turned inside out. A pale stripe around the wrist of one of the outflung arms showed where his watch had been. The redhead searched all the pockets carefully, finding nothing.

He stood up, letting the lighter flame wink out. Eddie was on the sidewalk watching. Behind him the cab’s motor idled loudly.

“Senator Wall?” the driver said hoarsely as Shayne reached him.

“No. Now I need a phone.”

“Is he dead?”

“Yeah,” Shayne said wearily, getting into the front seat of the cab.

Eddie came around and got in beside him. “Hacking nights, you run into things. But I’ve got a policy-go to sleep and forget it. Why don’t we let somebody else find him?”

“A phone, Eddie,” Shayne repeated. “He didn’t die of smoking cigarettes. Somebody killed him. This is for the cops.”

“Well, sure, as a rule. But do you have any idea of the red tape you can get involved in? The company will have to know I knocked off back there for a drink. That’s one example.”

“Eddie,” Shayne said more sharply.

“OK, but do you mind telling me who you are? I know you’re a pro, but who do you work for?”

“I’m a private detective,” Shayne said, “and when I come across a dead body I notify the cops. It’s a habit you get into.”

He checked the address of the battered tenement. Returning to Ninth Street, Eddie drove two blocks and stopped at a cheap hotel.

“I’ll keep the motor running. Don’t let them tie you up in a long conversation while they trace the call.”

“Stop worrying, Eddie. Nobody’s traced any calls since the dial system came in.”

He climbed a flight of worn steps between a store and a shooting gallery. The hotel lobby was nothing but a desk and a few chairs in a corridor. An old man came out of an inner room while Shayne was leafing through a phone book hanging from a nail beside the wall phone.

“Using your phone,” Shayne said.

He found fourteen precincts listed, and he chose one with a Northwest address, without being sure he was actually in that part of town. When a voice answered he said brusquely, “I’m reporting a killing. I thought it was a drunk at first, and he certainly stunk of liquor, but the guy is dead, all right. Slugged and robbed.”

“What’s the address?” the voice said calmly.

“Thirty-seven and a half Fortescue Street, just off Ninth. In a little open space alongside the house. It runs all the way through, a place where people throw their junk, and he’s about ten feet in. I won’t give you my name. I’m hanging up now.”

“Wait a minute.”

Shayne hung up. The old man at the desk continued to regard him impassively. Shayne nodded to him.

Returning to the cab, he told Eddie, “Drop me at Oskar’s. You don’t have to come in with me if you don’t feel like it.”

“You’re an optimist, I must say,” Eddie said. “What makes you think they’ll let you in?”

“They’ll let me in,” Shayne assured him.

Eddie drove back to Larue Place, staying at the wheel after Shayne got out in front of No. 17.

“What do I owe you?” Shayne said.

“Oh, hell!” Eddie said, disgusted. He turned off the ignition and joined the redhead on the sidewalk. “It’s against my principles, but they won’t take just your word for it.”

“Let’s wait till we hear the sirens.”

That took less than a minute. When the first siren began to wail Eddie went down from the sidewalk and rapped tentatively. Shayne reached past him and gave the door three hard knocks, which brought Pete in a hurry. Seeing who it was, he stepped out into the little areaway.

“Man, you guys are really asking for it.”

“He’s dead!” Eddie said excitably.

Another siren joined the first, coming fast. Pete moved toward the street, then checked himself.

“Who’s dead? Some more Senators?”

“I have to apologize about that,” Shayne said. “I told you he was a Senator, but I was wrong. His name’s Bixler. He was sent by a Senator, and that’s almost as bad. I better talk to your brother.”

With a scowl on his face, Pete listened to the screams of the sirens. “I’ll go in and find out.”

Shayne felt a sudden hammering in back of his eyes. “Goddamn it, open that door or I’ll take it to the cops and let them ask the questions.”

Pete stepped back, still undecided but being worked on by the sirens. When he opened the door, Shayne pushed it out of his hand and walked through. Oskar was on his way from the bar. The sirens had reminded his customers that they were breaking the law, and the atmosphere was no longer even partially festive.

“What’s going on out there?” Oskar demanded.

Pete spoke to him in an undertone. The sirens were dying as the police cars converged around Bixler.

“Take it easy,” Shayne said. “They aren’t interested in you yet. I told them where they could find the body. I forgot to say he was drinking in here before it happened.”

“He’s dead for sure?”

“If you don’t want to take my word for it,” Shayne said, “you know where you left him.”

“Goddamn you, if this is a frame-”

Shayne interrupted. “Sure. I could have found him sleeping off his drunk and caved in his skull so I could get you to answer a few questions. Anything’s possible. But I’d say the blood on his face has been drying about as long as the blood on your knuckles. We can get the cops to give us an expert opinion. A better idea might be to close up for the night and talk about it.”