Brett Halliday - Never Kill a Client

“That’s what he must have thought, at least, until she turned up here in Miami this morning after eluding Gentry’s dumb cops.”

He slowed down to sixty for a changing traffic light at 79th Street.

“That was less than two hours ago.” He slammed through the intersection and added, “You said north of Hundredth?”

“Yeh. Not far. Just a few blocks, then it’s a turn to the right. Better get over in that lane and slow down a little.”

Rourke leaned out the window on his side to peer ahead, said sharply, “Next turn beyond that filling station. I remember…”

Shayne braked hard as he went past the filling station indicated by Rourke, moved into the right-hand lane and made the turn onto a side street with screeching tires.

Still leaning out the window, Rourke told him, “It’s along here. Big stone gateposts on this side. There. Up ahead.”

Shayne slowed still more and swung in between the stone gateposts on a macadam driveway that curved up a slight slope toward a modest stucco house surrounded by tropical shrubbery.

He was just beyond the gate when the front end of a gray Cadillac nosed around the curve in front of them headed downward.

Shayne slammed on his brakes hard and threw his car into reverse. It lurched backward and he swung the steering wheel hard to settle his car firmly between the gateposts, crosswise of the driveway, so the other car could not possibly get past it. He set the hand-brake and jerked his keys from the ignition and leaped out on his side as the big Cad ground to a halt with its grillwork almost touching the side of his car.

Shayne trotted around the back of his car, noting that a man and a woman occupied the front seat of the other car. The man was Dirkson Boal and the woman beside him was Mrs. Robert Long.

“Take her, Tim,” Shayne panted, heading for the left side of the Cad where Boal had his door open and was stepping out.

Dirkson Boal was a big man, broader than Shayne, but not so tall. He was immaculately clad in a cream-colored suit, a yellow polo shirt open at the throat, and a wide-brimmed Panama hat.

He was heavily tanned and looked physically fit, and his normally pleasant features were contorted with rage as he squared off in front of the detective and sputtered, “What’s the meaning of this?”

Shayne hit him in the mouth before he could get his guard up. Blood spattered and he staggered backward on the dew-wet grass beside the road with arms flailing wildly.

Shayne followed him coldly and methodically, his gray eyes blazing with all the accumulated fury that had been building up inside him for the past twelve hours. He drove a short left to the lawyer’s hard guts and then a swinging right to the side of his jaw that drove him to the ground.

He lay there gasping, looking up fearfully at the detective with blood running out the side of his mouth. He turned his head from side to side in denial when Shayne demanded, “Where’s Lucy Hamilton? My secretary.”

“Don… know,” he croaked between split lips. Shayne drew back a heavy foot and kicked him solidly in the ribs, and Boal grunted and doubled up in pain.

“I’m going to stomp your head in,” Shayne told him implacably. “Where’s Lucy Hamilton?”

“In cellar,” the attorney gasped, covering his bloody face with both hands. “Don’t…”

Shayne turned away from him in disgust, the anger suddenly drained from his body. He grinned at what he saw on the other side of the Cadillac. Timothy Rourke was having a wrestling match with the blonde, and seemingly enjoying it tremendously. They were rolling over and over on the turf and her dress was all the way up to her waist with her long white limbs fully exposed to the sunlight. She was twisting and snarling beneath him as Shayne hurried around the car to see if he required assistance, but the reporter had her lithe body pinioned beneath him and he looked up with a grin, showing three parallel scratches on his cheek where her fingernails had raked him.

“She’s all mine, Mike,” he panted happily. “You tend to your own knitting and I’ll tend to mine. Bite me, would you?” he exclaimed suddenly, turning all his attention back to her. “Try that again and I’ll bite you right back.”

On the Boulevard a block and a half away, Shayne heard the shrill keening of a siren as he hesitated there.

He waited a moment, listening, heard another siren behind the first one, and the protesting screech of rubber as the leading squad car made the turn into the side street leading to the stone gateposts of Boal’s estate.

He waited just long enough to see it pull up beside his parked car and uniformed men piling out of it, and he knew that Will Gentry had quickly guessed where he was going when he slammed out of the chief’s office.

Boal was sitting up on the grass, moaning and holding his head in both hands when Shayne trotted past him, and he left him there for the cops to take care of.

Another car was parked out of sight around the curve headed down the drive. It was a 196 °Chevy with Dade County license plates. The motor was running and there was a couple in the front seat peering anxiously through the windshield down the drive as though they didn’t know what to do next.

Shayne kept on running past them toward the house with only a sideward glance. The man was big and rangy and had red hair. That’s all Shayne saw as he went by, leaving them there like sitting ducks for Will Gentry’s policemen to take care of.

He pounded up to the front door of the house, found it locked, drew back five feet and then drove his shoulder into it like a battering ram.

The lock gave under the impact and he staggered into a hallway which ran through the length of the house, regained his balance and trotted back to the kitchen where he found a door opening onto stairs leading down to the basement.

There was a light switch at the head of the stairs and he switched it on and plunged down, calling, “Lucy,” as he went to keep from frightening her further if she were really down there and could hear him coming.

She was there all right. Huddled up on the concrete floor near the foot of the stairs with her wrists bound tightly to her ankles and wide strips of adhesive tape over her mouth.

Her eyes were open and they looked up at him as he bent over her, and the message they conveyed was more eloquent than her lips could have spoken if they had been free to speak.

He squatted down beside her and got out a pocketknife to cut the hard-knotted clothesline binding her wrists and ankles, and said quietly, “It’s all over but the shouting, Angel. Miami’s Finest has got the whole gang corralled.”

More than an hour later Timothy Rourke was striding impatiently up and down the living room of Lucy Hamilton’s apartment consulting his notes on a wad of copy paper in his hand.

Shayne and Lucy sat side by side on the sofa and watched him indulgently. Shayne had a four-ounce glass of cognac in his left hand, and a glass of ice water sat within easy reach on the coffee table in front of him. The fingers of his right hand were closely entwined with those of Lucy’s left, inconspicuously pressed down between their two bodies where Rourke didn’t notice them. The only outward sign that Lucy’s ordeal had left on her were her bruised and swollen lips where the adhesive tape had been roughly applied as a gag. Otherwise, she was relaxed and tranquil, and obviously very happy indeed to be sitting where she was.

“I’ve only got about fifteen minutes to make my deadline for the first edition,” Rourke complained, studying his notes. “I’ve got just about everything except your side of it, Lucy. And just how you figured the whole thing out, Mike. They even found the money, you know? In a suitcase, in storage. Boal had the torn halves of the receipt in his pocket. Rexforth insists you can’t legally claim a recovery fee on it, Mike, but Will Gentry is going to bat for you on that. It’s his contention that you actually broke the case when you discovered that Lucy had been held a prisoner in that motel room. That was the turning point, says Will. So, how’d you know, Mike? That’s an important part of my story. The man and woman who had her there swear she had no chance of leaving a message for you or anything. They say she was tied up and still groggy from the knockout drops they fed her at lunch when they went there from the office and got her. Why were you so sure Lucy had been in that room?”