Brett Halliday - Never Kill a Client

Were those coincidences too? Why not? Shayne asked himself grimly. What else did they add up to?

Well, let’s see. Someone knew he was due to be on this plane. If that someone wanted to contact him before he reached Los Angeles…?

Nuts! Why all this hocus-pocus? Anyone who wanted to contact him on the plane would have a picture to identify him by. It was sheer E. Phillips Oppenheim stuff to think that this quiet and practical woman who sat beside him had any connection with the torn and perfumed half of a thousand-dollar bill.

And yet, he had an uneasy feeling that the whole thing had come straight out of Oppenheim.

He struck his match and put flame to the tip of his cigarette and inhaled deeply. He heard a lighter click beside him, and turned to see that his companion had turned the book down in her lap and lit a cigarette of her own. With the title staring up at him boldly, Shayne lifted a ragged red eyebrow at it and asked, “Do you read a lot of those?”

She nodded. “They’ve been my chief source of relaxation for years. Certain authors…” She hesitated. “Are you familiar with the Mike Shayne stories?”

“Some of them,” he said cautiously. “Written by a fellow named Brett Halliday, aren’t they?”

“Yes. I’ve read every one I could find. They’re laid in Miami, you know?”

Shayne said, “I know.”

“That’s why I find this one just a trifle disappointing. The story opens in New York, and Mike Shayne isn’t even there. I’m almost half through and still waiting for Mike to come in. I like the stories that start with a mysterious client coming into his office to consult him, and then going straight on with Mike all the way.”

Shayne nodded gravely. “I think I remember some of them opening up with his getting a phone call… or a letter… asking him to go some place.”

“It’s the same thing. But I want Mike in right from the start. He’s the one we’re interested in, and the author should realize it.”

Shayne sucked moodily on his cigarette and didn’t reply to this. Either she knew who he was, or she didn’t. Either she was needling him, or she was just a fatuous mystery fan who would likely faint if he told her who he was.

“Did you see that atrocious TeeVee series they had on the air for awhile? On Friday nights.”

“I saw a couple of them,” he admitted uncomfortably. “Don’t watch TeeVee very much.”

“I don’t either as a rule. But when I saw it announced they were making a series based on the Michael Shayne books, I just couldn’t wait. But they were terrible. Not like the books at all. They changed the characters around. Made Tim Rourke, the reporter you know, into a young whippersnapper. And they dreamed up a kid brother for his secretary. And then the actor who played Shayne! No more like him than anything. You know how Mike Shayne is described in the books. Big and tough and redheaded. Sort of like you, really. Well, I don’t mean you look tough,” she amended. “But I don’t think of Mike as looking tough either, not outwardly.”

She was turned toward him now, studying him frankly with sparkling eyes. His left hand was going up subconsciously to tug at his left earlobe in a characteristic gesture which Halliday had often described in his books, and he caught himself just in time to refrain from doing it.

He said, “Yeh. The TeeVee shows were pretty bad, all right. I guess that’s why they went off the air. Do you live in Los Angeles?”

“No. Detroit. But I’ve got a sister in Los Angeles.” She went on to tell him about her sister and her sister’s children, and Shayne was relieved when the stewardess came down the aisle taking orders for complimentary preluncheon drinks. They had no cognac, of course, and Shayne settled for Scotch and water, and after luncheon his seat-mate yawned prettily and slipped her unfinished paperback into her purse and napped the rest of the trip leaving Shayne still wondering what the strange interchange had meant, if anything.

He had no further clue by the time they reached their destination. The stewardess nudged her awake when it was time to fasten her seat belt, and she did not resume the conversation.

Neither did Shayne. He decided the whole thing was preposterous and promptly forgot about her when she disappeared ahead of him in the crowded terminal and he looked for a taxi.

It was a little after two o’clock Los Angeles time when he got in a taxi and asked the driver if he knew the Plaza Terrace Hotel in Beverly Hills. The driver hesitated and then said, “On Sunset, isn’t it?”

Shayne said, “Yeh,” and settled back to enjoy his first taxi ride in Los Angeles traffic for many years. He did enjoy it too. As he always enjoyed riding in a taxi in a strange city. This driver knew his business, by God. He had to know his business to make any sort of time through the honking, tumultuous melee that was Los Angeles.

Thus, it was two-fifty when he deposited the redhead and his briefcase in front of a quiet hotel set well back in a palm-shaded lawn off Sunset Boulevard. Shayne paid an exorbitant taxi bill and went out of the brilliant sunlight into a dimly cool lobby that looked old fashioned and genteel with a sprinkling of elderly ladies ensconced in soft-cushioned chairs.

The clerk behind the desk looked dapper and genteel. He had thin lips, a sharp nose and a beautifully tanned bald head which he shook regretfully from side to side when Shayne inquired for Elsa Cornell.

“I’m sorry, sir,” he said positively. “We have no one named Cornell.”

Shayne put his big hands flat on the counter. “I think it will be a recent registration. Possibly last night or this morning. Please check it carefully.”

The clerk shrugged to indicate that the most careful checking in the world couldn’t possibly turn up a guest named Cornell in his hotel, but he turned about and went through the obvious motions of checking an alphabetical guest list before turning back with another shake of his head. “No Cornell, sir.”

Shayne said, “Possibly she has left a message for me. I’ve just flown in from Miami and was to meet her here between two-thirty and three o’clock. My name is Shayne. Michael Shayne. It’s extremely important,” he added.

The clerk thumbed through some messages in a box behind the desk, and then lifted a house phone and spoke into it. Again, he turned back with a shake of his head. “There is no record of any call or message, Mr. Shayne.”

A muscle jumped in Shayne’s cheek. He pulled the envelope from his pocket, extracted the letter and checked it. “This is the Plaza Terrace Hotel on Sunset Boulevard in Beverly Hills?”

“It certainly is that.”

“There’s no other Plaza Terrace Hotel?”

“Not in Beverly Hills, I’m positive. Nor in the entire metropolitan area of Los Angeles to my knowledge.” Shayne drummed his knuckles lightly on the desk and glanced at his watch. He still had Miami time, slightly past six o’clock. He glanced at an electric clock on the wall to reassure himself that there was three hours difference. It said two minutes past three.

A woman came up to stand hesitantly beside him, and the clerk said. “Excuse me, sir.” And brightly, to her, “What can I do for you, Mrs. Somerset?”

The feeling of doubt and unease that had been building up inside Michael Shayne for several hours became stronger and stronger as he waited for the clerk to take care of Mrs. Somerset. When she turned away, he asked abruptly, “Do you have a house detective on duty?”

“Security Office is around the corner. Second door on your right. But I’m afraid I don’t quite see…”

Shayne lifted his briefcase and strode around the corner without waiting to find out what the clerk didn’t quite see. He rapped on the second door on his right, then turned the knob and went in.