Brett Halliday - Never Kill a Client

He dropped a five-dollar bill on the bar and followed her, noticing that the fat man craned his head around to watch them go out together, exactly as a voyeur might avidly watch a sexual act being performed in front of him.

Shayne went out the door into the Hollywood night behind Elsa and saw the doorman holding the door of a taxicab open while she stepped inside. He strode across the sidewalk and dropped half a dollar into the man’s hand and got in beside her.

The door closed softly and the taxi pulled forward. She pressed warmly against him and put her head against his shoulder and began sobbing like a frightened child.

Shayne put his arm tightly about her shoulders and held her very close, and spoke soothingly with his mouth against her ear:

“It’s all right now. Relax.”

“I’ve been so damn scared… so long.” She whispered the words against him, stopped sobbing and held her breath for a long moment, then let it out in a shuddering sigh.

He began, “Now tell me for God’s sake…” but she hushed him with two fingers pressed against his lips, and murmured, “Just hold me without talking now. That driver…?”

Shayne repressed a snort of derision. She had a bad case of the willies, all right. Did she think that every taxi driver in town was in league against her?

Instead of arguing the point at that moment, he asked her in a low voice, “Where to?”

“Tell him… the Roosevelt Hotel.”

They were headed east on Sunset, and when Shayne told the driver, “The Roosevelt, please,” he nodded his head and continued in the same direction.

The blonde stirred against him and moved away slightly, but not out of the circle of his arm. She turned her head to look up steadily into his eyes, and in the bright lights of the boulevard he saw that her dark eyelashes were wet.

“Michael Shayne.” She pronounced his name softly, almost disbelievingly, in a voice too low for the driver to hear. “You don’t remember me, do you? But I would have recognized you anywhere.”

“Ten years ago?” he asked in the same confidential tone.

She nodded slightly and a faint smile curved her full, red lips that were only inches away from his. “Mary Devon.”

He repeated the name to himself, frowning and halfclosing his eyes, mentally going back over the years as he had done on the airplane earlier that day. Ten years back? She would have been in her early twenties… and she must have been beautiful even then to have matured into this improbably lush woman whose body was so warm against him.

Mary Devon? Damn it, there was a nagging memory, but he could not grasp it. He shook his head slowly and said, “Sorry, but you’ll have to help me out.”

“I was afraid I didn’t make much impression on you, Mr. Shayne. Why should I after all? You only saw me for a few minutes that one time. And you were pretty well preoccupied with my room-mate’s suicide which later turned out to be murder.”

Cogs clicked in Michael Shayne’s mind. “Helen Taylor,” he said. “The Wanda Weatherby case. You were Helen’s room-mate. A television actress.”

“It was radio in those days. I never saw you again, but I never forgot you, of course, and I kept reading about you in the papers. So, when I got into this… horrible mess… you were the only person I could think of to turn to. I’ve been so… utterly alone. I feel as though I’m just beginning to come alive again, to emerge from a frightful nightmare.”

She kept her voice low, but it pulsed warmly and with a new vibrancy.

The taxi had switched over to Hollywood Boulevard and was approaching the Roosevelt Hotel on the right. Mary drew away from him and sat up a little straighter, and he leaned forward to look at the meter and got out his wallet.

She took his arm as they went in the brightly lighted entrance, and pressed it tightly against her side while they moved toward the elevators and the desk.

Just in front of the desk she turned him away from the elevators to the left, past the desk and entrance to the dining room, and out the side entrance.

He looked down at her in utter astonishment as she paused there at his side. “Where are we headed now?”

“To my hotel,” she told him triumphantly. “Isn’t that the way a detective does it? I’ve got so careful these last few days that I never take a cab that’s waiting in front of a place directly to my hotel. I always change at least once and then take one that’s just pulling up. Like this,” she added as a taxi drew up in front of the side entrance to let out a passenger. “You see, he can’t possibly be waiting here for me to come out.”

Shayne said wryly, “I see,” without seeing at all. She looked and acted sane enough, but she either had one hell of a persecution complex or he was right smack in the middle of one hell of a case.

He helped her into the cab and she told him, “The Perriepont Hotel this time. I’m almost sure it’s safe for us to go there,” she added cheerfully. “I just checked in there this afternoon after ditching my tail at the Hilton as I explained in my note. That’s why I was so long getting to the Brown Derby… and that I don’t understand at all. Did you tell anyone you were meeting me there? But you couldn’t have because then you didn’t even know my real name… just Elsa Cornell… and I made that up when I decided to write to you.”

“It must have been that taxi driver that brought you the note,” she decided suddenly. “It wasn’t even sealed and he must have read it before he gave it to you. I thought there was something funny about him… the way he pretended he couldn’t tell whether we were being followed or not. Oh, dear God,” she added feelingly, reaching for his hand and squeezing it, “I’m so sick of ducking around corners and being suspicious of everyone I see even looking at me. From now on, you can take over and do the worrying.”

Shayne squeezed her fingers back reassuringly, although he didn’t know what the devil he was reassuring her about.

She had a very comfortable, but not ostentatious, two-room suite on the fourth floor of the Perriepont Hotel in downtown Los Angeles.

She closed the door behind the two of them with a long exhalation of relief and exclaimed, “Now I feel I can breathe easily for the first time in days. Sit down and I’ll order up a drink. You can see I haven’t even unpacked yet.” She gestured toward a closed suitcase and hatbox standing side by side just inside the door of a bedroom.

Shayne sat in a comfortable chair beside a smoking stand and ran clawed fingers through his red hair while he appreciatively watched her sway across the room to the telephone. There was a pleasing air of exuberance about her now that was quite at variance with the first impression of taut strain she had given when she entered the Cock and Bull.

She lifted the telephone and asked for room service, then glanced over her shoulder at him and asked, “A bottle? If they have it?”

He nodded comfortably and lit a cigarette. She gave her room number and asked, “Is it possible to have a bottle sent up? Cognac, if you have it. Martel? That’s fine. With lots of ice and two glasses.” She hung up and turned slowly to look at him, nodding her head soberly. “You’re just the way I remembered you, Michael Shayne, only more so. God, if you knew how good it makes me feel just to have you here.” She made a little face at him. “I could kiss you… just out of sheer gratitude.”

“I haven’t done anything,” he protested. “Later, perhaps. After I’ve earned it. Right now I feel like Alice on the other side of the Looking Glass.”

He reached in his pocket for the torn half of the bill she had passed to him surreptitiously at the bar, and spread it out on his knee. Then he got her envelope from another pocket and extracted the other half from it, and gravely placed the torn edges together to make sure they matched.