Brett Halliday - Never Kill a Client

Michael Shayne was in a cheery frame of mind when he entered his office shortly after eleven o’clock that morning. He was clear-eyed and smiling, and Lucy Hamilton studied him with approval from the other side of the low railing separating her secretarial desk from the rest of the small anteroom.

She wrinkled her nice nose at him and made a production of consulting the watch on her wrist. “You don’t have any appointment until eleven-thirty. What brings you out at the crack of dawn?”

“Sheer zest of life, Angel.” He tossed his Panama on a hook near the door and rumpled coarse red hair with a big-knuckled hand. “It’s almost summer and the tourists are going home in droves, and crime is quiescent in Miami, and I’ve got a hunch the fish are biting down on the Keys. I just dropped by to tell you… hey! What do I think I heard you say about an eleven-thirty appointment?”

“Exactly what you think you heard. I told you yesterday afternoon, Michael, but you were sopping up cognac and probably didn’t listen.” She glanced down at an appointment pad beside her typewriter and read from it: “Mr. Reginald Dawes Rexforth, Third. Very important. Practically a matter of life and death if the third Mr. Reginald Dawes Rexforth can be believed.”

“Which he can’t, of course,” snorted Shayne. “You know what, Angel? There just isn’t any more life and death stuff in Miami any more. The old town is slowed down to a standstill. I’ll bet you ten to one either Reggie has been cheating and he wants me to buy off some gold-digger, or else he suspects that Mrs. Rexforth Third has been cheating and he hopes to throw the hooks to her. When he comes in, you inform him very sweetly and regretfully that your boss has been called out of town on an extremely important case… and refer him to one of my grubby competitors who handle such marital mishaps.”

“I’ll do no such thing, Michael,” she warned him as he swung away from her to the closed door of his private office. “I’ll tell him you’ve gone fishing, darn it, and then I’ll probably close up the office and go fishing myself.”

“That’s a wonderful idea.” Michael Shayne paused with a hand on the knob of his door and grinned over his shoulder at her happily. “We’ll leave a sign on the door: ‘Gone fishing’ and you take off with me. You could stand a little fresh air and sunshine. Get that prison pallor off your face. You make up a sign while I call Luigi down at the wharf and see if his boat’s free.”

Before Lucy could frame a disapproving refusal, there was a tap on the outer door, and then it opened. Shayne heard it and stopped with one foot over the threshold, still glancing back over his shoulder. He was relieved to see that it wasn’t a client barging in so early, but only a mailman with a Special Delivery letter.

He crossed to Lucy, holding it out and intoning, “Special for Michael Shayne.”

Lucy nodded and took the square white envelope, signed for it and glanced down dubiously at the airmail and special delivery stamps on the front of it.

Shayne said hastily, “I never got it, Angel. Why bother to open it? Go ahead and fix that sign while I make a phone call.”

He went inside and closed the door firmly behind him, wincing as he did so at the sound of Lucy’s paper-knife slitting the envelope open.

She was too damned efficient, he told himself glumly as he crossed the office to peer out one of the wide windows down at the bright sunshine on the leisurely traffic flowing along Flagler Street. And downright insubordinate, too. That was a direct order he had given her about closing up the office to go fishing. But no woman, he knew sourly, could resist opening a special delivery envelope.

He kept his back stubbornly turned when he heard the door open behind him, and then Lucy’s voice told him sweetly, “You’ll have to move fast, Michael, if I’m to tell Mr. Rexforth the truth about your being called out of town unexpectedly.”

He turned away from the window, slowly and unwillingly, and saw her laying out a number of objects in a row on the flat top of his desk.

“One envelope,” she said briskly, “addressed to Mr. Michael Shayne in a flowing, feminine hand. Postmarked Los Angeles, California, at four-fifteen yesterday afternoon… no return address. One sheet of heavy and fairly expensive notepaper containing an anguished appeal in the same flowing handwriting and liberally doused with an exotic scent unfamiliar to these plebian nostrils. This is an honest-to-God life and death appeal, Michael, with two intriguing enclosures.” She held them up, one after the other, between thumb and forefinger. “The torn half of a thousand dollar bill. And a round-trip, first-class airplane ticket from Miami to Los Angeles. You also have a confirmed reservation on United nonstop jet flight number…” She paused to glance at the sheet of notepaper. “Two-sixteen,” she read briskly, “which leaves the airport here at twelve twenty-seven. That’s in exactly one hour and six minutes, Michael, unless you’d still rather go fishing.”

“What the devil are you talking about?” Shayne crossed the room in three long strides to stand beside her and look down at the sheet of heavy notepaper which she held spread flat for his inspection.

There was no date and no address at the top. He read wonderingly:

Dear Michael Shayne:

You will not recognize the name signed below, and I dare not risk saying more than I do, but please, please, please believe me when I say that if you disregard this appeal it will be, literally, my death sentence.

Do I sound hysterical? I am. With fear.

The other half of the enclosed bill will await you at the Plaza Terrace Hotel on Sunset Boulevard in Beverly Hills when you arrive between two-thirty and three o’clock in the afternoon on the non-stop United jet Flight Number Two-sixteen, leaving Miami tomorrow morning at twelve twenty-seven.

Ask for me at the hotel desk. I will be registered under the name signed below. If you refuse to help me after we meet and I explain the circumstances to you in person, you will still have a thousand dollars and a return ticket.

If you have not changed greatly from the Mike Shayne I knew ten years ago, you will knock on my door before three o’clock tomorrow afternoon.

At this point I can only pray to God that you will come.

Elsa Cornell

Shayne tugged at his left earlobe with a frown and exhaled deeply as he read the name aloud. “I never heard of a woman named Elsa Cornell.”

“She starts out by saying you won’t recognize the name signed to this. Doesn’t that indicate that it is not her real name?”

“God knows what it indicates or doesn’t,” growled Shayne. “The whole thing is phony from the word go. Utterly absurd.”

“This isn’t phony, is it?” Lucy held up the torn half of the bill in front of his eyes. “And that perfume isn’t either. Sure you don’t recognize that, Michael, even if the name doesn’t ring a chord?”

He shook his head definitely. “After ten years, Lucy? You expect me to recognize a perfume?”

“I have an idea she hoped you would. It’s the sort of thing a certain type of woman might hope.”

“What type of woman?” Shayne looked at his secretary wonderingly.

“I don’t think we should waste time trying to psychoanalyze her from three thousand miles away,” Lucy told him briskly, looking at her watch. “You’ve got just an hour, Michael, to pack a bag and get to the airport.”

“Good Lord, Angel! Do you expect me to hop on a plane for Los Angeles on the strength of this?” Shayne pointed down to the desk disdainfully.