Brett Halliday - Framed in Blood

Two men squatted on the floor, their backs toward Shayne, pawing through the papers. Shayne closed the door quietly and watched for a moment, his eyes smoldering dangerously.

“If you’re looking for a drink,” he said, “I keep a bottle stashed in the top compartment.”

Will Gentry turned his graying head slowly, grunted as he heaved his bulk upward, and turned to face Shayne; but his companion continued to squat on his heels, poking industriously through the papers.

Shayne lounged forward and lowered one hip to a corner of his desk. He lit a cigarette and said, “Even if you’ve got a search warrant, Will, you might have called Lucy and asked her to get whatever you’re looking for. Sometimes she has a little trouble finding things, but she never has to go this far.”

Chief Gentry was a big man with a normally ruddy and good-natured face. Now, purple veins stood out from the ruddiness, and his murky gray eyes were angry. “You know we didn’t do this,” he snorted.

“What the hell am I supposed to think?” said Shayne. “I find the two of you squatting on your haunches going through my stuff.”

“Cut it,” said Gentry wearily. He went to the swivel chair behind the desk and dropped into it. “Let it go, Morgan,” he said to the officer. “Go on out and wait with Riley. And close the door,” he added as the Homicide dick reluctantly arose and let the paper in his hand flutter to the floor.

Shayne’s eyes narrowed when he recognized Detective Morgan. He waited until the door was closed before asking Gentry, “How does Homicide come into this?”

“A stiff,” grunted Gentry. He took out an ugly blackish cigar, looked at it distastefully with slightly protuberant eyes, and returned it to his inside pocket. “When were you here last, Mike?”

Shayne half-stood, turned, and lowered the other side of his buttocks onto the desk to face Gentry. “About four-thirty. Lucy and I closed up early. We had a dinner date, and she went home to doll up.”

“Neither of you been back?” Gentry persisted.

Shayne shook his red head slowly. “Who’s the stiff, Will? Give it to me.”

“Can you prove you haven’t been here since four-thirty?” Gentry parried.

“I had to doll up, too. You know how Lucy is. Do I need an alibi?” he asked impatiently.

Gentry took the cigar out again, lit it, and said, “What you working on now, Mike?” He emitted a puff of noxious smoke and watched it float drearily through the airless room.

“Nothing. That’s why we closed up early.”

“No recent client?”

“Look, Will,” said Shayne patiently, “if I had a client I’d be working.”

“Put it this way, then. What have you got hidden in your office that somebody’d go to all this trouble to find?” He waved a plump, stubby hand over the wreckage.

“Not a damned thing,” said Shayne promptly. “I mean it, Will. All this stuff is junk-stuff from old cases that are closed.”

“A man was murdered tonight,” Gentry rumbled, “so that killers could get in here and go through your office.”

“Who?”

“The night elevator operator. Don’t hold out on me, Mike. It’s got to be a case you’re working on.”

“I’m not working,” Shayne reminded him. “Mike Caffrey?”

“That’s the name we found on his operator’s license,” said Gentry.

Shayne ground out his cigarette in a desk ash tray. A muscle twitched in his angular jaw, and his eyes were bleak. An innocent old man who addressed him as “Mr. Shayne” and whom he always called “Mike” was dead. And a wide-eyed dame named Betty, a fanatic named Bert-and maybe Tim Rourke, plus a reporter named Brooks were probably responsible-plus a Mr. Big and a girl named Marie.

He was brooding over the possibility when Gentry said, “We haven’t anything to go on, Mike. Just Caffrey with his head smashed to a pulp. Soon as we know what they wanted from your office we’ll have something to work on.”

“I swear I don’t know, Will,” he said solemnly.

“Can you tell if anything is missing?” Gentry demanded.

Shayne looked at the piles of papers and said disgustedly, “Lucy might-after a month or so of straightening up and refiling. You know how I work. When I’m on a case I carry most of my stuff here.” He tapped his temple. “Lucy records the case afterward with whatever documentary evidence comes to light.”

“That’s not good enough.” Gentry bobbed forward in the new, well-oiled swivel chair. “You must have some idea-”

He was interrupted by a rapping on the door which opened immediately to admit the tall, emaciated figure of Timothy Rourke. He whistled expressively as he closed the door and said, “I just got home and was ready to park my car and turn in when I got the flash. What’s up, Mike?”

“Ask Will,” said Shayne. “He’s telling the story. I’m on the side line this time.”

“I doubt that,” said Gentry. “It has to be something important-worth killing for.”

Rourke’s slate-gray eyes glittered in their cavernous sockets, and his nostrils flared. “Could it be the Bert Jackson deal, Mike?”

“As I’ve told Gentry,” Shayne said calmly, “I have no idea what anybody could be after.”

“Who’s Bert Jackson?” Gentry demanded, his half-closed lids rolling up like miniature awnings, his murky eyes fixed on Rourke.

“A punk I threw out of my apartment this afternoon,” Shayne interposed. “I told you that, Tim. I told you I wouldn’t touch his proposition with a ten-foot pole.”

“Yeh. You told me that,” said Rourke. His eyes shifted feverishly from Shayne to Gentry and to the littered floor.

“What sort of proposition?” rumbled Gentry.

“What does it matter?” Shayne said hastily. “I’ve told you I turned it down flat.” He didn’t look at Gentry, but turned to study Rourke with brooding curiosity. He caught a glimpse of panic in the reporter’s expression before he turned away and slumped into a chair.

There was a long silence between them. Gentry chewed his cigar across his mouth twice, then said, “You can go home if you’re not going to give us anything we can use.”

Shayne slid from the desk and took a turn around the small private office. Rourke was sprawled in the one extra chair in the room, his head lolling against the back and his eyes closed.

Stopping before Gentry, Shayne said, “You know I’d give if I had anything, Will.”

“If you thought you wouldn’t pass up the chance to make a buck. Don’t lie to me.”

“Have I ever lied to you?” Shayne demanded.

“Hell, yes. Any time it suited you. And I think it suits you now, by God.” Gentry struck the desk resoundingly with the heel of his doubled fist. “When I prove it, you’ll lose your license. I’ve been lenient before, but I warn you that this time I mean it.”

Shayne rubbed his angular jaw thoughtfully. “We’ve been friends a long time, Will.”

“And I’ve taken a lot from you,” fumed Gentry. “What about this Bert Jackson? Rourke said-”

“Why don’t you call Lucy and ask her?” Shayne interrupted.

“I did call Lucy, before I called you.”

“And?”

“How do I know you hadn’t called her first and told her to keep quiet?”

“But I didn’t know about any of this,” Shayne declared, waving his big hands toward the muss of papers, “until I got here.”

“Maybe you didn’t and maybe you did,” said Gentry wearily. “You can get out of my way now and let me finish up here.”

“If you find anything, let me know,” Shayne said. He tapped Rourke on the shoulder, and the reporter jumped as though suddenly awakened from a deep sleep.

They went out together, closed the door, and as they walked silently to the elevator Shayne scowled in deep concentration. The cop took them down, and when they emerged from the building Rourke said, “I’ve got my heap here. Let’s find a bar where we can talk.”