Brett Halliday - Too Friendly, Too Dead

“From what I hear you must have gone back to the Sporting Club after we got thrown out.”

“Those two punks? Yeh, the bartender finally decided to come clean. How do you like them, Painter?”

“For a cheap little rolling rap, fine,” Painter said condescendingly. “For a big rap, they’re out. We’ve put them through the mill and all we’ve got on them is they followed a drunk out of a bar and snatched his roll.”

“After maybe slipping some sodium amytal in his drink first so he’d be an easier take,” Shayne suggested, pulling up a chair and seating himself without waiting for an invitation.

“Not a chance,” snorted Painter. “While you’ve been chasing all over town after those two-bit punks, I’ve been finding out some things about that redhead widow you were cuddling up this morning.”

“That so?” Shayne lifted ragged, red eyebrows in surprise and busied himself lighting a cigarette.

“It is a truism in police work that the most obvious answer is generally the true one. Your trouble, Shayne, is that you can’t see the woods for the trees. Give me a husband-poisoning and I’ll give you a two-timing wife ninety-nine percent of the time.”

“Linda Fitzgilpin?” Shayne frowned sourly and shook his head. “She seemed a hell of a fine woman. A loving wife and devoted mother. Lucy Hamilton knows her quite well, and that’s her opinion.”

“Maybe I should put Lucy on the payroll as psychological advisor,” said Painter sarcastically. “These loving wives and devoted mothers,” he sneered. “When I see one of them stacked like that widow is stacked… married for years to a meek little man without too much on the ball… I start digging. And if you dig far enough and intelligently enough you generally find paydirt. I’ve only gone back a couple of years this far, and I’ll lay ten to one I’ll find plenty more as I go back further.”

“What have you got so far?”

“Plenty to build a case against her. She had a red-hot affair with a tin-horn gambler about a year and a half ago. Asked her husband for a divorce and he refused to give her one. This isn’t for publication yet, Tim,” he went on to the reporter who was busily taking notes, “though I’ve got all the proof I need. Fitzgilpin went to an attorney at that time for advice, and turned the tables by threatening a suit of his own, naming her lover as co-respondent and demanding custody of the children. I have an affidavit to that effect from the lawyer Fitzgilpin consulted. How do you like that for a loving wife and devoted mother?” he demanded happily of Shayne. “What will the prosecuting attorney do with that in court?”

Shayne shook his head wonderingly and sighed, “You never know, do you? But that was a year and a half ago. They patched it up and went on living together. If her husband was willing to forgive her, why should she suddenly want him dead a year and a half later?”

“Who knows how well they patched it up? How do we know how completely he forgave her? Maybe she carried a torch all this time… or maybe she found another man better in bed than her husband?”

“Who was the other man?” asked Timothy Rourke alertly. “You got any line on him?”

“Name of George Nourse. I’ve got lines out on him. He apparently left town about that time, and rumor says he’s been on the West Coast ever since. But he could have come back to get some more of that redheaded stuff. If I can put him in town last night I’ll have an open and shut case against the two of them,” Painter ended triumphantly.

“Have you talked to her?” Shayne asked curiously.

“Not yet. I want to be ready to really throw the hooks to her when I do. I’ve got you to thank, Shayne, for preventing me from questioning her this morning before I had this stuff to throw in her face,” he added happily.

Shayne said, “Yeh. She had me fooled all right. A gambler named George Nourse, huh? I’ll be asking around.”

“You do that, and I’ll do the same. Right now I’m waiting for a reply from some contacts on the Coast.”

Shayne let his shoulders slump dispiritedly and rose to his feet. “I thought I was pretty smart coming up with Timmy and Ox, but I guess they’re not very important in the light of what you say.”

“You did all right on them, Shayne,” Painter told him magnanimously. “Not that I wouldn’t have gotten around to them myself sooner or later. But, first things first in police work is the way I see it. Sure, I knew he’d been rolled but I figured all along it was just an accidental by-product of him having been poisoned first.”

Shayne hesitated on his way to the door, “You coming, Tim?”

The reporter recognized his tone of voice as a request, and arose hastily. “Yeh. I guess I got all I can here.”

“Not a word in the paper about this other,” warned Painter. “Right now, play up Timmy and Ox as our chief suspects. Give Shayne full credit for bringing them in,” he added generously, “and quote me as saying I’m not completely satisfied and am working on some other aspects of the case.”

Rourke said, “Will do,” and briskly followed Shayne out of the detective chief’s office.

“What’s on your mind?” he asked Shayne eagerly as they went down the corridor.

“Plenty. Let’s stop at Jim’s for a drink.”

When they were settled in a secluded booth in Jim’s Joint with drinks in front of them, Rourke said anxiously, “You were damn well sold on the widow Fitzgilpin this morning, Mike. Are you unsold now?”

“Let’s say I’m slightly disillusioned,” Shayne admitted wryly.

“You got to hand it to Petey sometimes. When he gets a hunch he hangs onto it like a bulldog. If he can put this lover of hers in Miami last night it’ll be tough sledding for both of them.”

“I can do better than that,” Shayne informed the reporter grimly. “Strictly off the record, I can place George Nourse hiding in Linda’s bedroom when her husband came home unexpectedly from his office last night.”

“Wha-at?” Rourke stared across the table at him in complete amazement. “All that stuff wasn’t news to you? The divorce threats and all? The way you acted in Painter’s office…”

Shayne shrugged irritably. “He has his methods and I have mine. Each of them works… sometimes.”

“You held out on him,” charged Rourke. “Damn it, Mike. If he knew Nourse was in town playing bedsie with Linda! That he was actually at their place last night…!”

“And,” said Shayne cynically, “for a real clincher, that the husband downed a big drink of whiskey while he was there… which Linda says he fixed in the kitchen for himself… but how in hell does anybody know at this point? Yeh,” he muttered. “Petey would have himself a prima facie against the two of them. That’s why I didn’t hand him the dope on a platter.”

“You’re on pretty thin ice, Mike,” Rourke warned him seriously. “Withholding important information in a murder investigation. You sat there in his office and blandly pretended you’d never heard of George Nourse before.”

“He was telling me, he wasn’t asking me,” Shayne pointed out irritably. “He was so damned full of his own self-importance. Hell! I’ll bet that lawyer came to him with the information about the proposed divorce, and now he’s taking all the credit for digging it up.”

“Still and all…” Rourke paused, shaking his head dubiously.

“All the little twerp has to do is go to Linda and get the whole story for himself just the way she gave it to me. But he’s playing it smart. He’s so damned busy fashioning a noose to go around her pretty neck that he won’t do the obvious thing. To hell with that,” Shayne went on briskly. “I’ve got more important things that Painter could also find out for himself if he’d go to Linda. There’s a mysterious female named Mrs. Kelly who showed up at the insurance office a day or so after your interview with Fitzgilpin was printed. She talked with his secretary who recalls that she seemed much more interested in Fitzgilpin and his private affairs than in a big policy on her husband’s life. Particularly about his last visit to New York in November nineteen sixty-one.