Brett Halliday: Too Friendly, Too Dead

Shayne nodded unhappily. “This I shall attempt to sell Painter. But he’s a confirmed cynic, and he operates according to rules. In his experience, a poisoning is a close-to-home job. I’m afraid your friend Linda is in for a pretty rough going-over when Petey gets around to her.”

“She has nothing to hide,” Lucy told him strongly.

“I sincerely hope not.” Shayne turned his head toward the kitchen and sniffed pleasurably. “Hasn’t your coffee-pot stopped perking?”

“I think so.” Lucy jumped to her feet and gathered up the two glasses she had brought in previously. “With, Michael?”

“With,” he told her firmly, and when she returned shortly with a mug of strong black coffee giving forth the aroma of cognac, he accepted it from her gratefully and settled back on the sofa, saying, “Let me relax here alone with your heavenly brew, Angel. I think you’d better go back upstairs and take those two youngsters off Linda’s hands. By this time she must have told them whatever she’s decided to tell them, and she can probably use a respite.”

“Of course. What are you going to do, Michael?”

“Drink a couple of coffee royals and then hie me over to the Beach to get my teeth into a few facts before doing any more vain theorizing. Tell Linda I’ll be in touch.”

Lucy nodded and hurried out, leaving him alone with his cognac-laced coffee and his thoughts.

Twenty minutes and two coffee royals later, Shayne telephoned Timothy Rourke at the News from Lucy’s apartment. When the reporter’s voice came over the wire, he said, “Tim. Have you got anything on the Beach killing… Fitzgilpin?”

“Not much. I’ve just been sitting here thinking about the little guy and what a shame it is. Are you interested, Mike?”

“His widow is a close friend of Lucy’s. I drove her over to make the identification. What do you mean… you’ve been thinking what a shame it is? Did you know Fitzgilpin?”

“Not really. I interviewed him a couple of weeks ago and did a piece about him for the paper. Human interest stuff. He got an insurance company award… top ten in the United States for annual increase in number of policies for five thousand bucks and under. He seemed a hell of a nice guy. Knocked off for a few hundred bucks, huh?”

“That’s not too certain,” Shayne told his old friend cautiously. “I guess he was rolled, all right, but he was poisoned first.”

“Poisoned? You sure?”

“Painter is. You better ask him.”

“Damn right I will. How do you stand in it?”

“The widow is officially my client. And Painter isn’t pleased.”

“No. He wouldn’t be.” Rourke’s voice was thoughtful and Shayne could almost hear the wheels spinning around in his head. “He’d like to hang it on her, huh?”

“You know how a cop is when a husband turns up with poison in him. I’m at Lucy’s place, Tim, and she’s upstairs with Mrs. Fitzgilpin. You want to go over to the Beach and nose around? Painter isn’t going to give me much, but he can’t refuse the press.”

“I’m practically on my way,” Rourke told him enthusiastically. “Where’ll I meet you?”

“How about that bar a couple of blocks from headquarters? Jim’s Joint, I think it is. In about an hour?”

“Right. I’ll have the dope.” Rourke hung up and so did Shayne, tugging thoughtfully at his left earlobe. He looked at his watch and dialed another number that gave him a direct line to Will Gentry’s private office.

When the Miami Chief of Police answered, he said, “Mike Shayne, Will.”

“Mike? What’s with you so early of a Saturday morning?”

“Early?” said Shayne reprovingly. “I’ve been up for hours. Making hay before the sun even started to shine.”

“What spoiled your beauty sleep?”

“The Fitzgilpin case. On the Beach.”

“That mugging? I see a report here on my desk, but I didn’t know… what’s he to you, Mike?”

“His widow is one of Lucy’s best friends. I wanted to tell you this may be your case, Will. Don’t let Painter hog it. The guy lived on this side of the bay and was loaded with poison that may well have been fed to him at least an hour before he died. That could easily make it your problem.”

“Fine,” said Chief Gentry wearily. “Nothing I like better than a nice, clean poisoning.” He paused and then added sharply, “Widow’s a friend of Lucy’s, you say?”

“Lives right upstairs in the same apartment building with two cute kids. Lucy’s with her now. Reason I called, Will, I don’t want Painter throwing his weight around over here with Mrs. Fitzgilpin. He has a perfect right to question her, but I’d like a good man of yours with him when he does. You know how he is about any friend of mine?”

“And she’s… a particular friend of yours, Mike?” Gentry asked urbanely. “Good-looking?”

“Yeh,” said Shayne angrily, “a red-headed sex-pot, if you want the truth. Don’t make anything out of it, Will. Leave that to Petey.”

“Sure, Mike,” Gentry soothed him. “I’ll check into it and if it seems anything for me I’ll go around with Painter myself to talk with her.”

Relieved, Shayne said, “Fine. I’ll be in touch later.” He hung up, knowing he had done all he could to protect Linda Fitzgilpin from over-officious questioning by Painter.

He hesitated about going upstairs again, decided against it. He had nothing to go on yet. Nothing to discuss with the widow until he’d been to the Beach and dug up more facts. She would be better alone with Lucy at this point.

He went out to the kitchen and poured himself a very moderate drink and relaxed with it on the sofa until it was time to meet Timothy Rourke on the Beach.

The gangling reporter was seated in a booth at the rear of Jim’s Joint with a bourbon and water in front of him when Shayne entered the dim interior half an hour later. He looked up with a saturnine grin on his thin face as the redhead slid into the booth opposite him and said admiringly, “Boy! Did you ever rub Petey’s fur the wrong way this morning. What I got is strictly confidential… not to be passed on to an interfering shamus from Miami who thinks, by God, he can run the whole Miami Beach police department.”

Shayne returned the grin and said, “It isn’t difficult to rub Painter the wrong way. You made no promises, I hope?”

“Not… under oath,” Rourke told him cheerily. “I agreed with him that you certainly were a pain in the neck and didn’t deserve any cooperation whatsoever. But I didn’t say you weren’t going to get it.” Rourke lifted his glass and sipped from it pleasurably.

“How much dope did you get?”

“Everything they have thus far. Let’s see. Officer Farrel found him about four o’clock lying off to the side of Lone Palm Road about ten blocks north of the Causeway. That’s a quiet, sort of run-down section on the Bay side. There was an empty car parked on the shoulder near the body. Nobody around that time of morning. Body was cool, but no rigor. Smelled of whiskey and staggering tracks from the car to where he was found. No wallet. No nothing for identification. Routine check on the car registration got Fitzgilpin’s name in Miami and they called the number. You know that much.”

Shayne nodded, drumming impatiently on the table top with blunt fingertips. “Time of death?”

“Probably between midnight and two o’clock. The complete autopsy may set it closer. Not a mark on his body to indicate any sort of slugging. He was loaded with sodium amytal and alcohol. It’s a sleeping drug, really, but enough of it is poison. He had enough.”

Shayne nodded thoughtfully. “Wouldn’t a load of it likely put him to sleep before it killed him?”