Brett Halliday - Too Friendly, Too Dead

“Doc says it’s probable. At least he’d be knocked out on his feet and never know what hit him. That’s about all I got, really. They’re doing a complete autopsy. Seems he generally kept his insurance office open late Friday nights collecting small cash premiums from clients, and probably was carrying a roll of several hundred in small bills. Might have looked like a lot more if he flashed it in a bar.”

Shayne nodded absently. “I got that. And it was normal procedure for him to drop into a bar for a couple of beers on Friday nights on his way home. His wife expected it and wasn’t alarmed when she went to bed, with a sleeping pill, about eleven o’clock.”

“Sodium amytal?” asked Rourke alertly.

Shayne said, “I’ll have to ask her.”

“He sure as hell had a lot more than a couple of beers last night. He was loaded, and the doc figures he got the stuff in whiskey. Says it would kill the taste fine. Goddamn it, Mike, I don’t like this one.” Rourke spread out his thin hands in front of him and slowly closed them into tight fists. “Like I said on the phone, I interviewed him a couple of weeks ago and thought he was one of the nicest guys I ever met. Friendly as hell and sort of bubbling over with goodwill toward his fellow men. I got the impression… and I wrote my story that way… that he was a completely satisfied and happy man. One of the very few I ever met. I can’t conceive him having an enemy.”

“But someone fed him poison last night,” Shayne said grimly. “Unless you think he took it himself.”

“Not him,” said Rourke flatly. “He was so proud of that citation he’d gotten from his company, and about having a write-up in a newspaper. Hell, you’d thought he’d been awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. Biggest thing that ever happened to him in his whole life.” Rourke drained off his bourbon and regarded Shayne shrewdly. “What’s the wife like?”

Shayne replied simply, “She’s a close friend of Lucy’s, who swears by her. They lived right upstairs and she baby-sits sometimes. Two kids… six and nine, I think.”

“Could she be cheating?”

“Right now, all I have to go on is Lucy’s judgment, but I’ll accept that until I have some reason not to. Let’s see what we’ve got without the widow. You say there were staggering tracks from the car to where he was found. Any other tracks?”

“You mean to indicate he was rolled after he died or collapsed. No. Farrel’s report says not. And his tracks didn’t lead exactly from where the car was parked. From the edge of the pavement, rather, starting about twenty feet from the car. I saw photographs and a sketch of the scene.”

“Then it looks as though he drove there or was driven there… got out of the car and started up the road before he staggered off and died.”

“He was driven,” Rourke told him promptly. “Or else someone went to the trouble of wiping his fingerprints off the steering wheel after he got out. No prints at all on the wheel, light switch or gear shift. They’ve still got his car at the lab giving it a thorough job.”

“Someone who met him in a bar,” suggested Shayne. “Gave him the stuff there or noticed he was already passing out and offered to drive him home.”

“Could be either way. I’m sorry, Mike, but this time I have to string along with Painter. Poisoning puts it closer to home than just some stranger in a bar.”

Shayne sighed morosely. “Probably. But don’t tell Petey I said so.” He glanced at Rourke’s empty glass and put a dollar bill on the table. “Let’s drive out and look at the spot. Lone Palm Road?”

“Yeh. A couple of blocks from the bayshore. I’ve got the address.” Timothy Rourke slid out of the booth with him and they went out to where both their cars were parked outside. Shayne waved the reporter on to his car and said, “You go ahead and I’ll follow.”

He got in his own car and followed Rourke’s shabby coupe away from the vicinity of police headquarters westward toward the bay.

Rourke followed a winding course, checking street signs, and finally pulled off and stopped in the middle of a block of quiet homes on a street that dead-ended against the bay a couple of blocks ahead.

Shayne pulled up behind him and they got out and walked forward in front of Rourke’s car where chalk marks on the edge of the pavement indicated the position of Fitzgilpin’s parked car, then on ten or fifteen feet to a chalked arrow pointing off to the side where the body had evidently been found. There were many tracks back and forth across the soft shoulder here showing that the police had made an intensive search of the scene, and Shayne shrugged and glanced up and down the residential block, muttering, “These people are the kind to all be in bed and asleep by midnight. Painter’s men will have been ringing doorbells up and down, but I doubt that he’ll get anything.”

“Nothing had come in worth a damn by the time I left his office,” Rourke agreed.

Shayne stood there and looked toward the bay in the bright sunlight at a large, two-story stucco building built adjacent to the water’s edge. “Isn’t that Pete Elston’s Sporting Club up ahead?”

Rourke glanced in that direction and nodded. “He’s got a nice quiet little bar downstairs,” he suggested hopefully. “And Fitzgilpin’s insurance office isn’t too far from here, from the address I got. Might be a place he’d stop in at on his way home.”

Shayne said, “I could use a drink about now. How about you?”

“Why not? The one you paid for at Jim’s was my first this morning.”

Without more ado they both got in their cars and drove up to the Sporting Club and parked in front where only one other car stood at this hour of the morning. There was a neon light on over the door to indicate the place was open for business, however, so they got out and went in purposefully together.

The interior of the Sporting Club bar had subdued lighting and a quiet decor. It was not one of the garish, chromium and red leather cocktail lounges that are characteristic of Miami Beach, but had a homey quality about it that was more like the atmosphere of a neighborhood bar in a small town.

There were two men seated at the far end of the bar when Shayne and Rourke went in. They had beers in front of them and were engaged in earnest, low-voiced conversation. None of the tables or booths was occupied.

Shayne and Rourke took the first two stools and the bartender moved in front of them with an indifferent, almost hostile, expression on his horselike face. He had a protruding Adam’s apple, a bald head, and his small eyes were set too close together.

He swiped a damp cloth across the bar in front of them and asked, “What’ll it be, gents?”

Shayne said, “A bourbon and water for my friend. Old Crow. And a cognac and water on the side for me. Martel,” he added glancing at the row of bottles behind the bar.

Shayne lit a cigarette and blew out the match as the bartender set their drinks in front of them. He said, “Had some excitement around here last night, didn’t you?”

“Huh?” The bartender blinked at him suspiciously. “I don’t recollect any.”

“Were you on duty last night?”

“Sure was. Right up to quitting time.” Horseface started to turn away, but Shayne stopped him by asking, “What about the stiff they found down the street this morning? Was he passed out when he left here?”

“Look here, Mister. I don’t know nothing about a stiff down the street. We run a quiet place here, and nobody passes out if I’m serving him drinks. Get that straight. I already told the cops nobody answering his description was in here last night.”

Shayne said quietly, “We’re not cops.”