Brett Halliday: The Body Came Back

Russco turned back and Shayne said, “You don’t happen to have a pair of gloves you can put your hands on quick?”

“Gloves? Christ, no.”

“That car you’re going to pick up,” explained the redhead. “You and I’ll have fewer questions to answer if our fingerprints aren’t found on it when it’s picked up tomorrow. Here. Try these on for size.” He pulled the cellophaned stockings from his pocket and held them out to the hotel detective.

Russco took them dubiously. “Am I stealing a car, too?”

“Just giving it back to the owner,” Shayne told him with a grin. “Slide your mitts into these before you get into it. And keep them handy for me to put on when I meet you down here later.”

Russco took them with a nod of understanding and turned away again.

Shayne watched him go out of sight, then turned back and got into the elevator and pressed the button numbered 8. The doors slid shut silently and the cage began to move upward. When it stopped at the eighth floor and the doors opened, Shayne carefully pushed the HOLD button, and checked to see that it stayed down.

Then he stepped out into the wide corridor and looked at the room number across from him to orient himself. It was 804. By the grace of God and with an assist from the Shayne luck, the room he sought was only three doors down the hall. He knocked twice and waited a moment, and then three times.

The door opened instantly. He grinned reassuringly as he stepped past her, and asked, “Has your daughter phoned?”

“No. I’m getting scared, Mike. She should have before this. Do you suppose…?”

“I suspect she’s holed up somewhere trying to get up her nerve to lift the telephone receiver and call this number. Remember… she hasn’t the faintest idea whether you or the police will answer the phone. Look,” he said firmly, taking her by both arms and looking into her frightened face. “Stop worrying. Everything is going to be okay. All you have to do is be here when she calls. Then tell her to come on back… and have a damned good story made up and ready to tell her to explain who Al Donlin was and why he came here looking for you tonight. Do you understand?” He gave her a little shake to emphasize his words.

Tears swam into her eyes. “Oh, Mike,” she breathed. “You are going to…?”

“I’m going to give a girl a break on the eve of her wedding day,” he told her lightly. He released her arms and stepped back, glancing at his watch. “I’ll have to take a blanket or something to roll him up in.”

She followed him to the door of the bedroom, asking shakily, “Is there anything I can do… to help?”

“I don’t think so.” He stood inside the door looking down at the corpse. “Can that pistol be traced to you… or your daughter?”

“No. I’m positive it can’t.” She laughed nervously. “Actually, I got it from an actor who had lifted it off the set of a movie… one of the prop guns.”

Shayne muttered, “There might be fingerprints,” and reached down to pick it up and rub it between his big palms much as she had done an hour previously. Then he slid it into the man’s coat pocket and said, “Let the police try to figure out why he’s carrying the gun that killed him.” He straightened up and glanced around the room. “I wonder if there’s an extra blanket or anything.”

She hurried past him toward the closet door, murmuring, “There often is… on a shelf.” She opened the door and stood on tiptoes, then turned back with a folded blanket in her arms. “It has the name of the hotel on it.”

“Can’t be helped. I won’t leave him wrapped up in it.” He took the blanket from her, shook it out so it was folded double, and carefully spread it across the body, covering it from head to toe. Then he knelt down and rolled the man over carefully so that he was enclosed like a cocoon in the blanket. The body was beginning to stiffen with rigor mortis, so it was quite easy to manipulate.

Shayne stood up and checked his watch. It was exactly nine minutes since he had parted with John Russco in the hotel basement. “Time to get this show on the road,” he said casually and turned to her where she stood in the doorway watching him with fear-distended eyes.

“There’s nothing for you to worry about,” he told her quietly. “Just stay here and drink the rest of that Scotch and wait for Vicky to telephone you. Tell her to check out of wherever she is and come back here and pretend none of this happened. Go on about your normal routine. The wedding will be tomorrow. Act exactly as you would have acted if this hadn’t happened. You may read in the paper about an unidentified body being found in Miami. I hope he can’t be traced here. Even if the police come knocking at your door asking questions… you just don’t know the answers. There’s not even a drop of blood here on the rug where he’s lain. Deny everything. Don’t identify him even if they should force you to go to the morgue to look at him.

“Good luck to you, Carla. And good luck to Vicky. I hope she has a long and happy marriage. Now… stand out of the way and open your door for me.”

She stood there on the threshold of the sitting room gazing at him. “Will you be in touch with me, Mike? Will I see you again?”

“Better not. Though I’d like to… under different circumstances.” He tossed her a wide smile. “In Hollywood, maybe. Next month… or next year? If you happen to run into Brett out there… tell him I’m still holding up my end in Miami… but this is one case I don’t think he’d better write up in a book.”

He turned away from her, leaned over and picked up the blanket-wrapped bundle of stiffening flesh in his arms and turned back to the sitting room.

She was waiting by the outside door with her hand on the knob. She smiled faintly as he approached, opened the door and leaned out to look up and down the hallway. Then she drew back and nodded reassuringly to indicate that the coast was clear, and drew to one side to let him pass through with his gruesome burden.

He stepped out into the wide, well-lighted corridor and she silently drew the door shut behind him. He turned in the direction in which he had left the open elevator waiting for him, and walked swiftly toward it, praying that no late-comers would suddenly turn up around the corner.

He reached the door numbered 804 and gazed blankly at the closed doors of the service elevator across from it. He had left them standing open, with the HOLD button pressed down to hold the cage at that floor.

Now it was gone.

He stood there in the lighted hallway awkwardly holding the blanketed burden of stiffening flesh in his arms, staring stupidly at the closed doors of the service elevator. It couldn’t be gone. He had pushed the right button to hold it, just as Russco had showed him.

There was no indicator above the closed doors to show where the cage was now. There was an electric button in the frame beside the doors and he pushed it hard in the hope that it might, somehow, open the doors and show the cage waiting. But the doors remained obstinately closed and there was no sound to indicate that pressing the button had any effect on the mechanism at all.

He couldn’t just stand there with a dead man in his arms waiting. Someone might turn up at any moment. And time was running out on him. He’d told Russco fifteen minutes.

He’d better get the corpse back inside 810. Then he might get down in time to catch Russco… find out what had gone wrong with the elevator… start out all over again.

He turned back with his burden, but was halted by the sound of voices just around the corner toward the regular elevators.

People were coming. There was no time to make it to 810 unobserved. He whirled and deposited the corpse on the floor against the wall and beside the elevator door. Then he straightened and wiped sweat from his face, moved to place himself in front of the dead man and conceal him from view as best he could, just as a young couple came around the corner and started toward him.