Brett Halliday - The Body Came Back

He said, “I haven’t got the serial numbers, of course. But they were twenties that I gave that cop named Barkus. Look here, Sergeant,” he hurried on persuasively. “Let me call Chief Gentry at home. You tell him what the situation is. I’ve still got to keep that damned appointment somehow.”

Loomis shook his head. “Why, no. I wouldn’t want to bother the chief this time of night. I know perfectly well what he’d say. So, beat it, Shayne. We know where to reach you. I hope she hasn’t got tired of waiting.”

Shayne grinned tiredly and appreciatively. “So do I. Thanks, Sergeant.”

He went out the door fast and was intercepted down the hall by a reporter from the Herald and Timothy Rourke of the News. The Herald man grabbed his arm and said happily, “We’ve been hearing all sorts of stories, Shayne. What’s the lowdown? You got your license jerked?”

Shayne pulled away and growled at him, “Talk to Sergeant Loomis. You got your heap, Tim?”

The saturnine reporter nodded with a grin. “Just so you won’t be forced to steal any more transportation tonight. Down this way, Mike.”

He turned into a corridor that right-angled away from the other, and a moment later they walked out into the night and he indicated his car between two No-Parking signs. Shayne got in and Rourke went around to get under the wheel. He settled himself and muttered wonderingly, “What in the living hell has been going on tonight, Mike? There were all kinds of rumors floating around the station, but I didn’t get any one of them straight. You kill somebody… or what?”

Shayne sighed and said, “Mostly what, Tim.” He got out a cigarette and lit it, realizing, suddenly, that it felt good not to have handcuffs on his wrists.

Then he said, “It’s a long story, and we need liquor to wash it down with. Can’t we get the hell away from here? I’ve seen enough cops for one night.”

“Sure… Mike,” Tim told him soothingly. He started the motor and pulled away from the curb. “Home, James?” he asked cheerfully.

“Wait a minute. No. Drop me at the Encanto Hotel, Tim. And then forget you did.”

“You’re not running out on me, Mike? Not without telling me what this is all about?”

“No. I’ve got to pick my car up at the Encanto. About forgetting it… I just mean if anything comes up later. Look. I’m confused, Tim. I’ve got thinking to do. Save your questions, huh?”

“Sure,” said Timothy Rourke easily. “Will you be at the Encanto long?”

“Just long enough to get my car. Then I’ll meet you back at my place.”

The two men had been close friends for a great many years, and Timothy Rourke knew when it was not the time to ask questions.

He drove to the Encanto without speaking again, pulled up under the canopy, and said, “I’ll be waiting for you, Mike.”

“Sure. You’ve got a key. Use it.” Shayne got out and fumbled in his pocket for his parking stub to give to the doorman, and the reporter pulled away into the night.

While Shayne waited at the hotel entrance for his car to be brought around, he glanced inside and saw two house phones just inside the door. He hesitated, scowling uncertainly. Should he call Carla and warn her what had happened? He wondered whether Vicky had checked back with her mother, and whether she had returned safely to the hotel.

He stepped inside quickly and lifted one of the phones, but replaced it before giving the room number. Why worry Carla at this point? What the hell could he tell her? Simply that he had bungled the job and that her dead husband might turn up anywhere, at any time.

There would still be the matter of identifying the man, he realized. There was nothing about him at this point to connect him with Carla. Just the blanket that had the name of the hotel on it. But there was nothing to show what room it came from. No, he told himself. Carla and Vicky were safe enough at this point, if they just kept quiet and went on as though nothing had happened.

If the body were discovered in the trunk of the Ford a certain private detective named Michael Shayne was the only person who could be tied directly to it. Finding the blanket, the police would check the Encanto Hotel, of course, looking for a missing guest who answered the dead man’s description. They wouldn’t find one. It would take days to check every room in the hotel for a missing blanket… if they bothered to go so far.

There was no reason to worry about Carla and Vicky at this point. He was the only one who had things to worry about. He strolled back outside as his car was driven up by the attendant, gave the lad a half-dollar and got in.

He turned south on Biscayne Boulevard, drove to Southeast First Street and then west. He found Rourke’s car parked at the curb beside his hotel on the north bank of the Miami River, and he pulled up close behind it and shut off the lights and ignition. He hadn’t formulated any definite plans for the remaining hours of the night, but he was positive that he wouldn’t be going to bed and let matters take their natural course.

He went in a side door with a stairway leading up that by-passed the lobby, climbed to the second floor and went down the hall to his door which was standing ajar and showing a light inside.

Timothy Rourke was comfortably relaxed in a deep chair with a bourbon highball in his hand. He had set out a cognac bottle for his host, with an empty four-ounce glass beside it, and a tall glass of ice water for a chaser. His deep-set eyes were hooded, and they glittered with happy curiosity as the redhead strode into the room. He lifted his glass in wordless greeting and sipped from it as Shayne crossed to the table and poured himself a healthy drink. Still standing, he drank it in three swallows, automatically chased it down with a sip of ice water and said feelingly, “By God, I needed that!” He poured more liquor into the glass and then sat down and lit a cigarette.

“Just about two hours ago,” Rourke reminded him, “you tore yourself away from my scintillating company and refused another drink… which I offered to buy, by God, and swore you were coming straight home and to bed and ten hours sleep. What the devil have you been up to in those two hours?”

“What did you pick up at headquarters?”

“Not a whole lot. Just that you’d been arrested driving a stolen car and tried to bribe the two cops to let you go. And that you deliberately ran over some honest citizen who tried to stop you. Nothing really world-shaking for Mike Shayne spending a quiet evening in bed.”

Shayne grinned mirthlessly and clawed fingers through his hair, “Things do have a way of happening. Tonight it was a friend of Brett Halliday’s in town from Hollywood.”

“Good looking?” asked Rourke alertly.

“You know Brett.” Shayne made a gesture. “She had a run-in with a dead man, so who the hell should she call on but Brett’s old friend Mike Shayne?”

“It figures. Where else would tomorrow’s headlines come from?”

“This is going to be one hell of a headline,” growled Shayne. “If things don’t break right.” He took another drink and then got up from his chair and began to prowl up and down the room.

Rourke watched his friend for a moment, then asked, “Are you going to tell me about it?”

“I’m trying to decide how much to tell you,” Shayne confessed angrily. “It’s going to sound like hell when I put it into plain words. You’re going to sit back in judgment and ask why in hell I let myself get pulled into it. All I had to do was say no, God damn it. All I had to do was turn my back and walk out of the hotel room. Which is what any sensible human being would have done,” he added in a tone of deep disgust.

“But she was a friend of Brett’s,” Rourke reminded him.