Brett Halliday - Murder by Proxy

Shayne tapped the picture in front of Arentz and told him, “Gene walked out of the Beachhaven bar with this woman last Monday evening after picking her up there, and the bartender heard some mention of gambling as they went out. She didn’t return to the hotel that night… hasn’t been seen since. Did he bring her here, Willy?”

The gambler lifted the picture again and studied it more carefully. He frowned, half-closing his eyes.

“Monday night? It wasn’t very fast… Mondays never are. I was out on the floor from about ten o’clock on. Gene Blake? H-m-m.” He touched his mustache reflectively. “Would she have been a plunger, Mike?”

“I don’t know how much cash she was carrying. Her husband is a New York stockbroker… fairly up in the chips I’d guess, though probably not really loaded.”

“Reason I ask… if she dropped a wad, Gene would have been around to collect his cut. I just can’t remember Mike. I’ve got a feeling Gene was in about then… a few nights ago, anyhow… I don’t remember seeing him around since. Later in the evening, I can show that picture around and maybe get a real make for you. If she was in, one of the boys will surely place her.”

“In the meantime, can you check and see if Gene did collect a percentage for someone Monday night?”

“Sure, I can do that.” He pressed a button on his desk. “It’s all kind of guesswork, you know. Anything under five hundred doesn’t count…”

He broke off as the door opened and the spectacled young man asked deferentially, “You want me, Chief?”

“Take a look and see if we paid out anything to Gene Blake this week.”

Henry nodded and disappeared into the inner office. Arentz studied Shayne shrewdly and asked, “You think this dame has been shacked up with Gene since Monday night?”

Shayne spread out his hands. “For her husband’s sake, I hope not. On the other hand… hell!” he ended explosively, “I don’t know what I think about it, or what I want to think.”

Henry reappeared in the doorway and said, “There is no record of any payment to Gene Blake for the past two weeks.”

Arentz nodded and dismissed him. “There you are,” he told Shayne. “That doesn’t mean he didn’t steer her here Monday night. It just means she didn’t drop as much as five hundred… or that Gene has been so busy since then that he hasn’t been around to collect.”

“You know where I could find him?”

“We wouldn’t have any record of that, Mike. Like I said, he isn’t on the payroll or like that. I can ask around tonight and probably get a line for you.”

Shayne said, “Thanks, Willy,” and got up. He hesitated, and then said, “This is the only copy I’ve got at the moment,” and pocketed Ellen’s picture. “Let it ride, if you don’t hear from me, Willy.” He went to the door and opened it, then turned back, “The cops are liable to be around asking the same questions. Right now Painter is trying to pretend nothing has happened, but there’s going to be a front-page story in tonight’s News that will make him get off his ass and start asking questions.”

“The Gray Gull won’t be mentioned by name in that newspaper story?”

Shayne shook his red head. “Not in this one, Willy. The faster we clear it up the better chance we can keep you out of it.”

Arentz said reproachfully, “You know if I had anything…?”

Shayne said, “Sure,” and went out of the gambler’s office.

Arentz sat very quietly and stared after him, then lifted a telephone and began dialling a number.

In the wide hallway downstairs a colored man was indolently moving a vacuum cleaner over the rug. Shayne headed for the open front door in long strides, then slowed suddenly and stopped beside a public telephone booth. There were Miami and Miami Beach telephone directories on a shelf beside the booth. He tried the Beach directory first, and found one Eugene Blake listed with an address on 12th Street. He left the book open at that page, and checked the Miami directory. There were a number of Blakes, but no Genes or Eugenes.

He went into the booth and closed the door tightly to shut out the whir of the vacuum cleaner, and dialled the number listed in the Beach book. He listened to the telephone ring four times, and then there was a click and a brisk feminine voice repeated the number he had dialled.

Shayne asked, “Is Mr. Blake in?”

“Not at the moment,” she replied. “May I take a message for him?”

Shayne said awkwardly, “Well, I… this is an old friend of Gene’s from out of town. I’ve been out of touch for a long time. Is this… Mrs. Blake?”

The faint suggestion of a chuckle came over the wire. “This is the Professional Answering Service. If you wish to leave a message for Mr. Blake, I will be glad to take it.”

Shayne said, “Don’t bother,” and hung up. He sat there for a moment looking at the wall, and then went back to the telephone booth and verified Eugene Blake’s street address. He went out and got into his car and headed south toward 12th Street.

Blake’s street address brought him to a square, two-storied stucco apartment building in the cheaper section of the Beach. Shayne parked outside and went in to a foyer with sixteen mailboxes on each side of it. He found “Blake, E.” on number twelve, and pushed open a door and went down the left-hand corridor where the apartments were numbered 9, 10, etc. He stopped in front of 12, and knocked.

He expected no answer, and received none. He took a well-filled key-ring from his pocket while he studied the lock, and the first key he tried went into the lock and turned it part way, but stopped there. He withdrew the key and studied it, selected another one which unlocked Blake’s apartment smoothly.

Shayne stepped inside and drew the door shut behind him. He stood in a small entryway, with an open door on his left leading into a kitchen, and an archway in front of him. A faintly damp, unventilated smell came from the interior of the apartment.

Shayne went through the archway into a small and littered living room. The windows were tightly closed, and the smell of stale cigarette smoke lingered in the air. There was a shabby sofa along one wall, and beyond it a matching overstuffed chair with a newspaper lying on the floor beside it. On a coffee table, in front of the sofa, there were two glasses and a half bottle of cheap bourbon. One was an empty highball glass, and the other a cocktail glass with a tiny portion of faintly milky residue in the bottom. Shayne leaned over to sniff it, but he wasn’t expert enough to determine whether it had contained a daiquiri or not. An ashtray beside the two glasses overflowed with cigarette butts, at least half of them carrying lipstick stains. Shayne studied them and wondered what shade of lipstick a blonde like Ellen Harris normally wore.

He moved on to the chair beyond the sofa, and checked the date of the paper lying on the floor beside it. It was dated the preceding Tuesday.

Shayne went on into the rear bedroom and found an unmade double bed with a bedside ashtray containing also an almost equal number of lipsticked and unlipsticked cigarette butts. There was the same smell of stale air in the bedroom that indicated it had been unused for several days.

Shayne turned back and glanced into the bathroom without seeing anything of interest, retraced his steps through the living room and paused in the door of the kitchen without entering it.

Two empty ashtrays stood on the drainboard beside the sink, and tiny gnats buzzed over the carcasses of two squeezed lemons in the sink.

He went out of the apartment and closed the door tightly behind him, went back to his car parked outside and drove to the first sign he saw indicating a public telephone.