Brett Halliday: The Homicidal Virgin

“Then think about Horace for a moment,” urged Rourke. “Poor old guy with his life in jeopardy. His own niece advertising openly for a killer to gun him down.”

“But you’re not running the ad. So she won’t contact any killers and Uncle Horace will remain perfectly free to live to a ripe old age.”

“Not if I know our Jane Smith,” Rourke declared positively. “Failing in this attempt, she’ll try something else. But if she doesn’t fail in this attempt…” He paused significantly. “If she were to achieve contact with the perfect guy who is willing to do anything for the right price… then you’d be in a position to dissuade her from whatever she has in mind.”

Shayne yawned and drank more cognac. “Chase down your own headlines, Tim. She gives a mailing address. Take it from there.”

“I just came from five sixty-two Flagler,” grumbled Rourke. “Suite eleven-fourteen is just what you’d expect. A mail-drop to receive and forward letters. Presided over by an old battle-axe who wouldn’t give out the correct address of a client if you twisted her arm off. I suppose their clients are mostly extra-marital lovers who are willing to pay plenty for the assurance that their real identities will be protected.”

“So she certainly wouldn’t give out any information to a private op who comes snooping around.”

“Of course not. Only way to get Jane Smith’s address out of her is by a police order. And that brings us back to Peter Painter. You going to force me to go to him?”

“I don’t see how else…” Shayne began, but Timothy Rourke interrupted him with feverish intensity:

“Answer the ad yourself, Mike. Your reply will be the only one she receives. If she’s at all serious about this she’ll jump at the chance and set up a meeting. You go on from there.”

“But she’ll be watching the paper and see that her ad doesn’t appear. She’ll know damned well my reply to it is a phony.”

“I’ve thought that all out, Mike. It’s easy. You write her explaining why her ad wasn’t inserted. But say that your girl-friend works in the advertising department and the letter came to her desk to be opened. And instead of sending it on up to the front office for approval, she simply held it out and passed it on to you on account of you’re just the man to fill the bill and your gal would like to see you make a fast buck so she can quit her lousy job at the News and get married. Doesn’t that make sense?”

Shayne stretched and leaned back in the swivel chair, clasping the knobby fingers of both hands behind his neck and furrowing his forehead. There was a long moment of silence while he blinked reflectively up at the ceiling. From the open windows on his right there continued to drift in the muted sound of slow-moving traffic from the street below, and from the open door into the anteroom there came the persistently soothing cadence of Lucy’s typewriter.

He had no important case on hand, and he was bored. And the unknown Jane Smith did intrigue him. He was too seldom intrigued these days.

He kept his gaze fixed on the ceiling and said ruminatively, “If the set-up is anything like it looks from here, Jane Smith certainly won’t confide in a private detective. And if she’s got a brain in her head, she won’t jump into anything blindly without investigating my background. I’d have to set up a whole new identity…”

“Simplest thing in the world for a smart guy like you,” declared Rourke expansively. “On a News expense account, Mike. I’ve got a curious hunch about this. That it’s something big. Important enough to be worth following up. You know how it is, damn it. You get that feeling sometimes… in my business and in yours. Honest-to-God, don’t you feel it too?”

“Not exactly. But if your paper wants to foot the bill, I’ll try to establish contact with Jane Smith and see what comes of it.”

“Go to it,” said Rourke fervently. “All I ask is to have a crack at the story… when and if it breaks.”

Shayne sat erect and finished his drink, drained the paper cup of water. He smashed all four cups in his two big hands, swung out of the swivel chair and dropped them into a wastebasket beside the water cooler. Then he strode past Rourke into the outer office, and Lucy Hamilton broke the even rhythm of her typing to look over her machine at him inquiringly, competent fingers lying lax on motionless keys.

He paused beside the outer door, reaching for a Panama hat on a hook beside it. “Tim and I are drifting out for a drink,” he announced casually. “Close up shop whenever you’re in the mood, angel.”

Lucy Hamilton’s serious brown eyes held more than a hint of disappointment as she said, “This isn’t anything really important, Michael.” She allowed herself a brief downward glance at her watch. “In fact, I could close up right now…”

“Sure. Go right ahead,” Shayne said heartily as Rourke sauntered from the inner office to join him. “You know you can take off any time you like. See you in the morning.”

He opened the door onto the corridor and stepped out, held it open for Rourke to join him.

“Some day,” said Timothy Rourke, “you’re going to drop into your office on an otherwise fine morning, and there’s going to be no perfect secretary to greet you. I saw that warning in Lucy’s eyes just now. You can be just so casual just so long with a gal like that. Why push your luck?”

Shayne had stopped to push the Down button on the elevator. He said morosely, “This time it’s entirely your fault. If you hadn’t walked in when you did with this Jane Smith deal, Lucy and I would be hightailing it together to the nearest air-conditioned cocktail lounge right this minute. If I do have to break in a new secretary, that will go on the News expense account too.”

In his corner hotel suite on the north bank of the Miami River, Michael Shayne selected the smartest piece of luggage he possessed, a five-year-old grayish suitcase of lightweight material for airline travel, and opened it out on the bed to receive a careful selection of clothing to fit the move he intended to make.

He tossed in his most flamboyant pajamas and a silk dressing gown Lucy had given him for Christmas three years before, and two of his most garish sport shirts, laying aside one atrocity with pineapple trees and hula maidens outlined in red against a bilious yellow background to wear when he went out. He added underwear and socks, and a pair of creamy-white Italian silk slacks, toilet articles and clean handkerchiefs. From the bottom drawer of his bedroom dresser, he lifted out from underneath a pile of white shirts a short-barreled. 38 nestled in a worn leather holster strapped into an efficient shoulder harness which he hadn’t worn for many years. He placed this carefully inside the folds of the slacks at the bottom of the suitcase, spread the other clothes on top of it, and closed the bag.

Downstairs, he stopped at the desk with his bag and told the clerk, “I won’t be around during the nights for a few days, Pete. I may give you a phone number later where I can be reached if it’s important.”

With a suggestion of a leer, Pete let his knowing eyes rest on the hulaed sport shirt and the most aggressive jacket the detective owned, and said, “Sure, Mr. Shayne. Would a call from Miss Hamilton… would that be what you’d call important?”

Shayne said, “If I do give you a number… it’ll just be for your use… to pass on messages to me.”

Pete said, “Sure, I get it, Mr. Shayne,” and as the redhead turned away to cross the lobby, he called out in a low voice, “Have fun.”

Shayne grinned back over his shoulder and said, “This is strictly business, Pete.”

He had already parked his car in its stall in the private garage behind the apartment hotel, and he waved down a passing taxi outside the hotel and got in.