Brett Halliday - Shoot to Kill

Rourke came up on the side of her and helped support her sagging weight, and they half-dragged her inside and through the comfortably littered sitting room to the still unmade double bed beyond, where they got her decently stretched out and she immediately rolled over on her side and buried her face in the pillow and began snoring gently.

They went out together and closed the outer door behind them just in time to witness the arrival of Griggs’ Homicide experts for the second time that evening.

They went past them down the stairs to Shayne’s car, and got in and he said, “I’ll drive you around to the office, Tim. Got time for a drink first?”

Rourke looked at his watch and grunted his satisfaction. “Time for half a dozen. I want to check with Griggs again and maybe have another talk with Ralph before I write my story.”

Michael Shayne stopped in front of a small bar around the corner from the newspaper office where he often met Rourke for a drink, and they went inside together, past a line of men at the bar and with a greeting for the bartender, and back to an unoccupied booth near the rear.

A waiter came also immediately with drinks which the bartender had automatically started making as soon as they walked in, a tall, very brownish bourbon and water for the reporter, and a brimming shot-glass of cognac for Shayne with a tall glass of ice water on the side.

Shayne nodded and said absently to the waiter, “Keep them coming, pal. As fast as we get low.” He took a cigarette out of a crumpled pack from his shirt pocket, lit it reflectively and let twin spirals of thin gray smoke trail from his nostrils. “What do you make of it, Tim?”

“I don’t.” The gangling reporter took a long slow drink, lowering the contents of his glass halfway. “I don’t get that picture in the apartment at all, Mike. Where could Dorothy Larson be? Suppose she did take out after Ralph after phoning you, with some crazy idea of trying to stop him?”

“After spilling blood all over the bathroom?”

“It could be nosebleed. We still don’t even know it’s her blood. A neighbor kid might have cut his finger and she bandaged it for him,”

“That’s right,” Shayne took a long sip of cognac and chased it down with a swallow of ice water. “We do know she never got to Ames’ house if she started there.” He paused, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “They don’t have a second car, do they?”

“No. That is… no, they don’t. I remember Ralph mentioning that recently. It’s one of the reasons he needed the extra money he was earning from Ames.”

“What did he actually do for Ames? I don’t know much about the man except that his gossip column was widely syndicated and he was regarded as Miami’s Walter Winchell.”

“What did Ralph do?” Rourke shrugged. “Sort of legman, I guess. Went around to night spots and gathered items for Ames’ column, or checked on rumors of gossip that are the stock-in-trade of a scavenger like Ames. I wouldn’t be surprised if he had a couple of others on his payroll doing the same sort of thing. God knows he earned enough from his column to afford as much help as he needed.”

“How much?” Shayne asked with interest.

“How much did he pay?”

“How much do you suppose his column earned him?”

Timothy Rourke emptied his highball glass while he considered the question. Shayne drank from his glass again, and the waiter reappeared with refills for each. “Hard to say,” Rourke admitted finally. “I never had a syndicated column but I do know something about prices. At a rough guess: Thirty to fifty thousand a year. Maybe more.”

“Then he wasn’t what you’d call hard up?”

“Not exactly. That would be gross, of course, but he didn’t have much overhead. Whatever pittances he handed out to boys like Ralph. And his secretary, of course. He was full-time, I understand.”

“I was thinking,” Shayne said, “about a couple of remarks made by Mark Ames. One was to the effect that a lot of people were going to sleep more soundly tonight after they heard that Ames was dead. Would he be implying that his brother, who he quite evidently detested, was not above a spot of blackmail?”

“Not necessarily blackmail. Wesley Ames was certainly feared and hated by a lot of people. He couldn’t help picking up stray bits of very damaging information about many celebrities during his night club rounds which might even ruin a career if printed in his column. In other words, he was certainly in a good position to do some discreet extorting, but I never heard him charged with that. I think he enjoyed the power it gave him over many important people, and it probably gave him sadistic pleasure to watch them writhe while they waited for his columns to appear and see what he printed about them.”

“So a lot of people will sleep easier tonight after they hear the good news,” muttered Shayne.

“Not much doubt about that. What does this have to do with Dorothy Larson’s disappearance?”

“Damned if I know.” Shayne sipped his cognac morosely. “It’s just that the whole thing is thrown wide open by what we found at the Larson apartment. It may be pure coincidence, of course, and have nothing whatever to do with Ames’ death. But if she doesn’t turn up pretty soon with a logical explanation of where she’s been, we’ll have to assume otherwise and start looking in the cracks for things that aren’t apparent on the surface. If Ralph, for instance, was trying some private blackmail on the side… and Ames got wind of it…? Don’t you see? Maybe it wasn’t just a cut-and-dried case of sexual jealousy after all, and Ralph had some other impelling motive that no one knows about… except maybe his wife. Hell, I don’t know,” he went on disgustedly. “At this point it’s just a matter of pure theorizing. Maybe Dorothy Larson just went home to mama for the night. Does she have a mama in town?”

“I don’t know. I suppose Griggs will check out all the relatives and close friends with Ralph.”

“Yeh. Griggs is a careful and thorough cop.” Shayne emptied his cognac glass and scowled down into it. “There’s something bugging me,” he muttered. “Something about that locked room murder set-up that smells just slightly. But it smells, Tim. I can’t put my finger on it. It was there for me from the very beginning… even when I accepted all the surface indications. With Dorothy Larson inexplicably missing, and that bloody bathroom staring us in the face, I’m getting a stronger and stronger hunch that everything isn’t exactly as it seems.” He shrugged his wide shoulders and angrily tugged at his left ear lobe.

Timothy Rourke sat very erect and peered across the table at him with bright, alert attention. During the years that he had followed Michael Shayne around on his cases he had learned to have a profound respect for the redhead’s hunches. “What is it?” he urged. “What is it that smells, Mike?”

“I wish I knew. There’s something that keeps eating at the back of my mind. Something in Ames’ study that was out of place. Or something should have been there that wasn’t.” He shrugged and looked up at the waiter who was approaching the booth inquiringly, and shook his red head firmly. “No more for me.” He got out his wallet and gave the man a bill, and Timothy Rourke finished his drink and sighed and said reluctantly, “I’d better get into the office myself and see what’s on tap. Are you calling it a night?”

Shayne said, “Lucy will be sitting on the edge of her chair and chewing her fingernails waiting to hear what happened after we dashed off.”

But after they parted outside the bar and Rourke swung around the corner to the newspaper, Shayne sat in the front seat of his car for at least sixty seconds before turning on the ignition.