Brett Halliday - Shoot to Kill

“Keep your eyes closed,” Shayne advised him cheerfully. “That’s Seventy-Ninth ahead. If I can hit that light…”

He did hit it a moment after it changed to red, but side traffic hadn’t begun to move and he went through the intersection unscathed. Traffic was thinner north of Seventy-Ninth, and Rourke forced himself to relax and he asked wonderingly, “What in hell happened to trigger Ralph off tonight? I thought you had it all set with Dorothy…”

“I thought so too. She didn’t say over the phone. Just that he had a gun and was on his way to kill Ames. Goddamn woman probably changed her mind,” he grated. “Threw it in his face or something. Know what kind of car Ralph drives?”

“N-no. Blue with a white top, I think. One of the new compacts. I can’t tell one from another.”

They passed 110th Street doing eighty-five and Shayne took his foot off the gas and said, “We’ll know soon enough. If the cops are already there and got him, let me handle it, Tim. Jail is the best place for him until he cools off.”

He touched the accelerator lightly again to maintain a speed of forty as he approached 120th, braked sharply and swung to the right on a two-lane street that dead-ended against the western shore of Biscayne Bay a few blocks ahead. There were no tail-lights ahead of them. Scattered houses were lighted on either side of the street, large estates that appeared calm and peaceful at this early evening hour.

“I think it’s on the end at the right.” Rourke was sitting erect scanning the houses as they passed. “I was here at a party once several years ago. I remember there’s a stone wall and wide entrance gates.”

The last house on the right was a large mansion at the end of a short drive through an arched gateway behind a high stone wall. The driveway and a large paved parking area in front was brilliantly lighted by two glaring floodlights mounted well up at either end of the house.

Two cars were in sight as Shayne swung into the driveway. A black Cadillac sedan stood under the porte-cochere and a blue and white compact was parked directly behind it. Lights blazed from the lower front windows of the house, and the front door opened and the figure of a man disappeared inside and the door slammed shut just as Shayne swung in behind the compact.

He cut his motor and leaped out, and heard a loud shout and something that sounded like a crash from inside the house as he sprinted toward the front door.

It opened inward onto a large square living room that was brilliantly illuminated like a stage setting.

A man lay on his side ten feet in front of the door, struggling up to a sitting posture, his mouth ludicrously open although no words were coming out, and pointing a trembling finger toward the stairway at the rear.

A silver tray lay on the floor in front of the stairway, and there were broken glasses and bottles strewn around it. A small, white-coated figure was running up the stairs as Shayne lunged in through the front door with Rourke close behind him, and he disappeared at the top and Shayne heard a door slam loudly on the second floor.

Shayne ran toward the stairs, skirting the broken glass and bottles, and mounted as fast as he could with Rourke pounding close at his heels.

Half-way down a wide carpeted corridor at the left the white-coated man was pounding a small fist on a closed wooden door while he ineffectually twisted the knob with his other hand. A printed “Do Not Disturb” sign hung from the knob. He turned a frightened, brown, Puerto Rican face over his shoulder to look toward Shayne as the redhead reached the top of the stairs, and he jabbered something in Spanish while he continued to pound on the door.

Shayne reached him in four long strides and clamped a big hand on his shoulder to thrust him aside from the door, then drew back and lowered his shoulder to drive his weight at it.

Before he could make a lunge a muffled shot sounded beyond the closed door. Shayne hesitated momentarily and then hit the door with his shoulder.

It shuddered with the impact, but did not give a fraction of an inch.

There was silence inside the room as Shayne stepped back for another try. Somewhere down the hallway a door opened, and the Puerto Rican houseman was slumped back against the wall, his eyes wide and round and staring and his mouth making small whimpering sounds.

Shayne hit the door again with his bruised shoulder, this time lower and closer to the lock, and there was the protesting screech of screws being torn from wood and the door burst open, almost catapulting the detective forward on his face.

He caught the door-jamb and straightened himself slowly. It was a large room, fitted up as an office or study, with a big flat-topped desk set squarely in the center of it and a dead man slumped sideways, half-in and half-out of an armchair behind the desk.

A thin intense-faced young man with a lock of black hair slanted across a high forehead stood flat-footed at the side of the desk and a few feet away from it. He was in his shirtsleeves with a black tie dangling loosely. A. 38 caliber revolver dangled from his right hand and a thin wisp of smoke still drifted upward from the muzzle. He frowned at Shayne in a puzzled manner and said in a perfectly reasonable voice:

“You didn’t have to break the door in. I would have unlocked it after I killed the son-of-a-bitch.”

Michael Shayne drew in a deep breath and expelled it slowly. He went toward the young man, holding out his hand, “Better let me have the gun.”

“Sure.” A twisted grin crossed Ralph Larson’s face and he jerked his head to toss the lock of black hair away from his eyes. He took the barrel of the. 38 in his left hand and ceremoniously offered the butt to Shayne. Then he looked past the redhead and said indifferently to Rourke, “Hello, Tim. You know I told you I was going to kill him. So I did, by God.”

Timothy Rourke said tightly, “I know.” He moved slowly into the room behind Shayne.

The detective slid the gun into his hip pocket and turned to look at the dead man. At that moment the wail of a police siren came to their ears. It rose to a banshee shriek as it approached the house rapidly, and then died to a low moan and silence in the driveway outside.

“He laughed at me, Tim,” Ralph Larson said earnestly, as though it was terribly necessary to explain things and justify himself. “He sat right there in the goddamned chair and laughed in my face when I told him I was going to kill him. He just couldn’t believe it, you see. His goddamned ego just wouldn’t allow him to accept the fact that I meant what I said. He was Wesley Ames, you see. He was immune from the fate that overtakes ordinary mortals. So he didn’t take me seriously. He laughed at me. Well, he knows better now. He’s not laughing now, by God. Because the joke’s on him. I’m the one who’s doing the laughing.”

And he did. He threw back his head and laughed. High, shrill laughter that cut through the silence in the room like a knife. Then he put his hands over his face and sank slowly down to sit cross-legged on the floor and his laughter turned into sobbing.

Outside the room there was the loud purposeful tramp of feet on the stairway, and voices, and Shayne turned to the open door to confront the police officers who had responded to Lucy’s telephone call too late.

The first man through the door was bulky and blue-coated, with a big protruding paunch and dull-witted, porcine features. He waved a service revolver menacingly, breathing heavily through open mouth; and he narrowed close-set eyes at Rourke and at Shayne, and then at the sobbing man seated on the floor and finally at the murdered man behind the desk.

“What’s going on here, huh? Stand still all of you. Nobody make a move.” He swung his revolver around, pointing it at first one and then the other, pouting his thick lips and drawing himself up with an air of ponderous authority on wide-spread flat feet.