Brett Halliday - The Careless Corpse

Rourke.

“Maybe.” Shayne studied the picture frames speculatively, wondering if anyone would expect to find a bracelet concealed between the picture and cardboard backing. He moved forward and knelt down beside the dead girl, put his hand on her cold wrist and lifted the arm enough to determine that rigor had already begun to stiffen her flesh. “At least three hours ago,” he muttered, settling back on his haunches and tugging at his earlobe thoughtfully.

“Let’s get the hell out of here, Mike,” Rourke said nervously. “Suppose those cops across the street decide to pay her a visit and find us here?”

“Why should they? So far as I know the Miami cops don’t even know who she is.”

“But they may revive one of the Beach men and he’ll tell them about her… including the fact that I was cruising around the neighborhood looking for a chance to interview her.”

“Yeh. They might at that,” Shayne agreed happily. He swung to his feet and went to the window to draw the shade aside a crack and peer out. “But I don’t really think so. Looks like they’re pouring them both into the back of the patrol car.”

“But it won’t be long before they do,” protested Rourke.

“That’s why you’d better jump the gun by reporting the body first,” Shayne said, turning from the window. “It makes sense,” he insisted. “They shooed you off from visiting her, and you stopped in the corner bar for a drink. Then they got in this street fight and knocked each other out, and you seized the opportunity to come up anyway. Sure,” he said persuasively. “You grab that phone as soon as I get out of here, and call Gentry. That way you’ll be in on the whole story.”

“The cops will have to go to Peralta when they discover her connection with him.”

“Probably. That’s why I’ve got to get there first.” Shayne looked down sombrely at the girl’s lax body again. She was fully clothed except for her feet which were shoeless, and her nylon-clad legs were drawn up in tight vees against her thighs, indicating the agony of her death throes. From his position Shayne could see the sole of her stockinged left foot, and his eyes narrowed as he stared at it from across the room.

“Painter and Erskine will be sore as hell,” Rourke began, but Michael Shayne wasn’t listening to him. He was moving forward slowly, staring intently at the body, and Rourke watched in open-mouthed amazement as he dropped to his knees beside the corpse again, and began tugging the hem of her white dress up over her knees to expose bare white thighs.

“For Christ’s sake, Mike!” he exclaimed in revulsion. “You said she’d been dead for three hours.”

Shayne disregarded him, exposing the snaps of her garter-belt and clumsily unfastening them from the top of her left nylon.

Rourke continued to watch in angry perplexity while the detective stripped the stocking down off the cold flesh and free from her foot. Then he peeled a small square of yellow cardboard from the instep and stood up, looking down at it broodingly.

“What in hell is that, Mike?”

“It looks like the torn half of a claim check,” Shayne told him casually.

Rourke swallowed hard and his gaze darted about the room. “You think that’s what the murderer was looking for?”

“It’s a good guess.” Shayne dropped it in his side pocket and went back briskly to the window where he peered out again.

“Coast is clear,” he announced. “They’re going around the corner headed downtown.” He turned back, tugging Rourke’s own automatic out of his hip pocket, holding it carefully by the corrugated handgrip. He looked down at the gun bleakly for a long moment while Rourke watched him uneasily, and then dropped it on the floor.

“I’m going to make a trade with Will Gentry,” he announced, “but you don’t have to tell him, Tim. That’s your gun on the floor, by the way. Don’t touch it. I think it may very well have the murderer’s fingerprints on the barrel. Blurred, maybe, but they should be able to get enough for comparison with any prints they can pick up here.”

“Whose prints, Mike?”

Shayne shook his red head maddeningly. “I don’t think you should know. Just be sure that they get prints from it, and check them against what they find here.”

“But it’s my gun, Mike. How shall I tell Will it got here?”

Shayne paused a moment, tugging at his ear-lobe while he considered this.

“Tell it to him this way, Tim. That I used your car this evening, and after he and Erskine left my apartment, I told you to be careful handling your pistol because I thought the barrel of it might carry the fingerprints of the man who stole Peralta’s emerald bracelet. Then say you brought it with you when you came up to see Felice, and dropped it on the floor when you saw her lying there. That should cover up pretty well.”

“Yeh,” said Rourke unhappily. “For you, maybe. If the murderer’s prints are on it, I’m going to be ’way out on a limb.”

“Why, no, Tim.” Shayne smiled happily. “You’ll be the man of the hour. Reporter’s gun identifies murderer,” he declaimed loudly. He walked toward the reporter. “You got it straight, Tim. Call in as soon as I leave, but stall as much as you can when they get here to keep them off Peralta. There’ll be a certain amount of protocol involved anyway, with Painter insisting on handling the Beach end. It should give me plenty of time.”

“Time for what, Mike?”

“To wrap things up and maybe get my hands on the other half of this claim check.” Shayne stopped in front of Rourke who stood stubbornly in front of the closed door. His face was deeply trenched and his gray eyes were bleak. “And maybe find Lucy,” he added as though she were a casual afterthought.

Timothy Rourke wet his lips and dropped his eyes before the redhead’s hard gaze. He nodded unwillingly and stepped aside to let Shayne go out, and muttered, “Good hunting.”

Shayne went past him and hurried down the stairs. A little knot of interested onlookers had gathered across the street while the patrol car was there, but they were dispersed now and the last of the laggards were turning into the cocktail lounge for a nightcap and to discuss the queer affair of two drunkards getting out of a parked car to knock each other out cold in the street.

No one noticed Shayne slip out of the house and hurry back to the Boulevard and Rourke’s car with the key in the ignition where the reporter always left it. He got in and started the motor and drove south toward the Causeway to Miami Beach.

The Jai Alai Club on South Miami Beach was, like Las Putas Buenas on the Miami riverfront, almost exclusively patronized by a Spanish-speaking clientele, but there the resemblance ended.

The Jai Alai Club was quiet, well-run, and orderly. There was a small bar, it is true, but it dispensed mostly cerveza. There were two well-patronized billiard tables in front, and ranged along the wall toward the back were a series of small tables where chess, checkers and card games were quietly enjoyed by players who could toy with a single glass of beer for an hour without being noticeable.

It was eleven-thirty when Michael Shayne walked into the Club. Both billiard tables were in use, and most of the tables toward the rear had occupants.

Shayne walked back past the bar slowly, noticing that most of the patrons were middle-aged and well-dressed, and that none of them did more than glance at him incuriously as he passed by.

A middle-aged and very fat Cuban sat with an alert young companion at the last table in the rear. They weren’t playing any game, nor did they have drinks in front of them. Shayne paused beside their table and said, “I am looking for Senor Alvarez.”