Brett Halliday - The Corpse Came Calling

“No! I swear I didn’t know Mace was coming. That’s a terrible thing to accuse me of.” She shuddered. “As though I’d planned it.”

“Yeh. They call it premeditated murder in front of a jury.”

“I didn’t do that. No matter what you think of me, I didn’t. But when Mace came and caught us-”

Shayne made a savage gesture to shut off her protestations. “That’s beside the point now. It worked out that way whether you planned it or not. Why don’t you turn off the waterworks and tell me the truth about a couple of things for a change?”

She sniffed loudly, trying to dry her tears with a wispy handkerchief. Shayne handed her a big linen handkerchief. He settled back and lit a cigarette, waiting for her to stop crying. When she blew her nose and gulped back a final sob, he asked matter-of-factly:

“Why did you think Mace would kill you if you didn’t get him first?”

“He threatened to. He had a terrible temper.”

“You were going to tell me the truth,” Shayne reminded her. “You were double-crossing him. You and Lacy. He found out about it and crashed out of stir to follow you here. You were afraid to turn him in as an escaped convict because you knew he’d turn canary and spoil the deal you and Lacy were working on together. That’s the way it reads-and that’s the only way it reads.”

Her face screwed up for crying again, but after studying Shayne’s stony features for a moment, she nodded and said, “It was-sort of like that. But I didn’t intend to double-cross Mace. I would have saved his part for him until he got out of jail.”

“But you couldn’t make him believe it?” Shayne prodded her relentlessly.

“No. He-he wouldn’t listen when I tried to tell him I was doing it for him.”

Shayne laughed. “Knew you too well to swallow a lie like that, eh? I suppose he gave you his part of the claim check when they sent him up the river?”

“Yes. He gave it to me to keep for him. But I didn’t know what it was. He wouldn’t tell me-except that it was something important.”

“Where is it now?”

“I don’t know. That is-well, not exactly.”

“What did you do with it?”

She sprang up suddenly, a wild look in her eyes. “Give me a drink,” she begged. “I’ll tell you everything. I know I can trust you. There’s no one else now-with Jim and Mace both dead.”

Shayne poured her a drink in Rourke’s glass, glancing down at Rourke’s limp body as he handed it to her. Rourke’s thin lips purled out at regular intervals, making a soft, snoring sound.

Helen seized the glass avidly, slopping some of the cognac as she raised it to her lips. She drank half of it in two gulps, then sputtered, and her eyes watered. But the strong potion gave her a lift, and her voice was quiet and resolute as she began her story.

“Like I said, I didn’t know what the little strip of cardboard was when Mace gave it to me to keep for him. He thought he’d draw a short rap, but they hung a five-to-eight on him. Well, I didn’t think much about it-I couldn’t make out what the parts of words and figures meant-until a couple of weeks ago.

“Then a man came to see me in New York. His name was Harry Houseman. He said Mace had sent him. He’d been Mace’s cellmate and was just released after doing his time. He said I was to give him the piece of cardboard-that Mace had said for me to. So I did.”

“For how much?” Shayne asked caustically.

She widened her eyes. “What?”

“How much did you get for it?”

“What makes you think-”

“You’re not the type to pass it over for nothing. You knew it must be valuable. How much did you charge Houseman?”

Color spread over her face. She took another drink of cognac, then said defiantly, “Well, why not? Sure, I knew it must be valuable. I deserved anything I could get out of Mace. God knows he never supported me. Most of the time I had to support him. And he didn’t leave me a dime to live on-”

“Don’t justify yourself to me,” Shayne interrupted impatiently. “How much did Houseman pay you?”

“A thousand dollars. And he haggled about it for two days. The lug. He swore it wasn’t worth that much.”

“One grand?” Shayne whistled. “You evidently didn’t know what it represented.”

“No. That’s what Jim said. Jim Lacy. He came around a couple of days later raving about me practically giving it away. That was the first time I knew-that Lacy knew anything about it. And he hadn’t known until then that Mace had left it with me.”

“Houseman had gone to Lacy to arrange the payoff,” Shayne surmised.

“That’s right. That’s exactly the way it was. Well, Jim said I might as well come down to Miami with him and maybe I could persuade Houseman to give me a bigger split-or we might work on him together-refuse to go in with him unless he agreed to take a smaller cut. Like Jim said, Houseman really didn’t deserve any of it. He’d just horned in and sold me a bill of goods.”

“And Houseman’s in Miami, too?” Shayne asked softly.

“Yes. He’s here.”

“Where?”

“I-why should I tell you everything?” Helen suddenly became defiant. “How do I know you won’t take the whole thing into court?”

“You don’t.”

“Well, then-”

“You’re out anyway,” Shayne argued. “What have you got to lose? You’re on the outside. Lacy’s dead-”

“And you’ve got Lacy’s piece,” she charged. “I heard you admit it to your friend there.”

“Maybe I have. Tell me where I can find Houseman and I’ll see if I can fix a deal with him.”

“What’s in it for me?”

“I tell you, you’re out in the cold. Hell, I covered you in Morgan’s murder. Isn’t that enough?”

“I can’t live on that.”

“You’ll keep on living,” Shayne reminded her. “Which is more than you might have done if I’d turned you over to the law tonight.”

“But that’s already done,” she pointed out. “You can’t change your story now. And it’d be just about as tough on you as on me if you did tell the truth.”

“So,” said Shayne slowly, “I don’t get any credit for that?”

“Credit?” She spoke with a strident note of scorn. “You can have all the credit you want. All I’m interested in is the cash.”

Shayne studied her for a moment. Then he shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t need your information. Houseman has already come to me. He had to.”

Helen hesitated, turning the glass around in her fingers. “That advertisement I heard you phone to the paper-was that it?”

Shayne nodded.

“You’re a fool if you sell out for a thousand,” she cried.

“You sold him Mace’s part for that.”

“But that was before I knew what it was worth. Can’t you see that you’ve got Houseman where you want him? He’ll pay ten-maybe fifty times a thousand if you hold out.”

“I’m not in a position to hold out,” Shayne said tonelessly. “He’s got my wife.”

“Your wife? You mean-”

“So he’s got me where he wants me, too,” Shayne explained. “I took a chance by demanding a grand extra-a little something to pay expenses.”

She looked tragically disappointed. “You’re a fool if you don’t collect big. Suppose he has got your wife? She’s no good to him.”

“Except to make me come across.”

“Oh, he’ll bluff with her, of course. But you can bluff right back. All you’ve got to do is make him believe you don’t care what happens to your wife. That won’t be hard for you. You know what they say about you in Miami-that you’d sell your own mother out for enough money.”

Shayne’s gaunt features tightened. “Yes,” he admitted. “I know that’s what they say about me.” He frowned, then asked, “What about the third man in the deal?”