Brett Halliday - The Corpse Came Calling

“You lie,” Shayne told her. “You know I never want you to do such a thing. Good God, angel, you’re not the type to cope with a gang of killers-guys like we were forced to entertain yesterday afternoon.”

“I found that out,” she confessed. “I’m pretty sure now that she told Leroy who I was and they acted as they did to decoy me outside where they could grab me. Because Leroy and that other man were waiting right outside the door and they threw a sack over my head as I stepped out. I didn’t see the girl again.”

Shayne stood very still. “You didn’t take any taxi ride? You’re sure Leroy helped grab you right at the door?”

“Of course I’m sure. They took me to a storeroom at the rear of the restaurant. What do you mean about a taxi ride?”

Shayne shook his head wonderingly. He said, “I’ve listened to so many lies in the past fifteen hours that I feel punch drunk, and I haven’t had a drink for hours.”

He tugged at his ear, then went into the bedroom and called the Tidewater Hotel. He asked if they had an Ann Adams registered, and was connected with room 212.

When Helen answered, he said, “Hi, toots. This is your redheaded boy friend. Remember me?”

He nodded, listening, cocked a shaggy eyebrow at Phyllis, who had followed him and stood by with a belligerent light in her dark eyes.

“That’s what I thought,” Shayne said into the transmitter. “Sit tight and I’ll be over to settle with you.”

He cradled the phone and swung around to face his wife. She sniffed the air of the bedroom with wrinkled nose. “The bed is mussed and I smell heliotrope,” she charged. “Mike Shayne, you had that female here last night.”

“Only a part of the night.” He put his hands on her shoulders and moved her out of the doorway. “I’ll tell you about it later. Right now, I’ve got a date with a blonde.”

“A date? When you’ve hardly even seen me after being locked up all night?”

“This blonde uses heliotrope perfume,” Shayne said. “You heard me promise I’d be right over. I owe her something, and you know how I am about paying my obligations, angel.”

Phyllis said, “Maybe I’d better buy a quart of heliotrope and a gallon of peroxide to blondine my hair. I could-”

Shayne was going out the door and she gave up in disgust. Sometimes Michael Shayne could be the damnedest man.

In the lobby of the Tidewater Hotel on Flagler Street, Shayne went directly to an elevator and said, “Two.” When he stepped out, he looked at the room numbers and strode down a corridor to 212.

He rapped on the door, and Helen opened it immediately. Her gray silk dress was wrinkled, as though it had been slept in. She swayed as she faced him. He smelled whisky on her breath and looked past her to see an almost empty bottle on the bedside table.

She pouted her lips and said, “Well, you took your time to come see me.”

He stepped past her. “You’re drunk,” he said.

“Well, why shouldn’t I be drunk. What else was there to do? Did you expect me to sit here and go nuts? I’m afraid to go out-didn’t know what might happen.” She swayed past him and sank down on her unmade bed.

Shayne didn’t answer her. He prowled through the room, peering into the bathroom and the clothes closet.

Helen lay back on the pillow and laughed at him. “A person would think you were jealous. Want to look under the bed, too?”

Shayne said, “I always check a hotel room when I’m visiting a female like you. Never know when you’ll think up a new variation of the badger game-like last night.”

“Last night?” Helen’s eyes didn’t quite focus on his face.

“Have you forgotten last night already?” He whirled toward her. “Good God, is that all a murder means to you?”

“Murder is an ugly word.” She tried to be coquettish with her eyelashes.

Shayne pulled up a straight chair and sat down. “Let’s go back beyond last night. Let’s go back to New York.”

“Damn New York,” she broke in pettishly. “I’m dying to know what’s happened. Did you make a cleanup?”

Shayne shrugged. “I did all right. A grand from Houseman. And I guess there’ll be a hunk of reward money from the bonding company.”

“Reward money?” She shrank back. “You double-crossed him-turned him in?”

“Suppose I did? Wouldn’t you call that smart?”

“Maybe it was at that. With all the heat on Houseman.” She laughed weakly. “Christ, but you’re a card. And I thought at first you were dumb. Reward money? Well, don’t I get my split? If I hadn’t told you how things were, you’d never have figured that angle.”

Shayne said, “If you hadn’t lied every time you opened your mouth, I might not have checked too closely. But don’t worry, you’ll get everything that’s coming to you. And I guess you do deserve something. You fingered Morgan for the New York rap, didn’t you-after he had given you his piece of the claim check? The papers said the police were tipped off by an anonymous informant.”

“Sure I did.” She giggled. “I helped him plan the whole job-shipping the money here and all.”

“But Barton crossed you and Lacy up,” Shayne said sympathetically. “He had a third of the claim check and he wouldn’t play ball-simply because you’d framed Mace.”

“That’s right. Can you feature a cluck like that? Claimed it wouldn’t be honorable as long as Mace was up the river. And a hundred grand sitting here in Miami to be picked up.”

“Some people,” said Shayne, “have screwy ideas about honor. So when Harry Houseman came along from the clink and made an offer for Mace’s piece of cardboard, you figured you were playing him for a sap by selling it to him-because you didn’t think it would be any more use to him than it was to you.”

“Look. How do you figure all these angles?” she asked suspiciously.

“I’ve just been adding things up the way I know your mind works. You must have been plenty sore when you read about Houseman robbing Barton’s apartment.”

“I’ll say. What a boob I was to sell him Mace’s piece for a lousy grand. When Lacy skipped town I knew he’d thrown in with Houseman and they were cutting me out. So I grabbed a train, too. And when I got here I found them arguing over the split. Houseman held out for two thirds on account of he had two thirds of the claim check, but Lacy held out for a fifty-fifty split.”

“And you threw in with Houseman,” Shayne guessed, “because he had two of his old mob with him and Lacy was playing a lone hand.”

“Wouldn’t you have done the same?” she asked thickly.

Shayne shrugged and pressed on. “In the meantime, Mace had got word of the double cross he was getting from his wife and buddy and he crashed out and came down.”

“Yeh. Frothing at the kisser. He was gunning for Jim and me-but wanting his cut of the money. He’d given us until last night to kick through.” She shuddered. “That’s why he had to be taken care of.”

“And that’s why you planned last night’s kill.” Shayne’s lips came back from his teeth. “Using me for a decoy and putting me on the spot so I had to cover up for you.”

“No. I swear I didn’t plan it. It was an accident-Mace coming there-”

“You got my wife out of the way to set the scene and hurried over with a long lie about not knowing what had happened to her. And I halfway believed you, God help me.”

“Well, I did want a chance to talk to you alone,” she admitted sullenly.

“You got a better chance than you expected. You crawled into bed and telephoned Mace to come to my apartment-not telling him you were there, but that I had Lacy’s piece of the claim check.”

“I did not,” she cried wildly. “I didn’t know he was coming. I was so scared when he caught me there. When I heard him talking-”