Brett Halliday - Counterfeit Wife

“In other words, because someone mistook him for you.”

“Not necessarily that. But at least because someone came there looking for me and ran into him instead.”

“Dawson?”

“It could be,” Shayne agreed. “Your timetable doesn’t exclude Emory Hale or Arthur Deland until we have a more positive check on their movements.”

“Here’s something I’ve been wondering about,” said Rourke thoughtfully. “Why did Dawson jump the plane at Palm Beach? He had your ticket all the way to New Orleans, and we presume he didn’t know anything about the switched suitcases until he got his bag from the plane and opened it. Why didn’t he just keep on going?”

“That’s something we’ll have to ask Dawson when the time comes, though there is a perfectly reasonable explanation. He knew there’d be a big stink raised as soon as the deadline passed and neither he nor Kathleen Deland showed up. The police would start looking for him, and he didn’t know how soon I might hear his description broadcast and recognize him as the man using my plane ticket. All I had to do was notify the police and they could wire ahead and have him jerked off the plane. He played safe by jumping at the first stop.”

“That makes sense,” Rourke agreed. “To get back to Hale and Deland. How could either of them have possibly gone up to your apartment and run into Slocum by mistake? As far as we know, neither of them even knew a man named Michael Shayne existed at that time.”

“Dawson knew it,” Shayne reminded him. “And Irvin. And maybe Fred Gurney-though I didn’t think Gurney recognized me at the Fun Club.”

“Hale and Deland came home together a little after four,” Rourke told him, glancing at his sheet of paper again. “Hale was fairly tight, but Deland appeared cold sober. He claimed he’d picked Hale up in some joint and persuaded him to come home with him.”

“When?” asked Shayne sharply.

“They didn’t say when they met. I got the impression that it wasn’t long after Deland found him that they got home.”

Shayne said, “Arthur Deland was at Papa La Tour’s rest home asking for Fred Gurney shortly after two o’clock this morning, and Papa told him that he might find Fred at the Fun Club.”

Rourke’s jaw gaped open and his feverish and bloodshot eyes held disbelief. “Good God, Mike! Then Deland could have made the phone call that sent Gurney to the Tower Cottages to be killed.”

“He could have,” Shayne agreed morosely. “And here’s something else to chew on-both Dawson and Deland knew Greerson, which is the name Irvin used on Thirty-eighth Street. Or at least they knew of him,” he amended. “Something screwy about a plumbing repair job that Greerson was never billed for.” He went on to give Rourke a brief account of the rambling monologue Miss Morrison had given him.

When he finished, Rourke said, “Dawson’s announced intention of buying his partner out after he received an expected legacy sounds like another angle. Could the ransom money have been the legacy he hoped to get?”

“Dawson fits perfectly,” Shayne admitted, “if it weren’t for that goddamned counterfeit money. That doesn’t fit anywhere.”

“Seems to me Bates is the man to give you the low-down on that,” suggested Rourke eagerly. “If Irvin has disappeared-”

Shayne looked at his watch and nodded. “Bates should just about be reaching the Fun Club. Want to go along while I ask him?”

“I wouldn’t miss it.” Rourke downed the rest of his rye. “Want another shot before we go?”

“No more for me. Bates owes me a few drinks and I think it’s time I collected.”

The Fun Club looked drab and lifeless with the hot afternoon sun revealing its ugly architecture and peeling paint. There was one car parked in front of the entrance. Shayne pulled in beside it and stopped.

Inside, the place was even drearier. Window shades were drawn, and the dead air still held the stench of last night’s liquor and smoke. Two men wearing overalls were drinking beer at the bar, and a bartender leaned against the cash register, picking his teeth with a sharpened matchstick. He was not the same man who had been on duty the previous night, and he looked at Shayne and Rourke without recognition and without interest.

They chose two stools near the end. Shayne said, “Hennessy. Two double shots.” He turned the revolving stool to look across the gloomy interior toward the door leading into Bates’s office. It stood ajar a few inches, and light showed through the opening.

The bartender set two glasses in front of them and turned to get a bottle of cognac.

Shayne said, “Never mind pouring it. Just set it down. I like to pour my own.”

The man apathetically set the bottle on the counter. Shayne picked it up by the neck with his right hand and, taking an empty glass with the other, said to Rourke, “Bring your glass along and we’ll have a drink with the boss.”

They crossed over to the office door, and Shayne pushed it wide open. A bright ceiling globe illuminated Bates’s desk. He was evidently going over some accounts. An open ledger was at his right hand, and there were bills spread out in front of him. His large ears protruded more grotesquely than Shayne remembered, and his big mouth tightened into a straight line across his square face when he looked up and saw the detective.

He didn’t say anything, but made an involuntary movement with his right hand toward the half-open drawer of the desk.

Shayne advanced swiftly, swinging the cognac bottle. “Don’t try it, Bates. You might get hurt.”

Bates put his hands on top of the desk, his worried gaze moving from Shayne’s face to the pleased grin Rourke wore.

Shayne set his glass down on a corner of the desk, reached inside the open drawer and withdrew the. 45 with which Bates had menaced him the preceding night. He slid it into his hip pocket, then poured his glass full of cognac, glanced at Rourke, and said, “Hold out your glass, Tim. I’ve got lots of credit here, haven’t I, Bates?”

“What credit?” growled Bates.

“Don’t you remember? I left something behind last night,” said Shayne cheerfully.

“A phony C-note,” the square man charged.

“But a sweet job. You said so yourself. Worth at least forty bucks in the open market, and I only had a couple of drinks out of it.”

Bates folded the fingers of both hands together and didn’t say anything. Shayne moved back to sit in one of the cane-bottomed chairs, and Rourke folded his stringy body into the other.

Shayne set the uncorked bottle on the floor beside him, took a sip of cognac from his glass, then asked Bates, “Heard anything from the senator this morning?”

“I don’t know any politicians,” said Bates stoically.

“Senator Irvin.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Could be you think his name is really Greerson,” Shayne admitted. “The big shot to you.”

Bates sat stolidly silent, his mouth a closed vise and his cold eyes slitted.

Shayne lifted himself and leaned forward with his left hand supporting his weight on the desk between them. With his open right hand he slapped Bates’s square face. The blow sounded loud in the office.

Bates cursed in a low tone, shoved back his chair, and stood with knotted fists in an attitude of self-defense.

Shayne remained leaning forward with both hands on the desk. He said, “Getchie got himself killed last night. Sit down in that chair and start talking before something like that happens to you.”

In a voice choked with impotent rage, Bates said, “You can’t slap me around like that, damn you.”