Brett Halliday - Counterfeit Wife

Shayne laid the bill down and folded his hands again. Juke-box music came softly through the open door behind him.

“This is Bates, proprietor of the Fun Club,” the man at the desk finally said. “I got a C-note from that batch of fifty G’s you been huntin’.”

He listened for a moment, his face impassive, his gaze and the muzzle of the gun steady on the detective.

“Yeh. I got him here. He ain’t sayin’ where he got it. Yeh. Tough-like. Oh, he’ll stick around till the boys get here. I got a gun on him that says he’ll sit quiet. Sure. That’ll be fine.”

Bates pronged the receiver, picked up a half-smoked cigar from an ash tray, and settled back as comfortably as he could in the straight-backed chair.

Shayne kept his hands straight in front of him. He got up easily, careful to make no sudden motion. “That gun of yours,” he told Bates quietly, “is going to make a hell of a noise if you trigger it in here. I don’t believe you want all your customers to see you shoot an unarmed man.” He backed slowly toward the open door. A deepening of the trenches in his cheeks was the only evidence that he was under any undue tension. “I’m going to turn around and walk out,” he went on evenly. “I’m keeping my hands where you can see them so you won’t have any excuse for blasting me in the back.”

He turned in the doorway, dropping his hands limply at his sides. The interior of the Fun Club was just as it had been before, except that the somnambulistic dancers had collapsed in chairs at one of the tables and were wearily sipping drinks. A big fat man and a short plump woman had taken their place on the dance floor, and the man was slowly pumping the woman’s arm up and down to a dismal tune from the juke-box.

Mrs. Dawson turned her head to look at Shayne as he walked out of Bates’s private office. He went slowly toward her, his hands still hanging limply. He hadn’t formulated any plan but he knew he was fairly safe as long as he remained out in the open in sight of the customers of the Fun Club and until reinforcements arrived for Bates. He didn’t know how soon that would be nor what form they would take.

Right now he wanted to get close to the big blonde. She was his only contact with Dawson-the man who had slipped him the two hundred-dollar bills in exchange for passage to New Orleans. He had to work fast, gain her confidence somehow-

Shayne eased himself into the chair opposite her. She emptied the second half of the drink he had bought her, staring steadily at him over the rim of her glass.

Then she set it down, ran her tongue over her lips, and asked, “What’s all this monkey business about? I know Dawson was trying to get a plane out of town at midnight. If he’s run out on us-”

“I’ve got a couple of minutes,” Shayne interrupted her harshly. “Shut up and listen to me.”

Her eyes widened. “A couple of minutes?”

“Before some gunmen come in after me.” He turned his head to look at the open door of Bates’s office. He couldn’t see the proprietor but knew he was being watched from inside the room.

“That isn’t long enough to tell you what you want to know about your husband,” he said rapidly.

“My husband?”

“Sure. Only he told me his name was Parson.”

She said, “I haven’t got any husband.” Her eyes narrowed as she concentrated her gaze on his face. “I get you now. You were at the airline ticket office while I was asking about him.”

Shayne nodded impatiently. “I trailed you here in a taxi. Do we go somewhere and talk things over?”

“Where is Dawson?”

“I’m the only man in Miami who can tell you.”

“Well?”

“If I stay alive long enough,” Shayne amended.

The big blonde considered that statement for a moment, looking away from him.

Shayne leaned forward and took hold of her wrist. The bone was large under the generous covering of flesh. He said, “I’m not playing games. We’ve got maybe a couple of minutes to get away from here where we can talk.”

“And if we don’t?”

“Then you lose your chance to find out about Dawson.”

“Are you in trouble?”

“Plenty. I walked out of Bates’s office with a gun on my back. He’s got some boys on the way here now to take care of me.”

She nodded thoughtfully, and again her eyes traveled past Shayne to the rear of the room. She lifted her free hand and brushed her fingers across her forehead, then pressed her eyelids with the tips of two fingers.

Shayne realized she had reached that certain stage of drunkenness at which her thought processes were clear and direct but not swift-a condition in which her brain grasped the essentials of a situation and disregarded all side issues.

She said, “I wondered what Batesey wanted with you.”

“Is that gray sedan outside yours?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sober enough to push it?”

She smiled suddenly. It was the first time he had seen her smile. Her eyes crinkled at the corners and she smiled all over her face like a delighted child. “I’ve been soberer,” she told him, and added, “and a hell of a lot drunker.”

Shayne released her wrist. He said rapidly and in a low voice, “Go out and crank it up. I’ll wander out toward the door, but I’ll stay in the light, where there are too many people for Bates to do his stuff. Wheel the heap up as close as you can, and I’ll make a run for it.”

“What about him?” She inclined her head ever so slightly toward a rear table near the telephone booth where Fred Gurney sat glowering at them.

“Leave him out of it,” Shayne said lightly and swiftly. “You won’t be sorry, if we can get out of this together.”

The woman said thickly with a hint of excitement, “I don’t think I’d be sorry at that. But I could use a bracer-”

“Hell! Get going,” Shayne whispered furiously. “You’re carrying a big enough load now.”

Her face grew sullen and she started to protest, but after a long look into Shayne’s angry gray eyes, she got up and walked toward the front door without wavering. Shayne glanced at Gurney’s table and saw that the fellow had half risen as though to follow her. Gurney looked from her moving figure to Shayne, and Shayne shook his head not more than an inch. Gurney tightened his thin lips, and his scowl deepened, but he hesitated only a second before reseating himself.

Timing himself impatiently, waiting to give the blonde a chance to get the car to the door, Shayne wondered what sort of a deal they were working on together and what it had to do with Dawson. Why had she claimed at the airport that the dough-faced man was her husband, and now to him declared she had no husband? He wondered whether he was making a fool of himself and whether, after all, there could have been two men of the same description both trying to get tickets on Flight Sixty-two.

He glanced at the private office and saw Bates standing in the open doorway, his mouth grim and his worried, slate-gray eyes flickering from Shayne to the front entrance.

Shayne got up and went toward the door.

Bates moved quickly to intercept him. He said, loudly enough to be heard above the moan of the juke-box and the excited voices of the people in the room, “No you don’t, pal. You don’t get out of here without paying for the drinks.” His right hand was hidden inside his sagging pocket.

Shayne kept right on walking toward the door. He heard a motor racing outside. Then it was throttled down to a steady purr.

Bates was moving in at an angle to intercept him before he reached the door. He went on talking in a loud and angry voice. “You’re not walking outta here without paying. That’s a lead-pipe cinch. I don’t want trouble, but I-”