Brett Halliday - Murder Is My Business

“Never,” said Larimer tightly. “I have a legitimate business and-”

“How much does he charge to rent clothes to soldiers?” Dyer demanded of the girl.

She lifted her head and widened her eyes at him. “I do not know. I theenk I weel ask-”

Chief Dyer uttered a disgusted exclamation and turned to stride out of the room. To the patrolman at the door he said, “Have Sergeant Lawson get all the dope, and then release them. You made the grab too fast. If you’d waited until the soldiers actually changed clothes in the shop, we’d have something.” Muttering to himself, he strode back to his office.

Cochrane and Jasper Dodge were lounging against the wall in front of his door. He brushed past them and went inside. Following Chief Dyer, Shayne was intercepted by Cochrane, who stepped in front of him and said, “Look here, Shayne. I want some answers-”

Shayne put a big hand flat against the reporter’s thin face, and shoved. He stepped inside the chief’s office and closed the door. Dyer was seated at his desk fitting a cigarette into his long holder. His naked-appearing face depicted extreme disgust. “That’s the way it is in police work,” he said. “Have to depend on a bunch of incompetents who go off half-cocked and ruin things.”

Shayne eased one hip onto a corner of the chief’s desk. “Speaking of those two back there?”

Dyer nodded. “We haven’t a thing on them now. And they’ll be careful from now on.”

Shayne lit a cigarette and blew smoke into a cloud already rising from a violent puff from Dyer. “Larimer appears to be some kind of a foreigner.”

“He speaks mighty good English,” growled Dyer.

“Too good,” Shayne said. “Too precise and bookish.”

“We’ll have to work up another lead on the racket now.”

“You could hold the girl,” Shayne suggested to the chief.

“On what? Juvenile delinquency? There are hundreds like her in Juarez and El Paso preying on the soldiers.”

Shayne’s gaunt face was grave. He murmured, “That would be a logical approach for a spy ring. Getting young soldiers across the border with a girl like Marquita. I suppose there are still places in Juarez that go the limit.”

“If there is any limit,” Dyer grunted. He leaned back to peer at the redheaded detective through a haze of cigarette smoke. “Are you saying there’s a spy ring operating here?”

“Could be. It’s a good spot. Close to the border, where information is easily relayed overseas.”

“What sort of information?” Dyer snapped. “What sense would there be in pumping a couple of privates? They possess about as much secret military information as a taxi driver.”

“If enough of them do enough talking, things begin to add up,” Shayne told him. “The modern espionage agent is taught the value of extracting minute bits of information from every source. Add ten thousand of them up and you may have something.”

“Do you think they’d hire a girl like Marquita for that?”

Shayne shrugged. “Not as a Mata Hari, but as a decoy to get the boys across the border to the right places. It’s just a thought,” he went on easily. “How did Cochrane take Thompson’s autopsy?”

“He choked over it,” Dyer chuckled. “The Free Press is all set to tear it to pieces as bought and paid for with Towne’s money.”

Shayne said pleasantly, “Towne didn’t like it either.”

“I know. He called me after you’d been out to see him. He figures you’re playing the Free Press’s game.”

Shayne grinned imperturbably and admitted, “Maybe I am.” He stood up and yawned, “Any chance of borrowing a spare police vehicle to do some poking around the city?”

Chief Dyer regarded him quizzically. “Who are you working for?”

“Myself. As far as I can see, I’m the only one actually interested in how and why the soldier was murdered before Towne ran over the body.”

“I’ve got men on it, but it looks like a dead end to me,” Dyer growled. “Look up Captain Gerlach and tell him I said to give you the key to one of the homicide crates.”

Shayne thanked him and sauntered out to look for Captain Gerlach.

Half an hour later Michael Shayne was rolling west on Main Street as it roughly paralleled the course of the Rio Grande out toward the smelters. He was driving an unmarked coupe loaned to him by Captain Gerlach.

He turned to the right at the intersection of Lawton, and drove the one block toward Missouri at about twenty miles an hour. The two streets met at an acute angle, and at that speed Shayne had to swing the coupe out in a wide arc to make the turn eastward onto Missouri. It was quite evident that the sharp corner could not be negotiated at a greater speed than he had been driving.

He pulled the coupe in to the curb and walked back toward the corner. Faint chalk marks still remained on the pavement, showing where the police had outlined the position of the soldier’s body and had traced the tire marks of Towne’s limousine around the corner. The chalk lines indicating the path of Towne’s tires stopped about ten feet beyond where the body had been run over.

Shayne stood on the curb and studied the chalk marks carefully. Towne’s heavy limousine had cut the corner more sharply than the coupe, indicating that Towne was driving at even less than twenty miles per hour, an assumption that was borne out by the fact that he had stopped within ten feet after running over the body.

The spot had been well chosen if the body was placed in the street in the hope of having it run over by a car rounding the corner at slow speed. The acuteness of the angle would prevent a driver from seeing what lay ahead until his car was fully straightened out. And at dusk, when headlights give little actual illumination, Shayne could see that it had been easily possible for a driver to strike a body lying in the street without realizing it until the wheels passed over it.

He went back and got into the coupe and drove along slowly, stopping in front of a little stuccoed house set well back from the street behind a neat hedge of cedar. He got out and went up a gravel walk to the front door and pressed the bell. The hedge extended past both sides of the house, effectually screening it from its neighbors.

A woman opened the door and looked out at him. She was about forty, with a well-kept figure for a Mexican woman of that age. She had pleasantly placid features, dark skin, and her cheeks were smoothly plump beneath high cheekbones. Her black hair was drawn back severely from a broad, unlined forehead. She looked at him with perfect self-possession and waited for him to state his business.

Shayne pulled off his hat and said, “Good afternoon. Mr. Jefferson Towne sent me.”

She raised black brows until they made a straight line above her eyes and said, “I do not understand.”

“Jeff Towne,” said Shayne expansively. “Didn’t he telephone you that I was coming?”

Her eyes were puzzled, and she moved her head slowly from side to side. “I do not have telephone, Senor.”

“I guess he meant to come around and tell you, or send a message. Anyhow, he sent me to have a talk with you.” Shayne tried out his most disarming smile.

Her eyes were very dark, a soft, liquid brown. She stood looking at him with disconcerting steadiness and it was impossible to know what she was thinking, or if she was thinking at all. She was clothed with dignity and a stoic reserve characteristic of her race. For a baffled moment Shayne thought that Carmela must be mistaken with regard to her relationship with Jefferson Towne, but he made a move to step forward and said, “May I come inside where we can talk?”

She stood aside, then, to let him enter.