Brett Halliday: Murder Is My Business

Holden pursed his thick lips and nodded. “Naturally I’d rather not have any trouble.”

“Worth anything to you to keep it quiet that the soldier was murdered before Towne’s car ever touched him?” Shayne asked gently.

Cochrane repeated, “Murdered?” in a shrill voice, but neither of the others looked at him.

Holden blinked his eyelids and asked coolly, “Is that the angle you’re working on, shamus?”

“How do you like it?”

“I don’t like it,” he sighed. “Homicide investigations always stir up a lot of dirt.”

“Somebody should have thought about that — before they planted a body where Towne would run over it.”

Holden asked, “Can you prove that?”

Shayne shrugged his wide shoulders. “It’s a reasonable assumption — as soon as we accept the murder theory. And Doc Thompson will make a good witness.”

“I don’t like it,” Holden told him.

“It’s one of his damned crooked tricks!” Cochrane blazed out. “Everyone knows he pulls that kind of stuff all the time.”

Shayne glanced at him and warned, “You’re not sitting too well. Your article last night sounded as though you had prior knowledge of what an autopsy might bring out.”

“Nuts!” Cochrane shot back venomously. “I knew that’s the sort of thing you’d try to pull.”

Shayne said, “A jury might think differently — if I can show you knew Towne was going to turn that corner just when he did.” He turned his attention back to the fat man. “How do you feel about your hundred grand now?”

“Quite well.” Holden was unperturbed. “I don’t think you’re going to stir up a stink, Shayne.”

“I’m open to offers.”

“I’m not bidding against Towne,” Holden said. “I’m telling you to get out of El Paso.”

“I’ve got to make a profit,” Shayne told him. “With a hundred grand riding on the election, you could afford to do some bidding.”

“But I’d never be sure Towne wouldn’t go higher.” Manny Holden took a sip of his highball and added regretfully, “You’d better go back to New Orleans.”

“How’d you like it if I twisted things around to prove that Towne killed the soldier before he ran over him?”

Holden moved his head slowly from side to side. “Things were going all right until you showed up. They’ll be all right again as soon as you get out of town.”

“It’s easier to buy me off than to run me off,” Shayne warned him.

“I don’t think so. This isn’t your town, Shayne. It belongs to me.”

Shayne said, “All right.” He stood up, his gaunt face inscrutable. “Be seeing you around,” he said to Neil Cochrane and went out.

The door of his hotel room stood slightly ajar when he returned. He knew he had locked it when he went out. He walked casually past the door, glancing aside through the crack as he went by, but was unable to see anything inside.

He went on around the corner of the corridor and stopped. He took his time about lighting a cigarette, moving back to a position where he could watch the door. It stayed slightly ajar.

The incident didn’t make much sense to Shayne. If this was an ambush, the person inside his room was playing it dumb to leave the door open to warn him. On the other hand, he realized fully that he had stayed alive for a lot of precarious years by never taking anything for granted.

He tranquilly smoked his cigarette down to a short butt, then walked rapidly along the corridor, drawing his gun as he approached his door from the wrong direction.

He hit the open door with his left shoulder in a lunge that carried him well into the center of the room.

A woman sat in a chair by the window. She dropped a water tumbler from which she had been helping herself to his cognac. Otherwise she remained perfectly calm.

Shayne’s alert gray eyes swiftly circled the room, returning to her face while he slowly pocketed the gun.

“Carmela Towne,” he said in a flat tone.

Carmela pushed herself up from the chair with both hands gripping the arms. Her black eyes searched his face and she said, “Michael,” making three syllables of his name, her voice throaty and a little blurred.

“Some day you’ll get yourself shot,” he said, and went toward her.

Carmela Towne giggled, “I’m already half-shot, Michael,” and held out her arms to him. Her lips were dry and hot and hard. Ten years had done some shocking things to her. She had been a leggy youngster with a rich, dark beauty that burned beneath the surface and glowed in her eyes. She had been vital and alive, tingling with youth and a fervid passion for life and love.

Now her long-limbed body was thin and taut, her face almost haggard. Two spots of rouge far back on her cheeks gave her a feverish look, and her eyes glittered with the same unnatural brightness. She was the embodiment of a woman who for a long time had made a habit of drinking too much, and sleeping and eating too little.

Shayne stepped back from her embrace, and she slid her hands down his arms to grip his fingers tightly. She asked, “Do you always come into your room with a bound like that?”

“How did you get in?”

“Oh, I bribed the bellboy. He asked me if I was Mrs. Shayne, and I told him I wasn’t, and he seemed to think that made everything all right.”

Shayne released his hands from hers and went back to close the door. He said morosely, “You spilled some of my cognac. It’s hard to get nowadays.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t spill much, Michael.” She sank back into her chair, and got a cigarette from her bag. She put it between her red lips and looked to him for a light. When Shayne struck a match to it, she inhaled deeply and let the smoke filter through her nostrils. Tilting her head back to look into his eyes, she said, “It’s been a long time,” and for a moment forgot to be glib and flippant.

He nodded and extinguished the match. He moved back to sit on the edge of the bed and asked, “How did you know I was here?”

“I read the Free Press. And I know you were out to see Father this morning.”

“At this hotel — I mean.”

“You stayed here ten years ago. I took a chance and asked at the desk.” Carmela made an impatient gesture with the long, thin fingers of her right hand. “Have you seen Lance?”

“Not for ten years.” Shayne reached for the bottle of cognac by the bedside table and poured a drink. He didn’t offer Carmela one. She didn’t appear to notice. Her great dark eyes were fixed on his face. She said, “He’s here.”

“In El Paso?”

She nodded. “I saw him three days ago in a taxi downtown. He didn’t see me. He was riding with a Mexican girl. A common little Mexican wench whom he must have picked up in Juarez on the Calle de Diablo. He looked terrible,” she ended in a lifeless tone.

Shayne took a drink of cognac and murmured, “I’ve wondered what became of him.” After a moment’s hesitation he asked, “Did you ever see him after you came back from your trip abroad?”

“No. He’d left town. He never wrote to me, Michael,” she answered softly, as though for an instant she lived in a dream.

“Why would he?” Shayne asked angrily. “Lance wasn’t the kind to come crawling back after you kicked him in the teeth.”

“I know.” Her upper lip trembled, and a semblance of the fire Shayne had seen years ago kindled in her eyes. “I’ve hated myself for letting Father do that to me. But I was so young, Michael. I had been reared to think he was like God. My mother was Spanish, you know. She taught me that it was a woman’s place to submit.”

Shayne ignored the plea in her voice. He asked impatiently, “Do you know where Lance has been? What he’s been doing?”