Brett Halliday: Murder Is My Business

“I heard indirectly that he went to China. And later to Germany. Neil Cochrane called me once to say he had heard a short-wave propaganda broadcast from Berlin by Lance. I didn’t believe it, but Neil later sent me a news clipping giving Lance’s name as one of a group of renegade American journalists aiding Hitler.”

Shayne scowled over a drink of cognac and was silent. The girl in front of him needed to talk things out. She had kept too much bottled up for too long.

“And now Lance is back in El Paso,” she went on drearily. “He looks old and bitter and defeated. I thought you might be in touch with him. I thought that might be the reason you are here.”

Shayne cocked his red head and said sardonically, “If you read the Free Press you know I’m here to help your father get himself elected mayor of El Paso.”

“That’s not what he says.” For the first time since Shayne had entered the room there was a hint of laughter in her voice. “You should have heard him raving this morning after you left the house.”

“After I fixed an autopsy to show he didn’t kill the soldier,” murmured Shayne. “You’d think he’d be grateful.”

“He knows no one will believe the autopsy. He’d much rather take the blame and have the incident forgotten.”

Shayne said, “He’d make a better mayor than John Carter.”

“I hope he’s defeated,” Carmela exclaimed passionately. “He’s always had everything his way. He thinks he’s a man of destiny. No one has ever successfully opposed him. Not for ten years. You don’t know his cruelty and his arrogance.”

Shayne reached for the bottle of cognac. He held it out toward her. Carmela relaxed and nodded listlessly. She picked up the overturned glass beside her chair and held it while Shayne poured it a quarter full. She drank half of it as though it were water.

“No one knows how I hate him. It’s a horrible thing to say about one’s father, but it’s true. He’s made me hate myself. I’ll never forgive him for that.”

“What do you suppose he was doing at the corner of Lawton and Missouri when he ran over the soldier? It’s a block off the route out to his smelter.”

“I suppose he was on his way to see that woman,” she said without looking up.

“What woman, Carmela?”

Carmela lifted one thin shoulder in a shrug of disgust and drank the rest of the cognac. “There’s a woman, in the next block on Missouri. I’ve known about her for a long time. Her name is Morales. He doesn’t know I know, but I haven’t cared what he did. She lives in a little house set back from the street with a high cedar hedge in front. I trailed him there once, out of curiosity.”

“Does he go to see her regularly?” Shayne asked the question in a casual tone.

“Two or three times a week,” she replied with hard indifference. “I don’t think he has regular days, if that’s what you mean.”

“It is what I mean,” he said harshly. “You see, Carmela, whether anyone believes it or not, that soldier was dead before your father’s car ran over him. Murdered — and then placed in the street to be run over.”

Carmela’s black eyes flickered toward the cognac bottle. The tip of her tongue moistened her lips. Shayne poured a small drink and handed it to her. “So I’m trying to find out who might have known Towne would be turning that corner at just that time. Someone put the body there. Someone who wanted Jefferson Towne to run over it.”

Carmela was turning the glass around and around in her hands, staring into the amber fluid as though it fascinated her. “Would anyone go to that trouble — commit a murder just to make Father think he had accidentally run over a man?”

“It’s likely to make the difference in the coming election,” he said. “And it might not have been a murder committed for that single purpose.” He paused, then added, “It’s a neat way to dispose of a body, to cover up a murder. It would have stayed on the books as a traffic accident if I hadn’t horned in with an autopsy.”

“Why don’t you leave it the way it is?” Carmela cried out suddenly. “If you solve the case and prove that someone else murdered the soldier and put him there it’ll clear Father completely. He’ll win the election. I thought you hated him as I do. Ten years ago, you said-”

“Ten years ago,” Shayne told her flatly, “I told your father what I thought of a man who would pay to have me dig up non-existent dirt against Lance Bayliss to prevent his daughter’s marriage. My opinion remains the same today. But I’ve stumbled onto a murder, Carmela. Murder is my business. And I’ve got some money and time invested in this thing now. I’ve got to figure a way to collect a fee.”

“I won’t help you exonerate Father!” Carmela cried shrilly. “I’ll see him in hell first. I hope whoever did it gets away with it and he doesn’t get a vote in the election.”

Shayne said, “You should have exhibited some of this brave spirit ten years ago.”

Carmela Towne put her fingers over her face and bowed her head and began to cry. Her weeping had an obscene sound. It was as though something had rotted away inside of her, and her tears were a suppurating excrement bubbling up under the pressure of long decay.

Shayne got up and walked away from her. The sound of her weeping followed him across the room. He clawed at his red hair and watched somberly, but made no move toward her and said nothing to halt the flow of tears.

His telephone shrilled loudly. Carmela took her hands away from her tear-streaked face to look at him as he strode across to answer it. Shayne said, “Yes?” and listened. His eyes narrowed and his gaunt features hardened. He started to protest, “Not right now,” but he shrugged and replaced the instrument.

“He hung up on me before I could stop him,” he told Carmela quietly. “It was Lance. He’s on his way up here.”

She jumped up with an abject cry of fright.

Shayne went to her swiftly and put his arm about her shoulders. He swung her toward the open bathroom door and gave her a little shove. “Go in there and lock the door. It might do you good to listen in at the keyhole and see what Lance has to say for himself.”

She stumbled toward the door and went inside, pulled it shut behind her. Shayne waited until he heard the click of the lock from the inside, then went slowly across to open his door. He heard the elevator stop down the hall and let out a passenger, and waited to meet Lance Bayliss.

Bayliss would have been almost as tall as Shayne had Bayliss stood erect. He didn’t. His shoulders drooped wearily, and his back appeared to be permanently bowed. His head was lowered, and he walked with a curious shuffle as though to balance his body with each step. Tendons stood out on each side of his neck, and he wore a shabby gray suit and a black bow tie about the frayed collar of a dingy white shirt. Ten years had thickened his torso and he looked well-fed, but his eyes held an expression of secretive wariness, and he seemed prepared to cringe should a hand suddenly be lifted against him.

Shayne put out his hand and said heartily, “Lance Bayliss!” After a moment’s hesitation Lance put his hand in Shayne’s. He didn’t lift his head to look directly into the detective’s eyes when he muttered, “Hello, Shayne. I didn’t suppose I’d ever see you again.”

Shayne kept hold of his hand and stepped back, urging him inside the room. “Come on in and have a drink.”

He narrowed his eyes as he noted the manner in which Lance Bayliss entered the hotel room. It told him a lot about what had happened to the man during the past ten years. Lance came in with a sort of furtive stealth, darting his eyes around in all directions suspiciously, behind the door and under the bed, and at the open closet door and the closed bathroom door. He kept moving toward the center of the room, and then stopped to look back slyly over his shoulder while Shayne closed the door. He said, “I guess I could use a drink.”