Brett Halliday - Call for Michael Shayne

The room was blue with the smoke from one of Will Gentry’s evil-smelling cigars. The chief sat relaxed in his swivel chair behind a scarred oak desk. By wriggling his full lips he maneuvered the soggy butt of the cigar from one corner to the other, grunted, and said, “Been waiting for you, Mike.”

Shayne closed the outer door and walked over to dump the clothing onto a chair. “I had a couple of things to do after you left Doctor Thompson’s.”

“He give you much?”

“A lot.” Shayne yanked a straight-backed chair around and sat in it backward, resting his folded arms on the back. “He has retained me to do what I can for Arthur Devlin.”

Gentry nodded and rumbled, “I had a hunch he’d spill to you if I could get Painter out of his hair and leave you two together.” He hesitated and then added flatly, “Petey checked up on the phone call to you. Man at your hotel says he rang your room but you didn’t answer.”

“That clear me with Painter?”

“He’s still itching to know why I brought you along with me.” Gentry took the soggy butt from his mouth, studied it as though it had suddenly become an important clue, tossed it toward a trash basket, and said, “I didn’t tell him you knew about Skid Munroe being murdered before his body was found.”

“Thanks, Will.”

“Sure. And so do I get Thompson’s story?”

“Every word of it,” Shayne assured him, “and maybe a couple of other things I picked up that Thompson doesn’t know about. He and Devlin are old friends, as you must have gathered, and it appears that Devlin called him to come over as soon as he reached his own apartment at the Clairmount after leaving Skid’s body in the room on Palmleaf Avenue.”

Gentry nodded, lit a fresh cigar, said, “And?” then picked up a pencil and began doodling on a clean sheet of paper.

“According to Thompson, Devlin told him a fantastic and unbelievable yarn about losing his memory for two weeks and coming back to consciousness about one-thirty this morning with Skid’s corpse for company.”

Shayne ran knobby fingers through his coarse red hair, frowning with concentration as he carefully repeated Devlin’s story exactly as the harried man had related it to him in confidence a few hours earlier.

Will Gentry listened without interrupting and without change of expression as he meticulously doodled a chain with alternate weak and strong links across the paper.

Shayne concluded with the incident of the doctor’s departure from the Clairmount and Gentry pointed out dryly, “Even Arthur Devlin’s best friend couldn’t swallow a yarn like that, eh? Why didn’t Thompson report to Painter at once?”

“Because he is Devlin’s best friend. He’d like to believe the story. He’d like to believe there are some extenuating circumstances behind Skid’s death. But I think he feels that Devlin didn’t tell him the whole truth. As a medical man, he simply can’t square up the amnesia story with the facts: Devlin’s radiogram to him from aboard the Belle the next morning after he sailed — the letter from Janet which indicates Devlin was aboard and jumped ship at Havana.”

“Can you square it up?” Gentry asked abruptly.

Shayne hesitated, frowning and tugging at the lobe of his left ear. “At the time I left Thompson’s place I had a pretty theory all worked out,” he admitted uncomfortably. “To accept amnesia, I think we have to assume that it came on before Devlin went aboard the Belle. That means that someone impersonated him — someone close enough to pass himself off as Devlin to Lily Masters’s sister, Janet, and to send the reassuring radiogram to Thompson. Working on that theory, I reasoned that Devlin might have waked up in a complete mental fog the next morning, with nothing in his possession to identify him as Devlin, but with something that led him to assume the name of Joe Jerome. Then I figured he’d met this girl who called herself Marge over the telephone, and gotten her to marry him — and between them they’d worked out this plan to murder Skid for the roll he was carrying — though how a punk like Skid got his hands on ten grand and what he was doing with it in that room on Palmleaf Avenue, registered as George Moore, I can’t even begin to guess.”

“So that’s what you thought when you left Thompson. Something happen to change your mind?”

“A couple of things,” said Shayne angrily. “I traced Marge to the Argonne House on Second Avenue. Don’t ask me how, because I shan’t tell you, but it’s the same woman who phoned Devlin and called him Joey and asked him if he’d bumped Skid off and got the money. She’d been living there a couple of months, alone, but registered as Mrs. Jerome all the time. And none of them had seen Devlin, or Mr. Jerome, until he moved in with her on the night of June eighth — the night he passed out at Bert Masters’s party.”

Gentry’s swivel chair creaked loudly in the silence that fell between them as he turned slightly to rest his arm on his desk. “There could be an answer to that, Mike. For the sake of argument we’ll assume that Devlin did pass out that night,” he drawled. “Let’s even assume that Devlin’s state of amnesia existed for the period of time he claims. So he runs into this Marge Jerome while he’s wandering around wondering who the hell he is. Maybe she fell for him — just like that. Or maybe she wanted a man around. Or maybe she needed a guy just then to pass off as her husband. So she takes him home with her and nurses him and makes love to him and convinces him he is her husband. Wouldn’t a guy in that condition grab on to an identity and a soft spot to lie up and convalesce in?”

“I suppose he would,” Shayne agreed. “We’d have to consult a doctor, but it sounds reasonable. I thought of that, too, Will, when I learned that Marge once told a lady friend across the hall that her husband was doing time — and that she had been going steady with Skid Munroe until her so-called husband appeared on the scene.”

Gentry’s heavy lids rolled up quickly. “Is that straight, Mike?”

“It is. And I’m afraid it’s going to tie a noose right around Arthur Devlin’s neck — amnesia or no amnesia.”

“It’s all we need,” Gentry said gruffly. “Better give him to me, Mike.”

Shayne took out a cigarette and lit it deliberately. He narrowed his eyes at Gentry behind a film of smoke. “Do you really think I should, Will? If I could, I mean.”

Gentry shifted his cigar and regarded Shayne with a long, steady stare. “Why not, Mike? If you can, that is.”

“I don’t know why not,” said Shayne frankly. “But there’s something behind this that stinks worse than that stogie you’re smoking. It’s too damned open and shut to suit me.”

Gentry shrugged his massive shoulders. “Best thing for him, it seems to me, is to give himself up and make a deal with the state’s attorney to cop a plea. Second-degree, maybe.” He clamped strong teeth over the end of his cigar, pulled on it strongly, and sent a cloud of smoke roiling toward the ceiling.

“Second-degree isn’t good enough,” said Shayne explosively. “Either we accept his story or we reject it. If we reject it, he should get the works. But if we accept it—”

“What then?”

“Then I say he’s the innocent victim of some devilish plot that has its roots back in Lily Masters’s suicide and he’s not guilty of anything except being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“What do you intend to do about it?”

“Check back into Mrs. Masters’s death.”

Gentry moved his head slowly back and forth. “You’ll run up against Bert Masters. The way I recall that, Mike, it was hushed up fast by the Beach police. It was an open secret that Masters wasn’t unhappy about her suicide and put the pressure on the boys to let it ride that way.”