Counterfeit Wife (4 page)

Shayne frowned and took a drink from his glass before setting it on the desk. He sat down on one of the chairs and asked, “Why? Isn’t it any good?”

“I’m asking you,” said the proprietor of the Fun Club patiently, “where you got it.”

“I don’t think it’s any of your damned business.”

“I’m making it my business.” The square-faced man’s voice remained rasping, yet not particularly unfriendly but colder, and he spoke more deliberately.

Shayne shrugged and admitted, “Printed it last night myself. Thought I did a pretty good job.”

“It is a good job, pal. One hell of a sweet job. You’ll save yourself a lot of trouble by telling me where you got it.”

Shayne emptied his cognac glass and set it down with a thump. “I don’t see why you’re playing puzzles, but I’m tired of it. I cashed a check at the bank this afternoon.”

“The bank didn’t give you this bill.”

“I say it did.”

“The cops won’t believe you, pal.”

“Why don’t you call them and we’ll see?”

“I think I’ll do that little thing.” There was a smirk on his thick lips and his slate-gray eyes stared coldly at Shayne. He picked up the desk telephone with a square left hand, laid it down and dialed a number with the first blunt finger of that hand. His right hand slid from the desk into his lap.

Shayne’s eyes narrowed at him. “You didn’t dial police headquarters. The number is—”

“I know what number I’m calling, pal. Just sit tight where you are.”

The muzzle of a .45 inched up over the edge of the desk and rested there, leveled at Shayne’s mid-section. The square-faced man lifted the telephone with his left hand and said, “Perry? Put the big shot on.”

Shayne sat very still with his hands folded in front of him. He wondered if the big blonde in the outer room had finished her drink.

He studied the bill lying on the desk between them, then reached out and picked it up by one corner. The proprietor watched him with no change of expression, the gun steady in his square right hand.

Shayne studied the bank note carefully, frowning and turning it over in his hands. It looked genuine enough to him, though he wasn’t an expert. He said so, and the man across the desk grunted something unintelligible.

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

PLENTY OF TROUBLE

“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—”

He was within six feet of Shayne, and his right hand was coming out of his pocket. Shayne hadn’t looked in his direction but now he whirled, took one lunging step sideways, and threw a left hook to Bates’s square jaw.

Bates reeled backward and went down.

Shayne sprinted toward the screen door. Bates’s .45 roared behind him and a slug plunked into the door casing above his head as he went through.

The gray sedan was pulled up outside with the right-hand door standing open and the motor roaring. He dived into the seat beside the woman, and the car raced forward down the gravel drive to the macadam.

He said, “Nice going, baby. We just—” He sucked in his breath and added, “Maybe we didn’t,” as tires screeched, and a big car with dimmed lights lurched into the driveway.

Mrs. Dawson swung the steering wheel violently to the right and stepped hard on the gas to avoid a collision. There were confused shouts behind them as she swerved to the left into 36th Street in second gear. She sat erect with both hands loosely on the steering wheel. The sedan got up to fifty in second gear and was tearing itself to pieces before she shifted into high.

Shayne was doing some fast figuring on how long it would take Bates to give the reinforcements the hundred-dollar bill and send them racing after the gray sedan.

They heard a few scattered shots from the direction of the Fun Club. The woman looked up at the mirror and said, “My God! They’re coming—but fast.” She switched off her lights and added calmly, “We may make it yet, big boy.”

In the light of the moon, now shining in a pool of unclouded sky, the straight black macadam had a grayish sheen. The way the sedan trembled, Shayne knew it must be making more than seventy. He grinned into the dark and said wonderingly, “You’re doing all right. If you pull this one out of the bag I’ll owe you a lot of drinks.”

“I’ll be able to use a lot.” Her eyes were on the road ahead; she was gripping the wheel tighter. Lights flashed by on either side of the street, and Shayne realized that they were approaching the more thickly populated section of the city proper. The headlights of the pursuing car were relentlessly gaining.

“What kind of jam you in?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I think they’d rather get me alive, though.”

She lifted her foot from the accelerator and put it on the brake. The sedan settled back on its haunches with tires screaming. She said nothing but suddenly swung the wheel hard to turn into a side street. The sedan skidded and the left side rose from the ground. Then it crashed into a concrete guard rail of a bridge.

The car turned over on its side, and the big blonde was on top of Shayne, pinning him against the door beneath.

She was inert and heavy, and blood trickled down on his cheek and seeped under his collar as he tried to push up against her dead weight.

He could hear shouting voices and running feet. Then someone was climbing up on the overturned car, and the left-hand door was opened. He twisted and lifted the solid hulk of the woman upward toward the opening, calling out hoarsely, “Take her out, quick. I’m afraid she’s badly hurt.”

A flashlight glared down from above. Shayne pushed from below as someone above dragged the woman out.

He then managed to stand up and pull himself from the tangled wreckage of the sedan.

There were men and women and a few children swarming around in various states of disarray, and in the midst of them the big blonde’s body was outstretched on the roadside a few feet away. A man bent over her with a flashlight.

Shayne took a couple of steps toward her, but was halted by the feel of a gun in his ribs and a harsh voice in his ear.

“This way, bud. Keep it quiet.”

Shayne turned slowly and saw a big black sedan parked on the other side of the bridge with headlights burning brightly. He knew by the intonation and by the feel of the gun that he couldn’t bluff this off as he had bluffed Bates.

On his way to the black car he thought, morosely, that he had encountered three very chummy guys within a couple of hours. He had been called “brother” and “pal” and now “bud,” and two of these chums had held pistols on him, and one had stuffed two, probably counterfeit, hundred-dollar bills into his hand.

He hoped the woman wasn’t badly hurt.

THE SENATOR ENTERTAINS

THEY REACHED THE SIDE of the black sedan, and the man with the gun swung an ape-like arm past Shayne to open the rear door. He stood back and said, “Get in.”

Shayne got in; the man followed, closing the door.
The man in the driver’s seat wore a stiff straw hat tipped far back on his head. Shayne could see the profile of a flat, black face, but that was all.

The man beside Shayne said, “Get rolling, Getchie,” and the car moved smoothly forward.

The man sat quietly for a moment, then said, “I reckon you’re not carryin’ anything or you would’ve showed it. But I’m not taking chances. Twist down with your face against the seat and put your hands behind you. If you move, I’ll split your head open.”

Shayne followed directions and got his hands clasped behind his neck with an effort. His left shoulder had been wrenched in the accident. At first it had felt numb, but in this uncomfortable position it began to ache. His head ached, too. The blood on his face was beginning to clot, and it itched.

He lay very still and tried not to think about things. The car was being driven smoothly on paved streets, making a lot of turns which Shayne made no effort to memorize. He wasn’t familiar with this northeast section of the city, and he had a feeling that he wasn’t going to have any particular desire to retrace the route even if he did have a chance to do so later.

It wasn’t more than fifteen minutes later that the car turned off the street and went down a steep incline into a place that smelled strongly of grease and gasoline. Shayne guessed that it was a basement garage. The man beside him said, “End of the line, bud. Get out that door.”

Shayne sat up and unlatched the door and got out. They were in a big concrete-walled and concrete floored room and there were half a dozen other cars parked around the walls. A twenty-watt, fly-specked bulb in the ceiling gave off a dim light.

The man with the gun followed Shayne out of the car; the driver came around to stand beside him. The gun was poked in Shayne’s ribs, and he was told to go straight up the stairs.

The stairs were wooden and shaky, ending at a small landing faced by a closed wooden door with a bar across it. Shayne lifted the bar and stepped into a narrow, dark passageway. The men stayed close behind him and the gun stayed against his back. He bumped into another door in the dark, found a knob and opened it onto a brightly lit room with a Persian rug on the floor and overstuffed furniture around the walls. The men closed the door when they entered, and Shayne turned to look at them.

The driver, Getchie, was a Negro. His nose had been smashed flat against his broad face, and he had a long grayish scar on one cheek. His forehead was low, and he looked mean and sullen.

His companion was white, rather tall, and fairly bulky. He gestured toward a davenport with his .38 and said, “Sit down there an’ I’ll tell the boss you’re here. But wait a minute,” he added, as Shayne started toward the long couch. “Shake him down, Getchie.”

Shayne stopped and lifted his right arm high. But his left arm balked when pain shot through his shoulder. The Negro frisked him carefully, stepped back with a grunt and a negative shake of his head. “He ain’t totin’ nothin’, Mistuh Perry.”

Perry nodded. “Watch him, Getchie.” He went to a door at the end of the room, opened it and called, “We got that guy from the Fun Club, boss.”

He stood in the doorway until a bulky man came in belting a black silk robe about his protuberant middle. He was bald with a fringe of gray hair around the back of his head. His face was plump and rosy and he had the placid, satisfied manner of a pastor of a wealthy congregation. He scuffed in past Perry, wearing a pair of rope sandals with heavy cork soles.

When he saw Shayne, the man stopped suddenly, his bleary eyes staring in blank amazement.

Shayne stared back at him and grinned. The grin broke the dried blood on his face into innumerable little cracks. He said, “Senator Irvin, by God.”

The ex-state senator said, “Shayne!” in a high, squeaky voice apparently gone completely out of control. His florid face became mottled with anxiety. He clasped his pudgy hands together over his belly and forced his voice down the scale by several notes when he asked, “What are you doing here?”

The grin stayed on Shayne’s face. He said, “I heard that you’d beat that Raiford rap, Senator, but I didn’t think you’d have guts enough to show your face in Miami again.”

“Mike Shayne,” Perry said softly. “That tough shamus I been readin’ about in the papers? Maybe you want Getchie should soften him up, boss?”

“Wait a minute, Perry.” The senator scuffed forward and seated himself in a comfortable chair opposite Shayne, who sprawled on the davenport. “Bring us something to drink, Getchie. Mineral water for me. Scotch, Shayne?”

“If you haven’t any cognac.”

“I’m afraid it’ll have to be Scotch.” The senator got a white linen handkerchief from a pocket of his robe and blew his nose resoundingly as the Negro left the room. “I’m really amazed, Shayne. I had no idea when Bates telephoned—But you’ve been hurt,” he went on with concern. “I’m sorry—”

“He got that in a car crack-up,” Perry said sourly. “Some blonde dame at the Fun Club took him for a ride and piled up on Thirty-sixth.”

“But I understood Bates to say he would hold the man for your arrival,” the senator said in a tone of extreme irritation.

“That Bates,” Perry spat out. “He don’t know which way is up. This mug walks out on him with the dame ’fore we get there.”

Getchie came back into the room with a wooden tray containing a decanter of mineral water, a bucket of ice cubes, a bottle of Scotch, two glasses, and a siphon of soda. He set it on a table, put ice cubes and water from the decanter in one glass and handed it to the senator, put two ice cubes in the other glass, and took the cork out of the whisky bottle.

“A steady hand does it. I’ll say when,” said Shayne, leaning forward as the Negro began pouring. The glass was full to the brim before he said, “When,” and then added, “never mind the soda,” as the man looked questioningly at the siphon.

Shayne drank half of the whisky and felt a lot better. “Nice of you to have me here at this time of night,” he told the senator.

“How do you figure in this, Shayne?” Irvin asked.

Shayne said irritably, “In what?”

The senator sighed and looked at Perry. Perry stepped forward to hand him a hundred-dollar bill. Irvin smoothed it out on his knee. “Bates says you tried to buy some drinks with this.”

“What’s the matter with it?” asked Shayne.

“I didn’t say anything was the matter with it. I simply want to know where you got it,” Irvin countered.

“I cashed a check at the bank this afternoon.”

“Perhaps. But the bank didn’t give you this bill.”

“How in hell do you know it didn’t?”

“Please, Shayne,” said the senator patiently, “let’s not talk in circles.”

“Then tell me what it’s all about.” Shayne lifted the glass to his lips and took a long drink.

Irvin sighed and said, “Hit him, Getchie.”

The Negro hit Shayne in the face with his open palm.

“That was just to convince you that we’re not fooling,” the ex-senator explained quietly, pinching the pendulous flesh of his third chin. “Where did you get the bill, and how many of them have you?”

Shayne got up and walked to the tray holding the whisky bottle. Blood oozed from his upper lip where his teeth had cut through from the Negro’s blow. He picked up the decanter of mineral water, poured his cupped palm full, and, bending forward, dashed it over his face. He repeated the performance until his face felt free of the blood, then wet his handkerchief thoroughly and mopped around his neck.

The trio watched him in stony silence. Then Perry said, “They say this mug is plenty tough. Whyn’t you let Getchie work him over some more, an’ then we can—”

“I think Shayne will tell us what we want to know,” said the senator quietly.

Shayne strolled back to the davenport. The Negro took the detective’s wallet from his hip pocket. Shayne sat down again and nursed the bottle of Scotch which he had brought with him, watching the senator with an oddly abstracted expression on his gaunt face.

Irvin opened the wallet and fanned through the contents. He studied one bill and nodded, placed it with the other one on his knee and returned the balance to the billfold. “Two of them. Why did you try to pass one at Bates’s place? What did you expect to find out?”

“To hell with this,” Shayne exploded angrily. “If those bills are phonies, I’m the one who should be sore about it. I sold my car this afternoon for cash. Those bills are part of the price I got.”

“Who bought your car?” The senator’s voice was smooth as silk.

“I don’t know his name. I met him in a garage on Flagler.”

“We’ll find out his name,” the senator said. “There has to be a record of the bill of sale. We’ll keep you till tomorrow morning, and if you’re lying, Shayne—”

Shayne took a long drink from the bottle while he thought rapidly. “All right,” he admitted. “I was lying. But I don’t see why I have to stick my neck out for a guy I never saw before. Particularly if the bastard slipped me a couple of queer ones. I intended to leave town tonight on the midnight plane. You can check that easily enough. I missed the damned plane and came back in a taxi. I felt like a drink and dropped off at the Fun Club on the way to town.”

That, he thought, would cover the blonde’s angle, if she were in on it somehow and told her story.

“All right. But where did the bills come from?”

“I’m getting to that. I checked out of my apartment at noon, and—well, you know how things are in Miami right now. I happened to meet a guy that was yelling his head off about not having any place to stay. I didn’t see any reason not to pick up a piece of change so I slipped him a tip on my apartment, and he gave me those two C’s for the dope.” He dabbed at his cut and bleeding lip with the wet handkerchief.

“You’re probably still lying,” said Irvin. “What apartment house?”

Shayne gave the apartment name and the room number, hoping to God they had rented it that afternoon and feeling vaguely sorry for whoever had rented it.

The senator nodded to Perry. “Check on that.”

Perry went out of the room. Shayne set the whisky bottle on the floor and pressed the handkerchief to his lips again. He said to the Negro, “Next time we meet I’m going to slice the other side of your face to match that scar.”

The Negro’s arms remained insolently folded, and his eyes were low-lidded. He pushed his thick lips out at Shayne but said nothing.

Irvin irritably drummed fat fingertips on the arm of his chair and said placatingly, “Getchie simply did what he was told to do, Shayne. I had to convince you this was serious business.”

Perry came back into the room. He said, “Could be, boss. The shamus checked out at noon like he said, and sent his suitcase to the airport. His apartment was rented again right afterward, but the clerk don’t think the new fellow has moved in yet. By the name of Slocum. He didn’t answer his phone.”

Irvin said, “We’ll check with Mr. Slocum in the morning.” To Shayne he added, “I’m sure you won’t object to being my guest until we can hear Slocum’s story.”

“Do you expect him to tell you the truth about paying a bribe with phony money?”

“I think Mr. Slocum will tell what we want to know. If you’ve told the truth you’ll be in the clear, Shayne. If not—”

Shayne took another drink of Scotch and dangled the bottle by the neck between his knobby knees. “I hope you’ve got a comfortable bed for me to sleep on.”

“Perry and Getchie will see to that.” He nodded to them and got to his feet. “For your sake I hope you’re telling the truth this time.” He turned and scuffed out of the room.