Counterfeit Wife (5 page)

SHAYNE BLOWS A FUSE

SHAYNE’S LEFT SHOULDER was hurting badly, and a little blood still oozed from his cut lip. He said, “That davenport looks good to me.”

“Damned sight too good for you,” Perry snarled. “We’re going back down to the garage where there’s a nice little place all fixed up for you.”

The whisky bottle was a little more than half full. Shayne hefted the weight of it and figured his chances of slugging Perry with it before he could get going with his gun. Perry was ten feet away and the .38 was lax in his fingers, but he didn’t look like a man who’d be easy to take. Ever since the ex-senator had spoken Shayne’s name, the man had shown his respect for the detective’s reputation by keeping a good distance between them. Getchie wasn’t any pushover either. It was a cinch he had a shiv where he could get at it fast, and a further cinch that he would enjoy using it if Shayne started anything.

All in all, Shayne decided it would be much more sensible to drink the whisky and play along for better odds. He put the bottle to his lips, and Perry said to the Negro, “Shove him along down the stairs, Getchie.”

Getchie took a step forward, put his hand between Shayne’s shoulder blades and shoved. Shayne reeled forward and didn’t look back. He was getting damned tired of being pushed around, but he didn’t say so.

They stopped at the bottom and waited for Perry to come down. Shayne was breathing hard and fighting back the anger that threatened to possess him. He had stayed alive a lot of years by holding his anger in check and waiting for at least a fifty-fifty chance before striking out. Such a chance generally came to a man if he waited long enough.

Perry reached the bottom of the stairs and circled around them on the greasy floor. “Bring him over here to the can. It’s quiet in there and the door’s a double thickness.”

“Ain’ no lock to it,” Getchie objected, pushing Shayne forward.

“We’ll fix that,” Perry assured him. He stood back ten feet from the door of the small square alcove built into a corner of the room.

There was a concrete wall jutting out from the corner and a heavy wooden door that opened outward. Getchie stopped beside the door and reached inside to switch on a ceiling light. There was a dirty lavatory and a dirtier toilet inside the four-by-six room.

Perry said, “Wait a minute,” as the Negro started to push Shayne inside. “Take off your clothes,” he told Shayne. “Every damned stitch down to the skin.”

Shayne turned his head to glare at him and asked thickly, “What’s the idea of that?”

“Just so you won’t pull any smart tricks,” Perry explained happily. “God knows what you could pull inside there with a car backed up against the door, but I’ve heard too much about you to take any chances. Maybe you got a gas bomb in your pocket or a saw blade sewed in your underwear.”

“You’ve been reading too many comics.”

Perry said, “Strip him, Getchie.”

The Negro was behind Shayne. Shayne felt smooth metal touch the base of his neck and glide downward along his spine. Coat, shirt, and undershirt divided as the razor moved, the back of it cold against his flesh, while Shayne shuddered with impotent rage. It sliced cleanly through his leather belt, and his trousers and shorts slid down around his ankles.

Perry grinned and Getchie chuckled softly behind Shayne. Shayne set his teeth together hard and shrugged out of the upper portion of his clothing. It was impossible to move with his pants hobbling him. He stooped and untied his shoelaces, kicked his shoes off and stepped clear of the encumbering clothing.

Getchie was still close behind him with his razor, and Perry’s gun was ready, his eyes tight and watchful.

Shayne picked up the bottle of Scotch just as Getchie shoved. He sprawled forward on hands and knees, lifting the precious bottle to keep it from breaking on the concrete.

Perry laughed loudly. The Negro went out and the wooden door slammed shut as Shayne lifted himself painfully erect. He carefully set the bottle on top of the porcelain water closet and looked at his reflection in the small mirror above the lavatory.

The terrifying face of a complete stranger looked back at him. His gray eyes were humid and contracted, his hair and eyebrows were matted with the blonde’s blood.

Splotches of crusted blood were still on his face and neck, and his haggard features were set in a mask of such uncontrollable fury that it startled him. His swollen lips were drawn back from set teeth, and every muscle in his face was tense and trembling.

He drew a shaky hand across his forehead and forced himself to speak aloud. “Take it easy, guy. What you need is a drink.”

He turned away from his reflection, tilted the bottle, and let the whisky flow down his throat. He didn’t taste it as it went down, but it started a fire burning in his stomach.

His long rangy body was trembling violently as he seated himself on the filthy toilet seat and hunched forward, his elbows resting on his bare thighs.

A car started in the garage. In a moment there was a dull thud as a bumper was jammed solidly against the door.

Shayne didn’t move. He stared dully at the concrete floor and tried to figure his way out of this one. He’d been in tough spots before, but he couldn’t remember a tougher one. All because he’d done a guy a favor. What the hell was it all about? What was the matter with those two bills the pasty-faced man had given him? Were they counterfeits? How did ex-Senator Irvin figure in it? And Bates at the Fun Club? And the big blonde and Fred Gurney?

He took another drink and reminded himself that such questioning was utterly useless at this stage of the game. His present and very real problem was to get out and look for some answers. He wished now that he’d paid more attention to the comics—to Dick Tracy and Superman. They always had ways of getting out of fixes like this one.

He took another drink and looked around sourly. The walls, floor, and the low ceiling were of concrete. The only ventilation came from two openings about four inches square in opposite corners of the wall just below the ceiling. The door was a homemade affair, a double thickness of tongue-and-groove boarding reinforced with two-by-fours. He reached out and pushed on it. The door was solidly blocked.

His bleak eyes looked up at the ventilation squares near the ceiling. One of them was directly above the lavatory. He could hoist himself up on the lavatory and yell through the opening, but probably his voice would only be heard by Irvin and his gunmen in the apartment above.

He inspected the contents of the whisky bottle. It was still a quarter full. He drank two gulps and began considering ex-Senator Irvin.

It had been more than five years since Shayne had helped gather evidence on the sale of pardons to inmates of the state penitentiary. The investigation had developed into a nationwide scandal with Irvin in the middle of it at a time when he was supposedly serving the people of the state in an honorable capacity. There had been enough direct evidence to force his removal from office, but there had been a cover-up by other state officials and the trial had fizzled out without a conviction.

Shayne had neither heard Irvin’s name nor thought of the man since that time. He wondered what the devil he was mixed up in now. Counterfeiting, apparently. That could be the only answer to his curious interest in a couple of ordinary looking hundred-dollar bills.

He took another drink.

The senator had changed a lot in five years. Shayne remembered him as a pompous stuffed shirt. Five years had turned him into something else. What was it Bates had said over the telephone? “Put the big shot on.”

So Irvin was a big shot now, with gunmen and shiv artists to do his bidding. Shayne could still hear the soft purr of his voice when he said, “Hit him, Getchie,” and, as he remembered, a cold fear ran sickeningly over his naked frame.

He hadn’t thought about that angle very much. But, thinking back, he knew now that Irvin had made up his mind about something as soon as he, Shayne, had been recognized by the rosy-cheeked ex-senator.

Irvin knew Shayne’s reputation, and he knew a thing like that would never be forgotten. There was only one possible answer—Irvin had ruthlessly decided that Shayne would never be in a position to do anything about it, and for that reason hadn’t hesitated to have Getchie slap him around.

He remembered Irvin’s saying that he had to convince Shayne that this was serious business. That, thought Shayne, was a masterpiece of understatement. What it actually meant was that he didn’t intend to let Shayne out of the place alive, so the manner in which he was treated didn’t matter. They’d keep him alive until they checked his story with Slocum, the man who had rented his apartment. When they found they could learn nothing from him, they’d put the screws on.

He realized now that he should have put up a fight upstairs. He would have if he had thought things out clearly. The whisky was helping to clarify his mind and he excused his previous vacillation by telling himself he had been in no condition to think straight. His left shoulder and arm were of little use. Besides, he had been thrown off-stride by the suddenness of it all; by his complete lack of comprehension of what it was all about. He had been dazed and uncertain by the swiftness of events since he overheard the blonde talking to the freckle-nosed girl at the air terminal, and by the fact that none of it made any sense.

His mind was clear now, his thinking coldly logical. The odds were still a thousand to one against him, but they wouldn’t get any better while he sat and waited for the night to drag itself out.

He drank the rest of the whisky and turned the bottle over and over in his hands. It was a tall, round bottle. Better for his purpose than a squat, square one.

He took a solid grip on the neck and struck it a sharp blow just below the center against the edge of the lavatory. The bottom broke off neatly and clattered into the basin. He tapped the lower rim of the upper portion gently, turning it and working at it until three jagged glass prongs remained, then he studied it approvingly.

Except for a gun, he couldn’t ask for anything better, and for close work this was far better than a gun. The next thing was to arrange for some close work, preferably in the dark.

He stooped down and carefully gathered the fragments of glass from around the lavatory and tossed them into a corner. When he stood up, he knew he was quite drunk. That was good, for no sober, sane man would do what he was going to do.

He laid the top half of the bottle carefully on top of the water closet, reached a long bare arm overhead and unscrewed the electric bulb from the ceiling socket.

Feeling his way to the lavatory, he turned on the water and held the brass contact end of the bulb under the flow for a moment, then screwed it back into the socket. The instant the connection was made there was a momentary flare, then the water-shorted circuit brought impenetrable blackness again.

He gave another twist to set the bulb tightly in the socket, and sank back on the toilet seat to wait. Groping behind him, he got hold of his improvised weapon and hunched forward with his elbows on his knees.

It was hot and stifling and soundless inside the room. He knew a fuse had been blown, but he had no way of knowing whether it also controlled an upstairs circuit or only shorted the basement lights. He didn’t know, either, whether all the others upstairs were in bed. If their lights were not burning, they wouldn’t know a fuse had been blown.

He could only wait in the darkness and the silence and listen.

He waited a long time and nothing happened. He thought about Lucy Hamilton and about a lot of things he could have said to her over the telephone. None of this would have happened if he’d thought fast enough and kept her on the wire.

He was sorry he would never see Lucy again. Sorry that he would not be able to give her the string of simulated pearls, the only payment he had received or would have taken for recovering the real pearls for Christine Hudson, who had been Phyllis’s dearest friend.

Waiting in the black silence, his thoughts went back to Phyllis, his wife whom he had loved so dearly, who had died so valiantly trying to bring their son into the world.

Lucy was a lot like Phyllis. Perhaps that accounted for his feeling toward her. A mood of dejection seized him, and he thought,
Phyllis is gone. Lucy is gone. The pearls are gone.
He would probably never see his clothes or any of the things that were in his pockets.

The overhead light flared suddenly, went out again just as suddenly. Alert now, he sat naked and motionless on the toilet stool, waiting. Someone had found the burned-out fuse and replaced it with a good one. Current had flashed through for an instant, only to be shorted again by the wet contact.

Eagerness and anxiety flowed through him. Sweat ran down in streams from his body and made little pools of wetness on the floor around his feet. He wondered if they had any more fuses—if they would realize that it was he who was causing the short circuits from his concrete prison.

When the light flashed on again and burned steadily, he knew that the contact end of the bulb had dried sufficiently to let the current flow again.

He sat immobile and waited. No need to hurry now. Better to let the lights burn for a time. Long enough to convince those upstairs that they weren’t dealing with an ordinary short circuit. When he blew another fuse, they would know it was he who was causing it.

While he waited he decided to take advantage of the light, and he poured cold water over his face and body from his cupped hands, massaging his aching shoulder and working it gently as he did so. He took the broken glass out of the basin, then filled it and doused his head, washing the matted blood from his red and unruly hair.

When he finished he felt better. He reached over to the roll of toilet paper and tore off a sheet, folded it into a tiny square, then soaked it thoroughly. He held it ready in his left hand while unscrewing the bulb again.

Pressing the sodden mass firmly against the end of the bulb he inserted it carefully in the socket and twisted it tight. There was not even a momentary flash of current as it made contact.