The Corpse Came Calling (15 page)

A voice on the wire complained, “Why do you make things tough on yourself, shamus?”

Shayne said, “That’s the way I like things.”

“Well—on your wife, then? You can’t dig an extra grand. We trade even—or not at all.”

Shayne said, “Then we don’t trade.” He replaced the instrument and stood up. His only outward sign of strain was the sweat streaming from his furrowed forehead. He stalked into the living-room and picked up the empty mug, refilled it in the kitchen. The telephone rang again as he carried the full mug into the living-room.

He took time to set it down carefully, then answered the call. “Well?”

The same voice sounded less certain. “All right. I guess you know what that piece of cardboard is worth.”

“I have a fair idea—enough to know that a grand is damned little to ask.”

“Oke. You get Mrs. Shayne and one G. We get the piece of cardboard you lifted from Lacy.”

Shayne said, “Right. But before we do any more talking I’ve got to know that my wife is still in one piece. Put her on so she can tell me she’s all right.”

“I can’t do that, Shayne. Do you think I’d be fool enough to call you from where she is?”

“You’re more of a fool if you think I’ll make a deal without having her tell me herself that you bastards haven’t touched her.”

“I swear she’s all right.”

Shayne laughed harshly into the mouthpiece. “I’ll believe it when she tells me so.”

“But I haven’t got her here.”

“Then get her.” Shayne waited, the lines of strain deepening on his face.

After a long pause, he heard, “It’ll take ten or fifteen minutes.”

Shayne said, “I’ll be waiting,” and hung up. He went back to his coffee.

He smoked a cigarette and finished the second mug of coffee before the telephone rang again. He hurried in and snatched it up. Phyllis’s voice lilted over the wire.

“Darling—I’m all right. They treated me fine.”

“I suppose you’re talking with a gun in your back,” Shayne growled. “Just answer yes if you’re lying to me.”

She said, “No,” promptly. “Everything’s all right, but I feel terrible about them coercing you by threatening me. Don’t do anything—”

Her voice was cut off sharply. In a moment the original speaker asked, “Are you satisfied?”

“That was all I wanted to hear. Now the only thing is to arrange how the exchange is to be made.”

“Right.”

“As soon as you deliver Phyllis here safely, you can have what you want.”

His suggestion was met with derisive laughter. “I’d be a sucker to fall for that.”

“And I,” said Shayne, “would be a sucker to let go of it before my wife is home safely.”

“Neither of us is going to trust the other,” the voice on the wire agreed. “So, we meet some place. Me with your wife and you with your end. That’s the only way to do it.”

“And you with your two gunsels,” Shayne scoffed. “No soap, Gorstmann.”

“What did you call me?”

“Your name. The one you’re using here in Miami, at any rate.”

“What makes you think so?”

“Hell,” said Shayne wearily, “we’re wasting a lot of time talking in circles. Here’s the way it’s going to be. You set a time when you can deliver Phyl here to the apartment. I’ll leave here fifteen minutes before the time you say—”

“With the piece of cardboard?” Gorstmann asked.

“Yes. It’ll be in my pocket. But I’ll be in the open with lots of people around and it won’t be healthy for you to get any funny ideas about taking it off me.”

He paused for a moment, then went on persuasively. “Suppose I go down to the F.E.C. depot? That’ll be handy for you after I turn the piece of claim check over to you. I’ll leave a note in the apartment for Phyl giving her the number of one of the station pay telephones. I’ll be waiting at that booth, and the moment she phones to say she’s here, safe, with one grand in hand—then I’ll hand over what you want. You can have me covered while I wait at the depot for her call.”

“That’s giving you all the breaks. How do I know you’ll come across after she calls?”

“You don’t,” Shayne agreed promptly. “You’ve got to take that chance. But I’ll be where you can blast me if I don’t play ball.”

He waited tensely while Gorstmann considered his proposition. Finally, the headwaiter said, “Don’t think you’ll keep on living if you try to pull anything. There’ll be a gun on you all the time.”

“Sure. I expect that. Set your time.”

“Ten o’clock.”

“I’ll leave here on my way to the East Coast depot at nine forty-five.” Shayne dropped the receiver on its prongs and sat for a long moment without moving. His hand shook as he lit a cigarette. His belly muscles were drawn up in a tight knot. He had expected more trouble from Gorstmann. Still, the man had little choice in the matter. As Helen had pointed out, Phyllis was actually worth nothing to her captors. On the other hand, Gorstmann knew that if he forced Shayne’s hand and the detective went to the authorities he would lose everything.

He called Information after a time and got the telephone number of a pay phone at the station—the one nearest the baggage room.

He jotted down the number and went into the living-room, intercepting a look of loathing on Rourke’s face as he passed the foot of the bed.

Shayne got a sheet of paper and wrote:

Phyl: Call this number as soon as you read this. I’ll be at the other end. Call me
BEFORE
you untie Tim Rourke or untape his mouth. Let him go as soon as you’ve called me.

He signed the note and set it up in a conspicuous place on the table where it would be the first thing she would see upon entering the door.

He still had a long time to wait before the curtain went up on the last act. He paced back and forth restlessly, filled with torturing doubts, now that the die was cast.

If he was wrong—but he couldn’t be. There was only one definite pattern into which all the facts fitted. True, there were still a few facts missing. He could fill most of them in by guesswork. But there was one point he didn’t like to guess about. He needed a telegram from the fingerprint division of the FBI to reassure him on the one point of conjecture upon which his entire course of action was based.

His tension increased minute by minute. He went in the kitchen and started another pot of water boiling. He then dropped six eggs into it and timed them for four minutes. He cracked them into a cereal bowl, dropped in a hunk of butter, then crumbled two slices of bread into them.

Food eased some of the tension, but as the hands of his watch crawled toward 9:45, he was still pacing the floor and rumpling his hair fiercely. At 9:35 he grabbed his hat and went out. He couldn’t wait for the telegram any longer. There was no telling what Gorstmann might do if Shayne didn’t leave his hotel at the appointed time.

He hurried down to his office on the next floor and took the small piece of cardboard from its hiding-place. It was 9:42 when he reached the lobby.

He was striding toward the door when a Western Union messenger entered with a yellow envelope in his hand. Shayne stopped him and asked, “Could that be for Michael Shayne?”

The boy said it was. Collect from Washington. Shayne told him to collect the charges from the desk, seized the envelope, and ripped it open. A glance at the message sent him out to his car fast. He couldn’t afford to mess things up now by being late.

The fingerprints on Phyllis’s note which was handed to him by the headwaiter at the Danube Restaurant were identified by the FBI as those of Harry Houseman, wanted by the New York police. He didn’t have to depend on guesswork any longer.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

A COUPE WAS PARKED across the street and up near the drawbridge when Shayne wheeled his car in a U-turn to go north. He saw two men in the coupe, slouched low in the seat with hatbrims pulled over their faces. As he straightened out after making the turn, a glance in the rearview mirror showed the coupe pulling away from the curb behind him.

He drove north across Flagler Street at a moderate pace, then left on Northeast 3rd Street. The coupe trailed him a discreet half block away, made the turn behind him. He drove on to the Florida East Coast railway station and parked. The coupe stopped behind him, and the two men were getting out as he went into the station.

Shayne strolled toward the baggage room without looking back, and glanced at the phone numbers in the booths until he located the one over which Phyllis was to call him.

It lacked three minutes of ten o’clock. He lounged in the open door of the booth and lit a cigarette. He hadn’t seen the faces of the men in the coupe, but was certain they were Leroy and Joe.

A man bought a newspaper and sauntered to a position twenty feet from Shayne’s right, ostentatiously holding the open paper in front of his face. He wore the same belted sport coat and wrinkled flannels that Leroy had worn the preceding afternoon when he visited Shayne’s apartment.

Shayne let smoke dribble from his nostrils while his incurious gaze drifted around the crowded waiting-room. A northbound train was due to leave soon, and there was a lot of bustle and movement.

There were two uniformed cops laughing together just outside the door leading to the men’s room. His gaze stopped and gauged half a dozen other men loitering about at what might be considered strategic points, but none of them were Leroy’s burly companion, nor did he see Gorstmann’s horsy face anywhere.

He glanced at his watch again. Thirty seconds to go. He took a last draw on his cigarette and dropped the butt to the floor. The telephone inside the booth rang sharply.

He stepped inside the cubicle and closed the door. Phyllis’s excited voice came through the receiver to him.

“Mike!”

“Yeh. Are you—”

“I’m all right, darling. I’m perfectly safe. But be careful, Michael, and—what about Tim? Why did you have to—”

“Untie him as soon as you hang up and tell him I’m at the depot,” Shayne cut her off. “Have you got the money?”

“Yes. A thousand dollars. Promise me you’ll be terribly careful and—”

“I’m always careful, angel. Keep the door locked and stay inside.”

He hung up. Sweat ran down his face and soaked his shirt collar as he opened the door.

Leroy stood in front of the door. His short-barreled .45 was concealed by the folded newspaper in his hand. His pallid features twitched as Shayne stepped out. In a hoarse whisper he said, “Walk straight ahead to the can.”

Shayne started walking toward the men’s room. The two harness men were no longer laughing in front of the door.

Joe came around a corner and joined Leroy behind Shayne. Everything was perfectly casual and no interest was aroused in the little procession.

Gorstmann stood just inside the door of the men’s room. His eyes glittered with excitement but his long, bony face was emotionless. He said, “All right, shamus,” and held out his hand.

Shayne said, “It’s in my right-hand coat pocket. Shall I reach for it, or—”

Gorstmann grated, “Keep your hands in sight.” He stepped close, reached into Shayne’s pocket, and got the small piece of cardboard. Leroy and Joe stood close behind the detective.

Gorstmann breathed heavily as he retreated a pace. He muttered, “Everybody hold it while I check to see if this fits my pieces.”

He got two longer strips of cardboard and a small piece from his pocket and began fitting Shayne’s piece with them.

The swinging doors burst inward and erupted men with guns in their hands. The two uniformed cops were in the lead. Behind them, Shayne saw Will Gentry’s beefy face and Pearson calmly moving beside him with a .45 automatic in his hand. Peter Painter was behind them.

Shayne dropped to the tiled floor as the shooting started. He saw Joe whirl with gun extended. A bullet in the burly man’s chest staggered him. A second slug in his chest cut him down.

Leroy found time to trigger his gun twice. Both bullets went wild as a slug tore away the back of his head and sent him to the floor on top of Joe.

Gorstmann had not moved. He stood against the wall as though held in position by invisible bonds. Both his hands were in front of him, holding the four pieces of cardboard for which the other men had died.

Shayne caught a glimpse of Pearson’s set face as he stepped forward with heavy automatic extended. The racketing echoes of gunshots were still loud in the room when Pearson’s automatic spoke twice.

Both bullets took Gorstmann in the pit of the stomach. He clamped his hands over the wounds and the four pieces of cardboard fluttered to the floor. A look of dismay spread over his face, then the strength went out of his legs, and he slid down to a sitting position. He tried to speak, but the shrewdly placed slugs had paralyzed a nerve center and all he managed was a low moan before his head sagged forward.

In the silence that followed the shooting, Shayne said, “Nice going, Pearson. Like shooting dummies at target practice.”

Pearson looked down at the detective with compressed lips. He said, “I wasn’t taking any chances,” and stepped around a pool of blood to pick up the torn pieces of claim check dropped by Gorstmann.

Shayne dragged himself to his feet. Will Gentry confronted him. He said, “You shouldn’t have tried to pull this off under our noses, Mike.”

Shayne shrugged. “You can’t shoot a man for trying.”

“Don’t be too sure about that.” Peter Painter edged forward as he spoke. “It’ll be a federal charge this time, Shayne.”

Gentry said quietly, “It’s up to the government. You’re under arrest, Mike.”

Shayne said, “I had to take my chance on that. How did you come to be here, Johnny-on-the-spot?”

“You can thank Painter for that,” Gentry rumbled. “He tipped us off that you were planning to pull a fast one.”

“Painter?” Shayne frowned at the slim detective chief from the Beach.

“That’s right.” Painter caressed his mustache. “I suspected all along that you knew more than you were telling, Shayne. Someone sent me a marked copy of this morning’s
Herald
and as soon as I saw the advertisement I knew what it meant. So Gentry had you tailed when you left your hotel.”

Shayne nodded. His face was expressionless. He said, “Anyhow, Phyllis is safe—and she’s got a grand to hire a lawyer with.”