The Private Practice of Michael Shayne (14 page)

Shayne waved to them genially without getting up. “Coffee—or something stronger, gentlemen?”

“Neither.”

In the lead, Will Gentry’s face didn’t wear its usual jovial expression. He scowled and avoided Shayne’s eyes.

Painter was his usual dapper, stern self, with perhaps an added touch of complacency clinging to him this morning.

The welcoming grin went off of Shayne’s face as he looked from one to the other.

“I have an uneasy feeling that you bear ill tidings. Marco hasn’t inconveniently committed suicide, has he?”

Painter shook his head slightly, and Gentry dropped his heavy, solid body into a chair and said resentfully, “I’ve played ball with you lots of times, Mike. I’ve trusted you when God knows I didn’t have any reason to.”

Shayne set his cup down. “You haven’t ever regretted it, have you, Will?”

“No,” Gentry rumbled. “That’s the hell of it, Mike. I didn’t think you’d let me down.”

“Have I?” Shayne’s eyes were alert, questioning.

“That’s what it looks like. And what gets my goat is the damned stupidity of it. Any time you pull a fast one I expect it to be good. This stunt couldn’t get by, Mike. You, of all men, should have known better.”

“I don’t get it. I’m no good at riddles or beating around the mulberry bush. What are you talking about?”

Gentry waved a big hand toward Painter. “You tell him. It’s your party.”

Peter Painter took a folded document from his breast pocket. “Just to be sure that everything’s in order, Shayne, here is a search warrant authorizing me to search your apartment for the gun that killed Harry Grange.”

He extended the paper toward the detective.

Shayne blinked at him in utter consternation, his thoughts swiftly going over his action in exchanging barrels in the two pistols. He was certain the barrels had no identifying marks. How in hell could they have found out about the exchange? He bluffed it out by growling, “You don’t need to get so technical. I gave you that pistol last night of my own volition.”

“You gave me
a
pistol,” Painter contradicted. “But not the one that killed Harry Grange. Don’t you know, for God’s sake, that we’ve got ballistic tests down to such a science nowadays that you couldn’t get away with a switch like that?”

Shayne still didn’t get it. He thought the beach detective was referring to his switching of barrels. He glanced over at Will Gentry with ragged red brows drawn down low over his eyes.

“What’s this guy talking about, Will?”

Gentry waggled his head sorrowfully.

“It wasn’t even smart, Mike. Painter has found out about you prowling Marco’s house yesterday, and it’s easy to guess how you got hold of the gun registered in his name.”

“Then went out on the beach and had a witness watch you pick up the death gun where you had thrown it last night,” Painter put in swiftly. “Then you fired a shot out of the Marco pistol, cleaned and reloaded your own gun—as if that would fool a ballistics expert,” he ended witheringly.

“Wait a minute.” Shayne looked from one to the other in horrified realization. “Do you mean to say that gun you took away from here
didn’t
fire the bullet into Grange’s head?”

Painter said, “Absolutely not. There’s a difference between the markings on a bullet shot out of it and the death slug.”

“Well, I’m damned!” Shayne appealed to Gentry. “He’s crazy, Will. He must be crazy—or else
he’s
pulling one.”

Will Gentry nodded negatively.

“You can’t get away with it, Mike. I had my own expert compare the bullets before I’d believe you had tried a dumb trick like that.”

Shayne got up unsteadily. He moved over to the liquor cabinet like a man in a coma, reached down a bottle and pulled the cork with his teeth, took a long drink out of the bottle.

Gentry frowned, watching him. Shayne’s surprise was almost too perfect to be simulated. For a moment the Miami detective chief wondered if it was possible that Shayne had actually thought he was giving them the death gun.

Shayne came back, stood before the two detectives on wide-spread legs, his nostrils flaring at the base.

“As God is my witness,” he told them steadily, “this is news to me. News that hurts like the devil. I—hell! I can’t believe it yet.”

Painter’s lips curled scornfully. He snapped, “Save the histrionics for a jury.” He flipped the search warrant in front of Shayne and reached for the table drawer. “I’m taking this nice clean pistol along with me this time. We’ll see what ballistics has to say about it.”

Trapped by his own infernal cleverness, hoisted on his own petard! For a moment Shayne couldn’t think of anything to say.
His
pistol was fitted with the barrel taken from the Marco gun—the one he had found in Marsha’s room.

And Marsha’s handkerchief had been in the car—high-heeled footprints running from the scene—Marsha had, undoubtedly, ridden away from the casino with Grange—Marsha’s inexplicable confinement to her room and her father’s anxiety over what she might have told Shayne.

All these facts flashed kaleidoscopically before his benumbed mind as he stood there speechless. If Marsha Marco had killed Grange, a ballistic test would prove
his
gun had shot the bullet.

It was too much for Shayne all of a sudden. All along he had been working on the theory that Larry Kincaid had killed the man with
his
pistol and left it behind to frame him. But if the barrel from his pistol
hadn’t
fired the shot—

He dropped into a chair and mopped sweat from his brow. Painter had the drawer open and was lifting out his pistol.

“I’ve got another warrant in my pocket,” Painter was saying casually. “One charging you with first-degree murder, Shayne. If you want to come along quietly, I won’t serve it until we’ve had a chance to test this pistol and clinch the case against you dead to rights.”

Shayne’s head moved slowly from side to side as if he hadn’t the strength to stop it. It was beginning to clear up a little, and he realized what a spot he had put himself in. They’d never believe him if he told his story of exchanging pistol barrels—and if they did believe him, he’d be indicted for planting evidence in a homicide.

He turned his back on Painter and addressed Gentry. “Before God, Will, this is all a complete upset for me. You can see what it does to my plans. I thought I had this case all sewed up. Now, everything’s screwy. I’ve got to work it all out from another angle.”

“You can work it out behind bars,” Painter told him silkily. “Let’s be going.”

Shayne kept his position, further appealing to Gentry, “Talk him out of it, Will. Give me a few hours to readjust my case. Tell him I’m not going to take a runout powder. Hell! I’ll hand over the real murderer if he’ll give me a few hours.”

“And I contend I’ve already got the real murderer. You’ve had your last chance to mess up the evidence in this case.”

Shayne thrust his hands deep into his pockets and strode across the room and back, shoulders hunched. Stopping in front of the two men, he said, “There’s one thing neither of you know. The pistol I found on the scene of the crime had jammed after the first shot was fired. I unjammed it when I removed the magazine to count the remaining cartridges. Knowing that just one shot had been fired into Grange’s head, I naturally thought nothing about it. But you can see how that changes things now that we know the one shot fired from it didn’t kill Grange.”

Gentry said, “Mike, I’ll be damned if you aren’t making me believe you thought that was the death gun you gave Painter.”

Shayne swung on him savagely.

“Why wouldn’t I think so? There it was with one shot fired—lying where the murderer might have tossed it. Good God, Will! as you said in the beginning, I would have been a damned fool to think I could put the wrong gun over on ballistics.”

For the first time since the interview had started, a look of indecision appeared on Peter Painter’s face.

“Why would anyone leave a jammed gun lying around there?”

“That,” Shayne told him, “is what I intend to find out.” He swung away, back and forth across the room again.

Gentry stepped close to Painter and said in a low tone, “I’d listen to him if I were you. He’s never run from anything. He’ll be here whenever you want him.”

“I’ll be here,” Shayne promised grimly from behind them. “I’m going to be so damned busy the next few hours I won’t have any time to think of leaving town.” Painter rubbed his mustache undecidedly.

“Will you be personally responsible for him, Gentry? Alter all, he’s a citizen of your city—not mine.”

“Of course,” Gentry said without hesitation. “I might have known I shouldn’t have come up here with you. I knew he’d twist me around with his blarney.”

“Thanks, Will.” Shayne’s hand closed tightly on the detective chief’s shoulder.

“All right,” Painter decided. “I’ll place you in Gentry’s custody until I can get a check made on this gun. If it proves to be the one that killed Grange, I’ll serve that warrant without any further argument.”

He turned away and Gentry made a movement to follow him. Shayne’s hand closed down tighter on his friend’s shoulder.

“Don’t go, Will. You’ve got to help me.”

They stood like that until the door closed after Painter, then Shayne’s hand relaxed and slid away.

“How long will it take him to make that ballistic test?”

“Half an hour.” Gentry looked at him steadily. “Why, Mike? You’re not afraid of what it will show, are you?”

“God help me, I am.” Shayne gritted his teeth angrily, then spread out his hands. “There’s no time to go into the details—but
I switched barrels in those two pistols.
I thought my gun had killed Grange. If the Marco gun killed him—I’m done for, Will.”

“You damned fool. You goddamned fool.”

“I know.” Shayne jerked his head around. “I deserve anything you say. I didn’t kill Grange. You believe that, don’t you?”

“Yes. I believe that. But why—?”

“Never mind anything else.” Shayne gripped his arm. “I’ve got to have a few hours to clear myself. How many ballistics experts are there on the beach force?”

“Why—only one. Lonnie Judson.”

“You personally acquainted with him?”

“Sure. He used to work with me.”

Shayne was dragging Gentry toward the phone.

“Call your friend Lonnie Judson before Painter has time to get there with the pistol. Get him away from the office somehow. Tell him anything. Have him go home with a case of smallpox. Anything to stay out of Painter’s way. Do this one thing for me, Will, and I swear to God I’ll have Grange’s murderer by five o’clock this afternoon.”

“I can’t do that, Mike. I’m an officer of the law, and Painter’d know.”

“Will, for God’s sake, you know how Painter feels toward me. If that pistol shows—he’ll have me behind bars, and I won’t get out. You know me, Will. You’ve got to do it.”

Gentry sighed and said, “You do have a way of making it tough on your friends, Mike.”

He lifted the receiver and called Miami Beach headquarters while Shayne went back to pour himself a drink and do some concentrated thinking.

Gentry left the telephone and said, “Lonnie thinks I’m nuts, but he owed me a favor. He’ll be home and in bed by the time Painter gets there. That’ll mean Painter will bring the gun over to my office for—”

“Stall him,” Shayne said impatiently. He set down his glass and absently poured Gentry a drink. “Didn’t you ever get anything on those hoodlums you fished out of the Tamiami Trail canal?”

“Them? Oh, yeh, I forgot to tell you. Ex-cons paroled from Raiford last month. The car was stolen.”

“Raiford? Paroled last month?” Hope shone in Michael Shayne’s eyes. “Remember Whitey Larson? Used to work for Marco and got sent up for rolling a drunk for his winnings.”

Gentry rubbed his chin. “I just remember the name.”

“He was paroled from Raiford last month, too. Any way you could find out whether Whitey and those other two were friendly while they were doing time together? Whether they got paroled at the same time?”

“Sure. I could call the warden.”

“Do it.” Shayne shoved him toward the telephone. “Charge it to my phone. I’m either going to earn a fee on this case, or I’ll be in a spot where I won’t have to worry about telephone bills.”

It took Gentry some time to get through to the warden of the state penitentiary at Raiford. After he was connected, it didn’t take long to get the information he wanted.

“You hit it on the head,” he told Shayne when he hung up. “Whitey and the others were close pals—all three of them worked in the laundry for months, and they were paroled at the same time.”

“That,” said Shayne soberly, “must mean something. If I can just figure out what it means I may dodge the chair yet.”

Gentry grabbed him by the arm and pushed him down into a chair.

“You’re holding out too much on me. It’ll do you good to spill some of this—clear it up in your own mind. What’s the straight on those birds that were drowned in the canal?”

Shayne gave him the story succinctly.

“You might as well have the rest of it,” he went on when Gentry asked what they thought he had gotten from Grange that was so valuable.

“Right now, I’m guessing they were after the info Grange was holding out on Thomas. I was balled up at first because the only thing I took from Grange was a lady’s handkerchief, and I thought they were after
that.”

“The one you gave me to analyze?”

“Yeh. I had a crazy hunch there might be a message on it, or something. It belonged to Marsha Marco.”

Gentry sighed out loud and shook his head.

“This gets more mixed up all the time. Marsha Marco. How does she figure?”

“She’s the key to the whole damned thing. She either killed Grange—or knows who did it,” Shayne explained.

He sucked in his breath sharply. “I lifted that pistol out of Marsha’s room. I was being, oh, so goddamned cagey.” He groaned and lifted a haggard face to stare at his companion. “I deserve anything I get. I’ve messed around with evidence before, Will, but always in the ultimate interests of justice. This time, I was positive I knew the killer, and I was trying to throw the law off the track, and incidentally save myself from a frame.”