Heads You Lose (17 page)

“You’re contradicting yourself,” Miss Taylor said quickly, “If those checkmarks meant anything…”

Shayne stopped her with a short laugh. “Let me finish. They wouldn’t sell me any illicit stuff until I flashed a Motorist Protective Association membership card. That made the difference and they weren’t afraid of me.”

He glanced at Edna and met a venomous glare from her hazel eyes. He said, “Don’t blame yourself for giving me that card. After all, you could hardly refuse without arousing more suspicion. I had already guessed the angle and it simply made proving it easier.”

“How about Seeney?” Gentry put in impatiently. “Did he kill Clem Wilson?”

“I’m coming to that. When Brannigan read about Wilson’s murder last night he was scared. He didn’t know whether one of his men had found it necessary to kill Wilson or not. If not, it meant there was another gas racket operating in town in competition with him. In either case he was damned anxious to know who’d killed Wilson… and how much I knew.

“So he called me to his office and tried to find out what I knew by claiming his association wanted to help stamp out gas racketeering. He was partially truthful. It was to his interest to stamp out any competitive organization.”

Shayne paused to draw a long breath. “When I wouldn’t play ball, he sicked his vice-president onto me.
She
tried to wangle it out of me. Eddie Seeney came to the door while we were having fun. He was scared, too, because he’d been to see Wilson lately with a proposition. Wilson cussed him out and he crossed Wilson off the list. But he was afraid Wilson might have described him to me over the phone. His wife had accused him of the murder, too. He tried to see Brannigan, but Brannigan put him off… fired him. So he tried to turn to Miss Taylor. As soon as she saw him in the doorway drunk, she knew she had to shut him up before he spilled things in front of me. So she grabbed my gun and let him have it, her brilliant legalistic mind realizing she could claim self-defense. Mrs. Seeney, by the way,” he ended, turning his eyes on Edna Taylor, “has a very young baby.”

Edna gave a little gasp and swayed to the couch, burying her face in her hands.

Gentry growled, “All right. That’s one murder. But who did kill Clem Wilson? Seeney? And what about those hoods that have been trying to rub you out?”

“I’m coming to that.” Shayne paused at the sound of a car pulling up outside. He looked relieved and said, “That must be our missing witness.”

He strode to the door and opened it, caught Mr. Carlton by the arm and drew him inside, saying cheerfully, “Everything is under control, Carlton, and you’re not going to get hurt.”

Herbert Carlton nodded nervously to Chief Gentry and his gaze flickered over Brannigan and Dennis Kline with no show of recognition.

Shayne said, “Just take it easy, Carlton,” and asked Gentry, “Did you find any evidence of ration-book forging in Carlton’s printing office when you picked up Donald Frazier’s body?”

“Plenty. We found the plates used for the coupons, but we didn’t find any of the printed stuff.”

Shayne said, “Carlton’s trusted employee, whom we know as Bartel, was an ace counterfeiter. Working alone at night, he has been forging gas coupons and books. And that’s where you come in, Kline.”

Dennis Kline smiled coldly and fingered his gray mustache. “You’ll have one hell of a time proving anything, Shamus.”

“I don’t think so. Gentry has a dozen men out raiding your string of outlying service stations.”

“They won’t find anything. Not a drop of bootleg.”

“They’re not looking for that. We knew you were too smart to take a chance that way. With your reputation, it was a cinch your stations would be closely checked. But forged coupons are a different matter. They’re easily concealed, and there’s no way in God’s world to prove they’re not legitimate once they’re torn from a book and put with the others. You thought it was foolproof, didn’t you, Kline? There’d always be the exact number of coupons to match the amount of gas sold.”

Kline grated, “You’re crazy. I don’t know anything about any forged coupons. Those stations are legitimate business.”

Shayne turned to Gentry. “Can you get a report on that raiding squad?”

“I’ll call in and see,” Gentry answered. He heaved himself from the deep chair and looked around for a telephone.

“It’s in the bedroom,” Shayne told him. He preceded Gentry into the room and tested the instrument, nodded with satisfaction, and said, “It’s okay. See what you can get.”

Gentry dialed a number and consulted briefly with headquarters, hung up and turned with a glint of satisfaction in his eyes. “I got plenty,” he said and they went back to the living room.

Gentry confronted Kline and growled, “You’ve tangled with the Feds this time, Denny. Three of your stations raided. One drew a blank, but the other two were lousy with loose coupons.”

“Can I help it if some of my men don’t have any better sense?”

“With coupons turning up at enough of your stations, it’s going to make a federal grand jury suspect that you
might
have a hand in it,” Gentry said. An expression faintly resembling a smile spread over his beefy face. Turning to Shayne, he went on: “By God, Mike! I’ve been waiting for years for Kline to get careless enough so that Manny Markle couldn’t push him through a loophole. This is it.”

“And that isn’t all,” Shayne said. He heard another car stop outside and strode to the door, yanked it open and said, “Come in and join the gathering,” to Captain Ott and the shrinking youth whom the officer pushed in front of him.

Shayne caught Bob Wilson’s arm and straightened him up. The Army deserter cowered away from him, but Shayne turned him around to face the others, ordering, “Point out the man who’s been hiding you here in town.”

Bob Wilson drew in a long breath and blurted out, “Nobody’s been hiding me.”

Shayne said, “You know you went to Dennis Kline as soon as you hit town. Kline got you into that drugstore holdup a year ago and you knew he would help you because you kept your mouth shut. Isn’t that it?” He pressed hard on the youth’s shoulders.

Kline took a step forward, his eyes leering angrily. “You’re putting words into his mouth, Shayne. I don’t even know who this boy is.”

“How about it, Captain Ott?” Shayne glanced at the Army officer. “Where’d you pick him up?”

“Just where you said we would find him, Shayne. With the help of Gentry’s men we raided a night-club owned by Kline. This lad was hiding there.”

Kline blustered, “That doesn’t prove anything against me. I’m not responsible…”

“I can prove that you sent a man to Clem Wilson offering to protect his son from arrest if Wilson would sell out to you. Wilson refused and threatened to notify the authorities last midnight unless Bob gave himself up. You knew Wilson would do it, didn’t you, Kline? So you couldn’t afford to let Clem live until midnight.”

Bob Wilson was suddenly standing erect of his own accord. He fought Shayne’s arm from his shoulder, took two steps toward Kline with his face contorted and his fists doubled. “Did you murder my father, Dennis Kline? Did you?”

Shayne stepped forward and laid his hand on the lad’s shoulder again. “Draw your own conclusions, Bob. Midnight was the deadline.”

“Don’t listen to him, kid,” Kline put in hastily. “It’s a trick.”

“You bastard! Goddamn you to hell, you bastard.” Bob ducked from under Shayne’s restraining hand and rushed Kline. “And all the time you were telling me all you’d do for me.”

Kline sidestepped the lad’s pounding fists and Shayne jerked him back and flung him over to Captain Ott, saying, “Save your punches for the Japanese, Bob. The law will take care of Kline. He’s yours, Captain. He’s got a lot of fight in him.”

“We’ll take care of everything,” Captain Ott promised grimly.

Will Gentry stood by, his massive face very red, a scowl trenched between his eyes. He asked incredulously, “Do you mean it, Mike? Did Denny have the old man killed? I always figured he was smarter than that.”

Shayne looked at the chief in surprise. “Of course he is. He’s too smart to stick his neck out like that. I thought you knew.”

Gentry’s eyebrows appeared to bristle with anger. Shayne shrugged wearily and said, “That’s about all that’s left to clean up, I guess. Carlton killed Clem Wilson,” he announced without enthusiasm. “Mr. Herbert P. Carlton of Coral Gables… the best witness I have against himself.”

CHAPTER

THERE WAS A MOMENT OF DEAD SILENCE INSIDE the crowded room after Michael Shayne made his casual announcement. The only sound was the soft lead of Timothy Rourke’s pencil scribbling furiously on a pad of copy paper. He stopped writing to lift his eyebrows at Shayne.

Carlton exclaimed vehemently, “Do you know what you’re saying, Shayne?”

Will Gentry screwed up his face anxiously and asked, “Do you, Mike?”

Shayne dropped into a chair and sprawled his legs out comfortably. He said, “Honest to God, Will, I thought you knew it was Carlton. I thought you were just waiting for me to get the dope on him. Hell, it
had
to be… from the very first.”

Gentry growled, “What do you mean by ‘the very first’?”

“Last night out at the filling station. I suspected him then, though I wasn’t positive until this morning.”

In a trembling, aggrieved voice, Carlton said, “I demand an explanation for your absurd charge, Shayne.”

“You’ll get it. You thought you were safe from suspicion every time I dragged a dead herring across your path.” To Gentry he said impatiently, “That stall about having a flat and seeing all those things happen sounded goofy. In the first place, look at him. Is he the type to change his own tire when there’s a filling station handy, rubber conservation or not? Not on your life. And didn’t you notice his hands and the knees of his pants? They were clean. And that malarkey about the car almost hitting him. His pants were torn, but there wasn’t any bruise on his leg. He hadn’t been changing any tire. All he had time to do was slide a jack under the wheel. Then he hurried to the station because he was stuck with that flat and had to go through the normal actions of an innocent man.”

Gentry got out a handkerchief to mop his florid face. “You can’t hang a murder rap on a few little things like that.” His words drooled with disappointment and disgust.

“Don’t worry. I’ve got plenty more. Those things just made me suspicious. I saw what they could point to. If Carlton had killed Clem Wilson and then got a flat as he was driving away he would have done just those things. He couldn’t drive on… not in these days of tire rationing… without attracting a lot of attention. And he felt pretty sure Clem Wilson was calling the cops and he was likely to meet up with them. He couldn’t desert his car half a mile from the crime, because that would throw too much suspicion on him. So he had to face it out by acting the innocent bystander.

“He overdid it,” Shayne went on slowly, “with the details he claimed he saw half a mile away which fitted Mrs. Wilson’s story. He was careful to mention two men in a dark sedan, and after I gave him the idea, he realized it might be well to claim he could identify them.”

Carlton broke in angrily, but Shayne raised his voice and continued:

“All that is actually immaterial, though. Carlton made his real mistake early this morning. I knew it had to be him. Hell, Will, you’re the one who pointed it out to me. Before God, I thought you knew.”

“Me?” Gentry scowled heavily.

“Sure. When you pointed out to me how prompt the man with the rifle was after the
Herald
came out. Remember? You said he checked into the hotel at six twenty-two. Just twenty-two minutes after the first edition was out.”

Gentry sputtered, “I don’t get it. Twenty minutes is plenty of time to read a paper and check in at a hotel.”

“But you’re forgetting the call that came in while I was in your office. About the kid killed near the railroad yards. I told you he had been in my room with a phony message at five forty-five… fifteen minutes
before
the
Herald
came out.”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

“It was perfectly clear that the boy was sent to my apartment to learn its exact location. He was just a punk they picked up. They grabbed him as he came out of my hotel, got the information, then bumped him. The rifleman who signed his name B. Antrim knew which hotel room to rent in the hotel opposite… and which window to watch for his try at putting me out of the picture.”

Gentry said glumly, “Come again.”

Shayne lifted his arms and clasped his hands at the back of his head, took a deep, painful breath, and said, “That made it absolutely a cinch that whoever was after me didn’t have to wait to read the paper about the murder. He already knew, and that made it Carlton. He was the only person, other than Mrs. Wilson and the police, who knew that Clem Wilson talked to me before he was shot… the only other person who knew I was keeping the information to myself.”

Gentry subsided, venting his disgust with a half-hearted snort.

Herbert Carlton’s voice was out of control when he said, “It all sounds perfectly absurd. I don’t know what all your gibberish is about. What about that threat I received… these wounds I got while those men were abducting me? What about my car fenders being smashed when they rammed into me? And what about the boss who listened outside the cabin while we were locked inside?”

Shayne let his head loll against the chair. He said, “I have already said you were your own best witness… or worst… in the crime you committed. You wrote an anonymous threat to yourself at the same time you wrote that note to me. A check will show they were written on your typewriter. And as for the wounds on your face, the tape looks mighty clean. People don’t tape up bruises. They tape up scratches where there has been blood.”

He came up from his chair in one movement, stepped forward swiftly, and ripped a strip of adhesive from his cheek. There was no wound underneath. He pinned Carlton’s arms behind him with his two hands, held him with his left while he stripped the last piece of tape from his face. Then he dragged him toward Gentry, saying, “Look, Will. A boy scout would be smarter than Carlton. There’s not a scratch on him.”