Marked for Murder

Brett Halliday

TIMOTHY ROURKE’S TALL LEAN BODY was bent forward from the waist when he loped into the city room of the
Courier.
His shock of black hair, showing traces of silver, was disheveled from much finger-combing. His dark eyes were narrowed and his thin nostrils flared like a bloodhound’s hot on a scent.

Striding purposefully toward his typewriter, he shed his light coat and began rolling up his shirtsleeves. He sailed his soiled Panama hat over the heads of two fellow workmen and it landed on his desk.

Minerva Higgins, prim and fortyish, a fixture in the
Courier
office for more than 20 years, glanced up and met Rourke’s eyes. She motioned for him to stop and said in a low voice, “Are you still prying into that mess on the Beach, Mr. Rourke?” Her pale eyes studied his face earnestly through bifocals. “Mr. Bronson wants you to lay off.”

“With three murders committed during the past week? To hell with Bronson.” Timothy Rourke swung around angrily.

Minerva caught his arm. “Don’t forget Bronson’s the boss. He thinks you’re riding Painter too hard—and unjustly.”

“This is one time, by God, when I wish Mike Shayne had never left Miami. Trouble with Painter is, he hasn’t been ridden hard for too long.”

Rourke went on to his desk, dropped his coat over the back of his chair, and slid into it. He rolled a sheet of paper into his typewriter and pulled a protective rubber finger tip over the index finger of his right hand. Lowering his gaze to the keys, he began punching them with the single finger, hitting each key methodically and hard, and with a steady speed not much less than that of an experienced touch typist. He wrote,
Three men have been murdered in Miami Beach during the last week. The murders have not been solved. No arrests have been made. No arrests are anticipated by those who follow the record of the Miami Beach detective bureau under the leadership
(sic)
of Chief Peter Painter.

In an exclusive interview with Chief Painter this morning
…

A tap on his shoulder interrupted him. He turned with his finger poised above the keys and saw Tommy, one of the copy boys, standing beside him. Tommy was round-faced and freckled. He grinned and said, “Boss wants to see you, Tim.”

“Tell him I’m busy,” Rourke growled. “Tell him—”

Still grinning, Tommy shook his head. “He saw you come in, and he wants you right now. He’s chewin’ hell out of his cigar,” the boy ended with a chuckle.

Rourke got up and went across to a closed door with the legend
Managing Editor
on the upper frosted-glass portion. He opened the door and went in, pulling it shut against the clatter of typewriters and the din of teletype machines.

Walter Bronson sat alone behind a big, bare oak desk, a massive man of 40, bald and heavy-featured. His thick-lidded eyes had a way of regarding his subordinates with brooding but benign severity, as though he accepted and understood their human weaknesses while he deplored them. His lips were pouched around a cigar, his jaws working slowly, ruminatively.

None of his evident perturbation showed in his bland voice when he said, “Come in, Timothy.”

Rourke leaned his shoulder blades against the frosted glass of the closed door, and said impatiently, “Let’s have it in a hurry. I’m doing a story.”

Bronson said, “I just had a call from Chief Painter.”

Rourke’s thin, wide mouth twisted in a grimace. “That’s my story.”

Bronson worked the cigar to the other side of his mouth. “You’re a competent reporter,” he said, “when you stick to reporting. But I’ve been meaning to speak to you about those stories you’ve been running the last few days.”

“Does the truth frighten you?” Rourke made a loose cigarette with brown paper and sack tobacco.

“The truth,” said Bronson sententiously, “will always be welcome in the
Courier
columns. But our regular staff will continue to write the editorials.”

Rourke lit his sorry cigarette and said flatly, “All right. Your regular staff will continue to write the editorials. I’ll continue to write the truth.” He turned and put his hand on the doorknob.

“Hold it, Rourke.” Bronson didn’t raise his voice but it was heavy with jarring impact. “You insulted Painter in his office this morning.”

Rourke’s eyes glinted. “That’s page-one news. I didn’t know Painter could be insulted. God knows I’ve tried often enough.”

Bronson jabbed a drooling cigar toward Rourke. “You’ve also insulted a lot of other people in the entire greater Miami area with your inflammatory stories about a crime wave; your unjustified statements that Miami is becoming a mecca for hoodlums and gangsters; your thinly veiled implications that graft and corruption are rampant in the Beach police department; your insinuations concerning the activities of a shady gambling syndicate.”

“I suppose the Chamber of Commerce doesn’t like it.” Rourke glowered at his cigarette. It had gone out. He flung it in a wastebasket.

“Precisely,” Bronson went on. “Also the Civic Betterment League and the Ministerial Association. Protests have been pouring in, Rourke, from right-thinking citizens on all sides. The wire services are picking up your stories and featuring them throughout the country. You’re giving Miami a black name just when it’s very important that we have a good press throughout the nation. Our civic leaders envision an unparalleled opportunity for Miami to build and grow as never before. A resurgence of the ’twenty-six boom, perhaps. People won’t come here if they get the impression they’re likely to be murdered while walking our streets.”

“They are.”

“Nonsense. Three murderous attacks in succession is sheer coincidence. Chief Painter assures me—”

“Chief Painter lies,” said Rourke. He moved forward and put both palms flat on Bronson’s desk. “Hiding our heads in the sand won’t solve this problem, Bronson. I can name you half a dozen gambling spots that have opened on the Beach in the last two months—all operated by the same syndicate. There’s too much loose money around.”

Bronson swiveled his chair slightly and looked away from the hot glare in Rourke’s eyes. “We’ve always had a certain amount of gambling here,” he snapped. “Miami isn’t a blue-law town. The tourists demand it.”

“But this is big-time organized stuff. With everything that goes with it. I tell you they’re moving in. It’s prohibition days all over again, except on a bigger scale. They’re buying protection, forming their own strong-arm mobs.”

“You’re having nightmares,” Bronson scoffed. “I know Chief Painter. He’s honest and incorruptible.”

“He’s honest,” Rourke agreed soberly, “but he’s in a tough spot. The civic leaders over there are putting the pressure on Painter. He’s human and he wants to keep his job. He’s trying to hold the lid on—and kid himself that it isn’t as bad as he knows it is.”

Walter Bronson took his cigar from his mouth and glared at it. A full inch of one end was a soggy, pulpy mass. “I’m afraid you’re exaggerating conditions in your own mind.”

“I was in Miami back in the ’twenties when Capone’s mob tried to take over,” Rourke said bitterly. “You weren’t.”

Bronson moved a pudgy hand in an impatient gesture. “The situation is entirely different today.”

“You bet it is. It’s worse. We’ve got to open our eyes and stamp it out before it goes any further.”

“That’s a job for the authorities,” Bronson told him.

“It’s a paper’s duty to give its readers the facts.”

“But not one man’s wild fancies.”

Rourke pushed himself erect, circled the desk slowly, and went over to the open window. He said, “Miami Beach is my home, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to stand by idly and see it taken over by a gang of murdering rats. They’ve got to be stamped out, and the only way to do it is to arouse the citizens to an understanding of the danger.”

Bronson cleared his throat. “I’m the managing editor and I’ll decide this paper’s policy. After you’ve written your story, send in your copy for my okay.”

Rourke hesitated with his hand on the doorknob, then flung the door open and went back to his desk. Glancing over the few lines he had written, his jaw tightened, and he pulled on the rubber finger tip again. Deliberately and methodically, he went on with the story he had started before visiting Bronson’s office.

There were four full pages when he finished. He clipped the sheets together, folded them in the center, and laid them beside his typewriter.

He slid in a fresh sheet of paper and typed,
In an exclusive interview this morning with Chief Peter Painter, capable and affable head of the Miami Beach Detective Bureau, this reporter was assured that any fears of a crime wave in the resort city were wholly groundless.

True, there have been three murders within a week but Chief Painter was emphatic in his statement that early arrests are confidently anticipated, and…

When he had completed three pages he called Tommy over, handed him the copy, and said, “Take this in to Bronson for his okay before turning it in to the composing room.”

Tommy said, “Sure, Tim. Are you still ridin’ the Beach racketeers? I bet you’re a better detective than any they got on the police force.”

Timothy grinned and said, “Run along with that stuff, and be sure you get down on your knees when you hand it to the Big Shot.”

He waited until the boy disappeared, then gathered up the folded pages of his original story, and strolled down to the composing room where he handed it to Sam, the grizzled foreman.

“Page one if you can make room for it, Sam.”

Sam spread the sheets out and read the lead. “Hot stuff, eh, Tim? This is getting to be like old times.”

“Yeh. Like old times.” He laid a friendly hand on the older man’s shoulder and turned away, stopped in the doorway to roll and light a cigarette.

The brown cylinder was half-smoked when Tommy came down the steps with Bronson’s okayed copy in his hand. Rourke stopped him and asked, “Old man like it all right?”

“Sure. He quit chewin’ on his cigar while he read it.”

“I’ll take it to Sam. You’d better beat it back upstairs to see if some of the others need you. Pretty close to deadline.”

“Sure.” Tommy took the stairs two at the time. Rourke followed him slowly, tearing the typewritten sheets into narrow strips and stuffing them in his pocket.

Upstairs, he went to his desk and stood for a moment with his hand on the back of his chair, looking soberly at the typewriter on which he had pounded out copy for almost 20 years. It was a lumbering old-fashioned machine, but it suited him and his one-finger punching. He wished he could take it with him. He knew he would have a hell of a time getting accustomed to another typewriter.

He sat down and started gathering his personal belongings from the desk drawers. No one paid any attention to him. He stuffed all the memoranda on stories he had done, and stories he had planned to do, in his pockets. He then rolled a sheet of paper in the typewriter and looked at his watch.

It was 12:18. He typed the date and added, 12:18 p.m. Below that heading he typed,
The hell you do. I’ve already quit.
He typed his name and left the sheet of paper in the roller.

He got up and put on his coat, strolled out, nodding and lifting his hand casually to two or three who looked up and spoke to him.

The elevator took him down to the ground floor and he walked unhurriedly toward Flagler Street.

IT WAS A LITTLE AFTER TWO O’CLOCK when Timothy Rourke parked his roadster in front of a modest two-story apartment house on Miami Beach. The afternoon air was sun-drenched and humid. He got out and walked around the front of his car, crossed the palm-shaded parkway, and started toward the front of the apartment house.

A man got out of a sedan parked beyond the entrance and sauntered toward him. He was an inch or so above six feet in height and very bony. He wore a Palm Beach suit and a Panama hat, two-toned sports shoes that glistened in the hot sunlight. His features were sharp, and pallid skin stretched tightly over high cheekbones and pointed chin. His eyes were deep-set, with lids wrinkled down and closing them to mere slits.

He met Rourke at the entrance walk and said, “Rourke?”

“Who are you?”

“I’m a pal.” The man’s voice was low and husky. “Let’s take a little ride.”

Rourke laughed shortly and started up the walk. The man put long bony fingers on his arm and tightened them. His face had a tired, depressed look. He said, “Get smart, chum,” and bunched his other hand in the side pocket of his coat.

Rourke said, “All right,” and went with him to the sedan.

A man wearing a pink-striped shirt sat behind the steering-wheel. His sleeves were rolled up above hairy forearms, and he wore a black-and-white checkered cap with a stiff bill. His right ear was cauliflowered, and when Rourke opened the back door he turned his head to give a view of a profile almost perfectly flat.

Rourke got in the back seat and left the door open. His tall companion got in beside him and closed the door. He said, “All right, Monk.”

The driver raced the motor and ground the gears getting away in low. His left ear was twisted and stood away from his head at an odd angle. The back of his neck was red with a thick fold of flesh above the pink-striped neckband.

Rourke rolled down his window and settled back with cigarette papers and tobacco.

His companion took out a pack of Camels and growled, “Don’t go fouling up this car with that junk. Take one of these.”

A saturnine grin lighted Rourke’s face. “Thanks,” he said.

The man snapped a silver lighter and held the flame to Rourke’s cigarette, then settled back and pensively studied the polished tips of his shoes.

Monk had turned north and was driving at an easy speed between rows of coco palms and modest bungalows. Presently he turned to cross a bridge onto one of the small man-made islands dotting the shore of the bay. He followed a winding course to a big sprawling one-story clubhouse on the waterfront and pulled into a deserted parking-lot.

Rourke knew this to be the Sunrise Club, formerly a private clubhouse for wealthy householders on the island, now converted into a swanky gambling establishment. He asked, “End of the line?”

The tall man unfolded himself and got out. Rourke followed him to a side entrance in a concrete wall draped with red and purple bougainvillea. Monk plodded along behind them.

Rourke’s self-appointed “pal” unlocked a rear door opening onto a narrow dark passageway. He switched on a ceiling light and went on to a door at the end of the narrow hall and turned the knob. They entered a spacious office carpeted with rich red carpeting. Venetian blinds at the wide windows let slatted sunlight into the room. Walls of robin’s-egg blue rose to meet the warm creamy ceiling centered with a magnificent chandelier.

A tall spare man sat behind a leather-covered desk. His jaw was square, his mouth tight-lipped, but his blue eyes twinkled as he half-rose and nodded pleasantly to Rourke. He said, “It was nice of you to come, Mr. Rourke,” and looked inquiringly at the two men behind the reporter.

“Acted like he was glad to come,” Monk said.

“You and Monk wait outside, Bing. I’ll have you drive Mr. Rourke back presently.”

The pair went out through a side door. Rourke sat down in a chair of blue leather and chromium near the desk. He got out cigarette papers and a sack of tobacco.

His host took the cover from a rosewood humidor and shoved it toward him. “Won’t you try one of these Havanas?”

“No, thanks.” Rourke’s lean face was blandly expressionless. He poured tobacco in the brown paper and on the carpet.

“I presume you know who I am,” said the square-jawed man.

“I presume you’re Brenner.” Rourke licked his cigarette and crimped the end.

“Correct,” Brenner told him with incisive calm. He pulled a desk lighter toward him and lit a cigar. He settled back and looked at the glowing tip with satisfaction, then said, “I’m not one to beat around the bush. You’re stirring up a lot of trouble with your newspaper stories.”

“That,” said Rourke, “was the general idea.”

Brenner sighed. “I’m a reasonable man. Live and let live is my motto.”

Rourke made no reply.

“How much do you earn on the
Courier?”

Rourke grinned and crossed his thin legs. “About half what I’m worth.”

“I need a man like you to take care of public relations. I’m going to make you an offer. I’m only going to make it once. Five hundred a week.”

“For ratting on my job?”

Brenner sighed again. “You’re not a damned reformer. You know people are going to gamble. You’re not going to change anything with your newspaper stories,”

“I’ve got you worried,” Rourke told him.

“You’re beginning to cause trouble,” Brenner admitted. “If you keep that stuff up long enough I’ll lose more than five hundred a week in patronage. It’s a business proposition with me.”

“My stories have been about murder,” Rourke reminded him.

“So they have. You’ve done a lot of insinuating.” Brenner pointed the glowing tip of his cigar at him. “People who read your stuff are beginning to believe they’ll be marked for murder if they win anything at my tables.”

“Like the last three,” Rourke agreed without emphasis.

“You’re a fool if you honestly think I had any part in those killings. I don’t have to make my money that way. I know the suckers will be back the next night to drop their winnings.”

“I don’t think you engineered any of the murders, but you’re directly responsible,” Rourke said calmly. “As long as you stay in business, they’ll go on.”

“Five hundred a week,” Brenner said sharply.

“Or else?”

“Or else.”

Rourke took a final drag on his limp cigarette, crushed it out in an ash tray, and said, “I’ve got you on the run. Painter doesn’t like this setup any better than I do. Public opinion has forced him to hold his hand. But I’m changing all that, Brenner. You were a fool to let those three customers be murdered. That’s going to put you out of business.”

“I don’t think so.” Brenner drummed on the desk with long, white, spatulate fingers. “Say it was a mistake,” he went on quietly. “Say I didn’t have things well enough organized. I’ll see that it doesn’t happen again.”

“Give us the killers,” Rourke suggested. “Including the finger bitch.”

Brenner’s square jaw was set and he said, “You’ve done a lot of nosing around,” through tight lips.

“That’s the only thing that’ll take the heat off.”

After a moment’s consideration Brenner said, “Can’t be done,” almost regretfully, and added, “In the first place, I don’t know anything about it.”

“You offered to see that it doesn’t happen again,” Rourke argued reasonably.

“I can pass the word along,” said Brenner, “but we can’t change what’s already happened.”

“Neither can I change what I’ve written.”

“You’re not quite out on a limb,” Brenner reminded him. “I don’t even demand a retraction. Just drop the line you’ve been pounding on.”

“Suppose I don’t.”

“Then you’ll be out five hundred a week—and you will, anyhow. I can put pressure on your publisher.”

Rourke stood up and said, “You’re a cold-blooded bastard, Brenner. The rackets stunk bad enough before the war.”

Brenner’s smile was cold. “That old line again,” he scoffed.

Rourke’s face was taut and his eyes were murderous. He swung angrily toward the door through which he had entered. The side door opened and Bing hurried in with an early afternoon edition of the
Courier
in his hand. He was excited. He thrust the paper at Brenner and panted, “Look at this, Boss. It just came.”

Monk came in and got between Rourke and the outer door, his big hands doubled into fists.

Brenner spread the paper out and began reading the front page item. Rourke saw that some of the news had been crowded off to give his story a prominent spot. He had a sudden let-down feeling inside. Up to now he hadn’t thought much about personal danger. In his mind he had characterized Brenner and his ilk as rats and was contemptuous of them, but as he watched the gambler’s face, he wished to God he was out of there.

It was ominously silent in the ornate office. The only sound was Bing’s heavy breathing. Then there was the rustling of the newspaper as Brenner laid it aside. He lifted his cold blue gaze to Rourke and said, “You really spilled your guts this time.” He nodded to Monk.

Monk slugged Rourke. It didn’t appear to be a hard blow. It struck the reporter on the side of the head. He tried to roll with it, and to his surprise found himself rolling all the way to the floor.

Brenner puffed on his cigar and said with sadistic calm, “Work him over, Monk.”

Monk wheezed happily and kicked Rourke in the face. Blood trickled from one corner of his mouth, and he lay very still.

When he came to, he was in the hallway and Monk was sloshing cold water over his head. Rourke groaned and tried to sit up. Monk squatted beside him and said solicitously, “Lemme help you,” and slid a bulky arm under the reporter’s armpits and lifted him to his feet. Rourke began retching. Monk waited until the seizure passed, then dragged him back into Brenner’s office.

Brenner was still sitting behind his desk. He said, “My offer still stands. Only now you’ll have to write a retraction for some of the stuff in today’s paper.”

Rourke licked at his swollen lip and said thickly, “Nuts.”

“You’d better think it over tonight.” Brenner’s voice sounded remote in Rourke’s ears. “Take him out to the car,” the gambler directed Monk, “and drop him somewhere near his apartment.”

Bing and Monk carried him out and put him in the back seat of the sedan. They both got in the front seat and drove away. Rourke lay huddled on the seat. His strength was coming back but he couldn’t think very clearly.

They drove to within a block of the apartment and pulled up to the curb. Bing got out, whistling cheerfully, and dragged Rourke to the pavement, propped him up against the base of a palm tree, and the two men drove away.