Murder Is My Business (16 page)

There were no streetlights at all now, and thin clouds partially obscured the moon, but the trailing men were close enough to hear the others moving steadily ahead.

There was a queer tightness in Shayne’s chest and his mouth was dry as he continued on doggedly. He was thinking of Carmela Towne in her living room last night — and, later, crumpled unconscious in her bed. He should have stayed with her until the liquor wore
off. She had been in no condition to be left to awaken alone in that echoing stone house. He thought,
God knows how she must have felt when she woke up and found me gone.

And tonight she was walking down a squalid street in Juarez by the side of Neil Cochrane whom she detested.
Why?
Where was she going? What was the meaning of this secret meeting with Cochrane?

There was a sudden break in the clouds overhead, and a bleary moon shone down on the street briefly, outlining Carmela’s bare head and squared shoulders and the shambling figure of Neil Cochrane by her side as they approached the alley entrance. Ahead of them, the street was empty. Rodriquiz nodded wisely and murmured, “It is as I thought. They have turned in the alley to Papa Tonto’s.”

Even as he spoke, the pair ahead of them turned into the alley also. At the same time, the clouds came together again, hiding the moon behind a heavier veil than before. Far off toward the river a burro brayed dismally, and Shayne shuddered in spite of himself. He gripped Rodriquiz’s arm and urged him forward roughly, muttering, “I don’t like this. Let’s hurry—”

The muffled
brup
of a small-caliber pistol from the darkness of the alley interrupted him. A single scream followed the shot, then two more sharp, blasting reports in quick succession. Shayne was lunging into the alley, and Rodriquiz panted by his side.

They halted beside a blurred shape in the alley, and Shayne dropped to his knees and put his arms about
Carmela’s shaking shoulders. She was crouched, sobbing, over the lifeless body of Neil Cochrane, and her face was a blurred oval of whiteness in the dark when she lifted it to look at him. “Michael?” she sobbed. “Hurry! You’ve got to find Lance. In that place! Papa Tonto’s.” She sank back in his arms limply.

Captain Rodriquiz was squatting beside them and he twitched a stubby pistol from Carmela’s fingers before she dropped it. He said swiftly to Shayne, “I will stay here if you wish. Papa Tonto’s is where the light shines at the end of the alley.”

“The killer ran that way, too,” Carmela moaned. “I shot at him but I don’t think — I hit him.”

Shayne let her lax body down on the ground and stood up. Inhabitants of the neighborhood, aroused by the three shots, were beginning to stream toward them. Shayne muttered, “I’ll take a look in Tonto’s — for the other three who were ahead, and for Lance.”

He trotted down the alley to a closed wooden door with a dim light bulb glowing above it. The door was unlocked, and he strode into a dark hallway. Light showed through curtains at the other end of the hall.

An old Mexican came out of an alcove to confront him as he started forward. He had thin white hair, and luminous eyes set in a wrinkled face. He laid a palsied hand on Shayne’s arm and protested, “No,
Señor.
I am not know you, an’ you cannot—”

Shayne thrust him off with a force that sent him reeling back against the wall. He went on to the curtains and thrust them aside. The low room was lighted with a few bulbs in the ceiling, partially obscured by a
heavy pall of smoke hanging above the couples who sat at small tables or half reclined in booths about the wall. The smoke was acrid and biting in his nostrils, heavy with the noxious fumes of marijuana. The couples were young and mostly Mexican. They looked up at him vacantly as he threaded his way between the tables, and those in the booths didn’t change their amorous attitudes as he paused to peer in at each couple. Neither Marquita Morales and her escorts nor Lance Bayliss was in the room.

The old man from the entrance panted up to him when he finished his inspection at the far end of the room.
“Qué busca usted?
” he demanded.

“I’m looking for a girl and two Americans who just came in,” Shayne growled. “Any other places where people hide out in here?”

“But no,
Señor.”
His voice trembled angrily.
“Nadie se esconde
.
”

Shayne snorted, and jerked aside another curtain over the entrance to a short corridor leading off from the main room. The odor of opium swept out strongly. Four doors opened off the corridor into small cubicles fitted with beds and smoking equipment. Two of the cubicles were empty. A middle-aged American woman lay on her back in another bed. Her mouth was open and she was snoring. The small room was stifling with opium smoke. Shayne closed the door hastily after one look at her. The fourth cubicle had two occupants, and two pipes were going strongly. They were young, a Mexican and an American girl. They didn’t pay any attention to Shayne when he
looked in on them. They were off in a dream world of their own.

The corridor dead-ended, and there was no other exit. Shayne stalked back through the main room and out through the curtains into the dark entrance hallway. The old Mexican’s eyes blazed at him balefully from the alcove as he went by, but he didn’t speak.

In the alley an ambulance and a police car were drawn up at the entrance, with their lights shining on a group of people near the end. Neil Cochrane’s body was being loaded into the ambulance. Carmela hurried toward Shayne, with Rodriquiz a few paces behind. Carmela’s face was white and her smoothly braided hair was disarranged. Her eyes burned into his as she caught his arm and cried frantically, “Where is he, Michael? Did you find him? Was Lance there?”

Shayne shook his head. He put his arm about her shoulders and told the Mexican police captain, “Marquita and her friends evidently didn’t go into Tonto’s. What have you done out here?”

“We will find them,” Rodriquiz assured him confidently. The pistol he had taken from Carmela still dangled from his fingers. He glanced down at it and suggested politely, “If you will ride in the car with me?”

Carmela leaned against Shayne with her face pressed to his chest. “I don’t understand, Michael. Where’s Lance? I don’t—” She began to sob violently.

Shayne nodded to Rodriquiz and picked her up in his arms. He carried her to the police car and got in the back seat with her. Captain Rodriquiz got in the front beside a uniformed driver. The ambulance was
already backing away. Rodriquiz turned to tell Shayne, “We have blocked off this section and are searching for Marquita and her two soldiers. The man you looked for in Papa Tonto’s—?”

Shayne shook his head. Carmela sat beside him, supported by his arm about her, with her head resting against his shoulder. She said tiredly, like a small child just awakened from deep sleep, “They told me Lance was there. I don’t know—”

Shayne said, “We’ll talk about it when we get to headquarters.” He tightened his arm about her, and she sighed and didn’t say anything else.

At the police station, Captain Rodriquiz escorted them back to a private office. He seated himself gravely at a desk and had a stenographer brought in, laying Carmela’s pistol in front of him. She sat beside Shayne and held his hand tightly. Before the captain could begin asking questions, Shayne asked him, “What about the man who was killed, Captain?”

“Quite dead.” Rodriquiz raised his expressive eyebrows. “One bullet fired against his body penetrated the heart.” He looked at Carmela. “Will you tell us, please, how it happened?”

“Wait a minute,” Shayne said. “She should be told anything she says may be used against her. And you can consult an attorney first,” he told Carmela, “or refuse to testify at all, if you wish.”

“Oh, no,” she said quickly. “I want to tell you everything. Why should I refuse?”

Shayne shrugged. “Go ahead then.”

“There isn’t much to tell.” She paused to moisten
her lips. “We had just turned into the alley, and it was awfully dark. Neil was a step ahead of me — and the first thing I heard was the gun going off. Neil groaned and fell before I realized what had happened. Then I heard someone running. I couldn’t actually see in the darkness, but I realized he’d been shot and his murderer was getting away. I instinctively got my pistol out of my bag and fired after him. I shot twice. And then I heard someone running up behind me. I didn’t know it was you, Michael.” She rubbed her eyes as though still bewildered. “I didn’t know you were anywhere in Juarez. And — that’s all,” she ended simply.

Rodriquiz looked at Shayne and shrugged. He asked Carmela, “You will swear the pistol was in your handbag when the first shot was fired?”

“Oh, yes. It was.”

“And you fired only two shots,
after
Mr. Cochrane had fallen and his assailant was running away?”

“That’s right. That’s the way it happened.”

Captain Rodriquiz opened the small revolver and drew out three empty brass cylinders, which he carefully lined up in front of him. The gun was a .38 with its barrel sawed off half an inch from the cylinder to make it a small though lethal weapon.

“There is one empty chamber,” he pointed out to Shayne and Carmela. “Behind that there are three empty cartridges. Then two loaded ones.” He drew out the two unexploded .38 shells. They had snubnosed, leaden heads, and two deep notches in the shape of a cross were cut in the soft nose of each bullet. He lined the two bullets up with the empty
cylinders and said, “Your pistol has been fired three times, Miss Towne.”

“Perhaps I shot three times. I don’t know. I don’t remember.” Carmela shuddered violently. “I
thought
I just pulled the trigger twice.”

Shayne leaned over to pick up one of the bullets, and he studied it with a frown. “Homemade dumdums,” he muttered. “Who taught you to fix bullets this way, Carmela?”

“Father fixed them for me. Years ago when he gave me that gun. He said”— her voice faltered and then came clearly—”they were more deadly that way. And that I should never use it until I had to, but if it ever came to a showdown, that I should shoot to kill.”

“And tonight was the first time you had to use it?” murmured Rodriquiz.

“Yes, I — I haven’t carried that pistol, or even thought about it, for years, until tonight.” She glanced from the Mexican captain to Shayne. “Why are you both looking like that?”

Shayne shrugged, and reached over to replace the bullet. “There were only three shots filed in the alley, Carmela. Rodriquiz and I were right behind you. One of the three bullets killed Cochrane.”

“Of course! That’s what I said at first. That I fired twice after he fell. And then you said there were three bullets fired from my gun and I — Oh!” She caught herself up suddenly, staring at the three empty brass cylinders in front of the captain. “But — if there were only three shots fired altogether—”

“And there are three bullets missing from your pistol,” Rodriquiz put in pleasantly.

Carmela winced, looking dazed and disbelieving. “I don’t understand. It’s all so sort of mixed up.”

“Wait a minute,” Shayne said. “That’s a six-shooter, isn’t it? Why are there only five shells?”

“That’s all I ever put in it,” Carmela told him. “Father taught me to keep an empty chamber under the hammer.”

“The three exploded cartridges were in a row behind the one empty chamber,” Captain Rodriquiz agreed. “Would it not be better to tell the truth, Miss Towne? A full confession. He insulted you, perhaps? To defend your honor, you were forced to fire the shot.”

“But I didn’t!” Carmela cried wildly. “Someone else shot him and ran away in the darkness. That’s the way it happened.” She clamped her lips together and settled back to fight for composure.

Shayne said, “I think you’d better tell us why you are over here tonight. Why you met Neil Cochrane in
El Gato Pobre
and were going to a place like Papa Tonto’s with him.”

“He was taking me to Lance. He said he was. He swore Lance was at that awful place. He and Father both said so.”

“Wait a minute,” said Shayne. “Take your time and tell us all about it. When did Cochrane tell you that?”

“This afternoon. After Father came home from — after he was released. Neil came to see him. They were in the library arguing violently when I passed to go
upstairs. I heard Lance’s name mentioned as I went by. I jerked the door open and demanded to know what they were talking about — what about Lance. But Father wouldn’t let me stay. He ordered me out. He was angrier than I’ve ever seen him.

“I went up to my room and waited until Neil left,” she went on in a hard, strained voice. “Then I went down and confronted Father. I demanded to know what Neil had been saying about Lance. He refused to tell me, at first. He insisted it would be better if I didn’t know. But I threatened to leave home unless he told me. I accused him of trying to keep us apart again as he did once before.

“Then Father exploded. He said, all right. That I might as well know the truth. He said he’d paid Neil to keep quiet about it so I wouldn’t find out. That that’s what the argument was about and Neil had demanded money for his silence. Then he told me Lance was mixed up in some Nazi spy activities and he was making his headquarters here at a place called Papa Tonto’s.

“I didn’t believe it,” Carmela went on rapidly, her cheeks beginning to show a little color. “I accused Father of lying to keep me away from Lance. And he cursed me and said, all right, if I wanted proof why didn’t I get Neil to show me. I told him I would. That I’d call Neil up and ask him. And he said he’d paid Neil to promise not to tell me, and that Neil would probably deny it if I asked him, but why not get him to take me to Papa Tonto’s so I could see for myself.

“And that’s what I did,” she ended dully. “I called Neil and asked him if he’d take me to Papa Tonto’s tonight,
and offered to meet him at
El Gato Pobre
after dinner. So we did, but when I asked him about Lance he denied everything — because Father had paid him to, I guess. He wouldn’t believe me when I said Father had told me the truth. But he was willing enough to take me. He didn’t seem to think that was breaking his promise to Father. And that’s — all. We were almost there when — it happened.”