Murder Is My Business (2 page)

“What sort of work was he doing in Mexico?” Shayne asked idly.

“Driving a truck for a mine, the
Plata Azul
mine, they call it. But he really didn’t know about the draft until last year.”

Shayne lit a cigarette and suggested, “Why not let things go along as they are? If your son has actually got on to some sort of spy ring in El Paso and if he succeeds in exposing them, I’m certain the government will forgive him for enlisting under a false name.”

“But that isn’t all of it,” she said hastily, fumbling in her purse again. She brought out a clipping torn from a local newspaper and passed it to Shayne.

“Right after getting Jimmie’s letter this morning I happened to see this in the paper. It’s — well — you can read it for yourself.” There was a queer urgency in her
old voice, a sort of harsh vibrancy that was at the same time proud and pleading.

It was an AP dispatch, datelined the preceding day from El Paso, Texas. It stated that Private James Brown, a recent recruit at Fort Bliss, had died that afternoon in an auto-pedestrian accident, receiving injuries that were instantly fatal underneath the wheels of a limousine owned and driven by Mr. Jefferson Towne, local smelter magnate and candidate for the mayoralty of El Paso on a Citizen’s Reform ticket.

Details of the accident were vague in the brief account, but it was assumed that the soldier had stumbled or fallen into the path of the oncoming limousine; and Mr. Towne’s humanity and citizenship were lauded due to the fact that though there were no witnesses, the candidate stopped immediately and rendered what assistance he could and then made a prompt and full report to the authorities despite the fact that such action might prove detrimental to his political aspirations.

Chief of Police C. E. Dyer stated that Mr. Towne had been released on his own recognizance and expressed the personal belief that the accident had been unavoidable, though he promised the citizens of El Paso a full investigation. The dispatch also stated that the parents of Private James Brown in Cleveland, Ohio, were being notified of their son’s death by army authorities.

Three vertical lines in Shayne’s forehead deepened into trenches as he read the dispatch with great care. He looked up to ask, “When was your son’s letter written, Mrs. Delray?”

“Yesterday morning. He sent it airmail. And he said
he had a pass to go to town and see some man about the spy business in the afternoon. Do you suppose — it
wasn’t
an accident, Mr. Shayne?”

Shayne shook his head. “I happen to know Jeff Towne. Knew him ten years ago,” he amended, “and I’m certain Towne isn’t the type to be mixed up in a spy ring.” He glanced down at the dispatch and muttered, “Running for mayor? He must have been doing all right these past ten years.”

“But there must be some reason for it.” Mrs. Delray’s voice trembled urgently. “Couldn’t be just happenstance.”

“You’re not certain the James Brown mentioned here is your son,” Shayne reminded her. “It’s a very common name. And this James Brown appears to have parents in Cleveland, Ohio.”

“It’s my Jimmie. I know it is. He wouldn’t tell the truth about where his folks live, I guess, enlisting under a different name and all.”

Shayne nodded, his gaunt face hardening a little. He looked past the bonneted mother, out through open windows of his fourth-floor office in the International Building to the soft blue of the horizon. His eyes narrowed a little and a muscle jumped in the left side of his lean jaw. He said, “I’ll check with El Paso, Mrs. Delray. If they haven’t succeeded in locating the dead soldier’s parents in Cleveland, I’ll take the case.”

“Will you, Mr. Shayne? Like I said at first, I haven’t got much money to spend—”

Shayne’s outflung hand silenced her. “Didn’t Captain Denton tell you I could be had cheaply?” He lifted his
voice to call, Lucy. She appeared in the doorway almost immediately.

“Get Chief of Police Dyer in El Paso, Texas, on the phone,” Shayne directed her. “If you can’t reach Dyer, try to get Captain Gerlach.” Lucy nodded and went back into the reception room.

“I know it’s my Jimmie,” Mrs. Delray said again with complete conviction. “I just sort of feel it like, Mr. Shayne. And it’s got something to do with those spies that talked him into enlisting under a false name. Jimmie wasn’t any coward and they must have seen he wouldn’t help them out.”

Shayne nodded absently. He got up and walked across to the double windows. It was warm and quiet in the office. Through the open door into the reception room came the murmur of Lucy Hamilton’s voice as she put through his long-distance call.

Shayne thrust both big hands deep into his pockets and scowled savagely out at New Orleans’ skyline. He had one of those crazy hunches that hit him like a ton of bricks sometimes. It was a feeling he couldn’t put his finger on, but one that he had long ago learned could not be disregarded. He stiffened and wheeled about when his secretary called, “I have Chief Dyer on the line, Mr. Shayne.”

He strode past Mrs. Delray to pick up a telephone on his desk. “Hello. Dyer? Mike Shayne speaking. That’s right, it has been a hell of a long time. I’m checking on the traffic death of a soldier in El Paso yesterday. Private James Brown. Has the army been able to locate his parents in Cleveland?”

Shayne listened intently, and as he listened the deep lines in his forehead gradually smoothed out. He nodded after a time and his voice was almost exuberant when he agreed: “It does look as though the James Brown and Cleveland address might be a phony, doesn’t it? I’ll be up tomorrow and may have some dope on that, but keep it under your hat. In the meantime, do me a favor, Chief, and yourself one too. Pull an autopsy on the corpse. What? I don’t care if the cause of death
is
established. Yep. Be seeing you.”

Shayne replaced the telephone on its prongs and told Mrs. Delray, “I’m afraid it may be your son. The Cleveland address simply doesn’t exist, and they have no record of him there.”

“I knew it.” Mrs. Delray clenched her thin hands together convulsively. “But I don’t know whether I can afford to pay your expenses to make a trip up there, Mr. Shayne. I’ve got fifty dollars here—”

She was nervously opening her purse again, but Shayne stopped her with a wave of his big hand. “The spy angle makes this sort of government business, Mrs. Delray. Forget about the expenses. They’ll be taken care of.”

Tears of thankfulness came into her old eyes. “That’s what I asked Captain Denton — if the government wouldn’t do something. He just laughed and said they couldn’t follow up every wild-goose chase that came along. But will you have to tell them, Mr. Shayne, about Jimmie?”

Shayne shook his head. “I won’t have to tell anyone anything.” He patted her shoulder gently. “You go on
home and try not to worry. I’ll get in touch with you as soon as I have something to report. Just leave your address with my secretary.” He helped her from the chair and toward the door.

Lucy came in a few minutes later and stopped in front of his desk with her hands belligerently on her hips. “You certainly let Captain Denton put a sweet one over on you this time. Just forget about the expenses, Mrs. Delray. Where are we going to get next month’s office rent?”

Shayne grinned and opened a drawer to get out a bottle of cognac and two four-ounce glasses. “We’ve still got a drink left. Relax and have one with me.”

“As long as you’ve got a drink of cognac, you don’t think about expenses,” she charged, her brown eyes blazing with wrath.

Shayne’s grin widened. He poured one glass full and looked at her inquiringly. She shook her head and took a backward step. “You just want to get me woozy so I won’t mind if you go off on a trip to El Paso.”

He lifted his glass and arched his eyebrows at her. “Why, Lucy. I didn’t realize you
would
mind.”

“I don’t. Not the way you think. I hate to see you fall for a sob story like that. No wonder Captain Denton told her you could be had cheaply.”

Shayne tossed off the cognac and laughed. “Get me a reservation on the next plane for El Paso. If I need a priority, get in touch with Captain Campbell, Military Intelligence.” He gave her a telephone number.

Lucy’s brown eyes widened. “Do you really think it’s a spy ring?”

“I doubt it, but there should be enough in the story to wangle me a priority for plane space.”

The sparkle went out of Lucy’s eyes. “Just another one of your shenanigans. What am I going to tell Mr. Pontiff Jalreaux when he calls tomorrow?”

“Tell him any damned thing you want to,” Shayne told her impatiently.

“That you’re in El Paso on a charity case?”

Shayne poured his glass half full of cognac again. “There’ll be certain compensations for my trip to El Paso,” he assured her gravely. “You see, I knew Jeff Towne ten years ago. I did a little job for him while I was working with World-Wide. He had a daughter. She was twenty. Her mother was Spanish.” He emptied his glass and smacked his lips. “Carmela will be thirty now. A beautiful and frustrated thirty.” He set his glass down and there was a queer gleam in his eyes.

“She’ll be fat and satisfied,” Lucy warned him. “All Spanish women are at thirty.”

“Not Carmela Towne. She won’t be married — unless Towne has changed a lot. That’s the job I did for him. There was a chap named Lance Bayliss. A poet, Lucy, and a poet is lower than dirt to a two-fisted, self-made financier like Jefferson Towne. He broke up their engagement and he broke Carmela’s heart. I doubt whether she’s looked at another man.”

“So you expect her to welcome you with open arms?”

Shayne grinned crookedly. “I’d like to see what the years have done to Carmela Towne,” he assented. “And to her father. He was on his way up ten years ago, rough and ruthless and domineering. Now he seems to
be at the top of the heap, local magnate and mayoralty candidate.” He scowled at his glass. “He must have changed a great deal since I knew him — though I didn’t think Jeff Towne could ever change.”

“What made you ask for an autopsy on the soldier?” Lucy asked him. “I read the letter and the clipping before you saw Mrs. Delray, and I don’t see why you think it wasn’t just a traffic accident.”

Shayne looked at her in surprise. “I’ve just been telling you.”

“You’ve been mooning about a half-blooded Spanish girl whom you hope to find frustrated and beautiful,” she reminded him bitterly.

Shayne shook his head and complained, “Sometimes I fear you’ll never make a detective, Lucy. Call the airport and see about the plane.”

The plane set Michael Shayne down at the El Paso municipal airport early the next morning, and a taxi took him to the old yet still magnificent Paso Del Norte Hotel, where he had reserved a room by wire the preceding evening. He went up for a shave and a quick shower, and then down to the coffee shop for breakfast, picking up a copy of the evening
Free Press
as he went by the newsstand.

He settled himself at a table in a corner of the uncrowded coffee shop and spread the paper out before him. A glance at the front page left no reader in any doubt as to whom the
Free Press
was championing in the mayoralty election. A black headline proclaimed:
Towne Released to Kill Again.

Shayne ordered coffee and scrambled eggs and settled back to read the story. Stripped of innuendo and inflammatory accusations, it told how Jefferson Towne at dusk the preceding evening had run down and killed a young recruit from nearby Fort Bliss who had been identified as James Brown of Cleveland, Ohio. The opposition paper made much of the fact that Towne had been released by Chief Dyer on his own recognizance to (as the
Free Press
stated it)
go forth and kill again,
and it broadly hinted that the entire police department
had joined in a conspiracy to cover up Towne’s crime.

The news story concluded with a brief paragraph that caused a slow grin to spread over Shayne’s rugged face:

The citizens of El Paso are warned that no effort or expense will be spared by Jefferson Towne to whitewash his criminal negligence in this matter. As we go to press, the
Free Press
learns from a reliable source that a private detective of unsavory reputation from New Orleans has been retained to aid in confusing the electorate on this issue and to hide the full truth from our citizens.

For an interesting commentary on this desperate expedient of Candidate Towne, be sure to read the editorial by our Crime Reporter, Neil Cochrane, on this page.

A waitress brought Shayne’s coffee and eggs. He took a sip of coffee and scowled across the room. He remembered Neil Cochrane from ten years ago. Neil had been a friend of Lance Bayliss —and of Carmela Towne. A thin, waspish, eager lad, with a head too big for his undersized body, and a sharp, incisive intellect. Shayne had an idea that Neil, too, had fancied himself in love with Carmela in those days, though he must have known there could be no one but Lance in her life. Now Neil Cochrane was a reporter on the
Free Press,
violently opposing the election of Carmela’s father.

Shayne folded the paper and read a boxed editorial near the center of the page. It was starkly titled,
WARNING!

Jeff Towne is a two-fisted fighting man. Those of us in El Paso who have followed his career with interest during the past decade know this to be true. He is a man accustomed to ride roughshod over his enemies, crushing and casting aside those who oppose him, surging upward through sheer aggressiveness to a position of industrial and financial leadership in this community.

Now, looking for more worlds to conquer, Jeff Towne has acquired political ambitions, and he brings to the political arena those same ruthless characteristics that have not failed him in the past. Jeff Towne is determined to be the next mayor of El Paso!

Yesterday a young soldier died beneath the wheels of Jeff Towne’s speeding limousine in the streets of this city. Crushed, as other men have been crushed when they stood in Jeff Towne’s way.

Fearful of a public reaction which will smash his political aspirations beneath a landslide of votes for Honest John Carter,
Jeff Towne is fighting back!

With a vast fortune at his disposal, Towne has retained the services of a notorious private detective to fly here from New Orleans in a desperate attempt to cover up the true facts in this case.

Some of us in El Paso know Michael Shayne personally, and most of us know of him through newspaper accounts of his past exploits in cleverly circumventing the Law and disproving the guilt of wealthy clients.

The citizens of El Paso are
solemnly warned
to
expect subtle trickery and distortion of facts by this detective when he takes over the case against Jeff Towne. An indication of his methods is his telephonic demand of yesterday upon Chief Dyer that an autopsy be immediately performed upon the body of Towne’s victim for the ostensible purpose of ascertaining the cause of death.

An autopsy on a traffic victim!

Yet we learn from Chief Dyer himself that he has weakly acceded to this ridiculous demand and that an autopsy has been ordered.

We await the result of this farcical proceeding with indignation and with interest, and we warn our readers to accept with a grain of salt any medical testimony which attempts to shift the blame for the death of Private James Brown from the shoulders of Candidate Towne where it belongs.