Murder Is My Business (20 page)

A shabby little man sauntered along the street behind him. He looked like a western rancher in for a holiday, and was intensely interested in the shop windows
along the street. He loitered inconspicuously behind the detective while he was getting in his car, and Shayne watched him in the rear-view mirror as he pulled away. The little man continued to loiter, seemingly unaware of his departure. Shayne thought maybe he was wrong about him.

He drove directly out to Fort Bliss, and without too much difficulty was able to talk with the post adjutant. He introduced himself and explained his interest in the death of Private James Brown, and learned that the body had been given a military burial after all efforts to uncover his real identity had proved unavailing

Shayne kept his own council about the recruit’s letter to his mother in New Orleans. He didn’t think the army would appreciate his holding out that information all this time, and it didn’t seem a good moment to broach the subject. After a brief discussion of the mystifying elements of the case, Shayne said, “I understand you sent a set of fingerprints taken from the body to Washington for possible identification. No luck there?”

The adjutant shook his head. “We didn’t bury the body until the Washington report was received. We had his fingerprints on his enlistment papers, you know, and we sent them in as soon as Cleveland reported no such address as he had given.”

Shayne asked, “May I have a set of those prints from his enlistment record?”

The adjutant didn’t see why he couldn’t, and he sent an orderly to get a set for the detective. Then he eagerly asked what angle Shayne was working on, and what hopes he had of identifying the dead body. Shayne told him
it was too theoretical as yet to talk about, but he thought he could promise definite progress within a few hours.

When he went out to his car with Jimmie Delray’s fingerprints in his pocket, he saw a taxi parked half a dozen cars back of his coupé. The shabby little man whom he had last seen loitering in front of the Paso Del Norte was inconspicuously shrunk down in the back seat of the taxi.

Shayne grinned to himself as he drove off. He hadn’t been mistaken after all. He drove straight to his hotel and went up to his room. Lance Bayliss’s briefcase was still in the closet where he and Lance had placed it earlier. It lacked half an hour of his appointment with Jefferson Towne. He opened the briefcase on his bed and looked through the documentary evidence Lance had promised was there.

It was very complete, with names and dates and facts. Lance Bayliss had made a thorough investigation of the business of smuggling deserters across the border into the interior of Mexico. Larimer’s secondhand clothing store was one of three such places in El Paso that specialized in furnishing civilian outfits to the deserters. The registration cards and other identification papers were forged in El Paso, and there was documentary proof that Honest John Carter had been allied with Holden as a financial backer in his pre-war smuggling enterprises, and was continuing to take his profit from this new angle.

Only one thing disappointed Shayne. Neil Cochrane’s name was mentioned several times in Lance’s material,
but there was no evidence at all that the reporter had had any actual knowledge of what was going on.

Shayne sighed, and replaced the papers in the briefcase. It was dynamite, right enough. Plenty strong enough to blow Honest John Carter right out of the mayoralty race, leaving Towne unopposed.

Shayne sympathized with Lance’s wish to keep the evidence under cover until after the election. If it wasn’t made public until after Carter was elected, he would simply be removed from office and someone else would be appointed to serve out his term in accord with city statutes. Any danger of Towne’s filling the position would be definitely eliminated. Knowing Lance’s bitter hatred for Towne, Shayne could understand why he wanted the information handled that way. But if he waited until Towne was elected, the stuff wouldn’t be worth a penny to the new mayor.
Before
election, it was easily worth ten thousand dollars to him. It was as simple as that.

Shayne poured himself a drink, and put a gun in his coat pocket. He tossed off the liquor, picked up the briefcase, and went out. He didn’t bother to look around for the shabby little man as he drove off to keep his appointment with Towne. It was unlikely that they would bother to tail him any farther.

He didn’t have to wait at Towne’s front door this time. The Mexican butler recognized him with a nod and led the way back to the library. Towne was standing in front of the fireplace with his hands clasped behind his back. He nodded with a scowl, his gaze going to the
briefcase Shayne carried. “That the stuff you described over the telephone?”

Shayne said, “This is it. Guaranteed to knock Carter out of the race.” He set the briefcase down on a table, put his big hand up warningly when Towne stepped forward. “Let me see your end of the deal before you look at mine.”

Towne laughed shortly. “I had to answer some embarrassing questions at the bank this morning when I drew out this second ten thousand.” He drew an envelope from his pocket, opened it to riffle a sheaf of bills before Shayne. “When the police investigated the money I drew out for Barton, they practically told the bank it was for blackmail,” he went on bitterly.

Shayne said, “If you lived right, you wouldn’t be embarrassed by having to pay out blackmail.” He nodded. “I’m satisfied. Look it over and see if you are.” He unstrapped the briefcase and stepped back.

Towne replaced the money in his pocket and went to the briefcase. He took the papers out and began studying them eagerly. It was dark and gloomy inside the library, with the windows closed and half covered with dark drapes. Shayne strolled to one of the end windows and pulled the drapes back to let sunlight slant in. The windows were set in steel frames, opening on a rachet arrangement operated by a hand crank.

Shayne twisted the crank to open the window and let in a little fresh air. Towne was engrossed with the papers from Lance Bayliss’s briefcase. Shayne leaned on the low windowsill and lit a cigarette. It was very
quiet there on the hillside above the city, inside the big stone house set off from its neighbors by a thick box hedge.

Shayne smoked quietly for a time, and then asked without turning his head, “Are you satisfied it’s what I promised you?”

“There’s enough evidence to put Carter and Holden behind bars the rest of their lives,” Towne told him exultantly. “I don’t know how you dug this up, Shayne, but—”

“That doesn’t matter.” Shayne turned slowly. “Is it worth ten grand?”

“It’s an outrageous holdup for me to pay you for this,” Towne asserted angrily. “You could be jailed for trying to withhold this from the government.”

Shayne nodded calmly, but his eyes held a dangerous glint. He dropped his right hand toward the gun sagging in his coat pocket and drawled, “You’re not thinking of backing out, are you?”

“I never back out of a bargain,” Towne said stiffly. He reached into his pocket for the envelope, tossed it toward Shayne. The detective caught it in his left hand. He opened it and took out the bills, fingered them lovingly while he counted the total.

“Okay,” he said finally, straightening and replacing them in the envelope. He put the envelope in his left coat pocket and remained lounging back against the sill of the open window. “Now let’s start talking about something important.”

“I haven’t anything else to discuss with you.” Towne half turned away from him.

“We’ve got lots to talk about,” Shayne corrected him gently. “Like the price of domestic silver — and the
Plata Azul
mine in Mexico.”

Towne’s wide shoulders stiffened. He turned slowly, and his eyes were murderous. “What do you know about the
Plata Azul?”

“Practically everything,” Shayne assured him. “When Cochrane was murdered last night, we found a telegram in his pocket from an attorney in Mexico City stating that title to the mine passed to a certain
Señora
Telgucado twenty-five years ago on the death of her husband — to be passed on to his heirs.”

“Interesting,” sneered Towne, “but hardly relevant.”

“I think it is,” Shayne insisted. “You see, I visited the marriage-license bureau this morning and confirmed a hunch. You and the widow of
Señor
Telgucado were married less than twenty-four years ago.”

“It’s a matter of record,” Towne shrugged.

“But Carmela is almost thirty years old. That makes her your stepdaughter.”

“Suppose she is my stepdaughter? I adopted her legally soon after we were married.” Towne’s voice was edged but restrained.

“She’s still her father’s legal heir,” Shayne argued.

“The
Plata Azul
mine legally reverted to her on her mother’s death.”

“Perhaps it did.” Towne seemed uninterested. “While you were investigating my private affairs, you might have gone further to learn that I’ve been pouring money into that property for years without any returns. I was doing it for Carmela,” he added, “hoping I could
make a real strike and turn her over something worth while.”

“Without her knowledge?”

“I’ve kept it for a surprise,” Towne said stiffly. “What’s your interest in it?”

“I’m interested in its proximity to the border — and the fact that Mexican silver is worth only half the price of domestic silver — plus the fact that Josiah Riley was fired from your employ ten years ago after reporting your vein in the Big Bend pinched out.”

Towne’s face was slowly being drained of color. “How do you figure those add up?”

“They add up to fraud,” Shayne told him pleasantly, “when you consider the stamp mill you set up at the
Plata Azul
ten years ago, your ownership of a smelter here in El Paso where your Big Bend ore is processed, your revolutionary method of mining the Lone Star with steam shovels, and the fact that you went all out ten years ago to prevent Carmela from marrying the only man she ever wanted to marry.”

“What do you know about the Lone Star mine?” Towne snarled.

“Everything. I paid the mine a visit last night, Towne. I know the shaft is abandoned, and for years you’ve been scooping up the mountainside to get bulk to load into cars on top of refined ore you’ve been smuggling over the border from the
Plata Azul
. By shipping it to your own smelter here, you’ve been able to hoodwink the government into paying you the double price for domestic silver. Not only that, but every ounce of it came from the Mexican mine actually owned by Carmela,
and you’ve defrauded her out of a fortune during these ten years.”

Towne stood very straight and very still in front of Shayne. “You sound very sure of your facts.”

“It’s the only answer that comes out right,” Shayne said wearily. “It’s tough, isn’t it, after you got rid of Jack Barton and Neil Cochrane after they had discovered the truth? You thought your secret was safe. And now, by God, here’s another guy popping up to plague you!”

Towne moved aside and sat down heavily in front of the liquor cabinet by the fireplace. He opened it and withdrew the
tequila
bottle they had drunk from last night. He poured himself a drink with a steady hand and asked, “What do you mean about Barton and Cochrane?”

Shayne glanced out the window into the sunlight. “After killing two men, it must be tough to learn your secret still isn’t safe.” He took a step forward away from the window.

Jefferson Towne stopped his glass two inches from his lips. He said stonily, “I paid Jack Barton, and I was prepared to meet Cochrane’s price. I told him so yesterday afternoon. I can also afford to pay
you
off. How much?” He put the glass to his lips and drank.

Shayne shook his head and said mockingly, “Don’t kid me, Towne. I know how your mind works. Josiah Riley inadvertently tipped me off with an old border proverb:
‘Los muertos no hablan.’
You know it’s cheaper to kill a man than to pay blackmail. The dead don’t talk. That’s the only sure way to shut up a blackmailer. That’s why you killed Jack Barton Tuesday afternoon — and Cochrane last night.”

Towne set his empty glass down. “Very interesting, except that you overlook a couple of facts. Jack Barton is in California spending the ten thousand I paid him — and I was in bed last night when Lance Bayliss shot Cochrane with Carmela’s pistol.”

Shayne shook his head. “Jack Barton never left for California. You bought a ticket and had someone get on the bus, just to make things look right if anyone checked up. And you drew the ten grand out of your bank and put one of them in the letter you had Jack write his parents before you killed him. But you should have had him address the envelope before you killed him, Towne. A man doesn’t forget his own address, but
you
forgot to put
South
in front of the Vine Street number. That one mistake is what cooked your goose. The delay in the delivery of that letter sent the Bartons to Dyer with the whole story when they thought the unidentified body from the river was Jack.”

“But it wasn’t Barton!” Towne exploded. “They said so themselves after looking at him.”

“Of course it wasn’t. You weren’t dumb enough to kill a blackmailer and throw his body in the river and hope to get away with it. You thought you were safe because Jack Barton was already buried in an unmarked grave in the Fort Bliss military cemetery.”

Towne hunched lower in his chair. His face was livid, and his eyes were becoming mad. He leaned forward to tap an uneasy tattoo on the edge of the liquor cabinet. He said, “I don’t know which one of us is crazy.”

“You were,” Shayne told him cheerfully, “to think you could get away with it. Though you almost did —
until I thought about comparing the fingerprints of the body from the river with those taken from Jimmie Delray when he enlisted under the name of James Brown. Then I realized that you had put the soldier’s uniform on Jack Barton Tuesday afternoon and—”

Towne’s hand darted inside the liquor cabinet. It came out clutching a sawed-off .38, a replica of the pistol taken from Carmela Telgucado in Juarez. Shayne dropped to the floor as Towne whirled on him, and a bullet whistled over his head. He had his own gun out, but a heavier report from the open window prevented him from using it.