The Careless Corpse Read online

  Brett Halliday

  The Careless Corpse

  ONE

  Lucy Hamilton was on the telephone when Michael Shayne returned to his office after lunch. She sat at her desk beyond the low railing with the receiver held to her ear, a little frown of resignation ruffling her forehead as she listened.

  She turned her head as Shayne entered, lifted her left shoulder a trifle and said into the mouthpiece: “I’ve explained it will be impossible for me to promise that Mr. Shayne will come to see you unless you give me some idea of your business. He is a very busy man, and…”

  She paused, wrinkling her nice nose at the instrument and then at Shayne, who grinned widely as he tossed his hat on a wall-hook and lounged closer to lower one hip onto the railing near her.

  “I understand all that,” Lucy said, firmly. “And if you wish to see Mr. Shayne in his office, I will be glad to arrange an appointment. But I’m afraid that…”

  She was interrupted again by a voice Shayne could hear crackling over the wire, and, when it stopped, she said flatly, “Yes. I did get your name correctly the first time, Mr. Peralta. But I’ll still have to insist…”

  “Hold it, Lucy!” It was her employer who interrupted her this time. The rangy redhead was sitting erect with a gleam of interest in his gray eyes. “Would that be Julio Peralta?”

  “One moment, please,” Lucy said into the mouthpiece. She covered it with her hand and nodded to Shayne’s question. “He seems to think you should jump through hoops when he speaks. I’ve told him…”

  “It’s okay, angel. Tell him I’ve just come in, and switch him inside.”

  Shayne rose and took three long strides to the open door into his private office. He crossed to the flat desk in the center and scooped up the phone, said, “Hello? Shayne speaking.”

  “Mr. Shayne.” Peralta’s voice was precise and demanding, tinged with relief. “I’ve been explaining to your secretary that I must see you at once. Please come to my place immediately.”

  Shayne said, “I’m tied up for a time, Mr. Peralta. In a couple of hours?” He glanced at his wrist watch. “Say four-thirty.”

  “If you can’t possibly make it sooner. This is an extremely important matter that won’t brook delay.”

  Shayne said, “Four-thirty it is. You’re on the Beach, aren’t you?”

  “I am.” His caller gave him an address on Alton Road. “I’ll expect you here no later than four-thirty, Shayne.”

  “I’ll be there,” Shayne promised. “With bells on,” he ended sotto voce as he replaced the receiver. He straightened and stood for a moment, tugging at his left ear-lobe and looking across the empty office with ragged, red brows arched a trifle.

  The questioning expression faded to a slow grin as Lucy’s voice came indignantly from the outer office:

  “After all the times you’ve told me, Michael Shayne, that a client must state his business before you’ll see him! I was just building you up as an important guy, darn it, when you spoil it all by saying, meekly, ‘Yes, Mr. Peralta. Whatever you say, Mr. Peralta.’ Who the devil is Mr. Julio Peralta anyhow?”

  Shayne’s grin widened as he went back to the open door and leaned against it. “You should read the papers, Lucy. Particularly the crime news.”

  “I do read the papers,” she defended herself. “I don’t remember anything…”

  “About three weeks ago,” Shayne cut in. “There was a jewel robbery on the Beach.”

  “Oh.” Lucy Hamilton put her doubled fist against her mouth and looked contrite. “Something about a fabulous emerald bracelet—and the story was garnished with striptease pictures of a distraught female. You would remember that case.”

  “Just a couple of intimate snapshots of Mrs. Julio Peralta in her boudoir that morning after, pointing out exactly where she had tossed the bauble the preceding night.”

  “But this was Mr. Peralta on the phone,” Lucy reminded him acidly. “He won’t be greeting you in a filmy negligee.”

  “Probably not,” Shayne muttered. “But the bracelet was insured for a hundred and ten grand, angel. And there hasn’t been a single lead turned up in three weeks.”

  “So you’re going to find it for him?”

  Shayne shrugged. “If I just collect a retainer on a job like that, it won’t be chicken-feed.”

  He turned away from the door, adding over his shoulder, “Get Miami Beach Headquarters on the line for me. Detective Division.”

  When his desk phone rang a few minutes later, he picked it up and Lucy told him formally, “Detective Furness is on the wire, Mr. Shayne.”

  He said, “Hello, Ed. How’re things?”

  “As usual. How’s with you, Shamus?”

  “I need a little information from you boys. Can you tell me who is handling the Julio Peralta robbery?”

  “Just a minute, Mike.” Ed Furness sounded suddenly wary. “Hang on, will you?”

  Shayne hung on. It was at least a full minute before a voice rasped over the wire, “That you, Shayne? What’s your interest in the Peralta case?”

  Shayne winced at the voice of the chief of detectives in his ear. With assumed heartiness, he protested, “Furness needn’t have bothered you about this, Painter. I simply wanted to know…”

  “It was his duty to bother me,” Peter Painter informed him. “I’m handling the Peralta case personally. What is it you want to know?”

  “Just the low-down,” growled Shayne, knowing he wasn’t going to get it now. “What leads you’ve got thus far. What the chances are for…”

  “And what is your interest, Shayne?”

  “I thought I might take it on,” said Shayne, easily, “since you’re apparently not doing so well handling it personally.”

  There were a few seconds of silence. Shayne grinned, imagining he could hear Painter grinding his teeth together in rage. When the chief’s voice did come over the wire again, it was a vicious snarl:

  “You keep your goddamned big nose out of the Peralta job, Shamus.”

  “Why?” asked Shayne, innocently. “Don’t you think you could use a little help after three weeks’ horsing around with it?”

  “You try to horn in on that case, Shayne, and, so help me God, it’s the last one you’ll ever louse up. If I hear the slightest rumor of a pay-off on that case, you’ll lose your license and end up in a cell.” There was a decisive click as the detective chief hung up.

  Shayne replaced his phone thoughtfully and got up to stroll to one of the windows overlooking Flagler Street. This could only mean that Painter felt he was on the verge of solving the case by an arrest. His savage insistence that Shayne stay clear of it hadn’t been feigned. Yet, in the past the Beach chief had not been averse to turning his head the other way while discreet arrangements were being made with an insurance company to recover stolen articles for a fraction of their insured value. Not that Shayne had any particular reason to think such an arrangement might be possible in this case. That had been Painter’s idea entirely.

  Shayne shrugged and turned away from the window, glancing at his watch. He went to the outer hall and took down his hat, told Lucy Hamilton, “Close up whenever you like, angel. I don’t think I’ll be back this afternoon.” He pulled the hat low on his bristly, red hair and went out with a wave of his big hand.

  Timothy Rourke was lolled back in an aged swivel chair with his feet cocked up on a battered desk when Shayne entered the Miami News City Room a short time later. The reporter’s eyes were placidly closed and his partially open mouth emitted a rhythmic snoring sound despite the loud clatter of teletypes and the rattle of typewriters filling the room.

  Shayne crossed to Rourke’s corner with a grin, nodding greetings to other reporters who hailed him, pulled up a straig
ht chair in front of the attenuated, sleeping figure and sat down. He lit a cigarette and said quietly, “Tell me about the Peralta thing, Tim.”

  Rourke’s cadaverous features twitched. His mouth closed, then opened again into a wide yawn. One eyelid lifted cautiously, but he made no other movement.

  “Go ’way,” he muttered. “Information desk’s outside.”

  Shayne settled himself more comfortably as Rourke closed his eyes again and opened his mouth in a pretense of continuing to snore. The detective said nothing, but reached in a sagging side-pocket of his Palm Beach jacket to lift out a full pint of bourbon. He broke the seal and uncorked the bottle and leaned forward to gravely hold the open bottle under Rourke’s nose. The thin nose twitched and bloodless lips opened greedily. Shayne tilted the bottle and let a couple of ounces dribble into the open mouth.

  He took the bottle away and said, cheerfully: “First course. What’s on the Peralta case, Tim?”

  Rourke closed his lips and worked them in and out, opened both eyes this time and said warily, “Nothing new. You got an angle?”

  Shayne shook his head. “A phone call from Peralta to see him this afternoon. You heard anything at all on it?”

  Rourke sighed and dropped his heels off his desk. He sat up and reached for the pint bottle, lifting it deftly from Shayne’s lax grasp. He tilted it to his mouth, let it gurgle for a time, and set it on the desk in front of him. “Not a thing on it since the snatch, Mike.” His deep-set eyes glittered brightly in their hollows. “You got ideas?”

  “Trying to pick some up before I see him,” explained Shayne. “Was it your story?”

  “Only a follow-up. Human interest stuff. There was plenty of that with Laura Peralta cooperating on the cheesecake angle. How that dame loves to show her legs. Guess she’s damn tired of hiding ’em behind Julio’s millions.”

  Shayne took a drag on his cigarette and frowned. “Former show-girl, isn’t she?”

  “Right out of Minsky’s.” Rourke took another sip from the bottle and firmly corked it. “You see those first shots she gave the boys that morning?”

  Shayne nodded. “X marks the spot.”

  “Only the important spot in those pix was a Y and it didn’t need inking in.” Rourke chuckled obscenely. “You think there’s a deal in the making?”

  “I don’t know. Fill me in on the actual job. Sort of amateurish, wasn’t it?”

  Rourke shrugged. “I dunno. Call it that if you want, but a pro couldn’t have done better. There the bracelet was, lying on top of her bureau, where she’d tossed it the night before. There was a ladder up to her window with the screen cut out. No fingerprints. No clues. No nothing.”

  “Did she always leave it lying around?”

  “Only when she was too tight to bother with the big wall-safe in the sitting room between her room and her husband’s. After this happened a couple of times in the past, her maid had standing orders from Julio never to leave the room at night until she’d seen the bracelet locked up.”

  “And?”

  Timothy Rourke shrugged cheerfully. “Your guess is as good as mine. Which is that the maid was more afraid of Laura than of Julio. Her story is that her mistress threw a couple of slippers at her that night when she wanted to lock the thing up, and that, when she went in to knock on Julio’s door to inform him, he couldn’t be wakened. My guess is she didn’t try very hard.”

  “So the maid knew the bracelet was left out that night?” said Shayne, thoughtfully.

  “Right. And a lot of other people might have guessed it would be if they saw Laura staggering home. Petey Painter put the maid through the wringer plenty, so why not ask him?”

  “I will. The burglar didn’t arouse Mrs. Peralta?”

  “Hell,” said Rourke, disgustedly, “a whole herd of elephants wouldn’t have aroused her from the one she had hung on, from what I gathered.” He reached for the bottle and took a long swig, grimaced and glared at the amber fluid remaining. “Nasty stuff,” he muttered. “Responsible for nine-tenths of the troubles of modern civilization, according to statistics.”

  Shayne grinned and reached out his arm to take the bottle for a short drink. He said: “Here’s to more and bigger troubles,” and then went on:

  “The ladder at the window. Was that just fortuitously left around?”

  “Brought in for the job. One of those sectional affairs made of light metal. Aluminum or magnesium or something. You see them advertised under Army Surplus bargains in the Sunday papers. They don’t bill them that way, but might as well advertise them as Second-Story-Worker Specials.”

  Shayne said, “Give me a quick run-over on the rest of the household.”

  “A batch of other servants I don’t know about. You can be sure they all knew about Laura’s propensity for hanging one on and leaving her emeralds lying around. Then there’s Julio’s secretary, whom you’re just going to love; a governess, whom you’re probably going to lay; and the two Brats.” He gave the final word a capital B and reached for the bottle again.

  Shayne ran knobby fingers through his hair and said: “Come again.”

  “Edwin and Edwina. Julio’s first-born, and the best positive proof of the degeneration of the species I’ve run into for a long time.” He waved Shayne’s speculative glance aside with a long thin hand and shook his head stubbornly. “I’ll not deprive you of the pleasure of meeting them first-hand.”

  Shayne looked at his watch and asked a final question:

  “Know what firm carried the insurance?”

  “Not a firm. A man named Hamilton Barker is the adjuster who’s handling the claim. He refused to talk to me about it. In fact, there was a lot of hush-hush on the whole thing.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “I’m not sure. It was a feeling I got at the time. Circles within circles. Peralta himself was most uncommunicative. Didn’t want the servants interviewed, and insisted I get all my information from Painter. You know how Painter is when he takes over a case personally.”

  “Yeh, I know.”

  “Of course,” Rourke admitted judicially, “Peralta may have good reasons for not wanting reporters digging in too deep. There was that matter of the cyanide and the two Boxers.”

  “What was that?”

  “Happened about a week before the bracelet was snatched. All I could get was hints and evasive answers, and it wasn’t even officially reported to the police, so far as I could learn. Well, hell, they were his dogs and his kids.”

  “You mean the kids poisoned the dogs?” Shayne asked incredulously.

  “That’s the way I pieced it together. I tell you they’re precocious.”

  “You think the death of the dogs had any bearing on the robbery?”

  “Well, it did set things up pretty nice for the ladder job. The dogs did run loose at night.”

  “You think that’s why Peralta clammed up? Because he suspects the kids engineered the snatch?”

  “Hell, Mike. They’re only about ten years old. But I don’t know, at that. They’re a couple of enterprising youngsters.”

  “You think Petey has any such suspicions?”

  “Who knows what Petey suspects? Frankly, I doubt that he even knows the dogs were poisoned. I told you it wasn’t even reported when it happened. I ran onto it by accident.”

  “Give me a run-down on Julio Peralta. Seems to me his name turns up in the papers frequently.”

  “Yeah, and he doesn’t like it. He’s one of those rich Cubans who got out with their cash before Castro came in. He was educated in this country. Harvard, I think, and had a sort of reputation as an international playboy some years ago. Married New York money and settled down in Cuba a dozen years ago… all cozy with Batista. That’s where the twins came from. His wife died giving birth, and about five years ago he married the present Mrs. Peralta. Laura’s quite a lush dish.”

  “Wait a minute, Tim.” Shayne was frowning thoughtfully. “You say Peralta skipped with his dough before Castro took over.
It’s my impression, from things I’ve read, that he’s pro-Castro. That his money is one of the important sources of munitions shipped over to the revolution.”

  “That’s the way it looks, and it may even be true. He claims he had a change of heart after getting out with his own money, and then seeing how Castro took over. His heart bleeds for his country, which is shaking off the shackles of American imperialism.”

  “With the help of the Commies?”

  Timothy Rourke looked at him shrewdly. “You don’t swallow too much of that propaganda, Mike. Hell, of course the Commies are exploiting the revolution to the limit. And Mr. Julio Peralta may even be one, secretly. You know how it is in Miami right now,” he went on disgustedly. “The city is full of refugees and rife with rumors of plots and counterplots. No one knows for sure whose side anyone is on. I’ll lay you ten to one that at least half the arms ostensibly being smuggled over to Castro end up in the hands of counter-revolutionaries. Julio Peralta isn’t the only rich Cuban who moved his money out before the crash, and most of them are eager to spend a hunk of it to get the old way of life back.”

  “But not Peralta?” mused Shayne.

  “I don’t know. I do know he doesn’t like newspaper reporters snooping into his affairs, and I’m surprised he’s called in a private detective. As I say, I got a strong impression from Barker, from Painter, and from Peralta himself that the loss of the bracelet was chicken-feed and was sort of being glossed over. That’s why I’m surprised he wants you in on it.”

  “Hell, it may not be the jewel thing at all,” said Shayne impatiently. “Maybe he wants to hire a bottle-guard for his wife.”

  “That could be a pleasant assignment.” Rourke yawned and propped his feet up on his desk again. “Let me know, huh? What cyanide tastes like, and whether that governess looks as good under her clothes as I’m guessing she does.”

  Shayne said, “I’ll let you know.” He made his way out of the City Room and got into his parked car.

  Ten minutes later he entered a sixth floor office on Flagler Street. There was a medium-sized, pleasantly cool reception room presided over by a pleasantly cool blonde at a desk near the door. She was medium-sized in some respects and somewhat more than that in others. She gave the redhead an aloof glance and said, “Yes?” with her nose tilted a little higher than was necessary.