home?”
“No, no particular reason,” Brooks mumbled. “He just made me sore, and I spoke out of turn. Everybody knows about Tim and Betty,” he went on sullenly to exculpate himself. “Even Bert knew. And I thought I had seen Tim’s car parked around the corner earlier when I was cruising around looking for Bert. I’m sorry I said it. I don’t really know that Tim was there, even if all the shades were drawn.”
“Go on,” Shayne snapped. “Did you take Bert home?”
“Oh, no,” he denied stoutly. “He wouldn’t have any help. After we argued a minute on the corner he went on by himself. I got in my car and drove home.”
“What,” asked Shayne, “did Marie Leonard say to you when she telephoned you around daylight this morning?”
Again Ned Brooks shifted his eyes under Shayne’s hard gaze. “She called me back after breaking the connection and told me about you sneaking back and catching her calling me. But don’t get any wrong ideas about Marie and me. She just knows me as Bert’s friend, and as soon as you told her what happened to Bert she thought she ought to call me.”
“She didn’t tell you that Bert had spent most of the preceding evening with her and that she’d run him out about ten o’clock when he insisted on trying to carry out his blackmail scheme?”
“Good God, no!” Stupefied with surprise he jerked his eyes back to Shayne’s and demanded, “Did she tell you that?”
“And who is this Marie?” Abe Linkle interjected with a touch of irony when Shayne answered Brooks with a nod of his red head.
Turning to the editor, Shayne said, “I can tell you who she is, but I’ll be damned if I know what she is. Was Jackson trying to keep her in that apartment on his reporter’s salary?” he demanded of Brooks. “Is that why he needed the extra money?”
“I think he wanted to divorce Betty and marry Marie,” Brooks muttered. “Hell, I never asked him if he was keeping her.”
“If you ask me,” Shayne told Linkle, “she’s the kind who probably had six different men paying the rent at the same time.”
“What’s her last name and her address?” Abe Linkle clipped the words out and compressed his thin lips.
Shayne said, “Get it from Brooks. If the cops catch one of your reporters interviewing her I wouldn’t want them to find out I gave her to you.”
Abe Linkle yanked his eyeshade down, picked up a pencil, and held it poised over a pad, and the angry flash of his eyes demanded the woman’s name and address from his reporter.
Brooks gave the information reluctantly, and immediately protested, “Can’t you keep that stuff out of your filthy sheet, Abe? The guy is dead. It’s going to be tough enough on Betty Jackson without digging up this kind of dirt.”
“I’ll decide what we print,” said Linkle curtly. “Your job is to report, not have information dug out of you the way Shayne’s been doing for the past ten minutes.”
“Don’t blame Brooks too much for trying to cover up for a pal,” said Shayne pleasantly. “By the way, how’s our friend doing?” he added to Brooks, and when he received a blank stare for response, explained, “The one who went to visit you early this morning.”
“Okay when I left. That is-he was hitting the bottle pretty heavy,” he amended, glancing aside at Linkle. “Nervous as a cat on a hot stove.”
“I’m afraid he’s got reasons for being nervous,” said Shayne harshly. He arose, nodded at Linkle. “Thanks for everything. I’ll be moving along.”
There was a stir in the outer office, and as all three of the men moved toward the door it was suddenly blocked by a uniformed policeman who looked from one to the other and said, “Ned Brooks?”
“What do you want with Brooks?” the city editor asked.
“Orders from headquarters.”
“What for?” Ned Brooks asked hoarsely.
“Are you Brooks?” the officer asked and took a step forward. “I don’t know what for, but you can come along easy or the hard way if you want it.”
Brooks’s murky eyes were wide with fright. He sent a despairing glance at Shayne as the officer took him firmly by the arm.
“Mind if I follow along, Officer?” said Shayne.
“My orders are to bring in Ned Brooks,” he replied. “Whoever comes along is none of my business, but there’ll be no more talking now.” He ushered the reporter through the outer office and out the door.
The wiry city editor was bristling with anger. “What the hell?”
“I’ll go along and see,” said Shayne.
Linkle detained him, saying, “Phone me if it’s important. Goddamn it, Shayne, I’ve already lost one reporter.”
“I’ll phone you if it’s important,” Shayne promised, and went out in a hurry.
Chapter Fourteen
Ned Brooks and his police escort were nowhere in sight when Shayne came out of the Tribune building. He got in his car, made a U-turn on West Flagler, and drove to police headquarters, where he parked in a No Parking Reserved for Police area, and entered by a side door.
The officer who had brought Brooks in blocked the entrance to Will Gentry’s private office. Shayne shouldered him aside impatiently, went in, and confronted the chief, who was standing in front of his desk with a plain-clothes man on each side of him.
Ned Brooks was standing behind a chair, gripping the back of it with both hands and vehemently pointing out his rights as a private citizen.
Gentry turned his head, rolled his rumpled eyelids up, and said, “It’s all right, Jack,” to the uniformed officer who had followed Shayne in and held a vice-like grip on his sore arm muscles.
“Okay, Chief.”
The man went back to the door, and Gentry said to Shayne, “You will witness the fact that we’re not trying to frame this man as he claims. There’s a party waiting in the next room to try to identify the person he saw having an altercation with Bert Jackson on the street near his house about ten o’clock last night. If Brooks insists on a formal line-up he can have it, but you and my two men here should be enough to stand alongside Brooks to make it a legitimate identification.”
“I’m not insisting on anything,” sulked Brooks, “except decent treatment. If the cop had told me what you wanted when he came to the office I’d have come without protest. Hell, I’ll even waive the identification. I’ve admitted I saw Bert last night. Shayne knows all about that. It wasn’t an altercation. We just argued-”
“We’ll let the witness tell it first,” Gentry broke in. “Then you can make a statement. Just for the record, Brooks.” He backed up against his desk, and the two plain-clothes men took a couple of steps forward. “Get in here between them,” he said to Brooks, “and you bring up the rear, Shayne. We’ll see if our witness can pick Brooks out.”
Chief Gentry preceded the quartet and opened a side door, waited while they filed into a small, brilliantly lighted room, closed the door, and moved stolidly forward as the men lined up beneath the lights.
The witness was thin and middle-aged and bald. Lines in his face bespoke years of work and worry. He wore a shabby Palm Beach suit, and his thin fingers clasped and unclasped nervously as the men lined up before him.
“Now, Mr. Pastern,” said Chief Gentry, standing beside him.
Mr. Pastern stiffened, jerking his round shoulders erect.
“Look carefully at these four men,” Gentry resumed in a mild, conversational tone. “Tell me if you’ve ever
