Never Kill a Client

amazed when the same feminine voice, sounding just as happy as before, gurgled over the telephone, “Certainly, Mr. Shayne,” and added sotto voce, “tall, tough and red-headed.”

He held the telephone away from him, looking at it in consternation, and then put it back to his ear, reminding himself that this was, after all, the Brown Derby in Hollywood, where anything might happen.

He heard diallings and pingings over the line, and then a telephone began ringing in Lucy’s apartment some three thousand miles away, and the waiter came back and deftly set a cocktail in front of him while Shayne counted the rings, knowing after the third one that Lucy was not going to answer.

After he counted eight rings, a dulcet voice broke in and informed him, “That number does not answer. Do you wish me to try again in twenty minutes, Mr. Shayne?”

He said, “Mike, to you,” and got a little gurgle in reply. “Shall I keep trying?”

Shayne said, “Thanks. We’ll skip it for this time,” and hung up before his worse instincts got the better of him and he tried to make a date with the soft-voiced operator who had whispered, “tall, tough and red-headed,” into the telephone.

The sidecar was perfect, clean-tasting and crisp, and Shayne sipped it pleasurably while he leaned back and watched people being escorted to tables about him, tightening up a little each time an unescorted woman between twenty and forty came in his direction behind a captain, relaxing happily when each one passed by his table, because none whom he saw fitted the description the cab driver had given him of Elsa.

He was working on his third sidecar, at least forty-five minutes after he had entered the restaurant when he saw the captain to whom he had given his name hurrying toward his table.

He stopped beside him with a worried frown and leaned over deferentially to say, “A most curious thing has just happened, Mr. Shayne. You did tell me you were expecting a lady to join you, no?”

“Yes,” said Shayne.

“A few minutes ago one came and asked for you. Mr. Michael Shayne. That is correct, no?”

“Yes,” said Shayne again.

“I told her yes and asked her to follow me. I started toward your table and became suddenly aware that she was not behind me. I turned and she had stopped and was looking elsewhere to the center of the room, pale and shaken, with an expression of deathly fear on her face, Mr. Shayne.

“She turned abruptly and ran out. Ran, Mr. Shayne.” The captain glanced about him and lowered his voice discreetly. “Although no one moved to pursue her. Indeed, I could discover no one who appeared to have noticed her at all. It was as though she fled from a phantom.”

Shayne sighed and asked matter-of-factly, “Was she a beautiful juicy blonde?”

“A blonde, yes. Beautiful, yes. Concerning the juiciness, Mr. Shayne…” The captain of waiters paused helplessly.

Shayne grinned at him. He said reassuringly, “It’s just that you’re not a taxi driver, Captain. You don’t know about the juices.” He drained his cocktail glass happily and held it out to the captain. “Could you get me another of these while I continue my vigil? With just a smidgen… I repeat… just a smidgen more of cognac?”

“Certainly, sir.” The man hurried away with Shayne’s empty cocktail glass, and the redhead shrugged and wondered what in hell was going to happen next.

He felt a little bit like Alice on the other side of the Looking Glass, and he reminded himself happily that this was Hollywood… it wasn’t Miami, where all the juices were long ago dried up. Wasn’t it just this morning, by God, when he had realized how juiceless Miami had become? He hadn’t used that word, of course, but it was a good one. Very descriptive. It took a taxi driver, he mused, to glom onto a word like that.

His fourth sidecar arrived and he tasted it happily and decided it did have a smidgen more of cognac in it.

And then his own private telephone rang at his elbow. He looked around the room distrustfully, and allowed it to ring a second and a third time before he could accept the fact that it was a call for him, at his own table in the Original Brown Derby Restaurant in Hollywood.

He picked it up and wondered vaguely whether it would be Liz Taylor or Tony Curtis calling him. Or, maybe Harper Lee, insisting that Somerset Maugham collaborate with her on the screenplay of Darwin’s book.

He said, “Hello.”

A husky, voluptuous, bedroom-sort-of-voice came pulsing warmly over the wire: “Mr. Shayne! I’m calling from around the corner. The most dreadful thing has happened. One of them is in there watching you. I don’t know how. I just don’t understand… but I can’t meet you there. I don’t think he saw me. I truly don’t. But we can’t take any chances, can we? You’re a detective and know all about such things, so don’t let him follow you when you leave. Be sure you ditch him. You know. Like detectives do in books. Jump into the subway just before the doors close behind you. Only, there aren’t any subways in L.A., are there? Well then… you still can ditch him, can’t you? Of course you can. You must, because it is a matter of life and death.

“Look! I’ll meet you in half an hour or so at the cocktail bar in the Cock and Bull on the Strip. Just you ditch him on the way. I’m so frightened. I’m going to run now. I’ll switch taxis two or three times on my way to the Cock and Bull, and that way I don’t see how there’ll be any danger. Don’t fail me.” There was a click at the other end and the line went silent.

Shayne replaced it slowly, tugging at his left earlobe irritatedly. He turned slowly to survey the entire room that was slowly filling up now, and he could not detect a single person who appeared to be taking the slightest interest in him or what he was doing.

He finished his drink meditatively, and signalled to the waiter for his check.

The Cock and Bull on the Strip! That would be Sunset Strip, he assumed. What a delightful name for a place of assignation under melodramatic circumstances.

He paid his check and got up and went out without looking behind him to see whether he was followed out or not. It would be such a disappointment if he weren’t. It was a lot more intriguing to assume he was being followed… and to use his wits to lose his “tail” and avoid leading him to the elusive Elsa who waited for him on “The Strip.”

4

Shayne’s cab driver this time was a thick-bodied, hard-faced individual who appeared to have a grudge against the world in general and particularly against anyone who got in his hack for a ride.

He turned back to sneer insolently at Shayne when the redhead settled himself in the rear seat and asked, “Do you know the Cock and Bull on the Strip?”

“Sure. Anybody knows that, Mister. You want to go there?”

“Well,” said Shayne, a trifle irked, “I’d like to end up there eventually. However, let’s take a circuitous route. Pick out some street where there won’t be very much traffic.”

“You crazy, Mister? In L.A.? You find me a street where there ain’t much traffic five o’clock in the afternoon in this man’s town and I’ll give it to you. You want to go to the Cock and Bull or don’t you?”

Shayne said evenly, “Just get going, huh? Down this street the way you’re headed. I’ll tell you when I want to get out.”

The driver muttered something about people that couldn’t make up their minds and pulled out into the heavy traffic on Wilshire.

Shayne watched the meter and got a dollar bill out of his pocket. It clicked upward swiftly the way taxi meters do in Los Angeles, and when it said an even dollar, he leaned forward and said brusquely, “Pull in to the curb right here.”

The driver did so and Shayne dropped the bill on the seat beside the surly fellow and stepped out. He was near a busy crosswalk and there were a lot of pedestrians moving in all directions. Shayne moved in with them and rounded a corner, saw another cab just in front of him discharging a passenger. He stepped out and caught the handle of the open door, swung inside and said, “Get going fast.”

This driver was a slender, elderly man wearing glasses. He got going fast without asking any questions.