“It’s a good start, Mike,” Marsten said, looking straight into Shayne’s eyes. “Later, maybe?”
“Later,” said Shayne. “And thanks.”
Marsten was reaching for the telephone when Shayne got up, waved his hand in farewell, and went out.
Chapter Fifteen
There were flabby, liver-colored pouches under Chief Gentry’s eyes when Shayne entered his office after leaving the bank. He was chewing on the soggy butt of a black cigar, and he rumbled, “I’ve been trying to get hold of you ever since I came down this morning.”
Shayne pulled up a chair and dropped into it. “You look as though you’ve been out on a binge, Will.”
Gentry rubbed a big hand wearily over his ruddy face and growled. “Damned little chance I have for binges when you’re in town. Where did you get your hunch about Fred Gurney last night?”
“Gurney?” Shayne looked innocently puzzled. “Did I have a hunch about him?”
“Over the phone,” Gentry rumbled. “When you gave me the tip-off on the fire on Thirty-eighth that hadn’t started yet.”
“I didn’t say there was going to be a fire.”
“You told me about the body in the basement. I’ve got a report on that. He was dead before the fire caught him. Bled to death from a ripped jugular. Doc says it looks as though somebody had deliberately shoved a jagged broken whisky bottle in the man’s neck and twisted it.”
“People do the damnedest things nowadays,” marveled Shayne.
Gentry took the sodden cigar butt from his mouth, looked at it with extreme distaste, then tossed it over his shoulder toward a cuspidor in the corner. His aim had not improved with years of practice.
“You mentioned Gurney in connection with the Deland kidnaping.”
“I believe I did say something about having a lead that pointed to Gurney,” Shayne admitted.
“Sure you did. Where’d you get the lead, Mike?”
“You know how it is, Will.” Shayne made a negligible gesture. “A guy overhears something here and something else there. He adds them up-”
“And they make another murder,” Gentry interrupted in a deep rumble that held a grim significance.
“Another murder?” Shayne tried to look genuinely surprised, but Gentry had known him too long and too intimately.
“Tim Rourke got another one of those anonymous tips over the phone about daylight. Someone who wanted him to have a break on the story of Gurney’s murder-and the capture of Gerta Ross.”
“Tim has lots of friends around town,” murmured Shayne.
“Sure. Tim’s a very friendly guy,” agreed Gentry. “Could be the man who made the call was a big redheaded bozo who inquired at the Tower Cottage Camp for a Mr. and Mrs. Fred Smith about the time the murder was committed. The proprietor says he can identify that man, Mike.”
“After the murder was committed,” Shayne corrected equably. “Fred Gurney had a knife in his back, and the Ross woman had passed out in bed when I got there.”
“She says not. Says she guesses you killed Freddie so you could have her without a showdown with him.”
“How much of that is gin and laudanum?”
“Most of it, I guess.” Gentry grinned briefly. “They are pumping the stuff out of her stomach now. Look, Mike. Sometimes I do some adding up, too. You knew Gerta Ross was a blonde and was driving the death car. You mentioned Fred Gurney as soon as I told you about the kidnaping.” He meticulously ticked the two items off on blunt fingertips. “You knew there was a dead Negro in the Thirty-eighth Street house. There was a dead man in your old apartment. You got to Fred Gurney and Gerta Ross while the whole police force was looking for them.” He held up the five fingers of his left hand when he finished. “Add all those things up and it looks like you’re mixed up in the kidnaping all the way up to your neck.”
“I admitted that several hours ago over the phone,” Shayne reminded him.
“How, Mike? You’ve got to come clean. We’ve had four murders already.”
“Three,” Shayne corrected him. “The Negro’s death was justifiable homicide. Gurney’s may have been the same. I wasn’t there.”
Gentry let the obvious retort pass. He got out a fresh cigar, looked at its wrapper, scowled, and put it in his mouth. “From what we’ve been able to get out of Gerta Ross, it looks as though she and Gurney were the kidnapers, all right. But she swears she didn’t know the girl was kidnaped until she’d kept her drugged for a day at her place. By the time Gurney told her the truth, she was in it too deep to back out.”
Shayne nodded soberly. “That’s approximately what she told me between drinks last night.”
“Did she kill Gurney? And Slocum? Is Slocum mixed up in it somehow, or was it simply his hard luck that he was sleeping in the wrong bed? And if that house on Thirty-eighth Street was occupied by ex-Senator Irvin like you said, why did he call himself Mr. Greerson and pretend he was running an auto repair shop in the basement when we know he wasn’t? There was no equipment there.” Gentry paused for breath and added, “And why did Greerson-or Irvin-disappear just before the fire and fail to show up again?”
“I think,” said Shayne, “that the answer to all of your involved and pointed questions lies in the Deland kidnaping.” He looked levelly into Gentry’s eyes as he spoke.
“How, Mike? In the name of God, how?” Gentry pounded his desk angrily, and his face, normally ruddy, now became the deep color of the purple patches beneath his eyes.
“I think you’ll begin to get an inkling of the truth if you sit back and recall everything you know about Gurney and his past record.”
“Fred Gurney has never been anything but a cheap two-bit hustler,” said Gentry, leaning back in his swivel chair and sending a cloud of smoke from his cigar toward the ceiling, as though his sudden outburst relieved the tension of many long hours.
“He started snatching ladies’ purses when he was about twelve,” the chief went on calmly, “and graduated to rolling drunks and pimping-and what-have-you.”
Shayne relaxed and lit a cigarette. “Yeh. All cheap, small-time stuff,” he pointed out.
“Sure. Gurney’s always been a sniveling coward,” Gentry said. “He never had the guts for any big stuff.”
Shayne slid down in the straight chair, let his head fall back to rest on its back, stretched his long legs out comfortably, and said, “Doesn’t it strike you as queer, Will, that he suddenly pulled a job like the Deland kidnaping? A kidnaper really sticks his neck out since the F.B.I. took it over. There’s a difference between hustling for whore houses and gambling joints-and kidnaping and murder.”
Gentry said, “Keep on talking.”
Shayne said, “That’s it, Will. It’s a big jump for Gurney.” He jerked himself erect and spread out his big hands.
Gentry’s swivel chair moved forward and he sat with his elbows on the desk. The small rumpled awnings that were his eyelids went up, and he looked sternly at Shayne.
“What jump?”
“Add this in and see what you get, Will. Gurney called Gerta Ross last night after Dawson had been hijacked, and told her everything was all okay-that they’d get the pay-off anyhow. She was to meet him at the Tower Cottages to get her share.”
“How do you know that?”
“I wheedled it out of Gerta,” Shayne told him. “She happened to be in the mood to talk.”
There was a hint of humor in Gentry’s bloodshot eyes. “Seems to me,” he said, “you’re hinting that Gurney wasn’t the actual kidnaper. That he was fronting for someone else.”
“Let’s put it like this, Will,” said Shayne eagerly. “When Gurney told Gerta about the Deland girl, he assured her it was a cinch. That they had nothing to worry about. I suggest it was a hell of a lot more than a simple kidnaping. Gurney was being used by someone.”
