“I’ve heard,” said the chief, “that you’re a smart cookie. We’ll get along all right if you remember this is my town.”
The blow had reopened the cut on his lip. He got out a handkerchief and dabbed the blood away gently. “Mr. Persona gave me the idea the town belonged to AMOK.”
“Persona,” grunted the chief, “can hire all the special deputies he wants, but I still run Centerville.”
“And Seth Gerald runs you?” Shayne said bitterly.
Shayne felt this blow coming. He turned his face away and Elwood’s heavy palm struck the side of his head. “Keep driving straight ahead,” he rumbled to the driver. “Not too fast. We’ve got lots of time and aren’t going nowhere.”
A bell was ringing dully in Shayne’s left ear. He kept his face averted, looking out the window at the thin mist.
“When did you and Mrs. Roche fix that stunt up?” Elwood demanded.
“What stunt?”
“Getting yourself locked up in my jail long enough to talk to her boy friend.”
The man sitting beside the driver turned half-way around and Shayne could see his profile clearly. It was the larger of the two officers who had arrested him in front of the Eustis Restaurant. Shayne said, “Nobody has to work hard at getting himself locked up in the Centerville jail. I was having a few drinks… tending to my own business…”
“Putting it on that you were drunk as a hooty-owl,” the chief agreed placidly. “Abrams and Gar were dumb enough to pull you in the way you wanted. What’d you get from Brand?”
“Your cops are dumb, all right,” Shayne agreed. “If I were running this town I’d fire a bunch of them and…”
“What you wanta take his lip for, Chief?” the man in the front seat interrupted. “Le’s stop right here an’ I’ll work ’im over good.”
“Shut up, Gar. You caused enough trouble throwin’ him in the can with Brand. I’d like to hear just how a smart Shamus from Miami would run Centerville.”
“I’d fire most of my force and hire somebody to do my thinking for me,” Shayne snarled. “You’re sitting on top of a bomb and the fuse is getting short.”
“It’s been short a good long time,” said Chief Elwood. “What kind of a story did Brand give you?”
“He wouldn’t talk to me,” Shayne grated. “He’d got word I’m working for AMOK and I had all my trouble for nothing.”
“I might believe that… except for the way Mrs. Roche got you loose and brought you out in the country for a talk. That figures like a put-up job.”
“We’re old friends,” Shayne told him wearily.
“She didn’t act like it when you first busted in at Roche’s house this evenin’.”
“You weren’t there.”
“I got ways of knowin’ what goes on in my town. What’d you get out of Ann Cornell?”
“Several drinks of corn.”
Chief Elwood chuckled. “She sets out a tasty drink.”
“Look, let’s try to understand each other,” said Shayne angrily. “We’re both on the same side of the fence. If you’ve talked to Gerald you know I’ve been retained by AMOK to hang Roche’s murder on George Brand. The way I see it, you can use some cooperation.”
“If you’re on our side, why’d you pull that stunt to get in and talk to Brand unbeknownst to any of us?”
“I figured it was my one chance to get to him before it became generally known that I’d hooked up with Persona,” Shayne explained. “Even then it was too late. God knows how many pipelines he’s got out of that jail, but…”
“That’s one of the reasons I don’t believe you,” Elwood interrupted. “You didn’t make your deal with Persona till late this evenin’. You’re the first guy from outside to see him since then, so I know you’re lyin’ when you say he already knew.”
“Then you’d better check your own goddamned cops,” Shayne growled. “Somebody passed him the news fast. Hell, in a set-up like you’ve got here in Centerville, who do you think you can trust? A dumb ape like Gar up there?” He laughed sardonically. “Bribery and corruption have been bywords in Centerville for years. Do you think for one moment your force can be trusted? Any fool ought to know that a crook who’ll take money in his left hand will take it in his right hand, too.”
“Sounds like you know a lot about it,” grunted Elwood.
“I’ve been around other towns run along the same general lines. That’s why I tried to get to Brand secretly without even letting any of your cops know why I wanted to see him. I thought he might do some talking if he thought I was on his side.”
“But he already knew you wasn’t, huh?” Elwood sounded half-convinced.
“He already knew about my meeting with Persona,” Shayne lied. “If I were chief of police, I’d be studying who knew about it and had a chance to pass it on to him inside the jail.”
“Gantry!” Elwood exploded. “He was in my office while Seth was there. And he was up and down the jail half a dozen times.”
“I never did trust that damn Gantry,” Gar observed sourly from the front seat. “Too damn slick and smooth-talkin’.”
“He turned me out in a hurry when Mrs. Roche asked him to,” Shayne tossed in carelessly, recalling the desk sergeant’s apparent pleasure as he dragged the beaten and bleeding Dave Burroughs through the station.
“I’ll take care of Gantry. Now if you’re on the up and up, you’ll tell us what Mrs. Roche had to say.”
This was the payoff, Shayne decided. Gerald must have realized Elsa Roche was in a mood to spill everything to an outsider. But, how much of the truth had Gerald told Elwood? It didn’t really matter, actually. If Elwood didn’t already know, he would go straight to Gerald with the story Shayne told him, and the final effect would be to put Shayne in solid with both of them.
He said, “She told me plenty, Chief. Some of it would be better for you to hear all by yourself.”
“You can talk in front of Gar and Andrews,” Elwood told him. “They know enough to keep their mouths shut.”
“You may be willing to take a chance on them, but I’m not. I haven’t seen a cop in town I’d trust not to sell his own mother out for two-bits.”
“By God, Chief, that’s an insult,” Gar said thickly.
“Shut up,” Elwood snapped. “I dunno but what he’s got somethin’.” He hesitated a moment, then said, “Turn around and go back to town, Andrews.”
The driver slowed, made a U-turn and stepped hard on the accelerator. Shayne got out a cigarette and struck a match. “Maybe I’ll have time to smoke this before you’re ready to hear what Mrs. Roche told me,” he said.
“By God, I like you, Shayne. Yes sir, you and me could get along together. No hard feelings?”
Shayne put the cigarette between his swollen lips, carefully avoiding the cut. “I don’t blame you for going off half-cocked once… just so you don’t make the same mistake twice.” He spoke lightly, but there was an underlying hardness in his voice which the chief heard and recognized.
He reacted to it by saying frankly, “You and me’ll get along just s’long as you play straight with me… and remember this is my town. Anybody gets out of line in Centerville don’t last long.”
“I’ve been hearing that ever since I landed here,” Shayne told him. “And that made me wonder why George Brand lasted as long as he did. Some people take that as proof you’re losing your grip.”
Elwood didn’t rise to take the bait. He said, “I got my ways of handlin’ things. Don’t pay too much attention to what folks say.”
“Your biggest danger,” Shayne said in a tone loud enough to make certain the men in the front seat overheard, “is that you have to depend on a bunch of dumb clucks to do your work for you. Like that pair you sent after me at Ann Cornell’s tonight.”
“It’s the truth. I could tell you… eh? what’s that last you said?”
Shayne chuckled. “Those two dim-wits that tried to pull the same stunt on me that they pulled on Joe Margule on the highway this afternoon. Don’t your boys know any other way of rubbing a man out?”
“My boys had nothing to do with Margule. That was out of the city limits.”
“And I suppose it wasn’t a couple of your men that laid for me at the Cornell house and tried the same stuff?” Shayne jeered.