“Suppose I don’t want to go?”
“Why do you always make things tough on yourself, Shayne? All we’re asking is for you to come down and identify a murdered man.”
Shayne said, “All right.” He stood for a moment in indecision, yawning and stretching his arms.
Sergeant Frank was a young man, well built, with mild blue eyes and black, curly hair.
“What’s the trouble between you and Denton?” he asked.
“I hate his guts.”
The Sergeant chuckled. “But there’s no use bucking him. Besides, I thought murder was your business.”
After another brief period of hesitation, Shayne strode into the bedroom. In five minutes he came out settling his wide shoulders into a loose gray jacket, and the two men went down to a police sedan parked at the curb. Sergeant Frank slid under the wheel and Shayne got in beside him.
Shayne’s feud with Captain Dolph Denton of the French Quarter precinct went back fifteen years, and had been renewed last year when the red-headed private operator had come to New Orleans from Miami on a case, and had decided to settle in the city and open an office. It flared into the open during the investigation of the Margo Macon case, resulting in a draw that left each man backing away warily to measure his opponent. Since then, they had managed to avoid each other, but the bad blood still remained.
Sergeant Frank and Shayne drove in silence up Carondelet to Canal Street and on into the French Quarter. Frank turned off Royal onto St. Louis, and pulled over to the curb behind a cluster of cars at an alley entrance.
Shayne got out first and went directly to the spot where two white-coated men were kneeling beside a body. Glaring spotlights were trained on the corpse and a photographer was shooting off flashbulbs.
Captain Dolph Denton stepped forward aggressively from a group of men near the body. He was a big-girthed man with dark and brutal features. He accosted Sergeant Frank, who stood behind Shayne.
“I see you brought the shamus down, all right. Any trouble?”
Frank said, “Nope,” and moved on past Denton.
Shayne said, “What’s this all about?” His voice grated like a file drawn across rusty steel.
Denton’s black eyes bulged a trifle. He caught Shayne’s arm officiously and started to turn him toward the waiting group. Shayne brought his right forearm up in a horizontal position and struck his doubled fist a sharp blow with the open palm of his left hand. The blow drove his elbow into Denton’s potbelly.
Denton grunted and released his arm. “By God if you start anything I’ll let you have it,” he thundered.
Shayne ignored him and went over to Inspector Quinlan.
He said curtly, “I didn’t know you were in on this, Inspector.”
Quinlan smiled frostily and cleared his throat. “I just got here. Denton said he had sent for you to make an identification.” Quinlan was a slim, trim man of medium height with a shock of iron gray hair and a stoic expression. His eyes were a cold blue, and Shayne knew him to be hard as flint, but innately just.
Denton surged up beside Shayne, breathing hard. “One of these days you’ll pull a trick like that at the wrong time,” he growled.
Shayne didn’t look at him. He asked Quinlan, “What makes Denton think I can identify the corpse?”
“Never mind about that,” Denton barked. “Take a look and tell me who this stiff is.”
The two ambulance attendants rose and stepped away when Shayne went over and looked down at the corpse. Under the glare of the spotlight, the murdered man’s features were clearly outlined.
He was about forty, with the smooth, rounded features of a man who had lived well and carefully. He was well dressed, wearing a soft white shirt and black bow tie, a pin-striped, double-breasted blue suit. The coat was unbuttoned and pulled back, his shirt and undershirt pulled up to show a round hole in his chest.
Shayne stepped back and said to Inspector Quinlan, “I don’t know him. Why am I supposed to?”
Quinlan looked at Denton. The Captain shoved his burly frame forward. “Don’t pull that stuff,” he said. “You won’t get away with it.”
Shayne exhaled audibly and said in a dangerously soft voice, “Call me a liar, Denton, and so help me I’ll give you an excuse for locking me up on a charge of assaulting an officer.”
Denton scowled darkly and licked at his sensuously thick lips. “Do you deny that you know the dead man?”
“I do.”
“I suppose you’ve got so many clients you can’t remember all of ’em,” Denton snarled.
“My clients are my business,” Shayne told him. He turned his back on the Captain and addressed Inspector Quinlan. “I am not going to stick around here all night listening to Denton. If there’s any reason why I should know the dead man, tell me.”
Denton had his hand out as though to catch Shayne’s arm and whirl him around, but dropped it to his side and moved around to face him. “Who’ve you got an appointment with at nine o’clock this morning?”
“Nobody.”
“So you deny that you’ve arranged to see this man at nine o’clock?” Denton said in a churlish tone.
Inspector Quinlan said, “You’re not getting anywhere, Denton. Tell us what you know about the corpse. What’s this hocus-pocus about him being a client of Shayne’s?”
The Captain set his heavy jaw and muttered, “I was trying to trip Shayne up. If I tell him all I know—”
“You’d better give it to me,” Quinlan said with authority.
“There’s no identification on him. Not a damned thing in any of his pockets except one. Moran heard the shot from two blocks away, and by the time he found the body the killer had searched him and got away.”
“What was in one of his pockets?”
“This!” said Denton triumphantly. He drew out a thick black book about three by five inches in size, opened it, and displayed calendared pages for each day in the year, with a vertical row of hours from 9:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m.
From between the pages he took a folded newspaper clipping and held it in the glare of the spotlight. It was from a month-old issue of the New Orleans Times-Picayune, and was captioned Local Investigator Scores in El Paso. It carried a picture of Shayne, and a somewhat embellished account of the detective’s latest case in El Paso, which had resulted in the arrest of both that city’s mayoralty candidates.
Shayne looked at the clipping and grinned. “So I’ve got a public. Can I help it if I’m the pin-up type?”
“All right, wise guy,” Denton snarled. “Laugh this off.” He flipped the book open to the current date of June 6.
Written in a precise hand on the first line of the page opposite 9:00 a.m. was the notation, M. Shayne. The only other entry on that page was two lines below at 11:0 °Catch train.
“What do you make of those two entries?” Denton asked the Inspector.
“Looks as though he had an appointment with you at nine this morning, Shayne.”
“That proves he didn’t know me, or he wouldn’t have expected to catch me in my office at that ungodly hour,” Shayne said.
“But he planned to catch a train at eleven,” Denton persisted in a surly voice. “That indicates a definite appointment with you.”
Shayne said irritably, “I told you I never saw the man before.”
“Maybe not,” Quinlan said. “But we can still use his name — and what his business was with you. That may have some bearing on his murder.”
“Hell, yes.” Denton exploded. “That’s what I figured right away. He was gunned to prevent him from keeping his appointment with you. When you tell us what he was seeing you about we’ll know where to look for his killer.”