He had the irrational impression that he ought to cut off one of Julio’s ears and give it to her.
“Why didn’t you shoot him?” he asked. “You could at least have broken his leg or shoulder or something. He almost had me there for a moment?”
“I know that,” she said, “but you told me you could take him. I wanted to let you prove it. Besides you did in the end.”
“This is no spectator sport,” Shayne said. “Next time anybody gets that close to me, you shoot him.”
She bared her teeth in a grin like a fox’s. “Maybe I’ll shoot you instead, Mike. Why should I love you? If this hadn’t been the one who killed my Paul, maybe I’d have shot you this time. Anyway stop your beefing. You got him for fair.”
She had a point there.
“Okay,” he said then. “I won’t argue it. Where’s that diary you promised me? And whatever it is you want. Let’s get them so I can call in the cops before some of this big grizzly bear’s chums come looking for him.”
“Nobody’s coming,” she said. “Everybody ever met Julio hates him. Everybody. He has no friends.
“What you’re looking for, Mike, is an old fashioned tin dispatch box about twelve inches by six by four deep. The diary and what I want are both in it. You find it for me, Mike. Start by searching this room, and remember I still have the gun.”
He began by searching the area in which he had fought big Julio. He did a thorough job, even pulling the couch apart by sheer strength, but he found no tin box and ho hiding place big enough to hold one.
“Try the front bedroom next,” she said. “Me and my gun will be right with you.”
“How about him?” He jerked his thumb at Julio on the floor. “Suppose he comes to?”
“He won’t wake up for a week after that kick you gave him,” Millie Love sneered. “I think you broke his neck. Anyway, I still have the gun, don’t I?”
She indubitably did.
Mike Shayne didn’t find any tin box in the front bedroom. Millie stood in the doorway with the gun and watched him to make sure.
He did find that the carpeting over between the bed and the window had been soaked with blood. The blood was mostly dry, but there had been an awful lot of it. Julio had pulled the bed over to cover part of the stain. He didn’t say anything about the blood, and he couldn’t tell if Millie could see it from way over by the door. If she did, she didn’t comment either.
The hiding place he was looking for was in the floor of the closet in the second bedroom.
“They all think they’re so smart,” Shayne said as he lifted the home made trap door from the floor, “but I’ve yet to see one of them think of a really new place to hide anything. Not even a half-way decent hiding place.”
“Don’t worry about that,” Millie Love said from the doorway of the bedroom. “Is the box I want down there in that hole?”
“Millie,” Shayne said as he got back up from the floor with the tin despatch box under his arm. “Millie, I think maybe it’s time you told me the truth for a change.”
“I’ve told you the truth, Mike. Hand over that box and you’ll see I meant everything I said.”
“There isn’t any diary in this box,” Shayne said. “There never was. Not even that big ape in there on the floor could be dumb enough to take notes that will hang him. You knew that all along.”
“Why would I tell you there was a diary if there wasn’t?” she asked. “You look and see if there isn’t one.”
“If I look in this box, I’m dead,” Mike Shayne said. “What’s in here is the evidence to tie you and Paul Amor to the killing of a lot of helpless old nobodies. That and maybe cash or bank books. That’s why you brought me here. You figured I could maybe take this Julio for you. Even with a gun you weren’t quite sure you could do it by yourself, so you brought old Shayne along to do the fighting.”
“You’re crazy, Mike. It was just what I said.”
“Not a bit of it.”
She looked at him for a minute as if thinking over what he’d said. Then: “Okay. If you’re so smart, you tell me what the truth is.”
Shayne watched her closely, hoping she’d let her guard down for an instant and give him the opening he needed. He was talking for his life now and he knew it perfectly well.
She didn’t relax. The gun in her hand still covered him every second.
“I’ll tell you, Millie,” Shayne said. “You and this Paul Amor had a good thing in the Friendly Rest, but you were thieves and you couldn’t let well enough alone. I guess it started with getting your guests to take out insurance policies for you. Then you got tired of waiting for them to die. It didn’t take much. A dose of the wrong medication maybe, or not giving doses that were needed.
“I don’t suppose it even seemed like murder to start with. Just letting something happen that was going to happen anyway. You probably thought you did some of them a favor by putting them out of their pain. That sort of thing starts small and gets big like a landslide.”
She said nothing but he could see by her eyes that his words were scoring.
“Then along came Julio,” Shayne continued. “He did the dirty work from then on. He loved it, and you paid him well. Only Julio got greedy too. Like with Willison, he couldn’t even wait till the man checked in, and there were other jobs he did on his own. You figured too.he was holding out some of the take on you.
“You’re smart, Millie. You knew things were getting to a danger point. The dead were nobodies, but sooner or later somebody would smell a rat. It scared you.
“Well, somebody did. Willison’s insurance firm called me in. When I showed at the Home you knew me, and it scared you worse. It scared Amor when you told him. He never did have your nerve. He was going to panic and cut out on you, I suppose. You had to figure an out to save yourself. Am I right?”
She said, “Tell me the rest.”
“You called my office and set up the railroad yard meet. Lucy said the voice might have been a woman’s. Then you told Julio that Paul was running out. The first thing Julio did was grab this box I’m holding and bring it here. You hadn’t counted on that, but it didn’t stop you. You or Julio got Paul to come to this house and Julio killed him in the front bedroom. If it hadn’t been for the box being missing then you’d have cut out right away, but you had to have that box.
“You decided to trick me into getting it for you. You had Julio dump Paul’s body in that shack and then sent him back here to wait for you. You said you’d call the cops when I showed up to meet Paul, and have me blamed for his murder. That’s why you left my gun there, just in case. Julio fell for it. Maybe he didn’t know you knew he had the box. If you’d come back here alone, he would probably have killed you and put your body in the canal. Instead you brought me to take him.”
Millie Love almost smiled then. “You see, Mike, I had no choice. I needed you to get the box and get rid of Julio for me. Just like I’ve no choice now. I have to shoot you and finish off Julio. When the cops find you both dead here, they’ll figure you killed each other. No hard feelings, Mike. I hate to kill anybody man enough to take Julio like you did. I simply have to do it is all.”
“It won’t work,” Shayne said and hoped he sounded convincing.
“Oh, but it will.”
There was a crash that made them both jump. Something smashed through the glass of the bedroom window, scattering knife edged slivers of glass all over the floor.
Millie Love shifted her hand and pumped three thirty-eight slugs through the window.