Mabel glared up at Shayne. “What do you mean, leg man? You know Marsh Tarbox was my leg man. He’s been for four years.”
All three men glanced at her, then Gentry and Curry returned their attention to Shayne.
The redhead said, “He was hooked and wanted to kick it. He couldn’t by himself, so he was going to turn himself in and blow the whistle on the whole deal. It would be quite a coincidence if Mabel didn’t have a hand in his disappearance.”
Gentry and Curry looked down at Mabel again. She stared at Shayne, then emitted one short, wild laugh.
“You think I had Bill killed?” she asked half hysterically. “My best man!”
“Best man for what?” Shayne asked.
She laughed again, one short, wild note. “Why shouldn’t I tell you? You’ve got me cold anyway. He was my top recruiter. His job was to bring in new customers.” Gentry said, “Retailers like Goodrich, you mean?”
“Retailers are easy,” she said scornfully. “I mean customers for the retailers to sell to. You must know the pitch. First you start them on reefers. Free, of course. Then, when they’re ripe, you suggest a brand new kick. That’s free too, until they’re hooked. After that they pay through the nose. Bill was the best in the business.”
Shayne said, “Nice try, Mabel, but it won’t work. I know he was turning himself in to kick the habit.”
“What habit?” she spat at him. “Bill never touched the stuff in his life. That’s for suckers.”
Mabel emitted another hysterical laugh. “The blonde photographer over at Club Swallow? She’s one of the suckers he recruited!”
Shayne looked from Curry to Gentry, then back at the woman. Frowningly he tugged at his left earlobe.
“Maybe this Rose Henderson led you up the garden path, Mike,” Gentry suggested.
“Yeah,” Shayne said slowly. “I’m beginning to think that myself. Why don’t you take Mabel downtown and book her, Will. I have a visit to make.”
Abruptly he crossed to the dining-room door, strode through the dining room to the kitchen and out the back door to his car, still parked in the garage...
It was after three P.M. when Shayne arrived at Rose Henderson’s apartment. He hadn’t had lunch, but didn’t want to stop for that. Since the girl got off work at midnight, he assumed she went in about four P.M., and if he delayed he was afraid he’d miss her.
She answered the door in street clothes, carrying a purse. Apparently he had caught her just as she was ready to leave.
“Oh, hello, Mike,” she said with surprise. “You’re just in time to run me over to work.”
Moving into the apartment, he pushed the door closed behind him and dropped his hat on an end table. “I doubt that the club will open today,” he said. “Both the manager and headwaiter are in the hospital.”
Her eyes widened. “What happened?”
“They caught some bullets in a gunfight.”
Instead of surprise, a look of satisfaction flitted across her face. With sudden viciousness she said, “Good. I hope they die.”
“The whole narcotics ring is broken up,” the redhead told her. “The members not in jail will be as soon as the police finish studying some records. You’re not going to be able to get the stuff for a long time, Rose. Not in this town.”
“That’s one way to kick it,” she said.
“Is that why you did it?” he asked.
“Did what?”
“Started me after their scalps. Told me Marshall Tarbox was a new leg man, when you knew he’d been supplying Club Swallow all along.”
She looked at him warily and made no answer. But there was a sudden fright in her eyes.
“You can’t have your cake and eat it too, Rose. You got what you wanted. I broke the gang wide open. But you might have known I’d discover what Bill Whitney’s real job was.”
“What was that?” she asked with simulated innocence.
“Recruiting. You were one of his conquests. That why you killed him, Rose?”
She looked at him for a long time, her face expressionless. Then it suddenly crumpled. She said in a dull voice, “He said he loved me. He even asked me to marry him. Just to get me to trust him. A new kick, he said. He pretended to use it himself, too, until he had me hooked. Then he just laughed at me.”
“He wasn’t a very nice guy,” Shayne understated.
“He deserved to die,” the girl said with sudden fierceness. “It wasn’t only me. There’s no telling how many other lives he ruined. I did the world a favor.”
“A lot of people deserve to die, Rose. It isn’t a perfect world. But you’d have anarchy if individuals went around bumping all the rats off.”
“Do you blame me?” she demanded.
“I’m not a judge, Rose.” He examined her with something approaching pity. “What’d you do with the body?”
“I drove over to the bay in my car and dumped it in,” she said. “Weighted. But I guess the police will find him.” Her expression became a little unsettled. “Who’s going to blame me for killing a rat like Whitney?” she asked. “What would you have done in my place?”
“I wouldn’t have gotten hooked,” Shayne said. “Come on. I’ll drive you downtown.”
“To the police station?” she asked fearfully.
“Eventually,” he said. “I’m against murder as a matter of principle, but some killers deserve their full constitutional rights more than others. I’m taking you to a lawyer first.”
Mike Shayne as I Know Him
by Brett Halliday
In a very real sense Mike Shayne has become a national institution. Not only is he the favorite private eye of twenty million mystery story readers (He has appeared in 34 books, on radio and TV and in many new stories in MSMM) he is known and admired by men and women everywhere, even by those who neglect books because the demands of daily living are so exacting... or exciting. And here’s the amazing story of how it all began, told by Brett Halliday himself.
Many of my readers are familiar with the dramatic first meeting between myself and the man who was later to become the central figure in a series of mystery novels featuring a red-headed, fighting Irishman whom I call Michael Shayne. This first meeting occurred on the Tampico waterfront more than a quarter of a century ago. I was a youngster then, working as deck-hand on a Pan American oil tanker, and on a stopover in Tampico a bunch of us spent the evening ashore in a tough waterfront saloon.
I noticed him before the fight started, and was intrigued by him even then. A big, rangy redhead with deep lines already forming on his face. He sat at a table in the rear, surrounded by lights and music and girls. There was a bottle of tequila on the table in front of him, and two glasses. One of the glasses held ice water and he was drinking straight Mexican liquor from the other.
I don’t remember how the fight started, but it turned into a beautiful brawl with half a dozen unarmed American sailors slugging it out on uneven terms with twice as many natives who seemed to be carrying knives or guns.
We were doing all right, as I remember, making what you might call a strategic retreat and almost out the door, when I got a crack on the head that sent me under a table.
I remember lying there and wondering dazedly, “What next, little man?” when I heard the crash of a rear table overturning and peered out to see the redhead sailing into the fracas.
He was a fighting man and you could see he loved it. Three or four Mexicans went down in front of his fists before he reached me, dragged me from under the table and tossed me out the door bodily.