A Taste for Violence (15 page)

“So, she wasn’t concerned about what became of me?”

“I… don’t think she mentioned your name… after you left,” he stammered. “I gathered that… you all had a quarrel,” he ended, staring into Shayne’s cold gray eyes.

“Is Persona spending the night in town?”

“I don’t know.” Rexard glanced at the newspaper man. “You know, Frank?”

Seveir nodded. “He’s at the Moderne. With the strike fizzling out, he’s paying off the special deputies tomorrow.”

“Are your columns open to news?” Shayne asked abruptly, “or do you print what you’re told?”

“The press of the United States is free,” Seveir told him with stiff dignity.

“If I brought you proof that Seth Gerald murdered Charles Roche, would you print it?”

“What!” The exclamation came simultaneously from both men.

Shayne grinned crookedly. “You made several attempts to find out my business tonight,” he said to Rexard. “I’m in Centerville for just one purpose: To smash the town wide open and put a rope around the neck of the man who actually murdered Roche.”

“United States Marshal?” Seveir quavered, and mopped sweat from his face.

Shayne neither denied nor affirmed the conjecture. “Print that in your paper tomorrow,” he told the publisher grimly, “and you can quote me.” He got up and sauntered away from the table to the door, went down the street and found his car parked where he had left it.

He had left the keys with Lucy, but shorting a wire across the ignition switch was easily accomplished, and a few minutes later he was speeding toward the Moderne Hotel.

A light shone in the lobby of the hotel building as he swung past the cottages. He stopped in front of the cabin assigned to him. All the cabins were dark except the one at the end of the row. He turned off the headlights, left the motor idling, and went to the door he had left wide open earlier. It was cooler inside now, and everything seemed to be just as he had left it.

He went outside and crossed to Lucy’s cabin, rapped on the door several times, and receiving no answer he walked on toward the lighted cabin at the end.

The shades were not drawn and the windows were open. Shayne walked cautiously on the rocky ground, crept close enough to a window to look in. Lucy Hamilton reclined on the bed, propped up on one elbow. Mr. Persona sat in the only chair. He had removed his coat and loosened his collar, and his sleek black hair was disheveled. A bottle of whiskey was on the table beside him. He was talking and gesticulating and laughing heartily at his own wit. Lucy was laughing with him, her eyes very bright. Titus Tatum was not with them.

Shayne went back to his car, got in, and backed around, leaving the headlights off until he turned onto the highway. There were no cars on the road driving back to Centerville, and when he reached the heart of the village most of the night-life had died away. Only a few business places were lighted, and an occasional car was parked on the main street. He drove straight through, turned up Magnolia Avenue and parked in front of Ann Cornell’s house which was aglow with light.

He heard no sound from within until he was on the porch. Through the closed door, radio music could be faintly heard. He knocked and waited until Ann Cornell opened the door. She wore a blue flowered cotton dressing gown and blue bedroom slippers. Her face was flushed, and she lifted one hand to brush a strand of damp hair from her face. Her blue eyes held a fixed, drunken stare, but her voice was pleasant and slightly thick when she said, “I wondered when you’d be back.” She swayed a little as she stood aside for him to enter, closed the door firmly, and crossed the floor with careful exactitude to the chair beside the table where the jug of corn liquor stood. There were only about three inches left in the jug.

Shayne sat down, lifted his bushy red brows and asked, “Who’s been drinking your whiskey?”

She looked at the jug and said, “Nobody but me.” She picked up her glass and drank the half-inch of liquor remaining. “Been saving it for you.”

Shayne’s empty glass was on the end-table beside the chair where he had left it. He got up, poured it a quarter full and asked with a frown, “What are you afraid of, Ann?”

“Me?” She opened her eyes wide, then half-closed them. “I’m not afraid of Old Nick himself.”

“You’re afraid to be alone,” Shayne told her. “That’s why you keep a jerk like Angus around. Where is he now?”

“Back room. Sleeping off a load.”

“Like he was last night?” Shayne asked harshly.

She moved uneasily, ran her hand around the low-cut neck of her dressing gown nervously. Her chest and shoulders were firm and creamy where the flesh flowed away from her throat. She said, “Still harping on last night?”

Shayne nodded. “And I’m going to be from now on. Why don’t you get it off your mind? Drinking too much corn isn’t going to help.”

“What?” she asked indifferently.

“The truth.”

“What good’s the truth?” There was more of hysteria in her short laughter than drunkenness. She checked herself, took up the jug and half-filled her glass.

He was still standing beside her, and he bent over her, placing one hand on the arm of her chair, to say, “This is one time in the history of Centerville when the truth is worth something. Look at me, Ann.”

She lifted her head slowly and looked up at his angular face. His cheeks were deeply trenched, his mouth grim. She did not speak.

Shayne said quietly and with deep intensity, his eyes holding hers in a hypnotic gaze, “You know plenty about men. You know these punks in Centerville can’t stop me. You know that deep inside when you look at me. And you’re decent deep inside, Ann. You’ve always been decent and you’re proud of it.” His voice didn’t waver, didn’t rise or fall in tone. Her eyes were fixed on his and were becoming slightly glazed, as though she didn’t see his face, but something far beyond him.

“I’m getting hold of things,” he went on slowly, “and all I need is a hint. You can make it easy for me, or I can do it the tough way. Who was with you last night, Ann? Who saw Roche across the street and phoned Seth Gerald? Was it Angus?”

Speaking the name was a mistake. He knew it as soon as it left his lips. Ann Cornell’s eyes turned aside and the spell was broken. She lifted herself slightly and moved her hand upward toward his face. “Did you say your name was Michael?”

“That’s right.” He took her groping hand in his. It was moist and warm and firm. Her fingers gripped his with the strength of a man’s, and there was a look approaching panic in her eyes.

She said throatily, “None of this is any good, Michael. Drop it. We could have fun, you and me. I knew you’d come back. I wanted to be drunk when you came.” She was pulling his hand down to her lips, parting them to press a finger between them. “Whyn’t you get drunk, too?” Her voice was low and pleading. “There’s plenty liquor. ’Nother jug in the kitchen.”

Shayne straightened up, taking his hand from hers. She leaned back and looked up at him. Her eyes were humid and her breathing was rapid and audible.

Shayne said slowly, “Time is running out, Ann. I have to keep moving. If you won’t give me the truth, I may have to lock Angus up and make him talk.”

“No!” She came to her feet swiftly. “You can’t do that! Jail would kill Angus.”

“Not quite. He’ll just think he’s going to die after about twelve hours without dope. Then he’ll talk. He’ll tell me anything for a shot. Anything I want him to say. He’ll say he saw
you
shoot Roche if I tell him to.”

“You bastard!” she screamed. “You lousy stinking bastard!” Her face was contorted and she sprang at him with her fingers curved into claws.

He fended her off, flung her back roughly. She fell into the chair, her hips on the edge of the cushion, her feet sprawled out before her. She remained there, her arms clutching the chair arms for support, a stream of obscenity pouring from her lips.

Shayne half-turned from her to pick up the glass he had dropped. She straightened up suddenly and he ducked just in time to dodge the glass flung at his head. It shattered against the opposite wall. Ann Cornell crouched in her chair and startled him with the filth and violence of the epithets she hurled at him.

“Shut up,” Shayne said harshly, “or I’ll have to…”

A slight sound behind him brought him around in time to see Angus slithering across the room, clad only in the bottom half of his red and yellow striped silk pajamas, a six-inch kitchen knife in his hand.

Shayne leaped to one side and swung his left fist in a wide arc as he moved. It connected with the smaller man’s bony chin and Angus dropped to the floor.

Ann Cornell was on Shayne’s back like a wildcat before he could set himself, scratching and biting and screaming shrilly.

He got a hold on one of her arms and jerked her off, clamped a big palm over her mouth, and dragged her across the room toward the door. There was an open hallway and a bathroom at the end of it. He went toward it in long, rapid strides.

Holding her with one arm, he opened the medicine cabinet above the lavatory. He found a large roll of half-inch adhesive tape and a carton of absorbent cotton. He tore off a wad of cotton and forced it between her teeth, taped her lips tightly shut with four strips running from cheek to cheek and four more running from her chin upward.

She was gasping and jerking and writhing, but he worked coldly and methodically, then hoisted her in his arms and carried her into a bedroom where he tossed her in the center of a single bed, spreadeagled her on her back, and with extreme difficulty taped each wrist and ankle securely to the corner posts of the iron bedstead.

He was breathing hard and sweating profusely when he stepped back to survey his handiwork. Her dressing gown had been torn from her in the struggle and she lay nude with arms and legs outstretched.

Shayne wasted only a glance on her voluptuous feminine figure and accouterments before pulling a light spread from the foot of the bed and covering her, while her body writhed and her angry eyes glared venomously.

He lit a cigarette and sat down on the edge of the bed. “You asked for this,” he told her harshly. “I told you I was on my way and nothing could stop me. I’m going to leave you here while I take Angus away and store him in a safe place where he won’t get any dope until he decides to talk. You’ll be all right… I hope.”

He got up and looked down at her implacably. She continued to writhe and strain at the tape binding her. Her eyes rolled in their sockets, exuding such hatred that Shayne felt a chill down his spine.

“I’m sorry, Ann,” he said. “We could have had fun together, but now we never will. Take it easy. The less you fight the less sore you’ll be when you’re free.”

He turned and strode back to the living room where he found Angus still crumpled in the middle of the floor, unconscious. He lifted the light body easily to his shoulder and went out, leaving all the lights burning and the radio playing, and closed the front door firmly behind him.

He dumped Angus in the front seat of his car, went around and got in on the other side, connected the wire behind the switch and drove away, straight through the sleeping village and up the steep mountain slope toward the Moderne Hotel.

THE cabin at the end of the row was still lighted when Shayne stopped in front of his own. He shut off the motor and snapped off the headlights, went in and turned on the cabin light and took his suitcase from the bed.

Angus was still unconscious, but he breathed regularly and his color was normal when Shayne carried him inside. He stretched him out on his back on the bed, and gagged and bound him, pulled down the shades, got a flat .45 automatic from his suitcase. He threw a cartridge in the firing chamber and pushed on the safety, and slid it in his hip pocket.

Angus was lying limp, with his eyes closed, when Shayne turned out the light. He locked the door when he went out, then strode down past the row of dark cabins to a point where he could again look through a window into the lighted one.

Persona was sitting on the side of the bed now. His profile was toward the window, and he was leaning over Lucy Hamilton who lay on her back laughing up at him. Persona’s right hand rested on Lucy’s left shoulder, pinioning her to the bed with his weight, but Lucy didn’t seem to mind. Persona had an eager, hopeful look on his flushed face.

It seemed to Shayne that Lucy was shamelessly enjoying herself, and he had a funny feeling in his belly as he crept closer to the window. It was one thing to get a man drunk and try to dig information out of him, but quite another to give every indication of bitchy pleasure in the process. He hadn’t expected her to carry out his suggestion so literally.

As he neared the open window he was able to distinguish Persona’s voice clearly. It was thick with drink and with passion, and he was proclaiming over and over again that Lucy was the most beautiful and the most desirable woman in the world.

Shayne moved swiftly to the door, closing his mind to Persona’s voice, and knocked loudly.

Dead silence inside the cabin followed his knock. Then the creak of bedsprings, and the light went out suddenly. Shayne tried the knob. The door was locked. He pounded on it, and Persona called out, “Who is it?”

“Chief Elwood sent me.” Shayne’s voice was harsh and queer in his own ears.

A key turned in the lock and the door opened a cautious crack. He shouldered it wide and pushed in, reaching for the light switch on the wall and flipping it.

Lucy had swung her legs over the edge of the bed and was sitting primly erect, pushing strands of brown hair back with both hands. Her eyes were lowered and there was a demure smile on her lips.

Persona, shoved back against the wall by Shayne’s entrance, blinked a couple of times before his bleared eyes and blurred mind recognized the intruder. He exclaimed, “Shayne! What the devil does this mean?”

Shayne slammed the door shut and turned the key in the lock, withdrew it and dropped it in his pocket. He didn’t look at Persona. He asked Lucy, “Everything all right?”

“The Marines,” she said matter-of-factly, “landed just in time to save me from a fate worse than being your secretary.”