Stranger in Town by Brett Halliday Page B

Shayne slowly. “You seem to have a lot of anonymous Good Samaritans operating in Brockton.”
    “We do, don’t we for a fact? Well, you know how it is sometimes. A guy is maybe out some place where he ain’t supposed to be that time of night. Maybe he’s playing around with somebody else’s wife. So he does what he can to help out and then beats it without giving his name. Can’t blame him much. Not if he’s married to a battle-axe like I am.” Grimes laughed heartily and applied himself to his beer.
    “That’s probably the explanation,” Shayne agreed. He changed the subject abruptly. “One thing I wondered about last night.” He laughed wryly and went on: “Gave me a completely wrong idea about the efficiency of your police department, I guess. Maybe I wouldn’t have stuck my neck out like I did if I hadn’t seen this other thing.”
    “What was that?”
    “While I was in that bar where you picked me up. There was a ruckus and one man got beat up. I saw the bartender call the police, but nobody ever did come to investigate it. Gave me the idea you boys were pretty slip-shod… and that turned out to be my mistake.”
    “Is that so?” Grimes looked mystified. “They called the cops and nobody came?”
    “That’s right. At least half an hour before I left and you and Burke pinched me. It got my goat to have you so on-the-ball for a parking ticket when you didn’t even bother to check the other.”
    “I can see how that’d be, sure-enough,” agreed Grimes. “Funny, though. We got three radio cars on the streets all night. Any report of trouble should be covered in five minutes after it hits the despatcher.”
    “That’s why,” said Shayne, “I asked you about the reputation of the joint. If maybe it was a place you cops stayed away from.”
    “Nothing like that in Brockton. Must be some mistake.” Grimes was obviously nettled by Shayne’s implication against the probity and efficiency of the Brockton police. He glanced at his watch. “Take a walk up to the station with me and we’ll check what happened to the call. We may be a small town, but we got a system set up just as good as they got in Miami, I betcha.”
    Shayne said, “I’d like to.” He left three dollars on the table and they went out together.
    The Brockton police headquarters was like hundreds of others in similar towns which Shayne had seen throughout the country. It was housed in a modern, three-story brick building with court-rooms and city office above, and Grimes led Shayne around to a side door where they entered a small room divided in half with a shoulder-high counter. A uniformed man sat on a high stool behind the counter and yawned somnolently as they entered.
    Grimes nodded as he led Shayne toward a rear door, and the man stopped yawning long enough to say, “Hi Georgie,” and to look at Shayne with a curious frown.
    Grimes opened the rear door onto a wide corridor and turned to the right, telling Shayne, “The file room’s up here at the end. Only take us a minute to check and see…”
    He broke off abruptly as a side door opened in front of them and a big man stepped into the corridor.
    He was fat as well as being big in every direction. Well over six feet, with spreading shoulders and a thick torso, he had a huge paunch that hung out over his belt, his eyes were almost hidden by puffy rolls of fat on each cheek, and triple chins overlapping each other beneath an absurdly small and pouting mouth.
    He stopped in the center of the wide passageway, filling it to the extent there was scarcely room for a man to pass on either side, and glowered at Grimes and Shayne as they approached.
    Grimes slowed uncertainly and said in a placating voice, “Hi, Ollie. This here’s Mr. Shayne from Miami. Chief Hanger, Mr. Shayne. Being in the business himself, Mr. Shayne wants…”
    Chief Ollie Hanger snorted loudly, like a sweated horse that has plunged his nose too deeply into a water trough.
    “The big city shamus,