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  Text originally published in 1960 under the same title.

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  Publisher’s Note

  Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

  We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

  A BODY FOR McHUGH

  by

  JAY FLYNN

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Contents

  TABLE OF CONTENTS 3

  CHAPTER 1 4

  CHAPTER 2 8

  CHAPTER 3 14

  CHAPTER 4 20

  CHAPTER 5 28

  CHAPTER 6 36

  CHAPTER 7 44

  CHAPTER 8 53

  CHAPTER 9 61

  CHAPTER 10 68

  CHAPTER 11 76

  CHAPTER 12 83

  CHAPTER 13 93

  CHAPTER 14 98

  CHAPTER 15 107

  REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 113

  CHAPTER 1

  THE GIRL WAS LOVELY. She was also running scared.

  McHugh sensed it the moment she came into The Door, chased by the persistent gusts of San Francisco rain. She stood for a moment at the front of the long, dim room. From back of the bar he saw her small nose wrinkle at the merged odors of stale whisky and dead cigarettes and people and dampness. Then she moved toward a corner table, walking in the hesitant yet graceful way of a deer that senses the hunter and is ready to bolt.

  “A doll, boss. Livin’ doll...” Benny muttered the words. “Girl like that got no business bein’ out alone. Like in this dive, particularly.”

  “McHugh will see she’s well protected,” the woman on the other side of the bar said. Her tone was light, but not amused. She puffed on the cigarette between her wide, full lips, and her green eyes challenged him.

  “Remember, it was your idea, honey,” he said. Loris seldom gnawed on him, but this seemed to be one of the nights. He wished she would go back to the piano and sing something gutty. He grinned at her and acknowledged his bartender’s analysis with a small, thoughtful nod. The girl’s eyes were searching the sparsely filled room now, and her lips were, pursed in an expression that could have meant indecision. She did not brush back the hood of her light raincoat; nor did she bother to shrug the stray drops of water from it.

  She sat, digging cigarettes and a lighter from her purse with nervous fingers. The lighter sparked but did not flame. She slapped it down on the table, fished up a pack of paper matches and got the smoke going. Her shoulders trembled as she inhaled.

  McHugh wondered what it was that had her in such shape. It might be nothing more than the bar itself. She did not belong to this back-street cellar club that catered to the kind of people who walked the shadowed places of the world. At that, business was off. The only foreign agent on hand at the moment was Koolwyk, the fat Dutchman. There were a few other regulars: the FBI team involved in a liar’s dice game with the Treasury agent at the far end of the bar; a couple of Navy Intelligence men arguing the prospects of the Giants; the San Mateo County gambler holding office hours in a back booth.

  There were also four butter-and-egg men, slurring their loud words, debating whether to look for some girls or a bar where they could see a gaggle of fairies.

  “Hey, now. Lookit that, willya!”

  A visiting fireman had spotted the girl. He said something to his companions and started for her table. McHugh put his coffee cup on the back bar and moved around the end of the plank. The stranger was leaning on the girl’s table, saying something, and she was shaking her head.

  McHugh slid his hand along the man’s arm. Thumb and forefinger found nerve centers, pressed. The man breathed in sharply and raised up on his toes as the pain became intense.

  “Hey! What’n hell you think—”

  “I think you better go sit down. Or take a walk. Outside.” McHugh was smiling pleasantly, but there was nothing friendly in the eyes that were the color of new maple syrup. “Blow, big spender.”

  He released the man’s arm, meeting the glare. The man went back to his party. McHugh saw Loris watching him. The slender, long-limbed woman who owned the other half of The Door and shared the hilltop apartment had turned away, but her eyes were on him in the back-bar mirror.

  “Hi. You look like you could use a drink,” McHugh said, smiling. The girl had dark hair and dark eyes and a heart-shaped face. She had crossed her knees, and he approved of her legs. “Old enough?”

  She started to get up, fumbling the cigarettes back into her purse as she said, in a low voice, “Of course. But I better not. I shouldn’t have come anyway.”

  “You won’t get any static here. Stay as long as you like. You’re supposed to see someone, and it’s a lousy night for waiting on the street.” His hand dropped to her shoulder, and the insistent pressure of it urged her to stay.

  “I—how did you know?”

  “This is a popular meeting place. World famous.” He brushed a hand over dark hair that was cut short and salted with gray. “What’ll it be?”

  She fingered a driver’s license from her wallet and handed it to him. McHugh gave it a superficial glance; he had already decided she was old enough to drink if she wanted to. His trained mind absorbed the information in that instant. The license said she was Cecille Marie Harnois. Age twenty-five. Height five-five. Weight one-twelve. Eyes, brown. There was an address on Scenic Drive, Carmel.

  “A cognac, please. With coffee on the side, if you have some.”

  McHugh went to the bar and gave Benny the order. Georgie came from the back room with her tray and McHugh sent the drink over with her.

  “What’s the matter? Does she have a husband?” Loris said. Her voice was husky, the way it got when she was going to get either very loving or very difficult indeed. He did not think she was going to be loving.

  “Dear darling. Will you please get off my back?” he said amiably. “You’ve been picking at me until I feel like I’ve been rode hard and put away wet.”

  Georgie was back, asking for another shot of cognac. She nudged McHugh and said from the corner of her mouth, “She’d like you to come over.”

  “And McHugh will be delighted to oblige,” Loris purred.

  McHugh started to retort, swung around and looked at the girl for a minute. He wished Loris wasn’t in such a she-cat mood, but he supposed she had sensed the restlessness in him. She had been his woman a long time—since the Berlin days. She had never complained when one of the phone calls from General Burton Harts took him away indefinitely. No warning ever preceded the calls; no explanation followed. And it had been almost four months this time. McHugh had spent the weeks running the side-street bar, waiting, wondering when and in what part of the world a situation would reach the point where the crusty brigadier would put the small, highly specialized net of unorthodox agents to work again. McHugh stifled a retort, knowing how the uncertainty that never seemed to end affected this woman who loved him.

  Instead he said, “This girl is alone. She’s frightened. She keeps watching the door. She’s got class, and she�
�s waiting for someone who hasn’t.”

  “You’re sure about that.”

  “If she was waiting for her own kind, she’d be at the Fairmont or the Clift.”

  He went over to the table, skidded a chair back and sat down. “My name is McHugh. I’m one of the owners. What’s bothering you?”

  The girl’s fingers cupped around the snifter. She sipped, running the red tip of her tongue over her lips as she said, “I—I’m probably being foolish. But this neighborhood makes me uncomfortable. I’d like to leave, but I promised...” Her voice trailed off, and she was lighting another cigarette with fingers that trembled. “Can I leave a message with you? A man will be coming in. He should have been here by now.”

  “Sure. You want to write it down or just tell me?”

  “Just say—no, I’d better write it.”

  “I’ll get some paper.” McHugh stood, moving aside as the butter-and-egg men, who seemed to have something to do with selling hardware, weaved their way past him toward the front of the bar. The one he’d grabbed gave him a dirty look.

  The first man lurched and stumbled into the door. It gave an inch or two, then closed. McHugh heard a muttered oath, and the man straightened himself up and tried again. This time the door opened about a foot, then jammed and refused to move. The man put his head out into the rain, then pulled it back in.

  “Hey, bartender. You got some guy passed out here.”

  “Oh?” McHugh crossed the room as the smallest of the men clustered around the entrance squeezed through the gap.

  “Hey! This guy isn’t drunk!” he shouted. “Somebody stuck a knife in him. He looks dead!”

  McHugh broke into a run. He pushed the men aside and slammed a meaty shoulder against the heavy timbers of the door. He felt a sluggish weight yield, and the door was open.

  The Federal men were moving into it, herding the others back inside. McHugh bent over the crumpled form. There was no question; the man was dead.

  He had light brown hair, and a face that probably had been pleasant before someone shoved the heavy-handled knife into his belly. The knife had gone through a raincoat, and blood had seeped around the slit. McHugh saw the red spots trailing down the three steps that led to the street. They were flushing away in the rain. A dark green felt hat with a large feather in the band lay upside down near the man’s outstretched right hand. The knees were drawn up to the belly, and rain pelted into the open, glazing eyes.

  The FBI men looked at McHugh, and one of them asked, “Know him?”

  McHugh shook his head. “Anybody calling the cops?”

  “Jensen.”

  “I don’t want any part of this.” One of the hardware men was trying to squeeze past.

  Murrell, the other FBI agent, caught his arm and showed him a badge. “Sorry, sir. You’ll have to stay.”

  “Somebody get on the back door,” McHugh said.

  “The back—” The second FBI man broke away from the group and hurried along the bar toward the entrance that opened on the alley in the rear.

  McHugh went inside and found Loris in the crowd. His eyes swept the barroom, and he snapped, “Where’s the girl?”

  “I don’t know,” Loris replied. “She was at the table when I ran up here.”

  “She’s not now. Check the can.”

  Loris hurried toward the rest-rooms. McHugh walked back of the bar, poured himself a shot of Scotch, drank it in a gulp and poured another. Jensen, the Treasury agent, was hanging the phone up when Loris came back.

  She caught McHugh’s eye and shook her head.

  “Uh-huh,” he said. “Looks like that little gal was waiting for the victim of foul play. Makes me wonder.”

  “What, McHugh?” There was no irritation in her voice now.

  “Whether he’s the one she was waiting for. Or maybe the one she was afraid of. Or whether it’s the one who put the blade in him.”

  He slid a second shot glass across the bar and poured her a drink as a siren groaned over the surge of the storm.

  CHAPTER 2

  INSPECTOR KLINE stepped over the body and gazed with a sour expression at the assembly. He had the look of a man who has been summoned by the income tax man and asked to explain in detail his returns for the past five years.

  “I was afraid I’d find something like this,” he said grimly. He was recalling previous encounters with McHugh. McHugh alone was bad enough, but McHugh with a body on his front stoop was intolerable. And when it was one of those things with the FBI involved, Kline fervently wished the chief would bust him out of Homicide and put him on a three-wheeler, where he could spend his declining years happily writing parking tickets.

  McHugh and Nick Foote and Jim Murrell, the dour FBI team, seemed to delight in stepping in and crumbing up Kline’s cases. Now McHugh poured a mug of coffee and slid it across the bar toward the inspector.

  “Afraid of what, Inspector?” McHugh said in a pleasant tone.

  Kline made a growling sound deep in his throat, shoved his rain-splattered hat back on his head and gulped a mouthful of coffee. “Gimme the story,” he demanded. “And make it good.”

  “We can give you a body,” McHugh told him. “Not much in the way of a story. Just a stranger comes out of the night and gets taken dead with a dirk.”

  “Just that and no more.” Kline eyed McHugh, Murrell, Foote and Jensen grimly. “It’s just a coincidence that the dump happened to be full of Federal types when the stiff arrives. Who is he? Give.”

  “We never saw him before. We don’t have any idea of who he is,” McHugh said innocently. It was the truth, but he managed to make it sound like a lie. “Customers going out found him. Like the good citizens we are, we called the law.”

  “And what else? Don’t tell me you didn’t frisk him.”

  “He didn’t,” Foote put in. “We watched him every minute.”

  “And who watched you?” Kline retorted. He waved a plain-clothes man over from the door. It was propped open now, and a man from the coroner’s office was bending over the body. “What’ve you got?”

  “A dead man we don’t know,” the cop said. “No wallet, no money, no nothing on him. None of the customers seem to know who he might be. Labels cut out of his clothes, and no visible laundry marks. The coroner’s guy seems to think he got stuck just a few minutes before we were called.”

  Kline put his head in his hands and looked grim. “Yeah. It would be that way. Well, get him to hell out of there so we can shut the door. Do what you can with questioning these so-called customers of McHugh’s.” He shoved his empty coffee cup back and said to McHugh, “How many got out before we got here?”

  “None.” McHugh’s eyes slid over the Federal men. If they remembered the girl, they gave no sign. “Nobody went out the front, and the back door was covered right away.”

  “I’ll bet,” Kline answered. He watched in silence as the morgue crew dumped the body into a wicker basket and carted it off. “So who left last before the body was found?”

  “Nobody left,” McHugh assured him. “Last ones through the door were Nick and Jim here. I guess they came in about an hour ago.”

  He saw that now they were remembering the girl. The FBI team said nothing, and nodded a silent assent. They would go along with him—for now. Murrell and Foote were not giving anything away until they knew what it was.

  Kline turned away from the bar in anger. He stamped over to where the Homicide detectives were questioning customers. McHugh poured himself a brandy and sipped it slowly. He caught the barmaid’s eye, inclined his head toward the table where the girl had been sitting and caught her almost imperceptible answering nod.

  A moment later, Kline swiveled his head, scowling. He had been talking to the hardware men. Now he planted himself across the bar from McHugh and growled, “So nobody left, hah? What about the woman?”

  “Woman?” McHugh said innocently.

  “Woman.” Kline rattled off a surprisingly accurate description.

  “Oh, that one.
She was such a wee slip of a thing I forgot all about her. I guess she must have left.”

  “You know God-damned well she left,” Kline roared. “I got four witnesses already who say she was sitting at a table when they started out and found the stiff. She’s not here now. So what did you do with her?”

  “Nothing,” McHugh said flatly. “She came in, had a drink or two, paid up and left. I’m busy back of the bar. I don’t know when she went or where.”

  “You know who she was,” Kline accused.

  “I do not.”

  “She was a looker, and the visiting firemen were looking. They saw you get some identification from her. So who was she?”

  “I wouldn’t have any idea,” McHugh said with a bland expression. “I just checked her age. She was twenty-five.”

  Kline, turning his scowl on Murrell and Foote, saw he was going to get no help from that quarter. He crammed his hat lower on his head and stomped from the bar. In a moment the sound of a siren, moving away fast, filled the room.

  “Tell us,” Foote said. He draped his lanky frame over the bar. “I think maybe we should look the young lady up.

  “That was the truth. I didn’t get the name.”

  “Now listen,” Murrell said. “We let you slide on that one with Kline. But we don’t buy your wide-eyed look of innocence. We—”

  “If a citizen has knowledge of a crime, the law requires him to report it to the proper authorities,” McHugh said pleasantly. He reached for the phone. “I can get the inspector back here in a minute or two.”

  Foote and Murrell exchanged searching looks. “We’ll find her. With or without you, McHugh,” Murrell said flatly. “We’ll find out who she is and what she was doing here and what she has to do with dead men. And when we get through we’ll take this thing up through channels and see if we can’t get you chopped down to size.”

  “You do that,” McHugh said, smiling. He reached for a bottle. “Better have a nightcap.”

  The Homicide Squad picked up its gear and left. The Federal men left. The hardware dealers had taken off like foxes in a forest fire the moment they were allowed to. It was not yet midnight, and McHugh’s only customer was Koolwyk. The paunchy Dutchman straddled a bar stool, short fingers toying with the label on a bottle of beer. From time to time he sipped thoughtfully from the bottle and stared at his reflection in the smoke-tinged back-bar mirror.