Guilty as Hell

by Brett Halliday

  “I don’t suppose you’d say that so positively unless you know it for a fact. Something terrible must have happened to her when she was young. I thought—”

  “You were wrong,” Shayne said briefly. “How did she get you alone?”

  “She was sent by the baby-sitting agency. I drove her home. Her father was still working. Jake Fitch was still working. Fitch,” he repeated, pronouncing the name with revulsion. “Her lover? I shared her with Jake Fitch?”

  “Move it along, will you, Despard?”

  “She was afraid to go in alone. She thought she saw a shadow moving on an upstairs shade. She made me go up to make sure no one was there.” He swallowed heavily. “If that was acting, she did a good job.”

  “I doubt if she had to carry you upstairs,” Shayne said dryly. “How much have they taken you for?”

  “Not a cent! Oh, I’ve given her presents, perfume, a new dress. I leased the apartment. But my wife happens to run the checkbook in my house, and I assure you I couldn’t sneak any sizeable sum past her.”

  “If that checks out,” Shayne said, “I’ll have to report I’ve located the man who sold the T-239 folder.”

  The Buick slowed abruptly. “Shayne, you have to be joking. Damn it, I can’t talk and drive at the same time.”

  They were on 43rd Street, between First Avenue and North Miami. At a signal from Shayne, Despard pulled over to the curb. Turning all the way around, he said passionately, using both hands, “I didn’t do it. I don’t care what kind of blackmail they tried to use on me, I wouldn’t—”

  “What are the photographs like?”

  “Photographs? You mean they have pictures of me? Of me and Deedee?” He covered his face. “My God.”

  “They were taken the first night,” Shayne said. “Jake said they turned out well. What would your wife do if they showed up in the mail some morning?”

  “God,” Despard said again.

  “How old do you think the girl is?”

  Despard raised his head slowly. “I don’t think. I know. I happened to see a form she was making out. She’s fourteen. But she’s mature for her age.”

  “She’s seventeen,” Shayne said. “The form was a fake. The point of this whole operation was to make you think they could break up your family, get you canned from your clubs and slam you in jail for that fine old felony known as statutory rape. Not many people have a stiff enough spine to hold out against that kind of a parlay. Fitch is working for a blackmail and extortion outfit. You can’t tell me they had that kind of ammunition without intending to use it.”

  Despard lifted both trembling hands. He worked his Adam’s apple for a moment before he could bring out any words.

  “It’s—it’s absolutely the first time I’ve had the slightest hint of any such suggestion. I’ll repeat that under oath.”

  “You may have to.”

  Despard dropped one hand to Shayne’s shoulder. “You must believe me.”

  “Take your hand off me,” Shayne said.

  Despard pulled it back as though burned. “I see how you feel. I’m the lowest of the low. I have this—tendency. I love youthfulness. I don’t like to feel old. But with Deedee “it was the first time I ever—continued where I wasn’t wanted. She fought like a cat. And now you tell me it wasn’t real.” His eyes contracted. “Yes, there were signs. There were definite signs. A certain—lubricity. I thought afterward I was trying to fool myself, but perhaps—yes, if her resistance had been genuine, perhaps I would have stopped.” He seemed relieved.

  “Let’s hope so,” Shayne said. “Do you play much golf at the North Miami Country Club?”

  “Why, yes,” Despard said, the change of subject sending his eyebrows up. “I get in a couple of rounds every weekend, and I usually manage one or two during the week. Why?”

  “That’s where Begley picked up the report.”

  “I had nothing to do with it,” Despard said firmly. “I had access to it, I won’t deny that. My secretary has a Thermofax machine, not that I know how to work it. I played a lot of golf last spring, trying to overcome a slice. But don’t stop looking for the person who really did it, because I didn’t.” He looked ahead through the windshield, holding himself erect. “It’s old-fashioned, but I like to think I believe in honor.”

  Shayne made a rude sound.

  Despard said stiffly, “You’re entitled to that response. I make this distinction. Despards have often been in various kinds of trouble. We have lost too much money at the gambling tables. We have fought duels. We have committed adultery, and had sexual relations with unmarried girls. But we have not, Shayne, we have never betrayed the honor of our family, our country or the company we work for.”

  “I suppose Despards were officers in the Confederate Army.”

  “We ended as officers. We began as recruits. My great-great-grandfather rose to command a division of cavalry.”

  Shayne lit a cigarette deliberately. “Where does Hallam stand on the Civil War?”

  “Nowhere,” Despard said, still very stiff. “He is a part of a different tradition. All we could discover when he married my sister was the name of one maternal grandparent, a New Englander, who ended his life as a clerk in a cotton house.”

  “And you’ve probably rubbed that in often enough so he’d enjoy hearing about this trouble with Deedee?”

  Despard bit off the words. “He might. Are you going to tell him?”

  “No, not yet. There’s more involved here than the theft of a paint formula. I don’t want to commit myself before I know a little more.”

  “What do you mean, more involved?”

  “I can go into the next board-of-directors meeting with the facts I have and nail you to the wall. You know that. They’ll ask for your resignation on a dozen counts. And that will put Hallam in complete control. Or am I wrong?”

  “You surely don’t mean Hallam is behind this?”

  “I don’t know a damn thing except what people have been telling me,” the detective said sharply. “I don’t think he had anything to do with setting up Deedee. But after you fell for that, it’s possible he found out about it and brought me in to get confirmation so it wouldn’t seem there was any personal malice involved. When I say it’s possible, I don’t mean it’s likely. I’ve managed to stay alive this long by playing the odds. You’re the odds-on favorite on the morning line, Despard. But I don’t have to put my money down till Hallam gets back from Washington. If honor kept you from turning over that report, there’s somebody else in the company who’s either not so honorable or more pressed. I’ll give you twelve hours to see if you can come up with anything.”

  “Twelve hours! What can I do in twelve hours? You can’t believe I’ll suddenly be thinking about it for the first time!”

  Shayne made an impatient gesture. “Now you’ve got an incentive. I’ve already been paid two thousand. All I have to do to collect the eight-thousand-dollar balance is turn in a thief. You’ll do. If you don’t want to be turned in, give me somebody else.”

  “I’m not an informer,” Despard said with another attempt at dignity.

  “In that case you’re dead,” Shayne told him. “Oh, they’ll give you five minutes to defend yourself, and you can make your speech. I don’t think they’ll believe you. I happen to believe you myself, but that’s partly because I don’t think you’ve had your chance yet to find out how you’d stand up under real pressure.”

  Despard looked at him suspiciously. “I had the impression you thought I was lying.”

  “There was money involved,” Shayne explained. “They picked up the report one day and paid for it the next. They could get it from you for nothing. Not only that. I don’t think you would have gone on having sex with Deedee after you saw the photographs.”

  Despard shuddered. “I’m not in my dotage yet.”

  “Another point. This Candida Morse is a bright girl. Too bright to think she could hurt me with this kind of vice-cop frame-up. It’s too crude and too obvious. I t
hink the real reason for that was to lower my opinion of her intelligence, so I’d jump at the name Despard when I heard it. Deedee had been told to make sure I heard it, obviously to fake me away from their real contact.”

  “I agree with you,” Despard said ironically. “I didn’t do it. That’s what I’ve been telling you.”

  “They had a limited time to come up with the report,” Shayne continued. “If they couldn’t produce it in a month or maybe a month and a half, the deal would peter out. So they wouldn’t want to bet their whole bankroll on a single entry. They hired Fitch and Deedee to work on you. Candida went after Walter Langhorne herself on a recruitment basis, and maybe that was the one that worked. Statutory rape is tricky and dangerous, and they wouldn’t use it unless they had to. And maybe they were working on a third possibility. Probably three was all they had time for. All right. All these arguments weigh with me, but unless you can produce some hard information for me tonight or tomorrow morning, I won’t even put them in the report. I’ve been looking for a handle. Now that I have one, you’d better believe I mean to use it. As soon as you have something to tell me, call me on the car phone. If that doesn’t answer, try Tim Rourke.”

  “I’m no detective. I don’t even know how to begin.”

  “Begin by thinking about it,” Shayne said. “Who needed money? Who was in trouble? Who had more money and was in less trouble on April twenty-fourth than on April twenty-third? Get to work, Despard. You haven’t much time.”

  CHAPTER 12

  At first Shayne thought the phone-book address was a misprint. Then he saw a narrow cobbled lane leading between two stucco houses built in the fake-Moorish style of the mid-1920s, ending in a paved court.

  He tried Candida’s number again and again got no answer. He left the Buick in a University of Miami parking lot and entered the court on foot. The house he was looking for was a low building which seemed to be a remodeled stable, in spite of the fact that Coral Gables had been built after city people stopped keeping horses. The building contained three duplex apartments. The one in the middle, with “Candida Morse” in decorative script over the wrought-iron bell pull, was dark.

  Shayne snapped his lighter to look at the lock. The lock itself presented no problem, but the massive half-inch bolt could only be forced with heavier equipment than Shayne carried with him. He went around to look at the kitchen door. That, too, had been reinforced. He pushed his cast through the kitchen window, reached in carefully and unlocked it. A moment later he was inside the house.

  After turning on the light, he broke the slivers of glass still clinging to the sash, found a broom and swept the mess under the kitchen table.

  He searched the downstairs carefully. A small antique secretary in the living room had one locked drawer, which he forced. Inside, he found Candida’s passport, her college diploma, copies of income-tax forms for earlier years, bundles of letters and canceled checks. He flipped through the passport to see how much traveling she did, and found her birthdate. She was twenty-seven. The letters were in their original envelopes. He checked the postmarks without finding anything current enough to interest him.

  A steep, narrow staircase led to the second floor. In Candida’s bedroom, a very feminine room which she had passed through in a hurry, changing clothes on the run, Shayne looked around speculatively, rubbing his jaw with the ball of his thumb. His reflection in a big mirror over the bureau caught his eye. He needed maintenance. His sling was torn and dirty. His shirt was black with oil and dirty cobwebs picked up crawling out of the basement window of the Buena Vista apartment house.

  He continued to look around. The headboard of the oversize bed was divided into compartments holding books, a clock-radio, a phone. He pulled open a sliding drawer and gave a grunt of satisfaction, seeing three flat metal boxes, the size of a standard safe-deposit box, each tagged with a number. Shayne picked the box with the highest number. He worked on it with the flat chisel blade of a combination tool, holding the box with the weight of his cast. He twisted slowly, increasing the pressure, and the lid sprang open. He grinned when he saw what the box contained.

  He emptied it on the bureau. In an unmarked envelope there were four 35-millimeter negatives. He held one to the light. It showed a man and a girl on the floor. The girl was only partially clothed. Her blouse was torn. The man’s face didn’t show, but Shayne had no doubt that in an enlarged print the narrow head and thin fringe of hair would be recognized as belonging to Jose Despard.

  In the same envelope was a slip of paper with a number and a padlock combination. On a separate page there was a kind of timetable, giving the arrivals and departures of seven or eight people, identified by initials, over a ten-day period. Finally, there was a small film can. Inside it was a tightly wound roll of microfilm. Shayne unrolled an inch or so. It was the top-secret T-239 report.

  Still grinning happily, he transferred these objects to various pockets and put the rifled box back in the headboard compartment.

  Again the disreputable figure in the mirror caught his eye. He pulled off the sling and worked the shirt over his head and then over the cast. After washing his hands and face, he made a new sling from one of Candida’s pillow slips. Then he washed out the shirt, using part of a bottle of shampoo. He wrung it with one hand. While he was draping it over the shower rail he heard a door open downstairs.

  He went to the hall.

  “I really do seem to be rattled,” he heard Candida’s voice say. “I left all the lights on. I never do that.”

  There were footsteps. The door closed.

  A man’s voice said, “Let’s take a trip, shall we, after we get the check? I need a vacation. I’m so damn tense it isn’t funny.”

  “Hal, darling, you’re worrying about Michael Shayne again, and will you please stop? I have that situation in hand. Jake Fitch will be calling me promptly at nine. It won’t be with bad news.”

  “I need a drink.”

  Shayne called down, “So do I. Make one for me.”

  He returned to the bedroom and finished brushing his hair. Then he went down the cramped stairs, ducking his head to keep from hitting the low ceiling.

  Candida and her employer were standing in the hall below. They watched him emerge—his legs, his fresh sling, then his powerful bare torso. Candida was wearing a straight skirt and a sleeveless evening sweater, buttoned down the front. She had partly turned toward the living room, and Shayne saw that the sweater had no back whatever. Begley’s clothes were a little too sharp, as always. The weekend of heavy drinking had taken the highlights out of his tan.

  He said thickly, “This is what you mean when you say you have Shayne in hand? You absolutely don’t give a damn who you get into bed with, do you?”

  “Don’t be childish,” she said with her usual coolness.

  “Who’s being childish?” Begley shouted, turning on her. “Me? I’m being childish? That’s your opinion?”

  “Be quiet, Hal. He obviously broke in and he’s just leaving. I don’t know why he’s not wearing a shirt.”

  “I had to wash it,” Shayne said. “I’ve been crawling out windows. If you don’t have cognac, I’ll take bourbon.”

  “You didn’t invite him?” Begley said. “You haven’t hit the sack with him yet? Now there’s a switch.”

  He came around to face Shayne, nervously unbuttoning his jacket. He was an inch or two over six feet, broad and solid through the chest. At one time he might have been able to stand up to the detective, but he had spent too much time lately making money.

  “Miss Morse wants you to leave,” he said. “Leave. We’ll mail you the shirt. Don’t think you’ve got any immunity because of that broken arm. Under your own steam or otherwise, take your pick.”

  Shayne stepped in close, his right arm at his side. Begley held his eyes, waiting for the right to the body. Shayne half-feinted with his right shoulder, then struck with the cast.

  The hook caught the expensive fabric of Begley’s light sports jacket and to
re downward, taking part of his shirt and possibly some flesh with it. Begley flailed out without waiting to get set. Shayne yanked him off balance and blocked the blow easily. Then, his lips twisting, he brought the cast up hard.

  The hook tore loose. Begley took two wandering steps backward, collided with an upholstered chair and sat down. Candida hurried to him.

  “At this point,” Shayne said, “you offer to settle.”

  “Wha—?” Begley said.

  Candida turned with a flare of her skirt. “The devil we’ll settle! We have nothing to talk to you about, so now that you’ve asserted yourself on your usual level, why don’t you go upstairs and get your wet shirt and get the hell out of here?”

  Her voice was shaking. He grinned at her.

  “He owns the firm. Let’s give him a chance to make up his own mind.”

  Begley felt his jaw and finally managed to close it. “Settle?” he said, pronouncing only one syllable. He attempted to concentrate. “How much?”

  “I’m not talking about money,” Shayne said. “You can’t outbid Despard’s. Give us the name of your contact, get United States to withhold the new paint and we won’t take anybody into court.”

  Begley stared up, beginning to function again. After a moment he said quietly, “Is that a serious offer?”

  Candida put in, “Naturally it’s not serious. It’s a trick.”

  “It may not be,” Begley said slowly. “Shayne knows how hard it is to get enough evidence to impress a judge. I’d like to hear more about it. Candy, pour me a small slug of Scotch, please. I’m not up to that long walk across the room.”

  After glancing at Shayne, she went into the kitchen. Begley went on, his eyes narrowing, “To be realistic, you can’t hope to get a cancellation at this late date. They’re in too deep. They might listen to a two- or three-month postponement. That would give your people a chance to get organized. I don’t say Perkins will like it, but you outweigh us financially, and if we can avoid a bruising fight—”