Million Dollar Handle ms-68

by Brett Halliday

  “It baffles me, Pete. But I seem to have my own problems here.”

  “You do, don’t you?” Painter said with immense satisfaction. “A little crude, Shayne. Some of those teenage fans of yours are going to be painfully surprised.”

  “Crude? Not necessarily. Because why would Geary keep a payoff book?”

  “For his own protection, obviously.”

  “How does it protect him? There’s something peculiar about it. What do you get for a total?”

  “Two hundred and ten thousand the last year. You don’t exactly take care of that by dipping into the petty cash. Your own three-year total, not that I’m telling you anything, is eighty thousand, an impressive figure. Now I’m going to repeat my initial question: What did you do to deserve it?”

  “If he died Tuesday, I’m not the first person on the list you’ve asked that. What do the others say?”

  “Most of them are saying it’s a damn lie.”

  “And with Geary dead, that leaves you with no witness. Are you releasing the whole list?”

  “Selected names. I’ve been having an argument with the state’s attorney. I’ll be candid with you, Shayne. I’ve often tried being candid with you, and I’ve usually ended up regretting it. However. One school of thought is advocating just the course of action you mentioned-impanel a grand jury, subpoena everybody, if they deny receiving any money from Geary, indict them for perjury. But could we make it stick? Probably not. So now we’re leaning toward media exposure, and letting the legislature handle it. Make it an investigation of the whole dog-racing picture, not just Surfside. Maybe end up with a revamp of the entire racing scene, dogs and horses, which is long overdue, in my opinion. But I kind of hate to see it go that way.”

  “The name Painter would drop out of the story after the first day.”

  “Interpret it that way if you like,” Painter said kindly. “But the person I want to get my fingernails into is Castle. All these bureaucrats, these petty union officials-they’re minor league. Most people don’t know this, but I’m thinking about retiring. If I could bring in Tony Castle, it would be a nice capper to my career. That’s why I was so determined to talk to you before the publicity.”

  “You’re talking to me.”

  “I notice an interesting pattern in those payments you got. I’ll take the book back now, if you don’t mind.” Shayne slid it to him. “Three thousand regularly on the twenty-fifth of each month. Suddenly they drop to one thousand for a few months, and then stop altogether. Several months later they begin again, and continue to the present. You and I have had our little fallings-out, and some of them, regrettably, have been reported by your friend Rourke in the press. But I’ve always known that sooner or later you’d slip, and I’d nail you. I’m not vindictive!” He raised a finger. “You’ve expressed your scorn and contempt for me openly and often, but that’s one of the unfortunate byproducts of public service. As far as I’m concerned, you’re free to say what you like and think what you like. But that cuts both ways. I’m entitled to freedom of speech too. I happen to believe that your free-wheeling methods, your disregard for the legal niceties, have had a lot to do with the decline in respect for constituted authority in this city-”

  Shayne said impatiently, “I think you’re a horse’s ass and I’ve never concealed it. What has that got to do with this?”

  Painter was thrown slightly off-stride. “You’ve made me lose track of what I was about to say. If you can keep a civil tongue in your head for one minute, and remember that maybe the other fellow has some feelings. You know where I’d like to see you. In jail, with your license revoked. Be that as it may! I’m willing to work with you for the common good. And this time, by God, I’m talking from strength! Your name on that list would be enough. But I’ve got something else and I’m going to tell you about it right now.”

  “All right, Petey. That’s enough of a buildup.”

  “Just wait one minute and you may not be quite so flippant. What is your impartial observer going to conclude when he looks at that sequence of payments? Three thousand, three thousand, one thousand, one thousand, nothing, three thousand. Well, maybe Geary was temporarily short of funds. He had to go on paying those other guys, but you’ve got money in the bank from all those huge fees you’ve been drawing down from gullible people. So Geary came to you and said, Mike, I’m a little short, what do you say, ease up for a couple of months. And you went along with it because as I say, you don’t have to scrimp and scrape on a city salary. And when the winter meeting was underway and his income picked up, you went back to your old arrangement. That’s the way it looks. But I know different!”

  “Petey, you get more long-winded every day.”

  “Then I’ll come right to the point. People know you’re one of the high-priority items in this office, and when they hear about anything where your name is involved, they bring it to me. In October of last year, the third month you weren’t getting your slush, I was told that a nurse at Jackson Memorial had a Mike Shayne story I might want to add to the collection. That’s out of my bailiwick, but I made arrangements to see her. Geary was in the hospital-mugged outside the stadium after a Dolphins game. According to the official version, he was drunk, and when the man with the knife asked him politely if he had any change, he put up a fight. Broken nose, bruised larynx, concussion. I have her notarized statement, with two witnesses, and I’ll give it to the papers if you decide that’s the way you want to play it. The statement is as follows. Getting long-winded, am I? She was the night nurse on duty. He called her over and grabbed her wrist and told her it wasn’t some junkie who did this, it was no less a celebrity than Michael goddamn Shayne.”

  Shayne regarded him steadily.

  Painter gave his mustache another little flick, and went on. “An argument about money, and Shayne went out of control. Kicked him. Banged his head on the pavement. Left him there bleeding. King Kong stuff, and Geary was too scared to take it to the cops. But he wanted the nurse to make note. If anything happened to him, if he ended up on the obit page under suspicious circumstances-”

  “Wait a minute. Are you wondering if that crash he died in was an accident?”

  “No, that’s open and shut, as far as that goes. Hold the interruptions. I’m almost finished. He wrote her a check for three hundred dollars. I’ve got a photostat of that canceled check, with the right date on it, the night when he’d been beaten up and he was supposedly too drunk to hold a pen.”

  “This is all bad news.”

  “Not to people who don’t make a practice of beating up drunks. Not to people who don’t take high five-figure payoffs. I’ll tell you what I did a few days later. Geary was home, getting over his concussion. I told him it was silly to be scared of a private detective who was on the skids anyway. I pleaded with him to give you to me for assault with intent to kill. I couldn’t get anywhere with him. He maintained that he didn’t have any recollection of who mugged him, or of talking to the nurse.”

  “I think I see your theory, but you’d better tell me anyway.”

  “Obvious on its face!” Painter was enjoying himself. “He was trying to get out of that regular payment, and you gave him a taste of the law of the jungle. After that you’ll notice he was always prompt. So that’s the situation, and I can’t begin to tell you what satisfaction it gives me. My first impulse, my first impulse was to walk out and lay the entire sordid story in front of the press, and lick my lips while they crucify you. If there was ever any bastard who deserved it, it’s you. But what does it amount to, after all? A little petty extortion. True, as you said yourself, that’s a bad tag for somebody in your dubious profession. You’d probably have to move to a different location, but I assure you, after a couple of weeks we’d stop missing you. It took me a sleepless night to come to this decision, but I’m going to give you a chance to unhook.”

  “If I tell you everything I know.”

  “You’ve got it.” He ticked a fingernail against the desktop. “Frankn
ess, Shayne. I want complete openness and frankness and candor. In return, nothing will be said publicly about the nurse’s statement or the canceled check. And I’ll go one long step farther. I don’t like to make deals, I never have, but that’s the way the world seems to be organized. If you can deliver Tony Castle to me for a felony prosecution, I’ll suppress that eighty-thousand-dollar payoff. I’ll have to wave the book, but I won’t let it leave my hand. I don’t have to release all the names, I can get away with that. I want to make sure I don’t injure any innocent parties, and so on.”

  “All you want right now is a promise?”

  “And a few morsels to show good faith. As I keep saying, I don’t have a great deal of time. I’m not asking for immediate miracles, as far as Castle’s concerned. I’ll let you have a couple of weeks. But before I go out to face the TV cameras, I want to know what’s been going on over there at the Surfside Kennel Club.”

  Shayne shook his head. “It’s too open-ended. Any time you aren’t satisfied with my performance, you can always call another press conference-you don’t know how you overlooked it the first time, but all of a sudden you’ve noticed my name on the list.”

  “Sure-I’ve got something to hold over you for a change, and I’m not so saintly that I don’t like the feeling. No more stalling, please. A simple answer to a simple question. Three thousand bucks a month from Max Geary. For what?”

  “I’d like to think about it for two minutes.”

  “No more time. What’s there to think about? You’re in a jam this time, baby, and you’ve got one way out.”

  “I always hate to have people say that,” Shayne said, standing. “It makes me feel crowded.”

  “Who cares how you feel? You’ve got no choice in the matter.”

  “I can always tell you to screw yourself.”

  Painter dodged back, as though Shayne had swung at him. “You won’t do that.”

  “I just did it.”

  “You’re out of your mind! Alienating me is not in your own best interests, believe me. I’ll have no recourse except to include your name with the others I intend to announce, and make the nurse’s affidavit part of the record. Go ahead and deny it. How many of your friends will believe you?”

  “I haven’t denied it. I don’t have to plead until I’m charged with something.”

  Painter’s mouth opened and closed. “Come now, Shayne-”

  “Unless you want to book me.”

  “Not yet! Not yet! There are people on that list who were involved in the day-to-day operations, and I’ll make them the same offer I made you. They’ll cop, don’t worry. All I need is one living witness, just one, and you’ll be out of my hair for a long time to come. You may be surprised by the public reaction. I think you’ll find that the general beer-guzzling public will be delighted to learn that Mike Shayne is on the take, like everybody else.”

  “Do your duty, Petey.”

  “More sarcasm. And after I leaned all the way over backward, tried to give you a break-”

  Shayne walked out on him.

  Chapter 5

  A taxi took Shayne to the airport, where he picked up his car. He snapped on the dashboard radio, and left it on while he drove back into the city, using the East-West Expressway as far as Twelfth Avenue. He was tuned to a station that repeated ten minutes of news at the turn of each hour, and broke into the music for bulletins whenever anything big came in. The music faded abruptly and the broadcaster’s voice gave Shayne another version of the news he had just heard from Painter.

  His car phone buzzed as he turned into his basement garage. It was Tim Rourke, one of Shayne’s oldest friends, a crime-and-corruption reporter on the News. Shayne told him he was putting his car away, and to call him upstairs.

  The phone was ringing when he walked in. He dropped his flight bag on a chair, brought out the Martell’s and poured. He gave the brandy a quick swirl and drank, while the phone continued to insist on an answer. He made himself a sandwich and took that and his glass to the phone.

  “Yeah, Tim?”

  “I’ve got a story to write,” Rourke said briskly. “Did you hear about Painter’s press conference?”

  “I caught the radio flash. I had a pretty useless conversation with him before he went on-he showed me the book.”

  “We’re using a picture of that pickup at the airport. Jesus, Mike, you look like a Mafia hit man.”

  “That was the idea.”

  “Mike, quickly-what about this eighty G’s?”

  “How did Painter report it?”

  “He gave it the full treatment, naturally. Played it for melodrama. He hasn’t been getting much ink lately, and he’s hungry and thirsty. He used big easel cards to make it simple for the TV audience. You had a card of your own. Of course everybody knows about the great Shayne-Painter feud, but he didn’t gloat, certainly not. Sad, a little disappointed, maybe. That nurse’s statement hurt.”

  He paused for a comment, in case Shayne wanted to make one. Shayne said nothing.

  “Mike, the minutes are ticking. The man at the front of the room is screaming for copy. Give me an angle, will you? Painter said he deliberately held up the announcement until you got back from the Coast, to give you a fair shake. And you didn’t yell frame-up. You yelled for a lawyer.”

  “What else could I do?”

  “Yeah, but Mike. Think of the way it looks. Payoffs to politicians, inspectors, cops, a couple of union guys. And then Mike Shayne, three thousand bucks. Mike Shayne again. Three thousand bucks. Shayne, Shayne. Mike, throw me a piece of meat. What was that, some kind of retainer? Geary thought somebody was doping his dogs, or something? If that’s what it was, say so, for Christ’s sake, and I’ll do my best to sell it.”

  “The price is a bit high for that, eighty thousand over three years.”

  “What was it, then? I know there’s an explanation, I think I know you that well. But I need some indication of which way to go.”

  Shayne kneaded the bridge of his nose. “Tim, I don’t know what to tell you. I’ve been up three nights in a row. He sprang this on me without any preparation. I couldn’t think of any marvelous way to handle it then, and I still can’t.”

  “Let me ask you this. Are you covering somebody?”

  “That might be a good thing to suggest. No, better not, Tim. It’ll only lead to more trouble in the long run. I can ride this out. If they subpoena me, I’ll stand on the privilege against self-incrimination.”

  “Mike! Dummy! As far as the public’s concerned, that’s the same as an admission of guilt.”

  “I realize that,” Shayne said gloomily. “But who would have supposed Max was writing it all down? I still don’t think it makes sense.”

  Rourke said nothing for a long moment. “I was hoping for more than that.”

  “Go ahead and write the goddamn story. What else can you do? It’s news. I’ve had a run of good luck. I’m not going to start whining when it suddenly turns sour.”

  Rourke called to somebody, “In a minute, in a minute.” He came back: “The first denials are coming in. The politicians are using the standard out-campaign contributions. Wolf, the tax guy, says flatly that he never took a dirty penny.”

  “Do you believe him?”

  “Hell, no,” Rourke said angrily. “This is Geary’s under-the-table book. Why would Wolf’s name be down there if he wasn’t being paid off? He says he and Geary had differences when he was working the track. Bad fights. Geary put on pressure and got him transferred. And then, for purely vindictive personal reasons-this is Wolf talking-he put his name down on the grease list. If he had a heart attack and dropped dead, that would be his bequest from the cemetery-labeling Wolf as a thief.”

  “Not bad for the spur of the moment. It might save his job. They need people up there who can think fast on the phone.”

  “My point is, Mike, if you want to go that route, you have to get in with it fast, and stick to it. Any weaseling and you’re finished.”

  “Tha
t may be good public relations advice, Tim, but I’m not going to take it. I’ve decided to see how it goes. How about your sports man, Wanamaker?”

  “We’re admitting he took the money. Most of it was petty stuff through the PR department-a couple of junkets, they picked up the tab for two weeks in the Bahamas. But that adds to your problem. A News man is involved. Mike Shayne is involved, and that’s the same Mike Shayne who’s fed considerable hot information to his friend Rourke across the years. We can’t quibble on this. We’ve got to hit hard, to clear our own skirts. I’m signing the story, and unless I have something from you I have to write it Painter’s way, as much as it pains me. What did he offer you in that conversation? You can give me that, at least.”

  “To leave me out of it altogether if I told him everything I know about Surfside. I can’t trust Painter to keep that kind of bargain. He’d leak it, and blame it on somebody else in his office.”

  “One direct question. Did you beat up Geary in that parking lot?”

  “Tim, until I get some legal advice, I can’t answer any direct questions, even from you, even off the record. I’m more than a little foggy right now, but I think I understand the situation. Painter thinks this is going to destroy my business. He may be right. But it won’t kill me. I’m sick of all the people in this town who’ve been waiting around hoping to see me fall on my face. I may have to get out of Miami. Seriously, is that such a tragedy? Your editorial page has to maintain that this is God’s earthly paradise, and anybody who thinks otherwise is a Communist sympathizer. I was really impressed with San Francisco-it’s a great town. Maybe I’m due for a change.”

  Again, in spite of the usual afternoon pressures in the News office, Rourke let a few seconds tick past.

  Shayne broke the silence. “Just write it straight. If you try to qualify it you’ll make it sound worse. Now I’ve got to get some sleep.”

  He broke the connection. After finishing his makeshift meal, he set the alarm radio for seven and fell asleep at once. He was awakened by the seven o’clock news.