The Violent World of Michael Shayne ms-50

by Brett Halliday

  Olga seemed disturbed and upset. “I could tell his voice on the phone! That way he said ‘s,’ like he sort of stuttered.”

  “That wouldn’t be hard to imitate.” He rapped abruptly on the bar. “All right, Pete, let’s see what you took off him.”

  Pete stepped backward, a denial forming on his lips. “So help me God-”

  Ignoring him, Shayne looked at his older brother. “What do they use for executions in Washington, the gas chamber? If I knew what he had in his wallet, it might help.”

  Oskar moved along the bar toward Pete and said dangerously, “Is that what you did when you went back to put a newspaper under his head?”

  “No!”

  When Oskar continued to advance he said hastily, “OK! OK! I’ll give it to the Red Cross or somebody. What was I supposed to do, leave him lying there, with all that dough in his pocket, for the first wino who came along? What kind of sense would it make?”

  “What a family,” Olga said.

  “Do what Shayne says,” Oskar told him. “Dump it out on the stick, all of it.”

  Swearing, Pete emptied his pants pockets in front of Shayne: a wallet, keys, change, a fountain pen, a wrist-watch. Shayne counted the money. It came to over nine hundred dollars. Carrying that much cash in this neighborhood, and letting it be seen, had been a good way to invite a knock on the head. Shayne emptied the card pockets of the wallet. The dead man had belonged to the Diners’ Club, Carte Blanche, the American Legion, the American Rifle Association, Sigma Alpha Epsilon, the Elks. The membership cards gave him an identity that he had seemed to lack in real life. There were a number of girls’ names and phone numbers, and he had carried a color photograph of an older woman, probably his mother.

  “Any of that mean anything?” Oskar asked anxiously. Only one thing appeared to be current. It was a note scribbled on ruled paper and stuck into the money compartment: “Week of June 25-check safe deposit boxes, all Washington banks.”

  “Can you give me the date when you took the diary?” Shayne asked Olga. “I know it was last year, but when last year?”

  “In the spring,” she said doubtfully. “May, June?”

  “End of June,” Oskar said. “I was only out of the can a month.”

  Shayne put Bixler’s watch on his right wrist. Everything else he stuffed back in the wallet and snapped a heavy rubber band around it.

  “This goes to the cops tomorrow noon, along with the names of the four witnesses who saw you bounce him. That gives us-” he consulted his own watch-“seven and a half hours.”

  “Man, anything we can do-” Oskar said.

  “I might think of something,” Shayne said dryly. “This has all been pretty one-sided so far.”

  “Anything,” Oskar repeated, planting both hands on the bar and looking directly at Shayne. “I mean it.”

  CHAPTER 15

  4:35 A.M.

  Using the phone behind the bar, Shayne dialed the Hotel St. Albans, where he had checked in the previous afternoon.

  “Michael Shayne, please. Room 1232.”

  Oskar Szep looked around in surprise. “Didn’t you say that’s your name?”

  Shayne silenced him with a wave. The switchboard girl soon told him there was no answer from that room. He said to keep ringing. Finally Shayne heard a click and a man’s voice said gruffly, as though surfacing out of a heavy sleep, “’Lo.”

  “Rebman?” Shayne said sharply, his mouth several inches from the phone.

  “Yes,” the voice said more alertly. “Shayne hasn’t come back yet. The way it begins to look, he’s sleeping out. But all his stuff is still here, and there’s a chance he may be in to shave before breakfast. We’ll be ready for him, don’t worry.”

  “There’s been a change of plans,” Shayne said in his ordinary tone. “Forget about Shayne. Everything’s starting to fall apart. Get the hell to the airport and catch the first plane out.”

  There was a pause, and Rebman said, “Is that you, Shamus?”

  The redhead laughed. “You boys always do the obvious thing. Waiting in my hotel room, for God’s sake! I hate to think how much it cost you to get in.”

  “It didn’t cost too much,” Rebman said. “This is the second time you’ve suckered me. There won’t be a third. I’ve got new instructions, and they don’t leave me any leeway. The money offers are out. If you want to go home, fine, nobody’ll come after you. But leave your suitcase here and send for it. Am I making myself clear?”

  “Sure. Now will you give your boss a message? Tell Mr. Manners he’s going to be under a different kind of pressure starting tomorrow morning. Maybe he’s the one who ought to go home. Bribery and blackmail don’t seem to mean anything any more-it’s like drinking hard liquor during Prohibition. Murder’s something else. Questions about a murder always have that little extra bit of steam.”

  “Who’s been murdered?”

  “If you don’t know, Rebman, I think I’ll let you find out for yourself. Give him the message.”

  Shayne hung up abruptly.

  “Say,” Pete said as Shayne turned, “I just thought of something. One of our regulars came in right after Bixler, Billy, we call him. Like he was plastered, but maybe he saw if the guy came in a cab, or what. He lives down the street, and what I’m going to do, I’m going to wake him up and ask him.”

  He went out at a quick walk. Shayne took his glass and the cognac bottle to a table and asked Olga to sit down with him.

  “Let’s go through the whole thing again, starting with the first time Bixler got in touch with you. What he said, what you said, the whole thing.”

  She lowered her voice so her brother, who had stayed at the bar, wouldn’t hear her. “You really think they left him in front of the movie? And somebody else came along and killed him?”

  “He was hit when he was already out,” Shayne said. “I don’t know what with-a tire iron or the blunt end of a railroad spike. It was a funny-shaped wound. Does that sound like Pete and Oskar?”

  “No-o. In a fight. Not if he’s lying there sleeping.”

  “OK, Olga, you and Bixler. Take your time.”

  He listened attentively, occasionally asking a quiet question. Pete burst in ten minutes later.

  “A black and white hardtop!” he announced. “How do you like that?”

  “Yeah, but Billy,” his brother said skeptically. “He’d make some witness.”

  “He won’t get as far as court,” Pete admitted. “He’ll forget about it in the morning. But it’s a start, ain’t it? I could hardly make out what he was saying, half the time. He couldn’t find his teeth. The only reason he remembers-the guy stepped on his toes. When he got out of the car, and he didn’t say he was sorry. Billy’s still steaming.”

  “Are you sure he knew who you meant?” Oskar said.

  “Sure I’m sure. The guy we threw out. He remembers the car because he was going to pound in the fender. He looked around and picked up the first thing he saw-an old broken piece of a torsion rod, and he was all set to do it when he saw there was somebody sitting in the car. That scared him, and he threw the rod away and came in for a drink. Black and white hardtop, a good car, good shape. That’s all I could get out of him, and I was shaking him half the time.”

  Shayne pulled hard at his earlobe. He had seen a black car with a white top somewhere recently, but he couldn’t remember where. If he didn’t push it too hard it would come to him.

  Pete said, “Something else I been thinking about-that dough.”

  “What dough?” Shayne said.

  “In the wallet. Who’d know the difference if we cut it up in three shares?”

  “If you didn’t take it in the first place,” his sister said angrily, “and left it for somebody else, they’d be in this trouble, not you. Mr. Shayne talked me out of thinking you did it. What are you trying to do, talk me back in? Now beat it. I’m telling Mr. Shayne.”

  For the next half-hour she went on talking disjointedly, going over and over each episode until S
hayne was sure she had told him all she could remember. Something below the surface was working at him. When he finished the bottle, Oskar brought another. Pete, two tables away, smoked cigarette after cigarette. Oskar stayed at the bar, rarely taking his eyes off Shayne. Only the cognac kept the redhead awake. He was both tense and relaxed. His eyes glazed, his mind began to drift, and suddenly something Olga said broke through to him.

  “-telling the truth,” she said, and Shayne came back so suddenly that his hand jerked and the glass fell from his fingers.

  Olga stopped talking and watched him. Wide awake and back in action, he went to the phone. If Bixler had been telling the truth about the diary episode, maybe Maggie Smith had been telling the truth about her friendship with Hitchcock. There was only one Margaret Smith in the phone book. He dialed that number.

  It rang a long time, and Maggie’s hello was stifled and unclear.

  “Wake up, Mrs. Smith,” Shayne said briskly. “This is Michael Shayne.”

  “Who?”

  “Shayne. The crude son of a bitch who’s been trying to break up your romance with Senator Hitchcock. Are you awake?”

  “Michael Shayne? Do you know what time it is?”

  “It’s five-ten, and I thought I’d better tell you that the guy who told me about your Caribbean cruise has been murdered.”

  “Murdered!”

  “Yeah. He was already unconscious. Somebody broke his head open with a torsion rod, if you know what that is, and left him on a dump for the rats.”

  “Well, damn you, that wakes me up. Is this a joke?”

  “No, Mrs. Smith. His name was Bixler, and I don’t really think you killed him. Unless you drive a black and white hardtop?”

  “I drive a Volkswagen, and I wouldn’t know a hardtop if I saw one. Listen here, Mr. Shayne-”

  “Didn’t we decide at one point you were going to call me Mike?”

  “Are you drunk, by any chance?”

  “Slightly, and I’m tired. Is anybody with you?”

  She drew in her breath sharply and slammed down the phone.

  Shayne looked up the number and dialed it again. She let it ring as long as she could stand it, then picked it up and said angrily, “You’re a grown man, try to act like one. What did I do to bring this on?”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t know how that was going to sound. To put it another way, would it be all right if I come over? Don’t hang up! All of a sudden it’s occurred to me that maybe you’ve been telling the truth.”

  He wasn’t sure she was still on the line until she said suspiciously, “Which of your various accusations are you withdrawing?”

  “All of them. I don’t think you’re working for Sam Toby. I don’t think you knew he set up that dinner where you met Hitchcock. I don’t think you’ve been trying to blackmail anybody. This puts things in a different light. I really think you’ve been used by some pretty crummy people.”

  “I did go to the Caribbean with that Department of Labor man,” she said after a moment.

  “That’s long in the past. There’s something I want you to do for me, Maggie. Can I come over?”

  “Mike, I don’t know! I may not have much of a reputation, but I’d like to keep what little I have. Not to mention the fact that I don’t know you.”

  “Wait a minute. Even if I had any such ideas, which I didn’t before you brought it up-”

  “Before I brought it up!”

  Shayne continued, beginning to grin, “We’ve got too much else to cover. Maybe you’ll invite me to breakfast.”

  “Breakfast isn’t entirely impossible,” she said doubtfully, “but-”

  “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” he said, and hung up before she could point out that she hadn’t yet decided to invite him. He underlined her address in the phone book and tore out the page.

  “Are you going to need us?” Oskar said.

  “I think so,” Shayne said, his mind racing. “There are some Texans in town, and they keep telling me what they’re going to do to me the next time they see me. First I’m going to wake up a few more people.”

  He dialed the home phone of Senator William P. Redpath. Someone cut off the ring almost before it started, but all Shayne could hear was the sound of heavy breathing.

  “Hello!” he shouted. He whistled into the phone. “Hello! Mrs. Redpath?”

  “Hello,” a man’s voice said fuzzily.

  “Sorry to be calling you at this hour,” Shayne said loudly, “but will you get Mrs. Redpath to the phone?”

  “Who’s this?” the voice said more distinctly.

  “My name is Shayne. If this is Senator Redpath, your wife knows me. I want to ask her about a woman named Olga Szep who used to work for her before she married you.”

  He winked at Olga reassuringly. There was silence at the other end of the line for a long moment.

  “Let me have your name again.”

  “Shayne. I’ve been working all night on the Sam Toby investigation. Your wife’s name keeps cropping up, sometimes as Mrs. Redpath and sometimes as Mrs. Masterson.”

  Adelle Redpath’s voice exploded in Shayne’s ear. “What a ghastly hour! Precisely what do you mean by this, Mr. Shayne?”

  “I’ve already told your husband I was sorry,” Shayne said. “Don’t shout. I’ve had a bad night. I thought you’d want to know what happened to your diary.”

  Probably she had been in tight places before, and she didn’t gasp or cry out, but merely said cautiously, “I’ve lost touch with Olga in the past year.”

  “Does that mean your husband doesn’t know you used to keep a diary?”

  “Not yet. And I hope that continues.”

  “OK. I expect you know that it was copied, on or about June 25th last year. It’s my guess that only one copy exists. There’s a chance I can get hold of it. If I do, I’ll turn it over to you without reading it, in return for a small amount of cooperation from you and your husband.”

  “And you’re a private detective?”

  “You’ll have to take it on faith,” Shayne snapped. “I want to talk to Senator Redpath the first thing in the morning, and I want you to arrange it for me. Between now and then I think you have to tell him the full story.”

  “Why?”

  “The big reason is that an investigator who helped organize the theft of your diary was murdered tonight.”

  “What did you say?” she said quickly.

  “You heard me. The body hasn’t been identified yet. We may have until noon. If it hasn’t been cleared up by then, the whole thing has to come out. That means names, dates and prices.”

  “My God. How do you figure in this?”

  “People have been making me look dumb ever since I got to town, Mrs. Redpath, I’m sorry to say including you. I can’t be expected to like it, and right here is where it stops. Now ask your husband where would be a good place to meet.”

  “Call me back. I want to think it over first.”

  “You can think faster than that. I’m in a hurry.”

  She covered the mouthpiece. Oskar brought Shayne a new drink, and he sipped it while she convinced her husband.

  “There’s a room on the Senate side of the Capitol, on the gallery level, G 251,” she said curtly. “At ten.”

  Shayne agreed. After hanging up he sat looking down into his cognac and waiting for the name of the National Aviation lobbyist to come to him. Someone had mentioned it in passing, and he hadn’t supposed he would ever need to know it. But it was there. It rose to the surface after a moment-Henry Clark. There were four Henry Clarks listed, and Shayne dialled the one that had two office phones and one residence. This time the voice that answered was crisp and alert.

  “Yes?”

  “Does the name Shayne ring any bell with you?”

  “Yes, indeed. I heard you were in town.”

  “Would you know what I was talking about if I said that Senator Hitchcock won’t be seeing anything more of Mrs. Smith?”

  “I’d have a
faint idea,” Clark said. “And as an admirer of Senator Hitchcock, I’m happy to hear it. That was fast. Will you be going back in the morning?”

  “I doubt it. Too many other things have happened. Mr. Clark, what’s the most your company hopes to get out of this Toby investigation? What stakes are you playing for?”

  Clark considered. “We’re walking a rather fine line there, Shayne. If the hearings produce evidence of some transaction that is so raw and extreme that Manners can’t be allowed to keep the contract, it will fall in my client’s lap. No one would like that. The program’s already nine months behind and any shift would mean a further delay. Whatever you care to say about Hugh Manners, he’s an excellent production man. We don’t want the Pentagon really mad at us. It’s all right to rock the boat, but not to turn it over.”

  “I’m trying to find out what you do want.”

  “I don’t like to talk about it on the phone. Can we meet for breakfast?”

  “I have a date for breakfast, and after that I’ll be busy. If somebody’s bugging us, that’s just too bad. I’m told you’ve been working closely with Senator Wall. I could be wrong, but I’d say that the odds are about five to one that he’s changed sides.”

  “I’d be interested to know what makes you say that. Quite frankly, it would hurt.”

  “I haven’t worked it all out yet. You still haven’t told me what National wants to get out of it.”

  “We’d like to recover our expenses in the contract competition, a matter of some ten million dollars. We want part of the subcontract for the airframe assembly, to keep one of our key plants in operation. And we want an informal assurance that our bid on the new Navy fighter program will be given, oh, a two-or three-point edge because of the shellacking we took on this last one, through no fault of our own. Those three things.”

  “Are they worth fifty thousand bucks?”