Guilty as Hell

by Brett Halliday

  “I’ve been too fast on my feet,” he replied, drawing the cork. “How do you know some charmer didn’t turn me down once and I’ve never been able to forget her?”

  “I’d accept that,” Candida said, laughing. “Is it true?”

  “I forget.”

  He was busy for a moment arranging napkins and silverware. He took the chilled glasses out of the cooler and poured the wine. They touched glasses.

  Langhorne said seriously, “To your success, if that’s truly what you want.”

  “It’s what I want. But why so ceremonious? You sound as though the next thing you say will be goodbye.”

  He nodded. “It’s our last meeting. In the present series. I’ll call you in six months’ time and see what you think about starting over on a different basis.”

  “Then you’ve decided not to go with United States Chemical?”

  “Almost.”

  She disposed of the matter with a little movement of her lips. “That’s out of the way.”

  “Candida, one more moment on business. We’ve always been able to understand each other, I think, without elaborate explanations. I don’t want to change the rules, but I do want to say this. I’m not one of the most loyal employees E. J. Despard ever had, and if you find yourself in any difficulty and there’s anything I can do to help, will you let me know?”

  She put her hand against his face. “You really are a lovely man, Walter. But this is one time I don’t think I do understand you.”

  “Something’s going on,” he said slowly. “I’ve probably given you a biased picture of our distinguished president. Hallam has never had any real existence for me outside of his role in the firm, but I learned long ago never to underestimate him. I told him I was considering an offer from one of our competitors—”

  She broke in. “When?”

  “Yesterday. If I hadn’t known him so well, I would have thought he showed emotion. We’ve been at exactly opposite poles on every decision, every attitude, every course of action. I would have said he’d be delighted to be shut of me. But on the contrary. I haven’t definitely said I’d stay, but if I do I’ll have ten thousand dollars more a year, complete autonomy, a big increase in the design budget, veto power over a broad range of policy, six months out of every eighteen in Europe—”

  “Walter, that’s marvelous!”

  “I agree. But unless I’ve been dead wrong about Forbes Hallam all these years, something’s behind it. He wants me on the scene, but why?”

  He moved his wine glass so it caught the light. “And I’m wondering, in a perverse way, if he’s been told that I’ve been seeing you.”

  “Would that be so ghastly?”

  “Darling, of course not. Unless by some odd chance he connects it with the flap we’ve been having about a certain new nonpeelable paint known to our advertising department as T-239.”

  Neither spoke for a moment. Langhorne tasted his cold soup and added a few grains of pepper from a pepper mill.

  Candida ventured, “How does that concern me?”

  Langhorne chose his words carefully. “We’re all of us sitting on a barrel of dynamite. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the roof blow off the administration building before the end of the week. There’s a directors’ meeting on Thursday, and the board is split down the middle. Hallam’s enemies have been waiting for a pretext to move. I think you ought to pass this on to Begley. I’m not too impressed with your employer, as a matter of fact. It may be a mistake for him to go to Georgia this weekend. I want you to consider seriously having him come down with a virus that will keep him in bed until after the board meeting.”

  “He’s not exactly a fool, Walter.”

  “Would you mind defining your terms?” Langhorne said dryly. “It’s not his brain I’m thinking about. It’s whether he can be trusted. We have a report that you’ve been seen going into the United States Chemical offices on Route 128 outside of Boston. Not Hal Begley, you see. Candida Morse. I’m usually right about these things. He has a bad eye. What that eye tells me is that Hal Begley in the clutch will think of Hal Begley, and of nobody else. If he has to jettison someone in order to survive, too bad for that someone. Hal Begley Associates will dwindle down to Hal Begley Period.”

  He spooned up some soup. “I hate the idea of the kind of throat-cutting and back-stabbing I’m in for this weekend. Blood will flow! It’s no concern of mine who wins, the Hallams or the Despards. Probably I should have turned Hallam down outright instead of asking for a few days to think about it. One reason I didn’t was that I’d like to be on the inside when the trouble starts. Perhaps I can help. I’ve become very fond of you, my dear.”

  He touched her knee. “Come, Candida, you’re not eating.”

  Forbes Hallam, Jr., a good-looking, dark-haired young man with the build of a quarter-miler, tapped on a door on the twelfth floor of the Hotel St. Albans in Miami Beach. Without waiting for an answer, he unlocked it with a key he carried on his key ring and went in.

  It was 5:15 in the afternoon, and the blinds were drawn. The room was awash with discarded clothing. An empty gin bottle lay on the carpet. Ruth Di Palma was asleep on the bed amid a tumble of bedclothes. She was face down, one bare arm trailing.

  Forbes adjusted the blind cords, letting in the afternoon sun. This room was on the Inland Waterway side of the hotel, where prices were lower. Ruth, in fact, occupied it rent-free during the off-season, although she was supposed to be ready to move on an hour’s notice.

  He switched on the exhaust fan and turned the air-conditioning dial up a notch. Sitting on the bed beside the sleeping girl, he slipped his hand under the covers.

  “Ruthie, wake up.”

  He moved his hand along her body. She stirred, murmuring, then flopped over, opened her eyes suddenly and stared up at him. It was clear to Forbes that she didn’t have the remotest idea who he was. Her skin was a lovely golden color. Her face glistened with something she had rubbed on it before going to bed. The sun had burned her hair the color of driftwood. There were no lines on her face, and, if it was true that anxiety was what put the lines on people’s faces, Forbes could be fairly sure that she would still look the same at sixty.

  “You remember me,” he said, withdrawing his hand.

  “Put your hand back. Come on.”

  “Ruthie—”

  She lifted the sheet. She slept without nightgown or pajamas.

  “What are you doing out there with all those clothes on?”

  “Ruth, it’s five in the afternoon, which is a peculiar time to be asleep, and I tore in from the office to see you for about ten seconds.”

  “I took a pill. Or two. Or a handful. I love you.”

  “I love you.”

  “Five in the afternoon? You don’t scare me a bit. The real point is, what day?”

  Forbes laughed. “Friday.”

  “Well, if it’s still only Friday.” She pulled at his clothes. “Be unconventional. Come to bed. I haven’t seen you since this morning.”

  He scuffed off his loafers. Without undressing any further, he swung in under the sheet and took her in his arms.

  “Don’t you want to know why I left the office early and drove like a madman and why I’m taking a chance on holding up the company plane?”

  “Why?”

  “I wanted to find out what you decided.”

  “I never decide things,” she said. “Things decide themselves.”

  He gave her a small shake. “Why don’t you marry me, Ruthie?”

  “Because you’re only one person. If you have to have a reason.”

  He laughed again. “I’m changeable.”

  “Not enough. Number two, you like your job.”

  “I hate my job,” he said calmly.

  “You only think you hate it. Let’s make love. I don’t feel a bit like it. It’s the last thing I’d suggest ordinarily, down at the end of the list after watching cartoons on TV. But anything to change the subject!”

  “Ruthie,
don’t,” he said, trying to keep her from unbuttoning his shirt. “I have to be at Opa-Locka airport in sixty minutes, or my father will chop me off at the neck. He likes people to be on time.”

  Doubling the pillow behind her, she hitched up against the headboard and looked at him balefully. “You won’t believe this, but do you know I forgot you were going away? Now maybe you’ll agree I’m not cut out to be the wife of a rising young executive. I told Freddy and Adrian we’d go to Palm Beach.”

  “Where in Palm Beach?”

  “Freddy met the lady who gives those millions of dollars to the opera. She has some wonderful Picassos and he’s going to get her to give him one.”

  “Nobody gives Freddy Picassos.”

  “He has a plan worked out. I’ll see if he can put it off a week. Then I promised we’d be back in time for the soul session at the Stanwick. They’ve got some real weirdies.”

  “I’ll be satisfied to miss that.”

  “Too bad for you, buster. I’ll go stag. Cigarette.”

  She watched him find the cigarettes and hunt around in the mess for matches. “It begins to come back to me. I wish you wouldn’t keep telling me things when I’m tight. This is your Mike Shayne weekend.”

  “There, you see? There’s nothing wrong with your memory.”

  He held a match to her cigarette. She breathed out smoke and looked at him.

  “Forbes, are you in any kind of jam I don’t know about?”

  He shook his long hair off his forehead. “I tell you about all my jams.”

  “At three or four in the morning, when I couldn’t care less. I asked a couple of people about this Mike Shayne, and here’s what they tell me. Now listen. To start with, you have to remember he’s tricky. But he’s not like other tricky people. He can be tough. And he’s not like most tough people because he can also be tricky. If you can’t follow that, it’s because I’m not at my best before breakfast. What it boils down to, if you’ve got something you don’t want Shayne to find out, don’t take your eyes off the radar screen.”

  “Shayne and I are working the same side of the street. We’re the one-two punch for the good guys.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Ruthie, are you worrying about me by any chance?”

  “Me worry? About you? You may not be handsome, but you’re rich, accomplished, a talented writer, with a nice car, nice clothes and a nice crusty father.” She added, “You did raise that money O.K., didn’t you?”

  “Ruthie, that was ages ago. It all blew over. You realize, don’t you, that if you’ve started to worry about me and money, you might as well marry me? Wives are supposed to worry about their husbands. Girls are supposed to be blasé about their boy friends.”

  “How can I marry you, Forbes? I’m five years older than you.”

  “I’ll catch up.”

  “Besides, your father’s paying me a weekly allowance as long as we don’t get married.”

  His smile vanished. He seized her bare arm above the elbow. “Is that true?”

  She looked at him in silence for a moment before shaking her head. “No.”

  He let go. “Well, your financial condition’s a mystery to me, but I really don’t think that explains it. The old man’s attached to that dough. He made it himself. I’ve got to go.”

  “Not yet.”

  “Yes, damn it, if I want to hang onto that job, and we’ve been through that ten million times. If I could get along without eating, I could easily live on what I make writing fiction. Three short stories in six months, two hundred and twenty-five dollars.”

  “You’re not using the old computer,” she said, tapping his forehead. “If you drive to Opa-Locka, you’ll just about make it, leaving now. The Watson Park heliport is five minutes from here. Take a helicopter.

  He looked into her eyes, then glanced quickly at his watch.

  “You see?” she said. “Call the heliport.”

  She threw off the sheet and slid down in the bed, watching him gravely. He hooted and reached for the phone, beginning to unbutton his shirt with the other hand.

  CHAPTER 2

  In a crudely-built duck blind in a Georgia salt marsh early the next morning, Forbes Hallam, Jr., held out a cup of steaming coffee to the big redheaded private detective named Michael Shayne.

  Shayne leaned against the stringer at the front of the blind, a 12-gauge semiautomatic resting lightly in the crook of one arm. His slouch was characteristic, and characteristically deceptive. He had an athlete’s ability to seem totally relaxed a second before erupting into a violent explosion of controlled energy. A bloody mallard, brought down by Shayne in his first shot of the morning, lay on a bench at the back of the blind.

  “Coffee?” Forbes said.

  The detective took the cup, set it on the stringer and added cognac from a pint bottle. He offered the bottle to young Hallam, who was sitting on the bench well back from the opening, his long legs stretched out in front of him. His shotgun was propped in a corner. He had yet to take a shot.

  “Change your mind and have some cognac?” Shayne said.

  The young man shook his head ruefully. “I’d better wait. I had too much Scotch last night, I’m ashamed to say.”

  “You’re not the only one.”

  Forbes laughed. “Begley! I’ve never seen anybody get stoned faster.”

  Shayne straightened. Crinkles of concentration appeared at the corners of his eyes. A flight of blacks had appeared in the southeast, three ranges high. Pulling out a slender duck call, Shayne began working them down. He started with a piercing highball, followed by a series of high excited notes. The flight wheeled. The Chesapeake retriever beside his knee watched alertly. Shayne talked the ducks down and down. They were at sixty yards, coming over the blocks on the cross wind, when they were spooked by a single shot from another blind. They veered up and away. Shayne swore.

  “My uncle Jose,” Forbes said. “He always was a lousy judge of distance.”

  After lighting a cigarette, Shayne said, “Your father told me you’d fill me in. This might be a good time.”

  “I suppose,” Forbes said with a sigh. “I knew he had that in mind when he put us together. I just wish the aspirin would take hold, that’s all. How much has he told you?”

  “Enough so I can start with a couple of questions. What’s this T-239 paint?”

  “The name doesn’t mean a thing, Mr. Shayne. The ‘T’ stands for the pigment—titanium dioxide. Adding the number is just a gimmick, to make it sound scientific for the ads and the label. It’s an alkyd resin, water-thinned, and there’s no question it’s a damn good paint. We’re planning to offer an absolute three-year money-back guarantee against peeling or blistering on bare wood using a recommended primer. I don’t know how much you know about house paint—”

  “I live in a hotel.”

  “You’re lucky—I think I’ll have some of the cognac after all. This coffee isn’t doing anything for me.”

  The detective splashed a dollop of cognac in the younger man’s coffee cup.

  Forbes went on: “I don’t know how people who own houses manage to keep their sanity. Father maintains that the reason outside paints break down so fast is that houses are better insulated and present-day appliances give off so much steam—dishwashers, humidifiers, driers. The steam has to go somewhere. It breaks the paint seal and exits by way of a blister, which then peels down to the wood. The public, of course, simply figures we’re marketing an inferior product, to break down faster so we can sell more paint. This worries my father. Where will it end? In government regulation, he thinks. Socialism.”

  He snorted scornfully and sipped at his coffee. “Hey, this is good. Maybe we ought to add a few drops of cognac to each gallon of paint and see if it lasts any longer.” He winced. “I’m not really up to being facetious this early in the morning. God knows, it’s serious. We must have a couple of million dollars invested in T-239. The first company out with a really nonpeelable product is going to mop up. Everybody’
s been working on it. Well, about eighteen months ago we came up with a formula that gave very good lab results. That didn’t necessarily mean it would stand up well on a house. We put it through an elaborate series of tests, and those tests can’t be hurried. There’s really no substitute for slapping a coat of paint on a piece of cedar siding and leaving it out in different kinds of weather. Sure enough, after a few months the white paint turned yellow. We took care of that and all the technical boys are very pleased with the way things have turned out. But Dad happens to believe in being two hundred percent certain. That’s how we’ve got caught. He ordered a new series of tests, and we can’t hope to have T-239 in the stores before next May at the earliest.”

  “And United States Chemical stole the formula?”

  “More than the formula. The really important thing was the test results. A year and a half is a long time to keep a secret in any business. By not having to duplicate the tests, they save a huge amount of money and cut months off the development period. We’ve been getting rumbles about a new indestructible paint they’re about to launch with a long-term guarantee. They did a fair job of keeping it under wraps, but we finally managed to purloin a can. And it’s T-239, all right, with a few modifications. And a source in their experimental division tells us they rushed into production after a crash testing program that couldn’t possibly prove anything about durability. They’re making the first announcement on the CBS breakfast show next Tuesday morning. In other words, they’ll beat us out by five months.”

  Without looking directly at him, Shayne had been studying the young man as he talked. He was twenty-five, Shayne judged. One moment he was caught up in his explanation, taking it with utter seriousness. A moment later he would make a clumsy gesture and seem to sneer at the importance of what he was saying. At times he was capable of producing a sudden, engaging grin. Having talked at length with the senior Hallam, Shayne knew the younger man’s position in the company must be far from easy.

  Shayne’s gun came up.

  “Ducks,” he said in a low voice.

  Forbes reached for his shotgun, then sat back with a flap of his hand. There were five pintails and a single, quartering in and rising. At first Shayne thought they were all his. As he tracked them, they veered more and more to the right, crossing at the extreme limits of his gun’s range. There were two quick bangs from the next blind, a thousand feet distant. Two ducks plummeted out of the sky.