Guilty as Hell ms-56

by Brett Halliday

  “The Mike Shayne I’ve always heard about,” she said, “doesn’t make a move without being paid in advance.”

  “I expect to be paid.”

  She threw her lipstick in her bag. “I hate to think how close I came to telling you every last thing you wanted to know. I was so mixed up I felt like three different people. The truth is, we perform a valuable function. Big corporations like Despard have a huge and unfair advantage, with their great wealth, their control of the market. We’ve managed to help a few obscure companies to survive, Hal and I–I don’t think that’s necessarily so wicked. Well, I’ve changed my mind five times in five minutes, but this is definite. You and I are on opposite teams, and let’s keep it that way.”

  “The sex wasn’t my idea.”

  “Oh, I’m terrible. Seducing a man with only one arm to fight me off. I’ll iron your shirt.”

  She went into the bathroom and came back with his damp shirt. She unfolded an ironing board. She added in a low voice without looking at him, “Not that I didn’t think it was going very nicely.”

  Shayne laughed openly. “The hell you did. You were thinking of too many other things at the same time. Where will you be if anything comes up?”

  “Right here. I have to wait for a call from Hal. What could come up? Your terms are unconditional surrender, and I’ve decided to take my chances.”

  She worked on the shirt for only a moment. “For some reason you make me nervous, Mike. It’ll have to dry on you.”

  She tossed it to him. When she saw how hard it was to put on, she came to help him, which brought her back within the radius of his good arm. As soon as the shirt was on and the sling adjusted she stepped back quickly.

  “You have an appointment. Please. Go. If you stay another thirty seconds, I’ll change my mind again. That would be ridiculous, wouldn’t it?”

  CHAPTER 14

  Shayne had made it clear that he was going somewhere else. Candida had made it equally clear that she was staying home.

  Shayne moved his Buick to a less conspicuous parking lot on the other side of Alhambra Circle, one reserved for University of Miami faculty. From here he had an unobstructed view of the exit from Candida’s little court, and he could leave quickly in either direction.

  He killed his headlights.

  A moment or so later a black Ford with a buggy-whip aerial cruised past. It looked to Shayne like a City of Miami police car. The driver was peering into parked cars. As he passed under a streetlight Shayne recognized him. It was Vince Camilli, the vice cop who had raided Deedee’s apartment.

  Camilli’s head had swiveled toward Shayne’s Buick. His brake lights flared. Shayne thought fast. He was carrying only one thing that would make trouble for him with a vice cop-the blackmail negatives, showing Deedee and Jose Despard at four stages in the presumed rape. The one Shayne had looked at had been relatively innocuous, but the others were undoubtedly worse.

  Camilli left the Ford double-parked with its headlights on full. Shayne whipped the envelope containing the negatives out of his pocket and tried to slip it under the floor covering. But he had to crouch low to reach the edge of the rubber pad with his right hand, and Camilli saw him straighten.

  Shayne flicked on the switch of a battery-powered tape recorder under the front seat as the other approached. Camilli, chewing gum, his thumbs hooked in his belt, was moving at the easy saunter used by cops when they believe they are about to make a high-prestige arrest and their quarry has little chance to get away from them.

  “Mike Shayne again,” he said lazily. “You get around, for a man with a bad arm. What are you doing on University property, may I ask?”

  “You can ask,” Shayne said evenly. “What are you doing in Coral Gables? You’re out of your jurisdiction here.”

  “Let’s not worry about that. Ever since I saw you tonight, I’ve been thinking about some of those uncalled-for remarks of yours about frame-ups. Somebody’s a hooker, or a flagrant fag. Everybody knows it. They’re guilty as hell, and we can’t bring them in unless we catch them in the act. Well?” He jerked the door open. “What did you just stick under the front seat?”

  “Where’s your partner?”

  “He was in the john,” Camilli said. “When the call came in and I heard Mike Shayne was involved, I didn’t wait. I moved.”

  He had a long three-cell flashlight in one hand. Shayne shifted his feet, untying the knot of the sling with a quick pull. As Camilli leaned forward, his jowls were on a direct line with the hidden knuckles. Shayne suppressed an impulse to jerk his elbow outward. Camilli was a cop, after all. A good way to get in trouble in any town, including this one, was to slug cops.

  As Camilli’s right hand entered the beam of light, Shayne saw that he was holding his thumb folded under against the palm. Without further thought, Shayne broke the scalpel loose from the plaster and lifted the cast over Camilli’s hulking shoulders. He dug the hook in the back of his jacket and yanked him forward, at the same time bringing the bright razor-sharp edge of the scalpel up toward his throat.

  Camilli made a choking sound. He tried to pull back, but the hook held him.

  “Open your hand,” Shayne ordered.

  Camilli merely gurgled. Shayne repeated the command and nicked off a small slice of his chin with a pass of the scalpel. The cop’s eyes protruded dangerously. Slowly he turned his hand over. A brown, amateurish-looking cigarette slid to the floor beneath the steering column.

  Shayne clucked. “I see you were going to pull me in for possession. You get into habits and they’re hard to break. Where did the call come from, Camilli?”

  Camilli’s voice was thin and high. “You won’t use that shiv. You’re too smart. I’m a police officer!”

  “I keep reminding myself,” Shayne said. “I’ll ask you again, and I’m still asking you nicely. Where did the call come from?”

  Blood dripped from Camilli’s chin. He tried to swallow, but nothing went down.

  “Washington,” he whispered, his eyes on the bright blade.

  “Washington,” Shayne repeated without expression. “I’m glad you decided to tell me. They’re new seat covers. I wouldn’t like to get blood all over them. Go on.”

  “Mike, for God’s sake, do you know what you’re doing? You can’t control your arm. One touch with that thing-”

  Shayne’s hand with the scalpel was rock-steady an inch in front of his chin.

  “Said his name was Hallam,” Camilli gasped. “He fired you, you were trying to extort money from him. Please. Will you please, Mike? That wasn’t enough to hold you on. The reefer was only a gag! He said if you were out of the way for twenty-four hours, he’d give me a check for my favorite charity.”

  “Which one is that,” Shayne inquired, “the Society for the Advancement of Vince Camilli? Straighten up slowly and turn around.”

  He relaxed the pull of the hook and Camilli straightened. The scalpel followed him up and out of the car. Shayne freed the hook. Then, dropping the scalpel into his pocket, he slid his hand under Camilli’s arm and got his gun. He scaled it across the lot beneath the next line of parked cars. Using the blunt end of the hook, he walked him across the street to his Ford.

  There Shayne reached in and sliced the main battery cable. He allowed Camilli to turn to face him, and cut his belt with a quick upward stroke of the scalpel. Camilli grabbed at his pants as they fell.

  “Get in,” Shayne said. “The thing for you to do now is get your retirement papers in before tomorrow morning. If you move fast, I may not mention that stick of marijuana to anybody. I want you out of Miami inside a week.”

  “Mike, I’ve got roots here-I own a house-”

  “Sell it,” Shayne said. “Shaking down whores is one thing. This is something else. I’ve got that conversation on tape. All I need to do is make a couple of calls.”

  He motioned with the scalpel and Camilli fell into the front seat. Shayne turned his back on him and returned to the Buick without looking around.

>   An instant after the door of the Buick slammed, a red Volkswagen scurried out of Candida’s court and turned north on Alhambra Circle.

  Shayne wasted a second or two getting underway. The Volkswagen was already blinking for a right at Blue Road. There was no doubt in his mind that she must be going north. That was where the action was tonight. He continued across, turning into Bird Road at the end of the next long block. Here he gunned his powerful motor, crossed Granada Boulevard on the tail end of a green light, and hit seventy-five by the time he braked for Route One.

  The red Volkswagen came into sight. As it went through the intersection, Shayne had a glimpse of Candida. She was driving intently, her hands high on the wheel.

  From there it was easy. She crossed to Miami Beach on the Venetian Causeway. Shayne was the second car behind as she stopped to pay the toll. After passing Municipal Park on the Beach, she turned onto Collins, the street of the great hotels.

  If she was about to turn, she would be watching her mirror, and Shayne dropped back. His timing was bad. Caught by a red light, he picked up the phone.

  When the operator came on, he told her to hold. Ahead, the Volkswagen swung into the long curving approach to the St. Albans. Still immobilized by the light, Shayne gave the operator the St. Albans number. A moment later he was asking for the security man, Harry Hurlbut.

  “Hurlbut,” a voice said.

  “Mike Shayne, in a hurry. I know you like to be in on things. I have a strong feeling something’s about to happen.”

  Hurlbut groaned. “Why here? Why not at the Fontainebleu?”

  “A girl’s going to be along in a minute. Can you see the main-lobby entrance from your office?”

  “Wait a minute,” his friend told him. “Yeah, now I can.”

  “I can’t follow her in. I want to know what she does-it could make a big difference. She’s a blonde. Red skirt, sleeveless sweater, no hat. She’s alone.”

  “Right,” Hurlbut said alertly. “I think she just came in now. Sweater buttons in front, all the way up.”

  The light changed. Shayne wedged the phone between his shoulder and jaw. After crossing the intersection, he turned into the approach to the St. Albans.

  “She’s using a house phone,” Hurlbut said. “I’ll get the board.”

  He clicked off. Shayne fitted the Buick into an opening at the curb. In a moment Hurlbut was back.

  “She’s calling twelve-sixteen. They’re still ringing. Still ringing. Wait a minute, I’ll check the register.”

  After another brief pause Hurlbut said, “I thought that was the room. Ruth Di Palma. Mike, you’ll have to tell me more about this before I go any farther.”

  “You know the girl?”

  “I know her.”

  “How about a Forbes Hallam, Jr., do you know him?”

  “I don’t think so. Is he a guest here?”

  “No. Still no answer?”

  He waited. Hurlbut reported: “No answer. She hung up. There’s no back to that sweater! Jesus, that’s a really gorgeous number. She’s getting a magazine at the stand. Sitting down. I enjoy having girls like that in my lobby. They add to the decor. Go on.”

  “There’s not a hell of a lot more I can tell you,” Shayne said. “Hallam tried to raise some money about a year ago so his girl could get an abortion. I don’t know her name but the indications are that it’s this Di Palma girl. I need to find out if he got up the money, and where it came from. I also may be totally wrong about the whole thing.”

  “That doesn’t happen too often, Mike. The thing is, this girl is damn nice. By that I mean damn nice. I’ve had a couple of dates with her myself. Anything I tell you about her, you’ll get the wrong idea. We make her a rate because she knows everybody in town. Her friends tend to be good swimmers and divers with a year-round tan and it helps the pool. You know the tourist-hotel business. By the time people can afford our rates, they’re fat and bald. That doesn’t mean they want to spend their vacation in a hotel where everybody else is fat and bald, especially in bathing suits. Do you want to see her?”

  “It would help.”

  “I think I can find her for you. She’s at what they call a ‘soul session.’ You know? The papers are spreading the idea it’s a new kind of orgy, but it’s just a bunch of people with problems, and who doesn’t have problems nowadays? Ruthie wanted to know if they could have it here. I said why not, but the brass vetoed it-by the end of a long weekend everybody’s looking pretty grubby. I suggested the Stanwick, the new motel in Surfside. If you want to hold on, I can check. They’ll be breaking about now.”

  Shayne told him to go ahead. He listened to a dead phone for several minutes. Then Hurlbut was back.

  “Yeah-the Stanwick. Room twenty-four. You’ll recognize her. She’s got a great build. A short haircut-pretty near white.”

  “Thanks, Harry. Keep an eye on the blonde for me.”

  “A pleasure, especially from the rear. The thing about these backless fashions-you can’t help wondering what they’ve got on in front.”

  Shayne hung up and went around the semicircle back to Collins.

  CHAPTER 15

  The Stanwick Motel had been in place for a season and a half, and it was looking a little seedy. One letter was gone from its neon sign. Its four floors were arranged around three sides of a lighted swimming pool. The pool was closed for the night.

  Shayne found room 24 without trouble. It was one of a suite of three connecting rooms, and all the rooms along that gallery were dark. Apparently the organizers of the weekend had been talked into renting the entire section to avoid disturbing the other guests.

  Shayne opened the door and walked in. His arrival went unnoticed by the six or seven people in the room. On one bed, a man with a magnificent head of white hair was weeping silently. A man and a girl, on opposite sides of a TV set, stared at each other as though they had never seen anything so strange and fascinating. The man was talking in a low monotone which gave an effect of extreme excitement.

  Shayne stepped over the outstretched legs of a middle-aged Negro woman, several hours past the point of complete exhaustion, and continued into the next room. A young girl was studying her reflection in a mirror. Her lips moved silently; she was probably telling herself some home truths. In the third room, several people, including the girl Shayne had come to see, were attending closely to a discussion between two men and a much older woman. Shayne tuned in briefly. The older woman, it seemed, was being accused of playing a role in some kind of psychological game involving herself and the two men, but she was refusing to acknowledge that any such game existed or that she was a part of it. Probably, Shayne thought, if he had been present all Saturday and Sunday he would have understood why the exhausted audience was following the exchange with such interest.

  He had spotted Ruth Di Palma the minute he came in. She was lying on her stomach on one of the beds, her chin on a doubled pillow, her eyes jumping from one speaker to the next. Her sun-whitened hair was very close-cropped. Her tan was excellent. She was wearing tight slacks, a shapeless sweatshirt, no makeup.

  Shayne ripped the flyleaf from a Gideon Bible, scribbled “Can I talk to you?” on it, and slipped it inside the leather folder containing his detective’s license. He touched the girl on the shoulder with it.

  The surface of her eyes as she looked up at him was opaque with fatigue. She took in his sling, then she looked again at his face. There could have been either hostility or indifference in her eyes.

  After reading the note and glancing at the license, she commented with a slight upward movement of an eyebrow and rolled off the bed. She was barefooted, and not tall. She seemed to be smoldering quietly, and it was probably this quality, Shayne thought, that had impressed Hurlbut, a hard man to impress.

  Shayne opened the door. They went out to the gallery without passing through the other two rooms.

  “What time is it?” she asked.

  Shayne told her and she said, “It’s about time we knock off.” Sh
e stifled a dry yawn. “I’m tired, and at the same time I’m not. Pills and coffee, coffee and pills. And I think that’s a different kind of oxygen we’ve been breathing in there.”

  “Half cigarette smoke,” he said.

  She put both hands on the gallery rail and breathed in deeply. Her face had a strained look, a look Shayne associated with the amphetamines, or stay-awake pills.

  “Your Georgia weekend didn’t work out?”

  “It was over before it started,” Shayne told her. “Long ago now.”

  “That was my prediction. You don’t get results from one of these things by pushing. If it comes, it comes.”

  “You know what we were trying to find out?”

  “Forbes hasn’t been talking about much else.”

  Shayne offered her a cigarette. She shook her head. He lit one himself and said, “People are trying to convince me he’s been peddling his company’s secrets. What do you think?”

  “I try not to think about dull subjects.” She drew another deep breath, so deep it seemed to make her dizzy. “Or do you want me to act surprised?”

  “I thought you might react one way or another.”

  She turned toward him, apparently looking at him for the first time with a flicker of interest. “Whether Company A or Company B brings out a new paint first means very little to me.”

  “Does it make any difference to you whether or not Forbes is a thief?”

  “That’s a fine distinction I can’t get excited about. I understand why it interests you-it’s your business.”

  “He could go to jail.”

  “Don’t be silly. He’s the heir apparent. They wouldn’t let it get that far. They’d simply act hurt and drop him from the payroll. And if you really want my opinion, which I sort of doubt, that’s the best thing that could happen to Forbes.”

  “So he could spend his time writing?”

  “So he could spend his time getting something to write about.”

  Shayne was trying to decide how much of this was real, and how much the result of the sleepless weekend. For an instant she seemed to be touched by an ordinary human worry.