“I expect it,” Shayne said. “It doesn’t always happen.”
“I don’t see any reason to hold anything back. If you come in on this, you’ll be talking to people. I’m the money man in the organization, and I’m not too popular because I’m the one who has to decide that some ideas are too expensive. But you may be told that under this plodding exterior, I have my ambitions—I’d like to see if I could make it on my own, without Larry breathing down the back of my neck from morning to night. You may hear that I resent the sneers and sarcasm that have come my way over the years and that the only reason I want to make sure Larry lives through the night is because if he dies his shares will revert to a family trust with two trustees. I’m one of them. The other’s my mother. She’s a venal woman who hates Larry and will vote against his slate, and I’ll be job hunting.”
Shayne drank. “It’s interesting so far. You said another car crowded him off. What does he say about that?”
“There wasn’t much traffic. They shouldn’t have been that close together. He swerved off on the shoulder—all the way off on the grass. From the skid marks, both cars were travelling very fast. And before he could get back, he ran into one of those lovely exit barriers. Zap. The other car didn’t stop. It was a red convertible. Somebody coming north saw it pull past and leave the highway.”
“Unless the highway patrol has something, I’d have to be lucky to find out who was driving. And if they do have something, you don’t need me.”
“We know who was driving. An actress named Kate Thackera. I caught Larry at the right moment, when he was coming out of the concussion, before the censorship could start working. He said, and I quote, ‘That Brannon bitch, do you know what she did? She tried to shoot me.’”
“Brannon?” Shayne said, frowning. “Keko Brannon?”
“Kate Thackera took Brannon’s place in that sad lady’s last picture. He got them confused.”
“And she tried to shoot him from the other car?”
Marcus spread his hands. “That was all he’d say. I said something like, ‘What? Who? Tried to shoot you—what are you talking about, Larry?’ He came back into focus and his brain started clicking. I told you he doesn’t go in for telling secrets, and not to Junior especially. I tried to get him to go back to it, naturally; but he pooh-poohed it—more important matters to think about and so on. I had a man check the hotels. Kate Thackera is here at the St. Albans. She came in this afternoon. And she’s driving a rented Chevy, which happens to be red and a convertible.”
“Why does she want to kill him?”
“She’s trying to get the part of Doña Isabella, in The Last Buccaneer. We’re shooting it on location in Homestead; and if you haven’t heard about it, our publicity people are doing a lousy job. It’s a fat part, really fat—the only woman on a pirate ship. I saw her costume tests, and I thought she was okay. Maybe better than okay. But I’m not the creative genius. Larry’s using somebody else.”
“So she ambushed him on Interstate 95? I don’t know many movie stars, but how often does this happen?”
“This is a special girl. Not the world’s most stable individual. Larry used to screw her, and that makes it less simple. I don’t mean it was nutty, anything but. Under the circumstances, it might have worked. Larry likes people to fight for a part—he thinks it carries over into their performance. That was a heavy thing she did. Larry has to be impressed. Everybody else wanted her for the part, the producer, the director.”
“Are there any bullet holes in your father’s car?”
“You’re ahead of me. I couldn’t see any. Now I want to tell you something that’s not common knowledge. First I’d better see if we can cut a deal. What I want to have you do is take charge of Kate Thackera. I don’t care how you do it. I want you to tie her up so she can’t make another move for thirty-six hours. Tonight, tomorrow, tomorrow night.”
“That sounds possible.”
“And I’m not thinking in terms of surveillance. Our own people could handle that. I want you to be actually on the scene all the time. I don’t know if anybody’s working with her; so I don’t want her to have access to a phone. I’m told you set your fee according to the difficulty of the assignment. I’d prefer it if you could do all this without letting her know you’re working for us, but she’s not dumb, and she may be hard to handle. I’m thinking in terms of a thousand dollars.”
“For thirty-six hours?” Shayne said. “It’s high for escort duty. It’s low for kidnapping.”
“I’m not talking about kidnapping. Well, I suppose I am, if you look at it a certain way. Fifteen hundred? Half in advance.”
“What happens thirty-six hours from now?”
“The meeting will be over, and the Honest Ballot Association will announce the count. But that’s not all. Larry rushed Buccaneer into production and moved the meeting to Miami so the stockholders could visit the set and see the old dazzler in action. The proxy thing has been getting national coverage, and we want to spin some of that off on the picture. We’re on a thirty-day schedule. Right now—through tomorrow—we could switch Kate into the part. Then we start shooting scenes with the new girl, and it would cost too much. And Kate knows it. At that point, unless she’s completely out of her head, she’ll give up.”
“Have you put bodyguards on your father?”
“Three. But he’s not going to stay in the hospital a minute longer than he has to. They’ve put on a walking cast. It wouldn’t surprise me if he’s already out. The important thing is tomorrow’s New York papers, the Times and the Wall Street Journal. They’ll carry a wire-service story, and it has to say that the dynamic Consolidated-Famous executive, lucky as always, came out of the crash with nothing more serious than a broken leg and a few minor cuts. We aren’t mentioning the concussion.”
“Where’s he staying, here on the Beach?”
“No, he has a location trailer in Homestead. The idea is, he’s giving the picture his personal supervision. That doesn’t mean he’ll actually sleep there. The most sensible thing for him to do would be to check in somewhere inconspicuously under another name, with two or three armed men; and then we could stop worrying. But if I suggest that he do it, he’ll do the opposite. That’s why we have to work on it from the other end.”
“What was the thing you were going to tell me?”
Marcus faced the mirror again and began laying out his shaving equipment.
“That Larry had a heart attack last year, and this is really confidential. I know it happens all the time, and people accept the message and slow down. But we’re talking about Larry Zion. He’s a cliché, but don’t forget he’s one of the three or four people who originated the cliché—Louis B. Mayer, Harry Warner, Larry Zion, Harry Cohn. In Larry’s position, you can’t slow down. You keep going at the same speed, or you get the hell out of the movie business. All the way out. For this reason: if you have a bankable star and a property, there’s no problem getting financing. But you need financing before you can tie up the star and the property. It gets more complicated, but that’s basically it. Some of our big deals have been pretty bizarre lately. You plot and connive and blackmail; you beg some people and put the arm on others; you trade and cut corners and promise the moon; but to close that circle finally, you need somebody as hard as steel. Somebody like Larry, who’ll cut throats if he has to to get the deal. He’s the guy who drove the gangsters out of the studio unions, and he didn’t do it by being nice. A heart attack makes people soft. But that’s not the way pictures get made. All Larry did after the attack was transfer from tennis to table tennis; and my God, he’s turned into a demon at the game.”
“So the lady in the red convertible wasn’t trying to shoot him; she was trying to scare him to death?”
“That’s the way it looks. She wouldn’t have to shoot real bullets. The bang and the flash would be enough. He knew she had a good reason for wanting him to die. By that I mean a good reason in terms he himself has always accepted. He had half a seco
nd to recognize her and react. One twitch at that speed would do it. And then Kate would go into Buccaneer, the critics would love her, and she could get off unemployment insurance. That’s my theory; and whether it’s true or not, I’m betting that Larry believes it.”
Shayne looked down into his glass and studied the shifting patterns on the surface of the cognac.
“Let’s see if I’ve got this. He regretted telling you about the gun. He’s a tough man who doesn’t believe in falling back on his son or anybody else when he’s threatened or in trouble. He believes in taking care of his own problems. That was a close miss today. She was taking a big chance herself, and he knows she’s serious. So you aren’t hiring me because you’re worried about what she’ll do to him. You want me to keep him from doing anything to her.”
Marcus rinsed his razor. “Shayne, I don’t want either one of them killed or hurt. I can’t put company guards on her because Larry outranks me. He formed his attitudes in the days when movie companies could pretty much do what they pleased. But this is Miami, not Los Angeles. Nobody knows us here. I don’t want any trouble right now. I happen not to give a goddamn about the girl personally, but I want her immobilized, and I want her protected. I assume we have a deal?”
Shayne finished his drink and nodded. “Where can I find her?”
“The last time I had a report, she was drinking downstairs in the Seminole Room. She’s a great bourbon drinker; and this would be a good time of night to make the connection, while she’s still fairly sober.”
Shayne stood up. “How do I recognize her?”
“Kate Thackera?” Marcus said, sounding really surprised for the first time. “She’s made some big-budget pictures for us.”
“We don’t go to the movies as much here as you do in Los Angeles.”
Marcus shook his head. “I’ll send somebody down with you to point her out. Do you have a gun with you? I’m sure we can scare one up if you haven’t.”
Chapter 3
In this light, at least, Kate Thackera seemed perfectly sane. She was strikingly well built, and the red dress she was wearing had been designed to call attention to that fact. She wore her black hair in bangs, long enough to hide her eyebrows when she raised them. Her eyes were wide-set, slightly slanting. Just then she tilted her head, her eyes closed down almost to slits, and her face broke up into happy laughter. But she looked less happy as Shayne got closer to her. Some of the laughlines had been put there by something else.
She was at the extreme end of the bar, sitting on a stool with her legs crossed, her skirt well up along her thigh. She had two men with her. Shayne squeezed into an opening beside a slightly built youth in glasses.
“Hey, Mike,” the bartender said in greeting. “Months and months. I’ve been keeping Hennessy in stock, and the bottle’s still three-quarters full.”
“I’d better start working on that,” Shayne said.
A cool black piano player in a tuxedo, the only member of his race and the only tuxedo in sight, was playing show tunes in an alcove between the bar and the large room beyond. Most of the drinkers on either side of Shayne had their elbows out, as though to discourage conversation. They looked straight ahead in silence at the dim mirror and the pyramids of bottles.
“Isn’t that Kate Thackera down there?” Shayne said.
The youth beside him tucked in his elbows and half turned, eager for contact. “In the flesh! And in the flesh she looks even better than in the movies.”
“Quite a bit of flesh showing.”
The youth laughed. “Man! A picture of hers came out when I was in college. On Fire: Did you ever see it? And she was so marvelous in it. I saw it eight times. Funny and sexy both; and in my book, that’s an unbeatable combination.”
“Who are the guys, do you know?”
The youth studied the group. “The small one, don’t you think he has something to do with show business? He has that sort of sneaky look. Somebody said the big guy is linebacker for the Dolphins, Doc something. I don’t follow the game.”
“Doc Black,” another drinker said.
“Sure,” Shayne said. “And you can tell from looking at him that he really likes contact.”
“He also likes to break up bars,” the expert continued. “I’ve got my track shoes on. The minute the argument starts I’m getting out of here.”
“She came in by herself!” the youth said. “I mean, Kate Thackera by herself, when she must know thousands of people in town. I thought I’d go over and introduce myself, but what a draggy scene it must be for somebody with any sensitivity at all. Fans,” he said. “That must be the worst thing about being a star.”
“I hear she’s trying to get the lead in that pirate movie,” Shayne said.
“No kidding!” the young man exclaimed. “Who told you that? I was thinking of hitching down to see if I could get on the set, but I don’t suppose they’d let me. They’ve got a couple of ships that are absolutely authentic replicas. A good, old-fashioned, slam-bang pirate picture. I think the public is going to eat it up. Do you agree with me?”
Shayne was willing to agree. The bartender brought his brandy and joined the movie discussion. Kate, talking with animation, used her glass to emphasize what she was saying and set it down only when it was empty. Going out of balance, she tipped sideward against the chest of the large man, who was heavily muscled, tall, and nearly bald. The other man, younger and narrower, with a nervous mustache, looked like a hustler. If he was in show business, as the youth suspected, it was on the fringes.
Shayne drank and watched. The youth beside him was trying to get Shayne to persuade him to go down and shoehorn himself into the conversation.
“Why not?” Shayne said agreeably. “If you really saw one of her movies eight times.”
“Minimum. I chased it around all over Boston. Whenever I went to a party in those days, I picked out the girl who looked most like her. And I got stung a few times. That crazy kind of look can fool you. Sometimes they really are crazy.”
He studied Kate. “It’s that quirk at the corner of her mouth. You know she’s bright, with a good sense of humor; and at the same time, she could be very loving. That’s her big asset—that little dint she gets when she smiles.”
“Not to speak of a great pair of tits,” Shayne added.
“Oh, the one thing she radiates is sex. Look around you. There isn’t a soul along this bar who isn’t thinking the same thing—involving Kate Thackera, a clear night, a bottle of wine, a sleeping bag.”
“She’s smaller than I expected,” Shayne said, keeping the conversation going.
“I like them small,” the youth assured him. “I like the top of their head to come up just about to my chin. I know if I spoke to her she’d be nice. She wouldn’t put me down. But the thing of it is, do I want to invade her privacy?”
“No harm in trying. I think she came in here looking for a little impromptu action.”
“Oh, I don’t agree. She’s not that type. My trouble is, I’ve never walked up out of the blue and started a conversation. That’s why I’ve missed out on so many things.”
The heavy-set football player, swaying, dropped one meaty hand on Kate’s thigh, as though to help her stay on the stool. The other man looked anxious and edged away. Kate didn’t seem to object to the hand. The big man shifted and came in against the bar and upset his drink reaching for it.
“Another round down here! Will you kindly snap it up and give us a little service?”
“Oh-oh,” the youth at Shayne’s end of the bar said. “Now if I wasn’t so chicken I’d go down and get everybody interested in something else. That creep is over the edge. Big son-of-a-bitch, isn’t he?”
“It’s simple,” Shayne said. “You just do it. Like this.” Pushing off the bar stool, he went down to the little group and told the linebacker coldly, “Take your hand off the lady’s leg.”
They looked at him. The football player seemed three feet across, and approximately as solid as an anvil. H
e was shorter than Shayne, but fifty pounds heavier. He carried a ridge of scar tissue over one eye, a jagged scar along the side of his nose. One of those specialized mutations who have been bred and trained for the single function of getting through to cripple the quarterback, he had the air of a man who considered himself a success.
“What did you say?” he asked incredulously. One of his important front teeth was missing.
“I said to put your hand back in your pocket. This is a public bar. People have a right to drink here without being groped.”
Kate recovered first. “Baby, this is nice of you, I suppose; but do I look like a damsel in distress?”
Shayne ignored her. “The moral standards in this town are going to hell, in my opinion. People seem to think that if they’re big enough and drunk enough, they can do anything they feel like doing; and nobody’s going to call them on it.”
The girl put one hand on his shoulder. “Before this thing escalates, will you let me say something? I make a point of not getting mixed up in brawls. I’m flattered, I honestly am. But I don’t need your help. I’m Kate. This is Max,” she said, indicating the smaller man, who had pivoted and taken a full step backward away from trouble. “And this is Doc; and believe me, that isn’t fat you see; it’s meat and muscle. Have a drink on us. I’m paying for this round. What’s your pleasure?”
Kill All the Young Girls Page 2
