“To do what?”
“First are you interested?”
“I’m always interested in that kind of dough.”
The phone rang. “Yes,” Manners said. “All right, Sam. Your idea about Mike Shayne backfired, and backfired badly. Never mind how it happened. We have to pick up the pieces. He’s in a position to make one or two demands. Have you been using somebody named Maggie Smith on Hitchcock?”
He listened, breaking in sharply after a moment. “Don’t tell me about it. I want it scratched. Do it as soon as I hang up. If she doesn’t answer her phone, ring her doorbell, and keep at it till you wake her up. Tell her to stay away from Hitchcock, starting now. That’s all. Keep in touch.”
Shayne motioned to him.
“Hold it,” Manners said into the phone. “What is it, Shayne?”
“Ask him how much he agreed to pay her.”
Manners repeated the question to Toby and hung up after listening to the answer.
“He’s promoting a foundation grant for her theatre,” he said. “It could run as high as thirty thousand.”
Shayne felt an unreasoning stab of disappointment. Even now, he realized, he had been hoping it would turn out that Maggie had been telling the truth and everybody else had been lying.
Manners took a lined memo pad out of one of the manila folders. “I don’t like Sam Toby,” he said, biting off the words, “and this is the last time I deal with him. What do you want me to say to Hitchcock?”
“Put it in your own words,” Shayne said. “Mike Shayne tells you that a woman named Maggie Smith has been working on him, and Toby confirms it. Toby’s arranging some financing for her theatre in return. This isn’t the way you like to work. You gave Toby hell and told him to call it off, and you’re glad you caught it this early, before any harm was done.”
Manners scrawled a message covering half a page. He tore it off and tossed it to Shayne. Shayne read it, nodded and put it away. He kept his face impassive, but all the alarm bells were clanging. They shouldn’t have been so ready to jettison Maggie Smith. Something was wrong here, and he didn’t know what. On the record player another jazz record came down and began to spin. There was an unmistakable note of menace in the air.
“We thought you were working for National,” Manners said. “But you’ve actually been working for Hitchcock’s family, haven’t you? I understand he has a daughter?”
Shayne shrugged and started to get up. Manners went on, “To be candid, I wouldn’t want to hire you away from a competitor, because I couldn’t be sure you wouldn’t try to get away with drawing a fee from both sides. But I assume that this wraps it up as far as you’re concerned. We need some background on Senator Tom Wall. We suspect he’s on the National payroll. He’s close to Henry Clark, who handles National’s undercover lobbying. We need proof of this, and we need it in a hurry. The payment schedule would be-two thousand down, eighteen thousand balance on delivery of something we can use.”
Shayne picked up his drink, looked at it with distaste and set it back on the floor.
“That sounds possible. But you’d better get somebody who can find the Washington Monument without having to follow a cab driver. Probably there’s no reason you shouldn’t know-Trina Hitchcock hired me to keep her father out of bed with the Smith woman. And that’s all she hired me to do. I’ve been working on something in Miami the last few days and I’m behind on my sleep. Now I’m going to start catching up. As soon as the hearings adjourn I’m going back to a town where the cops know me and I have friends on the papers. That makes a difference.”
Manners screwed on the top of his fountain pen and clipped it to his shirt pocket. “Has it occurred to you that you might have been brought to Washington for some other reason than the one you were given?”
“Let’s say it’s occurred to me.” Shayne crossed the uncarpeted floor and added his cigarette butt to the others in the ashtray. “But the hell with it. The day’s over.”
“I’d like to take another minute to give you some history,” Manners said. “Sit down and finish your drink.”
Shayne returned to the sofa. “OK, but I’m having trouble keeping my eyes open.”
“One year ago I had my back to the wall. I’d made the mistake of putting too much time into building airplanes and too little into buttering up the generals and admirals. The fat cats at National thought the time was ripe to take me over. Two of their top executives and three of their directors are ex-general officers, and their only company duty is to stay on friendly terms with their ex-colleagues in the Pentagon. I’ve never gone in for that old-buddy crap. I’d never heard the name of Sam Toby. If he’d come into my office and said I needed to hire a Washington influence peddler to stay in business, I would have thrown him out on his ear. Then National took a contract away from me after I’d spent two million on wind-tunnel tests. I had a couple of big loans called, for no good reason. All of a sudden my credit sources dried up. I began to hear that rumors were going around about me personally-my financial position, even my sanity. National made me an offer. The price was ridiculous. I turned it down. They began raiding my stock, and drove it down to below nine dollars a share. All the analysts were predicting I’d be in bankruptcy in six months. They hadn’t seen my books. I had six weeks.”
“And what does all this have to do with me?” Shayne said blurrily.
“Manners common closed this afternoon at one hundred and ten. I have thirty thousand men at work in five states. We’ve had enough delays. We’re finally rolling on this plane, and anything that holds us up now will be bad for everybody. There’s no question of canceling the contract. It’s too late for that. The reason National is making this big effort is to show they still have some political muscle, to lay the groundwork for the next time. No matter how big you are, you have to wade through a certain amount of mud to get a contract like this one. The reason I’m fighting Hitchcock’s investigation is that I don’t want any of the mud splattered on the airplane. Who made what promises, who paid what legal fees, who traded what favors for what phone calls-none of that matters, Shayne. What matters is how far can the plane fly without refueling? How fast? How much load can it carry? How soon will it be operational?”
“Well, as I say-” Shayne said.
Manners put his hands flat on the table and pushed himself erect, and Shayne realized that the industrialist must need sleep almost as much as he did himself.
“You’ve done what you were brought in to do,” Manners said evenly. “Pleasant dreams. Here.” He held out the whiskey bottle, which was still three-quarters full. “Take this with you. The bars close at two and you’ll have trouble getting a drink. What I’m trying to get across is this: Rebman did badly tonight. But he’s a capable man, and don’t underestimate him. Think about my offer. It’ll still be open in the morning. If anybody else tops it, bear in mind that there’s nothing I won’t do, and I mean that literally, to put that airplane into production. Don’t get in the way.”
“Hell,” Shayne said, “I’m getting out of it as fast as I can. I don’t go around looking for trouble.”
“Where do we find the Buick?”
“Around the corner from a spot called the Bijou on Wisconsin. I don’t know the name of the street.”
“Stevens!” Manners called.
The big man came out of the bedroom and Manners said, “Shayne’s leaving.”
Manners and the redhead exchanged a look. They obviously respected each other, but they made no move to shake hands. One of the things Shayne was wondering was who had smoked the cigarettes in Manners’ ashtray. He grinned at Stevens and said, “Mind if I use your bathroom?”
He took two long strides and opened the other bedroom door. He heard someone moving and smelled cigarette smoke, but all he could see was a raincoat and a brown felt hat on one of a pair of twin beds. Then Stevens, moving fast, took the doorknob out of his hand.
“Mr. Manners has things to do.”
“I won’t insist,” Shay
ne said peaceably.
Manners was watching him. The phone had begun to ring, but he made no move to answer it until the redhead half waved and went out. Manners was clearly not finished for the night, and neither was Shayne. He had been watching the polished performance of an accomplished magician; his eye had been misdirected, so he had been looking the wrong way when the substitution was made. If he went to bed now, he would wake up in the morning to find that something surprising and possibly ugly had happened. “Terrific, isn’t he?” Stevens said on the stairs.
“Yeah,” Shayne agreed. “I don’t know if I’d like to have him around all the time. It would be like living with a band-saw.”
“Oh, he’s OK if you do what he says. When you’re working for Manners you don’t sit around wondering who’s boss. He’s got that big company in the palm of his hand, like this.” He clenched his fist, which was the size of a small cantaloupe. “Rebman, now, Mr. Manners is going to take off his hide in strips.”
They said goodnight, and Stevens stayed in the doorway until Shayne got into his Ford and drove away. Manners had obviously been conferring with someone when Shayne arrived, driving the visitor into the bedroom. It was a clear, hot night, with no sign of rain, so why, Shayne wondered, had the visitor been wearing a raincoat?
He circled the block. Turning back onto 16th, he parked across from the Royalton Arms. There was a similar apartment house on the opposite corner, with an equally flossy name, the Pickwick. He went into the lighted lobby, unscrewed the overhead bulb so he couldn’t be seen from the street, and waited.
Presently Stevens came out, squeezed into a compact sedan and drove off, probably to rescue Cheryl and the others from the locked Buick. Shayne dozed, leaning against the mailboxes, snapping awake abruptly as the door across the street opened again. This time it was a short, burly figure wearing the raincoat and felt hat Shayne had seen in Manners’ bedroom. The raincoat collar was turned up, the hat brim was turned down. Not much showed in between except the burning spark of a cigarette.
When he went around the building, Shayne left the lobby and slid into his Ford. A moment later he heard the roar of a powerful unmuffled motor. A squat black English sedan came out of the driveway. The man had taken off his disguise getting into his car. The raincoat had concealed an Air Force uniform. Light glinted from the insignia on his shoulders; they were eagles.
Shayne waited a moment so the colonel wouldn’t know he was being followed. That was Shayne’s only hope, for the English car had a fast acceleration and considerable power. Shayne managed to hang on for several miles, while they made their way north and west, toward Virginia. He could not work close enough to be sure of the license number.
On Connecticut Avenue, Shayne was held up for a moment by a turning truck. It was a big tractor and trailer, and there was nothing Shayne could do but wait. While it was inching out of his way, the colonel turned off to the right into a maze of side streets. There Shayne lost him.
CHAPTER 9
1:40 A.M.
The phone rang a long time. It was answered by two voices, a fraction of a second apart. One was the Swedish maid, the other Trina Hitchcock.
“Miss Hitchcock?” Shayne said. “Michael Shayne. Will you get the maid off the extension?”
“Michael?” she said vaguely. “Michael Shayne. I have it, Hanna, this is my call.”
There was a click as the maid hung up. Trina said, “You’ll have to start over. I took a pill and I’m not quite in focus. You aren’t still working?”
“Yeah, I’m still working. The Maggie Smith thing seems to be taken care of. But I don’t like the way it happened-it was too easy.”
“Too easy? Mr. Shayne, you aren’t getting through to me. Is she leaving town?”
“It doesn’t matter if she does or not. I’ve got a written admission from Hugh Manners of what she was doing for them and how they were paying her. It won’t hang anybody, but your father can’t pretend he doesn’t understand it. I don’t want to show it to him yet. I’d like to let him go on thinking she went out with him because she liked him. Maybe I’ll send her a copy and tell her I’ll use it if she tries to get in touch with him again. She’s been yanked off by Toby, more or less in my hearing, and I think that probably winds it up.”
“Mr. Shayne!” Trina wailed. “Have pity! You’re going too fast. How in heaven’s name did you get an admission out of Hugh Manners? I can hardly believe it. But there’s no need for you to hang around indefinitely. Why don’t we consider that your part is finished? Give me the letter or what-ever it is. I’ll keep my eyes open. If Daddy shows any signs of doing anything foolish, I’ll let him see it.”
“It’s not that simple,” Shayne said. “Manners sent three people after me, two men and a girl. The girl was wearing a two-hundred-dollar dress. They offered me a large hunk of money and took a swipe at me with a blackjack. And right after that they gave me Maggie Smith without batting an eye. There’s something phony about it.”
“A blackjack, a two-hundred-dollar dress-my head’s spinning. What does it mean?”
“I wish I knew, Miss Hitchcock. I think they have something else underway, which probably involves your father. I also think they don’t want me around when it happens. Do you know how I can get in touch with Senator Wall?”
“He lives at the Park Plaza, but he won’t thank you for waking him up at two in the morning.”
“I’ll take a chance. Thanks.”
“Mr. Shayne-” she said quickly.
He waited. After a moment she said, “Well, frankly I don’t understand it. It’s cold comfort to be told that you don’t either. I’m in no position to give you orders, though, so goodnight.”
“Goodnight.”
He looked up the Park Plaza and dialed the number. The switchboard girl connected him with the night manager, who explained that they had a policy of not ringing their guests’ rooms after midnight without advance authorization, and would Mr. Shayne care to leave a message?
Shayne said, “I’m calling on Senate business, and it’s important. Can you tell me whether or not he’s in his room? If he hasn’t come in yet I won’t waste any time arguing.”
“One moment.” When the voice returned to the line, it reported flatly but with a faint note of surprise, “Senator Wall is out.”
Shayne’s exhausted body was telling him to call it quits, but he forced himself to keep going. He looked up Ronald Bixler’s address; the little Civil Service investigator might know where he could start looking for Wall. Then he dialed Trina Hitchcock’s number again.
She picked up the phone promptly.
“Shayne again. Sorry to keep bothering you, but Senator Wall hasn’t come in.”
“That’s funny. He’s a stickler about how much sleep he gets, and with that big hearing in the morning-”
“Probably that’s what he’s working on. Did he give you any idea of where he might be?”
“No, it was very cloak-and-dagger and hush-hush, that’s the way Tom is. But I still don’t see why you’re so anxious to talk to him.”
“I don’t think he knows Manners is in town. I know where he can be found if Wall wants to hit him with a subpoena, but it has to be done now. I doubt if he’ll still be there in the morning.”
“Why should anybody want to subpoena Manners? It’s Sam Toby they’re investigating. I assure you, Tom Wall knows what he’s doing, and in any event I’m not in his confidence.”
“Will you wake up your father for me?”
“I wouldn’t think of it. Mr. Shayne, in fairness, this isn’t really your forte, is it? You’ve taken care of Maggie Smith, and you seem to have done it thoroughly and well. Daddy’s on the alert now and nothing so terrible is going to happen. Now don’t make any more trouble. Go home.”
“What do you call trouble?” Shayne said softly.
“I didn’t mean that. I know I’m not making any sense. But I engaged you to do something specific, the kind of thing experience has fitted you for. You’ve done
it. Why isn’t it over? Of course I want you to consider that whatever is left of that ten thousand dollars is your fee, and please accept it without arguing.”
“Is it your money, Miss Hitchcock?”
“What are you implying by that? Of course it’s my money. Mr. Shayne-isn’t it barely possible that some of these interrelationships may be more than you can hope to work out in a couple of hours?”
“Barely possible,” Shayne said wryly.
“And that by bulling around blindfolded, the way you’ve been doing, you may be doing more harm than good? Right now my father may not appreciate what you’ve done. Probably he let fly some fairly caustic observations about meddling busybodies, et cetera, but someday when he can think back on this period in tranquility, he’ll give you credit for preserving him from the stupidest blunder an old man can make. Now will you go home?”
“I’ll think about it,” Shayne said.
“Do. Now I intend to take another pill. Goodnight again.”
Shayne had promised to think about it, and he thought about it for fully a minute after he hung up. Then, swearing savagely under his breath, he put himself back together and left the booth.
CHAPTER 10
2:10 A.M.
Ronald Bixler lived in a large anonymous concrete-and-glass apartment house in the Southwest redevelopment area. Shayne hesitated after finding his name and apartment number in the lobby. At this hour an urgent knock on the door would stand a better chance of being answered than the ringing of a doorbell.
Using a strip of celluloid that he carried in his wallet, he opened the inner door. An automatic elevator took him up nine floors. He found Bixler’s apartment. Music was playing softly inside and he heard voices.
He knocked sharply. The voices stopped. He was facing a small round one-way mirror, and there was a faint clatter as it opened on the inside.
The door was thrown open promptly. Bixler, his face red, his eyes bulging, was wearing a kind of smoking jacket with velvet lapels. On a mannequin in a store window it had probably looked quietly dashing. It was wrong for Bixler.
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