Lady, Be Bad

by Brett Halliday

  Brett Halliday

  Lady, Be Bad

  CHAPTER 1

  Michael Shayne joined the line of passengers disembarking from the 707. Tall, red-haired, powerfully built, he was a conspicuous figure among the downstate lawyers and businessmen who were gathering in Tallahassee in the hope of influencing the state legislature in the final days of its biennial session. Like most of the others, Shayne carried a cowhide dispatch case, but his contained two flat pints of Martell’s cognac, a .38-caliber automatic and a dozen rounds of loose ammunition.

  A pretty dark-haired girl waved from the open door of a helicopter. Her name was Jackie Wales. She wore black-rimmed glasses and looked trim and competent. Shayne had been a good friend of her husband, a heavy-drinking Miami public-relations man, who had finally decided that drinking was the only thing he really liked to do, and had started doing it around-the-clock. The result was bad debts, an occasional fight in a bar, other girls, a divorce. Jackie took over the dying agency and tried to bring it back. The second year she broke even. Now she was edging into the black, and beginning to repay some of the money Shayne had loaned her.

  The helicopter, a four-passenger Bell JetRanger, belonged to the Miami News. Shayne saw his friend Tim Rourke, the News reporter, behind Jackie, a highball glass in his fist. He was the paper’s crime man, in Tallahassee to cover the biggest story of the waning season, an attempt to legalize casino gambling.

  Shayne sprang up into the cabin, where Jackie welcomed him with a warm embrace. Her arms came around him inside his jacket, and pulled him in hard. After a long moment she drew back to look at him. “It’s been a long three weeks.”

  “You two people know each other?” Rourke asked.

  “I’ve seen him around,” Jackie said. “Michael, you know this is nice of you.” She touched the side of his face. “You didn’t even take time to shave.”

  “Grab a glass, Mike, and pour yourself a jolt,” Rourke said. “No liquor served in the capitol.” He yelled up to the front cabin, “All secure back here, Gene. Move out.”

  The overhead rotor began to whirl. Shayne picked a shot-glass out of an open picnic basket. Settling down in a bucket seat, he opened his dispatch case and took out one of the bottles of Martell’s. With a full-throated roar, the ungainly craft lifted off the runway.

  “What did you bring a gun for?” Rourke demanded. “All we want you to do is testify about a piece of pending legislation. Nobody’s going to be shooting at you, as far as we know now.”

  Shayne grunted. “I didn’t unpack.” He filled the shot-glass with a steady hand and knocked it back. “I need a fast briefing, Tim. I saw the story in a Las Vegas paper, but it didn’t look serious. There’s been talk about legalizing gambling at every session since World War I. Let the gamblers come out of hiding so the state can take 12 percent of the action, and nobody else will have to pay any taxes.”

  Both Jackie and Rourke began to speak at once. The reporter waved his glass.

  “You tell him, baby. You’re in charge.”

  She swung around to face Shayne. “We’ve only got a few minutes, so to boil it down—this time they aren’t trying to open up the whole state, just Dade County-Miami and Miami Beach. And that was an inspiration, because of course the rest of the state wrote us off long ago. We’re beyond saving. The arguments haven’t changed. Why should gambling in a clean, well-lighted casino be any more immoral than betting on dogs and horses? We lose millions of dollars of tourist business every year to Nevada and the Caribbean islands. People are going to gamble whether or not it’s legal. Why shouldn’t we stop being hypocrites, take a percentage, and pay our schoolteachers a living wage?”

  “All sounds very familiar,” Shayne said. “At the last session they voted it down ten-to-one. What makes the difference this year, just the Dade County angle?”

  “A couple of other things,” Rourke said. “State lotteries are getting to be fairly respectable, and a lottery has a lower payoff than a roulette table. Lower than the numbers racket. Well, we shouldn’t moralize. The state has to take money from somebody, and if we don’t take it from rich northerners coming down to the Miami gaming-tables we might have to pass a state income tax, God forbid, and that’s why Judge Kendrick has come out for the bill.”

  “Kendrick,” Shayne repeated, surprised.

  “He didn’t exactly come out for it,” Jackie pointed out. “All he said—”

  “Now there you had a politician talking,” Rourke said. “He’s been carrying on about the immorality of gambling for the last thirty years. He was against pari-mutuel betting and night harness-racing. He’s fought every extension of racing dates. He couldn’t switch all the way around in one press conference. People might think he’d taken a bribe or something.”

  “I give him credit for a certain integrity,” she said stubbornly. “I still think that when he hears Mike’s testimony about the way legalized gambling works in Nevada—”

  “I agree it’s worth trying, but I really don’t expect him to leap to his feet and shout hallelujah. I’ve got a tear sheet of my story on his statement, Mike. Read it and see what you think. I’m supposed to have a good sense of smell, and behind all the double-talk I think I smell money.”

  “I just don’t believe it,” Jackie said.

  “A man can look honest without being honest,” Rourke said. “That’s one of the things they teach in the first year at law school.”

  Shayne scraped his thumbnail thoughtfully through the harsh stubble on his jaw. Judge Grover Kendrick had been cracking the whip in the Florida State Senate for as long as Shayne could remember. His home constituency, a sparsely settled county on the Alabama border, was so sleepy and secure that he hadn’t bothered to campaign for years. Returning to Tallahassee term after term, he had moved steadily upward in the conservative coalition, known to admirers and enemies alike as the Pork Chop Gang, and was now its acknowledged leader.

  “Of course he’s only one man,” Rourke continued. “One man has one vote. That’s what the Supreme Court tells us. But the bookies back home were giving fifty-to-one against the bill before Kendrick’s statement, and the price has now dropped to five-to-three.”

  “You couldn’t buy him for nickels,” Shayne observed. “Who’s putting up the money?”

  “Guess,” Rourke said. “Someone you know. One of the leading citizens of Miami Beach, the logical person to get the first casino license if the bill goes through. He has a hotel, good political connections, and friends who know how to run a dice table.”

  “Sam Rapp.”

  “That’s what common sense tells me,” Rourke said. “And by a great coincidence, Sam and his handsome girl friend happen to be in town at the moment.”

  “Sam Rapp’s here in person?”

  “Yeah, you’d think he’d stay out in the bushes and let somebody else pass out the cash, but not at all. He’s highly visible, a big two-dollar cigar in his mouth, buying people drinks. And Lib Patrick. She doesn’t exactly disappear into the wallpaper. She was in the senate gallery yesterday, wearing one of the lowest necklines some of these crackers had ever seen. They kept craning around to make sure. Not much business got done. My personal opinion is that she has an allover tan.”

  “I’ve heard that the Regency has been losing money,” Shayne said, “but Sam shouldn’t be doing his own lobbying. I thought he had more sense. What’s the status of the bill?”

  “Still in committee,” Rourke said, “but those guys have been jiggling at the end of the judge’s string for years. They’ll do what he says. If he says to vote it out they’ll vote it out. There’s the usual rush to adjourn. Tomorrow’s the big day. If Kendrick uses his full leverage and leans on the right people, the idea is that he can put it over. Not by much, by two or three vo
tes. The crusty old son of a bitch really has power.”

  “What about the opposition?”

  “It’s scattered and fairly silent,” Jackie told him. “Sam Rapp and his people have been making most of the noise. I didn’t have a chance to explain about the committee we’ve set up. To get all the bad news out of the way at once, it was Shell Maslow’s idea.”

  When Shayne looked at her, she said hurriedly, “I know what you think of him, Mike, that he’s far too ambitious and a little phoney. But at this stage in my so-called business career, I’m in no position to pick my clients.”

  “I can think of one or two you’ve turned down,” Shayne said.

  “True, and as a result I spend too much time at an uncluttered desk thinking about how I can pay the rent. I can stand Senator Sheldon Maslow. He makes me a little nervous, but I think he’s sincere.”

  Rourke made a rude noise.

  “He wants to be governor,” Jackie said. “There are worse things to want to be.”

  “He wants to be God,” Rourke said.

  “Tim, why do you always have to run people down and suspect their motives? Of course he wants publicity, all he can get, and he’s probably too obvious about it. And maybe there’s an element of calculation in his crime investigation, but what does it matter? That’s a traditional way to get ahead in politics. He came to me to suggest organizing a statewide campaign against the bill. I’m opposed to the idea of legalized gambling, and I hope it gets clobbered. If Sheldon Maslow can defeat a proposal backed by Judge Kendrick, it will be very good for Sheldon Maslow. Does that mean I should call the janitor and have him thrown out of my office?”

  Shayne patted her knee. “Calm down. What’s the arrangement? Is Maslow your client?”

  “Not exactly. I lined up a dozen names for a letterhead, and he guaranteed my phone bill and raised the money for a newspaper ad appealing for contributions. That brought in just about enough to pay expenses. Which is all right, because this is wonderful exposure for me, too. If we win I’ll get some of the credit. So be persuasive today, Mike.”

  The beat of the rotor dropped off abruptly and they began to descend. Rourke peered out the window at the domed capitol.

  “Here we are. What you ought to do, Jackie, is invest some more dough and hire Mike to find out how they got the Judge to make that statement. It’s the kind of thing he does very well.”

  Shayne filled his shot-glass with cognac, and after downing it, laid his dispatch case on his knees to put away the bottle.

  “We can talk about it at lunch. But it takes luck to prove a cash bribe. These people aren’t likely to be careless. They’re all pros.”

  Suddenly, about to touch down on the grass behind the capitol, the helicopter took off, as though the pilot had realized all at once that he was about to land in enemy-held territory.

  Rourke exclaimed, “What the hell’s going on?”

  Shayne leaned forward to look out. They were skimming past the dome, climbing. The big post office building fell away beneath them. Then they turned sharply to the south and began to come down.

  Rourke was out of his seat. “Gene, what are you blowing up there? We’re due at a hearing.”

  The craft tipped and he grabbed the back of his seat to keep his balance. A voice called, “We’re o.k. now. I thought we lost a wheel.”

  They were over a large shopping-center, settling rapidly. They bumped down hard in a half-empty parking lot. Rourke recovered his footing as the door to the front cabin was flung open. A mop-haired youth, wearing wraparound dark glasses and holding a .45-caliber Colt automatic, stepped through.

  Rourke’s jaw dropped. “Where’s Gene?”

  The boy chortled, showing a mouthful of bad teeth. “Tied up in the men’s room at the terminal. How’d you like that landing? Shake you up a bit?”

  “You don’t know what you’re doing, kid,” Rourke warned.

  The boy’s smile vanished and he made a short, deadly gesture with the .45. “After you, ladies and gentlemen. Abandon the goddamned aircraft. Mike Shayne, huh?” he sneered, looking at Shayne. “You make a nice target. Don’t give me an argument, because these service Colts have terrific stopping power, they tell me. I doubt if I’d miss.”

  Shayne still had his dispatch case open on his lap. He lined up the shot carefully, knowing that the .45 and the boy’s nervous system were both off safe. He waited for another gesture. When it came it was wider and more urgent, and Shayne fired through the lid of the dispatch case.

  The boy made a sound like a popped balloon. The Colt went spinning away.

  Shayne had aimed at the muscle of his arm, but the boy had begun to worry about the open dispatch case and anxiety had pulled him around. Shayne’s slug went into his chest, hurling him back against the wall.

  Shayne left his seat in a swift, fluid motion. One long stride took him to the door.

  A battered Volkswagen bus had pulled up alongside, its driver peering out warily from under the long bill of a baseball cap. He, too, was partly concealed behind a disfiguring pair of shades. A second man jumped out. He was dark and jowly, unshaven, with unkempt hair falling across his eyebrows. One hand was inside his flowered shirt.

  “We’ve got the jump on them, Mike,” Rourke said in an urgent whisper. “We can take them.”

  He had the boy’s Colt. Shayne gauged the situation and shook his head.

  “Give me the gun.”

  “Mike, come on. These are just bat boys. Let’s find out who—”

  “Don’t be dumb, Tim. You’re a newspaperman, not a hero.”

  After an instant’s hesitation Rourke put the Colt in Shayne’s outstretched hand. Shayne signaled and Rourke swung the door open.

  Beneath them, the man in the flowered shirt went into a fighter’s crouch. He checked his hand before twitching it out of his shirt. Even without the two guns, Shayne was an arresting figure in the doorway.

  “They won’t let us take them in,” Shayne remarked conversationally, still talking to Rourke, “but they know this is no place for a fire fight. So run along, boys, and try to be law-abiding from now on. It pays better.”

  The man in the open wet his lips and swallowed, his hand still inside his shirt. “If you hurt him—” he stammered, his voice surprisingly high, almost girlish.

  The other man snapped, “Ramon, stupid, get in. What do you want to be, dead?”

  Moving reluctantly, Ramon backed into the Volkswagen and it roared away across the parking lot toward the nearest exit. Shayne watched it go, the skin around his eyes crinkled in concentration.

  “I know that guy, the one in the loud shirt. The Cuban.”

  “From Miami?” Rourke said.

  “Tampa, I think,” Shayne said slowly. “Tampa or St. Pete. Are any of the Tampa people mixed up in this?”

  “You mean Boots Gregory and that crowd? Jesus, I hope not. Sam Rapp isn’t too bad, but if Gregory’s in town this thing could get hairy very fast.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Michael Shayne, leaning forward, stubbed out his cigarette. Every seat in the big air-conditioned chamber was taken and there were lines of standees. The aisles were blocked with TV equipment. Too many reporters were jammed in around the press table.

  The senators, behind a long curving desk above Shayne, were trying to seem unaware of the bright lights and the cameras. Judge Kendrick, the chairman, was so still he almost seemed to be asleep. He was a fine-looking man, with a small head and a crop of white hair. His face was seamed and tired. A small hearing-aid button gleamed in his ear. Occasionally he shot his lizard’s head forward to ask a barbed, well-phrased question. Now he wanted Shayne’s opinion about the kidnap attempt that had delayed his appearance at the hearing. How could Shayne be sure it had no connection with his recent assignment in Las Vegas?

  “Anything’s possible,” Shayne said easily. “But they didn’t seem too worried about me when I was out there. Up to a point, they cooperated. I didn’t find out anything that would get them into fed
eral trouble, and that’s the only kind that bothers them. If they’d wanted to kidnap me, they would have done it before I left.”

  “Then what’s your hypothesis, Mr. Shayne? That the proponents of this bill we have under consideration brought in a group of thugs to remove you before you could testify against it?”

  “That’s probably more or less what happened,” Shayne agreed. “It was a stupid move, but there are stupid people in every business. I’d like to correct you on one point. I’m not testifying against the bill. I haven’t read it. I’ve been asked to appear to answer questions about the way gambling casinos operate in the one state where they’re legal.”

  “Continue, Mr. Shayne.”

  Shayne had recently been hired for a large retainer by two minority members of the Gaming Control Board to investigate rumors about irregularities at several large Las Vegas hotel-casinos. The public, it was felt, would have more confidence in a report by an out-of-state investigator than in anything originating within Nevada. While the senators listened attentively, Shayne explained the principle of the house percentage. The casino operators took a small piece of every dollar, varying with the type of play, a cent and a half on dice, six cents on blackjack, six or seven cents on roulette. To a winner, a 6 percent deduction was trivial, but of course all the operator had to do was continue play through a succession of wagers, and without risking his own money he would end up with everything on the table. Then Shayne moved on to the theory of streaks. A player without capital is wiped out quickly by a streak of losses, while the house waits for the turn.

  For these reasons, a large-scale gambling operation can lose money only if the operators are forced to pay too highly for permission to operate. In Nevada, the gamblers avoid this hazard by being on the good side of the law. Still, being businessmen, they like to minimize their tax obligations, and before the evening’s winnings are counted, an undisclosed amount of cash is skimmed off the top, to be distributed among the owners. This is a federal offense. The Internal Revenue Service, using computers, can estimate the true profit levels of a legitimate operation. So the owners, to beat the computers, go illegitimate again, ringing an occasional shaved deck into the blackjack games, tightening the payoff screw on the slot machines, controlling the play at the roulette layouts.