Lady, Be Bad

by Brett Halliday

  Shayne aimed the flashlight in another direction. “Now hold your hands out to the side. Straight out. Further than that, and hold still. I’m going to search you.”

  “Search me!” she said indignantly. “I haven’t got one stitch on except this sweatshirt.”

  Sam rumbled a warning behind Shayne.

  Shayne said sharply without turning, “Don’t try anything, Sam. And Lib, for God’s sake stop being coy. We’re all over voting age. I’ll just call your attention to this Cadillac steering wheel. I’ve already knocked out one set of teeth with it, and I’m ready to knock out two more. Are you listening, damn you?”

  “Yes,” Lib said.

  “Sam?”

  “Yeah.”

  “O.k. I still don’t know what the hell you people think you’re doing. Maybe you’re imbeciles—maybe. You laid fifteen thousand on the line to put me out of circulation till tomorrow. I know I wasn’t trying to corrupt Grover. But unless I can fill in a few blank places on the map, I think they may be able to stick me with it. That’s a three-to-ten year jolt.”

  “The charges will be dropped tomorrow morning as soon as the senate votes,” Lib assured him.

  “You don’t know the law, baby. The complainant can’t drop the charges. All you can do is refuse to appear. Boyer saw me offering the money. He heard me working toward a top price of fifty thousand, and because of that smash in the mouth he won’t be feeling like giving me any breaks.”

  Again her arms began to drop. He lifted the steering wheel.

  “Lib.”

  “Yes, Mike,” she said in a hurry.

  “I’m checking a theory. There’s no use buying votes unless you can make sure you’re getting what you pay for. Maybe you threw this party to collect blackmail on your guests, but that’s the dirty way to do it. A series of statements on tape would be just as good.”

  “Mike, we’d implicate ourselves.”

  “You’d put them around privately, so no other lobbyist would trust the same people again. You and Grover were having a serious talk tonight in a locked bedroom. I searched the room after you left and I didn’t find anything.”

  She said suddenly, “So that’s why you—”

  “Sure,” Shayne said when she stopped. “That’s why I gave you the alcohol rub, without the alcohol. Don’t worry about it, Sam. She walked out before I got to any of the interesting places.”

  He reached for the sweatshirt. She moved back.

  “You’re right, Mike. I’ll give it to you.”

  “I don’t want it to end up in the lake. I’ve gone to too much trouble.”

  Letting the steering wheel dangle, he lifted her sweatshirt and found a long cylindrical recorder taped beneath her breasts.

  She shivered away. “Damn you, will you hurry? I’m embarrassed.”

  She winced as he freed the recorder. He glanced at it briefly and dropped it into his pocket.

  “Japanese, no doubt. What will they think of next? Now we’ll talk about Senator Maslow.”

  He stepped out of the way so they could look at each other, and saw her eyebrows come down warningly.

  “Don’t try any cops’ tricks, Mike,” she said quietly. “How did it happen?”

  “He was in a bedroom closet. There were two holes bored in the door and he had an infra-red flashbulb in his pocket. I didn’t find a camera. The way it looked, or the way it was meant to look, he was taking pictures as people went in and out. If the pictures were lurid enough he could use them as ammunition. A monotonous way to spend an evening, and he had a bottle of bourbon to keep him company. He was asleep when I saw him. I locked the door and took the key with me. Then the fire broke out. I was handcuffed to a steering wheel. I didn’t get there in time.”

  “He died in the fire?”

  “Apparently. But if we can find out who started the fire, if it turns out to be somebody who had a motive for killing Maslow and knew he was unconscious in a locked room, we can get a conviction for manslaughter. That’s my ambition right now.”

  “How can you prove who started the fire? Everybody was high as a kite, walking around with candles—”

  “I didn’t say it would be easy.”

  She gave Sam a quick look as he started to speak. “We’d better start thinking in terms of a lawyer.”

  “If you want to do it that way,” Shayne said. “He’ll tell you about the law on conspiracy. If you’ve got a common purpose they can get you whether or not you struck the match yourself.”

  “Hand me my pants, Mike.”

  “If you have anything to say now would be a good time to say it, while I’m still moving around.”

  “I’d say the conversation is over, wouldn’t you, Sam?”

  “Just about,” Sam said. He hesitated. “Mike, I wish you’d go someplace, it would be better for everybody, yourself included, but I know how you operate. Just the same, don’t let this bribery business with Grover and the cop weigh too much—I’ve got friends, I’ll straighten it out in the morning.”

  “By making a statement that you set it up?”

  “No-o. It was all a misunderstanding. You know. Grover can say it was his money, he was trying to hire you away.”

  Shayne shook his head. “They’ll still have me for assaulting a police officer. They like to get convictions on that.” He went to the cabin and started the engine. Lib and Sam conferred in low voices while Shayne came about. He looked back once while he headed for the opposite shore, and saw her getting into her wet underclothes.

  The fire was still burning strongly, but without the wildness it had had at first. Shayne was angling to the left, aiming at a spot a quarter mile from the burning building and the people around it.

  “How are you going to work this?” Lib said from the doorway.

  “I’m going to let you walk. Then I have to get rid of this steering wheel. After that I’ll need a fifteen-minute start. Right about here should do it.”

  The motor idling, he drifted in toward a public boat-landing, a wooden ramp and a shack selling bait and soft drinks. It appeared deserted.

  “You can follow the shore, or take the driveway out to the road, depending on how embarrassed you are about your costume.” He glanced at her. “You look pretty good, as a matter of fact.”

  Her hand went to her hair. “I do not.”

  “I don’t think it’s over your head here.”

  “Mike, you mean it, don’t you?”

  “I mean it.”

  She drew a deep breath and slipping over the side, lowered herself into the water. It rose as high as her waist.

  “Mud,” she said. “Squishy and probably full of broken glass. Coming, Sam?”

  Sam gave a snort of laughter. He slid awkwardly into the water.

  “However it works out, Mike, things are usually interesting when you’re around.”

  “I don’t think it’s so damn funny,” Lib said grimly. “If I cut an artery, Mike, I’m going to collect as much blood from you as I lose.”

  Shayne swung the flashlight around and lit their way to shore. He left them arguing in front of the bait shack.

  CHAPTER 10

  Michael Shayne, looking down from the Miami News helicopter, saw the lights of the little city of Leesville, county seat of Jackson County, represented in the Florida Senate for the last thirty years by Judge Grover Kendrick. The pilot set the craft down nicely in the parking lot behind the courthouse.

  Having called Kendrick before leaving Tallahassee, Shayne was expected. As he stepped out he was met by a 250-pounder with the unmistakable air of a small-town deputy sheriff. He was an outdoorsman, but that didn’t mean that he got much exercise. He was wearing a stained felt hat and a wrinkled summer suit, bulging in the spot where he would be expected to carry a gun.

  He looked Shayne over elaborately, screwing up his little elephants’ eyes. “Mike Shayne—we’re flattered.”

  He led the way to a side entrance in the ornate marble building, coming down too hard on his heels, t
he walk of a whiskey-drinker. Inside, the air had a characteristic courthouse taste, as though it had been in and out of too many lungs. Crossing a lobby lit by a single naked bulb, they passed underneath a display of bullet-torn regimental flags from the losing side in the Civil War, and entered an office.

  Judge Kendrick was sitting behind the receptionist’s desk, his carved cane lying in front of him. One gnarled fist was wrapped around a paper cup. The men in the room—there were four or five—averaged fifty pounds apiece overweight. The air was heavy with cigar smoke and male companionship.

  They all looked at Shayne as though they considered him a threat to their standard of living and their way of life.

  “This here’s Mike Shayne,” the deputy said unnecessarily. “All the way from Miami.”

  Kendrick broke the silence that followed by coming to his feet and stretching out a hand. “Yes, I met Shayne this morning at the capitol. I didn’t expect to see you again so soon, but it’s a pleasure and an honor. Let me introduce you around.”

  The man who had guided Shayne in from the helicopter was, in fact, a deputy sheriff, named Grady Turner. Next Shayne shook hands with the sheriff. He had the same look around the chops and the same overflowing belly, but he had had a decade longer to ripen. Of the others, one was called “Commissioner,” another “Doc.” They all had chilling smiles and firm handshakes. They looked Shayne in the eye when they shook hands, obviously sincere about hoping he would prove to be a friend so they wouldn’t be called upon to stomp him.

  “You boys are going to have to excuse us,” Kendrick told the gathering. “Can’t keep a helicopter waiting.”

  He insisted that Shayne precede him, and Grady Turner closed the door behind them. They were in the judge’s own office, a comfortable room furnished with guns and law books, with a large inscribed color photograph of the most recent Democratic president.

  The judge stumped to a file and took out a quart mason-jar filled with colorless liquid. There was a burst of hearty male laughter from the outer office, causing a shadow of annoyance to cross his face.

  “Let you have a taste of something special,” he said. “Jackson County’s finest export product. Some little old boys made it in the brush up along the Alabama line, but they never applied for a United States revenue permit so you know we had to confiscate it.”

  He broke out two paper cups and filled them both, handing one to Shayne. Sitting down behind his big desk, he motioned Shayne to a leather chair facing him.

  “Only thing wrong with it, you better drink it fast. Or the wax on the inside of the cup is going to melt on you.”

  Shayne emptied his cup in one long swallow.

  “It’s smooth,” he agreed. “I don’t want to keep you up any longer than I have to, so—”

  “Let me break in briefly. You said you have something for me to hear, and I’ll gladly listen. First let me say a word about your presentation before the committee this morning. Life would be easier if all our witnesses were as succinct. You’re a persuasive arguer. In point of fact, you came close to convincing me.”

  “You must have a pretty good idea what I have in my pocket.”

  Kendrick lighted a cigar with a kitchen match. “Some proof of lobbying activities on the part of proponents of the bill, I expect. I’m not still wet behind the ears. I’ve spent many a long year ambulating around the corridors of the capitol, observing the interaction of politics and human nature. If this bill passes tomorrow, certain citizens of Dade County stand to benefit enormously, and they can be expected to bend every effort to assure a favorable outcome. Being the kind of people they are, their methods of advocacy may not be gentlemanly or even entirely legal. This is one of the innumerable factors we are obliged to consider. To quote from your testimony, ‘You have to remember these people are crooks.’ Words to that effect. Should we permit such people to solve the state’s financial problems? That is part of the quandary. Did you read the statement I put out yesterday?”

  “I’ve been told about it.”

  “I tried to pose the questions objectively, without the emotionalism that always seems to force its way in when legalized gambling is mentioned. The tourist interests are for this bill. My own views on the subject of skinning the hapless tourist happen to be somewhat reactionary, but each year tourism contributes more and more, percentage-wise, to Florida’s economic well-being. The old ways are passing. Our state employees want to be paid more money. Welfare costs are rising. Roads, mental hospitals. Do you realize the state budget has tripled in two years? Has tripled? And yet, if we lay an income tax, an inheritance tax, if we increase the already heavy burden on the land and on industry, we discourage new investment and tip the balance even more in the direction of that perpetual carnival you’re running down at your end of the state.”

  His cigar was drawing well. He rotated it carefully.

  “But you know all the arguments, pro and con, as well as I do, if not better. I almost succeeded in convincing myself that with care and watchfulness we could quarantine ourselves against what would be happening across the Dade County line. And then you came along, with your ‘you have to remember these people are crooks.’ Well.”

  “What’s this leading up to? Have you decided to switch back?”

  Kendrick permitted himself a tight smile. “Read my statement. Those words were chosen carefully. They meant no more and no less than they said. I came back to Jackson County tonight to take the advice and counsel of some old friends. Up here at the end of the world we look at things differently than you do in the cities.”

  “And what’s the consensus?”

  Kendrick drew on his cigar carefully. “The consensus hasn’t yet formed. They see the dilemma as well as I do. They’ll be hit by the new taxes. However, this is a godfearing community on the whole, and looked at purely as a political matter, as a question of votes—”

  Shayne cut in. “Listen to the tape first. It won’t give me as much satisfaction if you’ve already changed your mind.” He took out a flat tape recorder and set it on the desk beside the jar of whiskey. “I also think you had another reason for coming up here tonight—so you’d have a few witnesses to your whereabouts if you have to dump your son.”

  Kendrick’s expression solidified. “Explain that, please.”

  “In a moment. I did a lot of chasing around to get my hands on this, and I want to get the right effect. You may not know a lady named Lib Patrick. I took a little Japanese recorder off her about an hour ago. She had it inside her bra—this is hazardous duty. It was about as big as a small pencil. Transistorized, powered by nine-volt batteries, voice-actuated, with three reels of tape. A beauty. I didn’t want anything to happen to it, so I tied it into another recorder and retaped it. I think I can find the part you’ll be interested in.”

  Setting the controls in playback position, he pressed the fast-wind button. The recorder produced a gabble of animal noises. When he slowed it down, Grover Kendrick was speaking.

  GROVER’S VOICE: —on the vote.

  LIB’S VOICE: Never mind. So long as he definitely took the forty thousand.

  GROVER: (with a laugh): I had to twist his arm. I never thought it would be so hard to give away money. All those pretty packages of hundred dollar bills.

  LIB: That’s a weight off my mind. At just about the last possible minute! And we had to plan around him. I don’t like to think about the next time I wash my hair. I know I’ve turned gray in the last week.

  GROVER: Then you’ll be even more gorgeous than you are now. This has been a classy operation. No matter what happens—

  LIB: It’s going to work. We can’t lose.

  GROVER: That’s right, sweetheart, and what do we want to do to celebrate?

  LIB: Not yet. Don’t say things like that, I’m superstitious. I have to ask about a couple of other people. Matt McGranahan is being very cagey, for some reason. How high do you think we have to go?

  GROVER: How much has he had from you so far?

&nb
sp; LIB: Ten.

  GROVER: That’s enough, for God’s sake. He only has his one vote. As far as his influence goes, it’s zero.

  LIB (doubtfully): I’m afraid they’re trying to outbid us. I would have said we had Matt pinned, but with Mike Shayne in the picture I’m beginning to worry. Shayne has a well-deserved reputation for getting results. We haven’t heard from him all day, and maybe he’s gone home. I hope. He’s no blue-nose about gambling, like some of these people. I wish I’d thought of hiring Jackie Wales. It never occurred to me.

  GROVER: If you don’t mind a suggestion, what you need with McGranahan is leverage. He’s a married man. I thought that was why some of these girls—

  LIB (lightly): Darling, leave that part to us. I’ve got a very far-out idea I’d like your opinion on. What do you think Sheldon Maslow would say to a money offer?

  GROVER: Are we thinking about the same Sheldon Maslow?

  LIB: I know it sounds impossible, but is it really? The race for governor is wide open. If he could get the nomination he could probably win. But getting the nomination will cost money, and everybody tells me he doesn’t have it.

  GROVER: Do you have anything to go on? It sounds so—

  LIB: Nothing but a look he gave me in a restaurant last night. I went to the ladies room and he made a point of being where he could see me on my way back.

  GROVER: Well, you said it was far-out. You couldn’t get him for ten thousand.

  LIB (ruefully): As I’m well aware. And the petty-cash box is nearly empty.

  Shayne pressed a button, freezing the tape. “That gives you the idea. There are three other male voices besides Grover’s. The subject is the same each time—votes and money.”

  “As a matter of curiosity,” Kendrick said, “how much did those votes cost her?”

  “The exact sums weren’t mentioned. Does it matter?”

  “Perhaps not. But the senate is my stamping ground—I like to keep up with what’s going on there. Now I presume you’re going to tell me what I must do to prevent you from calling the press together to hand out a transcript of that conversation.”