Brett Halliday: Blue Murder

“We can call in the lawyers and draw up a contract. That might take a little too much time.”

Baruch gnawed at a fingernail, which was already as short as he could get it.

“All right,” he said finally. “I’ll be your dog. I’ll lollop around with my tongue out, and maybe I’ll be so lovable you’ll throw me my ball. I couldn’t be in worse shape than I am now, could I?”

Shayne pulled out a chair. Baruch, more nervous, returned to his perch on the editing table.

“No smoking in here,” he said when Shayne took out cigarettes. “An age-old tradition. You said to take it from when Gretchen walked in. She walked in with Capp. We were shooting a five-person tangle. We had the big Mitchell on a dolly, for the master. Two hand-held Arries for the tight shots. The lighting guy, the sound guy. A makeup chick squirting glycerine on anything that looked dry. I mean, it was a busy scene. Gretchen was interested, but not too much so — about right, I’d say. Then while everybody was cooling out she laid the idea on me. And it looked good, surefire.”

“How did she seem?”

“I don’t run into many stable women, so how would I know?”

“Was she sleeping with Capp?”

“With Frankie ? Good God, no. Those are two different species of people. I mean, strange things happen, but he would have talked about it if he was getting any. He’s always telling people how many times he can come in one night. You called him my partner — partners we aren’t. He needs me, I need him. Forget about eyewitnesses, I wouldn’t abduct anybody out of a motel with that jerk. That’s one of the last things I’d do. And why should I abduct Gretchen? She’s been to my place, we balled a few times. Nice.”

He swung down from the table. “No, I can’t do it this way. Look at this film first. It’s only a couple of hundred feet. Do you have a time for that so-called abduction?”

“Seven fifty a.m.”

“Now how can that be? I met her here at eight forty-five. If somebody kidnapped her an hour earlier, she got over it in a hurry. She was high on something, I’d say, but she looked great, just out of the shower. I’ll show you how to work this thing. An imbecile could do it, and they often do.”

Shayne took the editor’s chair, and Baruch, standing behind him, showed him the manual controls.

“The processing people did a rush job and the quality’s terrible. Some of that is my fault. The angle was lousy, as you’ll see.”

Blurred images, meanwhile, were running backward across a screen the size of a piece of typewriter paper. The film itself, behind the screen, was moving from a reel on one side of the table to the plastic core on which it had been wound at the lab. Baruch punched a button, and the film began to wind back at normal speed.

Shayne saw a thin woman with long blonde hair, in slacks and a striped sweater, walking away from the camera. She was in a parking lot somewhere, marked off with diagonal hash marks. He froze on a frame in which she began to turn her head. He backed off and came forward again, a frame at a time. She was wearing enormous sunglasses. For an instant, from behind, he had thought she was Maureen Neal. She had the same thighbones and flat haunches. But the resemblance disappeared as she turned.

“Who is this? Where was it taken?”

“The exposure’s wrong by a couple of stops. It gets better in a minute. That’s the lady we’re talking about. Gretchen Tucker. It’s at a shopping center downtown, off Flagler. I’ve got this van with a breakaway panel. We use it for crowd shots, exteriors. People don’t know we’re shooting so they don’t look at the camera. She’s meeting her husband here. The date was for nine thirty, but he was early, by a couple of minutes. Most of the stores don’t open till ten, that’s why there aren’t many cars.”

“What’s she going to do, sell him the film?”

“They’re going to talk about it. The film’s in a locker at the bus depot, and if he brought the right amount of cash and promises, she’s going to give him the key. Run it, run it.”

“Did he call her, or did she call him?”

“She called him. I squeezed into the booth with her so I could listen, because after last night I decided to play it cool. He already knew that the meeting was going to be at this shopping center. We put that in when we sent him the slides. We left the time open so he wouldn’t have a chance to arrange anything.”

“How much money were you asking?”

“Sixty thousand. Plus his agreement to get out of politics, all the way out. To resign from Congress and not run for anything.”

“How much of the sixty was going to be yours?”

“All but ten. She put up ten for production, and she wanted that back. And I put up ten. I didn’t spend ten, but I owe ten. That would give me forty thousand profit. With forty thousand in front money I can raise three hundred, which automatically puts me in a different category. And if he didn’t pay it, or if he couldn’t pay it, I could exhibit the picture and come back with fifty at least. So I thought there was no way I could lose. And here I am, as usual.”

Shayne restarted the film. The woman continued to walk away, moving from one aisle to the next by crossing between cars. Nicholas Tucker was waiting beside an open convertible, in bright sunlight. Even from that distance, he was easily recognizable by his wide-brimmed hat and white suit.

“He came past later and I got a shot of his tag,” Baruch said. “Now they’re going to talk for a minute.”

The woman halted several feet from the man, who remained beside his car. She was clutching a purse. After only a moment, they were arguing. She started to turn, and the man stepped toward her. A passing car blocked them for a moment.

“Right here it happens.”

Reaching past Shayne, Baruch slowed the film to quarter speed. The car moved on, and the two figures were seen entering the convertible. The man’s hat had fallen off, and his hair was like a beacon. He pushed her hard. She fell away to the opposite side of the seat.

Baruch backed the film off and came into the action again, stopping at frames he wanted to look at more closely.

“This one. I think he slugged her with something. I didn’t react too fast. I was thinking about getting the shot. I’ve been doing that all my working life, and it’s an instinct with me. I was supposed to be bodyguarding her, and I was supposed to be filming the action so we’d have a record in case anything happened. Well, hell! I couldn’t do both at the same time.”

The top of the convertible folded out of the boot and came down. The car was already moving toward the camera, traveling fast. The license plate showed clearly. Then the image disappeared in a blaze of light. Shayne ran the last minute again, in slow motion.

“I couldn’t have caught him,” Baruch said. “He’s really peeling out there. I turned my goddamn ankle getting up in front, which didn’t help a hell of a lot. By the time I got out on Flagler, he was on his way.”

“All right. What do you think happened?”

Forgetting his own rule, Baruch took out a cigarette and lit it. “Somehow the son of a bitch got hold of the film, so he didn’t think he had any worries. That’s an angry man on that film. He knows that when she said she wanted him out of public life, she really meant it. If this didn’t work, she’d try something else. She doesn’t give much of a damn about anything, and that’s impressive.”

Shayne ran the film back to the frame he had looked at before. “Are you sure this woman is Gretchen Tucker?”

The cigarette spun out of Baruch’s hand. “What are you doing, trying to loosen my hold on reality? Of course it’s Gretchen Tucker.”