Brett Halliday: Blue Murder

“Gretchen’s writing,” Tucker said. “A phone call right after you left. A man’s voice — you’ll hear it again in a minute. I don’t know how to describe it. Mocking. To look for an envelope underneath the mailboxes. This is the envelope. I’m afraid I’m not up to seeing it again. It was bad enough the first time. Press this button when you want to change slides. There’s a tape that came with it.”

He bent over a tape recorder and punched buttons.

“Good evening,” a man’s voice said, “whoever you are, wherever you are. The slides you are about to look at are not stills. They have been made from thirty-five-millimeter frames, taken from a four-reel Triple-X-rated sex comedy entitled Domestic Relations, produced by Armand Baruch for Warehouse Productions, soon to go into national release. The locale of our story is the nation’s capital, Washington, D.C., generally considered a straight place, so the scenes we are about to show you may raise a few eyebrows. What do Supreme Court Justices wear under those black robes, for example? Not a stitch! This is only one of the many revelations in Domestic Relations. Women outnumber men two to one in that city, and competition is severe for the available supply. The old-fashioned positions and combinations aren’t good enough. The men call the shots. You never knew politics was like this. A penetrating picture! Your customers will come again and again. Turn out the lights now and enjoy yourself. Our salesmen will contact you.”

“Their salesmen will contact me,” Tucker said bitterly from the doorway. “That’s one thing of which I am reasonably sure.”

He killed the lights and Shayne turned on the projector. The tray revolved, and the white square of light on the wall was replaced by a color slide of a naked blonde wearing enormous airman’s glasses, tinted amber. She was smiling pleasantly.

“Reading for the blind,” Tucker remarked. “The Warehouse is a long way from Anna Karenina. I’ll leave you.”

Shayne worked the switch and the tray advanced. The blonde kept her glasses on. The next three slides showed her in bed with four men, two of them black.

Above the hum from the projector fan, he heard Tucker prowling restlessly in the next room. A second woman joined the group. One of the men in the shot was plump and bald, which was unusual in the fantasy world of this kind of film.

He worked on through the tray. The story line was unclear, but skin-flick audiences don’t expect much in the way of a story. Except in one shot, the performers were unclothed. The exception showed a white-haired man, wearing the same kind of broad-brimmed planter’s hat affected by Nick Tucker when he was out campaigning. The actor even looked a little like Tucker, with the same kind of scar.

Shayne held this slide on for a moment, then turned off the projector. The congressman came in bringing his own drink and a glass and the cognac bottle for Shayne.

“Whose voice was that on the tape?” Shayne asked.

“I expect Baruch’s. The Warehouse is a one-man operation.”

Shayne accepted the bottle, and poured. “Do you think there really is a film?”

“What do you mean?”

“If it’s just a matter of blackmail, all they’d have to do is stage those shots and threaten to make a film unless you pay up.”

“I see.” He glanced at the wall, where the images had been, and ripped off his necktie, as though it choked him even with the knot loose. “Can they be stopped, Shayne? Do you think it’s possible to stop them?”

Shayne considered before answering. “They’ll be in touch, one way or another. She must know approximately how much money you can raise.”

“Unless she’s gone into psychosis. I live on my salary. I could get a second mortgage on this place. There are people I could ask. Seventy-five thousand would be an outside figure, and I couldn’t do that on twenty-four hours’ notice. And would they take seventy-five if they could make that much by releasing the damn thing? A congressman’s wife! The ghouls would pack the theaters.”

“Get an injunction.”

“With the Supreme Court we have now? No way.”

“Then it may not be money blackmail. Merely a warning — this picture is on the way, so don’t run for governor.”

“I’ll run, and she knows it. I won’t be intimidated by these… He bit down hard. “These…” He stopped again. “It strikes me you’re being pretty damn cool! They weren’t faking those shots. Those men were inside her! You wanted to know if she hates me. There can’t be any doubt now, can there? One of the things she was doing in front of that camera, with strangers — that gross little man, my God, fantastic — the oral sex — fellatio or whatever the hell is the name of it — she never did that with me. Never. She’s sending me a message, you see, to show that she won’t be satisfied with making my life just a little bit difficult. She wants to wreck me, once and for all. Shayne, get that film for me, I don’t care how, and I’ll pay you fifteen thousand dollars.”

“I’ll give you some advice for less. There’s no rule of thumb with blackmailers. Sometimes the best thing to do is pay. But you have to know that you’re dealing with responsible people, and your wife doesn’t fit that category, by your description. Everybody has too much emotion tied up in this. You want to put them out of business, they want to put you out of business. Let’s find out what their terms are. Then we’ll set up a meeting and have the cops ready. There haven’t been many blackmail prosecutions lately, but the laws are still on the books.”

“And she’ll accomplish what she wants, drive me out of politics. ‘Wife of Anti-Smut Crusader Makes Blue Film.’ Shayne, I’ve been reading about your exploits for years. I know you want to put Capp in jail—”

“The problem is that even if I could manage to get the negative, we still wouldn’t know how many prints were made. They’d keep at least one to make sure you call off the Washington hearings and pay the seventy-five thousand, or whatever the price is going to be. This is hot enough so you couldn’t expect the lid to stay on indefinitely.”

Tucker ran his fingers through his hair. “I’ve been through crises before. It always turned out that if I thought long enough and hard enough, I found a way out. But I can’t get my brain to work. It’s so totally evil. To take a sick woman, with a self-image of zero, and degrade her to the point where she could…”

This was a husband’s reaction, but it had seemed to Shayne, on the evidence of the slides, much more likely that the woman had been the instigator. She had shown no signs of distraction or guilty excitement and had seemed to be enjoying herself.

Tucker recalled abruptly that he was an important personage, a member of the U.S. Congress, possibly a governor, possibly a senator, perhaps even, if events broke in a certain way, something more. His chin came up.

“I’ll change the deal. A flat five, with fifteen more if you get the negative and all the prints. If that turns out to be impossible, I’ll follow your suggestion, bait a trap for them and hope we can clap the whole filthy crew into jail, not excluding my depraved wife. I can give you a lead into the Warehouse. My research staff has done a job on these people. We want to know what answers we’re likely to get before we ask the questions. We talked to a girl who’s worked in the films, Lib something. Last names don’t get used much in that world. She’s the one who told us about Frankie Capp’s loans.”

“How much did you pay her?”

“Three hundred, I think. You’ll have to be careful not to be outbid, because she’s a mercenary creature. Is it worth a try?”