Brett Halliday - Million Dollar Handle

Then they turned off the lights and began the wait. Fifteen minutes later, the phone tinkled a warning. “All right?” Shayne said quietly.

“Ready. You make the first move.”

Shayne had one end of the rope doubled around his hand and elbow. He braced himself for the pull. He was listening intently, but he couldn’t hear Frieda breathing.

A heel scuffed on the cork floor of the corridor. The door handle turned, and a figure entered.

“Mike?” a man’s voice said cautiously. “Asleep?” Shayne was already in motion. The noose tightened around the man’s leg, and Shayne’s weight jerked him off his feet. Frieda slammed the door and stepped out with her gun. The light flashed on.

It was Tim Rourke. Only his shoulder blades were still on the floor; everything else was airborne.

“Now we know it works,” Shayne said.

He came forward, and Rourke’s legs returned to the floor.

“What the hell?” he said weakly when he had his breath back. “I guess I was lucky it wasn’t a gun trap.”

“Let’s get that rope off,” Frieda said. “We’re expecting somebody.”

Rourke loosened the loop. “Guinea pig-that’s what friends are for. Christ, I thought the building collapsed.”

He came jerkily to his feet. He was a tall, bony figure whose long arms and legs often seemed to be following programs of their own.

“I see you’re walking around, Mike,” he said. “That can’t be too good for you after… No, I get it, I get it. Dawn breaks in the East. That diagnosis was for the bad guys. You’re really in good health.”

“More or less.”

“Can I stay and watch? I haven’t had a decent eyewitness story in months.”

“If you sit still and keep quiet.”

“I can sit still. I don’t know about quiet. I’ve got three thousand questions, and they’re fermenting. Who are we waiting for?”

“I don’t know,” Shayne said shortly.

“Mike, did you knock against something?” Frieda said.

“Yeah. Tim, get the end of the rope. You can help pull.”

“I brought you a bottle, but I see you’ve already got one. Can I take a drink once in a while?”

“Quietly.”

After they reset the snare, Rourke had trouble settling down. His little movements made Shayne aware that time was passing, and that the real dawn would soon be breaking. He heard the bottle being opened, and Rourke breathing out after drinking. There was enough light from outside for Shayne to see that he was being offered the bottle. He drank and handed it back.

Rourke continued to fidget. Shayne was about to tell him to wait somewhere else when he heard a faint noise in the corridor. This time there had been no telephone warning. Shayne’s grip tightened.

The door opened very fast. As Shayne went backward he caught a glimpse of a slender figure wearing hospital whites. A gold hoop swung from one ear.

The noose tightened, and he heard a head hit the floor. The light came on.

“Watch it,” Shayne told Frieda as she advanced. “That’s close enough. He has a knife.”

Cognac was gurgling out of the open bottle. Rourke, nearly all the way down, was holding the rope desperately with both hands.

“Mike, get the bottle.”

Shayne turned the bottle right side up. “You got him. Just hang on.”

“That’s not so-easy.”

At the opposite end of the line, Pedro was thrashing wildly. He was completely off the floor, suspended by one ankle. Each convulsive movement jerked Rourke up and down. With Frieda’s help, Shayne lashed the rope to the bed. Then he stepped in close and kicked their prisoner in the neck. The agitated movements stopped and the knife clattered down.

“Is that the same man?” Frieda asked.

“Yeah. The guns were to make me stand still so he could use the knife. Now it’s time to break some news. Tim, pay attention.”

Rourke was jacking himself erect, fingering his spine. “That’s the first real exercise I’ve had in months. Like hooking into a goddamn marlin.”

“Shut up, Tim,” Frieda said. “Mike has something to tell us.”

“I’m now denying that I took any illegal payments from Max Geary,” Shayne said.

Rourke’s head came forward. “What do you mean, what do you mean? If they weren’t illegal, what were they?”

“I never received them. Now let’s sit down and see if we can make any sense out of this.”

Frieda said, “What do we do with this one, leave him hanging?”

Pedro was quieter, the white orderly’s shirt falling around his shoulders. His face was already noticeably darker. His breath came in gasps.

“He can listen. Pray if you want to, Pete, but not out loud. You’re in trouble, you know that.”

Shayne shifted the pillows to the head of the bed. Rourke prowled around, keeping well away from the dangling man, but unable to hold still.

“Mike, say that again. Eighty thousand bucks. Two, three thousand every month. Are you telling us that book was a fake?”

“You saw it. What did you think?”

“We didn’t get too good a look. He just flashed it and riffled the pages. But I want to tell you, if you weren’t taking, you’re the exception. The union guy, that was real cash and I can prove it. Wanamaker, on the paper. That’s what I came over to tell you. Officially he’s still claiming those gifts were made out of pure friendship, but I got the story at dinner. How about that beating in the parking lot outside the stadium? You must have had some good reason for that.”

“I assume it happened,” Shayne said, “but I didn’t do it. Either the nurse is lying or Geary lied to the nurse. Painter saw a three-hundred-dollar check with the right date on it, and that makes it look as though Geary planted the story to cover the person who actually gave him the beating. But it wouldn’t mean anything much unless he was killed later. Then I’d look like the killer. But why? I had nothing against the man.”

“Why in God’s name didn’t you say so this morning?” Rourke demanded.

“I knew you wouldn’t believe me. What did you think, Frieda?”

She said quietly, “I thought you were paid the money, but not for any of the obvious reasons. I knew you’d tell me when you got around to it.”

“There’s a Pakistani doctor here. He’s the only one I’ve run into who didn’t automatically assume I was guilty. And I haven’t figured that out yet, because he doesn’t know me nearly as well as you guys.”

“If I’d known this, I might have written a different lead,” Rourke said. “I still don’t see why you didn’t-”

“All you could say was that Mike Shayne was yelling foul, like everybody else. Be honest, Tim. I’ve given you a flat denial. Do you believe me right now?”

Rourke reached for the cognac. “No, goddamn it. I think you’re trying to fake me. Not for the first time, either. I think you’ve got some surprise up your sleeve. You want me to put a slant on tomorrow’s story so it’ll have a certain effect on certain people unknown to me. I’m not complaining-what good would it do me? I know your pattern. I get to hear about it after everything’s all buttoned up.”

“I’m not that much of a mastermind,” Shayne said dryly. “I admit I wanted to get an effect with your piece today. I wanted people to think, ‘Hey, Tim Rourke, he’s been flacking for Shayne for years, and even Rourke thinks that this time his old buddy has been caught with his hand in the jam.’”

“I may be a little slow, but why would you want that?”

“Use some imagination. Imagine that when Painter sprang this on me, the whole thing was a total surprise. Imagine that I can’t explain it any more than you can. I tried telling Painter, but there was my name on the list, in Geary’s writing, in black and white. All right. There’s only one way to disprove that kind of thing, and that’s from inside. Obviously the real takers would talk more freely to a co-conspirator than to a detective trying to find out where the money really went. So I went out to the track tonight. I walked around, trying to look like the man Max Geary was paying three thousand a month for something or other, surely discreditable. Nobody seemed to find it hard to believe. It was a funny business-I tried every remark two ways before I said it. And I didn’t get much. The state tax guy, Liebler-and his name isn’t even on the list-was afraid I was going to take over and cut everybody else out. Linda Geary, the daughter, told me to behave or she’d tell everybody what I did for the money. That was a hard one to handle. I asked her to tell me, because I wanted to know myself, and then she was the one who refused to answer.”