Brett Halliday - Million Dollar Handle

“That machine is working,” Shayne said, and called the next.

Again the figures jumped. Shayne worked down the row. Coming to the first window in the $10 win series, he called for another ten tickets. Nothing changed on the board.

“That may be the one we’re looking for,” Shayne said. “Seller, is your machine producing tickets?” On the monitor, the seller gave an affirmative wave. “Now try ten more.”

Again, no change. The crowd murmured.

“You’re getting the idea,” Shayne said. “Two hundred dollars just came in that window. Twenty tickets went out. But nothing registered on the board. Ordinarily, with all the windows working at once, you’d never see it. It’s a simple scheme. Any pari-mutuel track can work it. Geary did the wiring when the track was renovated. All he had to do was cut into the line from that one ten-dollar window to the main circuit, and install an on-off switch. The switch could be anywhere in the building, built into an ordinary light switch, a TV set, a telephone. Pick up that telephone, and one ten-dollar window would cut out of the pool totals. The money would keep coming in, the tickets would keep going out, but as long as the switch was off, none of the transactions would be included in the total handle. He was careful about it. I’ve heard the figure six thousand a night. The window machines, individually, would all tally. As soon as the sellers checked their receipts against their own machine totals, they’d clear the machines and go home. The only people who knew the track had a surplus were the three who handled the main count. Max Geary. Fitzhugh, the racing secretary. Lou Liebler, the state’s tax man. Now Dave, if you’ll swing that camera a couple of degrees to the north, we’ll see that sterling police officer, Chief of Detectives Peter Painter, entering the judges’ box to make a double arrest.”

Painter straightened his necktie and went out.

Shayne went on talking while the camera moved to the next window. Liebler and Fitzhugh were conferring in the back of the brightly lighted box.

“I can’t give you the dialogue,” Shayne said as Painter entered. “‘Fitzhugh? Liebler? You’re under arrest.’ That’s about it, unless they try to shoot their way out. No, they’re white-collar people. Incidentally, if Linda Geary is listening, will you come to the control room, please? Now we’ll continue. What Geary was doing, in effect, was adding one point to the regular seventeen-percent bite. He kept his two collaborators on fees. He was the only one who knew the location of that switch. When he died, they tried to find it. They had wiring diagrams, and Liebler had been keeping a minute-to-minute schedule of where Geary was and exactly what he was doing during betting hours. They narrowed it down to the VIP lounge, but they still couldn’t find it. We’re going down there now. When we walk in, we’ll be picked up by a closed-circuit monitor. This is an extra one I installed last night, behind a two-way mirror. There won’t be any sound, but I’ll come back and explain. Don’t throw any chairs while I’m gone.”

Painter, after playing his TV scene, had given the prisoners to his detectives for processing. Shayne, passing, took a sour look from Liebler.

“How in God’s name-I pulled that place to pieces.”

“Careful, Lou.”

“I’m not worried. I’d like to see you prove anything.”

Linda was coming up the escalator. Shayne met her at the top.

“Linda, what’s that room on the ground floor down from the PR office? I saw you coming out of it.”

“Room? Oh, that’s all storage. Trash, old programs, tickets.”

“Let me have one of your hands.”

She started to extend a hand, but thought better of it and put it behind her.

“I won’t wrestle you,” Shayne said. “I just thought it might smell of gas.”

“Gas.”

“Burn, Surfside, burn. When you said that, I thought it sounded like a good slogan. If the track burns down, your mother will have to sell. I think the trash in one of those rooms is gasoline-soaked. I think there’s an incendiary device set to go off sometime early tomorrow morning.”

She yelled and struck out at him. He caught her hand and smelled it.

“Hard smell to get rid of. Peel off another man, Petey, and let Linda show him.”

She covered her face with her hands, her shoulders shaking.

Entering the VIP lounge where he had spent the day and part of the previous night, Shayne pointed out the two-way mirror among the bottles behind the bar.

“There’s no reason to monitor this room usually, but I didn’t know which way this was going to go. I was thinking I might inveigle Castle up and have a conversation.”

He poured a glass of cognac, lifted it to the crowd watching him through the hidden camera, and drank.

“I saw one of the timetables Liebler was keeping on Geary. Geary liked to keep moving. He probably hit every department two or three times in the course of the night, and naturally he kept dropping in here to talk to his very important guests. He was a big drinker. He had a drinker’s kidneys. He was always excusing himself to go to the john. And that’s where he put the switch. Underwater, at the bottom of the tank. If somebody like Liebler was listening, he’d hear the usual splash and the usual flush. The water would run out of the tank, exposing the switch, Geary would reach in and throw it, and the water would come back and cover it. There’s a timer, to throw the ten-dollar window back into the system after it’s been out exactly fifteen minutes. I disconnected that so we could check the machines.”

He opened the washroom door. Inside, Charlotte Geary lay face down on the floor. An empty glass had rolled beneath the wash basin, amid a scattering of pills.

“Call first aid,” Shayne said urgently. “The list by the phone.”

He pulled her over and checked for a pulse. Her face had the bluish tinge of souring milk. On his knees, Shayne forced her mouth open roughly and began to blow into it hard. He heard Painter at the phone, asking for a resuscitator and a stomach pump. Presently he established his rhythm, and he kept it going until the doctor from the first aid station ran in and took his place.

He watched the doctor work for a moment. Painter swept up the pills and returned them to the bottle.

“I guess this one is obvious. When she saw us arrest the Sanchez boy-”

“No, it’s my fault. I had to make a public announcement that they were sleeping together.”

“Move, Shayne, will you? You’re blocking the TV. The crowd’s quieter, and we might as well give them something to look at and keep it that way.”

“Petey,” Shayne said slowly, “I think you’ve just come up with something.”

“What?”

“That’s been transmitting all night. If it’s still in the video machine-”

He rode the escalator to the control room, taking the last few steps at a run. Harry Zell, the developer, had joined the technicians and the announcer. He was leaning carelessly against the console.

“Get away from there, Harry.”

Zell looked around and down, stabbed the Erase button, and holding his finger on it, pulled a gun with his left hand.

Shayne’s hand came out of his pocket holding a handful of change. He threw it at Zell. At the same moment, Dave fell off his stool against Zell’s knees. The announcer hit him with the loose mike, swinging it like a bolo. Zell’s finger was forced off the button. Shayne joined the group and pried the gun loose.

“Finally. Something we didn’t catch on closed circuit.”

“We’re still shooting through the window,” Dave said. “We have it for replay.”

Shayne recovered the fallen mike. The fat man, panting and bleeding, seemed to have lost weight in the last moment. Shayne told Dave to pull the VIP lounge closed-circuit tape. In a moment it was running on the main monitor; nothing showed but the empty room.