Brett Halliday - Lady, Be Bad

Rourke laughed. “But if anybody ever got rapped for blackmail, it wouldn’t be Sheldon Maslow. That I can guarantee.”

They let him think for a moment. Finally he nodded. “When you look at it from that angle, it’s a possibility. That’s as far as I care to go at this time.”

“You have to go further,” Shayne told him. “Did you ever pick up a package for him without knowing what was in it?”

“I guess I may have,” Teddy said, beginning to look worried. “A couple of times anyway, from Phil Noonan for one.”

“Tim, find out if he’s registered here, and if he is tell him we want to talk to him about some hundred-dollar bills.”

Rourke went to the phone. Shayne continued, “Teddy, let’s figure that Maslow wouldn’t want to take any unnecessary risks. He could set up the cash deliveries so it would seem that you or somebody else on his staff was cadging behind his back. The whole operation was secret, and he had control all the way. You may never be charged with anything, but rumors can be just as bad in the private detective business. Let’s bring everything out in the open.”

“I’m for that,” Teddy said fervently, wiping sweat off his forehead with a bar napkin. “What else do you want to know?”

“How did Maslow hear about the party tonight?”

“I told him. A girl I met in a bar, kind of a chintzy accent, she sold me the tip for forty-five dollars, and I guess now that’s going to come out of my own pocket. Old Maz was real excited. Here was our chance for some documentation. We went in early by boat and ditched the boat in the weeds, where we could get away in a hurry. I couldn’t find it later-somebody beat me to it, a little rowboat with an outboard motor. For a couple of hours we hung around in the trees getting bit by mosquitoes. After dark, he skinned up the back roof and in a window. We had a couple of these high-priced Japanese cameras. He didn’t scare easy, because it was risky in there for somebody with a camera, I can tell you. I identified three of Sam Rapp’s goons. We had a system worked out, whereby after he took a few shots through the closet door he tied a piece of twine around the camera handle and let it down and I tied on the other camera with fresh film. That way it could get confiscated and we’d still have something to show.”

Rourke came back from the phone. “Noonan’s on his way.”

“What about the package Noonan gave you?” Shayne asked Teddy.

“It was more of an envelope. I had a piece of luck earlier with somebody in his office. This middle-aged lady cornered me and set up an appointment. She had evidence of a payoff, and she decided it was high time that kind of thing was stopped. Didn’t cost us a penny, a Xerox copy of some bookkeeping entries, I couldn’t make heads or tails out of it myself, I just passed it on to Maslow.”

“Did you ever come across anything to connect Maslow and Boots Gregory?”

“As a matter of fact! I saw Gregory coming out of his office-the private one, not the one in the capitol. He rented a place on the way to the airport, where he could meet his informants and so on. He set up the schedule so nobody would run into anybody, but this was just after I started and I had something urgent, which is how I happened to see Gregory. The senator gave me a real ripping up and down, and he even fired me, but he took it back later. I thought it was funny-Boots Gregory, after all, but you know what they say about politics and bedfellows.”

Phil Noonan came in. Usually one of the best-groomed men in the lobbying business, he had pushed a wet brush through his hair and knotted an ascot hastily around his neck, but he still had a long way to go before he could take his habitual place in the second-floor lobby connecting the house and the senate.

“What is it that can’t wait till morning, Mike? I had three hours with the highway patrol-”

He saw Teddy Sparrow, and shifted swiftly to his usual unruffled style. “Which isn’t to say I don’t appreciate the opportunity. Is there someplace we can go where we won’t bother anybody?”

“Your problem is a small part of the picture,” Shayne said. “Rourke knows about it already, and Teddy didn’t know there was money in the envelope you gave him.”

“It didn’t even occur to me,” Teddy assured everybody. “I mean, it occurred to me, but I put it out of my mind.”

“Here’s what I wanted you to see,” Shayne said.

He sorted out the three photographs of money passing between Noonan and Grover Kendrick. Noonan looked at all three and slapped them on the bar. He swore explosively.

“It’s been the damnedest legislative session I can remember. Where the hell-”

He looked at Sparrow, who said hastily, “Senator Maslow took them. I only sent him up another camera.”

“These were taken between nine o’clock and eleven last night,” Shayne said. “I’ve been told you paid Grover forty thousand dollars a few weeks ago. What was this payoff for?”

Noonan laughed sarcastically. “Wonderful. You’ve got the pictures out of sequence. He was paying me.”

Shayne took back the pictures, rearranged them and looked at them again.

“I’ve had nothing but trouble,” Noonan went on, “nothing but aggravation.” He looked at the slumbering bartender. “I need a drink.”

“Let him sleep,” Rourke said. “I’ll get it.”

“A large Scotch. A very large double-Scotch and very little soda. Mike, I’ve been beating up and down the thru-ways of this state for the last fifteen years, addressing chambers of commerce and Rotary Clubs, telling them about the services lobbyists perform, trying to erase some of the stigma. I never paid a political bribe in my life before last night. I just never had to.” He drained the drink in one harsh swallow, shuddering as it burned its way down. “I knew I shouldn’t step out of character. I should have bowed out gracefully, but it all seemed so-so extraordinary-”

Shayne looked up from the photographs. “You mean Grover was paying you back?”

“That’s what was happening, believe it or not, and if those pictures appear in the press, who would believe it? Mike, if you think it was hard rigging the books to cover the original payment, it was agony covering the repayment. There’s just no precedent. I begged him to keep the damn money, but he wouldn’t, or couldn’t. And how were we supposed to enter it? We had to patch and transfer and create an entirely new account. If we’re ever audited-”

“What was the first forty thousand for?”

“There was only one forty thousand. It went out, it came back in. I think I’m steadier. I can talk about it without going into falsetto. You’ve got me with these photographs, Mike. They’re publishable. They’re eminently publishable. But please don’t publish them. After the way I’ve been talking about ethics for so many years, the association would fire me and nobody would give me a job running their postage meter.” He looked at the pictures again. “Notice the sneaky look on my face. That man is obviously guilty. You say Maslow took this picture? One consolation-the bastard got what was coming to him!”

He looked at Shayne suddenly, and his tongue came out to lick whiskey off his lips. “You don’t think I had anything to do with starting that fire?”

His eyes traveled from face to face, and he began talking very fast. “You want the whole story. Mike? Tim? The big thing the association has been pushing this session is a one percent bump in the mortgage ceiling. Very good economic arguments in favor, and we didn’t expect any trouble. Then Grover broke the bad news. The judge had set a price of forty thousand on letting it through. I was surprised. It was the first time I ever heard of Judge Kendrick being on the shake. But of course it was worth it. Some of our members needed that extra point to stay in business, so I got the money together and gave it to Grover, and Judge Kendrick handled the bill all the way, smooth as cream.”