Brett Halliday - So Lush, So Deadly

“I tried every possible combination, and that was the only one that would fit. Don’t feel bad about it, Tim. I’m the one they really fooled. They took a hell of a chance, but they had to, and I’m sorry to say it almost worked. I just want to point out before we go any further that the morning they put on their performance for me I had no reason to think they weren’t the people they said they were. The dialogue was pretty convincing.”

Rourke protested, “Mike, are you trying to get us to believe you can’t tell a man from a woman? For Christ’s sake.”

“Undressed I’ve never made a mistake yet,” Shayne said, “but they weren’t undressed.”

Rourke gave a disbelieving laugh. “I don’t buy it. Now give us the switch.”

“There’s no switch, Tim. This is straight. If I’d had a little more background when I went in I might have caught it, but I’m not sure about that-they did a damn good job. It was a carefully staged scene. They’d probably rehearsed it a dozen times.”

“But, Mike-”

“Use your imagination,” Shayne said impatiently. “I had no description of Mrs. De Rham except that she was a neurotic and a drinker. Petrocelli was the one person in Miami who knew what she looked like until Tom Moseley showed up, and somebody killed Moseley with a gin bottle. Petrocelli kept coming back to the boat after they fired him. He saw Brady a couple of times but he never saw Mrs. De Rham. She was in bed drunk-or so they said.”

“You talked to both Mrs. De Rham and De Rham the same day,” Rourke said, still unconvinced. “How about the voices? The hands?”

“O.K., the hands,” Shayne said. “I never saw Mrs. De Rham’s hands. They were under the sheet. She had a low, hoarse voice. His was high for a man and slightly nasal. The easiest way to change the pitch of a voice is let it come out through the nose. They arranged it so she didn’t have to say much. A few words here and there. She’d been drinking for two weeks and she was badly hung over. Drunkenness is a good disguise, and a hangover’s even better. She lay in bed and groaned, and Brady did the talking.”

“How about the-well, breasts, Mike?” Rourke said.

“Padding,” Shayne said impatiently. “A fluffy bedjacket. But the big point is that when I saw Mrs. De Rham in the morning and De Rham at night, I saw two entirely different faces. The blinds were closed because her eyes were hurting, and of course she was wearing a goddamn pair of wraparound dark glasses. A wig, with bangs over the forehead.”

He pulled out the wig he had taken from the woman in the water. “Here it is, if you want to try it on. He darkened his eyebrows with make-up. His mouth was plastered with lipstick, and he was pretending to be drunk when he put it on, so there was a lot of it and it was a little crooked. Heavy suntan makeup on the parts of his face that were showing, and those were the same parts that were covered by a beard when he was playing himself.”

“A beard!” Painter exclaimed suddenly. “That’s what was beside Moseley’s body. A piece of a false beard.”

Shayne grinned. “It’s hard to fool you, Petey. Yeah-it was a different beard from the one De Rham was wearing in the photographs I saw, but I just thought he’d trimmed it a different way, as a kind of token disguise. What does that leave, Tim?”

“The teeth.”

“I didn’t ask him to open his mouth so I could count the fillings. By the time I was back on the boat later I’d begun to realize something was wrong. I wanted to talk to her, but she was in the head, throwing up. You can’t barge in on a lady when she’s vomiting. That’s one of the rules. It was Henry, of course, making gagging noises and flushing the john.”

Painter had listened to this open-mouthed, with his eyebrows all the way up. Now he said smugly, “This is one of the nicest things that’s happened to me in a long, long time. When it gets round town that Mike Shayne fell for something like this-and I’m going to make sure that it gets around-your stock may not be quite so high.”

“How long were you in the room with them when you talked to them, Petey?”

“That’s quite different! Maybe two minutes in all, and she didn’t say a word, did she, Luke?”

“Well-”

He flicked his mustache and said crisply, “All right, Shayne, you’ve made your point. De Rham was impersonating his wife. Now we come to the main question. Why?”

“You must have figured that out by now.”

“I haven’t been working on this case as long as you have,” Painter said stiffly. “You have information which for various reasons hasn’t been made available to the police.”

“I’m still just speculating,” Shayne said. “I don’t want to hog the spotlight. I’m willing to stop talking at any time.”

Rourke chortled. “He’s going to make you say please, Petey.”

Painter started to speak, swallowed it, and said through set lips, “Play the goddamn tape. I’d-appreciate it.”

Shayne pressed a button and the reel began to revolve. A voice began.

DE RHAM: Now we’ve got to talk about the timing, Paul.

BRADY: Relax. Relax. We’ve just bamboozled a guy who’s reputed to be the smartest and toughest private investigator in the United States. Worry can give you a heart attack. Let’s not worry.

DE RHAM: You thrive on this tightrope walking. I don’t. I’m exhausted.

BRADY: You did fine, baby, just fine. You were so irresistible in that bed jacket I almost climbed in with you myself after Shayne left.

DE RHAM: Cut it out with the queer stuff. I never did think that fag act was too funny.

BRADY ( softly, after a moment): What makes you sure it’s an act?

DE RHAM: Come on. I know you too well. You made a ravishing chorus girl in the Pudding show-

BRADY: True, old chap. But who was the leading lady?

DE RHAM: Seriously. There’s enough tension around here without going out of our way. I’m a dedicated heterosexual, and if I ever had had any doubts about that, this hippy chick resolved them very satisfactorily. She’s a talented performer in the sack.

BRADY: Spare me the details.

DE RHAM ( laughing ): No, a queer like you wouldn’t be interested. (more seriously) This is my last day as Dotty De Rham, alcoholic. No reason to drag out the drag bit any longer. This is D-day minus one.

BRADY (sharply): You don’t mean that. We wowed everybody. Just because a clown like Shayne-

DE RHAM: That clown happens to send cold shivers up and down my spine.

BRADY: We haven’t used the sick-to-the-stomach business yet. Hell, we can handle him.

DE RHAM: If he got Loring to send him a picture of Dotty, for example-

BRADY: Why would he do that? He’s been getting by on muscle for years. There’s nothing but reflexes behind the eyes.

DE RHAM ( slowly ): I don’t think so. It’s too big a chance to take. Tomorrow morning we give our make-believe friend Dotty a funeral at sea.

(A moment’s pause.)

BRADY: I hate to bring up a promise, but you said you’d wait for the real estate money to come through. That’s only four more days. Let’s sweat it out.

DE RHAM: That’s earmarked for you, baby. Believe me.

BRADY: But there’s no way you can put it in writing, is there? Somehow I feel sure you’ll find some technical reason for hanging onto it.

DE RHAM ( lightly ): You can always blackmail me.

BRADY: Can I? I’m in it as deep as you are now. What I want is cash, and I want it before we dispose of Dotty, not after.

DE RHAM: Well, you’re not going to get another penny, because we’ve run out of time. And don’t give me that now crap. This has been a joint venture from the start. It was your idea.