Brett Halliday - The Violent World of Michael Shayne

“I’m trying to find Wall. Do you know where he might be?”

“I think I can make an educated guess.” He went back to the bathroom door and rapped again. “Margaret, don’t be like that. Come on out.”

The door opened in a moment and a plain, dumpy woman emerged. She was stiff and embarrassed. Two pinch-marks on the bridge of her nose showed that she habitually wore glasses, though she had taken them off in honor of the champagne.

“Margaret, I’d like to have you meet the famous Mike Shayne,” Bixler announced, “in person. Mike, this is Miss Saul, my secretary. She’s in the pool, really, but I always ask for her, and do you blame me?”

“I certainly don’t,” Shayne said.

“How do you do,” Miss Saul said, looking no higher than Shayne’s necktie. “Ron, it’s so late I really think I must be going.”

Bixler tried to talk her into letting him fill her glass, but she insisted. She also refused to let him change his jacket and escort her home.

“I live downstairs on the sixth floor, you see, Mr. Shayne,” she explained, blushing.

Stooping swiftly, she retrieved a white bracelet from the floor near the sofa. Blushing more violently, she said, “I had a perfectly lovely evening, Ron. See you at work tomorrow.”

He took her to the door, where he whispered something. She giggled and gave him a push. He was preening himself when he came back.

“A very warm person, Mike. No raving beauty, I’ll be the first to admit, but the truth of the matter is that I think surface prettiness is greatly overrated in women. Bosoms-people believe in these great enormous bosoms, but I for one think companionability’s more important. You’re used to the women in the sensual south. You wouldn’t believe how puritanical they can be in this town. This apartment is setting me back an arm and a leg, but it’ll be worth it if tonight’s any example. More champagne?”

He filled Shayne’s glass and raised his own. “Here’s to money.”

Shayne started to speak, but Bixler forestalled him.

“Michael, I just wanted to say this. I know you want to locate Senator Wall, so you can confer about overall strategy, and the reason you dropped by is that you’ve figured out that I know that-” He stopped, confused. “I seem to be a little-but don’t worry, I know what I’m trying to say, I have a good head for liquor. What I mean is, I’m under no illusion that this is a social visit. You have an ulterior motive, like everybody, and you’re probably impatient to get moving. I know how monotonous it must be, always running into people who are sort of like disciples, but I’m a dyed-in-the-wool disciple of yours and I always have been. You’re the reason I took up investigation in the first place. Maybe it didn’t work out the way I expected, but that’s no fault of yours. That’s Washington. It’s been tedious, and the financial pickings have been slim. Not many glamorous women have come my way. And then you blew in, and in six hours I made more money than in the whole last year. Margaret sensed the change right away. That made the difference between coming up for a drink and not coming up for a drink. Where was I?”

“Weren’t you about to tell me what it was you sold Wall?”

“I guess I was. He told me not to breathe a word to a soul, but that wouldn’t include you. If you want to check further, and knowing your methods I think you will, you may be able to find him at Oskar’s, that’s an after-hours joint, 17 Larue Place, off Ninth Street, pretty sleazy. That’s the first place I’d try if I was you.”

“I’m surprised he’s still making the rounds,” Shayne said. “I heard he usually gets to bed early when he’s going to be working the next day.”

“Oh, this is no pub-crawling expedition,” Bixler told him. “Wall? Heavens, no. He wouldn’t be caught dead in that kind of joint if he didn’t think there was money in it. You know that as well as I do.”

“I don’t know anything at all about these people,” Shayne said. “That’s why I came to see you.”

Bixler broke into a happy smile. “Think of being in a position to give pointers to Mike Shayne! You’re going to be calling me Ron before the evening’s over, aren’t you, Mike?”

“It wouldn’t surprise me,” Shayne said agreeably. “What does this all go back to, something you found out when you were investigating Toby for the Hitchcock committee?”

“There! You don’t beat around the bush, like some people. You put your finger right on the crucial point. I’ll tell it in chronological order, that would be the best way.”

He took a large gulp of champagne. “This was just before I went with Civil Service-well, I told you that. I was working for Hitchcock, if you can call it working. We had half a dozen things we were supposed to be looking into, and Toby was one of them. He’s a perennial. We weren’t any of us too eager. Step on the wrong toes in something like that and before you know it you’ll be lining up for unemployment insurance. So before you even call up and make an appointment to see somebody, better check to make sure you got the right kind of backing.”

“That must make it hard to operate,” Shayne put in.

“It does. But you have to remember that nobody in Congress likes these investigations, never mind on which side of the aisle. Because they can run away. We all knew nobody really wanted Sam Toby at that point. We weren’t feeling any pressure from the papers or anybody. They keep that subcommittee ’way understaffed, and if I’d really been working on all the things I was supposed to be working on, I’d need six assistants and twenty-five pairs of hands. Well, there was this certain prominent woman named Mrs. Masterson, who had a Georgetown house and did a lot of entertaining. Those parties were the chic thing for a while. I didn’t see her allure, myself. We were speaking about female bosoms here a minute ago, and hers, to be frank with you, was a little excessive. One of the ten best-dressed Washington women. Maybe not too puritanical in her private life, if there was sufficient scratch on the line. Well, we got this tip that she was getting some financial backing from Mr. Toby. I won’t go into all the ins and outs. Usually, as I said, I wouldn’t follow up that sort of lead unless I was told to in writing, but this one was giving off a strong money-odor, and on my own initiative, and being very careful, believe me, I was looking into it. I’m being candid with you, Mike, you would have done the same thing in my shoes. I thought if I could tie her to Toby it would be worth something not to pass it on to the committee. I mean, the country wasn’t exactly clamoring for an expose, plus the fact that the situation wouldn’t be changed one iota even if we succeeded in putting him in jail.”

“Nobody else knew you were working on it?”

“I had to cover myself, you understand. Working’s the wrong word-every so often I’d make a phone call, if I was in a certain neighborhood I’d drop in on somebody. Now it happened that Mrs. Masterson had a fight with her maid and fired her, and I heard about it. I looked up the maid and gave her a song and dance about how it was her patriotic duty to tell me everything she knew about the lady. I was disappointed to hear that she hadn’t slept in. What happened after dark was what I mainly wanted to know. The girl was a Polack, Olga Szep, with a z. Not bad looking, a bit on the husky side. The name’s fresh in my mind because her brother runs the place I was telling you about, Oskar’s. She works there waiting on table.”

“I don’t want you to think I’m not following you, Ron, but let’s finish up with what happened last year.”

“How’s your champagne holding out? There may be a dividend at the bottom.”