Brett Halliday - The Violent World of Michael Shayne

Shayne swung around. “Do you remember what color braid? What kind of insignia?”

“What kind of what?”

Oskar explained in Polish, and Olga said, “Some big bird, like an eagle?”

Shayne smiled for the first time since finding Bixler’s body. “Now how about the diary?”

Olga said bitterly, “I wish I never saw that diary.”

Oskar filled Shayne’s glass and poured another shot for himself. “What did you do that was so bad, Olga? He said they were crooks, they were robbing the government, and you had to help so he could stop it.”

“Oh, yes, and I helped him. I turned into a thief myself.”

“You didn’t steal it, you borrowed it! I’ve told you time and again.”

“Steal it, they know it’s gone. Borrow it and put it back, maybe they don’t even know it happened. That’s worse.”

Shayne was pulling at his earlobe. “Bixler told me he didn’t go through with it.”

Olga laughed without humor. “He lied, Mr. Shayne.”

“How did you work it?”

“This diary,” she said, “she kept it locked in a box on the back of a shelf in the bedroom closet. If she didn’t want me to know where she puts the key to the box, the other little key to the diary, she should change her own towels and vacuum-clean and straighten up and make her own beds. In one year, the maid finds out little things. When I tell Bixler I know about the keys, oh, he goes crazy. This was after she fired me, and I had to give her back my key to the house. He got another key for me. He told me what I must do. One day we practiced, to be sure there was time for everything. The day after when she went out to lunch-he knew she was going out to lunch, he had everything worked out-he called the house. The new maid answers, he says it’s the furnace company, go down and get the number off the furnace. There was no number! That was his business, to know how to do those things. So the maid is looking for it in the basement, I unlock the back door very very quietly and walk up to the bedroom, get the keys from the desk, open the box, unlock the diary, put the keys back, the box back, hurry downstairs-one minute, no more.”

“Did you look in the diary?”

“I had no time. Everything was all hurry, hurry.”

“Olga, you know you looked in it. You’re human.”

“I opened it, but it was in this tiny writing, you’d need hours to read one sentence. Every day she put down names for lunch, names for dinner, and numbers, like two hundred dollars, five hundred dollars.”

“You couldn’t make out any of the names?”

“You try reading something that little in a taxi sometime. Bouncing around. And I was scared. I couldn’t keep my mind on it. I put it in a locker at the Greyhound depot. I went back and watched the house to be sure she didn’t come home early. One hour later, back to the depot, get the diary. The three thousand dollars was in an envelope. We spent it to air-condition this place for Oskar, the down payment on the mortgage.”

“Wait a minute. How did Bixler get the key to the locker after you left the diary in it?”

“That part I didn’t tell. He sent me the key in the mail the day before. He had another, see? Then he called the maid and talked to her on the phone in the kitchen and I walked in the front door, as bold as you please. All over. Then he said I should move to another house and be careful. I thought, if he says be careful, I’ll be extra careful, so I went to my other brother and sister-in-law in the Bronx, New York. I stayed four months.”

Shayne said slowly, “Are you sure it was Bixler who arranged all this?”

She looked at him as though he had challenged some basic religious belief. “He said he was Bixler, Ronald Bixler.”

“OK,” Shayne said. “This sounds simple because it worked, but it was really pretty complicated. From the depot he’d have to take the diary to an office, and back to the depot. Even with a high-speed copier, say a late-model

Zerox, the timing would have to be close. How did he work it all out with you, on the phone?”

She shook her head. “No, I saw him. He came to my house once, once I met him in a cafeteria. After that it was on the phone. The keys, I told you, in the mail. He fixed it so the day it happened nobody saw us together. He said there was dangerous, danger. I was the one he was thinking about, so I wouldn’t go to jail for stealing when all I did was borrow for two hours. He didn’t have to tell me to be careful. I was careful, believe me.”

Oskar said, “Notice that only one person ran any risks, and it was Olga? What did he do besides get a couple of keys made and call the house? If anybody had asked me, which they didn’t, I’d say don’t settle for a measly three grand. That’s a three-to ten-year rap for burglary right there. To tell the truth, it’s the main reason I clipped him tonight. That always griped me.”

“The thing that bothers me,” Shayne said, “is where did he get his hands on three thousand bucks?”

They looked at him blankly. He explained, “That’s a lot of cash in one lump for anybody at his level.”

Pete said scornfully, “That’s how much you know. You should see the roll he was flashing tonight.”

“I’m not talking about tonight,” Shayne said. “Tonight he had hundreds sticking out of his ears. You must know by now that this thing was never legitimate. Whoever got hold of the diary has been using it for blackmail. A year ago Bixler was trying to live on his salary, and just getting by. If he was the one who laid out that three thousand, it means somebody else was bankrolling him. And maybe they didn’t bother to use him at all. Think about it.”

Olga seemed disturbed and upset. “I could tell his voice on the phone! That way he said ‘s,’ like he sort of stuttered.”

“That wouldn’t be hard to imitate.” He rapped abruptly on the bar. “All right, Pete, let’s see what you took off him.”

Pete stepped backward, a denial forming on his lips. “So help me God-”

Ignoring him, Shayne looked at his older brother. “What do they use for executions in Washington, the gas chamber? If I knew what he had in his wallet, it might help.”

Oskar moved along the bar toward Pete and said dangerously, “Is that what you did when you went back to put a newspaper under his head?”

“No!”

When Oskar continued to advance he said hastily, “OK! OK! I’ll give it to the Red Cross or somebody. What was I supposed to do, leave him lying there, with all that dough in his pocket, for the first wino who came along? What kind of sense would it make?”

“What a family,” Olga said.

“Do what Shayne says,” Oskar told him. “Dump it out on the stick, all of it.”

Swearing, Pete emptied his pants pockets in front of Shayne: a wallet, keys, change, a fountain pen, a wrist-watch. Shayne counted the money. It came to over nine hundred dollars. Carrying that much cash in this neighborhood, and letting it be seen, had been a good way to invite a knock on the head. Shayne emptied the card pockets of the wallet. The dead man had belonged to the Diners’ Club, Carte Blanche, the American Legion, the American Rifle Association, Sigma Alpha Epsilon, the Elks. The membership cards gave him an identity that he had seemed to lack in real life. There were a number of girls’ names and phone numbers, and he had carried a color photograph of an older woman, probably his mother.

“Any of that mean anything?” Oskar asked anxiously. Only one thing appeared to be current. It was a note scribbled on ruled paper and stuck into the money compartment: “Week of June 25-check safe deposit boxes, all Washington banks.”

“Can you give me the date when you took the diary?” Shayne asked Olga. “I know it was last year, but when last year?”