Brett Halliday - The Violent World of Michael Shayne

“In the spring,” she said doubtfully. “May, June?”

“End of June,” Oskar said. “I was only out of the can a month.”

Shayne put Bixler’s watch on his right wrist. Everything else he stuffed back in the wallet and snapped a heavy rubber band around it.

“This goes to the cops tomorrow noon, along with the names of the four witnesses who saw you bounce him. That gives us-” he consulted his own watch-“seven and a half hours.”

“Man, anything we can do-” Oskar said.

“I might think of something,” Shayne said dryly. “This has all been pretty one-sided so far.”

“Anything,” Oskar repeated, planting both hands on the bar and looking directly at Shayne. “I mean it.”

4:35 A.M.

Using the phone behind the bar, Shayne dialed the Hotel St. Albans, where he had checked in the previous afternoon.

“Michael Shayne, please. Room 1232.”

Oskar Szep looked around in surprise. “Didn’t you say that’s your name?”

Shayne silenced him with a wave. The switchboard girl soon told him there was no answer from that room. He said to keep ringing. Finally Shayne heard a click and a man’s voice said gruffly, as though surfacing out of a heavy sleep, “’Lo.”

“Rebman?” Shayne said sharply, his mouth several inches from the phone.

“Yes,” the voice said more alertly. “Shayne hasn’t come back yet. The way it begins to look, he’s sleeping out. But all his stuff is still here, and there’s a chance he may be in to shave before breakfast. We’ll be ready for him, don’t worry.”

“There’s been a change of plans,” Shayne said in his ordinary tone. “Forget about Shayne. Everything’s starting to fall apart. Get the hell to the airport and catch the first plane out.”

There was a pause, and Rebman said, “Is that you, Shamus?”

The redhead laughed. “You boys always do the obvious thing. Waiting in my hotel room, for God’s sake! I hate to think how much it cost you to get in.”

“It didn’t cost too much,” Rebman said. “This is the second time you’ve suckered me. There won’t be a third. I’ve got new instructions, and they don’t leave me any leeway. The money offers are out. If you want to go home, fine, nobody’ll come after you. But leave your suitcase here and send for it. Am I making myself clear?”

“Sure. Now will you give your boss a message? Tell Mr. Manners he’s going to be under a different kind of pressure starting tomorrow morning. Maybe he’s the one who ought to go home. Bribery and blackmail don’t seem to mean anything any more-it’s like drinking hard liquor during Prohibition. Murder’s something else. Questions about a murder always have that little extra bit of steam.”

“Who’s been murdered?”

“If you don’t know, Rebman, I think I’ll let you find out for yourself. Give him the message.”

Shayne hung up abruptly.

“Say,” Pete said as Shayne turned, “I just thought of something. One of our regulars came in right after Bixler, Billy, we call him. Like he was plastered, but maybe he saw if the guy came in a cab, or what. He lives down the street, and what I’m going to do, I’m going to wake him up and ask him.”

He went out at a quick walk. Shayne took his glass and the cognac bottle to a table and asked Olga to sit down with him.

“Let’s go through the whole thing again, starting with the first time Bixler got in touch with you. What he said, what you said, the whole thing.”

She lowered her voice so her brother, who had stayed at the bar, wouldn’t hear her. “You really think they left him in front of the movie? And somebody else came along and killed him?”

“He was hit when he was already out,” Shayne said. “I don’t know what with-a tire iron or the blunt end of a railroad spike. It was a funny-shaped wound. Does that sound like Pete and Oskar?”

“No-o. In a fight. Not if he’s lying there sleeping.”

“OK, Olga, you and Bixler. Take your time.”

He listened attentively, occasionally asking a quiet question. Pete burst in ten minutes later.

“A black and white hardtop!” he announced. “How do you like that?”

“Yeah, but Billy,” his brother said skeptically. “He’d make some witness.”

“He won’t get as far as court,” Pete admitted. “He’ll forget about it in the morning. But it’s a start, ain’t it? I could hardly make out what he was saying, half the time. He couldn’t find his teeth. The only reason he remembers-the guy stepped on his toes. When he got out of the car, and he didn’t say he was sorry. Billy’s still steaming.”

“Are you sure he knew who you meant?” Oskar said.

“Sure I’m sure. The guy we threw out. He remembers the car because he was going to pound in the fender. He looked around and picked up the first thing he saw-an old broken piece of a torsion rod, and he was all set to do it when he saw there was somebody sitting in the car. That scared him, and he threw the rod away and came in for a drink. Black and white hardtop, a good car, good shape. That’s all I could get out of him, and I was shaking him half the time.”

Shayne pulled hard at his earlobe. He had seen a black car with a white top somewhere recently, but he couldn’t remember where. If he didn’t push it too hard it would come to him.

Pete said, “Something else I been thinking about-that dough.”

“What dough?” Shayne said.

“In the wallet. Who’d know the difference if we cut it up in three shares?”

“If you didn’t take it in the first place,” his sister said angrily, “and left it for somebody else, they’d be in this trouble, not you. Mr. Shayne talked me out of thinking you did it. What are you trying to do, talk me back in? Now beat it. I’m telling Mr. Shayne.”

For the next half-hour she went on talking disjointedly, going over and over each episode until Shayne was sure she had told him all she could remember. Something below the surface was working at him. When he finished the bottle, Oskar brought another. Pete, two tables away, smoked cigarette after cigarette. Oskar stayed at the bar, rarely taking his eyes off Shayne. Only the cognac kept the redhead awake. He was both tense and relaxed. His eyes glazed, his mind began to drift, and suddenly something Olga said broke through to him.

“-telling the truth,” she said, and Shayne came back so suddenly that his hand jerked and the glass fell from his fingers.

Olga stopped talking and watched him. Wide awake and back in action, he went to the phone. If Bixler had been telling the truth about the diary episode, maybe Maggie Smith had been telling the truth about her friendship with Hitchcock. There was only one Margaret Smith in the phone book. He dialed that number.

It rang a long time, and Maggie’s hello was stifled and unclear.

“Wake up, Mrs. Smith,” Shayne said briskly. “This is Michael Shayne.”

“Who?”

“ Shayne . The crude son of a bitch who’s been trying to break up your romance with Senator Hitchcock. Are you awake?”

“Michael Shayne? Do you know what time it is?”

“It’s five-ten, and I thought I’d better tell you that the guy who told me about your Caribbean cruise has been murdered.”

“Murdered!”

“Yeah. He was already unconscious. Somebody broke his head open with a torsion rod, if you know what that is, and left him on a dump for the rats.”

“Well, damn you, that wakes me up. Is this a joke?”

“No, Mrs. Smith. His name was Bixler, and I don’t really think you killed him. Unless you drive a black and white hardtop?”

“I drive a Volkswagen, and I wouldn’t know a hardtop if I saw one. Listen here, Mr. Shayne-”