Brett Halliday: The Violent World of Michael Shayne

“Are they worth fifty thousand bucks?”

“You really have to understand, Mr. Shayne-”

“I know, you don’t want to talk about money on the phone. But I’ll want a written agreement, and if that price sounds right, be in the rotunda of the Capitol at ten-twenty. Wipe your forehead with a handkerchief now and then so I’ll recognize you.”

“You’ve certainly given me something to think about, Mr. Shayne.”

“And I need some information I can’t get myself. I want to know who rented safe-deposit boxes in the principal Washington banks the week of June 25th last year. Is that possible?”

“If it’s important. I doubt if I could have it by ten-twenty.”

“Bring as many of them as you can. I may be a little late.”

5:30 A.M.

Maggie Smith’s house was one of a row not far from her theatre, on a narrow street. Shayne made a note to duck when he went through the front door. The Szep brothers, who had followed in a Chevy pick-up, parked several blocks away, where the truck would be less conspicuous, and came back to wait in Shayne’s Ford. Shayne gave them descriptions of Stevens, Rebman, and the Mexican gunman who had accompanied Stevens. He didn’t expect them to look for him here, but they had surprised him before.

The sky was beginning to lighten in the east. Maggie Smith opened the door almost as soon as Shayne let go of the antique brass knocker. She was wearing slacks, high-heeled gold sandals, and a sleeveless green blouse, and her immediate effect on the redheaded detective was to make him forget to duck. As he stepped inside he grazed the top of his head on the lintel.

“I should have warned you,” she said. “These are famous houses, and thousands of tourists come by to gawk at them every day, but they’re small. Oh Mike!” Closing the door, she came in against him for an instant. “You’re so big and solid and comforting. I’ve been humming to myself ever since I got up. You’ve decided to believe me!”

“I tried believing everybody else first.”

“I don’t care! So long as you came around to believing me in the end. Go through to the kitchen. I’m in the middle of making breakfast.”

Shayne followed her down a narrow hall, papered in a striped pattern, with a stepped row of oval miniatures on the wall. The kitchen was large and modern. It was filled with pleasant smells. Coffee was filtering on the stove. A dozen strips of bacon were laid out to drain on paper towels and a bowl of uncooked scrambled eggs was ready to be poured into the pan. Something was underway in a wall oven.

“The muffins have ten more minutes. Coffee’s almost ready. The eggs-I hope you like eggs-”

“I like eggs,” Shayne said.

“Sit down.” She pointed him toward a big table, already prepared for two. “I know it would be more polite to wait till you’ve eaten something, but Mike, what happened? The last time I saw you, you certainly gave no signs of disagreeing with Trina Hitchcock. What made you change your mind?”

Shayne stuck a cigarette in the corner of his mouth. “A funny thing happened. I talked to Hugh Manners, and he claimed he’d never heard a thing about it. I happened to have something to bargain with, and I told him to get Toby on the phone and call it off. And he got Toby on the phone, and Toby called it off.”

She gave him a worried look. “You mean Toby himself admitted-”

“Yeah, and not only that. I’ve got it in Manners’ writing. He gave me a letter to Hitchcock. You can read it if you want to. The idea was that I wouldn’t use it unless you gave me more trouble. Manners says he’s just found out that you and Toby have been setting up Hitchcock for a dirty photograph. It’s not that specific, but Hitchcock would understand what he’s getting at. And then Manners says he’s sorry and tells Hitchcock not to worry-it’s all off.”

“He signed that? Why would he sign such a lie?”

“Didn’t know it was a lie,” Shayne said, the sharp outlines of everything in the kitchen beginning to fuzz over and blur. “Believed me and Toby. You said one thing, Toby said another. I tried believing Toby, made no sense. Because all a fake. Tried believing you, made sense.”

He had been able to stay awake and clear-headed in a hard, uncomfortable chair in Oskar’s after-hours bar, but here in the airy kitchen, filled as it was with pleasant cooking smells, he could feel himself going.

“Don’t fall asleep!” Maggie said urgently. “Mike, I have to know! What do you mean, all a fake?”

Shayne snapped out of it, giving his head a short shake. “How’s the coffee coming?”

“One more minute. What could Toby hope to gain by telling Manners something he knew wasn’t true? Aren’t they working together?”

“Toby’s been conning everybody, Manners too. He had to.”

As Shayne’s eyes began to close again Maggie hurriedly splashed some too-strong coffee into a cup and put it in front of him. The fumes brought him back for a moment, but getting the cup to his mouth, or his mouth to the cup, seemed to be beyond him. He blinked hard, then his eyelids relaxed and everything began to swirl.

She shook his shoulder. “Damn you, Michael Shayne! You can’t say something cryptic like that, and dodge out of it by going to sleep. Drink your coffee.”

He could hear her, but her voice seemed to come at him from a great distance, rising and falling as though being blown about by a strong wind. He managed to take the coffee cup in both hands. He lowered his face toward it, meeting it halfway. It was scalding hot. The first mouthful burned its way down and his head cleared.

“There’s no time to sleep!” he said. “I’ve got to explain something. I think I know what happened but I can’t prove it. I need your help.”

“What can’t you prove, that Toby was lying?”

“No, no. That-”

The cup began to tilt. He watched, powerless to stop what he saw happening. Maggie took it out of his hand and put it back on the table.

“All right,” she said more philosophically. “I can see you’re determined. You woke me up in the middle of the night, and now you can’t stay awake yourself to tell me why. If you think I’m going to carry you upstairs, you’re very much mistaken.”

“I just need a minute,” Shayne mumbled. “Some more coffee.”

“It’s too hot to drink, and you won’t still be awake when it cools off. Stand up.”

He shook his head, frowning. “Got to tell you something. It wasn’t Toby’s idea.”

She pulled at him gently, and he toppled sideward, knowing that if he went to sleep now the machinery he was caught up in would go faster and faster until it crashed into something and broke apart. Maggie guided him toward the living room. He heard a low hum from an electric clock on the wall and saw the sweep second hand revolving slowly. He was past before he was able to decipher the time.

He tried again. “Toby’s the hired man. He wasn’t-”

“No, Mike,” she said when he didn’t go on. “He definitely wasn’t. You can finish that sentence after you wake up.”

“I can’t go to sleep!” he exclaimed, finding himself lying on a broad sofa, with no memory of having crossed the living room. “You don’t understand.”

“You can say that again,” Maggie said, untying his shoe laces. “And the reason I’m taking off your shoes is not because I want you to be comfortable, but because I don’t want my sofa to get dirty. When do you want me to wake you up?”

“I can’t go to sleep,” Shayne insisted.

He could hear his own voice, but that was all, and it went on echoing for a long time. Damn right he couldn’t go to sleep. He had to meet Senator Redpath at the Capitol at ten, and he had a lot of persuading to do first. Ten was the absolute deadline. Ten o’clock.