Brett Halliday: The Violent World of Michael Shayne

“I doubt if he even remembers me.”

“You’re wrong! He knows about all your big cases. And there isn’t time to get anybody else. It has to be done today.”

Shayne gave a half-grin. “Miss Hitchcock, I admire your father and the fact is that I owe him a favor. But I’m going to cork off forty-five minutes from now and you couldn’t wake me up with a brass band. If you can wait till tomorrow, maybe. Otherwise-”

“Mr. Shayne! I know this is unfair, but it’s so important. You can sleep on the plane. There’s a two o’clock jet, and I think we can make it. I can phone Bixler from here and have him meet you at the airport. That conversation shouldn’t take more than ten minutes. Then Maggie Smith, maybe half an hour. After that you can go to a hotel and sleep as long as you like. I’ll pay you a thousand dollars.”

“Not that I’m going to do it,” Shayne said, “but what makes it so urgent?”

“Because tonight is when it’s going to happen! Sam Toby has been subpoenaed to appear at the hearing tomorrow, so doesn’t it stand to reason that tonight’s their deadline? Daddy has a date with her, needless to say. He’s picking her up at the theatre and taking her to supper at a fancy restaurant outside of Pine Grove. I heard him make the reservations. And that happens to be not just a restaurant but a motel.” She hammered her knee with her fist, and there were tears in her eyes. “You know how these things are worked. Do I have to draw you a diagram?”

The redhead sighed and checked the level of cognac in the bottle. No, she didn’t have to draw him a diagram. He had done very little anti-blackmail work in recent years, but this kind of operation was fairly standard. Toby would spend some money at the motel. When Hitchcock asked for a room, there would only be one vacancy, and the infrared camera would already be in place over the bed.

“OK,” Shayne said heavily. “I hope it turns out to be as simple as it sounds, but we probably can’t count on it. Forget about the fee. I was out of the country last election and I didn’t have a chance to vote for your father. This’ll make up for it.”

“If you knew how much I’ve been counting on you! God, if you’d said no I don’t know what I would have done.”

“Now what’s the guy’s name again who has the information?”

“Bixler, Ronald T. Bixler. He works for the Civil Service Commission now. About how much to pay him. He must know how important this is. Do you think ten thousand would be too much?”

“Much too much. You have to be careful with these people, or they get inflated ideas. He’ll want it in cash.”

“I expected that. I have ten thousand dollars in a dispatch case at the Washington airport.”

He looked at her sharply and she said in a quiet voice, “I knew I’d persuade you, Mr. Shayne. You see, I had to.”

Shayne looked at his watch. “We’re cutting it close. If that two o’clock flight is crowded I don’t think we’ll be back in time to get space.”

“Oh, that’s taken care of. Your secretary’s making the reservations, and she’ll be at the airport with your overnight bag and a clean shirt. She knew you’d say yes.”

Shayne drank from the bottle and said dryly, “I appreciate being allowed to make up my own mind.”

2:00 P.M.

They boarded the plane with ten minutes to spare, too late to find seats together. That was all right with Shayne. He knew Trina Hitchcock had told him all she intended to at the moment, and he hoped it would prove to be enough. He fell asleep wondering about the ten thousand dollars. Where had it come from?

A stewardess shook him awake, to tell him to fasten his seat belt. He stretched all over, putting a strain on the narrow seat, which had been built for a much smaller man.

Trina smiled from across the aisle. “I’ve never seen anybody sleep quite that hard.”

“It didn’t go on long enough,” Shayne said.

He put a cigarette in his mouth, lighting it in the mobile lounge as soon as it had fastened itself to the great plane. The plane emptied and the lounge moved across the asphalt to the arrival building.

Trina, beside him, said in a low voice, “Now we have to start being careful. In many ways Washington is the smallest town in the world. Probably it wouldn’t matter if anybody saw us together, but let’s not chance it. The money’s in a locker, and I’ll give you the key. Use as much as you need, but of course I hope you’ll have some left over. And I’ve been thinking: maybe you ought to offer some of it to Mrs. Smith, to make absolutely sure? What do you think?”

“I’m still half-asleep,” Shayne said. “Let’s see how it goes.”

“I know you’ll be playing it by ear, pretty much. I just thought I’d mention it. The first thing is Bixler. I don’t see why he couldn’t meet you some simple place, like here or your hotel room, but if he wants to be melodramatic we’ll have to do it his way. He sounded terribly impressed on the phone when I told him he was going to be meeting Michael Shayne.”

“Fine,” Shayne commented. “Maybe he’ll cut his price.”

“Oh, I doubt that. You’ll call me? I’ll be home all evening.”

Shayne nodded.

“Then good luck, Mr. Shayne.” She put out her hand, looking at him directly, and let something personal come into her eyes for the first time. The worry-lines had deepened, but what she seemed to be worrying about now was whether he liked her. The tip of her tongue appeared briefly between her lips. All she said was, “I can’t tell you how grateful I am.”

Swallowing a yawn, Shayne watched her click off through the crowd. She looked more at home in this setting than she had on the deck of Captain Prideaux’s charter boat. He checked the number of the key she had pressed into his hand, found the locker, and took out an almost-new dispatch case. Then he rented a new Ford and drove to the St. Albans, the airport hotel. After checking in he bought an afternoon paper and went up to his room to shower and shave. He was glad to see that Lucy Hamilton, his efficient secretary, had packed a fifth of cognac.

He poured himself a drink and counted the money. It came to ten thousand even, mostly in fifties and twenty-fives. He sorted out two thousand dollars, wrapped it neatly in newspaper, and snapped a rubber band around it. He put the rest back in the dispatch case. It was too large a sum to leave in his room, and he checked it downstairs before going out to pick up his Ford.

He wheeled in beside an empty taxi at the cabstand in front of the hotel. “I want you to show me the way to Rock Creek Cemetery,” he told the driver. “Will two bucks cover it?”

“As far as that goes,” the driver said. “You want to go in your own car? OK, it’s your dough.”

The driver took his money and drove off, with Shayne following closely. The other times he had been in Washington, his business had always kept him close to Capitol Hill.

He watched the street signs, but he didn’t expect to be here long enough to learn his way around. He had to buy some information and deliver a message. That was all.

They were driving south on North Capitol Street when the driver in the taxi ahead blinked his directional signals. He pointed out the open window, turning all the way around to be sure Shayne understood, honked twice, and then pulled away. The redhead began looking for a place to park, and found one within a block. He locked up and walked back to the cemetery. He was a minute ahead of the time Trina Hitchcock had appointed with Bixler when she called him from the Miami airport.

Bixler’s instructions, delivered in a muffled whisper, had been for Shayne to meet him in front of the famous Saint-Gaudens statue, “Grief.” So that Shayne would recognize him, he had promised to carry a paperback copy of one of Michael Shayne’s own adventures, put into novel form by Shayne’s friend Brett Halliday.