Brett Halliday: The Violent World of Michael Shayne

“Is that where we’ll find it?” Redpath said hopefully.

“Not any more. It was too dangerous to keep. He only rented the box for three months. My guess is that he burned the copy as soon as the deal was underway. He was a cautious man. And being a cautious man, he had to do something about Bixler. He persuaded him to go to the joint where the maid was working, to question her further. He made sure that Bixler was carrying plenty of cash. He could be fairly sure what would happen. Bixler had been tossed out of there before. He was drunk and cocky, and if the woman was slow about answering, as she was bound to be, Hitchcock knew that he would try to see what a little bullying would do. Of course, he was bounced by her brothers, in front of fifty witnesses, and left lying unconscious on the sidewalk. Then all Hitchcock had to do was load him into the car, kill him and dump him a couple of blocks away. Bixler had already been rolled, and Hitchcock took off his shoes to make it look even better. He didn’t have to douse him with liquor. Bixler had already done that himself.”

Trina was sobbing helplessly. “He couldn’t have done that. My father. You don’t know him.”

“You didn’t really know him either, did you?” Shayne said. “I think he’s had about enough time.”

They found him in the study of his Georgetown house. He had slipped partly off a leather chair, his eyes glazed. He was breathing heavily.

A.38 caliber revolver lay on the carpet beside him. Shayne had given him time enough to use it, but the heart attack had felled him with the gun in his hand. For eighteen hours he had been in a state of increasing tension and anxiety. He hadn’t allowed himself to relax for an instant. The showdown with Wall, then the killing, the increasing terror as Shayne closed in, finally the desperate rush from Capitol Hill to burn the stock certificates that would convict him of murder-Shayne was surprised his damaged heart had held out as long as it had.

Trina ran to him, screaming. If he recognized her he gave no sign.

Wall dialled a hospital and ordered an ambulance. Shayne carried the dying man to a leather sofa. Trina covered him, and after that there was nothing to do but wait.

A dozen or so of Hitchcock’s handsomely bound volumes, wrenched from the bookshelves, lay strewn about the floor. Shayne examined one. It wasn’t a book, but a box disguised as a book. A heap of ashes still smoked in the fireplace.

Seeing the National Aviation lobbyist, Henry Clark, in the corridor, Shayne had brought him along. Clark conferred briefly with Manners at the far end of the study. Coming up to Shayne, he said in a hushed tone, “He’s willing to give us the subcontract. Redpath says he’ll set up a conference in the Pentagon and back us on recovering our expenses, and he’ll see to it that some Air Force colonel-I didn’t follow this part-will suddenly find himself a civilian. It looks as though your fee’s in the bag. Congratulations, very fancy footwork.”

“Make out the check to the Washington Little Theatre Club, or whatever the hell it’s called.”

“Mike!” Maggie said. “You don’t have to do that.”

“Don’t talk him out of it,” Clark said. “That’s an educational contribution. That kind of check is deductible.”

Manners met Shayne’s eyes. Looking at the ashes in the fireplace, he shrugged slightly. “For somebody who doesn’t know his way to the Washington Monument, you did fairly well, Shayne. But you were wrong about one thing. Toby wouldn’t let me pay him in stock, which we would have to register under some phony name. These were bearer bonds. The price swing hasn’t been quite so extreme-from 33 to 97. It’s a break for us, because now the company won’t have to redeem them.”

“I didn’t plan that,” Shayne said ironically, pouring himself a cognac from the bottle Hitchcock had brought out the night before.

Redpath came over to join him. “How much publicity will there have to be?”

“That’s up to you. If you try to keep it in the club, two friends of mine, Oskar and Pete Szep, will take a lot of hell from the cops. But Hitchcock doesn’t look as though he has much time, and if you can get the Szep boys off the hook, I’ll go along with anything else you decide.”

“In other words,” Senator Redpath said carefully, “if the police agree to call Bixler’s death an ordinary robbery with violence, and list it as unsolved-”

“Yeah. And I’ll stay around a few days to be sure that’s the way it’s handled.”

Shayne took a long drink of cognac as Senator Redpath went on to talk to Wall. He knew he would need more than one drink to get the taste of these people out of his mouth.

Maggie said, “Will you come back to my house for breakfast when it’s over, Mike?”

“No,” the redhead said. “It wouldn’t stop with breakfast.”

She glanced at the unconscious man on the sofa. “This isn’t the ideal place to say it, but would that be so terrible?”

He drank again. “It might be very damn nice. Thanks for the performance a few minutes ago. But I have to say no to the invitation.”

“It’s that awful thing eight years ago,” she said. “I buried it as deep as I could, but I knew it wouldn’t stay buried.”

“It’s that,” Shayne said, “and it’s this flirtation with Hitchcock. He started it, he kept it going, but you could have stopped it any time you wanted to by saying no.”

“That’s true,” she said sadly. “I owe the government three thousand dollars in back taxes. Everybody’s been nice about extending me credit, so now they’re talking about suing me. Some days, if nobody calls me, I skip lunch and dinner. God help me, if he’d asked me to marry him I would have said yes. I’d make a good Senator’s wife. Well, if you’re ever in Washington again-”

“Yeah, if I’m in Washington again-”

He didn’t finish. Two interns came in with a stretcher.