Brett Halliday - The Violent World of Michael Shayne

The cemetery was a big one, crowded with memorial statues, fine trees and clumps of tourists, most of them busy taking pictures of gravestones. Shayne strolled toward the spot where the largest crowd had collected, and in a moment saw a great bronze figure of a seated woman, in a grove of evergreens. Bixler, on the fringes of the crowd, was nearly as conspicuous as the statue itself. Shayne could have identified him even without the paperback book, which he was holding awkwardly, so no one could miss seeing the front cover. He wore a three-button suit with all the buttons buttoned, dark glasses and a hard straw hat. He had a round face and a gray complexion, as though he spent his days indoors under fluorescent lights in air-conditioned buildings.

He saw Shayne at once. Shayne turned on his heel and walked away, letting Bixler overtake him.

“On the dot,” Bixler said breathlessly. “I like punctuality. It’s getting rarer and rarer. I was worrying about not recognizing you, but I knew who you were right away. You look exactly the way I expected.”

“You can get rid of the book now,” Shayne said.

“I’m certainly not throwing it away, if that’s what you mean.” He stowed it in his hip pocket. “I’m not finished with it. I thought afterwards it was a mistake, a bit too much, because somebody might notice it and look at you and do a double take. I don’t mind telling you I was flustered on the phone. This is a grand moment for me. I’ve always hoped our paths could cross someday.”

“Where do you want to talk?” Shayne said. “I could use a drink.”

“Oh we couldn’t go to a bar,” Bixler said. He had a slight lisp when he talked fast. “That’s the wortht pothible place to transact confidential business. I could suggest sitting in my car, but I want to be fair-you couldn’t be sure I hadn’t bugged it, could you? And the same could be said for your car, looked at from my point of view.”

Shayne’s ragged red eyebrows came together impatiently. “You don’t know Washington,” Bixler said. “Maybe you can get away with being slapdash in places like Miami, but this is the counterintelligence capital of the world. Maybe Miss Hitchcock didn’t tell you how much money is involved. One billion dollars.” The sum pleased him so much that he repeated it. “One-billion-dollarth.”

“I hope your price is going to be lower than that.”

“My word, yes! I’m not in that bracket, not by a long shot. I’m the low man on the totem pole, and to tell you the truth, that’s how I like it. Nobody’s been killed yet to my knowledge, but some violent people are mixed up in this and, with a billion dollars at stake, who knows what can happen? Let’s just sit on one of these benches. You pick, and then you can be sure there’s no recording device planted underneath it. OK?”

Shayne motioned to a backless stone bench. “Does everybody operate like this up here?”

Bixler looked around carefully before sitting down. “If they want to survive. I’m not afraid of being followed. I’m an old hand, and there isn’t a tail in the business who can stick with me if I really want to lose him. The thing I worry about is coincidence. That’s the trouble with going to a bar. Anybody can be in a bar. But nobody comes here but tourists.”

“Maybe you’d better show me what you’ve got on Maggie Smith and then we can talk about how much it’s going to cost.”

“Show you!” Bixler exclaimed. “I have nothing to show you. I wouldn’t think of making copies of confidential file material. This has to be entirely verbal. I thought I made that clear to Miss Hitchcock.”

“Then let’s hear it,” Shayne said, trying to be patient. “But if you don’t have any documentation it’s going to affect the price.”

“No, excuse me,” Bixler said. A group of nuns approached, and he remained silent until they were out of earshot. “You have your methods, and I won’t deny that they work, nine times out of ten. Even ninety-nine times out of a hundred. I wish I could be as free and easy as that, but I can’t. I’m on a payroll. I have to charge you-” he glanced at Shayne quickly-“eight thousand for what I’m going to give you, so let me fill you in with a little background to justify the amount.”

Shayne laughed easily. “Never mind.”

“What do you mean, never mind?”

“We’re in no hurry. I’m at the St. Albans. I might go as high as fifteen hundred, depending on how solid the stuff is, but that’s where it stops. Call me if you change your mind.”

“You’re in no hurry!” Bixler said as Shayne stood up. “Mr. Shayne, I’m sorry to have to say that I don’t think you understand this at all. Miss Hitchcock didn’t fly to Florida and back because she’s in no hurry. Why quibble? — it’s not her money, they’ll just charge it off to miscellaneous and collect from the government. Sit down. Please don’t argue. Make it six thousand.”

Shayne pulled at his earlobe, studying the anxious little man. “I don’t like to buy a pig in a poke.”

“I appreciate that. What I mean is, you’re not just buying an episode out of a file. You’re buying my know-how. Would you agree to that as a statement of principle?”

Shayne sat down. “Go ahead. I’m listening.”

“Senator Hitchcock, Maggie Smith, Sam Toby. That’s the sequence. I know the Senator well. I worked over two years for his subcommittee. He was a very good boss. As a matter of fact, I was running down a lead on Sam Toby a year ago when I got the Civil Service Commission offer, at a big jump in grade. That’s not the coincidence it sounds, because we were always trying to prove something on that son of a bitch, excuse the expression. The man who puts Sam Toby out of circulation is going to be made. But it may not happen in my time. He’s cagy. He’s tough. He’s slippery as an eel. Well, I always comb the society columns because you never know what you’ll find. I read where Senator Hitchcock went to an opening at the National Theatre with somebody named Maggie Smith. A week later they were both on the guest list at so-and-so’s dinner. I said to myself, ‘Who is this woman? The name rings a bell.’”

“Miss Hitchcock says she used to work for Toby,” Shayne said, trying to hurry him up.

“Maybe she said that,” Bixler said. “I never did. I stick to facts and let other people draw the conclusions. I have a phenomenal memory for names. I fed Maggie Smith into the Bixler computer.” He tapped his forehead, to show where the Bixler computer was located. “Nothing came out. I tried Margaret Smith. Yes! I looked it up and verified it. A Margaret Smith applied for a job with a theatrical company that was going overseas for the State Department, and we ran a routine check on her. We turned her down on grounds of moral turpitude, and Sam Toby’s name was mentioned.”

“In what connection?”

“This was eight years ago. One of his clients-call it Company X-needed a decision out of a certain administrative agency. The key man on the decision was Mr. Y, and Mr. Y’s decision was no. Toby introduced Mr. Y to Maggie Smith. They went off on a joint vacation in the Caribbean. When they came back, Mr. Y canceled his no decision and made it yes. Those are the facts.”

“Is this all on the record?”

“It’s in her file. You can’t expect documentation on a deal like that. Toby didn’t get where he is by putting things in writing. The way we do-we get this kind of story on strict condition that the source isn’t named. But the agent gives the source a believability rating. This one was excellent.”

“I still don’t know what I’m buying,” Shayne said. “Eight years ago-it’s pretty stale. Your anonymous source was obviously trying to damage the woman. The whole thing sounds very flimsy.”