Brett Halliday - A Taste for Violence

“And he accepted?” Shayne asked incredulously.

“Of course he accepted. There’s nothing unusual about such an arrangement.” Persona laughed cynically. “Plenty of professional labor agitators feather their nests that way.”

“I know there are crooks in every field,” Shayne tugged at his earlobe and studied Persona’s flat, swarthy face. Then he shook his head angrily. “I don’t believe it of Brand. What proof have you got?”

“There are twenty thousand dollars lying in escrow in a Lexington bank,” Persona assured him. “Waiting to be claimed by Brand, now that the strike is ended.”

“If you did have such an arrangement, why has the strike dragged on so long?”

“That was part of the arrangement.” Mr. Persona was enjoying his triumph. “The longer it ran on and the more money the men lost in wages, the stronger salutary effect on other miners when it is finally broken.”

“But not so good for the Roche mines,” Shayne muttered.

“What profits the industry as a whole,” Persona remarked sententiously, “profits every member of that industry.”

“But Seth Gerald must have been mightily worried,” said Shayne. “You hadn’t told him about this arrangement, I presume.”

“Naturally not. I suppose he was worried, but then I’ve felt all along it was his fault for allowing Brand to get such a hold over the men.”

Shayne fell across the bed on his back, clasped his hands behind his head and stared at the ceiling. “At last,” he said, “something begins to add up.”

“You certainly must admit,” Persona said smugly, “that I had no reason for having a murder committed.”

“No,” said Shayne slowly. “You’re not a murderer, Persona. You’re simply a businessman. In the business of starving old women and small children and squeezing the heart’s blood out of men. It’s so much easier… and more profitable. A good clean murder is so far above your methods that I was a fool to think you had planned one.” He was watching Persona through lids that were almost closed.

“Now, see here Shayne!” Persona got to his feet. His dark face was a mottled red and his chubby short fingers were clenched.

“You can’t talk to me that way. I won’t…”

Shayne came up from the bed in a swift, flowing movement. He slapped Persona with his left hand first, then with his right, then drove his left fist full into his face.

The chairman of the board of AMOK staggered back against the wall and slid down against it to the floor. He sat there with a hand on each side of him to support his weight. Shayne stepped over and drew back a number twelve shoe and kicked him in the face.

Lucy was beside him, clinging to his arm and pleading with him. “Michael… don’t… hit him again!”

“All right,” Shayne said gruffly. “It’s okay, Lucy.” He was unnaturally pale, and his gray eyes were darker than she had ever seen them.

“Are we all through in Centerville now?” she asked, frightened. “Shall I go pack my things and…”

“We’ve just started in Centerville,” he growled. They went out and closed the door. “First we have to visit a naked widow and then I’m going to see about getting myself appointed chief of police. After that, you might go house-hunting. I may be here for a long time.”

“Do you believe Mr. Persona was telling the truth about Mr. Brand?” Lucy asked in a small awed voice.

“I don’t know,” Shayne muttered. He was driving slowly, hunched over the wheel. “I suppose it’s inevitable that a lot of that sort of thing should go on. The threat of a strike is a terrific weapon in the hands of an unscrupulous man. Better than a loaded gun pointed at a rich man’s belly.” He laughed wearily and mirthlessly.

“A gun just threatens his life,” Lucy mused, “but a strike threatens his profits. I’ve no doubt that plenty of industrialists would be happy to pay off a labor leader willing to take their money.” She was relaxed against the back of the seat. She yawned widely, patting her mouth with the tips of her fingers and added, “I’m dead tired. If you hadn’t come when you did, I think I’d have been sick right in Persona’s fat black face. Do you think Brand is the sort of man who’d take their money?”

“I don’t know. Persona could be lying. It makes a good story and has a damnable aura of plausibility. If he could convince the men that Brand was betraying them he would accomplish his purpose neatly.”

“But he’d need some proof, Michael. The money that he says is in escrow: Couldn’t you check on that?”

“That’s what worries me,” Shayne admitted. “Here’s another possibility.” He was thinking aloud now as the car slid downward around the curving highway toward Centerville. “If Brand is as smart as I think he is, he could be pulling a fast one on Persona. Sitting down in his office and pretending to reach this agreement to defeat the strike. Going through all the motions of having the money put in escrow while having no intention whatsoever of collecting it.”

“What would he gain by that?”

“Two things. First, it would lull AMOK into a sense of false security and prevent them from taking any positive action like trying to import strikebreakers. We know it did have that effect on Persona. Second, it would be a sort of insurance if the strike was honestly unsuccessful. Take the present situation.” Shayne’s tone gained assurance as he expanded a nebulous thought into definite theory.

“Something wholly beyond Brand’s control has come along to smash that strike. Roche’s death couldn’t be foreseen, but it happened at just the right time and in a way to defeat the strikers. What’s wrong, then, with Brand collecting the twenty thousand and later distributing it secretly among the miners… or keeping it to finance another strike? That’s the impression I got of Brand.”

“Did they let you talk to him, Michael?”

“Yeh,” he muttered. “In jail.”

“They just let you go in and…”

“I didn’t get very far with him,” Shayne interrupted. “He’s cagey as hell. One of the things I couldn’t understand was his complete imperturbability. That twenty grand in Lexington might help explain it. He knows he’s lost the strike, but I presume the conditions of escrow are such that he will collect the money.”

Lucy yawned again and let her head roll over to rest against his arm. He patted her hand and said, “You poor kid,” gently, then added harshly, “But it serves you right letting that guy Persona practically crawl on top of you.”

“While you were running around visiting widows, and admitting you left one of them naked,” Lucy retorted. “But that money won’t do Brand much good, will it, if he’s convicted of murder in the meantime.”

Shayne thought for a moment, then said, “I’d guess he’s a fatalist. I’ve seen other innocent men in prison, and none of them ever seem to realize they can possibly be convicted. Simply because they know they’re innocent. It’s a sort of self-anesthesia. They walk right up to the chair believing the switch won’t be pulled.”

Lucy Hamilton shuddered and changed the subject. “How did you manage it… getting in to see him?”

“The Eustis Restaurant obligingly tipped off the cops. They were waiting outside. All I had to do was stagger around a little.”

Lucy’s eyes narrowed. She said, “So that’s what you were up to.”

“Didn’t you get any dope from Persona?”

“Nothing much.” She chuckled quietly. “He doesn’t like Seth Gerald. Thinks he’s incompetent. I think they’d had an argument, but he didn’t tell me what it was about. He didn’t want to talk anything but…”