Brett Halliday - A Taste for Violence

Shayne grinned and turned on the ignition. “Gerald doesn’t know that. That’s why I’m working fast. I’ll hold my job just so long as George Brand stays in jail charged with murder. If I released him the whole thing would blow up in my face. The more I get done before that happens, the better it’ll be for Centerville.”

“Do you think Gerald did kill Roche?”

“Right now it looks more like Jimmy. But as long as Gerald thinks I have those threatening letters to spring on him, he’s going to be well satisfied to have all the suspicion rest on Brand.”

“What does Jimmy say?”

“I’ve avoided pushing him into a corner where he’ll have to say anything. Unless Gerald has spilled it, he doesn’t even know I have any idea he was at Brand’s place that night. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to get Ann Cornell and her hophead out of town quietly. Jimmy doesn’t know whether they’ve talked or not. I don’t want him to know. As long as I keep everything quiet and appear to be building up the case against Brand, I’ll have a free hand with the police department.” He was driving slowly, and as he reached the main street he turned to the right.

“I’ve never known you to be like this, Michael. You’ve always accepted police corruption with a shrug. Won’t the whole thing just go right back into the same old groove when you leave?”

Shayne stopped in front of the Central Hotel. His gaunt face was serious and his eyes bleak when he said, “Something happened to me, Lucy, about the third time I was told, “This is Centerville.’ As though this was Germany, or Turkey. Not Centerville, U.S.A. Not the United States at all. Those three words answer every question here. They say there isn’t any justice, there isn’t any hope, there isn’t any future. No one tries to do anything because they accept the fact that nothing can be done.”

His doubled fist struck the steering wheel in a surge of anger. “Maybe something can be done. George Brand pointed the way. For a little while these people began to believe in something.”

He gritted his teeth and was silent for a while. “I’ve always liked things tough,” he resumed. “This is the toughest setup I ever walked into. It’s not that I’m burning up to reform the world, but I’ll be goddamned if I’ll admit this thing is bigger than I am. Let’s go,” he ended abruptly.

Lucy followed him into the hotel lobby, away from groups of people huddled on the sidewalks talking together and turning to stare at Shayne’s tall, lanky figure. The hotel management was glad to cooperate when he asked for a key to Myron J. Stanger’s room. Every eye in the lobby followed them to the elevator, and they saw the idlers get up from their chairs and converge upon the manager’s desk just before they got in the elevator to go up.

It was evident that the Washington attorney had stopped at the hotel only long enough to deposit his things before hurrying to seek an interview with his client. There was a Gladstone and a worn pigskin bag on the floor, and a strapped briefcase on the bed.

Shayne went straight to the briefcase and unstrapped it, found it locked, and got out his keyring. The lock came open easily and he dumped the contents on the bed. He said to Lucy, “See if his bags are locked.”

He went swiftly through the documents from the briefcase while Lucy tried the locks on the bags and told him they were locked. Shayne turned from the bed, unlocked both bags with practiced ease, opened the Gladstone and said to Lucy, “You go to work on that one. Don’t worry about messing his stuff up. If we find what we want he won’t have any kick coming. If we don’t, we’re sunk anyhow.”

“What do you want?” Lucy asked helplessly as she knelt beside the pigskin bag and began lifting out underwear and socks.

“Money,” Shayne told her. “A wad of cash… and an agreement signed by Charles Roche setting forth the terms on which the strike was to have been settled if he’d lived.”

“Oh! Do you think it will be here?”

“I want it if it is,” he said impatiently. He had finished one side of the Gladstone and turned to the other. “Stanger and I have different ideas about the use for that document,” he went on, exactly as though Lucy knew all about everything. “I don’t… hold it!” he exclaimed. “I think this is what we want.”

He tossed aside a pair of folded pajamas, emptying the suitcase, and dug with his finger nails at the edge of a fine slit in the inner cloth lining of the bag. He ripped it open and drew out a flat typewritten document with a thin packet of bills inside.

Lucy looked over his shoulder as he riffled through the bills. There were twenty of them, all of thousand-dollar denomination. He wadded them carelessly in his pocket and read swiftly through the first page of the agreement, noted the inked initials at the bottom, “G.B.” and “C.R.” and turned to the next page to verify the signatures and date.

He said, “This is what we need. Pick up the phone and call Mr. Seveir at the Gazette office. Tell him to be in my office in ten minutes.”

Shayne was waiting at the hotel room door when Lucy hung up the receiver. They went out and down to the car.

Mr. Seveir made no pretence that he wasn’t worried and frightened when he faced Centerville’s new chief of police across his desk a quarter of an hour later. He took off his gold-rimmed glasses and polished them nervously and admitted, “Frankly, Mr. Shayne, the town is so full of rumors that I disregarded all of them in today’s edition. Some people say you’ve released all the prisoners and have fired several from our police force. Others say you’ve arrested both Chief Elwood and the mayor and are torturing them frightfully. If you care to give me a statement…”

“That’s what I called you here for. First, I want to know what the facilities are in Centerville for getting dispatches out of town. Are there any press bureaus here? The AP or any of those?”

“None of the large press associations have offices here. The Gazette is a member of the Associated Press and we put anything on the wire that seems of more than local importance.”

“How fast?” Shayne leaned back and regarded the nervous publisher through a cloud of cigarette smoke. “If an important story breaks here,” he amended, “how long a period would elapse before it hit the front pages throughout the country?”

“Depending on the timing, of course. It would go over the teletype immediately and be picked up in other cities at once. You realize, of course, that the afternoon editions of most dailies are already set up by noon and the presses running. An afternoon release would make the early morning editions.”

Shayne nodded and drummed his fingertips on the desk. “I presume your teletype apparatus is the only wire medium for a message to go out after the regular telegraph office closes at night.”

“That’s correct. Since we have no railroad here, there is no all night telegraph office. The lack of a railroad is one of Centerville’s greatest economic handicaps in getting out coal, and the Gazette believes…”

“Where is the closest railroad?” Shayne interrupted absently.

“Slag Junction. That’s a forty-mile haul by truck, and you can readily understand why wages in the mines have to remain low to meet that increased cost.”

Shayne turned in his chair and called, “Lucy.”

She appeared immediately from an inner office and he said, “Get the railroad depot at Slag Junction on the telephone. I want a record of all telegraph messages filed at the station night before last. They won’t want to give them to you, but tell them this is official business.”

He turned back to Seveir. “Who owns the Gazette?”