Brett Halliday - Guilty as Hell

She trailed off when he failed to reply. Several more times on the way down she tried to continue the subject, but the grim set of his mouth discouraged her. Between the fourth floor and the third, she began to feel dizzy and told him she had to stop and sit down. He ignored her. She pulled his arm in hard against her breast.

“I’m about ready to flop! Honestly and truly. I don’t get enough exercise.”

Shayne still didn’t slow down.

They passed the first floor and continued to the basement. She went on revolving even after Shayne had stopped, reeling back in to clutch him with both hands, the robe flying. He put her aside, opened the door and looked out carefully.

The cinderblock corridor was dimly lit by forty-watt bulbs. Hearing footsteps, Shayne let the door swing nearly shut as a man in work clothes, carrying a mop and a pail, came out of the elevator, left mop and pail in a storage closet and entered another room. Through the open door, Shayne could hear TV voices, the sound of screeching tires, then gunfire. A baby was crying.

He pulled Deedee into the corridor and motioned to her to open a door. She did so. He felt for the light switch and turned it on. It was a storeroom, jammed with bikes, baby carriages, cots and luggage, with three windows high in the back wall.

“What was Jake going to do?” he asked. “Wait to see what happened?”

“Uh-huh. In case you didn’t show up, he’d have to lay a few bills on the cops, to keep everybody happy.”

“Where is he?”

“I guess in his car.”

Shayne snapped his fingers twice and she said hastily, “A new air-conditioned DeSoto, and it’s double-parked at the dead end if he didn’t move it. I’ll show you exactly where. Believe me, Mr. Shayne, I’m cooperating right down the line.”

He put out his hand. “Let’s have the robe.”

She pulled it together defensively. “I won’t try to get away. I won’t budge an inch.”

He continued to hold out his hand. She made a pleading face, but her sense of realism won. “Aah!” She shrugged out of the robe and gave it to him.

“Maybe I’ll walk out of here like this and get a taxi.”

“They’re scarce around here,” he said.

He looked into the corridor. The door of the superintendent’s apartment was still open. He hesitated. He didn’t want any trouble while the raiding party was still in the building.

“O.K., I’m going out the window. When I get out, turn off the light.”

“And what if somebody comes in for a baby buggy or something?”

“Hold still. They’ll think you’re a statue.”

He kicked a trunk into position beneath one of the windows and pulled out the screen. Pushing his cast ahead of him, he pulled himself up and out. The light winked off behind him.

He went around the building. Protected by a screen of low-growing shrubs, he spotted the DeSoto where Deedee had said it would be parked. There was a figure at the wheel.

After a moment’s reflection, Shayne returned to the back of the building and stepped down off the embankment onto the strip of hard sand at the water’s edge. He walked on to the canal, came back up on the embankment and approached the DeSoto from behind.

He pulled open the door on the passenger’s side and slid into the cool interior. The man at the wheel swung around.

Shayne left the door open slightly so the dome light would stay on and they could look at each other. Jake Fitch was swarthy and unshaven, with bushy eyebrows which almost met over a meaty nose. His forearms were hairy, and heavy black hair tufted out of the neck of his shirt, his ears, his nostrils. He was wearing a blue linen cap with some kind of insignia.

His eyes flickered at Shayne’s cast and his hand shot toward the glove compartment. Shayne raised the cast and waited. Jake touched the glove compartment button, the little door fell open, and Shayne moved the cast forward and upward, slapping him on the temple with the brass knuckles.

He sat back, stunned. Shayne felt inside the glove compartment and brought out a Walther. 38, one of the prettiest of the European handguns.

Jake mumbled something while the detective lit a cigarette.

“Take your time,” Shayne said. “I’m in no hurry.”

He smoked in silence. Jake recovered gradually. He was functioning again by the time Shayne finished his cigarette and stubbed it out against his heel.

Jake touched his forehead and looked for blood on his fingers. “What did you have to do that for? I didn’t do anything.”

“I can’t really believe that,” Shayne remarked.

Working the slide of the little Belgian automatic with one hand, he checked to be sure it was loaded. Then he brought it around in the flat of his right hand and slapped Jake with it.

Jake yelped. He came down hard on the door handle and hurled himself sideward. Shayne raked out with the hook, which snagged in Jake’s pants. Jake didn’t understand what was holding him, and he went on trying to get away. The hook ripped through his pants and buried itself in the soft flesh of his thigh.

“Close the door,” Shayne said coldly. “I’m feeling less good-natured every minute.”

Jake eased back in, going with the pull. As he came all the way in the light went off. He put both hands on Shayne’s cast and tried to work it toward him. Shayne dropped his elbow and the hook dug in deeper.

“Please,” Jake begged. “Shayne, don’t-that’s-they weren’t supposed to do anything to you last night but tap you a couple. When I get hold of that Whitey, I’ll break him in two.”

“What about this setup with Deedee?”

Jake’s weight shifted back against the door and the light blinked on. There was a look of intense alarm on his face.

“Shayne, what are you, anyway?” he cried frantically. “How did you find out about that?” The light went off. “It’s not how it looks! Give me a break! Don’t pull so hard. It wasn’t a real frame. We didn’t play it to stick. She just wanted us to keep you wrapped up a few days.”

“Who?”

“Miss Morse! Miss Morse! Take the hook out, will you, please? Any questions, I’ll be happy to answer them.”

“Whose idea was the whip?”

“Hers. She mapped out the whole goddamn thing, the whip, the dialogue. I don’t claim to be any great brain.”

“How long have you worked for her?”

“Off and on. One year, two years.”

“Fifty thousand bucks,” Shayne said. “April twenty-third.”

“How would I know?” Jake demanded. “She wrote it down for Deedee to say on the phone. We figured it for a come-on, to make sure you showed up. Like that crack about murder. Who’s been murdered? What fifty thousand? The kind of dough I’ve been seeing is a hell of a lot less than fifty, believe me.”

“April twenty-third,” Shayne repeated. “Think about it.”

“I did think about it! I thought about it all afternoon. I planted Deedee on Jose Despard along around the first of April. If anything happened the twenty-third, I don’t know what. That’s six months back! The kind of memory I’ve got, I’m lucky if I remember last week.”

“When you planted Deedee how?”

“Well, I found out he likes them that age, so I asked at her high school if anybody might be interested. He thought he raped her-she’s only supposed to be fourteen. Shayne, I’m bleeding like a pig, you know that? You want me to bleed to death?”

“It can’t be that bad yet,” Shayne said. “How soon did you take the pictures?”

“Right away, right away. On the first night, when he thought he raped her. I’m no photographer, but they come out great. I thought it was strictly a one-shot, but when I turn over the pix, they tell me to string him along, Despard.”