Brett Halliday - Guilty as Hell

“What are the photographs like?”

“Photographs? You mean they have pictures of me? Of me and Deedee?” He covered his face. “My God.”

“They were taken the first night,” Shayne said. “Jake said they turned out well. What would your wife do if they showed up in the mail some morning?”

“God,” Despard said again.

“How old do you think the girl is?”

Despard raised his head slowly. “I don’t think. I know. I happened to see a form she was making out. She’s fourteen. But she’s mature for her age.”

“She’s seventeen,” Shayne said. “The form was a fake. The point of this whole operation was to make you think they could break up your family, get you canned from your clubs and slam you in jail for that fine old felony known as statutory rape. Not many people have a stiff enough spine to hold out against that kind of a parlay. Fitch is working for a blackmail and extortion outfit. You can’t tell me they had that kind of ammunition without intending to use it.”

Despard lifted both trembling hands. He worked his Adam’s apple for a moment before he could bring out any words.

“It’s-it’s absolutely the first time I’ve had the slightest hint of any such suggestion. I’ll repeat that under oath.”

“You may have to.”

Despard dropped one hand to Shayne’s shoulder. “You must believe me.”

“Take your hand off me,” Shayne said.

Despard pulled it back as though burned. “I see how you feel. I’m the lowest of the low. I have this-tendency. I love youthfulness. I don’t like to feel old. But with Deedee “it was the first time I ever-continued where I wasn’t wanted. She fought like a cat. And now you tell me it wasn’t real.” His eyes contracted. “Yes, there were signs. There were definite signs. A certain-lubricity. I thought afterward I was trying to fool myself, but perhaps-yes, if her resistance had been genuine, perhaps I would have stopped.” He seemed relieved.

“Let’s hope so,” Shayne said. “Do you play much golf at the North Miami Country Club?”

“Why, yes,” Despard said, the change of subject sending his eyebrows up. “I get in a couple of rounds every weekend, and I usually manage one or two during the week. Why?”

“That’s where Begley picked up the report.”

“I had nothing to do with it,” Despard said firmly. “I had access to it, I won’t deny that. My secretary has a Thermofax machine, not that I know how to work it. I played a lot of golf last spring, trying to overcome a slice. But don’t stop looking for the person who really did it, because I didn’t.” He looked ahead through the windshield, holding himself erect. “It’s old-fashioned, but I like to think I believe in honor.”

Shayne made a rude sound.

Despard said stiffly, “You’re entitled to that response. I make this distinction. Despards have often been in various kinds of trouble. We have lost too much money at the gambling tables. We have fought duels. We have committed adultery, and had sexual relations with unmarried girls. But we have not, Shayne, we have never betrayed the honor of our family, our country or the company we work for.”

“I suppose Despards were officers in the Confederate Army.”

“We ended as officers. We began as recruits. My great-great-grandfather rose to command a division of cavalry.”

Shayne lit a cigarette deliberately. “Where does Hallam stand on the Civil War?”

“Nowhere,” Despard said, still very stiff. “He is a part of a different tradition. All we could discover when he married my sister was the name of one maternal grandparent, a New Englander, who ended his life as a clerk in a cotton house.”

“And you’ve probably rubbed that in often enough so he’d enjoy hearing about this trouble with Deedee?”

Despard bit off the words. “He might. Are you going to tell him?”

“No, not yet. There’s more involved here than the theft of a paint formula. I don’t want to commit myself before I know a little more.”

“What do you mean, more involved?”

“I can go into the next board-of-directors meeting with the facts I have and nail you to the wall. You know that. They’ll ask for your resignation on a dozen counts. And that will put Hallam in complete control. Or am I wrong?”

“You surely don’t mean Hallam is behind this?”

“I don’t know a damn thing except what people have been telling me,” the detective said sharply. “I don’t think he had anything to do with setting up Deedee. But after you fell for that, it’s possible he found out about it and brought me in to get confirmation so it wouldn’t seem there was any personal malice involved. When I say it’s possible, I don’t mean it’s likely. I’ve managed to stay alive this long by playing the odds. You’re the odds-on favorite on the morning line, Despard. But I don’t have to put my money down till Hallam gets back from Washington. If honor kept you from turning over that report, there’s somebody else in the company who’s either not so honorable or more pressed. I’ll give you twelve hours to see if you can come up with anything.”

“Twelve hours! What can I do in twelve hours? You can’t believe I’ll suddenly be thinking about it for the first time!”

Shayne made an impatient gesture. “Now you’ve got an incentive. I’ve already been paid two thousand. All I have to do to collect the eight-thousand-dollar balance is turn in a thief. You’ll do. If you don’t want to be turned in, give me somebody else.”

“I’m not an informer,” Despard said with another attempt at dignity.

“In that case you’re dead,” Shayne told him. “Oh, they’ll give you five minutes to defend yourself, and you can make your speech. I don’t think they’ll believe you. I happen to believe you myself, but that’s partly because I don’t think you’ve had your chance yet to find out how you’d stand up under real pressure.”

Despard looked at him suspiciously. “I had the impression you thought I was lying.”

“There was money involved,” Shayne explained. “They picked up the report one day and paid for it the next. They could get it from you for nothing. Not only that. I don’t think you would have gone on having sex with Deedee after you saw the photographs.”

Despard shuddered. “I’m not in my dotage yet.”

“Another point. This Candida Morse is a bright girl. Too bright to think she could hurt me with this kind of vice-cop frame-up. It’s too crude and too obvious. I think the real reason for that was to lower my opinion of her intelligence, so I’d jump at the name Despard when I heard it. Deedee had been told to make sure I heard it, obviously to fake me away from their real contact.”

“I agree with you,” Despard said ironically. “I didn’t do it. That’s what I’ve been telling you.”

“They had a limited time to come up with the report,” Shayne continued. “If they couldn’t produce it in a month or maybe a month and a half, the deal would peter out. So they wouldn’t want to bet their whole bankroll on a single entry. They hired Fitch and Deedee to work on you. Candida went after Walter Langhorne herself on a recruitment basis, and maybe that was the one that worked. Statutory rape is tricky and dangerous, and they wouldn’t use it unless they had to. And maybe they were working on a third possibility. Probably three was all they had time for. All right. All these arguments weigh with me, but unless you can produce some hard information for me tonight or tomorrow morning, I won’t even put them in the report. I’ve been looking for a handle. Now that I have one, you’d better believe I mean to use it. As soon as you have something to tell me, call me on the car phone. If that doesn’t answer, try Tim Rourke.”