Brett Halliday - Guilty as Hell

“He cancelled my retainer. That’s his privilege. It doesn’t mean I automatically drop dead.”

Despard gave a low whistle. “Well, well. It wasn’t my idea. Now I’m trying to figure out where this leaves me.”

“You’re right where you were,” Shayne assured him, “except that I now have the negatives of those shots they took of you and Deedee.”

Shayne heard him swallow. “How much will you take for them?”

“They’re not for sale. I’m not in that business. What did you call him about, something involving his son?”

“Now how did you know that? Well, it’s narrowing down. You told me to sit down and think. I went to a bar-I can’t think at home. On my second brandy I remembered something about Forbes. He has certain beatnik proclivities, I don’t know if you know that. Dubious connections with civil-rights pickets and the like. There’s a girl. Needless to say, there’s always a girl. I don’t know her name, but I’ve dredged up something I’d completely forgotten about, that he needed money to pay for an abortion.”

“Last April?” Shayne said quickly.

“No, earlier. Around the turn of the year. He took me to lunch and asked me for a loan of eight hundred dollars. The girl wanted it done in Puerto Rico. I thought eight hundred was a bit much. I sympathized, I always feel sympathetic toward a fellow sinner, but to come up with eight hundred in a hurry I’d have to sell some bonds. To put it mildly, Mrs. Despard wouldn’t O.K. going into capital for an illegal operation for somebody no one in the family has ever met.”

“So you didn’t give him the money?”

“No. And there was another consideration. He’s an only child. That has a lot to do with the scrapes he got into while he was growing up.”

“What kind of scrapes?”

“Cars, girls, nothing too serious. His mother always took care of it, his father after she became sick. We finally decided he had to start toeing the line. I say ‘we’ because it was a family decision. My brother-in-law asked us to cooperate, and we agreed. From that point on, Forbes had to take responsibility for the things he did.” A note of embarrassment entered his voice. “I know you’re probably thinking I’m no person to talk, but I take my duties as a parent seriously. I have three fine kids. Getting good marks in school.”

“Did his father pay for the abortion?” Shayne said impatiently.

“I called him tonight to find out. He said no. But he may not want to admit it. There’s a pattern-he’s constantly telling the boy he’ll stake him this one last time, and then never again. I don’t suppose any of this means anything? It was just an idea. I mean, if she hit him for eight hundred in December, maybe it was only the beginning.”

While Despard talked, Shayne watched Candida repair her eye makeup at the mirror. She put down the little tools and picked up her lipstick.

“Where are you, Despard?” Shayne said. “I think we’ve got hold of something, finally.”

Despard gave him the name of the bar and agreed to wait.

“One more question,” Shayne said. “How long had you known Walter Langhorne?”

“All my life. My sisters were closer to him than I was, but we did the same things-picnics, dances. Now don’t double back on me, Shayne. Stick to Forbes. Walter Langhorne didn’t sell that report.”

“We’ll talk about it,” Shayne said wearily.

Candida looked across at him as he hung up. “You’re still working?”

“Yeah,” he said thoughtfully, rubbing his jaw.

“The Mike Shayne I’ve always heard about,” she said, “doesn’t make a move without being paid in advance.”

“I expect to be paid.”

She threw her lipstick in her bag. “I hate to think how close I came to telling you every last thing you wanted to know. I was so mixed up I felt like three different people. The truth is, we perform a valuable function. Big corporations like Despard have a huge and unfair advantage, with their great wealth, their control of the market. We’ve managed to help a few obscure companies to survive, Hal and I–I don’t think that’s necessarily so wicked. Well, I’ve changed my mind five times in five minutes, but this is definite. You and I are on opposite teams, and let’s keep it that way.”

“The sex wasn’t my idea.”

“Oh, I’m terrible. Seducing a man with only one arm to fight me off. I’ll iron your shirt.”

She went into the bathroom and came back with his damp shirt. She unfolded an ironing board. She added in a low voice without looking at him, “Not that I didn’t think it was going very nicely.”

Shayne laughed openly. “The hell you did. You were thinking of too many other things at the same time. Where will you be if anything comes up?”

“Right here. I have to wait for a call from Hal. What could come up? Your terms are unconditional surrender, and I’ve decided to take my chances.”

She worked on the shirt for only a moment. “For some reason you make me nervous, Mike. It’ll have to dry on you.”

She tossed it to him. When she saw how hard it was to put on, she came to help him, which brought her back within the radius of his good arm. As soon as the shirt was on and the sling adjusted she stepped back quickly.

“You have an appointment. Please. Go. If you stay another thirty seconds, I’ll change my mind again. That would be ridiculous, wouldn’t it?”

Shayne had made it clear that he was going somewhere else. Candida had made it equally clear that she was staying home.

Shayne moved his Buick to a less conspicuous parking lot on the other side of Alhambra Circle, one reserved for University of Miami faculty. From here he had an unobstructed view of the exit from Candida’s little court, and he could leave quickly in either direction.

He killed his headlights.

A moment or so later a black Ford with a buggy-whip aerial cruised past. It looked to Shayne like a City of Miami police car. The driver was peering into parked cars. As he passed under a streetlight Shayne recognized him. It was Vince Camilli, the vice cop who had raided Deedee’s apartment.

Camilli’s head had swiveled toward Shayne’s Buick. His brake lights flared. Shayne thought fast. He was carrying only one thing that would make trouble for him with a vice cop-the blackmail negatives, showing Deedee and Jose Despard at four stages in the presumed rape. The one Shayne had looked at had been relatively innocuous, but the others were undoubtedly worse.

Camilli left the Ford double-parked with its headlights on full. Shayne whipped the envelope containing the negatives out of his pocket and tried to slip it under the floor covering. But he had to crouch low to reach the edge of the rubber pad with his right hand, and Camilli saw him straighten.

Shayne flicked on the switch of a battery-powered tape recorder under the front seat as the other approached. Camilli, chewing gum, his thumbs hooked in his belt, was moving at the easy saunter used by cops when they believe they are about to make a high-prestige arrest and their quarry has little chance to get away from them.

“Mike Shayne again,” he said lazily. “You get around, for a man with a bad arm. What are you doing on University property, may I ask?”

“You can ask,” Shayne said evenly. “What are you doing in Coral Gables? You’re out of your jurisdiction here.”

“Let’s not worry about that. Ever since I saw you tonight, I’ve been thinking about some of those uncalled-for remarks of yours about frame-ups. Somebody’s a hooker, or a flagrant fag. Everybody knows it. They’re guilty as hell, and we can’t bring them in unless we catch them in the act. Well?” He jerked the door open. “What did you just stick under the front seat?”