Brett Halliday - Guilty as Hell

“It would help.”

“I think I can find her for you. She’s at what they call a ‘soul session.’ You know? The papers are spreading the idea it’s a new kind of orgy, but it’s just a bunch of people with problems, and who doesn’t have problems nowadays? Ruthie wanted to know if they could have it here. I said why not, but the brass vetoed it-by the end of a long weekend everybody’s looking pretty grubby. I suggested the Stanwick, the new motel in Surfside. If you want to hold on, I can check. They’ll be breaking about now.”

Shayne told him to go ahead. He listened to a dead phone for several minutes. Then Hurlbut was back.

“Yeah-the Stanwick. Room twenty-four. You’ll recognize her. She’s got a great build. A short haircut-pretty near white.”

“Thanks, Harry. Keep an eye on the blonde for me.”

“A pleasure, especially from the rear. The thing about these backless fashions-you can’t help wondering what they’ve got on in front.”

Shayne hung up and went around the semicircle back to Collins.

The Stanwick Motel had been in place for a season and a half, and it was looking a little seedy. One letter was gone from its neon sign. Its four floors were arranged around three sides of a lighted swimming pool. The pool was closed for the night.

Shayne found room 24 without trouble. It was one of a suite of three connecting rooms, and all the rooms along that gallery were dark. Apparently the organizers of the weekend had been talked into renting the entire section to avoid disturbing the other guests.

Shayne opened the door and walked in. His arrival went unnoticed by the six or seven people in the room. On one bed, a man with a magnificent head of white hair was weeping silently. A man and a girl, on opposite sides of a TV set, stared at each other as though they had never seen anything so strange and fascinating. The man was talking in a low monotone which gave an effect of extreme excitement.

Shayne stepped over the outstretched legs of a middle-aged Negro woman, several hours past the point of complete exhaustion, and continued into the next room. A young girl was studying her reflection in a mirror. Her lips moved silently; she was probably telling herself some home truths. In the third room, several people, including the girl Shayne had come to see, were attending closely to a discussion between two men and a much older woman. Shayne tuned in briefly. The older woman, it seemed, was being accused of playing a role in some kind of psychological game involving herself and the two men, but she was refusing to acknowledge that any such game existed or that she was a part of it. Probably, Shayne thought, if he had been present all Saturday and Sunday he would have understood why the exhausted audience was following the exchange with such interest.

He had spotted Ruth Di Palma the minute he came in. She was lying on her stomach on one of the beds, her chin on a doubled pillow, her eyes jumping from one speaker to the next. Her sun-whitened hair was very close-cropped. Her tan was excellent. She was wearing tight slacks, a shapeless sweatshirt, no makeup.

Shayne ripped the flyleaf from a Gideon Bible, scribbled “Can I talk to you?” on it, and slipped it inside the leather folder containing his detective’s license. He touched the girl on the shoulder with it.

The surface of her eyes as she looked up at him was opaque with fatigue. She took in his sling, then she looked again at his face. There could have been either hostility or indifference in her eyes.

After reading the note and glancing at the license, she commented with a slight upward movement of an eyebrow and rolled off the bed. She was barefooted, and not tall. She seemed to be smoldering quietly, and it was probably this quality, Shayne thought, that had impressed Hurlbut, a hard man to impress.

Shayne opened the door. They went out to the gallery without passing through the other two rooms.

“What time is it?” she asked.

Shayne told her and she said, “It’s about time we knock off.” She stifled a dry yawn. “I’m tired, and at the same time I’m not. Pills and coffee, coffee and pills. And I think that’s a different kind of oxygen we’ve been breathing in there.”

“Half cigarette smoke,” he said.

She put both hands on the gallery rail and breathed in deeply. Her face had a strained look, a look Shayne associated with the amphetamines, or stay-awake pills.

“Your Georgia weekend didn’t work out?”

“It was over before it started,” Shayne told her. “Long ago now.”

“That was my prediction. You don’t get results from one of these things by pushing. If it comes, it comes.”

“You know what we were trying to find out?”

“Forbes hasn’t been talking about much else.”

Shayne offered her a cigarette. She shook her head. He lit one himself and said, “People are trying to convince me he’s been peddling his company’s secrets. What do you think?”

“I try not to think about dull subjects.” She drew another deep breath, so deep it seemed to make her dizzy. “Or do you want me to act surprised?”

“I thought you might react one way or another.”

She turned toward him, apparently looking at him for the first time with a flicker of interest. “Whether Company A or Company B brings out a new paint first means very little to me.”

“Does it make any difference to you whether or not Forbes is a thief?”

“That’s a fine distinction I can’t get excited about. I understand why it interests you-it’s your business.”

“He could go to jail.”

“Don’t be silly. He’s the heir apparent. They wouldn’t let it get that far. They’d simply act hurt and drop him from the payroll. And if you really want my opinion, which I sort of doubt, that’s the best thing that could happen to Forbes.”

“So he could spend his time writing?”

“So he could spend his time getting something to write about.”

Shayne was trying to decide how much of this was real, and how much the result of the sleepless weekend. For an instant she seemed to be touched by an ordinary human worry.

“I doubt if he did it,” she said abruptly. “I think that foolish job means more to him than he pretends-it’s a flaw in his character. He denies it, but he plays by different rules between Monday and Friday.”

“Can you tell me anything about his finances?”

“What do you want to know? He’s trying to live on his salary, and he’s suffering. You’d be astonished to hear how little they pay him. It’s the barest minimum. Under our Friday-to-Monday rules, he’s not supposed to think about money every minute. I’m afraid I’m giving him premature ulcers.”

“Did you ask him for money last December or January for a trip to Puerto Rico?”

She gave a low, warm laugh. “Who told you about that? His father?”

“His uncle.”

“Well, Mr. Shayne, I’ll admit I asked him. But don’t let it blow up out of proportion. I didn’t know him well then. I asked him to pay for an abortion I didn’t actually need. I was broke and I wanted to go to Puerto Rico. I didn’t know he was getting starvation wages.”

Shayne flicked cigarette ash over the railing. “Did you go to Puerto Rico in the end?”

“Of course.”

“Does Forbes know you were faking about the abortion?”

“I told him later. He didn’t like it, which is what I mean. He cares about that kind of thing.”

She stretched all over, like a cat. She had a cat’s sleekness and indifference, and she was equally finely muscled. “He’s coming to pick me up. Does he know you’re hot on the trail?”

Shayne suddenly felt a surge of anger. Taking her by the shoulder, he pulled her around roughly and made her look at him. “Don’t you realize he’s in trouble?”