Brett Halliday - Guilty as Hell

It was 5:15 in the afternoon, and the blinds were drawn. The room was awash with discarded clothing. An empty gin bottle lay on the carpet. Ruth Di Palma was asleep on the bed amid a tumble of bedclothes. She was face down, one bare arm trailing.

Forbes adjusted the blind cords, letting in the afternoon sun. This room was on the Inland Waterway side of the hotel, where prices were lower. Ruth, in fact, occupied it rent-free during the off-season, although she was supposed to be ready to move on an hour’s notice.

He switched on the exhaust fan and turned the air-conditioning dial up a notch. Sitting on the bed beside the sleeping girl, he slipped his hand under the covers.

“Ruthie, wake up.”

He moved his hand along her body. She stirred, murmuring, then flopped over, opened her eyes suddenly and stared up at him. It was clear to Forbes that she didn’t have the remotest idea who he was. Her skin was a lovely golden color. Her face glistened with something she had rubbed on it before going to bed. The sun had burned her hair the color of driftwood. There were no lines on her face, and, if it was true that anxiety was what put the lines on people’s faces, Forbes could be fairly sure that she would still look the same at sixty.

“You remember me,” he said, withdrawing his hand.

“Put your hand back. Come on.”

“Ruthie-”

She lifted the sheet. She slept without nightgown or pajamas.

“What are you doing out there with all those clothes on?”

“Ruth, it’s five in the afternoon, which is a peculiar time to be asleep, and I tore in from the office to see you for about ten seconds.”

“I took a pill. Or two. Or a handful. I love you.”

“I love you.”

“Five in the afternoon? You don’t scare me a bit. The real point is, what day?”

Forbes laughed. “Friday.”

“Well, if it’s still only Friday.” She pulled at his clothes. “Be unconventional. Come to bed. I haven’t seen you since this morning.”

He scuffed off his loafers. Without undressing any further, he swung in under the sheet and took her in his arms.

“Don’t you want to know why I left the office early and drove like a madman and why I’m taking a chance on holding up the company plane?”

“Why?”

“I wanted to find out what you decided.”

“I never decide things,” she said. “Things decide themselves.”

He gave her a small shake. “Why don’t you marry me, Ruthie?”

“Because you’re only one person. If you have to have a reason.”

He laughed again. “I’m changeable.”

“Not enough. Number two, you like your job.”

“I hate my job,” he said calmly.

“You only think you hate it. Let’s make love. I don’t feel a bit like it. It’s the last thing I’d suggest ordinarily, down at the end of the list after watching cartoons on TV. But anything to change the subject!”

“Ruthie, don’t,” he said, trying to keep her from unbuttoning his shirt. “I have to be at Opa-Locka airport in sixty minutes, or my father will chop me off at the neck. He likes people to be on time.”

Doubling the pillow behind her, she hitched up against the headboard and looked at him balefully. “You won’t believe this, but do you know I forgot you were going away? Now maybe you’ll agree I’m not cut out to be the wife of a rising young executive. I told Freddy and Adrian we’d go to Palm Beach.”

“Where in Palm Beach?”

“Freddy met the lady who gives those millions of dollars to the opera. She has some wonderful Picassos and he’s going to get her to give him one.”

“Nobody gives Freddy Picassos.”

“He has a plan worked out. I’ll see if he can put it off a week. Then I promised we’d be back in time for the soul session at the Stanwick. They’ve got some real weirdies.”

“I’ll be satisfied to miss that.”

“Too bad for you, buster. I’ll go stag. Cigarette.”

She watched him find the cigarettes and hunt around in the mess for matches. “It begins to come back to me. I wish you wouldn’t keep telling me things when I’m tight. This is your Mike Shayne weekend.”

“There, you see? There’s nothing wrong with your memory.”

He held a match to her cigarette. She breathed out smoke and looked at him.

“Forbes, are you in any kind of jam I don’t know about?”

He shook his long hair off his forehead. “I tell you about all my jams.”

“At three or four in the morning, when I couldn’t care less. I asked a couple of people about this Mike Shayne, and here’s what they tell me. Now listen. To start with, you have to remember he’s tricky. But he’s not like other tricky people. He can be tough. And he’s not like most tough people because he can also be tricky. If you can’t follow that, it’s because I’m not at my best before breakfast. What it boils down to, if you’ve got something you don’t want Shayne to find out, don’t take your eyes off the radar screen.”

“Shayne and I are working the same side of the street. We’re the one-two punch for the good guys.”

“Hmm.”

“Ruthie, are you worrying about me by any chance?”

“Me worry? About you? You may not be handsome, but you’re rich, accomplished, a talented writer, with a nice car, nice clothes and a nice crusty father.” She added, “You did raise that money O.K., didn’t you?”

“Ruthie, that was ages ago. It all blew over. You realize, don’t you, that if you’ve started to worry about me and money, you might as well marry me? Wives are supposed to worry about their husbands. Girls are supposed to be blase about their boy friends.”

“How can I marry you, Forbes? I’m five years older than you.”

“I’ll catch up.”

“Besides, your father’s paying me a weekly allowance as long as we don’t get married.”

His smile vanished. He seized her bare arm above the elbow. “Is that true?”

She looked at him in silence for a moment before shaking her head. “No.”

He let go. “Well, your financial condition’s a mystery to me, but I really don’t think that explains it. The old man’s attached to that dough. He made it himself. I’ve got to go.”

“Not yet.”

“Yes, damn it, if I want to hang onto that job, and we’ve been through that ten million times. If I could get along without eating, I could easily live on what I make writing fiction. Three short stories in six months, two hundred and twenty-five dollars.”

“You’re not using the old computer,” she said, tapping his forehead. “If you drive to Opa-Locka, you’ll just about make it, leaving now. The Watson Park heliport is five minutes from here. Take a helicopter.

He looked into her eyes, then glanced quickly at his watch.

“You see?” she said. “Call the heliport.”

She threw off the sheet and slid down in the bed, watching him gravely. He hooted and reached for the phone, beginning to unbutton his shirt with the other hand.

In a crudely-built duck blind in a Georgia salt marsh early the next morning, Forbes Hallam, Jr., held out a cup of steaming coffee to the big redheaded private detective named Michael Shayne.

Shayne leaned against the stringer at the front of the blind, a 12-gauge semiautomatic resting lightly in the crook of one arm. His slouch was characteristic, and characteristically deceptive. He had an athlete’s ability to seem totally relaxed a second before erupting into a violent explosion of controlled energy. A bloody mallard, brought down by Shayne in his first shot of the morning, lay on a bench at the back of the blind.

“Coffee?” Forbes said.

The detective took the cup, set it on the stringer and added cognac from a pint bottle. He offered the bottle to young Hallam, who was sitting on the bench well back from the opening, his long legs stretched out in front of him. His shotgun was propped in a corner. He had yet to take a shot.