Brett Halliday - Mermaid on the Rocks

“I’ve passed my bar exams, Mike. I don’t answer that kind of question. Ever.”

“How about this one? Did you call the cops and tell them to expect a burglar in Kitty’s neighborhood?”

Shanahan smiled thinly without answering. He shifted position, as though he was wearing figure-control underwear which was beginning to bind.

Shayne went on, “Do you keep a room at the St. Albans?”

Shanahan squinted over his whiskey. “What kind of reaction are you trying to get? Why throw good money away on a hotel room? I have a perfectly good pad.”

“Mrs. Lemoyne knows where it is. You’ve been meeting Kitty Sims at the St. A., I’m told. On at least three occasions. On one she stayed the night.”

Shanahan put his glass down carefully. After easing the pull of his tight underwear he said brusquely, “What’s your source?”

“Hank Sims. He’s been following his wife, to get evidence of adultery for the divorce action. He has affidavits from an assistant night manager named Sedge, a bellman named Truehauf and a maid whose name I can’t remember except that it’s Polish.”

“Affidavits,” Shanahan said evenly. “And who were these affidavits supposed to impress, Babs? You’re beginning to tell me things, Mike. Maybe I’ve been a little too trusting. Now I’ll tell you about Kitty Sims. She’s got one of the greatest builds I ever saw on a woman, but the reason she never did any more with it is that she’s pure poison and she can’t conceal it for long. She’s too much the conniver for her own good. You can guess my approximate age, Mike. I’m no undergraduate. When you pass that half-century mark, it’s sad but the dolls tend to get a trifle reserved. It may turn out O.K. after you get over the first hurdle, but they really make you work for it, the dears. Being a judge has made a difference. They get some kind of perverse satisfaction out of going to bed with a judge, and why should I knock it?”

He picked up a Miami phone book and ruffled through it with both hands. “I’m not bragging, Mike. I’m stating facts, so you’ll know how much credence to put in those phony affidavits. There are two or three or four phone numbers under every letter of the alphabet in this book except X and Z, and there’s a girl at each one of them who’s always glad to find time for Frank Shanahan, feeble old crock that he is. Kitty, who needs her? Especially after the way she took Cal-”

“I wondered about that,” Shayne said.

“The badger game, Mike, in its classic form. Hank Sims walked in at the wrong time and said, ‘What are you doing between those sheets with my wife, sir? No clothes on, either! Fork over.’”

“Cash?”

“Damn right, cash. In the form of a capital investment in one of his real-estate promotions. You’d think Cal would bring somebody in from out of town, wouldn’t you, to tie them up and drop them in a swamp?” He shook his head. “No, he forgave her. He went on sleeping with her to the day he died. He looked into Hank’s promotion and put a hundred grand in it. He came out with an eighty-percent capital gain, and Hank never made a penny. That’s the way everybody should handle the badger game.”

He belched slightly. “Excuse me.”

He downed more whiskey and suppressed another bubble as it rose to his lips. “One way I’ve gone downhill, in the old days I never had hangovers. It hits me like this, all of a sudden.” He hiked up his robes to get at a handkerchief, with which he dried his forehead. “What about Quarrels, will he go by your recommendations?”

“I may have to persuade him. He’d like to believe in that buried treasure.”

“Mike, for Christ’s sake-if it’s a con, who’s behind it? Tick them off. Brad? He’s dead. Ev? Dead. Babs? Now Babs has a college degree, but you don’t think she’s got the brain power to swing something like this, do you? Kitty? I’ll tell you another thing about Kitty. She was with Ev the night he died. That’s established. The point is, if there’s no gold in that swamp, if there never was any gold in that swamp, what’s everybody getting worked up about?”

He put the handkerchief to his mouth. “I’m going to lose my breakfast, goddamn it. There’s just too damn much tension, and it’s been building up. One million bucks-it’s the sound of it that gets everybody, Mike. I defended a burglar once. Never mind his name. His specialty’s hanging around bars and seeing who gets plastered. Then he follows them home, waits fifteen minutes and walks in. Most of the time they’re passed out cold. He takes his time and cleans out the place. All right. Ev died in a fire in a southside hotel. This guy I’m telling you about was picked up for pulling a job that same night in that same hotel. I talked to him. If one of my fellow heirs murdered another of my fellow heirs, I thought I’d better find out about it. And it paid off. He was in the bar with Ev. A blonde with a sexy shape gave him some dough. He followed Ev when he staggered back to the hotel. He waited fifteen minutes. He went up the fire stairs. When he came out on Ev’s floor a woman was coming out of Ev’s room. Blonde. Very sexy ass.”

His whiskey glass fell. Shanahan clutched his stomach with both hands, a look of pained amazement on his face, and he pitched forward to the floor.

The bailiff opened the door.

“Chief of Police wants to talk to you, Judge. Judge? Where’d he go?” he asked Shayne. “Oh, my God!”

Will Gentry pushed past. The police chief was an old friend of Shayne’s, a red-faced, scrupulously honest cop who had seen too much violence and heard too many lies and alibis. Shayne was on his knees beside the unconscious judge. He let Gentry check Shanahan’s breathing and make the necessary phone call.

“He was telling me something when he collapsed,” Shayne said thoughtfully. He touched the drawn flesh at the corner of Shanahan’s mouth. “He’s been under a strain. I’d say he was the cardiac type, but it seemed to me it hit him in the belly.”

Suddenly Shayne’s face changed. He stood up and strode to the courtroom.

Except for the bailiff and one old man asleep on a bench, the big room was empty. The bailiff, at the judge’s bench, was shaking two aspirins into his hand, his face the color of dirty snow. He popped the aspirins into his mouth and raised a glass of water.

“Drop that!” Shayne commanded.

The bailiff’s hand jerked and the glass fell and shattered. He gulped down the aspirins dry and cried, “Look what you’ve done! I was going to get a clean glass for the judge. Who do you think’s going to clean it up?”

The big double doors burst open to admit a compact group, including Tim Rourke and two courtroom reporters. Rourke signalled to Shayne as he passed, then went through into Shanahan’s chambers with the others. Shayne took a paper tissue out of the soggy box of Kleenex on the bench, wrapped it carefully around the water carafe and carried it down to a table in the well of the court.

He heard a hum of excited voices from Shanahan’s chambers. More officials arrived, including a short preoccupied man he recognized as the medical examiner. Rourke and a reporter for the rival paper ran out to the phones.

Shayne was frowning at the burning end of his cigarette. Will Gentry appeared in the doorway. Seeing the private detective, he came over and sat down across from him.

“He’s dead. I don’t suppose you’re surprised.”

“That makes three,” Shayne said. “Two more to go.” He pushed the carafe across the table. “Better have this analyzed.”

“You think he was poisoned?”

“I know damn well he was poisoned. Shanahan’s a Monday-morning hangover man. Listening to lawyers argue is thirsty work. If the water bottle was full when court convened, he must have drunk at least two glasses.”