Brett Halliday - Murder Spins the Wheel

He pulled the boy back on the seat and let him recover. He backed away from the pole and drove on through the dormitory area until he found a place to park on a secluded, tree-lined block. The boy’s eyes were open, regarding him expressionlessly. He touched his face where Shayne had hit him.

Shayne said, “Is that the way you make people feel like doing you a favor? Or did you really think you could knock me out and sign with Colfax before I spoiled it for you? You wanted to know who was in trouble. You’re in trouble.”

Black’s face folded in on itself. “Damn it, damn it, damn it!”

“You can always go to medical school,” Shayne said without sympathy. “There’s a big shortage of doctors.”

“There’s a shortage of pro quarterbacks,” Black said. “That pays better.” He doubled up his fist and hammered his knee. Apparently he had swallowed his gum. “I could make it. I could make it my first year with the Warriors. The guy they’ve got throwing for them now is thirty-six years old. I could be the biggest-”

“Don’t cry about it,” Shayne said. “I meant it when I said it might still happen. It’s up to you. I’ll tell you what the situation is, Johnny. The cops aren’t going to figure in this, and neither is your dean’s office or your athletic department. My client wants to know who did it to him, so it won’t happen again. I wasn’t sure before you threw that punch, but I’m sure now. There was a big rush on Georgia just before game time, most of it with a bookie who happens to be short of cash. He had to call on my client for two hundred thousand bucks to make the payoff. Before the dough could be delivered there was a stickup. The two hundred thousand went down the drain.”

“Two hundred thousand,” Black whispered.

“I’m glad to see you’re listening. It all ties in. My client watched the last half of the game on television. He has a good sense of smell, and he smelled four plays.”

“My timing was off,” Black said sullenly.

“It was off four times, just enough to bring you home within the point spread. Even with the heavy action on Georgia, it might not mean anything. Add it to the stickup and it means a lot. I’m convinced you threw those four plays, Johnny, and that’s all that matters. Maybe a pro like Colfax could look at the films and spot little changes in your style that would give it away. It’s not necessary. The pro leagues are skittish about gamblers and people who know gamblers. All I have to do is tell Colfax my client’s name, and back it up with some betting totals, and it’s goodbye contract. I don’t need an airtight case, any more than Colfax has to give you a reason for not signing you. All he has to do is say thanks for the warm beer, and blow.”

Black’s face was rigid. He forced the word “Please?” through stiff lips.

“That’s a good sign,” Shayne said. “If you watch the old gangster movies on TV, you may think that Jimmy Cagney and George Raft will come out and work you over with baseball bats. Times have changed. Now they write it off to overhead. But naturally they don’t want it to get to be a habit. Tell me how it happened, Johnny.”

He shook his head shortly. “I can’t. It won’t happen again, I promise you that.”

Shayne made a rude noise. The boy said earnestly, “If I do go with the Warriors, it’s not a question of whether I’d want to, I couldn’t. No one person has that much control.”

“I’m not thinking about you,” Shayne said. “I’m thinking about your contact.” He picked up the phone from the little cabinet between them. “What’s the Lambda Phi number? After that quick con you gave him, I’m sure Colfax is still there.”

Black’s hand darted out and closed the switch. “What would you gain by it?”

“Nothing. I wouldn’t lose anything either, which is what makes it easy. This is just routine.”

Black looked at Shayne intently, to see how much was real, how much bluff. People who played poker with Michael Shayne often wondered the same thing, and usually ended up broke.

“You wouldn’t be doing it for money,” Shayne said. “They couldn’t pay you enough. What else is there but blackmail? Tell me about it, and maybe in the course of other things I can take care of it for you.”

Shayne let him think it out by himself.

Black heaved a deep sigh, which made him seem much younger. “His name’s Vince Donahue. He said today wouldn’t happen again, but I’m not that innocent. I knew he’d call up next year, and the only way I could stop it would be to quit football. That’s why I was going to stick Colfax for the biggest bonus I could get. Do you think it was easy to miss those passes? I had a shot at the Conference record! I got a funny look from one of the guys. I had to say I had a muscle spasm, and not to tell anybody so it wouldn’t queer me with the Warriors.”

Now that it was coming, Shayne didn’t look at him or question him, but went on smoking in silence. A student on a bicycle approached. Black waited till he was past.

“Vince has a tape of a phone conversation. It’s all out of context. I said it, but it sounds worse than it was. He said he’d send it to the sports editor of the Miami News if I didn’t play along. And he would have, too. That was yesterday. If I’d known where he lived I might have-” He stopped, his fists clenched. “Well, it’s just as well, I didn’t, or I might be in an even worse jam.”

“Go back a way,” Shayne suggested. “Where did you meet him?”

“All the way back, in grammar school. We were in the Boy Scouts, we played football, baseball, basketball-you name it. He could have pitched in the majors if he’d stuck to it. He was a natural platform diver, a wonderful swimmer. But he didn’t have the desire. He kept changing from one thing to another. And then he had some bad luck. Do you want to know all this, Mr. Shayne?”

“Yes. Go on.”

“It was just after he got his driver’s license. It wasn’t Vince’s fault, the other car went through a stop sign, but he thought if he’d been on the ball maybe he could have got out of the way. His mother and father were killed. Every body felt sorry about it, but he didn’t let that go on for long. He always had a mean streak, even before the accident. He and his sister moved in with an aunt, and that woman was hard to get along with. I sympathized, but! He broke dishes and robbed her and did things like ordering eight rooms of furniture-that kind of stupid stuff. He was left end on the football team, and in the state semifinals he took one of my passes and ran the wrong way. That was the end of the friendship. He didn’t even pretend to be confused, he was yakking it up all the way. Next year he dropped out of school and nobody knew where he’d gone. But where would somebody like that, who didn’t give a good goddamn about anything, a good swimmer and diver, where would he go but Miami?”

“Where do you come from, Johnny?”

“St. Louis.”

Shayne gave him a piercing look.

“Does that mean anything?” Black said.

“I talked to the cops. They say two of the stickup guys came from there.”

Black groaned. “What a character. I don’t suppose it’s a coincidence?”

“Probably not, Johnny. Finish it up.”

“I made the team here my sophomore year. He saw my name in the paper and came out. The funny thing was, I was glad to see him. Most of the time he was an asset to have around. He was almost a student here for a while. He sat in on courses. Then he decided the hell with it, and went back to Miami. He still came out to see me, or he called me, and sometimes we talked football. Of course I had access to our scouting reports and I knew about injuries and so on. He always needed money that year. When ever I thought the point spread was out of line I’d let him know and he’d bet a hundred bucks. That was all there was to it, but if you listened to the tape! I never bet a cent myself. I have a scholarship and anyway I don’t believe in it, it’s too risky. That was two years ago. I saw him once last year after a game, with a girl singer from New York, and he was driving a Jaguar. He showed me the registration to prove it was his. He made a big mystery about what he was doing. He said I’d sleep better if I didn’t know. After that not a word, until yesterday, out of a clear sky. The coach got word on the grapevine that the Warriors were interested, for real money. I knew we could take Georgia, but this being my last game and all, I wanted to do it by a top-heavy score. He called me on the house phone and played the tape for me, right there with the brothers sitting around doing their homework. I was stunned, I guess, and he played it again. I had to say yes. I know you’re not supposed to do what a blackmailer tells you, but this wasn’t any ordinary blackmailer, it was Vince Donahue. I knew him!”