Brett Halliday: Date with a Dead Man

There was a venomous ring in Cunningham’s voice. He shook his head, lifted his eyes to Shayne’s and added sullenly, “Not that I got anything against religion. I always been able to take it or leave it. But Jasper… he bore down on a man.”

Shayne took a long drink of cognac and a sip of ice water. He said flatly, “You didn’t hang around the Boswick Arms just to tell me this stuff.”

“No. You’re right. I didn’t. I want to get this straight, though. You’re not really the cops, huh?”

Shayne said, “I’m a licensed private investigator.”

“Yeah. That’s what I mean. Like a lawyer, huh?” Cunningham lifted one hand vaguely. “You got a client, you don’t tell all you know to the cops, huh?”

Shayne said, “I don’t obstruct justice by withholding information.”

“Yeh. Sure. Those big words mean you just don’t cover up for a crook, I guess.”

“That’s the general idea.” Shayne lit a cigarette without offering his pack to the man across from him. “Right now I haven’t got any client.”

“Maybe I could be one, huh? Then whatever I told you would be private.”

Shayne said, “I’ll have to be the judge of that. If it has to do with finding Jasper Groat…?” He let his voice trail off questioningly.

“If I knew that I’d tell you. It’s this here diary that Jasper kept on the life raft, see. Has he got a right to sell that to a newspaper to be printed?”

Shayne frowned. “His own diary? Why not?”

“No matter what kind of stuff it’s got in it? About somebody else.”

“About you?”

“Well… yeh. I never thought about it until this morning, see? After that reporter read some of the stuff and started talking big money to Jasper for printing it. But there’s a lot of private stuff in there I wouldn’t want people to read. You know, things I told him on the life raft when we didn’t think we had a chance in hell of getting out alive. A man talks kind of crazy at a time like that.”

Shayne said, “No reputable newspaper would want to print anything that might be libelous. They’d be pretty careful about deleting derogatory references to you or anyone else.”

“Yeh. Well, I don’t know just what Jasper wrote down and didn’t. If I could get hold of it to see, I’d feel a lot better.”

“Where’s the diary now?”

“That’s what I don’t know. The reporter took it off this morning and I don’t know whether Jasper saw him again or not. One thing I’ve been wondering… with Jasper missing like he is… if something has happened to him… you know. Would that reporter still have the right to print his diary?”

“You mean if Groat is dead?”

“Well… yeh. Like I say, I know something kept him from meeting me for dinner.”

Shayne said, “That would depend on whether they had concluded an arrangement to print it. Otherwise the diary would become Mrs. Groat’s property, I assume, and she’d have the right to arrange for publication.”

“Could you get it back, do you think?”

“I don’t know. Depending on who’s got it.”

“I’d pay good money to go through it and mark out the places I don’t want published.”

Shayne said, “I might arrange that… if a Daily News reporter has it.” He took another drink of cognac and set his glass down. “What about Leon Wallace?” he asked casually.

Cunningham’s big hand jerked and he spilled some of his whisky. His eyes widened in consternation or in fear. “What about him?”

“That’s what I asked you.”

The steward’s expression hardened into a sullen glare. “What kind of game are you and Jasper playing, mister?”

Shayne leaned back with a shrug. “I asked you a simple question.”

“And I’m asking you what you know about Leon Wallace. Where’d you ever hear about him, that’s what I want to know.”

“I’m a detective,” Shayne said quietly. “Remember? It’s my business to know about things.”

“Yeh, but… Was that just a put-up deal with you and your secretary and Jasper’s old lady tonight? Was it, huh? Just to fool me so I’d blab off to you?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“The hell you don’t,” Cunningham spat out truculently. “The way they fed it to me was that when you walked in there tonight was the first you’d ever heard of Jasper or his diary. That was just play-acting to fool me, huh? What did Jasper tell you about Leon Wallace?”

Shayne said, “Nothing.”

“The old lady then? After I left, huh?”

Shayne said, “She didn’t mention Wallace’s name either.”

“You’re lying,” Cunningham said thickly. He half arose and leaned over the table, thrusting his square chin toward the detective. “Don’t think you’re cutting in on it, mister. To hell with that. Nobody’s playing Pete Cunningham for a sucker.”

Shayne said, “Sit down.” His voice was like a whiplash and his gaze held the inflamed eyes of the younger man steadily. When Cunningham sank back slowly, Shayne said, “I don’t lie. At least to punks like you.” He stood up. “You’re paying for these drinks. If you decide you want to talk to me further, you can reach me at my office or this address.” He gave Cunningham the name of his hotel.

He slid out of the booth into the aisle and strode to the front, nodding curtly to Ernie as he passed him.

Driving home, he stopped at a newsstand to pick up the early edition of the Herald, which he carried up to his room after garaging his car for the second time that night.

He laid the folded paper on the table beside the water tumbler that still held some unmelted ice, shrugged out of his jacket and loosened his collar, poured more cognac into the glass he had emptied after receiving Lucy’s telephone call, and settled down to read the front-page story about the dramatic rescue of the two civilian crew members of the airplane that had been lost at sea two weeks previously while flying forty enlisted men back to the United States for discharge after completing a tour of duty in Europe.

Since they had been scooped on the story by the afternoon edition of the News, the Herald coverage was not so full or dramatic, but there was more background material presented in a sober and factual manner.

There were photographs of Groat and Cunningham, bearded, that had been snapped at the dockside, and a picture of Albert Hawley, the young soldier who had succumbed on the life raft, which had evidently been dug out of the newspaper morgue. Jasper Groat was a thin, middle-aged man with sunken eyes and almost cadaverous features, while the picture of Albert Hawley showed a slender youth in riding togs and a debonair smile that was weakened by a slack-lipped mouth and a chin that was noticeably nonaggressive.

Shayne read the entire newspaper account with care and without encountering any mention of the diary which Jasper Groat had kept during the ten-day ordeal on a life raft. Nor did the name of Leon Wallace appear in the story.

The prominence of the Hawley family in the social and economic life of Miami caused a large portion of the account to be devoted to them and to their only son. It was duly noted that the young soldier was survived by his mother and a married sister named Beatrice. A portion of the background material was devoted to Albert Hawley’s marriage at the age of twenty, not much more than a year before, which was described as one of the gala social events of the season. It had evidently occurred just prior to the young man’s induction into the army, and, by reading between the lines, there was clearly evident a cynical interpretation of the marriage as a last-ditch and desperate attempt of a wealthy, spoiled young man to thus escape being drafted into the service of his country as a common soldier, an attempt which had been thwarted by a stern and incorruptible local draft board.