Бретт Холлидей - Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 46, No. 9, September 1982

Shayne started to take it, then stopped the motion abruptly and asked, “Is this something the cops should be checking for fingerprints?”

Lomack waved a hand. “Don’t worry about that. They’ve got the others. When this one came, I decided it was time I did something on my own. I came to see you.”

Shayne picked up the paper and unfolded it. It was plain white paper, and someone had printed a message on it in block letters. It said:

YOU ARE A MURDERER AND WILL PAY FOR YOUR CRIME, JACK LOMACK. THE DEATHS OF TWENTY-FIVE WILL BE AVENGED. YOU WILL KNOW THE PAIN THAT THEIR FAMILIES HAVE KNOWN.

It was unsigned, and Shayne knew that the printing would contain no clues as to the author of it.

“There have been more of these?” he asked Lomack.

“Several. I tried not to let them bother me too much. Oh, I brought the cops in on it, that was the only reasonable thing to do, but they weren’t able to find out who was sending them. It was only when I got this one that I really started to get scared.”

“Why this one?”

Lomack’s hands clenched into fists. “Because this one was the first one I could take to be a threat to Maggie.”

“Maggie?” Shayne remembered plenty of women in Lomack’s life, but that name rang no bells.

“My wife.” Lomack’s gaze got far away. “Loveliest woman you ever saw in your life. Certainly the loveliest one I ever saw. The note says I’ll feel the same pain as the families of the men that went down with the rig. Maggie’s the only family I’ve got, so that must mean she’s going to be taken away from me.”

The pain and anxiety he was feeling came through in his voice. Shayne was quiet for a moment, digesting what Lomack had told him. Finally, he said, “Try not to borrow trouble, Jack. Whoever wrote the letter might not have meant any harm to your wife.”

“Then what else can it mean, dammit?”

Shayne didn’t have an answer for that one. He gave Lomack a second for the burst of anger and frustration to pass, then asked, “Is it possible that sabotage was responsible for the sinking of the oil rig?”

“It sure as hell is. Like I said, the insurance company is investigating, and they haven’t decided yet just what did cause the trouble. One thing’s for sure — it wasn’t weather-related. The night was calm and clear. The two survivors haven’t been able to talk much yet— They’re both still in the hospital, in serious condition — but they both remember there was an explosion before the rig went under.”

“Had you been out there recently?”

“The day before. I know what the insurance people think. They think I hid a bomb out there with a timer on it. But they’ll never prove it, because it didn’t happen.”

Shayne swallowed the last of his Martell and signaled the bartender for a refill. “Assuming that the explosion was deliberate,” he said, “I think we can rule out any of the men on the rig as the one who planted the bomb. Who else was out there and then left?”

Lomack shrugged. “I don’t know for sure. Several people could have been out there... My operations manager, the drilling coordinator, other people in the company, maybe...”

“You haven’t checked any of them out?”

“I’m sure the police have, but they wouldn’t tell me anything. Makes me think they didn’t find anything incriminating about anybody else and still consider me the prime suspect. But that’s one reason I’m here. I want you to check everything out, Mike. If it was sabotage and murder, find that out and find out why. That’s the only way the insurance company will be satisfied... and the only way I can get rid of the nut who’s sending me those threats.” Lomack’s voice dropped, and Shayne had to listen closely to hear the intense words. “Besides, if it was sabotage, some bastard killed twenty-five men. Nobody should get away with something like that.”

Lomack was sincere, Shayne was sure of that. And he was sure what his answer to Lomack’s proposal was going to be.

“I’ll find the answers, Jack,” he said. “You can count on that.”

The old familiar grin came back on Lomack’s face. “I knew you’d take me up on it,” he said. “Mike Shayne never could resist a challenge. I’m booked on a flight back to Corpus tonight. Is that too soon for you to leave?”

Shayne shook his head. “I’ll make a few phone calls to clear the decks here, then head back to my place and pack a bag.”

Lomack lifted his glass. “Here’s to the two of us,” he said. “We’ll raise hell, just like we did in the old days.”

“Sure, Jack,” Shayne said, raising his glass and clinking it against Lomack’s.

Some things never change, Shayne was thinking as he put clothes in a small suitcase in his apartment a little while later, and some things can’t help but change. Jack Lomack still had the same spirit he had always possessed, but years of making his living mostly behind a desk had changed his capabilities. The Jack Lomack he had known before would have charged any problem headon, never asking for help. He might be grateful for any help that he got, but he wouldn’t ask for it. Now Lomack knew he was out of his element and had wisely sought out Shayne.

Lomack’s business was oil. Shayne’s was murder.

He snapped the suitcase shut and carried it out into the living room of his apartment. Lomack was prowling around the room, another drink in his hand, too tense to stand still and wait. Shayne said, “I’m ready to go, Jack. I called Lucy and let her know where to find me for the next few days.”

Lomack tossed off the rest of his drink and said, “I want to meet this Lucy of yours when all this trouble is cleared up. I’m sure she’s a hell of a girl, though what she sees in an ugly son like you is beyond me.”

Shayne was glad to hear the bantering tone on Lomack’s voice again. The man might be down, but he was far from out. He hefted the suitcase, grasped Lomack’s arm, and said, “Come on, Jack. Let’s go to Texas.”

Lomack was fairly quiet during the ride out to the airport in Shayne’s Buick, quieter still as they boarded the big American Airlines jet bound for Corpus Christi. This evening flight wasn’t heavily traveled, and Shayne hoped to put the time in the air to good use.

He started by getting Lomack to tell him all he knew about the sinking of the offshore drilling rig. Thinking about it was obviously a burden on Lomack, but Shayne knew he had to have all the background of the case if he was to have any chance of cracking it.

“The thing of it is, it could have been an accident,” Lomack said. “Something could have happened with the equipment to cause an explosion. We’ve had divers down, checking what’s left of the platform to see if they can find any trace of something that shouldn’t have been there. So far, nothing has turned up. And everything my company has done has been gone over and taken several steps further by the insurance investigators. That rig was insured for millions of dollars, Mike, and those boys don’t trust old Jack like you do.”

“They’re just trying to run their business the best they know how,” Shayne commented.

Lomack nodded emphatically. “Oh, hell, I know that. I don’t have to like it, but I know it. What I can’t figure out...” He paused, and Shayne waited silently for him to go on. “Well, most of this has been kept out of the papers. How did whoever’s sending those threatening notes know that I’m a suspect in this? It doesn’t make sense to me.”

Shayne’s eyes narrowed. “That is a good question,” he said slowly. “One that we’re definitely going to have to answer.”

Lomack went on talking about the tragedy at sea and its aftermath, and Shayne took it all in, filing it all away in his keen brain. When Lomack was through, Shayne changed the subject abruptly by saying, “Tell me about Maggie.”