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

“I wasn’t sure of that, and I’m still not. But when Anna told me about your money problems, that made me consider other alternatives to her guilt.

“If you owed money to someone, your inheritance of the treasure would more than take care of it. You would have no reason to steal from yourself, since you could convert the legacy to cash legally and pay what you owed, and you would have even less reason to frame your sister and her friends for the theft of the trunk.”

Lake was calculating distances and angles as he went on, “But an old man named Mikhail died, and murder was a completely different matter. If you were implicated in that somehow, the safest thing for you to do would be to throw all the blame on someone else. Down at police headquarters, they already knew about the connection between you and Litton. Without my handy discovery of the chest in that garage, they would have started shining a very bright light into your dealings, and I don’t think you could have stood that.”

Kemidov’s teeth gritted and his fist tightened on the pistol. “Damn Mikhail! If he hadn’t come snooping down here, everything would have been fine. He carried on so when he. saw us unloading the trunk, said priceless works of art should not be used to pay filthy gambling debts. We were both traditionalists, Mikhail and I, but he knew nothing of modern expediency. Still, Alvin should not have hit him so hard just to quiet him down.”

“And when the old man turned out to be dead, you and Litton hatched your plan to frame Anna. You waited several days to fly out so that Litton would have time to transport the trunk, probably in a rented truck.”

Kemidov walked slowly down the stairs, keeping the gun lined up on Lake. “Perfectly correct, Mr. Lake. We hid the treasures in the unused furnace while the police made their investigation of the supposed break-in. I must say that it was none too thorough, since at the time I reported nothing stolen. It was only later, after Mikhail had died in the hospital, that I discovered the ‘missing’ trunk. But this is all ridiculous, Mr. Lake. You can prove none of this. You are no threat to me, now that I think about it.”

Lake pointed to the glittering pile in the box. “What about that?”

“If you choose to go to the police with this story of yours, by the time they secured a search warrant, those baubles will no longer be here.”

“Someone was keeping track of my movements back home, someone in a rented car. I checked the number. I wonder what would happen if I got a picture of Litton and showed it to the people at the rental agency?”

Kemidov’s mouth set in hard lines, and he said, “I could just shoot you down and save myself a lot of trouble, you know. You are the intruder here, you broke and entered. Your death would be messy, no doubt, but it could be handled if need be.” He sighed. “I hoped that I had judged you correctly and that you would accept my check quietly.”

Lake smiled sardonically. “You thought I was a spoiled rich boy playing private eye, is that it? Well, maybe you’re right, Kemidov, but some people take their games very seriously.”

“Another check perhaps? I could use your testimonay at my sister’s trial.”

“No. But there is one thing I’d very much like to know.” He bent slowly and carefully so as not to alarm Kemidov and plucked the black bird out of the box. “Is this... possibly... what it looks like?”

Kemidov smiled and chuckled. “Who knows, Mr. Lake? I believe Dashiell Hammett was a private detective himself at one time, with many underworld contacts. Perhaps he heard of my great-grandfather. Perhaps his fiction of the Maltese Falcon was more fact than anyone knew. The figure itself exists, of that there is no doubt.”

“But the business about it being made of gold and encrusted with jewels...?”

“I intend to find out in the near future. But now I must deal with you.”

“I’d like to know now,” Lake said, and he let the bird slip from his fingers. It landed on the concrete floor with a shattering crash as Kemidov let out a cry of surprise. His eyes grew wide as he stared at the finest jewels of Asia, sparkling amidst shards of black enamel.

Lake’s eyes never left the gun as he took a quick step and slapped it to the side. Kemidov’s finger contracted. The gun exploded, but the bullet buried itself harmlessly in the cellar wall. Lake bunched his shoulders and drove his left fist deep into the Russian’s stomach. Kemidov’s breath puffed out, his face turned white, and the gun fell to the floor, landing on rubies and emeralds. Kemidov folded up and fell over, all of the fight gone out of him.

Lake stooped and picked up the gun. Diamonds rolled under his feet as he headed for the stairs, looking for a telephone.

The next day, Lake leaned back in his office chair and smiled at Florence. “He was too paranoid,” he said. “If he had left things like they were and not tried to frame Anna, he might have bluffed his way through it. The frame was really Litton’s idea; like most criminals, he tried to cover every possible source of danger.”

“What happens now?” Florence asked.

“Well, Anna, Tom, and Allen go free, that’s the most important thing. Kemidov and Litton will face criminal conspiracy and manslaughter charges. Hopefully, they’ll stick, although the D.A. down there wasn’t too happy with me. Said I could have blown the whole case by taking things into my own hands. I didn’t like being Kemidov’s pawn, though.”

Florence started to go back to the outer office when she paused and asked hesitantly, “Nicky... Do you think it was the real one? The real Maltese Falcon?”

Lake got a faraway look on his face. “I don’t believe very much in coincidence. But I’m afraid the answer to that one went with Dashiell Hammett to his grave.”

“What was it again? The thing that Bogart said when... Who was it that played the policeman?”

“Ward Bond,” Lake supplied.

“When Ward Bond asked him what it was?”

“The stuff that dreams are made of,” Nicholas Lake mused. “And don’t call me Nicky.”

The iceman killeth, and Fast Eddie was at the top o£ his list. But the hit man wouldn’t succeed. Not if Helen had anything to say about it. She was married to Eddie, and for a gangster he really wasn’t all that bad of a guy!

Even before she married him thirty-five years ago, Helen Leighton knew that Edward Willis was what most people called a gangster. After all, with a nickname like “Fast Eddie,” hands that looked more gnarled than a cypress stump, and a high-school education, how else could you explain his income of over a hundred thousand a year. But Helen liked what she saw — the exciting world Eddie lived in.

Eddie liked what he saw too. A tall, willowy blond, a Boston upbringing, a graduate of Radcliffe, the lady had class. So he had picked her, a real corsage to wear on his upward climb through the organization.

There was only one catch. In a romantic moment he had agreed that once a week she could choose their activity. Unfortunately for him, Helen didn’t like fancy dinners or expensive clothes; she liked culture. And so “Fast Eddie,” the greasy kid from the tenements went to the Met, toured the Modern Art Museum, and took up mud sculpture.

Usually the bargain worked out well. Six nights a week she was there at the end of the day to listen to his tales about the bribes, the pressures, even the broken bones.

But that Tuesday night when Willie the Porter and the Tampa Truck invited him down to Shilito’s Garage for some high-stakes poker, it had been an offer he had to refuse. Helen insisted on going out to the University for her latest interest, the Great Writers of the Western World Lecture Series.