Brett Halliday - What Really Happened

“I’d like that very much.” He looked at the check while she finished her coffee and the last crust of dry toast, laid two bills and some change on it, and got up with her, suggesting, “My car is outside.”

“It’s quite far out on West Flagler,” she told him. “They have temporary offices there in an old building, and have fixed up a small studio for shooting interiors.”

They went out together, and Shayne swung into the flow of traffic on Biscayne Boulevard southward.

The improvised television studio proved to be an old three-story wooden mansion near Coral Gables. Shayne parked in the spacious front yard beside a dozen other cars and went with Muriel Davidson up the rickety front steps and into a hallway which opened onto what had once been the ballroom. Now, it was a huge, bare space with electric cables overhead and underfoot, spotlights suspended from the ceiling and mounted on heavy metal stands. There were four large cameras on rollers, and standing at one side of the room there were two flats at right angles to each other, simulating the corner of a room, with a sofa and two overstuffed chairs intimately and cozily arranged. Two girls and a man lolled on the sofa and in the chairs which were surrounded by brilliant spot lights and cameras. A dozen or so men moved about them, gesticulating and arguing in what seemed to Shayne a babel of confusion.

Muriel said, “I’m afraid I’m late, and I’m not even made up, so please excuse me, I have to hurry. You’ll find Harold in his office on the second floor — up those stairs and the first door to the right. And do explain to Harold why I sent you to him.” She hurried away and disappeared through a doorway on the left.

Shayne climbed the winding old stairway and knocked on the door with a typed sign that read; Prentiss. Private.

A voice said, “Come,” and Shayne entered what had obviously been a master bedroom, but now converted into the most untidy office he had ever seen. A state of confusion, it began to appear, was the natural habitat of television workers. Three desks were stacked with a litter of papers and scripts, there were two typewriter stands without typists, three filing cases with most of the drawers partially open, wadded sheets of discarded paper ankle-deep on the floor, and in the midst of it stood a bony and harassed-appearing young man talking excitedly over the phone.

He wore faded-blue dungarees, was barefooted, and his toenails were purple with polish. The blouse that hung outside his trousers was a violent pink with green elephants and giraffes chasing each other across his chest. He was prematurely bald, had a very high forehead, and obtrusively large ears. His eyes were deep-set and brown and melancholy, and his jaw was long and bony.

He fixed his eyes on Shayne with complete disinterest and continued to talk excitedly over the phone.

“I don’t give a green gumdrop what you think about it, darling. I’m telling you that scene stunk up the place and we had to call in fumigators. And it’s out.” He waved a thin hand in the air while he listened for a moment, then said, “And nuts to you, sweetheart.” He hung up, and in the same breath asked, “Who are you?”

“Mike Shayne. Are you Prentiss?”

“Certainly I’m Prentiss.” Obviously, Shayne’s name meant nothing to him. He turned and shuffled on bare feet through a litter of wadded paper and sat down at one of the desks with his back toward the detective. He rested his elbows on the desk and buried his face in his hands.

Shayne took a cigarette from the pack in his breast pocket, and the scratching of a match sounded loud in the quiet room. The assistant director continued to sit with his back turned, his face buried in his thin palms, and did not move or speak.

Shayne shuffled forward in the litter and eased one hip onto a corner of a desk a couple of feet from Prentiss, and said, “The name is Michael Shayne. I want—”

“Shut up, for the love of God!” Prentiss jerked his head up and stared at the redhead. “Can’t you see I’m concentrating? What was that — Michael Shayne, did you say? That’s a detective, isn’t it? Like Nero Wolfe?”

“Only different,” Shayne agreed. He took a long drag on his cigarette and asked, “Where did you hear I was starting a radio program?”

“That’s it!” He snapped his bony fingers, then pressed a palm hard against his elongated forehead. “You’re real, aren’t you? Sure. Mike Shayne! Hard-fisted, cognac-drinking private eye here in Miami. Why shouldn’t you have a radio program if you want it? God knows one more on the air won’t make any difference,”

“Where did you hear about it?” Shayne repeated patiently.

Harold Prentiss stared at him for a moment, then leaned back and lifted one bare foot to rest it on the edge of the desk. He wriggled his purple-tipped toes and said in disgust, “Isn’t that a hell of a shade? I ordered magenta, damn it.”

Shayne leaned forward and slapped him. The force of his open palm slewed Prentiss sideways and his foot slid from the desk. He recovered his balance, stood up, and said seriously, “Why did you do that?”

“Cut the posing,” Shayne growled, “and answer my question.”

“What did you ask me?” He seemed honestly puzzled.

“Where you got your information about a Michael Shayne radio program?”

“Oh — that.” Prentiss waved both hands vaguely. “Some one must have told me.” He cocked his head on one side and narrowed his sad brown eyes. “You’ll play yourself, of course. It’s a terrific idea. Stupendous. On TV you’ll slay them.”

Shayne grated, “Sit down and shut up.”

Prentiss sat down and shut up.

“You can answer my question,” Shayne told him, “or you can tell the police.”

“I don’t — think — I — understand,” the assistant director said, frowning.

“I’m investigating a murder. Two murders. And it may be pertinent.”

“Why come to me?” Prentiss dropped his exaggerated façade of preoccupation and became composed and businesslike.

“Because you telephoned an actress named Muriel Davidson this morning and advised her to apply for a part in such a show. I want to know where the rumor started.”

“Who knows where any rumor starts? You can’t keep a thing like that a secret. Not in this business.”

“There has to be some foundation, and there isn’t any to this.”

“There isn’t?” Prentiss frowned thoughtfully.

“None whatever. So, someone started it. Who?”

“God, I don’t know where I did hear it. One of those things you pick up—”

“That’s a lie,” Shayne interrupted in a mild voice. “You wouldn’t have been so insistent that Muriel promise not to reveal her source of information if it was just something you had picked out of the air. I want to know where you got it.”

“I see.” Prentiss sighed and compressed his thin lips. He drummed his finger tips on the desk, and asked with downcast eyes, “You say it may be important in a murder investigation?”

“Yes.”

“I was afraid of that,” he acknowledged. He sighed again, and said bitterly, “I was a fool to tell Muriel. But I’ve been trying to make her for three weeks without getting to first base, and I thought she might be properly grateful for the tip. The crazy things a man will do when his chromosomes get impatient.”

Shayne said, “I’m waiting.”

“It was a girl named Helen Taylor. When I heard on the radio this morning that she had died last night and the police wanted to know where she had been between eight-thirty and midnight, I knew I’d be a fool to involve myself. So I didn’t. I kept my mouth shut.”

“Keep it open now,” Shayne advised him.

“Yeh.” Harold Prentiss lifted his thin shoulders in a gesture of futility. “I took Helen to dinner. That’s all. I took her home afterward and kissed her good night in a brotherly fashion in that horrible lobby of her hotel because she wasn’t feeling well and didn’t want me to come up. That’s absodamnlutely all.”