Brett Halliday - Kill All the Young Girls

“Sorry,” he said, his teeth flashing. “Wrong image.”

He replaced the ship with a Consolidated balance sheet.

“Marcus,” Shayne said to Evie.

“He’s resigned. He’s going with Twentieth Century-Fox as head of production.”

“That’s a surprise.”

She nodded, smiling her situation-comedy smile. “He’s not quite as big a fool as everybody thought. Larry’s signed a purchase agreement for his shares.”

“How much is he paying?”

“Yesterday’s closing.”

At the mike, Zion was giving off sparks, trying to keep his listeners from looking too closely at the numbers at the bottom of the balance sheet. He was leading up to an important announcement.

Shayne said, “What’s Oscar doing up there?”

“Oh, he and Larry have made a deal.”

There was a spatter of applause around them. It was picked up by others, and soon nearly everyone in the room was clapping hard. Shayne had missed it.

Evie explained in a whisper. “He’s selling the backlog to television for thirty million. Oscar is putting in another ten in return for a three-picture production agreement.”

Many of the shareholders were on their feet, showing how glad they were that the cash flow had been reversed and was coming their way at last. Zion waved happily, good for another twenty years. He reached back to shake hands with Oscar, who bobbed his head. Flash bulbs were popping like sex-mad fireflies.

“Do we get to ask questions?” Shayne said.

“Pretty soon. Mike, it’s the wrong time of day for it; but I have a little liquid nourishment in my bag. What with one thing and another, would you be interested in a small jolt of scotch?”

“Absolutely.”

She opened a silver flask and inserted a bent straw. He drank; then she drank. Then he had another, and she had another. This continued until she was sucking air.

“I told you Marcus would surprise people. Didn’t I tell you that?”

“Something like it.”

Zion held both hands over his head, shook hands with himself, gave the V sign, and finally succeeded in quieting the crowd. Now, he announced, he was prepared to submit himself to questions. As anybody knew who had ever attended a meeting chaired by Larry Zion, the management believed in keeping nothing secret from the stockholders. He was prepared to be completely open and responsive. He wanted everyone to go away satisfied. If need be, he was willing to keep the question-and-answer period going well into the night. He had a handball game later, but he was prepared to cancel.

“With a broken leg?” Shayne said.

“He hasn’t really played handball since his — shh! — heart attack.”

A man in the front row jumped up and accepted a microphone from a smiling girl in the aisle. He asked about Marcus’s resignation.

Zion managed to look regretful. Marcus had decided to accept an offer from one of their toughest competitors; and his parent, for one, was very, very sorry. But the terms of the offer had been so generous that, in the interests of his family, Marcus had been unable to turn it down.

“Yes, the interests of his family,” Evie observed.

A woman in a huge hat took the mike. This was a professional gadfly, a perennial meeting-goer, who wanted to know: 1) when Consolidated-Famous was going to adopt cumulative voting for the board of directors, and 2) what plans had been made by the company for increasing minority employment. Zion had quick, humorous answers for both. So far, he seemed to be enjoying himself. Perhaps Shayne could change that.

He pushed to the aisle and signalled for the mike. “Mr. Shayne?” Zion asked, peering down. “A private detective, aren’t you? Are you a stockholder in this corporation?”

Shayne didn’t get any amplification from the mike, and the girl showed him the button he had to press.

“I’ve got two hundred shares,” he said. “I had a deal with Oscar for another thousand, but I’m not sure I can make it stick.”

Zion gave the audience a long-suffering look. “You have a question.”

“At the time of Keko Brannon’s death, the company was able to suppress certain facts; and my question is — was one of these facts that she had bruises on her shoulders?”

“Bruises?”

“Yeah, that might have been put there by somebody’s hands?”

The room was suddenly quiet. Zion’s face was as impassive as the statuettes on either side. He was a moment in answering.

“That suggestion is ridiculous, and you know it.”

“Her picture was already over budget. If you’d replaced her, you’d have to go on paying her salary. How much would you say her death saved the company?”

“Something, of course. As it turned out, the Thackera version was exceedingly profitable. But we lost one of the great moneymakers in the history of motion pictures.”

“What does the name Mandy Pitt mean to you?”

“The same thing it means to you, probably. I’ve seen the newspaper.”

“When did she start working for Consolidated?”

“She never did.”

Shayne took Gallagher’s brass knuckles out of his pocket and waved them. He was glad to see that he was getting attention. Painter and Will Gentry, each with a little group, were at opposite corners of the room. He saw his friend Rourke at the press table with the other reporters.

“These are the knucks the guy used on her. But the funny thing is—” he looked up at the tanned face between the statuettes—“the funny thing is, the bumps and indentations don’t fit all her wounds.”

“That’s enough,” Zion snapped. “I said I’d be responsive to any legitimate question. Incredible! I wouldn’t allow this scene in any of my pictures. You are out of order, Shayne. Take your seat.”

Shayne smiled up at him. “I think my question’s in order, and I appeal the ruling of the chair. What happens to the price of our stock if the chairman goes to jail for murder?”

“I’ll ask the sergeants-at-arms to remove this man.”

Shayne shouted, “We’re entitled to an answer. Did you go to the Sky-Vue drive-in last night?”

There was considerable confusion around him. Painter’s detectives were shifting uneasily. Guards began to converge on Shayne: two coming up the aisle from the front of the room, two from the back. The woman shareholder in the large hat leaped into the aisle.

“Let him speak! Move the previous question! An appeal from the ruling of the chair calls for an immediate vote! You can’t railroad this meeting, Larry Zion!”

Shayne pushed back into his row, pulling the mike on its long cord. “What’s behind this last-minute deal with Olson? I’ll tell you.”

From the podium, Zion cut off Shayne’s mike. But one of the professional gadflies, in the row ahead of Shayne, had brought a bullhorn in case the same thing happened to him. Shayne reached over and took it. People were on their feet around him. Chairs had been kicked out of line.

Shayne’s bullhorn roared. “Did Marcus resign because he had reason to believe you murdered Mandy Pitt and others in a desperate attempt to maintain control of this corporation? Yes, or no? Were you at that drive-in?”

Zion looked from side to side, as though wanting to consult the statuettes. In another situation, he would have refused to answer. That was impossible here. He had assured the meeting that he had nothing to hide. Unless he answered, he would stand condemned in front of his stockholders. The thousands of proxies his side had solicited were to be voted by the group of officers behind him. They were listening with interest.

“Did I go to an outdoor movie,” Zion said with difficulty. “Not for years, Shayne. What are you theorizing?

“You needed a pipeline into the Olson organization. You made an arrangement with Oscar’s secretary, and one of the things the poor girl told you was that Kate Thackera was seeing her boss. You said you could handle Kate, you could talk her around if you hit her at the right time. But she was easier to talk to when she was well-oiled — you won’t understand much of this,” he told the audience. “It’s between me and Larry. The son-of-a-bitch persuaded Mandy to take a gift bottle of Old Grand-dad to Thackera’s hotel room. He gave her a key and arranged a room-service call to that floor so she’d be sure to be seen. Not yet, Oscar,” he said as the publisher tried to grab the dais mike. “We’ll hear from you later.”