The Violent World of Michael Shayne (7 page)

He delayed a fraction of a second until his assailant had committed himself to his swing, then thrust the girl away and came up fast, catching the man’s forearm. He jerked it forward and brought it down hard on the steering wheel. He had the wrist in one hand, the elbow in the other, and gave it an extra twist at the moment of impact. He heard the bone break.

The blackjack fell limply between Shayne and the girl. She screamed, sounding more surprised than frightened. Shayne rammed the automatic transmission into drive and stamped on the gas.

The second man across the street had left the doorway of the apartment house where he had been waiting. Shayne swung the wheel and headed straight at him, his headlights on full. As Shayne had expected, it was the plump man with the long hair, who had come into the Bijou with Cheryl. The headlights blinded him. He halted, crouching, then darted to one side. Grinning wolfishly, his foot all the way down, Shayne went up on the sidewalk after him. The man whirled. His face had gone dead white. He shouted something, both hands up to ward off the Ford, and leaped into the doorway.

Shayne hit the brakes. The Ford skidded to a stop with its front bumper sealing the doorway. The man scrabbled frantically at the locked door of the apartment lobby. Shayne threw the transmission into neutral, snatched the blackjack off the floor and was out of the car in one swift fluid motion. He vaulted onto the hood, the blackjack ready. The man’s body contracted as he looked over his shoulder at the powerfully-built redhead above him.

Cheryl was trying to move the injured thug so she could reach the wheel. Shayne said with quiet authority, “Better not, Cheryl. You only had one chance. Nothing you can do about it now.”

The man with the broken arm had begun to feel sorry for himself as the pain reached him. Cheryl went on pulling at him. “Damn you, Morrie, get out of the way.”

Shayne said more sharply, “Don’t you know when something’s gone sour? Cut it out or we’ll have a few broken skulls.” He motioned to the frightened man in the doorway. “Climb over. Don’t hurry. We have lots of time.”

The man made an effort to recover his composure. Ordinarily his plump cheeks probably gave him a self-satisfied look. He smoothed his hair, gave it a final pat on each side, and stepped up on the bumper.

“You seem to be under the impression—”

Shayne slapped the blackjack smartly against his palm. “I’m not the one who made the mistake.”

“Curt,” the girl called urgently.

But the plump man hadn’t recovered from the effects of being pinned against the door by Shayne’s Ford. His head was trembling up and down, as though he consented in advance to anything Shayne wanted of him. He slithered across the hood. Shayne patted him under the arms and on the pockets. This was the executive; he wasn’t carrying a weapon.

There was movement in the front seat. The man the girl had called Morrie was trying to get his gun out with his left hand. The shoulder holster was one of those with a safety clasp, strapped on at an angle so the gun would resist a pull from anyone but its rightful owner. Shayne reached through the window and slapped him on the temple with the blackjack. He sagged forward against the wheel.

“Where’s the Buick?”

Curt glanced along the street. “Let’s talk about this,” he said in a strained voice.

“Why should I talk to you when I can talk to your boss?”

“I can make you a good offer. Violence won’t get us anywhere.”

“What made you change your mind?” Shayne signaled to the girl. “Get out, Cheryl. And don’t try to run. I think I could catch you, but I’d have to blackjack your friend here first.”

“He’s no friend of mine,” she said coldly. She opened the door and came around the car. “I’ll say somebody made a mistake. That was a pretty good drunk act. The only thing wrong was that kiss.”

“I didn’t have my mind on it, Cheryl,” Shayne said, opening the Ford’s front door.

“Well, sometime when you’re able to give it your undivided attention—”

Shayne worked the unconscious gunman into position so he could pull his fangs. The gun was a short-barreled .38. Shayne dropped it into his side pocket.

“I wish I could trust somebody to get the Buick,” he said, “but for some reason I don’t think I can. You two are going to have to carry him. Be careful of his arm. You don’t want to compound that fracture.”

Curt looked in at the limp figure. “He must weigh about one-ninety. I don’t think we can.”

“Try,” Shayne suggested.

Curt pulled the injured man to the edge of the seat. He returned to consciousness suddenly with a long moan.

“Does it hurt?” Curt said without sympathy. “It wouldn’t have happened if you’d been quicker with the sap, would it? We’re going for a short walk, Shayne tells us. Cooperate.”

Morrie protested, making a cradle of his left arm to support his broken right. Curt wrestled him out of the door and then Shayne moved the Ford back to the street and parked parallel to the curb. Curt and the girl walked Morrie toward the Buick, all three huddled together with the gunman whimpering between them. Reaching the bigger car, Curt opened the back door and Morrie fell in on the floor.

“Don’t pass out yet,” the redhead said. “I want to see what else you’ve got in your pockets.”

Morrie rolled on one hip, and Shayne took a thick wallet from his buttoned back pocket. There was nothing of interest in the other pockets except a half-dozen loose rounds for the .38. Shayne took those, while Morrie groaned and pleaded for a doctor.

“Nobody ever died of a broken arm,” Shayne said. “You’re next, Curt.”

“Seriously,” Curt said. “He wasn’t supposed to chill you, just tap you so you’d sit quiet and listen.”

“But he got carried away,” Shayne said.

“The man’s a moron, but he’s the best I could do on short notice. I want to persuade you to go back to Miami, Shayne. Tell me how much they’re paying you and I’ll double it.”

A car went by without slackening speed.

“You don’t want cops,” Shayne said, “and neither do I, so let’s see how fast we can mop this up. Dump everything out on the hood.”

“Shayne—”

“Will you shut up? I’m tired.”

He stuck the blackjack in his belt and began looking through their wallets. Curt, he found, was carrying over two thousand dollars in large bills. His last name was Rebman, and his address in the identification window was a hotel in Houston, Texas. In case of an accident, such as the one he was now having, notification was to be made to the Manners Aerosystems Co. Morrie, on the other hand, wanted his mother notified; she too lived in Houston.

“You’ll need it in cash,” Curt said, refusing to believe that he couldn’t reach Shayne if he named a large enough figure. “Take what I’ve got there as a down payment. Another two or three thousand would be no problem at all. And all you have to do to earn it is get on a plane.”

“Where would you get that much cash at this time of night?”

“I said it wouldn’t be a problem.”

Shayne smiled and took Cheryl’s bag out of her hands.

“Oh, no, you don’t!” she said, snatching for it.

“Goddamn it! Will you people get it through your head that you’re in trouble? I can take you in and charge you with assault. I know you don’t worry about gun registrations in Texas, but does Morrie have a permit in Washington? This would break in the morning papers, just before the hearings. Use your head.”

He emptied the girl’s bag, and in addition to the usual feminine equipment, he found a folded letter addressed to Miss Cheryl Remick, at a Northwest address, and postmarked Houston. Inside there was a single sheet of paper, on which was typed, “Royalton Arms,” followed by a 16th Street NW address and that day’s date.

“Reading other people’s mail,” she said.

“I’ve heard that Manners likes good-looking girls your age,” Shayne said. “Is that where he is now, at the Royalton Arms?”

“You can always go there and find out,” she said.

“No, Cheryl,” Curt said. “Shayne’s right, this has gone sour. What do you want to talk to him about, Shayne? I might just tell you where you can find him.”

A car with a long aerial approached slowly. Shayne swept up the wallets and the handbag and dropped them into his already bulging pockets. He closed the Buick’s back door before the cruising police car reached them, and pulled his coat together to hide the blackjack.

“You don’t want to call it a night,” he said to the girl. “Let’s call up some people. It’s my birthday, isn’t it? I want to celebrate.”

The police car went out of gear as it came abreast. The uniformed cop beside the driver looked them over impassively. Curt smiled at him.

“Evening, officer,” he said in a thick Texas accent. “Warm tonight.”

“Take it easy,” the cop said, chiefly to Shayne.

The redhead grinned. “Little birthday celebration.”

The cops went back into gear and proceeded to Wisconsin Avenue, where they joined the southbound traffic.

“He’s a hard man to get in to see,” Rebman went on, “but I think I can talk him into it. I agree with you, if you’re going to be talking money, you might as well talk about it with the man who has it. He expects me to handle things like this without bothering him, but never mind. Let’s get going.”

“I don’t want to be outnumbered when I get there,” Shayne said.

He slapped Curt lightly with the blackjack. The Texan made a sick sound and sat down in the street.

“What did you do that for?” the girl cried.

“Because he talks too much,” Shayne said. “Are you wearing stockings?” He flicked up her white skirt. “Let’s have them.” She didn’t move until he said it again. She reached under her skirt to unsnap her garters. Hopping on one foot and then the other, she skinned off the stockings. Shayne used one of them to tie Curt’s hands.

“What are you—” Curt said, dazed.

With the other stocking Shayne improvised a gag. Opening the rear door, he tipped Curt in with Morrie.

“Now I’m going to need your slip, if you’re wearing one.”

“I’m not,” Cheryl said.

“That’s too bad. Take off your dress.”

“This dress cost one hundred and ninety-eight dollars plus sales tax,” she said grimly, “and if you think you’re going to tear it up, you’ll have a fight on your hands.”

“I might enjoy it,” Shayne said, “but I don’t have the time. Make up your mind in a hurry. It can be one of two ways.”

He flicked the blackjack hard against the Buick’s front fender. The thin steel crumpled.

“You wouldn’t hit me with that,” she said.

“Take a good look.”

She looked into his eyes. “Damn it, Mike,” she said after a second. “Why did we have to meet like this? I’d better warn you—I’m not wearing much underneath.”

Leaning down, she pulled at the hem of her skirt, trying to tear it. “I’ll do that,” Shayne said. Cheryl touched his shoulder to keep her balance while he ripped her skirt all the way from the bottom hem to the waist. He tore out a long panel, tore that into strips and bound Curt’s ankles. After that he bound and gagged Morrie and turned to the girl.

“I don’t suppose you’ll make an exception,” she said.

“Why should I?”

She stood quietly while he tore off more pieces of her skirt and tied her wrists and ankles. “I’m sorry about that dumb trick in the bar,” she said. “I told Hugh I didn’t want to do it, but he said I had to. Am I going to see you again?”

“I hope not.”

He placed the gag and fastened it, then put her into the back seat with the others.

“My advice,” he said, addressing everyone who was still conscious, “is to keep your heads down and try not to move. If anybody calls the cops, you’ll get your picture in the paper. Manners won’t like that. I’ll tell him where he can find you. Just be patient.”

He cranked up the windows and went back to his Ford. As he drove past the Buick he tapped his horn.

1:10 A.M.

THE ROYALTON ARMS, A SHABBY BRICK APARTMENT HOUSE in an out-of-the-way neighborhood, seemed an unlikely place to find Hugh Manners. Probably, Shayne decided, the industrialist didn’t want the public to know that he was sufficiently worried by the Hitchcock investigation to come to Washington to take personal charge of the counteroffensive.

Shayne reviewed quickly the few things he knew about Manners. Before World War II, Manners’ fighter planes had been the fastest in the world. He tested them himself. He had grown up during the glamorous early days of aviation, and he had an obsession with speed. He had walked away from a dozen serious crashes. He ran his company the way he flew his planes—as enormous as it had become in recent years, it was still a one-man business, the last in the industry. His business methods were unorthodox and sometimes brilliant. One year he might make one hundred million dollars, and the next year be in serious danger of losing his shirt. He never gave interviews, believing that his private life was nobody’s business. Nevertheless, he had often been in the headlines with spectacular paternity and alimony suits.

There were twelve apartments in the building. Manners’ name didn’t appear beside the doorbells in the cramped, poorly lit lobby. Curt Rebman was listed as the tenant of a third-floor apartment. Shayne pressed that bell and waited.

There was no answering buzz. Before long he heard footsteps and the door opened. A large man stepped out all the way, closing the door behind him. He was easily six feet six, with the chest-spread of a steer and the relaxed expression of many powerful men. He had been hit in the face various times over the years, by various things that were harder than fists. His eyes were quick and intelligent.

“Michael Shayne to see Mr. Manners,” Shayne said.

The big man looked puzzled. “You rang 3-B. Nobody there by that name.”

“Curt sent me,” Shayne said. “You can give Manners this.”

Inside the last piece of Cheryl’s skirt, the redhead had tied all the trophies he had taken from her little party: the two wallets, her evening bag, the blackjack, the .38, the loose rounds of ammunition. It made an odd-looking bundle. The big man’s eyebrows disappeared in the scar tissue on his forehead. But as he felt the hard outlines of the gun through the cloth, the eyebrows came down in a frown.

“I hope you’re not trying to be funny.”

“Doesn’t Manners have a sense of humor?”

“He hasn’t cracked a smile in years. Wait here.”

He unlocked the door and went in, and was back again in almost exactly the length of time it would have taken him to go up and down two flights of stairs.

“You get in,” he said more pleasantly. “Now don’t take this wrong, but I’ve got to frisk you. That’s the condition.”

“I’m carrying a fountain pen,” Shayne said, “and it’s only fair to tell you that it’s loaded.”

“Will you stop trying to be smart, for your own good?” He extended both his hands toward Shayne’s chest. “OK?”

Shayne spread his arms and let the big man go over him rapidly. He was asked to pull up his pants to show that he wasn’t carrying a knife or a small gun strapped to his calf. He did so, after which the door was finally opened for him. The big man stayed a half-step behind him going up the stairs.

“What was all that stuff wrapped in? Was that the dress the kid had on?”

“Part of it,” Shayne said.

“That’s what I thought. Boy, oh boy. This is something I want to see.”

On the third floor he let Shayne into a short foyer leading to a small living room. There was no rug on the floor and not much furniture. What there was looked as though it had been bought from a secondhand dealer by somebody who wasn’t concerned about anything but the price. Manners, in his shirt-sleeves and wearing a green eyeshade, was sitting in a swivel chair behind an unpainted kitchen table. There was a neat stack of manila folders in front of him, a phone, an overflowing ashtray, and Shayne’s little heap of souvenirs. He must be in his middle fifties, Shayne thought, but he looked younger. He was lean and hard, with a heavily ruled face and piercing black eyes.

“Give him a drink if he wants one, Stevens,” he said to the big man. “I’ll let you know when I need you.”

All they had was whiskey. It wasn’t good whiskey. Shayne asked for soda, but they didn’t have soda. He didn’t bother to ask for ice, knowing they wouldn’t have that either. After handing Shayne the warm drink, Stevens went into a bedroom, closing the door. There was one other bedroom; that door was also closed. A jazz record revolved on an open phonograph, the sound turned down to a faint mutter. The TV picture was on, with no sound coming from the set. On the small flickering screen, a tongue-tied Western badman was silently holding up a stagecoach.

Shayne sampled the drink. He had drunk worse whiskey, but not lately.

Manners spilled the money out of Curt’s wallet. “You could have helped yourself, Shayne. There’s a couple of thousand here. Wasn’t it enough for you?”

“That’s not how I make my living,” Shayne said.

“All right, what’s the proposition?”

Shayne put the watered whiskey on the floor so he wouldn’t forget what he was doing and drink any more. He was on a battered sofa facing the TV set. The bandit, completing the holdup, swung onto his horse and galloped quietly away.

“First,” Shayne said, “I want you to tell me how you knew where I was going to be so you could pick me up, or try to. Second, I want you to give me Maggie Smith.”

Manners’ eyes, fixed on Shayne’s face, didn’t shift. “Sam Toby told me it would be a good idea to get you out of town. I don’t know why. He said we could catch you as you left Senator Hitchcock’s. That’s your first point. Now who is Maggie Smith?”

“You don’t know?”

“That’s correct. I don’t know.”

“She runs a theatre here, and works for Toby on the side. You know how people like Toby are when they’re being investigated. They feel a lot more comfortable if they can get a picture of the chairman of the committee in bed with somebody he’s not married to. Maggie had that just about organized when I showed up. I’ve got a temporary postponement, but Hitchcock refuses to listen to anything I tell him about the woman. I want it canceled from your end.”

Manners’ face had tightened. “I have nothing to do with any of that.”

“Maybe not. But you’re paying the bills, and if anything goes wrong, it’s your neck.”

After hesitating briefly, Manners said, “All right, you can consider it canceled.”

“Call him while I’m here,” Shayne said. “And just so you won’t call him again the minute I leave, I want a letter of apology from you to Hitchcock. To the effect that you knew nothing about this thing Toby has been setting up, and you’re deeply shocked. You’d rather give up your contract than be a party to anything so slimy. I won’t deliver it unless I have to.”

“Toby won’t like that,” Manners said through thin lips. “He won’t like what he reads in the papers tomorrow morning any better.”

The detective took out the keys to the big Buick and tossed them to Manners, who caught them neatly with one hand. “The three of them are tied up in the back seat. If you don’t want to know where the car is parked, I’ll be glad to tell the cops.”

“Maybe I’ll let you keep them. They didn’t do such a bang-up job on you.”

Shayne explained patiently, “Morrie has a broken arm, an empty shoulder holster and no license to carry a gun in the District of Columbia. It wouldn’t surprise me if his fingerprints are on file. Rebman and the car can both be traced to you. I didn’t have any rope or adhesive tape, so I used Cheryl’s stockings and tore up her skirt. You probably know how much else she was wearing—it wasn’t much. The papers are going to eat this up. It’s mysterious, and there’s sex in it.”

Shayne and Manners had been equally unsmiling so far, but suddenly, at the thought of how the livelier newspapers would cover this story, the redhead gave a hoot of laughter.

“Very funny,” Manners commented.

He thought for a minute, then pulled the phone toward him and dialed a number. On the TV screen, an announcer was holding up a pack of cigarettes, moving his lips in praise of his sponsor’s product. The redhead broke out his own cigarettes and offered one to Manners.

“I don’t smoke,” Manners said brusquely, and snapped into the phone, “Toby? I don’t want to talk on your line. Call me back as soon as you can get to another phone.” He hung up. “Rebman had instructions to hire you if necessary. He decided you were too drunk to be approached on that basis. He was ready to go as high as fifteen. I’ll raise it to twenty.”

“Twenty thousand or twenty million?”

Manners looked pained. “Needless to say, not twenty million.”

“To do what?”

“First are you interested?”

“I’m always interested in that kind of dough.”

The phone rang. “Yes,” Manners said. “All right, Sam. Your idea about Mike Shayne backfired, and backfired badly. Never mind how it happened. We have to pick up the pieces. He’s in a position to make one or two demands. Have you been using somebody named Maggie Smith on Hitchcock?”

He listened, breaking in sharply after a moment. “Don’t tell me about it. I want it scratched. Do it as soon as I hang up. If she doesn’t answer her phone, ring her doorbell, and keep at it till you wake her up. Tell her to stay away from Hitchcock, starting now. That’s all. Keep in touch.”

Shayne motioned to him.

“Hold it,” Manners said into the phone. “What is it, Shayne?”

“Ask him how much he agreed to pay her.”

Manners repeated the question to Toby and hung up after listening to the answer.

“He’s promoting a foundation grant for her theatre,” he said. “It could run as high as thirty thousand.”

Shayne felt an unreasoning stab of disappointment. Even now, he realized, he had been hoping it would turn out that Maggie had been telling the truth and everybody else had been lying.

Manners took a lined memo pad out of one of the manila folders. “I don’t like Sam Toby,” he said, biting off the words, “and this is the last time I deal with him. What do you want me to say to Hitchcock?”

“Put it in your own words,” Shayne said. “Mike Shayne tells you that a woman named Maggie Smith has been working on him, and Toby confirms it. Toby’s arranging some financing for her theatre in return. This isn’t the way you like to work. You gave Toby hell and told him to call it off, and you’re glad you caught it this early, before any harm was done.”

Manners scrawled a message covering half a page. He tore it off and tossed it to Shayne. Shayne read it, nodded and put it away. He kept his face impassive, but all the alarm bells were clanging. They shouldn’t have been so ready to jettison Maggie Smith. Something was wrong here, and he didn’t know what. On the record player another jazz record came down and began to spin. There was an unmistakable note of menace in the air.

“We thought you were working for National,” Manners said. “But you’ve actually been working for Hitchcock’s family, haven’t you? I understand he has a daughter?”

Shayne shrugged and started to get up. Manners went on, “To be candid, I wouldn’t want to hire you away from a competitor, because I couldn’t be sure you wouldn’t try to get away with drawing a fee from both sides. But I assume that this wraps it up as far as you’re concerned. We need some background on Senator Tom Wall. We suspect he’s on the National payroll. He’s close to Henry Clark, who handles National’s undercover lobbying. We need proof of this, and we need it in a hurry. The payment schedule would be—two thousand down, eighteen thousand balance on delivery of something we can use.”

Shayne picked up his drink, looked at it with distaste and set it back on the floor.

“That sounds possible. But you’d better get somebody who can find the Washington Monument without having to follow a cab driver. Probably there’s no reason you shouldn’t know—Trina Hitchcock hired me to keep her father out of bed with the Smith woman. And that’s all she hired me to do. I’ve been working on something in Miami the last few days and I’m behind on my sleep. Now I’m going to start catching up. As soon as the hearings adjourn I’m going back to a town where the cops know me and I have friends on the papers. That makes a difference.”

Manners screwed on the top of his fountain pen and clipped it to his shirt pocket. “Has it occurred to you that you might have been brought to Washington for some other reason than the one you were given?”

“Let’s say it’s occurred to me.” Shayne crossed the uncarpeted floor and added his cigarette butt to the others in the ashtray. “But the hell with it. The day’s over.”

“I’d like to take another minute to give you some history,” Manners said. “Sit down and finish your drink.”

Shayne returned to the sofa. “OK, but I’m having trouble keeping my eyes open.”

“One year ago I had my back to the wall. I’d made the mistake of putting too much time into building airplanes and too little into buttering up the generals and admirals. The fat cats at National thought the time was ripe to take me over. Two of their top executives and three of their directors are ex-general officers, and their only company duty is to stay on friendly terms with their ex-colleagues in the Pentagon. I’ve never gone in for that old-buddy crap. I’d never heard the name of Sam Toby. If he’d come into my office and said I needed to hire a Washington influence peddler to stay in business, I would have thrown him out on his ear. Then National took a contract away from me after I’d spent two million on wind-tunnel tests. I had a couple of big loans called, for no good reason. All of a sudden my credit sources dried up. I began to hear that rumors were going around about me personally—my financial position, even my sanity. National made me an offer. The price was ridiculous. I turned it down. They began raiding my stock, and drove it down to below nine dollars a share. All the analysts were predicting I’d be in bankruptcy in six months. They hadn’t seen my books. I had six weeks.”

“And what does all this have to do with me?” Shayne said blurrily.

“Manners common closed this afternoon at one hundred and ten. I have thirty thousand men at work in five states. We’ve had enough delays. We’re finally rolling on this plane, and anything that holds us up now will be bad for everybody. There’s no question of canceling the contract. It’s too late for that. The reason National is making this big effort is to show they still have some political muscle, to lay the groundwork for the next time. No matter how big you are, you have to wade through a certain amount of mud to get a contract like this one. The reason I’m fighting Hitchcock’s investigation is that I don’t want any of the mud splattered on the airplane. Who made what promises, who paid what legal fees, who traded what favors for what phone calls—none of that matters, Shayne. What matters is how far can the plane fly without refueling? How fast? How much load can it carry? How soon will it be operational?”