Guilty as Hell

CHAPTER 11

The light was on in the basement room where Shayne had left the girl. She had opened a trunk to look for something to wear, so far without success. She whirled, protecting her breasts. Seeing Shayne, she dropped her arms and came toward him.

“Hey, my dress. Did you see Jake?”

“Yeah. He was very disappointed to hear you didn’t do better upstairs.”

He tossed her the dress. She looked to see if he had anything else for her to wear underneath, then pulled it over her head and wriggled into it.

“I don’t see how he can blame me,” she said. “You didn’t give me one minute to think.”

He handed her a shoe at a time, and she hopped from foot to foot putting them on. She smoothed the dress over her hips.

“Big improvement,” she commented sarcastically. “You can see right through it. I hope we’re not going anyplace in public.”

“What’s your real name?”

“Deedee’s my real name. I had to put up a terrific battle, but everybody calls me by it, finally.” She added, “My real name is Dorothy Pappas. Do I look like a Dorothy Pappas?”

“Where’s your family live?”

“What family? They booted me out when I thought I was preg.”

He jerked his head. They went down the corridor to the elevator, passing the superintendent’s door. The super and his wife were watching television and they didn’t look around.

In the elevator Deedee stood very close to Shayne, her breasts touching his arm.

“I guess you don’t like me much.”

“Not a hell of a lot,” Shayne told her.

“I didn’t guess so.”

Outside, he strode rapidly toward the spot where he had left his car. She clicked beside him, not quite keeping up. Jose Despard was waiting on the sidewalk beside Shayne’s Buick, his shoulders hunched, both hands deep in his pockets. He gulped when he saw the girl.

She ran the last few steps, one hand out, but stopped before she actually touched him. “Honey, I’m so sorry it had to happen! As sorry as I can be. You know you weren’t supposed to be in on it.”

His face contorted painfully. At a brusque signal from Shayne, she got in the Buick.

“Wait here for me,” Shayne told Despard.

Despard kept his head averted. While Shayne went through the pattern involved in starting the car with one hand, Despard said in a choked voice, “Don’t forget to put something on that cut.”

“On my legs?” she said. “No, I’ll take care of it. I won’t see you again, will I, so-well, goodbye.”

Despard didn’t trust himself to answer.

Shayne turned onto Biscayne Boulevard, then pulled over to use the phone. On the third try he found a friend who said she would be willing to put Deedee up for the night.

“Man or woman?” Deedee said when they were moving again.

“Woman.”

“And she’s probably just a bit dykey, huh,” Deedee said sullenly after another moment.

Shayne glanced at her and she said with spirit, “Don’t look at me. I happen to be heterosexual and proud of it.”

“You happen to be what?”

“Heterosexual. That means-”

“I know what it means.”

He delivered her to a Northwest address, promising to explain in the morning how he found himself the custodian of a high-school dropout wearing no underwear. He returned to the Buena Vista street corner. Despard, told by Shayne to stay put, hadn’t moved. He had pulled himself together to the extent of being able to fill and light a pipe. Shayne motioned him to the driver’s side.

“You drive,” he said. “First, hand me the phone book.”

Despard reached all the way over to the shelf behind the back seat. The detective looked up the address listed for Candida Morse.

“Coral Gables. Avenue Muleta. Go over to North Miami Avenue and pick up the Expressway.”

After knocking out his pipe, Despard made a U-turn to join the traffic on 4th Avenue. His narrow, balding head nodded and bobbed at the end of a stalklike neck. He was trying not to look at Shayne, but his head kept turning.

“What do I do, thank you?” he said bitterly. “Or didn’t you arrange that? What kind of a hold do you have over her?”

“I won’t try to figure out what you’re talking about,” Shayne said. “The cops probably gave you a rough time before they found out who you were. You happened to walk in at the wrong time, that’s all. But I doubt if you’ll have any more Wednesday-evening dates with the girl. Something’s missing there, Despard. Some vital little connection, and who’s responsible for it is none of my business, or yours either. If she had all the usual parts, she’d go out with teenage boys and be interested in whatever the hell teenagers are interested in nowadays. But then she wouldn’t have been interested in seducing you, would she?”

“I’m the one who did the seducing,” Despard said miserably.

“That’s what they wanted you to think,” Shayne said. “She was planted on you by Hal Begley Associates, working through a small-time crumb named Jake Fitch.”

“Jake Fitch!” The pale face bobbed around again. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. He’s her father.”

“They may be living together. He’s not her father.” For an instant Shayne thought Despard would lose control of the wheel. The Buick drifted across the line, narrowly missing an oncoming car. Sawing at the wheel, Despard brought it back. His Adam’s apple was working.

“I don’t suppose you’d say that so positively unless you know it for a fact. Something terrible must have happened to her when she was young. I thought-”

“You were wrong,” Shayne said briefly. “How did she get you alone?”

“She was sent by the baby-sitting agency. I drove her home. Her father was still working. Jake Fitch was still working. Fitch,” he repeated, pronouncing the name with revulsion. “Her lover? I shared her with Jake Fitch?”

“Move it along, will you, Despard?”

“She was afraid to go in alone. She thought she saw a shadow moving on an upstairs shade. She made me go up to make sure no one was there.” He swallowed heavily. “If that was acting, she did a good job.”

“I doubt if she had to carry you upstairs,” Shayne said dryly. “How much have they taken you for?”

“Not a cent! Oh, I’ve given her presents, perfume, a new dress. I leased the apartment. But my wife happens to run the checkbook in my house, and I assure you I couldn’t sneak any sizeable sum past her.”

“If that checks out,” Shayne said, “I’ll have to report I’ve located the man who sold the T-239 folder.”

The Buick slowed abruptly. “Shayne, you have to be joking. Damn it, I can’t talk and drive at the same time.”

They were on 43rd Street, between First Avenue and North Miami. At a signal from Shayne, Despard pulled over to the curb. Turning all the way around, he said passionately, using both hands, “I didn’t do it. I don’t care what kind of blackmail they tried to use on me, I wouldn’t-”

“What are the photographs like?”

“Photographs? You mean they have pictures of me? Of me and Deedee?” He covered his face. “My God.”

“They were taken the first night,” Shayne said. “Jake said they turned out well. What would your wife do if they showed up in the mail some morning?”

“God,” Despard said again.

“How old do you think the girl is?”

Despard raised his head slowly. “I don’t think. I know. I happened to see a form she was making out. She’s fourteen. But she’s mature for her age.”

“She’s seventeen,” Shayne said. “The form was a fake. The point of this whole operation was to make you think they could break up your family, get you canned from your clubs and slam you in jail for that fine old felony known as statutory rape. Not many people have a stiff enough spine to hold out against that kind of a parlay. Fitch is working for a blackmail and extortion outfit. You can’t tell me they had that kind of ammunition without intending to use it.”

Despard lifted both trembling hands. He worked his Adam’s apple for a moment before he could bring out any words.

“It’s-it’s absolutely the first time I’ve had the slightest hint of any such suggestion. I’ll repeat that under oath.”

“You may have to.”

Despard dropped one hand to Shayne’s shoulder. “You must believe me.”

“Take your hand off me,” Shayne said.

Despard pulled it back as though burned. “I see how you feel. I’m the lowest of the low. I have this-tendency. I love youthfulness. I don’t like to feel old. But with Deedee “it was the first time I ever-continued where I wasn’t wanted. She fought like a cat. And now you tell me it wasn’t real.” His eyes contracted. “Yes, there were signs. There were definite signs. A certain-lubricity. I thought afterward I was trying to fool myself, but perhaps-yes, if her resistance had been genuine, perhaps I would have stopped.” He seemed relieved.

“Let’s hope so,” Shayne said. “Do you play much golf at the North Miami Country Club?”

“Why, yes,” Despard said, the change of subject sending his eyebrows up. “I get in a couple of rounds every weekend, and I usually manage one or two during the week. Why?”

“That’s where Begley picked up the report.”

“I had nothing to do with it,” Despard said firmly. “I had access to it, I won’t deny that. My secretary has a Thermofax machine, not that I know how to work it. I played a lot of golf last spring, trying to overcome a slice. But don’t stop looking for the person who really did it, because I didn’t.” He looked ahead through the windshield, holding himself erect. “It’s old-fashioned, but I like to think I believe in honor.”

Shayne made a rude sound.

Despard said stiffly, “You’re entitled to that response. I make this distinction. Despards have often been in various kinds of trouble. We have lost too much money at the gambling tables. We have fought duels. We have committed adultery, and had sexual relations with unmarried girls. But we have not, Shayne, we have never betrayed the honor of our family, our country or the company we work for.”

“I suppose Despards were officers in the Confederate Army.”

“We ended as officers. We began as recruits. My great-great-grandfather rose to command a division of cavalry.”

Shayne lit a cigarette deliberately. “Where does Hallam stand on the Civil War?”

“Nowhere,” Despard said, still very stiff. “He is a part of a different tradition. All we could discover when he married my sister was the name of one maternal grandparent, a New Englander, who ended his life as a clerk in a cotton house.”

“And you’ve probably rubbed that in often enough so he’d enjoy hearing about this trouble with Deedee?”

Despard bit off the words. “He might. Are you going to tell him?”

“No, not yet. There’s more involved here than the theft of a paint formula. I don’t want to commit myself before I know a little more.”

“What do you mean, more involved?”

“I can go into the next board-of-directors meeting with the facts I have and nail you to the wall. You know that. They’ll ask for your resignation on a dozen counts. And that will put Hallam in complete control. Or am I wrong?”

“You surely don’t mean Hallam is behind this?”

“I don’t know a damn thing except what people have been telling me,” the detective said sharply. “I don’t think he had anything to do with setting up Deedee. But after you fell for that, it’s possible he found out about it and brought me in to get confirmation so it wouldn’t seem there was any personal malice involved. When I say it’s possible, I don’t mean it’s likely. I’ve managed to stay alive this long by playing the odds. You’re the odds-on favorite on the morning line, Despard. But I don’t have to put my money down till Hallam gets back from Washington. If honor kept you from turning over that report, there’s somebody else in the company who’s either not so honorable or more pressed. I’ll give you twelve hours to see if you can come up with anything.”

“Twelve hours! What can I do in twelve hours? You can’t believe I’ll suddenly be thinking about it for the first time!”

Shayne made an impatient gesture. “Now you’ve got an incentive. I’ve already been paid two thousand. All I have to do to collect the eight-thousand-dollar balance is turn in a thief. You’ll do. If you don’t want to be turned in, give me somebody else.”

“I’m not an informer,” Despard said with another attempt at dignity.

“In that case you’re dead,” Shayne told him. “Oh, they’ll give you five minutes to defend yourself, and you can make your speech. I don’t think they’ll believe you. I happen to believe you myself, but that’s partly because I don’t think you’ve had your chance yet to find out how you’d stand up under real pressure.”

Despard looked at him suspiciously. “I had the impression you thought I was lying.”

“There was money involved,” Shayne explained. “They picked up the report one day and paid for it the next. They could get it from you for nothing. Not only that. I don’t think you would have gone on having sex with Deedee after you saw the photographs.”

Despard shuddered. “I’m not in my dotage yet.”

“Another point. This Candida Morse is a bright girl. Too bright to think she could hurt me with this kind of vice-cop frame-up. It’s too crude and too obvious. I think the real reason for that was to lower my opinion of her intelligence, so I’d jump at the name Despard when I heard it. Deedee had been told to make sure I heard it, obviously to fake me away from their real contact.”

“I agree with you,” Despard said ironically. “I didn’t do it. That’s what I’ve been telling you.”

“They had a limited time to come up with the report,” Shayne continued. “If they couldn’t produce it in a month or maybe a month and a half, the deal would peter out. So they wouldn’t want to bet their whole bankroll on a single entry. They hired Fitch and Deedee to work on you. Candida went after Walter Langhorne herself on a recruitment basis, and maybe that was the one that worked. Statutory rape is tricky and dangerous, and they wouldn’t use it unless they had to. And maybe they were working on a third possibility. Probably three was all they had time for. All right. All these arguments weigh with me, but unless you can produce some hard information for me tonight or tomorrow morning, I won’t even put them in the report. I’ve been looking for a handle. Now that I have one, you’d better believe I mean to use it. As soon as you have something to tell me, call me on the car phone. If that doesn’t answer, try Tim Rourke.”

“I’m no detective. I don’t even know how to begin.”

“Begin by thinking about it,” Shayne said. “Who needed money? Who was in trouble? Who had more money and was in less trouble on April twenty-fourth than on April twenty-third? Get to work, Despard. You haven’t much time.”