Guilty as Hell

CHAPTER 16

Shayne was waiting in his Buick, on his third cigarette, when Forbes Hallam, Jr., zoomed into the parking lot in his low-slung black Jaguar.

The door didn’t entirely latch as he got out. He took the outer steps two at a time and disappeared. A few minutes later Ruth came back with him. She was still barefoot, carrying a pair of sandals by their straps. She leaned her head against his shoulder as they came down the stairs. There was a long, deep kiss in the Jaguar before they got underway.

Shayne followed them south to Miami Beach.

He had checked the St. Albans twice by phone. The security man told him Candida Morse was still waiting. Shayne wanted to be present at this meeting, and as soon as Forbes committed the Jaguar to the St. Albans approach, he swung his Buick into the unmarked drive leading to the ramp to the service entrance. He leaped out at the unloading platform and entered the hotel through the kitchens.

He was in the ornate lobby before Forbes and the girl came in the main entrance.

Candida, he saw, was sitting near the archway into the Blue Bar, idly turning the pages of a magazine. He moved closer. From a vantage point behind a huge bronze statue of a mother and child, he saw an unmistakable sharpening of her attention as she noticed the other two. She slowly turned a page. They passed with no sign of recognition.

Ruth had put on her sandals. Her face was still bare of makeup. Even in the baggy sweatshirt she was the most exciting girl within Shayne’s range of vision, with the possible exception of Candida, who had the advantage of taking a sensible interest in money. Ruth and Forbes were holding hands. Again, as they waited for an elevator, her head dropped against his shoulder. He smiled down at her and said something that made her laugh.

As soon as an elevator took them out of sight, Candida put her magazine aside and checked her appearance in a pocket mirror. She did something minor to her hair. She looked at her watch. After a moment she uncrossed her elegant legs and stood up. She looked at the titles in a paperback rack, studied the schedule of the day’s events in the hotel, and forced herself to smoke a cigarette all the way through before going to the house phones. She checked her watch again and waited another moment. After giving them five minutes together, she finally picked up the phone.

Shayne was frowning. Harry Hurlbut, a tough, pockmarked ex-middleweight, was standing in the door of his office across the lobby. Candida put the phone down and entered an empty elevator.

As soon as the door closed on her, Shayne crossed to Hurlbut’s office.

“God knows what’s going on, Harry,” he said, puzzled. “I thought I had things figured out, but apparently not.”

“Keep trying, Mike,” Hurlbut said in his gravelly voice. “Whatever it is, let’s control it.”

“We’ve had a certain amount of violence, and I’ve been expecting some more. There’s a hell of a lot of money in the game. But tonight everybody’s being very well behaved.”

“Please God they stay that way,” Hurlbut said. “Would it help if I tell Ruthie we need her room?”

Shayne rubbed his jaw. “Harry, I just don’t know. This thing has more twists than a corkscrew. I think I have to go up and throw a little weight around.”

“Do it gently, will you, Mike? If you have to splash anybody off the walls, take them outside.”

Shayne returned to the elevators and waited. An elevator arrived. Forbes was in it.

He looked at Shayne blankly. Shayne put his arm into the electronic field to keep the door from closing.

“It’s no coincidence, Forbes. I followed you here from the Stanwick. I need to talk to you. Let’s go in the bar and have a drink. After that I may have some questions to ask Miss Di Palma.”

Forbes finally pushed off from the back wall. “She’s been on benzedrine all weekend and she took a couple of pills to knock herself out. I’m the one you want to talk to. I’ve been wondering how long it would take you to get around to me.”

“Yeah, I’ve been getting pushes in your direction,” Shayne said.

At the entrance to the Blue Bar he called Hurlbut over and introduced the two men.

“When the blonde comes down, tell her I want to see her in the bar,” Shayne said. “Maybe we can settle everything peaceably.”

“Knock on wood.”

Shayne took Forbes into the bar, found a large enough opening on a banquette and ordered drinks.

“I’m sorry about the arm, Mike,” Forbes said in a low voice. “I know it’s part of your profession, but I’m sorry just the same.”

“I’ll sue somebody,” Shayne said. “Did you know your father fired me?”

Forbes swung around in surprise. “What did he do that for? Did you insult him or something? We’ve only got one more day.”

“He’s writing it off,” Shayne told him. “He says he’d rather take a small money loss than look dumb in public. I think he’s really afraid I’m onto something that will lead to a family scandal or endanger his control of the company. He put a cop on me to make sure I was paying attention.”

“I thought he was in Washington.”

“They have phones in Washington. He happened to be talking to a cop who could take a hint.”

The drinks arrived. Shayne raised his. Forbes was thinking about something else. When he saw that Shayne was waiting, he started and picked up his drink.

“Cheers,” he said gloomily. “He’s trying to cover up for me, I guess. Who told him?”

“Your Uncle Jose. He wanted to know if your father ended up paying for Ruth’s abortion.”

“Oh, that,” Forbes said, his face clearing. “That turned out to be nothing. She made a mistake.”

“How much money was involved? I was told eight hundred.”

“That’s right. Dad loaned me some money the year before to cover a payment I had to make because of an accident. A hit-and-run thing, except I didn’t know I hit anybody. I didn’t have eight hundred. I’d only been going with Ruth a few months. She thought, on the basis of the Jaguar, the job, my rich family, she thought all I had to do was reach for the money clip and peel off hundred-dollar bills until she told me to stop. She knows better now. It turned out nobody considered me much of a credit risk. I was beginning to think I’d have to ask for offers on the Jag. I wanted to leave Dad out of this one if possible. Jose told him. Dad yelled a bit, but finally he said he’d take care of it. Then Ruthie came up with the good news-false alarm.”

Shayne drank some cognac and followed it with a sip of ice water. “That was the winter crisis. Now how about the spring one?”

Forbes sighed. “I knew you’d pick it up. That was worse. That was so bad it still gives me the shivers. This time it was ten thousand.”

“For another abortion?”

“Mike, you have the wrong idea about Ruthie. I’m not sore, just explaining. She had a letter from dumb me taking full credit for the baby. She could have made me marry her or come through with a big settlement. Mother was sick at the time, and there was a family theory that the news would be bad for her. Good God, I want to marry Ruthie. She’s the one who won’t marry me. No, this ten-thousand deal was something else, an old bane of mine. Stud poker.”

Shayne’s manner was offhand, but his grip on the cognac glass tightened. “That’s a lot of dough to drop in a poker game.”

“I’m aware of the fact,” Forbes said sadly. “It went on all night and all the next day. Talk about soul sessions. At one point I was fourteen thousand ahead.”

“Who was the big winner?”

“A fellow from New York, Lou Johnson. There’s something I want to explain, Mike. Someday I’d like to do a novel about these people, these friends of Ruthie’s. It’s material nobody else has used. They’re”-he made a rippling gesture with one hand-“I don’t know, floaters. They go where the wind takes them. They’re talented enough to do anything they want to, except that they don’t want to do anything. I really think I can catch the style. I admit I was drunk when I lost that money. But once I got involved in that high-stake poker game, I wanted to go all the way-for the book, you see? And of course, Mother was in the back of my mind all the time. If I dropped a few thousand, I knew she’d make it good, she always had. Well, she died a week later.”

He closed his eyes. “I’m posing again. I don’t suppose I’ll ever write that book.”

“Send me a copy if you do,” Shayne said dryly. “What business is Lou Johnson in?”

“Oh, he has something to do with raising money for the theater. He’s affable enough, and at the same time he’s a little scary, somehow.”

“There wouldn’t be any point in losing to him otherwise,” Shayne observed.

“You may be right. I wish I didn’t have to be such a fool.”

“If your mother had lived, would she have covered you to the extent of ten grand?”

“No. They would have settled for less. They agreed to come down fifty percent as it was.”

“Who agreed?”

“Johnson sent two friends to see me. One of them held me while the other hit me. Then they switched. I don’t stand pain well. I faced that fact about myself long ago. They told me they’d be back a week later for the five thousand.”

“Who did you ask for it?”

“Walter first. I knew he had it. I wanted to give him a lien on my share of Mother’s estate. He turned me down. I’m sure it was Dad’s doing. Then Dad turned me down, in no uncertain terms. I invented a reason to go out to the Coast. I stayed away a few weeks. I’d probably still be out there, but I found out that Johnson had been arrested in New York on some kind of narcotics charge. I decided to come back and I’m glad I did. Those two characters never came near me again.”

Shayne saw Candida hesitating in the doorway. He signaled to her. She stood irresolutely for another moment, then made up her mind and came over.

“I was under the impression we said goodnight a couple of hours ago, Mike.”

“I waited around to see if you really stayed home,” he said. “You know Forbes Hallam.”

“No, I don’t,” she said evenly. “Candida Morse. How do you do?”

Forbes had risen. “The Hal Begley Miss Morse? I don’t know what I expected. Something different.”

Shayne waved to a waiter. “She tells me she’s in it for the excitement, not the money. What are you drinking, Candida?”

“Nothing, thank you. I shouldn’t even have come in here, but curiosity got the better of me. I suppose you’re talking about our one big subject.”

“What else?”

They sat down. Shayne ordered a new round of drinks. “Forbes has been telling me how he was maneuvered into needing five thousand bucks in a hurry last April. We’re moving on to the next question. Who did the maneuvering?”

Candida looked at him levelly, then turned to the waiter. “I think I’ll have a Scotch and soda.”

Forbes protested, “Nobody planned it, Mike. I get in my own jams, from sheer natural stupidity.”

“Not this time,” Shayne said. “You were playing against a stacked deck. The timing was too good. Candida, do you know a New York gambler named Lou Johnson?”

“I don’t know any New York gamblers.”

“How early in the year did you get the United States contract?”

She felt for cigarettes, considering her answer while she took one out and Shayne lighted it for her.

“I don’t want to make your job any easier, Mike. Maybe you can provoke me into saying something, but I hope to be able to keep my mouth shut.”

“My guess would be early or mid-March,” Shayne said. “After you listened to my end of that Washington call from Forbes’s father, why did you head straight for the St. Albans and wait an hour or so for Ruth to show up? I think you probably wanted to give her money to get out of town.”

Forbes exclaimed, “Miss Morse, you and Ruthie know each other?”

Candida gathered her loose belongings and stuffed them in her bag. “This was a mistake, I see. I won’t wait for the Scotch. Goodnight, all.”

“No, stick around,” Shayne advised her. “There’s even a faint chance that you’re being taken here-a very faint chance. When did your mother die, Forbes?”

“April second.”

“The poker game was a week earlier. Candida was already sounding out Walter Langhorne on the subject of changing jobs. A blackmail operation was underway against Jose Despard. Which of these three gambits actually produced the T-239 folder I still don’t know. When did the two collectors come to see you, Forbes? I’d say about the twentieth. Suddenly, on April twenty-third, you no longer needed five G’s. You can’t really think anything as elaborate as this would be called off just because one of the principals was picked up in New York on another matter. There had to be a payoff. It doesn’t make sense otherwise.”

Forbes nodded slowly. “I think I know what happened, Mike. I’ve tried not to think about it. I think my father quietly bought up those IOU’s. After that abortion thing, he made one of his announcements. From that moment on, I had to get out of trouble on my own two feet. But he knew what would happen if I didn’t pay that five thousand. I was in for a really bad beating, and something like that can easily get out of hand. He wanted to make me realize that life isn’t easy. He didn’t want me killed.”

The waiter brought their drinks and Shayne asked for a phone.

“You don’t want to comment on this yet, Candida?”

She drank without replying.

When the phone was plugged in, he dialed the long-distance combination and asked for Washington information.

Forbes sat forward. “Dad won’t like being asked about it, I can tell you that.”

“That’s too bad.”

He asked the operator for the number of the Hotel Mayflower and started his new drink while he waited. A moment or two later Hallam’s father was on the line.

“Shayne!” he exclaimed when he was told who was calling.

“Camilli decided not to arrest me,” Shayne said. “He’s putting in for retirement instead. Something’s come up that has to do with your son, Mr. Hallam.”

“Don’t tell me about it!” Hallam snapped. “You no longer have any legal right to ask members of my family or executives of my company any questions whatever on any subject.”

“That’s pretty sweeping,” Shayne said mildly. “Forbes is right here. Do you want to talk to him?”

“Put him on.”

Forbes took the phone, holding it as though it might go off in his hands. “Dad, do you remember those stupid IOU’s I was worrying about last spring? We want to find out if you-”

His father interrupted. The harsh rasp in his voice carried to Shayne without forming any recognizable words.

“But Dad,” Forbes said, “if you did buy them that would-”

His father broke in again, giving him no chance to say anything more. The electronic rasp continued for some time, concluding with an audible click. Forbes looked at the phone, puzzled.

“He said not to talk to you. He’s flying back. He says you’re after more money.”

“He offered me eight thousand to quit,” Shayne said. “I don’t think anybody else will top that. Now I have to ask you the yes-or-no question, Forbes. Did you sell the folder to Candida?”

“No.”

But there was no conviction in his voice, as though this detail was of no interest to him. After a long swallow of whiskey, he burst out, “I don’t see why I shouldn’t talk to you! My God, we can’t just expect you to-”

“He doesn’t want you to incriminate yourself,” Shayne said. “When we check on it, I think we’ll find that Lou Johnson or somebody acting for Lou Johnson received the full five thousand, and if it didn’t come from your father, the assumption would be that it came from you. But there’s one other outside possibility-that there’s a third person involved, who really stole the folder and set up the poker game so you’d take the fall if it ever got that close.”

“That’s nonsense.”

“I think Candida would have been willing to go as high as thirty or forty thousand for that material. A five-thousand-buck payoff to Johnson would be cheap insurance.”

Forbes rattled the ice in his drink. He shook his head.

“Johnson was Ruthie’s friend. She knew he was staying in the hotel, and it was her idea to get in the game. In fact-”

“In fact what?” Shayne said when he stopped.

“It seems to me she suggested taking off the limit, and that’s when the trouble started. I’m not sure of that part, but if somebody introduced her to Johnson-hell, maybe she collected a small percentage, I’ve never been able to make out where her money comes from. But if somebody arranged that game to get my signature on some IOU’s, she knows who it was. We can find out in the morning.”

Shayne drained his glass and stood up. “We’d better ask her now. She may be many miles away in the morning.”

“She’s asleep.”

“Maybe not. She was pretty strung out when I saw her. The sleeping pills wouldn’t take hold right away. Coming, Candida?”

“Needless to say, for my own protection.”

Shayne overpaid the waiter and hurried the others to the elevator. He and Harry Hurlbut exchanged a look, and the elevator door slid shut. They rode up in unfriendly silence. On the twelfth floor, Forbes led them to Ruth’s room.

Shayne knocked. When there was no immediate response, he said, “Keep knocking. I’ll get a key.”

“I have one.”

Forbes unlocked the door. “Ruthie?” he called softly. He turned to Shayne. “I told you she’s asleep.”

“Maybe we can wake her up.”

Shayne turned on the ceiling light. This room was like most other hotel rooms in Miami Beach-a low ceiling, walls painted light green, furniture and fixtures modern, clean-lined and anonymous. But Ruth Di Palma was an exceptionally untidy guest. Her clothes were everywhere. Slacks and sweatshirt were crumpled in the middle of the carpet. Sandals and underclothing made a trail toward the bathroom. A damp footprint had been left on the carpet by a bare foot, beside a wet bathtowel. There was a glass of water and an open bottle of pills on the bedside table, with a spilled cigarette package, a sheaf of bills and other odds and ends from Ruth’s open bag.

Ruth herself was sleeping face down in the untidy bed, breathing hard. She was unclothed. Her midsection was covered by a corner of the sheet.

“We’re wasting our time,” Forbes said. “She never gets to sleep right away, but once she makes it-”

Shayne reached the bed in two strides. He touched the flesh at the corner of the girl’s mouth. Dropping to one knee, he felt for the wrist that was dangling over the side. For a moment he couldn’t find a pulse. Her breath caught and held, caught and held. He finally picked up a pulse-beat. It was faint and ragged.

He grabbed the phone, knocking her opened bag to the floor.

“Get a doctor up here in a hurry!” he said urgently when the switchboard answered.