Murder in Haste

Chapter Eighteen

The general babble in the ballroom was cut off as abruptly as if it were controlled by a single switch. Everyone looked toward the dais, where the two cops stood self-consciously on either side of the unattended mike. Shayne turned the knob, and Plato’s voice continued more quietly: “If you think you can get away with that kind of rough stuff, you’re making a mistake, Luke. The newspapers. The goddam Senate.”

Quinn replied with a truck-driver’s obscenity, telling Plato what the Senate could do, and it came over clearly.

Rourke said, “I wonder if that went over the TV.”

“The country may survive,” Shayne said.

Plato repeated the obscenity sarcastically. “I wish they could hear you say that. All right, kid how you planning to swing in the vote?”

“I have respect for you, Harry,” Quinn said. “You did a lot for this union. And you did a lot for yourself too, not to speak of your family and your wife’s family, but let’s not talk about that. I hate to break it to you this way. We’re dumping you. You get the pension, and that’s all.”

Plato’s voice was hard. “You’re going for that— that—”

“We’re going for your distinguished opponent from San Francisco. And you’re speaking of the future president of the Welfare Fund, so watch your language. I listened to the offers. We talked it over. And when I saw a way to take care of this Painter situation, I put the word around — what we need in the leadership is some representation from the West Coast.”

In the ballroom, the voting had stopped. The delegates had formed in lines leading to the tables to have their credentials checked, but the lines weren’t moving. Several of the most burly delegates moved toward the microphone. Wing’s reserves formed, two deep, nightsticks ready. For an instant it looked as though TV cameras would record some real action, but the threat fell apart before it reached the police line.

Shayne called to Wing, “Put another half dozen men in front of the Midwest office, Joe.”

“What did they offer you?” Plato cried. “Human blood?”

Quinn replied calmly, “I’ve got his promise for two years from now.”

“For what?” Plato was almost screaming, and Shayne turned down the volume. “For president? You want to step into my shoes?”

“Not right away, Harry. I’m not ready. Two years from now we figure will be about right.”

Plato said, “I knew you were crazy. You don’t have the... the stature, Luke. Everybody knows it. And your background! You’re vulnerable.”

“Not any more,” Quinn said.

“You’re wide open! I got this union finally a little respectable, and how’s it going to look when the international president’s put away for murder?”

“I’m in the clear, Harry. Not all the way in the clear, but close enough. I’ve got two years to take care of everything.”

“No, Luke, it can’t be done. You left too many loose ends. We’re in the goddam limelight, you can’t do things the old way. Sending goons to knock off that girl! That’s crude, Luke. You solve one problem and you make a couple more. Knocking off Milburn, okay, that’s the one thing you handled right. I think I’d even let you get away with knocking off Painter, because the dumb little no-good had it coming. But I’ll be damned” — his voice thickened — “if I’m going to let you get away sinking my boat!”

“I asked you to hand him over, Harry. I had to take him.”

“I had him under control.”

“And for how long? You found out what he was working on, I don’t know who from. That crumb Horvath, probably. Yeah, and he’s somebody else who’s going to get it in the head. And did you tell me so I could take care of it? You did not. You grabbed Painter and put him in the freezer so he couldn’t blow the whistle on me till you had both fists in the Welfare Fund. That may be good politics, but it’s not so hot, friendship-wise. I can’t feel so warm to you any more. And after the election? You were going to get him found with a babe in a motel, I hear! You’d have the Fund. And me? I’d change places with Sam Harris in condemned row.”

“That’s the risk you run when you kill people,” Plato said.

The TV cameras had discovered the receiver in front of Rourke. The reporter straightened his tie self-consciously.

Quinn’s gravelly voice went on, “It was an accident. I had to shoot Heminway, Harry. Nobody was supposed to be there that night. He loomed up in front of me, and I had to blast him.”

“Sure, sure,” Plato said. “I forgive you. But will the State of Florida forgive you? What I don’t understand is why you posed for a picture.”

Shayne leaned forward to hear the answer.

“That bastard Ben Chadwick,” Quinn’s voice said. “The bank president. He set it on automatic, with infra-red so I never knew it went off. He wanted to make sure I wouldn’t go light on his end of the split. And when I saw a print of that picture, believe me, I handed over every last buck he deserved.”

Standing up, Shayne motioned to Goddard in the balcony. He pointed toward the exit, and the insurance company president nodded. Shayne gave Rose Heminway the same sign, accompanying it with a hurry-up motion.

Plato said, “We’re wasting time. I’ll tell you what I want you to do — go out and tell your people that Harry Plato’s the man.”

Quinn laughed unpleasantly. “Give up, Harry. So long as you had Painter hanging over me I had to take your advice. But not any more.”

“I’m not forgetting how that happened, either,” Plato said. “I’ll send a diver down to get him, so I can dump him somewhere else, but I’m not forgetting you figured he’d be found on my boat. That was dirty pool, Luke, and you’re” going to pay for it.”

“Tell me how,” Quinn said.

“I’ll be glad to,” Plato answered carelessly. “I’ve got the picture.”

Shayne nodded to Rourke. “They’ll be yelling at each other in a minute. Let’s break it up.”

Quinn, at the other end of the transmission, whispered, “You’ve got the picture?”

“Of you coming out of the vault, just before George Heminway came around the corner. Chadwick had it with him the day he flopped on Painter’s front steps. I got it from Painter.”

“You mean he was carrying it around?”

“That’s Painter,” Plato said. “Brains aren’t his big feature. Naturally I’m not dumb enough to carry it around, so you can put that gun back in your pocket.”

A door came open violently, and Peter Painter’s voice cried over the public address: “So brains aren’t my big feature, are they?”

“Pa-painter!” Quinn said.

“I don’t blame you for stuttering,” Painter said with satisfaction. “You thought you could get the better of me, did you?”

Shayne jerked his head toward the exit. Rourke came with him, hurrying to keep ahead of the other reporters and wire agency men. Rose Heminway and Goddard were waiting in the corridor. Shayne swept them along with him to the open door of the Midwest office. Rourke managed to be last.

“Nobody else,” he told the cop, and closed the door behind him.

Shayne, two strides ahead of his friend, saw Luke Quinn with a big gun in his hand, pointing it at Painter. The barrel wavered as Shayne and the others thrust through the door. Rose gave a small scream.

“Don’t move, goddam it,” Quinn said. “Any of you.”

Painter walked calmly up to him. Quinn swung the gun back, but Painter batted it aside with his left hand and hung a right on Quinn’s jaw. As the blow landed the gun went off. To Shayne’s surprise, Quinn sat down. Harry Plato kicked the gun out of his hand.

Painter turned toward the others. “Big, tough hoodlum,” he sneered.

His eyes were bloodshot He had tried to shave, but his jowls were cross-hatched with small cuts. A strong smell of gin hung in the air. As Shayne approached, the report of the gun registered on Painter’s brain and he sagged into a chair.

“Get up,” Shayne told Quinn.

Quinn’s head lolled. Shayne gripped the front of his shirt. Heaving him erect, Shayne walked him to a leather sofa. Painter began to recover as he saw the effect of his roundhouse punch.

“When I hit them,” he observed, “they stay hit.”

Shayne shook Quinn’s shoulders and slapped him sharply twice. “It’s the end of the trail, Luke. You’ve had three years, but it’s finished.”

He picked up his hat from the desk and pulled out the little sending set. “These are wonderful gadgets. They cost an arm and a leg, but they’re worth it. Everything you and Harry just said went out over the public address. The TV-boys taped it and it’ll go out to the country later, minus some of the profanity. Five hundred people heard you admit you robbed the Beach Trust and shot George Heminway. The Coast Guard picked up the Ophelia, with Grimondi and the rest of your people. Painter’s alive, as you’ve just found out. Rose is alive. So is her father. I think Harry’s going to turn that picture over to us so he’ll win our friendship and we won’t prosecute him for kidnapping. At this point he needs all the friends he can get.”

“Mike—” Plato said weakly.

Shayne said, “Luke wants to clear up a few things for his friends in the ballroom first. Go ahead, Luke.”

Quinn pulled himself together and repeated his earlier obscenity. Shayne made a reproving sound.

“Think about it, Luke. You don’t want to be the only one who gets burned, do you? Of course you don’t. Who had the idea for the robbery, you or Chadwick?”

Quinn looked around the room. Then he made up his mind and said viciously, “It sure as hell wasn’t me. We had this deal going — collecting dough for the Red Cross, and he kept wailing about how he needed cash, he needed cash—”

“No,” Rose breathed.

“Oh, yes,” Quinn said more strongly. “I’m not going to take the jolt and let him hang onto that hundred and forty thousand I counted out in his lap. What I suggested, if he needed cash I suggested robbing the Red Cross, they’d never miss it, but Chadwick, he got up on his high horse. Rob the Red Cross! Who did I think I was talking to? I felt like a bum, and I was about to crawl out on my hands and knees when he said wait, he had a better idea, and this was it.”

“You’re lying!” Rose exclaimed.

Shayne cut her short with a gesture. “What was the split, Luke?”

“Down the middle, after expenses. I paid my debts, and laid out the rest so I got a nice advancement in the union, and everything was going fine till that Harris dame — I’d like to pull her apart!”

“What made you send a couple of gunmen to Rose?” Shayne said. “None of us liked that, Luke.”

“I had to,” he said reasonably. “She walked in on us, on Chadwick and me, when we were going over a layout of the bank. I don’t know what she made of it, but if she ever started thinking about it, I’d be dead.”

“I thought it was a map of the town,” Rose said, appalled. “For the Red Cross campaign. It never entered my head—”

“Just a minute,” Shayne said gently. “Milburn’s stabbing, Luke. How did you arrange that?”

Quinn bared his teeth. “In front of all these people?”

Rourke suggested, “Let’s turn off the radio, Mike. I want some of this exclusive.”

Shayne clicked off the sending switch. “Now do you feel better, Luke?”

Quinn went on sneering. “You’re the big brain here. You know all about it anyway.”

“I can guess,” Shayne said. “When Painter asked to see Milburn, they called him out of the mess-hall. A few hours later the warden put several of the prisoners’ leaders on discipline. Everybody knows how simple it is to bludgeon a two-time loser into turning stool pigeon. I think we’ll find some members of your local in jail. That doesn’t mean any of them did the actual stabbing. Starting a good strong rumor would be enough.”

“Now you’re worrying me, Shayne,” Quinn said.

“Do you ever do any skin-diving, Luke? That’s something else we’ll want to look into, to tidy everything up. It doesn’t matter too much. You can’t be executed more than once, and what you’re going to be executed for is the murder of George Heminway... Where are you going, Rose?”

She turned. “Mike, hadn’t I better call Norma Harris? It seems cruel to keep her in suspense.”

“Her big interest is the money,” Shayne said. “I’m coming to that.”

“The money?”

“Sure. I wouldn’t want you to keep it, when you’re the one who sent your husband to the bank that night.”

Painter sat up straighten “Now look here, Mike. Just because you had a few lucky breaks doesn’t entitle you to—”

“Right or wrong, Rose?” Shayne said.

“Wrong,” she said coldly. “As wrong as you could possibly be.”

Shayne smiled. “And how could we prove it, anyway? After three years, we probably can’t even prove that your father was helping himself to the bank’s assets even before you suggested the robbery to him. I really don’t think he’d go into partnership with a character like Quinn unless he already had a shortage he couldn’t cover.”

“Sixty G’s,” Quinn said. “Or so he told me. Of course he wasn’t George Washington, as far as telling the truth was concerned.”

“That’s the most — the most despicable—” Rose said.

“Well, Luke’s a despicable character,” Shayne said tolerantly. “I’ve been thinking about this, and I think I know about what happened. Your husband found out what his crooked father-in-law was up to. What’s more natural than for a husband to confide in his understanding wife? But he made a mistake there, because you’re the type of understanding wife that thinks things through. If George turned your old man in for embezzlement, he’d either go to jail or the bank would fire him and make him sell everything he owned to pay them back. Without a father-in-law at the head of the bank, George would stay at his adding machine for the rest of his career, and life as a clerk’s wife, with a father to support, was not for you.

“I’d better not try to guess which of you actually thought up the robbery, you or your old man, and that’s another thing that doesn’t matter. But of course you knew about it. Luke wouldn’t put thugs on you unless he was damn sure you knew everything there was to know about that night. When George came to you with his problem, you told him you couldn’t believe it, you had to have proof, and that meant he had to go back to the bank and work late, on his own time, with nobody else around. He got the proof all right, but from the wrong end of a gun.”

She started to speak and he said cheerfully, “This is all guesswork. I admit it.”

“When Norma came to me I did everything she wanted,” she said. “I tried to push Mr. Painter—”

“No, you didn’t,” Shayne said. “You went to him to find out what he knew, if anything. Your father went to him for the same reason, and I think he may have wondered if you’d sold him out.”

“But I–I hired you, Mike. Doesn’t that prove—”

“You suddenly realized you needed protection. Luke Quinn, who was coming to town this week, was friends with some very rough men.”

“Mike,” she said quietly, “your tone’s so — I don’t know — so vindictive. I thought you — you and I—”

Shayne looked at her in surprise. “Just because you offered to sleep with me, you thought I’d let you keep the money? That’s not the way I operate.”

Rourke put in, “He’s already got a girl.”

Rose looked from Shayne to Painter. The chief-of-detectives looked away, flicking his thumbnail across his mustache. She seemed to harden as she saw that Shayne’s reasoning had left her without allies.

“Just exactly what do you intend to do about it?”

“There’s not much we can do,” Shayne said. “You didn’t fire the gun that killed your husband, Quinn did, and there’s no way we can prove conspiracy. We can’t even prove perjury on your identification of Harris — you had the sense to qualify that. But we can take the money away from you. Goddard,” he said, addressing the insurance company president, “do you want to speak on that point?”

“I checked the banks for safe deposit accounts, as you asked me to,” Goddard said. “There’s one in Mrs. Heminway’s name and one in her father’s. It wouldn’t have mattered if you’d let her leave a minute ago, Mike, because I put a temporary stop-order on those boxes until we can get court permission to see what’s inside them. The Bay Harbor property ought to bring a nice price.”

“It’s not my father’s!” Rose cried. “It’s mine!”

“But he bought it for you, probably? It may take some litigation, but if Shayne’s charges hold up, and having worked with Shayne before, I have a feeling they will, I think the courts will decide that it was bought with money that properly belongs to us. That would go for any other real property, bought since your husband’s death. A car, say, jewelry, fur coats.”

Rose looked confused. “I’ll be left with nothing? Nothing at all?”

Painter said quickly, “You admit it?”

She rallied. “I don’t admit a thing! You’re going to have a fight on your hands! And as for you, Michael Shayne, I wish I’d paid more attention to the stories I’ve heard about you. You don’t want to settle for my little fee. You’re after higher stakes.”

Shayne said soberly, “No, I’m charging you my usual rates, and I expect to get paid. I promised I’d give Sam Harris twenty-five percent of the recovery fee, but I’ve decided he deserves it all. He’s spent three years in jail on a bad rap, and I doubt if the state of Florida will do anything but say they’re sorry.” He added to Rourke, “But don’t tell Lucy about this, Tim.”

“Norma Harris!” Rose exclaimed. “I might have known. That over-sexed, over-developed bitch. You’re birds of a feather!”

Shayne grinned. “I’m giving it to Sam, not Norma. It may be just the thing to keep their marriage together.”

“This isn’t in character, Mike,” Rourke observed. “Lucy wouldn’t believe it even if I told her.”

The door opened and a union official looked in. “Harry—”

He looked around, and Plato said impatiently, “Well? Hurry it up, because I’ve got to get out there and take the chair, if I’m going to hold the membership in line.”

“They just announced the results, Harry. You ran third. The rank-and-file—”

“What?” Plato demanded.

“Well, they won, Harry, all down the line.”

“We only put them on the ballot so there’d be a contest!” Plato cried. “What do those jerks know about running a union?” He turned angrily on Shayne. “And how about me? How about me? This is all your fault, you bastard. I’ve never been able to put aside a penny. I hope you’re satisfied! I’ll have to go back to driving a truck!”