He filled Shayne’s glass and raised his own. “Here’s to money.”
Shayne started to speak, but Bixler forestalled him.
“Michael, I just wanted to say this. I know you want to locate Senator Wall, so you can confer about overall strategy, and the reason you dropped by is that you’ve figured out that I know that-” He stopped, confused. “I seem to be a little-but don’t worry, I know what I’m trying to say, I have a good head for liquor. What I mean is, I’m under no illusion that this is a social visit. You have an ulterior motive, like everybody, and you’re probably impatient to get moving. I know how monotonous it must be, always running into people who are sort of like disciples, but I’m a dyed-in-the-wool disciple of yours and I always have been. You’re the reason I took up investigation in the first place. Maybe it didn’t work out the way I expected, but that’s no fault of yours. That’s Washington. It’s been tedious, and the financial pickings have been slim. Not many glamorous women have come my way. And then you blew in, and in six hours I made more money than in the whole last year. Margaret sensed the change right away. That made the difference between coming up for a drink and not coming up for a drink. Where was I?”
“Weren’t you about to tell me what it was you sold Wall?”
“I guess I was. He told me not to breathe a word to a soul, but that wouldn’t include
“I’m surprised he’s still making the rounds,” Shayne said. “I heard he usually gets to bed early when he’s going to be working the next day.”
“Oh, this is no pub-crawling expedition,” Bixler told him. “Wall? Heavens, no. He wouldn’t be caught dead in that kind of joint if he didn’t think there was money in it. You know that as well as I do.”
“I don’t know anything at all about these people,” Shayne said. “That’s why I came to see you.”
Bixler broke into a happy smile. “Think of being in a position to give pointers to Mike Shayne! You’re going to be calling me Ron before the evening’s over, aren’t you, Mike?”
“It wouldn’t surprise me,” Shayne said agreeably. “What does this all go back to, something you found out when you were investigating Toby for the Hitchcock committee?”
“There! You don’t beat around the bush, like some people. You put your finger right on the crucial point. I’ll tell it in chronological order, that would be the best way.”
He took a large gulp of champagne. “This was just before I went with Civil Service-well, I told you that. I was working for Hitchcock, if you can call it working. We had half a dozen things we were supposed to be looking into, and Toby was one of them. He’s a perennial. We weren’t any of us too eager. Step on the wrong toes in something like that and before you know it you’ll be lining up for unemployment insurance. So before you even call up and make an appointment to see somebody, better check to make sure you got the right kind of backing.”
“That must make it hard to operate,” Shayne put in.
“It does. But you have to remember that nobody in Congress likes these investigations, never mind on which side of the aisle. Because they can run away. We all knew nobody really wanted Sam Toby at that point. We weren’t feeling any pressure from the papers or anybody. They keep that subcommittee ’way understaffed, and if I’d really been working on all the things I was supposed to be working on, I’d need six assistants and twenty-five pairs of hands. Well, there was this certain prominent woman named Mrs. Masterson, who had a Georgetown house and did a lot of entertaining. Those parties were the chic thing for a while. I didn’t see her allure, myself. We were speaking about female bosoms here a minute ago, and hers, to be frank with you, was a little excessive. One of the ten best-dressed Washington women. Maybe not too puritanical in her private life, if there was sufficient scratch on the line. Well, we got this tip that she was getting some financial backing from Mr. Toby. I won’t go into all the ins and outs. Usually, as I said, I wouldn’t follow up that sort of lead unless I was told to in writing, but this one was giving off a strong money-odor, and on my own initiative, and being very careful, believe me, I was looking into it. I’m being candid with you, Mike, you would have done the same thing in my shoes. I thought if I could tie her to Toby it would be worth something not to pass it on to the committee. I mean, the country wasn’t exactly clamoring for an expose, plus the fact that the situation wouldn’t be changed one iota even if we succeeded in putting him in jail.”
“Nobody else knew you were working on it?”
“I had to cover myself, you understand. Working’s the wrong word-every so often I’d make a phone call, if I was in a certain neighborhood I’d drop in on somebody. Now it happened that Mrs. Masterson had a fight with her maid and fired her, and I heard about it. I looked up the maid and gave her a song and dance about how it was her patriotic duty to tell me everything she knew about the lady. I was disappointed to hear that she hadn’t slept in. What happened after dark was what I mainly wanted to know. The girl was a Polack, Olga Szep, with a
“I don’t want you to think I’m not following you, Ron, but let’s finish up with what happened last year.”
“How’s your champagne holding out? There may be a dividend at the bottom.”
“You take it,” Shayne said.
“Well, if yours is OK, I believe I will. When I get a buzz going I hate to let it fade out on me.” He shook the last drops of champagne into his glass. “To make a long story short, Mrs. Masterson kept a diary! To protect herself, I suppose, because Toby has a reputation for using somebody just so long, and then when the wrinkles begin to show-kaput, finish.”
“You’re sure it was a diary?”
“That’s what it said on the outside, according to Olga, ‘My Diary,’ and she kept it locked in her jewel box. At that moment in history I hadn’t had a raise for eighteen months. Side money-you know, odds and ends-was all that kept me going. Mike, maybe right now I’d better get your promise. This has to be strictly between you and me.”
Shayne’s eyes were bleak. “I never make that kind of promise.”
“You don’t?” Bixler said, dashed. “Couldn’t you stretch a point in my case?”
“I’m sorry, Ron. I make that a rule.”
“Not that I committed any crime. I’m just trying to establish motivation. I didn’t clear one cent out of this until tonight, and that’s perfectly ethical. But at the time, in a situation that was pregnant with possibilities, I admit I began thinking of how I could turn it into cash. Did Olga know where Mrs. Masterson kept her keys? She did. Was she sore enough about being fired, or to put it another way, the way I actually put it to Olga, was she devoted enough to the internal security of the United States, to borrow that diary for half an hour so I could see if there were any government secrets in it? And she was! All she wanted was fifteen hundred dollars, believe it or not. Probably no more than a gradeschool education, no imagination at all. Of course she didn’t know about Mrs. Masterson’s Toby connection, and how much he grosses in fees and commissions. If things broke right, if I could sell that diary to Toby, I could retire from the government and open my own office, which has always been my ambition.”
“And if they didn’t break right, you might end up in the morgue.”
“Hardly. Toby’s done just about everything else, but he’s never killed anybody as far as I know.” He finished his glass. “You know champagne could get to be a pretty expensive habit?”
“And then what happened?” Shayne prompted.
“Then my Civil Service appointment came through. Finally, after hanging fire for months and months. Ronald Bixler, report to the Chicago office without delay. Well, I griped and I groused all the way to Chicago, but maybe subconsciously I was relieved. Going up against Toby with this material-I know my limitations. He would have smiled me out of it, or twisted it around some way. But I couldn’t just drop it after I’d developed it that far, could I? I said to myself I’d come back the next weekend and finish it up. And when I came back the next weekend, Olga Szep had made herself scarce. She’d dropped out of the scene altogether. I tried to find her for two days, but she didn’t want to be found.”
“How did you interpret that?”
“Either she’d caught a slight case of cold feet, or she’d decided she didn’t need me, and tried for more than the fifteen hundred. Well, an amateur like Olga against Sam Toby’s organization? That would be the mismatch of the century. I decided the better part of valor was not to ask too many questions. I did ask one of the guys on the committee staff what happened to the Toby investigation, and they’d all been pulled off. It could be that the fix was in, or maybe it was legitimate, who knows? I never decided how much hanky-panky there was in that, if any.”
