Zerox, the timing would have to be close. How did he work it all out with you, on the phone?”
She shook her head. “No, I saw him. He came to my house once, once I met him in a cafeteria. After that it was on the phone. The keys, I told you, in the mail. He fixed it so the day it happened nobody saw us together. He said there was dangerous, danger. I was the one he was thinking about, so I wouldn’t go to jail for stealing when all I did was borrow for two hours. He didn’t have to tell
Oskar said, “Notice that only one person ran any risks, and it was Olga? What did
“The thing that bothers me,” Shayne said, “is where did he get his hands on three thousand bucks?”
They looked at him blankly. He explained, “That’s a lot of cash in one lump for anybody at his level.”
Pete said scornfully, “That’s how much you know. You should see the roll he was flashing tonight.”
“I’m not talking about tonight,” Shayne said. “Tonight he had hundreds sticking out of his ears. You must know by now that this thing was never legitimate. Whoever got hold of the diary has been using it for blackmail. A year ago Bixler was trying to live on his salary, and just getting by. If he was the one who laid out that three thousand, it means somebody else was bankrolling him. And maybe they didn’t bother to use him at all. Think about it.”
Olga seemed disturbed and upset. “I could tell his voice on the phone! That way he said ‘s,’ like he sort of stuttered.”
“That wouldn’t be hard to imitate.” He rapped abruptly on the bar. “All right, Pete, let’s see what you took off him.”
Pete stepped backward, a denial forming on his lips. “So help me God-”
Ignoring him, Shayne looked at his older brother. “What do they use for executions in Washington, the gas chamber? If I knew what he had in his wallet, it might help.”
Oskar moved along the bar toward Pete and said dangerously, “Is that what you did when you went back to put a newspaper under his head?”
“No!”
When Oskar continued to advance he said hastily, “OK! OK! I’ll give it to the Red Cross or somebody. What was I supposed to do, leave him lying there, with all that dough in his pocket, for the first wino who came along? What kind of sense would it make?”
“What a family,” Olga said.
“Do what Shayne says,” Oskar told him. “Dump it out on the stick, all of it.”
Swearing, Pete emptied his pants pockets in front of Shayne: a wallet, keys, change, a fountain pen, a wrist-watch. Shayne counted the money. It came to over nine hundred dollars. Carrying that much cash in this neighborhood, and letting it be seen, had been a good way to invite a knock on the head. Shayne emptied the card pockets of the wallet. The dead man had belonged to the Diners’ Club, Carte Blanche, the American Legion, the American Rifle Association, Sigma Alpha Epsilon, the Elks. The membership cards gave him an identity that he had seemed to lack in real life. There were a number of girls’ names and phone numbers, and he had carried a color photograph of an older woman, probably his mother.
“Any of that mean anything?” Oskar asked anxiously. Only one thing appeared to be current. It was a note scribbled on ruled paper and stuck into the money compartment: “Week of June 25-check safe deposit boxes, all Washington banks.”
“Can you give me the date when you took the diary?” Shayne asked Olga. “I know it was last year, but when last year?”
“In the spring,” she said doubtfully. “May, June?”
“End of June,” Oskar said. “I was only out of the can a month.”
Shayne put Bixler’s watch on his right wrist. Everything else he stuffed back in the wallet and snapped a heavy rubber band around it.
“This goes to the cops tomorrow noon, along with the names of the four witnesses who saw you bounce him. That gives us-” he consulted his own watch-“seven and a half hours.”
“Man, anything we can do-” Oskar said.
“I might think of something,” Shayne said dryly. “This has all been pretty one-sided so far.”
“Anything,” Oskar repeated, planting both hands on the bar and looking directly at Shayne. “I mean it.”
CHAPTER 15
4:35 A.M.
Using the phone behind the bar, Shayne dialed the Hotel St. Albans, where he had checked in the previous afternoon.
“Michael Shayne, please. Room 1232.”
Oskar Szep looked around in surprise. “Didn’t you say that’s your name?”
Shayne silenced him with a wave. The switchboard girl soon told him there was no answer from that room. He said to keep ringing. Finally Shayne heard a click and a man’s voice said gruffly, as though surfacing out of a heavy sleep, “’Lo.”
“Rebman?” Shayne said sharply, his mouth several inches from the phone.
“Yes,” the voice said more alertly. “Shayne hasn’t come back yet. The way it begins to look, he’s sleeping out. But all his stuff is still here, and there’s a chance he may be in to shave before breakfast. We’ll be ready for him, don’t worry.”
“There’s been a change of plans,” Shayne said in his ordinary tone. “Forget about Shayne. Everything’s starting to fall apart. Get the hell to the airport and catch the first plane out.”
There was a pause, and Rebman said, “Is that you, Shamus?”
The redhead laughed. “You boys always do the obvious thing. Waiting in my hotel room, for God’s sake! I hate to think how much it cost you to get in.”
“It didn’t cost too much,” Rebman said. “This is the second time you’ve suckered me. There won’t be a third. I’ve got new instructions, and they don’t leave me any leeway. The money offers are out. If you want to go home, fine, nobody’ll come after you. But leave your suitcase here and send for it. Am I making myself clear?”
“Sure. Now will you give your boss a message? Tell Mr. Manners he’s going to be under a different kind of pressure starting tomorrow morning. Maybe he’s the one who ought to go home. Bribery and blackmail don’t seem to mean anything any more-it’s like drinking hard liquor during Prohibition. Murder’s something else. Questions about a murder always have that little extra bit of steam.”
“Who’s been murdered?”
“If you don’t know, Rebman, I think I’ll let you find out for yourself. Give him the message.”
Shayne hung up abruptly.
“Say,” Pete said as Shayne turned, “I just thought of something. One of our regulars came in right after Bixler, Billy, we call him. Like he was plastered, but maybe he saw if the guy came in a cab, or what. He lives down the street, and what I’m going to do, I’m going to wake him up and ask him.”
He went out at a quick walk. Shayne took his glass and the cognac bottle to a table and asked Olga to sit down with him.
“Let’s go through the whole thing again, starting with the first time Bixler got in touch with you. What he said, what you said, the whole thing.”
She lowered her voice so her brother, who had stayed at the bar, wouldn’t hear her. “You really think they left him in front of the movie? And somebody else came along and killed him?”
“He was hit when he was already out,” Shayne said. “I don’t know what with-a tire iron or the blunt end of a railroad spike. It was a funny-shaped wound. Does that sound like Pete and Oskar?”
“No-o. In a fight. Not if he’s lying there sleeping.”
