Shayne grinned. “You never know, do you?”
CHAPTER 18
10:35 A.M.
From the railed balcony around the rotunda, Shayne spotted Henry Clark, the National Aviation lobbyist, on the paved floor below, in a sparse crowd of early tourists who were consulting guidebooks and peering up at the frescoes in the eye of the dome. Shayne was fifteen minutes late and Clark was noticeably impatient. He kept checking his watch and mopping his forehead with a white handkerchief.
Shayne made his way toward him through the crowd. Clark didn’t look out of place among the tourists. He was gray-haired and overweight, in a seersucker suit that fitted him badly and needed pressing. His hat was pushed far back on his head. As his eyes met Shayne’s he put the handkerchief away.
“Mike Shayne, right?”
Shayne nodded curtly.
“I couldn’t have gone on wiping my forehead much longer,” Clark said. “One of my few eccentricities is that I don’t sweat.” He took an unsealed envelope out of his inside coat pocket and gave it to Shayne. “Here’s the list you wanted-people who rented safe-deposit boxes in seven banks, the last week in June. I have more coming. Some we won’t be able to get without a court order.”
“How about the terms, are they OK?”
Clark winced. “I don’t object to your terms. I object to putting them in writing. I typed up an agreement, confining it to one point-if our out-of-pocket expenses are reimbursed, we will be liable to you for a fee of one-half of one percent. That would amount to fifty thousand on a reimbursement of ten million, but I think it sounds better to put it that way. Even so, it’s a lot of money to commit without authorization, and I ought to talk to you fairly soon.”
“I have something underway. It may not pan out.”
“You were right about Wall, it seems. Toby’s testifying now, and Wall is sitting there woolgathering. There were several questions he was supposed to ask, but he seems to have his mind on other things. Money, possibly.”
“I’m on my way over there now. Are you-”
He stopped abruptly.
Two men came in on him from both sides. One, a solid youth with his hair cropped extremely short, said in a friendly drawl, “You’d be Mike Shayne, the well-known Shamus? Tall, redheaded-yeah, you fit the description.”
Clark skittered a few steps, his eyes jumping to the envelope in Shayne’s hand. The second man, a seamed, leathery individual with heavy-lidded eyes, showed Shayne a police shield.
“Lieutenant wants to talk to you.”
Shayne swore viciously. It had taken them less time to identify Bixler than he had expected. After that, an easy sequence had brought them to Shayne. As soon as the news became known in Bixler’s office, the girl he had had champagne with the night before, Margaret something, would volunteer the information that somebody named Mike Shayne had dropped in on Bixler at three A.M., an hour or so before he died. Shayne wasn’t ready to be questioned, but he had to concede that as police work it had been fast and efficient.
“Lieutenant who?” he said mildly. “And what does he want to talk to me about?”
“This and that,” the older man said. “Come on, Shayne, you’re no baby. Are you licensed as a private detective in the District of Columbia? That ought to do for openers.”
“OK, you deserve an explanation. I’m busy now, but I’ll stop in and see you before noon.”
He put Clark’s envelope casually in his pocket. The first man’s hand snaked out and got it.
“Who’re you trying to kid? Before noon, hell. Now.”
“Henry,” Shayne said to Clark. The lobbyist turned reluctantly, hating to admit they were together. “These clowns can tie me up most of the day. You must have a little influence in town. See if you can get it postponed for half an hour. They can come with me. Hell, they can handcuff me if they’re afraid I’ll make a break.”
“I can make a few phone calls,” Clark said. “I don’t know how much good it’ll do. They tend to be a little touchy.”
“You go right ahead, brother,” the older man said. “And if I get new orders on the way in, I’ll turn around and come back.” He took Shayne’s arm above the elbow. “But when I get told to pick up somebody, that’s what I try to do. And I try to do it right away, not in half an hour. I’m too close to a pension.”
He turned Shayne toward the great bronze doors onto the eastern portico.
“Well, it’s bad luck,” Shayne said to Clark, “but I guess it can’t be helped. Make those phone calls anyway. What precinct are you boys from?”
“I’ve been patient!” the older cop snarled. “But that’s all the talking we’re going to do. You’ll find out when we get there.”
Shayne resisted the pull on his arm. He said gently, “Are you refusing to tell me your precinct number and who wants to see me? Is that the way you do things in this town?”
“You’re goddamn well told that’s the way we do things! No more of this crap, Shayne, or your ass is really gonna be in a high sling.”
His accent had thickened, and Shayne caught an inflection that reminded him suddenly of the group of Texans Manners had brought to town. And how would the Washington cops know they could find him here at this exact moment? He ran quickly through the list of people who knew where he was-Maggie Smith, Adelle Redpath, Senator Redpath, Henry Clark, the Szep brothers. Unless he was completely wrong about everything, none of them wanted him out of action.
“I think I’ll take a closer look at that shield,” he said.
“I said
They had Shayne by both arms, in a professional grip. He couldn’t see Oskar, but Pete was just ahead in the crowd of tourists, who had lost interest in the statues and oil paintings, and were watching avidly as a big unshaven redhead resisted arrest for some unknown but certainly interesting crime.
Shayne clenched one fist, with a slight sideward movement of his head toward the man on his left. Pete gulped and nodded. He edged away and began to work back in at an angle.
“I don’t like to be pushed,” Shayne said. “You want to watch yourself. You’re on Federal property.”
“I declare,” the younger man said sarcastically, “In a minute he’s going to be yapping about his constitutional rights.”
His face twisted abruptly and his mouth opened wide, in a lopsided O, as Pete hit him from the side, just above the pelvis. Shayne felt his grip loosen. Pivoting, the redhead stamped down on one of the other man’s feet, and at the same instant wrenched his arm free and started a left. It landed high. He got in two fast, damaging rights while the man was on the way down. He was unconscious before his face hit the marble.
Going down on one knee, Shayne pulled out the police shield. The unconscious man was a cop, all right, but he was a cop from a town called Fletcher, Texas. Shayne thought he had heard that Manners had his main plant there.
As the younger man fell, Pete grabbed the envelope out of his hand and thrust it at Shayne. A powerful kick in the fallen man’s lower ribs made it unlikely that he would bother anybody for the next few days.
“Let’s get out of here, Mike,” Pete said hoarsely.
The same detachment of Girl Scouts who had watched Shayne drink from the whiskey bottle stared at him now with real awe.
“Excuse me, girls,” he said, pushing through. “Lots to do.”
The crowd opened up for him; he realized that he looked dangerous and out of control. Henry Clark was nowhere in sight. Striding toward the stairs to the basement, Shayne saw one of the uniformed Capitol guards walking just as rapidly toward him, unfastening the flap of his pistol holster. The redhead didn’t want any of that kind of trouble. He slowed his pace to a saunter, and Pete overtook him.
“While you’re here,” Shayne said, pointing to one of the paintings, “that’s the Signing of the Declaration of
