So Lush, So Deadly

“Padding,” Shayne said impatiently. “A fluffy bedjacket. But the big point is that when I saw Mrs. De Rham in the morning and De Rham at night, I saw two entirely different faces. The blinds were closed because her eyes were hurting, and of course she was wearing a goddamn pair of wraparound dark glasses. A wig, with bangs over the forehead.”

He pulled out the wig he had taken from the woman in the water. “Here it is, if you want to try it on. He darkened his eyebrows with make-up. His mouth was plastered with lipstick, and he was pretending to be drunk when he put it on, so there was a lot of it and it was a little crooked. Heavy suntan makeup on the parts of his face that were showing, and those were the same parts that were covered by a beard when he was playing himself.”

“A beard!” Painter exclaimed suddenly. “That’s what was beside Moseley’s body. A piece of a false beard.”

Shayne grinned. “It’s hard to fool you, Petey. Yeah-it was a different beard from the one De Rham was wearing in the photographs I saw, but I just thought he’d trimmed it a different way, as a kind of token disguise. What does that leave, Tim?”

“The teeth.”

“I didn’t ask him to open his mouth so I could count the fillings. By the time I was back on the boat later I’d begun to realize something was wrong. I wanted to talk to her, but she was in the head, throwing up. You can’t barge in on a lady when she’s vomiting. That’s one of the rules. It was Henry, of course, making gagging noises and flushing the john.”

Painter had listened to this open-mouthed, with his eyebrows all the way up. Now he said smugly, “This is one of the nicest things that’s happened to me in a long, long time. When it gets round town that Mike Shayne fell for something like this-and I’m going to make sure that it gets around-your stock may not be quite so high.”

“How long were you in the room with them when you talked to them, Petey?”

“That’s quite different! Maybe two minutes in all, and she didn’t say a word, did she, Luke?”

“Well-”

He flicked his mustache and said crisply, “All right, Shayne, you’ve made your point. De Rham was impersonating his wife. Now we come to the main question. Why?”

“You must have figured that out by now.”

“I haven’t been working on this case as long as you have,” Painter said stiffly. “You have information which for various reasons hasn’t been made available to the police.”

“I’m still just speculating,” Shayne said. “I don’t want to hog the spotlight. I’m willing to stop talking at any time.”

Rourke chortled. “He’s going to make you say please, Petey.”

Painter started to speak, swallowed it, and said through set lips, “Play the goddamn tape. I’d-appreciate it.”

Shayne pressed a button and the reel began to revolve. A voice began.

DE RHAM: Now we’ve got to talk about the timing, Paul.

BRADY: Relax. Relax. We’ve just bamboozled a guy who’s reputed to be the smartest and toughest private investigator in the United States. Worry can give you a heart attack. Let’s not worry.

DE RHAM: You thrive on this tightrope walking. I don’t. I’m exhausted.

BRADY: You did fine, baby, just fine. You were so irresistible in that bed jacket I almost climbed in with you myself after Shayne left.

DE RHAM: Cut it out with the queer stuff. I never did think that fag act was too funny.

BRADY (softly, after a moment): What makes you sure it’s an act?

DE RHAM: Come on. I know you too well. You made a ravishing chorus girl in the Pudding show-

BRADY: True, old chap. But who was the leading lady?

DE RHAM: Seriously. There’s enough tension around here without going out of our way. I’m a dedicated heterosexual, and if I ever had had any doubts about that, this hippy chick resolved them very satisfactorily. She’s a talented performer in the sack.

BRADY: Spare me the details.

DE RHAM (laughing): No, a queer like you wouldn’t be interested. (more seriously) This is my last day as Dotty De Rham, alcoholic. No reason to drag out the drag bit any longer. This is D-day minus one.

BRADY (sharply): You don’t mean that. We wowed everybody. Just because a clown like Shayne-

DE RHAM: That clown happens to send cold shivers up and down my spine.

BRADY: We haven’t used the sick-to-the-stomach business yet. Hell, we can handle him.

DE RHAM: If he got Loring to send him a picture of Dotty, for example-

BRADY: Why would he do that? He’s been getting by on muscle for years. There’s nothing but reflexes behind the eyes.

DE RHAM (slowly): I don’t think so. It’s too big a chance to take. Tomorrow morning we give our make-believe friend Dotty a funeral at sea.

(A moment’s pause.)

BRADY: I hate to bring up a promise, but you said you’d wait for the real estate money to come through. That’s only four more days. Let’s sweat it out.

DE RHAM: That’s earmarked for you, baby. Believe me.

BRADY: But there’s no way you can put it in writing, is there? Somehow I feel sure you’ll find some technical reason for hanging onto it.

DE RHAM (lightly): You can always blackmail me.

BRADY: Can I? I’m in it as deep as you are now. What I want is cash, and I want it before we dispose of Dotty, not after.

DE RHAM: Well, you’re not going to get another penny, because we’ve run out of time. And don’t give me that now crap. This has been a joint venture from the start. It was your idea.

BRADY: I take credit for it. And where would you be if I’d gone into a tailspin like you that morning?

The room was quiet. Shayne pressed the rewind button, and listened to the last few speeches again. Then the voices resumed.

DE RHAM: I’ve been wondering about that. If I hadn’t panicked like a damn fool-

BRADy: Hell, it was understandable. You’d just knocked off your wife.

DE RHAM: I’ve told you approximately one hundred times that I didn’t kill her. I’ll tell you another hundred times. I didn’t kill her. I didn’t-

BRADY: I seem to remember dragging you off when you tried to throttle her. She was blue in the face before I could make you let go. Petrocelli must have heard her scream. He knew she’d written a new will. Of course I could be wrong. All I know is, she was on the boat when I went to bed and she wasn’t on the boat when I woke up. If you didn’t kill her, give me a better explanation.

DE RHAM (sullenly): I can’t remember exactly what happened.

BRADY: Which would make a very lousy defense in a court of law. The will, baby. What happened to the will? I saw her put it in the desk drawer. And when we looked for it, where was it? Gone with the wind.

DE RHAM: I’ve had two weeks to think about that. I don’t deny she got under my skin. Maybe I killed her and threw her overboard and blocked it out of my mind. I’ve got an uncertain memory at the bottom of a bottle of scotch, as you know very well, incidentally. O.K. Or maybe you killed her.

BRADY (with a short laugh): She wasn’t my wife.

DE RHAM (very slowly): But she’d written you a check for forty thousand bucks and she was talking about stopping payment. You were on funny terms with her, Paul-I don’t know if it was sex or not, but there was definitely something. I could feel the static.

BRADY: That static always went one way.

DE RAHM: I’ve seen you when you lose your temper. It’s a frightening thing. She was teasing you and