Lady, Be Bad

He looked at Sparrow, who said hastily, “Senator Maslow took them. I only sent him up another camera.”

“These were taken between nine o’clock and eleven last night,” Shayne said. “I’ve been told you paid Grover forty thousand dollars a few weeks ago. What was this payoff for?”

Noonan laughed sarcastically. “Wonderful. You’ve got the pictures out of sequence. He was paying me.”

Shayne took back the pictures, rearranged them and looked at them again.

“I’ve had nothing but trouble,” Noonan went on, “nothing but aggravation.” He looked at the slumbering bartender. “I need a drink.”

“Let him sleep,” Rourke said. “I’ll get it.”

“A large Scotch. A very large double-Scotch and very little soda. Mike, I’ve been beating up and down the thru-ways of this state for the last fifteen years, addressing chambers of commerce and Rotary Clubs, telling them about the services lobbyists perform, trying to erase some of the stigma. I never paid a political bribe in my life before last night. I just never had to.” He drained the drink in one harsh swallow, shuddering as it burned its way down. “I knew I shouldn’t step out of character. I should have bowed out gracefully, but it all seemed so-so extraordinary-”

Shayne looked up from the photographs. “You mean Grover was paying you back?”

“That’s what was happening, believe it or not, and if those pictures appear in the press, who would believe it? Mike, if you think it was hard rigging the books to cover the original payment, it was agony covering the repayment. There’s just no precedent. I begged him to keep the damn money, but he wouldn’t, or couldn’t. And how were we supposed to enter it? We had to patch and transfer and create an entirely new account. If we’re ever audited-”

“What was the first forty thousand for?”

“There was only one forty thousand. It went out, it came back in. I think I’m steadier. I can talk about it without going into falsetto. You’ve got me with these photographs, Mike. They’re publishable. They’re eminently publishable. But please don’t publish them. After the way I’ve been talking about ethics for so many years, the association would fire me and nobody would give me a job running their postage meter.” He looked at the pictures again. “Notice the sneaky look on my face. That man is obviously guilty. You say Maslow took this picture? One consolation-the bastard got what was coming to him!”

He looked at Shayne suddenly, and his tongue came out to lick whiskey off his lips. “You don’t think I had anything to do with starting that fire?”

His eyes traveled from face to face, and he began talking very fast. “You want the whole story. Mike? Tim? The big thing the association has been pushing this session is a one percent bump in the mortgage ceiling. Very good economic arguments in favor, and we didn’t expect any trouble. Then Grover broke the bad news. The judge had set a price of forty thousand on letting it through. I was surprised. It was the first time I ever heard of Judge Kendrick being on the shake. But of course it was worth it. Some of our members needed that extra point to stay in business, so I got the money together and gave it to Grover, and Judge Kendrick handled the bill all the way, smooth as cream.”

“The forty thousand stopped with Grover?”

“Yes, but how was I supposed to know that? The judge was for the bill, he just wasn’t committing himself for strategic reasons. When he found out about it he made Grover give it back, and that’s the complete and absolute truth. I hope you’ll see your way clear to destroying those pictures, including the negatives, because-”

The phone rang. Rourke took the call while Shayne questioned the lobbyist further about the payment he had made through Sparrow. Noonan maintained that that had been a mere thousand dollars. He had believed that Sparrow had learned of the forty-thousand-dollar payment and was blackmailing him on his own account.

“Nothing could be further from the truth,” Sparrow said firmly.

Rourke put the phone down. “Did you hear some fire sirens?”

“Yeah, on the way in. What was it?”

Rourke came back to his drink. “What’s our big unsolved question? Was Maslow’s death an accident or murder? Both doctors who looked at the body have political jobs, and a verdict of accidental death would get a lot of important people off the hook. Was Maslow really drunk when the fire started? Were they lying about the alcohol count, or did somebody switch blood samples?”

“Well?” Shayne said impatiently.

“There’s no way of checking now, Mike, because the funeral home burned down.”

When Shayne gave him a questioning look he nodded. “Yeah. Everything went, including the corpse.”

CHAPTER 15

Sam Rapp’s costly and powerful Ferrari 275 GTB, carrying Shayne and Tim Rourke, approached the medical block where, according to Teddy Sparrow, Senator Maslow had maintained his sub rosa office. The sky was beginning to lighten. Daybreak was less than an hour away.

“I know there’s no time for an illustrated lecture,” Rourke said, “but tell me this one thing. Was Maslow murdered?”

“Hell, yes,” Shayne said gloomily. “All you have to do is think of him in that closet. Every picture he took meant either money or votes. Why would he pick a time like that to start drinking?”

“I guess the answer is that he probably didn’t. We can’t prove it now.”

“Unless we get the killer to admit it.”

“Well, I’ve been following you around long enough to know that it sometimes happens. One thing I didn’t tell you. When I talked to the paper tonight they said three separate tipsters had phoned in a name. This is the smart money talking, and who do you think they give credit for the killing?”

“Sam Rapp,” Shayne said. “But Sam didn’t do it. That’s one of the few things I do know. Let’s see if we turn up anything at Maslow’s office. I doubt if he was a safe-deposit-box man, but you never-”

A cream-colored hardtop turned onto the street and rocketed away, kicking out a heavy exhaust. Shayne came down on the gas and the Ferrari responded.

“Tim! Watch the street numbers.”

The hardtop zoomed past a lumbering milk truck, drifting farther and farther across the center line until, with a sudden flare of its brake lights, it swung across the opposite lane into a side street.

“Here we are,” Rourke said.

Shayne lifted his foot off the accelerator, but waited an instant before applying the brake. He thought the hardtop had come out of a driveway in this block, but he couldn’t be sure.

He pulled up to the curb, hesitating again before getting out. But this was unfamiliar country, and he knew from experience that once you lose contact with a car in the residential district of a strange town, with two-way traffic and short blocks, it’s likely to be gone for good.

The address Sparrow had given them belonged to a long two-story brick building, with stores along the ground floor. The second floor was a warren of medical offices. As Shayne and Rourke went up the stairs, taking them two at a time, Shayne could still feel the pull of the hardtop. He was beginning to think he had made a bad choice. He should have given chase the instant the light-colored car appeared. The driver had accelerated too hard, he had taken the turn too sharply.

It was too late now.

They found Room 37, which the lettering on the glass door identified as the office of Dr. Seymour J. Weiss, Gynecologist. Shayne had his lockpicking equipment ready, but the door was already unlocked. As they crossed the threshold, the pungent after-smell of an explosion made his nostrils flare.

They were in a small waiting room. Crossing the room in two strides, Shayne pushed open the door to the doctor’s examining room. The medical furniture inside had obviously not been used in some time. A padded examining table, fitted with stirrups, was pushed against the wall, with newspapers and magazines thrown carelessly on it. The floor on the visitors’ side of the desk was littered with butts. Shayne went quickly to a wall cupboard, of a kind that could be used for storing medical supplies. The doors stood open. Inside, a small cylinder safe had been cemented into the wall. It had been blown.