“Gas.”
“Burn, Surfside, burn. When you said that, I thought it sounded like a good slogan. If the track burns down, your mother will have to sell. I think the trash in one of those rooms is gasoline-soaked. I think there’s an incendiary device set to go off sometime early tomorrow morning.”
She yelled and struck out at him. He caught her hand and smelled it.
“Hard smell to get rid of. Peel off another man, Petey, and let Linda show him.”
She covered her face with her hands, her shoulders shaking.
Entering the VIP lounge where he had spent the day and part of the previous night, Shayne pointed out the two-way mirror among the bottles behind the bar.
“There’s no reason to monitor this room usually, but I didn’t know which way this was going to go. I was thinking I might inveigle Castle up and have a conversation.”
He poured a glass of cognac, lifted it to the crowd watching him through the hidden camera, and drank.
“I saw one of the timetables Liebler was keeping on Geary. Geary liked to keep moving. He probably hit every department two or three times in the course of the night, and naturally he kept dropping in here to talk to his very important guests. He was a big drinker. He had a drinker’s kidneys. He was always excusing himself to go to the john. And that’s where he put the switch. Underwater, at the bottom of the tank. If somebody like Liebler was listening, he’d hear the usual splash and the usual flush. The water would run out of the tank, exposing the switch, Geary would reach in and throw it, and the water would come back and cover it. There’s a timer, to throw the ten- dollar window back into the system after it’s been out exactly fifteen minutes. I disconnected that so we could check the machines.”
He opened the washroom door. Inside, Charlotte Geary lay face down on the floor. An empty glass had rolled beneath the wash basin, amid a scattering of pills.
“Call first aid,” Shayne said urgently. “The list by the phone.”
He pulled her over and checked for a pulse. Her face had the bluish tinge of souring milk. On his knees, Shayne forced her mouth open roughly and began to blow into it hard. He heard Painter at the phone, asking for a resuscitator and a stomach pump. Presently he established his rhythm, and he kept it going until the doctor from the first aid station ran in and took his place.
He watched the doctor work for a moment. Painter swept up the pills and returned them to the bottle.
“I guess this one is obvious. When she saw us arrest the Sanchez boy-”
“No, it’s my fault. I had to make a public announcement that they were sleeping together.”
“Move, Shayne, will you? You’re blocking the TV. The crowd’s quieter, and we might as well give them something to look at and keep it that way.”
“Petey,” Shayne said slowly, “I think you’ve just come up with something.”
“What?”
“That’s been transmitting all night. If it’s still in the video machine-”
He rode the escalator to the control room, taking the last few steps at a run. Harry Zell, the developer, had joined the technicians and the announcer. He was leaning carelessly against the console.
“Get away from there, Harry.”
Zell looked around and down, stabbed the Erase button, and holding his finger on it, pulled a gun with his left hand.
Shayne’s hand came out of his pocket holding a handful of change. He threw it at Zell. At the same moment, Dave fell off his stool against Zell’s knees. The announcer hit him with the loose mike, swinging it like a bolo. Zell’s finger was forced off the button. Shayne joined the group and pried the gun loose.
“Finally. Something we didn’t catch on closed circuit.”
“We’re still shooting through the window,” Dave said. “We have it for replay.”
Shayne recovered the fallen mike. The fat man, panting and bleeding, seemed to have lost weight in the last moment. Shayne told Dave to pull the VIP lounge closed-circuit tape. In a moment it was running on the main monitor; nothing showed but the empty room.
“Speed it up. Cut back in every four or five minutes.”
The picture blurred. The third time Dave came back, Harry Zell’s great moon face filled the screen. He was at the bar, pouring.
“Let the customers see this,” Shayne said.
Dave backed off and came into the scene again. Shayne explained who Zell was, and what he so desperately wanted. Zell was looking directly at the camera, smoothing his hair. He turned to hand Charlotte Geary the drink.
Painter entered. “What’s this? I don’t get it.”
“Freeze it for a minute,” Shayne told Dave, and went on, talking both to Painter and into the mike. “You probably know Harry’s been trying to buy the track so he can put up a hotel here.”
“I read the papers.”
“But what the papers haven’t printed is that this deal is really crucial. I went through his books last night, and from the way it looked, unless he can slap on some fast Band-aids, the state’s attorney is going to want him for embezzlement. Not only that. He’s in hock to Tony Castle through a factoring firm, and has been for years. If he goes bust, owing Tony a bundle, he’s afraid Tony will do something unbusinesslike, such as kill him. Harry, if you want to contradict any of this-”
“You’re telling it.”
“I tried a little experiment last night, and I think I can say that Harry isn’t one of those people who enjoy physical pain. He screamed like a rabbit being caught by a greyhound. He probably screams that way when he cuts himself shaving. Everything turned on whether Max Geary would accept his offer for Surfside. Max refused. We know why-he had a diamond mine here. But his wife and daughter didn’t know about the diamonds. Zell thought that if Max was out of the way-”
“Come on,” Painter said. “I know who killed Geary. The boy, Sanchez. Dee Wynn saw him.”
“Did you believe that identification? He needed a name to make it saleable. And when he told Harry he saw Ricardo, Harry bought.”
“Shayne, are you telling me that Harry Zell stole Ricardo’s car-”
“Well, maybe not. Sanchez may be right-the bumped fender had nothing to do with the accident. Wynn saw the fender, and dreamed up the rest of it.”
“After leading me to believe that that was a murder-”
“It doesn’t matter. What we’re going to get Harry for is the murder of Dee Wynn.”
“Hold on. Sanchez was named in the deposition. He’s the logical man.”
“I had a detective following Ricardo all day. He went various places, but he never saw Wynn.”
“But why would Zell-Wynn would make a better witness alive.”
“From talking to Wynn, my guess would be that his price tag was something like twenty thousand. That wouldn’t be impossible for Sanchez-he could get it from Charlotte Geary or work it off in a few weeks in the kennel. But I really mean that this is one promoter who doesn’t have a dime. He might be able to raise twenty thousand from some trusting Shylock on a two-hour loan, but after he paid Wynn he had to get the money back in a hurry, and Wynn went into the canal.”
Zell continued to collapse inside his expensive clothes. “I deny this,” he said weakly.
“So after all the fixing and doping and stealing,” Shayne said, “what it comes down to is a real estate deal. Sanchez worked fast last night, and recovered the deposition and the purchase agreement. The deal was off again, after being off and on, off and on. But who’s the sole owner of Surfside if Mom and Pop are both dead? Linda, and she’s the one member of the family who always wanted to sell. All right, back to taped action.”
The scene in the VIP lounge began to roll. Harry Zell and Mrs. Geary, drinks in their hands, went on arguing until Mrs. Geary’s head wobbled and she fell back in her chair. Zell dragged her into the washroom and scattered the pills. He smeared the glass with a towel to blur the fingerprints and came out, smoothing his hair.
In the control room, Zell was mumbling. At a word from Shayne, Dave took the tape off the feed and substituted the live pickup from the VIP lounge. Mrs. Geary’s hand lifted and she sat up, blinking. Shayne heard a cheer from the crowd.
“So that’s one murder less,” Shayne told Zell. “It still leaves you with problems.”
The fat man peered at Shayne. “Well, somebody’s going to put a hotel here sooner or later. It’s so
