two o’clock Tuesday morning. The blood test showed straight bourbon. He was starting home from the track and just made it out of the parking lot, went off the cloverleaf and piled up on Alton Road. Made a very nice bonfire. They got the foam truck from the track, but he was pretty well singed by the time they got him out.”
“I’m sorry to hear it,” Shayne said somberly. “I used to like Max. He’s been getting a little hard to take lately, boozed up most of the time. I’ve never been one of his regular customers. I never had him for a client.”
“No, I wouldn’t say this was the regular detective-client relationship.” Painter gave his narrow mustache a quick flick in opposite directions. “Now I want to hear you say it. You never took a penny from him, legally or otherwise. You don’t know what I’m talking about. You let him buy you a drink now and then, but that’s as far as it went.”
“It seems to me I usually paid for the drinks. Aren’t you forgetting something? You haven’t given me the warning.”
“You don’t need that, for Christ’s sake. But all right. You’re entitled to have a lawyer present, and anything you say may be used against you. Now answer the goddamn question.”
“This isn’t boot camp, Petey. Look at it from my side of the desk. You went to the trouble of finding out where I was and what plane I was coming in on. You sent two guys out to grab me, and you made sure a photographer was there to get a picture of Mike Shayne being busted, or of Mike Shayne breaking somebody’s jaw. Now you tell me to waive my constitutional right to keep silent until I’m confronted with some evidence. Go to hell.”
Painter’s lips tightened, but he tried to speak evenly. “What happened the last time I asked you to come in and talk about something? You were gone for four days. And when you finally surfaced, you had the guy we were supposed to be looking for. You made us look bad, and not by any means for the first time, I’d like to point out.”
“If we’re thinking about the same case, there was a deadline and I couldn’t stop to explain it to you in advance. Petey, come on. Extortion is a bad label to hang on a private detective. It might give my clients the idea that it’s a mistake to trust me. You’ve got something connecting me with Geary, or with the dog track. It has to be more than a rumor but it can’t be much more or you’d be convening a grand jury. What is it? If you don’t want to tell me, I’ll try to catch your press conference on TV.”
He leaned forward to get up. Painter clamped his lips more tightly together, took a small notebook out of the central drawer, and spun it across the desk.
It was so small it fitted easily into the palm of Shayne’s hand. The leather cover was charred, but it is hard to burn a tightly closed notebook, and this one had come out of the fire in time for the writing on the inside to be legible. Shayne turned the pages slowly. There was nothing on them but a long list of names, dollar amounts and dates, going back six years.
“You found this on Geary?”
Painter was watching him closely. “Not right away. He was wearing it in a kind of money belt, around the upper part of his leg, under his underwear. Also two folded thousand-dollar bills, emergency money, and a safe- deposit-box key. The book was tucked back in under his balls, so it wouldn’t show. Skip the early pages. Start at the end and read backward.”
The last entry had been made the previous weekend, the name of a Miami lawyer against the sum of $1500. A flake of charred paper drifted to the floor.
“Tiny writing,” Painter observed. “If you’re having trouble I can give you a magnifying glass.”
Shayne turned a page, and his own name came out at him: Mike Shayne, $3000. He met Painter’s eyes. His old adversary gave him a tight smile.
“Don’t be embarrassed. Read on. You’re in distinguished company.”
Shayne returned to the book. He recognized most of the names that recurred at regular intervals. Before Christmas every year there were a dozen that didn’t appear at other times. There were a few police officers among the regulars, the majority leader at Tallahassee, several other Senators and representatives, a zoning official, a building inspector, the head of a Teamsters local. Some of the earlier Shayne entries gave his full name, some only his initials.
“This is dynamite,” he observed. “Are you in it?”
“I am very definitely not in it,” Painter snapped. “That’s a payoff list. I’ve never taken a payoff in my life.”
“Maybe that’s what makes people think you’re a little inhuman,” Shayne said. “How far have you got with this? Who’s Wolf? Five thousand.”
“He used to be the state’s tax man at Surfside. From the Division of Pari-Mutuel Wagering. Most of the Tallahassee people have something to do with allocating racing dates. There’s an ex-director of the Board of Business Regulation, a chief inspector, some racing judges. There are also a few cops there, I’m sorry to say, and one of the things I’m going to announce is their immediate suspension without pay.”
“Ben Wanamaker? Is that the guy on the News?”
“Sports editor. How far back have you got? Turn the page.”
“Tony Castle!”
“I thought you’d be interested. For eight thousand, and that’s annual. He’s not supposed to have any mainland connections anymore. That’s what I get from the FBI, and I still like to think they know what they’re talking about.”
Castle’s true name was Castalogni. At one time he had been an important figure in the Miami criminal world, but as a result of an investigation run by Tim Rourke of the News, using leads provided by Shayne, he had considered it prudent to get out of the country. The payments from Geary had started the following year. He owned a casino in the Bahamas, and as far as Shayne knew, he had never been back.
“And what does Castle do, if anything,” Painter said, “to earn that eight thousand a year? It’s one of the things I’m hoping you’ll tell me.”
“It baffles me, Pete. But I seem to have my own problems here.”
“You do, don’t you?” Painter said with immense satisfaction. “A little crude, Shayne. Some of those teenage fans of yours are going to be painfully surprised.”
“Crude? Not necessarily. Because why would Geary keep a payoff book?”
“For his own protection, obviously.”
“How does it protect him? There’s something peculiar about it. What do you get for a total?”
“Two hundred and ten thousand the last year. You don’t exactly take care of that by dipping into the petty cash. Your own three-year total, not that I’m telling you anything, is eighty thousand, an impressive figure. Now I’m going to repeat my initial question: What did you do to deserve it?”
“If he died Tuesday, I’m not the first person on the list you’ve asked that. What do the others say?”
“Most of them are saying it’s a damn lie.”
“And with Geary dead, that leaves you with no witness. Are you releasing the whole list?”
“Selected names. I’ve been having an argument with the state’s attorney. I’ll be candid with you, Shayne. I’ve often tried being candid with you, and I’ve usually ended up regretting it. However. One school of thought is advocating just the course of action you mentioned-impanel a grand jury, subpoena everybody, if they deny receiving any money from Geary, indict them for perjury. But could we make it stick? Probably not. So now we’re leaning toward media exposure, and letting the legislature handle it. Make it an investigation of the whole dog- racing picture, not just Surfside. Maybe end up with a revamp of the entire racing scene, dogs and horses, which is long overdue, in my opinion. But I kind of hate to see it go that way.”
“The name Painter would drop out of the story after the first day.”
“Interpret it that way if you like,” Painter said kindly. “But the person I want to get my fingernails into is Castle. All these bureaucrats, these petty union officials-they’re minor league. Most people don’t know this, but I’m thinking about retiring. If I could bring in Tony Castle, it would be a nice capper to my career. That’s why I was so determined to talk to you before the publicity.”
“You’re talking to me.”
“I notice an interesting pattern in those payments you got. I’ll take the book back now, if you don’t mind.” Shayne slid it to him. “Three thousand regularly on the twenty-fifth of each month. Suddenly they drop to one thousand for a few months, and then stop altogether. Several months later they begin again, and continue to the present. You and I have had our little fallings-out, and some of them, regrettably, have been reported by your friend Rourke in the press. But I’ve always known that sooner or later you’d slip, and I’d nail you. I’m not vindictive!” He
