“Twelve hours! What can I do in twelve hours? You can’t believe I’ll suddenly be thinking about it for the first time!”
Shayne made an impatient gesture. “Now you’ve got an incentive. I’ve already been paid two thousand. All I have to do to collect the eight-thousand-dollar balance is turn in a thief. You’ll do. If you don’t want to be turned in, give me somebody else.”
“I’m not an informer,” Despard said with another attempt at dignity.
“In that case you’re dead,” Shayne told him. “Oh, they’ll give you five minutes to defend yourself, and you can make your speech. I don’t think they’ll believe you. I happen to believe you myself, but that’s partly because I don’t think you’ve had your chance yet to find out how you’d stand up under real pressure.”
Despard looked at him suspiciously. “I had the impression you thought I was lying.”
“There was money involved,” Shayne explained. “They picked up the report one day and paid for it the next. They could get it from you for nothing. Not only that. I don’t think you would have gone on having sex with Deedee after you saw the photographs.”
Despard shuddered. “I’m not in my dotage yet.”
“Another point. This Candida Morse is a bright girl. Too bright to think she could hurt me with this kind of vice-cop frame-up. It’s too crude and too obvious. I think the real reason for that was to lower my opinion of her intelligence, so I’d jump at the name Despard when I heard it. Deedee had been told to make sure I heard it, obviously to fake me away from their real contact.”
“I agree with you,” Despard said ironically. “I didn’t do it. That’s what I’ve been telling you.”
“They had a limited time to come up with the report,” Shayne continued. “If they couldn’t produce it in a month or maybe a month and a half, the deal would peter out. So they wouldn’t want to bet their whole bankroll on a single entry. They hired Fitch and Deedee to work on you. Candida went after Walter Langhorne herself on a recruitment basis, and maybe that was the one that worked. Statutory rape is tricky and dangerous, and they wouldn’t use it unless they had to. And maybe they were working on a third possibility. Probably three was all they had time for. All right. All these arguments weigh with me, but unless you can produce some hard information for me tonight or tomorrow morning, I won’t even put them in the report. I’ve been looking for a handle. Now that I have one, you’d better believe I mean to use it. As soon as you have something to tell me, call me on the car phone. If that doesn’t answer, try Tim Rourke.”
“I’m no detective. I don’t even know how to begin.”
“Begin by thinking about it,” Shayne said. “Who needed money? Who was in trouble? Who had more money and was in less trouble on April twenty-fourth than on April twenty-third? Get to work, Despard. You haven’t much time.”
CHAPTER 12
At first Shayne thought the phone-book address was a misprint. Then he saw a narrow cobbled lane leading between two stucco houses built in the fake-Moorish style of the mid-1920s, ending in a paved court.
He tried Candida’s number again and again got no answer. He left the Buick in a University of Miami parking lot and entered the court on foot. The house he was looking for was a low building which seemed to be a remodeled stable, in spite of the fact that Coral Gables had been built after city people stopped keeping horses. The building contained three duplex apartments. The one in the middle, with “Candida Morse” in decorative script over the wrought-iron bell pull, was dark.
Shayne snapped his lighter to look at the lock. The lock itself presented no problem, but the massive half-inch bolt could only be forced with heavier equipment than Shayne carried with him. He went around to look at the kitchen door. That, too, had been reinforced. He pushed his cast through the kitchen window, reached in carefully and unlocked it. A moment later he was inside the house.
After turning on the light, he broke the slivers of glass still clinging to the sash, found a broom and swept the mess under the kitchen table.
He searched the downstairs carefully. A small antique secretary in the living room had one locked drawer, which he forced. Inside, he found Candida’s passport, her college diploma, copies of income-tax forms for earlier years, bundles of letters and canceled checks. He flipped through the passport to see how much traveling she did, and found her birthdate. She was twenty-seven. The letters were in their original envelopes. He checked the postmarks without finding anything current enough to interest him.
A steep, narrow staircase led to the second floor. In Candida’s bedroom, a very feminine room which she had passed through in a hurry, changing clothes on the run, Shayne looked around speculatively, rubbing his jaw with the ball of his thumb. His reflection in a big mirror over the bureau caught his eye. He needed maintenance. His sling was torn and dirty. His shirt was black with oil and dirty cobwebs picked up crawling out of the basement window of the Buena Vista apartment house.
He continued to look around. The headboard of the oversize bed was divided into compartments holding books, a clock-radio, a phone. He pulled open a sliding drawer and gave a grunt of satisfaction, seeing three flat metal boxes, the size of a standard safe-deposit box, each tagged with a number. Shayne picked the box with the highest number. He worked on it with the flat chisel blade of a combination tool, holding the box with the weight of his cast. He twisted slowly, increasing the pressure, and the lid sprang open. He grinned when he saw what the box contained.
He emptied it on the bureau. In an unmarked envelope there were four 35-millimeter negatives. He held one to the light. It showed a man and a girl on the floor. The girl was only partially clothed. Her blouse was torn. The man’s face didn’t show, but Shayne had no doubt that in an enlarged print the narrow head and thin fringe of hair would be recognized as belonging to Jose Despard.
In the same envelope was a slip of paper with a number and a padlock combination. On a separate page there was a kind of timetable, giving the arrivals and departures of seven or eight people, identified by initials, over a ten-day period. Finally, there was a small film can. Inside it was a tightly wound roll of microfilm. Shayne unrolled an inch or so. It was the top-secret T-239 report.
Still grinning happily, he transferred these objects to various pockets and put the rifled box back in the headboard compartment.
Again the disreputable figure in the mirror caught his eye. He pulled off the sling and worked the shirt over his head and then over the cast. After washing his hands and face, he made a new sling from one of Candida’s pillow slips. Then he washed out the shirt, using part of a bottle of shampoo. He wrung it with one hand. While he was draping it over the shower rail he heard a door open downstairs.
He went to the hall.
“I really do seem to be rattled,” he heard Candida’s voice say. “I left all the lights on. I never do that.”
There were footsteps. The door closed.
A man’s voice said, “Let’s take a trip, shall we, after we get the check? I need a vacation. I’m so damn tense it isn’t funny.”
“Hal, darling, you’re worrying about Michael Shayne again, and will you please stop? I have that situation in hand. Jake Fitch will be calling me promptly at nine. It won’t be with bad news.”
“I need a drink.”
Shayne called down, “So do I. Make one for me.”
He returned to the bedroom and finished brushing his hair. Then he went down the cramped stairs, ducking his head to keep from hitting the low ceiling.