One of the girls handed Shayne his drink. He sat down and lit a fresh cigarette. Oscar threw his inhaler aside after taking a dozen deep shuddering breaths. He looked much better.
“Do you absolutely have to smoke? The smell is offensive to me.”
“The air conditioning’ll take care of it.”
At a sign from Oscar, the two lesser girls drifted out.
“Now,” Oscar said to Mandy. “Condense it for me. What’s he want?”
“I don’t believe he could tell you himself exactly what he wants,” she said crisply. “It seems to me that he’s improvising. He wants to stir things up and see what comes to the surface.”
“Now, about Kate.”
“She’s dead, Oscar. Shayne was there when it happened, and it’s possible that he’s going to be suspected of having something to do with it. I imagine the police are anxious to get hold of him. He says his client is Marcus Zion. He came to you because he has a gatefold from an old issue of the magazine. I think he’ll show it to you in a minute. He made it clear to me that he considers this a bidding situation, but I think that was partly to get me to wake you up.”
“I also told you,” Shayne said, “that I’m not sure I have anything to sell.”
He handed Oscar the photograph, and Oscar’s eyebrows came together over the fierce nose.
“Keko.”
“I told Mandy you’d recognize her.”
“What does it have to do with me?”
“I’m hoping to find out.” Once again he repeated what Kate Thackera had told him. “I had to leave the magazine. Everything in that room is going to get close attention, and somebody’s going to notice the date and wonder about it. But not tonight, probably.”
Oscar retired under the hood for more help from the inhaler. Coming out, he told Mandy, “No need for you to stay up. Go to bed now.”
She rose obediently. Shayne said, “No, I want her here.”
Oscar swung around. Shayne explained, “Nobody likes to be sent out of the room just when things start getting interesting. Look at it from her point of view. Either she made a mistake waking you up, or she didn’t. If she guessed wrong, it’ll cost her her job. She doesn’t want to wait till morning to find out.”
“God knows I wouldn’t get much sleep,” she said.
“And if she’s as important as she’s been trying to tell me, there may be some questions I’ll need to ask her.”
“If you want me to leave, Oscar,” she said, “you know I don’t mind a bit.”
Shayne laughed. “She’ll burn.”
“Then stay, for Christ’s sake,” Oscar said irritably. “I have a feeling that we won’t be going very far beneath the surface.”
She sat down again, her knees together and her hands in her lap. “Give me a cigarette, Mike.”
He brought her one and let her light it from his. She was careful not to look at her nonsmoking employer, who was smoothing his eyebrows in a gesture he clearly believed to be urbane.
“How did a winner like you get suckered into this Consolidated-Famous mess?” Shayne said.
Oscar let the urbane expression stay on his face. “Have you read our proxy material? That says it all.”
“I’m told by somebody who knows that the odds against you are four to one. I’m also told that you don’t generally buck the odds.”
Oscar looked at the girl for a translation. She said doubtfully, “I think he’s trying to find out how serious you are, how far you’ll go to protect your investment.”
“Not as far as murder, Shayne,” Oscar said. “You’ve been misinformed. The odds are about even. I won’t give up girls if I lose. I just think it might be amusing to run a motion picture company.”
“Did you promise Kate the lead in this pirate picture?”
“After satisfying myself that she wouldn’t do the picture any harm. The director seems anxious to get her. She’s a bit of an alcoholic, supposedly; or should I say, she was; but I think Larry was responsible for most of those rumors. I thought she seemed reasonably okay, didn’t you, Mandy?”
“Within limits.”
“Have any of your proxy solicitors been working on her?” Shayne said.
“You’ll have to ask them. She was in a situation to swing a sizable block of shares. I imagine they knew that. Ferreting out this kind of information is the reason we’ll pay them a hundred percent bonus if we win. They sail pretty close to the wind at times; they do things they don’t tell the client. But does that include killing people? You know it doesn’t, Shayne.”
“Did you sleep with Kate?”
He gave his secretary an amused glance. “I don’t know — did I?”
“If so, it was before my time.”
“I may have,” he said, “but does it matter? I’ve gotten rid of my hang-ups in that area. I don’t let sex interfere with a relationship. I remember we suggested a pictorial feature to her once. She tried, but it didn’t come off. That ticky personality just didn’t register nude. Too bad, because we could have helped her.”
Still another blonde, one Shayne hadn’t seen before, entered quietly.
“Mandy, phone. Do you want to take it?”
Her eyes slid from Shayne to Oscar.
“Better find out,” Oscar said with a sigh. “We don’t want to get all our information from Shayne. I’m not sure we can trust him.”
As soon as she was out the door, Shayne made a flat gesture, cutting off the publisher before he could speak.
“Never mind if you can trust me. Can you trust her?”
“Shayne, you’re wonderful. Trust her not to do what?”
“She’s a smart girl, a little old to be hanging around here. She must know she hasn’t much time.”
“I don’t keep them a quarter of a century and give them a gold watch. It’s a fluid arrangement. They flow in and out.”
“And before she flows, I have a feeling she’s going to take you for as much as she can carry. This is a liberated female, not one of your slaves.”
“A ‘liberated female.’ She chose this. I didn’t drug her to do it.”
“I nearly had to scrape her off the ceiling when I told her what happened to Kate. Did they know each other that well?”
Oscar shrugged. “For all I know, they were lovers. But when would she have the time?”
“What kind of financial deal do you have here? How much do you give her every month for spending money? She’s taking too much interest in this, Oscar. I’ve been picking up signals for the last half hour.”
The publisher said softly, “You’re trying to disturb me, Shayne. I think it’s time for me to tell you to lay off.”
“Lots of people have told me to lay off. Most of them are dead, broke, or in jail.”
“Don’t be childish. I’m giving you some advice so you won’t waste valuable time. She had nothing to do with this killing, and I’m ready to back my judgment with the full resources of my organization. She has no stake in this. No financial stake, no emotional stake. Do you think I don’t know she dislikes me? All the girls do. I couldn’t care less. But she’s been around me long enough to know what would happen if she tried to pull anything.”
Shayne had been timing this carefully. He finished his cognac, stood up, and tossed the empty glass on the bed.
“Don’t go to sleep. I’ll call you.”
Oscar threw back the silk sheet and sprang between Shayne and the door.
“You had questions to ask me. I was just beginning to feel like cooperating.”
“That’s a good feeling. Hang onto it. She’s finished with the phone call, and I don’t want her to disappear.”