Painter straightened his necktie and went out.
Shayne went on talking while the camera moved to the next window. Liebler and Fitzhugh were conferring in the back of the brightly lighted box.
“I can’t give you the dialogue,” Shayne said as Painter entered. “‘Fitzhugh? Liebler? You’re under arrest.’ That’s about it, unless they try to shoot their way out. No, they’re white-collar people. Incidentally, if Linda Geary is listening, will you come to the control room, please? Now we’ll continue. What Geary was doing, in effect, was adding one point to the regular seventeen-percent bite. He kept his two collaborators on fees. He was the only one who knew the location of that switch. When he died, they tried to find it. They had wiring diagrams, and Liebler had been keeping a minute-to-minute schedule of where Geary was and exactly what he was doing during betting hours. They narrowed it down to the VIP lounge, but they still couldn’t find it. We’re going down there now. When we walk in, we’ll be picked up by a closed-circuit monitor. This is an extra one I installed last night, behind a two-way mirror. There won’t be any sound, but I’ll come back and explain. Don’t throw any chairs while I’m gone.”
Painter, after playing his TV scene, had given the prisoners to his detectives for processing. Shayne, passing, took a sour look from Liebler.
“How in God’s name-I pulled that place to pieces.”
“Careful, Lou.”
“I’m not worried. I’d like to see you prove anything.”
Linda was coming up the escalator. Shayne met her at the top.
“Linda, what’s that room on the ground floor down from the PR office? I saw you coming out of it.”
“Room? Oh, that’s all storage. Trash, old programs, tickets.”
“Let me have one of your hands.”
She started to extend a hand, but thought better of it and put it behind her.
“I won’t wrestle you,” Shayne said. “I just thought it might smell of gas.”
“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-”