Things seemed to be happening to Shayne today in pairs. Two attempts had been made to kidnap him. He had been handcuffed twice. Now for the second time within two hours he was surprised in the act of committing a felony. With the broken bottle at his feet, Kendrick bleeding behind him, five half-drunk cronies of Kendrick between him and the helicopter, he scooped up the bottle-neck and stepped back toward the desk.
Grady Turner, the deputy, was the first through the door. His face, usually, medium-well-done, was now closer to rare.
“You cut Judge Kendrick?”
As Turner reached for him, Shayne slashed the air between them with the broken bottle. The deputy followed the movement with his eyes, and turned to the others.
“Look at that.”
Moving deliberately, swinging his eyes back around to Shayne, he drew a.38 revolver.
Shayne said calmly, “Don’t use it, Turner. Kendrick doesn’t want me shot in his office. That would really bring the building down. He’s like everybody else-he just wants me on the sidelines until tomorrow morning.”
“Put the gun away,” the judge said. “Shayne, drop that bottle. Save yourself some grief. Grady, do you understand me? I don’t want you or anybody else to lay a finger on this man. I want a conviction that’ll stand up in court.”
The deputy lowered the gun slowly and Shayne threw the bottle on the desk. The sheriff brought out a pair of handcuffs, and again Shayne found himself handcuffed, this time to himself. Grady Turner pushed past the sheriff.
“Aren’t we supposed to have any feelings?”
Told not to lay a finger on Shayne, Turner slapped him with the flat of the.38, and the courthouse blew apart.
When the cloud dispersed, Shayne found himself facedown on the bare springs of a metal bunk in a four-bunk cell.
Time went by as he tracked backward, covering the trail of events that had brought him here. He rolled over with difficulty. He was alone. A fly-specked 40-watt bulb burned outside the bars. There was a short corridor, only two cells. That probably meant he was still in the same building, in the detention block, and the door he saw at the end of the corridor connected with the courtroom. He was breathing damp air that seemed to be covered with fur. He heard water dripping. His pockets had been emptied. His watch and belt were missing.
He forced himself up. As he left the springs, the bunk slammed up against the wall with a painful clang. Shayne touched his jaw carefully and found it swollen and covered with dried blood. He smiled to himself grimly. Going to the stained wash basin, he cleaned himself up as well as he could without soap or hot water.
Returning to the bunk, he slept.
He was awakened by the sound of a helicopter. It was coming in. Once more he went back over the night, remembering where he was and the part the News helicopter had played in getting him there.
A door opened. He lifted his head, and his eyes went to his wrist before he remembered that they had taken his watch. The window high up on the end wall of the cell was still dark.
The sheriff appeared, looking ill-at-ease. He smiled ingratiatingly as he unlocked the cell.
“Shayne, you could fall in a privy and come out smelling of violets. You may not even be booked. The judge wants to talk to you.”
“I want to talk to the judge.”
The bunk came up and smashed the wall. Shayne shied. He wasn’t ready for loud noises.
The sheriff was holding the cell-door so the bars were between them. He decided to remind Shayne that he was the one wearing the gun and the badge.
“I don’t like the tone of voice. If you have any complaints about how we run this county-”
“I have a few.”
“If you have any complaints,” the sheriff repeated, “I’ll advise you to keep them to yourself. You’re getting a break here, and you better watch your attitude or you’ll end up with lumps on the other side of your jaw.”
Shayne pulled the cell door out of the sheriff’s hand. “If he wants me out, you’ll let me out, whether or not I call you boss. What time is it?”
The sheriff, his jaw muscles working, blocked his way. Finally, in a voice that seemed to be strained through flannel, he said, “Getting on to four in the morning.”
Shayne calculated quickly. They were half an hour by helicopter from Tallahassee. If Judge Kendrick had left the moment Shayne was slugged, he had had two hours to mop up anything that had been spilled.
“I know it’s hard, but this is all very unusual. In a couple more hours things will be normal again and you can go back to scaring people. Didn’t I hear a chopper?”
“Yes,” the sheriff said, biting off the word.
Shayne’s belongings, including the tape recorder, were restored to him. He returned to Judge Kendrick’s office.
Kendrick, looking really exhausted, was sitting at his desk, a thin strip of adhesive on his forehead. Jackie Wales, on the leather sofa, rose swiftly and came up to Shayne. “What did they do to you, Mike?”
“Nothing much. I barked my face on a.38 police special. Now I think they’re about to apologize.”
“Not quite,” Judge Kendrick said dryly. “You know why it happened this way, and I doubt if you’d get far with a suit for false arrest. I’ve been down to Tallahassee and everything seems to be tied down there. Miss Wales wanted to consult with you, so I gave her a lift back. Do you want a drink?”
“With some black coffee in it. The sheriff will be glad to run out and get us some.”
Kendrick looked at the sheriff. “Three coffees.”
The sheriff wheeled and made off, without trusting himself to speak.
Kendrick continued, “I’ve explained that you risked your life to drag a man out of a fire, and you were under considerable nervous tension. Fortunately the cut was merely superficial. The deputy who hit you has been reprimanded. Perhaps we should call it a tie and drop any further action.”
“The sheriff thinks it’s going to depend on my attitude.”
“A friendly attitude might help, Mike. Sit down.”
Shayne sat on the sofa beside Jackie and accepted a cigarette. “Has Grover been arrested for Maslow’s murder?”
Kendrick’s grip on his stick tightened. “Senator Maslow died in the fire. The fire was clearly accidental. Somebody dropped a burning candle.”
“That’s one theory. What does the medical examiner have to say?”
“It’s more than a theory. It’s now an official fact. Miss Wales, incidentally, was afraid I might have some undue influence in the medical examiner’s office, and she insisted on bringing in an independent physician to corroborate the cause of death. Maslow died of asphyxia, loss of oxygen resulting from smoke inhalation. His blood showed a heavy concentration of alcohol, more than enough to cause him to lose consciousness.”
“It’s true, Mike,” Jackie said. “I kicked up a storm until they let me pick a doctor out of the yellow pages. The only part I still can’t accept is the drinking. He was a real spy-nut-that’s in character. But he was also a nut on the subject of alcohol. He never smoked or drank, ever. The only explanation I can think of is that he wanted to mislead somebody about why he went to the party.”
The sheriff, making no attempt to hide his resentment at being sent on an errand, came in with three cartons of coffee, and Kendrick dismissed him. Shayne laced his coffee with some of the contraband whiskey and sat back, waiting for the judge to make his offer.
Kendrick said abruptly, “Of course you realize by now that Maslow was a blackmailer?”
“We don’t realize anything of the kind!” Jackie said.
“A blackmailer in the exact dictionary-sense of the word. He accepted money and exacted political favors in return for suppressing derogatory information. He didn’t go to Grover’s party out of any compulsion to play the intelligence agent, or to expose the machinations of wicked Miami Beach gamblers. He was taking pictures, and he would have sold them for money and support.”
“Can you prove that?” Shayne said.
“I think so, to the satisfaction of any reasonable man. I have friends among the newspapermen, and if it comes to a crunch they will take guidance from me. But it would be bad for the party, bad for the public’s view of the democratic process. I hope the senator’s blackmailing proclivities will not be publicly aired. We’re going to talk it over here, the three of us, and see if we can reach a determination.”
“If the medical findings stand up you’re in the clear,” Shayne said.
“Not quite. The party was organized by my son, and I can’t hope to come out of this without tarnish unless I can get your cooperation. What do you want, Shayne? I’ll be happy to break Grady Turner to the rank of gas-station attendant.”
“Go on talking about Maslow.”
Kendrick touched his lips to his coffee. “He has known for some years that I had him ticketed. He could move on up the political escalator only if he succeeded in discrediting me or neutralizing my opposition. There is a law in politics-when you know a man is your enemy, find out as much as you can about him. The clerk of Maslow’s Investigations Subcommittee is indebted to me for his appointment. That’s why Maslow hired his own investigators. But the tips, the flow of anonymous information that is the lifeblood of his sort of investigation, still came through official channels, and I was able to keep track of what happened. If the information pointed at someone who could be milked for money, nothing further was heard of it.”
“I don’t know about Mike,” Jackie said, “but you’ll have to document that if you want me to believe you.”
“Here’s an example which will interest Shayne, if it’s true that a man named Frank Gregory was behind that kidnapping attempt yesterday morning. ‘Boots Gregory,’ he is called in the newspapers.”
“Yeah, I’m interested,” Shayne said.
“Gregory operates in Maslow’s district. Maslow has attacked him for years, promising to run him out of St. Petersburg. A tip about Gregory came in from St. Albans, from a prisoner there. Maslow flew out immediately to interview him. Soon afterward, by a coincidence, he stopped attacking Gregory. This looked like the kind of thing I’d been waiting for. I sent Grover to St. Albans, but by that time-another coincidence-the prisoner had been killed, knifed mysteriously in the shower.”
“Judge Kendrick, if that’s a sample of what you regard as evidence,” Jackie said, “it’s awfully thin.”
“I doubt if Shayne thinks so.”
“Now that you know he can’t contradict you,” Shayne said, “tell me again why you hit him with your stick.”
“He had a Xerox copy of a page of figures purporting to prove a payment of forty thousand dollars to my son from Phil Noonan’s Savings and Loan Association.”
“From Noonan?” Shayne said, surprised.
“He told me he intended to publish it unless I backed him for governor. Fortunately I followed my instincts and hit him. The paper was faked. It’s a rather clever forgery, and under different circumstances Maslow might have succeeded with it. I confronted Noonan this afternoon. He showed me the actual ledger entries.”
Jackie said, “They obviously had time to juggle the books and cover it up.”
“It doesn’t matter a hell of a lot,” Shayne said. “Judge Kendrick has agreed to vote against the bill, and to put the word around that he wants it beaten.”
She looked puzzled. “That’s wonderful, Mike, but how did you manage to-”
He grinned at her. “Blackmail.”
The phone rang. Kendrick said one more thing before picking it up.
“And if you publicize that tape, Shayne, in any way, shape or form, if you even drop a hint to your newspaper friends that it exists-”
“Why would I do that?”
“To increase your fee,” Kendrick said coldly. “If I hear any reference to that tape, however remote, I’ll turn the full committee staff loose on Maslow’s files and his bank accounts, I’ll subpoena his private detectives, I’ll use every bit of influence I possess-”
“I get the idea,” Shayne said. “Answer the phone.” Kendrick broke into the third ring and put the phone to his ear.
“Judge Kendrick,” he said, his anger carrying over.
The phone was equipped with an amplifying device because of the judge’s deafness, and the voice at the other end came over clearly, in an ugly rasp.
“I’m calling to tell you to vote against the Dade County casinos. And I mean it, you’d better believe me.”
Shayne, leaning forward, was listening intently. The voice had been roughened deliberately, but he knew he had heard it before. The vowels were flat, the diction a little too guarded, as though the speaker might be fighting a tendency to stammer. Shayne snapped his fingers soundlessly, thinking. On the sofa, Jackie had gone very still.
“You’re opposed to the casinos,” Judge Kendrick said ironically. “Thank you for favoring me with your opinion. Are you a constituent of mine?”
“Never mind that. I know how much they paid you, and you’d better not mash the wrong voting-button or I’ll get you laughed out of public life.”
The judge’s face suffused with blood. “I’ll tell you what you can do with your threats, my friend, whoever you are.”
Shayne waved his hand. Moving his lips soundlessly, he said, “Keep him talking.”
Kendrick nodded.
“I’ve been threatened by people who thought they were experts,” he said into the phone, “and they usually send word to me afterward that they wish they’d been told. You’ll laugh me out of public life? Try it. There’s an outside chance it might work. I’ve heard of people who fell in a sausage machine and lived.”
“You think you’re tough,” the voice said with a sneer.
“I’m tough enough for most purposes.”
“Too bad you don’t want to believe me, because-”
“I’m seventy-two years old,” the judge said. “I fought in two wars. I broke into politics at a time when people who could be frightened easily wound up running errands. I believe you thought all you had to do was call me in the middle of the night and breathe into the phone and I’d break out in a cold sweat. Go to hell!”
He slammed down the phone. In a quick reflex, Shayne snatched it up again, saving the connection, and covered the mouthpiece.
“Unless you want Grover to go to jail, keep this guy on the line and find out what he wants.”
He handed the phone back. Kendrick’s eyes were sparking.
Shayne gestured with his fist, and Kendrick said slowly, “Now that I’ve got that off my chest, what do you have in mind?”
The voice sneered, “You blow up easy, Dad. But when you’re in a corner you’ve got to deal. Here’s both sides of the proposition, the good and the bad. I figure your vote is worth twelve G’s. I’ll send you six in the morning by Western Union, six more when I see your number light up. I’m doing it this way because I want to, not because I have to. Now for the bad part. You think I can’t finish you in politics? Maybe you’re right. You know the ins and outs better than me. But what I can do is finish you, period.”
“What do you mean, finish me?”
“Finish you. Wind you up. You’re dead in a week.”
“Should I worry about that?”
“If you’ve got any brains at all. But you don’t know me, and maybe I’m bullshitting. When you get the six grand by messenger, you’ll know I’m serious about that part. About the other, here’s the convincer.”
Kendrick, his face darkening again, started to speak, but Shayne clamped his hand over the mouthpiece.
The voice grated, “That’s your Lincoln out in the parking lot.”
“What about it?”
“Can you see it from your window? For laughs.”
“Nothing had better happen to that car.”
“If anything does, the insurance company will take care of it. Look out the window.”
When Kendrick, alarmed, started to leave his seat Shayne waved him back. The two windows in the outer wall were sealed against the warm Florida air, and screened with Venetian blinds. Shayne picked a leather cushion off the sofa and brought Jackie to his side with a gesture. Keeping to one side of the window frame, she held the cushion against the blind so its shadow would show from outside. Shayne, crouched between the windows, looked out through the bottom slit without changing the setting of the blind.
There were two cars side by side in the parking lot, one a black Lincoln sedan, the other a Ford.
Kendrick held the phone away from his ear so Shayne could hear the amplified voice. “You’ve got forty-five seconds, but I wouldn’t go near it if I was you.”
Shayne lifted the bottom slat a quarter of an inch. There was a small dusty square in front of the courthouse, with the standard pyramid of cannonballs and undersized Confederate soldier. There was a row of stores across the square, and then the residential district began, big square houses on tree-shaded streets. Nothing stirred within sight.
“Look at that there,” the voice said suddenly. “There’s somebody in the other car.”
Shayne’s eyes jumped to the Ford. Judge Kendrick joined him on the floor. The front door of the Ford opened and a man stepped out, wiping his mouth and stretching. The wide-armed mercury-vapor lamp at the entrance to the parking lot showed him to be Grady Turner, the deputy sheriff who had slapped Shayne with his.38.
“Twenty seconds left,” the voice said more urgently. “Give him a yell or you’re going to lose a man.”
The judge said coolly, “He’s been lying to me for years. Is he in danger?”
“Ten seconds!”
Shayne jabbed the metal-tipped end of the judge’s carved stick through the slats. The window shattered. Turner came about sharply and started running toward the building. He had taken only a half dozen steps when the front end of the Lincoln blew.
Shayne covered the mouthpiece again. “He can see the parking lot and this window. Keep him talking. Maybe I can spot him.”
Moving fast, he went to the gun case on the opposite wall. It was locked. He signaled to Kendrick, who brought the phone back to his desk and opened the center drawer.
Shayne heard the voice say, “It’s only a car, Judge. Is the guy o.k.?”
“He’s getting up. Some day you’ll realize this was the biggest mistake you ever made. If you think you can intimidate me-”
The voice broke in. “Shut up for a minute! I could have fixed it to go off when you were in it, don’t you understand that?”
Kendrick was throwing things around in the drawer, hunting for the key to the gun case. Shayne grabbed up a pen and scribbled a note on a memo pad: “Sam Rapp threatened to kill you.”
The voice said, “I’ll go over it again. I don’t want that bill to pass. Vote no and you’ve got twelve thousand bucks in the bank, no questions asked. Vote yes and it’s final unction. It’s that simple. Repeat it so I’ll know it soaked in.”
Shayne pushed his scrawled note in front of the judge, who had to change glasses to be able to read it. He looked up, frowning.
Then his face cleared. “Why do I need to repeat it?” he said into the phone. “My mind is perfectly clear. I’ve listened to your terms, and now you listen to me.”
Using the judge’s stick for a second time, Shayne broke the glass door of the gun case. He selected a Winchester.264. The ammunition was in a series of labeled drawers. He loaded rapidly and crossed to the window.
“Do you think I’d go back on the beliefs and practice of a lifetime,” the judge was saying, “for any amount of crooked money? You don’t know me very well. But you have the edge, you people. You can shoot from ambush. I didn’t make that ambiguous statement because I’d been paid. I was threatened. I was threatened in almost the same words you’ve been using. You aren’t too inventive, any of you.”
“Who threatened you?”
“Are you really as innocent as that? Sam Rapp.”
Shayne raised the blind another half-inch, locking it in the new position. Crouching, he looked out. Grady Turner’s hat had been blown off. Although standing still he seemed to be wandering. The sheriff ran up to him, shouting, and shook his shoulder.
The square was empty and quiet. There were pools of deep shadow between the few streetlights on the residential blocks. Shayne panned slowly back and forth, looking for a flicker of movement, a glint of light. There was an outdoor phone booth at the extreme edge of his range of vision, too far for him to be able to tell if it was being used.
“Sam Rapp,” the grating voice on the phone repeated. “He said if you didn’t vote for casinos he’d knock you over?”
“Exactly.”
“And you believed him?”
“I believed him. He sent me a clipping about a man who tried to compete and ended up at the bottom of the bay in a barrel of concrete.”
“That sounds like Sam-corny.”
“Very corny. Very believable. What am I supposed to do now? If I vote one way Sam Rapp will kill me. If I vote the other way you will. I think I’ll just have to not vote.”
“Don’t do that,” the voice said quickly. “Let me handle it. Keep your radio tuned to the news and you’ll see you don’t have to worry about Sam Rapp and any barrel of concrete.”
“I don’t really know what you’re saying,” the judge said querulously. “Be more explicit.”
“Just keep your radio turned on.”
The phone clanged as a dime was collected. Shayne brought the rifle to bear on the distant phone booth. The caller must be using binoculars. Shayne took up on the sling, tucking the stock against his cheek, and adjusted the sights. He was guessing the range at three-hundred-and-fifty yards.
“Before I hang up,” the voice said. “I could send you clippings, too, but I don’t want to-it takes time. You don’t sound too shook about that deputy, the one with no hat on. I’ll do you a favor. Remember. The next time it’ll be you, and not in the leg.”
A flashlight blinked in the booth. An instant later there was a gunshot, and Turner, in the parking lot, screamed and went down.
Shayne put one bullet into the booth, high, to break the glass, then dropped the sights to knee level and pulled off another shot. A figure broke from the booth and disappeared. Shayne moved his rifle back and forth in short arcs, watching for the gunman who had taken the blinking signal and fired at Turner. A man carrying a gun jumped from a porch, and for an instant showed up against the glow from a streetlight. Shayne fired twice. The angle was bad, the light was impossible, and both shots missed.
The man jumped and was gone.