Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 34, No. 5, April 1974

“And listen, chief. If you hit the old jackpot, don’t go forgetting who gave you the combination.”

“I never forget a favor,” I said, and hung up.

I walked over to the door Reba Daniels had closed behind her. “I’ll be leaving now, Mrs. Daniels,” I said. “That car ought to be here any minute. And thanks again for your help.”

“Not at all,” she said. “Good-by, Mr. Selby.”

I let myself out of the apartment and walked down the corridor to the stairway.

G-Man Gault was a reliable stool pigeon. If he said that Dixie Ryan had threatened Larry Yeager’s life, Dixie had very probably done just that.

The big question was why.

V

Dixie Ryan’s room over the Poor Boy Bar contained a neatly-made day bed, a small dresser, a kitchen table with a movie projector on it, about two dozen wooden folding chairs stacked against one wall, and nothing else.

“Those chairs for your stag-show customers, Dixie?” I asked as he closed the door behind me.

“Stag shows?” he said. “Me? You’ve been listening to the wrong birds, Selby.”

Dixie Ryan had once been a pretty fair club fighter, back in the days when there were such things. Now he was a hard-bitten, jack-of-all-crimes character who had been suspected of everything from stealing pennies off newsstands to murder. His ring-ruined features showed nothing, but beneath their tracery of scar tissue, his eyes were as cold and bright as pale blue ice.

“The same birds told me you threatened Larry Yeager,” I said.

“So what if I did?”

“He’s dead,” I said. “Murdered.”

Dixie stared at me. “No lie?” he said. “And so who’s supposed to have killed him? Me?”

“That might depend on where you were around noon,” I said. “Say, from half-past eleven to half-past twelve.”

“No sweat there,” he said. “I was downstairs in the bar. You don’t believe me, ask them.”

“You can count on it,” I said. “What were you and Yeager having trouble about?”

“Maybe I don’t feel talkative.”

“And maybe a little time in the tank would change all that.”

“On what charge?”

“I could think up half a dozen in about that many seconds,” I said. “But this isn’t a bust, Dixie. I’m not interested in your damn stag show. The only thing that interests me is Larry Yeager.”

He stood there, not moving, studying my face as carefully as a jeweler appraising a diamond necklace.

“Hell,” he said at last. “You’ve leveling, aren’t you?”

“All the way,” I said.

He shrugged. “All right, then. It was over a film. A stag film. I showed it one night, along with a couple or three others. Yeager got in a hell of a sweat to buy it. He was so hotted up about it he was damn near bug-eyed.”

“He say why?”

“No. I asked him, but all he did was start trying to knock me down on my price.”

“And how much was that?”

“A grand.”

“A grand? For a stag film?”

“I didn’t say it was worth any grand. It wasn’t. But when I saw how hot the guy was, naturally I hyped the price up on him. It only cost me a hundred.”

“That’s a pretty stiff markup. What happened?”

“Well, I told him it was a grand or nothing. Then he said, well, how about renting it to him for a week? And I said okay, but it’d cost him a hundred bucks, and if he wasn’t back with it inside a week, I’d come and get it. So he gave me a yard, and I gave him the film, and that was that.”

“But he didn’t bring it back oh time?”

“No. And that’s what the trouble was about. But I was just trying to throw a scare into him.” He paused. “Anyhow, he said if I’d wait just two more days, he’d have the whole thousand for me. I thought he was conning me, naturally. But he wasn’t. Two days later, damn if he doesn’t show up with a grand. I was so surprised I almost forgot to count it while he was still here.”

“Where’d you get the film, Dixie?”

“From Fred Beaumont. You remember Beaumont, don’t you? That old joker the papers made so much over about ten years ago. You know, with what they called that sex club up in the Bronx and all?”

“I remember,” I said. “I thought he was still in jail.”

“He got out about two months ago. I bought the film off him a couple of days after he hit the street. He told me he made it just before he went in, ten years ago.”

“You know where he might live now?”

“The last I saw him, he was down in some flea-bag flop on the Bowery. The Palace, I think it was.”

“Thanks, Dixie,” I said as I turned to leave. “I’m glad to hear you aren’t running stag shows, after all.”

“Who, me?” he said. “I’d never even think of such a thing.”

Downstairs in the bar I talked to enough people to satisfy myself that Dixie had been there at the time of Yeager’s murder. Then I called the squad room to see whether there had been any messages for me.

A little to my surprise, the phone was answered by Stan Rayder. “I thought you’d still be over at Yeager’s apartment,” I said.

“I just got here. Pete, we got a break. They found the gun.”

“Good,” I said. “Where?”

“Beneath a parked car, about half a block from Yeager’s building. It’s a .22 Smith & Wesson Masterpiece.” He sounded mildly excited — which, for Stan Rayder, was a very rare thing. “And not only that, but we know who it belongs to.”