(1935 Saturday December 28th)
Oscar Wilde had it right. No man
was rich enough to buy back his past.
That
didn’t stop people from trying. Or hiring Rafferty to try. He looked at it more
like buying time. Sooner or later the truth always came out. But there was a
hell of a lot difference between the truth coming out three days before your
wedding or three years after you were dead.
Anyway,
he preferred dealing with blackmailers to trailing cheating husbands. This was
the first time he’d been asked to rendezvous with a blackmailer in a museum. A
museum holding a major exhibition for a cursed Egyptian mummy. An exhibition
where everyone
except the mummy was
in costume.
Rafferty
moved to the side as two scantily clad temple priestesses squeezed past on the
marble staircase. The nearest Lily of the Nile was giggling and clutching the
arm of her companion. The other doll was saying, “I told Gene, it was never like this in Babylon.”
They
went on their unsteady way to the mezzanine with its planetarium. Rafferty
gazed down at the crowded main hall. According to Scheiner, his client, the
blackmailer had instructed the payoff be left in a closed exhibition room, a
plain envelope of unmarked cash stashed behind the mummy case of an obscure Ptolemy
pharaoh no longer of interest now that Princess Nebetah had been brought to San
Francisco to wow the customers. At the end of the party Rafferty was to return
to the exhibition room and pick up the parcel that would be left in exchange.
If any attempt was made to apprehend the blackmailer’s confederate, the deal
was off and the blackmailer would go straight to the papers with whatever
damaging information he had.
Whatever
that information was it had to be pretty hot because Scheiner had never struck
Rafferty as a pushover but he’d been adamant that Rafferty follow the plan to
the letter.
And
that was what Rafferty was doing.
Mostly.
It
went against the grain to give into extortion. There wasn’t any creature on
God’s green earth Rafferty hated more than a blackmailer. So he’d left the fat
envelope of cash as directed and then slipped into the gents and changed into
an idiotic costume so he could blend in with everyone else at this wingding. He
didn’t plan on interfering with the pickup, but he did plan on tailing the
bagman.
Though
he’d provided the duds, Brett had advised against pursuit. Brett Sheridan was
Rafferty’s…well, never having had a friendship quite like this one, Rafferty
wasn’t sure what you’d call it. Whatever you called it was one reason Brett was
identifying too closely with the victim. Brett had guts, but the idea of
blackmail shook him. Scheiner, naturally, knew nothing about Rafferty’s plan.
He’d be happy in the end though, because the blackmail wouldn’t stop with this
payment. Scheiner was just kidding himself believing the promises of a guy who
called himself Mr. X.
From
his vantage point on the staircase, Rafferty watched the waiters, brawny lads
in slave costumes, circulate with drink trays and canapés amongst the hoi
polloi of San Francisco. A ten
piece orchestra sawed away at a version of “Night and Day,” though the music
could hardly be heard over the babble of voices. The place was packed. But then
the museum was not especially large.
Originally
built in 1920, the Morshead had previously housed a small collection of antiquities
and a large collection of oddities. It was designed in a pseudo
Egyptian-revival style. From the pair of giant sphinx sculptures guarding the
museum entrance to the painted and carved Egyptian friezes and lotus style
columns, the building was supposed to evoke the mystery and magic of the newsreels
they all watched with such fascination at the picture show. Newsreels that
showed the excavations at Tell el-Amarna and the Valley of the Kings -- which
was where Emmett Parker had made his now famous discovery of the burial chamber
of Princess Nebetah.
Emmett Parker. Rafferty’s lip curled.
Pompous ass. There he stood now, posing before a group of admirers, like the grinning,
bare-chested palooka on a cover of a Jungle
Comics.
Parker
spoke and his audience, mostly female, tee-hee-hee-ed obligingly. Among the
smitten was Justine Sheridan, looking especially striking in a white gown with
leopard skin girdle. She had the dark, dramatic looks to carry off the costume.
Not everyone was so fortune. Lenora Sheridan, for example, looked like she’d
fallen into a portmanteau of purple draperies and only managed to climb out.
Her gray hair was coming undone, as were the draperies. She kept clutching at the
fabric slipping from her plump shoulders.
A
lot of people to keep track of, and most of them unknown to Rafferty. Even the
familiar ones were hard to pick out in costume. He absently hummed a few bars
of “Night and Day,” turning to watch the hallway to the closed exhibition room
over his cupped hands as he lit a cigarette.
No
movement. No one was showing any interest in adventuring down the empty hall to
the darkened room.
The
fact that the blackmailer had chosen the museum might mean something. Might
even mean the blackmailer was someone who worked for the museum. Rafferty’s
gaze returned automatically to Emmett Parker, who once again had the ladies
gasping and giggling as he recounted his exploits in the Valley of
the Kings.
Honesty
forced Rafferty to concede that he probably wasn’t giving Parker a fair shake.
Once upon a time, a long time ago, Parker had hurt Brett pretty badly, and
anyone who hurt Brett Sheridan was no pal of Rafferty’s. Even so, it was
unlikely Parker, newly returned from
Egypt,
was spending his much-in-demand time blackmailing a small time
San
Francisco actuary.
No,
more likely, the blackmailer had realized, correctly, that pretty much
everybody who was anybody was going to be packed into this museum tonight -- in
disguise no less -- and his movements would be hard to track.
Hard.
Not impossible.
Rafferty
looked for Brett in the crowd below. He spotted him dancing, Brett’s sleek dark
head bent to hear what his companion, a slim dame in a sparkly white gown, was
saying. He was smiling, but Rafferty recognized that expression as the face
Brett wore when he was a million miles away.
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