Zaglan got it. He drew circles over his head with one forefinger, his eyebrows still questioning. The Saint nodded.
Ziggy scuttled behind the pushcart bar and cowered there, peering from behind it in abject terror. Then he picked up a bottle, aimed it like a gun, pulled an invisible trigger, and staggered from the imaginary recoil. Recovering, he inflated his chest, preened himself, and drew more halos over his head, only this time as if they belonged to him.
It was as corny as that, but everyone had some kind of smile.
“Have a drink, Saint,” Ziggy said, putting out his hand. “Scotch, bourbon, or shine?”
“I’ll take some of that Peter Dawson you just blasted me with.”
Ziggy dropped ice cubes into glasses with one hand while he simultaneously poured with the other.
“The first one, you’re a guest. After that it’s every man for himself. Nice to have you aboard.”
He raised his glass, saluted quiveringly, and turned back to Ralph Damian. As if nothing had interrupted him and the Saint had been disposed of like the turned page of a magazine, he went on: “Listen, Ralph, it came to me out there: this ties in perfectly with a new opening I had in mind for the next show. We know that by then the whole world has heard about Paul. Why isn’t there something better than the old Pagliacci routine and the show must go on? Why not come out and face it? Now suppose I opened the show with something like I had for this press-conference bit. Then I go on: But you’ve all read how Paul didn’t seem depressed when he said goodnight to us. So whatever else was on his mind, he must have been satisfied with the ending of the script he’d written for himself. Just as he was satisfied with the script we’re going to do tonight—”
Simon felt a nudge and turned to find Colbin at his elbow.
“Can I talk to you for a minute?” said the agent.
“Why not?” said the Saint. “Everyone else has.”
Colbin steered him out on to the pool terrace, deftly collecting a highball along the way.
“I hate bullshooting,” Colbin said bluntly. “So I’ll come right out with it. What are you doing here?”
“You heard—”
“I heard what Lois said, and what you said, which was two loads of nothing. The way I dope it out, Norroy and Velston are dragging you along just to see if you’ll stir up anything they can use. Even if you don’t do anything, they can hang half a dozen speculations and innuendoes on you, and since it’s a fact you were here the readers will believe that where there’s smoke there’s fire. That’s Fame oldest trick. I think you’re smart enough to know that. So I dope it that either you’ve got nothing but time to waste, or you think there may be something crooked in the deal.”
“Why do you dope it that I’d tell you?”
“Because I might be useful.”
The Saint’s blue eyes probed him dispassionately.
“You’ve got an investment here,” he said. “Ten per cent — maybe more — of an awful lot of money. Why would you want to help anyone who might even accidentally turn up something that might jeopardize it?”
“Because I’m an old-fashioned big-dealing sonovabitch,” Colbin said without animosity. “I play all the old copybook maxims, right down the line, ‘If you can’t lick ’em, join ’em.’ I know that nobody ever scared you off or bluffed you off, if you thought you had hold of something. So why should I beat my brains out trying to be the first? So I’ll help you. I’m hoping there’s nothing you can dig up that’ll damage my property. But if there is, I want to be the first to know. Perhaps I could show you a deal.”
“I haven’t offered anything.”
“Okay. ‘Nothing venture, nothing gain.’ What can you lose? I’ll play my hand, you play yours. But I’m putting my cards on the table. Help yourself. From all I’ve heard about you, if anyone gives you a square shake, you do them the same courtesy. That’s all I’m asking.”
“Since we’ve agreed to no bullshooting, Ted — how do I know about your shake?”
“Try me.”
Simon took out a cigarette and lighted it, taking plenty of time.
“Well, Ted,” he said, “what’s all this about how happy Paul Zaglan was, just before he topped himself?”
“I’d say he was walking on air,” Colbin answered. “I mean metaphorically, before he tried it for real. He’d just delivered his last script and quit his job with Ziggy.”
Simon raised his eyebrows.
“Was that something to celebrate?”
“Now he was going to write what he’d always wanted to.”
“The Great American Novel — or The Play?”
“Anything, later. But first he was going to get eating money by selling his memoirs of Life With Ziggy.”
“It sounds like a nice fraternal parting gesture.”
“They were only legally brothers. You could find that out quick enough. Paul was the elder, but he was adopted. Later on the parents were surprised to discover that they could make one of their own, after all. That was Ziggy. But all his life Paul took care of him. He’d promised the mother he would — the father died while they were kids. It was Paul’s way of paying her back for taking him out of an orphanage and raising him in a real home.”
“Until last night he decided he was all paid up?” Simon murmured.
“Until the day before yesterday, when she died. I guess that’s when he really started to feel happy.”
The Saint was luckily accustomed to surviving jolts that would have staggered the ordinary mortal.
“No doubt he was anticipating a humdinger of a wake,” he said.
“She’d been very sick for a long time,” Colbin said stonily. “Cut out the phony bullshooting sentiment and anyone would call it a merciful release. But it was a release for Paul too. He could stop being a brother to Ziggy.”
Two thin parenthetic wrinkles cut between the Saint’s brows.
“I must have missed that — at least, I didn’t notice anything about it in the papers.”
“You wouldn’t have. It wasn’t the same name. She married again after the boys were grown up.”
“Even so, I’d’ve thought—”
“Her second husband went to jail as a Red spy. Very likely it was as big a shock to her as anyone — anyhow, she wasn’t indicted with him — but you know how these things go with the public. It wasn’t a relationship that Ziggy would want to advertise.”
Simon released a very long slow trail of smoke.
“But you knew it”
“Ziggy got drunk and cried it out on my shoulder when the story broke. About the husband, I mean. He thought his career was finished, and I was ten per cent as worried myself. But somehow the connection never came out.”
“Then why are you telling me?”
“To prove I’m leveling with you,” Colbin said, and took a swallow from his glass. “Norroy and Velston may trip over it someday, by accident, but they won’t find it by hard work because they don’t work like that. You’ll find out, if you cared enough, so I’m only saving you the trouble. But you won’t spill it to Lois or Monty just for kicks. ‘The leopard doesn’t change his spots.’ ”
“Some great philosopher launched that one,” said the Saint. “When did Ziggy see his mother last?”
“I don’t think he ever saw her after that. He couldn’t risk it, could he? Be reasonable, man. But I know he called her on the phone quite often. She understood.”
Simon Templar took a last deep pull at his cigarette and put it down in the ashtray on one of the marble poolside tables. He stared abstractly at the darkening blue bay, beyond which the deceptive sky-line lights and neon tints of Miami were beginning to twinkle, striking the high points off the gleaming chrome and glistening varnish of Ziggy Zaglan’s trim speed cruiser tied alongside the sea wall. Now he could read the name lettered on her transom: she was called, almost inevitably, the Zig Zag.