Brett Halliday

Six Seconts to Kill

CHAPTER 1

More martinis arrived. Camilla Steele touched the chilled glass lightly with her fingertips. She could coast with this one, taking her time, and if everybody stayed relaxed and cheerful, and if she remembered to eat something, there was a good chance that she could kill the evening, get to sleep at a reasonable hour and kill the night.

She raised her glass and smiled at the man she was with. “Pretty soon we ought to order dinner. But not right away.”

Even without her glasses, despite the subdued light, she was almost positive that the man’s name was either Wally or Joe. Lately the people she went to dinner with had tended to overlap at the edges. They wore the same kind of suits, made their living in similar ways and all, for some reason, seemed to smoke cigars.

He breathed out a plume of smoke. It was Wally, probably. He sold real estate, not that it mattered. He was the best kind—he never asked questions, and wasn’t interested in anything that had happened earlier than the previous week.

“Camilla, you’re the best-looking lady in Miami Beach.”

She murmured something. She didn’t mind compliments, but she was sorry to say this one was hardly true. She was wearing a white cocktail dress, slit deeply at the neck. With her tanned skin, her very blond hair, she probably looked all right at the moment, but that was the point of these dim bars. She was too thin. If she had been interested in that kind of arithmetic, she could have counted her ribs. Until recently she had played a fiercely competitive game of tennis, and her movements still had a kind of controlled quickness and grace. She was thirty years old. In ordinary light she looked forty.

“I have a suggestion,” Wally said, “and I’ve learned from experience that the time to come out with something startling is between the second and third martini. The idea is this. I think we ought to get married.”

His face sprang into focus. Dark eyes, dark hair and sideburns, a humorous set to his mouth. It wasn’t either Wally or Joe. It was Paul London, damn it, which could mean another rough night.

“Do you really want to bother?” she said lightly, hoping that his words, like the cigar smoke, would vanish into the air-conditioning. “Let’s have dinner and then just go to bed together as usual.”

“No reason we can’t do all three.”

She started to raise her glass. Paul took her wrist, spilling some of the gin.

“Put it down for a minute, Cam. I want sixty seconds of your time, and you can clock me. After that we can go on drinking martinis until the management throws us out. Seriously.”

“I hate that word.”

He said it again. “Seriously. We’ve been seeing each other once every ten days, and in my opinion it isn’t enough. But if that’s what you want I’ll settle for it. Nothing stays the same, Camilla. We were in high school together, for God’s sake. What is it—fifteen years ago, now. You sent me marijuana brownies in the Marines, you dear girl. We’ve been having sex, off and on, for fourteen years, which I hope gives me a certain amount of seniority. And lately I’ve been getting the feeling that as far as you were concerned I could be anybody. My name doesn’t happen to be Max. Or Charley.”

“I know exactly what you’re going to say.”

He laughed and released her wrist. “Sure. Stop drinking so much. Stop spending the night with other guys, or cut down a little. Stop taking so many pills, and find out the name of the damn pill before you take it. All that’s standard advice. The reason I want you to marry me is to give you something to think about besides the Honorable Eliot J. Crowther.”

“I have to think about him now and then,” she said reasonably, “if I’m going to assassinate him.”

“Damn it,” he burst out. “That stopped being funny years ago. I hope you haven’t been writing him any more of those nutty letters.”

She smiled. “It’s against the law to write threatening letters to a public official, didn’t anybody ever tell you that?”

“It’s also damned dumb. You aren’t going to kill anybody. It’s not your style. Not to mention the fact that killing the attorney-general of the United States wouldn’t be the easiest thing in the world. His security people probably don’t even let him see your letters. You’re only injuring one person. Not Eliot Crowther—yourself.”

The horrible thing about this was that she knew it was true. She whispered, “It’s the only thing I have to hold on to, Paul.”

“Cut it out,” he said roughly. “It’s ancient history. I’m going to risk a declaration. I think I love you. The reason I’m not sure is that you keep changing. I do know I want to wake up in the same room with you every morning. That part’s definite. When Max calls I’ll tell him you’ve just moved to Hawaii. I’m running over my sixty seconds, but I’m going to say a few more things whether you like it or not. You had a run of bad luck. Getting married to Felix Steele was the unluckiest thing that could happen to a nice young girl. I know it’s a mean thing to say, but the guy was a first-class bastard.”

“You can’t think I didn’t know that.”

Paul looked at her closely. “When did it dawn on you?”

“Sometime in the middle of the second day. It was weird, Paul. He never looked it, but he was so damned insecure. He was always scared I was going to move out. And I finally did, you know. I think that was one of the reasons for what happened. But it isn’t considered ladylike to divorce your husband when he’s on trial for murder.”

She sipped some of her martini. Paul London wasn’t the only idiot who thought that talking about things helped. Three separate doctors had given her the same advice—dredge it up from your subconscious and you’ll feel better. At first she had tried. She had talked endlessly, and of course the more she talked about it the worse she felt.

She said quietly, “Being married to you might be pleasant in some ways. But be thankful I’m saying no—my kind of bad luck can be catching.”

“I’m willing to take a chance.”

“Let’s drop it, Paul. It’s distracting. I have other things on my mind.”

“Such as what?”

“Do you really think Eliot Crowther doesn’t read my letters? He reads them and they terrify him.”

“I’m sure.”

“How do you think I got this freaky job with the foundation? Nobody worries whether I come to work or not. Plenty of money so I can pay my bills at the drugstore and the liquor store. Strings were pulled. They were pulled by Crowther, and I know that for a fact.”

“Then it was nice of him. It must mean he feels a little responsible for what happened.”

She finished her martini in one long pull. It wouldn’t hit her for a moment, but if she wanted to explain anything—she didn’t know why she bothered—she had better do it in a hurry.

“How can I marry you? You’re right—a minute ago I didn’t even know who you were! And I honestly didn’t care! I only have room for one name in my mind, and how clever of you to guess it’s Crowther. I do want to assassinate that man, Paul. I know it won’t be easy, and I’m not sure I’m up to it.”

“I hope you don’t say things like this to other people. I know you don’t mean it.”

“I mean it,” she insisted. “I’m being very practical about the difficulties.”

She put her hand on his and said matter-of-factly, “I know I’m a little deranged. That’s no longer news. I don’t even hate him. It just seems to me that he sums everything up! Everything that’s ugly and horrible about the way we live. He knew Felix didn’t kill that woman. He must have known. But what a chance for a district attorney.”

“Camilla, that’s what district attorneys are for. He was playing the role.”

“And it carried him all the way to the cabinet. What’s the next step, the Senate?”

“I don’t think so,” he said seriously. “This could be the last stop. He hasn’t been in the papers for six months. The thing you forget—he looks like an important man, with that hair and that voice, but basically he’s a jerk. Sooner or later people find it out.”

“He’s a symbol. He’s not a person. When I shoot him he’ll bleed press releases.”

The gin in her last drink ended its journey and exploded behind her eyes. And that was enough of an explanation for one day. If Paul wanted to buy her another drink or two and feed her dinner, she would repay him by taking him back to her apartment for a fast bout of love-making which she might not even remember in the morning. She needed someone at night. The nights she slept alone were the bad ones. There would be new lines around her eyes the next time she looked. She knew she was deteriorating fast—it was her way of commenting on the mess around her.

Paul’s eyes seemed to be moving from one place to another in his face, which was otherwise, as always, solid and dependable. He had marvelous arms and shoulders, the legs of a quarter-miler. If she had married him instead of Felix Steele—

But she hadn’t, she very definitely hadn’t, she had married a handsome boy with a black Maserati, incredible clothes, a monthly check from a trust fund set up by a grandfather. And the trap had snapped shut. She was still in the trap, and she no longer expected to get out. Accepting that truth might be progress of a sort.

Two days after she left her husband—that fact was never brought out at the trial—he was arrested for the rape and murder of a beautiful Negro singer in her suite in a Miami Beach hotel. He had been taking the drug commonly referred to as “speed.” He had been seen in the hotel corridor with blood on his shirt. For some unexplained reason—Camilla, who knew him better than most, concluded that it was a queer kind of put-on, to show that he was brighter than the detectives—he had answered their questions playfully, admitting to lustful thoughts about the singer when he watched her perform. Camilla suspected that the particular crime of rape was beyond his capabilities. But it was the right moment in history for a white man to be convicted and executed for the rape-murder of a black woman, something that for two hundred years had happened only when the colors were reversed.

It was a spectacular trial, with a victim who was not only black but famous, a defendant who was rich and wild, a drug-taker. Felix’s family had just the right amount of political clout. They sounded more important than they actually were. Crowther defied their attempts to bring political influence to bear, and got his conviction and his reputation.

Camilla was twenty-two that year. She was twenty-seven when her husband was finally executed.

Now, three years later, she pressed Paul’s hand, feeling a sudden need for human contact. She had thought she was beyond all that, but perhaps not. She wished she could make him understand. She, too, had been playing a role—the loyal wife, insisting on her husband’s innocence, helping organize a defense committee, raising money for new appeals. The white-supremacy groups made sure that the defense fund was never short of cash. Felix himself ran the campaign from his condemned cell, using his wife as liaison. Month by month he became more hateful to her. He might be innocent of the murder, but of nothing else. She despised the cause, the bigots who were attracted to it, the embittered man in his cell.

After losing the battle for a new trial, she fought to have his sentence commuted. And if she succeeded, he told her, he had promised himself that he would kill one Negro convict for every year he was kept in jail. He spent most of his time devising ways of doing it without being caught.

He horrified her, but in the end he bored her. During the last weeks she was completely fed up with the legal maneuverings and her husband’s obsession. She longed for an end to the ordeal, for a definite date after which there would be no more appeals, no more writs and stays, no more talk.

And when it happened, she felt that she had helped bring it about. A few days later, she swallowed too many sleeping pills, an easy way to stop thinking.

She was out for forty-eight hours, and her recovery was slow and painful. She wrote her first letter to Eliot Crowther from the hospital, warning him not to expect to live forever.

After that, one of her main interests, at times her only interest, was following Crowther’s rise in state and national politics. Two years later, a Miami private detective named Michael Shayne brought in a talkative hotel thief who had rashly boasted of having committed the murder for which Felix Steele had been killed. Steele had been unlucky that day, this man had been lucky. His good luck continued. He repudiated the confession, and in the absence of other evidence the grand jury failed to indict. Camilla’s doctors were afraid this would be bad for her, but she had decided by that time that nothing mattered very much, except to see if she could harass Eliot Crowther and make him uneasy.

Her letters became more and more ingenious. Someone like Paul London, of course, would consider them a symptom of mental illness. And they were. She was willing to concede the point. They were!

She squeezed his hand and picked up her glass, which she found to be empty.

“Now that that’s taken care of,” she said, as though she had actually explained something, “it’s time for more drinks.”

“It’s time for dinner. I see you don’t like the idea about getting married. I’ve got another idea, and this is nearly as good. Come to Mexico with me. I’ve still got two weeks of vacation.”

“I’m sorry, Paul, it’s out of the question.”

Ordinarily she would have accepted promptly, because why not? But she couldn’t leave Miami right now. She was looking forward to something. For a moment she couldn’t remember what, and then it came to her—her number-one enemy, Mr. Eliot Crowther, was showing himself in Miami Beach the next Saturday, to accept some kind of award—for hypocrisy and opportunism, probably. She was planning to be in his hotel lobby when he walked through. She didn’t intend to spit at him, or shout. She was simply going to post herself where he couldn’t avoid seeing her. She had been practicing a smile. If she did it right, she was sure she could unsettle him. When he accepted his damn award, she hoped he would still be stammering and mopping sweat from his forehead.

Paul continued to badger her. He had friends in Acapulco. There was a hotel which would give him a fifty percent discount. He refused to let go of the subject, and finally she lost patience and told him to disappear.

He looked at her. “What was that word?”

“I don’t mean forever. But as far as tonight goes—” She gripped the edge of the table in both hands. “I mean it. I can’t talk about it any more. You thought up this Mexican deal so Crowther and I wouldn’t be in the same town at the same time. I suppose it’s sweet of you. But you remind me of too many things. It’s honestly much easier with someone absolutely new.”

“I saw a movie yesterday. We could talk about that.”

She shook her head without looking at him. “Good night, dear. I can’t get properly plastered with you around. I’ll sit here and brood for five minutes, and then I’ll call somebody.”

“I shouldn’t have said anything about marriage. That’s what scared you.”

“Leave some money for the drinks.”

He took out a bill, folded it carefully and put it under her empty glass. “As long as you realize this isn’t such a wonderful way to live.”

“I’m not advocating it for everybody. For me it works.”

“Does it?” he said gently. “I think I’ll go to Mexico anyway. When I get back I won’t call you for a while. But if you need anything get in touch with me.” He kissed her lightly. “Good luck.”

She watched him walk away, and almost changed her mind. He had a sexy way of moving. The one thing that was wrong with him was that he had terrible taste in women. Anybody with any native intelligence at all could see that Camilla Steele carried a very high risk, and you had to be a little sick yourself to take a chance on getting involved.

She felt the first probing touch of depression, an old acquaintance. She had to do something about that right away, or she would sit here the rest of the evening, ordering drinks and not bothering to phone anybody because it was too much of a problem to put a coin in the phone and dial without making a mistake. And she would arrive home alone, the one thing she was desperate to avoid.

She took a pill-holder out of her purse and ripped the plastic sheet to get at one of the pretty striped pills inside. If she remembered correctly, these babies were slightly unpredictable when combined with gin. There was only one way to find out.

She washed it down with what was left of Paul’s martini, and looked for a waiter to order another.

When he brought it he said, “A phone call for you, Mrs. Steele.”

“Will you tell them I just left?” She corrected herself instantly. “No, I’ll take it.”

This might save her the trouble of dialing. The public phones were hung on the wall beyond the end of the bar. One of the drinkers, a man in a brilliant sports shirt, spoke to her as she passed, and she stopped to see if she knew him. He was holding a lighted cigar. Only the cigar was familiar; everything else she was seeing for the first time. Perhaps it didn’t matter. It would set a precedent, but that would be one way of guaranteeing that he wouldn’t be thinking of her in terms of the losing side in a celebrated murder case.

She smiled at him and picked up the phone. “Hello. Camilla Steele.”

“At last,” a voice said. “I am overjoyed to locate you. But I must make sure. Is it indeed the famous Camilla Steele?”

“Who is this?” she said sharply.

“Speak louder. There is much noise there.” She didn’t recognize the voice; the accent was vaguely Spanish. “Hold the phone tightly to one ear and stop up the other with your finger. I think we will do OK. This is in connection with a pig named Eliot Crowther.”

She clattered the phone back on the hook. She looked at the dial, frowning. The pill had dissolved and was beginning to run through her veins. The air darkened and filled with swirling black dots, but each number and letter on the dial was brilliantly distinct, as though lighted from within. When the phone rang again she snatched it up and said, “I have to know who’s talking.”

“I could invent a name for you, but why is it necessary? I have been phoning all day, here and there at various places, because I have an amusing proposal, perhaps you would say a preposterous proposal. To begin with, as a form of password, tell me simply the given name of your husband.”

“He’s dead,” she said, and added, almost against her will, “Felix.”

“Yes. Dead, buried, but not forgotten. He never raped and murdered anybody, as is well known. But Eliot Crowther climbed up on his dead body and became rich, successful. Now I will tell you the reason I am calling you, and why I do not wish to pronounce my name. I would like very much to kill Eliot Crowther.”

She sucked in her breath. “What?” she said faintly.

“Now my dear Camilla. I hope you can hear me over all the hubbub. I am told that you, also, have mentioned such a desire, but possibly you were not serious. Possibly it was something to speak about over coffee, to startle, to make yourself seem interesting and tragic.”

“I don’t know. I—”

“But you must know. You must decide, so I will waste no more time or thought. I am in earnest! I have an excellent plan, I think, but it requires a woman. I will count ten to myself.”

There was silence. Camilla touched her forehead to the shiny blackness of the phone. The fog closed in. Suddenly she knew with absolute certainty that Paul London had been her last chance, and she had sent him away. Why would he bother with her after he came back? She had chosen—instead of someone who knew her and cared what happened—a succession of indifferent strangers. Life was dirty and tiresome, and she could see how it had to end, too much to drink some night, too many pills. Sirens. Headlines. And who would care? But first—

“Ten.”

“If I only could,” she said. “I dream about it. In dreams I get away by sprouting wings.”

“If you’re serious, you know,” the voice said, “escape should not be part of the dream. Sirhan Sirhan was not foolish enough to try to escape. I know things about you. You have attempted suicide. This way, to kill an enemy first, is more honorable, it has significance.”

She giggled, a surprising sound considering what they were talking about. “I’ve made plans, but I wouldn’t know where to begin.”

“That is most simple, the beginning. You first decide you will do it. Then it is one step at a time. I will make it simple for you. I promise to arrange everything.”

“I want to do it,” she assured him. “I hate everything he represents.”

“I like people who know how to hate. So many today are without feeling, without spirit. I detest such people. I think we will do well together. I will telephone you tomorrow night, at six precisely, at your apartment. Please be home. Be alone, OK? Simply say yes, you are determined, you have decided to revenge yourself and show there is a place for justice in the world. I will tell you to do thus and so. I will provide the weapon. Believe me, we will kill this son of a bitch, one hundred percent. You will become a footnote in the history books. Consider everything carefully, please, and tomorrow at six I will call you.”

The phone clicked in her ear.

As she turned back to the bar a face swam out of the fog and closed with her. The jowls were meaty, the voice was too loud, but the eyes, Camilla thought, showed signs of kindness and warmth. He was lonely in a strange town. “That drink we were talking about,” he said.

She enunciated carefully. “A martini, thank you. Very dry, on the rocks, a twist of lemon.”

He used his cigar to summon the barman. “Coming right up.” He touched her arm. “Baby, I’m dying. I was beginning to think there weren’t any friendly women in Miami Beach.”

The fog withdrew slightly and she saw that his eyes, far from being kind, were cold and appraising. He was fingering her skin as though it was some kind of dress material.

“Cancel that drink, will you? I’m sorry. I feel—sick all of a sudden.”

He tried to hold her, his smile fading, but she brushed past him.

CHAPTER 2

Eliot Crowther’s secretary nodded to Abe Berger.

“Go right in. He’s expecting you.”

Berger, a big, rumpled, carelessly dressed man, entered the attorney-general’s office. Crowther reached across the desk to shake hands. He kept in shape playing four-wall handball with subordinates, and Berger was quite sure that he invariably won. He was tall and lean, with a shock of wavy white hair, which made him look a little too handsome. This is almost as much of a handicap for a politician as seeming too intelligent. As a corrective, he wore a pair of half-moon reading glasses.

“Everything under control, I hope, Abe.”

He spoke briskly, but something about his diction always gave Berger the impression that he was speaking lines written by somebody else. Everything about him was carefully packaged. Even his reputation for coldness and disdain, Berger thought, was a part of that package. A reporter had once astonished Berger by asking if he liked the man, a completely meaningless question. He neither disliked nor liked these people. His job was to see that they stayed alive through their term of office. Some gave him more trouble than others. That was the only difference.

He sat down and lit a cigarette deliberately. “We want to ask you if you’ll consider calling off the Miami trip, Mr. Crowther.”

Crowther’s head shot forward. “Why on earth should I do that?”

“You saw the proofs of Jack Anderson’s column.”

Crowther shrugged. “Abe, is that going to hurt anybody? The Friends of Pan-American Democracy have decided to give me their Freedom Medal. It’s been in the works for months. It’s an annual affair, and we both know that the award doesn’t necessarily go to the person who deserves it most. It’s a way of getting a nationally known speaker. They’d have every right to be miffed if I pulled out now, just because a crusading newspaper columnist, with a ruffle of drums and a blare of trumpets, has revealed that my law firm has been receiving a retainer from an American copper company. The company happens to be on cordial terms with a Latin American government which happens to be headed by a man who doesn’t happen to be a Jeffersonian Democrat. But what does it signify? I don’t condone Colonel Caldera’s political tactics for one moment. Naturally U.S. Metals has a stake in the political stability of the area. So does the United States government. So do the Friends of Pan-American Democracy. It just isn’t a sinister thing, that’s all. I hope nobody’s going to believe that with my record I’m in favor of any kind of political dictatorship.”

He laughed and sat back. “I didn’t mean to give you a stump speech, Abe. Let’s just say—cynically, if you will—that canceling Miami because of some half-baked allegations from a discredited newspaper columnist would be the worst kind of political blunder.”

“What we were thinking,” Berger said patiently, having waited for a gap between sentences, “is that we could organize something important somewhere else, to take priority. If you could make the announcement before anything breaks out of Miami it wouldn’t seem that you were ducking anything.”

Crowther looked at him over the half-glasses. “Is it that serious, Abe?”

“Possibly not. But my theory about what to do with trouble is to detour around it. Miami’s full of volatile Latin Americans of every political persuasion—right, left and middle. We have an FBI report that one of the middle-of-the-road groups is organizing an anti-Caldera demonstration for Saturday—anti-Caldera, and anti-Crowther. I don’t know much about it, but apparently this isn’t something we’d worry about ordinarily. They’re professional people, lawyers and so on, and they’ll keep inside the police lines.”

“That doesn’t sound bad. Don’t forget I’ve integrated more than a few schools. This won’t be the first time I’ve seen a picket sign with my name on it.”

“The catch seems to be,” Berger went on, “that political leadership in the Spanish community down there is pretty much up for grabs. Both the left and the right are looking for an excuse to get out in the streets and make some noise. There are a lot of guns in that part of the world, as I don’t need to remind you. I’m not saying we can’t protect you. I think we can. But why not finesse the whole thing?”

Crowther removed his glasses and tasted the end of one of the ear-pieces. “What does the Bureau recommend?”

Berger hesitated. “The feeling there is that this is a chance to get certain people out in the open so we can see who they are. That’s their problem. The Secret Service problem, to put it bluntly, is to keep you from being shot. Knock on wood.”

“Abe, talk sense. I’ve made a few enemies along the way, but this Latin American business is very remote, believe me. Off the record”—he returned his glasses to his nose and peered over them at Berger—“the CIA believes that the Caldera regime may be shakier than most people realize. The matter has been talked about at the cabinet level, and I take the position that this government cannot afford to let Communists assume power in a country within bombing distance of the Panama Canal. But I’m not publicly identified with this view—it’s not my department. So will you stop jittering?”

“Franklin Roosevelt was shot at in Miami.”

“A long time ago. I agree, some psychotic might get the idea that he could help his faction by taking a shot at me, but that’s one of the hazards of holding public office. It can happen anywhere. I don’t think it would be a bright idea to ride down Eighth Street, through the heart of the Spanish section, in an open convertible. I usually try to cooperate, even though I do think you fellows tend to get a little overprotective at times. Get me to the hotel so I can deliver my speech. Then get me back to the airport. My God, if a cabinet member can’t go into any American city any time he likes, this country is really in a bad way.”

“I don’t like it,” Berger said gloomily. “But I’ll go down tomorrow and see how we can set it up. Under the circumstances I want you to wear your bulletproof vest.”

“O, Abe, for God’s sake,” Crowther said irritably.

Lorenzo Vega, in a battered six-year-old Dodge—it was knocking badly, but who had money for a ring job?—turned off Biscayne Boulevard on 72nd Terrace. It was 11:00 P.M. on the nose. He prided himself on keeping appointments exactly on time. In this business it was important.

He was looking for a black Chevy parked between street lights, and he already knew it would be a Hertz rental. That was the way they operated. His headlights picked it up, parked on the left. There was a figure at the wheel. He had his lights on high beam, hoping to glimpse a face, but of course the agent was shielding himself, and all Vega could see was the back of the hand with a burning cigarette stuck between the fingers. They had a mania for secrecy, these people. Why couldn’t they make a simple appointment to meet him in a bodega? This was the United States, their own country, after all. What were they afraid of?

And yet he was in no position to criticize. They hadn’t come near him for more than three years. Whatever they wanted, he had made up his mind to ask for $5,000, and if they acted shocked he would direct their attention to the rise in the cost of living.

He parked. As he walked back, all he saw was the hand and the cigarette. He touched the front door-handle, for his own amusement, and of course he was told quietly, “Get in back, Lorenzo.”

He entered the car. The driver started his motor and drove back to the boulevard, where he turned left, then right on 69th Street and came to another stop. Apparently procedures had changed since Vega was dropped from the payroll. The rear-view mirror was tilted up. The driver was wearing a hat and wraparound shades. His hair curled up at the back of his neck, another sign of how times had changed. In the old days, they had always seemed fresh from the barber.

Vega scratched his belly reflectively, starting a tape recorder tucked in his belt. It wasn’t a modern model, but it was the best he’d been able to come up with on short notice. No one, he knew, was going to look after Lorenzo Vega unless he did it himself.

The agent continued to cover his mouth, and when he spoke he didn’t turn around. “I’ve got an easy assignment for you.”

Vega’s voice should have been cool and self-possessed, but he was at a disadvantage here, and what came out was nearly a whine. “You’re going to have to show your credentials. I’ve had trouble that way.”

The man flipped open a leather folder. Still without turning, he used a tiny pencil flashlight to light up a card giving his government affiliation and declaring that his name in his present role was Frank Robinson.

“Does that satisfy you? Of course it could be a forgery, but you know that. You’re no maiden.” The light clicked off. “What kind of shape is your organization in?”

“Are you sure we want to call it an organization?” Vega replied bitterly. “For three years I haven’t seen a penny of funds, and now all at once, when apparently you want something, what I have in the way of a cadre is myself, my brother and a couple of cousins. But I still have a following! The point I’m making, I can’t get them to come to meetings on a regular basis when I have nothing in the way of patronage, know what I mean?”

“What about your paper?”

“I have no paper any more, Mr. Robinson. What I have is a printer’s bill, six months overdue, and this, I regret, I am unable to pay.”

“How much?”

Vega hesitated for a tiny tick. “Approximately five thousand dollars.”

The agent laughed. “One other thing you have, Lorenzo, is a sense of humor. Here’s what we want, and if you can’t do it we’ll just have to go into the files and get somebody else.”

“Those others. They’re big on flowery promises, but can they deliver? When I say I will do something, you can rely on it.”

“Yeah, yeah. We’re thinking about Saturday.”

“Crowther?” Vega said alertly.

“You know that Galvez and his NLS crowd are going to run a demonstration in front of the St. Albans. ‘American imperialist bandits,’ kind of thing. That we don’t care about, it’s par for the course. Did you know Gil Ruiz is in Miami?”

Vega sat forward, genuinely surprised. Gil Ruiz was a Brazilian, a professional revolutionary, he called himself—a professional phony, in Vega’s opinion. He had been in on the overthrow of a very stupid, very backward, very corrupt military regime, but the day-to-day business of running a government had bored him. Ever since, he had been sneaking around from one underground movement to another, stirring up trouble and getting his followers killed and jailed. He was a man of gesture, with an aura of spurious romance which appealed to susceptible teenagers. He had no business being in the United States.

“Gil Ruiz is definitely not in Miami,” Vega said flatly. “You are misinformed.”

“Somebody who looked like him landed on Pepper Key two nights ago. One of your local Communists picked him up in a Volkswagen camper. Unfortunately we lost track of him coming into Miami. Perhaps you also aren’t aware that an ad-hoc committee of leading leftists is calling for a rival demonstration Saturday?”

“I have heard something, but how many can they influence, after all? A handful.”

“Considerably more than a handful,” Mr. Robinson said dryly. “You haven’t been keeping up. Our estimate is four hundred. Galvez will have twenty or thirty at the most, walkers not fighters. The so-called militants will elbow them out of the way and take over the demonstration. And that won’t mean peaceful picketing. We think they’re going to try to storm the hotel. Ruiz, we believe, has been brought in to organize this, which indicates that they’re shooting for something big. It’s an easy scenario to write. Take over the St. Albans, cut off the electric power, disrupt the luncheon, kidnap Crowther—”

“Kidnap Crowther! Maria! That would be an impressive thing. On American soil!”

“They’ll settle for less. We won’t know till it happens. Luckily, we know about Ruiz, so they won’t be taking us by surprise. There’s going to be heavy media coverage, and purely for propaganda reasons, we don’t want to call out the National Guard. We would prefer to have the Latin community handle the problem in its own way.”

“But I had no idea—four hundred! Students, probably. I assure you, four hundred militant students are no joke. I can’t produce an effective counterdemonstration out of thin air. The paramilitary organizations are dissolved. The cadres stay home watching Jackie Gleason on television. Saturday afternoon there will be football games. I can predict that no one will feel ambitious about being cracked over the head on behalf of Eliot Crowther, a person of so little magnetism. I dislike him myself. Tell me exactly what it is you want. I would like to help you because of our past associations. It will take money, you know.”

“We want you to get out a special edition of your paper, what’s its name again—”

“Libertad. Three years ago it would have been on the tip of your tongue.”

“A lot has changed in three years. If your regular printer won’t cooperate, go to somebody else. Leaflets would be just as good. Don’t mention Crowther. Or Ruiz, naturally. The Commies and Castroites want to give the impression that the refugee community is opposed to United States policy, so on and so forth, so let’s come out on the streets to show our gratitude for American hospitality, the American way of life, the greatest country in the world et cetera—you’re the writer, put it in your own words. Then get on the phone and start calling people. You used to be considered quite a fair organizer.”

“In those days, I will remind you, I had money in my pocket. I could buy a person a glass of rum. If he needed a new shirt—”

“We understand that you’ll have expenses. A thousand dollars should cover it.”

“Including the printing? Some people will be working Saturday, putting in overtime, I will have to recompense them for taking time off. I say it with regret, but in this day and age, ideology is not enough. Even five thousand would be inadequate, but I would try to manage.”

Vega, as they both knew, wasn’t going to end up saying no, and they settled on $1,750.

“And I don’t even know what I’m buying,” Mr. Robinson complained. “How many people? You don’t seem able to tell me. This had better work, or it’s my ass. Tell them to take guns, just in case. If it looks too tough, do some shooting and then the cops can move in.”

So that was what it was all about! Penniless, Vega had allowed himself to be outmaneuvered. If guns had been mentioned earlier, he wouldn’t have agreed to do it for a measly $1,750. These North Americans were businessmen, after all.

“Yes, Mr. Robinson,” he said sadly. “I understand the situation. I will do what I can for you because I am grateful for American hospitality, and I assure you I really do mean that.”

Sometime in the early hours of Thursday morning, thieves broke into the Emerson Sporting Goods outlet on North Miami Avenue. A partial list of the missing merchandise, supplied to the police the following day, included tennis rackets, cameras, fly rods and golf clubs, hunting rifles, shotguns, an assortment of handguns, including a window display of unusual European pistols.

The detective division of the Miami police department, which as yet had not been officially informed of the security preparations for the visit of the U.S. attorney general two days later, treated it routinely. They called their informants and asked if they had heard anything. No one had. There it would have stopped, except for a lady who lived over a restaurant on the same block. Seeing an account of the break in the morning paper, she called in to say that she had gone to the bathroom in the middle of the night, and had happened to observe a light blue panel truck, unmarked, come out of a delivery alley. Nothing more important was happening at the moment, and two detectives were assigned to see what they could turn up.

The state motor vehicle bureau had recently installed a cardsorting machine. A clerk ran the truck registrations through the machine, which in a matter of moments kicked out all the blue panel trucks in Dade County. Most were the property of stores or delivery services, and were clearly identified. Only four were unlabeled. One of these was registered to a Guillamo Delgado, at an address on 15th Court in Southwest Miami.

The detectives were hurrying to get back so they could wind up their paperwork without running into the dinner hour. Delgado operated a small moving business and did light junking. His truck was up on blocks, and the oil pan had been pulled. The detectives nosed around, without really expecting to find any stolen tennis rackets or shotguns at this point. They knocked on the back door and were admitted to the kitchen.

Three young men, one of them with oil under his fingernails—this was Delgado—were sitting around the table drinking red wine from a half-gallon bottle. A woman at the sink was washing dishes. A radio, making too much noise, was tuned to a Spanish-language station. One of the detectives turned off the radio and asked for identification. Nobody seemed to speak much English.

“ID,” he said, shaping a card with his hands. “Name.”

They all had something, a driver’s license, Social Security. After looking around casually, the detectives left.

The young woman drifted to the front window and watched the police car drive off. She laughed and said something in Spanish. One of the young men at the table removed an extra set of protuberant top teeth, which had given his face a deceptively foolish look. He was fairskinned, with crinkles of concentration at the corners of his eyes.

He opened a door beneath the sink and took out a large rolled drawing. The others cleared the table. He unrolled the drawing, weighting it at the corners with wineglasses. It was a scale-plan of the Miami International Airport.

He covered it with a sheet of flexible acetate, drew several quick arrows with a red marking pencil, and began to talk.

CHAPTER 3

Michael Shayne—red-haired, powerfully built, as relaxed as a cat—sat back in the dental chair and let a plump, motherly nurse snap a bib around his neck. Dr. Galvez approached with a probe and a long-handled mirror.

“Open, please.”

After a moment’s cursory inspection, he murmured something about X-rays and told the nurse to write up the chart on the last patient. He would call her when she was needed. She nodded cheerfully and went out.

As soon as he heard the door close behind her he put down his tools.

“I am sorry about this cloak-and-dagger atmosphere, Michael. But there are now seven people working in my office, all with a passing interest in political matters. I would like to think that they subscribe to my own belief in constitutional democracy, but about one or two of them I have my doubts.”

“I needed a checkup anyway,” Shayne said.

“Your teeth seem in excellent shape. Come back next week for the X-rays, if you wish. Right now, politics. I would like everyone to think that it was my specialty that brought about this meeting, not yours.”

He opened a cabinet and took out a fifth of Jamaica rum. “I keep this for my nervous patients. Can I offer you—”

“Sure.”

Galvez poured two drinks into paper cups, gave one to Shayne, and perched on a high stool. He was small and slightly built, with a neatly trimmed Van Dyke and a professorial manner, in his middle fifties. He had formerly practiced in Havana. He was an excellent dentist, and several people Shayne knew used him. He was also an active figure in refugee politics, a subject about which Shayne knew very little. Before keeping this appointment, he had checked with his friend Tim Rourke, a reporter on the Miami News, who had recently written a series of pieces on the Latin American community. Rourke was able to give Shayne a fast briefing.

Dr. Galvez was the leading personality in a group that until recently had been the largest and most influential. It was usually referred to by its initials, NLS; Rourke had forgotten what the initials stood for. It was generally pro-United States, but in favor of some kind of socialist arrangement for Latin America. Its officers, like Galvez, were professionals who had prospered after coming to Miami. They had announced a street demonstration against Attorney General Crowther—partly, Rourke believed, to answer criticisms from some of their younger members that they talked a lot but never did anything. Rourke was sure the demonstration would be orderly and nonviolent.

“Salud,” Galvez said, raising his cup. “Now. Have you heard of a rather seedy proto-fascist named Lorenzo Vega?”

Shayne shook his head.

“He has been quiet lately. To people of my persuasion he is known as a CIA lackey, always too obvious to be really effective. He runs a marginal export-import business. He still has a so-called counterrevolutionary organization, no more than a phone number and a letterhead. His newspaper has not been issued since his subsidy was withdrawn. And now, out of a clear blue sky, a manifesto.”

He hiked up his white coat and produced a folded leaflet printed on cheap orange paper.

“‘To the Latin people of Miami,’” he read, translating. “‘Do you want the world to believe that you share the crypto-Communist views of the notorious Red Dentist and the NLS?’ I won’t bother you with a word-for-word translation. The language is predictable, ridden with clichés. In effect he calls for a violent counter-riot to suppress the riot we are planning for tomorrow. Not even our worst enemies have ever before now accused us of aspiring to the title of rioters. He says nothing of Eliot Crowther, you will notice, or of U.S. Metals, or of Crowther’s apologies for the Caldera junta. It is all anti-Galvez, anti-NLS, complete with caricature.”

A crudely drawn cartoon under the text showed a small, dapper man in a dentist’s white coat, with a Van Dyke beard, cowering back in a dentist’s chair while a huge Latin American workman, his sleeves rolled up, threatened him with a drill.

“The line underneath says, ‘A Taste of his Own Medicine.’ Vega as a spokesman for labor is really rather funny. Of course the actuality tomorrow may not turn out to be very funny at all. He is recruiting counter-pickets at fifteen dollars a head, and you can imagine what sort of people. Drunks, pimps, teen-agers from motorcycle gangs.”

“What kind of picket line are you planning?”

“We have a point to make, and we feel it can be made most forcefully with silence and dignity. We will be dressed in black, in mourning for the copper strikers shot down by the Caldera militia. We have a permit from the Miami Beach police. I confess that I personally have no taste for a street brawl with Lorenzo Vega and his hired bully-boys. None of us are fist-fighters, frankly. How much police protection will we get? That is problematical. I spoke to Chief of Detectives Painter, and he didn’t take it too seriously. He said I was exaggerating, there hasn’t been a major street disturbance on the Beach in ten years.”

“That sounds like Painter,” Shayne observed.

“And another aspect,” Galvez went on. “I won’t try your patience with a long political lecture, except to say that my position inside my own organization is far from secure. The younger element has been agitating for more militancy, more revolutionary rhetoric. According to the rumor mill, the super-radicals will also be out on Collins Avenue tomorrow, with their pockets filled with nuts and bolts. Thus—two groups, one on either side, both equally committed to the use of violence, with the NLS and Dr. Santiago Galvez in the middle. Does that convey a picture of the situation?”

“Except for what you think I can do about it.”

“I thought that was obvious. I’ve called a few of our regular benefactors and raised a purse. We want you to find out where Vega got his money. Prove that the CIA is paying him, and we can draw his sting. A story in tomorrow’s paper—”

Shayne laughed and reached up to unfasten the bib around his neck. “Thanks for the drink, Doctor.”

“Have another,” Galvez said quickly, uncapping the bottle. “What do you mean, Michael? I understood you to say that you weren’t working on anything else right now.”

“I try not to take hopeless cases,” Shayne said. “If the CIA really hired this guy, they did it in private, and paid cash. But how could I prove it? Hell, raise a little more dough and spend it where it can do you some good.”

Galvez filled Shayne’s cup and said cautiously, “If you have any ideas—”

“You said Vega has a marginal business. How marginal?”

“Very. He lives in a low-rent neighborhood. He drives a battered car.”

“Then a couple of thousand ought to do it. But you’ll have to move right away, before he hires too big an army. That kind of thing can pick up its own momentum.”

Galvez was staring at Shayne. “Buy him?”

“According to you, somebody else already has. That means he’s for sale. When nothing happens tomorrow, all he has to say is that the people he hired got scared and didn’t show up. Nobody’s going to take him out and shoot him. It isn’t that important.”

Galvez stroked his neat little beard. “You’re proposing that I make an appointment with Vega and walk up to him and offer him two thousand dollars?”

“If you don’t have capital in the export-import business, you’ve got to cut corners. He’s probably had a piece of dozens of illegal deals. If you can get something on him, open with that. While he’s wondering if you’re bluffing, come in with the money offer and he’ll probably grab it. But you have to move fast.”

“I see that. Good Lord. My niece Adele—you saw her, she’s my technician—mentioned something we might use, but—Mike, listen. You handle it. I wouldn’t know the technique. Two thousand is not an impossible sum.”

“What makes you so sure he’s spending government money? There are other possibilities. U.S. Metals. Caldera. Crowther himself.”

“Oh, I don’t—” His hand went to his beard. “Conceivably. We simply assumed that because Vega and the CIA were associated in the past—Crowther! Unquestionably our demonstration will embarrass him. We plan to assemble at the Orange Bowl and cross to Miami Beach in a motorcade, and if he could break it up before we come within range of the TV cameras—I think you may be onto something. And wouldn’t that give you a personal incentive? You’ve had a few run-ins with him, if I remember rightly.”

“In the old days,” Shayne said briefly. He glanced at the time. “But he keeps at least five removes from anything that could get him in trouble, and I know damn well there’s no chance of proving anything. I’m amazed that he didn’t make up some excuse for not coming down tomorrow. All right. It’s at least a hundred-to-one shot, but once in a great while they’ve been known to come in. It all depends on how nervous Vega is. I’ll try to shake him a little. Just remember I don’t speak Spanish and I don’t usually operate in this part of town. I’ll need any leads you can give me.”

“Good, Mike,” Galvez said, relieved. “Fine. I’ve got a thousand dollars here, and I can get another thousand by the end of the afternoon. As for leads, Adele has been talking to people who know him. She’d better tell you herself. The only thing—” He hesitated. “I’m getting a little paranoid, I’m afraid. You know the syndrome, surrounded by enemies. In the long run the obvious right-wingers like Vega have been discredited. It’s the left that frightens me. This unrealistic fever that has infected everybody beneath a certain age. I have the feeling that something—something—is in the wind. I wish I could speak more precisely. There is a difference, I don’t know how to describe it, in the way certain young men hold themselves at certain coffee stands. A sort of—impatience.”

“And you think your niece is involved?”

Galvez spread his hands. “Not involved. Perhaps aware. Her parents are both dead, I have brought her up with my daughters. She has given no sign that she is anything but completely loyal. But by accident I have found a copy of a picture magazine in my house with a page torn out. It was a photograph of a man called Gil Ruiz. Probably the name will mean nothing to you, but to the young people of Latin America it means a great deal. A student who interrupted his studies to join the revolution. A self-appointed expert on guerrilla warfare. He is said to be in command of the armed opposition to the Caldera regime, and to girls of Adele’s age-group he is a person of legend. Of course she knows how much I despise and have always opposed that kind of romantic adventurist.”

He hesitated again, and then said firmly, “She’s intelligent, level-headed. I’ve seen to it that she is firmly grounded in political theory. If I can’t trust her, I can’t trust anybody.”

CHAPTER 4

Dr. Galvez had his offices in a newly built medical block between Miami Avenue and Eighth. Shayne returned to his Buick, in the parking lot behind the building. Galvez had given him an envelope containing ten hundred-dollar bills. He tapped the envelope thoughtfully against the steering wheel, then transferred the money to his wallet.

He lit a cigarette and waited.

In another moment Adele Galvez opened the opposite door and slid into the car. She was a tall, open-faced girl, radiating health and enthusiasm. She was in her early twenties, Shayne judged. She wore her black hair to her eyebrows in front, to her shoulders everywhere else. She had changed out of her uniform into a very short skirt and a white sleeveless blouse with a small alligator over the left breast.

“Mr. Shayne, it’s tremendous!” she exclaimed. “I didn’t think he could persuade you. He’s nice after you get to know him, but he certainly can get pompous at times. I’m going to make an admission right away. I’m a fan of yours! You’re just so—I don’t know—”

She laughed.

“Thanks,” Shayne said dryly. “What’s this idea of yours about Vega?”

“Everything worked out exactly the way I planned! Usually when I plot something nobody else cooperates. I was on the phone half the night and most of the morning, and I found out a few interesting things about the bastard. But you’ll notice I didn’t give my uncle any details, and anyway, if we’re going to be sort of blackmailing somebody—isn’t that the idea?—he doesn’t want to know anything about it. I was dying to meet you! I’m hoping you’ll take me with you so I can see how you work. I guess that sounds pushy. I’m not throwing myself in your arms or anything.” She gave him a quick look. “Which might be very pleasant!”

“But time-consuming,” Shayne said with a short laugh.

“I certainly hope so! Look, we better not talk here. Too many people know I’m an NLS’er. Here’s a picture of Vega, probably not too recent. I know somebody who knows him, and she says he looks ancient, like fifty.”

She gave Shayne a snapshot of a balding man wearing only bathing trunks, squinting fiercely at the camera. He had a well-developed paunch, a luxuriant thicket of chest hair, a small, well-cared-for moustache. His arms were folded across his stomach, and he held a long-barreled Lüger automatic in each hand.

“That’s what we call machismo,” Adele said. “The guns. Don’t fool with Lorenzo Vega, he’s ready for anything. Guns in a bathing suit—he can’t be serious.”

Shayne put the photograph away and reached for the ignition key. At that moment a youth in a pullover shirt and Bermuda shorts burst out of the rear entrance to the medical block and raced to a blue panel truck parked two spaces away. There was a muffled explosion inside the building.

Adele jerked around. “Mr. Shayne!”

The blue truck pulled out of line, accelerating. Shayne’s moves were instinctive. He jammed the stick into reverse and came back hard. The Buick fishtailed as he went into low and hit the gas. The truck shot out of the lot, rocking. Suddenly an old Cuban woman jumped out in front of Shayne’s Buick, waving her hands and shouting. His horn blared. The brakes grabbed unevenly and the Buick slewed, nearly spinning into the next line of parked cars.

The woman leaped aside, still waving crazily. When she saw that he had stopped she ran up, shouting.

“Ten cuidado con las ruedas! Atencíon las ruedas. Cuidado!”

Shayne snarled, “Get the hell out of the way.”

“No, no,” she said in great excitement, pointing. She poured out an explanation in Spanish.

“What’s she saying?”

“I think—” Adele said. “She says somebody did something to the wheels.”

“Las ruedas!”

Shayne snapped off the ignition and stepped out. The woman subsided gradually, but went on pointing and nodding. The truck was now out of sight. Shayne went into his luggage compartment for a tire tool, and pried off a rear hubcap.

A lug-nut was missing. He tested the other nuts. They had been loosened to the point where the threads barely engaged.

The woman was still pouring out a flood of Spanish. Adele said: “She was waiting for a doctor and she looked out the window. That same kid in the shorts was fooling around your car. Stealing hubcaps, she thought, not such a terrible crime. Then he put them back on. When he went back to his truck she saw that he was carrying that four-handled wrench you use to change tires. It’s not just that one wheel, it’s all four.”

While she talked, the woman nodded happily, continuing to point at the sabotaged wheels and at the window from which she had seen it all happen. Shayne checked the other wheels. A number of nuts were missing. The rest were loose. Probably they would have held through the lower gears, but the first time he tried to corner at a high speed he would have thrown a wheel.

“Tell her we’re glad she was looking out the window,” Shayne said, tightening the remaining nuts. “Otherwise we’d be hearing ambulance sirens about now.”

Adele shivered. “That thought already crossed my mind.”

She spoke to the woman, who sobered abruptly and sketched a quick sign of the cross.

“She says St. Christopher must be looking out for us,” Adele said.

“Let’s hope it keeps up.”

The woman clasped him impulsively. Adele translated: “She says her husband, too, was a large man, with the same powerful arms, though not with red hair. He left her last year for a younger woman.”

“Can you wind this up, Adele?”

After a further exchange, the woman stood aside and they got back into the car. As they drove off, Adele sighed and fastened her seat belt.

“That scared me. I’d like to know how they knew. I suppose that bang we heard—”

“Just a feint to get us moving. The timing was pretty good.”

“Like—wow,” she said. “We could have been killed!”

He drove north toward the river, and stopped at a garage on West Flagler. He bought Cokes at an outside dispenser and they stood in the shade while a mechanic checked the wheels. Adele kept looking at her watch.

“The time element, gee. Well, we’ve got three quarters of an hour. Can I tell you my idea?”

“Yeah, go ahead.”

“I don’t know if it’ll work. There’s a cruise ship, the Mozambique, leaving from Pier Three. One of the things Vega does for a living, it seems, is sell bulk marijuana, and I feel a little finky talking about it. From what the kids say, he’s a pretty good source when you can’t get it anywhere else—though he’s expensive. Isn’t this something you could use as a handle?”

“What’s the connection with the Mozambique?”

“He uses cruise ships to bring it in. Everything’s very tight on the Mexican border, as I probably don’t need to tell you, so it’s been going the other way, down to Central America. Somebody on the Mozambique will pick it up in Panama. How does this sound so far?”

“Keep going.”

“Well, there’s a deckhand who thinks my uncle is the greatest man since Simon Bolivar. When he’s in port he comes to every meeting, he rings doorbells, he stuffs envelopes. He’s broken up that he’ll miss the picket line tomorrow. He speaks about two words of English, incidentally, so you’ll need me. If I explain everything to him, and it has to be me, he wouldn’t trust somebody like you even if you could speak Spanish, I just bet we can get enough information so you can scare Vega out of his shoes. He’s supposed to be very skittery about this dope operation. Can we try it, anyway? It’s a start.”

“Are you sure you want to come with me?”

“I’m not worried any more. Wheels have come off cars before and no one was hurt. You’re probably a very good driver. Come on, he’s finished, let’s go!”

She added, “But I’m fastening my seat belt, I can tell you that.”

He studied her for a moment.

“Please?” she said.

“OK.”

He paid the mechanic and they got in.

“I’m crazy about you, Mr. Shayne!” she said. “I thought you’d make me argue. My aunt and uncle act as though I’m still about twelve years old.”

“I’d say you were a bit older than twelve.”

“You noticed,” she said, pleased.

He found a parking place on one of the terraces two blocks inland, and they walked to the pier. The Mozambique, decked out with pennants for its departure, seemed to be pulling at its ropes. Its sides sparkled in the bright sunlight. A band played on the promenade deck.

Adele hesitated before starting up the gangway. “I guess it’s all right, isn’t it?”

“As long as we’re still not aboard when they sail.”

Most of the passengers had arrived by plane, and so had a few friends to see them off. But the cruise personnel were working hard, trying to make the departure an event. A gay middle-aged lady in a paper hat threw a streamer at Shayne as he emerged on deck, and asked him to dance. He smiled and evaded her. A steward offered them a tray loaded with glasses of domestic champagne. Adele asked him a question in Spanish.

“No speak Spanish,” he said, and she shifted to English.

“We want to say good-bye to Raphael Rivera, have you seen him?”

“Don’t ask me. I just signed on. Take a glass of champagne—it’s complimentary.”

They each picked a glass off his tray and drank it before continuing into the main salon, where the bridge tables were set up and waiting. Adele stopped a passing crew-member and repeated her question. This man thought he’d seen Raphael having coffee in the galley, one deck down.

They found the passenger dining room and went through a set of swinging doors into the galley. It was a busy place. Adele spoke to a small tattooed man slicing cucumbers. There was a rapid exchange of Spanish while Shayne started a cigarette. She was frowning when she turned back.

“Damn it, they must think you’re a cop or something. I’ll be less conspicuous by myself. Wait in the dining room and I’ll waylay somebody. I can’t say I’m Raphael’s girl friend with you hulking in the background. Stop looking at me like that—nothing’s going to happen. Go on, we don’t have much time.”

“All right, but be careful.”

“I honestly will,” she said impatiently.

Shayne stepped back into the dining room. Once there he moved quickly. He left by another exit, went up a flight of stairs and along a corridor. At the next stairway he went back down and found a door marked NO ADMITTANCE—CREW.

The corridor on the other side of this door was uncarpeted. The walls needed paint. If he had calculated correctly, the galley was somewhere to his right. He turned left.

A spindly youth in an undershirt and a chef’s cap came toward him.

“Did you see a girl in a white blouse a minute ago?” Shayne said.

“Yeah! What’s happening? I thought those cats were coming on a little heavy. Who is she, one of the new waitresses?”

“Which way did they go?”

“Right down—”

He stopped, and his eyebrows drew together. After an instant’s pause he said, “Excuse me. You’re some kind of fuzz, aren’t you? My daddy gave me a piece of advice when I shipped out. He told me to stay out of other people’s messes.”

“When you see your daddy again,” Shayne said, “tell him he gave you some bad advice.” He picked the boy up under the armpits and held him against a wall. “Do you want to reconsider?”

“Down the hall, down the hall,” the boy said. “They went in a cabin.”

“Which cabin?”

The boy gestured. “Further down on this side. Let me go, will you? They were spies, pantry-boys. You may not realize it, but that hurts.”

Shayne lowered him and he scuttled away. Shayne moved on warily. He passed the crew’s dining room, which was empty. Hearing a low thump behind him, he came back. A woman’s voice said something in Spanish. It was cut off.

Shayne checked his watch. He still had twenty minutes. He put out his cigarette.

Returning to a cross corridor, he picked a five-gallon fire extinguisher off the wall. A fire-ax was set in a recessed case with a glass cover, from which a little metal hammer dangled. Ignoring the hammer, Shayne smashed the glass with the extinguisher. A door opened and the youth in the chef’s hat looked out.

“Now’s the time to do what your daddy told you,” Shayne said. “Shut the door.”

The face retreated. Shayne took the ax and the extinguisher back to the cabin in which he had heard the girl’s voice. Setting the extinguisher on the deck, he raised the ax and chopped hard at the door above the handle. The wood splintered and the door swung open.

He picked up the extinguisher and waited.

He heard a choked sob. The door had jammed. He saw part of a narrow bunk and a washbasin. Time was moving at the same speed on both sides of the door, but Shayne had more experience at this kind of thing. After a long silent moment the door was pulled back violently and a man jumped at him.

He was short and dark, with tattooed forearms. Shayne had seen him last slicing cucumbers. Shayne tilted the extinguisher, and foam gushed out of the nozzle. The other staggered back, clawing at his eyes. Shayne stepped forward and kicked the door. This time it stayed open. Adele, against the opposite bulkhead, was twisting in the hands of a large Negro. Shayne advanced, holding the foam steady, and then clubbed his adversary with the extinguisher. He dropped away.

The Negro tried to get something out of his pocket, and Adele was able to pull out of his hands. Turning, she brought her knee up into his groin and dodged past Shayne and out of the cabin as Shayne swung the jet of foam, catching the Negro squarely and knocking him backward.

There was a sparkle of light from a knife-blade. Shayne lunged, swinging the extinguisher. The knife clattered against metal. Shayne changed the arc of his blow and hit the Negro’s wrist so hard he probably broke it.

The nozzle was whipping around, out of control. The other man had fallen across the bunk, and he now had a gun in his hand. Shayne threw the extinguisher with both hands.

There was movement behind him. but before he could whirl to deal with the new threat, his head seemed to explode, and the cabin walls closed in on him.

CHAPTER 5

The altercation still wasn’t over. Far in the distance, Shayne heard a gong. Perhaps it was time for visitors to say their final good-byes and go ashore. He considered, and decided to stay where he was. If he moved his head, he was afraid it would divide into two halves, like a cut melon. He had thought at first that he had been hit with the ax, but probably his assailant had simply used the handle.

The gong sounded again. He had fallen on the hose, and he could feel it struggling beneath him.

Somebody in the cabin was giving orders in Spanish. Shayne remained inert, and allowed himself to be flopped over. He was breathing heavily. He heard the sound of cloth being torn. Opening his eyes slightly, he saw the cucumber-slicer ripping up a sheet he had pulled from the bunk. That was to tie him up, Shayne supposed, so he couldn’t reach the gangway before the ship sailed.

He sent a message to one of his feet and felt it respond. The gong banged again. As the man with the torn sheet stooped over his ankles, Shayne flexed one knee slightly and kicked out hard. It made contact, but didn’t do much damage. The man sat down again.

Shayne looked around for the Negro. In pain, he lay beneath the washbasin, one arm useless. He was hitching himself slowly toward Shayne. They were all three in a bad way. Shayne rolled and came up on one elbow. The extinguisher hose whipped around and shot a last burst of foam at the Negro before expiring.

Shayne saw the gun on the carpet. It was an equal distance from them all. Shaking his head, the Negro tried to crawl. Shayne reached out. It was a dream movement, slow-motion in its most exaggerated form.

Then a voice spoke from the doorway. “You cats are going to get this whole ship in trouble. You know that, don’t you?”

The youth in the chef’s hat, whose daddy had warned him against getting involved, stepped into the cabin and gathered up the gun.

“I mean when it comes to chopping down doors—”

Shayne came to one knee and moved his head. It stayed together. A moment later he found that he could stand.

“You hold the gun,” the boy said. “I’ll go get the captain.”

Shayne grunted and started for the doorway. The youth backed into the corridor ahead of him, holding out the gun butt-first.

“Take it. Here. I sure as hell don’t want it.”

Shayne lurched toward the nearest stairway, keeping from falling by running a hand along the wall. The ship appeared to be heeling violently. On the first step he failed to raise his foot high enough, and fell forward on his hands.

The boy was dancing beside him, trying to get him to take the gun. “You mean this isn’t a bust? You aren’t going to bust those guys?”

“Give me a hand.”

“I certainly will not! I thought you were FBI, at the least. I held a gun on those characters, and now I’ve got to ship with them?”

Shayne forced himself up the steps. He made it halfway, with the help of the banister. There he stopped again. An endless stretch of steps rose ahead. The ship swung gently.

The boy grabbed his arm. “I’ll help, if nobody sees me. But I can’t do it all. Come on.”

He tugged at Shayne. The Mozambique reared. When it came back down Shayne took advantage of the momentum and let it carry him up the stairs. The boy pushed, and when the momentum faded he ran ahead and pulled. They reeled out on deck.

“For the last time, will you take this or won’t you?” the boy said, holding out the gun.

“Hold the gangway.”

“Jesus! I just wish somebody would tell me what this is all about!”

He ran ahead. The band was playing with real desperation, it seemed to Shayne. Streamers flew. A woman in a clown’s hat tried to embrace him, and she got him moving. He picked up an empty champagne bottle. Waving this, he headed toward the gangway. He heard laughter around him, ironic applause. People cleared out of his way.

“Really smashed,” somebody said. “Disgusting.”

“No, why? He’s feeling no pain.”

That was hardly true. Ahead, the youth gestured with the gun. Two seamen waited at the head of the gangway. Shayne held the bottle over the side and dropped it in the bay. His heel caught, and he went down much too fast, ending on the dock with a jolt. The passengers along the rail waved.

The gangplank was drawn in and the ship’s horn hooted. There was a flicker of white, and Adele Galvez threw her arms around him.

“I was calling the Coast Guard. You’re hurt!”

“Too much free champagne.”

Leaning on her heavily, he headed for a wooden crate. She continued to hold him until she was sure he could sit by himself.

“I got you into something, didn’t I? God, I’m sorry. What should I do now, get the car?”

“Yeah.”

He fished out the keys.

“Are you sure you’ll be all right, Mike? Maybe I ought to—”

“Get the car.”

While she was gone he watched the Mozambique pull slowly out into the Cut. The passengers along the rail went on waving and throwing streamers. The band still seemed slightly frantic.

Adele returned. She looked down at him anxiously, and helped him stand. The pain had receded slightly. He probably could have walked by himself, but she insisted that he lean on her. He let her drive.

She suggested in a small voice that he could use a doctor. He didn’t reply, and called the turns. Presently they were drawing up in front of his apartment hotel on the north bank of the Miami River.

The day-clerk rushed out when he saw Shayne. Shayne waved him away.

“I’ve already got one person looking after me. That’s enough.”

Upstairs, Adele unlocked the door for him. He was going to let her look at his head in a moment, and then he needed a change of clothes—he was soaked with foam. First he poured himself a stiff cognac. The neck of the bottle knocked against the glass.

“Adele? Cognac?”

She wasn’t sure. She splashed a little into a glass, tried it and coughed, then added ice and considerable soda. Shayne downed half his drink.

“I need a little maintenance. Before we get to work, tell me how you figure that skirmish on the boat. What was the point?”

“I honestly don’t know! Except I think you were the one they wanted, not me. It’s just as mysterious as that business with the wheels. How did they know? When I asked about Raphael it was as though I’d given some kind of signal—he got all peculiar and gave you that suspicious look. When I went back into the crew quarters they came after me.” She tasted the drink again and said miserably, “I did just what they wanted me to. I shouldn’t have tried to fight, or made any noise.”

“Had you ever seen either of them before?”

“Not as far as I know. I did get an impression that there was something—military about them. All those groups like Vega’s used to pretend they were soldiers. I thought they’d outgrown it.”

Shayne set down his empty glass and went into the bedroom. He stripped off his soggy clothes. Leaving them where they fell, he put on a beach coat. He got out some first-aid equipment and called Adele.

“I can’t see what I’m doing. Cut off some of the hair and slap on a piece of tape. I’ll get some professional repairs when I have time.”

“I’m not much of a nurse,” she said doubtfully.

Shayne pulled a straight chair into the bathroom and sat down astride. She made one or two snips with the scissors, standing behind him. Then her breath came out in a long sigh, and the scissors and the bottle of disinfectant fell from her fingers. She slipped quietly to the floor.

Shayne regarded her with the trace of a smile. He checked the time. It was a few minutes after five.

He picked her up and placed her on the bed. He poured more cognac. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he slipped an arm under her shoulders and raised her head. He held the glass to her lips and let her breathe the fumes. When her eyes opened he tilted the glass. She sputtered helplessly, but swallowed a mouthful.

She looked around in alarm, and pressed her face to his bare chest. He continued to hold her loosely.

“That’s the first time I ever fainted in my life.”

Her lips moved against him. For an instant his hold tightened. Then she shifted in his arms, and looked at him seriously.

“I was so scared. I can’t begin to tell you. The way they pounced on me. I was sure they were going to kill me. Then that ax came through the door! That fire extinguisher. You’re a—pretty impressive person.” She raised her head and kissed him gently. “And here we are. I have more clothes on than you do. I don’t think that’s right.”

He laughed, and she insisted, “Why don’t we? I know you wouldn’t ordinarily, because why should you pay any attention to me? But I did a sort of stupid thing and you rescued me, and you’re still woozy from that cut on the head, so you aren’t as iron-willed as usual—”

She ran her hands inside his robe. “Make love to me! Or I’ll have hysterics, and you don’t want that, do you? Hold me. Do. Do, please.”

Twisting, she pulled a zipper and her blouse opened. He let her kiss him again, and then, very slowly, he began to disengage.

She followed him urgently. “Mike, you can’t go yet. You have to recuperate. It won’t commit you to anything. Then we can really trust each other. Will you?”

There were two possible answers, and there was something to be said for them both. She was kissing him again, and there was no doubt, Shayne thought, that she was a determined girl.

It was beginning to seem that she would win.

Ten minutes passed. Then it took them another ten minutes to untangle completely.

“Mike, dear,” she whispered, “how nice that was. You were sweet to do it when you didn’t want to.”

“Where’d you get that idea?”

She smiled. “Possibly from something you said.” She put her forehead briefly against his shoulder, and looked up at him. “It wasn’t too strenuous?”

He rotated his head carefully. “Maybe it’s what I needed.”

“I told you! Darling, let me try again with the scissors. This time I won’t faint.”

“No, let it go. Make us some more drinks while I get dressed.”

He swung off the bed. As he stood up he felt a swirl of vertigo, but it passed at once. Adele, a tidy girl, straightened up the bed before going into the other room.

In the bathroom, working by touch, Shayne disinfected his head wound without starting it bleeding again. He didn’t bother with a bandage. With the help of more cognac, he could function and the wound would have to take care of itself.

Adele had combed her hair and repaired her makeup. She held out a glass.

“When I think that two hours ago you were only a name in the newspapers—”

“It was pleasant,” Shayne said shortly, “but now let’s get back to the main subject. Your uncle said the left-wing groups are preparing some kind of action for tomorrow.”

“Which left-wing groups? That covers a lot of ground.”

He sat down at one end of the big sofa. “Not that I want a lecture, but how many organizations are there, say, to the left of your uncle’s?”

“Only about four dozen.” She turned toward him, bringing up one knee. “Maybe not that many, but lots. It only takes three Latin Americans to make a political party. They keep arguing and splintering. I know there’s been talk that the students from the university are going to show up tomorrow, but it’s Vega’s people I’m worried about. They carry pistols to demonstrations.”

“Have you heard about somebody named Gil Ruiz?”

She looked surprised. “Of course. I thought he was famous. But he’s not here, for heaven’s sake. He’s off fighting in the jungle.” She stopped. “Isn’t he?”

“I don’t know a damn thing about it, as I keep telling people. What’s his main thing right now?”

“That’s easy—he’s organizing the guerrilla movement against Colonel Caldera. It’s still in the early stages. The only guns and ammunition they have is what they’ve been able to capture. But it’s growing. One of these days you may read about it in the Miami News.”

“Apparently Crowther’s got some kind of tie-in with Caldera. What if he was shot or kidnapped in Miami by Ruiz sympathizers? That’s always happening to American ambassadors, but I don’t think it’s ever been done in Florida. Crowther would be a very big fish if they could get him. What kind of political sense would it make?”

She had her fingers to her lips. “It’s such a startling idea! I doubt if—” She stopped to arrange her thoughts. “I don’t say they don’t believe in terrorism, because to a limited extent I suppose they do, depending on whether they expect it to be effective. God knows I’m not an expert either. But who would do the actual—I could name a few people who consider themselves followers of Ruiz, but they’re individuals. If there’s any organized group it’s very far underground.”

The phone rang and Shayne picked it up. It was Tim Rourke, who wanted to know how Shayne was getting along with his Latin Americans.

“All I’ve picked up so far is a mild concussion,” Shayne said. “Where are you, at home?”

Rourke said he was in a bar on Miami Avenue with a girl from the paper, but he was available if needed. Shayne told him to stay where he was.

“Tim, do you know anything about a man named Lorenzo Vega?”

“It rings a very faint bell,” Rourke said after a moment. “A couple of years ago? A little paper army? I think so. He was supposed to be drawing Washington money. That was one of the big cons in those days.”

“Anything else?”

“You’re lucky to get that much. This is a small fish.”

“That’s interesting.”

“Is it? Then you’re easily interested, man.”

When Shayne said nothing Rourke went on, “I see. This is one of those occasions when you want me to go on talking, for obscure reasons of your own. I just heard a couple of dirty limericks. I’ll recite them for you.”

When he finished the limericks, he asked, “Will that be enough? I have an extensive repertoire, as all my friends know.”

“That’s great, Tim, thanks. He may not be much of a problem after all.”

“Glad to be of service, my friend, and I do expect an explanation before Monday morning.”

Shayne put the phone down thoughtfully. He drank the cognac he had just poured and stood up. He waited for the dizziness that comes from a shift of altitude, and when it didn’t hit him he concluded that he was ready to return to action.

“This time I’m going alone, Adele.”

“I can’t argue about that, can I?” she said ruefully. “I could try to track down this Ruiz story. My roommate in college got very Red afterward. I think she’d know.”

“I’ll be in touch with your uncle.” He put his hands on her shoulders. “And be careful.”

“Don’t worry about that.” She pressed herself against him. “Mike, dear, do you think—this will ever happen to us again?”

“The odds are against it.”

“Do you have to be so realistic?”

Vega’s office was well out on 8th Street. Shayne would pass Adele’s house on the way, and she asked him to drop her. As he was about to stoop to get into the Buick, a quick spasm of pain crossed his face. He saved himself from falling by grabbing the door. Adele looked out anxiously.

“Mike, won’t you see a doctor? Get in this side and I’ll drive you.”

“I’m OK.”

He rested a moment at the wheel before driving off. He seemed to be handling the car with his usual skill. Adele said nothing more, and waited till the last possible moment, after he had made the turn onto 8th Street, before taking a .38 automatic out of her bag.

She took off the safety and went all the way over against the opposite door. She pointed the gun at him with both hands.

“Take the next right, Mike. All right?”

CHAPTER 6

Shayne glanced down. “You won’t shoot me, Adele.”

“After that nice sex I certainly don’t want to. Turn right and I won’t.”

He continued nearly to the end of the block, then pulled over into a parking space, cut the motor and swung around to face her.

“This would be a good place to do it. Naturally I hope you’ll decide against it. Your uncle knows you’re with me. The desk clerk at the hotel saw us go out together.”

“Mike, please. Don’t make me.”

“You’re new at this. You can use some advice. There’s plenty of traffic noise. Hold the gun low and pick your moment. Wipe off the fingerprints and drop it on the floor. After you get out, don’t run.”

“Mike, look at me.”

They exchanged a long look. Shayne said slowly, “I actually think you mean it.”

“But God, I’d hate to do it.”

“Does it have to be fatal, or would you settle for putting me in the hospital? Just above the knee would be a good place.”

The gun-barrel trembled, but she kept her voice steady. “Mike, I just can’t allow you to—This is very, very serious. Start the motor and do exactly what I tell you because I’m wound up so tight—”

Shayne raised his eyebrows humorously and snapped on the ignition. “You’ve convinced me.”

“Drive west to 17th. Then turn left. And don’t ask any questions because I’m not going to tell you a thing. Don’t talk at all.”

“Can I talk to myself?”

“No! It makes me nervous. You don’t want that.”

He made the turns as she called them, and before long he was slowing in front of a ramshackle house on 15th Court. A blue panel truck was parked in the driveway, surely the same truck that had almost decoyed him into a chase in which he would have lost a wheel.

“Pull in behind the truck,” Adele told him, with a movement of the .38.

Shayne accelerated. “I’ve changed my mind. I don’t think you’re really up to it. A pretty girl like you.”

“Mike, stop!” Her voice climbed. “This minute!”

He grinned at her. “This is my business, baby. Do you really think there are any bullets in that gun?”

“I can’t let you bluff me,” she said tensely.

She pushed the gun forward against his knee and pulled the trigger. The hammer clicked down on nothing. It clicked twice more. The blood drained out of her face.

With a sidewise swipe, he picked the gun out of her hand and tossed it into the back seat.

“You’re horrible!” she said. “You’re a horrible person!”

“That’s one of the things they say about me. It’s part of the image.”

He continued across Flagler and made another turn. She put her face in her hands.

“What are you going to do with me?”

“Not much, baby. In some ways you’ve been helpful.”

“I botched it. I botched it.”

Shayne pulled in against the curb and cut the motor. “A couple of things you did very well. The loose wheels—that wasn’t bad at all. If you could get me aboard the Mozambique, all you’d have to do was tie me up overnight and I’d miss the excitement tomorrow. But why should I trust you when I’ve never seen you before today? If that wheel had shaken off, we both would have been racked up. Then you had the old lady stop us. She was great. There was only one small thing wrong with the timing. The kid should have moved the minute I got in the car. Instead of that, he waited till you got in with me.”

She said bitterly, “We didn’t expect you to notice a little thing like that. You’re a monster. I’d like to know when you took the bullets out of the gun.”

“When do you think?”

“Do you mean when we were—”

She came at him angrily and struck him twice with her purse before he could take it away from her.

“You—you—she sputtered.

“Calm down, Adele. That sex wasn’t my idea. You practically raped me. No real harm was done. Your bag was on the floor. You shouldn’t close your eyes when you make love. It isn’t hard to unload an automatic with one hand.”

“You are—without a doubt—”

“What else happened at five o’clock?”

“What do you mean?”

“That sex episode held me up about fifteen minutes. And don’t tell me you have sex with every man you slug with an ax-handle, because except for your political opinions I think you’re probably a very nice girl.”

“What makes you think I’m the one who hit you? It could have been somebody else in the crew.”

“But it wasn’t.”

“No, it wasn’t. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I just wanted to put you out of action, and I didn’t even succeed in doing that… I wasn’t pretending about wanting to make love to you!”

“Yeah, it was politically OK.” He touched her shoulder. “No point in crying, Adele. You’re losing your eye-liner.”

“You certainly acted as though you liked it. Was that just—”

“I liked it,” he said gently. “But that’s not why it happened. You wanted to keep me there, and I wanted to get the bullets out of your gun. Everything else was incidental. What was happening in the outside world during that fifteen minutes?”

“You’ll hear about it anyway. Another Vega leaflet is coming out any minute. After he picks them up at the printshop he’ll be much harder to find. But that was only a pretext! Damn it, I—”

“We can analyze our motives some other time. What kind of leaflet?”

“Like the one this morning, nothing sensational… And there you were, sitting on the bed in a wrapper. It was ninety percent lust. I don’t care if you believe me or not.”

Shayne opened her purse. “Not as cluttered as some,” he remarked.

There was a small change purse, a few folded bills, the usual female grooming equipment, a library card, a magazine clipping. He unfolded the clipping. It was a photograph of a pale, tired-looking young man wearing a beret and jungle camouflage. He was thin and unshaven, with a preoccupied frown between his eyebrows. To Shayne, he looked neither glamorous or particularly dangerous.

“Ruiz?”

“Are you out of it!” she said. “You could ask anybody in this part of town. Of course it’s Ruiz.”

“What’s the attraction?” he said, studying the face.

“Mike,” she said definitely, “you don’t know a damn thing about it, I’m sorry to say. Can I get out now?”

“Any time.”

“Give me back my things.”

He put the picture of Ruiz in his pocket and stuffed everything back except the money, which he let slip between his knees.

“Educate me a little first. What’s going on, Adele? You don’t approve of your uncle’s politics, that’s clear. You don’t want me to interfere with Vega’s counterdemonstration, if that’s what you call it. But you don’t like Vega’s politics either, do you?”

“I despise them.”

“That’s the feeling I get. If he turns up tomorrow with a good-sized contingent, your uncle and his people will get their heads bashed. Why should you want that? On general principles? Because fighting in the streets turns liberals into revolutionaries?”

“I don’t dare talk about it. Look at the mess I’ve made. Now I’m going to start using my head. I’m just going to shut up and get out of this car.”

“Go ahead!” he exclaimed. “You’ve been acting like a goddamn child, and you don’t want to do anything sensible this late in the afternoon. That would be inconsistent. My God! Your uncle thought all he had to do was bring in Michael Shayne and pay him a fee, and his troubles would be over. I’d bare my teeth at Vega and the man would curl up and die. Think about it for a minute. What can I really do? Beat him up? Scare him? How can I prove whose money he’s spending? All I can do is plow ahead with my eyes closed, and hope somebody else will make the mistakes. And you made them. You worked out a complicated scheme to shanghai me. You exposed three or four of your people, you tried to put a .38 slug in my knee, you had sex with me—and that wasn’t ninety percent lust, baby, it was ninety percent calculation. You’re right. So far you’ve done a lousy job. And it was all totally unnecessary. I’m not Clark Kent or Mighty Mouse. Why not start over and tell me what’s really happening? I know Crowther and I don’t like him. If I knew more about Colonel Caldera I probably wouldn’t like him either. Ruiz is probably OK. He just doesn’t take a good picture.”

She hesitated, her hand on the door handle.

“You’re preparing something,” he went on. “If it’s not too illegal I might give your uncle his thousand dollars back and go up to Pompano and see if I can make some money on the trotters.”

She moved toward him swiftly and kissed the corner of his mouth. “I can’t tell you, Mike. I’m sorry, but I can’t.”

He made no effort to stop her. She got out of the car and walked away—a very nice-looking girl, whether coming or going.

Shayne was learning things all the time, but unfortunately not fast enough. He put the Buick in gear and drove off without hurrying. The moment he was around the corner, where he could no longer be seen by Adele, he shot ahead.

He had picked his spot carefully. Three quarters of the way along the block he turned abruptly, without signaling, and plunged down a ramp into an underground taxi garage. A few years before, the owner of the cab company, one of the biggest in Miami, had had a valuable painting stolen. Shayne had recovered it for him. Now Shayne had a standing deal permitting him to borrow a cab whenever he needed one.

The dispatcher looked out of his office. “Another handkerchief switch, Mike? Take that one. It’s gassed up.”

Shayne left his Buick in a parking slot and transferred to the cab. As he passed the office, the dispatcher handed him a cap, which he put on. It was much too small.

Wheeling out of the exit ramp, he headed back to 15th Court, an address which Adele had blown when she thought she was threatening Shayne with a loaded gun. He was improvising. He had told her the truth—he had no plan at all.

Soon he was cruising down 15th Court. The blue panel truck was still parked in the driveway. He checked the time. Three and a half minutes had elapsed since he changed cars. Finding no money in her purse, Adele would be unable to phone. It would take six or seven minutes to cover the distance on foot.

He pulled into a gas station at the corner and checked his tire pressure, then got back behind the wheel and glanced at a copy of the News left by a previous driver. The next day’s anti-Crowther demonstration by Dr. Galvez’ group had been given the big headline.

A moment later he saw Adele run across the street and enter the house by a back door. Her friends inside wasted no time. Shayne heard a door slam. The panel truck roared back out of the driveway. It proved to be easy to follow. It went west on 8th Street. At Ponce de Leon Boulevard, it turned south into Coral Gables.

There was less traffic here, and Shayne dropped back. On one of the curving drives near the university, the truck’s brake lights flared. Someone jumped out, a slender young man who somehow gave the impression of having slept in his clothes. He started up the walk toward a four-unit apartment building. He glanced around, hearing Shayne’s motor, and Shayne got a flash of dark glasses, large moustache, prominent front teeth. He noted the address and continued to follow the truck, which led him to Route 1 and back into Southwest Miami.

On 17th Avenue it swung north. Before long it stopped at an outside phone booth. Another young man jumped out. Shayne thought he was the boy he had seen run out of Dr. Galvez’ office, but he was wearing slacks instead of the checked shorts.

Shayne worked fairly close to the booth before parking. The boy stayed at the phone, making call after call, and at one point he had to go into a stationery store for change. Finally he hung up and waited.

Presently the phone rang. He talked briefly, then returned to the truck. It drove off, with Shayne still behind it.

It parked in front of a loft building between the railway tracks and South Miami Avenue. Shayne was in a good vehicle for a pursuit. A cab is hard to see when it is moving, but conspicuous standing still. He parked three blocks away, in front of a luncheonette. Leaving his cap in the taxi, he walked to the next corner.

There were two men in the front seat of the truck.

He was still feeling his way, but a few things seemed obvious. If Lorenzo Vega was to the right of Dr. Galvez, Adele and her friends were certainly to the left. After her blunder with the unloaded .38, the 15th Court address had become dangerous. She had warned its occupants, and they had promptly scattered. For some reason that was not yet clear to Shayne, they considered it important to keep him away from Vega. Luckily, like Galvez himself, they had an exaggerated idea of how much one private detective is able to do. If Vega had gone into hiding, Shayne, they thought, with his many Miami sources, would be able to find him. So they decided to find him first. Then all they had to do was position themselves and wait for Shayne to show up.

The boy who had done the phoning stepped out of the truck and concealed himself in the next doorway. Shayne instantly dropped into a new personality. Completely relaxed, he shambled up to a well-dressed man with a briefcase and asked for some change for busfare. The man shook him off irritably. Shayne panhandled his way back to the luncheonette, earning twenty cents on the way.

He used the dimes to make two phone calls. One was to Tim Rourke. He passed on the information he had picked up, and gave his friend instructions about what to say in case he received another call, which Shayne thought he might be able to set up.

After that he called the mobile telephone operator, who handled service to and from the radio-phones in moving automobiles, such as the one in Shayne’s Buick. He had never met this girl, but he had talked with her frequently. She listened carefully to what he wanted.

“One of these fine days, Mr. Shayne,” she said reluctantly, “I’m going to lose my job on account of you. Deceiving people, you know, isn’t company policy.”

“If you don’t want to do it I’ll arrange something else.”

“Did I say I wouldn’t do it? I know you wouldn’t ask me if it wasn’t important.”

He went into the luncheonette and ordered coffee, and found an empty booth from which he could watch the truck.

He was into his second cup when he saw the boy step out on the sidewalk menacingly. Two men who had come out of the loft building retreated quickly into the lobby.

Shayne returned to the cab. He started off fast, clapping on his taxi-driver’s cap and dousing the off-duty light. He had no doubt that one of the two men was Vega. If they needed transportation, he was ready to provide it.

He went down into low as he came abreast of the panel truck. Inside the lobby, Shayne saw a man stabbing at the elevator button while a second man, in a business suit without a necktie, hatless, faced the street with a Lüger in his hand. Shayne had seen a photograph of this man in bathing trunks. He had been armed then, too, probably with the same weapon.

He saw Shayne and came out yelling, “Taxi! Taxi!” Shayne threw his meter-flag. Both men leaped into the back seat and Vega shouted, “Get away fast!”

“Is somebody after you?” Shayne asked mildly, going into gear.

“Driver!”

Shayne was maneuvering for a look at the driver of the panel truck, and he didn’t let up on the clutch until the man looked around. It was the tattooed salad chef from the Mozambique. They recognized each other at the same instant.

Shayne moved off, not fast, with the truck behind him. Vega was sitting far forward, throwing quick glances out the rear window.

“Twenty-five bucks over the fare if you can lose him. It’s a piece of junk. You can do it.”

“I’m driving a piece of junk myself. I take it slow and easy so everybody’s still alive at the end of the shift.”

“Fifty!”

“Fifty’s too high,” Shayne observed. “That makes me think you’re doing something to break the law.”

He swiveled the rear-view mirror so he could see Vega’s companion, who met his eyes with a scowl. He was a familiar type to Shayne. He had the sprung nasal capillaries of a middle-aged drinker. He had been in too many brawls.

He seemed anxious about Vega’s gun, which was still showing. He put out a restraining hand as Vega raised it and placed the muzzle at the back of Shayne’s skull.

“A little more speed, damn it.”

Shayne rotated the mirror to pick up Vega. “What are you worrying about, Lorenzo? Take a deep breath and think about something soothing, like running water. How many times in your experience does a taxi show up exactly when you want it? That doesn’t happen in real life.”

Vega wet his lips and sat back. “I understand. Excuse me for becoming excited. I had the impression they wanted to kill me.”

“You had the wrong impression. You’re more valuable alive. Who are they?”

“In the truck? Alianza people. They think of themselves as being absolutely ruthless. Of course much of it is gas, but when anyone talks as much as they do about achieving success through violence, it is sometimes prudent to worry a little.”

His companion murmured something in Spanish. Vega said, “You are right in your count, Carlos, only two are visible. These we could handle. I never shrink from a fight when the sides are approximately equal. But I can guarantee you that there are others lying in wait inside the truck. You know their strategy as well as I do—never attack without overwhelming local superiority. That is why I say to this driver, for the love of the blessed Virgin, put on a little speed! At any moment they may pull up alongside and open on us with submachine guns. It happens daily in Buenos Aires, in Bogota.”

“Are they part of the Ruiz organization?”

“Ah,” Vega said. “That I am in no position to say of my own knowledge. Perhaps it is time we exchange credentials.”

Shayne grinned. “All you’re going to get out of me is my hackie’s license.”

Vega’s eyes flickered up to the license hanging from the back of the front seat, and returned to the mirror. “There is little resemblance,” he remarked.

“That’s deliberate,” Shayne said. “If you really want me to speed up, hang on.”

He accelerated sharply, and turned off 3rd Avenue, tires screaming. After two more quick turns, he ended at the ramp leading down into the taxi garage. The truck had good pickup and kept fairly close. In the garage, Shayne pulled in beside his Buick.

“Here we change cars.”

Both men got out readily.

“Not you, Carlos,” Shayne said. “Just Vega, if you don’t mind.”

Carlos minded, but there were several cabbies standing around watching, and he decided not to protest. Shayne slid behind the wheel. He slowed as he passed the dispatcher.

“Thanks, Eddie. Send me a bill.”

“What are you talking about, a bill? Any time.”

“Get down,” Shayne told Vega. “All the way down.” Vega crouched out of sight as the Buick came up the ramp. The panel truck had stopped with its motor running.

It didn’t follow. After turning a corner, Shayne told Vega to get back on the seat.

CHAPTER 7

After another quick turn he parked. Using the car phone, he called his old friend Will Gentry, Miami chief of police, described the panel truck and the two men who had followed him, and gave its location and license number.

“Pick them up and hold them overnight,” he said brusquely. “I’ll let you know what charges to bring against them.”

He held the phone tightly against his ear to contain Gentry’s reaction.

“What the hell, Mike?” the police chief demanded. “Since when did you start giving me orders?”

“That’s right.”

Gentry broke off and began again, this time in a more equable tone. “I was a touch slow there. You’ve got somebody in the car and you want him to think you can call up the local cops and order them around. Yes, sir, Mr. Shayne, sir. I’ll be glad to pick up the two gentlemen, but unless they’re doing something illegal when we get there, such as booking bets, you know how long I can hold them. About an hour.”

“That’s the general idea.”

He gave Gentry the address of the four-apartment block in Coral Gables, and described the tired young man he had flushed from the building on 15th Court. “But most of that facial description probably doesn’t mean anything, including the prominent front teeth. This could be a major pinch, Will. I have reason to think that he’s in the country illegally. The situation calls for a good four-man tail.”

“You concede that I have four good men? You’re mellowing, Mike. How important is this?”

“If I’m right, damned important. That’s all I can tell you about it now.”

“I’ll do what I can, sir. Can I go out to dinner now, or do you want me to have a sandwich at my desk?”

“Keep yourself available,” Shayne said curtly, and broke the connection.

Vega was fascinated. “This is a radio, am I correct? Can you call anywhere on it, or only within the city?”

Ignoring the question, Shayne said roughly, “What the hell are you trying to pull down here, Vega?” He took out the anti-Galvez leaflet and slapped it against his palm angrily. “Do you have access to some secret intelligence we don’t know about? This dentist is harmless. He has about forty followers, and they don’t even come to meetings. The thing to do is pretend he doesn’t exist. Attack him and you build up his importance.”

Vega tried to make his eyes meet Shayne’s, but they skittered away. “Ordinarily, of course. But the man has announced a demonstration against a high official of the United States government. His press statements have been vicious and one-sided. I thought—”

“Vega,” Shayne said scornfully, “never think. Make that a rule. Haven’t you realized yet that you’ve been taken?”

“I’ve been taken?”

“Suckered. You think you’re going out there tomorrow and raise hell. It doesn’t take brains to do that. But who’s going to benefit?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Galvez, to begin with. You’ll make him a big man again. Then the students will move in on you and drive you into Indian Creek. You’ll be finished for good. You walked right into it.”

Vega murmured, “I don’t care for your tone. I have certain connections myself. I asked to see your credentials, and you made a very unfunny joke about a taxi-driver’s license. Who are you, precisely? The question in my mind is, do I have to sit here and be talked to like an illiterate fieldhand?”

Shayne picked up the phone and held it out. “Call your connection. If there’s any conflict here, let’s straighten it out.”

Vega held up his hands. “That wouldn’t be procedure.”

“Lorenzo, will you use your head? You’re in a jam. If you thought up this stunt by yourself without checking in, I’m authorized to tell you that you’ll never see another penny of government money, and you’ll be called in immediately for a tax audit. If you’re one of those people who tell the exact truth on your Form 1040, don’t worry about it. But if somebody conned you into putting out that leaflet, there are still things you can do to deodorize. This isn’t much of a national emergency, but it’s an emergency for Lorenzo Vega. Call the goddamn number.”

Vega accepted the phone unwillingly. When the operator came on the line he whispered an area code and a number. She asked him to say it again, louder. Shayne had instructed her that all calls to area code 202 or 703—Washington, D. C., or Virginia—were to be put through to Tim Rourke at the Three Deuces bar.

“Hello?” Vega said cautiously when he heard an answer. “Red Tiger calling. Red Tiger, Miami.”

A voice exploded in his ear, and he winced away from the phone. He tried to speak, but Rourke overrode him.

“Yes,” he said finally. “I hope you will not withdraw your confidence. I assure you nothing like this will occur again.”

He hung up and turned aggressively on Shayne. “How can you people believe it was my private inspiration to organize support for Crowther? He is not congenial to me personally.”

“Lorenzo.”

“I will tell you a small sad anecdote. I have a potentially good business, importing and exporting with Latin America. I have correspondents in all parts of the continent. But I have been unlucky in my currency dealings. Delay is murderous for a man without credit. I see a chance for a profit in platinum, but it is held up, it is held up still, with the storage charges eating me up mouthful by mouthful. Some difficulty with the export license. And now I understand. U.S. Metals is also in the business of exporting platinum. Crowther and U.S. Metals are in each other’s pocket, if one can believe the newspapers.”

“I really doubt if Eliot Crowther knows you exist.”

“You think not,” Vega said stiffly. “I tell myself that coincidences happen. But sometimes, you know, these funny coincidences are not so funny. The amount of money involved is minor. But to me, a man who is not even on a small retainer from your agency any more, it is a matter of survive or not survive. Yet when I was asked, out of a love for democracy, to risk my neck for a man highly antipathetic to me, I did not hesitate.”

“Who asked you?”

“An individual calling himself Mr. Robinson,” Vega said bitterly, “because that is not his real name. The card he showed me was an excellent imitation of the real card. His rudeness was unquestionably CIA. I captured it on magnetic tape. I will play it for you, and you will see plainly that it was definitely not the idea of Lorenzo Vega.”

“How much did he pay you?”

Vega shifted, embarrassed. Shayne repeated the question.

“A miserly seventeen hundred and fifty dollars! Can you imagine? He wanted a special edition of my newspaper, but for various technical reasons that was impossible. I did as well as I could with leaflets. When I heard the sum he was offering I was nearly sick. In the old days I would receive that much every month or so for incidentals, and not be asked for an accounting. Except as a favor for an official agency of the United States government, would I involve myself in an affair that will almost certainly lead to shooting, arrests, hospitalization, for seventeen hundred and fifty dollars?”

“Was shooting part of the deal?”

“It was mentioned,” Vega admitted. “A small fusillade as an excuse to involve the police. As I say, a very good imitation of a genuine agent.”

“Who do you think he actually was?”

Vega flapped his hands. “I am at a loss to say! Shall I play you the tape? To the trained ear, perhaps he made some tiny mistake.”

“Not now. You’ve got work to do.”

“Yes?”

“You realize you’ve got to call this off.”

“But how can I?” Vega cried. “You mean publish another leaflet saying the whole thing has been a mistake? The community would laugh at me.”

“For the first time, Lorenzo?” Shayne said without sympathy. “How many people have you signed up?”

“It’s not that so much. It’s how many come out in response to the leaflets.”

“Nobody’s coming out in response to the leaflets,” Shayne said flatly. “You’ve been passing out money. Not much, probably, but some. I want to know how many you think you can count on. Start with Carlos. He looks like a broken-bottle fighter. How many others?”

“You must understand,” Vega said defensively, “that the climate in Miami right now is not favorable to a pro-United States position. As recently as a year ago I could mobilize hundreds, with a few phone calls. But everybody has jobs, they have become so materialistic. Lawn mowers. Washing machines.”

“How many?” Shayne said.

“Twenty-eight? I know it doesn’t sound like much, but twenty-eight experienced activists, properly dispersed, can set a much larger crowd in motion. To quote Napoleon, ‘Give me a corporal’s guard—’”

“All right. Twenty-eight phone calls. Tell them to stay home and watch the riot on television. In fact, if they stay home there may not be a riot.”

“I’ve already paid—”

“Don’t try to recover. That’s down the drain. They’ll be glad to earn money staying home. It’s less bloody.”

“Some were looking forward to it, you know. I ought to have a fund to dispense in case—”

“Lorenzo,” Shayne said softly, “if five of your people show up tomorrow, Internal Revenue is going to be looking for you, and I hope you believe I mean it. Don’t look so unhappy—people are talking about you again. You’re important enough to be bought. That’s better than nothing. Now let’s see how it sounds.”

A good Japanese tape recorder was concealed under Shayne’s dashboard, with pickup mikes planted at various places around the car’s interior. The playback was tied into the radio speaker. He moved a recessed dial built into the left side of the driver’s seat. The tape whirred. He reversed it, and Vega’s voice came out:

“His rudeness was unquestionably CIA. I captured it on magnetic tape. I will play it for you, and you will see plainly that it was definitely not the idea of Lorenzo Vega.”

“Very good fidelity,” Shayne commented. “Not everybody has such clear diction.”

“You do not surprise me,” Vega said wearily. “I made my tape of the spurious Mr. Robinson for the same reason, self-protection. Then I can expect no remuneration at all from you, even say five hundred dollars? One hundred?”

“Zero.”

“Past loyalties, I see, count for nothing. Now please tell me what I am to say when this Mr. Robinson, whoever he may be, asks me how he got so little value for his money?”

“You’d better keep out of sight for a while,” Shayne told him. “First I want that tape. Then get to work on the cancellation. When that’s taken care of, go to the Royalton Arms Motel in North Miami. I may or not need you. I’ll call in a few days.”

The phone rang between them.

“Do call in a few days,” Vega said. “It makes me nervous to think that people have forgotten me. I do rash things.”

“This time stay cool.”

The phone rang again. He picked it up.

A voice he didn’t recognize said, “Shayne?”

Shayne jerked his head, dismissing Vega, and waited till the Cuban was out of the car. He rolled up the windows and returned to the phone.

“Yeah, this is Shayne.”

“Tell me your car license for an identification.”

Shayne dropped his hand to the controls of the tape recorder, advanced the tape and opened the switch cutting in both ends of the phone transmission. By that time he had recited his license number.

“Now who is this?”

“No names! I am notifying you because I don’t like what is going on, and I want you to stop it.”

“Stop what?”

“When I went into this, nobody told me there would be someone killed. I am for the revolution like anybody else, but Madre de Dìos! When you think of the excitement, the chance of a slip-up, and I am in it up to my neck. You have to do something.”

“I’m listening.” Shayne felt for a cigarette. “What do you think I should do?”

The next words rushed into his ear. “It is dangerous for me to be talking to you. They will kill me promptly if they find out. I have picked you because I am told you are careful, you don’t blab to the newspapers like the damn police. Crowther will be shot. And if we are caught, everybody with a small part in it will be thrown into jail forever. Tell him to stay away from Miami! They say the plan is sure to succeed. I know nothing of that, I am only to drive. You are listening?”

“Carefully.”

“I can tell you only this. The person who is to do the killing is a woman.” He said hastily, “I have to hang up. Bye-bye.”

CHAPTER 8

Camilla Steele stepped out of the taxi at the International Airport. Friday night had arrived at last. It was a little after nine, according to the big clock confronting her as she entered the main concourse.

So far she was following instructions exactly, and she was pleased with herself. She had dressed carefully, because strange things had been happening to her lately, and she wasn’t sure how the evening would end. There was a smile of sorts on her face—a little strained, because those muscles hadn’t been exercised lately. The human mind is a mystery. She had no idea why the prospect of committing murder should make her feel cheerful. Perhaps because it gave her a goal, something she had lacked since her husband’s death.

Was she actually going to shoot this creep Crowther? Perhaps. Yes, now that she was here in the airport at the appointed time, she had to admit that the thing had begun to take on a certain reality.

She hadn’t had a drink for three days. Of course she was sorry to say that she was taking more Dexamyl than was good for her. But she didn’t want to miss anything. She wasn’t sleeping. These were her last days on earth, not that she wanted to romanticize anything, and she had been hurrying from place to place, seeing old friends on impulse, making lists and then misplacing them. She had had two more conversations with the anonymous voice, the man who was going to help her assassinate Eliot Crowther. She had annoyed him, she thought, by saying casually that she might as well fall in with his suggestion because how much did she have to lose? He would have preferred a little passion. But that wasn’t her way. She would take things as they came, and at the last minute, if she actually saw the handsome face and phony white hair of Eliot Crowther, and if she had a loaded pistol in her hand at the time, she would undoubtedly pull the trigger. But she didn’t intend to shout any slogans. He wasn’t worth the effort.

Her co-conspirator, whoever he was, wasn’t happy about this. In all the famous assassinations—Judith and Holofernes, Charlotte Corday and Marat, Booth and Lincoln, and all the more recent ones—the assassins had been fanatics, dedicated people. Now and then Camilla could work herself up to that pitch, but it passed quickly. Her attention span was getting shorter and shorter.

Still, if he was willing to keep reminding her, she thought there was a good chance that it might actually happen.

And a day later, a ticket arrived in the mail, entitling someone named Mrs. Doris Myerson to admission to the luncheon at which Crowther was to receive his ludicrous medal. She would need to show this ticket to get into the ballroom elevator. She would show it again at a table on the eighth floor. She had been told exactly where she was to stand. She went to the hotel the next day, ascended to the eighth floor, looked into the ballroom, took up a position according to instructions, and pointed her finger at an imaginary attorney general, a step or two away.

When the voice called that night—in her mind she capitalized it, the Voice—she told him the whole thing seemed childishly simple, and reminded him that he had done nothing about providing a gun. They had a strange kind of quarrel on the phone, like any bickering married couple. He demanded to know, before he got in any deeper, whether she was playing a game with him, or was she serious? She gave him an honest answer: she didn’t know. She wouldn’t know till it happened.

Before he brought the lengthy call to an end, he gave her a lecture about technique. No doubt she wasn’t much of a marksman with a pistol. No matter; at that range, accuracy was not essential. The important thing was to keep her head. Too many assassins got a good position on their victims and then were so nervous or excited that they fired only a single shot. Even when the bullet went home, the victim sometimes recovered. The thing to remember was to keep firing until the gun was empty. The final bullet might be the one that did the crucial damage.

Because of their quarrel about her lack of sincerity, it wouldn’t have surprised Camilla to hear nothing more about it. But the next day’s mail brought further instructions, a tiny key, and a claims ticket for a piece of luggage checked on an incoming flight to the International Airport. The letter was postmarked New York, and she decided, on an impulse, to save the envelope. Then another impulse took hold, and she ripped up the envelope and threw it away.

Now, at 9:05 P.M. Friday, at the International Airport, she looked for a window marked Unclaimed Luggage. Finding it without difficulty, she handed in her check.

She didn’t like the Voice, she decided as she waited. It had been a little too oily. She believed there was something in people’s voices that gave them away. This man, she sensed, didn’t hate Crowther. The killing was incidental to something else—that much had come through. She was only an instrument. Which was all right, she supposed, as long as she knew what she was doing.

And suddenly, as she was waiting for the suitcase, an alternative began to take shape. Obviously Camilla Steele as a person had very little future. She was assuming, and so was the Voice, that she would be caught. Security guards and police would be swarming all over her before the shots stopped echoing. And after that? Like her husband, she would spend years in a condemned cell while the lawyers squabbled. Felix had enjoyed it, in a way; she sometimes thought that he had even enjoyed his execution. He had been the center of attention, and had been able to annoy everybody. But Camilla, by that time, would have escaped into madness—if she wasn’t crazy already, which was certainly arguable. When she came face to face with Crowther, what if she shot herself instead of shooting him? It would end the agony. By reviving the old story of the miscarriage of justice, it might, it probably would, put a stop to his political advancement.

And what was so bad about suicide? Every thinking person had to keep it open as the final option. She herself had frequently come close—most recently, on the night Paul London asked her to marry him and she had her first phone call from the Voice. Under that kind of bombardment, what was the point in living one more day? A funny thing had stopped her. Her only weapons were sleeping pills, and a sleeping-pill death would be impossibly banal. She wouldn’t have a second chance—she had to get it right the first time. Suicide at its most elegant was an act of disgust. Crowther disgusted her. Politicians disgusted her. Awarding Crowther the Freedom Medal was one of the most disgusting things that had ever happened. The least she could do was spoil his luncheon for him. If she killed herself at his feet, he would have to discard his prepared speech.

The checkroom clerk brought out a nondescript fabric suitcase and pushed it across the counter.

She had been told not to return to her apartment, but to check into a Beach hotel. A reservation had been made for her in the name of Meyerson, the name on the luncheon ticket. But she was beginning to balk at those precise instructions. She wanted to find out right now what her unknown friend had sent her. It was irrational not to wait, but after coming this far in an assassination plot without knowing whether or not she wanted to do it, she could hardly consider herself rational.

She carried the suitcase to the nearest ladies’ room. The booths were coin-operated. She had given the taxi driver her last loose change. Instead of going back to the concourse to break a bill, she made a bet with herself.

There was no one around. She decided to open the suitcase there and see if it did, in fact, contain a gun, as promised. If somebody came in and saw her, that would be a sign that the bad luck was running, and she could stop thinking of herself in terms of Charlotte Corday, and return to her idle life in the Miami Beach bars.

The key worked stiffly, but at last the suitcase opened. Inside, she found a handbag packed in crumpled newspaper. Inside that, there was a neat, blue-black automatic. It was surprisingly small, almost pretty, with a funny kind of metallic attachment at the end of the barrel. A silencer?

It fitted nicely into her palm. Looking up, she saw her reflection in the mirror—Camilla Steele, thirty (thirty!), in her best black cocktail dress, with a heavy gold necklace given her by a man whose name she could no longer remember, holding a firearm, no less deadly for being so small. The picture was so exactly right, as though all her life she had been needing a gun to complete her personality, that she doubled forward suddenly and retched into the basin.

There was a sound behind her. When she straightened and looked in the mirror again, she was still alone, but the door was swinging slightly.

Now, of course, she had to hurry. She thrust the gun in the handbag. Leaving the empty suitcase lying open on the floor, she went back to the busy concourse. A voice on the public address was clamoring about planes that were about to depart. One of her sudden impulses hit her. Perhaps she should take that flight, no matter where it was going. She had money. When it landed, she would hunt up a cocktail lounge and order a drink.

The announcement came again—a Pan-American plane headed somewhere or other.

She started for the Pan-Am ticket counter. She saw a woman talking excitedly to a uniformed guard. She swerved and went down into a big kitchen. She thought she heard footsteps behind her. A surprised face under a chefs hat looked around, and somebody shouted. At an open door, an Eastern Airlines food truck was being loaded from rolling carts.

“What are you—” a voice said, and she ran past the food truck and out onto the loading apron.

A power cart was blowing air into one of the engines of a big jet. A sudden exhaust spumed toward Camilla as the engine came alive. A truck carrying baggage bore down on her. Blinded by the lights, she leaped aside.

In an upstairs bedroom in an imitation Moorish apartment building in Coral Gables, a dark young man with pale green eyes, which seemed darker in photographs, moved the curtain a quarter of an inch and looked out carefully.

“Sì. Son policías.”

There were several others in the room, including a girl. The young man at the window asked a slightly built teenager a question. The boy assented eagerly. The others fitted him out with a disfiguring set of front teeth, a false moustache and sunglasses. He emptied a glass of wine, went out to the street and sauntered north. Two detectives followed.

Soon afterward the young man and the others left the building by a rear door. They removed to another house some distance away. After making sure that they hadn’t been followed, they loaded two dozen Winchester sporting rifles into the trunk of a Pontiac convertible. The girl parked it two blocks away, checked twice to be sure it was locked, and walked back to the house.

The meeting was held in a conference room in City Hall.

The mayor of Miami was present with two of his aides. They remained silent. Will Gentry, Miami chief of police, had called the meeting. Peter Painter was there, representing the Miami Beach police. Abe Berger, the Secret Service agent charged with the protection of cabinet members, had flown in from Washington. General Matt Turner, of the U.S. Army, was sitting beside Michael Shayne.

Gentry opened the meeting, outlining the security situation as it had seemed that morning, and asked Shayne to take it from there.

There was a small flurry at the door and another man arrived. He was short and plump, with a nervous moustache which he dabbed at anxiously when he saw that everybody in the room was looking at him. “Am I late? Teddy Sparrow. I’m standing in for Mr. Devlin.”

Larry Devlin, a tough, competent ex-cop, commanded the International Protective Agency contingent at the International Airport, a uniformed force of thirty or forty private guards. Sparrow until recently had operated his own one-man private detective business in Miami. He had tried hard, but he was almost completely inept, and he had finally closed his office and gone to work at the airport. “Devlin said he’d be here,” Gentry said.

“He was called away, you might say. He’s in Oklahoma on private business. But he left me explicit instructions and I’m glad to report that the situation at International Airport is well in hand.”

He pulled out the chair next to General Turner, and the corner of the chair caught the general in the knee. Flustered, he apologized too profusely, and sat down. He laced his fingers, broke them apart and laced them again.

“Shayne’s going to fill us in on the background of this thing,” Gentry said. “Go ahead, Mike.”

“I’d like to ask what made Devlin take off for Oklahoma on such short notice,” Shayne said.

Sparrow looked startled. He tightened his necktie and looked around the table with an ingratiating smile.

“I find myself in pretty fast company, is all I have to say. I didn’t realize this was going to be on such a rarefied level.” He closed off his smile and looked serious. “I did promise Devlin before he left that I wouldn’t noise it around, but if he was here himself I think he’d give me the all-clear. It’s his son, Lawrence, Junior. He wired his father to come at once and bring six hundred dollars in cash, and not to say anything to the boy’s mother. And that indicates to me that it’s something embarrassing, but I more or less felt I had to leave it at that. I wish it hadn’t happened at just this juncture. But we’re a team out there, gentlemen. We finish each other’s sentences, so to speak. I’ll just ask myself what Larry Devlin would do in my shoes, and I don’t think I’ll go very far wrong. Every man on the regular force will be working tomorrow, plus twenty specials at double-time.”

“Do you have a number where Devlin can be reached?” Shayne said.

“He’s going to call me. We didn’t understand it was that much of an emergency.”

Shayne and Will Gentry exchanged a look. Gentry said calmly, “Continue, Mike.”

Shayne described Vega’s plan to disrupt the Galvez demonstration, and he played the tape Vega had given him. Parts of it were inaudible.

“I made a rough transcript,” Shayne said, “and you can pick up a copy before you leave. Now here’s a conversation I had with Vega a couple of hours ago. I have the man himself on tap in North Miami if anybody wants to talk to him.”

They listened closely. Abe Berger, the Secret Service man, shot Shayne a sharp look when Vega called what he had been persuaded to believe was a Washington number.

“You’re a sharpshooter, Mike.”

“Yeah. Now here’s the phone call I got about the assassination.”

On this hearing, it seemed to Shayne that the Latin accent was too careful to be real.

“He used a filter to change the pitch,” Abe Berger said slowly. “I’d better take it back and let the lab boys fool with it.”

“But it’s an obvious phony!” Peter Painter said waspishly. “I’m surprised you’re taking it so seriously. It’s supposed to distract our attention so they can hit us somewhere else.”

General Turner started to speak, and Painter said hastily, “I’m not saying we shouldn’t take every precaution. I can assure you that my Miami Beach organization is ready for anything short of a natural disaster. If these radicals think they’re going to outflank me, they’re in for a surprise. There’ll be some skulls cracked tomorrow, I can promise you that.”

“Which may be just what they want,” Shayne observed. “And I’m prepared to oblige them!”

The meeting broke up twenty minutes later. One important decision had been reached: General Turner had made four phone calls, in ascending order of importance, and a battalion of airborne infantry was promised for nine o’clock the following morning. Security precautions were to be intensified at the airport and the hotel. The assassination tip was to be kept quiet. The printing plant that had printed Vega’s leaflets had been fire-bombed earlier that evening, and the leaders of every militant Latin American organization in Miami were to be picked up and held on high bail until Eliot Crowther had completed his speech and started back.

Berger and Shayne left the room together. Teddy Sparrow, who had bolted to the corridor the minute the meeting was over, intercepted them at the elevators.

“Mike,” he said, patting his forehead with a folded square of Kleenex, “could I have a word with you, more or less in private?”

“Be with you in a minute, Abe.” He took his plump ex-colleague further down the corridor. “What is it, Teddy?”

“Well, listen, I didn’t anticipate getting thrown in there with the top brass. I used to hold my own pretty well when I had the investigator’s license, but I know what your regular cop thinks of people in protection agencies. Glorified night watchmen. Painter! He looks down his nose at anybody who didn’t pass their civil service exams. Never mind that. I wanted to ask what you think about that telegram Devlin got. Do you think there’s a chance it was a fake?”

“A very good chance, Teddy,” Shayne said. “Gentry’s checking on it.”

Sparrow patted his forehead. “And the deduction I make from that is that something’s definitely going to take place at the airport tomorrow, and they wanted to get Devlin out of town. Not so flattering to yours truly, but let that go. Damn it, I may not have that much experience in airport security, but I know the physical plant inside out, and if I say it myself, I have good rapport with the men. Who are not all dunces, by any manner of means.”

“I’m glad to hear it, Teddy,” Shayne said impatiently. “Can you get to the point?”

“The point is this. The army and Berger and so on are planning to bypass us. You may have noticed that whenever I made a suggestion, it was received with an amused little smile. Well, it’s dumb! It’s all very well, bringing in paratroops, but those boys have never been in Miami International, and they’ll need Seeing Eye dogs to lead them around. Meanwhile, I’ll be getting in everybody’s way out of ignorance of the situation, when I could be making a contribution. I’ll be up all night if I can manage to stay awake, which is a problem with me, and if there’s anything you think I ought to know, I hope you’ll call me.”

“I’m pretty far down the chain of command this time,” Shayne said.

“Now, Mike,” Sparrow said, smiling. “But that’s neither here nor there. Bear it in mind, and here’s what I really wanted to tell you. Painter was sort of pooh-poohing that phone call you got, the voice from nowhere that said the potential assassin was a female. Something happened at the airport tonight, a peculiar little episode on the face of it, and I want to get your opinion. A lady went into the rest room on the main concourse. I can get you the time if you think it’s important. I made a note of it. About nine. As she told me the story, somebody was being sick into a washbowl. Another lady, naturally, that goes without saying. And she had a gun in her hand.”

Shayne frowned. “Why didn’t you bring this up at the meeting?”

“Mike, after the way Painter was cutting me down I didn’t feel like opening my mouth. And nothing came of it. I investigated myself. By the time I got down from my office there was nobody there. It was kind of touchy going into a lavatory for the opposite sex, but I gritted my teeth and went in. Right in the middle of the floor was this empty suitcase. I say empty. There were some crumpled-up pieces of The New York Times inside it, but nothing else. The flight tag was still on the handle. I checked that immediately. It was a New York flight and it came in at four o’clock this afternoon.”

“Did you get a description of the woman?”

“Absolutely. That was the first question I asked, but she was leaning over the basin, and of course the view was definitely from the rear. The impression my informant got was that she was kind of middle-aged, and maybe a Negro.”

Shayne considered for a moment. “Tell Will Gentry right away. He’ll want to talk with your witness and check the flight records. If she came in at four o’clock, why was she still hanging around your terminal at nine? Maybe the airline lost her suitcase. The baggage people might remember her.”

“Oh, my God,” Sparrow said, his hands flying. “The one thing I neglected to do when I interrogated that woman was take her name. I mean, I took down her verbatim statement and I thought that was adequate. I didn’t know anything about a possible assassination at the time.”

“We’ll have to work with what we have,” Shayne said, patiently. “She said a gun. Does that mean a handgun?”

“A pistol. Definitely not a rifle or anything.”

Will Gentry appeared with General Turner. Shayne left them conferring with Sparrow, who was having another nervous attack, smiling too much and continuing to pat at his forehead.

Berger and Shayne found a booth in a dim bar two blocks from City Hall. After ordering drinks Shayne told the Secret Service man about Sparrow’s account of the woman who had been seen in the ladies’ room with a gun in her hand. Berger listened skeptically, reserving judgment.

“How do you evaluate it, Mike?”

“I used Teddy a number of times when he had a private detective’s license. He’s not a complete fool. I admit I’d feel better if Devlin was here. He’s a known quantity. But Teddy can surprise you at times.”

Their drinks arrived. Shayne looked down into his cognac without drinking.

“I still can’t believe Gil Ruiz is here in Miami in person. But even if he’s masterminding it from a distance, we have to expect a certain amount of razzle-dazzle. I think Painter may have been partly right. Isn’t it one of the big theories that to win in guerrilla warfare you fake in one place, and come in somewhere else, where nobody’s expecting you?”

“That’s Chapter One. It’s like a football offense. You try to hide what you’re doing until the defense is committed.”

“OK. Somebody sent a telegram that decoyed Devlin out of town, leaving airport protection in the hands of Teddy Sparrow. So we concentrate on the airport. But Crowther won’t be using the terminal tomorrow. He’ll transfer to a helicopter on one of the taxi-strips. Anybody who wants to take a shot at him out there will have to use a rifle. This woman in the ladies’ room had a pistol. The only place the public will get close enough to use a handgun will be at the hotel.”

“Unless that’s the fake,” Berger said. “That whole scene sounds a little peculiar. Let’s see.” He ticked off the possibilities. “Either Sparrow’s witness was lying and there wasn’t any woman, or she had something else in her hand that only looked like a gun. Or she was really there, and really had a gun, but the scene was staged. Or she was really there and the scene wasn’t staged, in which case we’re dealing with a kook, and not a political assassin.”

Shayne drank half his cognac. “Don’t qualify it when you talk to Crowther. Tell him it’s a real woman with a real gun. It may persuade him to stay home.”

“I’ll try. But he’s convinced that if he doesn’t keep this date, he’s through in politics, and he could be right.”

“Do you think there’s a chance he leaked that story about the U.S. Metals retainer?”

“Why would he do that?” Berger said, surprised. “It was a slam. He’s known as a civil-rights man—it’s going to hurt him with the liberals.”

“Unless he’s looking for new backing,” Shayne said. “It costs money to run for senator. It’s just the kind of tricky move he’s famous for. He hasn’t had much exposure on the home screen lately, and from what I know about Crowther, I’m sure it’s been bothering him. This U.S. Metals story is what’s bringing out the demonstrators tomorrow. The more excitement, the bigger the headlines.”

“True,” Berger said doubtfully, “but he doesn’t go out of his way to stir up trouble. One of the few things I like about him, he’s a coward.”

When Shayne laughed, Berger said seriously, “That’s a compliment. A little realistic cowardice is a fine trait in an elected official. It’s the hunters and shooters, who don’t know what it means to be afraid, who drive me crazy. If he didn’t think it was vital to be here—and I don’t mean just important, I mean vital—he’d cancel like a shot. When I told him you’d been tipped off to an assassination, I really thought he’d turn white and call in his speech-writers to draft a statement of why, after all, it was impossible for Attorney General Crowther to go to Miami. It jarred him, but not much. He lit a cigarette, and his hand was hardly shaking at all.”

Shayne tapped his glass thoughtfully. “He usually follows your suggestions?”

“Always, Mike, he’s always been very docile. If I tell him to go in the back way he may gripe about it—they all do—but he goes in the back way. He takes his hate mail seriously. I remember once—” His eyes narrowed. “You had something to do with the Felix Steele case, didn’t you?”

“Not officially, and too late to change the outcome.”

“It’s a funny thing, but the first person I thought of when I listened to that tape you played us was Steele’s wife, I forget her first name.”

“Camilla.”

“Does she still live in Miami? She used to write Crowther regularly, and if you’re interested in threatening letters, hers were gems. I had a long talk with her myself, and I came to the conclusion that she didn’t really mean what she said. But Crowther thought she meant it. He got her a job, to give her something to think about. We had her arrested briefly, and I think the letters finally stopped. Anyhow they didn’t get as far as me. It’s something I’ll have to check.” He looked at the time. “I’m getting an eleven o’clock flight back, but I’d better phone him before he goes to bed. Conceivably the mysterious lady with the gun will convince him that Miami isn’t healthy. Order me another drink. It’s on the government.”

Catching the waiter’s eye, Shayne made a swirling gesture for another round. Something Berger had said bothered him. He returned to the start of the conversation and followed it through again, ending with the same dissatisfied feeling. He put out his cigarette, crumpling it viciously, and started over once more.

Berger returned, and took the top off his Scotch before saying anything.

“Here’s the current theory, and it’s a wild one. The Steele woman is still writing Crowther, mailing her letters from different cities and using words cut out of newspapers. They aren’t signed, but there’s something about the tone. A sort of playfulness, he says. Very macabre, apparently. He didn’t want to get her in any more trouble because of everything she’s been through, that’s why he didn’t report it. Translated out of Crowtherese, that means he didn’t think the evidence was good enough to get a conviction.”

“How current is this?”

“Very. The last one was two days ago, postmarked Miami. It was in a kind of elementary Spanish. Now I’m going to tell you a secret, Mike. Last month Jenkinson, the Supreme Court Justice, was checking his climbing equipment before he went off to climb some damn South American mountain. One of his nylon ropes snapped under a fifty-pound pull. He turned it over to us for analysis. On either side of the break, the strands had been weakened by acid.”

“What’s the connection?”

“Wait a minute. He thought it might have something to do with his antisegregation opinions, and that worried Crowther because he’d argued some of those cases for the government. Oddly enough, Jenkinson denied the last application for a stay of execution in the Steele case. Here’s Crowther’s notion. Maybe this madwoman plans to eliminate, one by one, everybody who had a part in her husband’s death. Unquote. He feels it’s his duty to force her hand and possibly forestall a number of other killings. So he’s coming. No change in plans.”

He drank angrily. “That sabotaged rope was like the anonymous letters—playful. Alpinists are careful people. Jenkinson tests everything very carefully before he starts up a mountain, and whoever weakened that rope probably knew it. It’s as though she wants to do something to notify her old enemies that she’s still around, still thinking about them. What if Sparrow’s eyewitness was actually Camilla? A mild hoax, and of course we all panicked. I don’t know. I expect she’ll be hard to find. That would be part of the joke. But find her, Mike. If Teddy can identify her we’ll get her committed.”

“I always thought she was quite a woman,” Shayne said. “So did I when I met her. What difference does that make?”

CHAPTER 9

Camilla Steele lived in a garden apartment in Buena Vista.

Michael Shayne and a city detective named Squires approached the building. Squires rang the bell. Getting no answer, he opened the door with a skeleton key. Entering, they turned on all the lights and carefully searched the empty apartment.

The air-conditioning was on high. A double bed in the bedroom was unmade. The condition of the sheets showed that whoever had slept there last had done considerable tossing and turning. In addition to being a restless sleeper, Camilla was a compulsively untidy housekeepeer. A container of cream had been left out in the messy kitchen. Numerous empty liquor bottles, torn pill containers and partially smoked cigarettes were scattered about. Shayne made a careful inventory of the medicine cabinet. There were several kinds of headache remedies, different brands of prescription tranquillizers. Amphetamine and barbiturate prescriptions had been written by different doctors. Her birth-control pills were dated in sequence so she wouldn’t lose track; she was currently three days behind.

There were more barbiturates in the bedroom, again from different drugstores, with different prescription numbers. The bureau was littered with unopened bills, loose change and a checkbook. She hadn’t added up the checkbook for three months. One of the bills was from a doctor named Irving Miller. Shayne tore this open. Dr. Miller was a psychiatrist, with a Miami Beach office, and Camilla Steele owed him for professional services which the doctor valued at $950.

Squires phoned headquarters and read a list of numbers he found scrawled on the card at the beginning of her phone book. Gentry, at the other end of the connection, asked to speak to Shayne.

After taking the phone, Shayne said, slowly, “I think we’d better get out an all-precinct call, Will. Her car’s not in the garage. She’s forgotten to take her birth-control pill for three days running. From the looks of the apartment she hasn’t been paying much attention to routine lately. There are enough pills in the place to kill three people. A week’s newspapers scattered around. There’s a picture of Crowther on the front page of today’s News, and somebody’s stuck three pins through it.”

“Hold on, Mike.” He told somebody in his office to get on another phone and find out the make and license number of Camilla Steele’s car. Coming back to Shayne, he said, “Does it look as though she was home today?”

“Yeah. She left out some cream and it hasn’t turned sour. I hope the photo morgues can find a recent picture, because from all the medicine lying around I doubt if she’s as good-looking as she used to be. Another thing—there are four different hair colors in the bathroom, from ash-blond to black. I’ve seen two wigs, one black and one platinum. She was blond once. That doesn’t mean she’s still blond.”

“What kind of feel does the place have, Mike? You know what I mean. Does it look as though she’s planning to put bullets in Crowther tomorrow instead of pins?”

“God knows,” Shayne said, looking around. “She’s certainly been thinking about him. Berger kept talking about playfulness. Sticking pins in a photograph is a playful way to kill somebody, and collecting three times too many sleeping pills is a playful way to commit suicide. No sign of a gun.”

Squires had picked out something else while Shayne was talking—a photograph of a man standing beside a car.

“It was at the bottom of a bureau drawer,” he said. “Underneath everything. A funny place for a snapshot.”

“This lady is not in the best of mental health.”

“You know it.”

It had been decided that they would leave the apartment dark, and that Squires would wait outside in his unmarked car. Shayne returned to his Buick and started south on Biscayne Boulevard, heading for the Julia Tuttle Causeway to the Beach.

An open convertible came up behind him rapidly and pulled out as though to pass, honking. In his side mirror Shayne saw that the driver was waving him over. He braked and slid in against the curb.

The other car passed him and parked. When the driver came into Shayne’s headlights, Shayne saw a well-built young man, getting bald too early. He had had more hair in the photograph Camilla Steele had squirreled away at the bottom of a bureau drawer.

“You’re Mike Shayne, aren’t you? I thought it was you. Can I get in?”

Shayne cut his headlights. Leaning over, he unlatched the front door. As he straightened, he activated his tape recorder.

“Look, I’m Paul London,” the young man said quickly. “I’m a friend of Mrs. Steele’s. I know she’s in some kind of a jam, and I want to find out if there’s anything I can do.”

“What kind of jam do you think she’s in?”

London hesitated. “I don’t want to answer that. It might turn out to be something you didn’t already know. The other guy’s a cop, isn’t he? I can’t go up to a cop and ask him why he’s searching somebody’s apartment. They don’t give out that kind of information. But I thought you might be halfway human.”

“Mr. London, are you or Camilla Steele affiliated with any group that’s working for the forcible overthrow of any Latin government?”

“What?”

Shayne put a cigarette in his mouth and waited. After a moment, London said, “I’m not, certainly. I guess I really don’t know about Camilla. She works for a foundation that gives research fellowships to Latin American scientists, but she doesn’t talk much about it. All that stuff in the papers. Is that why you’re—”

He stopped. Shayne’s lighter flared.

“How well do you know her?”

“We were in high school together. We dated for a couple of years until—well, you know the story.”

“Are you married?”

“Not any more. If you’re wondering about my interest in this, I want her to marry me. She’s turned me down. Nevertheless—” He drew a deep breath. “I’m on vacation. I went away for a couple of days, but I couldn’t relax. I finally decided to come back. I’m—damn it, I’m afraid she’s going to try to kill herself or something equally stupid. If she can get through this weekend I think she may be all right.”

Shayne smoked for a moment in silence. “She keeps a picture of you at the bottom of one of her bureau drawers.”

“You’re mistaken,” London told him seriously. “She doesn’t care that much about—” He swung around. “You mean you found one?”

“Yeah. I’d judge it was taken about three years ago. What were you doing parked outside her house?”

“Waiting for her. She specifically said she didn’t want me hanging around, and she really meant it. But the way she drove off tonight—”

“What time?”

“About eight thirty. She was carrying a scarf, and one end was dragging on the ground. That’s what decided me. She doesn’t do that kind of thing, no matter how many drinks she’s had. She jumped in her car and took off like a drag-racer. By the time I got organized it was hopeless to try to catch her. I decided to wait and see if I could—” His grip on his knees tightened. “Did she have an accident? You can at least tell me that.”

“We don’t know where she is. Do you think this funny behavior has anything to do with the medal Attorney General Crowther is getting tomorrow?”

“Those letters!” London cried. “They don’t honestly mean anything, Shayne. It’s a game she’s been playing.”

“Did she ever say anything to you about Supreme Court Justice Jenkinson?”

“Who? What’s he have to do with this? The answer is no, but if you’d tell me what’s going on, maybe I could help. I’ve been seeing her fairly often.”

“Does she own a gun?”

“A gun,” London breathed. “Jesus. I doubt it like hell. You don’t believe she’s thinking about—?”

Shayne snapped on the overhead light and asked to see London’s identification. He was thirty-one, an office-furniture salesman. Making up his mind abruptly, Shayne told him about the anonymous tipster who had warned him that an attempt was to be made on Crowther’s life, and that the potential killer was a woman. Then he described the tableau in the airport ladies’ room.

“There’s more, but those are the two main items. Somebody’s putting up a smoke screen. We don’t know what the real move is going to be, or where. Whatever it is, it has to be serious. Three different people have pointed guns at me since four o’clock this afternoon, and I’ve been slugged from behind with an ax-handle, for no particular reason, because I don’t know much more about what’s going on than you do. I hope Camilla’s not planning to play any games with Crowther tomorrow. A battalion of airborne infantry’s coming down from Bragg. Every cop in town is going to be on duty with a loaded weapon.”

“Oh God,” London said unhappily. “I’d better tell you everything that happened yesterday and today. Can you give me a cigarette?”

Shayne shook one out of his pack.

“As soon as I got in yesterday I called her office. She wouldn’t talk to me. I’d already decided I couldn’t afford to be too touchy, so I waited downstairs. She really looked like a ghost when she came out—very tired and sick and jumpy. We had a fight in the lobby about whether I had any right, etc. She used some strong language. She was trying to make me mad, and she succeeded. But she overdid it. She wouldn’t be yelling like that in a crowded office-building lobby unless something was wrong. I followed her over to one of the hotels on the Beach.”

“The St. Albans?”

“That’s right, where Crowther is getting his medal tomorrow. I don’t know what else she did, but she picked up a man in one of the bars and took him home. At that point I decided the hell with it, not for the first time. I didn’t wait to find out how long he stayed, which was just as well. I saw him leaving this morning.”

“She didn’t take her birth-control pill yesterday,” Shayne remarked.

London had been tightening up noticeably during his account of Camilla’s evening, and now he flared. “Damn you, Shayne, you don’t care what you do, do you?”

“The medicine cabinet is always one of the first places I look. Did she know you were following her?”

“I suppose. I wasn’t trying to keep out of sight.”

“Then maybe the reason she picked somebody up was so she wouldn’t have to argue with you any more.”

“Maybe. But it wouldn’t be the first time she slept with somebody she just met. I wish she wouldn’t do it, but it’s a symptom of something else, and when she gets over that, whatever it is—” He broke off. “And of course the truth is that it’s driving me out of my skull! The guy was such a slob!”

“The slobbier the better, if the object was to get you to leave her alone. We need a recent photograph. Do you have any?”

“A couple. I took some Polaroid shots a few weeks ago, and one of them made her look just the way she used to.”

“I want one of the way she looks now. Has she ever attempted suicide?”

“Several times. Once she came pretty close. I know she thinks about it whenever she gets depressed. The last few days just before she menstruates are the bad ones. I try to keep track, so I’ll be available. When she feels really low she calls me and sometimes we stay on the phone all night. But one time last year I had to go out of town and I couldn’t reach her before I left. I kept getting a busy signal when I called. I caught an earlier flight back and got her to the hospital. Just in time, they told me.”

“What medical treatment has she been getting?”

“Various doctors. Different pills. Sometimes she’ll be almost normal for a few weeks at a time, and then all of a sudden—”

“Did she show you any of the letters she wrote Crowther?”

“No, but I heard enough about them. Did she actually mail them?”

“Apparently.”

“Part of the time I thought she was joking. She claimed she was shortening Crowther’s life by keeping him in a continual state of terror, which I tried to tell her was absurd.”

“Where is she in the menstrual cycle now, do you know?”

“That’s just it—she’s due.” He added grimly, “Unless she’s pregnant.”

Shayne stubbed out his cigarette. “OK, Paul, I want you to listen to a theory. If you collected everybody who has a reason for killing Crowther, you could fill the Orange Bowl. What if somebody else found out about these letters, and also knew she’d been thinking about killing herself? What if he offered to arrange an assassination? She wouldn’t have to know who he was. He could do it by phone. One way to get her the gun would be to put it in a suitcase and check it on a flight into International Airport, and send her the claims check.”

“You mean the phone rang and she picked it up and a voice said, Do you want to—”

“Something like that,” Shayne said. “‘You’ve been threatening to murder this man. God knows he deserves it. Put up or shut up.”

“Are you serious?”

“I’m asking your opinion. You know her. I don’t. You say these letters were partly a joke. Now here comes a genuine offer—someone who’s willing to work out all the details and tell her exactly what to do. It coincides with one of her low points, when she’s thinking about suicide anyway. This would be a much more interesting way to kill herself than swallowing pills, and she’d take Crowther with her.”

London was staring at him. “Do you know anything you haven’t told me?”

“I’m speculating. Would that kind of proposition appeal to her?”

“It might, but she wouldn’t do it.”

“Are you sure?”

“No, I’m not sure! You see I know her. We used to make love in high school. We stopped for a few years, and then we started again after her husband was condemned to death, and we’ve been doing it ever since. That doesn’t make me any kind of an expert on what she’s really like.”

Shayne didn’t comment.

After a moment London went on reluctantly, “But if that call came in at just the right moment, if he didn’t make any mistakes, she might decide—oh, that if she didn’t agree, it would mean admitting that she hadn’t ever been serious about anything, just fooling around. One thing would happen, then another, and before she knew it she’d be committed. But she wouldn’t go through with it! At the last minute—”

He thought about it, and then said helplessly, “No, I just don’t know.”

CHAPTER 10

Will Gentry, in his office in police headquarters on NW 11th Street, opened a can of ginger ale and laid out a game of solitaire. At this stage in the evening, there was nothing to do but conserve energy, and wait for something to happen.

Shayne brought Paul London in with a sheaf of Polaroid photographs. London had several ideas about where Camilla might be spending the night.

Leaving them conferring, Shayne looked up the phone number of Dr. Irving Miller, the psychiatrist whose unpaid bill for $950 Shayne had found on Camilla’s bureau. An answering service gave him another number, where the doctor was spending the evening. Twenty minutes later, Shayne dropped off the Venetian Causeway onto one of the Venetian Islands and found the house, an expensive modern dwelling belonging to another psychiatrist. Most of the guests that evening drove Cadillacs, Shayne noted. After giving a maid his name and telling her that he wanted to talk to Dr. Miller, he walked around the house to a terrace overlooking the bay. The moon was in its final quarter.

Dr. Miller proved to be a sharp-nosed, nearsighted man in a white dinner jacket. He had been drinking. For obvious professional reasons, he explained to Shayne, he found it impossible to discuss his patients, ever. Shayne told him bluntly that this particular patient was involved, in some unexplained fashion, in a conspiracy to assassinate a high government official, and unless he discussed her now, he would find himself discussing her in front of a grand jury.

Dr. Miller’s breath came out as though Shayne had hit him in the stomach. He threw his cigar into the bay and sat down on the flagstone railing. Shayne explained the situation. Presently Dr. Miller went back into the house and returned with drinks. His training had conditioned him to attach labels to people, to divide them into categories according to the symptoms they had in common, but behind the bristling manner and professional jargon, Shayne thought he saw concern and a genuine liking for Camilla as a human being. They talked for more than an hour.

From there Shayne continued to Miami Beach.

At the St. Albans, as he expected, he found Johnny Cheyfitz, the head security officer, awake and worrying. He was glad to get an outsider’s opinion of the security arrangements, which had been worked out jointly with Peter Painter and the army, and okayed by Berger before he flew back to Washington. Cheyfitz had an uneasy feeling that they had overlooked something. Though it was no longer really his responsibility, he didn’t want any blood to be shed in his hotel.

“That’s the one thing you can’t get out of carpets,” he said. “You have to take them up and burn them.”

He turned on all the lights on the ballroom floor. After a time Shayne told him to go to bed. But if Cheyfitz didn’t mind, Mike would hang around a little longer.

“Glad to have somebody else involved, Mike. This I’m not possessive about.”

He said good night. Soon afterward a room service waiter brought up a bottle of cognac, a glass and a pitcher of ice water.

“Compliments of Mr. Cheyfitz.”

“Yeah, thanks,” Shayne said absently, dropping a bill onto the tray.

He poured a slug of cognac and went on prowling about the ballroom and the corridor between the ballroom and the elevators. There was a ten-foot gap between the raised dais and the nearest tables. Secret Service men would line up shoulder to shoulder in the interval, facing outward. Shayne checked the sight-lines from the front tables and the low television platform, which was placed at the ballroom entrance, where the cameras could cover Crowther’s arrival, and then swivel around to follow him to his place on the dais.

Half an hour later, Shayne called the Three Deuces, where he had told Tim Rourke to wait.

“Hey, Mike,” Rourke said genially, “what happened? I’m three quarters smashed. I’ve been drinking bar bourbon and whispering to a chick who pretends I’m slurring my words so she can’t understand me. She understands me, all right. I just watched the news. This is a hell of a story, and do you realize I don’t know anything more about it than I saw on that tiny screen? I shouldn’t be sitting here. I ought to be out talking to people.”

Shayne told him to leave his drink on the bar, say good night to the girl, and come to the eighth floor of the St. Albans, where he would find Shayne filling in the chinks in a story that could be one of the biggest of Rourke’s career. Rourke clicked off. Shayne then signaled for the switchboard girl and asked for Cheyfitz.

When the security man answered, Shayne apologized for disturbing him again.

“Tomorrow night I’ll sleep,” Cheyfitz said. “Or maybe I won’t, depending on what happens tomorrow morning.”

“Do you happen to know if Crowther’s been in Miami Beach lately?”

“Last week, Mike. He stayed here at the St. A. That was before all the noise in the papers, and there was absolutely no fuss or bother. It was billed as a vacation, but I know they did some conferring about the ceremony tomorrow. He went in the pool like anybody else, and nobody took any shots at him.”

Shayne thanked him and hung up. Tim Rourke, coming into the ballroom some time later, found him sitting on the dais in the master of ceremonies’ chair, his heels on the table, swirling cognac. For what must have been the tenth time, he was rearranging his meager supply of hard facts. Again they dropped into the same pattern.

“What are you doing, Mike?” his friend demanded. “Thinking? This is no time for thinking, man. It’s a time for action.”

Shayne waved his glass. “I see a bulge in your pocket. You brought a bottle. Sit down for a minute.”

Rourke was tall, skinny, always sloppily dressed. At the moment he was in serious need of a haircut. His offhand manner concealed a quick intelligence and a consuming curiosity that had made him one of the top reporters in the country.

He took a pint of bourbon out of one pocket, a highball glass containing two ice cubes out of the other. He poured whiskey over the ice and pulled out a chair.

“What’s your opinion of Eliot Crowther?” Shayne said abruptly.

Rourke sat down and drank. “What kind of question is that, at this time of night? You know my opinion of Crowther. I think he’s a bum.”

“Be more specific. Pretend you’re writing his obit, and the paper is letting you be completely honest for once.”

“What is this, a Rorschach test? An obit of Eliot Crowther—that’s a dream assignment. All right, I’ll play the game.”

He considered. “Crowther. A phony, a bigmouth. Nobody with any political sophistication would trust him to mail a letter.”

Shayne continued to look at him hard, and Rourke now said, more seriously, “Let’s assume there’s some hidden meaning in this somewhere. While Crowther lived he was one of the luckiest bastards in American politics. As tricky as they come, but because of his thatch of white hair and Benjamin Franklin glasses he didn’t look tricky. A conniver. He’d do any goddamn thing in the world if he thought it would help his political career, and if he thought he could get away with it. Self-confident. Ambitious. My God, was he ambitious. If he hadn’t been a Protestant he would have wanted to be Pope, and if the College of Cardinals had offered him the job, he would have switched. Some people thought he was brainy. I didn’t. He failed his bar exams twice, and if you really looked into it, I think you might find that somebody was standing in for him the time he passed. Of course I have a reputation for cynicism… Is this the kind of thing you’re anxious to get?”

“Go on,” Shayne said, scraping his chin with a thumbnail.

“Now consider the matter of style. His courtroom technique was greatly admired. All his effects were carefully staged, and my personal feeling was that he overdid it a little. But juries hardly ever thought so. He must have been a pretty good politician because until the day of his death he never lost an election. The odd thing is that I literally don’t know one single person who ever voted for him.”

“That’s the obituary,” Shayne said, still scraping his chin. “What do you think of him as a man?”

“You mean how does he perform in the sack? He still has his original wife, and I’ve never heard about any chicks on the side.”

“I’m thinking about how he’d stand up under pressure. Under threats.”

Rourke said slowly, “He’s a mean cat to have as an enemy. I wrote a piece once he didn’t like—it was about the Felix Steele case, remember—and he sent one of his Mafiosi to sniff around the paper and see if he could get me fired. Certain old charges against me were exhumed. Luckily the publisher knew about them and had already forgiven me.”

“Abe Berger says he worries about being assassinated. Anonymous letters make him shiver and shake.”

“Yeah?” Rourke said, interested. “Then why doesn’t he stay in Washington tomorrow? This medal isn’t a very high-priority thing.”

“That’s one of the things we’ve been wondering,” Shayne said. “The official reason is that he can’t afford to be intimidated by a Miami dentist. Unofficially, he’s hoping to flush out a crazy who may or may not be trying to murder a Supreme Court Justice, among other people, including Crowther himself.”

Rourke’s head shot forward at the end of his long neck. “More on that, please.”

Shayne described the acid-weakened climbing rope, and Crowther’s theory on why it had happened. Rourke listened intently.

“You don’t think Camilla did it?”

“No,” Shayne said. “I think Crowther did it himself.”

Rourke stood up, running his fingers through his tangled hair. He walked to the end of the dais and came back. “Mike, this man is attorney general of the United States.”

“And also, as you pointed out, a conniver, a frustrated ham actor. He’s mean and ambitious, and on top of that, scared. He hasn’t been on page one for months. How did this Freedom Medal come up in the first place?”

“It’s a money-raising lunch, and the medal’s just a gimmick. One of Crowther’s people probably dropped a hint that he was available.”

“And the next step was to leak the news that his law firm is on retainer from U.S. Metals.”

Rourke was skeptical. “Mike, that isn’t all plus.”

“It depends on his next move. He’s been mentioned for the Senate, and he may want the big political contributors to realize that he’s safe, in spite of his civil-liberties background. It guarantees him a nationwide news story. Defying potential demonstrators and ignoring threats on his life, fearless Eliot Crowther—you’d write it that way yourself.”

Rourke snapped his fingers silently. “If we could prove it, Mike—”

“We can’t,” Shayne said. “There’s more, and I know in advance that some of this you’re not going to believe. Camilla Steele has been writing him letters over the years, threatening to kill him in various gruesome ways. Half serious and half joking, and according to Berger they got under his skin. He got her an interesting job. He sent Berger down to lean on her. They had her arrested. She went right on writing the letters. The point is, she’s not exactly crazy. She had a real grievance and Crowther knows it. He got plenty of mileage out of that Felix Steele conviction. I doubt if he felt much remorse when the other confession came in.”

“Somehow I doubt it, too.”

“Nevertheless, it must have set up a few vibrations. He knew he deserved something, if only to be scared by an occasional threatening letter. He’d look silly if he tried to lock her away for good. But she’s been getting more and more unstable, and I have an idea the letters have been getting wilder and more convincing. She’s drinking and dropping pills, and there’s always an outside chance, he must think, that someday she’ll walk up out of a crowd with a gun—”

“Mike!” Rourke poured more whiskey and drank it excitedly. “Are you saying that Crowther set up this assassination himself?”

Shayne corrected him. “Not assassination. Attempted assassination. If he’s supplying the gun he can make sure it’s loaded with blanks.”

Rourke gave an awed whistle. “Let me think about this for a minute.”

“I talked to her boyfriend and her psychiatrist. She’s being treated for recurrent depressions. She tried to kill herself at least twice, and nearly succeeded. Here’s the hypothetical question. If somebody found out about those letters, if this person wanted to kill Crowther himself but was afraid to, if he called Camilla and asked her if she was just kicking the idea around or would she go through with it if somebody else made the arrangements? All right. Both the doctor and the guy think she’d probably say yes.”

“You don’t happen to have those calls on tape?”

“No, I’m guessing. It’s my guess that he’d use a trace of a Spanish accent, to tie it in with the Latin American demonstrations.”

Rourke shook his head decisively. “The trouble is, everything would have to work out exactly right, and how often does that happen? After he gave her the gun she wouldn’t be under his control.”

“Back off a step, Tim. I know it sounds complicated, but it’s really incredibly simple. I think we’ll find that Crowther and Justice Jenkinson know each other socially. At some point in the last few months he located Jenkinson’s climbing gear and switched ropes. After that, it was a matter of two or three phone calls. He couldn’t possibly lose. If she said no, he could stop worrying about the letters. If she agreed, and then found that she couldn’t go through with it after all, she’d be mad at herself, and the next time she tried suicide she’d make sure nobody was around to bring her back.”

“And if she actually did take out the gun and fired—”

“Sure. She’d miss. She’s been drinking heavily. There’s a chance she never handled a gun before in her life. Nobody’ll be surprised if she misses the target with all her shots, even at close range. Then one of two things can happen. Everybody’s going to be very tense and gun-shy. The place will be crawling with cops and Secret Service people. They’ve been warned that an assassin is around somewhere. Suddenly a wild-eyed woman starts banging away with a revolver. Their guns are going to jump into their hands, and it’s a fairly safe bet that one or two will go off.”

Rourke repeated his long whistle. “Son of a bitch. Tricky, all right, even for Crowther.”

“And if she lives through it, she’ll get a long jolt in jail or end up in a hospital for the criminally insane. Either way, she’ll be out of his hair.”

“Now wait. Wait. What if she doesn’t get off all the shots, and we find a couple of blank rounds in her gun?”

“In Crowther’s shoes, in one of the early phone calls I’d tell her to keep firing till the gun was empty. Five shots are better than one, and so on. I’d keep drumming it into her until I was sure she understood it.”

“Mike, it’s too fantastic to believe, but I’m almost beginning to believe it. If it worked, it would make his career. He’s important enough to demonstrate against. He’s important enough to try to kill. The publicity! My God, it would go on for weeks. The best kind of publicity. There was a story once about how he choked when he was flying somewhere and one of the engines caught fire. He went down on his knees and prayed. It hurt him politically. Everybody thought it was a little excessive, a little chicken. This would blot that all out. A cool head in a crisis. And why the hell wouldn’t he be cool, if he knew there weren’t any real bullets in the gun? Mike, it could make him President! What a story, what a story.”

“Are you convinced?”

“I didn’t say that. I said what a story. Because what’s it based on? A long series of guesses.”

“Up to a point. He’s prosecuted enough murder cases to know the importance of physical evidence. There’s one gap in the story the way it stands. If she fired five live rounds and missed with all five, what happened to the slugs?”

Rourke looked thoughtful. “That would certainly be asked. They couldn’t all fly out an open window.”

Shayne stood up decisively. Leaving the dais, he strode to the television platform.

“I may need your testimony, Tim, so pay close attention. Publicity is the key to this. You know he’d make sure the cameras were pointed the right way. All three networks are going to be here tomorrow. After he’s seated and while he’s speaking he’ll get full security coverage, and she wouldn’t be able to shoot more than once or twice. For Crowther’s purposes, the best time for the shooting to take place would be during the first minute or two after he gets off the elevator. A crowd will be milling around. He’ll want to be looking straight at the cameras when it happens, so people can see how calm and unruffled he is. That means the assassin ought to be standing just about here.”

He indicated a spot in the corridor, outside the arched entrance to the ballroom. There was a cigarette-shaped burn in the carpet, possibly put there as a marker. The burn pointed toward the elevators.

Rourke’s undernourished frame was coiled forward. “Goddamn it, Mike, you mean you’ve found some bullet holes?”

“Two,” Shayne said. “There may be others, but two would be enough. He wouldn’t want to have more holes than shots. If she fires twice and the unfired rounds turn out to be blanks, whoever loaded the gun made a mistake, that’s all. Here’s the line of fire.”

He extended his arm, an imaginary gun in his hand. Rourke followed the line down the corridor. Beyond the elevators, the corridor turned sharply. He examined the wall at the turn.

“Hell, I don’t see anything.”

“She fired high.”

Rourke peered up doubtfully. “I see a couple of black dots—”

Shayne brought him a chair from the ballroom. “Look closer.”

Rourke clambered up on the chair and straightened gingerly. The plaster was painted a dull green. The two holes were several inches apart, a foot or so below the molding. Shayne opened his pocket knife and passed it up to him.

“Dig one of them out.”

Rourke twisted the point of the knife in the hole. A moment later he stepped down with a bullet in his hand.

“There’s a time warp here. The gun that fired this bullet isn’t scheduled to go off till tomorrow morning. Mike, I’d say this is conclusive. But dear God, it’s extraordinary! On the basis of a goofy…”

He looked at his friend curiously. “Unless you put it there yourself?”

“That’s a dumb suggestion.”

“It’s just so goddamned extraordinary! On the basis of a goofy theory you decide there are going to be two bullet holes in a wall seventy-five feet away, nine feet from the floor, and sure enough, there they are.”

Shayne said impatiently, “There’s only one place she could stand so the TV cameras could get Crowther’s expression. Bullets travel in a straight line.”

“I suppose this slug was fired by the same gun she’ll be using tomorrow?”

“I think so. I also think there’ll be a silencer on it. I agree it’s extraordinary. That doesn’t mean it was especially hard to arrange. Crowther stayed in this hotel last week. Anybody can get off the elevator at this floor and look around. After one or two in the morning he’d have the place to himself. Again, there was no risk. No risk at all. If the rest of the scheme didn’t pan out, nobody would notice the holes until the next time the place is painted.”

“Well, it’s fantastic.”

Rourke tossed the bullet in the air and caught it as it came down. Shayne asked to see it.

“Twenty-five caliber,” he said. “That closes another loophole. It’s hard to buy twenty-five caliber ammunition in this country. If she fired the gun by accident, she couldn’t reload it.”

“Fantastic,” Rourke said again. “And we’d better call a meeting right away, because I can name a few people you won’t be able to convince in a hurry. Peter Painter, for one.”

“I don’t intend to tell Painter.”

Rourke went back to the ballroom, where he headed for the whiskey bottle. He replenished his glass and sat down.

“Now I want to see if I really heard that. You don’t intend to tell Painter?”

Shayne held the cognac bottle to the light to check the level, and poured himself another drink.

“I don’t think we’ll find Camilla Steele tonight. Before Crowther shows up tomorrow, we can clear the public out of the corridor and saturate it with plainclothesmen. As soon as Camilla appears, we grab her before she can fire. The gun will be loaded with blanks, but she’ll get the publicity as a potential assassin, and probably a hospital commitment. How many people will believe that Crowther arranged it? I’m willing to make a statement, but would your editor be willing to print it?”

“Hmm,” Rourke said. “Those bullet holes. But if she’s really off her squash, maybe she did that herself, to make us think that Crowther—” He stopped. “In fact, Mike, while we’re talking about possibilities, isn’t that one? She sneaked in late one night, put the holes in the wall, sent herself the gun, and then tomorrow—wait a minute till I work this out—some smart head like Mike Shayne would find the holes and spread the wild tale that Crowther put them there. His career would be damaged, and she wouldn’t go to jail for murder.”

Shayne was shaking his head.

“A guy named Paul London has been following her for a few days, and she wasn’t in New York this morning checking a suitcase on a Miami flight. That could have been worked. But the main thing that’s wrong with the idea is that it doesn’t fit her condition. She’s not a politician and a manipulator, like Crowther. This is a Crowther type of thing. Her doctor has been seeing her three times a week for a year. He says she isn’t capable of carrying out anything complicated alone. She needs support all the way.”

Rourke objected, “I know psychiatrists who’ve made some really lousy diagnoses.”

“So do I, but this guy impresses me. He likes her and he’s worrying about her. He won’t make any prediction about her future, except that it can go either way. If something good happens, he thinks she could get well in a hurry. But if she has a setback at this point, if something she’s been counting on falls through, she’s gone. Think about it. She worked herself up to kill somebody, and the damn gun was loaded with blanks. She’ll realize that Crowther tricked her, made a fool out of her. In psychiatric language, she’s suffering from a poor self-image, and this would reinforce it. Suicide or permanent depression. That’s why I said Crowther can’t lose.”

“Then for Christ’s sake, let’s break it up. Tell him you found a couple of inconspicuous little holes in the plaster on the eighth floor of the St. Albans. He’ll call everything off. She can’t shoot him if he isn’t here.”

“He wouldn’t take a phone call from me.”

“Tell Abe Berger and let him pass it on. It would be a great moment for Abe.”

“No, I don’t think I’ll bother either of them. Here’s the scene as I see it. She must have a ticket to the luncheon under a different name. That part of the corridor, in front of the cameras, will be jammed with people. As Crowther comes out of the elevator she fires four or five shots. They all miss, but never mind, she’ll have the satisfaction of knowing she actually pulled the trigger.”

“She’ll run a risk of being shot herself.”

“I’m going to be there. I know exactly where she’ll be, and what to watch for. I’ll be in front of Crowther, and I’ll tackle her the second she fires. There’s a risk either way. And then we can report digging a bullet out of the wall the night before. If Camilla planned it herself, she wouldn’t do any actual shooting. Do you see that point? To prove it was a fake, to be able to blame Crowther for setting it up, there would have to be holes in the wall even though no shots were fired.”

“You’ve lost me.”

“Well, we’ve got the rest of the night. My scenario ends with Crowther being kicked out of the cabinet, Camilla throwing away her sleeping pills. Happy ending. We all congratulate each other.”

“So you’re going to let it happen?”

“That’s right. I’m going to let it happen.”

Rourke gave him a direct look. “You’re not exactly impartial on the subject of Crowther, are you, Mike?”

“I have no interest whatever in saving his skin,” Shayne said. “Either his political skin or his actual skin.”

CHAPTER 11

The news programs were filled with warnings of trouble. A café in the Latin district, owned by a right-wing politician, had been wrecked in the night. Two boys distributing leaflets had been set upon and beaten. Until long after midnight, 8th Street was alive with knots of people, arguing bitterly. Will Gentry kept a concentration of police cars moving back and forth between Miami Avenue and 27th.

In the morning several thousand people from the Latin community crossed the causeways to Miami Beach and assembled on Collins Avenue in front of the St. Albans Hotel. Dr. Galvez, already there with his band of black-clad pickets, was astonished and pleased. It was a peaceful crowd, including many children.

Galvez spotted no more than a dozen of Vega’s toughs. They circulated for a time, decided they would be clobbered if they started anything, and went home. Vega himself never appeared. It was reported that someone had presented him with an expensive sports car, as a price for agreeing to stay away; Vega himself had started this rumor.

The left organizations boycotted the Miami Beach demonstration. Their adherents drove to the International Airport to boo Crowther when he arrived. Michael Shayne, on the observation deck of the main terminal with Teddy Sparrow, watched the long line of cars coming out of the LeJeune interchange and up the ramp.

“God, will you look at that crowd?” Sparrow demanded. It was a cool morning, but he was already perspiring heavily. “What I wanted to do was close the lots, but the brass overruled me, on the grounds that public relations-wise it would be counterproductive. I can see that. And with five hundred combat infantrymen on the premises we should be able to handle anything. Don’t you agree with me, Mike?” he said anxiously.

Two companies of paratroops had been airlifted to the Bayshore Country Club in Miami Beach, to back up the police if the Collins Avenue demonstration got out of hand. The remainder of the battalion was being held at the airport in reserve. Directly below the tower, in the ramp area and along the front of the International Concourse, four big troop-carrying Sikorsky helicopters waited. The soldiers themselves were dispersed in the departure lounges.

Two Bell helicopters, much smaller than the Sikorskys, were parked on a grassy triangle near an intersection of a taxiway with the main northwest-southeast landing strip, several hundred yards from the terminal. These were to carry Crowther’s party into the city.

“If they’re bound and determined to demonstrate, damn it,” Sparrow went on, popping a digestive tablet into his mouth, “why don’t they demonstrate where they were given a permit? Not that I don’t think it was a mistake to issue that permit, but that’s Miami Beach business. An airport isn’t a street. It’s a mechanism. We’ve got to run a regular schedule of arrivals and departures here, VIP’s or no VIP’s. What if we get a landing emergency and people are yelling so loud we can’t hear the announcements? Lives could be lost.”

“I’m hitching a ride on one of the helicopters,” Shayne said. “Are you using soldiers to cover the transfer?”

“That’s General Turner’s responsibility. He worked it all out on the telephone with Abe Berger.” He touched Shayne’s sleeve. “Mike, this is kind of unorthodox, but it’s an unorthodox situation. While you’re looking around, if you see anything about my dispositions I ought to change, I hope you won’t hesitate to tell me. I don’t have a hell of a lot of flexibility. I’ve still got to think about the warehouses and the cargo area, I can’t forget those. I’ve pulled as many men off routine duty as I dare.”

“Nothing to worry about, Teddy,” Shayne said absently, scanning the crowd.

“I certainly hope you’re right. I’ve got a case of indigestion I wouldn’t want to wish on Eliot Crowther himself. People have been running to me with rumors all morning. It’s the army’s responsibility to load Crowther into a helicopter, and it’s my responsibility to protect the airport facilities. But in case of a political outburst, whose responsibility is it to break it up? That hasn’t been made clear to me.”

“We’re all going to be improvising,” Shayne said. Among the shifting mass of people on the deck, he saw a tall girl with long black hair, in a white sleeveless blouse. He nodded at Sparrow. Putting on a pair of sunglasses, he moved through the crowd.

The girl was Adele Galvez, still as good-looking as she had been the day before. She seemed to be alone, but as Shayne approached he saw a look pass between her and a dark youth twenty feet away, leaning against the coping overlooking the aircraft apron.

“Your uncle’s probably wondering why you’re not on the Beach,” Shayne remarked as he came up.

She whirled. A quick look of dismay fled across her face, and then she closed with him and kissed him hard. “I knew I’d see you again sooner or later.”

“It’s a small town.”

She turned him away from the youth across the deck. “Everybody’s so impressed with you, Mike! The way you squashed poor Lorenzo Vega. But as for me! My standing’s way down. One of my friends wanted to know why I didn’t seduce you. All I could say was, I tried!”

She hugged his arm.

“Would you like to try again?” he said. “I can get a room at the hotel here. We’ve got twenty minutes.”

She looked at him. “That might be nice, but you don’t really mean it, do you?”

“That’s right, Adele. I don’t really mean it.”

He moved to the right and cut back. Adele stayed with him. The boy she had signaled was being careful not to look toward them. Shayne bulldozed his way through the crowd and took his elbow in a firm grip. With a quick twist, he wrenched a shopping bag out of his hand. The youth grabbed for it, but Adele stopped him with a quick word in Spanish. Shayne set the shopping bag on the coping. There was nothing inside but a purple banner.

“What’s it say?”

“I’m afraid it’s slightly obscene,” Adele said.

A circle of unoccupied space had opened about them. Shayne told the youth to hold still and let himself be searched.

“Like hell. I don’t see a badge.”

“If you want to be busted instead,” Shayne said, “I can arrange it.”

After a moment the boy spread his arms. Shayne gave him a quick going-over but found nothing of interest except a toothbrush in a plastic container. He recorded the number of the boy’s driver’s license on the back of an envelope. He hesitated for another instant because of the toothbrush, but the boy had probably come expecting to be arrested.

“Have fun,” he told the young people, and walked away.

In a ladies’ room in the Beach hotel next to the St. Albans, Camilla Steele shut herself in a booth and opened her shoulder bag. She had left herself plenty of time, but all the clocks she consulted today seemed to be behaving strangely. They would stop for a stretch, stop absolutely dead. Then she would blink, and fifteen minutes would pass.

The gun was inside the bag, wrapped in a black scarf. She touched it lightly, and was reassured by its solidity. Much that had happened in the course of the night had been shadowy and unreal. But the gun was a fact, with definite dimensions and properties, a hard, smooth surface with curves and corners. She couldn’t understand now why she had been so unsure about using it. If a gun hangs on the wall in the opening act, it has to be fired before the end of the third—Chekhov said that, and Camilla entirely agreed. An assassination is impossible without an assassin.

Smiling to herself, she took out the hypodermic syringe.

It was charged with Adrenalin, precisely the thing she needed. She hated needles, as a rule. Her horror of injecting herself was what had kept her from going beyond pills. But of course people gave themselves shots all the time. All it took was courage.

She waved her hand in the air until the blue map appeared on her forearm. Holding her breath, she plunged in the needle, hitting the right spot the first time—perhaps a good omen. Then, like a fool, she forgot to depress the plunger, and she actually pulled the needle out before she noticed. The next time she had trouble finding the vein, and she felt a spurt of panic. But finally she had it. She sighed deeply, and her thumb came down.

Her heart began to rattle violently. She pulled out the needle and put it away.

She had been given a half-tablet to swallow, and she managed to get it down without water. This was Dr. Jekyll—Mr. Hyde medicine, to change her appearance during her first few moments in the St. Albans. It was Antabuse, a drug prescribed for alcoholics, to make the taste of liquor acutely unpleasant.

She put on an unbecoming pair of dime-store glasses with tinted lenses. She had cut her hair the day before, and dyed it in tawny streaks. She was wearing a too-large dress and a padded bra, shoes with thick heels. She left the booth, and with the Adrenalin racing happily through her veins, she was certain for the first time that this was really going to work. A surge of crazy optimism carried her into the hotel bar, where she ordered a bottle of imported beer. She was not only going to shoot the man, she was going to get away with it, and live to a pleasant old age. Everybody deserves to have one major secret. The fact that she had killed an attorney general was going to be hers.

The bartender poured the beer. It looked insipid, and had a noxious smell. Her lip curled as she raised the glass. She was the only customer; the bartender had gone back to preparing mixes at the far end of the bar. She held her nose and drank.

It was vile stuff, but she didn’t set the glass down until it was empty. She saw a dim reflection of herself in the back mirror. Her eyeballs pounded. Blood poured to her head, and she felt her features beginning to coarsen. But the mirror was too dark, and she returned to the one in the rest room.

She found herself unevenly flushed, with patches of color high on each cheekbone. Her eyes did seem to protrude slightly. She wouldn’t be looking her best when she shot Mr. Crowther, but needless to say, that wasn’t the object.

A good-humored crowd had gathered along Collins Avenue. A line of police trestles, backed up by cops, confined the demonstrators to half the street, keeping the other half open. None of this concerned her. She had to show her lunch ticket before she was allowed through the police barrier. She passed clumps of soldiers. At other times she would have drawn admiring stares, but today, a dowdy, squarish middle-aged woman with a distracted air and some kind of skin disease, she was ignored.

A triangle of beach in front of the hotel had been cleared as a landing pad for Crowther’s helicopter. She watched the preparations idly, starting for the entrance only when a taxi arrived with a party of guests. She moved uncertainly, and they overtook her. They all entered the lobby together, two men and three women. Inside, she stumbled against one of the men and caught his arm.

“Sorry. I always seem to trip at that exact spot.”

They both held the same political opinions, or they wouldn’t have been here, and the man’s face showed his concern.

“Are you all right?”

“Perfectly,” she said. “Do you think they’re going to start on time, or will they give us a drink first?”

The man laughed. “More than one, I hope, considering the speeches we have ahead of us.”

They were asked to show their cards again before they were allowed into the elevator. They showed them again at a table in the eighth-floor corridor. After being told her table number, Camilla was issued a tag with a pseudonym on it—Doris Myerson. She exchanged a smile with her new friends, and asked the ladies at the table if they needed any help.

The Jet-Star bringing Eliot Crowther from Washington came down on the number-one landing strip, slowed to taxiing speed, and rolled past the Delta Airlines building toward the International Concourse. The helicopters started their engines.

Michael Shayne, in the lead helicopter, saw the young demonstrators at the edge of the observation deck break out their banner. Soldiers in a loose formation moved out of the ground-level gates. The Jet-Star, now headed directly away from the terminal, continued toward the concrete intersection where the transfer would take place. A cloud of red balloons rose suddenly from the observation deck, and a dozen or so youths burst out of the gates in Concourses 3 and 5 and raced onto the field.

A command was shouted. The soldiers wheeled toward the demonstrators, who were carrying buckets of black paint, which sloshed out as they ran. Only two were able to break through the line of soldiers. They hurled paint at the helicopter Shayne was in. Some of it splashed against the windows. They were seized from behind and manhandled back to the terminal.

Picket signs appeared above the crowd on the deck. They wavered and dipped, then vanished.

A movable ramp was rolled into place against the forward cabin door of the Jet-Star. The soldiers formed a tight corridor connecting the bottom of the ramp with the helicopter.

Abe Berger was the first man out of the plane. He conferred with an army officer and looked around carefully. Two more Secret Service men appeared at the top of the ramp. They were followed by Crowther.

He was bareheaded, as usual, his shock of white hair stirred by the breeze. All the preparations had been directed against an anti-Crowther demonstration, and Shayne was surprised when most of the people on the observation deck began cheering and shaking small American flags. Crowther, too, seemed surprised. He stopped on the top step and broke into a wide grin, raising both hands over his head. His adherents cheered more loudly. Berger, below him, looked pained. Crowther was isolated for a moment, a marvelous target. Berger returned to his side and hustled him down the steps and between the two lines of soldiers to the helicopter.

“I’ve been trying to call you,” Berger snapped as he passed Shayne. “Where’ve you been?”

“Out and around, Abe.”

Crowther swung up into the helicopter. The happy politician’s grin was still on his face, but it lost some of its luster when he saw Shayne.

“Mike Shayne,” he said. “I’m told some people wanted to come out in the streets in support of the United States government, in support of my position, and you discouraged them.”

“I had something to do with that,” Shayne agreed. “It wouldn’t have amounted to much.”

Without warning, traces of his smile still showing, Crowther drove one fist hard into Shayne’s stomach. Shayne grunted. Crowther pretended he had injured his fist, holding it up with a mock grimace.

“You keep in shape, don’t you, kiddo?”

His laugh boomed out. He tapped Shayne on the shoulder and went on to his seat, where he began working on his hair, disarranged by the breeze.

The helicopter filled rapidly. Berger came back up the aisle. His breath was sour and his eyes were heavy from lack of sleep.

“I hope he pulled that punch,” he remarked to Shayne.

“As long as it made him feel better.”

“You’ve been kind of elusive, boy. Gentry says he couldn’t locate you either. He’s used to your lack of cooperation. I’m not. They still haven’t found the Steele woman?”

“Not as far as I know.”

The door slammed. Through the closed door to the cockpit, Shayne heard the voice of the ATC ground controller in the tower: “Bell one-forty, cleared for takeoff. Change frequency for airways clearance.”

The rotors clacked and they lifted from the concrete. Crowther, halfway back in the cabin, put on his half-glasses to go over his speech. He began making breath-marks on the manuscript in red pencil.

Berger had to raise his voice so Shayne could hear him. “A hell of a place to talk. What happened last night after I left?”

“Not that much.”

“Mike, Mike,” Berger said impatiently. “Level with me, please. My radar’s picking up some funny blips. I don’t like secrets. You’re involved in something you don’t want to let me in on.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Instinct. When this much is going on, you don’t go to bed and take a pill so the phone won’t bother you. Did you talk to her?”

“Camilla?”

“Yeah, yeah!”

“No.”

They crossed the river, a thousand feet above the East-West Expressway, heading east toward Miami Beach. The tangled spaghetti of the 7th Avenue interchange lay ahead.

“I’m supposed to be in charge here,” Berger said savagely. “I don’t like people who duck my phone calls, and I’m making a note. But the hell with that now, we don’t have time. I get the feeling you don’t think this is quite as serious as you did last night, which means you know something I don’t, because it still looks goddamn serious to me.”

“He got a nice round of applause at the airport.”

Berger shook his head shortly. “Maybe I know something you don’t, Mike, has that occurred to you? I woke up a few people in Washington. I got an absolute denial from the CIA—this is not a public relations denial, it’s the real one, and I had to go as high as the President to get it. None of their people or anybody they deal with had anything to do with any of these demonstrations or counterdemonstrations. The Mr. Robinson who talked to Vega told him Gil Ruiz is in this country. The CIA is supposed to know things like that, and they didn’t. Ruiz, as a matter of fact, has a special reason for being sore at our boy.” He nodded at Crowther. “This is goddamn secret stuff, and I shouldn’t be shouting it in a helicopter.”

One of Crowther’s aides came up the aisle. Berger waved him to a stop. “This is private.”

When the man retreated Berger went on, “Crowther’s been arguing in cabinet meetings for tougher action in support of the Caldera junta against the insurgents. Diplomatic muscle, money, weapons—the works. To be specific, you’ve heard of the M-16, the new lightweight automatic rifle? All our own infantry divisions haven’t been equipped with it yet, and it hasn’t been peddled abroad. Crowther carried a vote in favor of letting Caldera have ten thousand M-16s to see how they work against guerrillas. The assumption is that they’ll work goddamn well.”

“Have they been shipped yet?” Shayne said quickly.

“You’re awake, good. No, they’re here in Miami, waiting for clearance. At the airport, as a matter of fact. There’s still some high-level lobbying going on, people who want to reverse the order. If Ruiz and his people can get public attention with some kind of action against Crowther, maybe they’ll stir up enough of a stink so the deal will be canceled.”

A few more pieces of the puzzle snapped into place. Biscayne Bay was beneath them. They began to glide in for a landing.

“They wouldn’t need many men to burn a warehouse,” Shayne said. “That could be it.”

“And a shooting or an attempted shooting would make a nice diversion. Mike, do this. Stay with us. If you see anybody who looks remotely like Camilla Steele, yell. Let’s get Crowther into the ballroom. That’s the first thing. Then I’ll call the airport and have Turner move one of his companies into the warehouse area. Here’s a direct question, and I have to get a direct answer. Do you know of any reason to change our arrangements for getting Crowther in and out of the hotel?”

Shayne met his eyes. “He doesn’t smoke or drink. I think he’ll outlive everybody.”

The helicopter was hanging above the cleared stretch of beach in front of the St. Albans. Using binoculars, Berger checked the beach and then swept the hotel façade. He said mildly, “And if you’re holding out on me, Mike, for whatever reason, I’m in a position where I can do some damage. I can lift your license, for openers.”

“That’s happened before, Abe. I’ve been thinking about taking a vacation.”

“This could be a long one.”

Berger tossed the binoculars on an empty seat. “Take her down,” he called.

The helicopter descended slowly. He waited until the second helicopter, bringing the rest of the entourage, settled alongside. He swung down, conferred with the officer in command of the waiting escort, then gave the signal to dismount.

Vacationers in bathing suits watched curiously as the new arrivals, all in suits and neckties, poured out of the two helicopters. The instant Crowther stepped onto the loose sand the party began to move, with Crowther himself and two aides packed tightly inside a cluster of soldiers and Secret Service men. Crowther was waving gaily, and some of the vacationers returned the waves and shouted approval and encouragement, while the other crowd, out of sight on the far side of the hotel, bayed angrily.

A siren howled in the distance. Photographers backed away in front of the moving group, taking pictures. The hotel manager was waiting at the front entrance to shake hands with his guest, but Berger kept everybody in motion.

“Come on, Mike. Keep up.”

A local politician and his wife squeezed into the elevator with them.

“Mr. Crowther, I want to congratulate you on your strong position against Latin American Communism,” the politician declared. “We’ve been too patient with those people. What’s the point in having power if we’re scared to use it? The people of Miami Beach are with you, sir, all the way!”

This was heady stuff, but Berger interrupted before he could answer.

“Stay in the car, if you don’t mind, Mr. Crowther. I want to be sure everything’s lined up in the ballroom.”

“Abe, you’re turning into a fussy old woman,” Crowther complained. “I don’t object to reasonable precautions, but can’t we relax a little? As I understand it, the people up here have all bought tickets.”

“Which have been on public sale for weeks.”

Crowther wagged his head wryly at the politician. “Why do we do it? Not for the salary!”

The elevator doors opened, and they saw a clamorous crowd, bathed in television light. Berger and another Secret Service man stepped out into the confusion. Press photographers spotted Crowther and began taking pictures. Shayne saw Tim Rourke. Catching Shayne’s eye, Rourke shook his head and shrugged. Crowther chatted easily with the politician until Berger returned.

“All right, Mr. Crowther.”

The group moved out of the elevator. Crowther reached past the nearest Secret Service man to shake a hand. Everybody here except the media people and the police had paid $6.50 for the privilege of having lunch with him, and they wanted him to realize that in spite of the newspaper attacks, they were behind him. He was exhilarated by the welcome. He saw local friends, and shouldered past the Secret Service men to return their hugs and handshakes, and to kiss their women. The group moved slowly.

The night before, Shayne had stepped out a circle at the end of the corridor, inside which Camilla would have to stand to make the bullet holes in the opposite wall seem plausible. The television platform had been brought forward, contracting the circle slightly. All three cameras were in action. He looked into the blaze of light.

Crowther worked slowly forward, approaching the table where ticket-holders had their names checked off and were given lapel badges. The three women who presided at this table were standing, to get a view of Crowther. Like everybody else, they were screaming happily. Shayne was jostled from behind, and a red-faced man tried to knock him out of the way so he could touch Crowther’s hand. Shayne moved him aside.

One of the women at the table turned gracefully, and the movement reminded Shayne briefly of Camilla Steele. But she was too old. Her face was swollen, and oddly mottled. Shayne was concentrating on his imaginary circle, shading his eyes against the glare of the TV lights. He still saw no one there who looked like Camilla. Crowther, a few feet behind Shayne, was giving his hands-over-his-head gesture, turning completely around. The Secret Service men struggled to keep him moving. Berger swung his elbows, swearing.

Again something pulled Shayne’s eyes to one side. The woman he had noticed had stepped backward toward the elevators. Her shoulders were tense. Shayne pulled around sharply. But it was impossible. If she fired from there the bullet holes wouldn’t line up. Nonetheless, she raised a scarf she was holding, brought both hands together, and fired through the scarf.

The scarf flared out and fell away, exposing an automatic pistol equipped with a silencer. Shayne, looking directly at her, saw the recoil, but no one else seemed to notice the shot. She fired twice more, smiling. Then she felt behind her and opened the elevator door, which had been blocked with something to keep it from closing.

For an instant, alone in the lighted car with the door open, she was vulnerable. Abe Berger had seen her. He had his gun out, his left hand shielding his eyes. Shayne slapped at the gun-barrel. In the same quick motion, almost a reflex, he brought his right fist up hard. Berger was wide open, coming forward. The punch exploded at the hinge of his jaw. His head snapped around. He was unconscious before he hit the floor.

Crowther watched the elevator door slide shut, an expression of disbelief on his handsome face. He clutched his neck, as though choking. He tried to move forward, clawing out in front of him with one hand. As he turned, Shayne saw that part of his face was shot away.

He lurched forward and collapsed on top of Berger.

CHAPTER 12

Shayne scooped up Berger’s gun, lying on the carpet a few inches from his outstretched hand. As he went backward he worked the slide. The nearest Secret Service man reached inside his coat, but the expression on Shayne’s face froze him in place.

The disturbance had been confined to one tiny section of the corridor, but ripples of shock and alarm were already radiating outward. Somebody screamed. One of the TV cameras toppled over. The elevator which Crowther and the others had used was still at that floor, with a Secret Service man in the doorway. Shayne stepped in and showed him Berger’s gun.

“Out. Out.”

The man looked toward the ballroom.

Shayne hit him with the gun, gave him a hard push and stabbed the Down button. Tim Rourke, a few feet away, was staring at him.

“Real bullets. Man, that’s trouble.”

“Yeah,” Shayne said as the door closed.

He dropped the gun in his pocket, his face hard and dangerous. He had been fooled, and there was only one person who could tell him how it had been done. That was Camilla Steele. Trouble was a mild word to describe the situation. Berger had had a good shot at Camilla while the elevator’s electronic brain was deciding to close the door. Shayne had interfered. As soon as Berger was conscious again, it would be clear to everybody that Shayne and Camilla, old allies, had planned the shooting together. Camilla had fired the shots and Shayne had made her escape possible.

No one had rung for the elevator on the lower floors, and it descended directly to the lobby. Shayne stepped out. The lobby seemed normal—more crowded than usual, but as yet no one knew what had happened on the eighth floor.

Shayne moved quickly, his hand in his pocket. He needed some fast transportation. Outside, the approach to the helicopter was still clear.

The crowd on Collins Avenue was chanting rhythmically. Here everything was serene; Shayne was two or three minutes ahead of the hue and cry. He headed for the helicopter that had brought him from the airport. As he pulled himself in, the pilot, a young man with fanlike ears and hair redder than Shayne’s own, looked around from his controls.

“Yeah, want something?”

Shayne shut the door and said briskly, “Back to the airport.”

The pilot had seen Shayne as part of the security detail surrounding Crowther. Responding automatically to the note of command in Shayne’s voice, he switched on his engine. The overhead rotors began to revolve.

“Just by yourself?”

“Let’s go,” Shayne snapped. “The bastard left his dispatch case on the Jet-Star.”

“Oh.”

The beginnings of doubt faded out of the pilot’s face. As the helicopter rose Shayne watched the front entrance of the hotel. The scene was still peaceful. A hundred feet from the ground, the pilot changed the tilt of the blades, hesitated and turned toward Shayne.

“I don’t want to be chintzy, but I think for my own protection I’d better get the captain to authorize this. They’ve been tightening up lately. I mean, you’re a civilian, right?”

He reached for the control yoke, and Shayne, stepping forward, hit him with the flat of the pistol, just hard enough to jar him. He fell sideward, his hand going to his head. The helicopter stayed where it was, drifting almost imperceptibly toward the ocean.

“Let’s get going,” Shayne said quietly.

“What did you do that for?” He came out of his seat slowly. “Put that gun down, mister, or I’ll be forced to take it away from you.”

Shayne’s expression hardened, and he brought the gun up between them. “Stop where you are.” The pilot stopped. “Don’t be a damn fool. Sit down and let’s travel.”

“I warn you,” the pilot said, going into a crouch. “I’m getting my Irish up. You wouldn’t shoot me. You need me to fly the helicopter.”

“Hold still,” Shayne said in a voice that stopped him again as he started to move forward. “I don’t know how accurate this gun is.”

He fired. The pilot looked amazed and clapped his hand to his ear. When he looked at his hand he saw blood.

“The next one goes in your shoulder,” Shayne told him coldly. “After that, we’ll see.”

Blood was streaming from the lobe of the other’s ear. Twisting, he collapsed into his seat, and in a moment the helicopter was roaring in the direction of the mainland. Glancing down through the paint-spattered side window, Shayne saw two Secret Service men burst out of the hotel. “What’s your name?”

“Hank McSorley,” the man muttered.

“I’m Michael Shayne. Christ! People have been hijacking planes at the rate of one a week, and nobody’s had the slightest trouble. And I have to run into the one idiot who believes in protecting government property.”

“All I wanted to do was go down and get an OK.”

“Can you get a little more speed out of this, McSorley? I’m in a hurry.”

“Because Crowther forgot his dispatch case. What crap.”

“The truth is, I’m being chased. It’s possible that I’ve committed a crime and I want to get to the airport to catch the next flight for Brazil. It’s also possible that I’m right and everybody else is wrong. Take off your shirt. You’re losing blood, and I don’t want you to faint.”

“I do feel a little—”

“Come on, come on,” Shayne said without sympathy. “All you lost was the tip of an ear. Worse things happen all the time. Let’s have your shirt.”

McSorley struggled out of his shirt. Shayne ripped it into strips. Standing behind him, he put on a crude slanting bandage.

“Now when we get there, you’re going to do what I tell you, aren’t you?”

“Under duress. Under duress!”

Harry Montgomery, tower control chief at the International Airport, held up the incoming flights until the brief anti-Crowther demonstration had been completely suppressed. The banner that had flown briefly from the edge of the observation deck was lying in a sad heap below, near a docking gate. Too bad it had been so ineffective, Montgomery thought. He had been rooting for those boys with the black paint to get through so they could splash the people who were arriving from Washington. It was his own personal opinion that the United States had no business backing military despots like Colonel Caldera. As for Crowther, Montgomery had no use for the man at all.

At the same time, it didn’t pay to fool around in the middle of a busy airport. Luckily he’d had a hunch that something might happen, and he had put all incoming traffic into a holding pattern until he saw that Crowther’s helicopters were safely on their way. Even at the best of times, with all runways open, ceiling and visibility unlimited, a major disaster was never more than a second away. He mistrusted even the tiniest variations from routing, because they disturbed his concentration. Of course the men in the tower cab relied on the sensitive electronic devices all around them, but only an imbecile imagined that machines never made mistakes. It was a human voice, in the end, which told the planes overhead that it was safe to come down.

While the demonstrators were racing toward the helicopters with their buckets of black paint, Montgomery had crossed his fingers, a gesture that dated back to the days before radarscopes and the beginnings of air transportation. He had kept them crossed until the young men were rounded up and herded back onto Concourse 5. The Jet-Star was moved into a holding area. The taxiways cleared rapidly as departures were resumed. The stacked-up flights were now being talked down. Still Montgomery had an uncomfortable feeling that something was not exactly normal.

The big Sikorskys were waiting at Gates 63 and 64, but they had been there all morning. He made a circuit of the windows. The observation deck was still crowded, though less so than before. A surprising number of people were staying to give Crowther an enthusiastic send-off after he returned from Miami Beach. The herringbone pattern of cars in the main parking lot had broken. A telephone repair crew was working around an open trench; he hoped nothing had happened to the cable into the city.

Suddenly soldiers swarmed out onto the apron below Gate 63 and began pouring into helicopters. The radar screens in the tower showed nothing unusual, but Montgomery’s personal early-warning system, located somewhere at the back of his scalp, became agitated immediately. These troops had been held in reserve, awaiting developments in Miami Beach. The helicopter pilots requested clearance to take off. The man at the front console gave them a flight path and an altitude, and presently they were in the air.

Montgomery continued to move from one window to another. In the cargo area, a mile and a half away in the airport’s southwest corner, two cargo planes had moved in against the loading platforms at W-4, the main warehouse for short-term in-and-out cargo. The tower had no cargo departures scheduled. He told one of his phone men to find out from the warehouse coordinator how soon the planes would be ready, and he resumed his patrol. At the phone desk, the man clacked the disconnect-bar angrily. “Damn line’s out again, Mr. Montgomery.”

“Try again in a few minutes. It’s not urgent.”

At one of the side consoles, the operator in charge of east arrivals was calling into his mike, “Bell one-forty, this is Miami Approach Control. I don’t receive you. I don’t receive you.”

Montgomery caught the note of urgency and turned to watch a Bell helicopter approach from the northeast, too low and too fast. He saw splashes of black paint on its side windows, and then it lifted over the tower and disappeared. At that moment the door of the tower cab opened and a dark-haired boy came in, smiling in embarrassment. He was carrying a pistol in each hand. He was followed immediately by an older man in dark glasses and a tall pretty girl in a white blouse. Both the girl and the man had shotguns. Montgomery took a backward step, crossing his fingers.

“Continue what you’re doing,” the girl said pleasantly. “You will not be hurt.”

The army helicopters passed in staggered formation, like four ponderous geese, heading for Miami Beach. And that meant, Shayne knew, that the security of the airport was now in the hands of sixty-odd uniformed guards under the command of Teddy Sparrow, eked out by a few Miami police on traffic duty near the interchange.

The radio crackled with a warning from the tower that they were entering a closed zone. They were to ascend at once to seven hundred and fifty feet and await landing instructions.

“Do what they tell you,” Shayne said.

He was using Berger’s binoculars. Nothing unusual was happening in the terminal area. A black Port Authority sedan, traveling fast on the perimeter road inside the big fence along the southern boundary of the airport, turned in among the warehouses. He followed its progress through his binoculars until it stopped abruptly and a man wearing the black uniform of the security guards jumped out and ran into a warehouse.

Sweeping the area, Shayne picked up a swirl of activity involving two planes on the loading apron. Several fork-lift trucks worked back and forth between the nearest warehouse and the planes, moving large container pallets. He tightened the focus and studied the scene until he realized what bothered him about it. These were not ordinary warehouse workers. They were working too fast.

“Take it down, McSorley,” he snapped. “Pick an open place in the south parking lot.”

“Around here we do what the tower says. That way we stay healthy.”

“Goddamn it—”

“All right!” McSorley said hastily. “But under duress.”

They dropped rapidly. The tower radio squawked: “Bell one-forty, maintain elevation. Hold for instructions.”

McSorley answered, “Approach control, emergency, out of fuel. Request permission to land on parking ramp.”

He was ordered to use the docking apron near Gate 1. By that time they were already down, on an unoccupied patch of concrete near the pumping station. Shayne leaped out and raced to his Buick. He grabbed up the phone in the front seat and signaled the operator.

She took a moment to answer. Continuing to call her frequency, he took a flask out of the glove compartment, unscrewed the cap and drank.

“Shayne,” he said when she came on. “Put in some calls for me. Will Gentry. General Turner—somewhere around the St. Albans. Abe Berger, Secret Service, same place.”

“I’ve got that.”

“Latin American guerrillas are raiding the airport. They hold the control tower. Guns being loaded aboard two planes. Get the troops back in a hurry and alert the air force. Fast, baby.”

He threw the phone onto its cradle and ran for the helicopter. Halfway there he veered toward an outdoor Coke machine, fumbling coins out of his pocket. An instant later a cold Coke clanked into his hand. He opened the bottle while the machine delivered a second, and emptied both bottles as he ran across 20th Street to a gas pump inside the entrance to the big Delta Airlines maintenance facility. He unhooked the hose and began filling the bottles. A mechanic in greasy coveralls came toward him. “What do you think you’re up to, mac?”

“Helping myself to some gas,” Shayne said savagely.

The mechanic stopped. “Why, yeah. I see that. Go right ahead, man.”

Shayne left the hose running. He raced back to the helicopter, which sprang up from the concrete even before he closed the door.

“Remember I’m not getting combat pay,” McSorley said nervously.

The radio was shouting again. “Bell one-forty from tower. Do not proceed over runways. Emergency incoming traffic. Category-two emergency procedures. All aircraft hold, repeat hold.”

The helicopter cleared Concourse 1, rising at a sharp angle.

“The warehouses,” Shayne said curtly.

“But what if there really is—”

Shayne handed him the binoculars. “Look at the tower.”

They were now on the level of the control cab, and they could see straight through from window to window. Even without binoculars Shayne could see the clear outline of a man with a gun.

“Jesus,” McSorley said.

“Tower to Bell one-forty, make an immediate right turn, heading zero-eight-one, and land at once. Acknowledge.”

McSorley thumbed the transmit switch. “Bell one-forty to Air Traffic Control. Up yours.”

He hung the mike back on its hook. “I always wanted to do that. But you know this isn’t recommended, Shayne. If any of those planes are actually coming down—”

“Don’t worry about it,” Shayne told him. “They’re clearing everything out of the way so those cargo planes can take off.”

One of the two planes in the warehouse area was coming about slowly. It headed along the taxi strip into the east-west runway. Shayne picked up McSorley’s torn shirt and ripped off a long strip. Tearing this in two, he rolled each portion into a tight cylinder and stuffed it into the neck of one of the gas-filled Coke bottles. He upended the bottles to let the gasoline soak into the rags.

“You aren’t thinking of destroying any aircraft, are you?” McSorley said.

“Yeah. Come right up over it. As soon as I’ve dropped the bottles, land on the railroad track. Make the turn fast because they’re carrying ammunition and it’s likely to blow.”

“Great. I’d rather not have any part in this, but I don’t suppose I have a choice?”

“No.”

“I had a date to play golf this afternoon. I don’t suppose—”

They skimmed across the crosshatched field at an altitude of fifty or sixty feet. Shayne told McSorley to climb. The plane ahead was approaching the end of the runway, ready to turn to come back.

“More to the left.”

He unlatched the door and forced it open. He leaned out, but as long as the helicopter was moving forward there was too much outside pressure on the door; he couldn’t hold it open and expect to throw accurately at the same time.

“I’ll go up ahead and hover,” McSorley offered.

“Fine.”

The plane on the ground began a long loop into the end of the runway. McSorley picked a spot where it would pass beneath them. He cut their forward momentum.

Shayne braced the bottles between his legs and lighted the rags. The cargo plane rolled toward them, picking up speed.

“Hey, somebody’s shooting,” McSorley said, surprised.

“Can you cut down the goddamn vibration?”

Shayne leaned out and lobbed one bottle, then the other. He swung back inside and slammed the door.

The helicopter shot toward the General Aviation Center. He felt the explosion through the soles of his feet. He had led the plane too much with the first bottle, but the second had hit it squarely. One wing was a sheet of fire.

The helicopter swung back and around. McSorley, very excited, yelled, “Now what?”

Shayne, from the window, gave him hand signals. The cargo plane slewed off the runway, and the burning wing crashed into a lighting stanchion. Men were spilling out of the side door.

The helicopter touched down, kicking up swirls of dust, between the last warehouse and the Seaboard Airline siding. An instant later Shayne was out and running, Berger’s automatic in his hand.

He raced around the corner of the warehouse and along 4th Street toward the remaining plane. At the next intersection a young guerrilla armed with a hunting rifle fired from a warehouse platform. Shayne threw himself face down and rolled, reaching the opposite platform before the other could fire again. In the darkness beneath the platform, Shayne scrambled backward and out again five feet away. A bullet buried itself in the edge-beam above his head. He fired. The youth went backward and lost the rifle.

Shayne ran across to him and snatched it up. The main siren was going, the big one that was saved for major calamities. Fire apparatus, salvage trucks, pumpers and ambulances were on their way from the fire and rescue station at the center of the field. Shayne worked his way to the end of the platform.

His view of the field was partly blocked by a Port Authority sedan and two trucks. The second plane was beginning to stir. Armed men from the disabled plane were running toward it. Others, working desperately, pulled the big pallets into the plane’s belly.

There was a piercing whistle. A man appeared on the opposite loading platform. He had a pistol strapped to his side and carried a submachine gun. As he turned in Shayne’s direction, Shayne saw the heavy-lidded eyes, the deep mark above the nose, the pale olive skin of the magazine photographs—Gil Ruiz.

A dead cigar was clamped between his lips. He relighted the stump as several unarmed men coming out of the warehouse passed him and jumped down onto the apron and ran toward the moving plane. Shayne brought his rifle around to bear on Ruiz. He waited a moment, his finger grazing the trigger. He raised the barrel without firing. He wanted this man alive.

Ruiz saw someone Shayne was unable to see, frowned and half shook his head. There was an explosion from the burning plane, and Shayne didn’t hear the shot. Ruiz was struck in the chest. Like Eliot Crowther in the hotel corridor fifteen minutes earlier, he looked surprised, a little indignant. He staggered sideways and tumbled off the edge of the platform.

Another booming explosion blew the burning plane back onto the runway. A big pumper was pouring chemical spray on the fire. Shayne could feel the heat.

An unlikely vehicle raced across the field from the terminal—a motorized ramp. One man was at the controls, another man and a dark-haired girl were behind him, clinging to the steps. As it turned into a cross taxi-strip, Shayne put a bullet into one front tire. It careened away, out of control, and tipped over on the grass. In a moment the two men were running.

Shayne left cover and darted forward between the two trucks. Hands reached down from the plane’s belly to haul the two men aboard. Shayne, on one knee, took careful aim at the big tire. The hammer clicked down on nothing.

Moving back fast, he grabbed the submachine gun dropped by Ruiz when he fell. The plane’s pilot had decided to take a chance on getting off using only three quarters of the runway. The plane seemed to hesitate while he used his brakes to let the power build up, and then it leaped forward.

Shayne returned to his position between the trucks, threw the safety flap and waited for the plane to come back within range. There was a wild crackle of small arms as the fire reached the ammunition boxes in the burning plane.

At that moment two airport security guards in black uniforms ran in front of Shayne. One was unarmed, the other had a revolver. The plane came rapidly down the runway. Shayne yelled at the armed guard to get out of the line of fire, and the man whirled and snapped off a shot. The bullet hit the concrete to Shayne’s right and screamed away. Shayne dived beneath the truck. The guard ran to his right, back to his left, squatted and tried to shoot again.

Swearing, Shayne sent the submachine gun skidding into the open to make the guard think he was surrendering, then wriggled out beneath the truck on the warehouse side. The guard screamed at him to hold still and put his hands over his head. Shayne swore again, fiercely, but he stopped and did as he was told.

Teddy Sparrow, with two more guards, burst out of the next warehouse. Sparrow had been tied up, and a length of clothesline dangled from one wrist.

“They’re getting away!”

“Aren’t they,” Shayne said dryly. “Will you tell your man we’re both on the same side?”

Sparrow jumped down, shouting. He landed on a spare tire lying on the ground, and one leg crumpled beneath him. Shayne started to move, but the excited guard made a menacing gesture with his pistol and Shayne stopped again.

Sparrow came to his feet. Hobbling out to the submachine gun, he snatched it up and fired a burst at the departing plane as it lifted off the runway and made a climbing turn to the southwest.

He turned back toward Shayne, his face contorted. He was nearly crying.

“I blew it! I knew I would! I knew it would happen!”

CHAPTER 13

Shayne knew he had very little time.

The main siren was still screaming. More emergency vehicles had gathered. Kneeling beside Ruiz, Shayne went through his pockets quickly.

“I see we got one of them, anyway,” Sparrow said miserably. “You can’t blame my people, Mike. They haven’t had military training. These guys were soldiers! They came in on us from all sides.”

“Round up your men and cordon off the area,” Shayne said. “Don’t let anybody in or out. You’ll have reinforcements inside of fifteen minutes.”

Sparrow straightened his shoulders and looked serious. “That’s right, maybe everybody didn’t get away. I certainly would like to capture a couple. It wouldn’t be such a total disaster.”

He climbed up on the platform. “Fellows!” he shouted. “Over here. We’re going to cordon off the area. Don’t let anybody in or out.”

Shayne checked the black official sedan at the loading dock. The key was still in the ignition. He swung in and started the motor.

“Mike, where are you going?” Sparrow called.

Ignoring him, Shayne wheeled around and entered the diagonal taxi-strip to the runway. He had seen movement near the wrecked mobile ramp. Crossing the runway, he saw Adele Galvez sitting on the grass, looking around. There was a smear of dirt across one cheek.

“Get in,” Shayne said, pulling up beside her.

She pushed back her hair with a dazed gesture. “Mike?” Shayne set the hand brake and got out. Understanding suddenly that she was about to be taken prisoner, she scrambled for a shotgun lying on the grass. Shayne kicked it away, pulled her to her feet and thrust her into the car.

“The fight’s over. You’re all by yourself, as far as I know.”

As he drove down the runway toward the terminal area, she looked back at the burning plane. Another box of ammunition let go. In the mirror, Shayne saw flaming bits of debris erupt across the runway.

“That was you in the helicopter, wasn’t it?” she said.

“That was me.”

“Did the others—”

“You took a few casualties, but everybody else got off, and maybe they’ll make it. I’m hoping the air force knows about them by now.”

“Luckily they don’t,” Adele said quietly. “Before we left the tower we smashed the radios. All the telephone cables have been cut.”

“That may not be quite enough.” He swung between the Delta maintenance building and Concourse 1, cutting beneath the wing of a parked 707. “But never mind about them, think about yourself for a minute.”

“I don’t care! It was splendid! We paralyzed a great American airport. We stole a shipment of arms intended for our enemies.”

“All of which,” Shayne said, “carries a heavy jolt in jail. But be a nice girl and maybe we can deal. Do you have a car?”

“Yes.” She looked at him sharply. “You mean you’re letting me go?”

“That depends on a number of things. How you behave, for one.”

He pulled up alongside his Buick and slid out. Unlocking his own car, he picked a Phillips screwdriver out of the tool kit beneath the glove compartment. He felt Adele’s restlessness behind him. Half turning, he saw that she had edged over in the front seat. She could start the car and lock the front door in the same quick flurry of motion, and with luck she could get away. But she was hesitating.

Shayne unscrewed the radio-telephone antenna attached to the front door-frame. He snapped the wire between the antenna and the phone and took out the entire unit. Then he went into the glove compartment for his flask. Adele hadn’t moved.

“You’re thinking,” Shayne said, getting in beside her. “You only have one chance of getting out of this unsinged, and that’s if I decide to give you a break.”

“But that’s what I don’t understand. Why should you?”

“Where’d you leave your car?”

“The main parking lot.”

They were on the wrong side of the barrier; to stay together, they would have to detour around on 20th Street and come back through the toll plaza. He told her to get her car and meet him at the interchange, and to flash her headlights so he would recognize her.

She was still puzzled. “I could take a taxi and—”

“Don’t be dumb. How long do you think it would take the cops to find out about you? Somebody in that crowd on the deck knew who you were. You’re going to need some help. Wipe the dirt off your face so you don’t look so much like a girl guerrilla, and get going!”

She gave him one more puzzled glance, got out of the car and walked off. Shayne drove to the interchange and waited, keeping his motor running, on the ramp leading south on 42nd Avenue.

As the minutes passed, he felt more and more conspicuous in the black Port Authority sedan. The siren finally stopped. One of the army helicopters clacked overhead, coming back from Miami Beach, and Shayne rattled the steering wheel. He couldn’t delay much longer. Too many people had seen him leaving the warehouse area in an official car.

An elderly Chevrolet with its lights on came down the ramp from the parking area. He signaled with his blinkers, and she followed him off the expressway. On 8th Street he turned east. A half dozen blocks later, he signaled again and passed through a pair of high gates into a cemetery. Adele hesitated, but in the end decided to follow him in. A curving roadway took them between orderly ranks of monuments and headstones, and they parked beside a mausoleum. There were no other cars.

He took the phone and antenna to the Chevrolet and got in.

“I ought to be going someplace very fast,” she said. “I shouldn’t be sitting here. We’re on opposite sides!”

“Right now the sides are pretty scrambled. Things have been happening in other parts of town. Crowther’s been assassinated.”

She came all the way around. “Who did it?”

“A lady named Camilla Steele. Her husband was executed for murder a few years ago. He was innocent, it turned out. Crowther prosecuted the case.”

Adele breathed deeply. “Then it had nothing to do with us.”

Shayne made a rude noise. “There were five hundred armed paratroopers at the airport, and the minute they were ordered into the city, you people moved. That was a careful operation. Of course there’s a connection.”

“Mike—no! We didn’t know about those soldiers till late last night. It made everything more risky, but Gil decided to go ahead. Careful—it certainly was careful. Some of our men had warehouse jobs. Two others were part-time guards. Gil and the rest drifted down two or three at a time. The guns were under a platform. The guards didn’t have a chance. Even if we’d had to do any shooting you wouldn’t have heard it, because that’s when the kids ran out on the field with the paint. The soldiers were there all the time!”

“It wasn’t arranged on your level, Adele. Ruiz arranged it. I can’t ask him how he did it, because he’s dead.”

“Dead?”

“Don’t blame me—I didn’t do it. But I hope I’m going to get some of the credit, because it might not have happened if I hadn’t tossed those Coke bottles out of the helicopter.”

“Gil Ruiz is dead?”

“It happens, baby. When you take over an airport and hijack two planes and a shipment of rifles, there’s an outside chance that somebody’s going to get hurt.”

She put her fingertips to her forehead. She swayed forward. Shayne caught her before she hit her head against the steering wheel. He uncapped his flask of cognac and held it out.

“Drink some of this. I don’t want you to faint again. I don’t have the time.”

She swallowed some cognac, coughed and drank again.

“Let’s assume the plane got through,” he said. “Cuba’s only a couple of hundred miles away, and the air force isn’t as efficient in real life as it is in the movies. You lost your commander and at least one man, maybe more. I didn’t stick around to get the complete casualty list. But on balance, it was a great success. Adele, are you with me? The political effect could be terrific. But not if your band of heroic revolutionaries assassinated an American cabinet member to pull the paratroopers away from the airport. That’s dirty football.”

“We don’t believe in assassination. Read Gil’s books.”

“Nobody on the jury is going to read any books. I mean the jury that’s going to decide whether you get five years for armed robbery or thirty years for conspiracy to commit murder.”

“Thirty years?”

“You committed a few crimes this morning, haven’t you realized that? But I seem to be in a worse jam than you are. Crowther and I weren’t exactly friends. I won’t explain the whole thing, but the way it looks, the killer and I had a joint contract. The top Secret Service man on the scene was about to shoot her, and I slugged him and took his gun. I’ve still got it.”

“It’s a trick. Why should I believe you?”

“You don’t have any choice, Adele.”

He opened the radio antenna to its full length and slid it out the window. After cutting back the insulation on both sides of the break, he spliced the wires. Then he tied the lead-in wire into the Chevy’s ignition system and signaled his operator.

She came on promptly.

“Mr. Shayne, what’s happening? No, don’t tell me. I probably shouldn’t know. Some police officer—Peter Painter, can that be right—wants me to call him the instant you get in touch with me.”

“Are you going to?”

“Not if you say I shouldn’t. I didn’t like the way he sounded. He’s certainly no diplomat, is he?”

“Did you make those calls?”

“I did, Mr. Shayne, but I don’t think they believed me. Mr. Berger especially. He was really abusive! I have a number for Tim Rourke, if you want to talk to him.”

“Yeah, get him for me.”

While she dialed, Shayne told Adele, “Slide over. I want you to hear this. Of course I might have set it up just for you, but I’ve been pretty busy the last fifteen minutes.”

Rourke’s voice said cautiously, “Hold on a minute till I take care of something.” Shayne heard a muffled conversation and the sound of a closing door. When Rourke came back he said, “Where are you?”

“In Miami,” Shayne said.

“Then maybe you better get out of Miami. If there’s a rocket leaving for some other planet, see if you can thumb a ride. All I have to say is, Je-sus Christ!”

“I agree with you, Tim.”

He had the phone in his left hand, tipping it so some of the sound would spill out. Adele’s cheek was against his hand.

“This is insane, Mike! I’m in Room Seven-oh-three. Ditch that car and get to another phone. Every cop in town is watching for your Buick.”

“I’ve already ditched it. I pulled the phone and took it with me.”

“Mike, you’re being a little too cool. Use your imagination. Crowther died on the floor with Berger on top of him. Shot in the neck and the head. All three cameras caught the action, including that right hook you hung on Berger. Everybody’s feeling very, very jittery. When you walk in, don’t be too hard-nosed, because those trigger fingers are going to be itching. Damn it, I can’t think straight. This has got to be handled. I think if I set up a meeting somewhere with you and Will Gentry, just you and Will—”

“Not now, Tim. Has Camilla been picked up yet?”

“No. She took the elevator to the basement and went out the service entrance. The idea is that somebody was waiting for her in a car. She dropped the gun in the elevator. A Stehyr, a Czech automatic, seven millimeter, which means it takes a twenty-five caliber bullet.”

Shayne thought for a moment. Adele put her fingers into the palm of his hand.

Rourke went on earnestly, “Mike, you’ve got to believe me. This is one time you can’t get away with your usual tactics. It isn’t just a couple of jerks like Painter. The FBI is swarming! The longer you stay out there the worse it’s going to be. You absolutely can’t hold out against this kind of pressure.”

“It seems to me I’ve got to.”

“No, Mike. We’ll think of a way you can surrender without getting yourself shot. Let the dust settle. In a couple of days, after everybody calms down—”

“You aren’t usually this hysterical,” Shayne commented. “Has something else happened I don’t know about?”

“They found out about the tickets.”

“What tickets?”

“Her badge had the name Doris Myerson. On the seating plan, Mrs. Myerson had the seat next to Mr. Michael Shayne.”

Shayne snorted. “Anybody can order tickets by mail. You don’t think I actually worked this all out with Camilla, do you?”

“If you mean did you know she was going to shoot him, hell, no. I just think it’s one time when somebody beat you by a step.”

“Who?”

“Camilla, Crowther, Ruiz—how do I know? I’ll tell you my personal theory, and it’s the mildest version going around, believe me. I think you agreed to get her into the ballroom so she could jump up when Crowther started his speech and yell ‘Murderer!’ or something. And she crossed you. But everybody else thinks you slowed Crowther down so she could shoot him, and then when Berger got his gun out faster than you expected, you lost your cool.”

“How does that explain the bullet holes?”

“Well, Mike,” Rourke said slowly, “you have to admit there’s something funny about those bullet holes. They’re in the wrong place, to begin with. I showed them to Berger. He’s not exactly open-minded on the subject of Mike Shayne. His top-of-the-head reaction was that you put them there yourself, so you could claim you thought she’d be shooting blanks, if you follow me.”

“I follow you,” Shayne said. “Are you going to be in that room for a while?”

“I rented it for the paper, to be near the action. But I don’t like to tie myself down to the phone, if that’s what you mean.”

“Leave somebody covering if you go out. If anybody picks up any leads on what happened to Camilla, I want to know about it as soon as the cops do, and if possible sooner.”

“Mike, if you think you’re going to accomplish anything, you’re out of your goddamn mind. This is what we know as a manhunt. Show your nose anywhere in Dade County and you’ll get it shot off. For God’s sake, give up and stay alive!”

“Save it, buddy. I’ll say it once and I hope it sinks in. You remember what happened to Lee Harvey Oswald. I don’t want the same thing to happen to Camilla, because then we’ll never find out who switched the bullets in her gun. Somebody did. Crowther was pulling the strings up to nine o’clock last night. After that somebody else took over. That’s absolutely the only explanation that fits the facts. Whatever Berger thinks, I know I didn’t put any bullet holes in the wall. I know I didn’t pay six-fifty to listen to Crowther sound off. Crowther bought that ticket himself, to pay me back for my part in the Steele case.”

“I admit that’s a possibility—”

“It’s the only way it could have happened, Tim. Then after the shooting, people would figure just the way you did—that I’d helped her, thinking she was just going to yell something. It’d make me look stupid, if nothing worse. Here’s the problem. Switching bullets is one thing that can’t be done on the phone. She saw whoever did it, and he’s going to be gunning for her. I want to get there first.”

“Let the cops do it, Mike. One of the cameras got a very good look at her. How far can she get?”

“She killed an important man. If she’s arrested she won’t be arrested gently. They’ll grab her and drag her in with maximum publicity. She’s in a shaky mental condition, and the kind of treatment she’s sure to get from the cops and you people can easily knock her all the way back into psychosis, and she’ll never be able to answer any questions. If she goes permanently nuts, I’m permanently out of the private detective business. From what you tell me, I may also be in jail.”

“Well, OK, but it’s risky. What do you want me to do?”

“Get her doctor, Irving Miller, and a guy named Paul London. Have them stand by. Get a list of everything that’s missing from the airport warehouses. I don’t mean a complete inventory, just the principal items. Call me as soon as you have it.”

CHAPTER 14

He hung up. Keeping her fingers in his palm, Adele twisted out from under the steering wheel, and kissed him.

“What was that for?” Shayne said.

“I don’t know. But we seem to be in the same kind of trouble, don’t we? I want to think for a minute.”

“No time for that, Adele.”

“I know where we can get a power boat—”

“Forget it. You’ll do better by yourself. I’m the one they’re looking for now, not you. How much money do you have?”

“Fifty dollars or so.”

“I’ll give you another thousand, contingent on getting some information. If you can’t help me, I’ll tie you to one of those headstones and tell the cops where to find you.”

“Would you really do that?”

“I really would, and not just to be mean. It would show them I’m trying to be helpful.”

“Damn, damn. I guess I do need some money, but I’ve got to bargain. Tell me what you think I’d better do, so I can see if it sounds possible.”

“We can assume you were seen getting into my car. But until everybody starts comparing stories, the theory’s going to be that you got off in the plane with the rest of them. You’ve got a couple of hours. Catch the first bus out of town, it doesn’t matter where. Buy some different clothes and a suitcase in the first big town you come to. Keep traveling by bus, and keep reading the papers. You’ll be in Mexico in a few days, and then you can decide where to go next. There are revolutions all over the world. Take your pick.”

“You aren’t coming with me?”

“Baby, I’m on the side of law and order.”

“I know that, damn it! All right, Mexico. I don’t know about afterward. Life isn’t as simple as it was a few hours ago. How I hate to be lied to! I thought Gil was—beautiful, Mike. Honest and brave and tough. But now—”

“Now,” Shayne prompted.

“He did have something to do with that assassination. Which may be all right. Crowther was an evil man, a terrible man. But I wish he hadn’t used a sick woman who had nothing to do with the Movement—”

“So do I. You realize I need facts.”

“You said somebody switched bullets. Last night he had a bullet he was trying to match.”

“What time?”

“After midnight. We were at a place in Coral Gables, five of us. I couldn’t sleep. Gil was playing a six-string guitar, very softly. The phone rang downstairs. He went to answer it, and after that I think he went outside.”

“For how long?”

“Ten or fifteen minutes. He brought back a bullet. I think it was a blank, it looked sort of flat at one end. We all compared ours with it. There was a lot of rummaging around. By that time we had quite a collection of various ammunition, and when he found the right size he went out again and everything settled down. Then he came back and started playing the guitar. I never did get to sleep.”

“Except for that one period, he was in the house the whole time?”

“Yes. Everything was all worked out, and all we had to do was sit around and try not to get too nervous.”

“Did anybody else leave during the night?”

“No.”

“All right, that fills in a few gaps. The woman who shot Crowther is two or three inches shorter than you are. Ten years older, and those have been long, hard years. Not as much bosom, skinnier in the can. Her hair would be any color, any length. When I saw it today it was hacked off short, a streaky light brown or chestnut. But she has a variety of wigs at home. She was very red in the face this morning, but that’s not how she usually looks. Does any of this mean anything to you?”

She shook her head, and Shayne continued, “She was at the airport at nine. She knew her apartment building was being watched, so she wouldn’t go back there. We checked every hotel and motel and rooming house, and most of her friends. We didn’t find her. She spent the night someplace. One of the few things I know about her is that she isn’t up to making any elaborate arrangements herself. If Ruiz gave her some bullets, maybe he also gave her a key. There weren’t any keys in his pockets. How long’s he been in town?”

“A week. Less than that, five days.”

“And he’s been very hot. Somebody probably rented him an apartment under a fake name. On a side street, with its own entrance, probably on the edge of the Spanish district.”

“I wonder,” she said doubtfully. “Can I use your phone?”

He had drawn in the antenna. He extended it again and brought in the operator.

“Mr. Painter called again,” she said, and laughed. “We had a terrible connection and I couldn’t hear him very well. But he sounded excited.”

“Keep lying to him,” Shayne told her.

He passed on a number Adele gave him, and handed her the phone. In a moment she began talking rapidly in Spanish. She broke the connection and gave the operator another number.

This time she was met with a barrage of questions, and it was a moment before she could break in. After another moment she asked Shayne, “Does the woman you’re trying to find speak Spanish?”

“Probably not.”

“Then perhaps—” She returned to the phone. After another breakneck exchange she hung up and told Shayne excitedly, “She’s there now!”

“Let’s go.”

“In this car?”

“Yeah. Fast.”

The motor caught with a roar. He telescoped the antenna and stowed the phone unit under the front seat. “What part of town?”

“Fourth Avenue, near Riverside Park.”

He swung over into the back seat and was out of sight on the floor by the time she passed through the gates and turned onto 8th Street.

“Slow down now,” he said. “You’re going to have to leave me the car. You can pick up a cab on Flagler. Who were you talking to? Don’t turn your head. Talk to the steering wheel.”

“She lives across the street. She was supposed to watch the house while Gil was there, to make sure everything was all right. I don’t want to get her in trouble.”

“I’ll get her a citation. What was all that chatter, Adele? Put it in English.”

She slowed for a turn. “God, the cops are thick around here. Keep down, Mike.”

“I’m down.”

“Last night she went to bed early. She knew Gil was going to be somewhere else. This morning there was a car in the driveway with Alabama plates. She’s been worrying about it, because she didn’t think anybody was supposed to be using the house. Then a woman came out and drove off. If the time’s important, it was between ten and eleven. Crowther’s plane got in when? About eleven fifteen? She came back about an hour later, turned too soon and hit the hedge. She managed the second time, but she did everything very slowly. Then she just sat there. Finally my friend went over and asked if she needed help. The woman couldn’t understand Spanish. Her face was very red, and she looked sick. She said she was fine and went in the house. The car’s still there.”

“OK. You’ve earned the thousand bucks.”

“Mike,” she said after a moment, “will you tell my uncle I’m—”

When she didn’t go on, Shayne said dryly, “I’ll give him the message.”

“What a lot has happened,” she said, still addressing the steering wheel. “I met you. We made love. I took part in my first battle. I don’t know, maybe my last. All of a sudden I feel much, much older. But all I can think about is how sleepy I am.”

She made the final turn and Shayne gathered himself. “It’s on the second floor,” she said, braking. “There’s a car coming… all right, I think everything’s OK. Can I send you a postcard from Mexico?”

“Better not.”

He had the thousand dollars ready, the same thousand Dr. Galvez had given him when they had thought he would have to buy Lorenzo Vega. He passed it to her, jackknifed forward and opened the back door. The Alabama car, parked at a slant across the driveway, was a Pontiac convertible with a patched top. Shayne cut across a poorly maintained lawn to the house.

Adele, too, was out of the car. She walked away without looking back.

CHAPTER 15

Shayne made no attempt to be quiet. He opened a downstairs door and went up. The door at the top of the stairs was unlocked.

There was no furniture in the front room except a phone on the floor under the windows, nothing in the bedroom except a mattress and some scattered clothing. The kitchen had been used by someone who had been living on dry cereal, cold cuts and coffee. He found Camilla in the bathroom, sitting on the closed toilet seat.

She was wearing a black shoulder-length wig, slightly askew, and nothing else except a torn half-slip. She looked blankly at him, without recognition.

“There you are,” he said. “What kind of medicine have you been taking?”

“Medicine.”

“Fine. We’re communicating.”

He went down on one knee, and caught her shoulders as she began to tilt. He shook her and made her look at him. Her pupils were huge. To the drugged brain beyond those eyes, he must have seemed dim and shifting. He dug his fingernails into her shoulders. Her breasts swayed.

“Look at me. I’m Mike Shayne. We’re both in bad trouble, but if you can stay awake for a few minutes maybe we can do something about it.”

“I know,” she said wearily.

The words were distinct, but they came out heavily, as though she was using her last strength to move them past her lips. He held her erect, but her head rolled.

“What did you take? Barbiturates?”

“Adrenalin,” she said after a moment.

“Like hell you took Adrenalin. You mean you gave yourself a shot?”

Without letting her go he looked for the hypodermic. It had rolled behind the toilet. Supporting her body with one hand, Shayne retrieved it. There were a few drops of liquid left in the barrel. He sniffed the needle, then touched it to his tongue. It tasted faintly salty.

“’Drenalin,” she said again, not getting the whole word. “Need it to…”

“Maybe you thought it was Adrenalin,” he said roughly, “but somebody put something else in the needle. Did you hear me? This was a downer. If you fall asleep now, it’s for good.”

“Don’t care.”

“Well, I care, goddamn it.”

He pulled her to her feet. For the first moment he supported her full weight. He continued to hurt her with his fingernails until she took some of it herself.

“We’re going to walk,” Shayne said. “Nobody important knows we’re here, so we’ve got plenty of time “

With one arm around her, he walked her out to the bare living room.

“But you have to want to come out of it. Camilla, listen. Last night they changed the plan so you could get out of the hotel. Instead of looking for the burn in the carpet, you blocked an elevator door and used the table. You surprised everybody. They gave you a stolen car. You were supposed to come back here and change, and take a shot of something to keep you moving until you were out of town. But they conned you! It was a heavy sedative, strong enough to kill you. That’s murder, baby.”

She shook her head.

“Understand this one thing,” he said. “They tried to kill you. You did everything exactly right. You shot Crowther and they double-crossed you. The place has been rented for a month. By the time you were found you’d make a very smelly corpse.”

He was moving her back and forth across the room while he talked. He began to think she was steadier, but each time he stopped to give her a chance to stand alone, she folded. He picked the phone off the floor as he passed. To dial was impossible. He managed to raise the operator on the third try. Continuing back and forth to the limit of the telephone cord, he told her he was having trouble reaching a Miami Beach number, and asked her to dial it for him. A moment later he was talking to the St. Albans switchboard. He asked for Room 703.

Rourke answered.

“Dr. Miller,” Shayne said.

“Right here, Mike. Do I get to know what’s happening?”

“Later. Put him on.”

Miller’s voice said, “Shayne?”

“I’ve got her,” Shayne said abruptly, and had to change hands as she slipped. “She’s just about under. Some kind of sedative in a hypodermic. Get over here right away.”

He started to give the address, but Miller cut him short. “Two detectives are following me around. You don’t want police at this point.”

“Damn right I don’t.”

“How’s her breathing?”

“Very hard and slow.”

“Then it could be morphine. Keep her reacting. Insult her. Try coffee if you have it. If she goes to sleep, be sure she doesn’t suffocate—watch her tongue. There’s a private clinic in North Miami. I’ll send an ambulance. And Mike!” he added. “Bring the syringe so we can see what we’re up against.”

He slammed down the phone. Shayne caught Camilla again and wrestled her back under control.

“Here’s something else you’ll be interested in,” he said. “You picked up the gun at the airport at nine o’clock. A Czech automatic, taking an off-caliber bullet. It was loaded with blanks.”

Her head wobbled. “No.”

“Yes,” he said. “Crowther sent you that gun. He didn’t want to be killed himself. He wanted you to be killed. He wanted you to be shot down by his bodyguards.”

Her head wobbled again.

“He was still on his feet when you went into the elevator. You saw the look on his face. That was surprise. He didn’t expect it to hurt.”

She staggered, attempting to stand by herself. He moved her backward until she hit a wall, and stayed in front of her so she had to look at him.

“Two facts to get in your head. Crowther sent you the gun. Somebody else put a shot of dope in that needle. So that makes two people who tried to kill you.”

He repeated the two statements, but he wasn’t sure she heard him.

“I feel—” she said.

“Sure. You feel like going to sleep so you won’t have to do any thinking. But you changed your mind once. Change it again. You wanted to kill Crowther and get away with it. You wouldn’t have done it otherwise! If you die now it won’t be something you decided to do yourself. Stay awake. Tell me what happened. If you don’t, they’re going to get away with it.”

She managed one word. “If—”

“If what? If there were blanks in the gun, how did you succeed in killing anybody? There weren’t blanks in the gun when you fired it. Somebody changed clips.”

She sagged forward. He moved her into the kitchen. There was coffee, there was running water, there were cups. Somehow he got the operation started while bouncing her off the walls and the counter. She got away from him briefly and fell against the stove, knocking the pan aside and touching the hot unit. She screamed, and for an instant she was fully awake.

“Who brought you here, Camilla?” Shayne demanded.

She stared at him. “He—”

She fell. He pulled her to her feet, and for a moment he thought she was completely gone. He slapped her hard. Her eyes opened and he hauled her to the bathroom, where he turned on the cold water and held her in the shower until she began to fight to get out.

Back in the kitchen, he spilled powdered coffee into a cup and covered it with boiling water. He held it to her lips and got some of it down. It made her throw up. She was wet from the shower, and kept slipping out of his hands.

They walked some more. Each time her eyes closed he had to be more brutal to bring her back. He was losing, but he kept her in motion.

Passing the front window on one of his circuits of the room, he veered sharply. A police car was parked directly in front of the house.

He backed away, shifting Camilla to his left arm, and approached the window again. The cop at the wheel was calling in. He looked at the convertible in the driveway, apparently getting a check on the Alabama plates. If it was on the stolen-car list, Shayne knew that the cops would be leaning on the doorbell in another minute.

He showed himself at the window and made a clenched-fist salute, wondering if anybody but the black-power people used this any more. The woman Adele had talked to on the phone, like Shayne, would be watching the police car. He lifted the phone and showed that.

A moment later it rang.

Picking it up, Shayne said, “That was fast. Do you speak English, I hope?”

“A little,” a woman’s voice said.

“I’m a friend of Adele’s,” Shayne said. “Arriba Gil Ruiz! If those cops get interested in this house, we’re all cooked. Do you understand?”

“The policemen. You want them go away.”

“I want them to go away fast.”

“I think I can.”

The phone clicked. An instant later a ground-floor window in a house across the street flew up and a stout, grayhaired woman, the same woman who had warned Shayne the day before of the loosened lug-nuts on his wheels, put her head out and screamed. “Cabrón! Guardias cabrónes!” People appeared on nearby porches. The woman gestured like a cheerleader and others joined in. Both cops were out of their car, no longer wondering about the convertible.

A boy darted around a clump of bushes and heaved a broken tile at the police car. One cop stayed to protect the car and the other tried to catch the boy, who wasn’t going to let himself be caught. A crowd was gathering, made up entirely of women and young children who had had to stay home while the men went off to take part in the exciting events at the airport and in Miami Beach. A garbage-filled bag arched through the air and exploded on top of the car.

Both cops now retreated into the car and called for reinforcements. Today nothing was available. All the cops had emptied out of the station houses to look for Michael Shayne and Camilla Steele.

The car drove off amid jeers and taunts.

Shayne showed his clenched fist out the window and went back to the struggle to keep Camilla from falling asleep. He tried the shower again, and brought her back, but only for a moment. As she sagged in his arms he heard an approaching siren.

The crowd on the street had only partially dispersed. The ambulance drew up, its siren dying. Shayne signaled from the upstairs window. The driver and an attendant pounded upstairs.

“Need the stretcher?” the driver asked.

He was an ambulance-driving type, squat and doughfaced, with an aggrieved expression, indicating that he had taken this menial job only because of its social importance. Shayne explained the situation in a few crisp words and sent the attendant into the bathroom for the hypodermic syringe and into the bedroom to gather up Camilla’s clothes.

“Did they send any medication?”

“Not my department,” the driver said. “I didn’t know this was what I was getting into. Mike Shayne. The things they’re saying about you on television.”

“OK,” Shayne said. “What’s it going to cost me?”

“I’ll have to say you pulled a gun on me. Wouldn’t seventy-five bucks be about right?”

“Seventy-five bucks would be high.” He pulled out his wallet and threw the man a hundred-dollar bill. “You owe me twenty-five. Put it in the mail.”

“I’ll remember to do that,” the driver promised him.

Downstairs, Shayne backed into the ambulance and the others handed Camilla in. He told the attendant to ride in front.

“And use your siren. We’re in a hurry.”

“I always use my siren,” the driver said, surprised. “It would hardly be worth it otherwise.”

Shayne pulled the curtains on both sides. The ambulance got away fast. The turn at the next corner was so sharp that Camilla, on the edge of the reclining bed, plunged into Shayne’s arms. He put her back, and she surprised him by saying sleepily, “Mike.”

“That’s right. Is that all you’re going to say?”

Her lips moved in what was nearly a smile, and her hand rose. It was her first voluntary movement in some time.

“Do you remember a dream you had about shooting somebody?”

“Dream?”

“Nothing’s been working too well for you lately. But in that dream everything went off like clockwork. It would be a good sign.”

Her head fell back. He let it roll, then snapped her violently forward. Her wig fell off. She pushed at him weakly, and said, “Don’t.”

She only said one other thing. An abrupt change of lane sent her sliding sideways and her head flopped against his shoulder. She said distinctly, “Sex is so nice.”

“If you want any more,” Shayne said, “you’d better wake up.”

The ambulance reached the North-South Expressway and really took off. They left at the Opalocka exit. Shayne was still going through the motions, but he was no longer getting results. The ambulance made a final screaming turn and skidded into a covered receiving area. Someone threw the back doors open, and Dr. Irving Miller took over.

CHAPTER 16

He smelled and tasted the needle, then plunged it into his own forearm. He waited an instant, then selected a hypodermic from several that were already prepared, and injected it in her shoulder. A second doctor pricked her finger and filled a syringe with blood.

Shayne kept out of their way. She was still unconscious when she was carried inside.

“How’d you like the ride we gave you?” the driver asked, grinning. “I figured for seventy-five bucks you deserved a little something extra.”

Shayne shook his flask. It was empty.

“Where can I get a drink around here?”

“You’re in the wrong place, man. This is for drying out alcoholics.” He added, “But I happen to have a pint I could sell you.”

“How much?”

“Call it twenty-five, and then I won’t have to remember to send you change from that hundred.”

Shayne agreed, and had a drink from the costly bottle before going inside. He was directed to a small elevator which took him to the third floor. A pretty blond receptionist started as he entered the waiting room.

“Mr. Shayne? If you’ll wait here, Dr. Miller will let you know when he can—”

The furniture looked comfortable, but Shayne didn’t sit down. Several expensively dressed people sitting around the room stirred uneasily and tried not to look at him. He was holding a pint bottle of whiskey, a black wig, and a loose bundle of women’s clothing, from which a bra dangled. Having been in and out of the shower with Camilla, his clothes were soaked. She had thrown up on him and spilled coffee on him. None of that could be helped. He drank again from the bottle.

In her nervousness the receptionist broke the point of her pencil. “Would you mind putting that bottle in your pocket, Mr. Shayne? If any of our patients—”

Ten minutes passed before Dr. Miller called him into the corridor.

“Paul London’s with her, but that’s not what she needs right now. She’s still very disoriented. I gave her a shot of Nalline to counteract the morphine, and it seems to be taking hold nicely. Her breathing is normal. But she seems to have barbiturates inside her as well as the morphine, and I don’t want to let her sleep right now. Her blood shows a trace of alcohol, which is bad in combination.”

“Can she talk?”

“I want her to talk. The next quarter hour is critical. She’s blocking out everything that happened. That’s understandable, but it could do her considerable damage. She’s convinced herself that she’s worthless. If you could make her realize somehow that at this moment she’s the most important person in Miami—”

They stepped out onto a broad terrace overlooking the bay. Several patients in bathing suits were taking the sun in reclining deck chairs. Camilla, wearing a red robe, was walking beside Paul London. Although she was leaning on him heavily, she was definitely walking. She stopped when she saw Shayne.

“What are you doing here?”

“I came in an ambulance, but I’m only a visitor.”

“I want you to go away, please. I happen to be quite sick.”

“That’s not news.”

“Leave me alone.”

Shayne glanced at Miller. The plump little doctor remained detached, watching them with his thick glasses pushed down his nose. Shayne pulled Camilla out of Paul’s grasp and slammed her against the high parapet. The sunbathers sat up in alarm. Paul made a movement of protest, but Shayne elbowed him aside and caught Camilla as she came off the wall.

“Nine o’clock last night you picked up the suitcase and took it to the ladies’ room. The gun was inside the suitcase. You had to touch it, but it made you sick to your stomach.”

She began to cry. “The lights were so bright there. The whiteness, the mirrors.”

“What did you do?”

She looked confused. “I ran out in the dark where the planes were. My shadow was hundreds of feet long, tall and thin. It wasn’t like me at all. It went on and on and then vanished. People were shouting, shouting.”

“When you run out on a busy airfield you have to expect to be shouted at.”

“The lights. Blue lines of light running away forever. I thought if I was an airplane I could run between the blue lights and fly! A big jet roared at me and I ran into a dark building. I was frightened. There were dim lights there like a church.”

“Were there planes in the building?”

“Oh, yes. An oily smell. I was so exhausted. I looked for a place to rest. Everything was metal, cement.” She drew back. “What’s the matter with you, Mike? You’re soaking wet.”

“I took a shower, and forgot to take my clothes off.” He smiled at her. “Baby, you’re wild.”

“I am not,” she said seriously. “I’m basically colorless and uninteresting. I can’t do the simplest thing, like tying my shoelaces or fastening a bra. Somebody was looking for me with a big flashlight. It kept stabbing in the darkness, coming closer and closer. I shot at it. When it didn’t stop coming I was so frightened I tried to shoot myself, but I couldn’t even do that. I felt so blue and depressed. He said he wanted to be my friend. He said kind things to me, and how I needed kindness. I gave him the gun and he turned out the flashlight and we talked in the dark, under a big plane. We talked a long time. We went somewhere in his car. We drove and drove. Then there was a dark room with a mattress on the floor. I think we made love. Did we, Mike?”

“Probably.”

“Then it was morning, the phone was ringing. I couldn’t remember why I was there, what day it was. He told me what I should do. He made me wind my watch and told me what time it should say. There were pills and a glass of water, and they made me feel better. There was a dress to put on. I found it in the bathroom and went back to the phone. He explained what I should do about the elevator at the hotel, the table I should pull over so no one could follow me into the elevator, how many shots—” She stopped, suddenly uncertain. “How many shots to fire. I missed, I know.”

Shayne had seen a recreation room off the terrace. He took her there and snapped on the television. Everything had been canceled because of the assassination. She watched with interest at first, and then smiled indulgently.

“You really are ingenious, Mike. I thought that was real for a minute.”

He snapped off the set. “One thing I don’t understand is how you could make love to the guy, even in the dark.”

“I’m not particular. I didn’t look at him.”

“Not even in the car?”

She shook her head. “I simply—went with what happened. He was part of the night. I did what he told me, to get in the car, to wait while he telephoned somebody, to come inside and undress. I was frightened of him. Dark glasses. I’m worried about people who wear dark glasses at night. In the room with the mattress there were no bulbs.”

“You talked about Crowther with him.”

Again she shook her head. “He talked about Crowther. I can remember some of the things he said—very stupid things. That Crowther was a murderer of little children. That if I shot him I’d be part of something much bigger than a single person. What he was really saying was that I had to do it. I had to do what he said.”

“Then you made love. Was he tall or short? You remember something. Fat or thin?”

“Mike, I’m not at all sure we made love.” The questioning was beginning to worry her. “I sometimes make love to people I don’t want to know anything about. I’m sorry I can’t help you. You should know better than to expect any help from me.”

“You’ve helped. I think we’re just about out of the woods. Now think about that hangar last night. Every one of those planes had an airline’s name on it. Pan-Am. Delta. Eastern.”

She frowned. “There was a big crane. The kind of truck the tree-surgeons use, with a long arm and a bucket at the end. I bumped into a gas pump inside the door.”

She was running down. She mumbled something incomprehensible. He took her chin in his hand and forced her to look at him. Her pupils had been nearly normal for a time, but they were big again.

“You’re a great girl, Camilla.”

He handed her over to Paul London, who was still in the background, and Dr. Miller took him into a small office on the same floor.

“I think that was good for her,” Miller said. “She’s worn out physically, but I don’t want to let her sleep for another hour.”

“What happens after she wakes up?”

“After she wakes up.” He looked unhappy. “I only hope she does. I think she’ll try to protect herself by forgetting everything she just told us. That may be the last we’ll hear of the man with the flashlight, if he really existed.”

“He existed,” Shayne said briefly. “I want to use the phone.”

Miller left him alone. Shayne punched a button for an outside line, and dialed the St. Albans. Presently Rourke was on the line.

“Back in touch,” Rourke said cheerfully. “Do you realize that certain people around here are beginning to flake?”

“Can you get Abe Berger? I want to talk to him.”

“They’re using the ballroom upstairs as a command post. I’ll send somebody up.” He was away for a moment. “Can you give me some indication of how we stand at the moment, Mike? I personally am taking a certain amount of heat here. I’m not complaining, you’ll notice. I just hope you’ll decide to come in fairly soon.”

“I need some more time, and I need some cooperation from various people.”

“If you think you’re going to get any cooperation out of Berger, lots of luck. That man has himself barely under control—barely. If I’m having trouble giving you the benefit of the doubt, you can imagine what’s going on there. He knows what he saw before you gave him that shot in the jaw.”

“You know how unreliable eyewitnesses always are. What else has been happening?”

“Gil Ruiz was killed at the airport. That’s a positive identification, from fingerprints. Two of his men were wounded. Local people, they didn’t come in with him. The plane got through to Cuba, or we assume that’s where it is. I know you put in an alert, which was clever of you, but we all thought you were trying to fake us out.”

“Any mention of a girl?”

“Any mention of a girl. There was a girl in the group that took over the control tower, but as far as we know she made the plane. If you want to give me any additional news, about her or about anybody else, I’m ready with a pencil.”

“No.”

“I figured as much. You asked for an inventory of what was missing out there. The problem is, how many guns burned and how many—”

“I’m not interested in guns.”

“Well, they also broke into the security area and cleaned out all the high-value, low-bulk cargo. I don’t have a list yet. Some gold bullion and platinum. The guess is about a quarter of a million bucks. Some crazy bastard fire-bombed one of the planes from a helicopter, and they may recover some of it. Gold doesn’t burn.”

“They were mainly after the guns. Anything else would go on the second plane. While you’re sitting around there doing nothing, keep after this for me, will you? Find out who was shipping the gold. If it was a treasury shipment, forget about it. But if it came from a private bank, get the name of their insurance company and find out how much they’re willing to pay on a recovery. Not that they’re likely to recover anything if it got to Cuba. Same with the platinum. As soon as they understand the situation they’ll be glad to cooperate. Get the terms in writing, and tell them to put it in the mail this afternoon.”

Rourke chortled. “My dear fellow, I don’t know why I’ve been worrying about you. You’re going to come out of this covered with roses, as usual.”

Berger’s voice interrupted. “Shayne,” he said through set teeth.

“I hear you’re sore,” Shayne said. “You shouldn’t have pulled that gun, Abe, but I’m willing to forget it if you are. Are you still in charge, or have they relieved you?”

“It’s the same committee, plus the FBI district director. And minus Sparrow—Devlin is back. If you have something you want me to tell them—”

“I can’t make a deal with a committee.”

“No deal, Mike. No deal is possible. Please believe me.”

“I asked for you, Abe, because you have a few more brains and a little more experience than the local people. And you have more to recoup. Your assignment was to protect Crowther, and you didn’t do it very well, did you?”

“We know why.”

“I know why. I don’t think you do yet. Are you assuming I was in on a plot to assassinate your boy?”

“I’m reserving judgment. I know damn well you were in on something! Come in and we’ll talk about it. You can have your lawyer present.”

“Do you want Camilla too?”

Berger said cautiously, “Have you got her?”

“I know where she is. I hope somebody’s given you her medical history. She’s a little unstable, to put it mildly. She attempted suicide a couple of hours ago. Right now she’s full of morphine and counter-morphine and barbiturates on top of alcohol, some kind of amphetamines and God knows what else. She may come out of it and she may not.”

“We’ll see that she gets the best of medical attention. Bring her in.”

“Abe, what’s the matter with you? You’ll get her. You can have custody by ten o’clock tonight. But you may have custody of a corpse, depending on what you decide right now.”

“I want her alive, Mike.”

“Sure. But you would have shot her in the elevator if I hadn’t decked you. Your gun would have gone off by itself. I’m in a position to play God. I can give her to you, and there’s a chance she’ll pull through. And after that, the way things look at the moment, she’s a cinch to be found guilty of first-degree murder. So why should I give her to you? She’s not guilty of first-degree murder. She’s guilty of holding a gun that killed Crowther. Hundreds of people saw her do that. There are going to be some very tricky legal questions. When all the facts are known, you people are going to be combing the books to find what charge to bring against her. In the end you may decide not to bring any.”

“Are you still trying to persuade people that Crowther arranged to have himself shot?”

“Think of some other explanation. That’s the only thing that fits the bullet holes in the wall. How did the bullets check out?”

“They were all fired from the same gun.”

“Yeah—he used an odd caliber to make it easier for you. And harder for her to replace if she noticed hers were blanks, which she wasn’t likely to do. You’re probably thinking I should have called you up last night and told you about those holes in the wall.”

“Why, no,” Berger said ironically. “Why should I think that?”

“If you haven’t worked it out for yourself, here’s why I didn’t. You’d have told Crowther. He’d say, ‘My God, bullet holes in the wall, something funny going on down there and I’d better stay away from Miami after all.’ Camilla would go on falling apart. Sooner or later, the pills would kill her. Crowther would run for the Senate and probably make it. Eight years from now, with that wonderful head of hair, he’d be a good presidential possibility.”

“God forbid,” Berger said involuntarily.

“All right, Abe. That remark makes you an accessory. The weapon that killed him wasn’t a Czech automatic. It was Camilla Steele. She’s going to put in a stretch in a mental hospital, whether she’s sent there by a judge or somebody else. She may pull out of it in the end. Meanwhile, I’m going to see to it that the public knows the facts about the gun and where it came from. Crowther won’t do any lying in state in the Capitol rotunda.”

“Let’s be sure they are facts.”

“Now that’s the first sensible remark you’ve made in this conversation. Last night when she picked up the gun she was in no condition to kill anybody except possibly herself, and she couldn’t do that because it wasn’t loaded with live ammunition. Somebody—not Crowther, somebody else—straightened her out, switched clips, found her a place to sleep, made a few little changes in the plan so she’d have a chance to get away, and then left her a syringe with an overdose of morphine, so she wouldn’t be around to identify him in court. I was hoping she could describe him. She can’t remember much. She’s already beginning to paper it over. By tomorrow she may not remember anything at all. Here’s what I want you to do.”

“Now we get to the pitch.”

“That’s right. There are still major blanks in her story. I want to take her over the same route tonight and see if anything else comes back to her.”

“Impossible.”

“Abe, it’s our only chance to find out who really killed Crowther. It may not work, but it seems to me we have to try it.”

“Bring her in. Maybe we can arrange something.”

“That’s not the deal,” Shayne said coldly. “I think she finally trusts me, but it’s been touch and go. I can’t take a chance on turning her over to anybody else, and I obviously can’t do this without your help. If you can’t talk your committee into it, I’ll stop working on her and let her die.”

“Say that again.”

“I’ll let her die,” Shayne said harshly. “It’ll save her from a sure death by execution, and I won’t be any worse off than I am now. Here’s the option. Call off your dogs. All of them, Abe. At nine tonight I’ll bring her to the airport. You can have a thousand cops out there, as far as I’m concerned, so long as they’re in plain clothes and keep out of my way.”

“It’s a stunt,” Berger said. “I don’t like it a bit.”

“But you’ve got to do it.”

Berger hesitated. “Well—maybe so. It’ll mean stalling the media wolves, getting clearance from Washington—I don’t think you have any conception of the kind of tension we’re under. Let me think if there’s any way it could backfire.”

“Any number of ways.”

“Call me back in ten minutes. No, make it twenty. I’ve got some selling to do.”

Shayne put the phone down slowly. Outside on the terrace, Camilla was still being walked slowly up and down. Her face was empty of expression. At nine o’clock that night, when Shayne had told Berger he would deliver her at the airport, she would be unconscious.

The next time around, Shayne asked Paul London to let Dr. Miller relieve him for a moment.

CHAPTER 17

Promptly at nine, an ambulance arrived at the taxi discharge point at the Miami International Airport. Michael Shayne came out first, and helped a woman to dismount. She was wearing a full black wig, dark glasses and the same nondescript flowered dress the assassin of Eliot Crowther had worn that morning. She carried a black handbag with a long strap slung over her shoulder.

She entered the terminal alone.

The real Camilla was sleeping in the North Miami clinic, breathing fitfully and occasionally throwing her head from side to side. To Shayne, looking down at her before they left the clinic, it had seemed that she was a long way from giving up. Paul London had agreed readily to the substitution. One of the nurses let out the side seam of the dress so it would fit him. Another nurse with exceptionally large feet contributed shoes and supervised the makeup. Not much padding was necessary. He had trouble walking in the high heels, but presumably Camilla herself would be walking unsteadily because of drugs.

He went directly to the baggage claims window. He surrendered a check and was handed the same lightweight suitcase Camilla had picked up the night before. He took it to the ladies’ room near the Pan-American ticket counter. He hesitated briefly here, but went in.

Tonight there were a half dozen women inside, including two armed policewomen. He entered a booth with his suitcase. Tonight there was no gun inside it. He already had a gun in his handbag, a heavy Colt .45 automatic.

He abandoned the suitcase and left the ladies’ room. Outside, he looked around quickly and bolted down a flight of steps. He was in the southernmost concourse, one of six that protruded from the terminal building like the spokes of a half-wheel. Banks of floodlights three quarters of the way up the control tower illuminated the gates and the holding areas. Two airplanes were loading, each surrounded by its own small school of service vehicles.

When a uniformed man approached, London ran out through the nearest gate onto the concrete, teetering on his unaccustomed heels. A crew bus, coming in from the hangar area, swerved to avoid hitting him, and the driver honked angrily. It had been agreed that when he broke into the open at the end of the concourse, instead of continuing out on the field as Camilla had done the previous night, he would cut back at once toward the Delta maintenance hangar. A security guard who hadn’t been warned about what was happening started for him, but was called off by a voice from above on a bullhorn.

London crossed to the hangar. The big galvanized overhead doors into the building were closed. He opened a smaller door beyond. One hand was inside his open handbag.

He waited an instant, then stepped through the doorway.

Only a few lights burned inside the cavernous building. A big DC-9 was suspended from a rig attached to an overhead crane. Three of its engines had been pulled. Two cherry-pickers were in position beyond it—trucks carrying a metal bucket at the end of a long movable arm. Using these buckets, workmen could reach the upper surface of the wings. One of the buckets was higher than the plane. As London moved further into the building, Michael Shayne, crouched against the opposite wall, reached up and touched a light switch.

He heard a faint metallic sound. He pulled the switch and flooded the building with light.

At the same instant, a gun banged. The blaze of light jarred the shooter’s aim. The bullet, from a high-powered Winchester sporting rifle fired from the cherry-picker overhanging the plane, struck London above the knee, knocking him back through the doorway.

Shayne shouted, his voice echoing from the metal ceiling, “Throw it down.”

The man in the bucket had disappeared. The bucket began to come down. For an instant it was hidden by the wing of the plane. Shayne moved before it could reappear. From the wing’s shadow, the gun banged again.

Shayne dropped behind a tow truck, going all the way down to the oily concrete. Abe Berger, near the hangar’s rear door, fired at random, to show he was there. Another shot from the moving bucket went through the fender of the tow truck.

And then the bucket was down, concealed from Shayne by the cherry-picker’s chassis. He crawled beneath the truck. He had a sixteen-gauge shotgun. The Winchester clattered to the concrete twenty feet behind the DC-9, without disturbing Shayne’s concentration. The man broke from cover. Shayne brought the shotgun around smoothly and fired at the cement floor, a foot or so short. The man ran into the ricocheting pellets and stumbled through the door. Paul London, lying on his back holding the Colt in both hands, shot him in the chest. He reeled into the open, into the path of a speeding power cart. The impact knocked off his hit and dark glasses, and as he went backward, Shayne saw that it was Teddy Sparrow.

He was dead when Shayne reached him.

“Sparrow!” Devlin exclaimed. “Mike, I know you’re usually on target, but you’re all wrong about this. Seriously, you don’t know him. He was out there in that Delta hangar because he had some nutty idea that he could help catch an assassin, and make himself famous. He was a clown.”

“He looked like a clown,” Shayne said. “People who look like Teddy get typed in the second grade. And I do know him. I know him well. He’s worked for me a few times, and he knew the reason I hired him was because I wanted a bumbler who couldn’t help drawing attention to himself. So he played the bumbler. That doesn’t mean he didn’t want money, like anybody else.”

“You sound pretty sure of yourself. Teddy Sparrow—I’ll be goddamned if I believe it.”

Shayne said patiently, “Nobody knew Camilla went into that hangar last night. She told me, and I told Abe Berger. The only other person who knew it was the man who met her there. She was the one person alive who could tie him into any of this, and he didn’t know there’s a good chance she’ll never remember a thing about him. This may have been one of the first operations in his life that really worked, that looked as though it might really pay off. He couldn’t risk losing it at the last minute. He thought he had to shoot her, and the hangar was the obvious place to do it. He was planning to drop the rifle, and if he didn’t succeed in getting out the opposite door, he could say he heard the shot and ran in to see what was happening. I had to let him get off one shot, to commit himself.”

“And to get himself killed,” Devlin commented.

Shayne shrugged. “Even if Camilla had identified him, and her doctor doesn’t think it’s likely, a good defense lawyer could break her apart on cross-examination.” They were in Devlin’s office on the mezzanine of the terminal, overlooking the main concourse. Devlin was a short, freckled ex-baseball player with a booming voice, still touchy about having been decoyed to Oklahoma by a fake telegram. He had sent down to a bar for drinks. Will Gentry was there. Berger had brought two FBI officials, including the district director.

“What do you know about Teddy’s background?” Shayne asked Devlin.

“He worked around. He was in the army a few years, the MP’s. He had that private-detective business. Before that he did some kind of labor relations for one of the copper companies in Latin America. I could look it up.” He stopped.

“Yeah,” Shayne said. “He said something to me about it once. He spoke Spanish well. He knew somebody who could put him in touch with Ruiz. In anything this big there has to be an inside man. How long have those rifles been in the warehouse?”

“About ten days.” Devlin ran his fingers through his sparse hair. “I just can’t get adjusted to it. He knew about the troubles I’m having with my son, and he could have sent that telegram. But remember I just got back. This happened in my jurisdiction, and I’ll have to get up in front of the TV cameras and tell the public all about it. What’s this wild business about Crowther organizing his own assassination?”

“I’ve explained that to too many people already,” Shayne said wearily. “Berger can brief you before you talk to anybody. The thing that gave us trouble was that everything seemed to dovetail. But there were actually two schemes running—Crowther’s and Teddy’s, and they kept getting in each other’s way. By itself, each one probably would have worked. Ruiz wasn’t going to be using more than about twenty people, and he needed a diversion. A small Miami Beach riot would be just the thing.”

Berger said, “You mean it was Sparrow who hired Lorenzo Vega?”

“I think so. I think he’d want to do it himself.”

“And was he the one who tipped you off to the assassination?”

“He didn’t know about it yet. That was Crowther. If Camilla’s functioning tomorrow, we can play her tape of that phone call. I think it’ll turn out to be the same voice that talked her into the assassination in the first place.”

“But I don’t see—”

“He wanted to be sure he got full network coverage. But this complicated things for Teddy and Ruiz. Teddy found out we were bringing in paratroopers, and it must have appalled him. They were planning to steal two cargo planes, load them and take off, and if anything went wrong, all they had to contend with was a force of security guards commanded by Teddy himself, who could be counted on to make his usual quota of mistakes. Regular infantry was a different story. They must have considered calling it off, and you know how much Ruiz wanted those rifles.”

“And of course,” Berger said slowly, “it was Sparrow who got the report about a woman in the ladies’ room with a gun.”

“Yeah. He saw her leaving, and followed her into the Delta hangar. He went after her with a flashlight. She fired at the light, but naturally she didn’t hit anything, as she was shooting blanks. He calmed her down, and I suppose she told him the whole story. If he hadn’t charged her up all over again, she would have wandered around and thrown the gun in the canal. But an assassination, from Teddy’s point of view, would be an even better diversion than a riot, especially if the assassin escaped. When he found out she’d used up her bullets he got her more from Ruiz.”

“Pretty risky,” Devlin observed.

“Not really. Ruiz already knew about him, and they had to confer anyway. They worked out the changes, so she stood a chance of getting away. You know the rest of it, or somebody can fill you in. Later he tried to kill her with morphine. Ruiz was dead by that time, and that would leave nobody alive to testify that Teddy Sparrow wasn’t as much of a clown as he looked. You realize that he shot Ruiz?”

“Did you see him do it?” Berger asked.

“I saw the look on Ruiz’ face when he was hit, and that was when everything started to make sense. I’d seen that same look a little while before, on Crowther’s. They were both surprised and annoyed. Not furious, just annoyed. Crowther knew for an absolute fact that the pistol was loaded with blanks. He’d loaded it himself. And the stupid girl wasn’t standing where he’d told her to stand. Ruiz was looking at another loading platform. There he saw Teddy Sparrow, a little foolish, but a man who sympathized with the revolution, who had helped pull off the great coup of the decade, and the clown was pointing a rifle at him. That was the look of somebody about to be shot by his inside man, and Ruiz didn’t believe it until he fell off the platform.”

“And now that Teddy’s dead,” Devlin said, “I don’t suppose we’ll ever know what he got out of it.”

Shayne finished his drink. Setting his glass down, he crossed to the door. Tim Rourke was outside with other reporters and TV people. They closed in around Shayne and began barking questions.

“Mr. Devlin will tell you what happened in a minute,” Shayne said. “Tim, what did you find out?”

Rourke grinned. “All the gold and platinum was owned by private shippers, and their insurance companies were glad to hear from me. You get twenty percent of what you recover, not including anything that turns up in the burned plane.”

“Call them back and say I accept.”

Shayne returned to the office. “We all know Teddy wasn’t in this for political reasons. They paid him off with permission to clean out the maximum security area. I saw a Port Authority vehicle heading for the warehouses. Teddy was probably driving. He loaded the trunk with gold bars and platinum, unloading the spare tire to get more room. I saw the tire later. What was a spare tire doing lying out in the open? I filed it away to think about when I had time.”

“Then where is it now?”

“I drove off in the car, which must have practically killed Teddy. It’s parked next to a mausoleum in the Forest Glade cemetery.”

Devlin and Abe Berger handled the press conference, referring to Shayne several times when they needed further details. Berger was heading back to Washington on the next available plane. Shayne had a moment alone with him before he left.

“Don’t you owe me something, Abe?”

“I wonder. I lost a politician I was supposed to be protecting. I took a full count in front of a hundred million people on ‘live’ television.” Then he understood. “I do owe you something, at that.”

Shayne was standing easily, his face impassive. Berger measured the distance, and swung hard, but he diverted the punch at the last instant, grazing Shayne’s jaw.

“The hell with it,” he said in disgust. “If they fire me, maybe I can get a job as number-two security man at Miami International. I understand there’s an opening.”

Rourke was waiting to talk to Shayne. When the reporter drove off to turn in his story, Shayne went out to the parking lot to pick up his Buick. He was oddly restless. He drove into town, found his radio-telephone and antenna on the floor of Adele’s Chevrolet, and reinstalled them in their usual place.

Checking the connection, he was surprised to get his usual daytime operator.

“Are you still working?”

“Overtime,” she said. “I just listened to the news, Mr. Shayne, and you were magnificent! I think I helped a little, didn’t I?”

“The phone service was very good, as usual. You’ll be hungry when you go off. Would you be interested in a couple of drinks and dinner?”

There was a brief pause.

“You don’t even know my name. What if I’m fat and bowlegged?”

“Are you?”

“Well, no, but if the supervisor ever found out—On the other hand, she’s away for the weekend, isn’t she, and if you’re really serious—”

“Damn right I’m serious. I’d like to talk to somebody normal for a change.”

She hesitated. “I wouldn’t say I was all that normal.”

Shayne laughed. “Where do I meet you?”

Table of Contents

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17