At the Point of a .38

by Brett Halliday

  “You assume he’s nearby.”

  “He’s got to be. He’ll want to know if he’s put me away for the night, or do I have some more errands. He’s driving a beat-up Buick with plenty of juice. Let’s set it up like this. I pull out and start south on One. Theoretically, I got rid of him hours ago, and I won’t be watching for headlights. I’ll take a couple of you with me, out of sight in the back seat. I’ll pick a spot and pull over. You come up behind in another car and we’ll wipe him out.”

  “Making a certain amount of noise,” Rashid said skeptically.

  “But fast. Then we scatter. I know that stretch of road. I’ll pick a place where we won’t be bothered.”

  “I see why having this detective put out of the way would be a relief for you, to remove a witness to a killing. For us, it seems less urgent.”

  “This is a special kind of private detective. I know him from way back.”

  “But only one man, Murray. We can leave at once, now that you have been careless enough to lead him here. As for you, simply steal someone else’s car so that trick with the helicopter can no longer work. We can make sure he doesn’t follow you, without having to kill him. In my judgment, we should do as little as possible to draw attention before eleven o’clock tomorrow morning.”

  “You can’t make book on this guy. All the people who’ve tried it have ended up dead or in jail. Without exception.”

  “You’re an exception.”

  “Am I?” Gold said bitterly. “He’s one of the big reasons I had to blow the country. Let me tell you about him. He’s no super-hero out of the comic-strips, but there are things he’s good at. He knows somebody on every block in town. He gets the feel of a thing, and anticipates. He’s stubborn as hell and when he’s underway he doesn’t give a shit about anything or anybody. Believe me. He can wreck us.”

  “You, perhaps, if you’ve been rash enough to do murder underneath his nose. But we are a new species. All that experience of his will count for nothing. What sort of intuition will cause him to be waiting at the Hotel St. Albans tomorrow morning with a battalion of paratroopers?”

  Gold shook his head. “He’s pulled off swindles I’ve never been able to explain.”

  “No,” Rashid said. “We’ll take a chance with this miracle-worker. We didn’t come to this country to shoot somebody at the edge of a highway, like cinema gangsters. You say you know that road. You have a memory, from the last time you travelled over it. But things change. Here in America they change fast. There may be a police barracks there now, a hundred meters from the spot you choose. It is a strong principle of mine, to see the terrain, to prepare alternative plans, to know the strength of the enemy. Mike Shayne? Merely a name.”

  “Let me tell you—”

  Rashid interrupted, “I have decided. I am in command. We do it my way.”

  “Then without me.”

  “Sayyid,” Rashid called without turning his head.

  “I am here,” Sayyid answered from the shadows at the edge of the garage. “I have a revolver. I am watching the Jew with it.”

  Gold shrugged and started walking away. Rashid watched him go. He was bluffing, surely. That shipment of narcotics was worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, perhaps a million. Gold reached the grass.

  “Those plastic bags filled with the white dust,” Rashid said. “What would you like us to do with them?”

  Gold looked back. “You can shoot it up your ass. I want to live.”

  Sayyid stepped into the light, and the two Arabs looked at each other. Apparently this American, Mike Shayne, was a genuine threat.

  “Murray,” Rashid called, and Gold stopped and turned. “You hire somebody to kill him, one of your own people.”

  “I tried that once. It didn’t work out. Can’t you get it through your skull that I don’t want people to know I’m back?”

  “The killing of this one man would satisfy you? It wouldn’t become necessary to kill the helicopter pilot, and after that someone else?”

  Gold came back a step. “No, the one good angle on Shayne is that he works alone. He doesn’t check in until he has his package all tied up, nice and pretty.”

  “I don’t like it, but very well, we’ll do it.”

  The Jew came back. “In the desert, O.K., you’re in charge. But this is the pleasure capital of the world, and I know the ins and outs. I won’t take you into anything risky.”

  “What if you’ve guessed wrong and he isn’t outside waiting for you to appear?”

  “We’ll try something else.”

  5

  Shayne’s phone rang several times in the night.

  He heard the ringing, but it was far away, as though taking place in somebody else’s dream. On the dot of seven, the phone struck again. This time it partially woke him.

  He tried to reach for it but he seemed to be strapped to the bed. Nothing worked as it should. He was off balance and sliding. He lunged with his left hand and knocked the phone off the table. That stopped the insistent ringing. He still had no idea where he was, or why one of his arms was in a cast.

  Rolling with difficulty, he sat up.

  Scratching sounds came from the floor, as though a family of mice was trapped in the phone. Shayne crumpled and threw away an empty cigarette pack. He got out of bed, supporting the weight of the cast with his left hand. After some clattering and fumbling, he put water on for coffee. He used the bathroom. Then he put his head in a stream of cold water and held it there until he remembered a few of the questions that had been in his mind when he went to sleep.

  He towelled himself off, still a long way from normal, and returned to pick up the phone.

  “Shayne speaking.”

  A long-distance operator asked him to hold for Leonard Dodd. Shayne pinched the bridge of his nose. He was still thinking in categories. Dodd. Washington. State Department.

  A voice said, “Apologies, Mike. From the noises I’ve been hearing, I assume we woke you up?”

  “I took a pill. I won’t be all the way back until I get some coffee.”

  “Then maybe I’d better say my name again. Leonard Dodd. Do you place me?”

  “State Department, isn’t it? Give me a minute. A couple of years back, something about forged passports. I seem to remember you were ninety-five percent human. In your department that’s high.”

  Dodd laughed. “That was two years ago. My wife tells me I’ve slipped a few points since. Mike, I tried to reach you last night without any luck, and I thought I’d better get started early before you went anywhere. Have you had a call from somebody named Esther Landau?”

  “The phone’s been ringing. It didn’t get all the way through.”

  “I don’t know when she’s due in—she’ll call from the airport. This is a nice bright Israeli chick, and I’ll give you her name again. Esther Landau. She works for the Shin Bet. That’s like their FBI, but it covers more ground.”

  “Never heard of it,” Shayne said. “And I’m not sure I want to right now. Try me again in half an hour.”

  “Mike, hang on, please. All I’d like to do is establish her bonafides, and ask you to see her.”

  “Does she speak English?”

  “With a cute accent. And she’s nice, Mike. Very down to earth, and I think you’ll like her. She was an army lieutenant. That doesn’t mean she’s not totally feminine, if you don’t mind that old-fashioned word. An interesting mixture, and she has an interesting problem, just your kind of thing.”

  Shayne breathed in and out slowly. “I’ll be tied up later, I’m not sure for how long. Talk a little slower. Don’t be afraid to say things twice. As I keep saying, I haven’t had coffee yet.”

  At the other end of the conversation, Dodd made an effort to slow down, but the pace wasn’t natural to him. In a moment he was speaking as rapidly as before, in staccato bursts.

  “The channels on this I won’t go into, but they’re gilt-edged. It carries a high priority, shall we say. The Ambassador put in a personal re
quest, and that’s why I got up so early to make this call. What Esther wanted us to supply was the name of a competent and discreet—and I’ll say that again, discreet—investigator in Miami, with connections to handle an important undercover assignment. The name Michael Shayne sprang to mind. If you’re too busy to take it on, I hope you’ll talk to her and recommend somebody else. The bill comes to us.”

  “To the State Department? That must mean you really think it’s important.”

  “You’re remembering the trouble you had getting paid. This is different, it’s out of contingency funds and it won’t have to be approved by so many people.”

  “I have to talk to the cops about something that happened last night. How pressing is this?”

  “Rather. I want her to tell you about it, but maybe I can whet your appetite. Murray Gold.”

  “Yeah?” Shayne said slowly. “And she’s from Israel. That’s enough, you’ve hooked me. If she’s a cop why don’t you send her to our cops here and save your department some money? They’re as interested in Murray Gold as I am.”

  “If you try hard enough, maybe you can guess why. All right, great. That’s all I want to say on the phone. I won’t tie up your line any longer. She may be trying to get through. Call me if you have any questions.”

  The phone rang the instant Shayne put it down. It wasn’t the Israeli woman he had just been told about. It was Rourke.

  “Man, are you O.K.? What happened last night?”

  “Two or three things. I’m waiting for a call, Tim, but quickly: I saw a guy putting a body in a car and I chased him around for an hour and a half. He finally got away from me. That’s more or less all, except that at one point he bought ten or a dozen stolen submachine guns from a master sergeant at Homestead. I haven’t decided what to do with that. Don’t print it, but if you want to pass it along, go ahead. I’ll be talking to Gentry later. Have you heard anything about Murray Gold in the last couple of weeks?”

  “Gold. Now there’s a newsworthy name. Where does he connect?”

  “Tim,” Shayne said curtly. “I want the line.”

  “Just the usual rumors that he’s been seen. The bondsmen are so anxious to get their hands on him they’re catching at anything. If he really is around, and I doubt it, he has to have a damn good reason. O.K., I’ll hang up,” he said when Shayne made an impatient sound. “But remember your good friend Rourke. Remember I’m in the newspaper business.”

  The water was boiling. Shayne made coffee, adding a sizeable dollop of cognac. While he sipped, he watched the local news. He frequently made this program. This morning he made it twice. He listened with no change of expression to several misstatements of fact, no more or less wide of the mark than usual. He poured more coffee and dressed.

  His next caller was his daytime mobile operator.

  “This is a funny one,” she said. “I have a call from your own car phone.”

  “My car’s in the garage downstairs, I hope. That’s where I left it.”

  A woman’s voice, speaking quickly: “Mr. Shayne. My name is Landau. I am here in this country from Israel, and I would like to consult you on a matter. I am sorry to say that I believe some men have been following me. It seems I have evaded them, but I decided against using one of those glass cages the phones are in on the street. I persuaded the man to show me your car, and it is from there I am calling. May I tell you the subject I would like to discuss?”

  “It’s O.K. Dodd called me from Washington. Come on up. Take the elevator from there. You won’t have to go through the lobby.”

  “That was what I intended, but for these people to know I am here in Miami has surprised me completely. Do they also know that I hope for the assistance of Michael Shayne? I would dislike to have our discussion interrupted by gunfire. If you would come down, perhaps I can compress myself into a small space, out of sight, and you will drive us somewhere.”

  “O.K., compress yourself,” Shayne said with a smile. “I’ll be down in a minute.”

  He finished his loaded coffee. He took cigarettes, a half-filled fifth of cognac, and in case of trouble on the way, a Walther .38, which he concealed in his sling.

  The elevator took him to the basement garage without stopping. His Buick seemed at first to be empty. The woman was on the floor of the front seat, her knees high, a gun in her hand. She was older than she had sounded, but better looking than he had expected from Dodd’s description. She looked more like an ex-Harper’s Bazaar model than an ex-lieutenant in the Israeli army. She had black shoulder-length hair and olive skin, and was so slender the bones of her shoulders showed through the fabric of her black dress. Her earrings might have been diamonds. High-heeled shoes elevated her knees still further. She had a stern look, and the lines of concentration around her eyes were likely to stay there, Shayne thought, even after she stopped concentrating.

  “You have a broken arm!” she exclaimed. “Can you drive a car?”

  “Not easily,” Shayne said, getting in. “But I put on quite a few miles last night, and I’m getting better at it.”

  She opened a shiny purse and put the pistol away. “Am I down far enough? I regret this, Mr. Shayne, and it is possible, of course, that it is all my fancy. One reads so much about violence in America. But these men did seem to have a certain—intentness. I was quite frightened.”

  Shayne backed out of the berth and eased the Buick around. He nodded to the attendant, who glanced in and saw the woman on the floor.

  “I hope it was all right, letting her use the phone. She showed me her credentials.”

  “Sure.”

  When they were out on the street the woman said, “I showed him credentials, and I also tipped him five dollars.”

  “That’s how we do things here.”

  “In Israel too, I’m afraid, more and more.”

  He turned north along the Miami River. “Any special place?”

  “No, somewhere we can talk.”

  She began to change position to come up on the seat. Shayne said quietly, “No, stay down there. We’ve got somebody with us.”

  There were two men in the car he had spotted. Both had a charged air, as though when they moved they would go directly from repose into violent action. A third, who had been looking into a show window, crossed the sidewalk, too hurriedly, and joined them.

  “A green Pontiac, three men,” Shayne said, still speaking quietly. “They’re new at this. They aren’t being too careful.”

  “Oh, God. What do we do now?”

  She had been about to put on dark glasses as they came out of the garage. She completed the movement, and her face partially disappeared.

  “If they give us a few minutes we can call a cruiser and have them arrested,” Shayne said.

  “They won’t wait so long. I really believe they’ve been hired to kill me. Can you keep ahead of them?”

  “Probably.”

  “I’m so sorry to involve you in this, Mr. Shayne. I had no idea whatsoever that anyone knew—”

  He was driving easily in third, keeping the following car centered in the rearview mirror. It moved up but made no attempt to pass.

  “They don’t look quite right,” he said after a moment. “The guy jerked getting away, and he’s using too much brake. Who are they?”

  “I would like to know! They must realize I am here in the matter of the arch criminal Gold.”

  Shayne took a hard right, passed a truck on the wrong side, forced himself into a narrow opening between cars, and turned left.

  “I haven’t heard anybody called an arch criminal in years.”

  “That’s what he is, however, from the inside out. It makes one ashamed to be a Jew.”

  They were approaching 36th Street. Arrows pointed to the airport expressway. Suddenly a second car, a large sedan, moving fast, passed the Pontiac and then passed Shayne, cutting in sharply and forcing him to brake. The change in speed threw the woman forward.

  “If they want it this way, then,” she said grimly
, opening her purse.

  One man was out of the car ahead, waving Shayne over. Again, there was something slightly off about him—he wasn’t one of the arch criminal Gold’s usual people.

  “Brace yourself,” Shayne said. “Get all the way down and tighten up.”

  She responded instantly, tucking her knees under her chin and rolling. Shayne was trussed up in his seat-belt, but if she hadn’t reacted promptly to his warning, she would have been thrown violently forward against the dashboard when the Buick’s reinforced bumper caved in the rear end of the stopped car, and drove the car ten feet forward, clearing the entrance to the expressway. Shayne reversed—he was becoming more adept at this difficult one-hand movement—and went past on the inside, kissing fenders.

  He was leaning forward, using his cast to steady the wheel. The woman, off the floor, extended her arm behind his head and fired out the side window. The unexpected crack of the gun behind Shayne’s ear caused him to pull the wheel. They ran out on the shoulder.

  “Hey,” he said, after bringing all four wheels back on the concrete. “We can outrun them.”

  In the side mirror, as they carried into the curve, he saw the man in the street bend forward clutching his stomach. The curve took them around so their assailants were now on their right. The woman reversed herself and fired twice more, through the window on her side. Then Shayne was out on the expressway.

  She had held the pistol in both hands as she fired. Now, turning, she lowered it between her knees.

  “I believe I hit one of them.”

  “I believe you did,” Shayne agreed. “Hang on now. We’re going to do some steeplechasing.”

  He shifted lanes abruptly without signalling, moving into the middle lane first, then the highspeed lane to the left. Again, using only his speed and judgment, he came all the way back across and left the expressway. If any other cars had been following, they would have been swept past the exit in the stream heading for the airport.

  The woman was sitting forward, her knees locked, her mouth a straight line. She didn’t seem to notice that her arm was bleeding.