At the Point of a .38

by Brett Halliday

  “It’s gone. Remind me.”

  “About why you expected Gold to come back to Miami.”

  “For this reason. I searched his residence after the arrest, most carefully. There was painfully little, a scattering of checks and bills and memos to himself. And one letter. Mr. Shayne, move nearer to me. I haven’t the strength to speak loudly.”

  Shayne moved to the edge of the bed and sat down there. This was no improvement, for his weight was forward and he was watching her closely.

  “If he received any other mail, he didn’t save it. It was from a girl here who signed herself Helen. No address—merely the date and Miami.”

  She could have invented something, but Gold and Rashid had decided, discussing what she was to say, that she should stick closely to the truth. No one could be sure exactly where Shayne stood, or how much he knew. There actually had been a Gerda Fox, and she had actually been a Shin Bet informer. Gold’s opium-into-heroin laboratory had actually been set up in the galley of a fishing boat. The letter she was describing now was real. They had laughed about it in Beirut.

  “It was illiterate and childish. That is his pattern, it is in his dossier. He confined himself to girls below the age of twenty. From indications, this was one of them, it seemed perhaps the last before he left this country. She was having difficulties at school, at home, she longed to see him and squeeze him, et cetera. Oddly enough, she was a policeman’s daughter. She asked Gold to tell her where to look, and she would go into the files through her father and remove or destroy evidence against him, so he could come back and she could do various sexual things to him which I won’t repeat. Did he need money? She had some saved. And I thought to myself—if he came to Miami, wouldn’t he notify her? He could use her to carry messages, to find him a secure place. He would have to be careful about old acquaintances. I thought this Helen would be a good one to start with, in any event. Do you think it’s enough?”

  She played with the flap of her purse. Shayne’s eyes were on her every minute. She had a horrible thought suddenly that something had made him doubt she was Israeli. The earrings? She regretted those. Perhaps she would have to lay the purse in her lap and shoot through its bottom. But she had bought it in Paris, she would hate to spoil it.

  Shayne scraped his thumbnail across his chin. “Half the people in the drug world inform on the other half. They’re jittery right now. If Gold killed a woman last night, that steps up the pressure. He can’t hang around and feed it into the market a bag at a time. It all has to hit at once. We can wait till that happens and trace it back. There are a few people I can lean on. But there may be a faster way.”

  He continued to watch her with those penetrating eyes. She sat forward, bringing the purse up from the floor. The pistol inside had shifted, and she couldn’t locate the grip.

  “If that was Murray Gold I was chasing,” Shayne said, still working on moves which her two bullets would prevent him from making, “why would he drive down to Homestead to pick up ten tommy guns?”

  “Tommy guns?” Rashid hadn’t known that Shayne knew about those. “This doesn’t fit into my theory at all.”

  “See if you can make it fit. Did Gold grow a beard in Israel?”

  “Not while I watched him. Perhaps in prison. I can cable and find out.”

  “You can buy beards at a hair-store. But if that woman was Gerda Fox, and Gold knew she was the one who turned him in—if she knew the name of the buyer here—”

  He stopped to think again. “He bought the guns from a master sergeant. I’m not really sure how many, but he paid three thousand in cash, and submachine guns go for about three hundred apiece. For ten guns, you need ten men. You don’t take ten men along on a drug buy. The hell of it is, I had him right in my fist. But I tried to be too tricky, and I lost him.”

  She had adjusted the pistol so it was pointed at Shayne. The safety was off.

  “Mr. Shayne, you keep throwing fragments. What do you mean, you lost him?”

  “I had a helicopter on him, and the engine conked out. He was up around Boca Raton at the time. That doesn’t mean he stayed there.”

  Alarm bells began clanging. Wait. Wait.

  All at once she thought of the danger she was in. Of course the plan had been worked out to minimize the danger, but if Shayne and his helicopter hadn’t linked Gold to the Arabs, it was no longer necessary to kill him. She had been keyed up to do it, but it was a relief not to have to.

  And then she had a better idea, having to do with the money. It was mad, and most unlikely to work, but what a coup if it did! It would prove to a few people, including her almighty husband, that Arab women were not altogether as helpless as they looked.

  “Then we’ll be working together?”

  “It seems so,” Shayne said, still studying her. “Unless you can think of something else you ought to tell me, I’ll be moving.”

  “Mr. Shayne, if you knew how relieved! All the piled-up sleepiness has caught up to me suddenly.” This was true; she had had no sleep the night before, after Rashid had come into her bedroom, and now she was having trouble keeping her eyelids up. “How would it be if I simply stay here? If you’ll get off that bed I’ll fall into it. Three hours at the most. Three hours would make an enormous difference.” Also true! Everything was scheduled to take place during the next three hours. “My dress will be dry by then. Phone me or come back for me.”

  “I’ll see what I can find out about the girl. First name Helen. A cop’s daughter. I’ll ask some people.”

  Good; that would take him out of Miami. He had a few more questions, and to make him go she acted as though she was about to fall asleep in the chair. They stood up together. She pretended to lose her balance, and touched his arm. She would like to see him undressed.

  But not now, unhappily. Even if she could have thought of a way to bring it about, there was too little time.

  After he left she waited at the closed blind, peering through the thin slit between blind and window-frame, and saw his Buick pull out, return to the street and turn north. He was apparently in every way a careful man. A moment later he was back, cruising slowly past to make sure he had left her in safety.

  But Rashid was equally cautious. He had parked elsewhere, and came among the motel cars on foot. He rapped quickly. Smiling, she let him suffer out there in the open, where the world could see him. He would be furious, she knew.

  He shook the doorknob. Would it disturb this strange creature, she wondered, if Shayne had taken away her gun and left her dead on the floor? Not for more than a moment, probably, and then only because it would entail a change of plan. He would prod her with his toe, walk out and never think of her again. And that made her almost as angry as he was when she opened the door and he came storming in.

  “What in the devil’s name have you done here, woman?” he demanded. “You let him walk away unharmed.”

  No woman likes to be called woman in that tone of voice. “I decided not to shoot him,” she said calmly. “Those magnificent shoulders and narrow hips.”

  Really enraged, he slammed her in the face with his closed fist. It was a serious blow. He had entered her sexually a half dozen times in Beirut, and apparently he thought, incorrectly, that that entitled him to do this. She fell against the television set, and somehow the contact turned it on. The voices came up first, followed by a picture of four American women with beautifully groomed hair, sitting at a table discussing the population explosion.

  She still had her purse in her hand. Sitting up, she took out the gun and let Rashid look into the muzzle.

  “Or perhaps you think I was unable to change the bullets,” she said. “That I am too ignorant to understand the mechanism, unlike Israeli women. Shall I press the trigger and convince you?”

  He waved to show her that the gun didn’t intimidate him. But she noticed that he was careful to move no closer.

  “No, no. Merely tell me at once how it happened. Up to a point it went off perfectly. You were alone toget
her. I watched the window for your signal, that you had done it and I should drive in to pick you up. Instead, he drove away, in a car with a radio telephone. And I find you here partly undressed.”

  “It was necessary to wash my dress.”

  “And because of those narrow hips and so forth—”

  “We discussed making love, but decided against it. It would have been a mistake to kill him. The helicopter last night had a failed engine. He knows nothing about us.”

  Rashid thrust his head forward. “He told you that.”

  “Convincingly. If I put the pistol away, will you hit me again?”

  “No, I was angry. Turn off that noise.”

  As much as she would have enjoyed hearing intelligent American women talk about the best way to avoid becoming pregnant, this was not the time, she agreed.

  Rashid put a cigarette in his mouth. After shutting off the television, she came up to him, removed the cigarette and kissed him, forcing her tongue between his lips, daringly. He responded with less than his usual masculine fervor.

  “You taste of being sick.”

  “Still?” she said coolly. She lay down on the bed and crossed her ankles. “I know our schedule as well as you do, my dear. We have a full twenty minutes before you meet the Jew, and it is safer to be here behind drawn blinds than riding around in a foreign city. Michael Shayne will not be back. He believes me to be asleep, from airplane exhaustion. And if he does come back, you can have the pleasant experience of killing him, as you seem to want to so much. Meanwhile, I want to persuade you to take me with you.”

  “Akhatari, I beseech you, not again and again. But if I have to listen to it, finish first with the detective. How much did you tell him?”

  “Only about Gold and his narcotics. I watched the time constantly. You said fifteen minutes would be safer, so I wouldn’t walk out one moment after we came in. I said nothing about the prison escape, that it was Mr. Gold’s idea.”

  “It was also mine. For months I was thinking of nothing else.”

  “But without him you would all still be gathering dust, behind bars. You did the fighting, of course, and I admire your bravery. A word about this Michael Shayne. I see why Gold fears him. I was very much struck by him, to be truthful, and even with the one arm, I knew I would have to be quick. You have taught me to be willing to take chances, but only when necessary, and in this case it would have been foolishness. Oh, the Jew would be delighted to hear of Shayne’s death, but we should let him take care of his own part of that business. If a policeman and his mistress were making love in the next room, for example, and he heard the shots, I would have been captured immediately. But if you prefer to think I failed to shoot because I am a cowardly female—”

  “Akhatari, you know I respect you. Where is Shayne now? Do we have to include him as a factor?”

  “I sent him off on a wild chase, in the other direction from Miami Beach. All he thinks about is Murray Gold and the heroin, the one thing that occupies all Americans’ thoughts, it seems. He knows nothing about Palestinians, only that Gold last night bought ten machine pistols—”

  “He knows that!”

  “But could the cleverest detective in the world find out more than that in the next twenty minutes? Needless to say, no.”

  “I still believe it would have been better—”

  “If so, the harm is already done. But up to that moment, do you agree that I did well? I persuaded him I was a woman of action, formerly an officer in an army at war. Now I hope to convince you.”

  “Akhatari, it’s impossible. Women have no place in the camps. And you are a sheik’s wife, it would be insane to offend him. He has given us much money and support.”

  “He’s divorcing me in any case.”

  Rashid was so surprised that he dropped his cigarette. “Does he know about Beirut?”

  “He knows what he wishes to know. He wanted me to come with him to the United States because of my English, but I have developed the wrong style for him. I disagree with his opinions. Unheard of! He wants submission, and many children. Do you think he knows about you and Sayyid and the rest? Wait and find out! If the action succeeds, he will take credit for it—his own wife was one of the conspirators. But if it is a disaster—”

  “Don’t say it,” Rashid said superstitiously.

  “He will say he had no part in it, and cast me out. For me to come in the airplane with you, would fit either story.”

  “When we land in Libya, we disperse and disappear, one by one. For you to disappear would be difficult. You are too beautiful.”

  “Nonsense. I would disguise myself as a bent-over grandmother.”

  But she could see there was no chance. This was going to be another all-male operation, from first to last. Very well. They could hardly object if she played an independent hand. A million dollars would be a marvelous sum of money with which to start her new life.

  Changing the subject, she suggested that while they had the use of this big soft bed, they should give each other a moment’s pleasure. It would ease the tension in so many ways, and it might be their last time. He was reluctant, but masculinity has its bad side, and by making it into a challenge she left him no choice. He came down to her.

  And nothing came of it in the end, for he failed to erect, for the first time in their dealings together. She had been three-quarters sure this would happen, and she wasn’t particularly nice to him about it. But she needed some compensation, she believed, for being struck in the face with his fist.

  7

  Shayne’s operator reported that Will Gentry had been calling. Shayne hesitated, and then told her to try to find Tim Rourke for him.

  While she was trying numbers, Shayne crossed the river on the 27th Avenue bridge. Rourke came on. He was at his desk in the News city room.

  “I wonder how you guessed I was writing my story. I’ve got two or three hundred questions. Do you have a minute?”

  Shayne continued to maneuver through traffic, without replying.

  “Mike? Are you on?”

  Shayne had been counting backward. Three weeks before, Murray Gold had escaped from prison. A week before that, someone had appeared there to see him, with a Miami police card. At just about that time, Shayne’s good friend Gentry had been vacationing in Bermuda. Gentry’s wife had been sick for ten months, in the hospital for six. His expenses had been enormous. He had been spending all of his free time in the hospital, drinking too much, eating too little. Finally his own doctor had ordered him to take a few days off, completely alone, and do nothing but lie in the sun, out of the reach of the telephone. Shayne had been away from Miami himself, and he had wanted to ask Rourke if he or anybody else had been in touch with Gentry during that time.

  But it was a question he found himself unable to ask. When Rourke called his name again, Shayne quietly broke the connection.

  He drove to a small bar on 8th Street, patronized in the evening largely by homosexuals. The owner, a part-time homosexual himself, was a small, lively, brown-skinned man named Manson. He had once fought professionally at 150 pounds, and he still carried ring scars over one eye. Shayne, some years earlier, had broken up a ring of extortionists specializing in gay bars, and since then Manson had become one of Shayne’s principal sources of gossip.

  Shayne interrupted him at breakfast, in the kitchen behind his bar.

  “Mike, next time phone, all right? So I can meet you someplace. It isn’t good for the joint’s reputation to have private detectives walking in and out.”

  “Today I’m in a hurry,” Shayne said.

  He took out one of the hundred dollar bills he had confiscated from Marian Tibbett, the Homestead master sergeant, and laid it beside Manson’s coffee cup. Manson became more cheerful at once.

  “Coffee?”

  “No time,” Shayne said. “I have two topics. Number one, Murray Gold. Number two, heroin.”

  Manson folded the bill and put it away. “And do they connect? Mike, anything’s possible.
He always steered clear of it here, but you know it wasn’t for moral reasons. There he was, at loose ends, in the Middle East, where most of our shit comes from. If he really was broke, that’s the one way you recoup with one turnover of capital. But different ones have different ideas.”

  “Why do you think he went to Israel in the first place?”

  “We all thought they promised him a passport, and then they put on those delays and hesitations to run up the price. But Gold—you just know he couldn’t change his lifetime habits. A hospital orderly? After being that big? No, he saw an opportunity and started working on it, and they caught him at it. I’ll tell you what everybody’s saying about that prison break.” He finished filling his cup, and returned the pot to the stove. “He organized it.”

  “Using Arabs?”

  “That’s the nice part of the story. What other Jew would be so open-minded?” Manson took a sip of steaming coffee and lowered his voice. “I understand he’s in Uruguay.”

  “Why Uruguay?”

  “Why not? No, as a matter of fact, it was set up long ago. Maybe he hasn’t got there yet, but I do know he’s expected. This isn’t more of the usual crap, Mike. Most of what I give you is what I hear pouring drinks, but this I happen to know.”

  “Can I count on that?”

  “It’s definite.”

  “Now talk to me a minute about the heroin situation. All I want is a market report.”

  “I don’t know why everybody thinks I’m such an expert. I don’t do anything stronger than aspirin myself, and I keep it out of the bar. But when the subject comes up, I admit I don’t stop up my ears. It’s so-so, Mike. The big bust yesterday had everybody worried, but not that much, you know? No panic. Does that mean help is on the way? In the shape of a major shipment from someplace? You decide.”

  “None of this is worth a hundred bucks. Now something specific. I’d like to get the name of his last girl friend before he left the country. Her first name was Helen.”

  Manson shook his head. “I didn’t keep up with him that close. Do you have anything else on her except that she was under nineteen? Which goes without saying.”