Million Dollar Handle

by Brett Halliday

  Without shifting his weight, Shayne clipped him on the side of the jaw, hitting him again as he started his slide. When the elevator door opened, Shayne levered him onto one hip and ran him outside. Finding the parked police car, he slid the cop behind the wheel and walked away, coming back after a few steps because the cop’s upper body had fallen against the horn. After rearranging him, Shayne went to his own car, which was parked on the opposite side of the street, a block and a half away.

  He turned on the radio receiver and put on the headset.

  The reception was fine. He heard the woman in Sanchez’s apartment moving about restlessly. Once, very close to the transmitter, she said aloud, “Damn, damn, damn. Ricardo, my dear, what am I going to do about you?”

  She made one phone call, to a friend or a relative. She was sorry, she said, but she couldn’t accept the invitation. There was too much going on here. After much shuffling and vacillation, she had decided to sell the track. She couldn’t trust anybody to run it for her—they all seemed to be thieves. Some shady dealings of Max’s had come to light. It was a tense and difficult time.

  The police car’s headlights came on. Shayne slid down so his silhouette wouldn’t show against the windshield.

  When the car went past, he checked with Rourke, then with Dave, Bobby Nash’s technician. Dave had everything and was ready to move as soon as Surfside turned off the lights.

  A badly bruised green sedan turned into the tenant’s parking area. As it passed under an overhead light, Shayne saw that the driver was Sanchez. He watched for the car of the Cuban detective and blinked his lights when he saw it. The Cuban double-parked and came in beside him.

  “Nothing much,” he told Shayne. “I think he’s using chemistry on the dogs. Mrs. Charlotte Geary rented this apartment. He’s a serious, hard-working kid, and he wants to make money.”

  “I’ve got a transmitter up there,” Shayne said. “There’s an interesting conversation coming up, but I can’t stay for it. I want to switch cars.”

  He explained the equipment. The recorder was tied into the receiver; it was voice-actuated and needed no attention. But he wanted the Cuban to use the earphones, and Shayne would call him at intervals to get a summary.

  He heard Ricardo’s voice.

  “Oh, Charley, it went so smooth. So easy. I only touched three dogs but they did what I told them.”

  Mrs. Geary, muffled but still distinct: “How much did you make?”

  “Eighty-five hundred in three hours of racing. Of course we’ll have minus nights, too, but they’ll average out. You’ve got to keep telling me one thing, honey: Don’t get greedy.”

  One boot hit the carpet, then the other. He blew like a horse.

  “I better grab a shower. That sixth race, I sweated a pint.”

  “I’ll do that, you don’t have to. You smell fine. Ricardo, baby—”

  A moment later, it began. Shayne passed the headset to the Cuban, and switched off the tape recorder.

  “Let’s respect their privacy. Don’t forget to turn it back on when they start talking.”

  “What I predict,” the Cuban said, putting on the earphones, “he’s going to do it quick the first time, because he’s twenty-two years of age and he just won a couple of bets, and he’s going to do it again, and take a goddamn hour. And I’m going to sit here listening to all the slurping and groaning. What a job. Watch my car on the fast curves, Mike. She has a tendency to chatter.”

  Chapter 14

  Ricardo had recently read the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears to his four-year-old niece. At first everything in that story was too hard or too soft, too much or too little, too big or too small, and then finally it was just right. It had made him think of his new lady. Always before, they had been younger than he was, and too something or other—too lazy or too busy, too shy or too selfish. With Charlotte, it was just right. And not only that, it was getting better all the time. He separated from her slowly. She tried to hold him.

  “Charley, you’re the world’s best. Just no comparison. When the meeting’s over and I don’t have to do all that chartwork, let’s work up to twice a day. Do you want to go away somewhere? Brazil?”

  She put her face against the hollow of his shoulder and followed him as he rolled. Then she sighed and pulled back slightly so fewer surfaces overlapped. But her mouth was still against his shoulder, and he didn’t hear what she said.

  “What, honey?”

  “You aren’t going to like what I have to tell you.”

  He pulled back another fraction of an inch. Her eyes were still closed.

  “You met somebody else. You decided to join the nuns.”

  “I’m selling Surfside. Now darling, don’t jump. I had to do it. We’ll have quite a nice bit of money. Brazil, of course, anywhere. I know what you think about marriage, but I hope we can get a house—”

  The hammering subsided slowly, and he was able to speak. “I don’t believe this.”

  “I’m not strong enough, Rick.”

  He had moved completely apart from her now. “Max paid out that money. You had nothing to do with it.”

  “Nobody else knows that. I’ll be subpoenaed.”

  “What’s a subpoena? A piece of paper. Get a good lawyer. You aren’t the first wife who signed the tax returns without reading them first. This thing at the track is just getting started! Eighty-five hundred in three hours. And the beautiful thing about it—absolutely without risk.”

  “Absolutely without risk,” she repeated. “You see, I don’t believe that.” She sat up, pushing back her hair. “And if you’re caught, I’m part of it, aren’t I. I protect you and we divide your winnings. People know about us already. Linda, damn her, hired Shayne, the private detective. He’s a clever, ruthless man.”

  “He may be all that,” Ricardo said, “but he isn’t allowed in the lockup kennel.”

  “I wouldn’t be sure of anything with that man. He’s an outlaw now, and he smells money. I’m afraid of him. You and I are no match for that kind of person.”

  “You tell me exactly what you’re afraid of. I’ll tell you exactly how we deal with it.”

  She was off the bed now. She went to the refrigerator and took out the ice and the vodka. She said without turning, “It’s a waste of time. I already signed.”

  He stood up slowly, again feeling the pounding in his temples. “When?”

  “Over coffee and brandy, in Zell’s office, two hours ago. I’m sorry. I’ll try to make it up to you.”

  “How?” he shouted. “You don’t realize what we’ve got going. I put three years into that, and there it is, finally. If we take it easy, if we don’t push it, it can go on and on and on. And you threw it away—”

  “I had to.”

  “Why did you have to? Why didn’t you talk to me first? What about all those things you’ve been saying to me in bed? What was it, bullshit to keep me contented?”

  “No! I want to be with you all the time.”

  “And slip me a twenty under the tablecloth so I can pay the check. Didn’t you ever hear of machismo? We don’t like to take money that way.”

  “I thought you might get a job at another track—”

  “I explained it to you! I’d have to spend ten years cleaning up turds, and why would they give me my own kennel even then? It’s working! And because you were scared for an hour or two—scared of a private detective—why aren’t you scared of me? Don’t you know about Cubans? Hot-blooded. We want to have some say about the conditions of life. We don’t like to take twenties from middle-aged women.”

  She was breathing quickly. “I beg you—”

  He shouted again and came at her. He could hardly see through the pink haze. He was going to smash this woman’s face…

  Dropping the glass, she ran past, striking out at him. His fingers slipped on her bare shoulder. Things spilled out of her purse. He stopped short when he saw that she had a gun.

  “Be careful!” she warned. “I’m perfectly ca
lm.” That was untrue; the gun was shaking badly. “I won’t have it, do you hear? I won’t have you hit me. You stand there, and let me get dressed and out of your life.”

  “Charley,” he said, confused.

  “I had a decision to make, and I made it. I haven’t made many decisions in my life, but by God I made that one.”

  The haze receded, and Ricardo saw her more clearly. “A gun,” he said softly. “Sweetheart, we’ve just been fucking. They don’t go together.”

  He put out his hand, and the sight of this beautiful naked woman pointing a gun at him seemed so unlikely that he was convinced she would hand it to him.

  “Don’t!” she screamed. The gun was all the way out between them, and it was pointed at his crotch, naturally. “I’ll try not to kill you. But I’ll hurt you badly if you come another step.”

  He lowered his hands. “You really are scared of me, aren’t you? That’s funny, because I love you, for Christ’s sake.”

  “You do not. Liar. You planned it all in advance, for the money. You told me.”

  “To start with, sure. If I go across the room and sit down, will you point that at the floor or someplace? I feel tender right there.”

  After a moment she brought the gun back in to her chest. “I’m not naive enough to believe—”

  “Charley, I wouldn’t hurt you. Jesus, seeing that look in your eye—you were one second away from pulling that trigger.”

  “One half second.” She lowered the gun the rest of the way. “And then I would have been in a real mess.”

  “How much is he paying?”

  She bit her lip. “The overall price is two and a half million. I know that’s not as much as—”

  “Two and a half! Two and a half! It was five last week.”

  He studied her. Various counters began clicking, and he said quietly, “You think I killed Max.”

  Her eyes darted over the room, never fixing directly on him.

  “Sure you do,” Ricardo said. “You think I racked him up and set him on fire. You see it on TV all the time. The young buck with a hard-on. The wife in menopause. The husband with all the money. And with us, it wasn’t just the savings account and the insurance. We had a real plan. We couldn’t do anything about it as long as he was alive. And now that I think of it, the night of that accident, you had the pip, such as it is these days, and stayed home to go to bed early. You don’t know where I was at two in the morning.”

  “That’s true, I don’t.”

  “But that wouldn’t be enough to make you sell for two and a half. What else?”

  “Oh, there’s more! I’ve known all along that you did it, and I didn’t care, why the devil should I? I would have done it myself if I’d had the courage. I thought of it long before you came on the scene, my friend! It was all right as long as it was just my mind. The sex was all right tonight, wasn’t it?”

  “Super.”

  “It could have gone on, I think. But we’re talking about it now, and that’s always a bad idea. You still have almost a month. You can make quite a tidy sum. Keep the whole thing. Then if you ever feel like taking me to dinner you can pay the check with your own twenty dollars and feel manly! Take me to Brazil and you can buy both tickets.”

  “Maybe it was a bad idea to start, but we’ve started, so finish. What did Harry say, sign or he’d turn your boyfriend in for murder?”

  “And do you think I wouldn’t go too? We all know about wives and husbands and lovers. The wife and the lover do it together. Oh, Ricardo, it’s so awful.”

  He shook his head. “Charley, I’m sorry to say you’ve been conned. You were already sure I did it, and Harry Zell worked on you for a few minutes and ripped off two and a half million bucks. I’d better know exactly what he told you, for my own protection.”

  “He got what he wanted, my signature. He won’t do anything now.”

  “But why should I trust Harry Zell? He’s as slippery as a trout, you can tell that by looking at him.”

  He made a move to get up. She had begun to put on her bra. She dropped it and snatched up the pistol again.

  After a moment he sat back and said, “Whatever he had, I see you believed him.”

  “A deposition,” she said reluctantly. “A statement, in writing, signed and notarized. I’m not a child.”

  “Who made it?”

  “Dee Wynn.”

  “Wynn!”

  She finished fastening her bra and reached for her blouse. “I know. Invariably drunk at that time of night. An unreliable witness. But I believed it, Ricardo, and so would a jury, I think.”

  “Tell me.”

  “He fell asleep in Max’s car. He heard the seat-belt buzzer but he couldn’t wake up. Max kept groaning and mumbling that everybody was cheating him. He jerked getting started, and then he kept swinging in great out-of-control arcs. Dee was trying to sit up and tell him to call a taxi or let somebody else drive. Then he heard a car behind them, accelerating. He sat up finally as they went off the bank. And it was your car, Ricardo. Your license plate and your car.”

  “Now if the bastard said I was driving—”

  “You were driving,” she said. “He had a good glimpse through the side window. The Cuban, Ricardo Sanchez. He was thrown out when the car turned over. Nothing he could do about Max, the fire was too hot, and the next morning, to make sure he hadn’t imagined it, he checked your car. And there it was, a freshly banged fender. But he was scared of what you might do, so he didn’t say anything to anybody.”

  “Scared, hell. He wanted to see what he could milk it for. Now is that all? Is there anything else you’re holding back?”

  “Isn’t it enough?”

  The answer to that was obvious. It was more than enough.

  “Are you just going to sit there grinding your teeth?” she said after a moment. “Say something.”

  Ricardo had to think. Needing help, he made himself a drink. Charlotte, too, picked up her dropped glass and used the bottle after he finished. A mixture of emotions—fear, anger, regret—had carried her this far, but now she was crying. It irritated him.

  “He put his watch on the table and gave me five minutes. Darling, all I could think was that even this way, with this hanging over us, it’s better than before, when we didn’t know each other—”

  “Is it?”

  He bit off the words, rattled the ice cubes and drank, forcing himself to keep drinking until the glass was empty.

  “God, I hate that stuff.”

  He dressed quickly, went through her purse and took all the cash and the gun. Without saying anything more or looking at her again, he left the apartment.

  Chapter 15

  The night security man came to tell Shayne there was a phone call for him. It was already after three, and they had only planted one of the Nash cameras. Unless they could work more swiftly, they would have to settle for a less ambitious program.

  “You can take it in the PR office.”

  It was the Cuban detective, using Shayne’s own mobile phone.

  “I haven’t figured out how to use this phone and chase at the same time,” the Cuban said. “I’ve got a tape you’re going to want to hear.”

  “Where are you?”

  “On the Beach, at Forty-third, a big oceanfront condo. Sanchez is inside, and he has a couple of friends with him. How do you want to do this?”

  “I’ll be right over. If he leaves before I get there, stay on him.”

  Shayne stopped at the kennel and told Dave, the closed-circuit technician from the Nash track, to do the VIP lounge installation next. Outside, the streets were deserted. Shayne ran the lights, and arrived less than five minutes after taking the Cuban’s call.

  “I almost lost him, Mike. He was headed south, so I took a chance and cut over to the Eighth Street area. I was lucky—he passed me going the other way, two guys with him. About the same age, I’d say. They’ve been inside—oh, eight minutes. Tape’s ready to run if you want to hear it.”

  �
�Yeah.”

  Shayne put on the earphones. While he listened to the exchange between Ricardo and Mrs. Geary, he took a pint of cognac from the glove box, offered it to the Cuban and then drank himself.

  “What the hell?” he said. “A deposition?”

  He listened for another moment. Without waiting for the tape to conclude, he whipped off the earphones and checked his .38.

  “We’d both better go in.”

  The Cuban pointed. Three figures came out of the condominium and walked, without hurrying, to a parked car.

  “Don’t lose him,” Shayne said. “If he goes home, do some more listening.”

  Ricardo’s car, an ancient sedan with a damaged front fender, moved off. Shayne slid out and crossed to the condominium.

  Security was one of the main selling points in these hastily built, overpriced buildings, and Shayne found the night doorman in his office off the vestibule, his mouth, ankles and wrists taped.

  Shayne ripped the tape off his mouth. The man gasped, “A stickup.”

  “Three guys?” Shayne said. “I saw them leaving, I thought I’d check. Does Harry Zell live in this building?”

  “In the penthouse. They took my house keys. Do you think that’s whose place—”

  “Don’t report this until I find out. Harry’s got strange ideas. He may not want people to know he’s been robbed. If I need help I’ll call you.”

  The doorman called after him. “Tell him I tried, but they climbed all over me.”

  Shayne rode the elevator to the top. There was only one door, and it was closed and locked. Shayne worked on the lock until it opened for him.

  The boys had left the lights on. Every bulb in the place was burning. This was Zell’s office as well as where he lived, and his house architect had been given an open budget and instructions to go for effect. The main room was circular, with a desk the size of a wading pool. The lights ran on overhead tracks. The telephone console was nearly as elaborate as the one on the Surfside control deck.

  Harry Zell was tied to a high-backed leather chair, his mouth taped. He made small protesting noises as Shayne walked in, putting away his lock-picks. The developer had been working when the Sanchez group surprised him. Papers and a big ledger were spread out in front of him.