Fit to Kill

by Brett Halliday

  His seat-mate, an automobile salesman, lit it for him.

  “Me, too,” he said. “I always feel better when one of these babies gets off the ground. What did they do, break your arm for you?”

  Rourke repeated the hit-run story. The salesman, it turned out, was an admirer of Marshal Gonzalez, having sold a gratifying number of cars, the most expensive models with all the extras. Rourke didn’t feel like arguing. The guy could read his views on the subject in the next day’s News.

  The propellers continued to revolve, and Rourke downed three successive rye-and-sodas to fill his empty stomach. A little past the point of no return, he paid a visit to the men’s room. Carla glanced up. Her eyes met his for only the tiniest part of a second before she looked away indifferently.

  Rourke couldn’t see the point. It was standard practice for a man traveling alone on one of these planes to stop and pass the time of day with a good-looking girl who was also traveling alone, and perhaps offer her a drink. But she had more experience in these things than he did. She had told him not to speak to her, and he went on.

  Presently he saw the low-lying coast of Florida, and soon after that, the towers of his home town. They came in toward the International Airport, got their instructions, and settled down, fifteen minutes behind schedule. Rourke’s heart was beating rapidly. He had asked Shayne to meet him, but it was such short notice that he didn’t really expect to see the detective. He would put in half an hour at the paper, and no more. This time it was Rourke himself who was news, and a rewrite man could do the story.

  In an hour at the most, he would be with Carla. He would take things as they came, not pushing any farther than she wanted, but not holding back, either.

  The plane came to a stop, and the engines died. The stewardess was waiting at the front of the cabin with a clip-board and a pleasant smile. Members of the ground crew maneuvered the steps into position.

  The first person into the cabin was a stocky, gray-haired man whose face seemed familiar to Rourke. The passengers were stretching, getting their hand-luggage and crowding the aisle.

  The stewardess called, “May I have your attention? Miss Ellen Porter?”

  For an instant that name meant nothing to Rourke. Then he heard Carla say coolly, “Yes?”

  “Would you come up here, please, Miss Porter?”

  Shrugging slightly, Carla edged through the other passengers. As she came abreast of Rourke she pretended to stumble, and had to catch his arm. She gave him a fleeting smile of apology, making it clear that they were to go on behaving as strangers.

  He could still feel the touch of her fingers as the gray-haired man, after a question and an answer, conducted her out of the cabin. Stooping, Rourke looked out the window. He saw them crossing the hardtop apron toward the big Immigration building. The man had Carla’s elbow, and he was moving her along faster than it was convenient to walk in high heels.

  Anger had been simmering inside Rourke ever since he had been knocked about his hotel room by the pair of Gonzalez cops. Now it neared a boil. He never liked to see a girl hustled like that. Before this thing was over, he promised himself that he would add a few scalps to his collection.

  CHAPTER 6

  With his typewriter in his uninjured hand, he joined the flow toward the door. A porter wanted to tag the typewriter and put it on the wagon with the other small pieces, but again Rourke held onto it firmly. At the long curving customs counter, he waited until the suitcases came in and were arranged alphabetically. He set the battered portable beside his suitcase, and smoked a cigarette nervously while the inspector worked his way along to him.

  “Anything to declare?” he asked Rourke.

  “I wasn’t there long enough to buy anything,” Rourke answered, trying to keep the impatience out of his voice. “This one suitcase and the portable.”

  The inspector gave the contents of the suitcase a cursory glance. Then he stamped the tag. The typewriter was obviously not a recent purchase, and he wasted no time on it. He moved along the counter.

  Rourke closed the suitcase. “Can I leave this here a minute?” he said.

  The inspector glanced at his broken arm. “Sure, go ahead, I’ll keep an eye on it.”

  Carrying the typewriter, Rourke went on to the waiting room. A small crowd in the doorway was waiting for the passengers from Flight 101 to be checked through. Shayne wasn’t there, and neither was Lucy Hamilton, his secretary. Apparently Rourke’s cable had arrived too late for them to rearrange their plans. That was just as well, the reporter thought. He didn’t want to waste any time in explanations until he found out where Carla had been taken.

  He went back out through the customs room. A guard at the gate tried to stop him, but he explained that he had left a book on the plane. He saw the tourist-cabin stewardess come out of the big Douglas, and overtook her as she went at an angle toward the administration building.

  She recognized him, probably by the cast on his arm, and gave him her professional smile.

  “Home, sweet home,” she said. “It’s always nice to be back, isn’t it?”

  “Wonderful,” Rourke agreed. “I’ve been lying in wait for you. I—”

  Her smile brightened. “I’m glad you did, but I’ve got to run now. I’m meeting my fiancé.”

  “You don’t understand. I’m not hitting you for a date. I’m a reporter, Tim Rourke of the News. The guy who took Miss Porter off the plan—I know I’ve seen him around. What’s his name?”

  She looked at him. “Do you have a press card or something?”

  “Sure.”

  Rourke fumbled for his wallet and opened it to the plasticene window through which his Newspaper Guild card showed.

  “I guess it’s all right to tell you,” she said. “That’s Jack Malloy, of Customs. His office is on the second floor.”

  Rourke thanked her. Immigration would have been serious. Customs was not only serious, it was baffling.

  He went into the building and found Malloy’s office. The lettering on the frosted glass door said, “J. J. Malloy, Regional Director, United States Customs.” And then Rourke remembered. Ten years before, then only a customs agent, Malloy had broken up a ring of smugglers who were exporting gold bars, an operation that was both illegal and immensely profitable at the time. Rourke had covered the story.

  He opened the door. It was a large, comfortable office, with a big desk, book-shelves filled with leather-bound volumes. Malloy turned from the window in annoyance.

  “Rourke, of the Daily News,” the reporter said quickly. “Spare me a minute?”

  “Hell, yes, I remember you,” Malloy said, his heavy face clearing. “Could it wait, though? I have something on the fire right now.”

  “That’s what I noticed,” Rourke grinned. “I was on the plane. I wondered if you could let me have something on it.”

  “Sorry, Tim,” Malloy said with regret. “I’d like to, but my hands are tied. If anything breaks, we’ll have to call in all the boys and give it to everyone at once.”

  “Now Mr. Malloy,” Rourke said, the friendly grin still on his face. “How many times does a story like this fall into a reporter’s lap? Not very often, I can tell you. I was there when she was arrested, so I’ve got the eye-witness angle. But naturally I’d like to get a little more before I break it.”

  “Sorry. That’s not the way we do business.”

  Rourke turned to go, thinking swiftly.

  “If it’s a rule, you have to stick to it. It doesn’t matter much, anyway. I’ve got her name, Ellen Porter. The sewardess says the passenger roster gives her home town as Philadelphia. I can get the U. P. to query their Philadelphia office. I’ve got an idea, from something about the way the girl handled herself, that the society editors of the Philly papers would know who Ellen Porter is and what she’s been doing in Central America. They’d probably also be interested to know that she’s been arrested.”

  Malloy let him reach the door before he said, “I wish you wouldn’t go to so m
uch trouble, Tim.”

  “It’s no trouble,” Rourke told him blandly. “It’s part of the regular U. P. service.”

  “You think you can blackmail me?” Malloy said ominously.

  “Sure. Don’t use that word, and you’ll adjust to it easily. We cooperate. That’s a more friendly way to put it.”

  Malloy spun his chair around and dropped into it.

  “Damn it, Tim. Sit down. Sorry I snapped at you. I’ve been telling Washington I need a vacation. The fact is, I don’t want any publicity on this at the moment. This is very much off the record. I know you’ll go along with me when you know what the score is.”

  Rourke drew up a leather chair facing the desk, after putting his typewriter on the floor.

  “Now that’s much better. And I hope you can give me a couple of hours advance notice when you do decide to break it.”

  “I can’t promise that, but I’ll try.” He lighted a cigar, shook out the match and revolved the cigar in his mouth until it was burning evenly. “I’ll give it to you in one word. Narcotics.”

  The reporter had been lighting a cigarette. Malloy’s quiet announcement jarred him. The burning match flew out of his fingers. He stamped on it and put it out.

  As soon as he could collect his thoughts, he said, “I’ll have to give up smoking until I’m out of this damn cast. So she was smuggling narcotics? I didn’t think she looked the type.”

  “You know better than that, Tim. There’s no smuggling type. It’s one thing that appeals to people in every economic bracket. All you do is carry something over an imaginary line, and it triples in value. Not much chance of discovery unless somebody tips us off for the informer’s fee.”

  “Somebody gave you a tip on this girl?” Rourke said carefully.

  “Yeh. And this one’s official, so there’s no fee to pay, not that it would come out of my pocket. Something went wrong at the other end, I don’t know what so far. She had to get out in a hurry. She didn’t bring any baggage. No baggage at all. Ordinarily that might not be noticed, because the bags are loaded separately. A man’s voice made her reservation, but she got on alone. I’m told she made no contacts on the plane.”

  “I tried to buy her a drink,” Rourke said. “She gave me the deep freeze.”

  “You’re lucky, boy,” Malloy smiled. “She might have tried to slip it in your pocket, or con you into bringing it through for her. That happens. I pulled her off the plane myself so she couldn’t pass it to anyone short of the customs check. We’ve got our eye on a couple of the ground personnel here.”

  “How much of the stuff was she carrying?” Rourke said casually.

  “So far she’s clean,” the customs director admitted. “Nothing in her handbag. The matron’s giving her a shakedown now, but good. I’m not present at that examination.”

  “Maybe you had a bum steer from somebody.”

  “Could be, but in this case I don’t think so, Tim. The tip was too strong, and the no-baggage business bears it out. If there’s nothing on her, there’s nothing on her, but maybe she got rid of it some other way. We’ll want to see who she contacts and where she goes. Washington’s interested, naturally. I’ve been on the phone all afternoon. You can see why I wouldn’t be overjoyed to read about it in tomorrow’s News.”

  The phone rang on his desk. He picked it up and said, “Malloy.—Nothing at all?—Okay, I’ll be right in.”

  Hanging up, he told Rourke, “She’s one of the cute ones. The matron didn’t find a thing. As soon as the girl’s dressed, I’ll have to apologize.”

  “Won’t she make trouble for you?”

  “Why should she? I told her I could arrest her if she wanted to do it that way. If she was sure she was innocent, she could agree to a search and have it over with in five minutes, without the humiliation of being jugged. Her name isn’t Ellen Porter, by the way. She’ll want to get out of our clutches before we find that out and hold her for illegal entry.”

  “Mind if I wait and find out how she takes it?”

  “Make yourself comfortable. But stay out of sight, if you don’t mind, Tim. We’re going to be tailing her, and I want that to be a clean-cut operation.”

  He went out, leaving the reporter alone.

  Rourke’s mind was racing. He went back to the beginning and started over. Was it possible that Carla, like the smugglers Malloy had mentioned, had been working a con game on him all the time? Malloy had sounded pretty sure of the tip, and he’d been in this business for a long time. What did Rourke know about her, exactly? She’d shown up at his door in a dressing gown, her hair up in curlers. Somehow that little touch of the curlers had been the clincher. If her hair had been brushed, if she’d been wearing lipstick, he might have been more suspicious about her account of the contents of the paper-wrapped parcel. Now it seemed remarkably flimsy.

  Could it be that the whole story of her political difficulties had been invented, merely to enlist his sympathy? That Lieutenant Renzullo had been sent to arrest a narcotics smuggler, not an underground courier? When she gave Rourke the parcel, had she actually been worried about getting it out of one country, or into another? Carla could have hired the maid in advance, coaching her to play a role. And she had negotiated for the uniform in Spanish, and Rourke couldn’t be sure of what she’d said. Then why had the police let her get on the plane? Why had she told Rourke so insistently not to speak to her until they were on the other side of the customs?

  It all fitted. She knew that someone had talked, and she had to leave in a hurry. She knew she would be searched. Meeting Rourke at his apartment, she would pick up the parcel and disappear. Rourke had certainly given her every reason for believing that she could handle him without difficulty. Looked at in this light, those kisses and lingering caresses in the taxi had been an investment, a teaser to make sure he would show up on schedule. She might even have planned to pay him a reward for being a good, dumb boy. Or it might have amused her to bilk him of that, too, for the satisfaction of making a fool of him all down the line.

  Rourke had a strong aversion to everyone in the narcotics pipeline, ending with the ultimate consumer. If Carla had planted a package of dope in his typewriter, he had better make sure of it now, before she could get out of the building.

  He laid the typewriter on his knees, flipped open the lid and took out the parcel. Secret markings! Rourke snorted. His powers of judgment had been suspended, for the ridiculous reason that she had been wearing less than the customary allotment of clothes.

  He picked up a letter-opener from Malloy’s desk. Thinking suddenly of that half hour in the taxi, he had a sickening stab of regret. But he couldn’t go back on his resolution now.

  He went to the door and listened carefully. If she had really been telling the truth, he didn’t want to get her into any more trouble.

  Holding the parcel clumsily against his stomach with the cast, he sliced through the Scotch tape with the sharp dagger. Below the first layer, he came to a second. Then he had to cut the wrappings open all the way down the middle. It was like opening a mummy.

  He exposed a shallow cardboard container, about the size of a carbon-paper box. He cut through more Scotch tape and lifted the lid.

  At first he thought there was nothing inside but cotton. He fumbled with it. The cast made him awkward. There were two layers of cotton, pressed firmly together. His fingers shaking, Rourke lifted the top layer.

  In his excitement, he nearly dropped the box. Resting securely between the two layers of cotton were twenty-five or thirty unset diamonds. They varied in cut and weight. They were all gem stones, and Rourke, though he was no expert, knew as he looked down that he held a fortune in his hands.

  CHAPTER 7

  Michael Shayne walked quickly through the main waiting room at the busy terminal. He was a tall man, with the shoulders of a heavyweight fighter. His face was cragged and lined, with keen gray eyes beneath pugnacious red eyebrows. He walked with lean-hipped grace.

  At the information counter, h
e pushed back his Panama and took out the crumpled cable from Tim Rourke. He smoothed it out and read it again.

  “KILL THE FATTED CALF,” it said. “VACATION

  UNEXPECTEDLY CURTAILED YOUR BOY ARRIVING

  FIVE-FORTY INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT WITH SURPRISE

  IN SHAPE OF LOVELY BLONDE AND WHAT A SHAPE

  WOW MEET ME IF CONVENIENT—TIM.”

  Shayne’s trenched face creased into a grin. After all Rourke’s years on newspapers, he still let himself go whenever he found himself facing a telegraph pad.

  He glanced up again at the big clock. He was half an hour past the time in Tim’s cable. He had delivered a report to a client on Hialeah Drive in Northwest Miami. The client had been pleased, and had insisted that they finish a bottle of cognac he had opened when Shayne first undertook the case. Shayne had earned a $1500 fee without a great deal of work, the check for which reposed in his billfold. The client was pleasant company, the cognac was very smooth and mellow, and Shayne decided that Tim Rourke could find his way home by himself.

  But when they reached the bottom of the bottle, the detective called the terminal and found that the 5:40 was overdue. The client had driven him out from downtown in his own car, so Shayne picked up a taxi on 37th Avenue and told the driver to take him to the airport. There was a chance, he thought, that Rourke had been held up going through customs and might still be here.

  When he caught the eye of the clerk he asked, “Has any message been left here for Mr. Shayne?”

  “I’m sorry,” the girl said, her eye passing down his powerfull-built frame.

  “How late was the five-forty?”

  “It came in”—she checked—“at five fifty-seven.”

  He thanked her and went out to the big customs room, which was now almost empty. At the far end of the semicircular counter, he saw a little knot of trouble. A small man, red in the face, was mopping at his forehead with a handkerchief. Two women, undoubtedly his wife and daughter, stood nearby, trying to look as though they had no part in what was going on. A half dozen bottles of perfume had been set out on the counter beside an open suitcase. The inspector was probing carefully, to see if he could turn up any more contraband.