Six Seconds to Kill ms-59

by Brett Halliday

  “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.