Count Backwards to Zero

by Brett Halliday

  Rourke answered promptly. “Mike, you may not like this, and then again you may. They just turned in at the Holiday Inn, off the North Miami interchange. The lady’s still in the car. The guy went in to register.”

  “What the hell?” Shayne said softly. “Tim, don’t let that Oldsmobile out of your sight. I’ll get back to you.”

  He brought in the operator and asked her to dial the home phone of Daniel Slattery, in Coral Gables. In a moment a woman’s voice said hello.

  “Is Dan in?” Shayne asked.

  “He’s not, I’m sorry. He won’t be back for another week.”

  “This is Mike Shayne. I’m a friend of his. Is he still in England?”

  “As a matter of fact, I think it’s Paris at the moment. It’s one of those hectic trips. Is there a message, Mr. Shayne?”

  “I’ll have to talk to him personally. Maybe I could meet his plane.”

  “He left his car in New York and he’ll be driving down. Next Monday, I believe.”

  Shayne untangled himself from the conversation and the operator put him through to Gentry again.

  “You said twenty minutes,” Gentry said. “I just called Doris to put the steaks in the broiler.”

  “Call her back. I’ll hang on.”

  “Damn it, Mike—all right, all right! I can tell from your tone of voice that this isn’t a simple little breaking and entering.”

  He clicked off.

  “Doris didn’t like it,” he said, coming back a moment later. “I don’t like it either. Why don’t you ever need help between nine and five, like ordinary people?”

  “I’m sorry,” Shayne said grimly. “I thought I had this under control, but it got away from me. You’re right, it’s not breaking and entering. It’s a smuggling operation. Don’t say anything to anybody, but it’s possible it may involve—” He hesitated. “Hell, I don’t buy it myself completely, but now I’m talking about possibilities. I think it’s possible that what came in on the Queen was an atom bomb.”

  “Now, Mike.”

  “I know it sounds insane. It may be true just the same.”

  “I’m a cop, Mike. You’re a private detective. This isn’t for us. This is the sort of thing we kick upstairs.”

  “Not this time. It’s us or nobody, and we’ve got to move fast. We can’t call time to convince some Washington pipsqueaks that we haven’t been blowing dope. Forget I said anything about a bomb. Assume it’s narcotics, and go on from there. We’ll need an all-precinct call on a Bentley. You know the make—it’s a Rolls with a different radiator, and it ought to be easy to spot. It had GB plates when I saw it last.”

  After describing the Bentley he told Gentry that he also wanted a call on a green Oldsmobile, registered in the name of Daniel Slattery, last reported parked outside the Holiday Inn in North Miami.

  “And make it urgent,” Shayne said.

  Without giving Gentry time to object, he cut the call short. The traffic signal at the corner had gone through another half dozen red-green cycles, and Pierre Dessau and Little’s Bentley had still not appeared. Now he had to find out which one of the two had faked him away from the pier.

  Returning, he used his siren to bull his way through two blocked intersections. He left his Buick in a forbidden zone and hunted up the Customs inspector in charge of the five-man detail working the arrival of the big passenger liner. A plump, good-natured man named Ben Wainright, he was perspiring freely.

  Shayne jerked his head to one side. “Let’s talk, Ben.”

  “One of the things I like to do best. I’ll just clear these last cars. The public’s getting restless.”

  “It can’t wait,” Shayne said brusquely. “Over here.”

  Wainright hesitated, then followed him to the other side of the cluttered pier. Shayne stopped beside a loaded baggage wagon.

  “Did you get tipped that anything unusual was coming in?”

  The good humor drained out of Wainright’s face. “You know we don’t answer that kind of question.”

  “Yeah, yeah, to protect your sources. I wouldn’t be asking if it wasn’t important. To pin it down, the tipster would be a big pasty-faced guy named Pierre Dessau. Six-four, English. The stuff was due to come in in a five-year-old Bentley, owned by another Englishman, Quentin Little.”

  Wainright’s eyes were alert and probing. “No cigar, Mike. I remember the Bentley. Ugly little guy, pretty well gassed. We didn’t shake the car all the way down, but it looked OK structurally. Wait a minute. What name did you say—Little?”

  “Dr. Quentin Little.”

  “That’s the one. His daughter has been trying to find him.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Cecily Little, at seventeen, was a serious, slightly built girl with dun-colored hair and oversize glasses. She was wearing bright lipstick that was closer to orange than red, but no other makeup, tight slacks and sandals. Wainright pointed her out. She was standing outside the barrier at the end of the pier, clutching a handbag. She looked scared and at the same time a little defiant.

  Shayne went up to her.

  “Are you the girl who’s looking for Dr. Little?”

  Her face lit up. “Do you know where he is?”

  Her voice was high and reedy, and made her seem even younger. There was a slight redness about her eyes and nose.

  “I’m hunting for him myself,” Shayne said. “What happened, did you miss him?”

  “I must have done!” she said. “They kept giving me the wrong directions, and everything’s so crowded and mixed up. Why aren’t there any signs?” she sniffed hard. “Jesus, it wasn’t my fault.”

  “Was he expecting you to meet him?”

  “Oh, who knows about Dad? He’s the original mad scientist. It was all arranged, but unless somebody’s right there to remind him—”

  “I have to move my car,” Shayne said. “I had a date to meet him and he didn’t show up, so you and I seem to be in the same situation. We can park down the block in case he comes back.”

  “I don’t know what hotel he’s going to, or anything. It’s so aggravating! He might even decide not to stay in Miami.”

  She took several steps with him and then checked herself. “Are you some kind of police officer?”

  “I’m a private detective. I came in on the same boat with your father. I don’t know any more about his plans than you do, but I’m in the phone book. He may call me.” He opened the door of his Buick for her.

  “I don’t want to sound suspicious or anything,” she said, “but if you’ve got some identification I’d like to see it.”

  He showed her the license signed by the Florida Secretary of State. She examined it carefully.

  “I know a lot you read about America is exaggerated, but just the same—”

  After getting into the car she sat quietly, her knees pressed together, clutching her handbag so hard that her knuckles had whitened. Shayne slid behind the wheel.

  “He’s in trouble then, isn’t he?” she said without looking at him.

  “I think so, Cecily, but I’m not sure what kind.”

  “It’s the booze! He used to be so—well, predictable.” The curbside jam had begun to break. Shayne moved the Buick forward to the nearest opening.

  “Did you fly over?”

  “I got in this morning. He doesn’t like planes and I couldn’t see killing all that time on that dumb ship. Mr. Shayne, would you mind not being too tricky with me? Tell me right away what’s wrong.”

  Shayne answered carefully. “He told me a long story on the ship. I don’t know how much of it to believe.”

  “Was he drinking gin at the time?”

  “Vodka.”

  “That’s pretty much the same, isn’t it? He’ll spin the wildest tales sometimes, and they sound so real—Do you smoke? Because if you don’t you’ll have to go somewhere and buy me some. I’m so jangly.”

  Shayne produced cigarettes and lit them with the dashboard lighter. She took a deep drag, her cheeks hollowing.
r />   “Of course he had to bring that stupid Bentley. Our Dad. They say a man can get the Change at a certain age, just like a woman, and that’s the only way you can explain it. He was out in the garage till one o’clock half the nights in the week, fixing it up, and that’s a giggle, because he doesn’t know how to drive, practically. I’m supposed to drive him to the factory. I thought he was looking forward to it!” Her mood shifted abruptly. “And if he sneaked past me deliberately, he’s going to be sorry. He can’t even read a road map, so how’s he going to know which way he’s going? And I’ll bet inside of five minutes he starts driving on the left of the road. Crrash!”

  “You make him sound pretty helpless.”

  “He can’t even tie his own bootlaces. He got on the wrong train one day last year and ended up in Scotland.”

  “Are you planning to live here with him?”

  “In Georgia? Thank you very much. I’ve read Erskine Caldwell and Tennessee Williams. No, he said he wouldn’t set foot out of England unless somebody went with him for a bit so he wouldn’t have to look at all those strange faces. Mum wouldn’t. I don’t say she won’t come over if it works out, but she doesn’t think he’ll have the job long because of all the drinking. So I was elected. I’ll settle him in, get somebody to char for him, and then I’ll kiss him goodbye and get on the bus. I’ll make a little tour of the United States while I’m here. Las Vegas. Hollywood.”

  She waved at the smoke. “But where is he? What if he started right off—”

  “The Highway Patrol is looking for his car. He was in bad shape when I saw him. How long has he been drinking like this?”

  “Oh, it sneaked up on him. He and our Mum—the less said about that the better. He reads his scientific journals or goes to the pub and she watches the telly or goes to the pub.”

  “He says you’ve been riding him about his job.”

  “He said that?” she asked indignantly. “Dad told you that? It’s been Stan, mainly, my brother. Not that I don’t agree with a lot of it. Dad went into science because he wanted to, quote, penetrate the mysteries of matter, unquote, and what did it amount to, after all? Looking for gruesome ways to murder people. Stan’s a wild Maoist, much wilder than me. I’ve tried to save Dad from the worst of it, and frankly I’ve told Stan to shut up more times than once. I’m going to try to make it up to him. Maybe he’ll meet somebody over here, some brainy bird who likes to talk about neutrons and protons and electrons. Aren’t there more females in America than males? I read that somewhere. Of course he’s a little—funny-looking?”

  She corrected herself. “Which is not for me to say. People that age are always getting married again, and it could happen, couldn’t it?”

  “Do you know somebody named Pierre Dessau?”

  “I should guess I do!” She jerked around. “Is he here? Does he have anything to do with this?”

  “According to the story your father told me. Can you imagine any circumstances in which your father would agree to smuggle something into the United States?”

  The cigarette flew out of her fingers. She retrieved it from the floor and stubbed it out in the dashboard ashtray.

  “I knew that lunatic was mixed up in something. Sure, it’s a possibility. It’s also possible he swam the Atlantic towing the Queen Elizabeth. You must have something to go on or you wouldn’t say that, but why would he? We’ve always been pretty stony, but this American company is paying him a fortune, isn’t it? All I know is what he told me.” She added. “Unless it’s political?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Oh—pamphlets. Guns and ammunition. I don’t know. The way Stan kept nackering at him got under his skin, finally, and he went slightly bonkers. He’s been going to marches and demonstrations and joining committees. He put his name on every manifesto that came in the mail—sign one of those things and you get on all the lists. I thought it was a leg-pull at first, to get a bit of his own back with Stan. Because it’s ridiculous! He’s too old for it. He’d show up for a picketing or a deputation three sheets to the wind. Everybody was delighted to start with—top-drawer government scientist and all—but he overstayed. It did him good, in my opinion. He’d never read a word of Marx or Lenin—he hardly looked at the newspaper—and it opened his eyes to what’s going on in the world.”

  “Does Dessau have radical connections?”

  “Pierre, my God, no. I’m sure he votes Conservative if he votes, and I doubt if he takes the trouble. Now can I ask a question? How did you and Dad—I mean, how did you get together?”

  “He hired me to get him into the country without being arrested or shot. I don’t have time to tell you about it. I’m expecting a phone call, and when it comes in I’ll have to move. It won’t be from your father—he doesn’t know I use a car phone. If he calls the number in the book he can leave a message on the recorder. I think it’s possible that he forgot you were supposed to meet him—he’s had other things on his mind. When the phone rings, I want you to get out and wait for another fifteen or twenty minutes. Then if he hasn’t showed up, take a cab to the Flamingo Springs Motel. It’s a couple of miles north on Biscayne. I want to know where I can reach you. Tell the desk Michael Shayne sent you, and I’ll be calling. Stay in your room. Read the Bible or try to find something on television.”

  “That’s not my idea of a grand evening. But if you say so.”

  “The Flamingo Springs, on Biscayne. Now tell me what you know about Dessau.”

  “Well, not all that much, really—one of those doughy blokes who trip over their own shoes all the time. A real pain in the arse, forgive the expression. A tongue like a clapper, always going. You have people over here like that, too, I’m sure.”

  “What’s he do for a living?”

  “Nothing strenuous, I know that. He knows what a prison looks like from the inside, I shouldn’t wonder. He’s always talking about business arrangements with this one or that one, but my feeling is that it’s about ninety percent air.”

  “How’d you meet him?”

  “He helped Dad home a few times when he had a drop too many. He arranged for the Bentley. It was supposed to be such a wonderful buy, but when you consider all the work Dad put in on it—”

  “Did Dessau give the impression there was money coming in?”

  “He gave the impression. But he lives in this awful hole with no inside plumbing and no springs on the bed, just a mattress on a piece of plywood. Ghastly.” She picked another cigarette out of the pack between them. “He’s definitely kinky, that one. I had one date with him. That was more than enough. He put on a pair of cloth gloves and bashed me a good one. Just like that. Then he had the gall to ask me to have sex with him—disgusting. I got out of there so fast. I lost a tooth out of it and I had a gorgeous eye for a few days.”

  “I heard another version of that from your father.”

  The phone rang. She jumped again, her hands flying, and lost another cigarette.

  “That’s loud. All right—the Flamingo Springs. But don’t forget me. I’ll be dying out there. When I think of my poor old Dad on the loose in a strange town—”

  She sniffed sharply twice, and got out of the car.

  CHAPTER 9

  Gentry’s voice said, “I just got a call from the Patrol. No Oldsmobile answering that description at the Holiday Inn in North Miami, and there’s no Daniel Slattery registered at the motel.”

  Shayne swore. He told Gentry to hold on, brought in his operator and asked her to put through a call to Tim Rourke’s Chevrolet.

  “No answer, Mike,” she reported.

  Shayne’s grip on the phone tightened. For a moment he said nothing, thinking.

  “Try again every few minutes. Now let me have Gentry.”

  When the police chief was on the line: “That makes one more car we’re looking for, Tim Rourke’s Chevy. He’s been following the Olds. Something screwy is going on, Will. I planted a homing device in the Olds, and we’d better get a helicopter up right away. It’s stan
dard lifeboat gear, a beep every thirty seconds. The Coast Guard choppers can pick it up.”

  Gentry groaned. “They’ll want an explanation. I don’t want to give them any.”

  “If Joe Nye’s still in command of the Dinner Key Air Station he won’t ask you to put it in writing. He’ll get his planes in the air and let you fill him in later. Just tell him it’s a security matter.”

  “A security matter,” Gentry said sarcastically. “Don’t tell me you still think somebody’s been smuggling in atom bombs.”

  “Will, the main guy is an English physicist who up to a week or so ago was a top official in an atomic laboratory. He’s been reading Lenin and going to Left-wing demonstrations. He brought in a Bentley. The gas tank on that car weighed about three hundred pounds with no gas in it. I know, because I wrestled it out of the Bentley into that green Olds, where I hope to hell it still is.”

  “You’re really serious about this, aren’t you?” Gentry said slowly.

  Shayne said grimly, “You know it. Make the Coast Guard call—they wouldn’t do it for me. Keep this line open.”

  Shayne’s operator, coming back at his signal, held the connection to Police Headquarters, and put Shayne through to the desk of the North Miami Holiday Inn. Identifying himself, he asked them to look at their list of license numbers, on cars belonging to their guests, and see if the Oldsmobile’s was among them.

  “Yes, here it is, Mr. Shayne. That’s Mr. and Mrs. William Robinson, of St. Petersburg.”

  Shayne thanked them and waited for Gentry.

  “Let’s go, Will, what’s holding you up?” he said impatiently to the dead phone.

  He took a cognac bottle from the glove compartment, and drank. Then Gentry was back.

  “Seems to be OK, Mike. They’ll run a series of five-mile circles, moving north and south, and he was nice enough not to ask me what a Cunard Line lifeboat transmitter was doing at a Holiday Inn in North Miami. I’ve got the Highway Patrol looking for Rourke. Now are you going to spoon out some more information, or do you want me to sit here and sweat?”