Count Backwards to Zero

by Brett Halliday

“I can explain one thing, at least,” Shayne said. “Slattery’s wife isn’t expecting him for another week. He brought somebody back with him—I saw a woman in the front seat when he drove the Olds out of Customs—and apparently he plans to get in a little illicit sex before he shows up in Coral Gables. The reason there’s no Daniel Slattery registered is that he signed in under the name William Robinson. If he’s there and the car is gone, it must mean somebody else found out about the gas tank switch and hijacked the Olds. And that’s bad news.”

  “Wait a minute, Mike. Something’s coming in now.”

  Shayne heard scratchy voices in Gentry’s office, too far from the phone to come across as words. When Gentry returned his attention to Shayne, his voice had quickened.

  “Here’s a break. I’ll be guided by you as to how we play it. The Bentley’s been spotted.”

  “Where?”

  “In Brownsville. We’ve got good lines of communication on that block. I think I told you about him once—Grady Ramsay.”

  “A numbers banker?”

  “That’s what he used to be. He broke his back in a car crash. Now he’s paralyzed and he spends most of his time at the front window. If we had somebody like him in every neighborhood we’d really know what happens in town. He called in to report a stolen car. The description fits your Bentley.”

  “What the hell is my Bentley doing in Brownsville?”

  “Call Ramsay, Mike. Otherwise you’ll be getting it third hand. It sounds like a queer deal.”

  He gave Shayne a number, and Shayne passed it on to his operator. In a moment a voice said briskly, “Grady Ramsay speaking, what can I do for you?”

  “This is Michael Shayne. I’m calling about the car you just reported stolen.”

  “Mike Shayne? Well, well. I had a hunch this was something, from the way they pricked up their ears.”

  “It sounds like a car I’m interested in. I know you’ve been through this once, but would you mind doing it again?”

  “I’m not going anyplace. You don’t see that kind of a car pass through here more than a couple of times a year, and I sharpened right up when it cruised past. Imported, you know—didn’t have that Detroit look at all. Those big swishy front fenders. The lines of a two-minute trotting horse. How much of a hurry are you in? I can condense it for you, or put in all the curlicues.”

  “Don’t leave out anything. Did you see who was driving?”

  “Only the elbow. I was dozing away, and he was past before I had the use of all my apparatus. Rolling along at ten miles an hour. He stopped all of a sudden, jammed on his brakes. That car raised up and then it settled back, a good three feet out from the gutter. I had my head poked out the window for a clearer view. I said to myself, ‘Uh-oh, that cat is inviting trouble.’ Because you know the younger element around here will strip that kind of automobile down to its bones if they’re given the opportunity, so the smart thing to do, the sensible thing, is don’t give them the opportunity. If you have to stop, don’t get out. He got out, both him and the person with him.”

  “Slow down. That’s important.”

  “I can’t help you with much of a description of either one of them. The street lamp service is a shame and a disgrace. There’s a chinaberry tree at that spot, which didn’t help matters any. The driver had the sense to lock up, I’ll say that for him, and he walked around past the headlights. Not a very large fellow. A white person, incidentally, and from little things about him I’d say he was more than somewhat polluted. As for whoever was with him, I couldn’t tell if he was old or young, or black or white, or anything about him at all.”

  He paused a moment.

  “Excuse me, just wetting my whistle here. Now you understand my heart was hammering and I was expecting some action. That automobile set somebody back over ten thousand dollars new, and the house they went into—I won’t say it’s run down because that wouldn’t convey the flavor. It’s been abandoned three weeks, and the landlord’s letting it go to the city. That car and that building, they don’t go together. And all at once I heard the beating of another automobile. This one I believe was a Dodge, and it could use a valve job and new plugs and points. It stopped behind the other car and a big guy jumped out with what I honestly believe was a pistol in his hand. He whipped out some keys, got in the first car, the imported car, and drove off, leaving some rubber on the pavement. The Dodge was right behind him, but here’s the point, and I didn’t tell the lieutenant this because it just happened this minute. The Dodge is back, and it’s parked out there with the lights off. I tried to get the license number but all I can see is the letter T and a nine.”

  “What happened to the people who went in the building?”

  “They could still be there, or they could walk through to the alley in back and I wouldn’t see them from here.”

  “Who used to live there?”

  “Just ordinary hard-luck black people, on welfare and so on.”

  “The guy who owns the Bentley is mixed up in some kind of radical politics. Would that fit any of the tenants?”

  Ramsay sounded careful for the first time. “I’d say nobody around here is any more militant than the next man. Just trying to slide along.”

  Shayne took him through the scene again, but it remained as baffling on the second telling as on the first. After thanking Ramsay for his help, Shayne broke back to Gentry.

  “I see what you mean, Will. He’s a good witness. But I’d better take a run out and see for myself. I ought to have a back-up man standing by. Who’s available? I need somebody who can work close without kicking over any garbage cans. Considering the part of town we’ll be in, somebody who’s not too pale.”

  “Max Wilson?”

  “Yeah, he’s fine. Tell him not to offer me any help unless I yell for it. And I’ve got a passport picture I want you to check out. This has got to start unraveling somewhere, and maybe that will do it. If you send somebody down to wait on the corner I’ll drop it off as I go by. Speed-photo it to Washington. The name that goes with it is Jerry Diamond, and he also carries a credit card in the name of Mason Smith. He’s connected with this in some way, but don’t ask me how.”

  Shayne hadn’t been in Brownsville since the last outburst of mass looting. Most of the burned-out stores were still boarded up with plywood panels. A few that had reopened for business looked like fortresses.

  Shayne found the building he had just discussed with Grady Ramsay. It had been left for the wreckers, but a quick glance as he drove past told Shayne that it might not be still standing when they arrived. The street lamp directly outside had been smashed. He watched the windows along the opposite side, but if Ramsay was still posted at one of them, he didn’t show himself.

  There were several derelict cars along the curb, wheelless and gutted. Only one car on the block was still intact, a black Dodge sedan. Shayne’s headlights picked up the T9 at the start of the license number, and he saw the red glow of a cigarette inside.

  He parked on a well-lighted main street, locked up carefully and returned on foot. There were few pedestrians. A hulking youth in his undershirt came out of a parked car and fell in behind Shayne.

  “Man, got a light?” he called.

  Shayne swung around, produced his powerful flashlight and switched it on. The beam struck the youth’s eyes and brought him to an abrupt standstill. He batted at the light, swore at Shayne, and faded out of sight.

  Shayne entered the alley running between the lines of houses. It was littered with obstacles. He moved forward carefully, using the flashlight only when necessary.

  There was a noisy party in one of the houses. All the rooms in that building were ablaze with light; loud, heavily accented dance music poured through the open windows. A man and a woman were embracing closely against a broken fence.

  “Nice night for it,” Shayne observed, and went past.

  The gate behind the building he wanted had been torn off, and most of the fence was down. It was a dog-run building, with two
apartments on each of the two floors, separated by a central hall. Both main-floor doors were missing, and Shayne could look straight through to the street.

  He entered quietly. A cat leaped past him with an angry squall and disappeared.

  He covered his flashlight with one hand and snapped it on. In the dim glow he saw an accumulation of debris, cans, and broken plaster. He checked the rooms on each side, scaring a rat out of one. He picked his way to the stairs. Part of the banister was gone, and the bottom step had splintered through. Much of the plaster in the stairwell had fallen.

  Hearing a sudden sound in a room behind him, he stopped and turned. That door hung by a single hinge, and creaked protestingly as he moved it aside and stepped in, shielding the light so it wouldn’t be seen from the street.

  “If there’s anybody in here,” he said in an ordinary tone, “say something so we won’t surprise each other.”

  There was no answer. He crossed the rubble-strewn door to an open doorway. As he uncovered his light a woman’s voice said thickly, “What do you want?”

  He shone the light in her direction. She was middle-aged and shapeless, with stringy gray hair, lying on a bare mattress. She sat up, blinking crossly, and brought a hand up to tidy her hair.

  “Taking a little nap. You could knock, you know, would it hurt you?”

  Shayne swung the flashlight away. “How long have you been here, all evening?”

  “Shh,” she said in disgust, dropping her hand. “Cops. You can’t get away from them.”

  Shayne squatted beside the mattress and held out his cigarettes. “Smoke?”

  She picked a cigarette out of the pack, crumbled it, and tucked the loose tobacco inside her cheek. “I’ve got a right to be here.”

  “I’m not rousting you out. I’m looking for a couple of people who came in earlier. They left a car outside with the lights on and somebody drove it away.” He took a bill out of his wallet and passed it through the flashlight beam. “If you can tell me what happened to them, it’s worth five dollars.”

  “I don’t live here,” the woman said vaguely. “My daughter’s entertaining, the bitch, and she put me out.” Shayne’s hand shot out and caught her forearm. She was wearing a man’s watch. He unfastened the strap and looked at it. Along with the usual information, it gave the day of the month and the year.

  “That’s my husband’s,” she said. “He left it to me in his will.”

  Shayne pointed the flashlight around the dirty mattress, and saw a discarded pint bottle of vodka and a pair of man’s shoes, placed neatly against the wall.

  She had fallen back onto her elbows, her eyes little red points of light.

  “All right, on your feet,” Shayne said harshly.

  “I don’t take things don’t belong to me. I found them. They were here when I came in.”

  “When was that?”

  “After supper. I don’t know when.”

  “Why not? You’re wearing a watch.”

  She shook her head and said with scorn, “You white people. You think we don’t have watches. Only you.”

  “Get up. If you don’t want to walk by yourself, you’re going to be dragged.”

  “I been dragged before. I feel sick.”

  Shayne changed tactics abruptly. “All right, let’s try something different. I’m a private detective. My client’s run out on me. That’s his vodka bottle, his watch, and his shoes. I don’t know why he came into this building, or who was with him. I need to find out.”

  “Look around, I’m not stopping you.”

  “He’s important. If anything bad happened to him it won’t be a small neighborhood stink, it’ll be a big story in every paper in the country. You’ll get the full treatment. I may be able to get you out of some of it if you can tell me anything that helps.”

  “I didn’t kill him.”

  “Is he dead?”

  “Do I get to keep the watch?”

  “You know better than that. I’ll buy it from you for ten bucks, and that’s more than a fence would give you. You can have the shoes.”

  She sat up and said more alertly, “Twenty.”

  “Ten’s my top price.” He took out another bill and added it to the one already in his hand. “Where were you when the car stopped?”

  She patted the mattress. “Lying down. I’ve got a bad back and bad kidneys, but all my daughter cares about is her own pleasure.” She took the end of the folded bills and teased them out of Shayne’s hand. “You know how Jamaicans talk, he talked that way.”

  “He’s English. What did he say?”

  “Oh, about this country, how bad we do with the black people, and Americans claim they stand for justice. He was juiced, it sounded like. I thought one of the sisters brought him in for a little jazz, and maybe she was planning to roll him, you know, but I don’t believe in that kind of thing. I don’t believe in going out of my way either, so I played possum and kept my opinions to myself.”

  “Did you hear the other person say anything?”

  “It was only a mumble-jumble. They went upstairs and he kept going on and on about the race question. Then he sort of grunted and somebody fell down. I dodged back inside. When I see that kind of trouble coming toward me I want no part of it. I heard some footsteps, but whether they were coming or going I couldn’t tell you.”

  “Did you go up to see what had happened?”

  “Climb those stairs? They’re too rickety. But a little spell later, a young sprout came skinning down with some things in his hand. I got the bottle and the watch and he dropped the shoes when I chased him. Now that’s God’s own truth, every last bit of it.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Mrs. Minnie Fish, and I can prove that because I’ve got some government mail right here.”

  “All right, Mrs. Fish. You’ll hear sirens, probably, but don’t let them bother you.”

  He returned to the hall. Letting a little light escape from his covered flashlight, he inspected the stairs and started up, keeping close to the sweating wall.

  As he turned at the top of the stairs, he saw a shadowy bundle flung down across the nearest doorway. It was a man’s body, shoeless, with only one arm in a sleeve. Shayne turned it over.

  Some of the tension lines in Little’s face had been smoothed out by death, and he seemed almost peaceful. His skin was the color of dead ashes under the faded sunburn. One of his hands still grasped the handle of a knife that had been driven into his abdomen at a steep upward angle.

  CHAPTER 10

  All the pockets had been rifled. A few British coins were scattered about on the floor. Little’s glasses had been partially dislodged. Shayne fitted them back, and straightened.

  After a moment he went to the front window, where only a few jagged slivers of glass still adhered to the dried putty. Flattening himself against the wall, he saw the black Dodge still waiting. Somewhere overhead, he heard the beat of a helicopter.

  He lit a cigarette, careful to keep the flare of the match from showing.

  Clearly the tall man who had taken the Bentley had been Dessau, Little’s fellow conspirator. The keystone of the plan, as Little had described it, had called for a denunciation from Dessau, which would have permitted the Customs to seize the Bentley and Dessau to file for the $500,000 reward. Nothing of the kind had happened, and that had already caused Shayne to conclude that Dessau was hoping to raise more than $500,000. The Bentley, of course, was now very hot. He would want to pull out the gas tank as quickly as possible, so he could jettison the car. And as soon as he found that he had the right car but the wrong gas tank, he would believe that the naive scientist who had seemed so easy to fool had actually been a step ahead of him all the time.

  So he would be back.

  A boy and a girl, their arms around each other, came along the sidewalk and stopped in front of the building, their linked figures partially concealed by the chinaberry tree. The boy was trying to persuade the girl to come inside. When she consented finally, S
hayne moved to the top of the stairs.

  They came in laughing. Shayne chunked a hard piece of plaster down the stairs and growled, “Get out of here, fast.”

  The couple jumped outside and hurried away.

  Shayne finished his cigarette, beginning to feel the pressures. An alternative to waiting would be to look for Max Wilson, the black detective who was somewhere nearby, and arrest the men in the parked Dodge. He snapped his fingers silently. There was still too much he didn’t know; he couldn’t be sure of his reasoning.

  Another car, a Mustang, pulled up ahead of the Dodge. Two men came out. One was ordinary height, and he seemed familiar to Shayne. The other was very tall, with a mincing, pigeon-toed walk. The shorter man spoke to the driver of the Dodge, and he and his tall companion came toward Shayne’s building.

  As soon as they committed themselves to enter, Shayne moved back to the top of the stairs.

  A lighter flared in the downstairs hall and was carried toward the missing rear door.

  “That’s what the bugger did,” a voice said. “Walked right out the back.”

  Shayne leaned forward, peering into the darkness. It was Jerry Diamond’s voice.

  The other man swore viciously and kicked at a broken board. “I’ll kill him when I catch him, and I promise I’ll catch him. He had it all planned, the street lamp, empty building. We should have twigged.”

  The unsteady flame returned to where Shayne could see it.

  “Never mind that,” Diamond said. “It’s the next step we’ve got to talk about.”

  “I wanted to crowd him over right away, you remember, as soon as I saw there was somebody with him. That wasn’t in the program. As soon as he went straight through the light instead of taking the left—But I was outvoted, remember. I want it on record.”

  “It’s on record.”

  “Now think, Jerry. You had one glimpse of the other guy. This Mike Shayne from the ship. Was there anything about the silhouette so we could rule him in or out.”

  “I told you, it was as dark as the inside of a pocket. Little was in the way.”