Meeting Shayne’s eyes, Alix consulted her watch and gave him a steady questioning look, which he shrugged away.
“Larry said something about a movie. What’s the choice?”
“We don’t want to watch a movie. They give me a headache at this time of night.”
“I haven’t been to the movies in months,” Shayne said.
They all discussed it, and the vote went against her. She dug out some flat film cans and read the titles. They picked a mystery about a few fast days in the life of a fictional member of Shayne’s own profession.
She pressed various buttons. A projector came out of one wall; two panels on the opposite wall parted to reveal a screen.
Art turned his chair. Jackie took a position with his shoulder to the screen so he could continue to watch Shayne. Testing their alertness, Shayne made a quick movement forward for his drink. Both men responded. Art’s hand slipped inside his jacket.
Alix touched Shayne’s neck from behind. “Comfortable?”
“One foot’s gone to sleep, but never mind. Too bad you’re so attached to the man, I have a feeling we could get to appreciate each other.”
“Impossible. Unfortunately.”
“Do you think I gave Larry any new ideas?”
“The only thing I know, he is thinking about the small amount of time between now and tomorrow morning. And I think the same.”
“Patience, baby.”
He asked for more cognac. She brought the bottle to him; but before she could open it to pour, a shot was fired suddenly outside.
In the trailer, everyone froze. The shot was followed by a splash, the sound of people running.
Both Art and Jackie came to their feet. Alix returned to the projector. The on-screen detective, who had infiltrated the Mafia by pretending to be broke, bitter and drunk, was walking into a gambling casino to approach the Mafia boss. Art, at the window, drew back a curtain carefully. Jackie was watching Shayne with a .45 automatic.
Alix turned up the sound; and Shayne, without looking at her, reached for the cigar box. On the screen, an excited girl with a knife attacked the Mafia boss. Shayne took out the .38 and flicked the chambers into firing position with a hard turn of the wrist. The movement was concealed by the open lid, but some change in his manner alerted Jackie, and he started to bring up his gun. Shayne fired through the cigar box lid.
Jackie fell back, clutching his elbow. Alix swung the projector so that when Art turned, he had the beam in his eyes. Seeing that his companion had been hit, he moved toward him; but it must have seemed to him that the shot had come from the outside. Broken movie images flashed across his face.
Jackie pointed toward Shayne, his shout of warning swallowed by the noises on the soundtrack. As Art moved, Shayne shot him twice—once in the thigh, a second time high on his arm.
Two quick hops took Shayne to the wounded man. The second shot had knocked him against the window; and he was beginning to slide, a look of disbelief on his face. Shayne plucked the gun out of his hands and let him fall. He swept Jackie’s big .45 off the rug.
“Stay out of this,” he told Alix. “I don’t like to shoot women, but I’ve done it when I’ve had to. Turn down the goddamn sound.”
She reached for the knob. Earlier, she had snipped off the ends of the Cuban cigars with a tiny pair of golden scissors; and now Shayne used them to cut the tape between his ankles. The men he had shot were complaining.
“I want you to listen to this,” Shayne said. “I know it hurts, but think of the people who are starving in Pakistan. Hang on for a few minutes. I’m taking Alix with me, and I hope they think she’s valuable enough so there won’t be any more shooting. Hostage—do you know what the word means, baby?”
He looked for his shoes and socks, but they had been taken somewhere. Three shots in quick succession were fired near the trailer. Shayne waved a gun at the wounded men.
“Don’t open that door. I won’t be taking off until I’m sure it’s clear. I’ll be outside, and I’ll be jumpy.”
“A doctor,” Jackie said.
“There’s probably an aspirin in the bathroom.”
He motioned to Alix to walk ahead of him. Before she unlocked the door, he touched her spine with the muzzle of the .45.
“I’m serious about this. Cooperate.”
“All the way. It is Larry’s battle, not mine.”
They stepped out. She locked the door behind them and threw the key away.
The other trailers were alight. The headlights on all the trucks and construction vehicles were on. A bank of floodlights lit up the shore. There were moving lights on the deck of one of the pirate ships.
Shayne put the smaller guns in his pockets, the .45 in his belt.
“That was neatly done in there,” Alix said. “What is taking place, do you understand?”
“I have a general idea. We’re being raided by Oscar Olson’s people.”
“I must telephone. I was worrying, and I had nearly decided Larry would win. Now I believe you will smash it for him. Do you really need me as a hostage?”
“I’m not leaving yet.”
“Be careful, Michael. Larry has given orders at the gate. But I think it will be hard for anybody to stop you. Shall we have a drink tomorrow afternoon to exchange ideas?”
“That’s a long way off.”
“It is, and much will happen in the meantime. But one last thing I must tell you. How he has worked it I don’t know, but Larry has known almost from the beginning what the opposition has planned. So why is he surprised by this tonight? And one further thing still. The thing he is so good at in a story conference—I have seen it—when a roomful of brilliant men are wondering how to put life or interest in a story, is that he comes up with some marvelous twist that stands everything on its head and solves the difficulties. So expect something. Bye-bye.”
She touched him and walked off.
The motor of a powerboat sprang to life, and an open-decked motorboat careened into sight between the two anchored ships. Two men were standing in the waist of the boat: one with a rifle, the other with a swivel-mounted searchlight which he pointed straight downward into the water, as though looking for sharks.
Moving from one shadow to the next, Shayne made his way to a spidery construction of aluminum girders supporting a platform for overhead camera shots. He was out in the open for a moment as he went up the ladder. He wriggled to the edge of the platform and shifted the .45 in his belt so he could lie prone. Shielding his eyes against the floodlights, he peered toward the ships.
Turkey Gallagher, the thug who had beaten Mandy Pitt with brass knuckles, had had a further assignment tonight, Shayne remembered. Shayne had been guessing, but Larry Zion had caught on instantly. He was counting on this picture. If something happened to the set or delayed the shooting schedule, it might convince the waverers that the producer had finally and definitely lost his magic.
Men at the rail of the pirate ship were shouting and pointing.
The rifleman in the motorboat fired into the water. His boat heeled over and came about sharply.
It was a clear night, with a half-moon. The powerboat was going around in noisy circles. After a moment, Shayne noticed a second boat, without lights, its engine idling, rocking halfway between the shore and the ships. Light glinted from a rifle barrel.
A golf cart carrying a driver and one other man—it was Larry Zion—passed beneath Shayne and entered a cobblestoned alley leading to the waterfront.
A dog began barking. After checking the perimeter fence, Shayne located a man in a green uniform, wearing a sidearm, being pulled by the barking dog toward the water. A voice carried clearly from the ship. “There’s something. Do you see it?”
The motorboat came about in a long sweep. The rifleman sighted at an object in the water but failed to fire.
Zion’s golf cart came into sight again on the hard sand at the water’s edge. Zion was standing, gesturing like a combat commander. The cart turned toward the fe
nce, stopping there to permit Zion to confer with the guard. While they talked, the dog kept barking and trying to pull away.
A pick-up truck honked for admittance, and the gate opened. Men, presumably armed, jumped out. Zion’s golf cart came up from the water to meet them.
The guard hauled the dog around and made him come back, but the animal continued to argue. Shayne blocked out the bright light with both hands and looked carefully along the water’s edge to see what the dog had been barking at. He saw something dark and solid rolling in the water. It glistened briefly with reflected light; then the lapping waves pulled it under.
Alix came out of a lighted trailer. The golf cart was approaching, but she saw it in time and stood still until it passed. Then she crossed a lighted space and disappeared.
The new men fanned out. Several had flashlights.
Before climbing down, Shayne made another quick reconnaissance of the area beyond the fence. He knew he couldn’t get his own car through the gate without shooting. But unless Larry’s men were firing at imagined targets, someone from the Olson camp was around somewhere; and he hadn’t walked from Miami. Off to the north, Shayne saw a rough woods trail leading from the movie company’s road to the water. A heavier darker shadow at the end was perhaps a parked car.
He looked around once more, then wriggled backward to the ladder.
Back on the ground, he circled the public square, keeping to the shadows. The pattern of streets and alleys made little sense; but having seen it from above, Shayne had a clear idea of how everything connected. He crossed a street of shops and taverns and entered an alley a minute before Zion’s golf cart turned into the alley from the other end.
The headlights caught him. He turned quickly, hearing the motor baying behind him. Coming into the main street at a hard run, he saw two of the new men with flashlights; and he wrenched at the nearest door. It was fixed in the wall. He tried another. It looked real; but it had been built to fool a camera, not to open and let people through.
The two men across the street had separated and had Shayne bracketed. When the golf cart, rocking, burst out of the alley’s mouth, Shayne stepped into the light, his hands out from his body. The cart swerved to a stop.
“What are you doing, Shayne, damn you?” Zion demanded.
“Gunfire makes me nervous,” Shayne said mildly. “I thought you might need some help.”
“Where’s Jackie? Art?”
“Around. Who are you shooting at? Gallagher, I hope.”
He had lowered his hands as he spoke; and now he bent forward, seized the flat running board, and spilled Zion and the driver out on the cobblestones.
He jumped for the alley and was out of sight before his pursuers had time to reorganize. Now that they knew he was loose, he needed a diversion. He circled back to the heavy-equipment park. There was no one around; the interesting things were happening closer to the water.
He chose the biggest bulldozer. Swinging into the driver’s seat, he started it up and lowered the big blade. It came around snorting, and he aimed it at the flimsily built set. He put it in gear and opened the throttle, jumping clear as it started to roll.
He was concealed in an alley when it met its first opposition, an apparent stone wall that was actually made of lath and painted canvas, and tumbled it down.
The hunt turned in that direction. The alley he was in came to a dead end. He came back and went into a tavern. After adjusting to the darkness, he felt his way toward a lighted window. Nearly there, he heard a faint movement. He took a quick sideward step so he wouldn’t be framed by the lighted rectangle.
A figure passed. Shayne lunged. His hands closed on a woman’s breast, and he recognized the perfume.
“Alix.”
She whirled as he released her and sliced at him with some kind of sword. He caught her arm.
“Put it down, baby. People used to get killed with these things.”
“Mike.”
The cutlass fell to the floor, and her arms came around him. “I’m glad to see you, Michael; but how are we going to get out of here?”
“You’ll be all right. Tell him I was trying to use you as a screen, but you got away from me. He’ll believe it. I’m the one who needs help. Have you got that .22?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. Here’s some more firepower.” He drew her to a trestle table and laid out his guns: his own .38 and the two others he had taken from Art and Jackie. “I don’t want to be bothered for a couple of minutes. Wait till I get out the window, and then start shooting. But try not to hit anybody, because the casualty list is already long enough. I want them to think a real gun battle is going on in here. Use up the ammunition, and throw the guns as far as you can. Rip your dress and smear some dirt on your face. He’ll give you an Academy Award. Who were you phoning—Oscar?”
“No, not Oscar. I only talked to Oscar once, and he said he already had the information he needed. When I heard that, I called my broker and went short in Consolidated-Famous.” She laughed. “Tomorrow, for each point the stock goes down, I will be ahead by five thousand dollars. Continue the way you’re doing, and I’ll end up a wealthy woman.”
“As a stockholder myself, I’m sorry to hear it. Remember we have a date for a drink tomorrow—if we’re all still breathing. You didn’t tell me who you were calling.”
“I didn’t, did I? And I’m not going to.”
The runaway bulldozer bumped into something that was too solidly built to be knocked down and ground to a halt. Shayne eased out the window into a smaller square with a fountain. He found an outlet on the opposite side, a dirt path that took him to the water.
Fishnets were spread to dry on a huge reel. There was a rattle of small-arms fire from the tavern behind him: the little peck-peck of the .22, the sharp crack of a .38, then the authoritative report of the big Colt. He left cover, walking without haste along the hard sand in his bare feet.
The black, shiny package he had seen from the platform was now partly out of the water, rolling heavily as it was nudged by small waves set in motion by the motorboat’s wash. It took on definition as Shayne approached and turned into a prone figure clad in a black wet-suit, with an oxygen rig strapped to its back. It lay mask-downward. One hand, flung up on the sand, had three splinted fingers.
Shayne went up to his ankles in the water and hauled the figure into the shadow cast by a low shed. He flipped up the mask. There was just enough light to show the features of Turkey Gallagher. He had stopped getting oxygen some time before. There was a gout of blood at the corner of his mouth.
Chapter 15
A sudden boom that seemed to come from one of the anchored ships caused Shayne to look up.
The motorboat swung around and headed back toward the ship. A voice shouted, “On fire!”
A man pounded past. He glanced at Shayne but kept going. The lights on the ship’s deck were darting around. Shayne saw a flicker of flame, swallowed immediately by a rush of oily smoke. Another man ran out on a short finger of dock and dropped into a power launch.
Shayne snapped on his lighter again and located the zipper tab under Gallagher’s rubber-clad arm. He worked the zipper, and water ran out of the suit.
He stood the lighter in the sand and undressed the dead man. Under the wet-suit, Gallagher was wearing only shorts. His chest was sticky. Shayne brought water in his cupped hands and rinsed him off, finding the entry hole of the bullet under the left nipple, hidden in a matted tangle of hair. The bullet had remained in his body.
The gunfight Alix was having with herself in the tavern petered away. The loaded launch cut loose from the dock and headed out for the ship. From the noises that reached Shayne across the water, it seemed that the fire was being brought under control. A plume of water arced into the air. Men from the small boats swarmed aboard.
Shayne checked the oxygen tank. It hissed reassuringly. While Zion’s men were preoccupied with fighting the fire would be a good time for Shayne to depart. He skinned out of his
clothes. The wet-suit fitted him snugly.
Someone on the ship called to the approaching launch. “We’re okay, Larry. It looks okay. I think we got it.”
Zion called up a question; and the voice answered, “One of those little stick-on bombs from the outside.”
Shayne adjusted the straps on the face mask. Keeping low, he rolled into the water. As soon as he was clear of the sand, he kicked out hard, driving himself along the shelving bottom, heading away from shore at an angle. After a dozen strokes, he curved to the left, trying to parallel the curve of the shore. But it was impossible to tell how deep he was in the black water. He swam blindly for a time, then took a deep breath, and stopped moving until he rose to the surface.
He came up too fast and broke water with a splash. He was beyond the end of the fence, off Consolidated-Famous property. Nevertheless, the dog was desperate to get out in the water and bite him.
Shayne remained quietly on the surface, working his flippers. The guard lost patience and batted the dog on the muzzle with his gloved hand.
Shayne bent forward at the waist and submerged. When he surfaced again, the guard had dragged the dog back to the gate; but Shayne continued to hear excited barking as he came ashore and stripped off the rubber suit.
He continued along the shore until he came to deep ruts where Gallagher had turned his car around so it would point in the right direction in case he had to leave in a hurry. It was the same yellow MG Shayne had seen him in earlier. Shayne turned on the inside light by opening the door. Gallagher’s clothes were on the driver’s seat, the ignition key in the pants pocket. Shayne dried himself with Gallagher’s undershirt and pulled on the shirt and pants.
He drove without lights and scraped bottom several times going out. Once, he slammed down into a pothole and thought he had snapped an axle. Presently, with everything still working, he reached the road that was maintained by Consolidated equipment; and in another few moments, he was on the expressway heading back to Miami.
Kill All the Young Girls Page 14
