“Do you want to tell me the reason for so much secrecy, Michael?” she asked then. “I know you trust Will Gentry, and the police are on your side tonight. I thought you trusted Mr. Hargrove too.”
“I do and I don’t,” Shayne said. “I thought only Hargrove and I knew about that trick belt buckle and the bug in the setting of the diamond. Only I was wrong. This Mr. Jay character knew about it. He didn’t just find it when I was searched, Angel. I’m positive he knew in advance what he was looking for.”
“And you think Hargrove told him?”
“I don’t know what I do think. Somebody told him, and who else knew about it? I didn’t talk and you didn’t.”
“Somebody had to install the bug in the setting of that diamond,” Lucy reminded him. “I don’t suppose Hargrove could do that himself.”
Shayne took a big bite of steak and followed it with a piece of garlic bread dipped in the steaming red juice on his plate.
“No, I don’t suppose he’s a jeweler, but I am sure he should have been plenty careful who did the job. The F.B.I. must have people who can do that sort of work. Anyway, I’m going to try and find out once and for all tonight.”
“Do you really think they’ll go ahead with the robbery after they know you escaped?”
“I don’t know whether they know I escaped, Angel,” he said. “Maybe Rocky did drown. Maybe they knew all along I was going to escape and planned it that way. So far all the way they’ve managed to stay one long step ahead of me.”
“They might kill you next time.”
“I might get struck by lightning,” Shayne said. “At least I think from here on in I’m going out in front. I’ve got at least one trick up my sleeve I don’t think they know about.”
“What’s that?”
“You know better than to ask. You go on home and get a good sleep.”
“Fat chance of that.”
“I said go on and get a good sleep. It’s nine o’clock now. The plane with that stone on board isn’t due to land until one-thirty in the morning. I’m positive they’ll heist the registered mail bag exactly as they planned. I’m going to try and pick up the trail then, exactly as planned too. From there on I’ll play the cards as they fall. If you don’t hear from me by noon tomorrow, call Will and tell him to get everybody out looking for me. By then I’ll know or they’ll have me.”
When Mike Shayne had picked up his rented car, Lucy Hamilton drove on back to her own apartment.
The big detective drove out to the Miami International Airport. After showing credentials, he was ushered into the private office of the chief of airport security. Will Gentry was there, and Sheriff Burdick of Metropolitan Dade County and a couple of quiet, dark suited men introduced only as Mr. Smith and Mr. Jones.
Mike Shayne assumed that these two represented the federal government agencies involved.
“I take it that our original plan to follow the diamond is off now,” the airport man said.
“Don’t take it,” Shayne said. “Just let it be. Follow the procedure we originally decided on. It’s the only chance we have.”
“You can’t let them take the Esperance Diamond,” one of the men said. “Not after what’s already happened.”
“That’s exactly what I do mean,” Shayne said. “Particularly after what happened. Let them take it. You know the procedure now. That sack will be passed to someone when the plane’s cargo space is unloaded. Follow that someone until the stone leaves the airport. When it does call me. Give me a walkie-talkie set. I want to know which gate the stone is leaving by and in what sort of car or cover. You can tail it that far. You’ve done worse before. After it leaves the airport take your men off the tail. Let me have it.”
“How can you follow the stone then?” Gentry asked.
Shayne knew that he was thinking of the lost directional indicator bug.
“I’ve got a sixth sense,” Shayne said. “You know it’s the only chance. They’ll let your tail stay on to the gates. Beyond there, if their courier can’t shake you, he’ll let himself get caught. What good is that? You can jail small-fry again, but Mr. Big stays safe and hidden. You have to bet I can nail him.”
“How good a bet is that, Mr. Shayne?” one of the government men asked quietly.
“I think I can do it,” Mike Shayne said seriously. “You know I can’t guarantee anything till all the chips are down, but I’m willing to try. I think I know a couple of things the rest of them don’t know I know. I think I’ve got enough of an edge to pull it off.”
“You had better be right,” the same quiet man said.
“I’m betting my life that I am,” Mike Shayne told them all. “I’m betting my own life, gentlemen.”
VIII
MIKE SHAYNE sat in his rented car in the main parking lot of the Miami International Airport and listened to the walkie-talkie set on the seat beside him.
The sending unit of the set was in the office of the airport security director. Agents all over the field reported to that office by phone or by sending sets of their own and the meat of their reports was forwarded to Shayne where he sat and listened.
The plane from New York which carried the Esperance Diamond in its registered mail shipment was only about fifteen minutes late on the long landing strip.
“Plane taxis to stop on ramp near passenger ramp,” the walkie-talkie said impersonally.
Then; “Passengers from New York debarking and walking to exit ramp.”
Shayne knew that, as an added precaution and for this one arrival only, each passenger and the luggage he carried was being photographed at long range by special cameras equipped with telescopic lenses. Later on the photos would be checked for identification.
“Service truck approaching plane,” the voice said in Shayne’s ear.
There would be a truck from the catering firm which supplied food to the passengers to remove dishes and other things left over from the trip. Another would bring linens, pillows and the like and remove those used by the passengers.
Above all would be the trucks to take off baggage. Included in the baggage would be the mail sacks.
The actual theft of the registered mail sack wasn’t made until the truck carrying it was in the maze of passageways under the main ticket levels of the airport building and on its way to the spot where a mail truck from the local post office would pick it up.
A caterer’s truck collided with the baggage truck from the plane. Nobody was hurt, but suitcases and mail bags were strewn in the corridor. When the baggage truck was reloaded the registered mail sack had been switched with a dummy.
“The mail sack you want has been put in a large brown trunk and reloaded on the baggage truck,” the walkie-talkie said.
Later: “The trunk you want has been claimed by a man who had the proper claim check but was not—repeat not—a passenger on the plane. He is carrying the small trunk out of the baggage room. Now he’s hailing a cab. The driver helps him put the trunk in the cab. Now the man walks over to a vending machine and buys a pack of cigarettes.
“He’s lighting a cigarette. Now he walks back and gets in the cab. No. Correction. No. He gets in the cab behind the one in which the trunk with the mail bag was loaded.
“Here are the license numbers of both cabs. The cabs are pulling out. They’re headed for the main exit gate of the passenger car parking lot. Apparently headed for the LeJeune Road exit on the East-West Expressway to Miami Beach.
“We are cutting off surveillance at this point.”
Shayne started the motor of his rented car and pulled quietly out of the parking space toward the exit gate.
For the past few minutes he’d known where the diamond was, or approximately where it was, without needing the soft words over the walkie-talkie.
When Mike Shayne had said earlier that he had a trick up his sleeve he hadn’t been kidding. It was inside the watch he wore strapped to his left wrist and it was a duplicate of the highly sophisticated “bug” that had been mounted inside hi
s belt buckle.
Shayne was getting a steady “bzz-bzz bzz” vibration through the back of his watch against his wrist. As the two cabs drew closer the vibration got stronger. He pulled into the line of cars behind them heading for the exit gate. Once through the gate the two cabs did an “in and out and switch places” routine in the heavy traffic that was designed to confuse anyone trying to follow.
Shayne wasn’t in any doubt. The walkie-talkie had given him the right license tag number and the wrist buzzer confirmed it as being accurate.
Once out at the LeJeune Road ramps of the expressway system the two cabs separated. The one with the passenger went north and got on the expressway of Highway 1-95 that could take it either east to Miami Beach or north to Hollywood and Fort Lauderdale.
Mike Shayne let it go. The cab he was after went south on LeJeune Road and then east on North West Twentieth Street to North West Twenty-Seventh Avenue and then north again. After a few blocks it pulled into a darkened garage back of a service station.
Shayne put his car in the parking lot of a bar and grille a few doors south of the garage. He turned off the lights and waited.
In about five minutes two identical appearing cabs pulled out of the garage and body shop. One turned north on Twenty-Seventh Avenue and the other south.
Mike Shayne paid no attention to either of the cabs. The buzzer strapped to his wrist was still sounding off loud and strong. That meant the jewel with its sending bug was still inside the darkened, now apparently abandoned garage. The service station out front was locked and closed for the night. Nobody showed.
No one went in or out of the garage, but the buzzer continued to give out its strong and steady signal.
Shayne waited ten minutes, fifteen. Still nothing happened.
If he had wanted, he could have picked the lock to the garage door easily enough and then let his wrist buzzer locate the jewel for him even in the dark and cluttered space. He didn’t. His job wasn’t to recover the stone until it was in the hands of the Mr. Big of the whole robbery ring.
The wait stretched out to half an hour. A few people went in and out of the bar in front of which the detective was parked. Nobody went near the garage and service station.
Of course Shayne couldn’t watch the whole place from his car. Someone could have sneaked in the back entrance where the detective couldn’t see him. He couldn’t have moved the bugged jewel, though, without its being known. As long as his buzzer was operating Shayne had only to wait where he was.
He didn’t like it, though. The wait was stretching out beyond the length of time the big private detective thought was reasonable. He was worried back at deep conscious level where his instincts lived.
The Esperance Diamond was worth a million dollars in United States money. Nobody, but nobody, leaves a cool million lying around a crummy garage in the edge of a slum. It just doesn’t check out with any sort of logic to do a thing like that.
Not with a million dollars.
Not unless somebody has a very special reason, that is.
Mike Shayne felt the small hairs stand up on the back of his neck just above the shirt collar. It was a feeling he got when he knew he was being watched or followed by a tail. Somebody had him under observation.
He sat there and wondered if a bullet would smash through the windshield in front of his face or come in the open window to where he sat in the car.
He was beginning to be very unhappy indeed.
A man and two women came out the door of the bar and started to walk toward the end of the line of parked cars. The man was staggering a bit. He had his arm around one of the women and she was giggling and whispering something into his ear.
The three of them went around behind Shayne’s car. The man and woman went on down the line of cars.
The second woman didn’t quite pass. She went to the rear of the car, then, swift as a ferret, doubled back to walk up to the driver’s side and level a gun at Mike Shayne over the top of the door and through the open window.
Fast as she was she wasn’t quite fast enough. Shayne had no intention at all of being caught napping for a second time that night.
The woman looked over the barrel of her own automatic into the muzzle of the detective’s big Colt’s forty-five. At that range it was like looking into the mouth of a cannon.
“Hello. Nita,” Mike Shayne said.
They looked at each other over their own guns. Both of them had good poker faces. Both were willing to shoot if they had to, and neither one underestimated the other.
“It’s another stand-off,” Nita Nolan said finally.
“So it is,” Shayne said then. “That doesn’t surprise a smart girl like you, does it?”
“No.” she said, “I’ll be damned if it does, at that.”
They looked at each other for another long moment and then burst out laughing almost simultaneously. It was a laughter of genuine mirth, of two almost equally matched opponents who could agree on the humor of the situation.
“Let’s us put these fool things away,” Nita said finally. “Honestly, Mike, I’d rather switch than fight right now anyway. You know how it is with a woman, lover. If we don’t have the drop on the man we won’t play.”
“Suits me,” Mike Shayne said. “I don’t think you came for anything but talk anyway. If you’d wanted to kill me, you’d have started shooting while you were still behind the car.”
“Shoot you in the back? Of course I would have. I don’t know why I pulled this fool gun anyhow. Simply an overgrown sense of the dramatic, I guess.”
They looked each other over for another moment and then both put their guns out of sight.
“How did you guess, lover? I thought it was such a good idea coming out with those two mooches as if I belonged with them.”
“When I’ve once seen a beautiful woman,” Shayne said, “I always recognize her the second time.”
It was the only answer he’d give. It flattered her, as he knew it would.
“Come on. Get in the car,” he said. “No sense standing there in the night air for the mosquitos to chew on.” There weren’t any mosquitos and they both knew it.
“Tell me what you wanted to talk about,” the big man continued. “I think you want some sort of deal. Maybe we can trade.”
“I hope we can,” she said. “Really and truly I do, Mike Shayne. It’ll be so much nicer and easier for everybody.”
“Don’t keep me in suspense,” Shayne said. “How did you know I’d be here when you wanted me?”
“Rocky’s a good swimmer,” Nita said and watched the redhead out of the corner of her eyes.
Shayne gave her a wide-mouthed grin.
“I figured that,” he said. “It didn’t take more than a bitty sort of push to put him in the Bay. That’s why he was the one sent out to put me on the bottom, isn’t it?”
“You’re as smart as we thought you were,” she said. “What else do you know?”
Shayne took out a cigar and lit it.
“What else am I supposed to know? And why don’t you start by telling me who’s ‘we’? I think I ought to know that before you and I get any further into this.”
“I guess we owe you that much,” she said and let herself slide closer to him on the seat of the car. “Mr. Jay and I and Rocky are working together. We’re the ones who can make you a deal if you’re willing to go along.”
“I take it by that that Jay isn’t the man I’m after? Because any deal I make includes getting that man and Jay doesn’t look like the give up easy type.”
“He isn’t, lover. He isn’t a quitter. If he was the man you wanted, my orders would have been to kill you. Rocky would have shot you in the boathouse and dumped dead meat in the Bay. You’ve got to have that figured out.”
“I did,” Shayne said. “I was sure of it after Rocky took his dive. On the other hand, you folks aren’t just playing patty-cake either. The fact you showed up here means you know there’s a million clams worth of flawless blue-white w
ithin a hundred yards of where we are right now.”
“We know it,” Nita nodded. “We figured you’d be smart enough to follow the stone this far. We know all about how it was tailed through the airport too. That’s why the boys on that end were told to make it easy to watch. It didn’t take any genius to spot the fuzz all over the place. Besides we knew what they were there for right from the beginning, like we knew who you were and what you were carrying before I ever collected you at the house of that dumb schmoe who worked for you.”
“He was no schmoe,” Shayne said. “He was a friend of mine. Was Charlie on your team too?”
“Not exactly,” she said. “I mean yes and no. Charlie was part of the varsity, you might say. but not Mr. Jay’s team. Charlie took his orders from the man you really want. He would have pulled the trigger on you if you hadn’t made out to lower the boom first. I mean, if it’d been Charlie in the skiff, things in the water would be eating your face right now. Are you starting to get the point, lover? I hope you are, I mean.”
“I’m beginning to get it,” Shayne told her. He felt her hand rubbing along his thigh. She was an attractive woman. “I begin to see. Your Mr. Jay wants me to find Mr. Big. He can’t come right out and turn the boss in himself, but he wants me to do it for him. So he and you and Rocky keep me alive and let me get away from you on the beach. So what comes next? You sell me Mr. Big’s name? Or maybe it’s his name plus your help in getting back the big rock.”
“Something like that, lover.”
“All right. Why and for what price? Let’s go over the why part first.”
“Simple,” she said. “Jay hates the bastard. He hates him enough to turn him in.”
“I don’t buy, beautiful. In your business everybody hates somebody. It’s part of the job. Nobody turns a man in only for hate. There’s no money in it.”
She had her head on his shoulder by now. “That’s right. It’s not for hate. Jay’s scared, I think. Even in his job he’s got millions out of this caper. He knows it can’t last forever. Now they got you—plus all those Uncle Whiskers’ boys. Who next? Sooner or later somebody will get the right answer. Then what happens to people like Jay and me?”
The Postman Brought Murder Page 4
