Caught Dead ms-64

by Brett Halliday

  Caught Dead

  ( Michael Shayne - 64 )

  Brett Halliday

  Brett Halliday

  Caught Dead

  ONE

  There was plenty of time before they had to leave, but the girl was so tense and jumpy she couldn’t respond. Tim Rourke continued stubbornly, breaking off only when the phone rang beside the bed.

  “I’m sorry I’m such a zero,” the girl whispered. “I have too much on my mind.”

  Rourke picked the phone off the cradle. “Who is it?”

  An apologetic desk clerk answered. “You said no calls, Mr. Rourke. I am aware of this. But here is a colleague of yours, Mr. Larry Howe. He is very insisting.”

  “Tell him I’m not in.”

  “Yes, but you see-”

  “Give me that,” a new voice said, and the phone changed hands. “Tim, are you on? We’ve got a small announcement, otherwise known as an ultimatum. O.K. to come up?”

  “Who’s we and what’s this about?”

  “Stu Wilke from Time-Life. And Noonan-you know, the AP guy. You must have a dim idea what it’s about-this exclusive interview of yours with Alvares.”

  “I’ll be glad to discuss it, Larry,” Rourke said easily. “It’s nice of you to take an interest. But this wouldn’t be the best time. I’m right in the middle of something, and she’d be very cross with me if I stopped.”

  Howe swore under his breath. “Can you wind it up in a hurry?”

  “You never know, do you?” Rourke said cheerfully. “Now we’ll have to go back to the beginning and start over. George in the front bar makes a pretty good whiskey sour. I recommend it. I’ll be down in twenty minutes.”

  “All right, but don’t dawdle, O.K.? And don’t try to sneak out the back door. We’ve got Menendez here, and they won’t let you into the prison without him.”

  “Larry, that’s an insulting suggestion.” His face was serious as he put back the phone.

  The girl said, “Something’s wrong.”

  “It’s Howe, from UPI,” Rourke told her. “The resident press corps never likes to be stiffed out of a story, and it seems they’ve reached Menendez.”

  “Who?”

  “The government PR guy.”

  “You gave him money, didn’t you?”

  “I guess not enough. But don’t worry about it. So the story isn’t exclusive-that’s not the main thing.”

  She brought herself against him with a wriggling motion and touched her lips to his shoulder. “Darling Tim. I’m really ashamed of myself for my lack of performance. I wanted this one to be tremendous for you, because you’ve been so exceedingly nice and obliging. My dear, lie down. Let me be the energetic one.”

  Rourke grinned and reached for a cigarette. “Your mind wouldn’t be on it.”

  “Perhaps not, but would it make that much difference?”

  “To really work,” Rourke said, “everybody has to give a hundred percent. That’s my philosophy, anyway. We’ll bump into each other someday. After the revolution, maybe they’ll make you ambassador.”

  “Tim, you’re so funny. What time is it?” She put on her glasses so she could read the numerals on her wristwatch. Glasses and a watch were all she was wearing. She was a lithe, good-looking girl, a little too thin, but then so was Rourke. She wore her black hair long, nearly to her shoulders-it was badly tangled now-with bangs hiding her forehead. She was probably no more than twenty-two, and her quick enthusiasms and ability to do without sleep had on occasion made Rourke feel comparatively elderly.

  Her name was Paula Obregon. Her mother was American, her father Venezuelan. She had spent a year at the University of Miami, studying journalism and perfecting her English, and that was when Rourke had met her-very young, very earnest, full of indignation at the lies and distortions of the bourgeois press. Rourke, of course, was the chief investigative reporter on an eminently bourgeois newspaper, the Miami News. That title meant that he was given the crime and corruption stories. After a series he wrote about gambling payoffs to high police officials in Dade County, Paula sent him one of the few fan letters he had ever received.

  He took her to lunch, and presently they were spending weekends together. At the end of the school year she returned to Caracas, where her father owned a department store. She sent Rourke a Christmas card, which he never acknowledged.

  Three years later, Guillermo Alvares, the man to see in Venezuela for a decade and a half, was turned out of office by a coup led by Air Corps officers. Rourke was vacationing in Trinidad at the time. Regular passenger flights between Venezuela and the United States were suspended during the crisis. Rourke’s editor phoned him and persuaded him to charter a light plane and fly to the mainland to cover the story.

  As he was preparing for bed his first evening in the country, Paula Obregon, looking as cute and serious as when she had been a student in Miami, appeared unannounced at his door to ask if he remembered her. The answer to that was that he remembered her very well. She had looked him up, she said, to find out if he was interested in authentic details about the urban guerrilla movement for publication in North America. Certainly, he told her; and if his paper didn’t want the story he could sell it to a magazine. But first things first.

  They celebrated their reunion by going to bed. There they had been, except for a few intervals, ever since.

  Paula saw him looking at her with a smile. She whipped off her glasses.

  “I know!” she said guiltily. “This is our last moment, and I should be thinking about saying good-bye properly. But I can hear the clocks ticking. Twenty minutes, you said. Please-can we go over the timetable just once more?”

  Rourke groaned. “I know it by heart.”

  “Except that the last time we rehearsed it,” she said seriously, “you were still a little doubtful at one or two places-”

  “I’m going to be ad-libbing most of the time.”

  “Yes, of course, but at the key points, and in the timing especially, that all has to be letter-perfect or we will end up very much in the soup.” She pulled the sheet to her chin. “Darling, begin at the beginning. Not because there are lives involved. Because you like me.”

  “That’s a good reason,” Rourke said.

  He studied the burning end of his cigarette. Alvares had been expecting the coup that ended his long residence in the Presidential Palace. He had a private plane, a twin-engined Jetstar, waiting. He reached the airstrip well ahead of the armed detachment that had been sent to arrest him, but the plane crashed on takeoff. Alvares was pulled out of the wreck, unconscious but not seriously hurt. He was now being held in the La Vega prison in Los Carmenes, a hilly district on the outskirts of the city.

  There were rumors that he had been roughly handled by the soldiers, that he was now being subjected to the same brutal third-degree the political police had used on the enemies of his own regime. Government spokesmen denied these rumors, but most people in the western hemisphere had stopped believing government spokesmen. Rourke, at Paula’s suggestion, demanded to be allowed to see the prisoner. After some hesitation, the new government, anxious for quick recognition from the United States, had arranged an interview.

  “I walk in,” Rourke said. “I give him the cigarettes. I ask a few nothing questions and walk out. What’s hard about that?”

  “No, Tim, listen. This gets dinned into our ears over and over in the movement. Needless to say, you can’t anticipate everything, but the more you can prepare for, the less chance something goes wrong. We know La Vega inside and out, enough of our people have passed through there. But Guillermo Alvares is a special prisoner, and they may use different procedures. If they want to take the cigarettes from you-”

  “I’ll throw a tantrum. I can work that-I’v
e had experience enough with cops back home. Those cigarettes come from his family, and unless they break both my arms I’m going to deliver them personally. They’re for one particular prisoner, not to be divided among the hacks. One thing I did forget to ask you-what if they want to open the cartons?”

  “Let them. We have some talented people, and they did a very good professional job, I think. It’s broken into the separate packages, smoke in some, tear gas in others. Then there are two packs containing the explosive, just enough to blow the cartons open. The timing device runs off a mainspring. Tim, I can see why you worry. If they go further and open one of the packages-but they won’t, why would they-and if they discover that your present for Alvares is something else besides cigarettes-”

  “Now how could I put together anything that fancy? I can’t even hit a nail with a hammer. Obviously some dirty dog like you planted it on me.”

  “Yes, that must be your story,” she said, “but they will need X-ray eyes to see anything peculiar about those cigarettes. I would like to open the cartons and show you. They are Pall Malls, his usual brand. You will have them in your dispatch case, and with a little luck they won’t ask for it to be opened. The interview is to commence at ten, and to impress you with their efficiency, they will be prompt. There is a desk on the ground floor as you enter the prison. If you are to be searched, it will happen there. But a journalist-why should they search you? Then you will go up one flight of stairs to a waiting room. When they are ready you will be admitted for the interview. He speaks English, of course, but out of books. Now there’s a possibility, a very, very faint possibility, that if there has been any kind of delay the material will go off while you are still there-”

  “Hey,” Rourke said softly. “That’s the first I’ve heard about that…”

  “It will make no difference! The room is not locked. There will be two guards with you, an interpreter. As soon as the tear gas hits them they will be no less anxious than you to get into the open air. Now this is what I wish you to remember. At the bottom of the stairs, as you come into the main corridor, the lobby, don’t continue out the front door or you may be knocked down by our people coming in. Swing into a side corridor and out by another door.”

  “Dodging bullets, no doubt.”

  “No.” She sketched a design with her fingernail on the sheet. “Turn to the left into that corridor and go straight on. Notice the corridor when you come in. I am sure we will manage this without shooting. There are fifteen guards at the most. Another six or seven political police, a total of less than twenty-five. They will be in a panic, and we will have oxygen masks, keys. The leaders know the layout perfectly. The whole operation will be over and done with in the space of five minutes.”

  “If everything works.”

  “Which it sometimes doesn’t,” she admitted. “Let’s say the timing control breaks and the devices fail to go off. The first sign of smoke is to be the signal. If there is no smoke we will simply turn about and go home. You will have your interview at least, another series when you return to Miami, the kind of thing that could get you the Pulitzer.”

  “And if I end up in jail, will you come in and break me out?”

  “Darling, if you seriously think there’s a chance of that happening-”

  He grinned at her. “An outside chance. There’s also an outside chance I’ll be mugged in the elevator.”

  “Oh, not in the Hilton,” she said, smiling. “It isn’t permitted here. Look-we’ve done everything possible to lengthen the odds. We’re planning some fireworks downtown. A bomb at the Columbus monument. A raid on a bank in the Centro Bolivar. Every available soldier will be rushed into the center of the city, and we will have Los Carmenes to ourselves. Guillermo Alvares will be whisked out of the country. Our MIR comrades will rejoin the fighting units in the mountains. The new junta will shake and shiver. And Mr. Timothy Rourke will be even more famous than now, if such a thing is possible.”

  She had been gesturing while she talked, and the sheet had slipped. Rourke laughed.

  “Baby, they knew what they were doing when they gave you this assignment. You’re one hell of a sexy guerrilla.”

  To his surprise, the serious, self-assured girl looked confused for the first time. “Damn it, Tim, I wish politics didn’t have to creep into everything.” She looked up at him swiftly. “Even in Miami, when I was chasing you around. That wasn’t because you were a bright, interesting-looking guy. You were a newspaperman with a byline everybody knew. I was always thinking of ways you could help us.”

  “That’s always been one of my problems. Do they love me for myself, or because of the byline?”

  “When I came to see you here, you know I’d almost forgotten how nice it was to have sex with you?”

  Putting out his cigarette, Rourke came over to her under the sheet, and after a moment, he felt her relax.

  “Do you think we really have time?” she said gently.

  “Out of the question. You’ve got me thinking of timetables and tear gas.”

  “That was part of my role as a revolutionary. I should do something now in my role as a girl.”

  She guided him into position above her. “But I believe it’s not possible. We have done it so frequently, and you say you are thinking of bombs. I wish it could happen, because we won’t see each other for how long, but as a Marxist-Leninist I believe in facing facts.” She touched him. “It is possible, I see. And it would make you less nervous. I think it would be the best thing to do politically, don’t you agree?”

  He kissed her gently to make her stop talking.

  TWO

  They dressed hurriedly.

  Larry Howe called again from downstairs. Rourke, wearing only his socks, assured him that he was just that minute walking out the door.

  “I wish there wasn’t this last-minute difficulty,” Paula said, zipping up her skirt. “But if somebody else goes to the interview with you, I don’t see that it changes anything.”

  “If I was in their shoes I’d squawk, too. They don’t like somebody coming in from outside to grab off the big story.”

  “So long as the cigarettes are delivered.”

  “Count on it,” he told her. “I know I can make it stick.”

  Paula ran a comb through her hair and checked her appearance in a mirror. She made a disgusted face, though Rourke thought she looked as splendid as usual.

  “I’d better tell you,” she said nervously. “I didn’t want to worry you, but I think I spotted a policeman behind us when we went out near the prison this afternoon. But who cares? In one hour and a half you’ll be at sea and I’ll be holed up in a barrio, where they won’t dare to look for me.”

  She put the two cartons of Pall Malls into Rourke’s battered attache case, otherwise empty except for a ruled yellow pad, several soft pencils, and a pint of American whiskey. Rourke thrust his necktie into a side pocket. She came up to him, put her hands inside his jacket and hugged him hard.

  “It’s been marvelous,” she said. “Now, speaking as a girl… do you think we’ll ever see each other again?”

  “After you win.”

  “Then I hope we win soon. Tim, I think I would have come to see you even if it hadn’t been for these cigarettes-”

  “I doubt it,” he said, “but that’s all right. I never thanked you for the Christmas card you sent me.”

  “Oh, well. I know you’re not the Christmas card type. Tim, will you be careful?”

  “You’re the one who ought to be careful. You’re the guerrilla.”

  She came up on her toes and pressed her lips against his briefly, then turned and went out, cracking the door first to make sure there was no one in the hall.

  Rourke’s smile faded abruptly. He opened the dispatch case. Taking out the yellow pad, he wrote a quick note. He ripped off the sheet, folded it, and slipped it into an unstamped envelope addressed to his friend Michael Shayne, the well-known Miami private detective. The envelope already contained another folded s
heet, torn out of a memorandum book or a diary. The phone was clamoring again as he went out.

  He knocked lightly on a door near the elevators. It was opened by an American in a T-shirt and slacks. Rourke gave him the envelope and a $20 bill.

  “You’re still going up on the early plane?”

  “Sure, no change,” the man said. “But I was thinking… Why don’t I wait and give it to the messenger service at the Fontainebleau, instead of at the airport? It’ll get delivered faster.”

  “Fine. Just be damn sure you don’t forget.”

  “Hell, it’s the easiest twenty bucks I ever made.”

  Larry Howe, a long way from his usual genial self, was facing the elevators in the lobby. He was an old Latin American hand, almost entirely bald, with a moon face fitted out with big glasses and a big cigar.

  Rourke looked at Menendez, who shifted weight patches-competent, plodding wire-service copy, a dim reflection of Howe himself, who drank heavily, pursued girls, and had had many lively adventures which never made it to the UPI wire.

  Two of the men with him were new to Rourke. The third, Menendez, the Venezuelan information man who had handled the arrangements for the interview, seemed to wish he was somewhere else.

  “The Tim Rourke legend,” Howe said sourly. “Stories breaking all over town, and he’s sacked out with a babe. We’re a little late, so this has to be abrupt. Plans have changed.”

  Rourke looked at Menendez, who shifted weight and continued to look uncomfortable.

  “I am sorry, you know. There are sometimes things one cannot help.”

  Howe broke in impatiently. “I’ll grant you, the interview was your idea, Tim, and as a new face in town you had the leverage to put it across. But is it fair to the rest of us?”

  “Who said it had to be fair?”

  “Or good journalism. The whole idea, the way Menendez got the junta to approve, was to quash the rumors about Guillermo Alvares being tortured.”