Caught Dead ms-64

by Brett Halliday

  They were facing each other, Rourke’s foot against Shayne’s. He stepped up the pressure when he told Shayne he’d been in too much of a hurry. Now he didn’t seem to want to let the subject go.

  “We’re thinking in terms of thirty years, for Christ’s sake. What’s half a day? Why the rush?”

  “Take a minute now, Tim. If I’m going to get you out of here I’ve got to have somebody else to give them. You worked on the story three days. You must have some idea who wanted to kill Alvares and why.”

  Rourke made a vague gesture. “My head’s not normal. Do you know why I really came to Caracas? I had a fight with a chick! If she hadn’t been so damn pigheaded, I’d be back in Miami right this minute, having my second cup of coffee and opening the morning mail.” His foot came down hard. “I’d be reading about it in the paper. Alvares hit-too bad, but he’s been asking for it for years. Do you mind if I get serious for a minute?”

  “It’s a serious jam.”

  Rourke’s face was troubled, but he was exerting no under-the-table pressure, indicating that what he was about to say was for their unseen listeners.

  “I’m not completely stupid. I tried to protect myself, and if it hadn’t been for all that goddamn Tanqueray gin-Here’s the thing that’s been bugging me. Has anybody told you I was the one who was set for that interview? I was planning to carry in those cartons myself. I had nothing to do with the change in plans and there are two good witnesses who can testify to that. I went along with it. I had no choice. But if Larry Howe hadn’t been hung up on the status thing, if he hadn’t insisted he was entitled to the story, I’m the one who’d be dead now! I haven’t bothered to tell the cops. They’d just say the bomb went off ahead of schedule, or the guy who worked the switch wanted me dead so I couldn’t pull him out of a police lineup. They’ve got their victim, and I’m more or less ideal. So that leaves it up to you, baby, and I wish I had more confidence. If we were back home I wouldn’t worry. In Miami you know where the bodies are buried. Here you don’t know a soul. I can tell you one thing about Felix Frost, he won’t break his neck for anybody. So what are you going to do, stand out in the middle of the Plaza Venezuela wearing a name-tag and hope somebody comes up and whispers in your ear?”

  “I’ll try that if you think it’ll help.”

  “Aah,” Rourke said in disgust. “You’d get propositioned, that’s about all. They’re hunting for Paula, no doubt. Poor kid-just because she was careless enough to have dinner with me a couple of times. Cherchez la femme- it’s an old idea.”

  “Cherchez what?”

  “La femme. I know my French is lousy. Look for the female. But the hell with the female. Look for the male, Mike.” His foot hit Shayne’s. “The male.”

  The door opened behind Shayne and a guard appeared. Shayne continued to watch Rourke.

  “Time seems to be up,” Rourke said. “I doubt if you learned anything.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “Think hard, man. Because while you’re outside having fun, I’m in here being grilled. Leave the cigarettes.”

  Shayne stood up. “Next visiting day I’ll bring you some dynamite.”

  “Yeah, this place could do with some livening up.”

  SIX

  Rubino, waiting in an anteroom, had a message for Shayne: the Chief of Police, Luis Mejia, wanted to see him. This wasn’t an order but it was a strong request, and Rubino’s recommendation was that Shayne should comply.

  “Why not?” Shayne said. “I don’t have anything better to do.”

  Rubino said carelessly, “Mr. Rourke didn’t succeed in conveying any information?”

  “Mr. Rourke,” Shayne said angrily, “was being so goddamn careful I couldn’t make out what he was saying half the time. Do you want to know how he got involved with those cigarette cartons? He’d been drinking martinis for two days and he didn’t know what he was doing.”

  “In my experience, North American newspapermen are heavy drinkers.”

  “Tim hasn’t drunk gin for years. It makes him throw up. Tell Frost.”

  “I think that’s hardly worth telling anybody. Is that all?”

  “There was something about a cyanide capsule and a guy with one built-up shoe. That gives the cops something to work on if they believe it. It didn’t sound too believable to me.”

  A creaking elevator took them up three floors where Rubino showed him the police chief’s door.

  “I am to wait in the hall.”

  “Doesn’t he trust you?”

  “This far.” Rubino held up his thumb and forefinger, an inch apart. “That’s an honor-most people he trusts less.”

  Mejia proved to be a middle-aged man in uniform, with a shaved head, a hard stare, and skin the color of cement. He must have been very strong when he was younger, and even now, with jowls and a paunch, he looked as though he could be dangerous. A detail map of Caracas hung behind his desk, which was large and solidly built, like Mejia himself.

  There was a girl in the room, also in uniform. She was small and dark, in glasses.

  “My English, you must forgive me,” the police chief said after shaking hands. “It is very little. I am for to try, and Sonia will help me sometimes. I know about Michael Shayne, your many successes.”

  He offered Shayne a choice of cigars or cigarettes. Shayne took a cigar, much less aromatic than the one he had been given by Frost. He rolled it in his fingers.

  “Did Rourke have those marks on him when he was brought in?”

  Mejia’s eyes jumped to the girl. She supplied a word.

  “I see,” Mejia said. “Was he beaten by us? No, no. While he was arrested, by the public. Here he is well treated.” He waved the cigar. “How does one say it?”

  He spoke to the girl and she translated. “He says that the treatment of the prisoner by the police has been quite correct and O.K., and he wishes to ask if the prisoner has complained to you.”

  “He complained of being kept awake.”

  “We, too, have been kept awake,” Mejia said. “Being awake is nothing. I will ask you now what he said to you on the subject of the bombing.”

  Shayne lit the cigar and waited till it was drawing evenly. “I understood that was a privileged conversation.”

  “Oh, no. We have no such practice in Venezuela. I explain. There was much shouting and noise when he was arrested. It was considered by the public that he was a gringo spy. So he is frightened. He thinks he should keep silence.”

  “Keep silent,” Sonia murmured.

  “But that is foolish for him. Much foolish. Very. We have him in our hands. We take in many other suspicious persons, but no one in that class as Rourke. He knows, he can tell. The others who were with him in this, the guerrillas-they will go very fast. Vanish. They will vanish into air. So we must be quick. Rourke must talk to us.”

  “Frost says you have a picture of a girl named Paula Obregon. You must be working on that.”

  “We work on it hard. But he could tell us something would help find her, maybe.”

  “Are you sure she’s still in the country?”

  “In Venezuela, yes. In the barrios, the mountains. There are one and one half million persons residing in Caracas. They are careful in her sect. The people they live among, they are frightened from them.”

  “Don’t you have any pigeons who can tell you where she is?”

  The girl translated the word and he spread his hands. “Few. Not so good.”

  “Is it absolutely definite that these guerrillas put her on Rourke? She’s a pretty girl, and he knew her in Miami.”

  The police chief lifted his heavy shoulders. “We believe. Now I ask a question. Why did Mr. Rourke come to Caracas?”

  Shayne looked at him carefully. “As far as I know, to cover a story. That’s what his editor told me, and I see no reason to think otherwise.”

  “How far of a Communist is he?”

  Shayne laughed. “Not far at all.”

  “We have received a report
from correspondents in the U.S.A. It is official, to be believed. It says he is-”

  He tried to think of the right words, and asked the interpreter to help. She said, “In the dossier it says Rourke is strongly sympathetic to the Left. He wrote dispatches taking the side of the revolutionary government of Cuba-”

  Shayne made a scornful noise. “Tim’s a crime reporter. A gambler who used to own a casino in Havana got him into Cuba to check on some diamonds the guy left behind. While he was there he reported what he saw. He doesn’t have any heroes.”

  “Then he didn’t come to this country to interview Serrano?”

  “Who’s Serrano?”

  Mejia looked at the girl helplessly. She explained. “A leader of the MIR. He escaped from prison and has been at large and in command of fighting detachments for three years. I had believed the name was known in the United States.”

  “I have all I can do to keep up with what’s happening in Dade County. Tell him he’ll be making a bad mistake if he tags Tim with any political label.”

  “If he came for a story,” Mejia said, “what story did he want from Alvares?”

  “Just getting in to see him would put it on the front pages back home.”

  “The other correspondents say in their deposition that he told Mr. Larry Howe to ask about the role of your government, the famous CIA, in the change of regime.”

  “I don’t know anything about that.”

  “Or about the Alvares money?”

  It was asked casually, but there was a sudden change in atmospheric pressure. Mejia’s eyes bored into Shayne’s.

  Shayne’s answer was made in an equally casual tone. “Alvares’ money. I suppose there must be quite a bit of it. They tell me there was a lot of stealing going on.”

  “Monies disappeared,” Mejia said. “It is-traditional? Seventeen years in office.”

  “How much?” Shayne said.

  Mejia shifted. “Some say one thing, some another. But indeed, it must be very large. And the prisoner Rourke said nothing to you about any of this?”

  “It’s not his field. Why do you think he’d know anything about it?”

  The police chief rotated his cigar carefully. “The former President went on vacations to the south of Florida. It is supposed-” He stopped and began again. “When there is a bomb, one thinks immediately it is a political question, but-”

  He gave up and said it in Spanish. The girl translated.

  “The Police Chief is concerned about the bomber’s motive. Would the death of Alvares help the MIR? Only indirectly, to show their power to avenge themselves-and truly Alvares was very cruel and barbaric against the MIR. But as a political personage, he was no longer a factor. Death, imprisonment, exile-his three choices. But who will get ownership of his illegal estate? That is the unanswered question.”

  Mejia spoke again, and she then went on. “Where it is located, what form it takes, this is unknown. But we assume it is liquid-gold or cash. We assume it’s in Florida. Mr. Rourke, a newspaperman, is widely acquainted in the world of politics, the world of finance, of crime, we are sure. So did someone from Florida send him to Venezuela to find out something, to communicate a message? He cleverly made arrangements to interview the prisoner. The Chief of Police suggests that his stated reason for desiring this interview was not in fact the real reason. Alvares was being questioned closely. His questioners wished to establish the whereabouts of his cache, the sum of money we speak of, before it became the knowledge of others.”

  She looked at Mejia, who said in English, “The money is the property of the Venezuelan state. It was important to-”

  “Forestall?” the girl suggested.

  “To forestall. To reach it before others. And Alvares was about to say something on the subject, and then he was killed.”

  “How rough were you being with him?”

  “I am not afraid to speak words,” the police chief said steadily. “To find out things from a prisoner is easy. To find out fast, some methods are better. You have laws against this in your country. Here not. Electricity is often useful. Soon, I think, he would tell us. He was not good about pain. He shouted, he wept. He was born a peasant but he had too many years of pleasure.”

  Shayne knocked the ash off his cigar. “If Tim knew anything about that, why didn’t he tell me? Let me be sure I have this. You’re suggesting that somebody brought him a proposition. Alvares had to be reached before you broke him. Some kind of message had to go in or out.”

  “Yes. Or he was to be killed. Anyone who knew Alvares would know he could not hold out against bad pain.”

  Shayne shrugged. “Try the theory on Rourke, and see what he says. Why ask me?”

  “Because you are interested in your compatriot and friend. If he has such connections in Florida, you have those same connections. The arrangement I suggest is this. What can you discover here? Nothing, clearly. Go home in your own country, and find out something of value. Bring it to me and we will-”

  He suggested a Spanish word to the girl and she said, “Negotiate.”

  The police chief considered, and then spoke to her again. She rose submissively and left the room.

  “A good girl, I think,” Mejia explained, “but she was a student and it is best to be careful. They are everywhere. I said to come back to me with information. We will talk. Not about a division of the money. That belongs to the government, to no individual person. We want facts to help us explain this terrible event. If they are important enough, our case against Timothy Rourke will be seen to melt away.”

  “What you’re saying is that he’s a hostage.”

  “Hostage?” Mejia said doubtfully. “You know about policemen-we need a criminal. We have Rourke. We keep him until you persuade us to not. One little advice. Mr. Felix Frost knows something about the money.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “It is the business of him. The movements of gold, hidden bank accounts, quiet arrangements. And he will not tell us. He is a tightmouth. With Felix Frost, he is the one who asks the questions. But someone named Michael Shayne, you can ask it through your Senator.”

  They exchanged a look. There was no reason a police chief in Caracas should know of that connection.

  “Is there any way I can get through to these MIR people?” Shayne said.

  “Only if they come to you.”

  Shayne stood up. “I want to be sure you understand what I’m about to say. I’ve got an interpreter outside, or call your girl in.”

  Mejia’s gaze was hard and unblinking. He touched a button and the girl appeared.

  “Right now I have nothing to threaten you with,” Shayne said. “Apparently we’ve stopped sending aircraft carriers to rescue Americans in trouble. For the time being, I’m staying in Caracas. It’s a hundred to one that I’ll find out anything, but I’ve been lucky at times. Nobody in the radical movement will talk to you. But maybe they’ll talk to me if I can think of a way to get in contact. And no negotiations are possible-I’ll repeat that- no negotiations are possible if you use electricity on Tim Rourke.” He looked at the girl. “Maybe I said that too fast.”

  “I understand it,” she said quietly. “You are promising that anything you discover will be available to the police only on condition that the prisoner is well treated.”

  “Tell him.”

  She spoke to Mejia, who watched Shayne while he listened.

  “For twenty-four hours only,” Mejia said. “And then, if necessary, we must.”

  “Talk to me first,” Shayne said coldly. “Everybody else must be in as much of a hurry as you are, and if I can make myself unpleasant enough it may happen fast. What kind of dollar amount are you thinking about, a few million?”

  “More.”

  “How much more?”

  Mejia’s tongue came out to touch his lips. “In the vicinity of twenty.”

  SEVEN

  As they entered the Jaguar, Rubino said, “I will be very much surprised and astonished if the police don
’t follow us.”

  “You’ve been telling me what a hot driver you are. Lose them.”

  Rubino moved out from the curb and joined the traffic, watching the mirror.

  “There they are. A black Chevrolet, and if it’s the car I think, it has a special engine, a double carburetor. Never mind, I can outrun them. But there will be a second car. At present I don’t see it.”

  “Shut up and drive.”

  While Rubino slipped smoothly from lane to lane, using his full range of forward gears, Shayne concentrated on the muffled signals he had received from Rourke.

  “You’re too early. What’s half a day? Back in Miami, second cup of coffee, opening the morning mail. Tried to protect myself. That goddamn Tanqueray gin. The Pulitzer prize was mentioned. The hell with the female-look for the male. Paula Obregon, nice kid, but forget the female, go after the male.”

  And then the pattern hit him. Not the female, the male. Male-mail. Back in Miami, opening the mail.

  Rubino turned onto the curved freeway running between the twin towers of the Centro Bolivar. He was as relaxed as a cat, smiling slightly, holding the wheel with only his fingertips.

  “I want a phone, Andres,” Shayne said. “I don’t want any cops crowding me.”

  “Yes. I see the second car now. We’ll worry them a little first.”

  He accelerated smartly, swinging into the oncoming lane, then back. He forced a taxi to veer away and turned a corner. A traffic policeman glanced at the Jaguar’s plates. Rubino waved, smiling, and turned again. He shot down a one-way street, up an alley, and emerged into another avenue.

  “Walk in the building where I stop. There are phones by the elevators. I’ll circle to confuse them. When you are finished, walk through the building. Have you Venezuelan coins?”

  He gave Shayne a handful of change, executed another quick series of linked turns and braked hard. Shayne was out of the car before it stopped rolling.