Caught Dead ms-64

by Brett Halliday

  He entered an open arcade lined with specialty shops. The entrance to the elevator lobby, halfway through the block, was between a boutique and a shop selling Indian artifacts.

  There were two phones. Shayne found the coin that would get him a dial tone, and dialed the operator. As soon as she answered he said, slowly and firmly, “Do you speak English?” He repeated the question twice more before he was switched to someone who could understand him. He placed an overseas call to his own Miami number.

  When a girl’s voice answered, he identified himself and asked if she’d been able to get back to sleep after he left.

  “Not a wink! Mike, how does it look?”

  “Worse than I expected. Much worse. I’m just beginning to feel my way. Has the mail come in yet?”

  “Not yet, but a messenger just brought an envelope for you and it’s on Hilton Hotel stationery-Hilton Hotel, Caracas. I couldn’t decide what to do with it.”

  “Open it, for God’s sake.”

  He heard the envelope being torn open. “It’s from Tim! And there’s something else, something in Spanish. Wait a minute.”

  There was a brief pause. “You know what Tim’s handwriting is like-this is a real scrawl. I’ll try to puzzle it out. ‘Dear Mike, I’m onto something really hot. If it works biggest story of career.’ I think that word is ‘career.’”

  She waited, and continued, “‘… Something… something risky. It could go sour on me, and if so I’m in bad trouble. It’s a jailbreak. Tear gas, smoke bombs-far out, man.’”

  There was a pause. She went on haltingly. “Here comes a bad stretch. ‘Something the enclosed.’ I guess ‘Translate the enclosed. Something something to-whet? To whet my appetite. If you don’t hear from me by noon, get your ass down here. I’ll give you half the net. The magazine rights alone should be fantastic. Life, Playboy- they’ll be bidding like madmen. It’s Alvarez’ diary. First person account of everything that happened. About 35,000 words. If this page is a sample we’ll make the history books. His wife has the rest. Strategy: get the full diary and use it to blast me loose. You owe me this! Tim.’”

  Shayne was scraping his jaw with his thumbnail. “All right, what’s the enclosure look like?”

  “I was bragging about my Spanish, Mike. It’s not that good. And this writing is even worse than Tim’s.”

  “All I want is the general idea.”

  “It’s a sheet torn out of a book. It starts off in the middle of a sentence. The next entry is ‘Tuesday,’ in a different color ink. Let me see. I’ll just give you the words I’m sure of. Here’s a proper name. That’s easy-Felix Frost. CIA. An oil company, somebody else’s name. They’re paying-well. Let me skip this part. A cable from Washington. ‘Private payments to-’ Hmm. North American somethings off La Guaira. Submarines? I guess submarines. Commercial airline, fourteen planes ready to take off in Guatemala City-guns and ammunition, I finally have absolute proof of U.S. involvement in plot against me-”

  “That makes the point,” Shayne said. “Now read Tim’s letter to me again. See if you can fill in the blanks.”

  He listened carefully. She read it with fewer pauses, and was able to decipher one or two more words.

  “O.K.,” he said. “This is going to put me one step ahead of the cops. Get a better translation of that diary entry if you can. I’ll try to call you later today.”

  He broke the connection and dialed the number Frost had given him.

  “What news of our boy?” Frost said cordially.

  “He’s in fairly good shape. I had to talk with Mejia. He knew the Senator called you, by the way. Does that mean he has a tap on this phone?”

  “That’s another number, not this one. I don’t mind too much. I have a tap on his.”

  “He’s giving me twenty-four hours before he starts working on Tim. They have little tricks they do with electricity, he tells me. Is that the kind of threat he’s likely to carry out?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  Shayne’s lips came back from his teeth. “Twenty-four hours. I’ve already used up fifteen minutes. Mejia didn’t sound too interested in Tim. The big subject he wanted to talk to me about was the grease Alvares has been accumulating over the years.”

  Frost sighed. “That old story.”

  “Do you mean there’s nothing to it?”

  “Something, of course. The Bull was, above all, prudent, and he must have known the cushy days wouldn’t last forever. He had an airplane ready to fly him to the States. I’m sure he had something laid aside to pay his bills after he got there.”

  “Mejia thought you could be more specific.”

  “In what way?”

  “About how much and where. He said it’s the kind of information you like to collect.”

  “How discerning of him. Yes, economic warfare is one of my things, perhaps because I’ve never been very good at the other kind of warfare, with fists. But I’m not omniscient. Alvares maintained several Swiss bank accounts for years. He closed them out some eighteen months ago, when he began to smell trouble. That much I’ve been able to discover. But the Swiss, as you know, are very chary with information. I pulled all the available strings, but I couldn’t come up with even an approximate evaluation of his holdings.”

  “Will you explain that? Why did he close his accounts?”

  “For one thing, those numbered accounts are no longer as sacrosanct as they used to be. The successor regime here might have been able to tie them up.”

  “In his position, what would you do with the money-keep it in cash?”

  “I’d put it in gold bullion, I believe. In retrospect, considering the recent changes in the price of gold, that would have been a clever move.”

  “Wouldn’t there have to be records if he bought that much gold?”

  “Records can be hocussed and faked. There are dozens of ways to cover your tracks if you buy enough of the stuff. Was Mejia willing to hazard a guess as to the amount?”

  “He said in the neighborhood of twenty million.”

  “The wrong neighborhood,” Frost said, laughing. “Much too high. It’s true the Alvares administration was notoriously corrupt, but he had to cut it up a number of ways to stay in power. How does this connect with the subject you were presumably discussing-namely, Tim Rourke?”

  “It seems that Alvares spent his vacations in Miami-”

  “Palm Beach, actually,” Frost said.

  “Palm Beach, then. Tim has friends there. Maybe somebody who knows where the money is talked him into pushing for that interview, and then screwed him by giving him a bomb instead of Pall Malls. I said I doubted it very much. That’s when he said I had twenty-four hours to come up with a different theory.”

  A soberly dressed youth walked quickly along the arcade, stopping a shade too abruptly when he saw Shayne. He came into the elevator lobby to look at the directory of tenants.

  Shayne said, “I want to see what I can get from Alvares’ widow. Do you think she’ll see me?”

  “You have to remember,” Frost said doubtfully, “that her husband was blown into little pieces last night. She won’t feel too happy about talking it over with a stranger. Still, you must run into that all the time.”

  “It’s never easy. Were they happy together?”

  “One doesn’t know. He was a typical Venezuelan. He had a succession of little mistresses, one or two of whom,” he added with a leer that came over the telephone line clearly, “were arranged for him out of this office.”

  “What does the widow stand to inherit?”

  “Virtually nothing. They lived in the Presidential Palace, the property of the nation. Her family has a little money. She lives on a farm west of the city, and that, I believe, is in her name. If not, it will undoubtedly be taken. She’s been a good friend of ours on occasion, and if she doesn’t want to be bothered today I hope you’ll respect her wishes.”

  A second man, another obvious cop, came into the lobby and pretended to look up a number in the phone-book, one
ear cocked toward Shayne.

  “I seem to be surrounded here,” Shayne said. “I’d better find out how good they are. Stay on tap. I’ll be calling you again.”

  He hung up. Before opening the folding door he lifted up on it hard, dislodging it from its overhead track. He beckoned to the man at the phonebooks.

  “Come here a minute,” he said in English.

  The man sent an uncertain glance at his partner and started toward Shayne, scowling. Shayne head-faked toward the street. His adversary had obviously never played one-on-one basketball. He went for the fake. Shayne caught him off-balance and pulled him into the empty phone booth. The second man reached inside his coat. Shayne feinted a kick, and when the cop doubled forward Shayne grabbed his hair in both hands. He pivoted, going backward. The first cop was trying to get out of the booth. The two Venezuelans collided, hard. Shayne gave the door a powerful yank and it jammed, shutting them both inside.

  He grinned at the knot of people waiting for the elevators.

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said pleasantly. “I do this sort of thing all the time.”

  He walked out of the building.

  EIGHT

  The open Jaguar was cruising toward him. Rubino reached across to open the door. Shayne stepped in and issued a curt order.

  Without hesitation Rubino wheeled about in a U-turn, using his horn to blast an opening. He swung right at the next corner, left at the next on a red light, and plunged into the older part of the city, a tangle of narrow twisting streets. A moment later they were edging into a fast-moving line of cars on an east-bound freeway. Rubino watched his mirrors.

  “That gets rid of one,” he said triumphantly. “I used to live in that district, in my unlucky days. I know it like the inside of my pocket. But two pacos went into the building after you. I don’t see their car.”

  “They’re trying to punch their way out of a phone-booth,” Shayne said. He took out a money clip and counted out five hundred-dollar bills. “This is an advance. Mejia’s giving me twenty-four hours, which means we have to keep moving. If I can get Rourke out I’ll ask his paper for a fifteen thousand buck fee. They’ll settle for half that. I’ll give you twenty-five percent on top of what I’ve just given you if you stick with me and don’t sell me out. That means no phone calls to Frost, Mejia, or anybody else.”

  Rubino swept the bills out of his hand. “You’re a master of psychology, Mr. Shayne. You’ve won my allegiance! Where do you wish me to drive you?”

  “Do you know where I can find Alvares’ widow?”

  “Yes, but it is some miles away, on the road to Valencia. We can phone first, to make sure.”

  “She won’t talk to me unless I walk in on her. Do you know if she speaks English?”

  “A woman in that position, I believe she must. She would always be entertaining Yankee imperialists to dinner. And if she pretends she doesn’t, I will interpret for you.”

  He circled the bullring and turned south. Presently the highway began to climb, and they left the city behind them.

  Their destination, Rubino told Shayne, still called itself a farm, but though a large number of peasants seemed to be employed on it, their true function had been to bodyguard Alvares, who had spent as much time there as possible, preferring it to the stately and uncomfortable palace.

  The countryside was rolling and rugged. Strips of mist lay in folds between the hills.

  “This is Alvares land now,” Rubino said, “on both sides of the road. More or less worthless, because who in his right mind would wish to buy it?”

  An occasional huddle of scrawny cattle grazed in the fields. They passed a group of farm laborers walking at the edge of the road-barefooted, in ragged clothes, with big hats and sheathed machetes. Rubino pointed and Shayne saw a kind of adobe fortress, reached by a dirt road between a double line of cypresses.

  A car was being driven down this avenue, very fast, kicking up dust. It swung onto the paved road and passed them-a heavy green Olds. Shayne had a flash of a woman in dark glasses at the wheel, her blonde hair blowing.

  Rubino’s foot lifted from the accelerator. He watched the rapidly receding car in his side mirror.

  “Funny,” he said.

  “What is?”

  “That’s Alvares’ girlfriend. Lenore Dante. And she has been to call on the Senora. For what purpose, do you think?”

  “You know more about it than I do.”

  “Did you see the look on her face? She has the devil behind her, jabbing her with a pitchfork.”

  After a moment he said slowly, “I think we should see where she goes in such a hurry. The Senora will still be here when we get back.”

  “O.K.”

  Rubino was still watching the mirror. “I don’t want her to see the brakelights if she looks. There is only this road. We can overtake her slowly.”

  He swung into the cypress avenue, stopped, and then moved the switch that brought the top up out of the boot.

  “If she noticed us pass, she saw an open convertible. Nov she will see a quite different car. I’m being clever today.”

  He waited till the Olds was out of sight before backing out onto the road.

  “Lenore Dante,” Shayne said. “What nationality?”

  “A compatriot of yours, such a lovely one. An artist, her paintings have been seen on many walls in Caracas since Alvares became her protector. And now, I suppose, they will be hidden in the garages.”

  “How old?”

  “In her first thirties. Thin. Dashing. It is an arrangement of three years. That is a long time for a thing of this kind with Alvares. Formerly it was for short periods, and with a great effort to be furtive and secretive. Always Latin girls of bourgeois families. They would be given a check when he said good-bye for the final time. But he allowed himself to be seen openly with this one. He visited her in Palm Beach, in your country, where it is said she owns a busy art gallery that makes much money. Here a cooperative apartment has been taken for her in a good district. And she lived in it every year a little longer. With the regime ending there was less reason to be careful.”

  The Olds ahead was still being driven at headlong speed. They had come over the rim of the plateau and saw the city stretched out below them. As they dropped, Rubino began closing the gap.

  “I’ll tell you something. It is supposed that no one was with him in the plane when it crashed except the personal pilot, who is now in the hospital with a cracked skull and can say nothing. But I think Dante was with him. Before the police arrived she had enough time to dismount and disappear. I have a private piece of information that a woman walked rapidly away from the wreck, not his wife. I’ve wondered what I could do with this information. Probably nothing.”

  When the Olds came up onto the city freeway he closed with it and hung just behind as it whirled across town in the high-speed lane.

  “The autopista,” he said. “To the airport. Mr. Shayne, this presents a problem.”

  The Olds leaned into the cloverleaf, taking the curve too fast. Rocking, it drifted off on the outside shoulder, swerved and recovered. Rubino dropped further behind as soon as the other car committed itself to the northbound lanes.

  “Because at the airport,” he went on, entering the cloverleaf, “there will be police. I wish there was time to change cars. They know by now to look for the Jaguar.”

  “Keep thinking about it. If they arrest us, there won’t be any more hundred dollar bills. What else can you tell me about this woman? Was she mixed up in politics?”

  “Not at all.”

  After another moment, watching Rubino carefully, Shayne remarked, “Mejia thinks there’s a sizeable chunk of money floating around.”

  He saw Rubino’s grip on the wheel tighten. “This is not, as I told you,” Rubino said softly, “much of a spiritual city. Ninety-nine percent of Caracans are daydreaming about that subject.”

  “Including you?”

  Rubino laughed again. “Why else are we following?”
/>   “Do you think you have a chance at it?”

  “By myself, no. I am too small. But together with you, there are attractive possibilities.”

  “This Lenore Dante must know something about it.”

  Rubino laughed again. “Why else are we following her? Mr. Shayne, I am sure she knows a great deal about it. That relationship, on Alvares’ side, was becoming always more scandalous, more intense. She would figure in his future plans. And now what do you think? Should we overtake her here in the open countryside or find out first if she is meeting someone?”

  “You decide.”

  Rubino considered, squinting into the glare. He pursed up his lips.

  “I think that first we establish if she turns to the airport. Then we can come up alongside and force her to pull over. We should seem cruel and merciless. I will conceal my ordinarily sunny nature. She was frightened leaving the Senora’s farm, we will frighten her more. If she decides to collaborate, to tell us all she knows about the bombing, about the money-fine. If not we will take physical possession and look for buyers. I think she will be in demand. We can be an excellent partnership. I with my knowledge of the Venezuelan mentality, you with your Embassy connection, the excuse of being interested only in getting Mr. Rourke out of prison-”

  He broke off suddenly. “There are binoculars in the compartment. Look at that turning red light. A police car?”

  Shayne found the binoculars. Bracing himself with his elbows against the dashboard, he moved the focusing knob and picked up a revolving beacon on the roof of a black sedan parked at the mouth of an exit ramp.

  “Yeah, it looks like it.”

  “At the airport exit,” Rubino said. “Damnation. They will be watching for Jaguars, certainly. If we had taken the trouble to borrow an anonymous car.”

  He shifted down, rattling his fingers against the steering wheel. Shayne watched the car they were following. Its brakelights came on for the exit, but it passed the police beacon and continued another hundred feet to the next ramp.

  “Going east!” Rubino said, his voice tight. “To a boat. But there is a roundabout way.”