Caught Dead ms-64

by Brett Halliday

  Serrano said deliberately, “I think perhaps you’re trying to trick us. You want this money for yourself.”

  “Do I?”

  Serrano asked the girl’s opinion, and the discussion ran around the room. Shayne had another drink of the explosive liquor and waited.

  He was asked questions from time to time, and again he explained the role he planned for himself. It was simply to convey the impression that he knew more about the money than he actually did, in the hopes of setting off a scramble.

  At least two of the young men distrusted Shayne and wanted nothing to do with his proposition. Paula seemed to lean the other way. Serrano was in the middle. Shayne listened for a time, then asked the young men on the cot to move. He folded his jacket to use as a pillow, lay down, and fell asleep.

  SIXTEEN

  When he was shaken awake an hour and a half later, only Serrano, Paula and one other were in the room.

  Serrano said quietly, “There is a difference of opinion among us. We must ask you more questions.”

  Shayne swung his feet to the floor and lit a cigarette. “I thought we’d covered everything. Has anything new happened?”

  “We have learned that the North American Frost did indeed visit Senora Alvares, and yesterday also. The lady today has had much to drink.”

  “Does that happen often?”

  “No, it is unusual. Our person there says she was unsettled by a visit from Shayne, the Yankee detective. We will receive a phone call if she leaves the house, but she is sleeping soundly now. Before we do anything further, we want to ask you two things. We assume Senor Rourke was unable to tell you any names, because surely a guard was present when you talked to him. How did you know about Paula?”

  “Frost showed me her picture. They’ve been watching Tim, and they knew he was seeing her.”

  “Lenore Dante.”

  “She bolted out of the Alvares farm looking scared, with her hair flying. We followed her to the boat.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “I have her tucked away.”

  Serrano nodded. “I think I understand you, your tactic in a matter that must present great difficulties for you. You stir things up, set one group against another, spread expectation. And the way we respond to all this tells you something. Of course you are manipulating us as well. What you say you want is not necessarily the truth. Now tell me what you expect to happen when you reach familiar surroundings, Florida. You will have Lenore Dante with you. Do you believe she will run directly to this money, to make sure it’s safe?”

  “That depends on whether she knows who was trying to kill her. She claims she doesn’t.”

  “If and when you find the money, what percentage will you allot us in return for our assistance?”

  “There’s no reason to work it out in advance because it won’t be enforceable. I expect you to provide enough muscle so you can take it away from me.”

  “But as you yourself point out, in Florida you have the advantage.”

  “I’ll explain something. If I cut you out of the split you’ll have a legitimate beef. You can’t take me to court on it, but the next time I need some cooperation from somebody, they’ll say, ‘Why help this creep? Remember how he screwed those Venezuelans.’ Do you follow that? Hell, take a chance. What can you lose?”

  “That,” Serrano said dryly, “is precisely what we are trying to determine.”

  The rest of the afternoon passed. The bottle of pisca remained available and Shayne sampled it occasionally. He was brought an evening meal of beans and dry, unleavened bread. At one point he and Paula were alone in the room.

  “Does Tim-” she began, and stopped. “Does Tim think I’m responsible for that bomb?”

  “Probably.”

  “Then I hope you find out who really did it. Some of our cadres have been drawn to the idea of selective terror-bombings, killings, to show our presence, and this might seem to be such a thing. So there is confusion among many who support us. I’ve been arguing on your side. I think you should be given the chance. But there’s the suspicion with some that you’re an imperialist agent, and this is all an elaborate deception.”

  “If you can think of any safeguards, I’ll consider them. We ought to get moving fairly soon.”

  “Not before dark.”

  “I need to get a call through to the Palm Beach police chief I told you about, and this might be the night he goes bowling.”

  Shayne’s hand shot forward and snaked the pistol out of her holster. Her hand fastened on his, but he held the muzzle of the long-barreled gun against her breast. Her pupils dilated.

  “You can’t think you can get out of the barrio.”

  “I can shoot a few people trying.”

  Serrano came in, stopping abruptly. He was unarmed. Shayne twisted the gun viciously, bringing it around to cover the guerrilla leader.

  “I’m beginning to wonder where we stand.”

  Serrano’s hands had come out from his body, but he was otherwise motionless. He spoke quietly in Spanish to Paula.

  “The answer to that,” Shayne said, “is yes, I’m just nutty enough to try it. You’ve had all afternoon to talk. I’ll stick the gun in your back and let you walk a half step ahead of me. I think I might make it. Of course somebody who doesn’t like you might take a shot at me so I’d be forced to put a slug in your spine. That’s a chance we’d both take.”

  “I accept the chance,” Serrano said.

  Shayne swore in disgust. Reversing the gun, he thrust it back hard into the girl’s holster.

  “Come on,” he said angrily, “will you make up your goddamn mind?”

  Serrano came into the room. “In fact, we have decided to do it. There is a waiter in a cafe who is sure to phone Mejia if the conversation is done with care. We must arrange the exact phrases he is to overhear.”

  “Do you have a way to get us on the plane?”

  “That can be done simply. It’s what is to happen after you arrive in the United States that we have been discussing. We risk three people.”

  “All they can be hit with is carrying concealed weapons and coming into the country illegally. I’ll put up the bail money and the legal fees. A good lawyer can get them off with a five-hundred-buck fine and deportation.” He stood up. “So if you’ve decided to do it, let’s get the wheels turning.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Shayne was in an outdoor phonebooth on the Avenue Mosquera, with a handful of coins. Paula, once again dressed as the daughter of a respectable businessman, placed the calls and stayed in the booth with him, to make sure he kept to the script they had worked out with Serrano.

  His first call was to La Maquetia airport. He fed the phone twice while they located the pilot of the Miami News plane, who told Shayne he was ready whenever Shayne was. He had the feeling the paper didn’t want him hanging around in Venezuela indefinitely. He’d been ducking the editor’s phone calls. The police had questioned him at length about Shayne’s plans and he had given them an honest answer. He didn’t know a damn thing about Shayne’s plans. He believed, without being certain, that he was under observation at the moment.

  Shayne told him to collect his crew and file a flight plan to Miami. If anybody asked, this was a Miami call, summoning him home. There was a good possibility that when Shayne arrived at the airport he would want to take off in a hurry.

  The pilot laughed. “It won’t be the first time.” He lowered his voice. “Will Rourke be with you?”

  “Not this trip. We’ll have to come back and get him. As soon as you’re ready, move out on a holding strip and stall the tower.”

  The next two calls went to Palm Beach.

  Howard Boyle, the chief of police there, a large, indolent professional cop who had been quoted as saying that he wished the taxpayers in his little fiefdom were less rich so they wouldn’t be such tempting targets for thieves, had just settled down in front of the TV to watch a hillbilly comedy.

  “They’ll be telling the same jokes next w
eek,” Shayne told him. “This could be a very big pinch. I thought of working it through the narcotics people, and then I decided it would be nice to let you have the credit.”

  “And of course I ask fewer questions.”

  “How long has it been since I wanted a favor? I can’t tell you much on the phone, except that both these people are big couriers, and they’re arriving separately. They’re heading for Palm Beach, but they’re likely to come in through Miami, and their credentials are going to be very good.”

  “I don’t like the way that sounds.”

  “The bigger the credentials, the better the story. You’ll be even more famous than you are now.”

  “I’m not famous at all, and that’s the way I like it.”

  “I’m taking the responsibility,” Shayne said. “If anything backfires, it’s my ass. They may do some yelling when you pick them up, but tell them the tip came from Mike Shayne in Caracas. That ought to quiet them down.”

  Boyle said doubtfully, “And if we shake them down and don’t find anything-”

  “You won’t. People on that level hardly ever get hassled. That’s the beauty of this. All I’m asking you to do is sit on them for three hours.”

  “They’re entitled to a phone call.”

  “Tell them I said to call this number.” He read off the number of the instrument he was using. “And if it’s busy tell them to keep trying.”

  “Mike, I know that tone of voice. I think I’m beginning to worry.”

  Shayne laughed. “If you can’t act dumb for three hours, you don’t deserve your badge. Get a pencil and paper. I’m going to give you the descriptions, and I want you to write them down. If anybody puts on a false mustache and sneaks past-”

  “Mike, I wish they would! That would show they have something to hide, and I’d feel better about this.”

  He gave Boyle a careful, detailed description of Luis Mejia and Felix Frost. His next Palm Beach call went to Sam Katz, the private detective Shayne had asked to check on Lenore Dante.

  “She seems O.K., Mike,” Katz reported. “Nobody has a bad word to say against her, officially. But you said you wanted rumors.”

  “That’s the main thing I want.”

  “You mentioned Alvares. The story is that he owns her business. But that could be legit, because it makes money. You had the idea they had an affair going. I can’t confirm it. She has a condominium apartment at the north end. Whenever he was in town he stayed at the Colony, forty-three days in the last four years. And she went places with other escorts when he was in town-to balls and stuff. He’s been a moderately soft touch for charities. Nothing out of proportion.”

  “How much of the year is she there?”

  “Right through, but there’s a lot of traveling. You know the Worth Avenue galleries. Hers is one of the winners. She buys for some of our big collectors. She goes to auctions and so on, New York, Europe, wherever. If she and Alvares met for any length of time, that was where. I’ve got copies of a couple of news stories, about pictures she bought for Mrs. Phipps and the Kennedys. Some of them in six figures. As I say, they all seem to like her.”

  “Which is the moneymaker, the gallery or the commission business?”

  “It’s part of the same stew, Mike, as I understand it. She buys in the slow season. Like she knows in general what kind of thing a client is looking for, Americana, French Impressionists, you name it. If she hears something’s coming up for sale in a private collection, or in the settlement of an estate, she has authority to bid for it. I haven’t heard that she’s made any mistakes.”

  “Any major romance?”

  “We’re still working on that. She’s had men overnight at her apartment but nobody Alvares’ age.”

  “How about bank accounts?”

  “Nothing out of line. I don’t have profit figures yet but they’re coming. I’m glad you called, Mike. There’s a safe in her office, on the second floor of the gallery. It’s a five-cylinder wall safe, and if you’re under pressure I imagine I could peel it for you.”

  “Let’s forget that for now. I’m interested in those profit figures and I’d like to get them tonight. Who are you working with?”

  “She has a part-time bookkeeper. It really isn’t costing you much.”

  “Does the bookkeeper have keys to the office?”

  “I can get her in if she doesn’t. Do you want me to call you?”

  “I hope to be up there in a couple of hours. I’ve-”

  Shayne dropped the phone and came around fast. A police car stopped at the curb with a squeal of brakes, and two uniformed cops leaped out.

  SEVENTEEN

  “It’s O.K., Mike,” Paula said quickly.

  Shayne recognized one of the uniformed men. He was a short, wiry guerrilla who had been sitting on the dirt floor across from him, his knees drawn up to his chin, most of the afternoon. The uniform was too large for him.

  He seized Shayne roughly and made an announcement in Spanish.

  “We are being arrested,” Paula translated.

  Shayne reached back in the booth and hung up the phone. The second bogus cop put him in handcuffs. Shayne submitted after testing them to be sure they were unlocked. He and Paula climbed into the back seat with one of the cops.

  “They’re going to be looking for this car if it’s the one we had before.”

  “We changed the plates,” Paula told him. “We’ve been dying to get our hands on such a car.”

  They dropped down to the Valencia road; their first stop was to be the Alvares farm. So far everything was working well. Two known MIR people had taken coffee in a restaurant where a man thought to be a police informer worked as a waiter. This man was permitted to hear them talking about how the well-known North American detective, Michael Shayne, had hired them, in a sense, to get him out of the country. The stake was enormous-the huge illegal fortune Alvares had accumulated during his years in power. Palm Beach, Florida, was Shayne’s destination, and if they managed to deliver him intact, and if he didn’t betray them the minute they arrived, the movement stood to gain a large sum in dollars, with which they could purchase weapons on the flourishing secondhand market. They finished their coffee and left. Another guerrilla, posted in the restaurant, then saw the waiter make a surreptitious phone call.

  Meanwhile, nothing had been heard from Senora Alvares’ maid, which meant that the widow was still at the farm. Entering the cypress avenue leading up to the house, the driver turned on his siren. The old man who had charge of the gate was already looking out through his little wicket. Seeing Shayne, he shook his head.

  One of the presumed cops yelled at him, and when the old man responded by closing the wicket, he drew his police revolver and fired a shot in the air. Shayne signaled to the driver to back off and ram the gate. The bolt tore out of the wood on the second try.

  The old man was unchaining the watchdog. Shayne pulled the Luger out of Paula’s handbag and fired as the dog leaped. The bullet passed through the animal’s brain, and he was dead by the time he hit the side of the car.

  Paula and one cop came inside with him.

  “Find out if she’s had any calls,” Shayne said.

  He found the widow in her bedroom, sprawled across the flowered bedspread, breathing heavily. She was wearing unbuttoned pajamas, and there was no doubt that she was actually asleep. A glass on the bedside table held a little dead champagne.

  Paula came in behind him. “Yes, Mr. Felix Frost phoned about twenty minutes ago. That would be ten minutes after Mejia got his call from the cafe. She talked to him in English, but kept dropping the phone. The servants put her to bed.”

  “Get some help.”

  He found a last split of champagne in the kitchen refrigerator, brought it back to the bedroom and drank while Paula and a maid attempted to get some clothes on the woman. She moaned and pushed, without seeming to understand what was happening. Her pajama tops came off, then the bottoms. Realizing suddenly that a man was across the room, she scream
ed and tried to hide behind her hands.

  “Perhaps you should wait outside, Mike?” Paula suggested.

  “If she’s embarrassed about being naked, all she has to do is get dressed.”

  Her eyes on Shayne, the Senora made the women work for each small success.

  “Go away,” she said in English. “I don’t want you in the house. I was sleeping.”

  She hit at the maid and knocked her over. The struggle continued. The black dress was so tight that Shayne had to be called on to help. He pulled her off the bed and forced her to stand. In a swift change of tactics, she flung her arms around his neck.

  “I hunt and I hunt. For a man with strong muscles.”

  Together they wrestled her into some kind of shape. Shayne put her over his shoulder and started out of the room. The old man was in the gallery outside, glowering at the cop, whose hand rested on the butt of his holstered gun. Senora Alvares waved an arm and gave a drunken shriek.

  “They are about to rape me.”

  “I’m not promising anything,” Shayne said. “We’ll see.”

  Paula opened the rear door of the police car and they manhandled her in. She fell off the seat and Shayne put her back.

  “Where are we going?” she said when the car started.

  “We’re picking up your friend Lenore Dante.”

  “Friend, not at all a friend! She robbed me.”

  “You had a phone call from Frost. What did he tell you?”

  “A disgusting person.” She toppled against Shayne. “I’m so lonely.”

  When they stopped at the apartment building where he had left Lenore, the widow was asleep again with her head against Shayne’s shoulder. He freed himself gently and backed out.

  He had to use his lock picks to get into the inner lobby. Upstairs, he tapped on the door of 9-C. The little peephole clicked. Then the door was thrown open and Lenore propelled herself into his arms.

  “Mike, Mike.” She pulled him against her. “You were so long! I thought they’d killed you.”