“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I’m probably all wrong,” Gentry said slowly. “But he gave me the impression he wasn’t too serious. That’s the worst thing I can say about a cop. It’s a game with him, and people like that take the wrong kind of chances. Don’t hold me to that. As I keep telling you. I’m a meat-and-potatoes man. I know you’ve got a prejudice against carrying a gun-”
“Especially on the Beach.”
“Make an exception this time, will you, Mike?”
The private detective shrugged. “If you say so, Will.”
CHAPTER 3
Jules LeFevre had only one arm. His empty coat sleeve was pinned to his shoulder. He gave Shayne a reverse handshake with his left hand and drew him into the room.
“So you survived. Without a scratch. My heart jumped when I heard about it, I can tell you. What will you drink? I have Scotch and cognac, or we can order from the hotel bar.”
“Cognac.”
Shayne watched him pour the drinks deftly with his single hand. He was in his mid-fifties, with a sharp-featured face, a neat, narrow mustache, waxed at the points, thinning black hair which he combed across. His suit was sharply pressed, with a decoration in the buttonhole of the jacket. He wore narrow pointed shoes, a faint but unmistakable perfume. He chatted rapidly as he handed Shayne a snifter half full of brandy. His pronunciation was good, but he ran the words together in short, fast takes.
“I’m afraid there’s no doubt who thought up those devilish cameras, eh?” he said brightly, his sharp little eyes probing Shayne’s face. “It’s an Adam idea. Brilliant, but also definitely perverted. Why not simply come up to you on the street with an ordinary gun? Bang bang. You fall to the sidewalk. One more shot in the brain to make sure you are dead. But the commonplace is never good enough for Adam. The world must applaud his cleverness. And you knew, he was clever enough this afternoon so failure was almost as good as success. People will think you only escaped because the goddess of luck wrapped her cloak around you. I think so myself. Very well, Michael Shayne. You would like to take him, would you not?”
“Yeah,” Shayne said briefly. “Gentry said you have an idea about how to do it.”
The Frenchman took a long drink of straight Scotch. “I have an excellent idea. Why do you think this attempt was made today, not a week from today, or a month from today? He has an operation which he wishes to work through Miami. He will feel more confidence if you are lying in the morgue with a shattered skull.”
“What kind of operation?”
“Gold. Gold smuggling. And because it is Adam, of course, it is complex and ingenious. Do you know much about the illegal traffic in gold?”
“I see headlines about the gold drain. Big political policy stuff. As for the illegal traffic, it’s not something I think about very much.”
“It is one of my specialties. Adam is another. The two subjects overlap-for the last five years he has financed about a third of the world’s illegal gold movements, by our calculations. The profits, my dear Shayne, the profits have been glorious.”
He swallowed more Scotch. “The subject of gold makes me thirsty, for some peculiar reason. After I have finished my small lecture, perhaps you will show me what Miami Beach has to offer in the way of after-dark entertainment. I have a theory, unhappily not shared by the academic sociologists, that the quality of a given civilization can best be expressed in terms of its striptease. I don’t know if you agree with me. Have you dined?”
“Not yet.”
“Then perhaps you will dine with me. Meanwhile, take some pate or caviar. The pate is excellent, I recommend it. Now back to the business.” He pointed up the ends of his mustache. “The ordinary citizen, of course, cannot buy gold in the United States, but in certain European countries, Switzerland is a good example because of the anonymity of the banking system, if you happen to have fourteen thousand dollars in cash, a gold dealer will be delighted to sell you a bar weighing four hundred ounces. And in certain Asian countries that same bar is worth twenty-eight thousand dollars, which presents an overwhelming temptation to people who like a hundred-percent profit on turnover. Dowries in India and Pakistan are computed in gold. The currencies there are weak. Officials are bribable. And so the trade flourishes.”
His white, even teeth bit into a cracker.
“The typical route, we all know it, is from Europe to banks in the Middle East, and from there-all so far perfectly legal-to the ancient fishing villages on the Red Sea, on the Gulf of Aden, on the Persian Gulf. A Persian Gulf sheikhdom in a year’s time will import, legally, gold bullion amounting to some fifty million dollars. According to officially published records, it will export hardly a sou. Among the fishing dhows in the harbor, you see, there are three or four secretly equipped with diesel engines. Gold is loaded on these vessels in the dark of the moon for a quick run to the coast of Asia, where it is unloaded in shoal water at specified points, to be picked up later at the convenience of the gold merchants. Very simple. Very rewarding. I’m not sure how much you know about the role Adam plays in such undertakings?”
“Not a hell of a lot. All I’ve been told is that he provides the financing. The Treasury people don’t want to trust me with any more information.”
“At Interpol we’re a trifle more free and easy. Adam is basically an export-import banker, except that his deals are illegal and he trades in nothing but contraband. He has no formal organization in the usual sense. That makes him a hard man for the police to handle. For two years I’ve done nothing but defend against Adam. That was the most we thought we could do-make things hard for him, increase his costs, interfere with an occasional deal and keep harassing his subordinates, until eventually he himself as well as the people he needs to impress will begin to believe he’s losing his touch. We never expected to arrest him. All he has to do is stay in his exquisite Georgian house in the Mayfair district of London and we can’t touch him.”
Shayne was beginning to show his impatience with the stylish Frenchman. “Do you really want to touch him?”
“Oh, very much. I admire the man, in a way, I think about him constantly, but nothing would please me more than seeing him on trial for his life at the Old Bailey. But look at this gold thing. How do we stop it? We can’t search every fishing boat in the Arabian Sea. If the Pakistani police arrest a Karachi merchant with gold in his possession, how do we connect him with Sir Geoffrey Adam, in London?”
“Sir Geoffrey?”
“He has recently been knighted. There are too many links in the chain, you see. The Saudi sheikhdom is sovereign. The sheikh and half his subjects are profiting from the gold trade. The Damascus banks won’t let us inside the door. The Swiss numbered accounts are sacrosanct.”
“Do you mind if we get back to a place I know something about? Where does Miami come into this?”
“Fetch the bottles, will you, and I’ll tell you my scheme.” Shayne replenished the drinks while LeFevre ladled caviar onto several crackers.
“Quite decent caviar. Come, Michael, eat. Nothing like expense-account living, after all.” He downed a cracker in two swift bites and licked his fingers. “I said Adam couldn’t be touched as long as he stayed in London. But he isn’t content to stay in London. He’s a gifted businessman, an excellent psychologist, incredibly lucky. He’s perfectly capable of making a fortune in any legitimate business. So why should he choose to make his money illegally? The illegality itself, the danger, must be what attracts him. The legal export-import business, after all-you import cocoa and export needles. You deal in arbitrage or foreign exchange. You borrow money at six and lend it at six and a half. You buy sterling at two thirty-eight, turn it into francs, then into lira, back into sterling at two thirty-nine. Predictable. Boring. Compare it to false-bottom holds on an Arabian dhow, dawn unloadings on the coast of India, beaten-gold necklaces for a Hindu girl’s dowry-”
“Miami,” Shayne growled.
The Frenchman drank deeply. “I’m quite sure he
was in the crowd at the football game this afternoon, probably in your section.”
Shayne lifted his cognac with a steady hand. “What makes you think so?”
“Because at last I’m beginning to know him. I’m not yet in a position to write his biography, but whenever a new fact or a new rumor or a new lead comes along, I pop it into the file. After a time, it begins to add up. A pattern emerges.”
“Can I look at it?”
“At the dossier? Why not? I brought it for that purpose. It’s in the hotel safe. I’ll show it to you when we return after wallowing in the fleshpots. At the moment the gold markets are chaotic. The Persian Gulf route has been interrupted because of political trouble in the Middle East, coups and countercoups and threats of war. Adam himself, I understand, suffered a bad loss some three months ago, when one of his dhows went down in a storm. Meanwhile, in India and Pakistan, people are clamoring for gold and the price is rising. There has been a series of gold thefts in American airports-”
Shayne made a quick movement. “Was Adam behind those?”
“We think not. But they took place. Stolen gold bars to a value of perhaps one million dollars has been offered for sale. Our information is that people working for Adam have bought it at a price of seventeen dollars an ounce. It can be resold in India at eighty, eighty-five. The only problem is to get it there. We are quite sure that this gold is at present in this city.”
Shayne waited while LeFevre drank.
“In September,” the Frenchman went on with mounting excitement, “through agents working for a dummy corporation, he purchased a Miami travel agency, Three-Seas Travel, a perfect cover, with correspondents and offices in all parts of the world. Three-Seas has a jet tour of South America leaving Miami International at eight o’clock tomorrow morning, using a rented DC-8 fanjet, and we have reason to believe that the gold will be on it.”
“A million bucks’ worth. That’s a lot of gold.”
“In bulk, not so much. It would weigh out at about six hundred pounds. The travel-agency people control the baggage. Dummy suitcases can be mixed with the real ones. I’m suggesting that what will happen is that at one of the stopovers, Brazil would be my guess, where the officials are known for their poverty and their approachability, the gold will be unloaded and transshipped aboard a tramp freighter, which will then head straight for Asia.” He swallowed more caviar. “I hope I can persuade you to join the group of tourists on that plane.”
“And then what?”
“Keep your eyes open and do as common sense dictates.”
Shayne frowned. “I’ll have to know a lot more about it first.”
“I’ll tell you all I know, which isn’t much. We can make the seizure ourselves, without your help, by keeping close surveillance on the plane at every stop. If we’re clever, and don’t move too soon, I think we can hurt him. But it isn’t enough. Everything I know about him convinces me that he’ll be on the scene when the gold is transferred. Think of the opportunity, Michael! Tie him into this, even at second hand, and there’s a chance that we can put him out of business for good.”
“How?” Shayne said bluntly.
“You’re interested?”
“Why wouldn’t I be interested? Before you go any farther, how would you cut up the seizure fee?”
“That would be negotiable, depending on the scope of your contribution. Our original informer is demanding three percent. I don’t insist on enough hard evidence to justify an arrest. Let’s speak of possibilities. Bring in enough facts so Adam will have to write off this travel agency. Show him up publicly. Leave him with his jaw hanging open. Do that, and I’ll recommend that you get the remaining seven percent, which would bring us up to the maximum. That would be seventy thousand for you. We still have details to thrash out, but are we in agreement in principle?”
Shayne shook his head decisively and poured more cognac. “A long way from it. Will you have anybody else on the plane?”
“A very competent person, named Christa Hochberg. Of the West German police-a beautifully constructed female, if that would weigh with you, and I think it might. An Amazon, and at the same time very feminine.” He licked a globule of caviar off his lips. “To put it another way, very, very sexy and yet a crack shot with a pistol. I can say definitely that she is not known to the opposition. This all blew up in the early hours of yesterday morning. We have had no chance to do any staff work on it. Christa was available, luckily. She flew here from Lisbon. Here’s your passport.” He dropped an American passport on the table between them. “No picture as yet but that presents no problem. There are eight or ten unsold seats on the plane. We’d better collect Christa and have a conference, plan your cover story while my brain’s still working with some small degree of efficiency. She’s been reconnoitering the airport, their system of handling luggage.”
Shayne, his face thoughtful, spread a cracker with pate while he reviewed what the Frenchman had told him. LeFevre lifted his glass in a half-salute and smiled loosely. He had absorbed four ounces of Scotch in fifteen minutes and was beginning to show it.
“I know you only from the Adam dossier,” he said, “but still it seems to me that I know you very well. I have wondered whether we could ever take common action against our mutual enemy. Now to meet you at last.”
One of the reasons Shayne was still alive and healthy was that, bit by bit, as the years passed, he had developed a kind of distant-early-warning radar, and he was getting a strong set of signals now. Something was seriously wrong with the story LeFevre had told him. The Frenchman’s smile concealed a hard edge of anxiety.
“What makes you so sure Adam’s going to be there?” Shayne said.
“Because I’ve spent the last two years studying the man. That’s the good thing about Interpol. Anything that has a bearing on the subject, no matter how trivial, no matter in what country it happens, ends up in the one central file.” He spooned out more caviar and ate it greedily. “His deals are sometimes almost too clever. I think he would prefer to lose ten thousand pounds on a brilliant conception than earn five thousand on a stupid one. He likes to pull off several tricks at a time. He likes to be in on the denouement, to see the look on his adversary’s face when he realizes he’s been beaten.” He reached for his glass, nearly knocking it over. “I know things about him he may not know about himself.”
He had suddenly turned very pale. He ran his hand across his forehead and looked at Shayne with real entreaty.
“Your answer is yes.”
“It’s no,” Shayne said. “Get somebody else.”
LeFevre’s mouth opened and closed, and he swayed forward. “You know he’ll kill you unless you kill him first. You’ll never have another chance as good as this.”
“I’ve got something going for me as long as I stay in Miami.”
“I don’t understand. That thing this afternoon was very close.”
“Not close enough. I knew my way around the Orange Bowl. The Japs didn’t. That gave me a small percentage. I don’t think Adam’s going to bother waiting for the gold in South America. Why should he? He might louse up the deal by being there. The one thing I agree with you on is that he might make a point of meeting the plane if I’m on it. I don’t think you want me on that plane to break up a smuggling operation. You want to use me as bait.”
“Of course,” LeFevre said simply.
“And I took him for more than money in New York. A girl named Michele Guerin was killed. She meant something to him-they’d been living together. You know about all that if you’ve read the dossier. You know he holds it against me, and you think he might be tempted to do his own shooting. You’ll be there in force. You’ll wait till his gun is empty, close in on him, and nail him for murder. A big success for Interpol.”
“You’ve done the same thing before, set yourself up as a target-”
“Sure, sure,” Shayne said roughly. “But not unless I had at least a fifty-fifty chance. Do you think I won’t be noticed on that plane? I m
ight as well carry a sign-‘I’m Mike Shayne. Shoot me.’ If I’m going to be surrounded, I prefer to have it happen in my own town, where I know the names of a few cops, where I know which streets are one-way. I don’t speak Spanish. I’ve never been farther south than the Caribbean.”
“Mike,” LeFevre said desperately, “you don’t seem to realize what I’m offering-a chance for an open showdown. If you don’t take it, you’ll never be able to relax, you’ll never know what direction a bullet may be coming from-”
“I’ve been shot at before,” Shayne said curtly. “I’m still in business.”
“It never occurred to me you wouldn’t jump at this chance. Perhaps if Christa-”
“You can’t have a very good file on me,” Shayne said. “I like good-looking girls. I don’t always do what they ask me to.”
LeFevre wet his lips. And then suddenly an extraordinary change came over his face. The sharp downward lines smoothed out and his eyes lost their intensity.
“Well,” he said, sitting back. “I agree, people put too much emphasis on money. As for me, I only wanted money for one reason. To make up for my lack of an arm. Women, you see-”
He fell forward to one knee. Shayne watched without moving while the whiskey glass dropped from his fingers. He tried to speak, but his head dropped forward and he sagged to the floor.
Shayne went around the table and thumbed back one of the Frenchman’s eyelids. The pupil was enormous. Shayne ran a finger through the spilled whiskey, sniffed it, and touched it to the end of his tongue. It smelled and tasted like ordinary Scotch.
Turning the Frenchman so he could get inside his coat, Shayne removed his wallet and went through it quickly. He found, among other things, several hundred dollars in cash, an obscene photograph of a man with two women, a three-pack of rolled contraceptives.
He started a rapid search of the room. A fog was gathering behind his eyes, and he knew he might not have much time. An ashtray had been emptied into a wastebasket; some of the butts were tipped with lipstick. If any of this meant anything, it would have to wait.
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