Win Some, Lose Some

by Brett Halliday

  He zoomed past.

  He ran up swiftly on the blue Chrysler. As he went past, he had a sideward glimpse of a gray-haired man, clean-shaven, wearing a bureaucrat’s steel-rimmed glasses and a look of generalized anxiety. He was gripping the wheel hard, and Shayne had the impression that he was going faster than he would usually think was safe.

  At the next exit, Shayne dropped off, paid the small toll, and waited for the appearance of the Chrysler. It passed without slackening speed. The mobile operator had his connection ready, and Shayne told Frieda that their man was still on the highway. He picked up a new ticket and rejoined the pursuit. It was a system they had used before, and as long as the phones stayed open, it was almost impossible for even the most experienced dodger to lose them.

  They continued south. The Chrysler followed arrows into the long bypass around Miami. This was newly laid highway, and most of the traffic dropped off at the Miami exits. Now the van, with the pretty young woman at the wheel, became more conspicuous. Gold began driving more slowly, perhaps pacing himself to arrive somewhere at a precise moment. Shayne waited to pass until he was partially screened by a truck, then sped ahead to the next-to-the-last exit. This was construction country, with occasional one-way stretches, long lines of flaring smoke pots and blinkers.

  He was watching for the Chrysler, and saw the van first. He signaled for Frieda to pull over.

  “The big construction five miles back,” Shayne said. “That has to be it. Let’s go back and take a look.”

  The median strip, a wide buffer separating northbound and southbound traffic, had just been planted with grass. Signs warned them to keep off the shoulders, as there weren’t any, and they continued south to the next truck crossing, made the U-turn, and headed back toward the smoke-pot fires through an unfriendly environment that might have been blasted by B-52’s. A succession of increasingly urgent warnings alerted northbound cars to be prepared to shift into a one-way pattern that would continue for the next eight miles. It was a bottle neck during the day, but less serious at this time of night. Shayne pulled up as the turnoff approached.

  “It’s passable,” he said when the van stopped alongside. “The Highway Commissioner doesn’t have to pay attention to his own signs. But we’d better walk in. They’ll be watching for headlights.”

  Getting out, he moved some of the flaring pots so they could drive through. They parked the vehicles out of sight of the highway. Before leaving the car, Shayne pressed a recessed spring in the door panel and a Smith and Wesson .357 dropped into his hand.

  “It’s going to be like that, do you think?” Frieda said.

  “There’s a huge amount of money involved.”

  The gun went inside his shirt. He unlocked the trunk and from a well-organized built-in cabinet took a tiny camera and a pair of night-vision binoculars.

  “Let’s use the bicycle,” Frieda said. “We don’t want them to be gone by the time we get there.”

  “I haven’t ridden a bike in years.”

  “That’s one of the things you only need to learn once.”

  Unstrapping the bike from the rear of the van, she trundled it out on the smooth pavement while Shayne lined up the pots again to discourage other cars. He straddled the bike, an English ten-speed. Frieda perched on the center bar, where she blocked access to the shifting levers. Starting in one of the middle gears, they wobbled away, beginning to run true as they gathered speed.

  Frieda gave a low laugh. “Mike, this is funny.”

  “Is it?” he said, pedaling grimly.

  The set of the handlebars invited him to crouch forward, but of course Frieda was in the way. A slight downward incline helped a little, and then their momentum carried them up one of the barely perceptible rises that are southern Florida’s equivalent of hills. He caught the rhythm and soon was pedaling more strongly. It was a black night, without stars or moon. The lighter-colored sand on the shoulders kept him on the asphalt. The median was wider here, twenty yards or so of broken ground strewn with construction litter. On the far strip, orange barrels and an occasional flare reminded drivers to stay in their own lanes. Freestanding concrete pillars loomed ahead like a roofless temple. Creeping out at right angles was the new highway, which in a few years’ time would allow wheeled traffic to reach Card Sound and the bay. There was nothing much there now except sand and scrub. The highway people urged skeptics to think back to the 1920’s. When the Florida East Coast Railway started south from Palm Beach, Miami was only a village, little larger than Homestead today. People would follow the highway.

  Shayne came back on the pedals, forgetting that the brakes were on the handlebars. By the time he found them, he and Frieda were off in the sand, Frieda extricated herself. “Going back,” she whispered, “I’ll pedal.”

  An immense culvert was being installed here to carry an irrigation canal, which had to cross the new highway. Great lengths of pipe blocked access to the other strip. A paving machine, waiting for daylight, dominated the smaller vehicles grouped around it. Shayne left the bike in its blacker shadow, climbed up carefully under the big umbrella, and broke out the binoculars.

  The truck park, with long ranks of earth-moving and paving equipment, lay in a shallow, dishlike depression to the right, in what would eventually be the armpit of the intersection. There were a half-dozen light poles carrying the spread wings of mercury-vapor lights, but these had been turned off so the surreptitious meeting could take place in darkness. He adjusted the focusing knob and began looking for private cars. Everything had a queer reddish tone, as though seen through a filter.

  After one quick sweep, he began to see some order in the apparent chaos. A dirt road, passing out through a chain-link fence, must lead to the new construction, the broad sandy gash that was being driven from Homestead to the bay. That road and four others became the spokes of a great wheel. At the hub sat the huge mixer—a semi-permanent installation where the oil, sand, and gravel came together to be cooked. Two of the spokes ran outward to low banks of sand and gravel, which had been eaten at by payloaders. From huge bins on either side of the mixer, sand and gravel spilled onto conveyor belts leading to the apertures in the face-plate of the great revolving tank. Mixed and heated, loads of the hot goo would be drawn off into trucks and carried out to the pavers. The mixer itself was controlled from a command trailer, tied to the feeds and motors with a variety of umbilical connections.

  Headlights gleamed in the distance, traveling south. Magnified by the magic of his night glasses, the splinter of light permitted Shayne to pick out the shape of a parked car between the control trailer and a blocked-up tanker the size of a beached whale. He held the glasses steady. The next headlight gave the car dimensions and character. It was long and stately, with the distinctive grill and regal rear end of a Cadillac.

  Cadillac, of course, would be Larry Canada’s car of choice. This was Canada’s turf, the one place in the vicinity of Miami where he could hold a meeting and be reasonably sure of not being monitored or interrupted. It was a little melodramatic, but Canada had always had an excessive streak; a big man, he liked to do things in a big way.

  Shayne smiled slightly. Tim Rourke’s employers were going to love this.

  He moved back to the high step and used the glasses again, looking for Gold’s Chrysler or other cars. The magnification picked up a glimmer of light from a window of the control trailer.

  He climbed down. Surprising Canada and Gold in a secret conference two days before the opening of bids for a new stretch of highway would be almost enough. It would prove nothing, but the lawyers would then let Rourke print his accumulation of rumors and leaks, and Gold would be laughed at if he attempted to sue.

  But it would be better to make this a public event, with other witnesses in addition to a pair of private detectives working for Rourke’s paper.

  “Fireworks time,” he told Frieda softly. “Bicycle back and call the Homestead barracks. Tell them to get some cars out here fast. Somebody’s looting the s
ite. Do you have a gun in the van?”

  He felt her shake her head no.

  “Here, take mine.” He put it in her hand. “I’m going to try for a picture. Swing around and come back from the north. Put up a roadblock, barrels, rocks, whatever there is. If one of them wants to leave before the cops get here, he’ll have to stop to clear the road. If you have to, shoot out a tire. We want to catch them together.”

  He touched her shoulder and let her go. That should do it. He could roll one of the trucks out and block the down exit. Neither Cadillacs or Chryslers are rough-country cars.

  Moving cautiously, he checked the next piece of equipment, a scraper. It was parked on a slight rise. If he took off the brake and turned hard, it would roll into position to block both lanes with its long, angled blade.

  He continued to be extremely careful. Everything about this told him that Canada had come alone. Canada had a reputation for trusting nobody. Probably that was why he had lasted so many years. But Shayne, too, had lasted, and one of the reasons for that was that he took as few chances as possible.

  He tried to keep the glimmer of light from the control trailer in sight as he circled, coming down and in. He lost it for a moment, blocked by a long storage trailer. As he came around, he had a sense that the scene had changed, and felt for his glasses.

  Now one of the big Euclid payloaders was in his way. He stepped on the bucket yoke and then found an even higher perch against the front of the cab. He was seeing a different trailer window now, and this one had a chink of light along the bottom edge. Something moved. He saw the corner of a desk, part of a control console. A hand appeared, holding a paper. Another hand came into the field. The single papery object turned into several. Envelopes.

  Another fragmented headlight beam swept across the tops of the taller machines. Concentrating hard, Shayne almost missed a flicker of movement to the right of the trailer. Swinging, he searched the area.

  A figure moved out from the loading bin and approached the parked Cadillac. One hand was extended, groping through what to him was nearly complete darkness. Isolated in Shayne’s binoculars, he seemed tall and somewhat misshapen. He was wearing a warmup suit and a tight-fitting cap. He turned his head. Shayne’s hand jerked slightly as a face out of a nightmare jumped at him. It was a mask, the kind of protective mask worn by hockey goalies to keep from being stunned or killed by flying pucks.

  Hunched and furtive, the masked figure continued along the Cadillac’s long flank. The door opened. He slipped inside.

  Shayne’s mind was racing. A killing? No, a killer wouldn’t hide in the car. Then a kidnapping. Big Larry Canada would bring a far higher price than poor Eddie Maye. That meant there were others hidden in the darkness, waiting for the meeting to end. Other cars. Other guns.

  Chapter 8

  Downey had found a wrecker equipped with a siren. To make sure it was working, he flicked the switch on and off quickly, producing a spurt of noise. He had also carried in a regulation riot-control bullhorn. Together, these two noisemakers should put both Canada and the Tallahassee bureaucrat into a nice state of panic.

  The trio had two hours to prepare. The mercury lights were burning, but a sweep through the site showed them that Downey had been right: the watchman had been told to get lost so Canada could have the place to himself.

  Downey assigned roles, and they went through the whole thing twice. So what if Canada and Gold didn’t use a trailer, but talked in the car. It would be Canada’s car. One scream from that siren, and the Highway Commissioner would leap out and burn rubber getting away. If Canada had a gun, Downey would use the bullhorn and talk him into throwing it out.

  “Good God, man,” he said when Werner continued to nip at his heels. “You’d think I never made an arrest. These people are realists. When they see they’re outnumbered, they come in quietly and call the lawyer.”

  “But if he brings anybody with him—”

  “Wernie, look,” Downey said, clearly suffering. “We control. If they come in three cars, we sit here and jack off and wait for some better time. Who’s in a hurry? For that much dough, I’m willing to make it a six-month project.”

  And that was easy for Downey, Pam thought, because he was drawing a city salary. She and Werner had both left their jobs. They had decided not to ask Downey for an advance because that would really put him in charge. Her airplane ticket to New York was her ace in the hole. If she was really turned off by the way things were going, she could always pull out, and it gave her a dreamlike feeling. In dreams, she always escaped by sprouting wings and going straight up.

  The hot plant, according to Downey, had been fixed as the meeting place. Downey was guessing that they would go into the superintendent’s trailer, a radio-equipped command post for the whole operation. Werner was posted near this trailer, leaning against the fender of a big oil truck. At the first sign of a car, he would drop to the ground and slide between the front wheels. If they were lucky, Canada would park directly across from him.

  Downey and Pam were in the wrecker.

  “That kid is beginning to get to me,” Downey said in a low voice. “You’d think he was doing us a Goddamn favor. I don’t like that la-di-da attitude.”

  He fingered the siren switch. Pam was glad to see that even this hardened professional seemed nervous.

  “Like to sound you out on something,” he said. “This Weiner’s our weak link, I mean afterward. Put him in a room with a light in his eyes, and he’s going to holler for Mommy. I know the type.”

  “I think he may be tougher than you think.”

  “Yeah? You, I’m not worried about. You’d spit in their eye, which is the only thing to do in those cases, and now I’m talking as a man who’s spent twenty-five years on the far side of the desk. Right now, I admit, we need him.”

  He put his hand on the inside of her thigh, well up. “That movie tonight. Christ Jesus. I’ve heard they were raw, but wasn’t that something? There they are,” he said suddenly, leaning forward.

  A car was coming through the forest of pillars. It jounced off the pavement onto rougher ground and headed straight at them, its headlights on fire.

  Downey’s fingers tightened. “Down.”

  They went down so fast that their heads bumped. The headlights swept past the windshield. After a moment, Downey lifted his head. A car door opened, the headlights went off. Pam didn’t like to be the female, crouching in terror and leaving the decisions to the man, and she forced herself to look out. She saw an immense bearded man in a wrinkled white suit, a shirt with a necktie. He walked to a switch box on one of the light poles. An instant later, the mercury-vapor lamps flickered and died.

  “There now,” Downey breathed. “Didn’t I tell you he’d turn off the lights?”

  A light came on in one of the trailers. Pam turned Downey’s wrist so she could see the watch face. It was three minutes to eleven. The Highway Commissioner had driven all the way from Tallahassee, but he arrived exactly on the tick of eleven. He came in another Detroit gas-eating monster. He wheeled it alongside the Cadillac and cut his lights before getting out. They saw him briefly as the trailer door opened. When he was inside, a Venetian blind slammed down, obliterating most of the light.

  “Now, Werner, old buddy,” Downey said quietly, “don’t freeze up on me.”

  Werner had been told to wait long enough to be sure neither man came back to get something he had forgotten. Minutes passed. In the blackness, it was impossible to tell if he had started or was still lying on his belly under the oil truck, fingernails digging into the dirt. Pam knew that feeling. She had experienced the same thing in Eddie Maye’s garage, had stayed in a frozen crouch, unable to move. Now, for some reason, she was anxious for things to happen.

  Downey checked the time again and nudged her with an elbow. “Get out and give him a goose.” His hand came up hard between her legs. “Do this right and we’ll get plastered and have a high old time.”

  He may have been trying to ease the tens
ion, but it was extremely unsettling and annoying. She trailed her fingertips along the wrecker’s side and reached out, waving, until she touched the next truck. Almost at once, she whirled and felt her way back. Downey jumped as the door opened.

  “Forgot my damn mask.”

  She realized that Downey had yanked out his gun. He hadn’t fired, at least. She picked the mask off the seat and had her usual difficulty lining up the eye holes. She started off again, furious, sure that other things would be forgotten. Werner was right. There was no point putting themselves through this for a one-third share. One-third was too low.

  Her way was strewn with huge obstacles which she had to find her way around. There was a blink of light as the Cadillac’s door opened. It blinked off at once. Pam stopped, touching some kind of machine with an enormous, smooth-sided bucket which was partly raised. Briefly there was a faint glow from the Cadillac. Werner was using a tiny flash to find the ignition wire. Then it went dark.

  His next move now would be to set the dome-light switch so it wouldn’t flash on when the door opened, then soak the cloth pad with chloroform and get down. After that, the plan called for a four-minute wait. In the rehearsals, Downey had made them sit still in a darkened room to get an idea of how fantastically long four minutes can be when nothing is happening.

  Now the seconds ticked by. This was ridiculous, Pam thought. Surely Downey had lost track and gone back to zero. Do it, she whispered fiercely. Now!

  The siren’s scream, when it came, was so sudden and frightening that she had the sensation of being lifted clear of the ground. Her hands flew up, and her knuckles rang against the bucket.

  Downey’s voice thundered from the bullhorn. “Robinson, you men block that exit right we’ve got them bottled up here be careful they may be armed they may be armed—”