Million Dollar Handle ms-68

by Brett Halliday

  “Number four.”

  The four dog, an Irish red brindle bitch named Elegant, had been listed at 14 to 1. The price had been driven to nine in the last minutes of the betting. She was running third, a yard in from the rail. In the back-stretch, the two front-runners ran out of gas, and she sneaked between them.

  “And it’s Elegant coming into the stretch,” the caller shouted, “Drizzle by a length, H’s Choice third, and it’s Elegant, it’s Elegant to the wire, Elegant wins it, H’s Choice second-”

  Elegant’s well-wishers in the control room had been urging her on silently, in sign language, but as she crossed the line three lengths ahead of the opposition, Soupy was unable to suppress a joyful cry. The caller snapped off his mike.

  “Everybody shut up. The track isn’t supposed to care who wins.”

  The “Official” sign was flashed, and Rourke went off to cash the tickets. The winning bitch was separated from the rest, and led to the finish line for the pictures. The others, in the paddock, were having their muzzles and blankets removed. Painter and his two men conferred with the security man at the kennel entrance. After a moment, they were admitted.

  On the track, Mrs. Geary was presenting Elegant’s owner with a trophy and a check. Linda, perhaps a little drunk, was stage-managing the photographers.

  Another ceremony was underway inside the kennel. Shayne and the others watched it on the closed-circuit. The police came out, bringing Sanchez. Shayne had already dialed the security phone at the entrance, holding up for the last digit. He dialed that now.

  When the security man answered, he asked for Painter.

  Painter sounded pleased with the world. “You came through for once. We found a couple of needles on him. He did a fast toilet-flush, but not fast enough. We have a pint bottle of something that looks like gin, but I doubt if that’s what it actually is. I take back some of the things I’ve been thinking. Catch you committing a felony, that’s the way to get some cooperation out of you.”

  “Don’t leave yet. You’ll be missing a lot. Is everybody out of the kennel?”

  “He was working alone. As soon as I get him booked, I want to see that those dogs get every conceivable test there is.”

  “Let me talk to him for a minute.”

  The little man’s head shot forward, the reflex that showed he feared he was about to be blind-sided. Before he could speak, Shayne explained, “I want to push him while he’s off balance. He can’t be as cool as he looks.”

  “All right, but enunciate, so I can hear both ends.”

  He offered the phone to his prisoner. “Mike Shayne wants to talk to you, and I’m going to listen.”

  When Sanchez took the phone, Shayne said. “I taped your conversation with Mrs. Geary last night, Ricardo. I’ll pause three seconds while you think about that. One. Two. Three. Now I want to ask you about that left front fender.”

  Through the binoculars, Shayne saw him swallow. “You taped-”

  “You’ve already had your three seconds. You’ll have to explain that fender to Painter. Try it on me first.”

  “It always gets so banged out here,” Ricardo said. “Everybody gets so damned drunk. Three times in the last two months. Dee saw it and made up the story. He wasn’t riding in Geary’s car that night-he just saw a way to make money.”

  “Your car would be easy to jump-start. If you parked it at midnight, somebody with a coat hanger, Mrs. Geary, for example-”

  “No.”

  “You don’t think she’s capable of knocking her husband off the road?”

  “She couldn’t start a car without a key. She doesn’t have the faintest idea what’s under the hood.”

  “I’ll let Painter have you, then. I don’t think you’ll fall apart.”

  Hanging up, Shayne reached over the announcer’s shoulder and picked the mike out of his hands. “Now for the main event. Give me room.”

  He opened the switch. “Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention. The management regrets to announce that no more wagers will be accepted tonight. Sellers, lock your machines. I repeat, lock your machines.”

  Chapter 18

  Out on the track, the Irish owner, a bony lady with a fresh Miami sunburn, had completed her trilling remarks and was having her picture taken once more with the lean bitch that had won her $35,000. Mrs. Geary, who clearly wasn’t enjoying the role, stared bravely at the flashbulbs.

  “Soupy, this screen and this one,” Shayne said, pointing to the monitors covering the approaches to the kennel. “Look hard. I know those guns are here somewhere.”

  “Getting kind of strung-out, man,” Soupy said weakly, passing his hand in front of his eyes. “I looked at nine thousand faces-”

  Nothing showed on the kennel monitor but cage doors and shadows. At the mixing console, Dave looked around, and Shayne nodded.

  Dave started a tape of dog noises, barks, scratches, whines, recorded earlier when the evening’s dogs had begun to arrive, and looped onto a second tape recorder so it would play continuously. He plugged in a videotape cassette. He and Shayne had made this in the empty kennel, early that morning, using the regular kennel camera before it was disconnected. He fed the sound into the public address system, the picture out to the thirty-five small screens and the big screen in the theater. The barking was too loud, and he brought it down so Shayne’s voice could be heard more clearly.

  “I’m Michael Shayne, talking from the Surfside kennel. You’re all dog-lovers. That’s why you’re here. So I know you’ll be interested in what I’m about to show you. We’re going to do some back-and-forth cutting, and it may look a little ragged. Don’t expect a network production. We’ll cut now to a shot taken on this spot earlier this evening.”

  The screen went blank. Dave had the kennel tape on the screening monitor. Coming to the segment he wanted, he cut it to half speed and fed it into the outgoing circuit. The master screen on the console, and all the screens scattered about the track, showed Ricardo Sanchez’s lopsided figure walking between the three-high tiers of cages.

  “Stop it right there,” Shayne said into the public address mike.

  The action froze. Sanchez had taken his fist out of his side pocket and was checking the syringe level. The needle-point caught the light. Sanchez was hunched slightly. In real life a slim, athletic youth, he was turned by the distorting lens into a misshapen dwarf. It was a sinister picture, the embodiment of every dog bettor’s secret fear. The vast crowd had formed in clusters beneath each screen, motionless, staring. Shayne watched at the outside window. Anyone moving from one cluster to the next would be isolated, easy to spot from above. The security man at the kennel entrance left his post to look at one of the hanging screens in the ground-floor cafeteria.

  “This man’s name is Ricardo Sanchez,” Shayne said. “He is in charge of the lockup kennel because of the death of the regular kennelmaster. Mrs. Charlotte Geary is paying the rent on Ricardo’s new apartment in the Fanchon Towers. I’ll have more to say about that later. When this scene was taped, he was about to check one of the dogs entered in the International Classic, the favorite, I think, who got off fast and died in the backstretch. Don’t expect a refund on your losing tickets, anybody. If you’ll think about it a minute, you’ll see it’s impossible.”

  A rumble began to rise from the crowd, like a dog’s growl. Shayne signaled to Dave.

  The taped action resumed, at half speed. Sanchez reached into the cage, smiling slightly. To every bettor except the fortunate few who had backed the winning bitch, it was a wicked smile. Dave cut back to the prepared tape of Shayne in the kennel, talking into a hand mike.

  In the flesh, Shayne was still at the side window, shading his eyes from the overhead light. On the screen, he was saying: “A few nights ago we had a memorial service for Max Geary, who took this track away from the gangsters and built it to the point where tonight they were hoping for the first million-dollar handle. Too bad they won’t get it. Maybe next year, if the dogs are still running. Fo
r years, Max tried to run an honest swindle. The State of Florida ripped off its usual five percent of every dollar bill-and I hope everybody here understands that if you bet twelve races a night, you’re paying that five percent twelve times. You all have pencils-do your own multiplying. Max had to pay an under-the-table tax for his racing dates. He had to pay to keep the inspectors off his back. When the plant began to deteriorate and he wanted to clean it up, nobody would loan him any money. So he went to a man named Tony Castle, which is short for Castagnoli. One of those bad people who used to hang around racing in the old days. Castle already had a piece of the Surfside concessions-”

  And suddenly, while his own voice continued to boom through the PA outlets, Shayne understood how Castle and his men had got by Soupy without being seen.

  “Soupy,” he said urgently. “Look at the bars, the sandwich guys.”

  Soupy gave him a surprised glance, and began to study the interior monitors. Now that he knew what to look for, Shayne immediately saw a cream-colored panel truck parked at the end of the line of kennel vans and station wagons. He put the binoculars on it. The company name-J. T. Thomas-was written on its side in the same script used on the workers’ uniforms. One of these workers was coming off the ramp now, pushing a delivery dolly piled with cartons. He was heavily bearded, with glasses. The uniform was of dirty white with orange piping, a cocked orange-and-white hat. Shayne lost him for a moment. He came into view again at the glassed-in end of the kennel. The crowd there was all looking one way-up at Shayne’s face on the hanging screen.

  His arm moved, in a hard sideward throwing motion. An instant later, there was an explosion in the kennel.

  Shayne came around fast and punched the cutoff.

  “Pick up the kennel camera,” he told Dave.

  On the closed-circuit screen, nothing showed but billowing dark smoke. Dave put it into the feed.

  “I see one,” Soupy said excitedly, pointing at a screen showing the long sandwich counter under the projection booth in the Hall of the Greyhound. “You owe me a hundred bucks. At the beer pulls.”

  Shayne took the public address mike. “Painter. Pick up the phone at the kennel.”

  When he saw the chief of detectives beginning to move, Shayne dialed that number again. It was ringing by the time Painter got there. Shayne handed the phone to Soupy.

  “Give him the guy’s description and tell him to pick him up. Then keep looking. There are two more.”

  “Giving directions to Painter,” Soupy said. “I’ll love that.”

  A lick of flame appeared in the cloud of smoke pouring out through the kennel’s smashed wall. On the closed-circuit screen, dogs were leaping down from the broken cages. The concessionaire’s dolly had been turned over by the force of the blast, and the big cartons were scattered. The man who had been pushing it came out of the crowd. Shayne grabbed Rourke’s shoulder and pointed to the white-and-orange cap.

  “Going into the cafeteria, see him?”

  They picked him up on the cafeteria monitor. Instead of turning toward the betting hall and the theater, he went toward a side door that would take him back to the loading dock and the service entrance.

  Using his elbow, Shayne opened a path to the door. Lou Liebler jumped in front of him. Shayne knocked him aside.

  He ran down the moving escalator. The crowd was still magnetized in clusters beneath the screens, and he was able to move quickly to the next escalator, getting a glimpse of Painter’s men closing in on the theater sandwich counter. The wide ground-floor corridors were completely deserted. He saw Linda coming out of an unmarked door. She looked startled. He hit a closed exit gate with his shoulder and burst through.

  He looked one way, then the other. Two Surfside workers were running toward the foam truck, parked in its own bay to the right of the entrance. Shayne was there first, and it started for him at once. He backed it out and wheeled.

  The kennel and service entrance were at the extreme end of the long structure. He depressed the gas pedal to the floor. He came into the access driveway as the J. T. Thomas truck entered from the opposite end.

  Shayne held to the middle of the two lanes. The truck roared directly at him. Shayne was swearing savagely. He held the wheel steady with the weight of his left forearm, and fumbled the. 38 out of the sling.

  He fired through the windshield, aiming downward. One of the truck’s front tires blew. The truck swerved into some shrubbery on the left of the driveway, and came back, out of control. Shayne pulled the wheel hard. He struck the van just back of the front door, and was thrown forward into the windshield.

  For an instant, pain took him elsewhere. When he came back, the driver of the van, still wearing the perky white-and-orange cap, was out and running. He vaulted onto the loading dock, stumbling briefly. Before he recovered, Shayne would have had a shot, but his. 38 was somewhere on the floor.

  He had blood in his eyes. He stepped down.

  The sky was filled with the excited barking of dogs. In the control room, Dave was playing the kennel loop, to go with the action on the screens.

  The rear door of the van had popped open. Frieda Field was on the floor, tightly gagged. She had twisted around and was trying to roll to the door.

  He helped her sit up. “Are you O.K.?” With a movement of her head, she urged him to go after the driver. He started to work at the knot holding her wrists, but she kicked him away.

  “All right. I’ll be back.”

  Inside, the crowd remained intent on the screens, which showed a fixed view of the interior of the burning kennel. Shayne sent one of Painter’s plainclothes-men to release Frieda, and picked up a phone. When the control room answered he asked for Rourke.

  “I saw him come back in,” Rourke said. “We’re tracking him. He’s at the sellers’ windows. Looking outside. In that cap, he’s easy to follow. Mike, I think it’s Castle.”

  “With a beard?”

  “He’s been gone a long time. Moving. Stopped again. Painter has two of Soupy’s guys. Shall I let Painter have this one, or do you want him?”

  “I don’t like to be selfish.”

  “He can’t get away, all the exits are covered. No, there he goes! There he goes, Mike. Heading for the grandstand.”

  “Swing one of the overhead cameras. Pick him up when he comes out, and put it on the screens.”

  Rourke shouted to somebody. Having decided to let the police make the capture, Shayne moved to where he could watch on the screen. The sound was cut off abruptly. Now he could hear the frantic barking of the real dogs in the kennel. The main film patrol camera, which filmed the start and finish of each race, swung completely around and began to scan the nearly empty grandstand. That picture replaced the kennel interior on the screens. The camera held on one of the gates into the betting hall. A bearded man in the concessionaire’s uniform came through.

  “There he is,” Rourke’s excited voice said over all the outlets. “The man in white. It’s Tony Castle. Who just bombed the kennel, killing some high-priced racing greyhounds. Wanted for conspiracy to commit murder. Be careful. He may be armed. Let the cops do it.”

  The camera followed the hurrying figure down the steeply pitched aisle. The foam truck Shayne had been driving had been disentangled from the wrecked van, and was being brought in to lay foam on the fire. It stopped beside Shayne, and he stepped up onto its bumper so he could see over the crowd. Castle was taking the steps dangerously fast, two and three at a time. But that aisle led nowhere except to the paved terrace in front of the grandstand. Shayne caught a flicker of movement and color. The big gate in the corrugated fence behind the starting box was beginning to swing. Another J. T. Thomas man in orange and white appeared for an instant in the opening, then slipped out of sight.

  “Everybody stay back,” Rourke’s voice clamored. “The man is dangerous. Watch it on TV.”

  Two track workers brought the foam jet around to bear on the burning kennel. Shayne pulled one of them aside, body-checked the other, and sli
d behind the wheel. Without stopping to cut off the foam, he came about and headed for the paddock fence, bracing himself so he wouldn’t be sent into the glass a second time. He hit hard, hung for an instant and went through, rocking. The foam hose whipped behind him, spraying the infield, the track, the knots of people on the grandstand lawn. He had a straight 150-yard run. The crowd was yelling him on, as though they had tickets on him.

  Castle, at the far end of the straightaway, went over the rail, landed running, and headed for the gate. He was beginning to labor like the tranquilized dogs on the backstretch in the Classic. Shayne groped behind him, and his fingers fastened on the hose. He followed it to the nozzle and brought it up and around. The foam jetted straight in the air for an instant, then arched outward in front of the truck, and struck the gate before Castle reached it, knocking it shut. Shayne adjusted his aim slightly. As Castle turned, a gun in his hand suddenly, the powerful jet caught him in the chest and tumbled him backward.

  Shayne slewed to a stop and jumped, landing on Castle with both feet.

  They rolled together. Breaking free, Shayne stamped at Castle’s gun hand. Ignoring the pain in his arm, he pulled Castle up by the front of his uniform and slammed him against the gate, shaking the gun loose. Shayne kicked it away.

  The two men stood looking at each other. Castle gasped for breath. The cocky hat had been knocked off. A few strands of gray hair were plastered across his skull. The wet uniform had picked up some of the track dirt as he rolled. He had fattened up, as well as adding the beard, since Shayne last saw him. Shayne would have passed him on the street without a glance. Sometime in the last seven years, he had become an old man.

  “Mike Shayne,” Castle breathed. “You were in the kennel.”

  “We videotaped that last night. A man of your age shouldn’t be running around like this. You ought to be sitting in a deck chair watching seagulls.”