Fourth Down to Death

by Brett Halliday

  “She’s going to wreck that car,” Rourke observed.

  “Yeah, looks like it,” Shayne agreed, unconcerned.

  Finally the front door of the Olds opened and a man jumped out. She had been waiting for this. Reaching in through the broken window, she unlocked the door and snatched up a tape recorder from the front seat. She was backing out when the man grabbed her.

  She backed into him hard, using her hips, and flailed at the car roof with the recorder. He managed to swing her around, and she hit him once with the recorder and once with the cutting edge of her hand.

  “That’s Stitch,” Rourke said, peering through the glasses. “Cute little mustache.”

  Reddick came back at the woman and caught a knee in the stomach. She aimed another vicious chop at the side of his neck, but now he knew what kind of fight he was in. Ducking, he took it high. She threw the recorder to the sidewalk and began stamping on it. Reddick connected with a right, sending her staggering back against the car. When he bent down to retrieve the flat little box, she kicked him in the head.

  Rourke looked around. “Mike, those people are going to kill each other!”

  “Maybe you’re right.”

  He put the Buick in gear and rolled out of the parking lot. He didn’t hurry, and by the time he pulled up behind the Oldsmobile the fight was over.

  Reddick was thinner than he had looked from a distance. His cheeks were deeply hollowed. Everything about him, even his narrow mustache, was disarranged. His head was bleeding.

  He wrestled the woman around, one of her arms in both hands. As he turned her toward the car, he lifted cruelly. She was stamping blindly, in the hope of getting his instep with her sharp heel, but she had lost some of her steam. The battered tape recorder had broken apart on the sidewalk.

  “You’re going to regret this,” Reddick snarled at her. “Maybe you don’t know who I am… maybe you’re about to find out. You’ll get six months for this, and I’ll personally see to that!”

  Shayne, coming around the Olds, said mildly, “Take it easy, Stitch. You don’t want to arrest anybody.”

  Reddick turned without letting go of the woman’s arm. He looked past Shayne and saw Tim Rourke, with the gory plastic wound still stuck to his forehead.

  “So I don’t want to arrest anybody?” he repeated. “Suppose you tell me why not.”

  “Former FBI men aren’t supposed to let frail women beat them up.”

  “Let me tell you she’s not so goddamned frail,” Reddick growled. Then: “That’s Tim Rourke. Do I know you?”

  “I’m Michael Shayne, and we’re both trying to keep the pro game honest. Who’s the girl?”

  Reddick gave her a vicious shake. “I don’t know who the hell she is. I was parked here minding my own business, and all of a sudden she began banging on the window. Will you look at the goddamn car?”

  He relaxed his grip slightly, and she tried to twist away. He clamped down again and made her whimper.

  “I’m not through with you, baby, not by a long shot.”

  “You stinking bastard,” she said, wriggling. “Let go!”

  “Not before we have a long heart-to-heart talk.”

  “I’d like to be included in that,” Shayne said. “Let’s see if we can retrieve something. A little less pressure, Stitch.”

  Reddick snarled and twisted harder. “I’d like to pull her goddamn arm out of the goddamn socket.”

  Shayne took Reddick’s neck from the side in one hand and squeezed. Reddick let go of the woman.

  “Jesus,” he said in disgust.

  “What’s your name?” Shayne asked her.

  She said sullenly, “Bea Truszowski.”

  She was looking for a way through, but Shayne and Reddick had her blocked against the car, with Rourke backing them up. She was breathing hard, her breasts rising and falling inside a tight black jersey. Her hair had pulled loose, and one long dark strand fell alongside her face.

  “Then you’re Joe’s wife,” Shayne said. “Is somebody inside talking to him?”

  “I don’t have X-ray vision. I was supposed to go to the movies, and then at the last minute I didn’t feel like it and came home.”

  “And you found a league security agent sitting outside your house taping a conversation.”

  She cut her eyes at Reddick. “Gee, is that who it is? I didn’t know…”

  Reddick began putting himself back together, brushing off his clothes and finishing with a quick flick at his mustache to be sure the hairs were all growing the right way. He touched his temple, and looked at the blood on his hand.

  “You bitch. People who hit me always end up sorry. You wrecked a valuable piece of recording equipment, and I suppose you think that’s going to get Joe off the hook. Anything but. I know who that is in there, and that’s all I need. I can get Joe kicked into civilian life like that.” He snapped his fingers.

  “You do that, buster,” she said, “and the next time you get a cut forehead it’s going all the way through.”

  “Don’t threaten me. You don’t have anything to threaten me with but physical violence, and I can protect myself against that, I assure you.”

  He wavered suddenly and slumped against the fender. “You know how it is after a fight, Shayne. You feel—drained. You don’t happen to have something to drink, do you?”

  “Tim, the man needs a drink.”

  “We have cognac,” Rourke said, “and then we have some warm gin.”

  “Gin,” Reddick said.

  Rourke passed him a flask. Reddick gave Shayne an unfriendly look as he raised it to his lips.

  “And I’ll get around to you in a minute. Don’t tell me you couldn’t have broken that up before she destroyed the evidence.”

  He drank deeply, and coughed up some of the last mouthful.

  “Warm—I call it hot.”

  He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and drank again. “Well,” he said, returning the flask to Rourke, “in one way I’m glad we’ve got a newspaperman here. Rourke, you may have to vouch for the fact that it wasn’t my fault this fell apart. How many times do you think I get within smelling distance of a thing like this? Not too often. This was real courtroom evidence, and a woman had to come along and louse it up for me. Story of my life.”

  “Who’s in there, Stitch?” Shayne asked.

  “In due time, in due time. All will be revealed. Which Zacharias are you working for—Mr. or Mrs.?”

  “We’ll have to talk about that sometime.”

  “Well, I can’t force you to use your head instead of your fists, but this is one time when I advise you to think before you swing.” He looked at Shayne shrewdly. “I’ll bet you twenty-five bucks it was Chan that hired you, right?”

  “You’d better be on your way,” Shayne said. “You’ve got insurance papers to fill out.”

  “I doubt if the insurance is going to cover it,” he said, looking at his car. Then he gave a high-pitched laugh. “I don’t know why Chan’s so worked up about me. I’m harmless. I had all my teeth pulled years ago. But you’re right, this is down the drain. Why cry over smashed tape recorders? You can have the tape, if you think you can get anything out of it. But they only spoke about two words before the bitch started screaming. So goodbye, everybody. Things are breaking in six different places. Bea, you’d be a more desirable female if you didn’t fight so dirty.”

  She said hesitantly, and with a complete change of tone, “Give Joe a chance, will you? He can explain—”

  “Kid, believe me, it’s out of my hands. I’m an agreeable slob, and usually I’ll listen to any reasonable proposition. I don’t enjoy wrecking people’s careers. But did you ever try to stop a skyrocket after it’s out of the tube?”

  “Please…?”

  “Baby, relax. I really think Joe’s going to make it. When something is big enough, there’s a conspiracy of silence and everybody benefits. And this, in my humble opinion, is big. Remember I said that, Rourke.”

  “You are
n’t trying to do too many things at once, are you, Stitch?” Shayne said.

  “That’s a failing of mine, I know, but I can’t seem to help myself.”

  He found a pair of bathing trunks in the back seat and wrapped it around one fist to sweep the slivers of glass off the front seat. “One final word. Tell Chan it may be too late. If you want to borrow the skyrocket metaphor, feel free. I’m willing to be quoted.”

  He got in, slammed the door with a tinkle of glass and leaned all the way over to address Shayne through the open window. “You’ve got a pretty good average, I understand. But football’s my subject. I’m the expert. Next time stay on the sidelines and let me handle it.”

  “Sure, Stitch,” Shayne said evenly.

  Reddick drove off.

  “Stitch Reddick, all right,” Rourke commented. “He doesn’t try to be a nice guy because nice guys finish last.”

  The block was quiet. Bea Truszowski limped to her other shoe and bent down to put it on. As she came erect she touched her forehead.

  “I’m going to faint,” she announced in a whisper.

  She fell against Shayne. He caught her under the arms, feeling the impact of her breasts.

  “I don’t believe you, Bea,” he said, holding her away from him. “You’re not the type. You handled Stitch Reddick very well. But this may not be as serious as it seems. The owners want to hold the club together through the season, and the last thing they want is trouble.”

  She looked up at him, and then at Rourke. “He’s a newspaper reporter.”

  “I’m a newspaper reporter,” Rourke agreed, “but I don’t print everything I hear. I’ve done very well by Mike’s rules, and this is his baby. I’ve also got some money on the game tomorrow, which gives me an interest.”

  “Then, great,” she said, pulling away from Shayne. “Goodnight, fellows. Nice to’ve met you.”

  “We’re not leaving,” Shayne said. “Give me your house keys.”

  “You’re crazy. How could I do that, even if I thought it was a good idea? Joe’d clobber me.”

  “We’ve wasted enough time, Bea. Who’s in there with him?”

  “How should I know who it is! He told me I was making him nervous, to go to the movies. I do what he tells me the night before a game. He has different ways of concentrating. But there was something about the way he said it… What’s everybody flocking around for, anyway?”

  “People think he let the pass-rush through last week so they could get the quarterback.”

  She gave him an appalled look, her mouth open. Whirling suddenly, she darted into the street. Shayne overtook her in two strides. She started a yell.

  “Joe—”

  Shayne hit her. Her eyelids fluttered, and this time there was no question that she was gone.

  Rourke held her while Shayne went through the pockets of her tight slacks and found a leather key case.

  “I think you got a tooth,” Rourke observed.

  “It’s a rough sport. There’s some heavy cord in the back seat. Tie her up and gag her with something so she can’t yell.”

  He picked her up and pushed her into the Buick. While Rourke was tying her wrists together, Shayne unlocked the trunk and took out two cameras, one a small German 16 mm. loaded with film so sensitive it could take high-definition pictures by starlight, the other an old-fashioned Speed Graphic with a flash attachment. He handed the smaller camera to Rourke.

  “If I work this right, someone’s going to skin out of there in about a minute. Try to get his picture.”

  He unrolled a prophylactic and partially filled it with blood from the squeeze bottle, leaving enough slack so he could loop the open end around one finger.

  “Don’t forget,” Rourke said. “Football players are paid to be brutal.”

  Holding the big camera in his left hand, with the blood-filled sheath concealed against the flash holder, Shayne crossed the Truszowskis’ yard to the front porch.

  CHAPTER 5

  The key turned in the lock, but the door had been bolted from inside.

  Shayne circled the house, moving carefully. Hearing a woman speaking in a low husky whisper, he eased up to a lighted window and looked in through the tilted slats of a horizontal blind. He saw a small cluttered living room, with plastic furniture that looked as though it had been bought with green stamps. The voice came from a TV set near the window, and as Shayne moved on, it continued to whisper about the sexual rewards open to men who were bold enough to wear a certain perfumed after-shave lotion.

  He found the back door locked. He sorted through the keys, but none of them worked. Setting down the camera and keeping the prophylactic cupped in his left hand, he went to his picks. In a minute, he heard a faint click as the tumblers spilled over.

  He tried the door again, and it opened.

  He stepped quietly into a dark crowded hall. A refrigerator was purring calmly near the doorway to the kitchen.

  “The thing of it is, Lou,” a voice in the kitchen said nasally, “I don’t know him that well.”

  “The kicker’s the guy we’ve got to reach,” another male voice said. “He has something to say about do we or don’t we come in under the points.”

  There was a short pause, and the sound of bodies shifting.

  The first voice said, “If I thought I could help you I’d say yes. I could use the bread. But this Maxwell’s funny—a funny character. He just doesn’t socialize.”

  “Joe, baby, we’ve got this cat scouted. I hate to involve anybody else, to tell you the truth, but we can’t get near him, and we been trying all year.”

  “Lou, how would I even introduce it?”

  “The guy’s hurting,” Lou explained. “That part we arranged. Like he’s got to come up with five G’s in a hurry or somebody near and dear goes to jail. He’s worrying, Joe; he’s sick to his stomach worrying where he can get his fingers on five thousand. That’s why he don’t get in on the horseplay in the showers or join the boys for a beer. Get him off in the can or something and say, ‘Maxie,’ or whatever you call him, ‘I don’t like the attitude. Your ass is dragging. Something’s bothering you, isn’t it? I don’t like to butt in, but you’re going to start missing those goalposts, and this is my livelihood.’”

  “He’s been kicking fine, Lou. Been booming them in.”

  “Put it in your own words,” Lou said impatiently. “Cut the dialogue according to the situation. ‘You got those big circles under the eyes, Maxie, and I want you to keep healthy so we can win. Can I help you with any money, perhaps?’ I promise he’ll listen. See, he’s got this great average, the best in the league, and if the situation arises tomorrow where a kick will put Miami over the points, he can go to the right or the left a few yards and the average can absorb it.”

  “Maxie knows about the birds and the bees.”

  “And the chances are we won’t even need him.”

  He broke off, and the atmosphere changed slightly. “Are you sure the doors are locked?”

  “That’s the refrigerator,” Joe said. “It makes that kind of humming noise.”

  A chair scraped. Shayne drifted forward, his camera raised.

  As he appeared in the doorway, two faces looked around at him, startled. Joe Truck didn’t seem especially large, but the chair he was in looked very small. He needed a shave. His nose, which had been broken the previous Sunday, was hidden beneath a mass of dirty tape. His eyes looked out from beneath a ridge of scar tissue, but they didn’t seem to be focussed on anything. Two of his fingers protruded at curious angles.

  The man across the table from him was something else. He was short and dark, in a black suit of rough silk, and he could clearly be mean if he thought it was necessary. He raised one hand to hide from the camera.

  The flash bulb blew, sending a blaze of light over the two men and the objects on the table—a glass of milk in front of Joe Truck, an empty shot glass and a bottle of Canadian whiskey, a white envelope from which a sheaf of money had spilled onto the tablecloth.


  Shayne grinned. “Thanks for holding still. That should make a nice sharp print.”

  Lou snapped, “Can we deal?”

  “Not on this, Lou.”

  “There’s some nice bread around. Ask me about it.”

  “Sorry, I’m already signed up.”

  “Joe, grab him, for God’s sake!”

  Joe Truck blinked up at Shayne without moving. Shayne started to turn, and a short .38 pistol appeared in Lou’s hand.

  “Don’t go. I get hysterical when people sneak up on me and take my picture. This wouldn’t be a first for me. I’ve shot people before.”

  “I doubt it,” Shayne said. “You’re a runner, kid. You carry the money, and if somebody walks in at the wrong time, you’re the one who gets slammed. Put it away before you shoot yourself in the foot.”

  Lou fired into the door frame an inch from Shayne’s shoulder.

  “Careful,” Truck said mildly, still without moving. “My wife won’t appreciate it if she has to mop a lot of blood off the kitchen floor. And I got some close neighbors here. One shot—it’s a car backfiring. Two shots—it’s a gun.”

  Lou hissed, “Get the camera, stupid.”

  “If you want it that much, get it yourself.”

  The little eyes above the nose bandage remained sleepy and indifferent. Lou kicked back his chair and came toward Shayne in a mincing movement, the gun advanced.

  “After thinking it over,” Shayne said easily, “I’ll accept your offer. You get the picture, I forget that I heard you trying to tempt an innocent lineman, and I get the envelope on the table.”

  “Drop the camera. Kick it over.”

  Shayne shrugged. Suddenly he flicked his eyes at Truck, who was still in his chair. No football player would have gone for the fake, but Lou’s gun jerked. Jumping in close, Shayne swung the camera and stamped down hard at one of the pointed shoes. Lou tried to bring the gun back. Shayne had his wrist in his right hand. There was nothing in the way of muscle beneath Lou’s black suit. Shayne pulled the gun up and let it scrape across his own forehead.

  Then, with a hard downward twist, he wrenched the gun out of Lou’s grasp and sent it spinning across the kitchen. The camera dropped. He staggered past Lou, touched his head and fell on the palm of the hand that was holding the blood-filled condom.