Fourth Down to Death

by Brett Halliday

  Zacharias continued to make noises, but Shayne put the phone down gently. Shifting to the booth, he dialed the number Ambrosiano had given him. The bookie sounded relieved to hear from him.

  “I was beginning to think you were shucking me,” Ambrosiano said. “This is a nervous business, and I’m getting out after the Superbowl. My kids are all through college and one of these days the law of averages will catch up with me and they’ll bust me for not paying the fifty dollars… You know why I’m calling.”

  “Miami-New York.”

  “That’s right. I hear you’ve been retained by Zacharias.”

  “Now who told you that, Sol?”

  “Everybody in town knows it. I heard it from a cab driver, for Christ’s sake. I’m hoping you can give me some information, because I could really get stabbed on this game if the points keep moving.”

  “What are you giving now?”

  “Fifteen on New York.”

  “Down two,” Shayne said thoughtfully.

  “Which I could live with if it holds through the morning. But I’ve been getting a rush of Miami money, and I thought I’d better stop answering the phone until I find out what the hell is going on.”

  “If you want my advice, Sol, put the game in the circle. Did that cab driver tell you what happened to Stitch Reddick?”

  “No, what did? I’ve been hearing about Stitch for two weeks. And that’s a funny one, because we didn’t have any reason to send for him. We don’t even know why he’s here.”

  “Right now he’s dead,” Shayne said, “and there are going to be rumors tomorrow morning that somebody killed him. I’m hoping for a small panic, and I can’t predict now which way some of these people are going to jump. If you’re out of balance, better lay off what you can and eat the rest.”

  “The game’s already off the board in a couple of places. But I don’t like to take off a Miami game in Miami. It’s bad public relations. I thought, you know, if we could pool our ideas maybe we could come up with something… The rumors, Mike! Joe Truszowski and a rookie named Aaron Brown got into a fight and smashed each other up—have you heard that one? And Morty Lynch has been fired. And so on… The thing is, inside money has been coming in both ways. I’ve never known anything like it.”

  “Sol, if there’s an announcement tomorrow morning that Ronnie’s playing, what will that do to the points?”

  “My God! Many thanks, Mike. The game is off the board, as of now.”

  “Wait a minute. Answer the question.”

  “We’d have to drop it to six or seven, and we couldn’t survive at the price. This is crazy—how can he play? He hasn’t touched a football all week. What’s that going to do to his timing?”

  “He says passing is all psychological.”

  “It is, like hell! Am I glad I called you—I’ll get to work and see how much of this Miami money I can peddle. I really owe you a favor, Mike.”

  “Maybe I’ll collect right away.” He waited a moment. “You’re heavy on Miami by how much?”

  “If you want to go into that, let’s not do it on the phone.”

  “I’m in a booth. You’re a gambler. Take a chance for once.”

  Ambrosiano said apologetically, “I keep thinking about what I’ll live on after I stop making book. One of the things I don’t have is social security.… To answer your question, I’m heavy in six figures.”

  “You can’t get rid of all that at fifteen points. Ronnie checked out of the hospital an hour ago, and that kind of news travels fast.”

  “Which is why I’ve got to move.”

  “I think it’s already too late. If the game’s scratched everywhere else and you stay open, you can pull in money from all over the country.”

  “At seven or eight points, and that’s the way bookies go bankrupt. A quarter of a million on Miami at seventeen. A quarter million on New York at seven. And what if New York wins by ten? I lose half a million.”

  “You said your kids are through college. The whole object of the point spread is to bring in maximum action.”

  “You’re leading up to something.”

  “Yeah. I’m beginning to get a faint glimmer. If I give you a list of names, will you find out for me how they’ve bet?”

  The bookie was doubtful. “I don’t know, Mike. Even if they bet with me, that’s top security information.”

  “I like your sense of ethics, Sol, but make an exception tonight, in the interests of staying solvent. See if you can get any help from the layoff people, and if it seems you’re stuck, get back to me. I’m still moving around.”

  “Mike, I have to think of my clients—”

  “Even when they’re trying to screw you?”

  “Nobody bets because they want to lose. I think you may have tied me up just long enough so nobody’s going to want any of my Miami action, and that’s probably been in the back of your mind all along, right? Give me the goddamn names.”

  “Mrs. Zacharias,” Shayne said. “Ted Knapp, and if you know anybody who ever did any bearding for Knapp, check on them, too. A nurse named Dody Germaine. Stitch Reddick, and he’s somebody else who’d use beards. Lou Mangione.”

  “Who?” the bookie said quickly.

  “Not the one you’re thinking about. This is a nephew. Any family connection of any of the coaches or players or anybody in the Miami organization. Anybody in the Ronnie James set—his agents or his agents’ girlfriends. Any doctor on the staff of Mercy Hospital. I think that’s it. There’s a lot of work there, but I don’t want to know about amounts below ten thousand. I’m looking for somebody who bets inconsistently—a hundred dollars one week, five thousand the next.”

  “And who wins with the big bets?”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “It’s going to take time,” Ambrosiano said, still doubtful. “I’ll have to wake up some people. You’d better call me. From a public phone.”

  Morty Lynch, a stocky, powerfully built man whose short hair seemed electrically charged, was waiting for Shayne at the appointed gate, striding up and down swinging his arms.

  “Sorry I’m late,” Shayne said.

  “That’s all right. I’m killing the clock.”

  Shayne took a powerful three-cell flashlight and they entered the stadium lobby. As they walked he explained what he was hoping to find—a miniaturized transmitter with an open mike. The receiver could be located anywhere within a radius of an eighth of a mile, taped to the bottom of a seat or concealed in a parked car. Most installations of this kind were left unattended. The tape recorder would be voice-actuated, starting only when somebody spoke. So Shayne cautioned Lynch to say nothing after they entered the locker room, and to move quietly.

  With no football players in it, the dressing room seemed huge. Their feet made no sound on the tufted carpet. There were four long unpadded tables in the taping room, several heat units, a whirlpool bath, a small alcove with a desk and medical supplies, another alcove at the far end, with a portable chalkboard, a table and a half-dozen straight chairs. A defensive pattern was chalked on the board.

  They began looking. Lynch started to say something, but turned it into a cough when Shayne gave him a look.

  It took them only a minute or two to find it—a small box the size of a cigarette package, taped to the backside of the drawer in the low table. There was just enough clearance so the drawer could close with the transmitter in place. Lynch grinned broadly and made a motion as though to pry it loose. Shayne waved him away and put the drawer back. They headed through the locker room, turning out lights.

  “You’re right, Mike,” Lynch said when they were out in the echoing corridor. “We’ll put in the key plays as usual—for the bug’s benefit—and then we’ll go to the john and turn on the water and work out the variations.”

  “Let them stop you the first couple of times. When you come in with the first variation, try to break it for a score. Then work a few switches and go back to one of the plays they expect, and score with that.”
>
  “And then play regular hard-nosed football. Mike, whatever Sid’s paying you, you just earned it. If I were a gambling man, I’d take a piece of that seventeen-point money myself.”

  Shayne didn’t tell him the Miami game had been embargoed in at least two major cities, and was in trouble in Miami itself. Lynch already had enough to worry about.

  After saying goodnight, Shayne returned to the phone booth and dialed Ambrosiano. The line was busy. He waited until he was a block from his hotel before trying again.

  “Mike,” Ambrosiano said. “Well, San Francisco and L.A. have heard about Ronnie and closed down. Vegas is open, but nobody wanted to help me. I seem to be caught, and I’m not the only one. Tomorrow could be a bad day for the profession. I didn’t get all the information you wanted, but I made a start. Are you ready?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Ted Knapp is strong on Miami with my book and three others. We’ve got to assume that if he likes Miami to that extent, he went out of town with more. His credit is good in Vegas for up to forty thousand, but they wouldn’t tell me if he used it.”

  “When did he place those bets?”

  “Today—late afternoon, early evening. Mrs. Zacharias has five hundred with me on New York at seventeen, and a thousand more at fifteen. You figure it out. The name Lou Mangione didn’t mean anything to anybody. I couldn’t get anything on Stitch Reddick. That would have to be really underground, and unless you can give me some kind of lead, there’s no use asking.… I did better with the doctors. There’s one guy who does most of the medical business, and believe me, it’s lucrative. They’re high-income people with too little time to do any real research. Most of the play has been on Miami. Nothing on Miami over five. He’s booked one big bet on New York, thirty thousand, and here’s somebody who usually spreads his money across and hasn’t ever gone over a nickel on anyone game. The name is Prettyman.”

  “Prettyman!” Shayne said, hearing the name of Ronnie James’s drinking companion, the doctor who had taken care of the quarterback’s simulated coma. “Do you know when he put it in?”

  “Early in the week. I think Tuesday.”

  “That does it, Sol,” Shayne said after a moment. “How many points do you want to give me on New York?”

  “This is your own money we’re talking about?”

  “If Prettyman has confidence, I have confidence. You said something about seven points.”

  “I’ll give seven when I hear that James is definitely playing! All I know for sure is he’s out of the hospital.”

  “Give me ten and you can put me down for ten thousand.”

  “You’re telling me something,” Ambrosiano said with care.

  “And another thousand for Tim Rourke.”

  “Mike, you’re cheering me up,” the bookie said more happily. “I still don’t get it, but you’re the man on the inside. You think it’s safe to keep the game on the board?”

  “That’s up to you, Sol. At ten points, I think I’ve got the percentages. But you know as well as I do that nothing is sure in football.”

  CHAPTER 15

  Shayne told his switchboard to block all calls. He slept late, ate a large, leisurely breakfast, and riffled through the Sunday papers. The sports pages were gloomy about the home team’s prospects without their brilliant first-string quarterback. Reddick’s death had made page 1, but the stories were perfunctory and didn’t make much of his affiliation with professional football. He had gone in the water and Michael Shayne, the private detective, had pulled him out, but not soon enough.

  Shayne asked for his accumulated calls. Most of them were from the Chief of Police, Will Gentry, and from Sid Zacharias. He threw the slips away and called Rourke. Rourke was surprised and concerned to learn that Ambrosiano had given as much as ten points on New York after hearing that James would be running the Miami offense.

  “We figure he’ll be weak after all that time in bed,” Shayne said.

  “Mike, would you mind not joking? I’m not questioning your judgment, but what is it based on?”

  “A hunch, Tim.”

  “It damn well better be more than a hunch!”

  Rourke had a press pass for him. They agreed on a place to meet, and Shayne called Ambrosiano. The bookie had taken a few more heavy bets on Miami, but then had decided he was in deep enough and closed down the line. Nobody else in town had taken anything.

  A cold rain was falling. Shayne filled a pocket flask with cognac, found his field glasses and phoned the desk to have his Buick brought around. By the time he reached the Bowl, the lots were beginning to fill up, but it was still half an hour until game time and most of the people were staying dry in their cars.

  He met Rourke and they rode the elevator to the enclosed press box, on the uppermost tier. Rourke was becoming more and more concerned about his bet. He realized that Shayne knew more about the situation than he did, and as usual, preferred to keep his ideas to himself, but was the slippery footing going to work for them or against them?

  “We’re not betting on the weather,” Shayne said. “We’re betting on the quarterback.”

  “Yeah, but why should Ronnie want to lose?”

  “Stop jittering and have a drink.”

  “It seems to me I have something to jitter about. The goddamn city editor heard that rumor about Reddick’s autopsy, that the guy was stoned as well as plastered, and why hasn’t he had a report from his ace reporter, who claims to be covering the story?”

  “You don’t print another paper till tomorrow morning. Plenty of time.”

  “That’s exactly what I told him, with some profanity thrown in. The commissioner flew down, did you hear that? And to all questions from reporters at the airport, he quipped, ‘No comment.’”

  Only a few of the typewriters in the long line were busy. The radiomen were testing their circuits. At opposite ends of the long built-in counter, two clusters of coaches, an offensive and defensive man, from each team were laying out their equipment. Two phones from each station connected with the New York and Miami benches.

  Taking an unoccupied chair, Shayne unlimbered his field glasses. People were beginning to file into the stadium under assorted umbrellas and wearing rain-weather gear. On the Miami side of the field, the place-kicker, Art Maxwell, was kicking imaginary footballs. Ronnie James, in a plastic rain cape without his pads, was warming up on the sidelines.

  Shayne moved his focussing knob. Ronnie, chewing gum, seemed very loose. He lobbed the ball to a rookie from one of the suicide squads and the rookie tossed it back. Ronnie gathered it in, darted to his right, and fired one very hard. It squirted out of the rookie’s hands. Ronnie laughed and waved.

  Shayne lifted his glasses to the club boxes in the upper tier. They were still empty.

  Without putting his glasses away, he went down the line of chairs to the Miami coaching phones. Reaching past one of the coaches, he picked up a phone and worked the crank. The coach grunted a question.

  “Relax,” Shayne said. “I’m working for Zacharias.”

  The phone rang on the Miami bench. James, a step or two away, picked a return out of the air and threw another hard, perfect spiral. Shayne continued to agitate the phone until another player picked it up. Shayne asked for the quarterback.

  He kept his glasses on James’s face. “This is Mike Shayne up here. I want to wish you luck.”

  “Great day for a ball game,” James said.

  “How are you feeling after all that bed rest?”

  “Sharp, man. Ready to roll.” He looked up toward the press box, continuing to work his throwing arm under the cape. “We’re going to massacre these bastards, so if you want to get down a last-minute bet—”

  “The game’s off the board all over the country—haven’t you heard? I managed to bet eleven thousand on New York before they closed.”

  The engaging James grin was shut off abruptly. Crinkles of concentration formed at the corners of his eyes.

  “What points did they give
you?”

  “Ten.”

  From the quarterback’s reaction, this was bad news. He scowled.

  “You’re going to lose your money.”

  “I’m counting on you, Ronnie. I don’t think you’re going to have that spark today.”

  “You know, this isn’t the best kind of pre-game warmup. They tell us to think positively. I’m going to have that spark—I’m going to connect with every pass, and the people who backed Miami are going to be drinking champagne… Now back to work.”

  “Don’t go yet,” Shayne told him. “I had another reason for calling. Did you see Reddick last night before he was killed?”

  James spun around as though hit. His face no longer visible, he said, “I’ll talk to you after the game. I can’t jam up my mind now with a lot of—”

  Shayne interrupted. “You’re the new breed of ballplayer, Ronnie. You don’t take football that seriously. Is Dody here someplace?”

  “What Dody—the nurse? I can’t keep track of everybody.”

  “We checked with New York,” Shayne said. “If you’d tried a little harder, you could have found a girl who couldn’t be tied to you with one long-distance call. That suggests you wanted it to be easy. It goes with your style. You imported her. I’m sure you paid her plane fare. She imported Mangione.… I can either suppress this or pass it on. Which way would be best for you?”

  James came around again and sat down on the bench. “Shayne, people are listening up there. Will you please bear that in mind?”

  “Don’t feel embarrassed. It’ll all be out in the papers tomorrow morning.”

  “You’ve got binoculars on me, haven’t you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then look me in the eye. I’ll start answering questions sixty seconds after the game. I won’t take time to get out of my muddy pants. So lay off right now, will you? It’s in your interest and the club’s interest.”

  “I don’t believe it. You can’t swing this yourself, Ronnie. I keep telling people that everything’s changed. Stitch Reddick didn’t die in an automobile accident. He was murdered, and I think I can prove it.”