“Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, Mike.”
Shayne laughed happily. “The shooter was six inches off. A little better aim, and I couldn’t have pushed that plunger, right? Right!”
“I’m surprised at you, Mike. It’s easy to miss even at point-blank range with a handgun. That was a downward shot, the hardest there is.”
Shayne pushed off the table. Pain stabbed him in the shoulder. He stood still to let the doctor fasten a sling around his neck.
“No, I didn’t tell you about this guy,” he said, his eyes alive. “He wouldn’t miss unless somebody told him to miss. Szigetti-he’s one of the best shots I’ve ever seen.”
“On a range,” Rourke said skeptically. “This was in combat.”
“Tim, at that distance he could have put a slug through my skull with both eyes shut, in the last stage of Parkinson’s disease. They wanted me to push that plunger. They wanted that truck to burn.”
“Mike, make sense.”
The doctor knotted the sling at the back of Shayne’s neck. “OK?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Shayne said impatiently. “The truck was loaded with envelopes. They certainly looked real. I opened one of them, and the stuff inside certainly looked like heroin. But I didn’t give myself a shot to see what effect it would have on me. For all I know, it could have been sugar or cornstarch. Let’s go.”
“Mike, you didn’t notice the way that truck was burning. If you think you’re going to rake around in the ashes and find anything, let me tell you-”
Shayne stuck a cigarette in his mouth and Rourke lit it for him. “I wish I knew Turkish. I’d like to tell the doctor I feel better.”
“Funny,” Rourke said. “I feel worse. Maybe you’ll tell me what this is all about if I stay out from underfoot and keep feeding you drinks.”
Shayne grinned at him. “You’ll have to do more than that, Tim, if I’m right. You just saved me from making a very bad mistake. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“I wonder myself,” the reporter said glumly. “Not often, though.”
Rourke still had the use of the police Ford with the phone in the back seat. When they arrived in front of the Motor Shop, a heavy wrecker was pulling out with the great charred hulk of the Sanitation truck. Only one piece of fire apparatus was still there, a small traffic-control truck with a revolving beacon.
“Want me to tell them to wait so we can look it over for burned cornstarch?” Rourke said.
“We’re not looking for cornstarch. We’re looking for heroin.”
“Why, obviously,” Rourke said sarcastically. “A couple of tons, wasn’t it? It must be around somewhere.”
They found a place to park on Eleventh and waited till the wreck was gone and traffic on the block had been allowed to return to normal. Shayne got out.
“I have to pick a lock, Tim. I’ll need more than one hand.”
“I don’t know anything about picking locks.”
“Then it’s time you learned.”
In front of the small door into the Motor Shop, Shayne handed the reporter his wallet and told him where to find his collection of picking equipment. Together, not without difficulty, they managed to force the lock. Inside, Rourke located the light switches and turned everything on.
“Let’s see, two tons of heroin,” he reminded himself. “Where would be a good place to start?”
“First we find a truck with a dented fender.”
They started along the line of disabled vehicles. When they reached the end Rourke suggested, “Maybe they hammered it out?”
“There wasn’t time,” Shayne said. “Well, it’s not the first hunch I ever had that didn’t pay off. As Power says, we really have achieved quite a lot, about as much as you could stick in a bug’s eye-Wait a minute.”
One of the five-ton monsters had been pulled out on the floor. The front end was up on jacks and one of the wheels was off. The hood was up. A pad was thrown over the fender so the mechanic could lie on it while working on the motor. Shayne strode toward the truck and jerked off the pad.
There was a deep vertical dent underneath.
“Here it is, by God!”
Rourke helped him open the side hatch. “Yeah,” Shayne said with satisfaction, seeing the cardboard cartons and the bundles of nine-by-twelve envelopes.
“I’m a genius!” Rourke exclaimed, performing a jerky little dance. “I thought I was saying you were lucky to be hit in the shoulder, not the head. What I really was saying was that we ought to hurry down here and look for a truck with a dented fender.”
He reached in to pull out an envelope. Shayne said sharply, “Leave it alone, Tim. Close the hatch. We’ve got to hurry.”
His tone was urgent. Rourke gave him a single quick glance, then slammed the hatch and fastened the toggle bolts.
“Now I know what we do,” he said. “We get a few dozen cops and wait for somebody to show up. Mike, I believe we’re going to pull this out of the fire!”
Shayne’s mind was racing. It was more of a steeplechase than a race on the flat-jumps, quick turns, hazards, then finally a hard fast run on level ground to the finish. He snapped his fingers.
“Didn’t you say we’re in a hurry?” Rourke asked.
“Damn right we’re in a hurry. A lot to do. Can you start one of these trucks?”
“Yes-s,” the reporter said without conviction, looking along the impressive lineup. “Maybe.”
“OK, the first thing to do is find one that runs.”
He started at one end while Rourke started at the other. The hardest part for Shayne was getting up in the cab. On his first try the door swung closed and dealt him a bad blow on his injured shoulder. Inside the cab, one arm was all he needed. The first truck failed to start at all. The second kept stalling. The third took hold at once, sounding healthy enough when he raced it in neutral. There was too much play in the brake pedal, which was probably the ailment that had brought it in.
Rourke was still trying to find the starting mechanism of the last truck in line. Shayne tapped the horn and his friend came running.
“Open the hatch,” Shayne called down. “See what’s inside.”
In a moment Rourke called back, “Junk. I don’t mean that kind of junk. Cans, broken bottles.”
“Full?”
“Right to the top.”
“OK. Here we go.”
He put the truck in low and eased out of line, applying his brakes at the end of the arc. They were very soft. He shifted into reverse and backed toward the grease pit at the far end of the shop.
“Give me some help,” he called to Rourke. “I want to get right to the edge of the pit.”
Rourke ran past and began waving. Shayne allowed plenty of time to stop.
“Now lift the tailgate. Can you see where it unfastens?”
Rourke disappeared from sight. “You mean the whole back piece? I see a couple of clamps, but don’t blame me if-” He jumped down. “Try it.”
Shayne pulled a lever, and the conveyor started clanking. He shut that off and tried another. Slowly the enormous body began to tilt into dumping position.
“I only want to dump part of the load. Tell me when to stop.”
Rourke moved back to the edge of the pit and gave him a hand signal. Again Shayne guessed wrong, and the upended body began to descend. He tried something else. There was a sudden roar behind him as the chewed-up rubbish cascaded into the pit.
“Stop!” Rourke shouted. “That’s enough! That’s too much!”
Shayne returned the lever to its previous position and lowered the body. Rourke fastened the tailgate while Shayne moved the truck back down the floor. He drew up beside the one with the front wheel missing.
“I’m beginning to get it,” Rourke said. “It’s the old razzle-dazzle. We switch trucks. But why?”
“Later,” Shayne grunted.
The reporter had to do most of the work. He transferred fifteen cartons, piling them carefully on top of the trash so a
nyone opening the hatch for a quick look would see nothing but cartons. He located the missing wheel and put it back on. Then Shayne maneuvered that truck back into the gap in the line, the third from the far end. Returning to the other truck, the one with fifteen cartons of narcotics on top of its usual cargo, he moved it forward to occupy the exact space where the other truck had been. “Now we take off a wheel.”
Rourke jacked up the front end and with Shayne’s help managed to start the nuts. He rolled the wheel into the parts office, where he had found the other. They raised the hood. Shayne dented the fender with a careful blow from a pry bar, then concealed the dent beneath the oily pad.
“They’ve got different serial numbers,” Rourke pointed out.
“I didn’t look for serial numbers when I picked out the other truck,” Shayne said. “I looked for the dent. And that’s what’s bothering me. Now we’ve got two trucks with dented front fenders.”
He had backed the narcotics truck as far behind the others as he dared, but the sharp dent in the fender still screamed for attention.
“Hide it with something?” Rourke suggested.
“No, get me a hammer.”
The reporter scrambled away, meeting Shayne a moment later at the other truck with a heavy ball peen hammer. “I don’t know about beating it out, Mike. That’s body work. You’d have to take off the fender.”
“Like this.”
Shayne took the hammer. Holding it close to the head so he could swing it with one hand, he brought it down hard on the fender. The small dent disappeared in a larger one.
“Oh,” Rourke said. “Like that. Let me.”
Using both hands, he slammed the hammer down on the right fender, which until then had not been damaged. He swung again and again, until both fenders and the radiator grille were bashed in all the way across, as though the big truck had lost a decision to an even bigger one.
Shayne stopped him.
Rourke panted, “I’m glad you let me come along, Mike. That’s the most enjoyable work I’ve done in years.”
“That’s the only work you’ve done in years,” Shayne snorted.
Rourke put the hammer back while Shayne looked around carefully to see if they had left any signs of their visit besides the newly damaged front end of the narcotics truck.
“We probably left fingerprints,” Rourke said, coming back.
“It’s a longshot,” Shayne said with a grin. “And I think you pointed out that longshots sometimes come in.”
“That’s not what I said. I said they almost always lose.”
They snapped off the lights and returned to the Ford.
“You’ve only got that one arm,” Rourke said. “And you know me, the less roughhousing I get involved in personally, the better. We need some reinforcements.”
“Just what I was thinking,” Shayne said. “Reach me the phone.”
CHAPTER 17
The next morning at seven-fifteen, after an all-night vigil, Shayne was drinking coffee out of a soggy container and trying to keep his eyes open. His shoulder throbbed unpleasantly. The coffee was laced with cognac, but it tasted more of cardboard than of either cognac or coffee. He frequently had to stay awake all night when he was caught up in a case, but this was the least enjoyable way to do it, in the front seat of a car.
The deadline, he knew, must be approaching. The truck had to be out of the Motor Shop before the first mechanic arrived. Shayne had gone to considerable trouble to set this up, and he couldn’t afford to miss it. Nevertheless his head kept falling forward. The music coming from the dashboard radio blurred in and out.
Suddenly he saw a man wearing the familiar green Sanitation Department uniform. He shook Tim Rourke’s shoulder.
The reporter’s long, disjointed body was jackknifed over the steering wheel. He looked around wildly and exclaimed, “Whose deal?”
“Wake up, Tim. We’re about to move.”
“You don’t think I could sleep at a time like this, do you?” Rourke said indignantly. “How long till daylight?”
“Damn it, Tim, open your eyes. The sun’s been up for hours. Have some lukewarm coffee.”
Rourke took the container. He said suddenly, “Somebody’s going in!”
“That’s what I’m telling you.”
They were still parked on Eleventh, pointing uptown. The man in the green uniform had reached the Motor Shop door. Shayne caught a glimpse of wraparound dark glasses and a full mustache as he looked around. Then he was inside.
“Seven-fifteen,” Rourke said in surprise, looking at his watch. “As late as that. Maybe it’s somebody coming to work early.”
“When did you know an auto mechanic to come to work early?”
“I guess I went to sleep,” Rourke said sheepishly. “Where is everybody?”
“Around. Let’s see if they’re all awake.”
He turned off the music and picked up the police transmitter.
“Shayne,” he said. “It’s been a long night, but we’re about to roll. The guy’s inside now. It shouldn’t take him more than two minutes to put on the wheel. Everybody check in, please.”
Three other cars responded.
“Good,” Shayne said. “He’s going to be easy to follow, and let’s not lose him.”
Rourke slurped down the coffee, his eyes on the Motor Shop door. Then the taste of the stuff hit him.
“You call that lukewarm? I call it cold.”
The overhead doors slid up. A big Sanitation truck with a dent in its left front fender rolled through and stopped while the driver got out and closed the door. Shayne described what was happening to the other cars. The Sanitation man climbed back into the cab and the truck turned east. Rourke started the motor. Shayne made him wait a full minute before letting him follow. By then they had a report from another car that the truck was approaching Tenth, apparently intending to continue across.
The four cars maintained a loose net around the big truck as it went downtown on Broadway. At Seventeenth Street, the driver jumped a light, skirted Union Square and headed back uptown on Fourth Avenue. Rourke’s Ford was now a block ahead of him. Another stock Ford was a block behind. The two other cars were moving on parallel avenues, one on Madison, the other on Third. At Thirty-third Street, the car behind them reported, “He didn’t take the underpass. Watch it.”
Rourke slowed until the gap between the truck and the Ford was only half a block. Shayne adjusted the rearview mirror so he could see the truck without turning around. Its left-hand blinker was flashing.
“Left, Tim.”
At Forty-second, where Grand Central and the Pan Am Building interrupt the uptown flow, Rourke turned. The light was green at Vanderbilt, and he went through. The truck had time to follow but instead it swung toward the curb in front of Grand Central. A steady flow of passengers from the early commuting trains was pouring through the main entrance.
Shayne said, “The one place in town where you can carry a suitcase and nobody sees you. Not bad.”
The truck’s faulty brakes failed to halt it in time, and it drifted up to kiss bumpers with a police car standing there. The cops in the front seat were from the Traffic Division and had nothing to do with Shayne. One of them yelled at the Sanitation driver before moving on.
“Leave the motor running?” Rourke asked.
“No, shut it off. This is as far as we go.”
They got out. The Sanitation driver had shifted in his front seat to unlatch the door on the inner side. A woman came through the crowd and handed a suitcase up to him.
“Michele!” Rourke exclaimed. “If she went to Portugal, she had a fast trip.”
“She didn’t go to Portugal,” Shayne said bleakly. “She should have, but she didn’t.”
They had a minute while the truck driver, alone in the high cab, opened the suitcase to see how much he was being paid. The Walk sign flashed, and Shayne and Rourke crossed Vanderbilt. Shayne was wishing he didn’t have an arm in a sling. The other three cars had closed in a
nd he had plenty of assistance for a change, but there were things he preferred to do himself.
The truck driver came out of the cab, bringing the suitcase with him. Another man in the same uniform took his place, to drive the truck away as soon as the transaction was completed. It was Szigetti, Shayne saw, finally getting his chance to show how well he could handle a heavy truck. He craned over in the seat to get the sign from Michele. She was standing at the curb, apparently waiting for the light to change so she could cross Forty-second-easily the loveliest girl in an area which has a high concentration of good-looking girls.
“And here’s where it hits the fan,” Rourke said in a low voice.
The Sanitation workman in the dark glasses opened the side hatch. Michele looked in. Frowning suddenly, she reached past the driver to move a carton, revealing the worthless trash behind it. Her lips moved. Shayne couldn’t hear the words, but from the way she shaped them he thought she was probably speaking in French.
The man’s dark glasses glinted. He pushed her aside and moved several more cartons. His back stiffened. He held that position for perhaps three seconds, during which he must have made a painful adjustment. Then he snatched up the suitcase and raced toward the entrance to Grand Central, running in the gutter, in the narrow space between the pedestrians and the moving cars. A man stepped out of the crowd, carrying the commuter’s badge, a dispatch case and a copy of the Times. He held out an arm toward the running man as if to stop him with the folded newspaper, and fired twice.
The runner went down as though he had been tripped by a wire. His glasses flew off.
“It’s Power!” Rourke exclaimed.
“Sure it’s Power,” Shayne snarled. “Who’d you expect?”
Michele grabbed the suitcase. With her usual deftness and grace she darted through the moving cars to her waiting convertible, parked on the other side of the street with the top down, the motor running. She flung the suitcase into the back seat.
Armed… Dangerous… ms-54 Page 14
