At the Point of a. 38

11

“Something’s wrong with their switchboard,” Shayne’s operator reported after re-dialing the St. Albans. “I get a funny buzz.”

Shayne rattled his fingers on the steering wheel. “Get me the Fontainebleau, and keep trying those police numbers. What the hell are they doing up there, calling each other?”

The Fontainebleau security officer was an experienced, reliable man who had often worked with Shayne. He listened without interrupting, and wasted no time asking Shayne if he was fooling or drunk.

“From their standpoint it makes more sense than that kidnapping at the Olympics,” he said. “Yeah, I’ll get right on it.”

Shayne released his operator, but told her to watch for his signal. His forehead was creased. Ordinarily, in a case like this that was bristling with unanswered questions, he would have broken in on the action and hoped that his presence would provoke some kind of counter-move that would tell him something. But he was thirty miles from Miami. He knew that timing was vital. Sitting absolutely still, seeing none of the movement about him on the street, he imagined a plot-line for Murray Gold, taking him to Israel, in and out of prison, back to Miami. The guns. What else would the Arabs need? Vehicles, information about American traffic patterns and police reactions, advice on how to handle the media while the blackmail was being collected. Their shadowy police connection-Gentry? Shayne didn’t believe it, and he had pushed the question out of sight so it wouldn’t keep irritating him-could block incoming calls during the crucial moments. With the cashing-in of the heroin, Gold’s role would be over. He wouldn’t wait around for the guns to be used. Shayne’s one chance was to intercept him before he could leave the country. Somebody else would have to deal with the Arabs. Murray Gold was Shayne’s.

To be in the right place at the right time, he had to force himself inside Gold’s skull, to think like him. Would Helen Robustelli consent to being left behind? In a deal involving hundreds of thousands, would $500 satisfy her? She had talked Shayne out of the house, but one of the things he had noticed was that when she left she hadn’t taken her Raggedy Ann doll, which might mean that she intended to come back. Gold had been using her as an arranger. Perhaps she had arranged a way to escape. The keys in her purse: Nefertiti.

“Mike?” his operator said.

“Get me the Coast Guard station in Key West.”

When a Coast Guardsman answered, Shayne identified himself and asked if they had a listing for a pleasure boat named Nefertiti. The answer was yes: a thirty-five foot sports fisherman chartering out of Key Largo.

That decided him. While he was waiting, he had looked up the number of a plainclothes detective in Southwest Miami, named Henry Coddington. He looked at his watch, and followed the second hand all the way around. Then he gave the number to the operator. Coddington answered.

“Shayne? On my day off? I’m taking my daughter out to the Glades to get some pictures of the birds. You just caught me.”

“Can you postpone it, in the interests of making some money? Seven hundred and fifty for the afternoon.”

“You know the rule against moonlighting, but I don’t think it applies to seven hundred and fifty dollar jobs, do you? If you’re paying that much, I suppose it has to be slightly illegal.”

“Only slightly. If it works, it’s going to be a major collar, and any little shortcuts along the way will be overlooked. That package of counterfeit fifties and hundreds you pulled in a couple of weeks ago. Where is it now, with the evidence clerk?”

“It better be. We need it to convict.”

“Sign it out and bring it down to Homestead Beach, and pay no attention to speed limits. Bring a gun.”

“Man, it sounds heavy. I can say the D.A. wants to look at it, but if anything happens to it, you know they’ll burn my ass.”

“Trust me,” Shayne said. “If it goes sour I’ll cover for you. Come on, move, or I’ll get somebody else.”

“I’m moving. But only for you, Mike.”

Shayne had a surprise as he hung up. Master Sergeant Marian Tibbett, USAF, blood type O, who had sold government property in the amount of $3000 to Murray Gold, to be passed on to Arab terrorists, came out of a sporting-goods store and walked off carrying a paper-wrapped parcel.

There were two blocks of stores. Tibbett got into a car on the next block-today he was travelling in a bright red, low-slung MG-and drove away. Shayne thought hard for a moment. Important parts of the puzzle were still missing, but Tibbett fell into place in an instant. Having been hijacked of some small change by Shayne, he was taking a shot at the real money.

Shayne crossed to the sporting-goods store. Except for one elderly clerk, it was empty. Amid the general clutter of merchandise, overflowing the shelves and covering every square inch of counter space, the big items seemed to be fishing rods, scuba gear and guns, in that order.

Shayne shook open his identification folder. The clerk peered at it through the bottom half of his bifocals, then through the top half at Shayne himself.

“A private detective from the big city. What can I do for you, sir?”

“You can sell me the same kind of gun you sold the guy who was just in here.”

“Sergeant Tibbett? That was a Winchester sixteen-gauge, over and under, and I think I do have another one like it.”

But something about Shayne’s request bothered him, and he didn’t move until Shayne brought out his wallet.

“I’ll be paying cash. And I see you do repairs here. There’s a little modification I’d like to have made.”

“You’ll have to wait for that-the repairman doesn’t come in until one.”

“I can do it myself. Tibbett and I are doing some skeet-shooting. We want to use the same guns, so we’ll start even.”

That explanation, thin as it was, satisfied the clerk. He unlocked a rack and took out a handsome weapon. Shayne had hunted with this gun, and knew it well. He checked the trigger action, holding the hammers to let them come down gently.

“I like a freer trigger, a little more play.”

He took the gun back to a work-room. The clerk came with him, stopping in the doorway.

“Be sure to put everything back. He’s the world’s fussiest man.”

When the street door banged, he returned to the main part of the store. Shayne broke the gun and tightened it into the gun vise, muzzle end up. He looked through the scrap barrel, without finding anything the right size, then picked out two stove-bolts and cut off the heads. They were a bit too big, and he ground down the corners until they fitted into the barrels. Lighting up a portable welding outfit, he welded them in.

He put everything back as he had found it. After paying for the gun and buying a box of shells, breaking one of Tibbett’s own hundreds, he asked to have the gun wrapped.

“I liked the way you wrapped Tibbett’s. Do mine the same way.”

Without looking at Shayne directly, the clerk said nervously, “We won’t get in any trouble over this, will we?”

“I don’t see how. You sold two separate guns. Naturally the packages are going to look pretty much alike. Don’t seal it.”

The clerk tore off a piece of heavy wrapping paper and folded it carefully around Shayne’s purchase. He used a strip of paper tape printed with the name of the store, but only fastened down one end.

“Like this?”

“Fine.”

Shayne took the gun back to his Buick and locked it inside. Then he went off to reconnoiter on foot.

The red car was easy to spot, parked on the almost empty street a half block from the two-family house where Helen Robustelli and her Raggedy Ann doll had spent the last few days with her ill-assorted friends. In his sling and cast, Shayne was nearly as conspicuous as the red car, and he returned for his Buick.

He parked on the same street as the MG, on the next block but one, and pointing the same way. Using binoculars, he saw the back of the sergeant’s cropped head, his elbow on the car door.

He lit a cigarette and settled back to work through everything again. The players in the game were scattered about the map of southern Florida, and the clocks were running. His operator checked once more, and found the police switchboards still not functioning normally. Shayne planted the pins in his imaginary map. In Miami Beach, the Arabs’ action was well underway. Unless Coddington had run into trouble at the property office, he had the counterfeit bills and was just reaching the Palmetto Expressway, and Shayne had reason to hope that he was still a jump and a half ahead of Gold, moving in the same direction. Artie Constable was probably still with Gold. Esther Landau, of Israeli intelligence, was asleep in a motel near the airport. Helen, Sergeant Tibbett and Shayne himself were waiting, within three hundred yards of each other.

Again and again, he returned to the enigmatic figure of Murray Gold. If he made any mistakes with that man, Shayne knew he would vanish like smoke.

Every so often, he checked the time and moved Coddington another leg from Miami. He had watched the odometer when he made the same run the night before, and he assumed that Coddington was following instructions and driving fast. Three minutes sooner than Shayne had expected, the detective’s car turned the corner and came toward him. He parked behind Shayne, unloaded a bulky carton tied with twine, and brought it to Shayne’s car. Shayne motioned him in.

City detectives were theoretically required to keep their weight within five pounds of their age-height line on the life insurance tables, but Coddington was thirty pounds over. He was sweating heavily.

“How’s the arm?”

“It’s O.K.,” Shayne said. “We may be cutting this close so let’s get underway. You see the red MG parked up there. There’s a guy in it. Do you think you can act like a junkie?”

“Junkies are usually thinner, but I can try. I wondered why you wanted the package of rags. We’re buying junk?”

“We’re working the handkerchief switch, only with shotguns. The money’s for somebody else.”

He told Coddington what to do. Like all good plainclothesmen, Coddington had worked up an identity for the times when it was important not to be tagged as a cop. In his basic undercover role he was a vacationist, a little drunk, with money in his pocket and looking for ways to spend it. Today he was unshaven, wearing the clothes he had put on for his expedition into the Everglades. Wetting his fingers, he picked up some dirt from the floor and rubbed it across his face. Then he shambled off.

Shayne watched through the field glasses. Coddington passed the parked car, but the brightness of the color and the fact that somebody was sitting in it pulled his eye. He looked back, stooped and played with a shoelace until a passing car was out of sight, looked around once more, and walked out in the street and back to the MG.

He showed his revolver, holding it close so Tibbett alone could see it. He was shaking with excitement. He ordered Tibbett out, to accompany him to a place where they could do business in private. He wasn’t a car-thief, he assured the sergeant. He wouldn’t know how to get rid of the MG even if he felt like bothering with it. All he wanted was Tibbett’s money and watch and shoes. He was half a day late. He needed medicine badly.

If Tibbett had tried to defend himself with the shotgun, Coddington had been told to shoot him. Tibbett decided to do as he was ordered, and unfolded himself from the car. The two men disappeared between houses. Shayne started his engine. The detective returned, a moment later, alone, carrying a pair of shoes. Shayne moved up and double-parked.

Tibbett’s new Winchester was lying across the second bucket seat in the red car, still wrapped, but he had broken the paper tape so he could get it out in a hurry. Shayne, while he was waiting, had loaded and rewrapped the gun he had doctored in the sporting goods store. Now he sealed that package and tore the tape so it would look exactly like the package in the MG.

Coddington made the switch and got into the Buick. Shayne circled the block, ending up back where he had started.

“How hard did you hit him?”

“Maybe too hard. You wanted him unconscious for exactly three minutes. That’s a tough thing to judge. Hey. There he comes. Three minutes and twenty seconds. That’s what I call a delicate touch.”

Shayne asked for binoculars, and watched Tibbett waver into sight. His face was a mask of blood. He wouldn’t be firing a shotgun at anybody until he got his coordination back. He stood in the street swaying and brushing at his face. Then he answered one of Shayne’s questions-was he operating alone, or was he in this with Helen? He walked away, some of the time on the sidewalk, some of the time on the grass. Reaching the house with the For Sale sign, he went in.

After taking the loads out of Tibbett’s shotgun, Shayne moved into the back seat and untied the carton of money. Taking out one of the bills, he held it to the light.

“Damn nice job,” he commented after a moment. “It looks real to me. It feels real.”

“One of the best fakes I ever saw,” Coddington said. “The giveaway is a little blot in the spinach on Ben’s collar. See where the line thickens?”

Shayne found the imperfection, which he would never have noticed if Coddington hadn’t pointed it out. He emptied his back-seat refrigerator, and filled it with money. Coddington took everything that had come out of the refrigerator to his own car, and stayed there.

Shayne moved back into the front seat, and the waiting resumed.

Tibbett reappeared, wearing two of the band-aids Shayne had seen in Helen’s purse. His balance was better, and he moved in a straight line. But as he crouched to enter the low car, he miscalculated the opening, and banged his head. The door stayed open until he recovered.

Waiting was a major part of Shayne’s job, and he had long since adjusted to it. But Tibbett moved nervously, lighting cigarettes and throwing them away almost unsmoked. Two boys went by on bikes, wearing bathing trunks. There was little through traffic, but an occasional car or delivery truck came and went. Mail was being delivered. A salesman carrying a sample case worked along from house to house, and gave Coddington and Shayne a close inspection as he passed.

And then it happened, though not precisely the way Shayne had planned.

A black Pinto, cruising at moderate speed, braked to a stop in front of the For Sale sign, and the driver honked. Shayne turned on the ignition and went into gear.

The Buick and the MG both moved out at the same instant. Tibbett accelerated hard. The twin shotgun barrels came out the window. The driver’s door of the Pinto opened. Coming abreast, the MG slowed abruptly.

The shotgun roared.

Over the Buick’s noises, Shayne heard a scream. The MG careened ahead, then darted off at an angle, mounted the low curb, and crashed smoking into the porch of one of the almost identical houses.