At the Point of a. 38

12

Shayne pulled up to the Pinto and got out.

The driver was a youth in his late teens, with long, untidy blond hair, in a black lightweight raincoat. Like Sergeant Tibbett, he had been driving barefoot. He had been smashed back into the car, his feet still outside on the pavement. Shayne’s makeshift weld had failed to hold in one of the Winchester barrels, and the bolt-head had been driven into the boy’s chest. But the obstruction had broken the close-range pattern, and some of the pellets had gone past to tear up the front seat and strike Murray Gold, hanging from his seatbelt on the other side of the wounded boy.

Gold stared incredulously at Shayne. “Mike Shayne.”

“Who did you expect?”

Gold moaned, and picked at the tangled harness. “Get me out of this.”

“Murray, I know this is going to be hard for you, but a man in your position has to learn to say please.”

Shayne left him hanging, and looked for the money. He found an old-fashioned leather satchel on the floor of the back seat. He swung it into his own car and followed it in. Gold was making plaintive noises behind him. Shayne turned the satchel upside down and dumped the money on the floor. He refilled the satchel with counterfeits from the refrigerator, replacing them with the genuine bills-at least he hoped these were genuine. By craning, Artie Constable could have seen what he was doing, but he was going fast. He clutched himself tightly beneath the breast bone with both hands. The acne on his face stood out like stigmata. A bubble broke at his lips.

Artie’s body and Shayne’s own back screened Shayne’s actions from Gold. “You son of a bitch,” Gold said faintly. “Please.”

Artie fell back. Doors were opening along the block. Women appeared on the porches. Coddington, as instructed, stayed where he was, waiting for Shayne to signal. Shayne took a gun from each of the boy’s raincoat pockets, two more from the floor of the Pinto’s front seat, and threw them into the Buick. He honked his horn and looked up at the second floor windows. When nothing happened he honked again, a long demanding blare, and Helen came out, looking mad and frightened. This time she brought Raggedy Ann.

Shayne circled the Pinto to open the door on Gold’s side. The old man was sighing heavily.

“I need some help here,” Shayne said. “I can’t carry him.”

“You bastard.”

“Don’t blame me. I didn’t shoot anybody.”

“Don’t blame you,” she said bitterly. “You really know how to spoil things, don’t you?”

Gold said feebly, “Baby, help me.”

“God, look at Artie,” the girl said.

Artie was clearly dying. His head was against Gold’s thigh. His hands fell away from the wound, which had the circumference of a clenched fist. He rolled out of the seat and lay with his neck on the knob of the stick shift.

Shayne patted Gold and took a gun out of his waistband. Only then did he unhook the belt.

“How bad is he?” the girl said.

“Let’s take him somewhere and see. Move him to my car. You carry him. I’ll carry Raggedy.” While she struggled with Gold, Shayne went to check on Sergeant Tibbett. The top barrel of the Winchester had blown apart in his face, and there was nothing anyone could do to help. The air force would give him a military funeral.

Gold was almost as limp and floppy as Helen’s long-limbed doll. She kept him on his feet and moving. A car stopped; Shayne waved it on. Gold and the girl fell together into the back seat of the Buick.

Helen saw two things, the satchel and the shotgun. Her eyes jumped to Shayne.

“Don’t grab it,” he told her. “It isn’t loaded. But the satchel is, you’ll be glad to hear. Close the door.”

“And just leave Artie-”

“Artie forgot that when you fool around with loaded guns, they sometimes go off. But you weren’t planning to take him with you, were you? Sergeant Tibbett was more mature. A much better complexion.”

She cut her eyes at Gold, to see how much of this he was comprehending. Not much, probably.

“Your father won’t care for any of this,” Shayne said.

“Don’t I know it,” she muttered, and went on, for Gold’s benefit, “Was that Tibbett in the red car? What happened, did Artie shoot him?”

Shayne gave a barking half-laugh, and drove off. Gold was waving, begging for attention.

“Wipe off the blood and slap on a few band-aids. That’s mostly shock. Nobody’s had the guts to shoot at him in years. I think you’ll find a box of Kleenex back there somewhere.”

She worked in silence while Shayne took the turn toward the ocean, then started south. Gold gave a yip of pain.

“Are you going to tell us where the hell we’re going?” she said.

“We’ll talk about that as soon as I find a place to stop. There’s a lot of picking up to do after a double-shooting, and we don’t want to spend the day answering questions, do we?”

Hearing a faint sound a moment later, he twisted the rearview mirror so he could see what was happening in the back seat. The girl was whispering into the old man’s ear. Gold’s eyes met Shayne’s. Hearing that Shayne was willing to talk was helping him recover.

Shayne swung into a two-table picnic area between the road and the ocean, and turned everything off except the tape-recorder. Gold came up on his elbows.

“How serious?” he asked the girl.

“If you’ll hold still for a minute,” she said crossly, “maybe I can tell you.”

She spat on a folded Kleenex and scrubbed at his face. He tried to push her away.

“Can you be a little more gentle?”

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do without any water.”

“Dip it in the ocean,” Shayne suggested.

Helen considered this a not bad idea. Getting out, she crossed the strip of hard sand to the water’s edge. Shayne offered the old man his flask. Gold looked at it suspiciously, but finally took it. He touched the refrigerator with his toe.

“Any ice in this thing?”

“That hasn’t worked for weeks. Drink it straight. It’s better for you.”

“Mike Shayne,” Gold said after drinking. “One of the reasons I blew this country was to get away from you. And here you are when I get back. You’d think Dade County would be big enough so we wouldn’t keep bumping, but no.”

He handed the flask over the seat. “Well, I came close.”

Helen returned with the wet Kleenex and a piece of cloth she had torn off the tail of her denim shirt. “What have you been talking about while I was gone?”

“Nothing important,” Gold said wearily. “We don’t have secrets. We’re on opposite sides.”

“Honey, maybe you didn’t catch what Mike said back there. He’s going to start talking business in a minute.”

“It’s an old technique. That’s to get our hopes up. This car is famous-it’s heavily wired. He’s taping everything we say.”

“So? That’s for insurance. Honest,” she insisted, “he’s as big a crook as anybody. I’ve listened to my old man. Let me see your face.”

Gold offered it to her, and she cleaned him off. Apparently most of the blood had come from Artie.

“When that gun went off,” Gold said. “A double-barrelled shotgun from a range of two feet. Quite a surprise.”

“Will you hold still?”

She pulled the thread of a band-aid and slapped it on.

Gold said, “If we’re going to be talking about money, Shayne, I’d like to get out of earshot of that tape recorder. But go ahead. How much are you thinking about cutting yourself in for?”

“Half,” Shayne said. “One dollar to you, one dollar to me.” He drank from the flask before putting it away. “I don’t know what your father was talking about, Helen. I try to stay straight on everything but narcotics. That whole thing’s such a mess there’s no honest way. I think half would be fair. If I turn you in, Murray, and I don’t turn in the whole package, I’ll have rumors to cope with, and for a private detective rumors can be bad. And if I tried to rip off the whole amount, I’d have you on my back.”

“Which isn’t such a big thing as it used to be,” Gold said, “but still.”

“I’d be worrying, and I couldn’t enjoy the money. I don’t know how much there is there, but fifty percent ought to keep you going. To be realistic, how many years do you have left?”

“Eight hundred thousand bucks,” the girl said dreamily.

“Divide it in half and it’s still good bread. I’ll drop you in Key Largo and hope I never set eyes on either of you again.”

“I didn’t tell him anything,” Helen declared when Gold looked at her. “He saw the key to the boat.”

“People have been talking about Uruguay,” Shayne said.

Gold exclaimed, “That’s the thing about you, Shayne. ESP or something.”

“I don’t suppose you’ll want to take Helen, after she tried to get you killed.”

“I-!” Helen cried. “I tried to kill Murray? He’s my passport.”

“Sergeant Marian Tibbett,” Shayne said. “Same money, same boat. But much more of a fun companion for a young girl.”

“Murray, he’s just saying that to make trouble.”

Gold put his hand on her leg. “As far as I’m concerned you can come. I’ve lived with this kind of thing for a long time.”

Shayne laughed. “Murray, you’re pathetic.”

“Then let’s move,” she cried. “Open the bag and start counting.”

“Oh, there’s more,” Gold said. “This is a law and order man, basically. He wants an arrest. So we’re going to chat for a few minutes. But the kid’s right, Shayne. We don’t want to hang around all day. Who can I give you? I don’t suppose Helen’s big enough.”

“I know you’re not serious,” she said nervously.

“For my own information,” Shayne said, “who was your buyer?”

“That’s the one thing I’ll reserve. I don’t even like to mention the word.”

“Heroin.”

“That’s right-get it on tape. But that’s stale stuff. You want to get in on the big news today, and that’s not heroin and it’s not Murray Gold. I’m passe.” He linked fingers with the girl. “In more ways than one.”

“Daddy, you’re not,” she protested. “You’re just a little slow sometimes.”

“Turn on the radio, Shayne.”

Shayne flicked on the dashboard radio. It was still tuned to the FM station that carried Tim Rourke’s show. It played jazz most of the day, and that was what was being broadcast now, an old Bessie Smith single.

Gold said, sitting forward, “Is that a Miami station?”

Shayne punched a preset button and the indicator jumped. An unexcited voice was telling them what to expect in the way of weather: continued warm, a three out of ten possibility of showers.

Then: “Repeating the day’s top story. A woman has been found slain in a luxury suite at the Hotel St. Albans. Identified as Mrs. Lillian LaCroix, thirty-one, of this city. She was shot three times at close range with a heavy-caliber weapon. Robbery has been ruled out as a motive, police say. The expensively dressed Miami Beach woman was wearing a valuable watch and other jewelry, and carrying several hundred dollars in cash. The suite is registered in the name of Louis Solomon of New York, who is being sought for questioning. Further details as they come in.”

And he went into a commercial.

“Lou Solomon,” Gold said in a low voice. “What the hell.”

When he didn’t go on, Shayne reached for the dial.

“Leave it on, leave it on,” Gold said.