Caught Dead

FOURTEEN

Three or four miles now separated Shayne from the man with the rifle, but he was not inclined to linger. He heard an automobile motor and drew his gun. He started for the Olds, but before he reached it an old Ford came out of the bend. The driver’s sombrero was tipped far forward. A woman in the front seat beside him held two chickens and the back seat was jammed with children.

The man saw the gun in Shayne’s hand and the Ford jumped forward.

Shayne returned to the ditch. Stooping, he ripped open Rubino’s shirt to look at the chest wound. It had been made by a high-velocity bullet, which had stayed inside the body. The car, the body and the wrecked plane were on a line. Apparently Rubino had parked and gone in to look at the wreck and had been fired on as he returned. The second shot, in the head, had been fired at close range.

The horse was grazing in the weeds near the paved airstrip. There was a routine to be followed in this kind of death, and it was probably much the same in Venezuela as in the United States. But someone else would have to do it for Rubino. Shayne went through his pockets, taking his keys, his wallet, and a bundle of American and Venezuelan bills, undoubtedly the money he had picked up from Frost.

He started the Olds, found the main Valencia-Caracas road, and drove down into the city.

Stopped by a red light, he flicked through Rubino’s wallet and dropped it out of the window after removing the money. The freeway carried him rapidly downtown.

He knew where he was now, but after leaving the freeway he was caught in a one-way pattern that carried him past the turn to police headquarters on Avenida Universidad. He came back and made the turn and then moved in fits and starts as though jockeying for a parking place. He checked the time. An hour and a half had elapsed since he let Rubino overhear him telling Lenore Dante about his plan to smash the guerrilla movement as part of an overall deal with the police. If Rubino had sold this information to the guerrillas, which was likely, they would be waiting here.

Moving into an intersection as the light changed he jammed on his brakes to avoid hitting a young woman who appeared suddenly in front of his bumper. He snapped off the ignition. As he came to a stop a slender dark youth opened the front door and slipped in.

“Turn to the left,” the youth said.

He had a knife at Shayne’s waist. Shayne looked down at the long blade.

“Turn to the left. Anything you say. But I think the damn thing is flooded.”

He went on grinding the starter with the ignition off. Horns were blaring all around them. The policeman at the intersection gestured.

The young man said urgently, “Be careful.”

He slapped Shayne’s hand away from the key and turned it on. The young woman who had got in his way pulled open the door on Shayne’s side and slid in. She had a small. 25 automatic.

“She will drive,” the young man said.

“Hell,” Shayne said with disgust. “What a country. Right in front of the goddamn police station.”

The motor started at once.

“Are you Paula Obregon?” Shayne said.

“Be quiet,” the young man told him.

“This must be one of those MIR operations I’ve heard about. Very slick. I’ve got a gun inside my shirt. Better take it away from me so I won’t be tempted to use it.”

The youth gave him a narrow look. Reaching forward, he found the gun and removed it.

“We are to kill you if you give us trouble.”

“In that case I won’t give you any trouble,” Shayne said, “because I don’t want you to kill me. Nice of you to tell me in advance. Do I talk with you or somebody else?”

“Not with us. There is interest in what you are doing here, and we wish you to discuss it.”

“I’m not arguing.”

They drove for a few blocks in silence. The girl was small and intent, with olive skin, a nicely cut profile, a very good figure in a simple white dress. She had been wearing high heels, but she had kicked them off and was driving barefoot.

The young man said stiffly, “You have just come to Venezuela, I think. I would like to ask you. What do they believe of our movement back in your country-that we are simple puppets of the USSR?”

“You don’t want me to answer that.”

“Yes, I am interested.”

“Nobody’s heard of you.”

The young man drew back slightly. “If you choose to be offensive-”

The girl spoke quickly in Spanish and adjusted the rearview mirror. The young man craned about to look out the back window.

“Cops?” Shayne asked.

“It would seem so. Don’t count on being rescued. They will have to win the argument with us first.”

He brought a long-barreled Luger out of a shoulder holster. The girl veered to the right, accelerating, and put a truck between them and the following car.

“What is it, a Chevvy?” Shayne said. “I had a couple of guys tailing me earlier. It looked like a stock sedan, but I was told it had a beefed-up engine. This Olds is in sorry shape.”

His abductors conferred quickly.

The young man said, “Mr. Shayne, we are going to fool with them a little. Just remain still, take no part. We are quite serious about that. It is life and death.”

“In that case use your head. Your tip came from a guy named Rubino. He called you and said I had some dope on the guerrilla movement and I was going to turn it in. He collected some money from you, probably. Then he saw a chance of collecting again from the cops and he told them to watch out for a kidnapping. But these guys aren’t interested in me, they’re interested in you. They want to find out where you take me.”

“We know that! Please stay quiet.”

“I’m trying to be helpful. If you hope to outrun them, you’d better change cars. You have time. They’re in no hurry to grab you.”

The girl frowned. She waited till she had a free space ahead and tested the acceleration.

“That’s not the problem,” Shayne pointed out. “The front end is out of line.”

“Never mind,” she said grimly, “I heard all about you from Tim Rourke.”

“I thought you must be that girl,” Shayne said approvingly. “I knew she’d have to be terrific, to get him to do anything that dumb.”

She gave her head a quick shake, to show her opinion of compliments. “And one of the things he said about you was that you only fight your way out of something after you’ve made sure you can’t talk your way out.”

“I’m thinking partly about myself,” Shayne said. “If you hit a pole we’ll all go through the windshield.”

“I have no intention of hitting a pole,” she said coldly.

He turned to the young man. “Didn’t you have anybody covering you in another car?”

“No. That would double the risk. Your conversation is disturbing Paula.”

They approached the long Gothic front of the university. Bedsheet banners flew from the windows. There was a heavy concentration of soldiers and police, doing little except lounging around displaying their weapons. The big iron gates into the university grounds were slightly ajar.

The girl tapped her horn and continued past.

“In and out,” Shayne said judiciously. “Yeah, it might work. But when you hit fifty-five watch out for the shimmy.”

She circled a stadium and came back toward the Avenida Las Acacias. Choosing her moment, she shot into the traffic with her horn squawling and the emergency blinkers flashing. Shayne heard a clash of bumpers behind them. The big gate swung open. They passed through, crossed a paved courtyard and down a narrow alley, then on between more Gothic buildings, across another courtyard and out by a different gate, into the botanical gardens.

“Not bad,” Shayne commented. “With a different car I’d make you better than even money.”

She was cornering hard and accelerating hard. She kept glancing at the mirror. As she slowed for the exit from the gardens she gave an angry exclamation.

“They’re talking about us on shortwave,” Shayne said. “That makes the difference.”

Paula and the young man consulted across Shayne. Soon she turned north and began driving faster. Shayne gripped the dashboard with both hands.

“Fifty-three, fifty-four.”

“Stop trying,” she said shortly. “This is a perfectly good car. Enough power. Good brakes.”

“I hope so,” Shayne said, “because when you go off the road I want you to stop in a hurry.”

They headed into the hills. The road was beginning to wind. Shayne looked back. The police car, a nondescript four-door sedan with no markings, was hanging about fifty yards behind.

“What’s the strategy?” he said. “You can’t run away from anybody on this road, in this car. Have you got some kind of ambush set up ahead?”

“No.”

“I never had guerrilla training, but let me make a suggestion. I don’t know if you were in the States long enough to hear about the game of chicken. Here’s how it goes. Two cars come at each other head on, and the idea is to see which driver has the best set of balls. Usually one of the two cars gets out of the way at the last minute. It might work with these guys, if you can make a fast enough turn. I mean it. Come back down and blow them off the road.”

“That’s not one of our techniques.”

“Introduce it. You have a strong motive for staying out of jail. You’re the chick who gave Rourke those cartons, and they’d put you in a cell and forget about you for years. Whereas cops. They’re doing a job. They’ll have the same thing for dinner tonight even if you get away.”

She gave him a look and the young man beside Shayne said something heatedly in Spanish.

Shayne continued. “You must believe in something, or you wouldn’t be mixed up in all this crap. What do the cops believe in? In getting by, like most people.”

“You want me to turn around and head at them and force them off the road? What if they don’t choose to get off? You also will die.”

“I’m betting they’ll chicken.”

She shook her head. “It’s a stupid chance. We’re going up the mountain to the Hotel Humboldt. I know this road. We will beat them by two minutes. Then we come back into the barrios by trails. I first, you second; Julio third.”

As the houses dropped away on either side she built up her speed. The curves were sharper and tighter and the surface of the road deteriorated rapidly. Suddenly, as she came out of a curve, the car traveled sideward on loose pebbles and the front wheels began to shake. She attempted to break the shimmy by fighting up into a higher speed, but without success.

The road curved in and out of the creases in the dry slope, climbing toward the bent end of another long hairpin, where it would switch back on itself at a higher level. Above, it was lost in mist. Paula had her left knee braced against the wheel. A slight cross-ripple in the road added to the shake. The ground fell off abruptly to the left. The police car was almost directly below them now.

“There aren’t any side roads,” Shayne said. “They’re giving us room. You’ll have time to turn.”

The youth suggested something.

“Speak English,” Shayne said. “It was my idea.”

The exchange continued for a moment.

“O.K.,” the girl said. “We’ll do it. This is our fastest speed and it’s too slow. But I wish I knew what was in your mind.”

“I set this up, for Christ’s sake!” Shayne said angrily. “Don’t you realize that? I want to talk to you. Everybody said it couldn’t be done. It turned out to be easy. Use your head. How can I turn you in? I don’t know anything about you. I planted that with Rubino.”

She spared him one quick raking look before she went into the curve. The front end shuddered dangerously. She fed the motor gas and cut in sharply. The curve was poorly banked and she had to go to the brakes again as the car chattered toward the outer edge.

“You’ve got it,” Shayne told her. “Now kick her around.”

But she couldn’t correct in time and they rode up on the inner slope, striking a boulder. She braked hard and came back in a short arc, stopping a scant foot short of the drop. She hauled at the wheel. The road was barely wide enough to permit two cars to pass abreast. She went back, forward, and back, and on the next arc she was facing directly down the mountain. Her friend Julio had his Luger out the window. The other car could be heard laboring up toward them.

“Now,” Shayne said. “Pass on the outside and give them a chance to jump.”

She rapped the wheel for luck and shot back around the curve, gaining speed rapidly. The police car was now less than twenty yards away. Paula took the exact middle of the road. Julio waved the Luger and yelled.

“They’ll move,” Shayne said calmly. “Hang in there.”

They were in third, well short of the shimmy point, but apparently hitting the boulder had knocked the front wheels further out of line. The front end of the car was bucking like a jackhammer. Shayne grabbed the wheel, and was able to hold them straight for a moment. He had one clear glimpse of a frightened face at the wheel of the police car. Then something snapped in the steering linkage. They angled off the road and tried to climb the slope.

The police car slithered around them, brakes screaming. Magically, a single rubber-tired wheel appeared on the road ahead, rolling very fast.

Shayne felt the Olds starting to go. It fell over, hitting hard on its side, and slammed back onto the road with its three wheels in the air.

Dust rose around them. The sudden stillness seemed very loud.

Shayne and the others were tumbled together in a confused heap. The car was no longer moving, but he had the feeling that it was sticking over the edge, where a slight change in equilibrium would send it rolling and bouncing on down the mountain.

Withdrawing one arm, he unlatched the door carefully. It pulled out of his hand and banged back against the side of the car. He was relieved to find, looking out, that the car was securely lodged in the middle of the road, where it would stay until a wrecker came up from the city to get it.

“Well, you can’t win every time,” he remarked.

Julio was scrabbling for his Luger. Shayne crawled over him and out of the wrecked car.

The police car was backing toward them. It stopped, and one of the cops, swearing steadily and fiercely in Spanish, jumped out to cover Shayne and the guerrillas with a submachine gun.

“Watch it,” Shayne said. “The kid has a pistol.”

Either the cop understood English, or he picked up Shayne’s meaning from his tone. He approached warily. Reaching into the car, Shayne found the Luger, pulled it out by the barrel and tossed it at the Venezuelan’s feet.

“Some people are rats,” the girl said. “I knew it. I knew it.”

“I’m not the one who turned over the goddamned car.”

She was caught. He helped her pry herself free. Julio, holding one leg in both hands, was biting down hard to keep from making any sounds.

“This guy is hurt,” Shayne told the cops. “Hold it-here’s another couple of guns.”

He threw out his own. 38 and Paula’s. 25. Then he tried to help the youth. His injured leg was twisted beneath him, and Shayne saw a splinter of bone.

“It’s broken,” the girl said.

The doorframe had been forced violently inward, trapping the boy’s foot. Shayne tried to lever it back. He felt the bent metal give, very slightly. Pulling with his full strength he snapped at the cops to help. They worked themselves into position. Straining together, they forced the frame back so the boy could pull his foot clear.

Shayne was the first out of the car. He picked up the submachine gun, which the cop had put down, and backed off a step.

When the cop came out of the car he looked at Shayne in disbelief. He had watched Shayne being kidnapped, and at extreme bodily risk, after a breakneck chase, had saved him from the kidnappers. Surely this was a mistake.

He started forward, and Shayne fired a burst into the ground at his feet.

Paula and the second cop worked Julio out of the wreck. That cop said something to her urgently in Spanish.

She translated: “They both have children. They are sympathetic with our aims. They ask you not to shoot them.”

“Hmm,” Shayne said thoughtfully.

The two cops watched while Paula started the police car, reversed it in a series of careful maneuvers, and brought it abreast of the upside-down Olds. She helped the injured youth into the back seat. He was still managing to make no sound.

Picking up the Luger and the other guns, Shayne backed into the car. He continued to hold the policemen’s eyes as Paula went into gear and roared away.