Caught Dead

EIGHTEEN

The plane had been cleared for the Palm Beach International Airport. It came in from the east, giving up altitude rapidly as it sliced across the narrow strip of sand between the ocean and Lake Worth.

Lenore Dante was in the cockpit beside Shayne, watching the approach. Suddenly she gasped and seized Shayne’s arm.

“Look.”

One of the business blocks on the main north-south avenue was on fire. Lenore’s face showed her consternation.

“Can you bring us around again?” Shayne asked the pilot.

He said sullenly, “After all the trouble I’ve already had from you guys-”

“Don’t let’s get chintzy at this late date,” the copilot told him.

The pilot sighed, and told the control officer they were having instrument difficulty. Receiving clearance to make another approach, he wheeled about slowly.

“My gallery’s on that block,” Lenore said quietly.

Shayne said nothing, watching her. She was gripping the back of the co-pilot’s chair. She turned her head slightly so Shayne couldn’t see her face.

On the next approach, the pilot brought them closer to the fire. The block was surrounded by fire apparatus, pouring plumes of water on the burning buildings. Flickers of flame could be glimpsed through the billowing masses of smoke.

“How fireproof is your safe?” Shayne said.

“Oh, that doesn’t matter. There’s nothing in it that’s important. A few papers.”

They flashed across the long sand-spit and the blaze passed out of sight beneath their wing. The blood had left Lenore’s face. When she turned to look at Shayne her eyes were unfocused.

“Too bad,” he said evenly. “But you must be insured.”

“But the pictures. The diary.”

She brushed past and entered the cabin, her walk very stiff. She sat in one of the many empty seats and fastened her seatbelt for the landing. Shayne continued to watch her. She was staring ahead fixedly.

They landed, rolled along the runway and turned to come back. The few passengers who had managed to get aboard before the abrupt takeoff were concentrated in the rear of the cabin; the plane’s destination had been New Orleans. Senora Alvares, alone in a row of seats, was looking better. She had borrowed lipstick and a comb from one of the stewardesses. Coffee and time had drawn the sting of the champagne. She was still an erect, handsome woman, but there was something crafty about the look she gave Shayne.

“I should warn you, I intend to ask for the protection of my Ambassador, who will provide me with the name of a good lawyer. You are back in your own country, where you can be sued.”

“For what?”

“Injury to my person and my sanity. Kidnapping and assault.”

“Throw in rape and you’ll get more ink in the papers.”

“Don’t try it,” she warned him. “Put one finger on me and you’ll know you’ve been in a real battle.”

The plane rolled to a stop, and a set of mobile steps banged against the door.

“Now we’ll find out if we were right to trust you,” Paula said.

Shayne grinned at her. “We all know this has to end in a deal. I always do my best to satisfy everybody.”

Shayne was first down the steps. Howie Boyle, the Palm Beach Chief of Police, was waiting at the bottom.

“You’re under arrest for stealing an airplane,” he said.

“Not just me, I hope,” Shayne said. “We all did it together.”

He introduced the others as they descended.

Senora Alvares said firmly, “I spit on you. They had to carry me on board, and I have witnesses who will testify to that-the stewardess, others.”

“The Chief’s going to hold you as a material witness,” Shayne said. “I’d hate to lose you at this point. You may not realize it, but your life is in danger.”

“My life is definitely and emphatically not in danger.”

Chief Boyle had brought two of his own patrolmen, and there were several armed men from the airport security unit, several more from the county Highway Patrol. The two Venezuelan guerrillas didn’t like it, but they were relieved of their guns.

“What about the two guys I told you to pick up?” Shayne asked Boyle as they moved toward the terminal. “Frost and Mejia.”

“I’ve got them, Mike. And you weren’t kidding, they have credentials. They’ve been doing some screaming. This Frost is some kind of CIA bigshot, the way he tells it, and I think I believe him. He may be carrying a fountain pen loaded with napalm or something. It wouldn’t surprise me. He came in on a government plane, and do you know I had to put him in restraint? He thinks he knows karate.”

“Where are they, here?”

“Waiting.” He was rolling along beside Shayne, carrying his two-hundred-seventy pounds in an easy bearlike weave, but Shayne could see the nervousness behind the placid facade. “I’m only a country boy, Mike, and this is fast competition. I’d be pleased to be allowed to back out at this point.”

“You can’t do that, Howie. You’re the law here.”

“That may be, but I don’t know a goddamn thing about anything, as you know, and Frost has been dropping remarks about how he’s going to nail my hide over the backhouse door. And he can do it, too, in my estimation, unless you’ve got some kind of slick little tactic up your sleeve.”

“We’re all going to talk about it. Is there a room we can use?”

“I put them in the pilots’ lounge because there are some comfortable chairs in there. But that Frost. That Frost. Get yourself up for him, Mike, because when that man lays eyes on you he-is-going-to-blow.”

“I’m looking forward to it. That looked like quite a fire on the Beach.”

“A real bad one, Mike, but the boys have confined it. Nobody hurt, as far as I’ve heard.”

“I have to make a phone call. Get everybody together and let them order drinks. One man from Highway Patrol and one from the airport. No reporters.”

“Don’t forget you’re under arrest,” Boyle reminded him.

Shayne peeled out of the formation as they passed a line of public phonebooths, and then had to come back and panhandle a coin from one of the security cops, as all he could find in his pocket was Venezuelan money. Sam Katz, the private detective, answered promptly.

“Well, the goddamned place burned down on us, Mike,” he said in a disgusted voice, “so I can’t tell you a thing. The lady was just starting on the books when we smelled smoke. I’m the one who pulled the alarm.”

“Any idea how it started?”

“No, and it’s a real hot fire. If it was set I doubt if they’ll be able to prove anything.”

“Never mind, Sam. These things happen, and it tells me something.”

“Wait a minute, that’s not all. I took a wild gamble, for no reason at all-pure hunch. We had a little crowd waiting for the equipment to get there. A dozen or eighteen people, all told. And there was a kid in the crowd. Or not exactly a kid, either-he could be twenty-one, twenty-two. And he had a glint in his eye. I can’t tell you any more than that. Just an expression, but I think it would have hit you the same way. You know-he shouldn’t be that interested in somebody else’s fire.”

“Have you got him?” Shayne asked quickly.

“Yeah. He didn’t want me to bother him so I decided to lean on him a little. He spoke with a Latin accent, which isn’t such a big deal around here, but I asked him where he came from and he said Caracas, Venezuela. That was where you called me from, Caracas, Venezuela. So I put the two things together and when a cop got there I had him bust the kid on suspicion of arson. He’s at the precinct now, and he’s being very quiet.”

“Sam, you earned yourself a bonus. Get over there fast and be sure they don’t make a mistake and turn him loose. What’s his name?”

“Jaime Mercado.”

Shayne hung up whistling. He found the pilots’ lounge. Felix Frost jumped to his feet as Shayne came in and started sputtering demands and objections. Shayne knocked him down with a hard shot to the jaw.

Frost’s glasses flew off. He blinked up malevolently from the floor.

“And you may be able to get my license for that,” Shayne said. “It depends on what happens in the next few minutes. Everybody else has had an interest in this pot and now I seem to have one, too. Get up.”

Frost retrieved his glasses and put them on. One of the thick lenses was cracked across.

“Threats would be out of place,” he said thickly. “But consider yourself threatened, Shayne.”

“Sit down. First we’re going to establish who knows who, and after that, who did what. Do you know Senora Alvares?”

“I know Senora Alvares,” Frost said icily.

“Did you see her today and phone her before you left Caracas?”

“I saw her today and phoned her before I left Caracas. So?”

Shayne exhaled. “How sweet it is to be back in a country where people answer questions.” He looked at Chief Mejia, who was planted stolidly in a plastic armchair smoking a heavy-bowled pipe. “Glad you could make it, Chief. I hope nobody’s tortured you yet. I’ll be needing you in a minute. You saw my problem right away. Why would anybody talk to me in Caracas unless they had to? I don’t carry anything but a private detective’s license and that’s no good outside the continental limits of the United States-not that it’s too good inside the continental limits. I’m afraid I had to stretch the truth in a few places. You got a hot tip from a waiter to the effect that I know where the dough can be found. That’s not quite accurate. All I have is a theory.”

“Why are we detained here?” Mejia said.

“Nobody’s being detained,” Shayne told him. “This is what we call a pre-arraignment hearing. We want to straighten out a few things so Chief Boyle can decide what he can hit us with. You’re free to leave at any time.” He added, “But don’t try it. Does anybody recognize the name Jaime Mercado?”

He got no response and shrugged. “Maybe it’s a pseudonym.”

He took Chief Boyle to the door and asked him quietly to send somebody across to Palm Beach to bring back the young man by that name.

Returning, he asked, “Did anybody think to order me a drink? Never mind, this won’t take long. Everybody’s been interested in the goddamn money, so let’s get that out of the way first. Lenore is the one person who’s really in a position to know about it, and she keeps denying it exists. I can sympathize, because there would be all kinds of tax and legal problems.”

He planted himself on an arm of a long leather sofa and continued easily, looking at Lenore. “When he closed out his Swiss accounts he gave you the cash and you bought pictures with it.”

She was staring straight ahead. A muscle flicked in her cheek.

“We can talk about it now,” he said. “Look at me.”

She turned. Her expression was as frozen as it had been since she looked down at the burning block.

“I hired a guy to check your business. He tells me one of the things you do is buy for clients on commission. Some of the auction prices lately have been fantastic. You read about them in the papers-two or three million bucks for one picture. But those are the ones that get press coverage. You can’t buy a Rembrandt and then go someplace and hide. But if you move down to the half million level, maybe you can buy a few of those and stay fairly anonymous. There are private sales. Now and then a stolen painting is put up for sale. I’ve heard that some of the Nazi loot from that old war is still floating around in a very private market. For somebody who’s looking for a way to beat inflation, it isn’t a bad place to put cash.”

“I won’t dispute you on that,” Lenore said, biting off the syllables. “It’s one of the ways I make my living.”

“Is there any reason you can’t tell us about it? I know you didn’t murder those three people. But you were in on the beginnings, and if it ended up in murder it doesn’t matter legally that you were as surprised as anybody. It isn’t quite time for the lawyers. But when they come in they’ll advise you that you can go down for conspiracy to commit murder, and that’s one of the worst raps we have. Larry Howe! The original innocent bystander. You don’t have any incentive to tough it out. Clear up this painting business and I think I can help you.”

She waited, and it was clear from her expression that she was still seeing flames.

“What do you want to know, their value?” she said in a dead voice. “We spent four million on them.”

“Only four?”

“Almost to the penny. There was a lovely, lovely Watteau and one of the really good Picassos and a Van Dyke that would break your heart. Six in all. I worked through two sets of dummies. Actually it wasn’t difficult at all.”

“Were you really his mistress, Lenore?”

“Yes,” she said, surprised. “Did you doubt that?”

“People in town here weren’t sure.”

“We took a few precautions.”

“All right, four million dollars. We’ve got a solid figure, finally. I’ve heard up to twenty, but we all know about street murderers who killed somebody for as little as forty-nine cents and a pair of shoes.” He turned to Frost, who was trying to steady himself by smoking one of his superlative cigars.

“While you’ve been sitting here have you noticed a smoky smell? I don’t mean cigar smoke.”

“No, I haven’t noticed a smoky smell.”

“Maybe it hasn’t got out here yet. Lenore took those four-million-dollar pictures out of their frames and stored them in a back room of her gallery. What else could she do with them? The whole point was to be casual about it. To take out insurance on them, to store them in a fireproof vault, she’d have to admit they were hers. Didn’t you even hear the fire sirens? The gallery just burned down. Anybody ready for another drink?”

There wasn’t much breathing going on among the principals in the room. Howie Boyle had finally become interested in what Shayne was saying.

Shayne looked at Paula. “You’ve stayed with your aunt. Did you know about these paintings?”

“No.”

“Mejia?”

“I-no.”

“Senora Alvares?”

“No, no, how should I?”

“Frost?”

“No, I did not know about these paintings.”

“Somebody’s lying,” Shayne said. He waited a tick. “And it’s you, Frost.”