Caught Dead

NINETEEN

“For God’s sake,” Shayne burst out, “what kind of imbecile do you take me for? This whole thing turns on those cigarette cartons. I’m supposed to know my way around. I know where to buy dynamite and TNT, and I could make a pretty effective homemade bomb out of gunpowder and primer cord and a piece of pipe. But plastic? Inside a cigarette carton so nobody’d know the carton had been tampered with? And wire it to go off at exactly the right time? I’m not that good. But you’ve spent years in the black end of American intelligence. I’m sure you’ve taken a course. Not only that, you probably have access to laboratory materials. Could Lenore fake up that kind of package? Could Alvares’ wife?”

“Black intelligence,” Frost said with scorn. “Bomb laboratories. You’re a romantic.”

“You people used to brag about that cloak-and-dagger stuff,” Shayne said. “Now I’m going to make up a scenario. Scenario-that’s another one of your words. Let me know if it fits. You were probably a bright boy, Frost, all A’s in school. But in a lot of other ways you’ve always been a mess. What do you look like naked? I’m embarrassed to think about it. You never married. Until lately I think you always used whores. Whores and maids.”

Frost had gone rigid, squinting against the cigar smoke and holding his knees.

Shayne said more softly, “You served your country quietly and secretly. Whenever you managed to upset a government or buy a newspaper editor or steal some industrial secret in a brilliant way, nobody knew about it except a few of your fellow jerks in Washington. And you didn’t even earn very good money. Soon you’ll be ready to retire, and what are you going to do with yourself? Buy a four-room house on a St. Petersburg sidestreet and sit on the front porch watching the seagulls? That’s all you can afford on your government pension. I know from the way you chew those expensive cigars that you’ve been looking for a moneymaking gimmick.”

“I have not been looking for a moneymaking gimmick,” Frost said. But this denial was made with more difficulty than the others.

“It’s understandable that you’d want to find out about Alvares’ financial plans. Unlike you, he managed to put a little aside for his old age. He closed his bank accounts, and I think that must have been about the time you and the Senora started having sex.”

He waited for Frost’s sarcastic denial, but this time Frost was unable to speak. Shayne was playing him carefully, because people in Frost’s line of work tried not to make the ordinary human mistakes.

“And the Senora,” Shayne said, looking in her direction, “had exactly the same worries. After switching around for years, her husband had finally made a stable connection with an intelligent, blonde American who had the kind of figure that seldom goes with her kind of brains and talent. The Senora’s future was bleak. Alvares was sure to get kicked out of his job sooner or later, and when he could stop thinking about keeping up his political image, the son of a bitch might even divorce her. Frost might be creepy looking, and I’m sure he couldn’t be anything but mildly disgusting in bed-”

“You think you know so much-” she began.

“Augustina!” Frost snapped, glowering at her.

Shayne grinned. “Lenore thought she was hiding those purchases, but for a professional intelligence agent like Frost, with a worldwide network of sources, it must have been easy. And now Frost had one of his logical ideas. This was stolen money to begin with. Why not steal it back and retire to some suitable spot like the south of France? But time was passing, for both Frost and the Senora. They couldn’t move while Alvares was alive and in power. Now we’re coming to the murders.”

“They sabotaged the plane!” Lenore exclaimed.

“I think so, but not very well. Mejia may be able to confirm some of this. Is it true that Frost gave the new junta money and backing, and encouraged them to take over?”

Mejia said, “I am simply a policeman. But yet, it is known, he did some things.”

“That may seem like an elaborate way to commit murder, but that’s the way people like Frost work. Of course he had to sell Washington on it, and he must have been able to make out a pretty good case. The motive was simple-money. The Senora was thinking of money, too, but also of something else. At the end, her husband had the gall to bring his blonde girlfriend to Caracas and set her up more or less publicly in a rented apartment. It’s an old-fashioned situation, and she had the old-fashioned reaction-she wanted to kill them both. Frost is a professional conspirator and he was probably careful, but we’ll turn his own department loose on him, and I think they’ll be able to fill in some of these details.”

“Such as,” Frost suggested.

“Such as how much the Senora helped in the change of regime. You needed somebody on the inside, who knew his plans and when he was likely to be vulnerable. Probably you could have arranged to have him shot during the revolt, but she wanted his girl included in the same action and so she had somebody tamper with the getaway plane. You don’t need to know much about airplanes to cut an oil line.”

“You don’t know this,” Mejia pointed out to Shayne.

“Right, it’s still the scenario. When we talked this morning she asked me to tell her future. Her prospects have improved in the last couple of days. Because if Alvares had succeeded in getting off in that plane, he wouldn’t have sent her one penny from the sale of those valuable paintings. And she’s too young to stop living. If she could manage to lose a little weight she would still be an attractive woman. A fairly attractive woman. Some people don’t mind flab, when there’s money attached.”

The widow Alvares looked as though she wished she could strap Shayne into an airplane about to crash.

“Now let’s shift to the present tense,” Shayne said. “So far Frost hasn’t done anything really serious, spent some government money and handed out a few mild nudges, as he calls it. But Lenore and Alvares survived the crash, and Lenore has a scheme to get Alvares out of prison. Paula Obregon and the MIR people agree to go along with it for reasons of their own. And here the Senora gets her great idea. Why not substitute some lethal high explosive for those harmless smoke bombs and finish off what they started? Frost thinks of all the zeroes in ten or twenty million dollars. Alvares is not only still alive, he’s in prison, and Luis Mejia here is running the interrogation. Given time, Mejia might persuade him to talk about what he did with the money. He attaches electrodes to various places and wires people to a dry-cell battery, I understand, and this might have worked on Alvares. After going to all that trouble, Frost doesn’t want a crooked cop to walk off with the prizes.”

“I will not speak,” Mejia said.

“So Frost shuts himself up and makes the bombs,” Shayne went on. “Now let’s nail it down. Lenore, Paula. You’ve both been thinking. When did Frost make the switch?”

“During the afternoon,” Paula said. “Tim and I went out to reconnoiter the prison. I think probably then.”

“For Frost, a hotel lock would be easy,” Shayne said.

“It seems to me-” Boyle put in. “Am I permitted to interrupt?”

“Go ahead.”

“I probably don’t understand it-I know I don’t understand it-but in my experience, when there are two people with a piece of illegal money and one of them dies it’s usually the other one who did it.”

“You mean Lenore. But if she made the switch, she would have been out of the country by the time the bomb went off. Instead, she hung around all night, getting hotter and hotter. And not only that, she’s a nice girl. The idea would never cross her mind.”

“Thanks, I think,” Lenore said. “Mike, the man who was waiting on my boat-”

“I’m coming to that. Even if you slipped past the cops and got back to Palm Beach, you’d have no reason to move the paintings or put them on the market. Frost and his overweight lady-friend could steal them after the dust settled. But remember the Senora had that other motive.”

There was a sound at the door and Sam Katz looked in. “Do you want us yet?”

“Hold it out there, Sam,” Shayne told him. “I’m working up a surprise.”

The others looked back at him as he went on. “Lenore was planning to take her man out of the country on a fishing boat. The Senora knew that and hired somebody to wait there with a knife. But Lenore didn’t make it last night. This morning she went to tell the Senora how sorry she was and the Senora announced that she’d told the cops all about her. Mejia?”

“We have had no message of that kind.”

“This is all guessing and lying and vicious talk!” the Senora said. “I suppose she gave you her version, but the truth might be very different.”

“However it happened, Lenore fled to her boat and got herself knifed there,” Shayne said. “Take off your shirt, Lenore, and show the people your bandages.”

She put her fingers obediently to the button at her throat. “Do you mean it?”

“Never mind, I just happened to remember how good you look with your shirt off. The guy probably never stabbed anybody before and he bungled it. A little later, he took three shots at me with a rifle, and missed them all. Of course I was riding a runaway horse for some of that time. The one thing he did that worked-did you get a report of a homicide out near there, Mejia? A guy who was working for me, named Andres Rubino.”

“I know about that. His money was taken. Robbery, I think.”

“I’m the one who took the money. Most of it was mine, anyway.”

“And did I do this shooting,” Frost inquired, “along with everything else?”

“No, it wasn’t your kind of thing. To stand out in the open and take a shot at somebody? I hope not. I’d have to change all my ideas about you.”

“Then why did it happen?”

“He tried one pitch too many,” Shayne explained. “He got a good look at the guy who knifed Lenore and I think he recognized him. He was a pretty knowledgeable character, Rubino, as you told me yourself. He closed the connection with the Senora and made a couple of quick jumps. If she was sending people to kill her husband’s mistress, maybe she also had something to do with killing her husband. The police had no reason to look closely at that wrecked plane. But if Rubino could find some sign that it had been fooled with before it took off he could squeeze the Senora for real money. Here I’m guessing again. But maybe she realized the danger of that wreckage, and sent her boy to set it on fire. And he met Rubino, walking back with a smirk on his face.”

Mejia commented. “True, this plane was burned this afternoon.”

“I forgot to ask what you’re doing here, Chief,” Shayne said, his voice suddenly ugly.

The Venezuelan looked around. “I have information-”

“You thought you could beat the rest of us to the money,” Shayne told him, “and that’s so goddamned obvious it could get you in trouble. Other people in the government might think they have a better claim. Be thinking about what you can do to make me feel friendly.”

He strode to the door and called Sam Katz and the youth who had set fire to the Worth Avenue block. “Ladies and gentlemen, meet Jaime Mercado.”

Senora Alvares said something quickly in Spanish. Shayne looked at Paula for a translation.

“To be silent.”

Shayne looked at the youth, who seemed more ill at ease than frightened. He was younger than Shayne had thought the other times they had encountered each other. He was short and dark, with a line of even white teeth below a well-tended mustache.

“You son of a bitch,” Shayne said, “you’re a rotten shot with a rifle and not much good with a knife. You did a lousy sabotage job on that airplane and you can’t even burn down a building without getting caught.”

“I wonder if he understands English,” the Senora murmured.

Shayne laughed and turned his back on him. “He’ll have time to learn it in jail. I’m curious about you, Frost. Have you ever seen him before?”

Frost shrugged. “A common type.”

“I can hear that brain of yours clicking,” Shayne said. “All A’s. Phi Beta Kappa. Of course it adds up.

“This is the Senora’s special boy. Notice the bulge inside those tight pants. Not too smart, but young. Young. You know her. You must catch glimpses of yourself a couple of times a day in the mirror. You know now that she was stringing you along.”

“I won’t dignify that with a comment.”

“She needed you, Frost. Your brains and your confidential money and your high explosive. But that’s all she needed. She hasn’t had an easy life and as a matter of fact I’m a little sorry for her. But now that she’s free of Alvares why should she tie herself to somebody like you?”

“Shayne, I warn you-”

“Your warning days are over, Frost. I’ve got a page from Alvares’ diary. I wish I had the whole thing but that page is going to make the papers. It’s enough to get you canned. They don’t care what you do in secret, so long as it stays that way.”

“I don’t know this man. Whatever he’s done-”

“He burned down the Dante Gallery, for one thing. And if there were four million bucks worth of paintings inside and the Senora knew it, why would he do that?”

Frost’s eyes darted to the youth’s impassive face. Shayne said, “You’ve figured it. That was fast. Yeah, she crossed you. She never had any intention of selling those paintings and splitting that money with you. This kid is her style. If he goes to jail there are plenty of others to take his place. The minute she heard that everybody was converging on the gallery to grab the pictures, she sent him ahead. Then she got drunk, and when you called her she couldn’t talk, let alone meet you at the plane. You’re the mark, Frost! She had a deal with you, but with the gallery burned she wouldn’t have to go through with it. As soon as she was out of mourning she’d start spending money on boys.”

“On boys,” the Senora said haughtily.

Shayne turned to her. “However this turns out, there’s one good thing. You won’t have Frost around your neck from now on. I think he’s losing some of his illusions.”

For a moment Shayne thought he had overdone it. Frost was stiff and awkward, but he seemed to have himself in full control. He was still puffing on his cigar, but suddenly his face suffused with color and he shouted, “You bitch, you’re as bad as the rest!”

Howie Boyle had been joking when he suggested that Frost might be carrying an unconventional weapon, but that, after all, was the business the diplomat was in. Frost snatched out a cigarette lighter, snapped it open and fired twice.

The separate shots were sharp and distinct. His cigar was smoldering on the rug.

The woman looked at him in stupefaction. One of the. 25 caliber bullets had hit her in the neck, the other in the chest. She said something in Spanish before she fell cut of her chair.

Now Frost’s hand slipped into his side pocket, but Shayne seized his wrist, pulled out the hand, and forced it open. A capsule spilled to the floor.

Boyle took over while Shayne recovered the capsule. Frost’s pudgy features were working uncontrollably, and his eyes were almost closed behind the thick glasses.

“A mark,” he said bitterly. “And not for the first time in my life, Shayne. Not by any means for the first time.”

The others stayed in the lounge after Boyle went off with Frost. The Senora, unconscious and breathing raspily, was rushed out on a stretcher.

Shayne ordered a double cognac. He drank it quickly and asked for another. Two men from the Broward County sheriff’s office arrived. Shayne waited for the rest of the officials to gather before he commenced the long tedious explanations.

Paula said, “Did you have to do it that way, Mike?”

“I don’t know,” he said wearily. “All the murders took place in Venezuela. What’s the law on conspiracy down there? I didn’t have time to find out.”

Lenore said, “My head is so numb. I can’t make sense out of it. You convinced Frost that she betrayed him. But I don’t see how.”

“How long have you been in Caracas?”

“Three weeks.”

“She and the kid might have stolen the paintings sometime during those three weeks. It’s about the only thing he did right.”

She hesitated, and said in a low voice, “And if she dies, I suppose there’s no way to find out what she did with them.”

“You gave them up twenty minutes ago, when you thought they were burned.”

“But I do remember you said something about a deal, Mike-”

“The deal was to get you out of Venezuela. I did that. Besides, you’re all right, baby. You’ve got rich clients. Even if the insurance doesn’t cover the real losses they’ll loan you money to open up somewhere else. Maybe you can find an old man who’ll buy you another Watteau, whatever the hell that is.”

“That’s a cruel thing to say,” she said coolly.

Shayne gathered himself to wind up a few loose ends. Mejia sat forward, but Shayne put his hand on his knee before he could get up.

“Tim Rourke’s still in jail.”

“I think in the trial they will say-innocent.”

“If Tim Rourke goes on trial,” Shayne said evenly, “I’ll come back to Caracas with an interpreter and tell everybody who’ll listen why you rushed off to Palm Beach without telling your bosses where you were going. Maybe you could squeeze through, I don’t know. Here’s an alternative. Those paintings are really the property of the Venezuelan people. With some fast footwork and a little help from your friends, Michael Shayne and Tim Rourke, you managed to get them back so they can be hung in the National Museum.”

“Mike,” Lenore said angrily. “If they exist they’re mine. I have the necessary papers.”

“Six great paintings,” Shayne said, continuing to work on Mejia. “Picasso, Watteau, Van Dyck-”

He paused. “Rousseau and two Del Sartos,” Lenore supplied.

“And as soon as the Museum gets them, Tim Rourke will be quietly released. The MIR prisoners now in the La Vega prison will be put on a plane for Mexico City.”

“Blackmail,” Mejia declared.

Shayne said nothing. The County Attorney came in hurriedly, but caught the tension and didn’t interrupt.

Mejia said heavily, “It will be hard.”

“You’re wrong. It’ll be easy.”

“It would be-good propaganda for me. But I do not trust.”

“Tim Rourke, one painting. One guerrilla, one painting. A second guerrilla, another painting.”

“Bandits. Why do you care about this scum?”

“Their group did me a small favor-they hijacked an airplane for me.”

Mejia knocked out his pipe into an ashtray. He looked at Shayne, then at the other faces around him.

“Yes,” he said, shrugging. “I will return to fix.”

Again he started to get up. Shayne summoned the County Attorney.

“This man is Luis Mejia, Chief of Police in Caracas. He’s interested in the way we handle murder investigations. Is it all right if he hangs around for a day or so and looks over your shoulder?”

“Are you telling me something, Mike?”

“Not at all. Give him an escort to answer his questions and don’t let him out of your sight, because somebody might mug him, and we wouldn’t want that.”

Mejia protested, “Pleasant, but there is so much to do at home-”

“I insist. You can phone from the hotel and make the arrangements. One guerrilla, one picture.”

“A hostage,” he said, using a word he had learned when Shayne applied it to Rourke.

“Certainly not. My guest. But make those phone calls collect. It may take some time to talk your people into it.”

Shayne dismissed him with a nod.

“Now, Mike…” the County Attorney began.

Shayne stood up. “We can talk on the way to Miami. I’ve got to catch a plane back to Caracas.”

“Caracas!” Lenore exclaimed. “After everything you went through getting out of Caracas-”

He grinned. “I have to steal some paintings.”

Her mouth opened and closed.

“I don’t think you saw them. That was one of the reasons she was so anxious to get you out of the house. She hung one in her sitting room and another in Alvares’ office. The other four are probably in closets-paintings by L. Dante, dated last year and the year before. You told me you gave up painting when you opened your gallery, and that was longer ago than that. You couldn’t stick those expensive paintings in a storeroom and hope people would think they were copies. You put on a coat of-what’s the stuff called? — white gesso? and painted over them. You could take off the modern paintings later with rags and chemicals. Frost got in some night with a fluoroscope and identified the valuable Dantes, but if he’d stolen them then you would have known they were gone. He wanted to do everything quietly and professionally, with a minimum of risk. Then the widow beat him to it and shipped them back to Caracas, where there were already dozens of Lenore Dantes. Of course the reason she had to burn the gallery was to hide this from Frost and it had to be done before he got here.”

“Damn it, isn’t there anything else you can trade for Rourke? Let me come with you. If it works out, you and I could-”

He touched her cheek. “I want you to stay here, Lenore. Get somebody to look at those stab wounds. If you charter a plane and try to beat me, there’s a good chance you’ll be arrested, and this time I won’t be able to help you.”

“Heavens, I wouldn’t try anything like that.”

But he could see that she was thinking.