Count Backwards to Zero

Chapter 11

“Which one of you is top man?” Shayne said on the sidewalk. “I’m dealing with just one.”

A glance was exchanged.

Dessau said anxiously, “I think I ought to be in on this, Jerry. I’ve got an investment to protect.”

“I’ll look after your investment,” Diamond said. “Shayne’s calling the shots.”

“That’s just it, I’ve been hearing about him. He’s about as twisty as they come.”

“That’s no news to me; I’ve played poker with him. Thanks for the advice, Pierre. I’ll try to remember not to trust him. Follow us in the Dodge.”

Pierre said stubbornly, “He keeps using the word deal. Deals are at somebody else’s expense, in my experience. I don’t want to end up on the outside.”

Shayne, who was to his right and a step behind him, moved in close and took him by the elbows from the rear. “I’ve known you five minutes and I’m already tired of that voice. All right, Diamond. Whatever you do for discipline, do it and let’s get out of his part of town.”

Diamond punched Pierre lightly in the stomach, a token blow. “You know I wouldn’t cut you out at this stage, Pierre. The trouble with you is, you’re thinking about money. That’s not the main problem. There’s plenty of money.”

“I do hope so, for all of us.”

Pierre turned and hurried to the parked Dodge. Shayne checked Diamond’s Mustang, without concealing what he was doing. It carried dealer’s plates.

“We borrowed it,” Diamond said.

Shayne got in, and the Mustang took them out of the neighborhood very fast.

“Well?” Diamond demanded.

“Not yet,” Shayne said. “I need to make one phone call, and then let’s go someplace where the light’s good. I want to see your expression change.”

Diamond’s expression changed for the worse, becoming cold and still. “Call the turns.”

“Straight ahead. Turn right on North Miami.”

Shayne caught the glint of the Dodge’s headlights in the mirror. They rode in silence until Shayne pointed to a dairy cafeteria, not far from where he had left his Buick.

“There are phones in there. Lend me your handkerchief.”

While Diamond parked, Shayne wiped some of Little’s blood off his face. Before getting out, Diamond said earnestly, “I warn you, I’m going to be listening in on that phone call.”

Shayne laughed. “Like hell you are. I have to check up on something. If I let you listen I wouldn’t have anything to sell. Don’t worry, as far as I know you’re the only market, and I’m in a selling mood.”

“I’m going to insist on this. I don’t have to hear both sides of the conversation, just yours.”

“No,” Shayne said. “I have a couple of choices. You don’t. I can go the law-and-order route if I have to. Little’s a problem, but without witnesses I think I can ride it out. You and Dessau won’t want to come forward. Or I can sit tight and see if anybody makes me an offer.”

Diamond took it with a tight mouth. They entered the cafeteria, and Shayne said, “Get me a cup of coffee and some pie. Be with you in a minute.”

He descended to the men’s room. Max Wilson, the black cop Gentry had assigned to help him, came in while Shayne was drying his face on a paper towel. One of the booths was occupied. Their eyes met briefly in the mirror. Wilson was wearing a faded porter’s uniform. He had been a middleweight fighter once, and his face showed signs of having been hit too often. His eyebrows were slashed with scars.

Back upstairs, Shayne shut himself in a phone booth and dialed Police Headquarters.

“Will,” he said without preliminaries when Gentry was on the line. “I’ve got a murder for you, and you’d better get up there fast while the corpse is still wearing a suit.”

He gave the details quickly, and Gentry repeated them to somebody in his office.

“There are some nasty angles to this,” Shayne said, “and I hope you’ll agree to sit on it until I can find out more about it. He won’t have any identification on him, and let’s leave it at that for now. You may want to connect it with that stolen car report from Grady Ramsay, but don’t leak it to anybody. You remember? Two people drove up and went into the building together. If you can find somebody who took a Polaroid flash, fine. Otherwise I’ll just have to go on groping. I heard a helicopter. Any news?”

“Not yet. But Mike, we found Tim, and he’s not in such great shape. He’s right here if you want to talk to him.”

“Hell, yes. Put him on.”

Rourke’s voice said, “I don’t like these slurs on my appearance. The chicks don’t like me because I’m handsome, but because I’m amusing. A few bruises, Mike, you know how it is. They look worse than they are.”

“Tell me what happened.”

“I might as well. You’ll remember I didn’t want to do this? I had a feeling I might be overmatched. And that’s the way it turned out. One-on-one I can play, but they were too many for me.”

“Tim.”

“Yeah. I forget where we were the last time we were in touch. I followed the Olds to the Holiday Inn. Fine so far. The guy went in and registered and then he moved his car down the line and they went in a room. The door barely closed. A man and a woman got in the Olds — a different couple, do I make myself clear? — and they were off and away.”

“Take this a little slower. Did they have the car keys?”

“They seemed to. I can’t tell you what they looked like, because the whole thing took me by surprise. I should have stopped to think. I was following the Olds and they were following the Olds. I’ve never had the knack of making myself invisible. So there had to be another car, right? It’s obvious now. The Olds turned off the expressway, I turned off the expressway, a third car turned off the expressway. And there we were on a one-lane exit ramp with me in the middle. The car ahead of me stopped. I stopped. The car behind me stopped. I was so fussed I forgot to lock the doors — it would have taken a little longer. And lately I’ve started fastening my seatbelt. That cut down my mobility. I hate to admit this, but it was a girl who slugged me. And she had muscles, Mike.”

“What did she look like?”

“Dark. Jewish, I think, if you don’t mind the ethnic note. I was trying to unsnap the damn belt and I didn’t see what she used, maybe only her fist, I don’t know. Whatever it was, it did the job.”

“How many people do you think there were?”

“In the two cars? Mike, don’t ask me. I wasn’t conscious enough to count. They could have killed me and they didn’t and I’m grateful to them for that.”

“It’s interesting,” Shayne said thoughtfully.

“I’m interested in it, too, as a matter of fact.”

“One person had already been killed. You’re a potential witness, but that didn’t seem to bother them. It must mean they didn’t think they needed a major delay. How did they leave you?”

“Bleeding from the mouth, man. They drove me off onto a side road and locked the doors. When I woke up I was too weak to fight my way out of the seat belt. The Highway Patrol found me. I was gone like twenty minutes, unless I skipped a whole day. I suppose I ought to apologize, except I did warn you this wasn’t my specialty, didn’t I? Who the hell were those people, do you know?”

“No, but I think I may be about to find out. Give me Gentry again... Will, any word from Washington on that picture of Jerry Diamond?”

“Nothing yet. They’re working on it.”

“I’m with him now, and I hope to get fingerprints. You might tell the Bureau to get a copy of the picture over to the CIA.”

“We’re getting up in the world. What makes you think the CIA would be interested?”

“I begin to get that feeling. The passport he’s carrying has recent visas for a couple of Middle Eastern countries. If you hear anything you think I ought to know, call this number.”

He read off the number of the pay phone and hung up. He met Diamond coming away from the counter with a tray.

“I didn’t know what kind of pie you wanted,” Diamond said. “I got lemon meringue.”

“I’m expecting a call,” Shayne said, sitting down near the booths. “Before you say anything I might as well tell you that I’m going to want some cash up front. Twenty-five thousand now, fifty more if I make delivery.”

Diamond, about to put sugar in his coffee, stared at him. “Aren’t you exaggerating your importance slightly?”

Shayne thought about it. “Maybe I am. Make that twenty and forty. If you can’t get hold of twenty thousand in currency tonight, forget it.”

Diamond put down his spoon and said carefully, watching Shayne, “It would be possible. Not so easy, but possible. I’d better find out if we’re talking about the same thing. Tell me what happened when we got the Bentley into a garage.”

“You opened the trunk and started to take out the gas tank. You probably began to worry when you saw that the bolts weren’t tightened all the way down.”

The muscles around Diamond’s mouth stretched in an involuntary grimace. “Do you have it?”

“You know I don’t,” Shayne said irritably. “And I can’t tell you where to look for it. I’ll contribute a few facts and you contribute a few, and maybe we can put something together.”

“The word is maybe. That’s not worth twenty thousand.”

“Diamond, tear a dollar bill in half, and you’ve got two pieces of paper. Scotch-tape it together, and you can spend it.”

Diamond hesitated for a moment, rattling his fingers on the formica, and nodded. “All right. I’ll make the call. This time you’re the one who won’t listen.”

He went off to the booth. Looking around, Shayne spotted Max Wilson a few tables away, moodily drinking coffee. Shayne nodded toward the phone booths, and Wilson drifted over to look for a number in the book. But from the way Diamond was crowding the phone, Shayne could tell that Wilson wouldn’t be able to overhear anything.

While he waited, Shayne wiped the silverware carefully with a paper napkin. Wilson, glancing up, saw what he was doing, and a slight movement of his scarred eyebrows told Shayne that he understood the message.

Diamond came back and sat down. Picking up the freshly wiped spoon, he helped himself to sugar and stirred it into his coffee.

“It’s on the way. And the weird thing about this is, I still don’t know what I’m buying. I still don’t know what Little did to get himself knifed.”

“I’ll go back,” Shayne said. “Here’s the story he told me. Did you notice a girl named Anne Blagden who was hanging around with him on the ship?”

“Sleeping with him was something else she was doing.”

“OK, she was sleeping with him. She works in the London office of the steamship line — this is the story, you understand. Her boyfriend asked her to get him the names of all the passengers who were taking cars along on this crossing, and he sold them to somebody. All clear, a smuggling operation. Somebody was going to pick a respectable name off the list, borrow his car for a few hours the night before sailing, and stash the shipment in the spare tire or under a seat. It didn’t bother Anne too much. These things happen, and smuggling isn’t that much of a crime. This time her boyfriend decided to pull a switch and make a little more money. He found out whose car was being used — Little’s — and tipped the American Customs to shake it down.”

“And you didn’t believe this?”

“All I did was listen. Anne had a vacation coming, and she went along for the ride. Out of curiosity, she picked up with Little. She began to worry about what was going to happen to him. Here was a classic case of an innocent bystander. Even if he managed to beat it, the publicity might kill his new job.”

Diamond said casually, “What were they smuggling, did she know, or say?”

“What could it be but narcotics? They built it into the gas tank, and that means it’s a high-profit item. Little was a known user at one time, and that would be sure to come out — bad scene all around. They hired me to handle it for them. I did the one thing that was possible, spent a couple of hours in the hold and shifted tanks. You wanted to know what you’re buying. You’re buying the make and the license number of the car I put it into, and the name and address of the owner.

“That information,” Diamond admitted grudgingly, “would almost be worth the money.”

He refused the cigarette Shayne offered him, and began playing nervously with his coffee spoon. Shayne swung an elbow and upset his coffee. By the time they had mopped up, with the help of a busboy, Shayne had the spoon with Diamond’s thumbprint on the handle.

He went on, “I checked with a guy in the Customs. No tip on the Bentley was ever turned in. So Little knew that somebody had to be lying to him, probably Anne. He’d been pouring down drinks all day, and he was coming unglued. He told me he’d found a Miami address in Anne’s purse, and he wanted me to go along and bodyguard him while he checked it out. That was the Brownsville house. I fell for it. Somebody was waiting for us inside. I’m supposed to be able to take care of myself, but this time it was close. I was slugged as I went in the door. I managed to get out the knife as Little and somebody else were hauling me upstairs. I put it in Little. Then the building fell in on me.”

“I don’t get that. Why do you think they wanted you killed?”

Shayne shrugged. “They didn’t kill me. Maybe they just wanted to put me in the clinic for a few hours. All I can do is guess. The stuff got ashore. I know which car I put it in. So do they, obviously, and without me around to ask them questions, such as why the Customs people didn’t shake down the Bentley, they could pick it up and cash in. The first thing I’ve got to do is find out who slugged me. Otherwise I’m in a serious jam.”

He paused, and continued soberly, “If I can lay some cash on the right people I may be able to squeeze through. Twenty thousand bucks at the right time in the right place can work wonders. The knife can’t be traced to me. Until I find out different I’m going to assume there aren’t any more witnesses. It’s the drug angle that makes it bad. There’s no question that I’m the one who switched tanks, and nobody’s going to believe I fell for an obvious con. It’s going to look like a straight two-man import deal, and then a fight about the split. I’m sorry to say the county attorney is a little prejudiced on the subject of Mike Shayne. He’s been looking for something like this for years.”

“It was self-defense.”

“I know that, but if I walk in with the story I just told you, I’m dead. I need money for grease. I need a few more facts, to have something to trade. Names and affiliations.”

“Such as my name and affiliation?”

“Use your head, Diamond! I don’t want the county attorney to know you exist. You can identify that knife, and trade it for permission to cop a plea. Murder’s the big thing around here. If you end up with the H, that’s fine with me. I don’t want that coming into court to haunt me.”

“It isn’t narcotics.”

Shayne waved that away, but Diamond insisted, “Drugs are too heavy right now. I don’t touch them. People have funny emotional reactions when the subject comes up.” He was speaking too emphatically, looking at Shayne with the sincere expression of a life insurance salesman who wants desperately to be believed. “Like even with you. Something like money is noncontroversial. But start thinking about it in terms of junkies nodding on street corners, and you’re likely to do something against your own best interests. I want it back. That’s all you need to know... There he is, he made pretty good time.”

A nondescript, gray-haired man came in from the street carrying a parcel wrapped in brown paper. Seeing Diamond, he picked up a cup of coffee and brought it to their table.

“Hard to find a bank open at this time of night,” he observed, speaking with a slight accent. “Hard? Impossible.”

“The coffee stinks in here,” Diamond said. “I don’t recommend it.”

The man spread his hands. “Not for the coffee, for the sake of appearances.”

“We’re in executive session.”

“Good enough. Any messages?”

“No.”

The man hadn’t looked directly at Shayne, but Shayne had the feeling that he wouldn’t be quickly forgotten. In spite of the shabby clothes and self-effacing manner, he didn’t look like someone who was accustomed to running errands.

He sauntered away. Shayne touched the package he had left on the table, and felt the edges of the crisp bills.

“Let’s not count it. I’ll trust you. I moved the gas tank from Little’s Bentley to an Oldsmobile, registered to a man named Daniel Slattery, at a Coral Gables address.” He sipped his coffee. “But don’t hurry off. You won’t find it in Coral Gables.”

“Shayne,” Diamond said, his voice soft and menacing, “I wouldn’t try any sharpshooting here if I was you.”

“I don’t want any more enemies than I’ve already got,” Shayne assured him. “After I’m finished, if you don’t think I deserve the twenty thousand, wrestle me for it. I realize I’m outnumbered — you’ll probably win. I picked Slattery’s car because I thought he’d drive straight home. He didn’t. He had a girl with him. He headed north and holed up at a motel.”

Diamond’s head came forward. “Then?”

“Then the opposition moved in and snapped up the Olds. I want to start dividing people up. Let’s call your group Team A. That’s you, Dessau, the guy who brought the package, the two guys in the Dodge. You set Little up. I don’t know how or why. You led him to expect a search at Customs. It didn’t take place. You wouldn’t have gone after the Bentley if you’d known the tanks had been transferred. You planned to grab him as soon as you got him away from the dock. Maybe he would have lived through that, but I doubt it. He wanted to die, and you could have arranged it for him. He was full of booze. Drunks are always wandering out into the traffic in that part of town and being hit.”

“You’re drawing too many conclusions, but go on.”

“That’s Team A. Team B is Anne Blagden and at least two others, and anything you tell me about them will be more than I know now. Switching tanks was a logical move, but to execute it she needed somebody like me, with credentials. I had to get the captain’s permission, and access to the right kind of tools. Afterward, it wouldn’t be hard to get into the hold and find out which cars I’d been working on. I didn’t know I had to be careful. So instead of following the Bentley, they followed the Olds. And somehow they persuaded Little to take me to Brownsville on a very thin pretext. I don’t know how that was worked, but for a man with a doctor’s degree, Little was easy to fool. As you and Dessau found out in England.”

Diamond was listening intently. “You had somebody following the Olds? What happened to him?”

“He’s still alive. A few bruises.”

Diamond frowned. “Merely bruises?”

“Yeah, the same thought crossed my mind,” Shayne said. “Whatever the hell you people put in that gas tank, I know damn well it wasn’t watch movements. You’re right — don’t tell me, I don’t really want to know. I asked for twenty G’s and you hardly whimpered. Whatever it is, it’s either damn valuable or damn important. So why didn’t they hit the guy a little harder, and make sure? It must mean that they thought they only needed a few minutes.”

Diamond was sitting at the extreme front edge of his chair, ready to jump. “How long ago was this?”

“Three quarters of an hour. Too long.”

“And you still think you have something to sell?”

“I think so. I didn’t expect this kind of trouble, but I try not to take unnecessary chances. So I put a homing device in the Olds.”

“A what?”

“One of those miniaturized transmitters they carry in lifeboats, so the search planes can find them before the survivors start eating each other. It puts out a very good signal, up to a range of ten miles. Did you hear a helicopter a while ago? That was the Coast Guard.”

“We don’t want the Coast Guard!” Diamond said, appalled.

“All I asked them to do was pinpoint it for me. That’s the phone call I’m waiting for. As soon as we find it I’ll let you overpower me and take it away.”

“What if they turned the damn thing off so it wouldn’t transmit?”

“They’d have to cut the tank open to do that, and how would they know it was there? I didn’t tell anybody. But maybe the reason the choppers aren’t getting a signal is because the tank didn’t stay in the Olds.”

“You just said—”

“There’s still a lot I don’t know,” Shayne pointed out. “And you haven’t been too communicative so far. Last night when I went into the Queen Elizabeth’s hold somebody was already there. He popped a couple of shots at me and ducked out. Which team was he on? I don’t know, but there’s no rule that says there have to be only two teams.”

Diamond’s eyes were jumping. “I had nothing to do with that. Anne Blagden wouldn’t want to shoot you before you made the switch.”

He raised his coffee cup, stared into it for a moment and put it down without drinking.

“Somebody may be trying to milk this for more than his fair share,” he said finally. “I think you’re right. For the time being our interests are parallel. Now let me get it straight about this transmitter. If somebody pulled the tank, would it stop sending?”

“Not altogether. But I had it tied in to the car antenna, and the wire would break as it came out. There would still be a signal, but a weak one.”

Diamond nodded. “And if they pick up anything, they’ll call you here?”

Shayne grinned at him. “There’s that, and then the FBI is running your passport photo through the files. We hope to come out with an identification.”

Diamond looked startled. “The cops are involved?”

“We need all the help we can get. The Highway Patrol is looking for the Olds.”

Diamond seemed more and more unsettled. “How do you handle that if they find it?”

“Easily. They won’t look in the gas tank. Why should they?”

“Well, you’ve got a lot of plates in the air, Shayne, and let’s hope you don’t miss. Now you want to hear my side, right?”

“Any time.”

“I keep thinking there must be something else I ought to be doing, but OK. This was my idea to start with. They were my connections. I put up the financing, and it wasn’t cheap.”

“I believe it.”

“That’s how I make my living, I broker international deals. Most of them are legit. It’s one-of-a-kind stuff. When I go illegal, I get in fast and get out the same way. I don’t usually get involved in the day-to-day, but this time I went along to make sure nothing happened. And I like the Queen, you know? It’s a relaxing way to travel. All I thought I had to do was keep one eye on Little and see that he kept sucking down gimlets. And then this Blagden chick.”

“Was she new to you?”

“Brand new, Shayne. And she’s good at her job, very good. I wish I had her working for me. I tried to move in on her, but she liked Dr. Little better, and not that I want to sound conceited but that told me something. He was easy for her. This was movie stuff — in real life that kind of combination doesn’t happen. Inside of two days I’m sure he was telling her his secrets.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t do something about her.”

“I’ll come to that in a minute. First I went through her cabin. Everything in order there except for one tiny thing.” He brought out an oversize European wallet and produced from it a folded photograph, a glossy 2½-by-4 contact print showing an envelope addressed to Anne Blagden at the Hotel Carleton in London. It was postmarked Nice. Shayne squinted at the sender’s name in the left corner.

“Sam something.”

“Sam Geller,” Diamond said.

“It sounds familiar.”

“Sam wouldn’t like to hear you say that, because in his business if you stop being anonymous you stop making money. He sells surplus weapons, all the way from.22 sporting rifles to M-9 tanks. A kind of junkman, really, and he’s like me — if somebody brings him a proposition that means a five-hundred-percent profit in one turnover of capital, with no complications, he’s never too busy to listen. There’s a personal thing between Sam and me. I spoiled a deal for him once. I was within my rights, but Sam didn’t think so, and he’s been laying for me since. To find out about Dessau and Little he must have had detectives on me, and that gives me a chilly feeling.”

Shayne handed back the photograph. “Was there a letter in the envelope?”

“A note about theater tickets. I phoned a contact of mine in Nice and asked him to look into it, and I got the answer in Bermuda. Anne Blagden has been Sam’s girl for the last year.”

“What’s he look like?”

“Sam? Very relaxed. Nice tan, about six feet one. A good build, black hair, an up-and-down wrinkle on his forehead between his eyebrows.”

“Is this important enough to him so he might be here in Miami?”

Diamond reflected. “Ordinarily I’d say no. But I really stung him that time, and if he could lever me out of this, and make money on a zero investment, I’d say yeah, he might come over. He has the Hemingway virus. Flies his own plane, shoots lions in Kenya — that kind of schtick. Tell me why you ask.”

“He sounds like the guy who met Anne at the ship.”

“Then damn it, Shayne,” Diamond said excitedly, “why don’t we take him? There’s eighteen thousand in that package. I know you said twenty, but eighteen was all we could come up with. Get the tank back for me and I’ll multiply that by three. That’s a promise.”

“Let’s talk some more about Geller. Does he kill people, or only lions?”

“You mean was he the third man in that fight — you, Little, and whoever? I doubt if Sam Geller in person, all by himself, would go into that building at that time of night. Not when you can buy the service for a thousand bucks.”

“And while we’re on that subject,” Shayne said, “how did Anne Blagden make it as far as Miami?”

“It does seem strange, doesn’t it? We knew who she was from Bermuda on. But I only had one man with me. You remember we made a half-hearted attempt to mug you after that poker game. Mug you, Shayne — we weren’t trying to bury you at sea. We wanted to stow you away in a safe place for twenty-four hours. And when that fell through, my guy sat in Anne’s cabin waiting for her to come in.”

“She must have come in to pack.”

“I suppose she did,” Diamond said dryly. “I can’t say for sure, because my man hasn’t turned up yet.”

“Quite a girl,” Shayne commented.

“So it seems. She stayed close to Little all day, and he was already shaky enough. If she hadn’t been around to give him that big kiss when we got in, God knows what would have happened. I wanted him to drive that Bentley onto American soil with his own hands and feet.”

“How many people do you have now?”

“Just the four. I can get more.”

“That ought to be enough. Do you trust Dessau?”

Diamond’s expression congealed. “I don’t trust anybody all the way. Why?”

“I’m thinking of something Little told me. It doesn’t fit his other story about being an innocent victim of evil smugglers who borrowed his car, but by that time he’d stopped trying to be consistent. Dessau may have been the only real criminal Little ever met, and Little was puzzled by him. He seemed so ordinary in many ways. Finally, Little thought, he found the key. Dessau wanted to be number one. He wouldn’t take orders or suggestions. I’m not trying to make trouble, you understand — I just want to be sure where I am.”

“Shayne—” Diamond began, his eyebrows lowering.

The phone clanged. Shayne slid the paper-wrapped parcel out from under Diamond’s hand and stood up.

Diamond said, “I assume you’re going to let me listen in on this one.”

“Absolutely. We’re partners, aren’t we?”