Count Backwards to Zero

Chapter 6

It rang just as he decided to make the call himself.

Anne spoke in a hushed voice. “I called you before, Mike — no answer. I’ve been worrying.”

“How is he?”

“Asleep, but it’s not doing him much good.” She lowered her voice further. “I found a couple of capsules in his suitcase. I don’t know what they are—”

“Get rid of them.”

“We have to talk. Can I come to your cabin?”

“No, stay with him. We’ll have to start being careful. I ran into somebody else who believes Little’s story, and this time a couple of shots were fired. I didn’t fire back. Somebody broke into my cabin earlier and took the bullets out of my gun. Those are the late developments. Stay under cover and don’t open the door to anybody.”

“Mike, if you’re trying to scare me,” she said accusingly, “you’re succeeding.”

“Fine. I’ve got something underway, and I think there’s a faint chance it will work. He’ll need some luck, but he already knows that.”

“Can you tell me about it? I could use a little reassurance.”

“Too many people know about parts of this already. He’s going to be closely watched when he comes off the ship. I don’t want to be seen with him, and the less he knows about it the better. I want him to look very jittery when he goes through Customs.”

“I can guarantee that! Mike, one of the things I wanted to tell you — I won’t be available to hold anybody’s hand. My brother and sister-in-law are meeting me, damn it. He heard about my great romantic disappointment in England — dear God, how long ago it seems now — so he’s taking a week off to cheer me up. I have to keep George Blagden and Dr. Quentin Little in two absolutely separate compartments.”

“That’s all right with me, but why?”

“George works for a Washington think-tank that’s always being accused of being too liberal. You see the implications. I’ve told Quentin, and he understands. Mike, are you really telling me that we shouldn’t talk about this at all?”

“I don’t even like this phone call. I’ll send down a bottle of vodka to help him through the day.”

“There’s a delicate line there, Mike, if you want him to walk down the gangplank under his own power. He can drink for hours without showing it, and then all of a sudden he comes apart. Well, that’s a minor problem. I’ll use my judgment. I don’t know where we’re going to be staying, but can I call you?”

“Call Mobile Operator Three. She’ll know how to reach me. If anything goes wrong, you’ll see it on television.”

“God! And I wanted some reassurance. Goodbye, Mike. He’s waking up.”

After a large breakfast, Shayne went to the communications center amidship and was assigned a booth. He placed a call to his friend Timothy Rourke, a crime and political reporter on the Miami News. The shoreside operator found him at the paper, working on a follow-up to the Bermuda story.

“Been thinking about you, man,” Rourke said. “That was a cryptic press conference on the Hamilton dock. ‘The cops blew it.’ Needless to say, we used the line, but would you mind expanding on it a little?”

“That’s yesterday’s news, Tim. Today I’m working on something else.”

“I’m listening.”

“So are other people, possibly. I’ll need my car. I left it at the airport — keys under the floormat. Will you send somebody out for it? And I want you to make one phone call for me. There’s a legislative research bureau in Washington I’ve used a couple of times. I don’t remember its name but you can look it up. I want to know about Public Law 1063, passed in May 1949. But I don’t want to start anybody thinking, so ask about three or four other acts at the same time. Pick some numbers at random. The title is all I need, never mind the details. Leave it in the glove compartment.”

“May 1949, 1063. You don’t want to give me a small hint about what’s happening out there in the Atlantic?”

“Not now. I hope you can arrange your social schedule so you can meet the boat. One other thing, Tim. Have a full tank of gas.”

“That’s the Mike Shayne I’ve come to know. Curt. Concise. Uninformative. Have a nice day. I wish I was out on the water instead of having to sit inside staring at this goddamn electric typewriter. It doesn’t want to perform for me today.”

After paying for the call, Shayne went up to the bridge, where Captain Stackpole greeted him cordially, making no reference to their middle-of-the-night conversation. Shayne wanted to know about the procedures for unloading passengers’ cars. This was a lengthy process, he was told. No one who had brought a car with him could hope to be free in much less than an hour.

Shayne had another piece of unfinished business. He checked the passenger list for Jerry Diamond’s cabin number. Finding the door he wanted after some searching, he knocked.

No one answered. He picked the lock and went in.

Diamond was already partially packed. He traveled simply, with a single two-suiter suitcase. Apparently he had left England in a hurry; he had brought no underwear except whatever he was wearing at the moment. There were drops of dried blood in the bathroom, and several blood-stained tissues in the wastebasket.

Shayne sat down to wait. Two cigarettes later, Diamond came in.

He seemed tired. Seeing Shayne, he stopped short in the doorway, his eyes widening. That look fled instantly and he flashed a smile.

“Mike! Hey! What did I do, leave the door unlocked? That was a great poker game, I seem to remember. I’m ashamed to say I had a few too many drinks.”

He was wearing a long-sleeved shirt with the cuffs buttoned. The edge of a bandage protruded below the left cuff.

“What happened to your arm?” Shayne asked. “You haven’t been getting into knife fights, have you?”

“That,” Diamond said. “Too many boozies, I guess. I thought I’d have a nightcap and take a shower, but I shouldn’t have tried to do both at the same time. I slipped and the glass broke. It’s an easy trick. Anybody who tries hard enough can do it.”

“Let me see your passport, Jerry.”

Diamond frowned and said in a suddenly ugly voice, “What’s this private-detective business all of a sudden, Shayne?”

“I want to see what countries you’ve been in lately. Just passing time.”

“Do you know what you can do, detective? You can beat your meat somewhere else.”

Shayne exploded upward and stood towering over the smaller man. Diamond checked himself after an involuntary step backward. After a moment’s hesitation he snaked out his passport and gave it to Shayne, who checked the visas. Before coming to England, Diamond had been in Egypt and Syria.

Tossing the passport onto the bureau, Shayne took the front of Diamond’s shirt and walked him back against the wall. Diamond’s breath came out in a warm puff. Shayne went over him for weapons and then checked his wallet. He was carrying three $1,000 bills, but nothing else of interest except a credit card in another name.

“Somebody tried to beat me up last night,” he said. “I don’t know why. Maybe they got the wrong man. That doesn’t make me like it any better.”

His knife came out. The blade snicked open and Diamond cringed away, raising an arm.

“Shayne, for God’s sake, will you think about what you’re doing?”

Shayne flipped open Diamond’s passport and began cutting out the picture.

“The same thing happened to mine last night, and it’s a cute idea. Unless you’re carrying a spare, you’ll have trouble getting through Immigration. I’ll shoot this up to Washington and see if you’re wanted for anything important. If the answer is yes, I’d advise you to move fast and stay out of everybody’s way.”

“I’ll stay out of your way, believe me,” Diamond said fervently. “I never like to tangle with psychopaths. Believe me, Shayne, you’re the one who’s making a mistake. I’ve never beaten up anybody in my life. It’s one of the things I don’t happen to do.”

“In that case I’m wrong,” Shayne said, “but I’ll hold the apology for now.”

The Queen Elizabeth moved regally up the Cut as the sun was setting behind the Miami skyline. To the north, Miami Beach was beginning to light up for the night. The fire ships were out, spouting a welcome. Tugs warped the big ship into place with special care. A large welcoming crowd waved from the dock.

Captain Stackpole had assigned an officer to sponsor Shayne, and in spite of his damaged passport, the detective was one of the first to leave the ship. He was wearing his freshly cleaned suit and carrying his shipboard purchases in a shopping bag.

He immediately became the center of a swarm of reporters and television people. In the back of this crowd, Shayne saw his friend Tim Rourke, his usual half-smoked cigarette stuck to his lower lip. His fists were buried in his hip pockets. He was a thin, disjointed, carelessly dressed man, whose offhand style concealed a stubbornness and a probing mind that had made him one of the best investigative reporters in a fiercely competitive business. He didn’t approach Shayne, or indicate that they had talked by radio-telephone earlier. Shayne had loosened his necktie and unfastened the top button of his shirt, a signal he had adopted long ago to inform Rourke that they were being watched or monitored.

The reporters followed Shayne to Biscayne Boulevard, pressing him for further information on the Bermuda affair. Rourke had left Shayne’s Buick in a no-parking slot with a police card stuck in the wiper. Shayne removed the card, found the keys under the corner of the floor mat, and gunned the motor getting away, almost clipping one of the persistent TV people.

He made a quick U-turn at the corner of 13th and came back with the southbound traffic. He swung into 11th Street and double-parked, parallel to a Ford sedan occupying a curbside space from which he would be able to watch the disembarking passengers. In a quick series of actions, he fished for the Ford’s front-door latch and forced it open, unlatched the hood, used a wire bridge to jump the ignition, and moved the Ford around the corner where he parked it illegally in front of a hydrant.

Returning to the Buick, he moved into the space the Ford had vacated and cut his lights.

He found a note in the glove compartment in Rourke’s handwriting: “No. 1063 of Public Laws of 1949, To Establish a Cash Award for Information Relating to Smuggling of Atomic Material into U.S. Now what the hell did you want to know that for?”

Shayne unlocked an equipment box and took out a pair of high-powered binoculars. He had an unobstructed view of the lighted pier. He used the squirter to clean the windshield, and settled down with the glasses to his eyes, his elbows on the steering wheel.

His car phone rang. Rourke’s newspaper had recently installed a phone in the reporter’s car so he could phone in on the move. He and Shayne shared the same operator. He was two blocks away, on 11th Terrace.

“For Christ’s sake, man,” Rourke said. “Somebody’s trying to smuggle in an atom bomb and you think you can handle it by yourself?”

“Hang on. I’ll explain in a minute.”

He had picked up Anne Blagden in the glasses and was following her down the gangplank. Quentin Little was a step behind, and he seemed in poor shape. His nose was peeling. His long hair was blowing, and under the sunburn his skin had a greenish tinge. He looked sick and unhappy. Arriving at the bottom, he swayed and nearly lost his balance.

Drawing him aside, Anne spoke to him urgently. He nodded. While she talked, his head kept swiveling around. Coming in against him, she kissed him hard.

She left him standing alone, his hands going. Shayne followed her as she made her way through the crowd.

Suddenly she began waving. Shayne lost her for a moment. When he picked her up again she was being greeted by a man and a woman. She hugged them both, laughing excitedly. The man was dark, tall, hatless, with thick, tightly curled hair. The woman was a head shorter, and Shayne caught only fragmentary glimpses of her as the crowd shifted. She was plain-faced, with a grudging smile. He switched back to Anne, who was chattering happily, her face showing her relief at being back with normal, well-dressed, self-assured people, after the strains and odd excitements of the voyage.

Shayne lost them. He picked up the phone.

“OK, Tim. Do you want to pull around on the boulevard and double-park? Keep the phone open.”

He saw Rourke’s battered Chevy emerge a moment or two later. It crossed on a green light and stopped pointing south.

“I’ve got my hands full,” Shayne said. “If you’ll do a simple little follow-job for me I think I may be able to repay you with a major story. A green Olds is going to be coming off in a minute. It’s a four-door, two years old, Florida plates with a GB tag. It’s registered to a man who lives in Coral Gables, and I want to be sure that’s where he goes. We absolutely can’t lose track of that car. Keep on his tail, and if he tries anything tricky, ram him. I mean that, Tim.”

“Ram him, I see,” Rourke said. “That’s not the way I make my living, though, is it? Why don’t you ram him? You do that sort of thing so well.”

“There’s another car I’m more interested in. It’s going in a different direction.”

“Then here’s another suggestion. Let’s get a couple of police cars with a two-way radio, and do it right.”

“There’s no time to set that up. Nothing’s going to happen. If he doesn’t go straight home he’ll stop off for dinner somewhere.”

“Isn’t there a small explanation that goes with this?” Rourke said. “The name of that 1949 public law gave me a jolt. There’s an old saying. You’ll live longer if you don’t fool around with dynamite. And I understand these atomic things are even stronger.”

“I’ll believe it’s actually a bomb when I see it go off. It smells like a con to me, an old-fashioned gypsy handkerchief switch. My guess is narcotics.”

“So why did you ask for that Washington information?”

“That’s the cover,” Shayne said impatiently. “The mark is a British physicist, and he thinks he’s bringing in a bomb. That doesn’t mean he actually is. The cash award in that 1949 bill was half a million bucks, which was a lot of money in those days. But with a heroin shipment today you can clear a couple of million, and you don’t run the same kind of risk.”

“I can see where a British physicist might pick up an atom bomb. Where would he get a couple of million bucks worth of heroin?”

“He didn’t organize it. From the description I’ve been given of the other guy, he’d go where the money is. He wouldn’t have a chance in a thousand of collecting the full reward, and I think he must know it.”

“Mike, there’s got to be more. You haven’t convinced me.”

“We’ll have to break this off any minute, Tim, so be ready. The big trouble with the bomb story is that it was supposed to be a two-man conspiracy. The scientist and the crook. It turns out there are others involved. I’ll know better in five or ten minutes. I think there’s a hijacking in the works.”

“Great. Mike, I don’t know if I’ve told you, but I’m not brave. I don’t ever feel called upon to prove my manhood by breaking up the Mafia. I believe the legend. Those Sicilians are mean.”

“The man in the Olds,” Shayne said patiently, “is going to be named Daniel Slattery, which isn’t a Sicilian name. As soon as I see what happens to my physicist and the Bentley he’s driving, we’ll bring in the cops and make some arrests. Whatever the shipment is, it’s safe in Slattery’s car. You’ll have another copyrighted story about still another victory in the fight against organized crime.”

“Mike, your instinct is telling you narcotics,” Rourke said stubbornly. “You’ve doled out very little information, but my instinct tells me that whether it’s narcotics or not, to go home and let other people carry on the fight against crime. I’m basically a voyeur.”

“There it is! The green sedan, coming out now. Keep in touch.”

Swinging his field glasses as the Oldsmobile passed, he caught a glimpse of a middle-aged man in glasses, a much younger woman beside him. Rourke’s lights came up, and he fell in line two cars behind the Olds.