Million Dollar Handle

Chapter 12

Shayne wasted the next few hours.

They met Painter at Jackson Memorial. The cold-room attendant pulled out a drawer of his big filing cabinet and showed them a corpse. Shayne said bleakly, “That’s Wynn. He tried to do business with the wrong man.”

The medical verdict was definite, death by drowning. There was more than enough alcohol in his blood to explain why he had lost his balance and fallen in. The props were in order-a half-empty bottle of blended whiskey, a fishing rod snagged in the reeds, claw marks on the bank. His car was nearby.

“Now why would he rush out of the hospital to go fishing?” Shayne said. “And he told me he drank nothing but good-label bourbon.”

“A lush like that,” Painter said. “When it’s a choice between cheap whiskey and no whiskey-”

Shayne shrugged and turned away.

“It may interest you to hear,” Painter went on, “that two of my men, not by doing anything tricky or spectacular, just by ordinary, unspectacular, slogging police work, have come up with a witness who says Max Geary may not have gone off that cloverleaf unassisted. I’m going to ask you now if you have any statement to make, beyond the nonstatement you gave me yesterday, and I urge you to think carefully before you answer.”

“No statement, Petey. Is that all?”

“It is by no means all. I’ll remind you that Geary was expecting something to happen to him. Remember what he told the nurse? That if he met with further violence she should go to the police and reveal that it was Mike Shayne who beat him up? Naturally I did some checking this morning, and I guess you really were in San Francisco the night it happened. I want to nail that down, because it doesn’t take long to fly from California to Florida nowadays, and where Mike Shayne is concerned, I don’t just check, I double-check. But let’s say it stands up. That doesn’t rule out the possibility that you hired somebody to drive the second car. I’ll keep picking away at this, I warn you. That’s my technique.”

And so it went. Shayne managed to remain patient, waiting for Painter to wear himself out.

“You’ve got a protective coating,” Painter said at one point. “You think you can make your own rules, and go your own way, and you’ll never be called to account. I’ve talked to dozens of people, and they all keep coming back to the same thing-Mike Shayne, what dirty tricks do you suppose he did for that eighty thousand dollars? And new things keep cropping up. Dee Wynn now. That was skillfully done, and this time you don’t have the excuse that you were in San Francisco.”

“You wouldn’t know Wynn’s name if I hadn’t told Barnes.”

“You didn’t tell him a hell of a lot, did you? You knew we’d find out you had an ambulance ride together, and it’s always good to get your version in first. He was rambling, you couldn’t pin him down to anything. Sure. I don’t mind admitting, some of your actions still don’t seem to make a hell of a lot of sense, but you can be counted on-you never do things the simple and easy way.”

“What’s your theory, Petey? I really would like to know.”

“I don’t believe in theorizing. You know that about me. I go by what I see with these eyes.” He pointed to them. “Some kind of battle is going on here. Three casualties so far, if you count Geary. Tough it out, Shayne. You against the world. Keep it up, boy, and that casualty list won’t stop at three. But as long as you refuse to tell me anything, how can I help you?”

He gave his mustache its quick double flick. “I have information that a new three-man group is being recruited. The target? Mike Shayne, again. Fifteen hundred apiece is available, if they bring their own gun.” He had been saving this; he watched Shayne closely to see how he would take it. “But you’re Mike Shayne, I forgot. They can’t intimidate you.”

“Who’s doing the recruiting?”

“I don’t know that. Just that the word is around, and I thought, in fairness, I ought to pass it along. We’ve locked horns in the past, and there hasn’t been much good feeling on either side. That doesn’t mean it wouldn’t distress me considerably to hear you’d been shot by hired killers. I’ll be glad to provide you with protection. A two-car escort, around the clock. But naturally I want something in return. Start with the eighty thousand from Max Geary.”

“No bodyguard, please, Petey. They can be dangerous. Who’s your source?”

“Confidential. I protect my informants. They know that. It’s essential to the relationship.”

“Soupy Simpson?”

“Simpson?” Painter said, a little too innocently. “Didn’t we have to bust him for possession? I think he’s in Atlanta.”

“No, he’s back. Thanks for the warning. Can I go now?”

“Who’s stopping you? If you refuse my offer of a bodyguard, all I can do is advise you officially to step carefully.”

Following this advice, Shayne took more than his usual precautions leaving the hospital grounds, but that was to make sure none of Painter’s men were behind him. Even for seasoned professionals, it is never easy to kill somebody who knows they are looking for him. A surprisingly high percentage of professional murder contracts are never paid off. The price is high not because of the danger-few professional killers are ever apprehended-but because of the frustration and the waiting time.

Shayne went onto the East-West Expressway at Twelfth Avenue and kept changing lanes, varying his speed and watching the mirror. Leaving the expressway at the airport exit, he found an inconspicuous public phone. Before getting out of the car, he tapped a recessed spring on the inside door panel, and a. 38 Smith and Wesson dropped into his hand. He still had the. 45, but the Smith and Wesson was a handier weapon. He concealed it in his sling.

He punched a handful of dimes out of the change dispenser hanging from his dashboard, took them to the booth and began hunting for Simpson, a heroin user who made a dangerous living fencing stolen goods and occasionally selling out one of his thieves to the police. Shayne located him at a bowling alley in southwest Miami.

“Mike Shayne? You’re hot, baby. You got your name on a bad list.”

“Tell me about it.”

“I hear they’re trying to sell another contract on you. But after last night it ain’t moving so fast.”

“Where’s the money coming from?”

“All I know, from out of town, but I’ll keep listening. Where can I reach you, and how much is it worth?”

“Don’t just listen,” Shayne said. “Ask. Say you’ve got a shooter you take a percentage on, and you don’t want to recommend it to him unless you know what you’re getting him into.”

There was a moment’s silence. “Man, if it was anybody else I’d laugh, but I think I like it from you. I do know a guy. He’s so stupid he never heard of Mike Shayne. But it’s kind of risky to me personally, you know? You’ll have to come up with a good number.”

“One thousand.”

“Mike, I think,” Simpson said hesitantly, “I think we’re in business. You pay me, and the guy pays me. It could make a very nice middle. How much do I get up front?”

“Nothing. It’s an automatic fee if I live five days.”

Startled, Simpson laughed. “Nice. That way I won’t feel tempted. But I’ve got to live through those five days myself, so put a hundred in the mail? Then I’ll have something to fall back on.”

Shayne heard his car phone. He agreed to Simpson’s suggestion, and got back in time to catch the call. “Mike?” Rourke said. “Did Frieda get you?”

“I’ve been tied up with Painter. What happened?”

“Castle pulled out at about four o’clock. She got to the airport in time, but he went in a private plane. Lear jet, two-engine. Naturally he wouldn’t want to travel with ordinary tourists. I’m at International, but no private Lear has shown up here yet. There are too many possible airports.”

“I’m not ready for him, anyway. Is she coming back tonight?”

“Maybe. She’ll call again. She found out where Geary stayed when he was in Nassau. There was a girlfriend, apparently, which may be where the money went. Frieda’s going out to talk to her.”

“Do you have a phone number?” Shayne said quickly.

“No, she’ll call me. She said she knows she’s in enemy country. She’ll watch the rearview mirror. She wanted to know how things are going here, and I told her fine. Was that the right answer?”

Shayne was kneading the bridge of his nose. “People keep telling me things. Forget about Castle for now. He has to come to us.”

“I wish he’d come over in a smaller plane. Those Lears can carry a dozen people. All right, I’ll go back to the office and start calling airports.”

The Nash dog track was only a few blocks away. Bobby Nash was waiting in his office, and as soon as Shayne arrived he called in a burly, bearded young man named Dave.

“Dave’s our resident brain,” Nash said. “But I’m beginning to think I was too fast about saying yes, Mike. This could backfire, and damage the whole industry.”

“There’s a chance of that,” Shayne said. “Geary was crooked, Surfside was crooked, therefore it follows that all the other owners and all the other tracks are crooked. But too many people have money tied up in the business. You’re part of the tourist draw, and the tax take is enormous. We’re dealing with large matters here-murder, conspiracy, large-scale corruption. If we put on a good enough show, maybe including one or two deaths, I think we’ll see a big rush to put the lid back on and get back to normal.”

“Deaths,” Nash said thoughtfully.

“All you can do is hope.”

“Dave and I have been talking, and there are going to be problems. I mean from the technical end.”

Given his general hairiness and a pair of big-lensed glasses, not much of Dave’s face was showing, but as much as Shayne could see seemed friendly. His belly was held in by a wide belt with holsters for various tools.

“The closed-circuit cables are in channels in the walls,” he explained. “You can’t run a duplicate system without tearing everything out.”

“I’m thinking in terms of substitutions,” Shayne said. “Take the lockup kennel. There’s one camera there now. Leave it where it is, but cut it off. Hide another somewhere else in the kennel, and tie it into the regular circuit.”

“Why not?” Dave said. “In a duct, a light fixture. I know where we can get some two-way mirrors. Then the picture coming into the monitors is taken from a completely new angle. But the kennel guys don’t know that. Yeah. It would help if we had a wiring diagram. Then we could cut directly into one of the main feeds.”

“I think I can get you that. Can you tape the closed-circuit picture and play it back later?”

“No problem, depending on the size of their video machine. With ours, we can store twelve hours of action without changing tapes. You mean replay over the regular outlets?”

“The same way they replay a race after it’s over.”

“Simple as throwing a switch. Everything goes into the mixing console. Of course closed circuit is black-and-white, and the track cameras are color. You’ve got four of those working. They’re usually fixed, on an automatic swivel, but turn them loose, and you can film anything. Store it, edit it, mix it up, play it backwards. Hey, this is going to be great.”

“Let’s think in terms of ten cameras. How much time will you need?”

“To hide everything? Days. How much time do we have?”

“Between two A.M. and seven tomorrow morning.”

“Then it won’t be perfect. You’ll just have to arrange enough excitement so nobody looks real close.”

At Surfside, across the bay in Miami Beach, racing was well underway by the time Shayne and Dave had talked through the problem. Shayne would be shaping events, but he knew he couldn’t control them. He had to be ready to move in unexpected directions. He kept throwing out ideas. Dave, sometimes using diagrams or referring to the actual equipment, told him whether or not he thought they would work. If the answer was no, he explained why, and Shayne was sometimes able to come up with a modification. Dave had a rough working knowledge of the Surfside system, but in some cases he would have to wait till he saw the physical layout.

Nash arranged a forty-eight-hour floater policy with his insurance agent, to cover the borrowed equipment. Shayne left them dismantling cameras and preparing an inventory. Nash was still wavering between awe at the scope of Shayne’s proposals, and worry about all the possible things that could go wrong.

Shayne had fallen behind on his phone calls. Surprisingly, it was the sports editor, Wanamaker, who had turned up a link between Tony Castle and C. and W. Factors, which had loaned several bushels of money to Harry Zell. The Cuban detective who had been following Ricardo Sanchez reported that Sanchez had arrived early at the kennel, where without Dee Wynn he would be fully occupied for the next couple of hours, and the detective was about to have a drink with a cousin, who worked at the Pompano Beach harness track. Rourke had had no further word from Frieda.

Surfside’s phones had been put on the Centrex system, with automatic switching and a different number for each extension. Shayne dialed the number given for Public Relations. Linda Geary answered.

“You big ugly redhead,” she said hoarsely. “Where have you been all day? Why didn’t you call me? What are you up to, damn it?”

“Working on Sanchez. One or two other things. I’m going to need a little sponsorship. Can you arrange for me to have the run of the track tonight after everything closes?”

“For what nefarious purpose?”

“You don’t really want to know. You want to be able to deny you had anything to do with it.”

“Translated, that means you want to bug the kennels, and prove Ricardo is shooting up dogs. That shows nice professional enthusiasm on your part, Mike, but it won’t be necessary now. I’m calling you off.”

“Why?”

“I decided there was no point in going through third parties. I barged in on Mother with blood in my eye, and told her in no uncertain terms that unless she went ahead with the sale, and did it today, her guy was going to get the same working-over Daddy got, and from the same source-Mike Shayne. That drained the blood out of her face, I must say. She wants that boy with his limbs in working order. Hell, I don’t begrudge the old girl her little adventure. I wouldn’t mind a piece of that myself, not that she’s offering to share the good fortune. And she signed, Mike! She signed like a woolly lamb. We’ll finish the meeting, and then the wreckers take over.”

“What did she sign, exactly?”

“A purchase agreement. Harry’s been carrying it around in his briefcase for a long time. Surfside Kennel Club, your name will shortly be Harry Zell’s Palace.”

“When did this happen?”

“The ceremony took place about half an hour ago. Don’t be too disappointed now, Mike. You’ll have plenty of other chances to hector people.”

“Sometimes it’s harder to cut me off than it is to put me on.”

She said more sharply, “Remember, Buster, I’m holding a sledgehammer. That’s not my style, usually. Usually I whimper and beg. But it worked so well with Mom-she crumpled, she fell apart! — I’m going to see how it works with you. Lay off, or the full truth about your eighty thousand dollars from Surfside will be in all the papers and on all the news shows. You are talking to the lady who knows.”

“I hear you, Linda.”

“Stop in. I’ll buy you a drink on the expense account.”

“Maybe tomorrow night.”

“Look for me at the clubhouse bar.”

Shayne broke the connection gently enough, but then he banged the meaty side of his fist against the wall of the booth. After a long moment, he dialed another Surfside extension, the control tower. He asked for Lou Liebler, the tax man.

Liebler said carefully, “Too much going on here, I can’t hear you. I’ll call you back from another phone.”

When they were connected again: “Mike, we need a face-to-face. All that money flowing both ways and we’re not tapped in on it.”

“We may be fairly soon. Did you find out anything about Geary’s financing?”

“One or two things, but should we talk about it on the phone?”

“It’s high percentage nobody’s listening.”

“Well-I did better than I expected without a subpoena. During the renovations, the books show a series of advances from a New York company I never heard of. Some of those notes are still outstanding. Some have been paid off by transfers of stock.”

“Tell me that again,” Shayne said, frowning.

After Liebler repeated it: “Anything to connect the New York company with the Bahamas, or with Castle?”

“No, but there’s this. It’s from Wolf, in Tallahassee. It has nothing to do with tax matters-he stumbled on it. You know Geary was always going back and forth to Nassau, and it seems he had a whole second life there, house on the beach, boat, woman, different lifestyle. And Wolf says that the woman was planted on him by Castle, to find out where he was getting his extra money.-Mike?” Shayne must have made some sound. “Is it helpful, I hope?”

Shayne was gripping the phone hard. This was the woman Frieda had heard about, and decided to question.

“Thinking,” he said. “Hold on a minute.” But whatever was going on in Nassau, there was no way he could influence it from here, and he went on: “I want you to arrange something for me, Liebler. I’m as anxious as you are to get the flow started, but I can’t just walk in and wave a magic wand. I have to pinpoint it. I can do that mechanically if I have the run of the place for a few hours. I think early tomorrow morning would be the best time-very early, so I won’t be bothered.”

“I’ll meet you anyplace you say.”

“You’re a hard-working man, Liebler. You need sleep. I never like to have people looking over my shoulder. When two people know a secret, it stops being a secret. Nothing for you to worry about financially. I’m increasing the size of your cut by a third, and the same for Fitzhugh. Tell him. Is everybody out by two o’clock?”

“Pretty close, usually. There’s a watchman.”

“I need a key, and I need that wiring diagram you were carrying around, and I want Fitzhugh to talk to the watchman so he’ll be expecting me. Tell him I’m checking the TV security, late at night so nobody’ll know about it. That should be good enough cover. And tomorrow night-money, Liebler. More than usual, to catch up after our little vacation.”