Six Seconds to Kill

CHAPTER 3

Michael Shayne-red-haired, powerfully built, as relaxed as a cat-sat back in the dental chair and let a plump, motherly nurse snap a bib around his neck. Dr. Galvez approached with a probe and a long-handled mirror.

“Open, please.”

After a moment’s cursory inspection, he murmured something about X-rays and told the nurse to write up the chart on the last patient. He would call her when she was needed. She nodded cheerfully and went out.

As soon as he heard the door close behind her he put down his tools.

“I am sorry about this cloak-and-dagger atmosphere, Michael. But there are now seven people working in my office, all with a passing interest in political matters. I would like to think that they subscribe to my own belief in constitutional democracy, but about one or two of them I have my doubts.”

“I needed a checkup anyway,” Shayne said.

“Your teeth seem in excellent shape. Come back next week for the X-rays, if you wish. Right now, politics. I would like everyone to think that it was my specialty that brought about this meeting, not yours.”

He opened a cabinet and took out a fifth of Jamaica rum. “I keep this for my nervous patients. Can I offer you-”

“Sure.”

Galvez poured two drinks into paper cups, gave one to Shayne, and perched on a high stool. He was small and slightly built, with a neatly trimmed Van Dyke and a professorial manner, in his middle fifties. He had formerly practiced in Havana. He was an excellent dentist, and several people Shayne knew used him. He was also an active figure in refugee politics, a subject about which Shayne knew very little. Before keeping this appointment, he had checked with his friend Tim Rourke, a reporter on the Miami News, who had recently written a series of pieces on the Latin American community. Rourke was able to give Shayne a fast briefing.

Dr. Galvez was the leading personality in a group that until recently had been the largest and most influential. It was usually referred to by its initials, NLS; Rourke had forgotten what the initials stood for. It was generally pro-United States, but in favor of some kind of socialist arrangement for Latin America. Its officers, like Galvez, were professionals who had prospered after coming to Miami. They had announced a street demonstration against Attorney General Crowther-partly, Rourke believed, to answer criticisms from some of their younger members that they talked a lot but never did anything. Rourke was sure the demonstration would be orderly and nonviolent.

“Salud,” Galvez said, raising his cup. “Now. Have you heard of a rather seedy proto-fascist named Lorenzo Vega?”

Shayne shook his head.

“He has been quiet lately. To people of my persuasion he is known as a CIA lackey, always too obvious to be really effective. He runs a marginal export-import business. He still has a so-called counterrevolutionary organization, no more than a phone number and a letterhead. His newspaper has not been issued since his subsidy was withdrawn. And now, out of a clear blue sky, a manifesto.”

He hiked up his white coat and produced a folded leaflet printed on cheap orange paper.

“‘To the Latin people of Miami,’” he read, translating. “‘Do you want the world to believe that you share the crypto-Communist views of the notorious Red Dentist and the NLS?’ I won’t bother you with a word-for-word translation. The language is predictable, ridden with cliches. In effect he calls for a violent counter-riot to suppress the riot we are planning for tomorrow. Not even our worst enemies have ever before now accused us of aspiring to the title of rioters. He says nothing of Eliot Crowther, you will notice, or of U.S. Metals, or of Crowther’s apologies for the Caldera junta. It is all anti-Galvez, anti-NLS, complete with caricature.”

A crudely drawn cartoon under the text showed a small, dapper man in a dentist’s white coat, with a Van Dyke beard, cowering back in a dentist’s chair while a huge Latin American workman, his sleeves rolled up, threatened him with a drill.

“The line underneath says, ‘A Taste of his Own Medicine.’ Vega as a spokesman for labor is really rather funny. Of course the actuality tomorrow may not turn out to be very funny at all. He is recruiting counter-pickets at fifteen dollars a head, and you can imagine what sort of people. Drunks, pimps, teen-agers from motorcycle gangs.”

“What kind of picket line are you planning?”

“We have a point to make, and we feel it can be made most forcefully with silence and dignity. We will be dressed in black, in mourning for the copper strikers shot down by the Caldera militia. We have a permit from the Miami Beach police. I confess that I personally have no taste for a street brawl with Lorenzo Vega and his hired bully-boys. None of us are fist-fighters, frankly. How much police protection will we get? That is problematical. I spoke to Chief of Detectives Painter, and he didn’t take it too seriously. He said I was exaggerating, there hasn’t been a major street disturbance on the Beach in ten years.”

“That sounds like Painter,” Shayne observed.

“And another aspect,” Galvez went on. “I won’t try your patience with a long political lecture, except to say that my position inside my own organization is far from secure. The younger element has been agitating for more militancy, more revolutionary rhetoric. According to the rumor mill, the super-radicals will also be out on Collins Avenue tomorrow, with their pockets filled with nuts and bolts. Thus-two groups, one on either side, both equally committed to the use of violence, with the NLS and Dr. Santiago Galvez in the middle. Does that convey a picture of the situation?”

“Except for what you think I can do about it.”

“I thought that was obvious. I’ve called a few of our regular benefactors and raised a purse. We want you to find out where Vega got his money. Prove that the CIA is paying him, and we can draw his sting. A story in tomorrow’s paper-”

Shayne laughed and reached up to unfasten the bib around his neck. “Thanks for the drink, Doctor.”

“Have another,” Galvez said quickly, uncapping the bottle. “What do you mean, Michael? I understood you to say that you weren’t working on anything else right now.”

“I try not to take hopeless cases,” Shayne said. “If the CIA really hired this guy, they did it in private, and paid cash. But how could I prove it? Hell, raise a little more dough and spend it where it can do you some good.”

Galvez filled Shayne’s cup and said cautiously, “If you have any ideas-”

“You said Vega has a marginal business. How marginal?”

“Very. He lives in a low-rent neighborhood. He drives a battered car.”

“Then a couple of thousand ought to do it. But you’ll have to move right away, before he hires too big an army. That kind of thing can pick up its own momentum.”

Galvez was staring at Shayne. “Buy him?”

“According to you, somebody else already has. That means he’s for sale. When nothing happens tomorrow, all he has to say is that the people he hired got scared and didn’t show up. Nobody’s going to take him out and shoot him. It isn’t that important.”

Galvez stroked his neat little beard. “You’re proposing that I make an appointment with Vega and walk up to him and offer him two thousand dollars?”

“If you don’t have capital in the export-import business, you’ve got to cut corners. He’s probably had a piece of dozens of illegal deals. If you can get something on him, open with that. While he’s wondering if you’re bluffing, come in with the money offer and he’ll probably grab it. But you have to move fast.”

“I see that. Good Lord. My niece Adele-you saw her, she’s my technician-mentioned something we might use, but-Mike, listen. You handle it. I wouldn’t know the technique. Two thousand is not an impossible sum.”

“What makes you so sure he’s spending government money? There are other possibilities. U.S. Metals. Caldera. Crowther himself.”

“Oh, I don’t-” His hand went to his beard. “Conceivably. We simply assumed that because Vega and the CIA were associated in the past-Crowther! Unquestionably our demonstration will embarrass him. We plan to assemble at the Orange Bowl and cross to Miami Beach in a motorcade, and if he could break it up before we come within range of the TV cameras-I think you may be onto something. And wouldn’t that give you a personal incentive? You’ve had a few run-ins with him, if I remember rightly.”

“In the old days,” Shayne said briefly. He glanced at the time. “But he keeps at least five removes from anything that could get him in trouble, and I know damn well there’s no chance of proving anything. I’m amazed that he didn’t make up some excuse for not coming down tomorrow. All right. It’s at least a hundred-to-one shot, but once in a great while they’ve been known to come in. It all depends on how nervous Vega is. I’ll try to shake him a little. Just remember I don’t speak Spanish and I don’t usually operate in this part of town. I’ll need any leads you can give me.”

“Good, Mike,” Galvez said, relieved. “Fine. I’ve got a thousand dollars here, and I can get another thousand by the end of the afternoon. As for leads, Adele has been talking to people who know him. She’d better tell you herself. The only thing-” He hesitated. “I’m getting a little paranoid, I’m afraid. You know the syndrome, surrounded by enemies. In the long run the obvious right-wingers like Vega have been discredited. It’s the left that frightens me. This unrealistic fever that has infected everybody beneath a certain age. I have the feeling that something-something-is in the wind. I wish I could speak more precisely. There is a difference, I don’t know how to describe it, in the way certain young men hold themselves at certain coffee stands. A sort of-impatience.”

“And you think your niece is involved?”

Galvez spread his hands. “Not involved. Perhaps aware. Her parents are both dead, I have brought her up with my daughters. She has given no sign that she is anything but completely loyal. But by accident I have found a copy of a picture magazine in my house with a page torn out. It was a photograph of a man called Gil Ruiz. Probably the name will mean nothing to you, but to the young people of Latin America it means a great deal. A student who interrupted his studies to join the revolution. A self-appointed expert on guerrilla warfare. He is said to be in command of the armed opposition to the Caldera regime, and to girls of Adele’s age-group he is a person of legend. Of course she knows how much I despise and have always opposed that kind of romantic adventurist.”

He hesitated again, and then said firmly, “She’s intelligent, level-headed. I’ve seen to it that she is firmly grounded in political theory. If I can’t trust her, I can’t trust anybody.”