Million Dollar Handle

by Brett Halliday

  “Who was delighted,” Nash said more happily, “to help expose the rascals who are threatening the integrity of the sport. Cameras? You’ve got them. But we’d better get together so you can tell me exactly what you need.”

  Shayne arranged to meet him later, and continued to work through his calls. He took on a Spanish-speaking private detective named Gonzales and told him to go to work on the Surfside assistant kennelmaster, Ricardo Sanchez. Then he called Rourke again to see if he had heard from Frieda.

  “She just hung up, Mike. I gave her your number, and she’s probably calling you now. I’ll get off the line.”

  The phone rang the instant the line was open. “Michael,” Frieda said. “I’m in Castle’s casino. I’ve been playing roulette. So far I’m two hundred ahead, and I think it’s a good omen. The box was just delivered, and everybody’s behaving according to the script.”

  “You’re being inconspicuous, I hope.”

  “They welcome the public. Of course it’s a little dead right now, but I’m with some friends I made on the plane. We’re all drinking Bloody Marys.”

  Her voice changed, becoming completely serious.

  “Which isn’t the reason I’m calling, is it? I hired a boy to hand the box to the doorman and run like hell. Your name seems to be known down here. The doorman gave it to another flunky, and when he carried it in to Castle, he was holding it as though he knew there was something bloody inside, like an ear. I think Castle had already heard the news from Miami. He’s had people coming and going. A long pause after the box went in. Then three new men arrived from somewhere outside the casino, at a fast walk. I’d better get back now, because I can’t see the door of the office from here.”

  “Sounds very good so far. Do you have a car?”

  “Yes, but the parking is murder. If he leaves in a hurry I may not be able to get out in time to see where he goes.”

  “To the airport, I hope. Do what you can, and go easy on the tomato juice. Don’t forget you’re outnumbered.”

  “I’m aware of that, believe me.”

  Shayne called Rourke back to report that the ear had been delivered, and to ask him to stay at his office phone so Frieda could call if she had more news. Then he called the Miami Beach police and was put through to his one friend on that force, a black detective named Barnes.

  The identification had just come in on the man Shayne had shot in the Surfside men’s room. He was from California, and had earned a long list of demerits there, mainly for robberies with violence. The other two men involved in the skirmish, Shayne was told, hadn’t stayed around to give an explanation of themselves. One had been tentatively identified as a local problem named Angelo Paniatti.

  “And that takes off some of the pressure,” Barnes told him, “but Painter still wants to hear it from you. When he couldn’t find you at the hospital he broke a perfectly good cigar into three pieces. I know he’d appreciate it if you stopped in.”

  “That would just be a replay of yesterday,” Shayne said, “and we both have better things to do with our time.”

  “Mike, about this sudden turnaround by Parker and Hamzy, this second car they think they remember. It turns out you and Tim Rourke were in asking for them last night. Is this just to get Painter thinking about something else, or is there anything to it?”

  “I have a witness, of sorts. I don’t know whether to believe him or not. It might help to have a cop along when I talk to him again. Can you meet me in the St. Francis parking lot in about twenty minutes? He should be waking up just about now.”

  Barnes had to agree, but it didn’t seem to make him happy.

  Shayne checked out of the motel and drove back to Miami, where he picked up I-95 and crossed the bay on the Julia Tuttle Causeway. Barnes was waiting. Inside, Barnes identified himself and they were told they would find their patient in the accident ward.

  But Dee Wynn was gone.

  The bed he had been in was the way he had left it, with the sheets tumbled and the pillow on the floor. Of the other two patients in the four-bed ward, one was almost completely wrapped in bandages, being kept alive through tubes. The other, a young black in a head bandage, was watching a game show on a portable television.

  “What happened to the patient who was here?” Shayne said, motioning at the empty bed.

  The black returned reluctantly to the real world. “You say something?”

  Barnes turned down the TV and Shayne repeated the question.

  “Oh, he went chasing off. He had a cast on his leg, but that didn’t bother him after the first time he fell down. Things to do, man, he couldn’t lie around in bed all day.”

  “When was this?”

  “Today show was still on.”

  The floor nurse, who had just come on shift, was unable to help. Wynn’s clothes were gone. All this was extremely upsetting to everybody, because he had managed to slip out without paying his bill.

  Barnes had stood out of the way, letting Shayne ask the questions. Outside, he said abruptly, “Mike, now we’re going in to talk to Painter.”

  They were standing on the asphalt in bright sunlight. He had put on dark glasses, and Shayne looked at his reflection in them.

  “Why? He didn’t know Wynn was here, so he won’t know he’s missing.”

  “Sometimes I’m willing to go outside the book,” Barnes said. “Not today. This is Miami Beach, and we have the home court advantage. I can’t go in and report this secondhand.”

  From the way Barnes was standing, Shayne could see that if he turned to walk to his own car, the gun would come out, and other cars would be called to escort them. His name next to the sum of $80,000 in Geary’s book had made that difference.

  “I don’t have anything to tell Painter except that the guy said he was in the back seat of Geary’s car when it happened, and there was a second car. He was drunk that night, and he was very drunk when he told me. That’s all there is.”

  “Not quite, Mike. It came in as I was leaving. An old guy was found drowned in a canal off the Trail. He was out there alone, fishing and drinking whiskey. And he wasn’t able to pull himself out because one leg was in a cast.”

  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 wa
s 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.