Armed... Dangerous...

by Brett Halliday

  “Get it through your head!” the man inside shouted. “You’re going to—”

  McQuade saw a heavy-set, burly Negro mauling a young white girl with a dense mop of black hair. He pulled the Negro into a right-handed punch that traveled less than a foot and lifted him clear off the floor. The little splat as fist and jaw collided sounded like an egg being dropped.

  “Stop it, both of you!” Michele cried.

  Her cry went unnoticed. A second man appeared in the archway at the end of the living room. He was smaller than McQuade, with snapping black eyes, a thin two-part mustache and slicked-back hair. He was wheeling a dress rack, a simple contraption of iron pipes running on rubber-tired wheels. A dozen or so identical dresses in plastic bags hung from the central pipe.

  He looked from McQuade to Michele, his eyes jumping like furtive animals. He whirled the rack around and thrust it at McQuade.

  The Negro landed on the worn carpet with a crash that must have startled the termites in the old beams. McQuade batted at the dresses with both hands. He tried to sidestep, but the smaller man kept pushing the rack at him, keeping him off balance.

  Michele cried, “Ziggy, that is truly enough!”

  McQuade took a backward step and finally got a grip on one of the uprights. He braced himself. The rack reversed and the smaller man began to retreat. On the floor, the Negro shook his head and gathered himself. Michele stooped beside him and said something urgently, in her agitation speaking in French. He brushed her aside and began to get to his feet, trouble written all over his black face.

  “Brownie, you fool, stand still and listen!”

  Billy, the boy who had met them at the gate, hurled himself on McQuade from behind. McQuade twitched violently and brought his elbow back into the boy’s midsection. Billy went flying, an anguished look on his face.

  The Negro, coming up, dealt McQuade a powerful blow in the kidneys. McQuade spun around and the dress rack went careening away, carrying its manipulator ahead of it. In front of the fireplace, he tripped on a low table and went down. The rack came down on top of him.

  The girl, a skinny thing under her wild crown of black hair, grabbed McQuade’s waist and hung on grimly. McQuade chopped at the Negro’s head, and caught him on the ear with a swinging right that took him out of contention again. McQuade turned to meet Billy as he came at him swinging a poker. He went in underneath the poker and caught it as it came down. He twisted, yanking hard. The poker whirled away.

  The dress-rack man had untangled himself, but he kept clear of McQuade until the Negro recovered and could come at him again. Then he darted in with a karate chop which McQuade caught on the side of his head. A swinging backhand blow sent Dress Rack reeling. A fat Tiffany glass lamp with a beaded shade fell to the floor.

  The skinny girl finally succeeded in working one leg between McQuade’s. The Negro grabbed from one side while Billy leaped on him from the other, and they all four went down, in a flailing, churning knot. Dress Rack moved around the little group with the marble lamp base, waiting to get a shot at the big man’s head.

  Michele continued to scream at these impossible Americans to act like civilized people. But suddenly the whole thing struck her as less awful than funny. She collapsed laughing into a tall chair. It was wild, high laughter, and after an instant it reached the struggling group on the floor. Dress Rack peered around in alarm, and lowered the lamp base. The Negro looked up, and McQuade hung a solid right high on his cheekbone.

  That was the last blow struck by either side. No one could go on battling in the same room with that cascade of laughter. The skinny girl freed herself, smiling, and came to her feet. Her blouse was in tatters and one strap of her bra had torn loose, but the bra didn’t have much to keep under restraint. Billy, sitting back on his heels, began to grin. In a moment he was hooting as hysterically as Michele.

  The Negro, dazed, was flickering in and out of consciousness, but his lips, too, began to move. Only Dress Rack still looked mad.

  “Put it down, Ziggy,” Michele sputtered. “I told you. Did I not tell you? Do you remember? I told you it had to work. And the dress rack. You see what a weapon? What you can do with it?”

  “I never said you couldn’t,” Dress Rack said stiffly.

  McQuade came heavily to his feet. “What are we doing, playing games?” he said, massaging his knuckles.

  Michele’s laughter was nearly under control. Catching Billy’s eyes as she started to speak, she was off again.

  “Oh!” she gasped finally. “My poor ribs. Brownie, are you all right?”

  The Negro waggled his jaw. “If someone will pass me the bottle of Scotch. Who is this gentleman?”

  “His name is Frank. He is taking Tug’s place. And this is Brownie.” She pointed. “And Irene. And Szigetti, sometimes called Spaghetti. I spoke of a small disturbance we mean to create on Sixth Avenue.” She spread her hands. “Violà! This is it!”

  McQuade touched the side of his face and looked at his hand. There was blood on it. Szigetti, smoothing his mustache with quick flicks of his thumbnail, studied McQuade closely.

  “I’ve run into you somewhere,” he said.

  “Have you?” McQuade said.

  “In Florida or someplace?”

  McQuade looked at him with more interest. “I’ve been in Florida.”

  “Yeah,” Szigetti said, studying the bigger man specula-lively. He turned to Michele. “We were counting on taking Tug’s split and divvying it up. We were working on the new timing when you came in. My principle is, the fewer the better.”

  There was no sign of merriment in her face now. He said quickly, “I’m not griping! I’m no complainer, anybody can tell you that. I thought we could see how it shaped up with just the four of us. And if you still thought you needed the extra man, I had somebody to suggest. A kid I can vouch for over the years, and you could get him for a fraction of what Tug was getting.”

  “Did you approach him?” she said sharply.

  “No, no, not without getting a go-ahead from you. But I happen to know he’s available.”

  “You can forget it, Ziggy. Frank, that blood on your face, do something about it. We don’t want to call attention to you with a bandage.”

  “It’s not my blood,” he said.

  Brown had picked himself up and was pouring himself a slug of good Scotch. “You’re welcome to it, baby,” he said softly. “For now.”

  “Now will everybody please stop this?” Michele said. “It was a stupid mix-up, and all my fault. We are going to be friends for thirty-six hours, because we can do this only if we work together. After that you may fight with knives or guns or anything you please.”

  “Blade work?” Brown said blandly. “Not for me. I’m a nonviolent cat. First thing I’m going to do is buy a red Thunderbird and some new threads. Then I’ll accept bids from the chicks.”

  “Where’s the bathroom?” McQuade said.

  Michele said, “Show him, Billy.”

  Billy took him out through a large dining room. The table was littered with aluminum trays, the remains of four TV dinners. He opened the door of a washroom off the kitchen.

  “There’s a tub upstairs,” Billy said, “and it’s about three and a half feet long. You couldn’t get in without a shoehorn, Frank.”

  “Yeah?”

  The boy looked down diffidently, then up into McQuade’s eyes. “That was some fight,” he said, and added, “Paper towels is all there is.”

  McQuade grunted. Inside the washroom, he closed and locked the door.

  Instantly his manner changed. He listened. When he heard Billy’s retreating footsteps he turned on the hot-water faucet. The water was rusty. Leaving the water running, he raised the lower half of a narrow frosted window and looked out. Then he eased his big frame through the opening and dropped to the ground.

  He moved cautiously around the house. The living-room windows were open. He dropped to his heels to listen to Szigetti’s overly emphatic voice.

  “A
ll I’m saying is I saw him somewhere. And he’s got the wrong smell. I just want to make sure you know for a fact he’s OK.”

  “I do know that for a fact,” Michele said coldly. “He has the wrong smell because you want another one-fifth added to your price.”

  “No! I was just checking up. If you say he’s OK, he’s OK. In this kind of situation, I like to trust the guy on the right of me as well as, the guy on my left, and the way this Frank McQuade strikes me, he strikes me as being maybe a little too independent.”

  “He is independent,” she conceded, “but I have a lever to use on him. He will give us no trouble.”

  “I’m glad to hear that,” Szigetti said, too heartily. “One other thing. There can’t only be one guy in charge. Tug—he was a natural, we’re all his boys. Now I know the setup, the kids have confidence in me. I’m the logical man. I’m not bucking for anything, understand, but if everybody feels—”

  McQuade’s lips shaped a savage smile. He slipped away without waiting to hear more.

  He had already spotted the telephone wire. He dropped to his hands and found the lead-in box, just above the masonry of the foundation. He pried the box open with a small screwdriver, working by feel. He struck a light, snapping the lighter shut again almost at once. He did something inside the box, closed it carefully and backed away, paying out a thin copper wire. At intervals, he pulled it taut and tacked it against the underside of a clapboard.

  He swung back into the washroom, bringing the wire with him. He took out his hearing-aid battery case and opened it. Where the batteries should have been there was a neat arrangement of printed circuits and transistors. He loosened a terminal and tied in the wire. After checking the button in his ear, he closed a gap in one of the printed circuits with the point of his screwdriver. He turned on both faucets in the wash basin and sloshed the water around with one hand. In a low voice, speaking directly into the battery case, he gave a Manhattan number.

  He waited impatiently. Then, in the same low urgent tone, he said, “Power? This is Michael Shayne. I’m in.”

  CHAPTER 5

  It had started two days earlier in Miami, when Michael Shayne, the big, hard-driving, redheaded private detective, received a phone call from his friend Will Gentry, Chief of Miami Police.

  Gentry wanted to know if he was busy. Shayne looked across his cognac at his secretary, Lucy Hamilton, who was sitting on the sofa where he had left her. He said yes. Gentry said in that case he would put it another way. Could Shayne, as a small return for all the favors Gentry had done for him over the years, interrupt what he was doing and get his ass over to the St. Albans Hotel in Miami Beach on the double? Shayne sighed. He told Lucy he was sorry as hell, and put on his shoes.

  He met his old friend in a room on the tenth floor of the hotel. A tired-looking man with a square, rugged face shook hands with him and looked at him searchingly.

  Gentry said, “This is Inspector Power from New York, Mike. Sanford Power. I’ve known him since he was a pup. The way it is now with these goddam jets, we’re getting to be practically a suburb of New York. If Sandy and I didn’t work together, we’d hardly ever catch anybody.”

  Gentry was red-faced and sad-eyed, a courageous, honest cop who was also one of the finest persons the redheaded detective knew. At the moment he was smiling too effusively, like a used-car salesman in bad need of the commission.

  “He wants to borrow you for a week, Mike. Sit down and he’ll tell you about it.”

  Shayne said dryly, “I don’t think I’m going to like this.” He waved away the chair he was offered, reversed a straight chair and swung a long leg over the seat. “But you put it so nicely, I’ll have to hear about it before I say no.”

  Gentry’s too-anxious smile faded. “I was hoping you wouldn’t take your usual hard-nosed attitude, Mike. This could be one of the biggest things in years.”

  “For me or for you or for New York?” Shayne inquired. “Go ahead, Inspector. But I have to warn you—there’s a sign on my office door that says, ‘On Vacation.’”

  “This wouldn’t be much of a vacation,” Power admitted, rubbing his eyes. “And I hope you’ll call me Sandy instead of Inspector. I’m a long way out of my jurisdiction. Nobody knows that better than I do.”

  “Then if this isn’t official,” Shayne said, “offer me a drink.”

  “I’m sorry!” Power said. “This thing has been hammering at me. I don’t know if I’m coming or going. I’m a beer man myself, but Will told me what you like.”

  He opened a bottle of Hennessey’s. There was a brief interruption while the drinks were poured.

  He resumed abruptly, “There may be a certain amount of money for you, Mike, somewhere between thirty and sixty thousand. There’s also a certain amount of danger. And there’s one other thing Will tells me not to stress, but from my point of view it looms pretty large. We have a chance here of crippling the international drug traffic, and it isn’t a chance that’s likely to come again.”

  “Every time somebody seizes a few hundred pounds of heroin they say they’ve crippled the drug traffic,” Shayne said. “It still seems to go on.”

  Power winced. “I’ve been guilty of that kind of statement once or twice myself. But this is different. It isn’t a few crummy pushers or wholesalers. It’s the men who put up the money, and by money I don’t mean a few thousand dollars. I mean approximately two and a half million.”

  Shayne looked up sharply. “I’ve never heard of professionals handling a shipment that large.”

  “The circumstances are unusual,” Power said in the same dry tone Shayne had used. “Do you want to say no at this point, or listen to some more?”

  Shayne drank some cognac and chased it with a sip of chilled water. “You mentioned a certain amount of danger and a fairly sizable fee. I take it the two things go together?”

  “That’s correct. The two and a half million is a retail valuation. A cash equivalent on the primary level would be in the neighborhood of half a million. A ten percent payout would be a justifiable figure for information leading to the apprehension and conviction of et cetera. As far as danger goes, with the right kind of preparation I think it can be minimized. This is very much an undercover assignment. I can’t risk using anybody from New York, even if I had anybody who could do it, and quite frankly, I haven’t. I drink a brew or two with Will whenever I’m in town, and I’ve heard about a few of your exploits, Mike. I think you can handle this job. I’ll go further—I think you may be the one man in the country who can handle it.”

  “Good God, Will,” Shayne burst out angrily. “I can see you at these beer-drinking sessions. A cop blows in from the big city, and you think you have to impress him with all the crime we have down here.”

  “I didn’t exaggerate,” Gentry said. “And you’re not just a local man anymore, Mike, I might point out. You’ve been known to make the New York papers.”

  “And since when did you start believing what you read in the papers?” Shayne made a disgusted face. “And where would this undercover work take place, in southern Florida, where I know my way around, or in New York, where I have to ask directions to find the Latin Quarter?”

  “In New York,” Power said. “That’s not necessarily a disadvantage. You’re listening, and that’s a start. I’ve been in police work all my life, Mike, a small matter of forty-three years. This is easily the biggest thing I’ve ever come within shouting distance of. Bear that in mind. And I want you to face the fact that if you get out of this room without saying yes, you’ll have to come up with some damned good reasons. Being on vacation is not a good reason.”

  “That was mainly my secretary’s idea,” the detective said impatiently. “I suggest we get on with it.”

  “Right,” Power said briskly. “Bear with me, Will. There’s going to be some repetition. This is the basic situation.”

  He tasted his beer. “It starts in a poppy field in Burma or eastern Turkey, and ends up on West One Hundredth Street in Manhatt
an. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred we can’t break into the chain any higher than the next to the last link. If not the user, the pusher, the man who supplies him, who’s usually also a user himself. Sometimes the customs people pick up a batch as it comes in, but one of the facts we have to deal with is that most of that information comes anonymously from inside, as a cheap way of getting rid of somebody who’s stepped out of line. Nobody has to tell me none of this does much permanent good. I’m not fooling myself. It’s a war, Mike, and in a war you do what you can. You don’t turn down a shot at an enemy tank because a couple hundred others are over the hill, and what’s one out of a couple of hundred? But I didn’t come down here to sing the ‘Star Spangled Banner.’”

  He reached abstractedly for his beer, and shook it to start the bubbles. “There’s a law against using or peddling, and you do your best to enforce that law. You can’t make an arrest without evidence. You see somebody who’s well known to be a junkie. He’s obviously on the nod, with a fresh needle mark on his arm. That’s not enough. You have to catch him with the needle, with the actual drugs. Sometimes you get lucky, and you’re on the spot when he makes his connection. You put your evidence in a manila envelope, and when you come into court you damn well better bring that envelope or they throw you out on your ear. Well, this happens three or four thousand times a year in greater New York, so naturally we’ve worked up a pretty solid routine. We can usually put our hands on those envelopes. Even after we get a conviction, if we get a conviction, we still hang onto them because the case may go up on appeal, or it may be reopened by a higher court ruling on something else. But a time comes when there’s no point in holding onto the evidence any longer, so what do we do? We burn it. This happens once every two or three years. We go through the property vaults, sort out the dead envelopes and truck them up to the Department of Sanitation incinerator on West Fifty-sixth Street. And it all goes up in smoke. Sometimes there’s a story in the papers about it, and even if there’s not, the news gets around. For a few days all the junkies in New York are very depressed.”