Armed... Dangerous...

by Brett Halliday

  “I hope so.”

  He hung up, troubled by something too vague to be called a premonition.

  He checked in at the motel. Alone in his room, he found a ball game on TV, took off his jacket and tie and sat back against the head of one of the twin beds with a glass in one hand and a pint of cognac within reach. He went over the plan again. Something continued to pick at him, but he wasn’t able to chase it down. They had set up a tight schedule, leaving the opposition too little time to work out any counterplan. There were three things that could happen, and as far as Shayne could tell, no more than three. If the banker appeared in person, they would film the transaction and have the most important narcotics arrest of the decade. If he sent an agent, they would still have an important arrest, as well as a fair case against the man at the top if they could find him. As for number three, if the banker decided not to believe Michele’s evaluation of Shayne and to take a chance that he was bluffing, a quick reflex action on Shayne’s part would destroy the truckload of drugs there on the street instead of at the Sanitation Department’s incinerator. Everything seemed to be covered. And yet—

  His eyes fixed on the TV picture without really seeing it, he started over, and again he failed to find the loophole he was sure was there. The minute hand on his watch worked slowly around. He was still dissatisfied when the phone rang during the four-o’clock station break.

  “Maguire?” the familiar voice said.

  “Yeah,” Shayne said, swinging off the bed. “Could you make it?”

  “Not quite. I have four hundred and twenty thousand.”

  “Too bad,” Shayne said shortly. “Hang up. I want to use the line.”

  There was a brief pause.

  “Five hundred then,” the voice said in a resigned tone. “Where do we make the exchange?”

  Shayne told him, then went on to give instructions on how he wanted the money packed. He gave a detailed description of the way the truck would be wired, as a precaution against treachery.

  “So make sure you do it all by yourself,” he said. “You’ll recognize me. I’ll be leaning against the front fender smoking a cigar. I’ll leave the motor running. All you have to do is put it in gear and go. You do know how to drive, I hope.”

  “One of those immense rubbish vans? Don’t be childish. Make a different arrangement, or I’ll have to bring a driver.”

  “No,” Shayne said. “You can have a driver waiting at the corner of Tenth Avenue, but the transfer has to be strictly one to one. Take off the hand brake and put her in low. It’s right where it is on any manual shift. Stay in low till you get to Tenth.”

  “Perhaps,” the man said with a sigh. “I won’t claim to be glad our paths have crossed, Mr.—Maguire, but I’m impressed, as always, with American speed and ingenuity. Do you care to tell me where you’ve secreted Michele?”

  “I’ll tell you after you hand over the dough.”

  “You made quite an impression in that quarter, it seems. Too bad. It might have worked out to your advantage.”

  He hung up, and Shayne moved fast. He went out carrying his tie and jacket, and put them on waiting for the elevator. A cab took him downtown on Ninth Avenue and let him out in front of the Department of Sanitation Motor Shop at four-sixteen.

  The big overhead doors were down. He knocked on a smaller door. Inspector Power opened it almost at once.

  “Did he agree, Mike?”

  “We’re getting the full price,” Shayne said, “and I think he’s bringing it himself. This could pay off.”

  “It’s about time something broke right for our side,” Power said. “Let’s change the plugs.”

  The big yellow truck Shayne had brought in was easy to pick out of the deadlined vehicles because of a bad dent he had put in its front fender by knocking down the iron fence. After replacing the three spoiled spark plugs, he swung into the cab and started the motor. It took hold with a roar. He pulled onto the floor, where Power was waiting with two one-gallon jars of kerosene.

  “You’ll want to be sure of the connections, Mike. Open the side hatch.”

  Shayne threw the heavy clamps. The side door swung open. The space inside was crammed with cartons, canvas bags and bundles of nine-by-twelve manila envelopes, tied with twine. He flipped one of the cartons open and pulled out an envelope. All the necessary information about the case of one John Gonzales, arrested two summers earlier for possession of narcotics, was entered on the front of the envelope in a careful clerk’s hand: the police code number, the name of the arresting officer, a listing of the evidence and the disposition of the case. Gonzales, seized with a broken eyedropper and eleven one-ounce bags of heroin, had pleaded guilty. Unless he had been paroled in the interim, he was still in jail.

  Shayne shook one of the innocent-seeming glassine packages into his hand. He tossed the envelope back with the rest and shook his head.

  “What a haul.”

  “Here, Mike, put it as far in back as you can reach.”

  Power passed up one of the jars of kerosene. A blasting cap had been fitted into the lid and sealed there with paraffin. Shayne paid out the wire carefully and wedged the jar into a nest of cartons.

  “One would probably be enough,” Power said, “but let’s not take any chances.”

  He handed up the second jar, identical with the first. Shayne placed it and jumped down. Power closed the hatch gently, leaving it unlatched so it wouldn’t pinch the wires.

  The detonator was already tied in. Shayne took it into the cab with him.

  Power pressed a button activating the overhead doors. Shayne drove through, parked pointing east and left the motor idling. The gas gauge was three-quarters full.

  Power lowered the big door and came out by the small one. His movements were as deliberate as usual, but Shayne could see excitement in his eyes.

  “That detonator. You know how to work it, Mike? Give the crank a couple of turns. There’s a safety latch, and you’ve got to give it a real hard push. Tim Rourke’s in a panel truck on the other side of the street. Jamieson’s in with him. Tim’s the only one who can see out, but all he has to do is say the word and Jamieson’ll jump. Try to work your man so they get a good picture of his face. Where do you think you ought to count the money?”

  “Up in the cab would be the best place.”

  Power nodded. “Just don’t push the plunger while you’re in there. I think the body is strong enough to contain it, but just the same.” He glanced at his watch. “Four-twenty-three. Not bad.” He looked at Shayne, liking and respect for the big private detective obvious on his lined face. “We’ll have a few snorts together when this is over.”

  Shayne gave him a crooked grin. He leaned back against the dented fender and lit a cigar. Power went into the lobby of the next building. After a moment Shayne turned idly to look for Rourke’s panel truck. It was a battered maroon and white International, to all appearances a bakery delivery truck. The aperture for the camera lens was well concealed. Even knowing what to look for, Shayne couldn’t spot it.

  The detonator was roughly the size of a cigar box. Shayne had it in a paper bag, holding it loosely in his left hand. After cranking the handle of the plunger, he was ready. Anyone who looked closely could have seen two wires coming out of the bottom of the bag, running down to the gutter and from there to the side hatch; but Shayne already knew that this was a city where people minded their own business. A block from the waterfront, there were few pedestrians, most of them looking like longshoremen or teamsters. Three out of four of the vehicles turning in from Eleventh Avenue were trucks.

  Shayne’s big body was relaxed, his eyes sleepy, but in fact he was as alert as a terrier watching a woodchuck hole. The motor of the big truck ticked behind him. Trouble, he knew, could come from any direction. Power covered him on one side, Jamieson on the other, but he was relying mainly on the detonator, and he kept the paper bag in plain view.

  He smoked his way through two cigars. He was in the middle of the third when
the big rearview mirror on the truck’s fender showed him a man in a black Homburg and a well-cut dark suit, which made him conspicuous in that neighborhood. Shayne came around without hurrying, his right hand hovering above the mouth of the sack. The man was carrying a Val-Pack, an army officer’s suitcase. It was heavy enough to pull him down on one side. He was in his sixties, wearing horn-rimmed glasses. He seemed oddly self-conscious.

  Shayne touched the plunger lightly, his cigar cocked at a steep angle. The man approached at a plodding gait. He was clean-shaven, but there were ingrained dirt specks around his eyes. Several paces from Shayne he said, “Mr. Maguire?” and thrust the suitcase forward.

  His voice, high and squeaky, confirmed what Shayne already knew: the shadowy Mr. A. had sent a substitute. Shayne reached for the suitcase, and at that instant he was struck a blow on the left shoulder. The detonator fell to the sidewalk. He pivoted on the ball of one foot, his brain registering automatically that he had been fired on from across the street.

  The man in the new clothes started at him in horror. He dropped the suitcase and turned to run. Power was on the sidewalk a few paces ahead of him. He fired. The man tumbled to the sidewalk, hit in the knee.

  Shayne went down, putting the truck between him and his hidden assailant. He still felt no pain in his shoulder, but he couldn’t do anything with his left hand. He reached for the paper bag, realizing as he did so that someone was above him in the cab. The gear-shift shrieked. His outstretched fingers touched the handle of the plunger. He twitched it toward him and drew the detonator in against his body, doubling over on it to hold it steady. The truck jerked out from the curb, the wires tightened, and with a fierce contraction of his whole body Shayne jammed the plunger down.

  The explosion blew out the side hatch. In an instant the entire cargo-space was a sheet of flame. Power was beside Shayne, trying to pull the detonator out of his hand. Shayne gripped it convulsively. A small wiry man burst out of the cab and leaped into a waiting car, which shot away.

  “Mike, for Christ’s sake! Let go.”

  Shayne came to one knee and shook him off. He caught a flicker of movement at an open second floor window in a brownstone. He knocked Power out of his way and started for the building at a shambling run, his left arm dangling. Tim Rourke jumped out of the bakery truck and ran toward him.

  The downstairs door of the building was propped open. Shayne heard running footsteps above him as he started up the stairs. He was feeling pain now, but he plowed on. Each flight seemed steeper, more treacherous, worse lighted than the one before. His lungs were bursting as he pushed through the heavy door at the top of the final flight and emerged into blinding sunlight.

  He checked himself abruptly. The tarred roof was studded with a pigeon shed and various vents and chimneys. This was the first in a row of three brownstones, and as Shayne’s eyes adjusted he saw a man racing toward the stairwell of the third building. He looked back for an instant. Shayne recognized Szigetti.

  Shayne had come as far as he was going. He stumbled to the low coping overlooking the street. The burning truck had moved just far enough from the curb so it blocked both lanes. It was almost directly beneath Shayne, and as he looked over the coping he could feel intense heat.

  “Power!” he yelled. “Jamieson!”

  Power was nowhere to be seen. Shayne yelled twice more. Then Power and Jamieson ran out onto the roof behind him.

  “What, Mike?” Power demanded. “What?”

  Looking down, Shayne saw Szigetti burst out of the front door of the other brownstone and set out toward Tenth Avenue at a fast walk without looking back.

  “Too late now,” Shayne said.

  CHAPTER 16

  “Hell, Mike,” Tim Rourke said. “It was a long shot right from the jump. You told me so yourself. Long shots sometimes come in, but not all the time or they wouldn’t be long shots. Excuse the lecture, but I don’t like the way you’re taking this, pal.”

  Rourke, Shayne and Power were in a narrow cell on the ground floor of a hospital called St. Luke’s. Shayne was stripped to the waist, sitting on the edge of a high bed while a young Turkish doctor worked on the hole in his shoulder. It could have been worse. The shoulder bone had been nicked, and he would have to carry his arm in a sling while the ligaments grew together, but in three weeks he could be back playing golf, no more than a half dozen shots off his usual game. This off-the-cuff diagnosis came from an X-ray technician. As for the doctor, he apparently spoke no English beyond “Hurt?” and “OK.”

  Rourke went on, “But if we’d been able to swing it, what a story, what a story! As it is, I don’t know how much they’re going to let me write.”

  He looked at Power, who was hunting for an ashtray. Power tapped the ash from his cigar into the cuff of his pants.

  “Maybe not too much, Tim, at present. That’s the point about black operations: when they poop out, the best thing is to shut up and cut your losses. Mike, I know how you feel, coming this close. One thing we can say, we sure as hell tried! Even as it stands it’s far from a total bust. Actually we’ve achieved quite a lot.”

  “How do you make that out?” Shayne said through set lips.

  “We’ve got two members of the original stickup team, Billy Matthews and Tug Wynanski. It’s just a question of time till we pick up the others.”

  “Who won’t be able to tell you a thing,” Shayne said.

  “But we don’t know that. Look at a few of the leads we’ve got. Who rented the girl’s apartment? Who leased the house on Staten Island? When we develop Tim’s movie film we’ll have a good picture of the guy who tried to take off in the truck.”

  “One of the things you’re telling me is that you don’t have the girl?”

  “No,” Power said with regret. “Somebody got there first. She was gone and Brownie was gone. The Jetstar you told me about took off from LaGuardia at five-forty-five, probably with Michele and the banker aboard. If they’re still on board when it lands in Lisbon, I’ll be very much surprised. But we couldn’t call on the Air Force to shoot them down, could we? And to get another piece of disappointing news out of the way—the number she called did turn out to be the Swiss bank on William Street. But you remember she asked for extension thirty-eight. There are only thirty-seven extensions.”

  “Big surprise,” Shayne commented. “How about the character who was carrying the suitcase? I don’t suppose he was anybody?”

  “Nobody at all. He did it for ten dollars and a new suit. But you never know. Somebody had to hire him and clean him up and tell him what to do. He’s here in the hospital and we’re getting a statement from him now. And the whole Kraus angle is far from closed. What the hell, Mike, it’s police work. I can see now we were hoping for the moon. I wanted to go off the force in a blaze of glory, but that’s not the way the world’s run. The trouble was, too many things had to synchronize. I think we made a mistake in setting the price that high. Perhaps at a lower figure they wouldn’t have taken a chance they could put you out of action before you could work the detonator.”

  Shayne said nothing.

  Power went on, “Now look at a few plusses. We’ll harass that bank a little. We probably won’t be able to close them up, but he can’t use it again, either. We’ve cost him some money and some prestige. All the information we’ve picked up will go into the international files. One of these days we’ll nab him. The girl’s finished for anything important. From now on the French cops will stick to her like a burr. Mike, don’t look so damn depressed. You know as well as I do that nobody wins them all.”

  “I don’t have to like it when I lose,” Shayne said.

  Power stood up. “You’ll be staying over, won’t you, Mike? I want to buy you a drink when we’re under less of a strain. I’ll have word from Lisbon in the morning.”

  Shayne winced as the doctor tightened the bandage and taped it in place. “No, I might as well get back. If it’s anything interesting, call me in Miami. I’m sorry it panned out this way.”
He forced a small grin. “Maybe I’ll feel more human back on my home turf.”

  The two men shook hands. Power left.

  Shayne said, “Time for my medication, Tim.”

  “Sure.”

  Rourke held out the bottle of cognac. The doctor glanced at him while he drank, but said nothing, perhaps not trusting his English.

  “You didn’t come out too bad,” Rourke went on. “There was nothing in that suitcase but phonebooks, so there’s no point in asking for ten percent of that. But the seventy-five hundred bucks in the Grand Central locker is yours. I’d like to earn seven and a half for three days’ light, agreeable work, including time in the sack with a damn cute chick, unless I miss my guess. You had to sleep with her, didn’t you? She had to think you were definitely her boy. It was an obligation, poor chap.”

  “Lay off.”

  “Come on, Mike! You didn’t accomplish much, but neither did they! Those drugs were going to be incinerated anyway. You got a bullet in the shoulder, but I’ve never known a small thing like that to slow you down. Let’s go out and tie one on. I have a tentative date with Terry Fox, and she can probably dig up a friend.” He added, “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”

  He grinned, but there was no answering grin from Shayne. The detective worked his injured arm into his shirt sleeve.

  “Christ, Mike!” Rourke burst out. “That bullet could have landed six inches away from where it did, and you’d be dead! What’s wrong with you? You ought to be celebrating!”

  Shayne turned a burning look on his friend. Rourke said warily, “All right, forget I said it.”

  “By God, Tim, you’ve put your finger on it!”

  “On what?” the reporter said suspiciously.

  Shayne told the doctor impatiently, “Finish it up, will you, doc?” And to Rourke: “Don’t you see? Power said everything had to synchronize. That was true for us, but it was true for them, too. Their timing had to be perfect. One guy walked up to me with the suitcase. A car turned the corner. I reached for the suitcase, the gun went off. Another guy jumped from the car into the cab of the truck. And it worked. There was only one thing wrong. They didn’t kill me.”