Fit to Kill

by Brett Halliday

  “I shouldn’t be so astonished,” she said. “They’ve done worse things than this. But usually, when they arrange a frame-up, they make sure it will hold water. It’s a miracle that they didn’t somehow contrive to have a quantity of drugs found inside the lining of my handbag. Apparently somebody slipped up.”

  Shayne excused himself, bringing the Martell bottle in from the kitchenette to replenish his glass.

  “Why don’t you tell me about it, Miss Adams? I can’t do anything to help Tim until I know more than I do now.”

  A dimple appeared at the corner of her mouth as she smiled at him. “Miss Adams sounds so formidable! My name’s Carla.”

  “Okay, Carla. How’d you run into Tim?”

  “It was the strangest thing! I needed help, and Tim gave it to me. You did know, didn’t you, that he was gathering material for a series of articles about the Gonzalez regime?”

  “In a general way,” Shayne said.

  “The police discovered what he was up to, and they asked him to leave the country. I suppose he gave them an argument. He was a United States citizen, and so on. So they broke his arm and his ribs—well, you saw him. If it hadn’t been for that, he might not have agreed to help me. I was in serious trouble. The police have murdered twenty-two of the Marshal’s opponents in the last year. I was scheduled to be the twenty-third.”

  “But you’re an American, aren’t you?”

  “I am,” she assured him grimly. “But that makes very little difference. I was stopping at Tim’s hotel, the Presidente. I was warned that they were coming for me, and I got out of my room just in time. Tim took me in. He got me an airplane ticket, helped me get out of the hotel safely, and bought me some clothes. He was wonderful, Mike.”

  Shayne scowled at his glass, glad to have an explanation of the all-new wardrobe.

  “Technically, under their laws, you involved him in abetting the escape of a fugitive.”

  “That’s true,” she admitted. “You don’t have to remind me. But it never occurred to me that he’d be in any danger after we got back to this country. He didn’t give his name when he phoned for the reservation. I took all the precautions I could think of. We got on the plane separately. We were careful not to speak to each other.”

  “Who is this Quesada?” Shayne said. “One of their cops?”

  “No, no. Quite the opposite. That’s what makes it so complicated. I was thinking of the danger from Gonzalez. I forgot the danger from his enemies.”

  “I don’t follow that,” Shayne said.

  She smoothed her skirt over her knees. “I told you it was complicated. I’ll have to give you a little autobiography at this point, but I’ll try to make it brief. I’ve been carrying on a little private crusade against the Gonzalez dictatorship. But I never thought that I, Carla Adams, could get into serious trouble. I wore a cloak of invisibility, like the girls in the fairy tales. I don’t have any excuses for myself—I know I was silly and romantic. It’s a life-and-death struggle to the people who suffer under the Marshal, but it’s not my fight and it never was. And yet that’s why I was so valuable to them. I didn’t come under suspicion for a long time. I masqueraded as an ordinary American tourist, lived at the best hotels and traveled about the country freely, carrying messages and material to units of the underground. They can’t complain. They got their money’s worth.”

  “And then you decided to quit?” Shayne suggested.

  “After an unpleasant episode. A bomb went off ahead of time, and innocent people were killed. But there was more to it than that. The glamour wore off. When you’re on the outside of a revolutionary movement, you think that everyone in it must be a dedicated idealist. The truth is quite different. This must sound like the worst kind of cliché, but I had to find out for myself. And I have to admit that I began to be frightened. I didn’t feel invisable any more. I’d done some careless things. And then a close friend of mine was killed, and I realized suddenly that there was nothing to hold me any longer.”

  Her face was sad, pensive, and very lovely, Shayne thought. She pulled up her thoughts with a jerk and tried to smile, but the smile trembled at the corners.

  “So I decided to quit,” she went on with an attempt at her earlier briskness. “But it wasn’t easy. I had a sensational story I could sell to the magazines. The people who call the turns in the anti-Gonzalez movement have few illusions about human nature, and they fully expected me to betray them. Something I ate made me very sick. I think I was poisoned. It doesn’t matter, except for the light it throws on what happened to Tim.”

  “How?” Shayne demanded.

  “The underground had discovered that Tim was a newspaper reporter. He’d been in touch with them. A maid in the hotel gave me a uniform so I could leave without attracting attention. It’s possible that she told someone in the movement that the American reporter had befriended me, and helped me get on a plane. Their communications system is excellent. They must have cabled Miami, concealing the information in some apparently innocent message.”

  “That doesn’t explain anything,” Shayne insisted stubbornly. “Why should Quesada want to kidnap Rourke, for God’s sake? Granted, he helped you out of the country, but that’s over and done with. You’re here.”

  “They’re afraid of what I might have told him,” Carla said.

  “Now we’re getting somewhere. They think you’re selling him your memoirs as a secret rebel, or something more specific?”

  She hesitated. “There’s an arms shipment, Mike. It should be passing through Miami very soon, perhaps tonight. I don’t see why you shouldn’t know about it. Small shipments have been going out all the time, in small boats, sometimes in planes. But this is the big one, that will make possible a really major rising. They wouldn’t draw the line at one small kidnapping if they thought Tim was in a position to stop it.”

  The detective took the cork out of the brandy bottle, upended it over his glass and listened to the pleasant gurgling. He noted absently that Carla’s glass was almost empty. He filled it in the kitchenette, welcoming the interval so he could go over her story.

  Coming back, he said, “Racing around being the girl revolutionary wasn’t fun any more, so you’ve quit and come home. That’s one thing. It’s something else to blow the whistle on a big shipment of guns. Why would they think you’d tell Tim about it?”

  “You see, Mike—I said something last week to one of them. It was a stupid thing to do, but I couldn’t keep it to myself. Everybody was so excited about the guns that were about to arrive, and I couldn’t take it any more. I suddenly saw it so clearly—these guns made their death almost a mathematical certainty.”

  “They could win, couldn’t they?”

  “There isn’t a chance in a hundred. These are mainly students, boys and girls without military training. They’ll be attacking concentrations of experienced soldiers.”

  “Then why go ahead with it?”

  “I’ll tell you why,” Carla said bitterly. “There hasn’t been enough trouble lately, of the kind that gets into the newspapers. Contributions have fallen off.”

  Shayne’s brow was furrowed. “What contributions?”

  “To the Provisional Committee.” Carla’s tone was savage and disillusioned. Her lips curled at the corners, the first unattractive expression Shayne had seen on her face. “I can prove it to you with facts and figures. Thirty boys and young men were killed last year in a crazy, suicidal attack on the central post office. The youngest was only twelve. As a demonstration of force, a battle, it made no sense, but immediately afterward there was a trememdous increase in gifts from well-to-do exiles and sympathizers in the United States. Much of the money comes from people who will gain from a change in government—contractors, business men, operators of all kinds. The committee can’t hold them unless they’re convinced they’re getting some activity for their money.”

  “So you want to keep these arms from leaving the country.”

  She looked directly at Shayne, and
a cold flame burned in her blue eyes.

  “Yes, I’ll do everything I can to stop it. Mike, I know Professor Quesada, and I admire and respect him. I think he’s convinced that it’s better to die fighting tyranny than to live as a slave. But he’s not the one who will do the dying! He’ll go on living in comfort, surrounded by his admirers. His people aren’t real to him any longer. Nothing is real now except empty abstractions, like liberty and democracy. But I know the people who will do the fighting and dying, at his command. I’ve slept in their houses, I’ve shared their troubles and pleasures. They’ll call me a traitor, but I can’t simply stand aside wringing my hands. I couldn’t live with myself if I did.”

  “Does Tim know about the guns?”

  “No. I planned to give him the full story when we met here. He could break it in the News, and I thought that would repay him for the risks he took getting me on the plane.”

  Again she stared moodily into her glass. She had crossed her legs, which were long and slender and elegantly nyloned. She was poised lightly on the edge of the sofa, her back as straight as a rifle barrel.

  Her story had been perfectly credible, her voice convincing and sincere. But Michael Shayne had been listening to liars, including some extremely skillful ones, since Carla Adams was in kindergarten. There was no doubt in his mind as he studied her that, although she might have been speaking the truth about a few small matters, in all the major ones she had been lying in her teeth.

  CHAPTER 11

  Shayne said, “How about the phony intern with the broken nose? Does he ring a bell with you?”

  She shook her head. “No, and it bothers me, Mike. Everything about him is wrong.”

  “Where would they take Tim? Where do we start to look?”

  “I’ve been trying to think. You understand that the Provisional Committee has no legal existence—there’s no headquarters or office. But this is so important that I think Professor Quesada would want to have Tim where he could watch him personally. Perhaps in his own house. That’s just off-campus in Coral Gables. Certainly it would be the first place to try.”

  The redheaded detective thought for a moment more, then put down his glass and went to the phone. Clearing a space amid the scattered bills and letters, he lowered one hip to the clawed-up desk and began to dial.

  “Who are you calling?” Carla said sharply.

  “The cops,” Shayne growled. “They’re going to hit this Professor Quesada with everything they’ve got.”

  “No!” She flew across the room and seized his arm. “That was only a guess of mine. I don’t know that Tim is there.”

  “You’ve given me enough to go on. You’ve put Quesada in the front seat of the kidnap car. Roberts will identify him, and then the heat goes on. Kidnapping’s a capital offense. He’ll talk.”

  “Mike, listen to me! Before Professor Quesada went into exile he was in and out of jail. The Gonzalez police never broke him, and neither will your police in Miami. He’ll tell you precisely as much as he wants you to know, and no more.”

  Shayne continued to dial. Carla reached past him and broke the connection.

  “Mike, Mike! I can’t stop you, if you’re determined to do it, but, at least, wait till you hear what I have to say. Please. Don’t you realize that Tim’s life is at stake?”

  She was holding the switch down on the phone, looking up into his face with a naked appeal in her eyes. “Mike?” she said more softly.

  “All right,” he said, speaking angrily, and threw down the phone. “But it seems to me it’s time to get on the ball.”

  For a moment longer she stayed where she was, her soft breast touching his arm, and then she turned back to the low table for her glass. She settled on one arm of the sofa.

  “Believe me,” she agreed, “I feel the same way you do, if not more so. These people are fanatics. If they thought they could advance their cause by cutting Tim Rourke’s throat and throwing his body in the canal, they wouldn’t hesitate for a second. It’s true that we have to do something, and soon. But we have to be sure we’re doing the right thing. They won’t kill him out of hand. First, they’ll question him about his connection with me, and why he cut short his vacation and came rushing back. They’ll assume I told him about the arms. It’s when they discover that they’ve made a mistake that the dangerous time will start for Tim. Professor Quesada will begin to wonder if he was seen at the airport. The penalty for kidnapping isn’t any more severe than the penalty for murder. Naturally he doesn’t want to deprive the anti-Gonzalez movement of his leadership. That’s not a joke. It’s really the way his mind will work. Everything is trembling in the balance. What if the police suddenly pound on his door? Tim will be killed, Mike.”

  “Then what do you suggest?”

  She bit her lip. “There’s one possibility.”

  Shayne came back to get his cognac. He swirled it around in the bottom of the glass and drank it off.

  “Yeh?” he said.

  “Tim told me quite a bit about you,” she said. “For instance, that you’re at your best with all the odds against you. It was quite flattering, Mike.”

  “And probably ninety percent untrue,” Shayne remarked, waiting for the pitch.

  She kept her eyes on her glass. “They fancy themselves as desperate characters, and they all carry guns. If Tim is there, the police won’t be able to get in without shooting. The moment the first gun goes off, Tim is done for. I’ve heard of an underground tunnel, a kind of escape hatch. They’ll shoot Tim and dispose of his body somewhere else. But Mike, perhaps one determined man—” She glanced at him quickly. “No, go ahead and call the police. I can see that it couldn’t possibly work.”

  “And what would I do after I got in?” Shayne asked her.

  “You could insist on talking to Professor Quesada. Tell him you’ve instructed the police to come after you within a certain time. Then—” She frowned in fierce concentration. “Then you make him a proposition. Tell him he was recognized at the airport, but if he lets Tim go unharmed, you guarantee that Tim will make no trouble for him. And to make up for the discomfort Tim has been caused, let him agree to an exclusive interview with Tim’s paper. I strongly suspect that he’ll leap at the chance to get out of his dilemma.”

  “How about the arms shipment? Won’t he still be afraid Tim will give the show away?”

  “That’s the crucial point, of course. The worst that can happen is that he’ll keep you both prisoner until the arms are out of the country.”

  She added, “I think you could bring it off, Mike, or I wouldn’t suggest it. They’re funny people. One minute they’re as fierce as tigers, and the next they’re as gentle and intelligent as anybody you’d want to meet. What do you think?”

  Shayne’s gaunt cheeks were deeply trenched. He still didn’t have enough to go on. There was danger, that much was obvious, danger to him and danger to Rourke.

  But he hadn’t ever allowed the element of danger to influence his judgment, and he couldn’t start now. Danger was a part of his business. The real question he had to decide was—at what point had Carla stopped lying and started telling the truth?

  She was regarding him steadily, an unspoken appeal in her blue eyes. He had an impulse to take her by the shoulders and shake the truth out of her. Somewhere there was a simple explanation that would make it all clear. If experience was any guide, it was the sort of thing that one man, working alone, could discover sooner than the police, with all their cumbersome mechanical resources.

  He was fairly sure that Professor Quesada had been the man in the front seat of the Pontiac station wagon; Carla would have no reason to lie about that. She obviously wanted Shayne to bull his way into the professor’s presence and force a showdown. But why? The redhead moved restlessly. Would he be helping Tim, or making things worse for him?

  He had an overpowering feeling. It was like an itch, or an uncontrollable tic. He wanted to come face to face with Broken-Nose, the hoodlum who had blackjacked Rourke while
he lay helpless on the floor. And suddenly Shayne stopped trying to decide what was sensible and what wasn’t. He had decided. By God, after he finished, the thug would think twice before he coldcocked anybody with an arm in a cast.

  He poured two more fingers of brandy and downed it, taking savage pleasure in its warmth and bite.

  “Let’s go out and look the place over,” he told Carla.

  “I don’t dare go with you, Mike,” she said. “It would make things harder for you if they saw us together, and I want to stay as far from those people as I can get. I don’t feel very brave right now. The naïve college girl has grown up fast.”

  He considered. “All right. But if I’m going to do this by myself, there’s one condition. I need a few hours’ leeway, without a lot of heavy-footed cops and customs agents falling all over themselves to get in my way. So stay off the phone. Don’t report that arms shipment until I see if I can locate Tim. I have to be free to move in any direction.”

  “A few hours?” She looked worried. “Mike, that may be cutting it awfully close. There’s a chance that they’re being loaded right this minute.”

  “That’s the way it has to be,” the detective said stubbornly, “or I’m bowing out. Get this straight. I don’t give a damn about those guns. If we stop this shipment, they’ll try again in a few months. But if they kill Tim, that’s all there is to it. Tim’s a friend of mine, and his life means more to me than a whole freighter filled with guns. I hope I make myself clear.”

  “Very clear, Mike,” she said, “and I believe I understand. In two hours, if I haven’t heard from you, I’ll call the police and tell them where they can find you. Then I’ll call the customs.” She smiled grimly. “The name of the man out there is Malloy, I think. I had quite an unpleasant encounter with him. He may be surprised to hear what I have to say.”

  She found Rourke’s phone book, and looked up Professor Quesada’s street address.

  “There’s not much I can tell you about the house,” she said. “I’ve only been there once, at night, so you’ll have to play it by ear. It’s big and rambling, with lots of rooms. And be careful, Mike. He has two official bodyguards, but when I was there I saw at least five others, and they were very tough young men. It’s a sort of stopover place for refugees. You’d better take Tim’s gun.”