Violence Is Golden

by Brett Halliday

  The door was a long distance away; the phone was nearer. Shayne picked it up, but he had already forgotten why he had wanted it. He could feel a smile spreading across his face. There was no longer any urgency about anything. He hung up slowly and dropped the phone in the wastebasket. The light in the room softened.

  He didn’t quite make the bed before he fell asleep.

  CHAPTER 4

  Michael Shayne, face down on the hotel carpet, lost a few hours. Then he began to dream. Lights moved around him. LeFevre was stumbling aimlessly around the room, mumbling, “I want a woman.” Shayne heard a buzzer. The door opened. LeFevre’s voice: “Well. You look lovely.”

  It seemed to Shayne later that someone pulled at his clothes. There were strange ugly noises in the room, quarrelling noises. He knew he should do something to stop it, but the carpet had a sticky coating, like flypaper, and he couldn’t move.

  Blackness followed.

  Then there were lights again. Again someone turned him over. He forced his eyes open. This time it was his friend Tim Rourke.

  “Can you hear me?” Rourke said urgently. “Come on, Mike. Wake up. Move.”

  Shayne attempted to speak.

  “You’re making noises,” Rourke commented. “That’s an improvement. Keep trying, boy. You’ve got a long way to go before anybody can understand you.”

  Shayne said something else. It trailed off and his eyes closed. Rourke shook him angrily.

  “Mike, Goddamn it.” He slapped Shayne as hard as he could. “We’re going to have cops in a minute. I can’t carry you. I’m a weakling, and I only have the use of one arm.” Shayne opened his eyes again. Rourke’s right arm was in a cast extending down to his knuckles. Shayne appreciated what his friend was trying to do, but he was too tired to help. Rourke let go and came back a moment later with a glass of cognac.

  “No, I better not,” he said in an undertone.

  Putting the cognac down, he emptied cold water from the ice bucket over Shayne’s head.

  Shayne sputtered his way up and asked Rourke what the hell he thought he was doing. The words were intelligible when they left his brain, but they came out as a meaningless babble. Each small movement of his head sent a flash of pain through his eyes. But the pain helped clear away some of the fog and numbness. His throat burned disagreeably. He still had amazingly little command of his arms and legs. He tried one thing at a time, first one hand, then the other.

  “I think you may make it, Mike,” Rourke said. “And if you don’t, you’ll be in the worst jam of your life. This is Miami Beach. How would you like it if Petey Painter walked in right about now?”

  Painter, Miami Beach Chief of Detectives, was an old enemy of Shayne’s. He had been trying for years, without success, to come out on top in his constant altercations with the private detective from across the bay. A circuit closed in Shayne’s fogged brain and he managed to sit up all the way.

  “Give me a drink.”

  “If you’re thirsty, you can have some tap water,” Rourke told him. “Let’s assume the liquor’s contaminated. You don’t pass out on the floor of a hotel room with your clothes on unless there’s something else in your glass besides cognac.”

  Rourke held a glass for him and Shayne managed to drink some cold water without gagging.

  “Hell,” Rourke said, “I don’t suppose the fumes will hurt you.”

  He waved the brandy glass back and forth under Shayne’s nose. Shayne breathed in deeply and the vibrations in his head began to fade.

  “What time is it?”

  “I heard that. You’re getting better. It’s two-thirty A.M., and if you want to see why I’m advising you to get moving, look around.”

  Shayne turned his head slowly. Chairs had been knocked over. An uncorked bottle of Johnny Walker lay on the floor. Continuing his slow inventory, he saw two feet in pointed shoes. LeFevre, the one-armed Frenchman, lay sprawled on his back between an overturned chair and the bed. His body was unnaturally twisted. The side of his head was bloody.

  “Dead?”

  “Very much so,” Rourke said.

  Now it was essential for Shayne to come forward onto his hands, then to bring his knees under him and push himself erect. His body followed directions sluggishly.

  “Need any help?” Rourke asked.

  Shayne rocked and almost fell. A thirty-eight caliber revolver with blood and tissue on the barrel lay near the dead man’s head. Shayne blinked at Rourke.

  “Caviar. Pâté.”

  “Caviar—are you out of your skull? What do you want with caviar at a time like this?”

  The room whirled like a chuck-a-luck cage, and Shayne caught at a bedpost. “He was feeding himself crackers and pâté. There was a bowl of caviar in ice. Where is it?”

  “I’ll look around, if you’re really dying for a snack,” Rourke said sarcastically.

  Shayne picked his way to the bathroom, where he filled his cupped hands with cold water from the tap and splashed it in his face. He repeated this twice more, then toweled himself off. His reflection in the mirror was still misty, as though seen through frosted glass.

  “Not a thing to eat in the place,” Rourke reported from the bedroom. “I don’t want to be repetitious or anything, but let’s split. You can get a hamburger at a dog wagon.”

  “Hand me the cognac.”

  “Better not, buddy,” Rourke said doubtfully. “Let’s get it analyzed first.”

  “No, the Mickey was in the food. What time did you say it was?”

  “It’s still two-thirty.”

  Shayne emptied a glass of cognac while Rourke watched anxiously.

  “Don’t pass out again, Mike. Please. How do you feel now?”

  Shayne didn’t reply until the cognac hit him.

  “Better. How long has he been dead?”

  “I’ll let you decide. Mike, you really don’t want to be too cool about this. I notice you’re wearing an empty shoulder holster. That’s your thirty-eight on the floor, right? Let’s hold the post-mortems someplace else.”

  “This was rigged.”

  “I know that, for God’s sake. You’re a very old friend of mine, and I know you don’t get impatient with visiting French cops and slap them dead with the barrel of a thirty-eight.”

  “That’s not what I mean.”

  He went down on one knee beside the dead man and checked the soft flesh beneath the jawbone. It was firm but rubbery.

  “More than a couple of hours,” he said, sitting back on his heels. “So there’s no hurry. How many people know you’re here?”

  “Will Gentry. Has your memory come back yet? Do you remember the last time I saw you? A Japanese was about to take your picture when I noticed he didn’t have any lens in his camera, just a hole. This was observant of me. And did I hesitate? No, it all went through my mind in a flash—all the times we’ve got drunk together, all the murder cases we’ve worked on. The least I could do was save your life.”

  Shayne grinned at him. “That was reflex, Tim.”

  “To a certain extent,” Rourke admitted. “But you ought to be glad I have a good reserve supply of adrenalin. I moved like a snake. They had me under the anesthetic for over an hour. Everything’s going to grow back together, thanks for asking.”

  Shayne put out a hand. Rourke pulled him to his feet.

  The reporter went on, “And when they said I could go home, naturally the first thing I asked myself was how my old friend was making out. I’d hate to think I went to all that medical expense for nothing. Nobody seemed to know where you were. Gentry said you had a meeting with a Frenchman at the Sans Souci. The guy wasn’t answering his telephone. It’s in the wastebasket, incidentally. How do you explain that? Well, I worried. I kept calling and kept getting no answer, and finally I decided I had to do a little ad hoc research. It’s lucky you gave me that lesson in how to get into locked hotel rooms with a strip of celluloid and a nail file. If you really want to take a chance on that cognac, bring the bottle with you. I
suggest we leave through the basement.”

  “Not yet.” Shayne poured himself more cognac. “I don’t want to think of something when it’s too late to check it. This may look like a murder frame, but it’s more than that. They want me to take a trip to Latin America, for some Goddamn reason.”

  “All very clear,” Rourke said, looking around nervously. “Who is ‘they’?”

  “I don’t know yet. Shut up for a minute. I want to see if I can remember what he told me.”

  Rourke swore under his breath. “Don’t take too long, Mike. I took a sleeping pill, and I’m fighting it.”

  Shayne sipped at the cognac, concentrating hard. His mind was still working at only twenty-five percent of capacity, with unexpected skids and lurches.

  “Wash the blood off the gun,” he told Rourke. “Don’t use any towels, and let’s start being careful about fingerprints.”

  “Fine. And what good that’s going to do if we get caught in here—”

  The passport LeFevre had prepared still lay on the coffee table. Shayne put it in his pocket. He checked the Frenchman’s wallet for a second time, finding one thing he didn’t remember seeing before—a small square of gray blotting paper. He thought about it.

  When Rourke came out of the bathroom, he said abruptly, “Tim, can you get the paper to give you a few days off?”

  “I think so. Why? They’re getting a nice page-one story tomorrow—ace News reporter saves Mike Shayne’s life. Whenever a reporter breaks a bone in the line of duty, they usually give him a day off.”

  “I wonder if that Jap was actually trying to kill me,” Shayne said slowly. “Yeah—I think that part was probably legit.”

  “Damn right he was trying to kill you!” Rourke said indignantly. “That was a real bullet. I can show it to you. They gave it to me for my collection.”

  “Don’t get excited. You know more about these things than I do. How do the dealers handle LSD and so on these days? They used to put it on sugar cubes.”

  “Not any more. The minute a cop sees a cube of sugar he begins thinking in terms of a narcotics pinch. Lately the boys and girls have been dropping it on a scrap of newsprint or blotting paper.”

  “That’s what I heard. There’s a square of blotting paper in LeFevre’s wallet. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t there before I conked out. He told me a fancy story about a big gold shipment that’s leaving the country on a plane tomorrow morning. He wanted me to ride shotgun on it. I turned him down. With the facts I had then, it would have been a stupid move. I thought he was a little too anxious. What do they want me to think now? That somebody killed him to keep him from telling me about the gold? It’s a possibility. I don’t know.”

  “Can we talk about it at your place, Mike? LSD—that’s a wonderful piece of news. No wonder you’re not your usual self. He wanted to try it, and being the soul of hospitality, you went out and bought him some. Those damned synthetics do funny things. This isn’t the first LSD killing and it won’t be the last.”

  “You’re right about one thing, Tim—Petey Painter would love it.”

  “As I keep reminding you.”

  “But if all they wanted was a frame, the cops would be here by now. That wouldn’t be hard to arrange. They must want me to think there’s only one way I can get off the hook—to take the plane and find out who really did the killing. They obviously figure I’ll decide I have to go.”

  “I think I’m following you,” Rourke said dubiously. “But you’re one step ahead of them, right? So you’re not going.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Shayne snapped. “Of course I’m going. Let’s find a photographer who’s still awake. I need a passport picture.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Most of the passengers were already aboard by the time Michael Shayne arrived at the loading port, tie-less and in need of a shave, wearing dark glasses and carrying an attaché case.

  After parting from Rourke, he had slept only two hours. He had a dull headache. His movements were more guarded than usual.

  The stewardess at the gate put a check beside his name and looked at him curiously.

  “I know,” Shayne said, rubbing his chin. “I look like something off Skid Row. I’ll shave on the plane, unless I forgot to pack a razor.”

  She was a dark-haired girl with a good figure and an expectant look. “I’m Sue Cornelius. Do you have any preference about where you sit, Mr. Shayne?”

  Before he had to answer, a tall, lovely blonde hurried out of the lounge toward him. She threw her arms around his neck and gave him a warm welcoming kiss. Her tongue flickered briefly inside his mouth. It was all very authentic, in spite of the fact that he had never seen her before. His arms came up and closed around her. He felt the muscles moving in the small of her back. She was breathing hard when she let him go.

  She pressed her face against his chest. “I was so damn worried.”

  She spoke with a faint German accent. Shayne tried to think of her name, and after a moment it came to him—Christa Hochberg.

  She looked at him reproachfully. “Darling, do you know we leave in precisely five minutes?”

  “I’m sorry. The traffic was murder coming out.” He gave the stewardess a quizzical look. “In answer to your question about where I want to sit, Miss Hochberg and I are sitting together.”

  “Obviously,” she said with a laugh.

  Christa hugged Shayne’s arm to her breast as they entered the cabin. Forty pairs of eyes were looking at them. She dropped his arm self-consciously and followed the stewardess to their seats.

  “You take the window, darling. Airplanes terrify me. I’d much rather not know how high up we are.”

  As soon as they were seated, she kissed him again, as efficiently as before and with even more passion. It was part of an act, Shayne knew, but nevertheless he felt himself responding. When it had run its course, she whispered against his ear, “You know who I am?”

  “Yeah, lady. You’re a cop.”

  As he turned his head, he caught the eye of a Negro sitting across the aisle, a dignified, gray-haired man in clerical black with a reversed collar. The Negro smiled faintly.

  Christa whispered, “Keep your arms around me, Mike. I couldn’t get through to him. Can you seem a trifle more affectionate, my dear? We are lovers. That is the story I have invented for us. We haven’t seen each other in weeks.” She drew back slightly to look at him. “Do you object?”

  “Not so far.”

  “Then why aren’t you kissing me?”

  Shayne exerted himself this time. She subsided against him with a sigh.

  “That was much better. You almost convinced me.”

  She pulled away as the order came to fasten their seat belts. The powerful jets began to whine. Gripping the arms of the seat, she looked straight ahead.

  “Excuse me. Now I say a small prayer that we get up into the sky safely.”

  She put her head back as the big DC-8 wheeled around. The whine of the engines passed upward into a thin scream. There was a sudden forward rush.

  Shayne studied the girl. Her hair was long and crossed her forehead at a slant, nearly touching her eyebrows on one side. Her eyelids were a subtle shade of violet, delicately veined. Her nose and mouth were nicely formed.

  She was wearing a smartly cut red suit, low in front. She was well tanned.

  He glanced out the window. The squat buildings of the International Airport were falling away beneath them.

  “We’re up,” he told her.

  Her eyes opened and they looked at each other. She said softly, “Three weeks is a long time to be apart.” Her eyes changed slightly and she snapped her belt open. “No. Business first. Can you hear me when I talk like this?”

  “Barely.”

  “If you can barely hear me, no one else can hear me at all. Damn Jules! He was with a woman, I suppose? That is one of the hazards with Jules. He meets someone new and he stops answering his telephone for twenty-four hours. We had discussed different stories, but nothing wa
s definite. I decided to keep it simple. And this is not bad, you know. You are not a typical fifteen-day tourist, by any means. Nor am I. You were shot at yesterday in a football stadium. They will have read about that in the morning paper. An unsettling experience even for a rugged private detective. The press, the police. Who were these Japanese, and why did they want to kill you? You decide you have to leave town, to get clear away for two weeks. Alone? Mike Shayne? Assuredly not. So you call me and tell me to pack a bag and meet you at the airport.” She laughed softly. “Are we agreed? That is the story?”

  “It’s too late to change it now.”

  She giggled and took his hand. “But it was a gamble for me, before I saw what you looked like. If you had turned out to be fat and sweating and unpleasant—Look. Did Jules give you a file to look at, on a man who may be involved in this?”

  “He told me he had it. I didn’t see it.”

  “Nor I. A maddening person. No one is ever too delighted to work with him.”

  “What did you find out about the luggage arrangements?”

  “There are three hatches. Each passenger is permitted fifty pounds, and some are paying for excess weight. It is a rented plane. The captain and co-pilot come with the package, the flight engineer is a Miami man. A husband and wife run the tour. George Savage, Naomi Savage. The husband handles the baggage, the hotels and buses. I let him give me a drink last evening. He is a little too talkative, a little too friendly. The wife seems worried. I know that there are other things to worry about in the world besides the smuggling of gold. Husbands, for one. When he learned I would be on the tour, he looked at me in a certain way, as if plotting some adventures in the hotel rooms of Rio. Well, we shall see.”

  “How much does the Treasury Department know about this, did Jules tell you?”

  “I believe very little. He likes to work with as few people as possible. Interpol is a lovely theory, but he thinks also of the glory of the French police.”

  “That’s going to make it rough,” Shayne said. “We’ll have our hands full. I never got our itinerary. Where do we go first?”