Count Backwards to Zero

by Brett Halliday

  “Shayne—” Diamond began, his eyebrows lowering.

  The phone clanged. Shayne slid the paper-wrapped parcel out from under Diamond’s hand and stood up.

  Diamond said, “I assume you’re going to let me listen in on this one.”

  “Absolutely. We’re partners, aren’t we?”

  CHAPTER 12

  The phone clanged again, and Shayne picked it off the hook. He saw Max Wilson get up without hurrying and move toward the table Shayne and Diamond had left, to beat the busboy to Diamond’s coffee spoon. Diamond squeezed into the doorway of the booth, looking tense.

  “Mike?” Gentry’s voice boomed. “Just heard from the Coast Guard. They haven’t picked up a thing, and they want to know if it’s all right to come in. They’ve covered a lot of territory, all the way up to Pompano.”

  “I guess we can knock that off,” Shayne said with regret. He glanced up at Diamond in the doorway. “Do you have anything on the passport picture?”

  “No, and unless you can supply us with fingerprints to go with it, I don’t expect we will. Mike, I want to talk about something else. We’ve got a corpse. And we’ve got a witness named Minnie Fish. The corpse has a letter in his pocket from the president of an American aerospace firm that even I have heard of. The witness gives us a description of somebody who sounds like you—the hair, the shoulders, the same striped suit I saw you wearing on TV earlier this evening. There was blood on this man’s face, according to the witness. There’s going to be a certain amount of attention paid, Mike.”

  “That wouldn’t surprise me,” Shayne said.

  “And add that to a couple of things Tim Rourke has passed along, and I think it’s time for the police to start playing this by the book. I need the answers to a few questions.”

  “I’ll stop by as soon as I have time,” Shayne said. “Right now I’m tied up.”

  “Mike,” Gentry said patiently, “I want you to rearrange your schedule and spare the time. Usually I let you play by your own rules, and by and large I think it’s worked out well. You’ve done various things I’m glad I didn’t know about in advance. Ordinarily I’m glad to sit in my office reading Playboy while you’re out on the streets taking your lumps. My big ambition is to get through another dozen years with my skin intact, and start collecting the pension.”

  “I’ve got to hang up now, Will. Go home and relax. I’ll call you if I get a chance, but don’t wait up for it.”

  Gentry’s tone sharpened. “Mike, listen. When a British scientist who’s just been hired by a big defense contractor ends up knifed in a black neighborhood, that’s news, by any definition. The FBI has a sneaky habit of going back over the early hours and seeing what the local people were doing in a big case. If I have to tell them that a certain private detective, who also happens to be a duck-shooting friend of mine, told me to go home and he might call me, I’m going to be given some funny looks. And it could be more than looks. I’ve got to know what’s going on. I happen to mean that.”

  “Then find out for yourself,” Shayne said angrily. “And I happen to mean that. I’m getting tired of doing your work for you.”

  Gentry was slow-moving and slow-speaking, but there was nothing slow about his mind. He had a long-standing working relationship with Shayne, and Shayne had never before used that tone. After only a second’s pause, Gentry picked up the cue.

  “Goddamn it, Mike! That publicity you’ve been getting has gone to your head. You don’t own this town!”

  Shayne said evenly, “Don’t push me, Will. I’ll come in and see you when I’ve got something to bargain with. Meanwhile, why don’t you get off your fat ass and come out where the action is? You might even enjoy it.”

  “This is the only warning you’re going to get from me—”

  “Will, you begin to worry me. Why not retire now and make room for somebody who can do your job?”

  He broke the connection. “Look up the number of the Opa-Locka Airport,” he told Diamond.

  “The—”

  “Opa-Locka Airport,” Shayne repeated with a peremptory gesture.

  He dialed a random digit, to block incoming calls. Max Wilson strolled up to the cashier’s counter, paid his check, and went out with a toothpick between his teeth. When Diamond read a number from the book, Shayne closed down the phone to get a dial tone, and dialed.

  A girl’s voice answered.

  “Is Buzz Yale still working out there?” Shayne asked.

  “In security, yes, sir. I think he has this shift. One moment, I’ll see if I can locate him.”

  It took more than a moment. Shayne waited, hammering his knuckles impatiently against his knee.

  “Who’s Buzz Yale?” Diamond asked.

  “An old friend of mine. Pay the check. I want to be ready to move out.”

  Diamond threw a bill on the counter. As Shayne spoke into the phone Diamond scrambled back, not wanting to miss anything.

  “Buzz,” Shayne said. “This is Mike Shayne. I’ve got a funny one. I can’t take time to explain, but I’m looking for a green Olds, a four-door sedan, and I think it may be in one of your parking lots. I’m on my way now. If you can find it by the time I get there, it’s worth two hundred bucks.”

  “Right, Mike. A license number?”

  Shayne concentrated for an instant, his eyes closed, and the Oldsmobile’s number came back to him. He gave it to Yale and hung up.

  “Let’s go.”

  Outside, one of Diamond’s men pushed off from a storefront and crossed the sidewalk to the Dodge.

  “You drive,” Shayne told Diamond. “There’s something I want to figure out.”

  Diamond slid in and snapped his seat belt. Shayne, one hand on the package of money in his lap, directed him to the North-South Expressway and asked for more speed.

  “Do I get an explanation of this?” Diamond said after a time, “or am I just supposed to follow orders?”

  Shayne didn’t answer for a moment. Then he said, “I’m trying to work out approximate times. Too much of it has to be guesswork. Assume it was Sam Geller who hijacked the Olds. He’s had a couple of days to get organized. He’d want to be miles away with the gas tank when you found out it was missing. What would he use, a car, a boat or a plane?”

  “More than likely a plane.”

  “I think so. After stealing the Olds they headed for the expressway. Tim Rourke, who was behind them, was on an exit ramp when they clamped down on him. He didn’t tell me which one, but none of those exits is more than ten minutes from Opa-Locka. They don’t handle the really big jets out there, but they’re more relaxed about everything than Miami International. And the location’s right. A couple of other possibilities have occurred to me, but if the Olds has been abandoned out there somewhere, we can rule them out. Now is there anything else you wanted to tell me about Geller and Anne Blagden?”

  Diamond kept his eyes on the road. “I think I covered everything important.”

  “I don’t agree with you, but if that’s the way you want to play it—” He turned to look at the Dodge hanging behind them. “Slow down to sixty and wave them alongside.”

  Diamond gave him a suspicious look, but did as he was instructed. He signaled for a right-hand stop, and waved. The Dodge pulled into the left-hand lane and overtook them. For a moment the two cars ran side by side.

  “I thought somebody was missing in that car,” Shayne said. “Dessau’s not there.”

  The Mustang slowed abruptly. Diamond’s head swung.

  “We leave at the next exit,” Shayne told him.

  Diamond looked back at Shayne, his eyes small and deadly. “You’ve been dropping hints about Dessau for the last half hour. If there’s something I ought to know, say it in English.”

  “All I know is what people have told me. Maybe I’m trying to split you into smaller groups so you’ll be easier to handle. We’re partners temporarily, but how long can it last? Use your brakes, Diamond, or you’ll overshoot.”

  Diamond brake
d sharply. The Dodge dropped back and followed them into the ramp, which discharged them onto Opa-Locka Boulevard. They entered Opa-Locka a few moments later, and began working north toward the airfield.

  A red light was flashing on a vehicle parked on the shoulder just short of the turnoff to the hangar area.

  “Slow down,” Shayne said. “I think that’s my man.” There were two cars, one a black official sedan and the second a green Oldsmobile, with only one wheel on the highway. Diamond pulled past and stopped. As Shayne stepped out, Buzz Yale, a big man with a belly that overflowed his ornamental belt buckle, came out on the road to meet him.

  “Since when have you been traveling in Mustangs, Mike? Is this the Olds you wanted? I really shouldn’t take any of your money, because it turned out I had a report on my desk when you called. All I had to do was check the tags.”

  “Thanks, Buzz. This saves us some time.”

  He snapped up the trunk hatch at the rear of the Olds. The rubber mat had been thrown out of the way. Through the opening in the floor he looked down at the gravel and tarred weeds along the shoulder.

  Diamond, beside him, said, “For Christ’s sake, look at the way it’s rigged.”

  An ordinary two-gallon can had been wired to three flat metal straps that were welded across the opening where the gas tank had been. The welds were sloppy and unprofessional; one had already worked open. The gas line was stuck into the can’s spigot, entering through a hole punched in the screw top. That joint had been wrapped with overlapping layers of white adhesive tape, but the whole crude installation was shiny with spilled gas.

  “Never saw anything like it,” Yale said. “What kind of mechanic—”

  “It’s a wonder they got this far,” Shayne said. “Buzz, I’m going to need something else. Sometime during the last hour a plane that was about to take off developed some kind of mechanical trouble. It was in a holding area, probably close to a service road. I’m guessing a private jet or a small cargo job. They were fueled up and ready. Ground clearance hadn’t been asked for yet. They were waiting for something or somebody. Then a message came in to shut down the engines. They may have pulled the plane back into a hangar, but I think it’s probably still out there, with a power car standing by. If you can find it for me, it’s worth another two hundred.”

  “I’ll try, Mike,” Yale said doubtfully, “but it’ll take scratching. You know what we’re like out here—scattered.”

  “Nose around. Don’t be conspicuous about it. I’ll call you.”

  He returned to the Mustang, broke open the package on the front seat and gave Yale two hundred dollar bills. Summoning Diamond with a brusque head movement, he reentered the Mustang.

  When Diamond was back behind the wheel: “I need a phone, Diamond. There’s one in the gas station half a mile down the road. And be thinking about whether it’s time to change your mind about telling me who we’re up against.”

  Diamond picked out one phrase and repeated it. “Change my mind,” he said, wheeling around and accelerating. “You’re damn right this changes my mind. It’s a whole new ballgame. You had it figured, didn’t you?”

  He waited till he was out of sight of the rotating beacon, and swung off the road, signaling.

  “That’s right,” Shayne said. “We have lots of time.”

  The Dodge slid to a stop and the two men ran up, one on each side of the car.

  “He has a gun,” Diamond called. “Watch it.”

  A cocked revolver appeared at the window beside Shayne. Diamond reached out warily, found Shayne’s .38 and pulled it into view. He rapped out a command and the armed man outside opened the door.

  “Get out, Shayne,” Diamond ordered. “Stand against the side of the car. I’ve had enough of this crap.”

  Shayne dropped his hand to the latch holding his seat belt. “Use your head.”

  “Get him out of there,” Diamond said.

  The man outside reached in and tapped Shayne lightly with the flat of his gun. Expecting the move, Shayne reached upward quickly. He grabbed the extended arm and yanked it forward with his full strength.

  The man’s chin struck the top of the car and the point of his weapon came forward to jam itself into Diamond’s side. The man tried to wrestle himself loose, but Shayne had a good two-handed grip, one hand in the armpit, the other below the elbow.

  Diamond pulled away, but he was held in place by the belt.

  “Don’t jerk your hand, for God’s sake!”

  The second man, on Diamond’s side of the car, was shuffling and weaving, trying to see in, blocked off from Shayne by Diamond on one side and by the man Shayne was holding on the other. Shayne kept the cocked revolver pressed against Diamond’s side.

  “If you don’t stop wriggling the hammer’s coming down,” Shayne observed. “Don’t you care?”

  Diamond shrank back. “Shayne—”

  “Hold still. Things are moving. The reason the helicopters didn’t pick up any signal was that the Olds wasn’t carrying the tank. When the people in the Olds ran out of gas they were just as surprised as we are now. They’re less than a mile from the airfield. Don’t forget the guy who fired at me in the Queen Elizabeth’s hold. He didn’t belong to either you or Geller. It’s beginning to seem that this shipment wasn’t such a tight secret, after all.”

  “Where is it?”

  “If I knew that, why would I be fooling around out here with you? This might make a certain amount of sense if you knew where Dessau is. Relax for a minute. Let the blood drain out of your brain so you can use it to think with. Tell these guys to cool off and we’ll talk.”

  After a moment Diamond called, “All right, when he lets you go, go back to the other car.”

  Some of the tension went out of the arm Shayne was grasping. He eased up, but when the man outside had withdrawn a few inches, Shayne yanked again. The man’s chin banged the top of the car harder than before. Then Shayne twisted with both hands, causing a contorted face to appear framed in the window.

  “Don’t hit people with pistols when you don’t know who they are,” Shayne said. “Find out something about them first. What happened to Dessau?”

  “He went for cigarettes. You came out of the cafeteria before he got back. That hurts.”

  Shayne let him go and the man disappeared.

  “For cigarettes,” Shayne said. “Most places that sell cigarettes also have phones. But maybe we’ll have a perfectly good explanation when he turns up.”

  He reached for his gun, which Diamond was holding, and then waved.

  “If you think it gives you an edge, keep it. What’s your current theory? I hope you don’t think I rigged that gas tank in the Olds. I would have put in a neater weld.”

  “You and Little had some kind of deal. You didn’t walk in that building on the basis of the explanation you’ve given me.”

  “I told you what he told me. I didn’t say I believed it. I know he was lying. So was Anne Blagden. So are you, for Christ’s sake. I’m used to that. But every time I get hit by somebody I find out something new. We’re ruling out possibilities all the time.”

  “What possibilities?”

  “I don’t know why you feel this is a time to panic. From your point of view the situation has improved. If the tank had stayed where I put it, in the Olds, it’d be out of the country by now. Or else the Coast Guard would have picked up the signals, followed them to the airport, and grabbed them while they were loading it in the plane. This way it’s still available. If I stashed it away somewhere, you have to deal with me. If I didn’t—and believe me, I didn’t—I’m your link.”

  “I don’t see that.”

  Shayne said patiently, “Anne and Geller don’t know how to get in touch with you. You don’t know how to get in touch with them. Whoever actually has the goddamn thing can’t put it up for auction because he doesn’t know how to get in touch with either of you. But everybody knows how to get in touch with me. I’m in the book.”

  Diamond began to
look interested.

  Shayne went on, “Anne—if it really was Anne and Geller who hijacked the Olds—is going to have the same reaction you did. I was in the hold of the Queen with welding and burning equipment, and a whole night to work out a three-way switch. She’s probably been trying to get through to me for the last twenty minutes.”

  “And what happens after she gets through to you?”

  “We go on playing it by ear. Seriously, Diamond, I’m the one fixed point. As soon as everybody gets that through their heads, we can start winding it up.”

  “All right, but I’m going to keep you right under my eye.”

  “I don’t object to that. Stick as close as you want, but keep out of sight. Right now we’re both stymied. I’m worse off than you because I’ve got a murder charge hanging over me. Anne doesn’t know that, unless Dessau told her. As far as she knows, I’m still open to a money offer.”

  “I hope you’re not thinking of asking her if she wants to outbid me.”

  “Don’t be stupid,” Shayne said wearily. “She must understand by now that there’s a good chance she’ll come out with nothing unless she levels with me. She’ll have to make some kind of offer. If it’s high enough I might be tempted to take it and sell you out. God, I’m tired of explaining the simplest things. Don’t you realize yet? The cops are going to want somebody for Little’s murder. It has to be me or one of Anne’s people. That’s something I can’t deal away, as much as I like large sums of money.”

  “I think I see your point,” Diamond said, still uncertain. “But if you try anything—”

  “Yeah, yeah. Stay within pistol range.”

  CHAPTER 13

  Using the phone in the next gas station, Shayne phoned his mobile operator and asked if anyone named Anne Blagden had called him. Someone named Anne Blagden had been calling regularly, he was told. She had left a number.

  Shayne instructed the operator to call the number and tell Miss Blagden that he wanted a meeting very much indeed. If she could arrange to be at the corner of 54th Street and North Miami Avenue in fifteen minutes, he would pick her up.