Caught Dead ms-64

by Brett Halliday

  “I’ve got them, Mike. And you weren’t kidding, they have credentials. They’ve been doing some screaming. This Frost is some kind of CIA bigshot, the way he tells it, and I think I believe him. He may be carrying a fountain pen loaded with napalm or something. It wouldn’t surprise me. He came in on a government plane, and do you know I had to put him in restraint? He thinks he knows karate.”

  “Where are they, here?”

  “Waiting.” He was rolling along beside Shayne, carrying his two-hundred-seventy pounds in an easy bearlike weave, but Shayne could see the nervousness behind the placid facade. “I’m only a country boy, Mike, and this is fast competition. I’d be pleased to be allowed to back out at this point.”

  “You can’t do that, Howie. You’re the law here.”

  “That may be, but I don’t know a goddamn thing about anything, as you know, and Frost has been dropping remarks about how he’s going to nail my hide over the backhouse door. And he can do it, too, in my estimation, unless you’ve got some kind of slick little tactic up your sleeve.”

  “We’re all going to talk about it. Is there a room we can use?”

  “I put them in the pilots’ lounge because there are some comfortable chairs in there. But that Frost. That Frost. Get yourself up for him, Mike, because when that man lays eyes on you he-is-going-to-blow.”

  “I’m looking forward to it. That looked like quite a fire on the Beach.”

  “A real bad one, Mike, but the boys have confined it. Nobody hurt, as far as I’ve heard.”

  “I have to make a phone call. Get everybody together and let them order drinks. One man from Highway Patrol and one from the airport. No reporters.”

  “Don’t forget you’re under arrest,” Boyle reminded him.

  Shayne peeled out of the formation as they passed a line of public phonebooths, and then had to come back and panhandle a coin from one of the security cops, as all he could find in his pocket was Venezuelan money. Sam Katz, the private detective, answered promptly.

  “Well, the goddamned place burned down on us, Mike,” he said in a disgusted voice, “so I can’t tell you a thing. The lady was just starting on the books when we smelled smoke. I’m the one who pulled the alarm.”

  “Any idea how it started?”

  “No, and it’s a real hot fire. If it was set I doubt if they’ll be able to prove anything.”

  “Never mind, Sam. These things happen, and it tells me something.”

  “Wait a minute, that’s not all. I took a wild gamble, for no reason at all-pure hunch. We had a little crowd waiting for the equipment to get there. A dozen or eighteen people, all told. And there was a kid in the crowd. Or not exactly a kid, either-he could be twenty-one, twenty-two. And he had a glint in his eye. I can’t tell you any more than that. Just an expression, but I think it would have hit you the same way. You know-he shouldn’t be that interested in somebody else’s fire.”

  “Have you got him?” Shayne asked quickly.

  “Yeah. He didn’t want me to bother him so I decided to lean on him a little. He spoke with a Latin accent, which isn’t such a big deal around here, but I asked him where he came from and he said Caracas, Venezuela. That was where you called me from, Caracas, Venezuela. So I put the two things together and when a cop got there I had him bust the kid on suspicion of arson. He’s at the precinct now, and he’s being very quiet.”

  “Sam, you earned yourself a bonus. Get over there fast and be sure they don’t make a mistake and turn him loose. What’s his name?”

  “Jaime Mercado.”

  Shayne hung up whistling. He found the pilots’ lounge. Felix Frost jumped to his feet as Shayne came in and started sputtering demands and objections. Shayne knocked him down with a hard shot to the jaw.

  Frost’s glasses flew off. He blinked up malevolently from the floor.

  “And you may be able to get my license for that,” Shayne said. “It depends on what happens in the next few minutes. Everybody else has had an interest in this pot and now I seem to have one, too. Get up.”

  Frost retrieved his glasses and put them on. One of the thick lenses was cracked across.

  “Threats would be out of place,” he said thickly. “But consider yourself threatened, Shayne.”

  “Sit down. First we’re going to establish who knows who, and after that, who did what. Do you know Senora Alvares?”

  “I know Senora Alvares,” Frost said icily.

  “Did you see her today and phone her before you left Caracas?”

  “I saw her today and phoned her before I left Caracas. So?”

  Shayne exhaled. “How sweet it is to be back in a country where people answer questions.” He looked at Chief Mejia, who was planted stolidly in a plastic armchair smoking a heavy-bowled pipe. “Glad you could make it, Chief. I hope nobody’s tortured you yet. I’ll be needing you in a minute. You saw my problem right away. Why would anybody talk to me in Caracas unless they had to? I don’t carry anything but a private detective’s license and that’s no good outside the continental limits of the United States-not that it’s too good inside the continental limits. I’m afraid I had to stretch the truth in a few places. You got a hot tip from a waiter to the effect that I know where the dough can be found. That’s not quite accurate. All I have is a theory.”

  “Why are we detained here?” Mejia said.

  “Nobody’s being detained,” Shayne told him. “This is what we call a pre-arraignment hearing. We want to straighten out a few things so Chief Boyle can decide what he can hit us with. You’re free to leave at any time.” He added, “But don’t try it. Does anybody recognize the name Jaime Mercado?”

  He got no response and shrugged. “Maybe it’s a pseudonym.”

  He took Chief Boyle to the door and asked him quietly to send somebody across to Palm Beach to bring back the young man by that name.

  Returning, he asked, “Did anybody think to order me a drink? Never mind, this won’t take long. Everybody’s been interested in the goddamn money, so let’s get that out of the way first. Lenore is the one person who’s really in a position to know about it, and she keeps denying it exists. I can sympathize, because there would be all kinds of tax and legal problems.”

  He planted himself on an arm of a long leather sofa and continued easily, looking at Lenore. “When he closed out his Swiss accounts he gave you the cash and you bought pictures with it.”

  She was staring straight ahead. A muscle flicked in her cheek.

  “We can talk about it now,” he said. “Look at me.”

  She turned. Her expression was as frozen as it had been since she looked down at the burning block.

  “I hired a guy to check your business. He tells me one of the things you do is buy for clients on commission. Some of the auction prices lately have been fantastic. You read about them in the papers-two or three million bucks for one picture. But those are the ones that get press coverage. You can’t buy a Rembrandt and then go someplace and hide. But if you move down to the half million level, maybe you can buy a few of those and stay fairly anonymous. There are private sales. Now and then a stolen painting is put up for sale. I’ve heard that some of the Nazi loot from that old war is still floating around in a very private market. For somebody who’s looking for a way to beat inflation, it isn’t a bad place to put cash.”

  “I won’t dispute you on that,” Lenore said, biting off the syllables. “It’s one of the ways I make my living.”

  “Is there any reason you can’t tell us about it? I know you didn’t murder those three people. But you were in on the beginnings, and if it ended up in murder it doesn’t matter legally that you were as surprised as anybody. It isn’t quite time for the lawyers. But when they come in they’ll advise you that you can go down for conspiracy to commit murder, and that’s one of the worst raps we have. Larry Howe! The original innocent bystander. You don’t have any incentive to tough it out. Clear up this painting business and I think I can help you.”

  She waited, and
it was clear from her expression that she was still seeing flames.

  “What do you want to know, their value?” she said in a dead voice. “We spent four million on them.”

  “Only four?”

  “Almost to the penny. There was a lovely, lovely Watteau and one of the really good Picassos and a Van Dyke that would break your heart. Six in all. I worked through two sets of dummies. Actually it wasn’t difficult at all.”

  “Were you really his mistress, Lenore?”

  “Yes,” she said, surprised. “Did you doubt that?”

  “People in town here weren’t sure.”

  “We took a few precautions.”

  “All right, four million dollars. We’ve got a solid figure, finally. I’ve heard up to twenty, but we all know about street murderers who killed somebody for as little as forty-nine cents and a pair of shoes.” He turned to Frost, who was trying to steady himself by smoking one of his superlative cigars.

  “While you’ve been sitting here have you noticed a smoky smell? I don’t mean cigar smoke.”

  “No, I haven’t noticed a smoky smell.”

  “Maybe it hasn’t got out here yet. Lenore took those four-million-dollar pictures out of their frames and stored them in a back room of her gallery. What else could she do with them? The whole point was to be casual about it. To take out insurance on them, to store them in a fireproof vault, she’d have to admit they were hers. Didn’t you even hear the fire sirens? The gallery just burned down. Anybody ready for another drink?”

  There wasn’t much breathing going on among the principals in the room. Howie Boyle had finally become interested in what Shayne was saying.

  Shayne looked at Paula. “You’ve stayed with your aunt. Did you know about these paintings?”

  “No.”

  “Mejia?”

  “I-no.”

  “Senora Alvares?”

  “No, no, how should I?”

  “Frost?”

  “No, I did not know about these paintings.”

  “Somebody’s lying,” Shayne said. He waited a tick. “And it’s you, Frost.”

  NINETEEN

  “For God’s sake,” Shayne burst out, “what kind of imbecile do you take me for? This whole thing turns on those cigarette cartons. I’m supposed to know my way around. I know where to buy dynamite and TNT, and I could make a pretty effective homemade bomb out of gunpowder and primer cord and a piece of pipe. But plastic? Inside a cigarette carton so nobody’d know the carton had been tampered with? And wire it to go off at exactly the right time? I’m not that good. But you’ve spent years in the black end of American intelligence. I’m sure you’ve taken a course. Not only that, you probably have access to laboratory materials. Could Lenore fake up that kind of package? Could Alvares’ wife?”

  “Black intelligence,” Frost said with scorn. “Bomb laboratories. You’re a romantic.”

  “You people used to brag about that cloak-and-dagger stuff,” Shayne said. “Now I’m going to make up a scenario. Scenario-that’s another one of your words. Let me know if it fits. You were probably a bright boy, Frost, all A’s in school. But in a lot of other ways you’ve always been a mess. What do you look like naked? I’m embarrassed to think about it. You never married. Until lately I think you always used whores. Whores and maids.”

  Frost had gone rigid, squinting against the cigar smoke and holding his knees.

  Shayne said more softly, “You served your country quietly and secretly. Whenever you managed to upset a government or buy a newspaper editor or steal some industrial secret in a brilliant way, nobody knew about it except a few of your fellow jerks in Washington. And you didn’t even earn very good money. Soon you’ll be ready to retire, and what are you going to do with yourself? Buy a four-room house on a St. Petersburg sidestreet and sit on the front porch watching the seagulls? That’s all you can afford on your government pension. I know from the way you chew those expensive cigars that you’ve been looking for a moneymaking gimmick.”

  “I have not been looking for a moneymaking gimmick,” Frost said. But this denial was made with more difficulty than the others.

  “It’s understandable that you’d want to find out about Alvares’ financial plans. Unlike you, he managed to put a little aside for his old age. He closed his bank accounts, and I think that must have been about the time you and the Senora started having sex.”

  He waited for Frost’s sarcastic denial, but this time Frost was unable to speak. Shayne was playing him carefully, because people in Frost’s line of work tried not to make the ordinary human mistakes.

  “And the Senora,” Shayne said, looking in her direction, “had exactly the same worries. After switching around for years, her husband had finally made a stable connection with an intelligent, blonde American who had the kind of figure that seldom goes with her kind of brains and talent. The Senora’s future was bleak. Alvares was sure to get kicked out of his job sooner or later, and when he could stop thinking about keeping up his political image, the son of a bitch might even divorce her. Frost might be creepy looking, and I’m sure he couldn’t be anything but mildly disgusting in bed-”

  “You think you know so much-” she began.

  “Augustina!” Frost snapped, glowering at her.

  Shayne grinned. “Lenore thought she was hiding those purchases, but for a professional intelligence agent like Frost, with a worldwide network of sources, it must have been easy. And now Frost had one of his logical ideas. This was stolen money to begin with. Why not steal it back and retire to some suitable spot like the south of France? But time was passing, for both Frost and the Senora. They couldn’t move while Alvares was alive and in power. Now we’re coming to the murders.”

  “They sabotaged the plane!” Lenore exclaimed.

  “I think so, but not very well. Mejia may be able to confirm some of this. Is it true that Frost gave the new junta money and backing, and encouraged them to take over?”

  Mejia said, “I am simply a policeman. But yet, it is known, he did some things.”

  “That may seem like an elaborate way to commit murder, but that’s the way people like Frost work. Of course he had to sell Washington on it, and he must have been able to make out a pretty good case. The motive was simple-money. The Senora was thinking of money, too, but also of something else. At the end, her husband had the gall to bring his blonde girlfriend to Caracas and set her up more or less publicly in a rented apartment. It’s an old-fashioned situation, and she had the old-fashioned reaction-she wanted to kill them both. Frost is a professional conspirator and he was probably careful, but we’ll turn his own department loose on him, and I think they’ll be able to fill in some of these details.”

  “Such as,” Frost suggested.

  “Such as how much the Senora helped in the change of regime. You needed somebody on the inside, who knew his plans and when he was likely to be vulnerable. Probably you could have arranged to have him shot during the revolt, but she wanted his girl included in the same action and so she had somebody tamper with the getaway plane. You don’t need to know much about airplanes to cut an oil line.”

  “You don’t know this,” Mejia pointed out to Shayne.

  “Right, it’s still the scenario. When we talked this morning she asked me to tell her future. Her prospects have improved in the last couple of days. Because if Alvares had succeeded in getting off in that plane, he wouldn’t have sent her one penny from the sale of those valuable paintings. And she’s too young to stop living. If she could manage to lose a little weight she would still be an attractive woman. A fairly attractive woman. Some people don’t mind flab, when there’s money attached.”

  The widow Alvares looked as though she wished she could strap Shayne into an airplane about to crash.

  “Now let’s shift to the present tense,” Shayne said. “So far Frost hasn’t done anything really serious, spent some government money and handed out a few mild nudges, as he calls it. But Lenore and Alvares survived the crash, and
Lenore has a scheme to get Alvares out of prison. Paula Obregon and the MIR people agree to go along with it for reasons of their own. And here the Senora gets her great idea. Why not substitute some lethal high explosive for those harmless smoke bombs and finish off what they started? Frost thinks of all the zeroes in ten or twenty million dollars. Alvares is not only still alive, he’s in prison, and Luis Mejia here is running the interrogation. Given time, Mejia might persuade him to talk about what he did with the money. He attaches electrodes to various places and wires people to a dry-cell battery, I understand, and this might have worked on Alvares. After going to all that trouble, Frost doesn’t want a crooked cop to walk off with the prizes.”

  “I will not speak,” Mejia said.

  “So Frost shuts himself up and makes the bombs,” Shayne went on. “Now let’s nail it down. Lenore, Paula. You’ve both been thinking. When did Frost make the switch?”

  “During the afternoon,” Paula said. “Tim and I went out to reconnoiter the prison. I think probably then.”

  “For Frost, a hotel lock would be easy,” Shayne said.

  “It seems to me-” Boyle put in. “Am I permitted to interrupt?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “I probably don’t understand it-I know I don’t understand it-but in my experience, when there are two people with a piece of illegal money and one of them dies it’s usually the other one who did it.”

  “You mean Lenore. But if she made the switch, she would have been out of the country by the time the bomb went off. Instead, she hung around all night, getting hotter and hotter. And not only that, she’s a nice girl. The idea would never cross her mind.”

  “Thanks, I think,” Lenore said. “Mike, the man who was waiting on my boat-”

  “I’m coming to that. Even if you slipped past the cops and got back to Palm Beach, you’d have no reason to move the paintings or put them on the market. Frost and his overweight lady-friend could steal them after the dust settled. But remember the Senora had that other motive.”