Fourth Down to Death

by Brett Halliday

  “Certainly. The corner delicatessen should carry it… Come on, man, where can I buy blood on a Saturday night?”

  “It doesn’t have to be human blood. Keep in touch.”

  Ted Knapp didn’t answer his phone, and Shayne went looking for him. The phone-book listing gave his address as a glass and aluminum tower on the bayfront, with a doorman, its own marina, a fountain in the lobby and closed TV security. Shayne was told that Mr. Knapp was out for the evening. Five dollars to the smooth Cuban at the desk and another five to the doorman produced the information that he could undoubtedly be found at the Biscayne Kennel Club, inasmuch as that was where the dogs were running.

  The doorman looked at his watch. “If you get there before the second race, I like the five dog, Mr. Shayne. I think he’ll go off at a nice price.”

  Shayne thanked him for the tip, and soon was driving north on the expressway again, this time in his own car and only five miles an hour over the posted limit.

  The Biscayne Kennel Club was built on unincorporated land outside North Miami. Shayne bought a ticket to the clubhouse section. On the brightly lighted racing surface, dogs were being handled into the stalls for the start of the second race. Shayne discussed his problem with two waiters, and one, again a Cuban, was able to identify Mr. Knapp for him. As Shayne went down the aisle the bell clanged, the unconvincing artificial rabbit burst out of concealment and the dogs began the pursuit, yapping madly.

  Knapp, a handsome, tanned man in his early forties, watched with a slight smile. The girl with him was much younger than he was. She screamed encouragement at number five, which had broken on top and was out in front by a length. Her excitement began to fade as the animal was overtaken in the backstretch. It came out of the turn well back and finished nowhere.

  She crumpled up a handful of tickets and threw them down. “I could kill that damn doorman.”

  Knapp laughed. Looking up, he saw Shayne. There was a slight gap between his front teeth, which kept him from being too good-looking.

  “You’re Michael Shayne.”

  “Yeah, and I’d like to talk to you about football. Privately.”

  “Football happens to be one of my favorite subjects. Baby,” he said to the girl, “go out to the bar and ask for more ice cubes. I’ll join you in a minute.”

  “Yes, master.”

  Knapp put one hand at the back of her neck and kissed her mouth, so she would feel less piqued at being sent away.

  “Do you want to bet on the next race?” she asked.

  “Let’s watch this one. The sixth is when we get even.”

  She squeezed past Shayne with an upward glance through extra-long eyelashes, and Shayne took her seat. She had long red hair and was tidily built, with each set of curves merging musically with every other. Knapp watched until she passed out of sight at the top of the aisle.

  “Life gets sweeter and sweeter. Cigarette, Shayne?”

  Shayne accepted a cigarette from a silver case and Knapp lit it for him.

  “Football,” he said. “A private detective. I have a feeling this may be something I don’t want to hear.”

  “I understand you beat the bookies for fifty thousand on the Miami-Boston game last week.”

  Knapp winced. “They beat me on a couple of others, but never mind that. How do you know? I hope it’s not common knowledge.”

  Shayne breathed out smoke. “A friend of mine on the News, Tim Rourke, found out for me. All it took was a phone call.”

  “A friend of yours on the News. You don’t take long to get to the point, do you, Shayne? A well-known Miami businessman, ex-president of the Junior Chamber of Commerce, cleans up by betting heavily against the home team. Very unpatriotic of me, as well as very illegal. Now you’d like me to explain my betting methods, and in return you’ll persuade this friend on the News not to use the story.”

  “Something like that,” Shayne said evenly. “I really doubt if you’d get arrested.”

  “I doubt it, too. But I don’t want the bookies to hang a ceiling on me. You’re not working for the league, are you?”

  “No, for Zacharias.”

  Knapp shook the ash from his cigarette. “I suppose he’s worried about Stitch Reddick.”

  “That’s one of the things he’s worried about. He’s also wondering if anybody’s been bribing his football players.”

  “Now, Shayne,” Knapp said easily. “Bribing football players is against the law, and that’s one law they enforce. You know as well as I do that it doesn’t happen very often, because it’s difficult and dangerous and there’s no guarantee that it’ll work. The only person who might try is a layoff bookie with too much action on one side of the teeter-totter. My personal opinion is that a book would have to be unbalanced by at least a million dollars to make it worthwhile, and even then the guy would have to be slightly insane.”

  “Do you usually bet as much as fifty thousand on one game?”

  Knapp shook his head impatiently. “That was a special situation. I go high maybe four or five times a season, when I see something I really like. I can usually hide it by going out of town, but the only place you can get important money against Miami is here in Miami. The book’s always out of balance because that’s how fans are. Sid’s a friend of mine. Does he know about this?”

  “Not from me.”

  “I don’t want him to get any wrong ideas.… I see I’ll have to tell you the story of my life.”

  “Boil it down,” Shayne said. “I’m only interested in the last couple of weeks.”

  Knapp looked at his cigarette with distaste and stubbed it out. “I’ve got to start cutting down on the damn things. Shayne, how many people do you know who switch, I mean who switch completely around, at the age of forty-one? I’m forty-four now. Three years ago two things happened. I paid a tax on an income of a third of a million dollars, and my wife left me. She said I was despicable. It shocked the hell out of me. I did some thinking about the insurance business. Everybody needs insurance, unless you drop out of the world completely. But it’s a bet, isn’t it? You bet the company your house won’t catch on fire, and if you live in the right part of town they give you good odds.”

  The dogs in the third race had begun their hopeless chase of the make-believe rabbit. For a moment there was too much noise for Knapp to continue.

  “For the company it’s a sure thing,” he said after one dog had beaten the others to the wire and the excitement subsided. “No careful insurance company can ever go bankrupt. I wore a dark suit, a white shirt, a dark blue tie, every working day of my life. My only vice, and I mean that literally, was betting on football pools. A dollar or two a week. The day my wife moved out I hit the pool for seventy-five dollars. I wore a bow tie to work the next day—everybody in the office was astonished. I had four martinis before lunch, met my first real-life bookmaker, bet the seventy-five on a horse that was running at Tropical, the horse came in for me, and here I am. Sometimes I win, sometimes I lose. Each day something different. I heard somebody say once, ‘The next best thing to winning is losing.’”

  Shayne shifted his body impatiently, and Knapp said, “I have a reason for telling you this. I’m selling my business. I don’t know yet what I’m going to do—I have several prospects. Now if I get labeled as the swinger who won X number of dollars when Ronnie James went into his coma, it’ll close out some of my options. That’s why I’m glad to cooperate with you.”

  “I’m always glad to get cooperation,” Shayne said. “What made you so sure Ronnie James was going to be dumped?”

  Knapp looked distressed. “I can’t see into the future. Let me scotch that idea right now. I was betting the points, the probabilities. Don’t forget, I’m on the outside.”

  “The outside of football, or of bookmaking?”

  “Both. I have to beat the vigorish to break even. All I ever try to do is win three bets out of five. The Vegas boys set the opening line on the basis of the best information available Monday morning. The spread
changes as more information comes in. I try to keep my information fresher than theirs. Sometimes I hear things that never get reflected in the official line at all. That’s all there is to it, nothing very sinister. I have contacts on most of the major clubs. Needless to say, the one thing I don’t intend to tell you is who they are. I get a daily injury report. Morale—if there’s any dissension among the players, I know about it. Have the coaches come up with any bright ideas for new plays or formations?”

  “Specifically,” Shayne said, “last Sunday, Boston against Miami—you must have had something really solid.”

  “But I didn’t. It wasn’t one big thing, but a combination of little things. I work it both ways, and one of my best sources happens to be in Boston. That man has yet to give me a bad steer. One of their wide receivers had been hobbling around on a twisted ankle. He was ready last Sunday, and that’s only one of the things Jimmy the Greek didn’t know. James humiliated Boston the last time out by something like forty-two points. So the Boston front four was psyched up to hurt him whenever they got in. On the Miami side, Ronnie skipped Wednesday’s practice. Most people don’t pay attention to that any more, but I do, because it irritates the linemen. They’re doing grass drills while he’s sipping vodka and lemon somewhere, surrounded by willing chicks in bikinis. Football’s a weird game. It doesn’t take much to dull the edge. And you can’t concentrate on football when you know that a shoofly from the league office is nosing around looking for violations. I admit that when I heard Stitch Reddick was in town I made sure it was passed around so all the players knew it.”

  “Is that all?”

  Knapp hesitated. “What kind of terms are you on with Sid and Chan?”

  “They’re clients.”

  “As far as I’m concerned, it’s Chan’s club. She held it together in the lean days when Sid was ready to drop it. Sid’s around more now, but she still comes on like the owner. And she’s not the owner, you understand. There are cross currents there. Sid’s made some decisions for no other reason than to show her he’s the one who has the power to make decisions. Plus”—he stopped and took out his cigarette case, selected another cigarette and lit it—“owners, especially women, and especially women who only own two or three hundred shares out of ten thousand, ought to stay away from the players, and Chan never has.”

  “She made a big point of telling me about that.”

  Knapp looked surprised. “She told you about Ronnie?”

  “What about Ronnie?”

  “I started this,” Knapp said glumly. After one puff on his new cigarette, he put it out. “She’s met him after practice a few times. I’m sorry to say that’s the kind of thing I look for. If the quarterback’s seeing the owner’s wife, how will it affect the points? Friday afternoon there was a fight of some kind in the trainer’s room. The team doctor, Len Bishop, tried to break it up, and he caught a fist or an elbow. He was wearing a very colorful eye for a couple of days. That’s the complete story, Shayne. A black eye, a skipped practice, Stitch Reddick in town. Maxwell, the place-kicker, had diarrhea Thursday. On the other side, all the key Boston players were healthy and the team was really up for the game. I decided to make this one of my big ones. Even if Ronnie hadn’t been clobbered I would have gone home with the money, I think.”

  “Who do you like tomorrow?”

  “Which way I go may depend on you, Shayne. Are you going to unsettle things further, or calm everybody down? Unless there’s some good indication by noon tomorrow, I may sit it out.”

  Shayne considered. It sounded plausible, and it might even be true. Knapp’s fingers kept picking at the crease in his slacks to keep himself from reaching for a cigarette.

  “Do you know what Reddick has been working on?” Shayne asked him.

  “No. He’s a great man for tapping phones, and I’m not even dialing for a weather report until he leaves town. I’ve got two or three ideas, things I’d look into if I were you, but one area I wouldn’t waste any time on is Ted Knapp—after getting all that money down, did he do something to make sure he won? I know the answer to that. He didn’t.”

  “All right, thanks,” Shayne said, standing up. “I may have more questions for you after I hear what other people are saying.”

  “Stick around to the sixth. I can give you a winner.”

  “I haven’t bet on a dog race in years,” Shayne said. “I don’t put money in slot machines, either.”

  Knapp’s girl looked at Shayne sleepily as he approached the bar.

  “He’s free,” Shayne told her.

  “I didn’t realize who you were at first,” she said. “Do you feel like buying me a drink?”

  “No,” Shayne said, and went past.

  CHAPTER 4

  Timothy Rourke’s car, a scarred Chevy with one functioning headlight, pulled into the shopping center and drew up beside Shayne’s Buick. Rourke got out, a tall, skinny figure with a nervous way of flapping his hands as he walked. His usual cigarette was pasted to the corner of his mouth. He had been wearing a necktie earlier, but he had pulled it off and stuffed it into a jacket pocket.

  He moved in beside Shayne. “I got the blood you wanted. What do we do with it, drink it?”

  Shayne said absently, “There’s some cognac in the glove compartment if you want that.”

  “I brought martinis, thanks, and I’ll have to drink them fast before they get warm.”

  Through Nikon binoculars, Shayne was studying the lighted windows of a house across the street from the shopping center. It was a low stucco structure on a narrow lot. The front lawn needed attention. Joe Truszowski, the Miami All-Pro offensive tackle, lived here, and in another moment Shayne intended to go in and ask him how much he’d been paid to miss two crucial blocks against Boston.

  “Don’t you want to know where I got the blood?” Rourke said. “I asked a few friends, and nobody had any suggestions. All the butcher shops were closed. I don’t know any chicken farmers.”

  Shayne moved the glasses to the line of cars along the curb. After a moment he settled on a black Oldsmobile hardtop with Georgia plates and two radio aerials. Light from the shopping-center sign glittered from the sloping rear window and kept Shayne from seeing inside.

  He lowered the glasses. “Sorry, Tim, I was thinking of something else. Where’d you get it?”

  “It’s mine,” Rourke said gloomily. “I had a doctor draw it off for me. I’ve been drinking since noon, so it’ll probably test out at about eighty proof.” He took a plastic squeeze bottle out of a paper bag. “I take it you’re thinking of working the old cackle-bladder routine, right? The con man wants to cool out the mark. Somebody shoots the con man with a gun loaded with blanks. He’s carrying the cackle bladder in his shirt pocket. He breaks it, blood spurts all over and the mark catches the first plane out of town.”

  “That’s the idea. Zacharias thinks Joe Truck hesitated on those two plays. The theory is that after nine years in the pit his brains have been scrambled, and so it couldn’t have been his own idea. The few linemen I know seem to be pretty intelligent people, but I want to check it out. I should be able to get him to throw a punch. I’ll hit the floor, and if I’m bleeding badly enough it may scare him into making a phone call.”

  “That’s the way I thought your mind was working,” Rourke said, producing a flat three-pack of rubber contraceptives. “The bottle’s going to be hard to palm. Fill one of these. And I stopped at a novelty store, in case you want to make it a real production.”

  He went into his bag again and brought out a plastic wound. “Spit on the back and it stays on by suction.” He clapped it on his own forehead and adjusted the rearview mirror to study the result. “I’d say it looks more like a knife wound, but slosh on the blood and he won’t know the difference.”

  “The blood’s enough,” Shayne said, checking the front of the house again through his field glasses.

  He shifted the glasses quickly to the black car with the double aerials. A woman, partially hidden by the b
ole of a palm tree, was looking into the front seat.

  He started his motor. “That black car, Tim… double aerials…”

  “What about it?”

  Shayne drove to the lot exit, where he stopped again and used the glasses. He still couldn’t see through the car’s back window, but the woman was now in focus, a pretty girl in slacks, somewhat plump, with a high pile of brown hair. Leaning down, she was gesturing angrily at someone in the car.

  Shayne passed Rourke the glasses.

  “Don’t know her,” Rourke reported in a moment.

  She was shouting now, shaking the door handle and hammering with her other fist on the closed glass. Shayne caught an occasional snatch of shrill invective. Without looking away from the scene, he fished out a cigarette and lit it, using his dashboard lighter.

  “What the hell?” Rourke said. “The door’s locked. Why doesn’t he just drive away?”

  “What’s Stitch Reddick’s home base? Atlanta, isn’t it?”

  Rourke swung the glasses. “Yeah. Georgia plates.”

  The woman took off one high-heeled shoe and pounded on the window. When the glass didn’t break, she raced across to a convertible parked in the Truszowski driveway, yanked open the luggage hatch and came up a second or two later with a lug wrench.

  “If that’s Stitch,” Rourke said, “maybe we ought to break this up before somebody gets hurt.”

  Shayne continued to lean on the wheel, smoking. The woman approached the black Olds, running erratically in her one shoe. She swung the wrench on the run. It broke the window on the driver’s side. She raced around the car. After knocking out that window she started on the windshield, keeping up a continuous flow of threats and obscenities.