Armed… Dangerous… ms-54

by Brett Halliday

  Szigetti faced into the shadows. “What’s the matter with that light down there? See if it’s loose or what, will you, Brownie?”

  Brownie sloped off, keeping his head low to avoid the obstructions on the ceiling. A bright light came on, showing a pocked target nailed to a plywood panel. The distance, Shayne judged, was about twenty-five yards.

  “Be careful,” Michele told Szigetti.

  He squinted at the target, holding a short-barreled. 38 loosely at his side. “I won’t plug anybody.” He risked a quick look at Shayne. “They knew how to build houses in the old days. I had Billy stand halfway to the road while I did some shooting, and he thought it was crickets, for Christ’s sake.”

  Brownie called, “OK?”

  “OK.”

  Brownie was concealed from view behind a hot-water tank. Suddenly a beer can flew into the light. Szigetti fired, sending the can spinning back with a clank against the masonry wall.

  “You bastard,” he said, laughing. “You almost tricked me that time.”

  Suddenly a rat scuttled across the concrete floor, heading straight at them. Michele screamed and seized Shayne’s arm. A shot from Szigetti’s. 38 checked the rat briefly, knocking it off stride, but it kept coming. Michele tightened her grip convulsively and went on screaming as the rat scuttled up to her feet. It had been put together out of brown cloth and darning thread, and stuffed with cotton. At close range it didn’t look much like a rat. Some of the cotton stuck out through the rip made by the bullet.

  “Ziggy, you monster,” she said, her hand to her breast.

  “And I don’t know what angle it’s coming from,” Szigetti said, pleased. “That’s the beauty of it. Depends on what string he pulls.”

  While he was talking, a cardboard head poked out abruptly from behind the water tank, disappearing the same instant that Szigetti fired.

  “Missed!” Brownie called. He added in a lower voice, “No, you didn’t. Nicked his ear.”

  Szigetti gave a complacent laugh. “Take a shot,” he told Shayne. “I noticed you carry a. 45. A. 45 slug would really blow a hole in that rat.”

  Shayne’s. 45, of course, was loaded with blanks, which made a noise but wouldn’t knock any stuffing out of a stuffed rat. “No, thanks,” he said. “I stopped practicing years ago.”

  “Go ahead,” Szigetti urged him. “Take a couple of cracks at the target anyway, if the rat scares you. I’d like to see what you’ve got in the way of a draw.”

  Shayne smiled. “What are we doing, rehearsing for television? No, you’re too hot for me, Szigetti. After that much sauce I might not even hit the target.”

  Szigetti sneered. Suddenly Shayne said, “Now I know where I saw you. You were in the Corps.”

  The other man looked at him with slow surprise and put away his.

  “Four long years. What outfit?”

  “I was a D.I. at Parris Island,” Shayne said. “I forget what year you were there.”

  When Szigetti told him, Shayne said, “The mustache makes the difference. I keep running into guys, but it always takes a minute. After the first half-dozen cycles all the boots begin to look alike.”

  Szigetti, in good humor again, thought this called for a drink. They trooped back upstairs and finished the bottle. Another bottle appeared, the same harsh blend, Shayne was sorry to see. Szigetti was no less ready to reminisce than any other former Marine, and he stayed in a good mood as long as the others were willing to listen. All his officers, for one reason or another, had had it in for him, but just the same, he had generally managed to fix their wagon.

  When Billy was called in off guard, he suggested a game of poker. Michele had never played, but she was willing to learn. She sat beside Shayne, her knee touching his leg. Between them, they collected most of the money at the table. Szigetti believed himself to be an expert but lost steadily. He crouched suspiciously over his cards, smoldering.

  “Of all the goddamned luck!” he said, slamming down aces and queens after Shayne took the last pot with a low flush.

  “Luck?” Brownie said. “That’s poker-playing, man.”

  Michele stood up quickly and told Shayne to come with her while she found him a place to sleep.

  “I know what,” Irene put in from across the table. “No, that would be unmoral.”

  Shayne gave her a half shrug and followed the French girl.

  “You can use Tug’s room,” Michele said when they were upstairs. “A toothbrush and so forth will have to wait till tomorrow.”

  She turned on the overhead light in an empty bedroom. There was a mattress and pillow on the big iron bedstead, but only one rumpled sheet.

  “Primitive,” she admitted, “but can you manage for two nights?”

  “It’s better than jail,” Shayne said. “No women in jails.”

  She listened at the door, then closed it and came into Shayne’s arms. She kissed him hungrily.

  “I would love to stay with you,” she whispered. “But Ziggy is so wild, it would make him worse. Tomorrow we make love. Do not forget. I take you to New York. When we are alone, let me suggest ways, darling.”

  Shayne’s role didn’t require him to make an answer. His arms tightened and he let one hand slide down her back. She broke away.

  “Tomorrow will be a sensational success, I promise you. Even better will be the day after, then the day after that Wait. I want you to try on the uniform.”

  She went to the closet and took out the green, one-piece overall worn by workers in the New York Department of Sanitation. “He was as tall as you, but without your shoulders. It was loose on him. We can get another tomorrow if this one is too bad.”

  Shayne undressed and put on the uniform. It was too tight across the chest. The bulge of his. 45 showed clearly. She gave him a critical looking over.

  “Leave one more button open. No, I think you must carry the pistol in a bag.”

  Shayne grinned. “Between two slices of bread?”

  “It will only be for a moment. Darling, that was clever of you, not to shoot for Ziggy. It pleased him. I have seen you with a pistol. I do not need to be shown.”

  “That’s the way people get in the Marines-gun-happy.”

  “He is not so bad, after all,” she said, trying to talk herself into it. “Perhaps tomorrow you must frighten him a little. He was frightened of Tug. Today they are all on edge about Tug’s arrest, they drank too much. But what each one has to do is very simple indeed. There will be no trouble. We will arrive in Portugal, you and I, with no one the wiser and much money in our luggage.”

  “Maybe, Michele,” Shayne said, his tone suddenly weary. “You don’t know how it is, kid. It’s never simple. There’s always a place where you’ve got to hang tough or let them take you. Too goddamn many thieves really want to make mistakes so they’ll be put away in a nice safe cell with three sure meals a day. This Tug character who let himself get picked up-after a couple of days with these oddballs maybe he was looking for a way out. He took the small pinch instead of the big one. And that’s what these characters are thinking. They think he knew something.”

  “Stop it.”

  “It could work,” he said. “So long as you remember it’s going to take luck. And I have a feeling that the minute that cop recognized me in the subway, my luck changed. I may jinx this for you.”

  “Nonsense!” she said sharply. “We go over it and over it, if necessary a hundred times, and cut down the possibilities. Then if something unlucky happens, you will move quickly and decisively and overcome it. That is my feeling.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  She peered up at him. “Darling, that one policeman recognized you. What if there should be others? I believe we should at least dye your hair. Red, perhaps.”

  Startled, Shayne let out a snort of laughter. “And maybe we can talk Ziggy into loaning me his mustache. No, baby. If something happens, it happens. That’s my philosophy.” He picked up his jacket, which he had thrown on the bed, and felt in the side
pocket. “I want to give you back your watch and bracelet.”

  CHAPTER 7

  After she said goodnight, Shayne stripped off the Sanitation Department uniform and listened at the closed door. There was no lock but he manhandled the empty bureau in front of it. He went to the window. A room on the ground floor would have been better for his purposes, but there had been no way he could ask for one. He removed the sliding screen and swung out onto the shingled roof of the veranda, which ran around two sides of the house.

  The shingles were dry and brittle underfoot. He edged carefully along the wall. The next window was lighted. He dropped to his knees and elbows and wriggled past. The shingles at the edge of the roof had split and peeled. The two-by-six beneath had begun to rot away from the nails. Shayne leaned on it and felt it give.

  He heard a mumble of voices from the living room: Michele’s and Szigetti’s. The note of complaint in Szigetti’s voice carried it around the house without bringing any words along with it. While the detective hesitated he noticed a dead branch dangling from the gutter. He might be able to use that.

  He freed the branch carefully, then let it down heavy end first and worked the tip inside the copper wire leading to the telephone box. One of the thumbtacks pulled out of the clapboard. Rotating the branch, he caught the wire on a protruding twig and fished it up. Another tack popped out. In a moment, reaching down, he was able to seize the wire and pull it free.

  There wasn’t enough slack to reach his window. He unwound more wire from the outside of his battery case and performed a rough splice in the half-dark without tools. A rotten board gave way under his knee and he had to twist sideward to keep from going through.

  Somebody had been moving in the bedroom on the other side of the wall. There was an abrupt silence. Shayne froze, spread-eagled on the roof.

  Irene’s voice said clearly, “You’re beginning to jump, my girl.”

  She came to the lighted window to look out at the night Shayne was too close to the wall to see her, but the shadow she cast was naked.

  “Anybody out there?” she said in a low whisper. “If so, come in. No? Too bad, Irene. Another night shot to hell.”

  Shayne waited till her light was out. Springs jangled as she climbed into bed, and under cover of the noise he wriggled past. He climbed through his own window and replaced the screen.

  On his bed, he doubled his pillow to make a soundproof cave for his tiny phone. He signaled the operator and gave her a number. An instant later the voice of his friend Tim Rourke spoke from the button in his ear.

  “Mike?”

  “Yeah,” the detective said curtly into his cupped hands. “Tomorrow morning. Watch the ferry and the bridges. Dark green convertible.” He gave the license number. “Read it back.”

  Rourke repeated the number. “Anything else?”

  “No.”

  Rourke said, “Well, Mike, you did it. Sometimes you amaze me. Good luck, buddy.”

  Shayne withdrew the point of his screwdriver, breaking the connection. He moved the bureau away from the door. After sliding in under the sheet he put the hearing-aid button back in his ear. He smoked a last cigarette thoughtfully.

  Like his friend Rourke, he was surprised at how well everything had gone. As Jake Melnick, the diamond dealer, Rourke had overdone the alarm and dismay, Shayne had thought, and when he had slapped the plastic membrane against his forehead he had produced a huge gush of blood, far more than would have been showing if Shayne had actually slugged him with a pistol. But the girl had been properly scared by it. Inspector Power himself had been the off-duty detective who accosted them in the lobby. The other roles had been filled by detectives from the Confidential Squad-the traffic patrolman outside, the workmen who blocked their escape with the piano, the uniformed cop, checking Michele’s apartment, who had been hit in the face with a wet towel. Shayne smiled in the darkness. Only the plump lady in the flowered hat had not been part of the troupe, and her performance couldn’t have been improved by three weeks of rehearsals. The one thing that had bothered Shayne-it hadn’t seemed to bother Rourke or Power, he noticed-was whether he could convince an intelligent girl that he was capable of stunning a defenseless man with a. 45, and then of putting a second bullet into a wounded cop. He made a wry face and stubbed out his cigarette. Perhaps the dyed hair made the difference.

  The next day would be a difficult one. The day after that would be more difficult still. His main problem remained Michele, but he had no shortage of lesser problems. All Szigetti’s early suspicions had come back, during the poker game, and Shayne’s last look of the evening from the dapper former Marine had been hard and searching. Probably, Shayne thought, on one of Szigetti’s vacation trips to Miami or Miami Beach some local companion had pointed Shayne out, and he could make the connection at any time. It was going to be like sitting in the same room with a ticking bomb.

  There was a rapid series of clicks in his ear. He sat up, instantly alert, and adjusted the hearing-aid button.

  “Yes?” a man’s voice said.

  “I found somebody,” Michele’s voice said without preamble.

  “Excellent.”

  The half-swallowed consonants went with an upper-class English upbringing, Shayne thought, listening carefully, but there was also something else, a faint whiff of another country.

  “I have observed him in action,” Michele said, “and I think he will do well. After Wynanski I thought perhaps we should cancel everything and return to France. This one prides himself on common sense and directness and vulgarity, but there is something else too. I think he conducts himself as he imagines he should. He is flexible, he improvises well, and he unquestionably has courage. He can drink a great deal with little change in his manner. He lost his temper once or twice, but I think deliberately.”

  “I see you’ve been watching him closely,” the voice said with a laugh.

  “Yes, it was necessary that I do so. I have had to be careful with him. I will tell you about it later. I was in danger for a time. America! Never again, thank you. But I found that the danger stimulated the sexual responses to a surprising extent. Interesting. But I would dislike to have it happen again in just that way.”

  “Ah.”

  “Yes. He is desirable, this man, and I am wondering if I should take him to Europe with me. Perhaps not. But meanwhile, to be sure of him, I need a passport.”

  “That can be arranged.”

  “I have never met this precise type, you see, and at times I think he is not so simple. So you should know this. He shot a policeman during a robbery. His name is Francis McQuade. He is also wanted for a robbery in Brooklyn. Are you taking this down?”

  “Yes’.”

  “And all this gives us a lever. He must do as we say, to leave the country under our auspices.”

  There was a doubtful quality about the silence at the other end of the line. She said, “Don’t you agree?”

  “It could have that effect,” the man said. “Or it could impair his judgment. There is a time to be reckless, a time to be prudent.”

  “Have confidence. If shooting becomes necessary, I want someone who will not hesitate. No shooting at all would be better, I quite agree. I have undertaken to pay him twenty-five thousand.”

  “Dollars, not francs, I suppose,” the man said without enthusiasm. “This is becoming expensive. I don’t say that in the way of criticism. The passport should be ready tomorrow at ten.”

  “Do you notice a noise on the line?”

  “Nothing unusual. Except for those in the USSR, American phones are the noisiest in the world. Till tomorrow.” They hung up. Shayne chuckled to himself. His deal with the girl was for fifteen thousand, not twenty-five. Apparently her moneymaking instincts were as well developed as her sexual ones.

  He disconnected the battery case. At the window he tugged at the wire until it pulled out of the telephone box below. He rewound it carefully. In a matter of minutes he was asleep.

  Michele awakened him. He bli
nked up at her, wondering what he had done to deserve the attentions of this cool, elegant girl. Remembering where be was and what was expected of him, he reached out for her. She moved away quickly.

  “Not now, darling. Not here. Those bedsprings would wake up everybody within miles.”

  “What’s the matter with the floor?” Shayne suggested.

  Her nose wrinkled. “I doubt that it has been cleaned since 1910. Put on some clothes and I’ll see about breakfast.”

  She was wearing a straight up-and-down white linen dress, put together in a way that called the viewer’s attention to the fact that Michele, inside it, was not straight up-and-down at all. It was no effort for Shayne to look at her with admiring lust.

  “I mean it,” she said. “I have an appointment at ten. Meanwhile, we have much to prepare. But sometime today, I promise you! In the bathroom at the end of the corridor you will find shaving things.”

  Shayne shaved and dressed. As he left the bedroom he had a feeling that his preparations were incomplete, and he went back for the dummy hearing aid. In the kitchen he found Michele preparing an omelet. She made a face from the stove.

  “Orange juice from a can. Coffee in the form of powder. Margarine. How do people live this way?”

  “We get used to it.”

  “Darling, after this is finished I cook for you. Cooking is an art all French girls are required to know.”

  The omelet was light and excellent, and Shayne had it to himself, Michele contenting herself with a half cup of coffee and a bite of roll. Brownie appeared as they were leaving. He regarded them with sad, bloodshot eyes.

  “I can’t find the aspirin,” he said accusingly.

  “Billy will drive down and get you some,” Michele said. “Tell everyone else to stay inside, and please not to drink so much. It will be nice if no one has a headache tomorrow.”

  Brownie mumbled something and watched them go.

  Shayne said, “I’d better drive. That’s the way we do it in this country.”

  In the car, heading down the long bumpy driveway, he went on, “To get something off my chest right away-this Szigetti is supposed to cover me, the way I understand it. I don’t trust the guy. I know it’s too late to work in anybody else, but I want him over on the other side of the truck so I can keep an eye on him. If he quits on me, I want to know it.”