Armed… Dangerous… ms-54

by Brett Halliday

  “Yes-s,” she said doubtfully. “See what you think when we get there.”

  Shayne drove through the electric eye at the gate and turned left. New houses were going up everywhere. At the first crossroads, there were a few stores, a bar and grill, a gas station.

  “Left again,” she said.

  “I want a paper.”

  “We’re in a hurry, darling. Get one in the city.”

  “I want to see what kind of story they gave me.”

  He swung onto the asphalt apron in front of the grocery store. There was a rack of New York newspapers on the front step.

  “Give me a News,” he called.

  A woman tending the stand whipped a Daily News out of her stack and brought it to him. He tossed it in Michele’s lap and drove on.

  A jet had crashed near Kennedy Airport, killing 83, so Shayne’s small-scale act of violence hadn’t been given a page-one headline. Michele found the story on page three and read it in silence. Shayne, of course, already knew what it said. Rourke had written the story and Power had persuaded the editor of the News to plant it in one copy of one edition, in return for a promise of an inside track on later developments. And then the single doctored copy had been planted on the Staten Island rack and the woman had been told to sell it to no one but a big black-haired man driving a green Chevrolet convertible.

  “But he wasn’t a policeman at all!” Michele exclaimed.

  “What?”

  “For twenty years he was a policeman, then he had to resign because of a gambling scandal. Edward Farrell, fifty-six. The last two years, he has been wandering about the city hoping to see some criminal to arrest, so the police would take him back. It is a de Maupassant story!”

  “My heart bleeds,” Shayne said. “What’s it say about Melnick?”

  “In a coma still.”

  “He better stay in a coma.”

  “Condition critical,” she said, reading. “That means serious? Perhaps by the time he comes round you and I will be in a country where few people can speak English.”

  “Knock on wood,” Shayne said.

  On the plane between Miami and New York, he had studied New York and Long Island road maps, and he knew that there were four possible ways for a car to get off Staten Island. When Michele gave him another left, in the direction of Port Richmond, he knew they were going by ferry. Victory Boulevard took them into St. George. This was a bad time of the day for automobiles. They inched down to the ferry slip. After a ten-minute wait they were permitted to crawl aboard a Manhattan ferry. They stayed in the car, and Shayne read the Daily News story.

  “The things they always get wrong,” he said, and paged through the paper until he came to Dick Tracy, the world’s most preposterous sleuth. He snorted again a moment later, wadded the paper up and threw it in a trash basket as they arrived at the Battery. From here he was expected to know the way by himself. Concentrating hard, he pulled an imaginary map into focus, with its tiny street designations and little blue arrows. “What do we want, the West Side Highway?”

  “I think so. The quickest way to Sixth Avenue and Twenty-seventh.”

  Most of the traffic was moving north on Whitehall Street, and Shayne moved with it. In addition to street signs and traffic signals, he watched for illegally parked cars. He saw what he was looking for, an unmarked black Ford at a bus stop, where it could swing left on Whitehall or take the East Side elevated highway. Two men were in the front seat, and one of them was Jake Melnick, no longer in a coma, the blood washed off his face, and changed back into Shayne’s friend Tim Rourke.

  Shayne slowed and changed lanes, letting the Ford get in behind him. He turned off at Bowling Green, swinging the wheel with a show of confidence he was far from feeling. Several blocks later, he stumbled on an inconspicuous ramp leading upward to the West Side Highway. He left at Twenty-third Street, the black Ford still right behind him. He passed Eighth Avenue, then Seventh, and came to the Avenue of the Americas. Here a red light stopped him.

  “Our Sanitation truck,” Michele said, looking down the avenue, “will come all the way uptown on Sixth. We have timed the distance, five days in a row. To be safe we should leave a thirty-minute margin.”

  Now Shayne remembered that the Avenue of the Americas was the official name for Sixth, and he turned north when the light changed.

  “You’re sure of the route?” he said.

  “Very sure.”

  As they approached Twenty-seventh Street she said, “Now stop a bit.”

  Shayne double-parked short of the corner. There was a solid line of parked cars in the metered spaces against the curb, and the second line was also nearly solid.

  “Billy is to fix the light this afternoon,” Michele said. “Brownie and Irene will come from there. Ziggy from there.” She pointed, and explained what would happen when the truck halted at the corner. It wasn’t simple, but it was less complex than the average football play on the college level. Shayne’s only reservation was that the play would be executed by a pickup team of misfits and malcontents.

  “Now if you want Ziggy to do anything different-” she said.

  “No,” Shayne said slowly. “I won’t make my move before he commits himself. It looks good, kid. Somebody put a lot of brain work into this.”

  “Thank you,” she said with a blinding smile.

  “How long does the light stay red?”

  “Forever, until a repairman finds the button. Billy’s plan is to attach it to the back of the one-way arrow. It will be hard to find. Are we finished here?”

  Shayne looked over the terrain once again. As soon as the Sanitation truck began to move, the group on the sidewalk would fade into nearby buildings. In back, there was a low wall to climb. Two parked cars would be waiting on Twenty-sixth Street. They had worked out two alternate routes in case anything happened to this one.

  “Now,” she said, “what you are to do, darling, you go through the red light and turn right.”

  “You mean left.”

  “No, right, against the arrow. What will happen, the moment the light changes here when Billy pushes the button, a truck will back out halfway to Broadway, to block both lanes. All the cars between there and here will drain off on the green light. There will be nothing in your way. Take me around and I show you.”

  He went on to Twenty-eighth, where he made a legal right turn and turned right again on Broadway. On Twenty-seventh he went west, toward Sixth.

  “Here,” she said. She pointed into a sloping delivery alley between two loft buildings. “Leave the car and walk in and see.”

  He went into a paved yard behind the buildings. A wall of steel posts and panels barred the way at the property line.

  He returned to the girl. “It’s blind. A hell of a place to unload.”

  “We do not unload here, my love. You are concerned about the wall? Simply put the truck in low, point at the wall and keep going. The uprights have been cut. They are held in place now by aluminum brackets. A child’s perambulator could knock it over. No, not a perambulator, but a large and powerful garbage truck, certainly. There is another alley exactly beyond. Drive through to Twenty-eighth, turn right with the traffic. Thus we confuse everybody.”

  Shayne was grinning broadly. “Baby, you’re in the wrong line of work. You should be a lady professor. What if another truck is already down in there?”

  “The lofts in this building are all vacant,” she said. “It is soon to be taken down. And we have two wooden barriers. ‘Police Department, No Passing.’ We put one here, one on Twenty-eighth. They are of flimsy wood. You knock them over and drive on. More questions?”

  “No more questions,” he said, still grinning. “Honey, I think we’re going to take these people!”

  “Of course we are,” she said simply. “Now I show you where we truly unload.”

  Shayne circled the block again and headed down Broadway, shifting to Fifth where Broadway crossed it at Madison Square. She pointed out an excavation for a new buildi
ng on Twenty-first, between Fifth and Sixth. A wooden wall had been thrown up along the sidewalk. The site could be entered by a sloping dirt roadway.

  “We borrow this place,” she said. “No one will be working. Change clothes while they unload. Then leave the truck on another block. Take a taxi to LaGuardia Airport. There I am waiting.” She looked at her watch. “Now I am late, dear. Go uptown to Forty-second Street.”

  Shayne turned again on Sixth. In a moment more they passed the corner of Twenty-seventh, where, if everything went well, there would be a certain amount of activity the next day.

  “One thing you haven’t covered,” Shayne said. “How about the two men in the cab, where do we dump them?”

  “Billy will carry four sets of handcuffs. As soon as you are out of sight behind the building between Twenty-seven and Twenty-eight, put handcuffs on their wrists and ankles, and leave them.”

  Shayne shook his head. “Kid, why aren’t you a millionaire?”

  “I intend to be,” she said.

  At Forty-second Street she told him to turn west. During all the weaving and circling, the black Ford had clung to their tail. It made the turn behind them.

  “You need a picture for the passport,” she said. “I think I remember a sign-yes, there.”

  She pointed to an arcade filled with low-cost entertainment devices, including a photo booth. She waited while Shayne ducked inside, coming back a moment later with a strip of four shots of a glowering, unprepossessing face which bore very little resemblance to his real one.

  “Frightful,” she said. “But never mind. Now I must be apart from you briefly, darling. It is to collect some money, so be patient. I will leave you at a cinema, and come as soon as I can. I hope in an hour’s time.”

  She scanned the marquees of the double-feature houses they were passing. “These are all dreadful! Well.” She pointed to a theatre showing two of the dubbed Italian spectacles which Shayne was always careful to avoid. “That one. I need some money. Give me some please.”

  Shayne counted out five twenties and gave them to her. He kissed her cheek and got out. She moved over behind the wheel, sliding the seat forward.

  “If there’s no smoking downstairs I’ll be in the mezzanine,” he said.

  Crossing the street, he bought a ticket at the glassed-in booth. Michele’s Chevy still hadn’t moved. He waved at her and went in.

  CHAPTER 8

  Shayne strode purposefully past the candy counter, apparently anxious not to miss a minute of the movie, which dealt with the adventures of Jason among the Amazons, female warriors who were almost as bare-chested as Jason himself. The theatre was half-filled. The customers were almost all men, most of them sitting alone, many of them asleep. Shayne ignored the usher, went down an outside aisle toward a red Exit sign, and pushed through a heavy door leading into a narrow cul de sac separating this theatre from the next. By the time he reached the sidewalk the Chevy and the police Ford had both disappeared.

  He shut himself in a phone booth in the amusement arcade. The number where he could reach Rourke during the day was scrawled across the back of one of the cards in his wallet. He dialed the Manhattan mobile operator and read her the number. Rourke answered promptly.

  “Shayne. Where are you, Tim?”

  “Going into the bus terminal,” Rourke told him. “She’s right ahead. There’s a garage on the roof. How come she dropped you?”

  “She has a ten-o’clock date with the guy we’re after. She said she’d be back in an hour. How about the cop they gave you, does he seem OK?”

  “So far, but how can you tell? When she parks, you want him to follow her?”

  “Right. He has to be the one to do it. You’re supposed to be in the hospital with a fractured skull. Tell him not to lose her. This is our best chance, maybe our only one.”

  “There she goes!” Rourke said. “Hold on.”

  Shayne heard the roar of buses and other automobile noises from the other end of the connection. Rourke spoke in a low voice to the driver of the Ford. The toll operator cut in to tell Shayne she needed more money, and he put in another coin.

  Rourke said, “It’s underway. She’s waiting for the elevator and Jamieson’s right behind her. He’ll call back on this phone as soon as he puts her in anywhere. I’m in touch with Power.”

  “Let’s not tie up the phone, then,” Shayne said. “How far away are you?”

  “Next block. A big hunk of concrete. You’ll see it.”

  Shayne decided to stay in the arcade another few minutes, to give Michele time to get out of the neighborhood. He paid a dime to send five rubber balls tumbling into a maze of baffles and holes. As each ball dropped, a playing card lit up on the backboard. It turned out that Shayne had rolled a full house and won a stuffed panda, to his disgust. He gave it to a Puerto Rican girl who was watching the play, and returned to the street.

  At the big Port Authority bus terminal on Eighth Avenue and Forty-first Street, an elevator took him to the parking garage on the top floor. Rourke, standing beside the Ford, saw him and waved.

  The reporter grinned happily as he approached. “That hair, Mike. You could walk down Biscayne Boulevard and nobody’d know you.”

  “How’s your skull?”

  “The skull’s fine,” Rourke said. “It’s my belly that’s sore. You were supposed to pull that punch.”

  “I wanted you to make a convincing noise. I thought you did it very well.”

  “That wasn’t acting,” Rourke said sourly. “All I’ve got to say, it’s lucky I’m in top shape physically.”

  Shayne exchanged an amused look with his friend, who had taken no exercise for years and who lived almost entirely on cigarettes, bad whiskey and delicatessen sandwiches. Some day he would probably fall apart. Meanwhile he wasn’t letting it bother him.

  Shayne folded his big frame into the front seat of the Ford. Rourke came in beside him.

  “That babe is really something,” Rourke observed. “I suppose you’re making out all right?”

  “Within reason,” Shayne said shortly.

  “She surprised me, you know? She’s got too much class for this job, like a stakes winner in a claiming race. What makes a doll like that tick? I’ll never know.”

  “She wants to make a million bucks,” Shayne said. “Don’t ask me why. Where’s Power?”

  “Downtown. He’s keeping a phone free. I don’t suppose you read the morning paper?”

  “All about the sudden death of an ex-cop? Yeah, I read it on the ferry. There were a couple of Tim Rourke touches there I liked.”

  “That’s not what I mean.” He reached into the back seat for a Daily News, which was folded open to an inside page. “And this one ran in all copies of all editions.”

  Frowning, Shayne took the paper. It was a small item, alone on a page with a department-store ad and headlined, SPURNED COP SLAYS SELF. Sergeant Herman Kraus, 33, the police department’s chief property clerk, had been found in his Bronx apartment, his service revolver beside his bed, a bullet in his brain. He had been in the department nine years, a sergeant for three. He had served two years in the Army. He was survived by a married sister in Ashtabula, Ohio. Friends said that Kraus, a bachelor, had been despondent since becoming estranged from his fiancee. They had quarreled over her friendships with other men.

  Shayne let out his breath in a soundless whistle.

  “Yeah,” Rourke said. “Quite a coincidence. He’s the guy who handled the bookkeeping on the narcotics evidence. When an envelope went to court, he signed it out. When it came back, he signed it in. He had charge of the whole operation tomorrow. The key man, in short. This all comes from Power. One important thing he didn’t tell me. Apparently there’s a suicide note. I’m a friend of yours, so I must be reasonably kosher, but I’m also a newspaperman, and he’s keeping that in mind. But it happens I know a rewrite man on the News, I’ve known him for years. He told me about the note.”

  “What’s in it?”

  “Mike, you
know the way the cops are when another cop knocks himself off. It’s usually not because of sweetheart trouble, and the lid goes on. They call in the department heads, and decide how much has to come out. Preferably nothing. Then they let it out with an eyedropper, one drop at a time. They’re saving that note till they see how it goes.”

  Shayne read the uninformative little story again. “Nobody in his right mind would try anything like this tomorrow without an inside man. And my Michele is definitely in her right mind. Quite a coincidence is right.”

  “That’s the impression I get,” Rourke said. “Maybe Kraus sold it to her, and then got cold feet at the last minute. Maybe somebody else found out about it and gave him the gentleman’s choice-suicide or a public jam.”

  “Power can’t hope to sit on it forever.”

  “No, but through tomorrow? The way I get it, and you never did start with A and go right through to Z, he wants the stickup to go off without a hitch. The wrong kind of newspaper story would kill it. It’s bad enough as it stands. If your babe has really been doing business with Kraus, she’s going to stop and do some hard thinking. What if he blew the whole thing to somebody before he pulled the trigger?”

  Shayne considered. “Did it make all the papers?”

  “Not the Times or the Trib. It’ll be in the afternoons. Oh. I see what you’re getting at. She didn’t see the News. If you can keep her occupied, so she doesn’t look at the papers-yeah. Now how will you manage that, I wonder?”

  “Maybe I can think of something.”

  Rourke grinned. “Is it too late to change places? You be Melnick, the diamond man. I’ll be McQuade.”

  The phone rang. The reporter was wound up tight; he leaped at it and got it before the ring was complete.

  “Rourke.” He listened for only a moment. “Tell it to Shayne. He’s right here.”