Win Some, Lose Some ms-69

by Brett Halliday

  Chapter 6

  Werner French hesitated before getting out of the car and going in the house. Always a little too stiff and serious, he looked mad all the time now, with a sullen, rebellious set to his mouth. He would try to clean everything out of his mind and relax. Sometimes he was able to manage it for a minute or two, and then he would be up and walking, hammering his bunched fingertips against the side of his leg.

  Pam came out of the bedroom to greet him. She had been extremely sweet since the catastrophe with Eddie Maye, he had to admit. She fucked like an angel, with none of her old brusqueness and asperity. And this had the odd effect of making Werner more aware of her faults. He had thought up this crazy kidnapping scheme to keep her from running off to New York. It had failed, it had failed fairly spectacularly, but even if the damn thing had worked, would it have been worth it? It would have knotted them together for the foreseeable future. And he could do without that excitement, the constant state of crisis, the mood swings, the ups and downs. He wanted some peace.

  She came against him hard. “Baby, I can’t bear it when you’re gone that long. You used to be so predictable. Where have you been?”

  As a matter of fact, Werner had been nowhere in particular, doing nothing furtive or dramatic. Feeling restless and impatient, he had wanted to drive around, just get in the car and drive the expressways, but he was terribly low on cash, and gas costs money these days, they no longer give it away free. So he had walked around the big downtown marina and looked at the big, brutal, expensive boats. Boats are less regimented than cars. They don’t need to stay on the highways. On a boat, you can go anywhere in the world that recognizes an American passport, and of course most places do.

  “Killing time was all,” he said, moving away. “Thinking.”

  “Don’t think!” she said sharply. “Drift. That’s the only way to get through this. And Werner,” she added as he opened the bottle, “maybe we ought to stick to coffee? A clear head would be a good idea if we have to do any fast driving. Jack may be calling any minute.”

  “A lot of minutes have gone by lately, waiting for Jack.”

  “Everything has to be just right. I want to get it over with, too, but if hurrying means taking chances-Baby, come to bed. I want to.”

  Werner smiled, drinking. “We’ve been getting a lot of that, haven’t we?”

  Actually, from the moment they loaded the dead body of Eddie Maye into the back seat of his VW and Downey drove off, their lovemaking had been practically continuous. They had gone back in the house and made love without even washing the traces of Eddie off their hands. It was astonishing to Werner that such a thing could happen, but it definitely did happen. And after returning to their own house, they continued to sleep and make love almost around the clock. If they ended up in separate cells, they would have much to remember. They crammed an ordinary month’s episodes into five days. And it cured Werner, cured him for good. He entered her body with increasing reluctance. She had been getting wilder and wilder at the end, throwing herself around, making strange tortured sounds, and sometimes, as happened now, bursting into tears.

  “Werner, if I’d only remembered that damn padlock-”

  He stroked her mechanically. “If-only is a dumb game. If Jack had only noticed. If we’d put a couple more cc’s of Demerol in that jolt. And incidentally, let’s make sure of that this time. Canada’s a big fat man. Give him a double.”

  “But we can’t make it too strong or we’ll kill him.”

  Werner reached for his drink. “I haven’t asked you this yet, but it’s been on my mind. How did Jack do it? Did he just walk over and shoot, or did he have to talk himself into it?”

  “It seemed to be easy for him. You have to remember-a loan shark is like a coyote to Jack. You don’t kill it, you harvest it to keep down the population.”

  “You didn’t try to argue him out of it?”

  “Are you crazy? It happened so fast, I was badly in shock. The minute he did it, you could see that Neanderthal brain starting to tick. The coyote was dead. Was there any way we could use it?”

  “If you want to know my opinion, I think he had that in mind all along. He was just waiting for an opening. Like this, he could shift some of the blame to you, make you feel guilty.”

  She was silent for a moment. “I’ve thought of that. We can’t have more sex right this minute, and it wouldn’t be smart to get drunk, which ordinarily I wouldn’t mind doing, so I suppose we’ll have to talk about it. Here’s what I decided. I decided that whether he did or didn’t, it doesn’t matter. We did the kidnapping together. We’re all in the same boat now.”

  “Not quite in the same boat,” Weiner said. They never looked directly at each other when they were talking about anything serious, as though afraid of what they would discover. “There’s one big difference. He’s a cop. We’re nobodies. If anything slips, he can bust us, or shoot us in the head the way he did Eddie, then arrange it any way he likes. And keep all the money.”

  After another moment, she said in a low voice, “It might be better for our mental health if we didn’t wonder about things like that.”

  “How much money have you got?”

  “Scraping bottom. You?”

  “Enough for groceries for another week. You can’t hide from a mad cop on unemployment insurance. So maybe we have to go through with this.”

  “Except that”-she waited-“it might be a good idea to keep in mind what you’re saying about Downey after we collect the money-”

  “I’m for that,” he said briefly.

  She reached for cigarettes. She had lost weight. She was so close to the tipping point that unless she made a conscious effort to eat, it showed almost at once. She had too many knobs on her spine, and a starved ass. Incredibly, because it had been less than five minutes, he felt the beginnings of the sexual tingle. But the phone rang.

  The phone table was on Pam’s side of the bed. Her shoulder muscles knotted. He could tell it was Downey, and the time had come.

  “All right. Yes, twenty minutes. Yes. Don’t worry about that. We’re all psyched up.” Putting the phone down, she said, “Get dressed.”

  They met at a drive-in movie. It was porno night, two of the new generation of porno pictures, with a grammatical script and personable actors who gave every appearance of enjoying what they were doing. Interesting, complicated things kept taking place on the oversized screen, and when Downey’s car appeared at the lighted ticket window, Werner almost missed it. They waited to be sure nobody had followed him in, then threaded their way among the darkened cars with the entwined couples and got in with him. This was his working vehicle, with metal mesh separating the front and back seats and no inside handles on the rear doors. They had already had one conference in this car, and it made Werner uncomfortable, reminding him forcibly of one of the things that could very well happen.

  “The Goddamn perverts,” Downey snarled, looking up at the screen. “Showing this dirty stuff, and not a thing in the world we can do about it. We can’t lay a finger on them. The Supreme Court said so. I’ll tell you one thing,” he said, turning, “people are fucking in these cars.”

  “Maybe we can find a John Wayne movie the next time,” Werner said.

  “You realize people can see that screen from the expressway? By Christ, I’m going to come in here some dark night with a chain saw-”

  Werner felt the back of Pam’s hand pressed warningly against his leg. He decided there was no point in quarreling. Downey wasn’t too bright, but they were stuck with him.

  She said, “We didn’t come here to talk about free expression on the screen, did we, Jack? Call the meeting to order.”

  Downey swung all the way around. He had left the sound outlet hooked to the post. On the screen behind him, three lovely young women continued to work in silence.

  “It’s tonight,” he announced. “And we couldn’t ask for a better location. Man, it couldn’t be more ideal. This is going to be so easy.”

&
nbsp; “Not like the last time,” Werner couldn’t help saying.

  “Wernie,” Downey said after a slight pause, “could something be bugging you? Let’s talk about it.”

  Werner moved his hand so it gripped Pam’s. Her fingers lay inert in his to show that she didn’t think this conversation was necessary.

  “As far as Eddie Maye goes,” Werner said, “I guess you were right. We seem to be in the clear. A three-inch story in the paper, and nothing else. One more unsolved homicide for the end-of-the-year stats.”

  “And it’s going to stay unsolved all the way,” Downey said. “My partner on it is a real retard. All he likes is to drink beer and watch games on TV. An unsolved gangland homicide, Werner. We don’t care if they only kill each other.”

  “I accept that, and I know you can jinx a thing if you get too negative about it. But let’s suppose for a minute. What if some little unexpected thing goes wrong, like that gun Eddie had when he was supposed to be so meek and mild. Knock on wood. I mean, what if? Won’t they ask themselves, even your partner if he can tear himself away from the tube for a minute, whether we’re the same people who did it to Eddie? And that’s so very much more heavy.”

  Somewhat to Werner’s surprise, Downey didn’t start yelling. “I’m glad you brought this up, Werner,” he said seriously. “Remember-we don’t officially know that was a kidnapping for ransom. Speaking as a cop now. But there’s always that outside chance that the two things would be connected. As far as I’m concerned, it’s a plus. I don’t want to insult you or anything, but this is your first time at bat in the majors. If it comes down to where you have to shoot the mother or somebody else, now I can count on you to perform. You won’t check or hold back. Because it’s your ass, right? And one of the things I was starting to tell you, it looks so open and shut I’m going to be right there with you on it.”

  “I’m glad to hear that,” Pam said.

  “When you got in that trouble in the garage,” Downey continued, “I could have turned my back and let you get out of it by your own self. Wading into the middle of a gunfight wasn’t a part of my deal. But it didn’t occur to me not to. When Pam goofed at the house and let Eddie see us, I’m the one who took care of it, didn’t I? We’re getting a fantastic break tonight. Unbelievable. And if you’re a believer in luck, Werner-we all are-you can’t walk away from a break like that, or the luck will be rotten the rest of your life, and you’ll die young. O.K.? O.K., Pam?”

  “O.K. But can we get going, please? All that stuff up there is making it hard to concentrate.”

  Downey shot a quick glance over his shoulder. “Say a carload of nuns came driving along and saw that? Do you see what I mean? Consenting adults is one thing-”

  “Jack.”

  He turned back. “Just don’t look, or cover your eyes. The big thing I’ve been trying to do is get a bug in on Canada. But he’s bug-shy from way back, and he’s got some advanced sweeping equipment. When he goes places, he goes with a driver mostly. And he don’t keep to a schedule, a pattern, you know? He learned that a long time ago. So I had what I think was an intelligent idea for a change. He’s got a piece of business coming up with Phil Gold, the Highway Commissioner, I happen to know, and they’re going to have to get together. So I took time off and went up to Tallahassee and tapped in on Gold’s personal phone. I’ve been flying up every day to listen to the tapes, and today we hit oil. Canada. He didn’t give his name, but I know the bastard’s voice. Started off with a certain amount of this-and-that about politics for camouflage. Then he said he was going to be at the hot plant tonight at around eleven. The hot plant. Does that ring any bell with you? It didn’t with me at first, either, and then all of a sudden I got it. That’s what they call the asphalt thing on a construction site. The big machine that mixes up the asphalt. Now at eleven at night, naturally it wouldn’t be working. But if anybody saw one of their cars, it wouldn’t be out of line. The Highway Commissioner, he could be pulling an inspection. Canada owns the company, he has a perfect right to be there.”

  “Where?” Werner said.

  “That big Homestead interchange, two four-lanes coming in and crossing, with the cloverleafs. So what I did, I got in the department chopper and told the guy to drop me down on Homestead Air Base. Chasing a lead on Eddie Maye was the idea. And I had a chance to study the site from four hundred feet. It’s perfect all around. Perfect for Canada to meet somebody, and perfect for us to grab him.”

  He was trying to stay cool, but he had trouble keeping the excitement out of his voice. “I’m going out on a limb and predict that Larry’s going to be driving himself, no driver. Never mind if he brings somebody, we can handle it. But from the way they talked on the phone, this is really under the table. He’ll make damn sure nobody’s behind him, but that won’t apply to us because we’ll be there already. There’s a side road three-quarters of a mile away where we can leave the car. A chain-link fence to get through, but that’s no problem. I’ve got a good pair of bolt-cutters.”

  “A night watchman?” Werner asked.

  “Now you’re using your head,” Downey said approvingly. “Sure, but if Canada set this up for a hundred percent privacy, won’t he tell the guy to go into town and buy himself a few beers? He’s the big boss, he can do how he pleases. We’ll ease in very slow. If anybody’s there, I know you’ll be willing to let me handle it.”

  “More than willing,” Pam said.

  “And would I be getting this involved if I didn’t think it was sure-fire? It’s made to order. These dozens of big machines, plenty of places of concealment. If they do what I want them to, they’ll come in separately from opposite directions. If they’re going to be looking at maps or specs, they’ll go in one of the trailers. They shouldn’t be having this conversation so they’re going to be easy to spook. Say while they’re inside, we do something to Canada’s car, cut the ignition cable. Are you picturing this? Gold is appointed. The Governor can cut off that appointment on ten seconds’ notice. So he’ll be carrying a very strong charge. At the first sign of trouble, he’ll be out in his car so fucking fast. And Canada will feel awful lonely. No driver, no watchman.”

  “No gun?” Werner said.

  “Did I say that? Larry Canada wouldn’t want to be picked up on a gun violation, but tonight could be the exception. Three guns to one. What somebody like Canada does when he’s outnumbered, nine times out of ten, he surrenders. They talk tough, but they have the balls of a rabbit. We don’t have to move in on him until he gets in the car. He’s a big heavy man. He has to cramp himself in and out. No, hang on, even better. Werner-that’s a big four-door, a Caddy. You can be down out of sight in the back seat. You’ll know when he gets in because that car is going to shake and settle down on the shocks. Rear up with the chloroform. The steering column will be pinning him in.”

  “We’ll move him in his car?” Pam said.

  “Have to. Give it a jump start. With a gun at the back of his head, he’ll remember what happened to Eddie Maye. Larry’s rough-housing days are long in the past, but let’s not take chances trying to get him to change cars under his own power. I don’t want to have to shoot this one. Give him the shot right away and manhandle him. How does it sound?”

  He wanted approval, and Werner said grudgingly, “Frankly, I can’t see anything wrong with it.”

  “Wrong with it, it’s sensational,” Pam said. “I can smell money from here.”

  Downey nodded. “Then let’s get the hell out there and set up.”

  Chapter 7

  Gold, in his state car, came south on Interstate 75. He was over the limit, and at one point a highway patrolman chased him for a short way before noticing the low-number official marker. Frieda Field, behind him, had driven this highway frequently. Most of the time, she hung far enough back to keep her lights out of his mirror, closing with him only as he was approaching an exit. When he committed himself to the turnpike, she knew he was going all the way. She picked up the Orlando mobile operator and had he
r put through a call to Shayne.

  Shayne met them at Palm Beach. He was parked at the foot of the West Palm ramp, hunched over the wheel, rearranging the pieces of the story they had been told by Chris Maye. He was trying to see some connection between her dead husband, Eddie, the small-time loan shark, and Larry Canada’s multi-million-dollar highway deals. They were on different levels, like the intersecting traffic here. The woman herself interested him. It had seemed to Shayne, listening quietly, that there was something she was holding back.

  Frieda’s van sailed serenely past. It was a big Dodge Sportsman, somewhat top-heavy on secondary roads, but powered with a Mercedes engine, capable of staying with all but the hottest cars on the Interstate. Her headlights flicked, and Shayne moved smoothly into the entry lane. It was ten-thirty. There was still considerable traffic.

  The Miami mobile operator connected the two cars and then backed out of the conversation.

  “He may be running a bit late,” Frieda said. “It’s a dark blue Chrysler, a seal on the door and state plates. How do we proceed?”

  “You stay back and I’ll pass him. Watch for me at Lake Worth. How are you, Freida?”

  “Glad to hear a friendly voice. He’s a dull man, and I’ve been having a dull time.”

  “There’s a deadline coming up, and we may be seeing some action. He drove down instead of flying. That may mean he’s meeting somebody he’s not supposed to know, like Larry Canada.”

  “And wouldn’t that be nice?”

  “We haven’t developed much at our end. Tim’s in one of his gloomy moods. Sometimes that’s when things begin to happen.”

  “About time, in my opinion.”

  Shayne pulled out to pass. The van clearly belonged to a vacationer, not a private detective. A bicycle was strapped to the back door. The bumpers were plastered with ads for various tourist traps between Miami and Chicago. She was using Illinois plates. Coming abreast, he held steady for a moment. Frieda was wearing a brief halter and a long-billed fisherman’s cap. She gave him a mocking salute, which he returned with a smile.