Violence Is Golden Read online

  Brett Halliday

  Violence Is Golden

  CHAPTER 1

  Like everybody else, Michael Shayne was on his feet yelling. He had five hundred dollars on the local team. With the score tied and three minutes left in the second quarter, the Dolphin quarterback slipped between two tacklers, scrambled out of the grasp of another, waited, and finally found an open receiver. The man had the defense beaten by a step, and scored.

  Sitting beside Shayne, Tim Rourke yelled something that was lost in the din. A moment later the kick was good.

  “Mike, how do you do it?” Rourke cried happily as the noise began to subside. “This guy, no kidding,” he said to the pretty girl between them. “He hasn’t lost a football bet all year.”

  They sat down, and Rourke, who was emphatically off duty as a Miami News reporter, produced a nest of plastic cups and a pint flask from a hamper between his feet. “After all that exercise, we deserve a drink.”

  “Mike Shayne, yes?” a voice said politely. “The detective?”

  They had seats on the forty-yard line, a dozen rows back. Shayne, on the aisle, looked up.

  A small Japanese, wearing a flowered shirt and holding an elongated camera, was smiling down at him.

  “Yeah, I’m Shayne,” the detective said, taking the cognac Rourke had poured him.

  “I would like to shoot your picture, OK? The most famous American private eye, at the great American spectacle, with a beautiful blonde lady. Japanese people so much interested in latest adventures of Mike Shayne.”

  Still smiling mechanically, he went down a step and raised the strange camera.

  Rourke shouted, “Mike, watch out!”

  The photographer’s smile tightened. Rourke flung himself across Shayne’s date and aimed an awkward punch at his big friend’s red head. Shayne recoiled instinctively, and as he pulled down and away he heard a small, crisp pop, a noise he had heard more times than he liked to remember. He knew, without actually taking time to shape the thought, that he was being shot at by a medium-caliber gun equipped with a silencer. And then Rourke’s other hand, coming up, dashed the cognac into Shayne’s face. Shayne twisted sideward and left his seat in a hard, flat dive. Behind him, he heard one of the girls cry out.

  Shayne’s fingers closed on the photographer’s shirt. The cloth ripped and the smaller man jumped away, trying to get the camera into position for another shot.

  Shayne’s hip banged painfully against the edge of a concrete step. He rolled. In addition to the power packed into his rangy frame, he had a gymnast’s grace and economy of motion. Again he hurled himself downward, as though diving into water. This time he fastened on flesh.

  Rourke yelled, “Another one behind you, Mike!”

  The Japanese had broken Shayne’s fall. Shayne held on and kept rolling. The narrowness of the aisle stopped him. Reversing, he brought the Japanese to his feet. Another man with the same kind of doctored camera was a few steps above them, a Japanese like his companion but larger and more powerfully built, as tall as Shayne himself. He was crouching, holding the camera to his eye as though trying to photograph the action. The smaller Japanese was attempting to wriggle out of Shayne’s hands, to give his companion a clear shot. Shayne hesitated only an instant. He shifted his grip and ran the wiry Japanese back up the aisle and thrust him hard against the bigger man, who went down in surprise. Then Shayne whirled, raced down the remaining steps, touched the railing lightly, and vaulted over.

  Momentum carried him across the grass toward the playing field. After three steps, he cut abruptly toward the fifty-yard line. Glancing back, he saw the larger of the two gunmen, one leg over the rail, trying to pick up Shayne in his sights. An instant later Shayne was among the officials on the sidelines.

  The Miami quarterback, on the field, was making the same kind of calculation as Shayne, on the sidelines. The big Japanese dropped over the railing and came after Shayne in a crouching run, keeping close to the stands. Shayne had several options. One was to dash toward the Dolphin bench, assuming that the hidden gun was inaccurate at any distance over a few yards. One of the defensive tackles, six feet seven inches, two hundred sixty-five pounds, was a friend of Shayne’s. With this man and the other members of the front four as escort, Shayne could scare the Japanese back into the stands. But he didn’t want to do it that way. He wanted to find out who had ordered this shooting, and why.

  A Dolphin pass fell incomplete. As the ball was brought back, Shayne swung sharply and set out across the playing field. One of the men on the bench yelled at him. He waved and kept going. The defensive linebackers, lumbering back into position, gave Shayne looks of surprise.

  “What the hell’s this, Jack?” one of them demanded.

  Shayne had reached the first hash mark by the time the referee spotted him. Two officials started toward him from the end zone, and Shayne broke into a hard run, angling away toward the line of scrimmage. He veered, a conspicuous, almost puny figure amid the helmets and facebars and padded uniforms. He heard a whistle.

  Running at top speed, he broke through the officials before they could converge in front of him. He stepped out of bounds and straight-armed an assistant coach. A press photographer fell out of his way. Shayne faked toward the ground-level ramp leading into the locker rooms. Swiveling, he swung over into the field boxes, reached the aisle without stepping on anybody, and took the steps two at a time.

  An usher in a bright striped blazer planted himself at the top of the aisle, but thought better of it after a look at Shayne’s face. Play resumed. As Shayne went out through the lower-tier exit, he heard a full-throated roar, the roar of a partisan crowd witnessing a breakaway run.

  Seeing a cop ahead, he plunged into a men’s room. He was alone there except for another usher, who was using the urinal. Shayne showed him his private detective’s license.

  “Rent me that blazer for five minutes for fifty bucks.”

  The usher, a corpulent, red-faced youth, stared at Shayne. The detective took a fifty out of his wallet.

  “I’m following a guy who held up a bank. I want to get next to him without being spotted. Fifty bucks for five minutes.”

  He snapped his fingers impatiently.

  “I guess it might be all right,” the youth said uncertainly, and took the bill out of Shayne’s hand before removing his blazer and straw hat.

  The blazer fitted, but the hat was two sizes too small. Shayne told the boy to meet him at Gate One in five minutes, and went out. The cop he had seen was walking toward him, but Shayne was now invisible in the bright clothes. He went down to ground level and out past a ticket taker wearing the same kind of striped blazer.

  “You’re missing a great game,” Shayne observed.

  “I’ll see the highlights on TV.”

  A broad apron of concrete separated the stadium from a sea of parked cars. Shayne tipped the tight hat over his forehead and started cautiously around the big horseshoe. He heard a groan from the crowd; someone had dropped a pass or been caught in the meat grinder. There were seventy-five thousand people within shouting distance, but Shayne and the two armed Japanese were probably the only ticket holders who were interested in anything at that moment besides football. For that reason they would be easy to see.

  A long chartered bus, probably the one that had brought the visiting players from their hotel, was parked in front of a blind exit. Shayne left the protection of the curving concrete and crossed the sun-drenched pavement.

  The bus was empty; the driver, too, was inside watching the game. Leaving the door open, Shayne swung behind the wheel and flicked the ignition switch, seeing the ampere needle flicker and a red light jump up on the instrument panel.

  One of the reasons for Shayne’s success over t
he years was that he could think like a criminal when necessary. The gunmen, having watched Shayne dash across the field, would reason that his next move, before returning to his own side of the bowl, would be to pick up the gun which, as a private detective, he would undoubtedly be carrying in his car. Shayne’s car was parked in a distant lot, and he didn’t want to be caught in the open lanes without a weapon. In a moment more, if his hunch was correct, one of the Japanese would appear around the curve, his camera ready, watching the gates.

  Shayne was low in the front seat. Waiting, he felt absently in his shirt pocket for cigarettes. He had lost them during the clash with the Japanese. He found a crumpled package in the pocket of the blazer, with one cigarette in it. Before he could light it, the smaller Japanese passed from the rear, close to the wall.

  Shayne gauged the distance. He could make it in two bounds, closing with the Japanese before he could bring up his camera. He checked the rearview mirror. No one was in sight.

  At that moment something made the Japanese look around. Shayne tipped his head, to screen the upper part of his face with the hat brim. The Japanese looked away, then back. He took a step toward the bus.

  Shayne hit the starter and the gas at the same moment and jammed the stick down into low. The motor roared. The inner wheel jumped the low curb as the Japanese raised his camera.

  Shayne threw himself sideward. A bullet went through the windshield, leaving a starred hole. There was another great, sustained howl from the crowd inside the stadium. Shayne shifted feet. The gas pedal was all the way down, and he was steering with his left hand, braced for the crash. The Japanese fired again, then once more.

  Then the bus hit him, lifted him, and smashed him back against the concrete.

  CHAPTER 2

  Will Gentry rubbed his nose with his thumb and forefinger as he studied his friend across the desk. Gentry, Miami Chief of Police, was a tough, honest, courageous cop whose face had developed deep lines of weariness and disillusionment as a result of several decades in an appointive office in a volatile town. He knew Shayne’s methods. He had seen them succeed often enough so he was willing to cooperate with the private detective whenever it was politically possible.

  “All right, Mike. If that’s the way you want to play it.”

  “I’m not concealing a thing, Will,” Shayne said flatly. “I really didn’t know those guys. I don’t know why they wanted to kill me. You know as much about it as I do.”

  “You don’t even have the faintest inkling, the faintest shadow of an idea, why anybody would send a couple of professional gunmen after you?”

  Shayne shrugged. “I’ve stepped on a few toes. There are people around who wouldn’t mind reading my obituary. I’m adjusted to the idea—it goes with the job.”

  “I take it you aren’t asking for police protection.”

  “The same amount you give to ordinary citizens.” He added more seriously, “Hell, Will—you can’t give me twenty-four-hour coverage for more than a few days. You don’t have that many men to spare. I’ll have to handle it my own way.”

  Gentry sighed. “And the odds are you’ll come out smelling of roses. Of course, I could put a man on you whether you like it or not, but I won’t if you’re dead set against it. To be realistic,” he added, “you generally manage to lose a tail.”

  “Because I know them so well.”

  “One more minute, Mike,” Gentry said as Shayne stubbed out his cigarette. “I don’t like to hear about guns going off at the Orange Bowl during a big game—it’s bad news for the tourist business. It was a pretty good effort. The guy said he wanted to take your picture, and what could you do about it, short of making a boor of yourself by smashing his equipment? But you wouldn’t like it. You wouldn’t look at the camera. Luckily for you, Rourke spotted it in time and threw his hand in front of your face, getting his wrist smashed with a thirty-two caliber slug. You came very damn close to taking that slug between the eyes.”

  “I remember what happened.”

  “OK—you got one of them. You didn’t have anything else to hit him with, so you hit him with a fifty-four-passenger bus. Fine. And now you’re going to stand around with your hands in your pockets until they try again, and hope you’ll be able to counter with something equally violent and unpleasant and public. Two or three more times, and maybe they’ll get the message.”

  “That’s the way it has to be, Will.”

  “Speaking as a friend now, not Chief of Police. It may work. Lloyds of London might not agree with me, but I think a bookie might give you pretty good odds, say five to four. But five-to-four shots have been known to lose. If you get unlucky for a change, it won’t be any consolation to me to know that you probably want me to help carry your coffin.”

  He picked up the oddly shaped Japanese camera and pressed a hidden release. The case sprang open, showing a short-barreled revolver. The muzzle fitted into a circular opening that would have been the lens aperture in a camera designed for taking pictures.

  “It’s a lovely gadget,” Gentry said. “Definitely not a mass-production item. This wasn’t put together by an amateur. It was hand-tooled and manufactured as a unit. It’s a perfect assassin’s weapon, when you have to pick your man out of a crowd at close range.”

  “You can get just as good results with a rusty thirty-eight from a pawnshop.”

  “Usually better. But that’s not the point. They didn’t use pawnshop guns, they used these. Two Japanese, and that’s not routine either. The one you splashed on the front of the Orange Bowl had nothing in his pockets but the stub of his ticket to the Dolphins’ game. His fingerprints don’t mean anything in Washington. I’m putting out a sheet on the survivor, and if any metropolitan police department has ever had any trouble with a six-foot-one Japanese, I’ll be hearing about it. But I doubt if I will. These people were imported.”

  “I don’t disagree with you,” Shayne said impatiently. “What are you leading up to?”

  “The whole operation stinks of money. It’s international. It’s—I don’t know what to call it; ‘elegant’ is probably the word. So when you say you’ve made a few thousand enemies over the years and this could be any one of them, you’re not being honest with me. What was the name of the character you tangled with in New York on that narcotics theft? Adam something.”

  “Adam’s his last name,” Shayne said, his voice flat and unemotional.

  “You cost him some dough, as I remember. You made him look like a slob. If he’s behind this, it would explain a few things. Those Japanese were conspicuous enough so nobody would think you’d been killed in some two-bit local quarrel. Like a public announcement—don’t fool around with me or I’ll have you assassinated expensively in front of seventy-five thousand witnesses.”

  “You’ve convinced me,” Shayne said sardonically. “Our next move is to bring him in and book him as a material witness.”

  “Very funny. All I’m trying to do is rub your nose in the obvious. He’s a rich man, with good connections. You stick out in this town like a sore thumb.”

  Shayne made a brusque gesture. “Do you have any real suggestions, or is this just talk so you won’t blame yourself if I don’t duck fast enough the next time?”

  “It’s partly that,” Gentry admitted. “But if you do have anything to go on—anything at all—don’t keep it to yourself this time. Sometimes it’s an advantage to operate alone, but this isn’t one of them.”

  “I don’t know a thing I haven’t told you, Will. Sure, what you say is a possibility. But I don’t even know the guy’s full name. He knows where he can find me—I don’t even know what country he lives in. Maybe that gives him an edge. And maybe not, too. He has to come to me. Don’t worry so much about me—I’ll be careful. That doesn’t mean I’m going to stay out of public places. Who won the game, incidentally?”

  “Miami, thirty-four to nineteen. Mike, would you consider talking to somebody in Washington? I’m thinking about the Intelligence Unit of the Treasury.”


  “Yeah,” Shayne said. “Very good idea. I spent four days up there last month. If they know anything about Adam, and I’m not sure they do, it’s classified. I didn’t have the proper clearance.”

  “What the hell!” Gentry exclaimed. “You broke up that New York deal without any help from anybody. Doesn’t that qualify you—”

  “I thought so,” Shayne said. “They didn’t seem to agree with me. They’ve got a jurisdiction to protect. And I guess it’s understandable. I broke a few rules.”

  “Why, the bastards,” Gentry said in disgust. “I get along pretty well with the Congressman. Why don’t I see what strings I can pull?”

  “Forget it. Will. I don’t belong to the club, and I do better that way.”

  He stood up. Gentry remained seated, swinging from side to side in his swivel chair.

  “You’re not being your usual hard-nosed self, Mike, I’m happy to see. I thought I was going to have trouble with you. I take it you’ll have no objection to talking to somebody who knows more about this Adam business than you or I do?”

  “Who’s that?”

  “A Frenchman named Jules LeFevre. He’s a prefect in the Paris police, on assignment to Interpol. Do you want to hear more?”

  “Damn right I want to hear more. Keep talking.”

  “You surprise me. I told him I thought you were just bullheaded enough to want to handle this by yourself.”

  Shayne was scraping his chin with his thumbnail. “How much do you know about him?”

  “I never saw him before today. But I had an idea you might be asking, so I called Paris. He’s who he says he is. I’m the cop on the beat and he had to check in with me, but he didn’t really tell me what he was doing so far from home.” He stood up and came around the desk. “When you find out, tell me, Mike. You’re a local responsibility. He’s at the Sans Souci, on the Beach.” He hesitated. “Better take a gun with you.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I’m probably all wrong,” Gentry said slowly. “But he gave me the impression he wasn’t too serious. That’s the worst thing I can say about a cop. It’s a game with him, and people like that take the wrong kind of chances. Don’t hold me to that. As I keep telling you. I’m a meat-and-potatoes man. I know you’ve got a prejudice against carrying a gun—”