Fit to Kill Read online

  Shayne tried to restrain his impatience. “Go on.”

  “I said, ‘Tim what happened to you, for the love of God?’ But he wasn’t saying a thing. The fact of the matter is, I didn’t like the way he looked at all. He was out cold. He won’t be back on the job in any couple of days, I can tell you that, Mr. Shayne. I thought I’d better go along with him to the hospital, in case there was anything I could do. And I’ve got to admit I was thinking of my career, too. I mean, if he was working on something important when he had his accident, I could maybe sort of take it over, and do myself some good. One of the interns kept telling me to get out of the way, and he used some pretty rough language on me. No, sir, I said to myself, you won’t get rid of Joe Roberts as easily as all that.”

  “But they did get rid of you?” Shayne said.

  “Well, yes, but I wouldn’t say it was my fault, exactly. I was taken by surprise, so to speak.”

  Shayne said, “He was only hanging on by a thread when I saw him. He must have blacked out, and somebody called an ambulance. There aren’t too many places they could take him. We can find him with a couple of phone calls.”

  The reporter looked at him askance through his circular glasses. “I suppose you’re right,” he said uneasily. “Only—”

  “Only what, for God’s sake?”

  “Only I had the impression—I was probably dead wrong, the Lord knows I usually am, which is why I sometimes think I won’t get anywhere in the newspaper business—you see his face was all bloody, and there was a gash on his scalp and a bump as big as a duck’s egg, and I had the distinct impression that he’d been slugged.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Shayne backed him against the wall.

  He explained, alarmed by the look on the detective’s face, “But of course you’re absolutely right. He fell down and banged his head on a sharp corner or something. But here’s the funny part, Mr. Shayne, and see what you make of it. Goodness,” he said, his voice becoming plaintive, “I just happened to be there. I don’t see how you can blame me.”

  Shayne realized that he had taken the front of the reporter’s coat in both fists, and was shaking him angrily. If anybody was to blame, it was Shayne himself. After seeing the shape Rourke was in, Shayne should have stuck to him like a burr, whether the reporter craved privacy or not.

  He let go of Roberts’ coat and said roughly, “I’m not blaming anybody. I just want to find out what happened.”

  “Well, I kept explaining to the intern that I was a friend of Tim’s, and by God, I was going along with him in the ambulance. And the intern, the front one, kept saying that was against the rules. He said to stop bothering them because it was an emergency and they had to get Tim to the hospital right away. I figured that after all I could get there just as fast in a cab, so I asked what hospital, and he told me Jackson Memorial. That sounded okay, I mean it stood to reason, nearby and all. We were outside at the time, going down the front steps. Well, you see two interns in white gowns carrying a stretcher with a banged-up guy on it, and it all makes sense. You don’t think twice about it. But here’s where it gets funny, Mr. Shayne. There was a Pontiac wagon parked down there, in a no-parking slot, with the back raised. They slid the stretcher in, slammed the back and took off like a big-tailed bird. I mean they left some rubber on the pavement. They were sure as hell anxious to get Tim somewhere.”

  “A Pontiac station wagon?” Shayne said, a worried look on his roughhewn features. “Did you get the license, Roberts?”

  “No, I didn’t. I know now that I should have, but it happened so fast I didn’t think of it. I was kind of adjusted to the idea that they were interns on ambulance duty, and I was worrying about Tim and looking for a taxi, all at once.”

  Shayne forced himself to speak evenly. “You know if you’d grabbed hold of one of those interns and done some yelling, they wouldn’t have got away with it.”

  “Yeh,” Roberts said miserably. “That’s exactly what I was thinking. But that intern—he had a smashed nose and muscles, Mr. Shayne. He looked like a male nurse in a violent ward, and frankly, I wasn’t even about to grab hold of that guy.”

  “It’s done now,” Shayne said bleakly. “What did the other one look like?”

  “I didn’t pay attention, except he was smaller. But I didn’t tell you about the character in the front seat.”

  “What character?”

  “He was sort of a funny old party, Mr. Shayne. I didn’t get much impression. I don’t know, maybe a hearing aid. Kind of spindly looking. I guess you’d say he was dressed real sharp for a man of his age.”

  “How old would that be?”

  “Like in his sixties, Mr. Shayne? And one other thing I didn’t mention—there was a suitcase right on the stretcher with Tim, and when you think about it, the whole thing is peculiar as hell. But at the time—”

  Shayne gave a non-committal grunt. He continued to look keenly at Roberts until he satisfied himself that more questions would only take the plump reporter over the same ground. He allowed his attention to slack off while he considered whether he should go back to Malloy and show him the cable which tied Rourke to the girl before the start of the plane ride. He was half-aware, meanwhile, that a middle-aged man in a brightly striped sports shirt was reading a newspaper beside a newsstand some steps away. This was no place to be reading a paper. The light was poor. Shayne’s subconscious, working while he was consciously thinking only about what had happened to Rourke, had picked out this man by his general stance as a cop waiting for somebody. Two or three times a minute, he looked up idly and his glance passed across the faces of the crowd.

  Now he folded his paper and stuffed it into his hip-pocket. Until then he had meant nothing to Shayne; cops abounded at a big terminal like this one, through which criminals from all over the country funnelled into Miami. Now his face came into focus, but it still meant nothing. Shayne knew the Miami detectives who worked in this part of town, and he knew the private cops on the airport’s payroll. This man was new to him, and the thought flashed through his mind that this might be one of the customs agents alerted by Malloy’s phone call.

  Malloy had been positioning his men to pick up Rourke’s blonde when she came out. If Shayne watched carefully, he might get an identification which he couldn’t get any other way.

  The sports-shirted cop coughed slightly, covering his mouth. Shayne swung around, following his glance. A second agent, this one young and eager, wearing a jacket that covered a shoulder holster, was standing before a big poster that advertised gay, carefree vacations in the country where Tim Rourke had acquired his broken bones. He lost interest in the poster, and turned. His partner was looking in the same direction. Shayne sketched two imaginary lines across the waiting room, extending out from each customs agent. The lines intersected at a hatless blonde girl coming through the crowd toward the exit.

  “What did you say?” he asked, aware that the reporter beside him had asked a question.

  “I said what are we going to do now, Mr. Shayne? We can’t just—”

  “Phone it in to your city desk,” Shayne said absently, his eyes on the girl. “Rourke carries identification, and the paper will be the first to hear about it if anything happens to him. Check Jackson Memorial, then the other hospitals. Find out if a Pontiac station wagon was stolen in Miami this afternoon, and where. Have your city editor—what’s his name, Dirksen—tell the cops to be watching for it, and notify him the minute it shows up. Then I think you’d better tell this story, word for word, to Will Gentry.”

  “Chief of Police?” Roberts said. “Okay, I’ll do that. Where will you be, Mr. Shayne?”

  “Around,” Shayne said.

  He stood in the same spot until there was no doubt that the girl would pass within a few yards. The customs men were in motion. One walked out and lighted a cigarette on the top step. Probably, Shayne thought, that was the signal that would collect the cars for the tailjob. The girl’s movements from now on would be well policed.

/>   The redhead gave his hat a tug. He towered above those around him, and he knew he was easy to spot. But he didn’t know the girl, and she didn’t know him. He didn’t risk a direct look, to see if she lived up to Rourke’s superlatives. He had a fleeting impression that she was smiling faintly, as though pleased with the way things were going.

  Giving Roberts a hard look that told the reporter to stay where he was, Shayne sauntered out. A steady line of vehicles was moving in toward the terminal from 20th Street. Shayne’s taxi was where he had left it. The driver, a cigarette dangling from his lips, was leaning against the front fender. Seeing the detective approaching with long strides, he got behind the wheel.

  “Beginning to think you ran out on me,” he threw over his shoulder as he started the motor. “Up to two bucks on the meter.”

  “Forget the meter,” Shayne snapped. “I’ll give you a double sawbuck over the fare if you do just what I tell you.”

  “Would I do anything else?” the driver said. “I mean short of wrecking the hack. You’re Shayne, aren’t you? The detective?”

  Shayne admitted his identity. He was looking out the rear window, watching for the girl.

  “I thought I recognized you,” the driver said with satisfaction. “I like to keep up with events around town, and I knew the minute you told me to pull up and wait that you were on a case.”

  “Do you hack out of here all the time?” Shayne asked without looking around.

  “For five years. And it’s a pretty good stand, considering most of the hauls are one-way.”

  “What kind of car do the customs dicks drive?”

  “Stock Fords,” the driver replied promptly. “Three sedans off the floor, and one they can goose up to a hundred or over.”

  “Keep your eye out for them, will you?”

  “Glad to,” the driver said.

  As the girl came down the steps from the terminal, Shayne looked her over carefully. She wore a smart black suit, with a short flaring jacket. She walked well, handling her youthful body with lightness and grace. And as for the figure Rourke spoke of in his cable, Shayne had no fault to find with it at all.

  She went without hesitation to the taxi stand and the starter waved a cab forward.

  Shayne turned. “Now,” he shot out. “The customs boys are going to be watching that cab. As soon as you spot them, move out.”

  The girl’s cab passed, gathering speed. Shayne, puzzled, was watching the cars approaching the drop-off zone. None of them peeled off to follow the cab.

  “What—” he began.

  Then he noticed a blue-and-white Ford sedan come out of a second exit from the parking lot and pull into the east-bound lane. It was ahead of the girl’s taxi, not behind. The timing was perfect. Shayne had missed the signal, which had probably gone up to Malloy’s office and back down to the Ford. The customs agents would hang just ahead of the cab, not letting it pass until the girl was convinced she was not being followed. If the cab turned off, another Ford, probably moving into town on a parallel route, would be notified by radio.

  “Never mind the cab,” Shayne told his driver. “Watch the Ford.”

  “So long as it’s not the souped-up baby,” the driver said around his cigarette. “You can’t tell from the chassis. It’s all under the hood.”

  They went north on 42nd Avenue. The Ford made the logical turn on NW 36th, a right, toward the bay. The two taxis followed, first the girl’s, then Shayne’s. Several cars were between the two taxis, and as they drove down 36th, the intervening vehicles dropped off, one by one, until the two cabs were bumper-to-bumper.

  Once the lights failed to break for Shayne. He was held up by a red signal while the Ford and the girl’s taxi drove on. They could have lost him easily, by plunging off into the maze of driveways and parking lots around the Biscayne Arena and Miami Stadium, but they didn’t bother.

  At the next light the customs Ford stalled getting away, and the girl’s taxi went by. On Biscayne Boulevard, where the little procession took another right, the two-toned Ford dropped out and a black Ford, of an older model, took over. Shayne was spoiling a nice professional job by keeping so close to the girl, but there was nothing else he could do. She had surely picked out his cab in the following traffic. The detective kept well to the back of the seat, his hat-brim pulled low.

  They turned onto the Venetian Causeway, headed for Miami Beach.

  “She’s made us,” Shayne’s driver said. “Any instructions?”

  “Watch out for sudden turns.”

  They crossed the bay, then went down Dade Boulevard to Collins Avenue, and along Collins past the big new hotels. The girl’s driver slowed, signalling for a turn.

  “Looks like the St. Albans,” Shayne’s driver remarked.

  The taxi ahead swung in on the curving approach to the great modernistic structure. Shayne mumbled a savage “Thanks,” thrust two bills into the driver’s hand, and was out and moving before the taxi had been brought to a complete halt.

  Long-legging it to the St. Albans’ entrance, he brushed past the doorman. The girl’s taxi was on its way back to the airport.

  Shayne forced himself to move circumspectly, putting on an indifferent expression to mask his disappointment. At this point a one-man tail was no good at all.

  He bought a pack of cigarettes, checked the schedule of events on the letter-board by the elevators, and picked up a travel folder from the reservations counter. Meanwhile, he was looking for the customs agents. The only ones he would recognize were those he had seen at the terminal. Neither was in the lobby, nor was the girl.

  CHAPTER 9

  He gave it five minutes. He was considering his next move, his rugged face thoughtful. The cops? But they already had Roberts’ story, and Shayne had little else to tell them—except for the wording of Rourke’s cable, and Shayne was holding that in reserve. A time would come shortly when he would have to use it to pry information out of Malloy. Will Gentry, the hard-driving, incorruptible chief of Miami police, had known Rourke for many years; he would be just as alarmed by the reporter’s disappearance as Shayne was himself.

  Shayne’s eyes were narrow slits. There had to be something he could do, short of sitting around police headquarters waiting for the city-wide network of cops to turn up some indication of his friend’s whereabouts. If all he did was wait there was a good possibility, Shayne knew, that the first break in the case would be the discovery of Tim’s body. He had one desperate, forlorn hope: that the sum of money Rourke had been after hadn’t been substantial. The detective raged silently at himself. He should have insisted on going along with Rourke. But Rourke had got under his skin, with his querulous pleas to be let alone. Shayne told himself fiercely that he had certainly picked the wrong moment to climb up on his high horse.

  He was frozen into indecision, which was an unusual state for Shayne.

  Suddenly his attention sharpened. The customs agent in the bright shirt came through the swinging doors from beyond the bellhops’ station.

  Feeling a rising surge of excitement, Shayne watched him stop to chat with a second agent, a sporting type who was sitting near a window, studying the racing entries in the Tribune with the air of having been sitting there in that same spot since after lunch. The two men were baffled and crestfallen, like hounds that have lost their quarry.

  The man in the bright shirt went into a public phone, feeling in his pocket for a dime. Shayne waited until he completed his call and left the booth. Then the rangy redhead looked up the number of the regional office of the U.S. customs. He had a strong hunch it was the same number his predecessor had called. He dialed it from the same phone.

  Malloy answered promptly.

  “Mike Shayne,” Shayne said. “I know you don’t want me to tie up your phone, so I’ll make this brief. I’m still looking for Rourke. You said he didn’t talk to that blonde of yours on the plane, but it occurred to me that he might have made a date with her without your knowledge. To dispense with unnecessary details, I
’m at the St. Albans on the Beach.”

  “Damn it, Shayne!” Malloy exploded. “Are you the one who fouled us up and tipped the girl off she was being followed?”

  “She knew you people would put a tail on her,” Shayne pointed out. “That’s assuming, as I think you do, that she has something to hide. She would have lost your boys here anyway. I’ve come to the conclusion that I’ll have to make a deal. I told you I came out to meet Tim’s plane. If you hadn’t been so anxious to get me out of the office, you might have figured I must have had a cable from him.”

  There was an instant’s pause. “Yeh?” Malloy said. “What did it say?”

  Shayne’s tone was cheerful. “I’ve got it right here. I’ll read it to you if you’ll tell me what gives with the girl. Her name and what kind of a tip you got on her.

  “Mike, honest to God! Sometimes I think—All right,” he said hastily. “Frankly, I need everything I can get on this, and I’ll have to take a chance that you’re holding me up. But if there’s nothing in the cable but a time of arrival, don’t think I’ll forget it, Mike! Her name’s Carla Adams, though she’s traveling under phony papers. She comes from Philadelphia, and she’s been out of the country eight months. The tip was about as authentic as you can get. It was phoned up to us from a high man on the cops down there. He specializes in narcotics. I’ve had dealings with him before, and he has yet to give me a wrong one. I don’t need to tell you this is confidential.”

  “Narcotics?” Shayne said thoughtfully.

  “Now don’t you tell me she isn’t the type. As I get it, her personality pattern is that she doesn’t care a hell of a lot so long as something is reasonably safe and reasonably profitable. They had her under observation all the time she was there.”

  Shayne’s bushy red eyebrows drew together. “So it wasn’t a spur of the moment job?”