Fit to Kill Page 8

  “I’ll be frank with you, Mike. Apparently she did some talking against their head man, Marshal Gonzalez. Everything’s political down there, and it wouldn’t have surprised me if they’d planted a package on the babe. Say she was planning to come out with some anti-Gonzalez stuff to the newspapers. This would take the wind out of her sails.”

  “But you didn’t find anything?”

  “We didn’t find any drugs. But this is a queer one. Number one, the kid made the trip without luggage. We checked on that, and she got on the plane at the last minute with nothing but a handbag. Number two, there wasn’t much in the handbag. Just her papers, some money, a new lipstick, a door-key. There wasn’t any of the junk girls will accumulate in the first ten minutes. Number three, her clothes were new. Her slip even had the tag still on it, as though she put it on in one hell of a hurry. The rest of her stuff had never been worn.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “You don’t need to run laboratory tests to know when clothes have just come from the store. You can tell from the way they look, the way they feel. The suit still had the pin marks in it. The bottoms of the shoes were hardly scuffed. Okay, you get a new pair of shoes for a trip, or a new bra, but do you get every stitch new, from the skin out? And what did she do with her old clothes, give them away? You explain it.”

  “That’s number three,” Shayne remarked. “Any more?”

  “Yeh, number four. I was a little rough with her when I pulled her off the plane, to see how she’d react. She didn’t turn a hair. What innocent traveler will let herself be searched by a matron without putting up a hell of a squawk and yelling for her daddy? But this doll was cool as a cucumber. The clincher is the way she shed the tail. That’s a sign of something, and it isn’t good. She walked into the St. Albans’ lobby as though she was about to register, then sheered off and went right through to the kitchens and out a service entrance. That place is a rabbit-warren. My boys never had a chance to get set. It’s my guess that somebody picked her up in a private car. Would she pull something like that if her conscience was clear? Now it’s your turn, Mike.”

  Shayne smoothed the creases out of the cable and read it aloud. Then he reported what he had learned from Roberts, the Daily News legman. When he had finished, Malloy whistled softly.

  “I thought at the time he was a little too intense. But I had other things on my mind.”

  “The cops ought to have it by now,” Shayne said. “They’ll show Roberts some pictures, on the chance that he can pick out the intern with the broken nose. The Pontiac will be turning up pretty soon. Maybe somebody at the terminal saw something else that will help, but I doubt it.”

  “Why would Rourke do such a thing, Mike?” Malloy said.

  “Would do what?” the detective said coldly.

  “Well, it’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? She sweet-talked him into carrying the stuff past us for her. Somebody found out about it, and highjacked him before he could make delivery. By God, after I catch up with that guy he’s going to be doing his literary work for a prison monthly, for a good long time to come. I’m not a fanatic, Mike. But drugs—”

  “Let’s wait till we can talk to him about it, shall we?”

  Shayne said softly. “Tim has done some dumb things in his time, and I’ll be the first to admit that he’s a sucker for any good-looking blonde. But he wouldn’t touch narcotics with a ten-foot pole.”

  “It’s good to be loyal to your friends, Mike, but facts—”

  “Are sometimes misleading,” Shayne interposed. “Let’s get all the facts before we find him guilty.”

  “Sure” Malloy said sarcastically. “Maybe he didn’t know it was heroin. Maybe he thought it was tooth powder.”

  Shayne’s tone was deliberately harsh. “Hold it, Malloy. If Tim did any smuggling of narcotics, he was tricked into it. He’ll be just as anxious as you are to bring the guilty person to justice, and that includes blondes. Your boys are standing out here with egg on their face. It seems to me that Carla Adams has made your organization look a little foolish, and maybe she also made a fool of Tim. As soon as I find out, I’ll call you back.”

  He slammed up the phone angrily. His eyes were smoldering. He knew that the reason Malloy’s suggestion made him so mad was that no other explanation made any sense. He had withheld one additional piece of information that would really have damned his friend—Rourke’s reference to the money he was after. The detective clubbed his right fist and pounded his knee. The damn fool! Rourke was either in some financial jam he had kept a secret from his friends, or he had suddenly gone haywire.

  Shayne’s eyes narrowed suddenly. He had started to open the door of the booth, but he held it as it was, feeling that he was on the point of getting a grip on something important. Assume that his suggestion to Malloy was correct, and the girl had let herself be picked up by Rourke. That wouldn’t have been difficult, in the light of Tim’s known proclivities along those lines. Assume that he took her to his room. After he was asleep, she slipped a package of dope into his suitcase, or hid it in the lining of his jacket, or beneath the heel of his shoe. Then when Malloy took Carla off the plane, Rourke’s suspicions were aroused. He discovered how he had been tricked. The girl’s confederates were waiting to take delivery. Before he could get to Malloy with his discovery, they grabbed him. Or—

  Now Shayne’s brain was working furiously.

  What if a rival set of crooks had found out about the plan, seeing a way of getting hold of the drugs before Carla recovered them from Rourke? This would explain why they had been waiting with a stretcher dressed as interns. One of them could stumble against Rourke, knocking him to the floor. Another, under pretense of giving him assistance, could deliver the quick blow that knocked him unconscious.

  And if it had happened that way, it followed that Carla Adams didn’t know it yet. Before they boarded the plane, they must have appointed a meeting place in Miami. She would want to get the parcel back from Rourke without his knowledge. To do this she would have to spend another night with him. They wouldn’t go to a hotel, where Rourke would have to register, and she would run the risk of being seen and recognized. The answer was obvious. They had arranged to meet at Rourke’s apartment. And only when he reached this point in his reasoning did he remember that one of the articles the customs had found in Carla’s handbag had been a key.

  Rourke lived only a few blocks away, near Flamingo Park. That explained why Carla had picked the St. Albans as the place to get rid of the customs agents. Shayne was suddenly convinced that she was there now, waiting for Rourke to bring her the package of narcotics he didn’t know he had.

  Shayne came out of the booth. The customs agent in the sports shirt was looking at him, his forehead corrugated in a frown. The redhead nodded in a absent way, said, “How are you?” and went by.

  Outside, he shook off the doorman’s offer of a cab. He didn’t want the customs men to trace him, for he wanted to have Carla Adams all to himself for a short while. He strode quickly along the curving, palm-lined drive, with the fresh-water pools on his left. He was looking forward to asking that self-assured young lady some questions. He was glad to have a little more time to think. He went back over the few facts he knew, and checked the deductions he had made from them.

  Rourke’s bachelor apartment was on the second floor of a modest building, much like a host of others in that section. Shayne entered the vestibule, scowling. He noted that Rourke’s mailbox was stuffed with mail that had piled up in his absence. He took out a bunch of keys. After a moment’s study he selected one and fitted it into the lock of the vestibule door.

  Then he hesitated. After a recent burglary, Rourke had installed a new bolt that could only be thrown by a double turn of the key. Given enough time, Shayne knew he could open it, but the girl wouldn’t wait to discover who was jimmying Rourke’s door.

  He cursed deep in his throat and went back outside and around the building by the driveway that led to the tenants’ garages
. A hard-top convertible was parked beside the back door. The detective gauged the distance and climbed up on the hood, ignoring the scratches his number-twelves made in the finish.

  A moment later he was on the second-floor platform of the fire escape. He eased close to Rourke’s kitchenette window, being careful to make no sound.

  He knew at once that his hunch had been right. The window had been raised. A half-screen had been put in place. The first thing the girl would do, coming into an apartment that had been closed up for five days, would be to let in some fresh air.

  Shayne lifted the window another half inch, slid out the screen and stepped inside.

  The air in the kitchenette was still warm and motionless. Shayne reached the door of the living room in two long strides.

  The blonde he had followed from the airport was standing at the front window. She whirled with a quickly indrawn breath. Making herself free with Tim’s liquor, she had fixed herself a drink, but, at the sight of the big redheaded detective in the doorway, she dropped it with a crash.

  CHAPTER 10

  Shayne was impressed with Carla Adams, seen at close range. She had the delicacy of coloring that is only found in girls with precisely that color hair. And yet her eyes were surprisingly dark. She had removed the jacket of her suit and tossed it onto Rourke’s worn leather sofa. Her sleeves were turned back, her severe white blouse was open at the throat.

  “Did I scare you?” he said pleasantly.

  The girl drew in a long breath. “You did,” she said in a crisp voice. “And that’s putting it very mildly. I need a cigarette.”

  She picked up the new black leather bag which she had thrown down on Rourke’s scarred desk. After fumbling in it, she took out a small .25 automatic and pointed it at Shayne.

  “I suppose you came in by the fire escape,” she said. “You can leave by the door. There’s nothing here worth stealing, anyway.”

  She had a pleasing voice, deep and well-modulated. Shayne could see that she would have an easy time with Rourke. He felt some of the effect himself, even with a gun pointed at his stomach. There had been no .25 in her bag when it was searched at the airport, so it must be Rourke’s weapon. Apparently she had taken the precaution of arming herself, in case she couldn’t talk Rourke into handing over the package.

  Shayne was careful not to move a muscle except to breathe, and he did very little of that. It was a small gun, but from a distance of three yards, a .25 could kill him just as dead as a heavier weapon.

  “There’s a phone on the desk,” he said. “If you think I’m a burglar, why don’t you call the cops? I’ll give you the number.”

  The muzzle wavered slightly. Shayne’s stomach muscles were very tight, as though they could give him some protection.

  “But you don’t want to call the cops,” the redhead went on, “and the last thing in the world you want to do is shoot anybody. Then you’d have to get out in a hurry, without waiting for Tim. And with most people, when they shoot somebody, they worry about it afterward.” He ended gently, “Put it down, Carla.’”

  Her eyes contracted as she heard him use her name. After a second the gun began to drop, ending up pointing at the carpet.

  “Who are you?”

  “Put it on the desk,” Shayne advised her in the same gentle tone.

  She obeyed, and the detective breathed more freely.

  “That’s better,” he said. “Now we’re going to do some talking, so we might as well make ourselves comfortable. What was in that glass you dropped?”

  “Whiskey, I guess.”

  “Sit down,” Shayne said. “If you want a cigarette, have one of mine.”

  He threw his opened package of cigarettes onto the end-table and went into the kitchenette. In the cabinet below the counter, he found a half-filled bottle of cognac, which Tim had laid in against Shayne’s occasional visits. The refrigerator had been turned off when Rourke left, so there was no ice. Into one highball glass, Shayne poured cognac, into another, the cheap blended rye which Rourke claimed to prefer over more expensive brands. He watered the whiskey with tap-water, filling a third glass with plain water for himself. He returned to the living room, carrying all three glasses easily in his big hand.

  “No ice,” he said. “But you already know that. No salted peanuts. No cocktail napkins.”

  “I’m used to roughing it,” she answered, without putting her heart into the joke.

  She was sitting at the extreme end of the big sofa, with her knees pressed primly together. She took the glass Shayne held out to her, giving a quick shudder of distaste as she tasted it.

  “That’s terrible stuff,” he said. “You can have cognac instead.”

  She shook her head shortly. “Now I hope you’ll tell me who you are, and why you chose to come in through the window.”

  Shayne took a sip of cognac and rolled it around in his mouth. He said gravely, “I don’t know much about you, Miss Adams, or what connection you have with Tim, but I had a feeling that you might not answer the doorbell. My name’s Michael Shayne. I’m a friend of Tim’s, a very good friend, and by that I mean that I don’t like to see him framed or mugged.”

  “Shayne,” she said thoughtfully. “He told me about you. He said you’re pretty good in your field.”

  “Nice of him,” Shayne grunted.

  She glanced at him briefly, then looked down at her drink. “And what does Michael Shayne want with me?”

  “The same thing I want with everybody. Information. I’d like to find out where Tim is, to begin with. Would you know?”

  She shrugged. “At his paper, probably. Have you tried there?”

  “He’s not at the paper. Was that the arrangement you made with him? He was to go there from the plane, and then come here?”

  “Any arrangement between Tim Rourke and me was a private one,” she said icily.

  “He gave you a key to his apartment. Would you take a door-key from a man you met for the first time on a plane? Probably not. How long have you known him, Miss Adams?”

  She took a long drink of the rye and set the glass down with a clink.

  “I don’t like your hectoring tone. Why don’t you tell me what you’re really after? If you think I’m an unsuitable acquaintance for your friend Tim, I have a suggestion to make. Let’s talk about something else, and when Tim gets here you can ask all the questions you like. Good heavens! He’s mature enough to pick his friends without any chaperonage from you.”

  “Tim won’t be here,” the detective said calmly, watching her from under lowered lids. “He’s been kidnapped.”

  Her hands jerked. She wasn’t holding her glass, or she would have smashed a second drink. She laced her fingers together tightly. Her color had drained away.

  “Kidnapped,” she said flatly.

  “Abducted,” Shayne said. “Snatched. A couple of hoods in intern’s uniforms chopped him down and carried him out of the terminal on a stretcher. A very smooth and professional job, and I’m hoping you’ll have an idea who did it.”

  She relaxed her fingers carefully. They were shaking, but not altogether out of control. She decided she could trust herself to take a drink. She drained her glass in one long swallow and held it out to Shayne.

  “I think I’ll need some more of that,” she said.

  Shayne took the glass to the kitchenette and this time he used less water and more whiskey.

  “That was quite a jolt,” she said ruefully when he returned. “If anything happens to Tim I won’t ever be able to forgive myself. I didn’t think there was any danger, Mr. Shayne. This puts us on the same side of the fence, and I’ll tell you anything you want to know. But first, perhaps you’d better tell me exactly how it happened.”

  Again Shayne repeated Roberts’ story, including a description of the station wagon and the old man in the front seat. She nodded thoughtfully.

  “I’m surprised he took part in a thing like this himself. He must realize how important it is.”

  Shayne lea
ned forward, knuckles whitening on his huge fists. “You know who it is?”

  “Of course,” she said. “There couldn’t be two people who would fit that description. It’s Professor Quesada. He wears a hearing aid, and he makes a very big thing out of being neatly dressed. Do you know exactly when it happened, how long after the arrival of the plane?”

  “It couldn’t have been long after I saw him, which was a few minutes past six. My secretary and I were planning a coming-home celebration, and I was there to pick Tim up. He didn’t give me a chance to say much. He told me to stay away from him because he had more important business. I think he was trying to find out what had happened to you.”

  “They took his luggage?”

  Shayne nodded glumly. “So Roberts said. He saw it on the stretcher.”

  Her face was serious and intent. “It’s my fault, every bit of it. We have to think this out clearly, and then move fast and do the right thing the first time. We won’t get a second chance.”

  Shayne nursed his cognac, rolling the glass backward and forward between his palms. He didn’t look at the girl. She was doing some hard thinking, and he didn’t interrupt.

  “Did Tim tell you my name?” she said.

  He shook his head. “I got it from the customs people.”

  “It’s my real name, as it happens, but it’s not the one I was using. I’m surprised they knew it—they didn’t make the least fuss about it. Oh, I see,” she said. “They wanted me to lead them to my accomplices, and that’s why they followed me into town, in such an obvious way. They think I’m some kind of notorious international smuggler, that’s plain enough, but what on earth am I supposed to be smuggling?”

  The detective savored the taste of his cognac, letting it run slowly over his tongue. “Drugs,” he said quietly.

  Carla gasped. “Drugs! The devils. So that’s why they treated me the way they did. I suppose this information came to them from the Gonzalez police?”

  “From quite a bigshot,” Shayne said, “who’s supposed to know what he’s talking about.”