Brett Halliday: Blue Murder

“Mike—”

“There really is a film called Domestic Relations and there really is a quarter of a million in cash. We’ve got to keep them apart. Can you line up two or three radio cars, and have them meet us?”

Rourke, in the back of the Land Rover, overheard this exchange. “Why not let Pomeroy pay the money and arrest the son of a bitch?”

“Too chancy. We don’t know who has the film.”

“You’re hoping it’s Capp?” Rourke said after a moment.

“I’m hoping it’s not Capp. I want to use it to force Capp to come to us.”

The helicopter rose with its deafening clatter, and Gentry went forward to shout directions to the pilot. As they came in over West Miami, he unhooked the transmitter and began calling police frequencies. Presently he made contact with the Northwest Miami dispatcher, who cut him into the circuit. He directed all circulating cars in this part of town to close in on Jackson Memorial, on Twelfth Avenue at Twentieth, and to report their positions at one-minute intervals.

Almost immediately afterward, Shayne saw the big hospital below and ahead, planted solidly amid acres of parked cars. The craft heeled and started to circle. Gentry was getting his first reports from the ground. Shayne, at the window beside him, picked up the beacon of one police car, then another.

Several moments later, he saw a third. The streets below were black with cars. Slowly the circle began to tighten, with Gentry orchestrating the movement from the hovering helicopter. One of the cars reached the hospital and turned onto Twelfth Avenue.

A report came crackling in: the driver had spotted Capp’s Cadillac.

Gentry pointed. The helicopter came clacking around, and Shayne saw the long black car enter the parking lot from the north.

“Set her down?” Gentry called.

Shayne shook his head and made a swirling motion: continue to circle.

Gentry positioned the police cars so they covered all exits from the lot. The Cadillac was moving erratically, as though searching for somebody. Suddenly one of the parked cars came to life and shot out of line toward Twentieth Street. It was the familiar cream-colored Dodge.

Shayne gestured, and Gentry ordered one of his cars to pick up the Dodge as it came out.

“Siren?” he asked, and when the detective shook his head he called into the transmitter, “No siren.”

The Cadillac braked and reversed, turning in the space left vacant by the Dodge. Accelerating, it frightened a smaller car aside and forced its way into the traffic. For one risky moment, it was running on the wrong side of the two-way separation.

Shayne joined Gentry at the transmitter. The Dodge swung onto Fourteenth Avenue and doubled back on a diagonal street cutting across the terraces at an angle parallel to the river. From above, the street plan was a chessboard and the cars were opposing pieces. Gentry could position his pieces at will, while his two opponents were running blind.

One police car was on Twentieth, moving west. The Cadillac was out of contact with the Dodge, which now made the mistake of staying on Seventeenth instead of disappearing into the maze of short streets to the west. The Cadillac came up fast, swinging in and out of lanes. Soon less than a block separated the two cars.

The Dodge made quick reckless darts one way and another, in an effort to shake its pursuer, but the driver was unfamiliar with the patterns, and he made several costly blunders. The Cadillac continued to hang on his rear bumper, edging into position to come up alongside and force him over.

Shayne made an encircling gesture with both arms, and Gentry ordered the police cars to close in.

The Dodge shot into a school grounds, across and out the opposite side, passing one of the police cars. At the sight of the revolving beacon, the Cadillac, following, slowed for a moment, then speeded up again when at a command from the helicopter, the police car pulled into a driveway and parked.

In open traffic, the Dodge was overmatched. Swerving, it ran up on a sidewalk, across a shallow lawn and back, in a fast U-turn. The Cadillac made the turn more slowly at the next intersection, but quickly recovered ground. Gentry, above, was telling his three cars to move in. The parked police car backed out and blocked that street. The Cadillac had overtaken the Dodge and forced it against the curb.

Shayne tapped the pilot’s shoulder and pointed down. The ungainly craft wheeled and settled onto the ball field behind the school.

When Shayne and the others reached the street, all three police cars were in position. Frankie Capp, his face heavily bandaged, backed out of the Dodge, a gun in his hand. Peter, shot, lay in the street.

Capp saw Shayne and Gentry first. He turned one way, then another. Every way he looked, he saw police.

Congressman Nick Tucker, meanwhile, had set a trap of his own, using the same bait — Pomeroy. Earlier, the older congressman had checked a battered suitcase at the International Airport, following instructions he had received by phone. An unknown person — Peter, of course — was to pick him up at the hospital, drive him to the airport and exchange checkroom stubs, the money for the film.

Armed with a small revolver, Tucker waited in Pomeroy’s hospital room for the youth to appear. Pomeroy, with a bad hangover and throbbing feet, had agreed to this procedure. If it had worked — Tucker had convinced him it had a chance of working — it would relieve him of the necessity of handing over a suitcase containing $225,000 that didn’t really belong to him.

Two homicide detectives found the congressmen together. Disregarding Tucker’s protests that he was a busy man, with a crowded schedule, they drove both men to the Warehouse, where Shayne had gathered a small group in one of the screening rooms.

There were twenty seats, half of them filled. Shayne, at the front of the room, seemed in good spirits. He thanked them for coming.

“I don’t know exactly what we’re going to see,” he said. “When we picked Peter off the street — Peter, what’s your last name?”

The youth looked at him sullenly. He had been shot in the fleshy part of his hand, not seriously. His right forearm was also bandaged. Frankie Capp sat several seats away. It was painful for Capp to talk because of his injured jaw, and in this kind of situation, unrepresented by counsel, he would have done as little talking as possible.

“Peter,” Shayne said again. “Your last name.”

“Fisher,” Peter said unwillingly.

“What were you in for?”

When he didn’t reply, Shayne said, “Your hair’s too short. Even soldiers don’t keep it that short anymore. Your prints are on file, so why waste our time? You don’t want to start by making us feel unfriendly.”

“Possession,” Peter said. “A block of hash and four marijuana cigarettes. Four years. I served twenty-eight months in the great state of Texas, where else?”

“O.K., Armand, get the lights. I’m going to give you a little commentary as we go. Peter had a baggage check in his pocket, and when we turned it in at the airport they gave us eight unmarked cans of thirty-five millimeter film. Four of these are the negative. We’re going to start in the logical place, with Reel One.”

The lights blinked off. Baruch stepped into the glassed-in projection booth.

A lighted pattern flashed on the screen, followed by a shot of a naked girl moving slowly in front of a three-panel mirror. The first title card came on: “Domestic Relations, an Armand Baruch presentation.” Other credits followed, printed over the languorous movements of the girl. The author of the screenplay was given as Gretchen Fisher.

“Hold it,” Shayne called, and the action stopped. “Tucker, did you ever meet Gretchen’s brother?”