Brett Halliday - Win Some, Lose Some

He overflowed onto the steering wheel. He gave them a dazed look. Frieda nodded pleasantly and showed him the gun.

His mouth opened, and he stamped on the gas. Shayne was a half-length ahead now. He bore in sharply and herded the van off the asphalt. The fat man finally went to his brake. He stopped well off the road.

Frieda descended, the gun still out. Shayne pulled past and parked. Canada recognized him when he came into the headlights.

“Mike Shayne. Am I glad to see you! I thought-”

“We’ll talk in a minute, Larry. If we stay here, we’ll collect a crowd.”

“Do you know what happened? They jumped me, they chloroformed me-”

“They?” Shayne said coldly. “What do you think this is, a rescue?”

Canada looked uneasily from Shayne to Frieda, and to the gun in Frieda’s hand. “You aren’t going to try to tell me-”

“Get in back and shut up.”

Canada’s jaw fell open. “You mean that was you in those masks? I don’t believe it.”

Shayne clicked his fingernail against the door. “Move, Larry.”

Canada had difficulty freeing himself. He sidestepped between the seats. Frieda came in back with him, returning the gun to her shoulder bag. Canada made a hard landing on one of the beds, looking misunderstood and confused. His white suit had been disheveled to start with, and it had deteriorated badly in the last several hours while he was moved from his smashed Cadillac to the sand pile and on into the van. He licked his full lips.

“You wouldn’t have anything to eat, would you?”

“Later,” Shayne said from the wheel.

He crossed the median and headed back toward the fire. Three cars had stopped. Rourke saw him, walked away from the group casually, and crossed the highway.

“You had me worried,” he said, coming in. “Then I saw the place where you cut your way out. That’s a good rule. Never get trapped in a burning trailer without the right tools. How are you, Larry?”

“You’re in on this, too?”

“You’re my project for the month. Maybe we ought to get moving, Mike.”

“No, I want Larry to see it. Struggle up, Larry.” Canada forced himself out from the wall, and Frieda parted the curtains.

“All right. A trailer. It’s on fire. So?”

“The people who set it on fire thought you were in it.”

He saw a flashing light coming fast and went into gear. The cops were only interested in what was happening on the southbound lanes. They would find one burned-out Ford, one trailer still burning too hotly for anyone to come near it, one abandoned pickup camper. They might also find one dead body, but by now, Shayne thought, everybody else had undoubtedly scattered.

After another moment Canada said quietly, “Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

“You arranged it?”

“That particular twist we arranged. The rest more or less just happened.”

He left the big highway at the next exit and turned north again at once, remembering a fishermen’s turnoff along the canal. After parking, he and Rourke both went in back, leaving the overhead light on so they could all look at each other.

Canada’s eyes were rolling, and he was struggling to stay upright.

“If you’ve got some coffee,” he said. “Everything keeps going in and out.”

Shayne set the coffeepot back on the stove. Canada leaned forward, supporting his head in his hands. His nostrils widened as they took in the coffee smell.

“All right, what is it? What’s going to happen to me now? The same thing that happened to Eddie Maye? Maybe I’m trying to talk myself into something, but I really doubt it. Mike Shayne? Tim Rourke? It isn’t your kind of thing.”

“And you may not know Frieda Field,” Shayne said. “She’s been following Phil Gold around for a couple of weeks.”

“She has, has she? I suppose she followed him all the way to Homestead tonight. That’s one small point taken care of. You don’t know who those people were any more than I do. Let’s get back to town.”

Shayne laughed. “You still don’t understand the situation. If you don’t want to think of this as a kidnapping, call it a citizen’s arrest. Only we aren’t going to turn you over to anybody. This is the whole judicial system right here-state’s attorney, grand jury, criminal court. You can claim your constitutional privilege if you want to. That’s up to you.”

The coffee began to make noises. He filled a cup and gave it to Canada. Frieda looked in the icebox and brought out a coffee cake and a half-dozen hard-boiled eggs.

Canada came fully awake for the first time. He set to work, washing down bites of coffee cake and egg with great slurps of the bitter warmed-up coffee. No one joined him-he so clearly wanted it all. In an amazingly short time, he had consumed the whole cake and all the eggs, and sat back, his eyes bulging.

“Larry, that was interesting to watch,” Shayne said.

Canada looked at him evilly. “You don’t know a thing about it, do you? Let’s hear the rest of the bad news. A citizen’s arrest. What are you arresting me for?”

“No particular charge. We think you deserve it, but we haven’t been able to come up with anything that will stand up in court. The lawyers won’t let Tim print some of his best anecdotes. I didn’t plan to kidnap anybody tonight. Somebody else shook that tree, and you fell out. You’re right, we probably won’t shoot you. We’re going to hold you for ransom.”

“Come on,” Canada said uneasily.

“People have been talking about a million dollars. I think that’s a bit high, but you have a wide circle of friends. If they’re as loyal as I think they are, I’m sure they can raise it.”

“Oh, you’re a bastard, Shayne.”

“Am I?” Shayne said evenly. “Now I’ll tell you what I think about you. You moved into the top slot because the previous guy did something stupid and we put him away for fifteen years. People congratulated me on that, and there was an editorial in Tim’s paper. But ask yourself, Larry. Are you any improvement? The same stuff still goes on, with different people. I can be philosophical about that. But I don’t want to get you on some petty bribery rap and have somebody else inherit your contracts.”

“I never thought of you as a bleeding heart, Shayne.”

“No, it’s a new thing. As long as you stuck to dope and bookmaking and extortion, you didn’t bother me too much. But I don’t want you to build that spur through the Everglades.”

Canada’s eyebrows worked. “If I back out, do you think that will stop it? Hell, no. That’s Interstate money, ninety percent federal. It’s been approved at the top. If I don’t get it, somebody else will.”

“This isn’t an argument, Larry. We’re working out a deal. Who’s trying to kill you?”

“Never mind. That kind of thing I take care of myself.”

“Maybe I’d better tell you some of the things that happened while you were asleep. I think I’m finally beginning to sort everybody out. I don’t have any names yet. I’m hoping you’ll help me on that. There seem to be two separate sets of people. They want different things. What’s the last thing you remember? The guy with the bullhorn-when he was trying to talk you out in the open, he told you they weren’t trying to kill you. That has to be true. Paid hit-men would have cut you down the minute you stepped into the doorway. Now skip a few hours. Everybody thought you were tied to a bed in that trailer. One side wanted to put out the fire. The others wanted to let it burn. And they weren’t fooling around. They were shooting at each other.”

“I heard shots. I didn’t think I was awake. I’m not even sure I’m awake now.”

Shayne emptied the coffeepot into his cup. “What would happen if this was a real kidnapping? Does your wife know where you keep your emergency money?”