Brett Halliday - At the Point of a. 38

“Today I’m in a hurry,” Shayne said.

He took out one of the hundred dollar bills he had confiscated from Marian Tibbett, the Homestead master sergeant, and laid it beside Manson’s coffee cup. Manson became more cheerful at once.

“Coffee?”

“No time,” Shayne said. “I have two topics. Number one, Murray Gold. Number two, heroin.”

Manson folded the bill and put it away. “And do they connect? Mike, anything’s possible. He always steered clear of it here, but you know it wasn’t for moral reasons. There he was, at loose ends, in the Middle East, where most of our shit comes from. If he really was broke, that’s the one way you recoup with one turnover of capital. But different ones have different ideas.”

“Why do you think he went to Israel in the first place?”

“We all thought they promised him a passport, and then they put on those delays and hesitations to run up the price. But Gold-you just know he couldn’t change his lifetime habits. A hospital orderly? After being that big? No, he saw an opportunity and started working on it, and they caught him at it. I’ll tell you what everybody’s saying about that prison break.” He finished filling his cup, and returned the pot to the stove. “He organized it.”

“Using Arabs?”

“That’s the nice part of the story. What other Jew would be so open-minded?” Manson took a sip of steaming coffee and lowered his voice. “I understand he’s in Uruguay.”

“Why Uruguay?”

“Why not? No, as a matter of fact, it was set up long ago. Maybe he hasn’t got there yet, but I do know he’s expected. This isn’t more of the usual crap, Mike. Most of what I give you is what I hear pouring drinks, but this I happen to know.”

“Can I count on that?”

“It’s definite.”

“Now talk to me a minute about the heroin situation. All I want is a market report.”

“I don’t know why everybody thinks I’m such an expert. I don’t do anything stronger than aspirin myself, and I keep it out of the bar. But when the subject comes up, I admit I don’t stop up my ears. It’s so-so, Mike. The big bust yesterday had everybody worried, but not that much, you know? No panic. Does that mean help is on the way? In the shape of a major shipment from someplace? You decide.”

“None of this is worth a hundred bucks. Now something specific. I’d like to get the name of his last girl friend before he left the country. Her first name was Helen.”

Manson shook his head. “I didn’t keep up with him that close. Do you have anything else on her except that she was under nineteen? Which goes without saying.”

“Her father’s a cop.”

“Robustelli!” Manson said promptly. “That was the angle that got it talked about. Did the old man know it or not? Gold used to pick her up every afternoon after school, was the story. Charming.”

Returning to his car, Shayne called Miami High School and asked for the vice principal. Helen Robustelli, he was told, was a junior there, and she had been absent for five days with a virus infection. Shayne checked the phone book. The listing for Captain Angelo Robustelli, the girl’s father, was in Southwest Miami, less than ten blocks away. Shayne drove past the house, turned around and parked. He gave his operator the Robustelli number. After nearly a dozen rings, a woman’s voice answered. It was Mrs. Robustelli, and she told Shayne emphatically that she didn’t wish to discuss her daughter.

“Helen may be in trouble,” Shayne said politely. “I may be able to help. The school says they set up two conferences with you but you missed them both.”

“Those morons, what do they know? Well, O.K. I suppose you better give me the bad news.”

“If you don’t mind, I’d like to stop in and see you. I’m not far away.”

She did seem to mind, but Shayne persisted.

“Let me see now,” she said. “You’re that big ugly private detective. Well, all right. Give me ten minutes to sort of tidy up?”

A TV repair truck was parked across the street from the Robustelli house. A moment after Shayne hung up, a young man in coveralls came around from the kitchen door. As he crossed, he checked the closure of his front buttons and pushed back the hair over his ears. Shayne let him get off the block before leaving the Buick and ringing the Robustelli bell.

Mrs. Robustelli was wearing fresh lipstick, with a strong punctuation mark at each corner of her mouth. One of her sweater buttons was missing, showing a portion of the bulge beneath. She was large-hipped and large-breasted, with a sullen look. She glanced at the street where the TV truck had been.

“That was quick.”

She let him enter the house, giving his broken arm an appraising look. “Before we sit down, what are you drinking?”

“Coffee, if it’s made.”

She took him into a bright kitchen. The unwashed dishes piled up in the sink dated back more than one meal, possibly more than one day.

“We’ve been having TV troubles. Maddening. Not that I spend that much time watching. A big strong one-fisted man like you-you don’t want coffee. I’ll fix you a drink.”

The upshot was that she poured Shayne a cognac and made herself a bourbon and water, which was clearly not her first of the day. She enjoyed the taste so much that she took off the top half before setting it down.

“I suppose you think I’m perfectly terrible, drinking bourbon right after breakfast.”

Shayne didn’t comment. As a matter of fact, she was pretty terrible. Her diction was already slightly moist; she would be unintelligible by noon.

Robustelli, her husband, was primarily a drug cop, with a secondary interest in prostitution, and he hadn’t had much luck stopping that, either. His picture, cut out of the News, in which it appeared frequently-he gave his basic get-tough-with-drug-traffickers speech somewhere in town once a week-was pinned to the wall over the kitchen table. He had an abundant growth of iron-gray hair, a jaw like a rock, the steady gaze of a man who, as far as Shayne knew, had never enjoyed a moment’s self-doubt.

“He doesn’t know his daughter is missing,” Mrs. Robustelli said, with a glance at the picture. “He’s usually late to dinner, when he does us the favor of coming in at all. When you’re trying to stamp out heroin single-handed, you keep crazy hours, junkie’s hours. Even a wife can understand that.”

“I’m feeling the pressure of time, Mrs. Robustelli. Do you know where Helen is?”

“Maybe I do and maybe I don’t. What do you want with my daughter, Mr. Shayne?”

“She may know something about a man I’m trying to track down.”

“Now you’re talking my language. I hope it’s serious?”

“You know who it is?”

“Let’s say I have a pretty good idea. His initials wouldn’t be A.C., by any chance?”

“If they aren’t M.G. I’m wasting my time.”

She began paying more attention. “Not Artie Constable?”

“I don’t have time to play twenty questions, Mrs. Robustelli. Didn’t you know she’s mixed up with Murray Gold?”

That jarred her. She had the glass to her mouth, but some of the whiskey went down the wrong way.

“Murray Gold? Murray Gold? The gangster? What a goddamned fantastic lie. What kind of weirdos have you been talking to?”

“The guy who told me is usually right about these things. Gold’s been picking her up after school.”

It didn’t take the girl’s mother long to adjust to the idea. “I knew there was something fishy,” she said grimly. “She was supposed to be staying late for extra help. But she went right on getting E’s and D’s. Gold! My God, we all know he likes them young and dumb, but this is going a bit far.” Her eyes jumped to the photograph. “Listen-listen-if Angelo finds out about this, he’ll kill her, I swear. I know you sometimes say that and don’t mean it, but I mean it. He’ll take out his trusty revolver and shots will be fired. Gold’s about eighty years old!”