Brett Halliday - At the Point of a. 38

His audience-a captive audience if there ever was one-listened quietly, though there were signs of restlessness among his fellow Arabs. No doubt they had heard it before, and wanted to move along to the next stage. Which would be what? This was a collection of very rich men, and they and their families-and Lillian LaCroix thrown in for laughs-would fetch a pretty ransom.

“It is not a hospital you raise money for,” the Arab said, “or the battle against cancer. It is a nation of murderers, who bomb little children. After today it may not be so easy to raise those rivers of money. We have made a declaration of war against you. You realize that we are serious, we will back what we say with guns, with our lives. And if we die, you others will die with us.”

He lifted his narrow head, with a quick enlargement of the nostrils. It was a pose, but an effective one. He had brought a party of armed men across the Atlantic, into the enemy’s stronghold. But Lillian had always distrusted people who were that pleased with themselves. In the sack, they had little imagination and expected nothing but service. Her knees felt weak. For her to be included in this was really ridiculous. She had never decided what she thought about that whole Middle Eastern mess, who was right and who was wrong.

Another Arab came in, carrying his gun in a book bag. He gave Rashid a head-shake.

The leader said, “The seventh man cannot be found. We will settle for six.”

“What ransom are you asking?” Weinberger said.

“One million dollars per committeeman. An airplane to take us out of the country. We leave here now. I want you to look happy and careless, like vacationers. These are American guns, we are sure they will function well. Will everybody please listen intently for another minute. You understand that we have no intention of being captured. But there has been no warfare on American soil for one hundred years, and you are all of you civilians, possibly you have never seen a bloody death. I am assured that kidnapping is a bad crime in your country. Not as bad as some others, however. You,” he said, pointing with his gun.

Lillian’s stomach clenched. What she wanted most was not to be noticed. The crowd parted in front of the leader. He stopped, facing her.

“What is your name?”

“Mrs. LaCroix.”

“You were taken in the bedroom of the Jew Weinberger.” He flicked his fingernails across her breast. “Are you Jewish?”

“About one-tenth.”

“A perfumed whore.” he said, pronouncing the w. “Not Jewish, I have no reason to hate you.”

For a fraction of an instant, she thought he was about to tell her to go. When she saw from a change in his eyes what he really intended, she tried to seize the barrel of the gun as it rotated toward her. A three-round burst shattered her forearm and tore into her body.

“Something’s wrong with their switchboard,” Shayne’s operator reported after re-dialing the St. Albans. “I get a funny buzz.”

Shayne rattled his fingers on the steering wheel. “Get me the Fontainebleau, and keep trying those police numbers. What the hell are they doing up there, calling each other?”

The Fontainebleau security officer was an experienced, reliable man who had often worked with Shayne. He listened without interrupting, and wasted no time asking Shayne if he was fooling or drunk.

“From their standpoint it makes more sense than that kidnapping at the Olympics,” he said. “Yeah, I’ll get right on it.”

Shayne released his operator, but told her to watch for his signal. His forehead was creased. Ordinarily, in a case like this that was bristling with unanswered questions, he would have broken in on the action and hoped that his presence would provoke some kind of counter-move that would tell him something. But he was thirty miles from Miami. He knew that timing was vital. Sitting absolutely still, seeing none of the movement about him on the street, he imagined a plot-line for Murray Gold, taking him to Israel, in and out of prison, back to Miami. The guns. What else would the Arabs need? Vehicles, information about American traffic patterns and police reactions, advice on how to handle the media while the blackmail was being collected. Their shadowy police connection-Gentry? Shayne didn’t believe it, and he had pushed the question out of sight so it wouldn’t keep irritating him-could block incoming calls during the crucial moments. With the cashing-in of the heroin, Gold’s role would be over. He wouldn’t wait around for the guns to be used. Shayne’s one chance was to intercept him before he could leave the country. Somebody else would have to deal with the Arabs. Murray Gold was Shayne’s.

To be in the right place at the right time, he had to force himself inside Gold’s skull, to think like him. Would Helen Robustelli consent to being left behind? In a deal involving hundreds of thousands, would $500 satisfy her? She had talked Shayne out of the house, but one of the things he had noticed was that when she left she hadn’t taken her Raggedy Ann doll, which might mean that she intended to come back. Gold had been using her as an arranger. Perhaps she had arranged a way to escape. The keys in her purse: Nefertiti.

“Mike?” his operator said.

“Get me the Coast Guard station in Key West.”

When a Coast Guardsman answered, Shayne identified himself and asked if they had a listing for a pleasure boat named Nefertiti. The answer was yes: a thirty-five foot sports fisherman chartering out of Key Largo.

That decided him. While he was waiting, he had looked up the number of a plainclothes detective in Southwest Miami, named Henry Coddington. He looked at his watch, and followed the second hand all the way around. Then he gave the number to the operator. Coddington answered.

“Shayne? On my day off? I’m taking my daughter out to the Glades to get some pictures of the birds. You just caught me.”

“Can you postpone it, in the interests of making some money? Seven hundred and fifty for the afternoon.”

“You know the rule against moonlighting, but I don’t think it applies to seven hundred and fifty dollar jobs, do you? If you’re paying that much, I suppose it has to be slightly illegal.”

“Only slightly. If it works, it’s going to be a major collar, and any little shortcuts along the way will be overlooked. That package of counterfeit fifties and hundreds you pulled in a couple of weeks ago. Where is it now, with the evidence clerk?”

“It better be. We need it to convict.”

“Sign it out and bring it down to Homestead Beach, and pay no attention to speed limits. Bring a gun.”

“Man, it sounds heavy. I can say the D.A. wants to look at it, but if anything happens to it, you know they’ll burn my ass.”

“Trust me,” Shayne said. “If it goes sour I’ll cover for you. Come on, move, or I’ll get somebody else.”

“I’m moving. But only for you, Mike.”

Shayne had a surprise as he hung up. Master Sergeant Marian Tibbett, USAF, blood type O, who had sold government property in the amount of $3000 to Murray Gold, to be passed on to Arab terrorists, came out of a sporting-goods store and walked off carrying a paper-wrapped parcel.

There were two blocks of stores. Tibbett got into a car on the next block-today he was travelling in a bright red, low-slung MG-and drove away. Shayne thought hard for a moment. Important parts of the puzzle were still missing, but Tibbett fell into place in an instant. Having been hijacked of some small change by Shayne, he was taking a shot at the real money.

Shayne crossed to the sporting-goods store. Except for one elderly clerk, it was empty. Amid the general clutter of merchandise, overflowing the shelves and covering every square inch of counter space, the big items seemed to be fishing rods, scuba gear and guns, in that order.