Brett Halliday - At the Point of a. 38

Shayne shook open his identification folder. The clerk peered at it through the bottom half of his bifocals, then through the top half at Shayne himself.

“A private detective from the big city. What can I do for you, sir?”

“You can sell me the same kind of gun you sold the guy who was just in here.”

“Sergeant Tibbett? That was a Winchester sixteen-gauge, over and under, and I think I do have another one like it.”

But something about Shayne’s request bothered him, and he didn’t move until Shayne brought out his wallet.

“I’ll be paying cash. And I see you do repairs here. There’s a little modification I’d like to have made.”

“You’ll have to wait for that-the repairman doesn’t come in until one.”

“I can do it myself. Tibbett and I are doing some skeet-shooting. We want to use the same guns, so we’ll start even.”

That explanation, thin as it was, satisfied the clerk. He unlocked a rack and took out a handsome weapon. Shayne had hunted with this gun, and knew it well. He checked the trigger action, holding the hammers to let them come down gently.

“I like a freer trigger, a little more play.”

He took the gun back to a work-room. The clerk came with him, stopping in the doorway.

“Be sure to put everything back. He’s the world’s fussiest man.”

When the street door banged, he returned to the main part of the store. Shayne broke the gun and tightened it into the gun vise, muzzle end up. He looked through the scrap barrel, without finding anything the right size, then picked out two stove-bolts and cut off the heads. They were a bit too big, and he ground down the corners until they fitted into the barrels. Lighting up a portable welding outfit, he welded them in.

He put everything back as he had found it. After paying for the gun and buying a box of shells, breaking one of Tibbett’s own hundreds, he asked to have the gun wrapped.

“I liked the way you wrapped Tibbett’s. Do mine the same way.”

Without looking at Shayne directly, the clerk said nervously, “We won’t get in any trouble over this, will we?”

“I don’t see how. You sold two separate guns. Naturally the packages are going to look pretty much alike. Don’t seal it.”

The clerk tore off a piece of heavy wrapping paper and folded it carefully around Shayne’s purchase. He used a strip of paper tape printed with the name of the store, but only fastened down one end.

“Like this?”

“Fine.”

Shayne took the gun back to his Buick and locked it inside. Then he went off to reconnoiter on foot.

The red car was easy to spot, parked on the almost empty street a half block from the two-family house where Helen Robustelli and her Raggedy Ann doll had spent the last few days with her ill-assorted friends. In his sling and cast, Shayne was nearly as conspicuous as the red car, and he returned for his Buick.

He parked on the same street as the MG, on the next block but one, and pointing the same way. Using binoculars, he saw the back of the sergeant’s cropped head, his elbow on the car door.

He lit a cigarette and settled back to work through everything again. The players in the game were scattered about the map of southern Florida, and the clocks were running. His operator checked once more, and found the police switchboards still not functioning normally. Shayne planted the pins in his imaginary map. In Miami Beach, the Arabs’ action was well underway. Unless Coddington had run into trouble at the property office, he had the counterfeit bills and was just reaching the Palmetto Expressway, and Shayne had reason to hope that he was still a jump and a half ahead of Gold, moving in the same direction. Artie Constable was probably still with Gold. Esther Landau, of Israeli intelligence, was asleep in a motel near the airport. Helen, Sergeant Tibbett and Shayne himself were waiting, within three hundred yards of each other.

Again and again, he returned to the enigmatic figure of Murray Gold. If he made any mistakes with that man, Shayne knew he would vanish like smoke.

Every so often, he checked the time and moved Coddington another leg from Miami. He had watched the odometer when he made the same run the night before, and he assumed that Coddington was following instructions and driving fast. Three minutes sooner than Shayne had expected, the detective’s car turned the corner and came toward him. He parked behind Shayne, unloaded a bulky carton tied with twine, and brought it to Shayne’s car. Shayne motioned him in.

City detectives were theoretically required to keep their weight within five pounds of their age-height line on the life insurance tables, but Coddington was thirty pounds over. He was sweating heavily.

“How’s the arm?”

“It’s O.K.,” Shayne said. “We may be cutting this close so let’s get underway. You see the red MG parked up there. There’s a guy in it. Do you think you can act like a junkie?”

“Junkies are usually thinner, but I can try. I wondered why you wanted the package of rags. We’re buying junk?”

“We’re working the handkerchief switch, only with shotguns. The money’s for somebody else.”

He told Coddington what to do. Like all good plainclothesmen, Coddington had worked up an identity for the times when it was important not to be tagged as a cop. In his basic undercover role he was a vacationist, a little drunk, with money in his pocket and looking for ways to spend it. Today he was unshaven, wearing the clothes he had put on for his expedition into the Everglades. Wetting his fingers, he picked up some dirt from the floor and rubbed it across his face. Then he shambled off.

Shayne watched through the field glasses. Coddington passed the parked car, but the brightness of the color and the fact that somebody was sitting in it pulled his eye. He looked back, stooped and played with a shoelace until a passing car was out of sight, looked around once more, and walked out in the street and back to the MG.

He showed his revolver, holding it close so Tibbett alone could see it. He was shaking with excitement. He ordered Tibbett out, to accompany him to a place where they could do business in private. He wasn’t a car-thief, he assured the sergeant. He wouldn’t know how to get rid of the MG even if he felt like bothering with it. All he wanted was Tibbett’s money and watch and shoes. He was half a day late. He needed medicine badly.

If Tibbett had tried to defend himself with the shotgun, Coddington had been told to shoot him. Tibbett decided to do as he was ordered, and unfolded himself from the car. The two men disappeared between houses. Shayne started his engine. The detective returned, a moment later, alone, carrying a pair of shoes. Shayne moved up and double-parked.

Tibbett’s new Winchester was lying across the second bucket seat in the red car, still wrapped, but he had broken the paper tape so he could get it out in a hurry. Shayne, while he was waiting, had loaded and rewrapped the gun he had doctored in the sporting goods store. Now he sealed that package and tore the tape so it would look exactly like the package in the MG.

Coddington made the switch and got into the Buick. Shayne circled the block, ending up back where he had started.

“How hard did you hit him?”

“Maybe too hard. You wanted him unconscious for exactly three minutes. That’s a tough thing to judge. Hey. There he comes. Three minutes and twenty seconds. That’s what I call a delicate touch.”

Shayne asked for binoculars, and watched Tibbett waver into sight. His face was a mask of blood. He wouldn’t be firing a shotgun at anybody until he got his coordination back. He stood in the street swaying and brushing at his face. Then he answered one of Shayne’s questions-was he operating alone, or was he in this with Helen? He walked away, some of the time on the sidewalk, some of the time on the grass. Reaching the house with the For Sale sign, he went in.