Brett Halliday - Six Seconds to Kill

“You must understand,” Vega said defensively, “that the climate in Miami right now is not favorable to a pro-United States position. As recently as a year ago I could mobilize hundreds, with a few phone calls. But everybody has jobs, they have become so materialistic. Lawn mowers. Washing machines.”

“How many?” Shayne said.

“Twenty-eight? I know it doesn’t sound like much, but twenty-eight experienced activists, properly dispersed, can set a much larger crowd in motion. To quote Napoleon, ‘Give me a corporal’s guard-’”

“All right. Twenty-eight phone calls. Tell them to stay home and watch the riot on television. In fact, if they stay home there may not be a riot.”

“I’ve already paid-”

“Don’t try to recover. That’s down the drain. They’ll be glad to earn money staying home. It’s less bloody.”

“Some were looking forward to it, you know. I ought to have a fund to dispense in case-”

“Lorenzo,” Shayne said softly, “if five of your people show up tomorrow, Internal Revenue is going to be looking for you, and I hope you believe I mean it. Don’t look so unhappy-people are talking about you again. You’re important enough to be bought. That’s better than nothing. Now let’s see how it sounds.”

A good Japanese tape recorder was concealed under Shayne’s dashboard, with pickup mikes planted at various places around the car’s interior. The playback was tied into the radio speaker. He moved a recessed dial built into the left side of the driver’s seat. The tape whirred. He reversed it, and Vega’s voice came out:

“His rudeness was unquestionably CIA. I captured it on magnetic tape. I will play it for you, and you will see plainly that it was definitely not the idea of Lorenzo Vega.”

“Very good fidelity,” Shayne commented. “Not everybody has such clear diction.”

“You do not surprise me,” Vega said wearily. “I made my tape of the spurious Mr. Robinson for the same reason, self-protection. Then I can expect no remuneration at all from you, even say five hundred dollars? One hundred?”

“Zero.”

“Past loyalties, I see, count for nothing. Now please tell me what I am to say when this Mr. Robinson, whoever he may be, asks me how he got so little value for his money?”

“You’d better keep out of sight for a while,” Shayne told him. “First I want that tape. Then get to work on the cancellation. When that’s taken care of, go to the Royalton Arms Motel in North Miami. I may or not need you. I’ll call in a few days.”

The phone rang between them.

“Do call in a few days,” Vega said. “It makes me nervous to think that people have forgotten me. I do rash things.”

“This time stay cool.”

The phone rang again. He picked it up.

A voice he didn’t recognize said, “Shayne?”

Shayne jerked his head, dismissing Vega, and waited till the Cuban was out of the car. He rolled up the windows and returned to the phone.

“Yeah, this is Shayne.”

“Tell me your car license for an identification.”

Shayne dropped his hand to the controls of the tape recorder, advanced the tape and opened the switch cutting in both ends of the phone transmission. By that time he had recited his license number.

“Now who is this?”

“No names! I am notifying you because I don’t like what is going on, and I want you to stop it.”

“Stop what?”

“When I went into this, nobody told me there would be someone killed. I am for the revolution like anybody else, but Madre de Dios! When you think of the excitement, the chance of a slip-up, and I am in it up to my neck. You have to do something.”

“I’m listening.” Shayne felt for a cigarette. “What do you think I should do?”

The next words rushed into his ear. “It is dangerous for me to be talking to you. They will kill me promptly if they find out. I have picked you because I am told you are careful, you don’t blab to the newspapers like the damn police. Crowther will be shot. And if we are caught, everybody with a small part in it will be thrown into jail forever. Tell him to stay away from Miami! They say the plan is sure to succeed. I know nothing of that, I am only to drive. You are listening?”

“Carefully.”

“I can tell you only this. The person who is to do the killing is a woman.” He said hastily, “I have to hang up. Bye-bye.”

Camilla Steele stepped out of the taxi at the International Airport. Friday night had arrived at last. It was a little after nine, according to the big clock confronting her as she entered the main concourse.

So far she was following instructions exactly, and she was pleased with herself. She had dressed carefully, because strange things had been happening to her lately, and she wasn’t sure how the evening would end. There was a smile of sorts on her face-a little strained, because those muscles hadn’t been exercised lately. The human mind is a mystery. She had no idea why the prospect of committing murder should make her feel cheerful. Perhaps because it gave her a goal, something she had lacked since her husband’s death.

Was she actually going to shoot this creep Crowther? Perhaps. Yes, now that she was here in the airport at the appointed time, she had to admit that the thing had begun to take on a certain reality.

She hadn’t had a drink for three days. Of course she was sorry to say that she was taking more Dexamyl than was good for her. But she didn’t want to miss anything. She wasn’t sleeping. These were her last days on earth, not that she wanted to romanticize anything, and she had been hurrying from place to place, seeing old friends on impulse, making lists and then misplacing them. She had had two more conversations with the anonymous voice, the man who was going to help her assassinate Eliot Crowther. She had annoyed him, she thought, by saying casually that she might as well fall in with his suggestion because how much did she have to lose? He would have preferred a little passion. But that wasn’t her way. She would take things as they came, and at the last minute, if she actually saw the handsome face and phony white hair of Eliot Crowther, and if she had a loaded pistol in her hand at the time, she would undoubtedly pull the trigger. But she didn’t intend to shout any slogans. He wasn’t worth the effort.

Her co-conspirator, whoever he was, wasn’t happy about this. In all the famous assassinations-Judith and Holofernes, Charlotte Corday and Marat, Booth and Lincoln, and all the more recent ones-the assassins had been fanatics, dedicated people. Now and then Camilla could work herself up to that pitch, but it passed quickly. Her attention span was getting shorter and shorter.

Still, if he was willing to keep reminding her, she thought there was a good chance that it might actually happen.

And a day later, a ticket arrived in the mail, entitling someone named Mrs. Doris Myerson to admission to the luncheon at which Crowther was to receive his ludicrous medal. She would need to show this ticket to get into the ballroom elevator. She would show it again at a table on the eighth floor. She had been told exactly where she was to stand. She went to the hotel the next day, ascended to the eighth floor, looked into the ballroom, took up a position according to instructions, and pointed her finger at an imaginary attorney general, a step or two away.

When the voice called that night-in her mind she capitalized it, the Voice-she told him the whole thing seemed childishly simple, and reminded him that he had done nothing about providing a gun. They had a strange kind of quarrel on the phone, like any bickering married couple. He demanded to know, before he got in any deeper, whether she was playing a game with him, or was she serious? She gave him an honest answer: she didn’t know. She wouldn’t know till it happened.