Brett Halliday - Six Seconds to Kill

“God forbid,” Berger said involuntarily.

“All right, Abe. That remark makes you an accessory. The weapon that killed him wasn’t a Czech automatic. It was Camilla Steele. She’s going to put in a stretch in a mental hospital, whether she’s sent there by a judge or somebody else. She may pull out of it in the end. Meanwhile, I’m going to see to it that the public knows the facts about the gun and where it came from. Crowther won’t do any lying in state in the Capitol rotunda.”

“Let’s be sure they are facts.”

“Now that’s the first sensible remark you’ve made in this conversation. Last night when she picked up the gun she was in no condition to kill anybody except possibly herself, and she couldn’t do that because it wasn’t loaded with live ammunition. Somebody-not Crowther, somebody else-straightened her out, switched clips, found her a place to sleep, made a few little changes in the plan so she’d have a chance to get away, and then left her a syringe with an overdose of morphine, so she wouldn’t be around to identify him in court. I was hoping she could describe him. She can’t remember much. She’s already beginning to paper it over. By tomorrow she may not remember anything at all. Here’s what I want you to do.”

“Now we get to the pitch.”

“That’s right. There are still major blanks in her story. I want to take her over the same route tonight and see if anything else comes back to her.”

“Impossible.”

“Abe, it’s our only chance to find out who really killed Crowther. It may not work, but it seems to me we have to try it.”

“Bring her in. Maybe we can arrange something.”

“That’s not the deal,” Shayne said coldly. “I think she finally trusts me, but it’s been touch and go. I can’t take a chance on turning her over to anybody else, and I obviously can’t do this without your help. If you can’t talk your committee into it, I’ll stop working on her and let her die.”

“Say that again.”

“I’ll let her die,” Shayne said harshly. “It’ll save her from a sure death by execution, and I won’t be any worse off than I am now. Here’s the option. Call off your dogs. All of them, Abe. At nine tonight I’ll bring her to the airport. You can have a thousand cops out there, as far as I’m concerned, so long as they’re in plain clothes and keep out of my way.”

“It’s a stunt,” Berger said. “I don’t like it a bit.”

“But you’ve got to do it.”

Berger hesitated. “Well-maybe so. It’ll mean stalling the media wolves, getting clearance from Washington-I don’t think you have any conception of the kind of tension we’re under. Let me think if there’s any way it could backfire.”

“Any number of ways.”

“Call me back in ten minutes. No, make it twenty. I’ve got some selling to do.”

Shayne put the phone down slowly. Outside on the terrace, Camilla was still being walked slowly up and down. Her face was empty of expression. At nine o’clock that night, when Shayne had told Berger he would deliver her at the airport, she would be unconscious.

The next time around, Shayne asked Paul London to let Dr. Miller relieve him for a moment.

Promptly at nine, an ambulance arrived at the taxi discharge point at the Miami International Airport. Michael Shayne came out first, and helped a woman to dismount. She was wearing a full black wig, dark glasses and the same nondescript flowered dress the assassin of Eliot Crowther had worn that morning. She carried a black handbag with a long strap slung over her shoulder.

She entered the terminal alone.

The real Camilla was sleeping in the North Miami clinic, breathing fitfully and occasionally throwing her head from side to side. To Shayne, looking down at her before they left the clinic, it had seemed that she was a long way from giving up. Paul London had agreed readily to the substitution. One of the nurses let out the side seam of the dress so it would fit him. Another nurse with exceptionally large feet contributed shoes and supervised the makeup. Not much padding was necessary. He had trouble walking in the high heels, but presumably Camilla herself would be walking unsteadily because of drugs.

He went directly to the baggage claims window. He surrendered a check and was handed the same lightweight suitcase Camilla had picked up the night before. He took it to the ladies’ room near the Pan-American ticket counter. He hesitated briefly here, but went in.

Tonight there were a half dozen women inside, including two armed policewomen. He entered a booth with his suitcase. Tonight there was no gun inside it. He already had a gun in his handbag, a heavy Colt.45 automatic.

He abandoned the suitcase and left the ladies’ room. Outside, he looked around quickly and bolted down a flight of steps. He was in the southernmost concourse, one of six that protruded from the terminal building like the spokes of a half-wheel. Banks of floodlights three quarters of the way up the control tower illuminated the gates and the holding areas. Two airplanes were loading, each surrounded by its own small school of service vehicles.

When a uniformed man approached, London ran out through the nearest gate onto the concrete, teetering on his unaccustomed heels. A crew bus, coming in from the hangar area, swerved to avoid hitting him, and the driver honked angrily. It had been agreed that when he broke into the open at the end of the concourse, instead of continuing out on the field as Camilla had done the previous night, he would cut back at once toward the Delta maintenance hangar. A security guard who hadn’t been warned about what was happening started for him, but was called off by a voice from above on a bullhorn.

London crossed to the hangar. The big galvanized overhead doors into the building were closed. He opened a smaller door beyond. One hand was inside his open handbag.

He waited an instant, then stepped through the doorway.

Only a few lights burned inside the cavernous building. A big DC-9 was suspended from a rig attached to an overhead crane. Three of its engines had been pulled. Two cherry-pickers were in position beyond it-trucks carrying a metal bucket at the end of a long movable arm. Using these buckets, workmen could reach the upper surface of the wings. One of the buckets was higher than the plane. As London moved further into the building, Michael Shayne, crouched against the opposite wall, reached up and touched a light switch.

He heard a faint metallic sound. He pulled the switch and flooded the building with light.

At the same instant, a gun banged. The blaze of light jarred the shooter’s aim. The bullet, from a high-powered Winchester sporting rifle fired from the cherry-picker overhanging the plane, struck London above the knee, knocking him back through the doorway.

Shayne shouted, his voice echoing from the metal ceiling, “Throw it down.”

The man in the bucket had disappeared. The bucket began to come down. For an instant it was hidden by the wing of the plane. Shayne moved before it could reappear. From the wing’s shadow, the gun banged again.

Shayne dropped behind a tow truck, going all the way down to the oily concrete. Abe Berger, near the hangar’s rear door, fired at random, to show he was there. Another shot from the moving bucket went through the fender of the tow truck.

And then the bucket was down, concealed from Shayne by the cherry-picker’s chassis. He crawled beneath the truck. He had a sixteen-gauge shotgun. The Winchester clattered to the concrete twenty feet behind the DC-9, without disturbing Shayne’s concentration. The man broke from cover. Shayne brought the shotgun around smoothly and fired at the cement floor, a foot or so short. The man ran into the ricocheting pellets and stumbled through the door. Paul London, lying on his back holding the Colt in both hands, shot him in the chest. He reeled into the open, into the path of a speeding power cart. The impact knocked off his hit and dark glasses, and as he went backward, Shayne saw that it was Teddy Sparrow.