Brett Halliday - Violence Is Golden

She hugged his arm. “To me that’s six years’ salary. And you swindled it in an hour and a quarter. But he was right, you know-you are lucky.”

In their room, she kicked out of her shoes and picked up an earphone. “I saw Naomi in the lobby, but not George.”

Shayne loosened his tie. It would take time for his adversaries to plan and mount another action, but he would be hearing from them again, he knew. The Miami plane bringing Tim Rourke was due in another half hour. Christa was Shayne’s immediate concern. An obvious strategy would be to try to reach him through her. His obvious counterstrategy was not to let her out of his sight between now and the time the plane left for Venezuela in the morning.

She was watching him. After a moment she slowly took off her earrings. Shayne had a feeling that this was going to be one of his most agreeable assignments in a long time.

One of her hands flew to an earphone. “This wretched equipment,” she said after a moment, disappointed. “Now the static is making noises like a person being sick.”

She brought him to her side with a gesture. “The phone’s ringing.” Picking up the second earphone, Shayne heard George’s voice say sullenly, “Hello.”

After a moment he continued, “Does it have to be tonight? To tell you the truth, I’m not feeling too well.”

Again he listened.

He snapped, “OK, I’ll be there,” and hung up with an oath. There was a retching sound, then, a little later, a rush of water.

Hearing nothing more, Shayne put down the earphone and shook a cigarette out of his pack.

“Darling, I have something I wish to say,” Christa said later. “And I happen to be quite serious, so listen to me seriously. If there were more of us than two, either you or I would go out and follow George to see where he goes. But we are without a car, without contact with the local police. I think logic calls for us to spend the night here, with the door locked and a gun under each pillow.”

“I decided the same thing when you took off your earrings,” Shayne said.

“I am trying to say something, Mike, so will you please not look as though you already know what it is? It might be something you don’t expect.”

“You’ve surprised me a few times. What are we talking about, whether or not we sleep in separate beds?”

“Damn you, Mike. I made a few careless remarks on that subject, as I hope you don’t remember, but I am not that type of person. Not exclusively that type of person.” She lifted her hands in despair. “I’ve lost track. Don’t sit there looking so sure of yourself.”

“We’re both cops,” Shayne suggested. “This isn’t a pleasure trip. We’re here on business.”

“Precisely. And we’re both mature people. Simply because the job requires us to share a room-”

“Doesn’t mean we have to do anything we don’t really want to.”

“You’re twisting my words! And will you stop grinning? That’s better. It has nothing to do with wanting or not wanting. Mike, listen.”

She pushed back her hair. “When I was seventeen, I had a bad and cynical time. I did some foolish things. Jules LeFevre found me and helped me. He needed an agent who would be accepted by the world I was living in then, on the edge of the drug business, among small criminals and students and politicals. Later I became a bona fide member of the police. I worked for a time on the French Riviera, then in Lisbon. I was given money to dress well, so I wouldn’t look like a policewoman. I broke up a group of jewel thieves when I was twenty-two. I saw Jules only sometimes, and it was always business, but I had a special feeling for him. He had saved me, I think, from something very bad. All during the day today, at odd times, I have remembered that he’s dead. Killed perhaps by one of these people we are playing cat-and-mouse with. Tonight, Mike, I think we should do nothing to break our concentration. If I ever make love to you, I want it to fill my mind! After tomorrow perhaps-”

One foot grazed Shayne’s knee.

The little contact canceled her arguments, and she came in against him. But before their bodies had adjusted to each other the phone rang, not the phone in the Savages’ room, but the one on the table between the beds.

It went on ringing. By the time Shayne decided it had to be answered and reached for it, it had stopped.

“Damn it,” Christa said with a little laugh. “But you see? Definitely not tonight.”

She clicked for the operator and asked if she had a call for them. She made a sour face a moment later.

“Yes, he’s here.”

She handed the phone to Shayne. The familiar too-girlish voice of Mary Ocain exploded against his eardrum.

“Mike! Just what are you up to there, with your blonde bombshell? Why weren’t you answering your phone? You’re supposed to be working, according to the story you gave me. I think it’s too disgusting for words.”

“As a matter of fact,” Shayne said, “we were in the middle of-”

“Don’t tell me!” Mary screamed. “I know what you were in the middle of. I’ve been picturing the scene. Mike, I’m ensconced in bed with a liqueur, a box of chocolates and a ribald paperback novel. I’m wearing a new nightie I bought for this trip on the chance that I might meet some impetuous Latin. I have something to tell you, and I thought I might inveigle you into coming down? It’s Room 285, and my roommate, to everybody’s surprise, has been invited to have drinks with the captain and won’t be in till-”

“What do you have to tell me, Mary?”

“I really think you’d get more out of it face to face?”

She made it a question. “Sorry,” Shayne said curtly. “Could you move it along a little faster, Mary? I’m expecting another call. I don’t want to tie up the phone.”

“I see through that! That’s very transparent! You want to get back to your blonde. Well, I won’t keep you long, a minute or two at the most. And if at any time you want to interrupt me and come down, don’t hesitate.”

“Now that you’ve got that out of the way-”

“Yes, Mike,” she said meekly. “Coyness is one of my many vices. I know you told me to crawl back into the woodwork and leave the investigation to you, but you didn’t think I was going to plug up my ears and wear a blindfold, did you? I didn’t do anything imprudent. I took a very small risk, and it paid off. I’m alive to tell about it.”

“You aren’t telling about it yet,” Shayne said patiently.

“I’m coming to it. I was down on the beach, well-oiled because of the fact that I freckle, and there was quite a breeze blowing. In ten minutes my skin felt like sandpaper. We were supposed to stay another half hour, but I went up to the pool to rinse off, and I saw George Savage going into one of the cabanas. Nothing suspicious about that, but do you remember I told you about that big Japanese with a camera? As I was climbing out of the pool, he went into the same cabana!”

“And you decided it was just a coincidence and went up to your room to change for dinner, because you remembered I told you to stop acting like a character in a Hitchcock movie.”

“No, to be honest with you I didn’t. How often does anybody like me get a chance to do something about crime? Now, Mike, I can tell from the tense way you’re not saying anything that you don’t think it was a good idea. But I’m not a moron. I had my camera with me. If anybody saw me they’d think I was getting into position for a low-angle shot of the beach. And nobody saw me, I’m sure.”

“That’s great,” Shayne said through his teeth.

“Mike, you were right to give away that forty-seven thousand dollars! Of course, poolside cabanas are built of the flimsiest materials. I heard George say something about some arrangement he was making at the casino. I came in on the tail end of that and I didn’t know what he meant until tonight, when some of the other gals and I were arguing about why you didn’t keep the money. And it struck me. They were planning to sandbag you and make it look like a robbery!”