Brett Halliday: Violence Is Golden

One of the reasons for Shayne’s success over the years was that he could think like a criminal when necessary. The gunmen, having watched Shayne dash across the field, would reason that his next move, before returning to his own side of the bowl, would be to pick up the gun which, as a private detective, he would undoubtedly be carrying in his car. Shayne’s car was parked in a distant lot, and he didn’t want to be caught in the open lanes without a weapon. In a moment more, if his hunch was correct, one of the Japanese would appear around the curve, his camera ready, watching the gates.

Shayne was low in the front seat. Waiting, he felt absently in his shirt pocket for cigarettes. He had lost them during the clash with the Japanese. He found a crumpled package in the pocket of the blazer, with one cigarette in it. Before he could light it, the smaller Japanese passed from the rear, close to the wall.

Shayne gauged the distance. He could make it in two bounds, closing with the Japanese before he could bring up his camera. He checked the rearview mirror. No one was in sight.

At that moment something made the Japanese look around. Shayne tipped his head, to screen the upper part of his face with the hat brim. The Japanese looked away, then back. He took a step toward the bus.

Shayne hit the starter and the gas at the same moment and jammed the stick down into low. The motor roared. The inner wheel jumped the low curb as the Japanese raised his camera.

Shayne threw himself sideward. A bullet went through the windshield, leaving a starred hole. There was another great, sustained howl from the crowd inside the stadium. Shayne shifted feet. The gas pedal was all the way down, and he was steering with his left hand, braced for the crash. The Japanese fired again, then once more.

Then the bus hit him, lifted him, and smashed him back against the concrete.

Will Gentry rubbed his nose with his thumb and forefinger as he studied his friend across the desk. Gentry, Miami Chief of Police, was a tough, honest, courageous cop whose face had developed deep lines of weariness and disillusionment as a result of several decades in an appointive office in a volatile town. He knew Shayne’s methods. He had seen them succeed often enough so he was willing to cooperate with the private detective whenever it was politically possible.

“All right, Mike. If that’s the way you want to play it.”

“I’m not concealing a thing, Will,” Shayne said flatly. “I really didn’t know those guys. I don’t know why they wanted to kill me. You know as much about it as I do.”

“You don’t even have the faintest inkling, the faintest shadow of an idea, why anybody would send a couple of professional gunmen after you?”

Shayne shrugged. “I’ve stepped on a few toes. There are people around who wouldn’t mind reading my obituary. I’m adjusted to the idea-it goes with the job.”

“I take it you aren’t asking for police protection.”

“The same amount you give to ordinary citizens.” He added more seriously, “Hell, Will-you can’t give me twenty-four-hour coverage for more than a few days. You don’t have that many men to spare. I’ll have to handle it my own way.”

Gentry sighed. “And the odds are you’ll come out smelling of roses. Of course, I could put a man on you whether you like it or not, but I won’t if you’re dead set against it. To be realistic,” he added, “you generally manage to lose a tail.”

“Because I know them so well.”

“One more minute, Mike,” Gentry said as Shayne stubbed out his cigarette. “I don’t like to hear about guns going off at the Orange Bowl during a big game-it’s bad news for the tourist business. It was a pretty good effort. The guy said he wanted to take your picture, and what could you do about it, short of making a boor of yourself by smashing his equipment? But you wouldn’t like it. You wouldn’t look at the camera. Luckily for you, Rourke spotted it in time and threw his hand in front of your face, getting his wrist smashed with a thirty-two caliber slug. You came very damn close to taking that slug between the eyes.”

“I remember what happened.”

“OK-you got one of them. You didn’t have anything else to hit him with, so you hit him with a fifty-four-passenger bus. Fine. And now you’re going to stand around with your hands in your pockets until they try again, and hope you’ll be able to counter with something equally violent and unpleasant and public. Two or three more times, and maybe they’ll get the message.”

“That’s the way it has to be, Will.”

“Speaking as a friend now, not Chief of Police. It may work. Lloyds of London might not agree with me, but I think a bookie might give you pretty good odds, say five to four. But five-to-four shots have been known to lose. If you get unlucky for a change, it won’t be any consolation to me to know that you probably want me to help carry your coffin.”

He picked up the oddly shaped Japanese camera and pressed a hidden release. The case sprang open, showing a short-barreled revolver. The muzzle fitted into a circular opening that would have been the lens aperture in a camera designed for taking pictures.

“It’s a lovely gadget,” Gentry said. “Definitely not a mass-production item. This wasn’t put together by an amateur. It was hand-tooled and manufactured as a unit. It’s a perfect assassin’s weapon, when you have to pick your man out of a crowd at close range.”

“You can get just as good results with a rusty thirty-eight from a pawnshop.”

“Usually better. But that’s not the point. They didn’t use pawnshop guns, they used these. Two Japanese, and that’s not routine either. The one you splashed on the front of the Orange Bowl had nothing in his pockets but the stub of his ticket to the Dolphins’ game. His fingerprints don’t mean anything in Washington. I’m putting out a sheet on the survivor, and if any metropolitan police department has ever had any trouble with a six-foot-one Japanese, I’ll be hearing about it. But I doubt if I will. These people were imported.”

“I don’t disagree with you,” Shayne said impatiently. “What are you leading up to?”

“The whole operation stinks of money. It’s international. It’s-I don’t know what to call it; ‘elegant’ is probably the word. So when you say you’ve made a few thousand enemies over the years and this could be any one of them, you’re not being honest with me. What was the name of the character you tangled with in New York on that narcotics theft? Adam something.”

“Adam’s his last name,” Shayne said, his voice flat and unemotional.

“You cost him some dough, as I remember. You made him look like a slob. If he’s behind this, it would explain a few things. Those Japanese were conspicuous enough so nobody would think you’d been killed in some two-bit local quarrel. Like a public announcement-don’t fool around with me or I’ll have you assassinated expensively in front of seventy-five thousand witnesses.”

“You’ve convinced me,” Shayne said sardonically. “Our next move is to bring him in and book him as a material witness.”

“Very funny. All I’m trying to do is rub your nose in the obvious. He’s a rich man, with good connections. You stick out in this town like a sore thumb.”

Shayne made a brusque gesture. “Do you have any real suggestions, or is this just talk so you won’t blame yourself if I don’t duck fast enough the next time?”

“It’s partly that,” Gentry admitted. “But if you do have anything to go on-anything at all-don’t keep it to yourself this time. Sometimes it’s an advantage to operate alone, but this isn’t one of them.”

“I don’t know a thing I haven’t told you, Will. Sure, what you say is a possibility. But I don’t even know the guy’s full name. He knows where he can find me-I don’t even know what country he lives in. Maybe that gives him an edge. And maybe not, too. He has to come to me. Don’t worry so much about me-I’ll be careful. That doesn’t mean I’m going to stay out of public places. Who won the game, incidentally?”