Brett Halliday - Violence Is Golden

The sailor with the tommy gun was watching closely, frowning. He was a strong young boy, with heavy eyebrows and deep-set eyes. Shayne grinned at him. He returned the wallet to his hip pocket, buttoning it in, and picked up the blotting paper.

Tasting the thick, bitter coffee, he made a face.

“Cold.”

Shielding the movement with his body, he dropped the blotting paper into the cup. Again without asking permission, he poured the coffee back and turned up the heat beneath the urn.

After another moment, he refilled his cup, filled another for the sailor and took it across to him.

“Hell, let’s be friends,” he said cordially. “When this is over, we’ll all be rich.”

The sailor looked at him suspiciously, thought about it, and finally accepted the cup. Shayne gave him an encouraging wink.

“Nothing like coffee. I know we’re all worried about that chopper, but they’ll go away in a minute. Everything’s going to turn out all right.”

The sailor stirred in sugar and took a noisy sip, still without taking his eyes off Shayne.

“Greece,” Shayne said. “It must be a great place. I admit I don’t like the liquor much, and I can’t say much for the coffee, but drink up, will you? We don’t have a hell of a lot of time.”

He motioned with his cup and put it to his lips. The boy went on drinking, his eyes alive with suspicion. With LeFevre, Shayne remembered, a vague, foolish look had spread over his face when the drug took hold. It had happened suddenly, as though a switch had been thrown. The boy sipped his way through the coffee and tipped the cup to get the dregs at the bottom. Overhead, the helicopter fell away and came back.

Shayne was on the point of deciding that the blotting paper hadn’t been in the urn long enough to affect the coffee.

Suddenly the boy rose several inches in his chair. The look on his face was a duplicate of the one Shayne had seen on LeFevre’s. He drew a deep breath, and as he breathed out, all his tension left him.

“Nice gun,” Shayne said, pantomiming taking an imaginary tommy gun off his shoulder. “Let’s have a look.”

He held out his hand. Without hesitation, the boy closed the safety and handed him the weapon.

Shayne snapped out the clip and cleared the chamber. He shucked the forty-five rounds into a drawer in the table, returned the empty clip to the gun, and clowned with it for a moment, wiping out imaginary enemies. He opened the coffee urn and stirred the coffee with the barrel, to the boy’s amusement. Shayne gave the gun back, dripping coffee.

The helicopter dropped away behind them, but Shayne could still hear the rotor thumping steadily in the distance. The sailor was still laughing when Nikko came in.

“You can’t laugh your way out of this, please believe me,” Nikko told Shayne. “You think you’re safe because of so many witnesses. Put it out of your mind. I take only relatives and fellow townsmen as members of my crew. This is my nephew Chris. If I say the word, he will shoot you like a rabbit and drop you over the side with weights fastened to your ankles. I am not talking big, just telling you the facts.”

Glaring at Shayne, he drew a cup of coffee.

He stirred in two spoonfuls of sugar and began to drink without sitting down.

“Who is responsible for this helicopter?”

“Adam, naturally. You know that.”

Nikko’s eyebrows came down. “I see. Are you working for him?”

“I’m a free agent. But I’m always looking for this kind of situation. After the fighting stops, there’s usually something left over for me.”

“So the other story, about following Moss to St. Albans, that was a lie. I told you not to tell lies. You’ll regret it. What do you know about Adam?”

“Not enough,” Shayne said curtly. “But you couldn’t bring the Paladin across the Atlantic on your own responsibility. He must be somewhere around. His original idea was to transfer the gold to a helicopter and fly it down to La Guaira. That was before everybody started thinking up variations. We radioed Maiquetia before we landed. His obvious move as soon as he heard about the hijacking was to get the chopper in the air and come looking for us. Of course, he’d recognize his own boat.”

Nikko wet his lips. His eyes were worried.

“You’ve got a choice now,” Shayne continued. “You can throw the luggage overboard and head back to wherever you’re supposed to meet him, and pretend you were just out for a sail. Or you can cut back up the coast and dive for the gold in the morning. But you’re fooling with a dangerous man. A powerful man. Why not be satisfied with the million and a half you took him for last summer?”

Nikko sipped his coffee, examining Shayne. He didn’t react, so perhaps the drug was beginning to reach him.

Shayne went on, “You’ve been out of touch. Did anybody tell you that LeFevre’s dead?”

“Oh? I’m sorry to hear that. How did he die?”

“Murdered,” Shayne said. “I think your best bet might be to throw in with us and see if we can nail your boss for conspiracy. As far as I can see, that’s your only real out. I don’t think you can talk your way out of this. He probably suspects you already. I think he wanted to throw a little temptation in your way, to see how long it would take you to give in to it.”

Nikko sat down and said politely, “An interesting idea. You may very well be right.”

“I think so. Let’s kick it around and decide what to do next. I need a drink. Do you want anything, or are you going to stick with coffee?”

“I’ll stick with coffee.”

Shayne poured himself a cognac. “You were lucky last summer, weren’t you?”

“Because of the storm-I agree, very lucky. Otherwise, luck had no part in it. I was at Alexandria with the Paladin. I slipped down and picked up the gold and returned to Alexandria. It was arranged by LeFevre so no mention of the Paladin appeared in the Suez records. So why should this stupid Englishman think I had anything to do with the affair at all?”

“I see you don’t know him very well.”

“Quite true,” Nikko conceded. “He sends guests to the Paladin. He seldom comes himself. He’s too busy making money! Once, in eighteen months. And then only from Friday to Monday. To have a boat like this and never use it-insane.”

“Where have you been since summer?”

“In the Mediterranean. The Greek Islands, the Adriatic.”

The boy with the tommy gun leaped to his feet. He unslung his gun and gave it to Shayne. Then, in absolute silence, he began a violent mountain dance, leaping, whirling, slapping his ankles. Nikko ignored him.

Shayne opened the mail bag containing the loot from the plane and began sorting out passports.

“Nikko,” he said. “Nikko!”

The Greek looked up from his cup, which he was holding delicately in both hands.

“If we’re going to be on the same side,” Shayne said, “I don’t want to put my head out the door and have somebody take a shot at me. How about asking the boys in for a drink or a cup of coffee?”

“My sailors are not allowed to drink at sea,” Nikko said. “That is an absolute rule. Coffee-yes. Excellent. I will brew more.”

“I just looked. There’s enough for now.”

Nikko yelled at the sailor and made him stop dancing. The boy, told what to do, nodded and went out.

Shayne continued, “It’s always seemed to me that the hardest thing about a job like yours must be the women. How do you cope with them? They have nothing to do all day but lie around in bikinis, drinking and smoking pot and thinking about sex-”

He passed Naomi Savage’s passport picture in front of the Greek. “How’s this one in bed?”