Brett Halliday - Violence Is Golden

“You’re right about one thing, Tim-Petey Painter would love it.”

“As I keep reminding you.”

“But if all they wanted was a frame, the cops would be here by now. That wouldn’t be hard to arrange. They must want me to think there’s only one way I can get off the hook-to take the plane and find out who really did the killing. They obviously figure I’ll decide I have to go.”

“I think I’m following you,” Rourke said dubiously. “But you’re one step ahead of them, right? So you’re not going.”

“Don’t be silly,” Shayne snapped. “Of course I’m going. Let’s find a photographer who’s still awake. I need a passport picture.”

Most of the passengers were already aboard by the time Michael Shayne arrived at the loading port, tie-less and in need of a shave, wearing dark glasses and carrying an attache case.

After parting from Rourke, he had slept only two hours. He had a dull headache. His movements were more guarded than usual.

The stewardess at the gate put a check beside his name and looked at him curiously.

“I know,” Shayne said, rubbing his chin. “I look like something off Skid Row. I’ll shave on the plane, unless I forgot to pack a razor.”

She was a dark-haired girl with a good figure and an expectant look. “I’m Sue Cornelius. Do you have any preference about where you sit, Mr. Shayne?”

Before he had to answer, a tall, lovely blonde hurried out of the lounge toward him. She threw her arms around his neck and gave him a warm welcoming kiss. Her tongue flickered briefly inside his mouth. It was all very authentic, in spite of the fact that he had never seen her before. His arms came up and closed around her. He felt the muscles moving in the small of her back. She was breathing hard when she let him go.

She pressed her face against his chest. “I was so damn worried.”

She spoke with a faint German accent. Shayne tried to think of her name, and after a moment it came to him-Christa Hochberg.

She looked at him reproachfully. “Darling, do you know we leave in precisely five minutes?”

“I’m sorry. The traffic was murder coming out.” He gave the stewardess a quizzical look. “In answer to your question about where I want to sit, Miss Hochberg and I are sitting together.”

“Obviously,” she said with a laugh.

Christa hugged Shayne’s arm to her breast as they entered the cabin. Forty pairs of eyes were looking at them. She dropped his arm self-consciously and followed the stewardess to their seats.

“You take the window, darling. Airplanes terrify me. I’d much rather not know how high up we are.”

As soon as they were seated, she kissed him again, as efficiently as before and with even more passion. It was part of an act, Shayne knew, but nevertheless he felt himself responding. When it had run its course, she whispered against his ear, “You know who I am?”

“Yeah, lady. You’re a cop.”

As he turned his head, he caught the eye of a Negro sitting across the aisle, a dignified, gray-haired man in clerical black with a reversed collar. The Negro smiled faintly.

Christa whispered, “Keep your arms around me, Mike. I couldn’t get through to him. Can you seem a trifle more affectionate, my dear? We are lovers. That is the story I have invented for us. We haven’t seen each other in weeks.” She drew back slightly to look at him. “Do you object?”

“Not so far.”

“Then why aren’t you kissing me?”

Shayne exerted himself this time. She subsided against him with a sigh.

“That was much better. You almost convinced me.”

She pulled away as the order came to fasten their seat belts. The powerful jets began to whine. Gripping the arms of the seat, she looked straight ahead.

“Excuse me. Now I say a small prayer that we get up into the sky safely.”

She put her head back as the big DC-8 wheeled around. The whine of the engines passed upward into a thin scream. There was a sudden forward rush.

Shayne studied the girl. Her hair was long and crossed her forehead at a slant, nearly touching her eyebrows on one side. Her eyelids were a subtle shade of violet, delicately veined. Her nose and mouth were nicely formed.

She was wearing a smartly cut red suit, low in front. She was well tanned.

He glanced out the window. The squat buildings of the International Airport were falling away beneath them.

“We’re up,” he told her.

Her eyes opened and they looked at each other. She said softly, “Three weeks is a long time to be apart.” Her eyes changed slightly and she snapped her belt open. “No. Business first. Can you hear me when I talk like this?”

“Barely.”

“If you can barely hear me, no one else can hear me at all. Damn Jules! He was with a woman, I suppose? That is one of the hazards with Jules. He meets someone new and he stops answering his telephone for twenty-four hours. We had discussed different stories, but nothing was definite. I decided to keep it simple. And this is not bad, you know. You are not a typical fifteen-day tourist, by any means. Nor am I. You were shot at yesterday in a football stadium. They will have read about that in the morning paper. An unsettling experience even for a rugged private detective. The press, the police. Who were these Japanese, and why did they want to kill you? You decide you have to leave town, to get clear away for two weeks. Alone? Mike Shayne? Assuredly not. So you call me and tell me to pack a bag and meet you at the airport.” She laughed softly. “Are we agreed? That is the story?”

“It’s too late to change it now.”

She giggled and took his hand. “But it was a gamble for me, before I saw what you looked like. If you had turned out to be fat and sweating and unpleasant-Look. Did Jules give you a file to look at, on a man who may be involved in this?”

“He told me he had it. I didn’t see it.”

“Nor I. A maddening person. No one is ever too delighted to work with him.”

“What did you find out about the luggage arrangements?”

“There are three hatches. Each passenger is permitted fifty pounds, and some are paying for excess weight. It is a rented plane. The captain and co-pilot come with the package, the flight engineer is a Miami man. A husband and wife run the tour. George Savage, Naomi Savage. The husband handles the baggage, the hotels and buses. I let him give me a drink last evening. He is a little too talkative, a little too friendly. The wife seems worried. I know that there are other things to worry about in the world besides the smuggling of gold. Husbands, for one. When he learned I would be on the tour, he looked at me in a certain way, as if plotting some adventures in the hotel rooms of Rio. Well, we shall see.”

“How much does the Treasury Department know about this, did Jules tell you?”

“I believe very little. He likes to work with as few people as possible. Interpol is a lovely theory, but he thinks also of the glory of the French police.”

“That’s going to make it rough,” Shayne said. “We’ll have our hands full. I never got our itinerary. Where do we go first?”

“Today, St. Albans. Caracas, tomorrow morning. Then down the east coast, to Brasilia. Then Rio, Sao Paulo, Montevideo. One day in each. Jules thinks they will wait till Sao Paulo, but he didn’t persuade me. I think sooner. The point of this arrangement, if I understand it, is to get out of the United States with the gold. That we have now done. Each day’s delay will increase their danger.”

She squeezed his hand and looked toward the front of the cabin. “Naomi Savage.”

A dark-haired woman holding a clipboard was standing in the aisle with a microphone. She introduced herself, welcomed them to what she was sure would be an exciting fifteen days, and explained where they were and how soon they would arrive in St. Albans, a Caribbean island which, until recently, had been part of the British Commonwealth, and what they would do there. She had a pleasant, low-pitched voice and was good-looking in an understated way. She was in her late twenties. Her manner seemed slightly flustered, but having to get thirty-seven tourists through twenty countries in fifteen days, Shayne thought, would be enough to fluster anybody.