Brett Halliday: Violence Is Golden

Like everybody else, Michael Shayne was on his feet yelling. He had five hundred dollars on the local team. With the score tied and three minutes left in the second quarter, the Dolphin quarterback slipped between two tacklers, scrambled out of the grasp of another, waited, and finally found an open receiver. The man had the defense beaten by a step, and scored.

Sitting beside Shayne, Tim Rourke yelled something that was lost in the din. A moment later the kick was good.

“Mike, how do you do it?” Rourke cried happily as the noise began to subside. “This guy, no kidding,” he said to the pretty girl between them. “He hasn’t lost a football bet all year.”

They sat down, and Rourke, who was emphatically off duty as a Miami News reporter, produced a nest of plastic cups and a pint flask from a hamper between his feet. “After all that exercise, we deserve a drink.”

“Mike Shayne, yes?” a voice said politely. “The detective?”

They had seats on the forty-yard line, a dozen rows back. Shayne, on the aisle, looked up.

A small Japanese, wearing a flowered shirt and holding an elongated camera, was smiling down at him.

“Yeah, I’m Shayne,” the detective said, taking the cognac Rourke had poured him.

“I would like to shoot your picture, OK? The most famous American private eye, at the great American spectacle, with a beautiful blonde lady. Japanese people so much interested in latest adventures of Mike Shayne.”

Still smiling mechanically, he went down a step and raised the strange camera.

Rourke shouted, “Mike, watch out!”

The photographer’s smile tightened. Rourke flung himself across Shayne’s date and aimed an awkward punch at his big friend’s red head. Shayne recoiled instinctively, and as he pulled down and away he heard a small, crisp pop, a noise he had heard more times than he liked to remember. He knew, without actually taking time to shape the thought, that he was being shot at by a medium-caliber gun equipped with a silencer. And then Rourke’s other hand, coming up, dashed the cognac into Shayne’s face. Shayne twisted sideward and left his seat in a hard, flat dive. Behind him, he heard one of the girls cry out.

Shayne’s fingers closed on the photographer’s shirt. The cloth ripped and the smaller man jumped away, trying to get the camera into position for another shot.

Shayne’s hip banged painfully against the edge of a concrete step. He rolled. In addition to the power packed into his rangy frame, he had a gymnast’s grace and economy of motion. Again he hurled himself downward, as though diving into water. This time he fastened on flesh.

Rourke yelled, “Another one behind you, Mike!”

The Japanese had broken Shayne’s fall. Shayne held on and kept rolling. The narrowness of the aisle stopped him. Reversing, he brought the Japanese to his feet. Another man with the same kind of doctored camera was a few steps above them, a Japanese like his companion but larger and more powerfully built, as tall as Shayne himself. He was crouching, holding the camera to his eye as though trying to photograph the action. The smaller Japanese was attempting to wriggle out of Shayne’s hands, to give his companion a clear shot. Shayne hesitated only an instant. He shifted his grip and ran the wiry Japanese back up the aisle and thrust him hard against the bigger man, who went down in surprise. Then Shayne whirled, raced down the remaining steps, touched the railing lightly, and vaulted over.

Momentum carried him across the grass toward the playing field. After three steps, he cut abruptly toward the fifty-yard line. Glancing back, he saw the larger of the two gunmen, one leg over the rail, trying to pick up Shayne in his sights. An instant later Shayne was among the officials on the sidelines.

The Miami quarterback, on the field, was making the same kind of calculation as Shayne, on the sidelines. The big Japanese dropped over the railing and came after Shayne in a crouching run, keeping close to the stands. Shayne had several options. One was to dash toward the Dolphin bench, assuming that the hidden gun was inaccurate at any distance over a few yards. One of the defensive tackles, six feet seven inches, two hundred sixty-five pounds, was a friend of Shayne’s. With this man and the other members of the front four as escort, Shayne could scare the Japanese back into the stands. But he didn’t want to do it that way. He wanted to find out who had ordered this shooting, and why.

A Dolphin pass fell incomplete. As the ball was brought back, Shayne swung sharply and set out across the playing field. One of the men on the bench yelled at him. He waved and kept going. The defensive linebackers, lumbering back into position, gave Shayne looks of surprise.

“What the hell’s this, Jack?” one of them demanded.

Shayne had reached the first hash mark by the time the referee spotted him. Two officials started toward him from the end zone, and Shayne broke into a hard run, angling away toward the line of scrimmage. He veered, a conspicuous, almost puny figure amid the helmets and facebars and padded uniforms. He heard a whistle.

Running at top speed, he broke through the officials before they could converge in front of him. He stepped out of bounds and straight-armed an assistant coach. A press photographer fell out of his way. Shayne faked toward the ground-level ramp leading into the locker rooms. Swiveling, he swung over into the field boxes, reached the aisle without stepping on anybody, and took the steps two at a time.

An usher in a bright striped blazer planted himself at the top of the aisle, but thought better of it after a look at Shayne’s face. Play resumed. As Shayne went out through the lower-tier exit, he heard a full-throated roar, the roar of a partisan crowd witnessing a breakaway run.

Seeing a cop ahead, he plunged into a men’s room. He was alone there except for another usher, who was using the urinal. Shayne showed him his private detective’s license.

“Rent me that blazer for five minutes for fifty bucks.”

The usher, a corpulent, red-faced youth, stared at Shayne. The detective took a fifty out of his wallet.

“I’m following a guy who held up a bank. I want to get next to him without being spotted. Fifty bucks for five minutes.”

He snapped his fingers impatiently.

“I guess it might be all right,” the youth said uncertainly, and took the bill out of Shayne’s hand before removing his blazer and straw hat.

The blazer fitted, but the hat was two sizes too small. Shayne told the boy to meet him at Gate One in five minutes, and went out. The cop he had seen was walking toward him, but Shayne was now invisible in the bright clothes. He went down to ground level and out past a ticket taker wearing the same kind of striped blazer.

“You’re missing a great game,” Shayne observed.

“I’ll see the highlights on TV.”

A broad apron of concrete separated the stadium from a sea of parked cars. Shayne tipped the tight hat over his forehead and started cautiously around the big horseshoe. He heard a groan from the crowd; someone had dropped a pass or been caught in the meat grinder. There were seventy-five thousand people within shouting distance, but Shayne and the two armed Japanese were probably the only ticket holders who were interested in anything at that moment besides football. For that reason they would be easy to see.

A long chartered bus, probably the one that had brought the visiting players from their hotel, was parked in front of a blind exit. Shayne left the protection of the curving concrete and crossed the sun-drenched pavement.

The bus was empty; the driver, too, was inside watching the game. Leaving the door open, Shayne swung behind the wheel and flicked the ignition switch, seeing the ampere needle flicker and a red light jump up on the instrument panel.