Brett Halliday - Caught Dead

There was a girl in the room, also in uniform. She was small and dark, in glasses.

“My English, you must forgive me,” the police chief said after shaking hands. “It is very little. I am for to try, and Sonia will help me sometimes. I know about Michael Shayne, your many successes.”

He offered Shayne a choice of cigars or cigarettes. Shayne took a cigar, much less aromatic than the one he had been given by Frost. He rolled it in his fingers.

“Did Rourke have those marks on him when he was brought in?”

Mejia’s eyes jumped to the girl. She supplied a word.

“I see,” Mejia said. “Was he beaten by us? No, no. While he was arrested, by the public. Here he is well treated.” He waved the cigar. “How does one say it?”

He spoke to the girl and she translated. “He says that the treatment of the prisoner by the police has been quite correct and O.K., and he wishes to ask if the prisoner has complained to you.”

“He complained of being kept awake.”

“We, too, have been kept awake,” Mejia said. “Being awake is nothing. I will ask you now what he said to you on the subject of the bombing.”

Shayne lit the cigar and waited till it was drawing evenly. “I understood that was a privileged conversation.”

“Oh, no. We have no such practice in Venezuela. I explain. There was much shouting and noise when he was arrested. It was considered by the public that he was a gringo spy. So he is frightened. He thinks he should keep silence.”

“Keep silent,” Sonia murmured.

“But that is foolish for him. Much foolish. Very. We have him in our hands. We take in many other suspicious persons, but no one in that class as Rourke. He knows, he can tell. The others who were with him in this, the guerrillas-they will go very fast. Vanish. They will vanish into air. So we must be quick. Rourke must talk to us.”

“Frost says you have a picture of a girl named Paula Obregon. You must be working on that.”

“We work on it hard. But he could tell us something would help find her, maybe.”

“Are you sure she’s still in the country?”

“In Venezuela, yes. In the barrios, the mountains. There are one and one half million persons residing in Caracas. They are careful in her sect. The people they live among, they are frightened from them.”

“Don’t you have any pigeons who can tell you where she is?”

The girl translated the word and he spread his hands. “Few. Not so good.”

“Is it absolutely definite that these guerrillas put her on Rourke? She’s a pretty girl, and he knew her in Miami.”

The police chief lifted his heavy shoulders. “We believe. Now I ask a question. Why did Mr. Rourke come to Caracas?”

Shayne looked at him carefully. “As far as I know, to cover a story. That’s what his editor told me, and I see no reason to think otherwise.”

“How far of a Communist is he?”

Shayne laughed. “Not far at all.”

“We have received a report from correspondents in the U.S.A. It is official, to be believed. It says he is-”

He tried to think of the right words, and asked the interpreter to help. She said, “In the dossier it says Rourke is strongly sympathetic to the Left. He wrote dispatches taking the side of the revolutionary government of Cuba-”

Shayne made a scornful noise. “Tim’s a crime reporter. A gambler who used to own a casino in Havana got him into Cuba to check on some diamonds the guy left behind. While he was there he reported what he saw. He doesn’t have any heroes.”

“Then he didn’t come to this country to interview Serrano?”

“Who’s Serrano?”

Mejia looked at the girl helplessly. She explained. “A leader of the MIR. He escaped from prison and has been at large and in command of fighting detachments for three years. I had believed the name was known in the United States.”

“I have all I can do to keep up with what’s happening in Dade County. Tell him he’ll be making a bad mistake if he tags Tim with any political label.”

“If he came for a story,” Mejia said, “what story did he want from Alvares?”

“Just getting in to see him would put it on the front pages back home.”

“The other correspondents say in their deposition that he told Mr. Larry Howe to ask about the role of your government, the famous CIA, in the change of regime.”

“I don’t know anything about that.”

“Or about the Alvares money?”

It was asked casually, but there was a sudden change in atmospheric pressure. Mejia’s eyes bored into Shayne’s.

Shayne’s answer was made in an equally casual tone. “Alvares’ money. I suppose there must be quite a bit of it. They tell me there was a lot of stealing going on.”

“Monies disappeared,” Mejia said. “It is-traditional? Seventeen years in office.”

“How much?” Shayne said.

Mejia shifted. “Some say one thing, some another. But indeed, it must be very large. And the prisoner Rourke said nothing to you about any of this?”

“It’s not his field. Why do you think he’d know anything about it?”

The police chief rotated his cigar carefully. “The former President went on vacations to the south of Florida. It is supposed-” He stopped and began again. “When there is a bomb, one thinks immediately it is a political question, but-”

He gave up and said it in Spanish. The girl translated.

“The Police Chief is concerned about the bomber’s motive. Would the death of Alvares help the MIR? Only indirectly, to show their power to avenge themselves-and truly Alvares was very cruel and barbaric against the MIR. But as a political personage, he was no longer a factor. Death, imprisonment, exile-his three choices. But who will get ownership of his illegal estate? That is the unanswered question.”

Mejia spoke again, and she then went on. “Where it is located, what form it takes, this is unknown. But we assume it is liquid-gold or cash. We assume it’s in Florida. Mr. Rourke, a newspaperman, is widely acquainted in the world of politics, the world of finance, of crime, we are sure. So did someone from Florida send him to Venezuela to find out something, to communicate a message? He cleverly made arrangements to interview the prisoner. The Chief of Police suggests that his stated reason for desiring this interview was not in fact the real reason. Alvares was being questioned closely. His questioners wished to establish the whereabouts of his cache, the sum of money we speak of, before it became the knowledge of others.”

She looked at Mejia, who said in English, “The money is the property of the Venezuelan state. It was important to-”

“Forestall?” the girl suggested.

“To forestall. To reach it before others. And Alvares was about to say something on the subject, and then he was killed.”

“How rough were you being with him?”

“I am not afraid to speak words,” the police chief said steadily. “To find out things from a prisoner is easy. To find out fast, some methods are better. You have laws against this in your country. Here not. Electricity is often useful. Soon, I think, he would tell us. He was not good about pain. He shouted, he wept. He was born a peasant but he had too many years of pleasure.”

Shayne knocked the ash off his cigar. “If Tim knew anything about that, why didn’t he tell me? Let me be sure I have this. You’re suggesting that somebody brought him a proposition. Alvares had to be reached before you broke him. Some kind of message had to go in or out.”

“Yes. Or he was to be killed. Anyone who knew Alvares would know he could not hold out against bad pain.”

Shayne shrugged. “Try the theory on Rourke, and see what he says. Why ask me?”

“Because you are interested in your compatriot and friend. If he has such connections in Florida, you have those same connections. The arrangement I suggest is this. What can you discover here? Nothing, clearly. Go home in your own country, and find out something of value. Bring it to me and we will-”