Brett Halliday - Caught Dead

The concrete ramp spewed them onto a narrow two-lane road, unpaved and rutted.

“Now you will meet Venezuela,” he shouted happily, “and if the axles hold-”

He hit a pothole and the rest of the sentence was jolted away. He stayed in third, avoiding the worst irregularities with subtle changes in speed and direction.

“Can you see the car?” he demanded.

The road here was depressed between high banks. Until it turned and dived downward, Shayne was unable to see the ocean. He located the coastal road, which hugged the shore in places but most of the time ran inland through dense undergrowth.

“Mr. Shayne,” Rubino said urgently, “do you have a gun?”

Shayne pulled his bag over from the back seat and took out his. 38. Rubino snapped the catches holding the top in place and let it fly up and back.

“At the next bend. Show them the gun and fire once.”

Shayne still had seen nothing that required a gun. Rubino threw the wheel over and started into another long downward curve. The curve tightened. The road doubled back on itself and they went into their own dust cloud. At the bottom of the loop, an old flat-bed truck was parked so that it nearly blocked both lanes. There was a man on the runningboard with a rifle, two bandoliers of ammunition crossing his chest. In the shadow cast by his wide hat brim, he was faceless.

Shayne pulled himself up and brought the pistol to bear. The Jaguar fishtailed in the loose dirt.

The man on the truck watched without shifting the rifle. Shayne fired, and he dived out of sight. The Jaguar swerved while Rubino sawed at the wheel. For a moment they headed straight down the mountain. The rear wheels rode out of the rut. Rubino pulled the wheel sharply to the left, missed the edge by an eyelash and came back around the truck into the road. Shayne fired again, at the truck’s tire, but the bullet went into the dirt.

He sat down and refastened his seatbelt.

Rubino was very excited. “How they would love to get hold of this car. It would make their fortunes.”

The road’s surface improved as they came out on the flat. He stayed in third, watching carefully to avoid the frequent holes.

“I fear we are still bouncing too badly for binoculars.”

He glanced behind, then skidded to a stop and took the binoculars out of Shayne’s hands. He began panning from left to right, looking for the green Olds.

“Yes,” he said. “I was right. She is going to Macuto. She can charter a boat there. Do you see her at the end of the long cove? Keep your eye on her, please, while I pay attention to this wretched imitation of a road.”

Part of the next section had washed badly, and he slowed to a crawl. Shayne lost the Olds briefly, picking it up again as the road improved. Then all at once they were rolling on blacktop. It was pocked and broken, but a big change after the difficulties of the last few miles.

Seeing the main road ahead, Rubino slid to a stop.

“We are here first,” he announced. “Now we spring out at her as she comes past and give her a small heart attack, perhaps. She thinks she is almost safe.” He peered down the winding road. “She will appear in one moment.”

But he became impatient quickly. “There are so many places for boats! If she had one waiting, in two seconds she could lose herself on the Caribbean. And that would be too bad, after all the time we have invested. I think we should go meet her.”

When Shayne didn’t disagree, he turned out on the shore road in the direction of the airport. There was little traffic, an occasional truck, one or two small European cars. A distant tanker, a smudge on the blue water, headed west toward Maracaibo.

They found the green Olds after half a mile. No one was in it. It was pulled well off the road with the front door slightly ajar, the interior light burning. Rubino frowned and said something in Spanish as he braked to a stop.

It was blindingly hot. The undergrowth was very thick on the land side. There was a small cluster of shacks just ahead, a tiny store marked with a Coca-Cola sign.

Shayne stepped out. A dirt track ran down to the water where two fishing boats were tied to a rickety dock. Off shore, a 20-foot open-decked runabout rode at a mooring in a slow swell.

A barefooted Venezuelan girl appeared around one of the shacks. Rubino called a question, which frightened her back out of sight.

Shayne started toward the water, and suddenly a man materialized on the deck of one of the boats. He was wearing only bathing trunks. He was young, well-tanned and well-muscled, with a full mustache. He looked at Shayne, then whirled, scrambled to the rail and dived.

He came out of the dive with arms and legs pumping in a powerful crawl. Shayne ran toward the dock, reaching it an instant before the swimmer arrived at the mooring and flashed over the gunwale of the powerboat like a leaping salmon. Shayne had his revolver out, but didn’t fire. He glanced back at Rubino, who had stopped short, shading his eyes.

A motor roared and the moored boat jumped forward, snapping the line. Shayne crossed the dock to the fishing boat and stepped aboard.

There was a strong smell of fish and the decks were wet. He found the woman face down on the floor of the cabin, her white blouse slashed open and her back bloody.

She uttered a low sound and one arm moved. The knife that had been used on her lay under the wheel, bone-handled, with blood on the long blade.

Shayne called to Rubino, who was still on the dock, looking after the departing boat. “Get me some water. Move!”

The woman’s dark glasses fell off as he lifted her carefully. He maneuvered her through a doorway and down a step into a cluttered cabin, where he laid her, face down, on a narrow bunk. With color in her lips she would have been a strikingly beautiful woman. Her eyes were open, but wide and unfocused.

“Relax,” Shayne told her. “For the time being I’m friendly.”

He gripped her blouse in both hands and tore it all the way down. Her back was a mass of blood.

Rubino appeared in the doorway. “Ocean water. O.K.?”

“Fine.”

Shayne found a towel. The woman raised her head and said distinctly, “Don’t touch me.”

“Just a little first aid.”

He sponged her back gently. She had been stabbed twice. One of the wounds was a neat, almost surgical puncture. The other was long and ragged, and the blood was welling up out of the torn flesh.

She objected. “I don’t know who you are.”

“I know who you are,” Shayne said. “You’re Alvares’ ex-girlfriend and I have some questions to ask you, so try not to die right away. Andres, make yourself useful. There are a couple of shirts and a bottle of cognac in my bag. On the double.”

She said faintly, “Do you think I’ll die?”

Shayne continued to work for a moment. “No,” he said then. “But you need a doctor, and finding one may be a bit tricky. Does your head hurt?”

“Oh, yes.”

“He must have slugged you first. Did you see him?”

She moved her head slightly. “Everything exploded. You’re hurting me.”

“I’m not doing it on purpose. We’ve got to do some fast figuring. He hit bone both times. I don’t know what else he hit. If I take you to the hospital you’ll probably feel fine in a few weeks. But do you want to show up at a Venezuelan hospital? We chased you down from the mountains. You were moving fast.”

She said nothing, and he said sharply, “Are you listening to me?”

She said with an effort, “I’m trying to think.”

Shayne heard running footsteps on the dock, and Rubino jumped aboard.

“Everything still peaceful. But for how long? Mr. Shayne, we should quickly reach a decision.”