Brett Halliday - Caught Dead

He showed Shayne a carefully constructed arrangement of overlapping geometric shapes, in blues and reds. It was signed L. Dante, and dated eight years before. Its creator was watching from the sofa, waiting for his reaction.

“Yeah,” Shayne said noncommittally.

The doctor completed his bandage. One breast was covered with gauze; the other had been left bare. Rubino brought a soft striped shirt from his bedroom and the doctor helped her put it on. She brushed her hair while the doctor spoke to Rubino in Spanish.

“The damage is not too bad,” Rubino translated. “Only one thrust penetrated deeply. The other was on the surface, through flesh and muscle, and he has taken care of it. She should not exert herself, remain quiet, et cetera, take aspirin tablets if the pain is bad, sleep as much as possible and be careful not to be stabbed again too soon.”

The doctor snapped his bag and went to the bathroom to wash.

“After you drop him off,” Shayne said, “I want you to take a message to Frost.”

“He can find a taxi,” Rubino protested. “We have so much to decide, what strategy to follow, ways and means-”

Shayne was writing on the flyleaf of a book he had picked off a side table.

Rubino persisted. “Frost is on the other side of the city. He has a telephone line installed by his own technicians; it is checked daily. You can speak on it with perfect security.”

“I need some cash,” Shayne explained. “I can’t operate without money in my pocket. Unless you’d like to advance me something?”

“That would be against my lifelong practice,” Rubino said stiffly.

Shayne ripped out the page. He had written: “I hereby acknowledge receipt of $2000 from Felix Frost, to be repaid promptly by money order on my return to the U.S. or to constitute a binding obligation on my estate if that’s how things go. Half American money, half Venezuelan. Michael Shayne.”

He handed it to Rubino. “He’ll want to know what’s happening. Tell him as little as possible. We want to keep Lenore a secret. You can say I haven’t been able to see the widow, but I’m still trying. Get back as soon as you can.”

Their eyes held for a moment.

“If he asks me a direct question about the lady, I’ll have to tell him, Mr. Shayne. I cannot afford to annoy this man.”

“Get in and out fast. As far as I can see now, she’s the only leverage we’ve got.”

“Yes, but how to employ it? This we need to discuss.”

The doctor came out of the bathroom. Rubino hesitated, then nodded to him and they went out together.

“Leverage?” Lenore said. “In just what way?”

“Don’t tighten up, baby, or you’ll start bleeding again.”

He went to the front window, and waited until Rubino and the doctor emerged from the building. Then he began to search the apartment. She watched him check the base of the telephone, underneath the tables, along the frames of the pictures and mirrors. She started to say something, but Shayne stopped her with a quick shake of the head. He was examining a large mirror over a teak sideboard.

“Yeah. Here it is.”

“Am I allowed to ask-” she began.

“No. See if you can stand up.”

He pulled her to her feet and put his mouth to her ear. “There’s a mike in the room somewhere, so take it easy. I want to show you something.”

Her eyes widened. He slipped his arm around her and walked her to the door, which he opened silently. He snapped the spring lock so they could reenter. At the door to the next apartment, he fished out the lock-picking equipment he always carried.

“I’m guessing on some of this,” he said. “But he lives in a high-rent building, by Caracan standards, and where does the money come from? He’s cleared about eighteen hundred bucks in the last couple of hours, but this is no ordinary day. Frost said something about blackmail. I don’t know if you know Frost.”

“By sight.”

“He’s using me to do some legwork for him. I think he was suggesting there might be ways I could use Rubino. The guy’s feeding information to various people, and the funny thing about that is that they all seem to know it.”

He gradually increased the pressure on his pick. When he felt it engage, he snapped it sharply and the bolt came back. He opened the door.

This apartment was a duplicate of Rubino’s, with the order of rooms reversed. It was only partially furnished, with no phone or kitchen equipment, no bed in the bedroom. Shayne opened the top doors in a carved sideboard against the party wall. Lenore gasped.

The back of the sideboard was cut away, and they looked into Rubino’s living room through a two-way mirror. On the shelf beneath, there was a small camera and a tape recorder. The recorder was voice-actuated, and the receiving switch was open. Shayne flicked it shut. Using the tiny screwdriver that was part of his lock-picking tools, he removed the top plate, exposing a printed circuit. He laid the screwdriver blade across the battery terminals. There was an impatient little hiss as the connection shorted out.

He put the top plate back and opened the switch.

“A nice little piece of equipment,” he said, and when the reels remained motionless: “O.K. Now we can talk.”

“How long will it take him?” Shayne said. “He’ll be driving fast because he won’t want to miss anything.”

“Twenty minutes at least, but can you be sure he’ll actually go?”

“I think so, to pick up the cash. He’s going to consider that two thousand bucks potentially his.”

He closed the doors of the sideboard and they returned to the other apartment, where Shayne rigged a simple device to let them know if anyone entered the apartment they had just left. He found a thin reel of picture wire in the kitchen, tacked one end to the inner side of the other living-room door, ran it beneath the door along the hall and under the door of Rubino’s apartment, where he anchored it to a tumbler in which he placed several coins. When the other door was pulled open, the glass would spill.

Lenore, meanwhile, was working on her appearance at the two-way mirror. She turned, and they looked at each other. The striped man’s shirt was just right for her. The nipple of her unbandaged breast pressed clearly against the cloth.

“How old was Alvares?” Shayne asked.

She moved her shoulders uncomfortably and sat on the sofa, knees together.

“Fifty-six when I met him. That was four years ago. I know what you’re really asking, and don’t think I haven’t asked myself the same thing, more than once. Well-he was a man of force, shall we say. I’d been painting and painting and painting, and getting nowhere. I literally wasn’t eating in those days except when somebody took me to dinner. I know that sounds ridiculous, in this day and age. But it’s true. I was sure I had talent. Sooner or later, I thought, someone would recognize it. And he recognized it. He really did, Mike, he bought one of my paintings before he met me. What he offered at first was a kind of scholarship, so I could concentrate on painting without worrying about bills. Of course it didn’t stop there. And after it really began with him I stopped painting, which may prove something about me. Heaven knows there’s no shortage of early Dantes.” She gestured ironically at the one on Rubino’s wall. “I am chic now. But in only two places, Palm Beach and Caracas.”

Shayne had left his cognac in the car, but he found another bottle in Rubino’s liquor cabinet.

“I think this really does help,” she said, accepting a glass.

“Twenty minutes isn’t much time,” Shayne said, moving a side chair so he could sit down facing her. “We’ve got a lot to cover. First I want to be sure you know where I stand.”