Brett Halliday - Caught Dead

“Yeah. He didn’t want me to bother him so I decided to lean on him a little. He spoke with a Latin accent, which isn’t such a big deal around here, but I asked him where he came from and he said Caracas, Venezuela. That was where you called me from, Caracas, Venezuela. So I put the two things together and when a cop got there I had him bust the kid on suspicion of arson. He’s at the precinct now, and he’s being very quiet.”

“Sam, you earned yourself a bonus. Get over there fast and be sure they don’t make a mistake and turn him loose. What’s his name?”

“Jaime Mercado.”

Shayne hung up whistling. He found the pilots’ lounge. Felix Frost jumped to his feet as Shayne came in and started sputtering demands and objections. Shayne knocked him down with a hard shot to the jaw.

Frost’s glasses flew off. He blinked up malevolently from the floor.

“And you may be able to get my license for that,” Shayne said. “It depends on what happens in the next few minutes. Everybody else has had an interest in this pot and now I seem to have one, too. Get up.”

Frost retrieved his glasses and put them on. One of the thick lenses was cracked across.

“Threats would be out of place,” he said thickly. “But consider yourself threatened, Shayne.”

“Sit down. First we’re going to establish who knows who, and after that, who did what. Do you know Senora Alvares?”

“I know Senora Alvares,” Frost said icily.

“Did you see her today and phone her before you left Caracas?”

“I saw her today and phoned her before I left Caracas. So?”

Shayne exhaled. “How sweet it is to be back in a country where people answer questions.” He looked at Chief Mejia, who was planted stolidly in a plastic armchair smoking a heavy-bowled pipe. “Glad you could make it, Chief. I hope nobody’s tortured you yet. I’ll be needing you in a minute. You saw my problem right away. Why would anybody talk to me in Caracas unless they had to? I don’t carry anything but a private detective’s license and that’s no good outside the continental limits of the United States-not that it’s too good inside the continental limits. I’m afraid I had to stretch the truth in a few places. You got a hot tip from a waiter to the effect that I know where the dough can be found. That’s not quite accurate. All I have is a theory.”

“Why are we detained here?” Mejia said.

“Nobody’s being detained,” Shayne told him. “This is what we call a pre-arraignment hearing. We want to straighten out a few things so Chief Boyle can decide what he can hit us with. You’re free to leave at any time.” He added, “But don’t try it. Does anybody recognize the name Jaime Mercado?”

He got no response and shrugged. “Maybe it’s a pseudonym.”

He took Chief Boyle to the door and asked him quietly to send somebody across to Palm Beach to bring back the young man by that name.

Returning, he asked, “Did anybody think to order me a drink? Never mind, this won’t take long. Everybody’s been interested in the goddamn money, so let’s get that out of the way first. Lenore is the one person who’s really in a position to know about it, and she keeps denying it exists. I can sympathize, because there would be all kinds of tax and legal problems.”

He planted himself on an arm of a long leather sofa and continued easily, looking at Lenore. “When he closed out his Swiss accounts he gave you the cash and you bought pictures with it.”

She was staring straight ahead. A muscle flicked in her cheek.

“We can talk about it now,” he said. “Look at me.”

She turned. Her expression was as frozen as it had been since she looked down at the burning block.

“I hired a guy to check your business. He tells me one of the things you do is buy for clients on commission. Some of the auction prices lately have been fantastic. You read about them in the papers-two or three million bucks for one picture. But those are the ones that get press coverage. You can’t buy a Rembrandt and then go someplace and hide. But if you move down to the half million level, maybe you can buy a few of those and stay fairly anonymous. There are private sales. Now and then a stolen painting is put up for sale. I’ve heard that some of the Nazi loot from that old war is still floating around in a very private market. For somebody who’s looking for a way to beat inflation, it isn’t a bad place to put cash.”

“I won’t dispute you on that,” Lenore said, biting off the syllables. “It’s one of the ways I make my living.”

“Is there any reason you can’t tell us about it? I know you didn’t murder those three people. But you were in on the beginnings, and if it ended up in murder it doesn’t matter legally that you were as surprised as anybody. It isn’t quite time for the lawyers. But when they come in they’ll advise you that you can go down for conspiracy to commit murder, and that’s one of the worst raps we have. Larry Howe! The original innocent bystander. You don’t have any incentive to tough it out. Clear up this painting business and I think I can help you.”

She waited, and it was clear from her expression that she was still seeing flames.

“What do you want to know, their value?” she said in a dead voice. “We spent four million on them.”

“Only four?”

“Almost to the penny. There was a lovely, lovely Watteau and one of the really good Picassos and a Van Dyke that would break your heart. Six in all. I worked through two sets of dummies. Actually it wasn’t difficult at all.”

“Were you really his mistress, Lenore?”

“Yes,” she said, surprised. “Did you doubt that?”

“People in town here weren’t sure.”

“We took a few precautions.”

“All right, four million dollars. We’ve got a solid figure, finally. I’ve heard up to twenty, but we all know about street murderers who killed somebody for as little as forty-nine cents and a pair of shoes.” He turned to Frost, who was trying to steady himself by smoking one of his superlative cigars.

“While you’ve been sitting here have you noticed a smoky smell? I don’t mean cigar smoke.”

“No, I haven’t noticed a smoky smell.”

“Maybe it hasn’t got out here yet. Lenore took those four-million-dollar pictures out of their frames and stored them in a back room of her gallery. What else could she do with them? The whole point was to be casual about it. To take out insurance on them, to store them in a fireproof vault, she’d have to admit they were hers. Didn’t you even hear the fire sirens? The gallery just burned down. Anybody ready for another drink?”

There wasn’t much breathing going on among the principals in the room. Howie Boyle had finally become interested in what Shayne was saying.

Shayne looked at Paula. “You’ve stayed with your aunt. Did you know about these paintings?”

“No.”

“Mejia?”

“I-no.”

“Senora Alvares?”

“No, no, how should I?”

“Frost?”

“No, I did not know about these paintings.”

“Somebody’s lying,” Shayne said. He waited a tick. “And it’s you, Frost.”

“For God’s sake,” Shayne burst out, “what kind of imbecile do you take me for? This whole thing turns on those cigarette cartons. I’m supposed to know my way around. I know where to buy dynamite and TNT, and I could make a pretty effective homemade bomb out of gunpowder and primer cord and a piece of pipe. But plastic? Inside a cigarette carton so nobody’d know the carton had been tampered with? And wire it to go off at exactly the right time? I’m not that good. But you’ve spent years in the black end of American intelligence. I’m sure you’ve taken a course. Not only that, you probably have access to laboratory materials. Could Lenore fake up that kind of package? Could Alvares’ wife?”