Brett Halliday - Caught Dead

He checked, about to duck back into the Ford. He could hardly believe that he saw the policeman Pichardo, who should have been recovering consciousness in a gutter in another part of town, limping along the crowded sidewalk toward him. The policeman was shorter than he had seemed in the car and there was a bloody smear on his face where it had been scraped by Rourke’s fist. From the beginning of the headlong flight, there had been a steady procession of lights across Rourke’s rearview mirror, and it was a bad shock to discover that one pair of those headlights had hung behind him all the way.

His heart hammering unpleasantly, he slid across the front seat and out by the other door, leaving the lights on and the motor running. Bent forward with his shoulders hunched, he sliced between the stalled lanes, around a truck and across the sidewalk to the next corner.

Here he used a trick he had learned from his friend Mike Shayne. He bent to tie a shoelace, and when he straightened, stood quietly against the building. Pichardo reached the abandoned Ford. As he bent to look in, Rourke crossed the street and started back on the opposite sidewalk. Pichardo stepped up on another car’s bumper to get added height, but he was looking the wrong way.

Rourke passed behind him. He went with the crowd. His moment of invisibility passed, and he began to feel more and more conspicuous, much too tall, too American, wearing clothes that had been bought in another country.

He reviewed his situation and found it far from encouraging. His friends were all elsewhere. He was carrying only a few hundred bolivars, about $45, not enough for an airplane ticket. In any case, by the time he could reach the airport the police would be waiting for him. The MIR, Paula’s underground organization, had gotten him into this jam and conceivably they might be willing to get him out. But how could he reach them? All the contacts had been one-way.

He lost himself in a maze of streets, came out on a major avenue and saw a hotel. Entering through a cafe, he found a public phone.

It was one of several, in open alcoves in a corner of the main lobby. One of the few things he was able to do with his limited stock of Spanish was to make a phone call. He spilled a handful of coins on the shelf beneath the phone, asked for the overseas operator and gave her a Miami number. He wanted her to hurry, but he didn’t know how to say that in Spanish.

Michael Shayne and the girl had spent the day fishing off the Keys, had returned to the city late and were among the last diners in the restaurant. This was Shayne’s favorite restaurant in the area, an unpretentious seafood place in downtown Miami.

“I have a feeling they want to kick us out,” the girl said.

“What makes you think that?” Shayne said. “Just because he keeps hovering around winding his watch-” He grinned up at the waiter. “All right, Lou, stop giving us hints. Let’s have the check.”

“Take your time, Mike. Are you sure you don’t want another brandy?”

The manager came over from the cash counter, bringing a phone. “A call for you, Mike.”

He set the phone on the table and plugged it in. Shayne said hello.

Over a crackle of static and the sound of an operator completing another call, Tim Rourke’s voice said: “Mike. Listen carefully.”

There was a thump and the line went dead.

“Tim?” Shayne said, sitting forward.

He heard nothing but a slow crackle, a woman’s voice saying something faintly in Spanish. An instant before, Shayne’s rangy, well-muscled athlete’s body had been totally relaxed. Now he crouched forward, lines of concentration forming at the corners of his eyes.

“Tim, can you hear me?”

“Is that Tim Rourke?” the girl said as he clicked for the operator. “Isn’t he off somewhere in the Bahamas?”

“Trinidad, the last I knew,” Shayne said. “Drinking rum punches and talking about going snorkeling. He actually did some skindiving one afternoon about six years ago.”

He continued to rattle the disconnect bar. A moment passed before he could get the operator’s attention.

“Give me the supervisor,” he said curtly.

When that woman was on, he had her check her long-distance lines. She reported in a moment that Rourke had been calling person-to-person from Caracas, Venezuela. Shayne’s answering service had passed the call along to the restaurant. They had lost the connection, but if Shayne would hang up, undoubtedly his party would place the call again.

“No, let’s do it this way,” Shayne said. “The Caracas operator must have a record of the call. Ask her to check the number he was calling from, and get back to me. Can you do that? I believe it may be important.”

He hung up, frowning. “You never know when Tim’s after a story. If anybody gets in his way he tries to run over them, and you know Tim-he’s no bulldozer. All he said was, ‘Listen carefully,’ and we were cut off.”

“‘Listen carefully,’” she repeated.

“The connection was lousy. I don’t know, but it seemed to me he sounded”-he hesitated-“as though the roof was about to fall in. And God knows that kind of thing has been known to happen to Tim.”

“Venezuela. I think I read about some kind of trouble down there.”

Shayne shrugged. He had just come off a hard case and hadn’t looked at a paper or television for five days. He ordered another round of cognac and paid for it when it came, dismissing the waiter.

The phone rang. “On that Caracas call,” the supervisor said. “It was placed from a public phone, and the instrument appears to be out of order. The operator gets a busy signal. She’s cut into the line, but no one is talking on it.”

“O.K. If it’s an inside phone see if you can get the location. Maybe there’s somebody there who can tell us something.”

Shayne had time to finish his cognac before she came back.

“It’s a hotel, Mr. Shayne. They’re ringing.”

In a moment a desk clerk answered and he and Shayne had a puzzling, inconclusive exchange. Like most hotel employees in Latin America, the Venezuelan spoke English, but he couldn’t seem to put his mind on what Shayne was saying. There was a babble of voices around him.

“What’s going on?” Shayne said. “What’s all the excitement?”

“It is difficult to know, Senor. Pardon me. I must-”

He clicked off.

Becoming more alarmed, Shayne dialed the number of Rourke’s paper and asked for the night editor, a veteran newspaperman named Caldwell, who had frequently covered for Rourke when the reporter’s unorthodox methods made the management unhappy. Rourke had been in Caracas several days, he told Shayne, and had filed his first dispatch that afternoon. It would appear in the next day’s paper.

“Nothing new in the piece,” Caldwell said. “The dictator down there just got the boot-you probably read about it. Tim wrote it like a crime story. The capos didn’t like the way the boss was cutting up the melon, so they withdrew their respect. That made it an automatic hit and a contract was issued. But before the button men could reach him he tried to lam, cracked up, and the fuzz got him. It’s a typical Tim Rourke story and we’re giving it a good play.”

“It’s probably going to offend a few people down there.”

Caldwell laughed. “He’ll be out of the country before they see it. He’s due back in the morning.”

“Do you know how to reach him?”

“He’s probably staying at the Hilton. We’ve got a due bill there. Why?”

“He called a few minutes ago, but somebody pulled us out before he could say anything.”

“Let me try him from here.”

Shayne held on, drumming his fingers on the table until Caldwell reported that Rourke was indeed registered at the Hilton, but his room phone didn’t answer.