Brett Halliday - Armed… Dangerous…

“What I haven’t told you yet is that there’s a girl, a French girl named Michele Guerin. She’s the one who’s been handing out the advances. She has an apartment in Manhattan. According to her dossier, it’s her first time in this country, and she probably has the usual foreigner’s idea of how much everyday violence there is on the streets of New York. Now imagine this scene. She’s driving down Fifth. Shots are fired. A big redhaired hoodlum-no, we better dye your hair, Mike, that thatch of yours is too well known-not a red-haired hood, a black-haired hood, backs out of a bank with a gun in his hand. He shoots an off-duty detective and commandeers the girl’s car. Why wouldn’t she fall for it? She saw it happen.”

Gentry said, “One thing I don’t like about that idea. It’s too public. Too many things to go wrong. Because what if Mike runs into a real off-duty detective, shooting real bullets? How would you time it so the car would be there at the right moment, and then wouldn’t get jammed up in traffic? I think it ought to be inside. You’d have more control.”

Shayne looked at his friend in amazement. “Will, do you mean he’s already sold you on this pipe dream?”

Gentry’s eyes moved uneasily. “It sounds far-fetched the first time you hear it, Michael, but it takes hold. It could be worked. The way I see it, it’s in an elevator. No problem about the timing-you simply wait till the girl shows up. You only need two men. Your straight man comes in with her. Mike’s waiting. All three of them get in the elevator. If somebody else gets in, no matter. Mike pulls his gun. The straight man-say he’s a gambler, carrying a real roll. Mike has to slug him. He can use the old cackle-bladder routine from the con games-a plastic membrane filled with chicken blood. He has it in the palm of his hand, and claps himself on the forehead and all at once starts bleeding like a damn pig. Then Mike shoots the off-duty detective, on the way out. He grabs the girl and backs into the elevator and lays up in her apartment. A few prowl cars circulate around with their sirens going. That’s all the atmosphere you’ll need. The girl needs somebody like Mike. She offers him the job. Why not? We can think of a few refinements, but basically it’s all right there.”

Shayne shook his head morosely. “How many beers had you put away before I got here?”

“Quite a few,” Gentry said, “and every time I have one more it looks a little better. Where’s the hole in it, Mike? All we want to do is establish you as a gunman in trouble, and it shouldn’t be hard. She won’t know you’re shooting blanks.” Suddenly he smiled broadly. “Sandy, show Mike the picture of this doll in a bikini. He’ll stop arguing.”

Shayne said impatiently, “If she looks that good in a bathing suit, aren’t there any easier ways she can make money?”

“She’s definitely not routine,” Power said, “but none of the rest of this is, either. I’ll tell you what Interpol has on her. She’s thirty-two, and well preserved. For three years, maybe longer, she was the mistress of a Greek shipowner. She went along on yacht trips with some highly placed people. She spends money freely. They think she carried some stolen bonds from Paris to Macao a year ago. She was suspected of blackmailing the younger son of a minor king, and that’s all, except for one small fact. During the bond investigation an agent heard her phoning somebody named Adam.” He looked at Gentry. “Does that name mean anything to you, Will?”

Gentry shook his head. Power went on, “It meant something to me, and it meant something to the agent who put it in the dossier. Actually we know quite a bit about the man, considering that we don’t know if Adam is a first or a last name. He’s English, probably not by birth. What we all agree on is the nature of his business. He finances the international movement of guns, drugs, gold, stolen paintings-you name it. He may or may not use an actual bank, nobody knows. We don’t know if he’s one man or a group. We don’t know where his headquarters is. It could even be some kind of a code name, though that I really do doubt. Well, I haven’t put away quite enough beer to give you my lecture on international underworld finance, and I don’t know such a hell of a lot about the subject anyway. But if you’re in the legitimate export-import business, shipping goods from one currency system to another, you need a legitimate banking connection. And if you’re in a crooked export-import business, you need a crooked connection.”

Shayne shrugged. “You’d do better to take this to the FBI. Everybody there has to be either a lawyer or an accountant.”

“That’s not what I need,” Power told him. “I need somebody to get this girl’s confidence. I ought to mention that when she isn’t working, she seems to prefer large, rugged men.”

“Which is why you thought of Mike,” Gentry said gravely.

“Hell, we need everything going for us we can get.”

“Christ!” Shayne said.

Power opened a folder on the bureau and handed the detective a six-by-eight glossy photograph of a girl in a two-piece bathing suit, standing in a stiff breeze on the bow of a sail boat. Shayne studied it for a moment.

“About the fee,” he said, “I’ll want that in writing.”

Power laughed. “You can have it in writing. I had a feeling you’d like her looks. Now how could a lovely girl like that get involved in something like this?” He picked up his beer again and looked into it as though if he stared hard enough a scene would take shape. “I think they were sitting around somewhere in the south of France, she and our Mr. X-Adam something or something Adam. He mentioned a proposition he’d heard about in New York. A hundred-thousand-dollar investment, a couple of million in return. And what a coup for their side! The poor underpaid cops worked and slaved for two long years, picking up a dribble of heroin here and a dribble of marijuana there, and then they lose it all in one afternoon. He’s toying with the idea, but he can’t use any of his regular connections in the business because he’s afraid they’ll throw it away. And the girl, who’s tired of running penny-ante errands, says, ‘Let me!’ Adam likes to work with gorgeous girls, it’s one of his trademarks. He gives her the name of a New York gun, Tug Wynanski, who will do all the donkey work. Now cops always go by likelihood and percentages. How many would believe this girl was the contact on a big-time stickup? I’m retiring next year, Mike. This would make a nice thing to retire on. Listen-even if you can’t get anything conclusive on him, find out his name! Blow his anonymity and he’s more or less through. Sure, somebody else will come along six months later, but that’s the condition of police work. It goes on.”

Shayne poured himself some more cognac. Both men watched him.

“And what if I do succeed in getting in without getting myself killed? I’ll be at the bottom. How do I find out anything about this banker you don’t already know?”

“We can bypass the girl. Say they have a series of ten steps. You carry out the first nine, and then pull a fast switch that puts you in possession, you personally. Then you can make him come to you. That’s only the outline. It needs a lot of work.”

“I’ll say it needs work,” Shayne said. “What do you think about it, Will?”

Gentry said impassively, “I wouldn’t have asked you over if I didn’t think you could swing it, Mike. You’ll be in touch with Sandy all along, and he’ll have his men within shouting distance. There’s a risk, but maybe it’s no worse than some of the jams you get into under your own steam. You know what I think about the heroin business. I think everything about it stinks.”