Brett Halliday - Armed… Dangerous…

Somebody had been moving in the bedroom on the other side of the wall. There was an abrupt silence. Shayne froze, spread-eagled on the roof.

Irene’s voice said clearly, “You’re beginning to jump, my girl.”

She came to the lighted window to look out at the night Shayne was too close to the wall to see her, but the shadow she cast was naked.

“Anybody out there?” she said in a low whisper. “If so, come in. No? Too bad, Irene. Another night shot to hell.”

Shayne waited till her light was out. Springs jangled as she climbed into bed, and under cover of the noise he wriggled past. He climbed through his own window and replaced the screen.

On his bed, he doubled his pillow to make a soundproof cave for his tiny phone. He signaled the operator and gave her a number. An instant later the voice of his friend Tim Rourke spoke from the button in his ear.

“Mike?”

“Yeah,” the detective said curtly into his cupped hands. “Tomorrow morning. Watch the ferry and the bridges. Dark green convertible.” He gave the license number. “Read it back.”

Rourke repeated the number. “Anything else?”

“No.”

Rourke said, “Well, Mike, you did it. Sometimes you amaze me. Good luck, buddy.”

Shayne withdrew the point of his screwdriver, breaking the connection. He moved the bureau away from the door. After sliding in under the sheet he put the hearing-aid button back in his ear. He smoked a last cigarette thoughtfully.

Like his friend Rourke, he was surprised at how well everything had gone. As Jake Melnick, the diamond dealer, Rourke had overdone the alarm and dismay, Shayne had thought, and when he had slapped the plastic membrane against his forehead he had produced a huge gush of blood, far more than would have been showing if Shayne had actually slugged him with a pistol. But the girl had been properly scared by it. Inspector Power himself had been the off-duty detective who accosted them in the lobby. The other roles had been filled by detectives from the Confidential Squad-the traffic patrolman outside, the workmen who blocked their escape with the piano, the uniformed cop, checking Michele’s apartment, who had been hit in the face with a wet towel. Shayne smiled in the darkness. Only the plump lady in the flowered hat had not been part of the troupe, and her performance couldn’t have been improved by three weeks of rehearsals. The one thing that had bothered Shayne-it hadn’t seemed to bother Rourke or Power, he noticed-was whether he could convince an intelligent girl that he was capable of stunning a defenseless man with a. 45, and then of putting a second bullet into a wounded cop. He made a wry face and stubbed out his cigarette. Perhaps the dyed hair made the difference.

The next day would be a difficult one. The day after that would be more difficult still. His main problem remained Michele, but he had no shortage of lesser problems. All Szigetti’s early suspicions had come back, during the poker game, and Shayne’s last look of the evening from the dapper former Marine had been hard and searching. Probably, Shayne thought, on one of Szigetti’s vacation trips to Miami or Miami Beach some local companion had pointed Shayne out, and he could make the connection at any time. It was going to be like sitting in the same room with a ticking bomb.

There was a rapid series of clicks in his ear. He sat up, instantly alert, and adjusted the hearing-aid button.

“Yes?” a man’s voice said.

“I found somebody,” Michele’s voice said without preamble.

“Excellent.”

The half-swallowed consonants went with an upper-class English upbringing, Shayne thought, listening carefully, but there was also something else, a faint whiff of another country.

“I have observed him in action,” Michele said, “and I think he will do well. After Wynanski I thought perhaps we should cancel everything and return to France. This one prides himself on common sense and directness and vulgarity, but there is something else too. I think he conducts himself as he imagines he should. He is flexible, he improvises well, and he unquestionably has courage. He can drink a great deal with little change in his manner. He lost his temper once or twice, but I think deliberately.”

“I see you’ve been watching him closely,” the voice said with a laugh.

“Yes, it was necessary that I do so. I have had to be careful with him. I will tell you about it later. I was in danger for a time. America! Never again, thank you. But I found that the danger stimulated the sexual responses to a surprising extent. Interesting. But I would dislike to have it happen again in just that way.”

“Ah.”

“Yes. He is desirable, this man, and I am wondering if I should take him to Europe with me. Perhaps not. But meanwhile, to be sure of him, I need a passport.”

“That can be arranged.”

“I have never met this precise type, you see, and at times I think he is not so simple. So you should know this. He shot a policeman during a robbery. His name is Francis McQuade. He is also wanted for a robbery in Brooklyn. Are you taking this down?”

“Yes’.”

“And all this gives us a lever. He must do as we say, to leave the country under our auspices.”

There was a doubtful quality about the silence at the other end of the line. She said, “Don’t you agree?”

“It could have that effect,” the man said. “Or it could impair his judgment. There is a time to be reckless, a time to be prudent.”

“Have confidence. If shooting becomes necessary, I want someone who will not hesitate. No shooting at all would be better, I quite agree. I have undertaken to pay him twenty-five thousand.”

“Dollars, not francs, I suppose,” the man said without enthusiasm. “This is becoming expensive. I don’t say that in the way of criticism. The passport should be ready tomorrow at ten.”

“Do you notice a noise on the line?”

“Nothing unusual. Except for those in the USSR, American phones are the noisiest in the world. Till tomorrow.” They hung up. Shayne chuckled to himself. His deal with the girl was for fifteen thousand, not twenty-five. Apparently her moneymaking instincts were as well developed as her sexual ones.

He disconnected the battery case. At the window he tugged at the wire until it pulled out of the telephone box below. He rewound it carefully. In a matter of minutes he was asleep.

Michele awakened him. He blinked up at her, wondering what he had done to deserve the attentions of this cool, elegant girl. Remembering where be was and what was expected of him, he reached out for her. She moved away quickly.

“Not now, darling. Not here. Those bedsprings would wake up everybody within miles.”

“What’s the matter with the floor?” Shayne suggested.

Her nose wrinkled. “I doubt that it has been cleaned since 1910. Put on some clothes and I’ll see about breakfast.”

She was wearing a straight up-and-down white linen dress, put together in a way that called the viewer’s attention to the fact that Michele, inside it, was not straight up-and-down at all. It was no effort for Shayne to look at her with admiring lust.

“I mean it,” she said. “I have an appointment at ten. Meanwhile, we have much to prepare. But sometime today, I promise you! In the bathroom at the end of the corridor you will find shaving things.”

Shayne shaved and dressed. As he left the bedroom he had a feeling that his preparations were incomplete, and he went back for the dummy hearing aid. In the kitchen he found Michele preparing an omelet. She made a face from the stove.

“Orange juice from a can. Coffee in the form of powder. Margarine. How do people live this way?”

“We get used to it.”

“Darling, after this is finished I cook for you. Cooking is an art all French girls are required to know.”