Brett Halliday - Armed… Dangerous…

The omelet was light and excellent, and Shayne had it to himself, Michele contenting herself with a half cup of coffee and a bite of roll. Brownie appeared as they were leaving. He regarded them with sad, bloodshot eyes.

“I can’t find the aspirin,” he said accusingly.

“Billy will drive down and get you some,” Michele said. “Tell everyone else to stay inside, and please not to drink so much. It will be nice if no one has a headache tomorrow.”

Brownie mumbled something and watched them go.

Shayne said, “I’d better drive. That’s the way we do it in this country.”

In the car, heading down the long bumpy driveway, he went on, “To get something off my chest right away-this Szigetti is supposed to cover me, the way I understand it. I don’t trust the guy. I know it’s too late to work in anybody else, but I want him over on the other side of the truck so I can keep an eye on him. If he quits on me, I want to know it.”

“Yes-s,” she said doubtfully. “See what you think when we get there.”

Shayne drove through the electric eye at the gate and turned left. New houses were going up everywhere. At the first crossroads, there were a few stores, a bar and grill, a gas station.

“Left again,” she said.

“I want a paper.”

“We’re in a hurry, darling. Get one in the city.”

“I want to see what kind of story they gave me.”

He swung onto the asphalt apron in front of the grocery store. There was a rack of New York newspapers on the front step.

“Give me a News,” he called.

A woman tending the stand whipped a Daily News out of her stack and brought it to him. He tossed it in Michele’s lap and drove on.

A jet had crashed near Kennedy Airport, killing 83, so Shayne’s small-scale act of violence hadn’t been given a page-one headline. Michele found the story on page three and read it in silence. Shayne, of course, already knew what it said. Rourke had written the story and Power had persuaded the editor of the News to plant it in one copy of one edition, in return for a promise of an inside track on later developments. And then the single doctored copy had been planted on the Staten Island rack and the woman had been told to sell it to no one but a big black-haired man driving a green Chevrolet convertible.

“But he wasn’t a policeman at all!” Michele exclaimed.

“What?”

“For twenty years he was a policeman, then he had to resign because of a gambling scandal. Edward Farrell, fifty-six. The last two years, he has been wandering about the city hoping to see some criminal to arrest, so the police would take him back. It is a de Maupassant story!”

“My heart bleeds,” Shayne said. “What’s it say about Melnick?”

“In a coma still.”

“He better stay in a coma.”

“Condition critical,” she said, reading. “That means serious? Perhaps by the time he comes round you and I will be in a country where few people can speak English.”

“Knock on wood,” Shayne said.

On the plane between Miami and New York, he had studied New York and Long Island road maps, and he knew that there were four possible ways for a car to get off Staten Island. When Michele gave him another left, in the direction of Port Richmond, he knew they were going by ferry. Victory Boulevard took them into St. George. This was a bad time of the day for automobiles. They inched down to the ferry slip. After a ten-minute wait they were permitted to crawl aboard a Manhattan ferry. They stayed in the car, and Shayne read the Daily News story.

“The things they always get wrong,” he said, and paged through the paper until he came to Dick Tracy, the world’s most preposterous sleuth. He snorted again a moment later, wadded the paper up and threw it in a trash basket as they arrived at the Battery. From here he was expected to know the way by himself. Concentrating hard, he pulled an imaginary map into focus, with its tiny street designations and little blue arrows. “What do we want, the West Side Highway?”

“I think so. The quickest way to Sixth Avenue and Twenty-seventh.”

Most of the traffic was moving north on Whitehall Street, and Shayne moved with it. In addition to street signs and traffic signals, he watched for illegally parked cars. He saw what he was looking for, an unmarked black Ford at a bus stop, where it could swing left on Whitehall or take the East Side elevated highway. Two men were in the front seat, and one of them was Jake Melnick, no longer in a coma, the blood washed off his face, and changed back into Shayne’s friend Tim Rourke.

Shayne slowed and changed lanes, letting the Ford get in behind him. He turned off at Bowling Green, swinging the wheel with a show of confidence he was far from feeling. Several blocks later, he stumbled on an inconspicuous ramp leading upward to the West Side Highway. He left at Twenty-third Street, the black Ford still right behind him. He passed Eighth Avenue, then Seventh, and came to the Avenue of the Americas. Here a red light stopped him.

“Our Sanitation truck,” Michele said, looking down the avenue, “will come all the way uptown on Sixth. We have timed the distance, five days in a row. To be safe we should leave a thirty-minute margin.”

Now Shayne remembered that the Avenue of the Americas was the official name for Sixth, and he turned north when the light changed.

“You’re sure of the route?” he said.

“Very sure.”

As they approached Twenty-seventh Street she said, “Now stop a bit.”

Shayne double-parked short of the corner. There was a solid line of parked cars in the metered spaces against the curb, and the second line was also nearly solid.

“Billy is to fix the light this afternoon,” Michele said. “Brownie and Irene will come from there. Ziggy from there.” She pointed, and explained what would happen when the truck halted at the corner. It wasn’t simple, but it was less complex than the average football play on the college level. Shayne’s only reservation was that the play would be executed by a pickup team of misfits and malcontents.

“Now if you want Ziggy to do anything different-” she said.

“No,” Shayne said slowly. “I won’t make my move before he commits himself. It looks good, kid. Somebody put a lot of brain work into this.”

“Thank you,” she said with a blinding smile.

“How long does the light stay red?”

“Forever, until a repairman finds the button. Billy’s plan is to attach it to the back of the one-way arrow. It will be hard to find. Are we finished here?”

Shayne looked over the terrain once again. As soon as the Sanitation truck began to move, the group on the sidewalk would fade into nearby buildings. In back, there was a low wall to climb. Two parked cars would be waiting on Twenty-sixth Street. They had worked out two alternate routes in case anything happened to this one.

“Now,” she said, “what you are to do, darling, you go through the red light and turn right.”

“You mean left.”

“No, right, against the arrow. What will happen, the moment the light changes here when Billy pushes the button, a truck will back out halfway to Broadway, to block both lanes. All the cars between there and here will drain off on the green light. There will be nothing in your way. Take me around and I show you.”

He went on to Twenty-eighth, where he made a legal right turn and turned right again on Broadway. On Twenty-seventh he went west, toward Sixth.

“Here,” she said. She pointed into a sloping delivery alley between two loft buildings. “Leave the car and walk in and see.”

He went into a paved yard behind the buildings. A wall of steel posts and panels barred the way at the property line.

He returned to the girl. “It’s blind. A hell of a place to unload.”