Brett Halliday - Armed… Dangerous…

Instantly his manner changed. He listened. When he heard Billy’s retreating footsteps he turned on the hot-water faucet. The water was rusty. Leaving the water running, he raised the lower half of a narrow frosted window and looked out. Then he eased his big frame through the opening and dropped to the ground.

He moved cautiously around the house. The living-room windows were open. He dropped to his heels to listen to Szigetti’s overly emphatic voice.

“All I’m saying is I saw him somewhere. And he’s got the wrong smell. I just want to make sure you know for a fact he’s OK.”

“I do know that for a fact,” Michele said coldly. “He has the wrong smell because you want another one-fifth added to your price.”

“No! I was just checking up. If you say he’s OK, he’s OK. In this kind of situation, I like to trust the guy on the right of me as well as, the guy on my left, and the way this Frank McQuade strikes me, he strikes me as being maybe a little too independent.”

“He is independent,” she conceded, “but I have a lever to use on him. He will give us no trouble.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” Szigetti said, too heartily. “One other thing. There can’t only be one guy in charge. Tug-he was a natural, we’re all his boys. Now I know the setup, the kids have confidence in me. I’m the logical man. I’m not bucking for anything, understand, but if everybody feels-”

McQuade’s lips shaped a savage smile. He slipped away without waiting to hear more.

He had already spotted the telephone wire. He dropped to his hands and found the lead-in box, just above the masonry of the foundation. He pried the box open with a small screwdriver, working by feel. He struck a light, snapping the lighter shut again almost at once. He did something inside the box, closed it carefully and backed away, paying out a thin copper wire. At intervals, he pulled it taut and tacked it against the underside of a clapboard.

He swung back into the washroom, bringing the wire with him. He took out his hearing-aid battery case and opened it. Where the batteries should have been there was a neat arrangement of printed circuits and transistors. He loosened a terminal and tied in the wire. After checking the button in his ear, he closed a gap in one of the printed circuits with the point of his screwdriver. He turned on both faucets in the wash basin and sloshed the water around with one hand. In a low voice, speaking directly into the battery case, he gave a Manhattan number.

He waited impatiently. Then, in the same low urgent tone, he said, “Power? This is Michael Shayne. I’m in.”

It had started two days earlier in Miami, when Michael Shayne, the big, hard-driving, redheaded private detective, received a phone call from his friend Will Gentry, Chief of Miami Police.

Gentry wanted to know if he was busy. Shayne looked across his cognac at his secretary, Lucy Hamilton, who was sitting on the sofa where he had left her. He said yes. Gentry said in that case he would put it another way. Could Shayne, as a small return for all the favors Gentry had done for him over the years, interrupt what he was doing and get his ass over to the St. Albans Hotel in Miami Beach on the double? Shayne sighed. He told Lucy he was sorry as hell, and put on his shoes.

He met his old friend in a room on the tenth floor of the hotel. A tired-looking man with a square, rugged face shook hands with him and looked at him searchingly.

Gentry said, “This is Inspector Power from New York, Mike. Sanford Power. I’ve known him since he was a pup. The way it is now with these goddam jets, we’re getting to be practically a suburb of New York. If Sandy and I didn’t work together, we’d hardly ever catch anybody.”

Gentry was red-faced and sad-eyed, a courageous, honest cop who was also one of the finest persons the redheaded detective knew. At the moment he was smiling too effusively, like a used-car salesman in bad need of the commission.

“He wants to borrow you for a week, Mike. Sit down and he’ll tell you about it.”

Shayne said dryly, “I don’t think I’m going to like this.” He waved away the chair he was offered, reversed a straight chair and swung a long leg over the seat. “But you put it so nicely, I’ll have to hear about it before I say no.”

Gentry’s too-anxious smile faded. “I was hoping you wouldn’t take your usual hard-nosed attitude, Mike. This could be one of the biggest things in years.”

“For me or for you or for New York?” Shayne inquired. “Go ahead, Inspector. But I have to warn you-there’s a sign on my office door that says, ‘On Vacation.’”

“This wouldn’t be much of a vacation,” Power admitted, rubbing his eyes. “And I hope you’ll call me Sandy instead of Inspector. I’m a long way out of my jurisdiction. Nobody knows that better than I do.”

“Then if this isn’t official,” Shayne said, “offer me a drink.”

“I’m sorry!” Power said. “This thing has been hammering at me. I don’t know if I’m coming or going. I’m a beer man myself, but Will told me what you like.”

He opened a bottle of Hennessey’s. There was a brief interruption while the drinks were poured.

He resumed abruptly, “There may be a certain amount of money for you, Mike, somewhere between thirty and sixty thousand. There’s also a certain amount of danger. And there’s one other thing Will tells me not to stress, but from my point of view it looms pretty large. We have a chance here of crippling the international drug traffic, and it isn’t a chance that’s likely to come again.”

“Every time somebody seizes a few hundred pounds of heroin they say they’ve crippled the drug traffic,” Shayne said. “It still seems to go on.”

Power winced. “I’ve been guilty of that kind of statement once or twice myself. But this is different. It isn’t a few crummy pushers or wholesalers. It’s the men who put up the money, and by money I don’t mean a few thousand dollars. I mean approximately two and a half million.”

Shayne looked up sharply. “I’ve never heard of professionals handling a shipment that large.”

“The circumstances are unusual,” Power said in the same dry tone Shayne had used. “Do you want to say no at this point, or listen to some more?”

Shayne drank some cognac and chased it with a sip of chilled water. “You mentioned a certain amount of danger and a fairly sizable fee. I take it the two things go together?”

“That’s correct. The two and a half million is a retail valuation. A cash equivalent on the primary level would be in the neighborhood of half a million. A ten percent payout would be a justifiable figure for information leading to the apprehension and conviction of et cetera. As far as danger goes, with the right kind of preparation I think it can be minimized. This is very much an undercover assignment. I can’t risk using anybody from New York, even if I had anybody who could do it, and quite frankly, I haven’t. I drink a brew or two with Will whenever I’m in town, and I’ve heard about a few of your exploits, Mike. I think you can handle this job. I’ll go further-I think you may be the one man in the country who can handle it.”

“Good God, Will,” Shayne burst out angrily. “I can see you at these beer-drinking sessions. A cop blows in from the big city, and you think you have to impress him with all the crime we have down here.”

“I didn’t exaggerate,” Gentry said. “And you’re not just a local man anymore, Mike, I might point out. You’ve been known to make the New York papers.”

“And since when did you start believing what you read in the papers?” Shayne made a disgusted face. “And where would this undercover work take place, in southern Florida, where I know my way around, or in New York, where I have to ask directions to find the Latin Quarter?”