Brett Halliday - Murder Spins the Wheel

“Here it is,” the agent said in a muffled voice. “And a damn professional job.”

There was a faint clink. He backed out and motioned to Shayne. He had taken off a long metal plate which had fitted exactly between two seams in the Alfa’s floor. The little dome light, augmented by the agent’s flashlight, showed a shallow well, several inches deep, extending across the Alfa’s body, like a false bottom in a trunk. It was filled with packages of bills.

Painter and Williams, the chief narcotics agent, peered in from the other side.

“I’ll be goddamned,” Painter said. “Those are twenties and fifties. There must be-”

“About two hundred thousand,” Shayne said casually. “Probably a little less.”

He motioned to the agent, and the man slid the metal lid back in place.

“I’m going to tell this in order, Theo. Feel free to interrupt.”

“I don’t think I will, thanks, Mike,” she said coolly. “It’s true that I’m Vince Donahue’s sister. That wouldn’t be hard to prove. As far as I know, it’s no crime to have a brother who’s been getting into messes since he was two years old.”

“And that’s about the only thing I will be able to prove,” Shayne said. “You’re a smart girl, Theo, and it’s a shame you couldn’t think of anything better to do with all that intelligence.”

Sanderson and one of the narcotics men had remained at the foot of the steps, beside the unconscious Harry Bass. The others, including Betty, had come over to the Alfa to gawk at the money. Shayne had an attentive audience.

“Johnny Black grew up with the Donahues in St. Louis,” he said. “He told me Vince and his sister moved in with an aunt after their parents were killed. I didn’t think about the sister again until I caught a trace of a St. Louis accent in something Theo said tonight. The way she pronounced the middle vowels in Miami. I’m no expert, but I once knew another girl from St. Louis who said it that way. The wheels started turning. I don’t know which Donahue got to Miami first. Vince drifted into small beach-boy swindles, but Theo was the one with the brain, and she wanted something bigger.”

“How do you know what I wanted?” she said.

“I’m guessing,” Shayne admitted, “but I do know you didn’t want to go on working in an insurance office. You arranged a meeting with Steve Bass. He liked you. Soon you were working for his father. He liked you. A girl with your looks and style, working in his house most of the time, would have no trouble getting an invitation to the Riviera. Vince found out the name of a man to see in France. He sold the deal to Doc Waters, and Doc scraped up the money to finance it.”

Williams looked around at Doc, who smiled lewdly and spread his arms. “Frisk me, fellows. Anybody who finds any junk gets a free cigar.”

“Theo made the connection in France,” Shayne went on. “She wangled this Alfa out of Harry and brought it back through the customs loaded with heroin. But you didn’t turn over the entire shipment, did you, dear? You took your pay in kind, and waited. Vince had a handle that could produce a football fix some day. When he found out about a mare that was going to win a horse race at a long price, you were ready to move. For the key hour and a half this afternoon, when Harry might have softened the blow by laying off some of the bets, you kept him busy. And you’re right, the Constitution says you don’t have to tell us how you did it. Harry wasn’t supposed to spot the football fix, but he did. Everything else went like clockwork. We thought at first that the big thing was the double fix, but that was only step number one. The stickup was step number two. Step number three was where it was supposed to end-with Harry being picked up in New York on a narcotics rap which he couldn’t beat. You had the run of the house. You handled Harry’s plans. You could plant the heroin in any one of a dozen ways, and the arrest could take place anywhere, even here in Miami. But New York was better. It’s chilly there at this time of year, and you could insist he wear his topcoat. After that, an anonymous call to the New York cops. He would have been tried up there, where the judges are hard on narcotics wholesalers. He wouldn’t be back in his home town for twenty years, if he lived that long.”

“I don’t get that part, Mike,” Rourke said. “What was her object?”

“To take over,” Shayne said quietly. “This girl has ambition. She knows the ins and outs of Harry’s business, legal and illegal. Probably not much of it is written down. In the first days after Harry’s arrest, everybody would have to turn to her.”

“Shayne, you’re a nut,” Doc Waters said flatly. “There’s dissatisfaction around, plenty of it, but who’d accept a woman?”

“You would,” Shayne said. “She’s a smart girl, and I think she could have pulled it off. Not all at once, step by step. Nobody likes a Donnybrook, with everybody brawling for the top spot. For a while she’d carry on as Harry’s agent, and after maybe two or three years people would realize how good she was. And let’s face it, she’s good. Look at the generalship that went into this thing tonight. She’d be the first, like the first woman astronaut. She’d be rich, famous, and a credit to her sex.”

“Oh, I’m so brilliant,” Theo said bitterly.

Shayne continued, “But Harry didn’t like the idea of going to jail for handling narcotics, and he didn’t stop to think it over. He blew. Theo didn’t know this, of course. Am I right so far? She went to her brother’s boat to look for a bait bucket filled with money. I’ll tell you more about that bait bucket in a minute. She emptied it and put it with the rest of the take in her Alfa. She was a little worried about me, I think, because I was pointed in the right direction. She was with me when we heard about New York. That was a bad blow. She turned pale and she cried. They were genuine tears. I tasted one to make sure. I think she thought I was kissing her.”

He grinned at her. She said acidly, “You’re a real bastard.”

“Yes, Theo. The tears weren’t for Harry, but for what had happened to her plans. She had an elegant chess solution all worked out, and Harry had kicked over the board. Now if I could talk to Harry before anything else happened, I might be able to convince him to go to the hospital and lie down. She must have considered shooting me. But she only had a small gun, and it might not have stopped me. So she shot herself. She knew exactly what Harry would do if he made it to Miami. He’d head for Doc Waters. Harry knew Doc wanted him replaced, and he knew that Doc had been dabbling in narcotics. Naturally he thought Doc was the source of the heroin in the lining of his coat. Theo wanted the meeting to take place. If Harry killed him, which came close to happening, he’d still be tainted with narcotics and he’d have a murder to answer for, regardless of what happened to the New York cop. She managed to hold me up for a couple of hours, and it was nearly enough. Another five minutes would have done it.”

“Mike,” Rourke said, “there’s one big hole in this-what happened to Vince?”

“Well, Vince. The poor guy was really hooked on heroin now, and you can’t rely on a heroin addict to show any stamina under police interrogation. He was her little brother, and she was probably fond of him in a way, but she decided he had to go. They had a good cover worked out for him during the time of the stickup, and she turned it into a murder device. He swam across from La Gorce to Normandy Isle, an easy swim, after supposedly knocking himself out with a strong fix of heroin. Her empty Alfa was parked near where he came out of the water. Theo herself was over here typing, on the other side of the island. He changed into his stickup clothes. He’d organized two back-home boys to help-he really did most of the work, when you think how little he got out of it-and after the stickup they dropped him and Harry’s suitcase beside the Alfa. That’s why I was able to catch them on the causeway. Vince stashed the money in the car and got back into his scuba suit. There was one change in plan which I think was his own idea. Maybe he didn’t trust his sister. He towed an empty bait bucket across from the boat, and he towed it back with money in it.”