Brett Halliday - Murder Spins the Wheel

Pedro Sanchez, a slight, narrow-chested youth, his sallow face studded with patches of acne, pressed against the smooth bole of a palm tree. He wore a black sports shirt, black slacks. The night was dark, without stars. His heart hammered as he searched the shadows, and he shivered slightly, although a necklace of perspiration beaded his upper lip.

He was supposed to be taking his time, but the extreme quiet was making him jumpy. Action he didn’t mind. He had been fighting all his life, in gyms and on street corners. But he had grown up in a big city, and the outdoors was mysterious to him, full of unknown dangers. He didn’t like this sneaking from tree to tree. He would rather walk openly up the driveway, the metal plates in his heels crunching on the gravel.

The big house on Normandy Isle, in upper Biscayne Bay between Miami and Miami Beach, belonged to Harry Bass. Sanchez had been imported from another town, in another state, but he knew that Bass was the big man in book-making and casino gambling in this part of the world, which automatically made him a bad man to fool around with. But everything had been worked out to the split second. By the time Bass discovered what had happened to him, Sanchez expected to be a thousand miles away, starting to enjoy the $10,000 that had been deposited in his account in the Liberty Savings Bank in St. Louis. For the first time in his life-he was twenty-two years old-he had a savings account. Most people didn’t realize, he was sure, that if you left $10,000 in savings-bank money alone, it would grow by four or five hundred a year. Not that he expected to leave it alone. He had plans.

Taking a deep breath, he moved quickly from the palm tree to an ornamental shrub. Now he could see the Cadillac on the graveled turnaround by the front entrance. It was too big, too black, too shiny, and Sanchez was pleased to think that before much longer it would be nothing but a twisted pile of junk.

He crept cautiously along the spongy turf at the edge of the driveway, bent low and keeping the Cadillac’s bulk between him and the lights of the house. Before leaving the protection of the last bush, he checked his pockets and crossed himself furtively. In a half crouch, he darted across the gravel, dropping to one knee beside the Cadillac’s front fender, and whipped a small metal canister, the size of a pack of cigarettes, out of his shirt pocket. A powerful magnet was welded to the top of the canister. Reaching underneath the car, he slapped the magnet against the bottom of the oil pan. A short length of light cable ran out from the canister, ending in another magnet. Sanchez attached this to the inside of the front wheel. The instant the wheel started its first revolution, the cable would tighten and snap, activating a timing mechanism inside the canister. Exactly three minutes later, Sanchez and the others had been assured, the incendiary material inside the canister would ignite, fuming upward into the motor. In ten seconds, the front of the car would be on fire.

Sanchez ran back to the nearest bush, where he wiped grease off his fingers onto his socks. He slid his hand inside his shirt and touched the butt of the. 38, which he wore in a shoulder harness against his skin. He had been told it would be easy, and it had been easy. Now they had to wait till the man came out with the money. The waiting, Sanchez knew from experience, would be the hard part.

He made his way back to the fence, and to show that he was unimpressed by the rustlings and insect noises around him, he ignored the bushes and walked straight across the grass. Freeing the loose section of the fence, where they had cut the wires holding the tall cedar pickets together, he peered out carefully. Finding the street deserted, he stepped through, hooked the fence back together and angled briskly across the street. He slid behind the wheel of a fairly new Dodge sedan.

There were two other men in the sedan, and Sanchez no longer felt so vulnerable. If anything went wrong now, it would be somebody else’s fault.

He made a circle with thumb and forefinger. “Let’s hope the damn thing works.”

The big man in back said cheerfully, “If it don’t work, get up close to him, Pete, and I’ll shoot out a tire.”

“That’s a Caddy, man,” Sanchez replied. “If he sees us coming he’ll walk right away from us.”

The kid in front beside Sanchez lit a cigarette. He was calling the shots, he had organized everything and put up the capital, and to hear him talk, he was no stranger to the big time. It had a calming effect on Sanchez to see that his lighter flame was trembling.

“It’ll work,” the kid said, breathing out smoke. “It’s the same stuff they put in fire grenades in the Army. And don’t start shooting out tires, for God’s sake. Any other cars in the driveway?”

“No, just the Cad.”

They heard distant traffic noises, but this was a quiet part of town. They were parked on a short street, beginning at the Normandy Shores golf course and ending at the edge of the bay. After the kid finished his cigarette, sucking the smoke in hungrily, he started combing his hair. He jittered up and down and around, stretching his legs to ease the pull of his tight slacks, fingering his nose, checking the time, keeping the comb in motion. The more he twitched, the easier Sanchez felt. It stood to reason that the kid would be wondering how much he’d clear, and he was probably running over the list of the hundred and one things that could go wrong.

Sanchez hadn’t seen him for a couple of years. During that time he had picked up a nice tan and some terrific clothes. He was wearing a forty-dollar pair of shoes. If there was one thing Sanchez was a good judge of, it was shoes. The kid had been light-haired to start with, and after all the sun he had been out in, his eyebrows and lashes were so light they could hardly be seen at all. There were lines on his face that shouldn’t be there at his age, but he was still a good-looking guy. Sanchez, for example, had complexion trouble. People had always kept telling him it would begin to clear as soon as he turned twenty-one, but it seemed to be getting worse. And look at the kid-the smooth cheeks and forehead of a goddamn baby. It didn’t seem right. He always had all the dolls he could use, rich dolls with cars and suites at the best hotels. Sanchez was wondering, not for the first time, how come he let himself in for the headaches of a major stickup when there were so many easier ways to keep himself in those forty-dollar soft Italian shoes.

And then the kid’s nostrils flared, and Sanchez suddenly had the explanation: he was on junk!

Sanchez turned to check on the big placid man in the back seat, Pond, who was smoking a cheap cigar, completely relaxed.

“Oh, my,” Pond said easily. “The things people do to make a living.”

A car door slammed. The sound carried well in the night. A motor coughed softly and took hold.

The kid looked at Sanchez.

“That’s it,” Sanchez said, and switched on the ignition. “A sweet engine, the Cadillac.”

His wheels were already turned, ready to roll out. The kid craned forward beside him, steaming up the inside of the windshield, watching the Bass driveway. When Sanchez saw a flicker of headlights through the stockade fence, he eased away from the curb. The Dodge had an automatic transmission, which he didn’t like, and a slow pickup in second. He was afraid cornering would be a problem at high speed. After stealing the car in northeast Miami, he had discovered these faults too late, crossing the causeway. But if everything went according to plan they would keep within the speed limit, observe stop signs, and attract no attention.