Brett Halliday - I Come to Kill You

Finding an outside booth, he called MacDougall’s number.

“Well, Mike,” MacDougall said briskly, “I thought you’d want to know that we found the bundle you left for us. We needed a helicopter, but Gentry waved them off as soon as they spotted the stain.”

“Has he agreed to keep it quiet?”

“Until six tonight.”

“Six is too early.”

“Well, that’s his deadline, Mike, and I had to talk myself blue to get him to agree to that. Your name came into the conversation, unfortunately, and he isn’t entirely rational on the subject of renegade private detectives. He choked and sputtered. And he didn’t like the insinuation that De Blasio has a pipeline into his office.”

Shayne swore. “If he releases that story at six, I stand a good chance of getting killed.”

“That’s what I told him, and got a very nasty laugh for an answer. The body’s locked in his car. It comes out at six, and gets the regular homicide treatment.”

“Hugh, six o’clock would be the worst possible time. You’ll have to tell him a little more. Have you got a copy of that contract we signed?”

“Yes, do you want me to show it to him?”

Shayne said reluctantly, “He’ll think he’s been made a fool of so I can draw down a big fee. You’ll have to persuade him to put his personal feelings aside. This could be the hottest homicide of his career. Here’s a way you can get his interest — the body in that tarp isn’t run-of-the-mill. It’s the Don’s consigliere. Musso Siracusa. And the point to make is that if he holds off till I give him the go-ahead, he can nail Carl De Blasio for the killing.”

“The son?”

“Yeah, and this time there’s an eyewitness. But if Gentry or anybody else fouls it up, the eyewitness will be too dead to testify.”

“Put it like that, and he’ll have to agree.”

“If he listens. He may not feel like listening. He can be a mule.”

“Leave it to me,” MacDougall said. “If you can handle these hoodlums, I should be able to handle one overweight police chief. He gave me a small piece of news — a minor strongarm at the St. Albans casino has been killed. He’s a De Blasio second cousin, a little retarded.”

“I’ve been expecting something to happen down there. That’s where they’re vulnerable. I’ll get back to you before six.”

Hanging up, he returned to the photo shop. His pictures weren’t ready, but as an old customer he was allowed into the second-floor lab to wait. A dark gum-chewing girl was processing his order. She checked one of the negatives on the viewer, and nearly swallowed her gum.

“You’re a technician,” Shayne said. “A picture’s a picture.”

“We can’t print this kind of negative! It got us in trouble last year.”

Shayne showed her his private detective’s license. “It’s a skin-flick operation. The lady’s brother hired me to put them out of business before they’re raided, and with these pictures I think I can do it.”

“What a liar. All right, Mr. Shayne. Keep an eye out, and let me know if you see any plainclothes-men.”

Shayne chose the negatives he wanted enlarged, and watched the scenes re-create themselves in the pan under the enlarger. He became impatient quickly, and left before some of the prints were dry.

He drove north and crossed onto Normandy Isle at Seventy-first Street. The condominium that Bobby Burns had taken over was a new Moorish-style building around a central court with a swimming pool. Shayne parked, blocking the driveway, leaving his motor running.

He saw an unshaven face at a front window. After a moment a burly man with a recent sunburn came down the front walk and unlocked the narrow gate. His face was unfamiliar to Shayne, but it was a familiar type.

“You’re sitting in our driveway,” he pointed out.

“I’m looking for an angle guy named Burns. Some friends of mine in Jersey told me he was down here, and I’ve got some pictures to sell him.”

“You’ve got some pictures to sell him?”

“I’ve got some pictures to sell him,” Shayne agreed. “But I don’t want to talk about it out here on the street. And I know you don’t want to let me in until you’re sure he wants you to let me in. So I’ll show you a sample. You haven’t heard about this yet.”

He selected one of the still-damp prints. It showed Marcello Marti, in undershirt and high socks, facing the wall with a gun at the back of his neck. The man gulped audibly and put out a hand for the picture, but Shayne moved it away.

“Tell Bobby what I’ve got.”

“He’s going to want to see these.”

He told Shayne to park. Shayne backed into an open space on the other side of the street, switched on his little radio receiver, and locked the car carefully. He took out the cigar, bit off the end, and lit it as he entered the building.

Three men were waiting in the entrance lobby. One was Valenti, the security man from the St. Albans casino.

“I see you’ve been traded,” Shayne commented.

“No percentage in sticking with a loser. Put your arms out, Shayne.”

He was relieved of the pictures, and Valenti took them into a downstairs apartment. Shayne had left his gun and knife in the car. The other men made a small pile of everything else he was carrying. Then he was told to take off his clothes.

“Come on. Let’s not overdo this.”

“Bobby had a bad experience with the FBI once. The goddamn agent had a mike taped to his belly button.”

“They’re bastards,” Shayne agreed.

The cigar in his mouth, he undressed. Everything came off, including his socks, so they could look between his toes. Valenti came back.

“He’s clean,” one of the men reported.

“Snap it up, Shayne. Bobby wants to know where those pictures come from.”

“I shot them myself. What does he think, I hired actors?”

He dressed quickly and finished buttoning his shirt as Valenti took him into the living room of the ground-floor apartment. It was clearly a bachelor encampment. There were several mattresses in the room, three or four chairs, a card table, bottles, cigarette butts, the remains of TV dinners.

Bobby Burns was short, no more than five-six, even with lifts in his heels, but very muscular. His frizzy black hair stood out around his head as though it carried an electrical charge. He was bare from the waist up, with several tattoos. “Born to Raise Hell,” said a message on his arm.

Shayne’s photographs were laid out in sequence, starting with the one-sided lovemaking and ending with Marti on the floor, clearly dead. Burns motioned to the photograph showing Skeets about to fire.

“Who’s the shooter?”

“One of the Don’s boys. Skeets, they call him. A kid.”

“What’s this, a hotel room or where?”

“A hotel room. It won’t be reported right away. They ditched the body, but I don’t know where. I wasn’t in on that part of it. All I was doing was carrying a gun.” He grinned. “And a Japanese camera.”

“You private eyes,” Burns said flatly. “You’d sell your own grandmother.”

“I’ve done it often.” He shook the ash from his cigar. “Do you have anything to drink around here? Your boys took my flask because it might be a forty-five pistol in disguise.”

“Just being precautious.”

Burns offered him a pint of cheap blended whiskey. Shayne winced at the label, but took it and drank. He brushed magazines and newspapers off one of the chairs and sat down.

“I saw this kid Valenti in St. A. What did he do, wipe out one of their guys before he took off?”

“That’s the condition,” Burns said briefly, sitting down.

“It’s pretty crude stuff, Bobby, considering that everybody’s trying to live down that old image.”