Brett Halliday - I Come to Kill You

Carl obeyed. “To be honest,” he said as Shayne brought the Buick around in a tight circle, “she’s not all that wild about sex, in my experience. She just lies there. She takes. She doesn’t give.”

Shayne had played a variety of roles in the last few days, and he was finding this easily the most repellent. He left it at that. Carl also was silent, becoming increasingly tense as they approached his house.

Shayne braked to a stop, but Carl didn’t get out. Setting his jaw, he said firmly, “You’re right, Mike. I haven’t been home as much as I should. I’d better stop kidding myself. I’m really part of the business now. I’ll spend more evenings with Nikki. We’ll start a family.”

“Will you go in, goddamn it?” Shayne said, losing patience. “I’ve got other things to do.”

Carl looked at him in hurt surprise.

“No, wait a minute,” Shayne said as he unlatched the door, and felt him for weapons.

“I don’t carry a gun on the island,” Carl said. “Hey, listen, you don’t think I’d hurt her, do you?”

Shayne made a brusque motion, and Carl scrambled out of the car and walked into the house.

After a moment Shayne switched off the motor. He heard Carl call, “Nikki, sweetheart?”

A light came on. A voice said something, and Carl made a loud sound, between a cry and a groan. Shayne heard running footsteps, then the sound of a struggle. A piece of furniture went over.

Shayne had been told to allow Philly five minutes, and he waited it out by the dashboard clock, minute by minute. Then he went into his equipment box for the little camera he had used to photograph the simulated execution of Marcello Marti. He stopped abruptly, swearing under his breath. He had forgotten to buy film.

It was too late to do anything about it now, or to change his plans. In a hurry to finish up the distasteful episode, he entered the house. He heard sounds behind the closed door of a bedroom. He unlatched the door quietly and let it swing open. The room was dark. Somebody moaned, and there was a wet sound and a gasp.

He stepped inside, the camera raised.

Philly’s confidence in his own attractions and Carl’s weakness had been justified. The two figures on the floor had come a long way in five minutes.

Shayne turned on the ceiling light and began clicking the shutter. If there had been film in the camera, he would have taken a half-dozen shots unnoticed. Philly looked up. “Baby, we’ve got company.”

Carl pulled free and lunged frantically at Shayne’s leg. Philly caught him, laughing.

“He’s straight, dear. He won’t come down and join us. He wants us to go on so he can take some more pictures.”

Carl slapped him away. “Mike, Nicola wasn’t here. He tripped me. He used karate.”

Shayne made another shot from a lower angle. Philly mugged lewdly for the camera.

“Take one like this, Mike. It’s my best profile. Isn’t he virile?”

“Enough is enough,” Shayne said, dropping the camera in his pocket.

There were tears in Carl’s eyes. “I haven’t been into anything like this for so long. I couldn’t help it. He made me.”

“And that’s true!” Philly said. “He fought every inch of the way, except the last couple.”

“Don’t show anybody those pictures, Mike,” Carl begged, coming over on his knees. “I don’t know what my father would… He’d castrate me!”

“Can I watch?” Philly asked.

“You certainly did a professional job,” Carl said bitterly. “Beautiful. I know what happens now. I pay. You’ve got a steady income for life.”

“Philly, do you think you can keep each other occupied for another forty-five minutes?”

“With the greatest of pleasure.”

Carl said accusingly, “You’re going to have those films developed and show them to my father! You don’t care if I get killed. I don’t know what I did to you to deserve anything like this.”

“One small thing you did, Carl,” Shayne said, “was involve me as accessory in a first-degree murder. Outside of that, you’ve been fine. I paid Philly five hundred dollars, plus his air fare, and that qualifies this as entrapment. It’s a standard technique, but I try not to use it too often. Stop feeling sorry for yourself, and listen. You knew you’d have days like this if you went to work in the family business. At least now you don’t have to pretend you’re a happy heterosexual.”

“Isn’t he beautiful?” Philly said.

“I thought so until just lately,” Carl said.

“I’ll be back,” Shayne told them. “I’ll have a program mapped out for you, Carl, and I advise you to follow it. Exactly. Don’t do anything to irritate me, and maybe I’ll open up the back of the camera and expose this film. Philly, lock the doors and leave one light on in the other room. When I honk, I want you both to come running. That means be dressed and ready.”

“Dressed,” Philly said. “Hmm.”

“Except for that, do whatever you like. Have fun, Carlo. Remember, Philly came all the way from New Orleans for this date.”

It was an overcast night, without stars, but Ponce de Leon was never completely dark because of the glow from the lighted buildings and streets on both sides of the bay.

The long black Cadillacs were arriving, bringing the great men — Dino Occhiogrosso, called the Senator because of his white hair and dignified manner, who brought ten million dollars out of Prohibition, and had held on to most of it, the coordinator of the New York — New Jersey families in the great days, in retirement since escaping from a nervous assassin with a short-barreled shotgun; Joe Barbieri, from Boston, who owned a racing wire, prizefighters, and a talent agency, and did the biggest layoff business in the East; Albert Cataldo, from New Jersey, numbers, unions, hijacking, construction kickbacks, politics, a harassed man who was being sued for divorce and had bleeding ulcers which he didn’t believe he deserved; Frank Guarino, from Las Vegas; Danny Noto, from Chicago, who until recently had done many of his own killings, not because he had to but because of personal inclination.

For Shayne’s plans to work, a large number of people had to appear at exactly the right time, and perform exactly as expected. After all his years of experience, Shayne had no real hope that this would happen. Bobby Burns and Will Gentry were equally unpredictable, in different ways. But even if the big confrontation failed to come off, Shayne now knew — thanks to Philly Tucker — that he could salvage something, and he was ready to move.

Using the telephone in the game room, he dialed Liz O’Donnell’s number. He let it ring twice, hung up with a frown, looked up the number again, and redialed it. Again, after hearing the two rings, he hung up. This was the agreed-upon signal that would bring Liz and her boat across to a point sixty yards west of the De Blasio dock, on a direct line between the main house and a lighted tower on Biscayne Boulevard, on the Miami side of the bay.

The television had been turned down to a mutter. Pool balls clicked and fell. At the bar, the drinkers talked in low tones, clearly aware of the important conference that was taking place elsewhere in the house.

No one spoke to Shayne. He returned to the garage apartment and let himself in.

Sarah came out of the bedroom and shut the door. “I’m having a time with her, Mike. She wants to find her husband and have it out with him.”

“This wouldn’t be a good time to do that.”

Nicola, very drunk, stumbled out. Shayne caught her.

“Nikki, Carl and I have had a long session. He knows he hasn’t been spending enough time with you, and he’s sorry about it. He wants you to go to the Beach with him, to catch the show at one of the hotels.”