Brett Halliday - I Come to Kill You

“Carl? Change my dress.”

“No, you’re all right. He wants to leave right away, before they grab him for some detail. Brush your hair. Sarah, give her a hand. I’ll be right with you.” The girls retired to the bedroom. Using the lock-picking attachments built into his pocketknife, Shayne picked the simple spring lock on the door to the gun room. A moment later he came out with two ugly-looking magnetic mines studded with explosive sensors and attached to disk anchors with fifteen-foot lengths of line.

“What are those?” Sarah asked as he passed the open bedroom door.

“Meet me downstairs.”

He camouflaged each mine with a dish towel and carried them to the water’s edge. Going over the aerial photographs with Burns, he had marked out a landing zone, a shingle beach an eighth of a mile west of the dock, on the northwest curve of the oval. He planted both mines here, scaling the anchors out some twenty feet offshore.

When he returned, Nicola was ready, washed, brushed, with fresh lipstick. She was wobbly, but erect.

“You come with us, Mike. Sarah. I want all my friends.”

“We have to go in two cars,” Shayne said. “There’s some kind of summit meeting going on in the house, and your father-in-law told Carl to stay on call. So we’ve got to fool them.”

“Mike, you’re a marvelous person.”

“I like to help,” he said with a glance at Sarah.

The girls got in. He drove back to Carl’s house and tapped the horn. Philly burst out, dragging Carl.

“I had to hit him, but he’s going to be a good boy, aren’t you, Carl?”

“I suppose I have to,” Carl said sulkily.

His wife, in the front seat, gave him a tremulous smile. “You don’t know how unhappy I’ve been.”

“You’re drunk,” he said with disgust.

“I had a few drinks with Sarah. I’m not drunk. You know this is the first time you’ve asked me to go anywhere with you in months?”

Shayne drew Philly aside. “Drive her out to the causeway. You won’t have any trouble getting that far, but then you’ll run into a police block. Tell them you’re working for me.”

“Baby, that’s no way to wind up a party. Fuzz?”

“Don’t worry about it. Just get rid of any dope you’re carrying. How have you broken the law otherwise?”

“Well, Mike, if you really don’t know…” He indicated Nicola with a nod. “I’ve had some bad times with female drunks. What do I do if she makes trouble?”

“Cool her,” Shayne said, and he made his next remark even more confidential. “The guns start going off about three minutes from now.”

“In that case…” Philly said hastily. He moved in swiftly and nearly succeeded in kissing Shayne’s cheek. He laughed as the detective pulled away. “Mike, you’re as skittish as a racehorse. Bye.”

Following Shayne’s directions, Philly drove them back to the garage, where he dropped them. Nicola made an attempt to get out and stay with Carl. “Carlo—”

Carl hit the door with both hands as it opened. “Goddamn it, will you start shaping up for a change?” he shouted. “Do what you’re told, and don’t ask any questions!”

His fury drained the color out of her face. Philly drove off.

“That’s the spirit,” Shayne said. “Do as you’re told, and don’t ask questions. I couldn’t improve on that.”

“I have to, don’t I?” Carl said sourly. “You’ve got me over a barrel.”

Larry Zito and another man stepped out of the garage. The second man, named Tony P., was one of the two who had accompanied Zito back from St. Albans. He was holding a shotgun.

“What’s this about a barrel?” Zito demanded. “That’s what guys say to shylocks. Is Shayne blackmailing you?”

“No-o! Larry, just don’t interfere, all right?”

“I think I’m called on to interfere. Up to the house, Shayne. I’ve been watching you for twenty minutes. What’s all this coming and going? What did you throw in the bay a couple of minutes ago? Who’s that fag driving the car? I never saw him around here before.”

“He’s a classmate of mine,” Carl said. “And he’s anything but a fag, as you put it. He’s taking Nikki over to the Beach for a drink. I didn’t want them around while the meeting’s going on. Do you mind?”

“In Shayne’s car? That was Shayne’s car he was driving.”

“I loaned it to them,” Shayne said. “We’re meeting them later.”

Zito remained firm. “Carlo, I want you to talk to the Don. I speak as an uncle. Shayne’s trying to work something.”

Carl seized his shirtfront and shook him. “Trying to mess me up, shylock…”

Tony grunted and brought the shotgun around. Stooping swiftly, Sarah picked up a loose coil of garden hose and flung it over his head. The nozzle rapped him on the cheek. As the coil tightened, Shayne hit him from the blind side, knocking the shotgun barrel away with one hand and connecting a split second later with a hard shot behind the ear.

The shotgun fired, and the recoil pulled it out of Tony’s weakening grasp. Shayne jerked the barrel hard, and it came free. He swung viciously and broke the stock over Zito’s head.

“Now we move,” Shayne said. “Grab the other guy, Carlo. Stay with me.”

He caught the semiconscious Zito around the waist and ran him down to the dock. Carl and Sarah followed with Tony, each with an arm. Shayne let Zito fall, and quickly prepared one of his two remaining needles, pulled down the loan shark’s pants, and hit him with it. He used the other on Tony.

The shotgun blast had brought several figures out on the lighted terrace. Shayne lined up the conspicuous tower that was their aiming point in downtown Miami, and was relieved to see a dark shadow on the water.

“There’s a boat waiting out there,” he said, pointing. “Swim out to it. Quietly. I’ll be along.”

“I can’t swim,” Carl said.

“Oh, for God’s sake!”

He went into the boathouse and retrieved his little waterproof case and the wet-suit and oxygen tank he had left there that morning.

“Put these on,” he told Carl, “and get in the water. Do you know how the oxygen works, Sarah?”

“Sure.”

“Hook him up and tow him. I’ll try to be back to help.”

There was more movement on the terrace. A floodlight came on.

Shayne started for the house, one hand in front of his eyes to shield them from the glare. As he approached, he called, “Any of you guys up there hear a gun go off?”

The consensus was that the shot had been fired from a boat lying just offshore. Shayne, who had been checking the dock area, had the impression that the sound had come from the grounds to the west of the house, the opposite direction from the garage. A patrol was quickly formed under the leadership of a man Shayne didn’t know.

Shayne walked through to the kitchen, where he found the maid putting dishes into the automatic dishwasher.

“Mr. De Blasio says to take off,” he told her. “Just leave everything. He doesn’t want anybody to get hurt. You heard a gunshot, didn’t you?”

“Was that what—” She grabbed her purse. “I knew something was bound to happen.”

She ran for the back door without changing out of her uniform, and Shayne went into the crowded utility room off the kitchen. Using a pencil flashlight, he found the main fuse panel, exactly where it appeared on the wiring diagram. He unscrewed the face cover. After making a few swift preparations, he began unscrewing the clamp holding the main cable. It whipped free. He hit the exposed panel three blows with the butt of his pistol, smashing most of the reset switches.

Returning to the dark kitchen, he crossed it to the back door without using his flashlight. People were shouting and crashing about in other parts of the house. The top third of the island had been blacked out. Still without using his light, he headed for the garage.