Shayne knew he had very little time.
The main siren was still screaming. More emergency vehicles had gathered. Kneeling beside Ruiz, Shayne went through his pockets quickly.
“I see we got one of them, anyway,” Sparrow said miserably. “You can’t blame my people, Mike. They haven’t had military training. These guys were soldiers! They came in on us from all sides.”
“Round up your men and cordon off the area,” Shayne said. “Don’t let anybody in or out. You’ll have reinforcements inside of fifteen minutes.”
Sparrow straightened his shoulders and looked serious. “That’s right, maybe everybody didn’t get away. I certainly would like to capture a couple. It wouldn’t be such a total disaster.”
He climbed up on the platform. “Fellows!” he shouted. “Over here. We’re going to cordon off the area. Don’t let anybody in or out.”
Shayne checked the black official sedan at the loading dock. The key was still in the ignition. He swung in and started the motor.
“Mike, where are you going?” Sparrow called.
Ignoring him, Shayne wheeled around and entered the diagonal taxi-strip to the runway. He had seen movement near the wrecked mobile ramp. Crossing the runway, he saw Adele Galvez sitting on the grass, looking around. There was a smear of dirt across one cheek.
“Get in,” Shayne said, pulling up beside her.
She pushed back her hair with a dazed gesture. “Mike?” Shayne set the hand brake and got out. Understanding suddenly that she was about to be taken prisoner, she scrambled for a shotgun lying on the grass. Shayne kicked it away, pulled her to her feet and thrust her into the car.
“The fight’s over. You’re all by yourself, as far as I know.”
As he drove down the runway toward the terminal area, she looked back at the burning plane. Another box of ammunition let go. In the mirror, Shayne saw flaming bits of debris erupt across the runway.
“That was you in the helicopter, wasn’t it?” she said.
“That was me.”
“Did the others-”
“You took a few casualties, but everybody else got off, and maybe they’ll make it. I’m hoping the air force knows about them by now.”
“Luckily they don’t,” Adele said quietly. “Before we left the tower we smashed the radios. All the telephone cables have been cut.”
“That may not be quite enough.” He swung between the Delta maintenance building and Concourse 1, cutting beneath the wing of a parked 707. “But never mind about them, think about yourself for a minute.”
“I don’t care! It was splendid! We paralyzed a great American airport. We stole a shipment of arms intended for our enemies.”
“All of which,” Shayne said, “carries a heavy jolt in jail. But be a nice girl and maybe we can deal. Do you have a car?”
“Yes.” She looked at him sharply. “You mean you’re letting me go?”
“That depends on a number of things. How you behave, for one.”
He pulled up alongside his Buick and slid out. Unlocking his own car, he picked a Phillips screwdriver out of the tool kit beneath the glove compartment. He felt Adele’s restlessness behind him. Half turning, he saw that she had edged over in the front seat. She could start the car and lock the front door in the same quick flurry of motion, and with luck she could get away. But she was hesitating.
Shayne unscrewed the radio-telephone antenna attached to the front door-frame. He snapped the wire between the antenna and the phone and took out the entire unit. Then he went into the glove compartment for his flask. Adele hadn’t moved.
“You’re thinking,” Shayne said, getting in beside her. “You only have one chance of getting out of this unsinged, and that’s if I decide to give you a break.”
“But that’s what I don’t understand. Why should you?”
“Where’d you leave your car?”
“The main parking lot.”
They were on the wrong side of the barrier; to stay together, they would have to detour around on 20th Street and come back through the toll plaza. He told her to get her car and meet him at the interchange, and to flash her headlights so he would recognize her.
She was still puzzled. “I could take a taxi and-”
“Don’t be dumb. How long do you think it would take the cops to find out about you? Somebody in that crowd on the deck knew who you were. You’re going to need some help. Wipe the dirt off your face so you don’t look so much like a girl guerrilla, and get going!”
She gave him one more puzzled glance, got out of the car and walked off. Shayne drove to the interchange and waited, keeping his motor running, on the ramp leading south on 42nd Avenue.
As the minutes passed, he felt more and more conspicuous in the black Port Authority sedan. The siren finally stopped. One of the army helicopters clacked overhead, coming back from Miami Beach, and Shayne rattled the steering wheel. He couldn’t delay much longer. Too many people had seen him leaving the warehouse area in an official car.
An elderly Chevrolet with its lights on came down the ramp from the parking area. He signaled with his blinkers, and she followed him off the expressway. On 8th Street he turned east. A half dozen blocks later, he signaled again and passed through a pair of high gates into a cemetery. Adele hesitated, but in the end decided to follow him in. A curving roadway took them between orderly ranks of monuments and headstones, and they parked beside a mausoleum. There were no other cars.
He took the phone and antenna to the Chevrolet and got in.
“I ought to be going someplace very fast,” she said. “I shouldn’t be sitting here. We’re on opposite sides!”
“Right now the sides are pretty scrambled. Things have been happening in other parts of town. Crowther’s been assassinated.”
She came all the way around. “Who did it?”
“A lady named Camilla Steele. Her husband was executed for murder a few years ago. He was innocent, it turned out. Crowther prosecuted the case.”
Adele breathed deeply. “Then it had nothing to do with us.”
Shayne made a rude noise. “There were five hundred armed paratroopers at the airport, and the minute they were ordered into the city, you people moved. That was a careful operation. Of course there’s a connection.”
“Mike-no! We didn’t know about those soldiers till late last night. It made everything more risky, but Gil decided to go ahead. Careful-it certainly was careful. Some of our men had warehouse jobs. Two others were part-time guards. Gil and the rest drifted down two or three at a time. The guns were under a platform. The guards didn’t have a chance. Even if we’d had to do any shooting you wouldn’t have heard it, because that’s when the kids ran out on the field with the paint. The soldiers were there all the time!”
“It wasn’t arranged on your level, Adele. Ruiz arranged it. I can’t ask him how he did it, because he’s dead.”
“Dead?”
“Don’t blame me-I didn’t do it. But I hope I’m going to get some of the credit, because it might not have happened if I hadn’t tossed those Coke bottles out of the helicopter.”
“Gil Ruiz is dead?”
“It happens, baby. When you take over an airport and hijack two planes and a shipment of rifles, there’s an outside chance that somebody’s going to get hurt.”
She put her fingertips to her forehead. She swayed forward. Shayne caught her before she hit her head against the steering wheel. He uncapped his flask of cognac and held it out.
“Drink some of this. I don’t want you to faint again. I don’t have the time.”
She swallowed some cognac, coughed and drank again.
“Let’s assume the plane got through,” he said. “Cuba’s only a couple of hundred miles away, and the air force isn’t as efficient in real life as it is in the movies. You lost your commander and at least one man, maybe more. I didn’t stick around to get the complete casualty list. But on balance, it was a great success. Adele, are you with me? The political effect could be terrific. But not if your band of heroic revolutionaries assassinated an American cabinet member to pull the paratroopers away from the airport. That’s dirty football.”
“We don’t believe in assassination. Read Gil’s books.”
“Nobody on the jury is going to read any books. I mean the jury that’s going to decide whether you get five years for armed robbery or thirty years for conspiracy to commit murder.”
“Thirty years?”
“You committed a few crimes this morning, haven’t you realized that? But I seem to be in a worse jam than you are. Crowther and I weren’t exactly friends. I won’t explain the whole thing, but the way it looks, the killer and I had a joint contract. The top Secret Service man on the scene was about to shoot her, and I slugged him and took his gun. I’ve still got it.”
“It’s a trick. Why should I believe you?”
“You don’t have any choice, Adele.”
He opened the radio antenna to its full length and slid it out the window. After cutting back the insulation on both sides of the break, he spliced the wires. Then he tied the lead-in wire into the Chevy’s ignition system and signaled his operator.
She came on promptly.
“Mr. Shayne, what’s happening? No, don’t tell me. I probably shouldn’t know. Some police officer-Peter Painter, can that be right-wants me to call him the instant you get in touch with me.”
“Are you going to?”
“Not if you say I shouldn’t. I didn’t like the way he sounded. He’s certainly no diplomat, is he?”
“Did you make those calls?”
“I did, Mr. Shayne, but I don’t think they believed me. Mr. Berger especially. He was really abusive! I have a number for Tim Rourke, if you want to talk to him.”
“Yeah, get him for me.”
While she dialed, Shayne told Adele, “Slide over. I want you to hear this. Of course I might have set it up just for you, but I’ve been pretty busy the last fifteen minutes.”
Rourke’s voice said cautiously, “Hold on a minute till I take care of something.” Shayne heard a muffled conversation and the sound of a closing door. When Rourke came back he said, “Where are you?”
“In Miami,” Shayne said.
“Then maybe you better get out of Miami. If there’s a rocket leaving for some other planet, see if you can thumb a ride. All I have to say is, Je-sus Christ!”
“I agree with you, Tim.”
He had the phone in his left hand, tipping it so some of the sound would spill out. Adele’s cheek was against his hand.
“This is insane, Mike! I’m in Room Seven-oh-three. Ditch that car and get to another phone. Every cop in town is watching for your Buick.”
“I’ve already ditched it. I pulled the phone and took it with me.”
“Mike, you’re being a little too cool. Use your imagination. Crowther died on the floor with Berger on top of him. Shot in the neck and the head. All three cameras caught the action, including that right hook you hung on Berger. Everybody’s feeling very, very jittery. When you walk in, don’t be too hard-nosed, because those trigger fingers are going to be itching. Damn it, I can’t think straight. This has got to be handled. I think if I set up a meeting somewhere with you and Will Gentry, just you and Will-”
“Not now, Tim. Has Camilla been picked up yet?”
“No. She took the elevator to the basement and went out the service entrance. The idea is that somebody was waiting for her in a car. She dropped the gun in the elevator. A Stehyr, a Czech automatic, seven millimeter, which means it takes a twenty-five caliber bullet.”
Shayne thought for a moment. Adele put her fingers into the palm of his hand.
Rourke went on earnestly, “Mike, you’ve got to believe me. This is one time you can’t get away with your usual tactics. It isn’t just a couple of jerks like Painter. The FBI is swarming! The longer you stay out there the worse it’s going to be. You absolutely can’t hold out against this kind of pressure.”
“It seems to me I’ve got to.”
“No, Mike. We’ll think of a way you can surrender without getting yourself shot. Let the dust settle. In a couple of days, after everybody calms down-”
“You aren’t usually this hysterical,” Shayne commented. “Has something else happened I don’t know about?”
“They found out about the tickets.”
“What tickets?”
“Her badge had the name Doris Myerson. On the seating plan, Mrs. Myerson had the seat next to Mr. Michael Shayne.”
Shayne snorted. “Anybody can order tickets by mail. You don’t think I actually worked this all out with Camilla, do you?”
“If you mean did you know she was going to shoot him, hell, no. I just think it’s one time when somebody beat you by a step.”
“Who?”
“Camilla, Crowther, Ruiz-how do I know? I’ll tell you my personal theory, and it’s the mildest version going around, believe me. I think you agreed to get her into the ballroom so she could jump up when Crowther started his speech and yell ‘Murderer!’ or something. And she crossed you. But everybody else thinks you slowed Crowther down so she could shoot him, and then when Berger got his gun out faster than you expected, you lost your cool.”
“How does that explain the bullet holes?”
“Well, Mike,” Rourke said slowly, “you have to admit there’s something funny about those bullet holes. They’re in the wrong place, to begin with. I showed them to Berger. He’s not exactly open-minded on the subject of Mike Shayne. His top-of-the-head reaction was that you put them there yourself, so you could claim you thought she’d be shooting blanks, if you follow me.”
“I follow you,” Shayne said. “Are you going to be in that room for a while?”
“I rented it for the paper, to be near the action. But I don’t like to tie myself down to the phone, if that’s what you mean.”
“Leave somebody covering if you go out. If anybody picks up any leads on what happened to Camilla, I want to know about it as soon as the cops do, and if possible sooner.”
“Mike, if you think you’re going to accomplish anything, you’re out of your goddamn mind. This is what we know as a manhunt. Show your nose anywhere in Dade County and you’ll get it shot off. For God’s sake, give up and stay alive!”
“Save it, buddy. I’ll say it once and I hope it sinks in. You remember what happened to Lee Harvey Oswald. I don’t want the same thing to happen to Camilla, because then we’ll never find out who switched the bullets in her gun. Somebody did. Crowther was pulling the strings up to nine o’clock last night. After that somebody else took over. That’s absolutely the only explanation that fits the facts. Whatever Berger thinks, I know I didn’t put any bullet holes in the wall. I know I didn’t pay six-fifty to listen to Crowther sound off. Crowther bought that ticket himself, to pay me back for my part in the Steele case.”
“I admit that’s a possibility-”
“It’s the only way it could have happened, Tim. Then after the shooting, people would figure just the way you did-that I’d helped her, thinking she was just going to yell something. It’d make me look stupid, if nothing worse. Here’s the problem. Switching bullets is one thing that can’t be done on the phone. She saw whoever did it, and he’s going to be gunning for her. I want to get there first.”
“Let the cops do it, Mike. One of the cameras got a very good look at her. How far can she get?”
“She killed an important man. If she’s arrested she won’t be arrested gently. They’ll grab her and drag her in with maximum publicity. She’s in a shaky mental condition, and the kind of treatment she’s sure to get from the cops and you people can easily knock her all the way back into psychosis, and she’ll never be able to answer any questions. If she goes permanently nuts, I’m permanently out of the private detective business. From what you tell me, I may also be in jail.”
“Well, OK, but it’s risky. What do you want me to do?”
“Get her doctor, Irving Miller, and a guy named Paul London. Have them stand by. Get a list of everything that’s missing from the airport warehouses. I don’t mean a complete inventory, just the principal items. Call me as soon as you have it.”