Each member of the tour was given a complimentary glass of champagne with dinner and ten dollars’ worth of chips to lure them into the casino. The main gambling room combined features copied from the elegant European casinos-chandeliers, paneled walls, impassive male attendants in evening dress-and the great Las Vegas supermarkets, which go in for varied action, fast turnover, and no frills. Lassiter, the pilot of their chartered DC-8, was shooting craps, the pastime that had got him into trouble when he worked for Pan American. Several sunburned schoolteachers from the tour were feeding half dollars compulsively into the slot machines. It was early in the evening, but they already wore the stupefied look of slot-machine players everywhere.
The Reverend Crane Ward, among the onlookers at the roulette table, caught Michael Shayne’s eye and shook his head in amazement. Shayne, playing idly, had been winning steadily. After an hour and a half, he was thirty thousand dollars ahead. A crowd had collected around him. Women kept touching him, in the hope that some of his luck would rub off. He lost on a combination bet, then won again heavily. There was a general exhalation of breath around him as the croupier’s rake, which usually moved in the opposite direction, pushed another impressive stack of chips toward him.
Shayne bet two fifty-dollar chips on the next spin and lost.
Christa, beside him, in a glistening silver evening gown with no back, was as excited as the others around the table. Shayne staked another hundred dollars and lost. He won again when he increased his bet, and now he began to pay more attention to his surroundings. He surveyed the room casually.
He had no trouble picking out the professionals by a certain quietness of manner. He recognized several of them who at one time or another had worked in Miami Beach.
The croupier was waiting for his play.
“What’s your name, croupier?” Shayne said.
The man, a small, sallow Italian, wet his lips. “Tony Gambino.”
Shayne reached out, but delayed before placing his bet on the table. “I haven’t kept up. Who has the concession here now?”
“Why, Al Luccio.” He corrected himself immediately. “Mr. Luccio.”
“Send for him.”
“Isn’t everything satis-”
“Send for him.”
Shayne dropped the chips on black, and the wheel spun. Black came up, to squeals of delight from Shayne’s little cheering section.
“Michael, you marvelous man!” Christa cried.
While she was stacking the chips, a thin bald man with a cigar appeared at Shayne’s elbow.
“How are you, Al?” Shayne said without looking around.
“Not bad, Mike. And yourself? You seem to be lucky tonight.”
“And all with that complimentary ten bucks. You’ve got a nice store here.”
“The best,” Luccio agreed quietly. “Are you picking up now, Mike?”
“No. The reason I called you over, Al, besides wanting to see a familiar face, is to talk to you about social conditions in St. Albans. I remember how generous you used to be when the Miami ladies passed the hat for some worthy cause.”
“Yeah, well-a lot of that was public relations,” Luccio said modestly. “You know how it is.”
“And I suppose you keep up the good work down here.”
Luccio said quickly, “Why don’t we discuss it in my office? This is no place-”
Shayne wagged his head, and when he spoke next his speech had thickened. He made a loose, drunken gesture.
“Anything I have to say, I’ll say in front of these wonderful people. I’m not going to give you a big speech, but when I was walking around this afternoon, I saw plenty of kids who could use a pair of shoes. Fine-looking kids. Al-I want you to cash in these chips and see to it that the dough gets where it’ll do the most good.”
He interrupted himself to ask Christa for a total.
“Just over forty-seven thousand.”
“As much as that!” Shayne exclaimed happily. “Al, this is going to do your public relations a world of good. Let’s nail this down. Not that I don’t trust you,” he assured the gambler, turning to look at him for the first time, “but there’s always a chance of a bookkeeping mistake. Who can give me the name of a good local outfit that can use forty-seven thousand fish?” He looked around. “Anybody.” A woman across the table said hesitantly, “There’s a free clinic in Old Town. The doctor who runs it is always short of money.”
“Perfect,” Shayne said. “Give Al the address. He’s known all over the Caribbean as a man who’s satisfied with the house percentage, and I think we have enough witnesses so he’ll make sure the clinic gets the full forty-seven thousand. I want to thank you, Al, for running an honest game and giving me this opportunity to help people who may not be quite as fortunate as the rest of us. I’ll be moving on tomorrow, but you’ll be staying. It’s really your money, in a sense. I’m only a vehicle. I know your name is going to be mentioned in a few mothers’ prayers.”
“Yeah,” the gambler said unenthusiastically. “It’s always a pleasure to see you, Mike, even if it usually costs me money.”
Shayne cocked an eyebrow at Christa. Leaving the chips where they were, she rose and came with him. The slot machines continued to clank and whir, but the rest of the action in the big room had stopped.
Alone with Shayne in the automatic elevator, Christa let out her breath in a long whistle. “You really think they were planning to jump you?”
“Sure. I spotted a couple of specialists. The wheel has an overhead photoelectric control.”
“You were winning, not losing. It never occurred to me that the wheel might be crooked.”
“The idea was to set up a legitimate excuse so I could be found with a fractured skull and the cops wouldn’t tie up the plane.”
“And Luccio would get his money back.” She shivered. “I was completely taken in. Still,” she added wistfully, “forty-seven thousand dollars! Wasn’t there any way you could put it in the hotel safe?”
Shayne shook his head. “All they were trying to do was get me tabbed publicly as a big winner. The money wouldn’t be there when the cops looked for it.”
She hugged his arm. “To me that’s six years’ salary. And you swindled it in an hour and a quarter. But he was right, you know-you are lucky.”
In their room, she kicked out of her shoes and picked up an earphone. “I saw Naomi in the lobby, but not George.”
Shayne loosened his tie. It would take time for his adversaries to plan and mount another action, but he would be hearing from them again, he knew. The Miami plane bringing Tim Rourke was due in another half hour. Christa was Shayne’s immediate concern. An obvious strategy would be to try to reach him through her. His obvious counterstrategy was not to let her out of his sight between now and the time the plane left for Venezuela in the morning.
She was watching him. After a moment she slowly took off her earrings. Shayne had a feeling that this was going to be one of his most agreeable assignments in a long time.
One of her hands flew to an earphone. “This wretched equipment,” she said after a moment, disappointed. “Now the static is making noises like a person being sick.”
She brought him to her side with a gesture. “The phone’s ringing.” Picking up the second earphone, Shayne heard George’s voice say sullenly, “Hello.”
After a moment he continued, “Does it have to be tonight? To tell you the truth, I’m not feeling too well.”
Again he listened.
He snapped, “OK, I’ll be there,” and hung up with an oath. There was a retching sound, then, a little later, a rush of water.
Hearing nothing more, Shayne put down the earphone and shook a cigarette out of his pack.
“Darling, I have something I wish to say,” Christa said later. “And I happen to be quite serious, so listen to me seriously. If there were more of us than two, either you or I would go out and follow George to see where he goes. But we are without a car, without contact with the local police. I think logic calls for us to spend the night here, with the door locked and a gun under each pillow.”
“I decided the same thing when you took off your earrings,” Shayne said.
“I am trying to say something, Mike, so will you please not look as though you already know what it is? It might be something you don’t expect.”
“You’ve surprised me a few times. What are we talking about, whether or not we sleep in separate beds?”
“Damn you, Mike. I made a few careless remarks on that subject, as I hope you don’t remember, but I am not that type of person. Not exclusively that type of person.” She lifted her hands in despair. “I’ve lost track. Don’t sit there looking so sure of yourself.”
“We’re both cops,” Shayne suggested. “This isn’t a pleasure trip. We’re here on business.”
“Precisely. And we’re both mature people. Simply because the job requires us to share a room-”
“Doesn’t mean we have to do anything we don’t really want to.”
“You’re twisting my words! And will you stop grinning? That’s better. It has nothing to do with wanting or not wanting. Mike, listen.”
She pushed back her hair. “When I was seventeen, I had a bad and cynical time. I did some foolish things. Jules LeFevre found me and helped me. He needed an agent who would be accepted by the world I was living in then, on the edge of the drug business, among small criminals and students and politicals. Later I became a bona fide member of the police. I worked for a time on the French Riviera, then in Lisbon. I was given money to dress well, so I wouldn’t look like a policewoman. I broke up a group of jewel thieves when I was twenty-two. I saw Jules only sometimes, and it was always business, but I had a special feeling for him. He had saved me, I think, from something very bad. All during the day today, at odd times, I have remembered that he’s dead. Killed perhaps by one of these people we are playing cat-and-mouse with. Tonight, Mike, I think we should do nothing to break our concentration. If I ever make love to you, I want it to fill my mind! After tomorrow perhaps-”
One foot grazed Shayne’s knee.
The little contact canceled her arguments, and she came in against him. But before their bodies had adjusted to each other the phone rang, not the phone in the Savages’ room, but the one on the table between the beds.
It went on ringing. By the time Shayne decided it had to be answered and reached for it, it had stopped.
“Damn it,” Christa said with a little laugh. “But you see? Definitely not tonight.”
She clicked for the operator and asked if she had a call for them. She made a sour face a moment later.
“Yes, he’s here.”
She handed the phone to Shayne. The familiar too-girlish voice of Mary Ocain exploded against his eardrum.
“Mike! Just what are you up to there, with your blonde bombshell? Why weren’t you answering your phone? You’re supposed to be working, according to the story you gave me. I think it’s too disgusting for words.”
“As a matter of fact,” Shayne said, “we were in the middle of-”
“Don’t tell me!” Mary screamed. “I know what you were in the middle of. I’ve been picturing the scene. Mike, I’m ensconced in bed with a liqueur, a box of chocolates and a ribald paperback novel. I’m wearing a new nightie I bought for this trip on the chance that I might meet some impetuous Latin. I have something to tell you, and I thought I might inveigle you into coming down? It’s Room 285, and my roommate, to everybody’s surprise, has been invited to have drinks with the captain and won’t be in till-”
“What do you have to tell me, Mary?”
“I really think you’d get more out of it face to face?”
She made it a question. “Sorry,” Shayne said curtly. “Could you move it along a little faster, Mary? I’m expecting another call. I don’t want to tie up the phone.”
“I see through that! That’s very transparent! You want to get back to your blonde. Well, I won’t keep you long, a minute or two at the most. And if at any time you want to interrupt me and come down, don’t hesitate.”
“Now that you’ve got that out of the way-”
“Yes, Mike,” she said meekly. “Coyness is one of my many vices. I know you told me to crawl back into the woodwork and leave the investigation to you, but you didn’t think I was going to plug up my ears and wear a blindfold, did you? I didn’t do anything imprudent. I took a very small risk, and it paid off. I’m alive to tell about it.”
“You aren’t telling about it yet,” Shayne said patiently.
“I’m coming to it. I was down on the beach, well-oiled because of the fact that I freckle, and there was quite a breeze blowing. In ten minutes my skin felt like sandpaper. We were supposed to stay another half hour, but I went up to the pool to rinse off, and I saw George Savage going into one of the cabanas. Nothing suspicious about that, but do you remember I told you about that big Japanese with a camera? As I was climbing out of the pool, he went into the same cabana!”
“And you decided it was just a coincidence and went up to your room to change for dinner, because you remembered I told you to stop acting like a character in a Hitchcock movie.”
“No, to be honest with you I didn’t. How often does anybody like me get a chance to do something about crime? Now, Mike, I can tell from the tense way you’re not saying anything that you don’t think it was a good idea. But I’m not a moron. I had my camera with me. If anybody saw me they’d think I was getting into position for a low-angle shot of the beach. And nobody saw me, I’m sure.”
“That’s great,” Shayne said through his teeth.
“Mike, you were right to give away that forty-seven thousand dollars! Of course, poolside cabanas are built of the flimsiest materials. I heard George say something about some arrangement he was making at the casino. I came in on the tail end of that and I didn’t know what he meant until tonight, when some of the other gals and I were arguing about why you didn’t keep the money. And it struck me. They were planning to sandbag you and make it look like a robbery!”
“Yes, Mary. Now, if that’s all-’”
“It’s by no means all! They mentioned a ship, the S.S. Mansfield City. They mentioned a location, La Guaira. For your information, if you’re not up on your geography, that’s the port for Caracas, Venezuela. And they mentioned two names.”
“Mary?” Shayne said when she stopped.
For an instant he thought the connection had been broken. Then she cried, “What do you think you’re doing? Get out this instant or I’ll-”
There was a guttural exclamation. She squealed almost comically and the phone fell. An instant later a click sounded in Shayne’s ear.