Will Gentry rubbed his nose with his thumb and forefinger as he studied his friend across the desk. Gentry, Miami Chief of Police, was a tough, honest, courageous cop whose face had developed deep lines of weariness and disillusionment as a result of several decades in an appointive office in a volatile town. He knew Shayne’s methods. He had seen them succeed often enough so he was willing to cooperate with the private detective whenever it was politically possible.
“All right, Mike. If that’s the way you want to play it.”
“I’m not concealing a thing, Will,” Shayne said flatly. “I really didn’t know those guys. I don’t know why they wanted to kill me. You know as much about it as I do.”
“You don’t even have the faintest inkling, the faintest shadow of an idea, why anybody would send a couple of professional gunmen after you?”
Shayne shrugged. “I’ve stepped on a few toes. There are people around who wouldn’t mind reading my obituary. I’m adjusted to the idea-it goes with the job.”
“I take it you aren’t asking for police protection.”
“The same amount you give to ordinary citizens.” He added more seriously, “Hell, Will-you can’t give me twenty-four-hour coverage for more than a few days. You don’t have that many men to spare. I’ll have to handle it my own way.”
Gentry sighed. “And the odds are you’ll come out smelling of roses. Of course, I could put a man on you whether you like it or not, but I won’t if you’re dead set against it. To be realistic,” he added, “you generally manage to lose a tail.”
“Because I know them so well.”
“One more minute, Mike,” Gentry said as Shayne stubbed out his cigarette. “I don’t like to hear about guns going off at the Orange Bowl during a big game-it’s bad news for the tourist business. It was a pretty good effort. The guy said he wanted to take your picture, and what could you do about it, short of making a boor of yourself by smashing his equipment? But you wouldn’t like it. You wouldn’t look at the camera. Luckily for you, Rourke spotted it in time and threw his hand in front of your face, getting his wrist smashed with a thirty-two caliber slug. You came very damn close to taking that slug between the eyes.”
“I remember what happened.”
“OK-you got one of them. You didn’t have anything else to hit him with, so you hit him with a fifty-four-passenger bus. Fine. And now you’re going to stand around with your hands in your pockets until they try again, and hope you’ll be able to counter with something equally violent and unpleasant and public. Two or three more times, and maybe they’ll get the message.”
“That’s the way it has to be, Will.”
“Speaking as a friend now, not Chief of Police. It may work. Lloyds of London might not agree with me, but I think a bookie might give you pretty good odds, say five to four. But five-to-four shots have been known to lose. If you get unlucky for a change, it won’t be any consolation to me to know that you probably want me to help carry your coffin.”
He picked up the oddly shaped Japanese camera and pressed a hidden release. The case sprang open, showing a short-barreled revolver. The muzzle fitted into a circular opening that would have been the lens aperture in a camera designed for taking pictures.
“It’s a lovely gadget,” Gentry said. “Definitely not a mass-production item. This wasn’t put together by an amateur. It was hand-tooled and manufactured as a unit. It’s a perfect assassin’s weapon, when you have to pick your man out of a crowd at close range.”
“You can get just as good results with a rusty thirty-eight from a pawnshop.”
“Usually better. But that’s not the point. They didn’t use pawnshop guns, they used these. Two Japanese, and that’s not routine either. The one you splashed on the front of the Orange Bowl had nothing in his pockets but the stub of his ticket to the Dolphins’ game. His fingerprints don’t mean anything in Washington. I’m putting out a sheet on the survivor, and if any metropolitan police department has ever had any trouble with a six-foot-one Japanese, I’ll be hearing about it. But I doubt if I will. These people were imported.”
“I don’t disagree with you,” Shayne said impatiently. “What are you leading up to?”
“The whole operation stinks of money. It’s international. It’s-I don’t know what to call it; ‘elegant’ is probably the word. So when you say you’ve made a few thousand enemies over the years and this could be any one of them, you’re not being honest with me. What was the name of the character you tangled with in New York on that narcotics theft? Adam something.”
“Adam’s his last name,” Shayne said, his voice flat and unemotional.
“You cost him some dough, as I remember. You made him look like a slob. If he’s behind this, it would explain a few things. Those Japanese were conspicuous enough so nobody would think you’d been killed in some two-bit local quarrel. Like a public announcement-don’t fool around with me or I’ll have you assassinated expensively in front of seventy-five thousand witnesses.”
“You’ve convinced me,” Shayne said sardonically. “Our next move is to bring him in and book him as a material witness.”
“Very funny. All I’m trying to do is rub your nose in the obvious. He’s a rich man, with good connections. You stick out in this town like a sore thumb.”
Shayne made a brusque gesture. “Do you have any real suggestions, or is this just talk so you won’t blame yourself if I don’t duck fast enough the next time?”
“It’s partly that,” Gentry admitted. “But if you do have anything to go on-anything at all-don’t keep it to yourself this time. Sometimes it’s an advantage to operate alone, but this isn’t one of them.”
“I don’t know a thing I haven’t told you, Will. Sure, what you say is a possibility. But I don’t even know the guy’s full name. He knows where he can find me-I don’t even know what country he lives in. Maybe that gives him an edge. And maybe not, too. He has to come to me. Don’t worry so much about me-I’ll be careful. That doesn’t mean I’m going to stay out of public places. Who won the game, incidentally?”
“Miami, thirty-four to nineteen. Mike, would you consider talking to somebody in Washington? I’m thinking about the Intelligence Unit of the Treasury.”
“Yeah,” Shayne said. “Very good idea. I spent four days up there last month. If they know anything about Adam, and I’m not sure they do, it’s classified. I didn’t have the proper clearance.”
“What the hell!” Gentry exclaimed. “You broke up that New York deal without any help from anybody. Doesn’t that qualify you-”
“I thought so,” Shayne said. “They didn’t seem to agree with me. They’ve got a jurisdiction to protect. And I guess it’s understandable. I broke a few rules.”
“Why, the bastards,” Gentry said in disgust. “I get along pretty well with the Congressman. Why don’t I see what strings I can pull?”
“Forget it. Will. I don’t belong to the club, and I do better that way.”
He stood up. Gentry remained seated, swinging from side to side in his swivel chair.
“You’re not being your usual hard-nosed self, Mike, I’m happy to see. I thought I was going to have trouble with you. I take it you’ll have no objection to talking to somebody who knows more about this Adam business than you or I do?”
“Who’s that?”
“A Frenchman named Jules LeFevre. He’s a prefect in the Paris police, on assignment to Interpol. Do you want to hear more?”
“Damn right I want to hear more. Keep talking.”
“You surprise me. I told him I thought you were just bullheaded enough to want to handle this by yourself.”
Shayne was scraping his chin with his thumbnail. “How much do you know about him?”
“I never saw him before today. But I had an idea you might be asking, so I called Paris. He’s who he says he is. I’m the cop on the beat and he had to check in with me, but he didn’t really tell me what he was doing so far from home.” He stood up and came around the desk. “When you find out, tell me, Mike. You’re a local responsibility. He’s at the Sans Souci, on the Beach.” He hesitated. “Better take a gun with you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I’m probably all wrong,” Gentry said slowly. “But he gave me the impression he wasn’t too serious. That’s the worst thing I can say about a cop. It’s a game with him, and people like that take the wrong kind of chances. Don’t hold me to that. As I keep telling you. I’m a meat-and-potatoes man. I know you’ve got a prejudice against carrying a gun-”
“Especially on the Beach.”
“Make an exception this time, will you, Mike?”
The private detective shrugged. “If you say so, Will.”