“Miss Hamilton took me shopping,” the redhead said with disgust. “You can’t go to the Caribbean these days, it seems, without getting dolled up like a damn fool.”
“Sorry I didn’t get around to the hospital, Mike. How are you feeling? You look all right to me.”
“I’m fine,” Shayne said curtly. “But what’s it all about, Jack? Unless you want to go for a plane ride you’d better get to the point.”
Malloy looked at his watch. “They’ll wait for me. I hope. I brought you a present, to put you in the mood.”
He took a flat pint bottle of cognac out of his side pocket.
“Rourke gave me a box of candy,” the redhead said. “This is a big improvement.”
“I thought you’d appreciate it. We’ll have to drink it straight, but as I remember that’s the way you like it.”
He broke the seal with his thumb-nail and got glasses down from a shelf over the stainless-steel sink. He splashed a good double-jigger into each glass and pushed one toward Shayne. Then he returned to the doorway.
“Tim tells me you’re supposed to take it easy, so I know I have to do some persuading. To get the sordid matter of money out of the way first, if all goes well it could pay the full fifty thousand.”
Shayne looked at him sharply. “Wait a minute, Jack. You wouldn’t be holding up a plane with fifty people aboard unless you had something your own people aren’t equipped to handle, and ordinarily I’d be glad to hear about it. I know you pay informers twenty-five percent of seizures, to a top of fifty grand. People have weird ideas about the size of my income, but as a matter of fact I don’t get that kind of fee very often. I can’t help you, though, Jack. When they let me out of that hospital they put me on good behavior. I promised various people, including my secretary, that I wouldn’t do any work for three weeks.”
“They don’t need to know about it,” Malloy said, unruffled. “If it was only a matter of the fifty thousand I wouldn’t take up any of your time. In your bracket, what’s a mere fifty thousand? My fellow-workers in Internal Revenue will get most of it.”
“Knock it off,” Shayne growled. “I just want you to know how things stand. Thanks for the cognac. Unless you want to change your mind and take it back?”
“Damn it, Mike. Don’t be such a hard-nose. I’m going to tell you about this if it takes all night. Why not shut up and listen so they can get this plane in the air?”
Shayne looked at him, his ragged red brows close together. After a second he shrugged and lifted the cognac.
“Go ahead. So long as you realize you’re wasting your breath.”
“All right,” Malloy said. “Three or four weeks ago an Englishman named Albert Watts came into my office. A mild little guy in his late thirties. Very nervous and jumpy. He looked as though he might have served a hitch in the British army and never got over it. A jet came over and the sonic boom almost gave him heart failure. He’d heard about our informer fees, and he wanted to know two things-how much of a tip he’d have to turn in to get the top price, and would he have to appear in court to give evidence? Well, we don’t use our pigeons in court because a smuggler has to be caught with the goods on him, or there isn’t any case. Watts seemed glad to hear it. He wouldn’t say anything more, except that I’d be hearing from him. I put a man on him, who tailed him back to his hotel. He was only in town for two days. He’d come up from St. Albans on business.”
“St. Albans,” Shayne said sarcastically. “The same place I’m going. Big surprise.”
“Come on, Mike. Sure it’s the same place. Otherwise why would I be here? We didn’t have any trouble finding out that he was assistant manager of the St. Albans branch of an American travel agency. He didn’t have much to do in Miami. The trip was mainly a pretext to see me. He went sightseeing, saw a few movies, and then went home. He didn’t have one drink while he was here. About two weeks later a cable came in from St. Albans, signed Albert. All it gave was a ship, an arrival time, and a man’s name-Paul Slater. Does that ring any bell with you, Mike?”
Shayne revolved his glass of cognac thoughtfully. “Paul Slater. I don’t think so. I suppose you shook him down when he came in. What did you find-nothing?”
“Not exactly. We found fifty Swiss watch movements inside the lining of a suitcase. If he got a good break on the resale, he stood to make the magnificent sum of four hundred dollars. Naturally I was disgusted with the nervous Mr. Watts. All this build up and hugger-mugger for a hundred buck fee, maybe less. Well, stranger things have happened. We confiscated the watch movements and gave Mr. Slater the treatment: a formal indictment, maximum fine and a stern lecture from the judge. This is usually enough to make a petty smuggler think twice before he does it again. It seemed to work with Slater. He looked like a beaten dog. After the trial, Watts should have contacted me to collect his fee. But there wasn’t any word from him at all. That sometimes happens, too, and ordinarily I’d forget about it. But something about this was nagging at me. I couldn’t really believe that the Albert Watts who’d been in my office had only expected to clear a hundred bucks. And I was there when Slater was searched. He was nervous, but we have that effect even on honest people. He didn’t overplay it or underplay it. It was just about right. But you need second-sight to be a good customs agent, and there was something wrong about the guy, Mike. I felt it and men felt it, and it wasn’t just those fifty watch movements. So I sent a message through channels. I was careful about it, because St. Albans is British, after all. There’s an old tradition of smuggling in the area, and they’re more tolerant of it than I tend to be. The message was simple. I asked Watts to come in and see me the next time he was in Miami. He never got it. Last Wednesday, two or three days after Slater got back to St. Albans, Watts was found knifed in the native quarter of the Old Town.”
Shayne shook out a cigarette and stuck it in his mouth. He offered the pack to Malloy, who shook his head.
“All right,” Shayne said. “I can hardly keep from crying. You don’t think it was anything simple, like a fight or a robbery. You think it ties in with the tip he gave you on Slater. And people don’t get murdered because of a few watch movements.”
“Exactly. And so it occurred to me. What if you’re a courier like Slater? You work out a pretty good method of getting the stuff in. But you have to buy it from somebody, and there’s always a danger of leakage. Why wouldn’t it be a smart idea to carry a decoy, a second parcel of contraband, only worth a few C’s? Then if somebody turns in a tip, the poor dumb customs agents find the decoy parcel and write the informer off as a harmless crackpot. The real contraband goes through untouched. No further investigation. No tail on the guy. Clever?”
Shayne swallowed the cognac he had been rolling around in his mouth, and reached for the bottle. Against his will, he was becoming interested.
“Why wouldn’t it be even better if you didn’t find anything?” he asked. “If the real stuff is going through some other way, he’s in the clear. He can act indignant and make you feel like a heel.”
“If we had a good solid tip on him, Mike,” Malloy said grimly, “we’d put him under the microscope. We’d get him up in the morning and put him to bed at night. We’d dog him around every minute he was in this country, and if he tried to take delivery on an illegal shipment, we’d grab him. This way, he paid a small fine to get us to forget about him.”
“Is there anything to indicate that, or is it just a hunch?”
“So far just a hunch,” Malloy admitted. “We have as many hunches as lady horse-players, only they don’t lose us any money if we’re wrong. This time the hunch is that those watch movements have been traveling back and forth a long time. The more I think about it, the stronger it gets. I’ve had two men digging up background on Slater, and they’ve put together quite a dossier. He’s perfect for the part. He runs a little import business in gift and novelty items in St. Albans. He travels a lot around the Caribbean, picking up local junk, most of it native-made, that he sells to gift shops. Baskets, costume jewelry, that kind of stuff. He comes through Miami once a month or once every two months. He doesn’t make a hell of a lot or money. And he’s careful. His standard of living is about right for his legal income. A good reputation with his jobbers. Not very aggressive or high-powered, but people seem to like him. No sign of anything offbeat in his private life.”
“Very logical,” Shayne commented skeptically. “You didn’t find anything, so that proves he’s a crook.”
“The watch movements, Mike,” Malloy reminded him. “He was out of line there.”
“I suppose you’ve checked his shipments?”
“Sure. We’re putting everything through the scope. Nothing’s turned up so far.”
“More and more suspicious,” Shayne said.
“Mike, you’re going to get me sore in a minute. We gave him a scare. Naturally he’ll be extra careful for a
