“Nothing had better happen to that car.”
“If anything does, the insurance company will take care of it. Look out the window.”
When Kendrick, alarmed, started to leave his seat Shayne waved him back. The two windows in the outer wall were sealed against the warm Florida air, and screened with Venetian blinds. Shayne picked a leather cushion off the sofa and brought Jackie to his side with a gesture. Keeping to one side of the window frame, she held the cushion against the blind so its shadow would show from outside. Shayne, crouched between the windows, looked out through the bottom slit without changing the setting of the blind.
There were two cars side by side in the parking lot, one a black Lincoln sedan, the other a Ford.
Kendrick held the phone away from his ear so Shayne could hear the amplified voice. “You’ve got forty-five seconds, but I wouldn’t go near it if I was you.”
Shayne lifted the bottom slat a quarter of an inch. There was a small dusty square in front of the courthouse, with the standard pyramid of cannonballs and undersized Confederate soldier. There was a row of stores across the square, and then the residential district began, big square houses on tree-shaded streets. Nothing stirred within sight.
“Look at that there,” the voice said suddenly. “There’s somebody in the other car.”
Shayne’s eyes jumped to the Ford. Judge Kendrick joined him on the floor. The front door of the Ford opened and a man stepped out, wiping his mouth and stretching. The wide-armed mercury-vapor lamp at the entrance to the parking lot showed him to be Grady Turner, the deputy sheriff who had slapped Shayne with his.38.
“Twenty seconds left,” the voice said more urgently. “Give him a yell or you’re going to lose a man.”
The judge said coolly, “He’s been lying to me for years. Is he in danger?”
“Ten seconds!”
Shayne jabbed the metal-tipped end of the judge’s carved stick through the slats. The window shattered. Turner came about sharply and started running toward the building. He had taken only a half dozen steps when the front end of the Lincoln blew.
Shayne covered the mouthpiece again. “He can see the parking lot and this window. Keep him talking. Maybe I can spot him.”
Moving fast, he went to the gun case on the opposite wall. It was locked. He signaled to Kendrick, who brought the phone back to his desk and opened the center drawer.
Shayne heard the voice say, “It’s only a car, Judge. Is the guy o.k.?”
“He’s getting up. Some day you’ll realize this was the biggest mistake you ever made. If you think you can intimidate me-”
The voice broke in. “Shut up for a minute! I could have fixed it to go off when you were in it, don’t you understand that?”
Kendrick was throwing things around in the drawer, hunting for the key to the gun case. Shayne grabbed up a pen and scribbled a note on a memo pad: “Sam Rapp threatened to kill you.”
The voice said, “I’ll go over it again. I don’t want that bill to pass. Vote no and you’ve got twelve thousand bucks in the bank, no questions asked. Vote yes and it’s final unction. It’s that simple. Repeat it so I’ll know it soaked in.”
Shayne pushed his scrawled note in front of the judge, who had to change glasses to be able to read it. He looked up, frowning.
Then his face cleared. “Why do I need to repeat it?” he said into the phone. “My mind is perfectly clear. I’ve listened to your terms, and now you listen to me.”
Using the judge’s stick for a second time, Shayne broke the glass door of the gun case. He selected a Winchester.264. The ammunition was in a series of labeled drawers. He loaded rapidly and crossed to the window.
“Do you think I’d go back on the beliefs and practice of a lifetime,” the judge was saying, “for any amount of crooked money? You don’t know me very well. But you have the edge, you people. You can shoot from ambush. I didn’t make that ambiguous statement because I’d been paid. I was threatened. I was threatened in almost the same words you’ve been using. You aren’t too inventive, any of you.”
“Who threatened you?”
“Are you really as innocent as that? Sam Rapp.”
Shayne raised the blind another half-inch, locking it in the new position. Crouching, he looked out. Grady Turner’s hat had been blown off. Although standing still he seemed to be wandering. The sheriff ran up to him, shouting, and shook his shoulder.
The square was empty and quiet. There were pools of deep shadow between the few streetlights on the residential blocks. Shayne panned slowly back and forth, looking for a flicker of movement, a glint of light. There was an outdoor phone booth at the extreme edge of his range of vision, too far for him to be able to tell if it was being used.
“Sam Rapp,” the grating voice on the phone repeated. “He said if you didn’t vote for casinos he’d knock you over?”
“Exactly.”
“And you believed him?”
“I believed him. He sent me a clipping about a man who tried to compete and ended up at the bottom of the bay in a barrel of concrete.”
“That sounds like Sam-corny.”
“Very corny. Very believable. What am I supposed to do now? If I vote one way Sam Rapp will kill me. If I vote the other way you will. I think I’ll just have to not vote.”
“Don’t do that,” the voice said quickly. “Let me handle it. Keep your radio tuned to the news and you’ll see you don’t have to worry about Sam Rapp and any barrel of concrete.”
“I don’t really know what you’re saying,” the judge said querulously. “Be more explicit.”
“Just keep your radio turned on.”
The phone clanged as a dime was collected. Shayne brought the rifle to bear on the distant phone booth. The caller must be using binoculars. Shayne took up on the sling, tucking the stock against his cheek, and adjusted the sights. He was guessing the range at three-hundred-and-fifty yards.
“Before I hang up,” the voice said. “I could send you clippings, too, but I don’t want to-it takes time. You don’t sound too shook about that deputy, the one with no hat on. I’ll do you a favor. Remember. The next time it’ll be you, and not in the leg.”
A flashlight blinked in the booth. An instant later there was a gunshot, and Turner, in the parking lot, screamed and went down.
Shayne put one bullet into the booth, high, to break the glass, then dropped the sights to knee level and pulled off another shot. A figure broke from the booth and disappeared. Shayne moved his rifle back and forth in short arcs, watching for the gunman who had taken the blinking signal and fired at Turner. A man carrying a gun jumped from a porch, and for an instant showed up against the glow from a streetlight. Shayne fired twice. The angle was bad, the light was impossible, and both shots missed.
The man jumped and was gone.
CHAPTER 12
At first the steady thrum of the rotor helped Shayne arrange a picture in his mind, but almost at once the picture began to spin. There were too many pieces still missing.
Jackie said, “Judge Kendrick was lying, wasn’t he, about Sam Rapp threatening to kill him?”
“Yeah. That was my idea. Sam’s outgrown that kind of thing, but it gives me an excuse to get him out of bed and see if he wants to be more responsive than he was the last time I talked to him.”
“Mike, do you understand any of it?” she asked helplessly.
“Not much, but it’s coming.”
“I feel like-oh, calling the whole thing off. That man on the phone is on the same side I am-against the bill! There’s nobody on my committee who knows how to blow up a car. They’re most of them ministers!”
