The gun-barrel trembled, but she kept her voice steady. “Mike, I just can’t allow you to-This is very, very serious. Start the motor and do exactly what I tell you because I’m wound up so tight-”
Shayne raised his eyebrows humorously and snapped on the ignition. “You’ve convinced me.”
“Drive west to 17th. Then turn left. And don’t ask any questions because I’m not going to tell you a thing. Don’t talk at all.”
“Can I talk to myself?”
“No! It makes me nervous. You don’t want that.”
He made the turns as she called them, and before long he was slowing in front of a ramshackle house on 15th Court. A blue panel truck was parked in the driveway, surely the same truck that had almost decoyed him into a chase in which he would have lost a wheel.
“Pull in behind the truck,” Adele told him, with a movement of the.38.
Shayne accelerated. “I’ve changed my mind. I don’t think you’re really up to it. A pretty girl like you.”
“Mike, stop!” Her voice climbed. “This minute!”
He grinned at her. “This is my business, baby. Do you really think there are any bullets in that gun?”
“I can’t let you bluff me,” she said tensely.
She pushed the gun forward against his knee and pulled the trigger. The hammer clicked down on nothing. It clicked twice more. The blood drained out of her face.
With a sidewise swipe, he picked the gun out of her hand and tossed it into the back seat.
“You’re horrible!” she said. “You’re a horrible person!”
“That’s one of the things they say about me. It’s part of the image.”
He continued across Flagler and made another turn. She put her face in her hands.
“What are you going to do with me?”
“Not much, baby. In some ways you’ve been helpful.”
“I botched it. I botched it.”
Shayne pulled in against the curb and cut the motor. “A couple of things you did very well. The loose wheels- that wasn’t bad at all. If you could get me aboard the
She said bitterly, “We didn’t expect you to notice a little thing like that. You’re a monster. I’d like to know when you took the bullets out of the gun.”
“When do you think?”
“Do you mean when we were-”
She came at him angrily and struck him twice with her purse before he could take it away from her.
“You-you-she sputtered.
“Calm down, Adele. That sex wasn’t my idea. You practically raped me. No real harm was done. Your bag was on the floor. You shouldn’t close your eyes when you make love. It isn’t hard to unload an automatic with one hand.”
“You are-without a doubt-”
“What else happened at five o’clock?”
“What do you mean?”
“That sex episode held me up about fifteen minutes. And don’t tell me you have sex with every man you slug with an ax-handle, because except for your political opinions I think you’re probably a very nice girl.”
“What makes you think I’m the one who hit you? It could have been somebody else in the crew.”
“But it wasn’t.”
“No, it wasn’t. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I just wanted to put you out of action, and I didn’t even succeed in doing that… I wasn’t pretending about wanting to make love to you!”
“Yeah, it was politically OK.” He touched her shoulder. “No point in crying, Adele. You’re losing your eye- liner.”
“You certainly acted as though you liked it. Was that just-”
“I liked it,” he said gently. “But that’s not why it happened. You wanted to keep me there, and I wanted to get the bullets out of your gun. Everything else was incidental. What was happening in the outside world during that fifteen minutes?”
“You’ll hear about it anyway. Another Vega leaflet is coming out any minute. After he picks them up at the printshop he’ll be much harder to find. But that was only a pretext! Damn it, I-”
“We can analyze our motives some other time. What kind of leaflet?”
“Like the one this morning, nothing sensational… And there you were, sitting on the bed in a wrapper. It was ninety percent lust. I don’t care if you believe me or not.”
Shayne opened her purse. “Not as cluttered as some,” he remarked.
There was a small change purse, a few folded bills, the usual female grooming equipment, a library card, a magazine clipping. He unfolded the clipping. It was a photograph of a pale, tired-looking young man wearing a beret and jungle camouflage. He was thin and unshaven, with a preoccupied frown between his eyebrows. To Shayne, he looked neither glamorous or particularly dangerous.
“Ruiz?”
“Are you out of it!” she said. “You could ask anybody in this part of town. Of course it’s Ruiz.”
“What’s the attraction?” he said, studying the face.
“Mike,” she said definitely, “you don’t know a damn thing about it, I’m sorry to say. Can I get out now?”
“Any time.”
“Give me back my things.”
He put the picture of Ruiz in his pocket and stuffed everything back except the money, which he let slip between his knees.
“Educate me a little first. What’s going on, Adele? You don’t approve of your uncle’s politics, that’s clear. You don’t want me to interfere with Vega’s counterdemonstration, if that’s what you call it. But you don’t like Vega’s politics either, do you?”
“I despise them.”
“That’s the feeling I get. If he turns up tomorrow with a good-sized contingent, your uncle and his people will get their heads bashed. Why should you want that? On general principles? Because fighting in the streets turns liberals into revolutionaries?”
“I don’t dare talk about it. Look at the mess I’ve made. Now I’m going to start using my head. I’m just going to shut up and get out of this car.”
“Go ahead!” he exclaimed. “You’ve been acting like a goddamn child, and you don’t want to do anything sensible this late in the afternoon. That would be inconsistent. My God! Your uncle thought all he had to do was bring in Michael Shayne and pay him a fee, and his troubles would be over. I’d bare my teeth at Vega and the man would curl up and die. Think about it for a minute. What can I really do? Beat him up? Scare him? How can I prove whose money he’s spending? All I can do is plow ahead with my eyes closed, and hope somebody else will make the mistakes. And you made them. You worked out a complicated scheme to shanghai me. You exposed three or four of your people, you tried to put a.38 slug in my knee, you had sex with me-and that wasn’t ninety percent lust, baby, it was ninety percent calculation. You’re right. So far you’ve done a lousy job. And it was all totally unnecessary. I’m not Clark Kent or Mighty Mouse. Why not start over and tell me what’s really happening? I know Crowther and I don’t like him. If I knew more about Colonel Caldera I probably wouldn’t like him either. Ruiz is probably OK. He just doesn’t take a good picture.”
She hesitated, her hand on the door handle.
“You’re preparing something,” he went on. “If it’s not too illegal I might give your uncle his thousand dollars back and go up to Pompano and see if I can make some money on the trotters.”
She moved toward him swiftly and kissed the corner of his mouth. “I can’t tell you, Mike. I’m sorry, but I can’t.”
He made no effort to stop her. She got out of the car and walked away-a very nice-looking girl, whether coming or going.
