had edged over in the front seat. She could start the car and lock the front door in the same quick flurry of motion, and with luck she could get away. But she was hesitating.
Shayne unscrewed the radio-telephone antenna attached to the front door-frame. He snapped the wire between the antenna and the phone and took out the entire unit. Then he went into the glove compartment for his flask. Adele hadn’t moved.
“You’re thinking,” Shayne said, getting in beside her. “You only have one chance of getting out of this unsinged, and that’s if I decide to give you a break.”
“But that’s what I don’t understand. Why should you?”
“Where’d you leave your car?”
“The main parking lot.”
They were on the wrong side of the barrier; to stay together, they would have to detour around on 20th Street and come back through the toll plaza. He told her to get her car and meet him at the interchange, and to flash her headlights so he would recognize her.
She was still puzzled. “I could take a taxi and-”
“Don’t be dumb. How long do you think it would take the cops to find out about you? Somebody in that crowd on the deck knew who you were. You’re going to need some help. Wipe the dirt off your face so you don’t look so much like a girl guerrilla, and get going!”
She gave him one more puzzled glance, got out of the car and walked off. Shayne drove to the interchange and waited, keeping his motor running, on the ramp leading south on 42nd Avenue.
As the minutes passed, he felt more and more conspicuous in the black Port Authority sedan. The siren finally stopped. One of the army helicopters clacked overhead, coming back from Miami Beach, and Shayne rattled the steering wheel. He couldn’t delay much longer. Too many people had seen him leaving the warehouse area in an official car.
An elderly Chevrolet with its lights on came down the ramp from the parking area. He signaled with his blinkers, and she followed him off the expressway. On 8th Street he turned east. A half dozen blocks later, he signaled again and passed through a pair of high gates into a cemetery. Adele hesitated, but in the end decided to follow him in. A curving roadway took them between orderly ranks of monuments and headstones, and they parked beside a mausoleum. There were no other cars.
He took the phone and antenna to the Chevrolet and got in.
“I ought to be going someplace very fast,” she said. “I shouldn’t be sitting here. We’re on opposite sides!”
“Right now the sides are pretty scrambled. Things have been happening in other parts of town. Crowther’s been assassinated.”
She came all the way around.
“A lady named Camilla Steele. Her husband was executed for murder a few years ago. He was innocent, it turned out. Crowther prosecuted the case.”
Adele breathed deeply. “Then it had nothing to do with us.”
Shayne made a rude noise. “There were five hundred armed paratroopers at the airport, and the minute they were ordered into the city, you people moved. That was a careful operation. Of course there’s a connection.”
“Mike-no! We didn’t know about those soldiers till late last night. It made everything more risky, but Gil decided to go ahead. Careful-it certainly was careful. Some of our men had warehouse jobs. Two others were part- time guards. Gil and the rest drifted down two or three at a time. The guns were under a platform. The guards didn’t have a chance. Even if we’d had to do any shooting you wouldn’t have heard it, because that’s when the kids ran out on the field with the paint. The soldiers were there all the time!”
“It wasn’t arranged on your level, Adele. Ruiz arranged it. I can’t ask him how he did it, because he’s dead.”
“Dead?”
“Don’t blame me-I didn’t do it. But I hope I’m going to get some of the credit, because it might not have happened if I hadn’t tossed those Coke bottles out of the helicopter.”
“It happens, baby. When you take over an airport and hijack two planes and a shipment of rifles, there’s an outside chance that somebody’s going to get hurt.”
She put her fingertips to her forehead. She swayed forward. Shayne caught her before she hit her head against the steering wheel. He uncapped his flask of cognac and held it out.
“Drink some of this. I don’t want you to faint again. I don’t have the time.”
She swallowed some cognac, coughed and drank again.
“Let’s assume the plane got through,” he said. “Cuba’s only a couple of hundred miles away, and the air force isn’t as efficient in real life as it is in the movies. You lost your commander and at least one man, maybe more. I didn’t stick around to get the complete casualty list. But on balance, it was a great success. Adele, are you with me? The political effect could be terrific. But not if your band of heroic revolutionaries assassinated an American cabinet member to pull the paratroopers away from the airport. That’s dirty football.”
“We don’t believe in assassination. Read Gil’s books.”
“Nobody on the jury is going to read any books. I mean the jury that’s going to decide whether you get five years for armed robbery or thirty years for conspiracy to commit murder.”
“You committed a few crimes this morning, haven’t you realized that? But I seem to be in a worse jam than you are. Crowther and I weren’t exactly friends. I won’t explain the whole thing, but the way it looks, the killer and I had a joint contract. The top Secret Service man on the scene was about to shoot her, and I slugged him and took his gun. I’ve still got it.”
“It’s a trick. Why should I believe you?”
“You don’t have any choice, Adele.”
He opened the radio antenna to its full length and slid it out the window. After cutting back the insulation on both sides of the break, he spliced the wires. Then he tied the lead-in wire into the Chevy’s ignition system and signaled his operator.
She came on promptly.
“Mr. Shayne,
“Are you going to?”
“Not if you say I shouldn’t. I didn’t like the way he sounded. He’s certainly no diplomat, is he?”
“Did you make those calls?”
“I did, Mr. Shayne, but I don’t think they believed me. Mr. Berger especially. He was really abusive! I have a number for Tim Rourke, if you want to talk to him.”
“Yeah, get him for me.”
While she dialed, Shayne told Adele, “Slide over. I want you to hear this. Of course I might have set it up just for you, but I’ve been pretty busy the last fifteen minutes.”
Rourke’s voice said cautiously, “Hold on a minute till I take care of something.” Shayne heard a muffled conversation and the sound of a closing door. When Rourke came back he said, “Where are you?”
“In Miami,” Shayne said.
“Then maybe you better get out of Miami. If there’s a rocket leaving for some other planet, see if you can thumb a ride. All I have to say is,
“I agree with you, Tim.”
He had the phone in his left hand, tipping it so some of the sound would spill out. Adele’s cheek was against his hand.
“This is insane, Mike! I’m in Room Seven-oh-three. Ditch that car and get to another phone. Every cop in town is watching for your Buick.”
“I’ve already ditched it. I pulled the phone and took it with me.”
“Mike, you’re being a little too cool. Use your imagination. Crowther died on the floor with Berger on top of him. Shot in the neck and the head. All three cameras caught the action, including that right hook you hung on Berger. Everybody’s feeling very, very jittery. When you walk in, don’t be too hard-nosed, because those trigger
