Six Seconds to Kill

Without letting her go he looked for the hypodermic. It had rolled behind the toilet. Supporting her body with one hand, Shayne retrieved it. There were a few drops of liquid left in the barrel. He sniffed the needle, then touched it to his tongue. It tasted faintly salty.

“’Drenalin,” she said again, not getting the whole word. “Need it to…”

“Maybe you thought it was Adrenalin,” he said roughly, “but somebody put something else in the needle. Did you hear me? This was a downer. If you fall asleep now, it’s for good.”

“Don’t care.”

“Well, I care, goddamn it.”

He pulled her to her feet. For the first moment he supported her full weight. He continued to hurt her with his fingernails until she took some of it herself.

“We’re going to walk,” Shayne said. “Nobody important knows we’re here, so we’ve got plenty of time “

With one arm around her, he walked her out to the bare living room.

“But you have to want to come out of it. Camilla, listen. Last night they changed the plan so you could get out of the hotel. Instead of looking for the burn in the carpet, you blocked an elevator door and used the table. You surprised everybody. They gave you a stolen car. You were supposed to come back here and change, and take a shot of something to keep you moving until you were out of town. But they conned you! It was a heavy sedative, strong enough to kill you. That’s murder, baby.”

She shook her head.

“Understand this one thing,” he said. “They tried to kill you. You did everything exactly right. You shot Crowther and they double-crossed you. The place has been rented for a month. By the time you were found you’d make a very smelly corpse.”

He was moving her back and forth across the room while he talked. He began to think she was steadier, but each time he stopped to give her a chance to stand alone, she folded. He picked the phone off the floor as he passed. To dial was impossible. He managed to raise the operator on the third try. Continuing back and forth to the limit of the telephone cord, he told her he was having trouble reaching a Miami Beach number, and asked her to dial it for him. A moment later he was talking to the St. Albans switchboard. He asked for Room 703.

Rourke answered.

“Dr. Miller,” Shayne said.

“Right here, Mike. Do I get to know what’s happening?”

“Later. Put him on.”

Miller’s voice said, “Shayne?”

“I’ve got her,” Shayne said abruptly, and had to change hands as she slipped. “She’s just about under. Some kind of sedative in a hypodermic. Get over here right away.”

He started to give the address, but Miller cut him short. “Two detectives are following me around. You don’t want police at this point.”

“Damn right I don’t.”

“How’s her breathing?”

“Very hard and slow.”

“Then it could be morphine. Keep her reacting. Insult her. Try coffee if you have it. If she goes to sleep, be sure she doesn’t suffocate-watch her tongue. There’s a private clinic in North Miami. I’ll send an ambulance. And Mike!” he added. “Bring the syringe so we can see what we’re up against.”

He slammed down the phone. Shayne caught Camilla again and wrestled her back under control.

“Here’s something else you’ll be interested in,” he said. “You picked up the gun at the airport at nine o’clock. A Czech automatic, taking an off-caliber bullet. It was loaded with blanks.”

Her head wobbled. “No.”

“Yes,” he said. “Crowther sent you that gun. He didn’t want to be killed himself. He wanted you to be killed. He wanted you to be shot down by his bodyguards.”

Her head wobbled again.

“He was still on his feet when you went into the elevator. You saw the look on his face. That was surprise. He didn’t expect it to hurt.”

She staggered, attempting to stand by herself. He moved her backward until she hit a wall, and stayed in front of her so she had to look at him.

“Two facts to get in your head. Crowther sent you the gun. Somebody else put a shot of dope in that needle. So that makes two people who tried to kill you.”

He repeated the two statements, but he wasn’t sure she heard him.

“I feel-” she said.

“Sure. You feel like going to sleep so you won’t have to do any thinking. But you changed your mind once. Change it again. You wanted to kill Crowther and get away with it. You wouldn’t have done it otherwise! If you die now it won’t be something you decided to do yourself. Stay awake. Tell me what happened. If you don’t, they’re going to get away with it.”

She managed one word. “If-”

“If what? If there were blanks in the gun, how did you succeed in killing anybody? There weren’t blanks in the gun when you fired it. Somebody changed clips.”

She sagged forward. He moved her into the kitchen. There was coffee, there was running water, there were cups. Somehow he got the operation started while bouncing her off the walls and the counter. She got away from him briefly and fell against the stove, knocking the pan aside and touching the hot unit. She screamed, and for an instant she was fully awake.

“Who brought you here, Camilla?” Shayne demanded.

She stared at him. “He-”

She fell. He pulled her to her feet, and for a moment he thought she was completely gone. He slapped her hard. Her eyes opened and he hauled her to the bathroom, where he turned on the cold water and held her in the shower until she began to fight to get out.

Back in the kitchen, he spilled powdered coffee into a cup and covered it with boiling water. He held it to her lips and got some of it down. It made her throw up. She was wet from the shower, and kept slipping out of his hands.

They walked some more. Each time her eyes closed he had to be more brutal to bring her back. He was losing, but he kept her in motion.

Passing the front window on one of his circuits of the room, he veered sharply. A police car was parked directly in front of the house.

He backed away, shifting Camilla to his left arm, and approached the window again. The cop at the wheel was calling in. He looked at the convertible in the driveway, apparently getting a check on the Alabama plates. If it was on the stolen-car list, Shayne knew that the cops would be leaning on the doorbell in another minute.

He showed himself at the window and made a clenched-fist salute, wondering if anybody but the black-power people used this any more. The woman Adele had talked to on the phone, like Shayne, would be watching the police car. He lifted the phone and showed that.

A moment later it rang.

Picking it up, Shayne said, “That was fast. Do you speak English, I hope?”

“A little,” a woman’s voice said.

“I’m a friend of Adele’s,” Shayne said. “Arriba Gil Ruiz! If those cops get interested in this house, we’re all cooked. Do you understand?”

“The policemen. You want them go away.”

“I want them to go away fast.”

“I think I can.”

The phone clicked. An instant later a ground-floor window in a house across the street flew up and a stout, grayhaired woman, the same woman who had warned Shayne the day before of the loosened lug-nuts on his wheels, put her head out and screamed. “Cabron! Guardias cabrones!” People appeared on nearby porches. The woman gestured like a cheerleader and others joined in. Both cops were out of their car, no longer wondering about the convertible.

A boy darted around a clump of bushes and heaved a broken tile at the police car. One cop stayed to protect