his suitcase. Tonight there was no gun inside it. He already had a gun in his handbag, a heavy Colt.45 automatic.
He abandoned the suitcase and left the ladies’ room. Outside, he looked around quickly and bolted down a flight of steps. He was in the southernmost concourse, one of six that protruded from the terminal building like the spokes of a half-wheel. Banks of floodlights three quarters of the way up the control tower illuminated the gates and the holding areas. Two airplanes were loading, each surrounded by its own small school of service vehicles.
When a uniformed man approached, London ran out through the nearest gate onto the concrete, teetering on his unaccustomed heels. A crew bus, coming in from the hangar area, swerved to avoid hitting him, and the driver honked angrily. It had been agreed that when he broke into the open at the end of the concourse, instead of continuing out on the field as Camilla had done the previous night, he would cut back at once toward the Delta maintenance hangar. A security guard who hadn’t been warned about what was happening started for him, but was called off by a voice from above on a bullhorn.
London crossed to the hangar. The big galvanized overhead doors into the building were closed. He opened a smaller door beyond. One hand was inside his open handbag.
He waited an instant, then stepped through the doorway.
Only a few lights burned inside the cavernous building. A big DC-9 was suspended from a rig attached to an overhead crane. Three of its engines had been pulled. Two cherry-pickers were in position beyond it-trucks carrying a metal bucket at the end of a long movable arm. Using these buckets, workmen could reach the upper surface of the wings. One of the buckets was higher than the plane. As London moved further into the building, Michael Shayne, crouched against the opposite wall, reached up and touched a light switch.
He heard a faint metallic sound. He pulled the switch and flooded the building with light.
At the same instant, a gun banged. The blaze of light jarred the shooter’s aim. The bullet, from a high- powered Winchester sporting rifle fired from the cherry-picker overhanging the plane, struck London above the knee, knocking him back through the doorway.
Shayne shouted, his voice echoing from the metal ceiling, “Throw it down.”
The man in the bucket had disappeared. The bucket began to come down. For an instant it was hidden by the wing of the plane. Shayne moved before it could reappear. From the wing’s shadow, the gun banged again.
Shayne dropped behind a tow truck, going all the way down to the oily concrete. Abe Berger, near the hangar’s rear door, fired at random, to show he was there. Another shot from the moving bucket went through the fender of the tow truck.
And then the bucket was down, concealed from Shayne by the cherry-picker’s chassis. He crawled beneath the truck. He had a sixteen-gauge shotgun. The Winchester clattered to the concrete twenty feet behind the DC-9, without disturbing Shayne’s concentration. The man broke from cover. Shayne brought the shotgun around smoothly and fired at the cement floor, a foot or so short. The man ran into the ricocheting pellets and stumbled through the door. Paul London, lying on his back holding the Colt in both hands, shot him in the chest. He reeled into the open, into the path of a speeding power cart. The impact knocked off his hit and dark glasses, and as he went backward, Shayne saw that it was Teddy Sparrow.
He was dead when Shayne reached him.
“Sparrow!” Devlin exclaimed. “Mike, I know you’re usually on target, but you’re all wrong about this. Seriously, you don’t know him. He was out there in that Delta hangar because he had some nutty idea that he could help catch an assassin, and make himself famous. He was a clown.”
“He looked like a clown,” Shayne said. “People who look like Teddy get typed in the second grade. And I do know him. I know him well. He’s worked for me a few times, and he knew the reason I hired him was because I wanted a bumbler who couldn’t help drawing attention to himself. So he played the bumbler. That doesn’t mean he didn’t want money, like anybody else.”
“You sound pretty sure of yourself. Teddy Sparrow-I’ll be goddamned if I believe it.”
Shayne said patiently, “Nobody knew Camilla went into that hangar last night. She told me, and I told Abe Berger. The only other person who knew it was the man who met her there. She was the one person alive who could tie him into any of this, and he didn’t know there’s a good chance she’ll never remember a thing about him. This may have been one of the first operations in his life that really worked, that looked as though it might really pay off. He couldn’t risk losing it at the last minute. He thought he had to shoot her, and the hangar was the obvious place to do it. He was planning to drop the rifle, and if he didn’t succeed in getting out the opposite door, he could say he heard the shot and ran in to see what was happening. I had to let him get off one shot, to commit himself.”
“And to get himself killed,” Devlin commented.
Shayne shrugged. “Even if Camilla had identified him, and her doctor doesn’t think it’s likely, a good defense lawyer could break her apart on cross-examination.” They were in Devlin’s office on the mezzanine of the terminal, overlooking the main concourse. Devlin was a short, freckled ex-baseball player with a booming voice, still touchy about having been decoyed to Oklahoma by a fake telegram. He had sent down to a bar for drinks. Will Gentry was there. Berger had brought two FBI officials, including the district director.
“What do you know about Teddy’s background?” Shayne asked Devlin.
“He worked around. He was in the army a few years, the MP’s. He had that private-detective business. Before that he did some kind of labor relations for one of the copper companies in Latin America. I could look it up.” He stopped.
“Yeah,” Shayne said. “He said something to me about it once. He spoke Spanish well. He knew somebody who could put him in touch with Ruiz. In anything this big there has to be an inside man. How long have those rifles been in the warehouse?”
“About ten days.” Devlin ran his fingers through his sparse hair. “I just can’t get adjusted to it. He knew about the troubles I’m having with my son, and he could have sent that telegram. But remember I just got back. This happened in my jurisdiction, and I’ll have to get up in front of the TV cameras and tell the public all about it. What’s this wild business about Crowther organizing his own assassination?”
“I’ve explained that to too many people already,” Shayne said wearily. “Berger can brief you before you talk to anybody. The thing that gave us trouble was that everything seemed to dovetail. But there were actually two schemes running-Crowther’s and Teddy’s, and they kept getting in each other’s way. By itself, each one probably would have worked. Ruiz wasn’t going to be using more than about twenty people, and he needed a diversion. A small Miami Beach riot would be just the thing.”
Berger said, “You mean it was Sparrow who hired Lorenzo Vega?”
“I think so. I think he’d want to do it himself.”
“And was he the one who tipped you off to the assassination?”
“He didn’t know about it yet. That was Crowther. If Camilla’s functioning tomorrow, we can play her tape of that phone call. I think it’ll turn out to be the same voice that talked her into the assassination in the first place.”
“But I don’t see-”
“He wanted to be sure he got full network coverage. But this complicated things for Teddy and Ruiz. Teddy found out we were bringing in paratroopers, and it must have appalled him. They were planning to steal two cargo planes, load them and take off, and if anything went wrong, all they had to contend with was a force of security guards commanded by Teddy himself, who could be counted on to make his usual quota of mistakes. Regular infantry was a different story. They must have considered calling it off, and you know how much Ruiz wanted those rifles.”
“And of course,” Berger said slowly, “it was Sparrow who got the report about a woman in the ladies’ room with a gun.”
“Yeah. He saw her leaving, and followed her into the Delta hangar. He went after her with a flashlight. She fired at the light, but naturally she didn’t hit anything, as she was shooting blanks. He calmed her down, and I suppose she told him the whole story. If he hadn’t charged her up all over again, she would have wandered around and thrown the gun in the canal. But an assassination, from Teddy’s point of view, would be an even better diversion than a riot, especially if the assassin escaped. When he found out she’d used up her bullets he got her more from Ruiz.”
