Six Seconds to Kill

CHAPTER 4

Dr. Galvez had his offices in a newly built medical block between Miami Avenue and Eighth. Shayne returned to his Buick, in the parking lot behind the building. Galvez had given him an envelope containing ten hundred-dollar bills. He tapped the envelope thoughtfully against the steering wheel, then transferred the money to his wallet.

He lit a cigarette and waited.

In another moment Adele Galvez opened the opposite door and slid into the car. She was a tall, open-faced girl, radiating health and enthusiasm. She was in her early twenties, Shayne judged. She wore her black hair to her eyebrows in front, to her shoulders everywhere else. She had changed out of her uniform into a very short skirt and a white sleeveless blouse with a small alligator over the left breast.

“Mr. Shayne, it’s tremendous!” she exclaimed. “I didn’t think he could persuade you. He’s nice after you get to know him, but he certainly can get pompous at times. I’m going to make an admission right away. I’m a fan of yours! You’re just so-I don’t know-”

She laughed.

“Thanks,” Shayne said dryly. “What’s this idea of yours about Vega?”

“Everything worked out exactly the way I planned! Usually when I plot something nobody else cooperates. I was on the phone half the night and most of the morning, and I found out a few interesting things about the bastard. But you’ll notice I didn’t give my uncle any details, and anyway, if we’re going to be sort of blackmailing somebody-isn’t that the idea? — he doesn’t want to know anything about it. I was dying to meet you! I’m hoping you’ll take me with you so I can see how you work. I guess that sounds pushy. I’m not throwing myself in your arms or anything.” She gave him a quick look. “Which might be very pleasant!”

“But time-consuming,” Shayne said with a short laugh.

“I certainly hope so! Look, we better not talk here. Too many people know I’m an NLS’er. Here’s a picture of Vega, probably not too recent. I know somebody who knows him, and she says he looks ancient, like fifty.”

She gave Shayne a snapshot of a balding man wearing only bathing trunks, squinting fiercely at the camera. He had a well-developed paunch, a luxuriant thicket of chest hair, a small, well-cared-for moustache. His arms were folded across his stomach, and he held a long-barreled Luger automatic in each hand.

“That’s what we call machismo,” Adele said. “The guns. Don’t fool with Lorenzo Vega, he’s ready for anything. Guns in a bathing suit-he can’t be serious.”

Shayne put the photograph away and reached for the ignition key. At that moment a youth in a pullover shirt and Bermuda shorts burst out of the rear entrance to the medical block and raced to a blue panel truck parked two spaces away. There was a muffled explosion inside the building.

Adele jerked around. “Mr. Shayne!”

The blue truck pulled out of line, accelerating. Shayne’s moves were instinctive. He jammed the stick into reverse and came back hard. The Buick fishtailed as he went into low and hit the gas. The truck shot out of the lot, rocking. Suddenly an old Cuban woman jumped out in front of Shayne’s Buick, waving her hands and shouting. His horn blared. The brakes grabbed unevenly and the Buick slewed, nearly spinning into the next line of parked cars.

The woman leaped aside, still waving crazily. When she saw that he had stopped she ran up, shouting.

“Ten cuidado con las ruedas! Atencion las ruedas. Cuidado!”

Shayne snarled, “Get the hell out of the way.”

“No, no,” she said in great excitement, pointing. She poured out an explanation in Spanish.

“What’s she saying?”

“I think-” Adele said. “She says somebody did something to the wheels.”

“Las ruedas!”

Shayne snapped off the ignition and stepped out. The woman subsided gradually, but went on pointing and nodding. The truck was now out of sight. Shayne went into his luggage compartment for a tire tool, and pried off a rear hubcap.

A lug-nut was missing. He tested the other nuts. They had been loosened to the point where the threads barely engaged.

The woman was still pouring out a flood of Spanish. Adele said: “She was waiting for a doctor and she looked out the window. That same kid in the shorts was fooling around your car. Stealing hubcaps, she thought, not such a terrible crime. Then he put them back on. When he went back to his truck she saw that he was carrying that four- handled wrench you use to change tires. It’s not just that one wheel, it’s all four.”

While she talked, the woman nodded happily, continuing to point at the sabotaged wheels and at the window from which she had seen it all happen. Shayne checked the other wheels. A number of nuts were missing. The rest were loose. Probably they would have held through the lower gears, but the first time he tried to corner at a high speed he would have thrown a wheel.

“Tell her we’re glad she was looking out the window,” Shayne said, tightening the remaining nuts. “Otherwise we’d be hearing ambulance sirens about now.”

Adele shivered. “That thought already crossed my mind.”

She spoke to the woman, who sobered abruptly and sketched a quick sign of the cross.

“She says St. Christopher must be looking out for us,” Adele said.

“Let’s hope it keeps up.”

The woman clasped him impulsively. Adele translated: “She says her husband, too, was a large man, with the same powerful arms, though not with red hair. He left her last year for a younger woman.”

“Can you wind this up, Adele?”

After a further exchange, the woman stood aside and they got back into the car. As they drove off, Adele sighed and fastened her seat belt.

“That scared me. I’d like to know how they knew. I suppose that bang we heard-”

“Just a feint to get us moving. The timing was pretty good.”

“Like-wow,” she said. “We could have been killed!”

He drove north toward the river, and stopped at a garage on West Flagler. He bought Cokes at an outside dispenser and they stood in the shade while a mechanic checked the wheels. Adele kept looking at her watch.

“The time element, gee. Well, we’ve got three quarters of an hour. Can I tell you my idea?”

“Yeah, go ahead.”

“I don’t know if it’ll work. There’s a cruise ship, the Mozambique, leaving from Pier Three. One of the things Vega does for a living, it seems, is sell bulk marijuana, and I feel a little finky talking about it. From what the kids say, he’s a pretty good source when you can’t get it anywhere else-though he’s expensive. Isn’t this something you could use as a handle?”

“What’s the connection with the Mozambique?”

“He uses cruise ships to bring it in. Everything’s very tight on the Mexican border, as I probably don’t need to tell you, so it’s been going the other way, down to Central America. Somebody on the Mozambique will pick it up in Panama. How does this sound so far?”

“Keep going.”

“Well, there’s a deckhand who thinks my uncle is the greatest man since Simon Bolivar. When he’s in port he comes to every meeting, he rings doorbells, he stuffs envelopes. He’s broken up that he’ll miss the picket line tomorrow. He speaks about two words of English, incidentally, so you’ll need me. If I explain everything to him, and it has to be me, he wouldn’t trust somebody like you even if you could speak Spanish, I just bet we can get enough information so you can scare Vega out of his shoes. He’s supposed to be very skittery about this dope operation. Can we try it, anyway? It’s a start.”

“Are you sure you want to come with me?”

“I’m not worried any more. Wheels have come off cars before and no one was hurt. You’re probably a very good driver. Come on, he’s finished, let’s go!”

She added, “But I’m fastening my seat belt, I can tell you that.”

He studied her for a moment.

“Please?” she said.

“OK.”