Never seen anything like them in my life!'
She stared blankly at him and edged away, then, when she was sure she was out of reach of his hands, she turned and made her way quietly towards the exit, clutching on to the small box of hand cream in which lay her death.
* * *
They came to Paradise City, separately, stealthily, like cautious rats coming out into the sunlight.
At this period of the high season, a constant police watch was kept on the airport and the railroad station. There were also police check points outside the City on the three major highways. Police officers with photographic memories waited at the various barriers, their hard, cop eyes staring searchingly at each passenger coming through the check points. Every now and then a hand would be raised and a passenger stopped. He or she would be whisked out of the slowly moving line of passengers and taken aside.
The dialogue was always the same: 'Hello, Jack [or Charlie or Lulu] . . . got a return ticket? Better use it: you're not wanted here.'
The same form of dialogue was used at the highway check points and cars were manoeuvred out of the queue and sent back towards Miami.
This police surveillance prevented hundreds of big and small criminals from operating in the City, saving the rich from being fleeced.
So the four men who had come in answer to an intriguing summons and who had been warned of the police cordon came separately and with care.
Jess Chandler, because he had no police record, came by air. This tall, handsome, debonair looking man walked without hesitation towards the police barrier, confident that his false passport and his glibly constructed background of a wealthy coffee grower with estates in Brazil would satisfy the police scrutiny.
At the age of thirty-nine, Chandler was now recognised by the underworld as one of the slickest and smartest con men in the racket. He traded on his movie-star appearance. His lean brown face, his short nose and full lips, his high cheekbones and his large, dark eyes gave him a sensual, swashbuckling look of a confident womaniser, and some of the women, looking at him, knew this, feeling a pang of desire as they moved with him in the long queue towards the heat and the sunshine that waited for them outside the airport building.
The two waiting police officers regarded him. Chandler stared back at them, his eyes bored, his expression slightly contemptuous. He showed no fear and fear was what the officers were looking for. After only a brief glance at his passport, they waved him through to the waiting line of taxis.
Chandler hefted his handbag from one hand to the other and grinned. He knew it would be easy . . . it had been easy.
Mish Collins had to be much more careful. He had only been out of jail for two months and every cop house had his photograph. It had taken him some hours to make up his mind how best he could get past the police cordon without being asked awkward questions. Finally, he had joined a sight-seeing tour that left Miami for a tour of the Everglades and then finally a night at Paradise City, before returning to Miami. In the packed coach, loaded with noisy, happy, slightly drunk tourists, he felt comparatively safe. He had brought his harmonica with him. Ten minutes before reaching the police check point, he had begun to play to the delight of his companions. The instrument, cupped in his huge, fleshy hands, completely shielded his face. He had picked a seat with three other big fleshy men at the back of the coach and the police officer who climbed into the coach merely glanced at him, then concentrated on the other sweating, bovine faces that all grinned back at him.
In this way, Mish Collins arrived safely in Paradise City, a man who the police would have immediately turned back had he been recognised, for Mish Collins was not only one of the top safe blowers in the country, but had also earned a reputation that made many burglar alarm manufacturers quail with apprehension.
Mish Collins was forty-one years of age. He had spent fifteen years of his life in and out of jail. He was massively built, fat, with a lumpy muscular body of great strength. His red hair was beginning to thin and there were lines of hard living, deeply etched on his coarse, rubbery face. His small, restless eyes had a cocky, cheerful light of cunning that somehow made the unwary take to him.
When the bus pulled into the bus station, he drew the Courier aside and told him he wouldn't be taking the return journey.
'I've remembered I have a buddy here,' he explained. 'You cash in my return ticket and keep the change for yourself. You certainly have earned it,' and before the courier could even thank him, Mish had disappeared into the swirling crowd.
Jack Perry came in his own Oldsmobile Cutlass convertible, now a little shabby, but still a nice looking car. He was aware that the finger-print department at Washington had one of his finger-prints; only one, the right forefinger, and this was the only mistake he had ever made during a long life of crime, a secret he kept to himself like a man nursing a cancer. At least, they had no photograph of him so he approached the police check point satisfied that the two bulls checking the cars would have no idea they were about to encounter a professional killer.
For the past twenty-seven years, Perry had earned a living by hiring out his gun. He was an expert shot, utterly amoral, and human life to him meant as little as something he might have stepped in on the sidewalk. But he was a free spender and was always short of money: women played a major role in his life . . . and when there were women, you spent money.
He was around sixty-two years of age: a short, heavily built man with close-cut, mow-white hair, a round fattish face, wide- spaced eyes under bushy white eyebrows, a thin mouth and a mall hooked nose. He dressed conservatively. Now, he was wearing a slate-grey tropical suit, a blood-red tie and a cream- coloured panama hat. He was always smiling, a grimace more than a smile, and if he had had any friends he would have been nicknamed 'Smiler', but he had no friends. He was a solitary, ruthless killer without a soul, and with no feeling for anyone, not even himself.
He drew up behind the car in front of him and waited while the two police officers checked the papers of the passengers. Then, when they waved the car on, Perry let the Cutlass creep up to the waiting men.
He regarded them with his fixed grin.
'Hi, fellas,' he said, waving a fat hand. 'Have I done something wrong?'
Patrol Officer Fred O'Toole had been on duty now for the past four hours. He was a big, dark Irishman with alert, bleak eyes. He was sick to death of all the people who had crawled past his check point in their luxury cars with their corny jokes, their servile smiles, their contempt and often their arrogance. They were all heading for a good time: gambling, the best food, the best hotels, the best whores while he stood with burning feet in the hot
