happened a couple of hours ago, maybe three-I couldn’t get an exact time. The News has a dozen men on it now. I get credit for starting it, so they’ll call me with developments as fast as they come in. I’d better hang up now so the phone will be open.”
“Yeah,” Shayne said bleakly.
There was a tiny pause. “God, Mike, did you ever think Harry would-”
“Don’t be dumb,” Shayne snapped. “Haven’t you been around long enough to spot a frame when you see one?”
17
He hung up.
“Here,” he said, extending the cognac bottle to Theo. “This may help.”
She almost dropped the bottle but succeeded in downing a mouthful of cognac.
“It’s not a frame-up,” she whispered. “The horrible thing is that it’s true.”
“True that Harry was selling heroin to get Doc Waters out of a hole?” Shayne said. “I don’t believe it.”
Her lips trembled. “I’m so sorry, so sorry. He hated the drug business. Mike, don’t you see? It must mean he was afraid he couldn’t raise the money on Monday. I knew things were bad, but not as bad as this. He’s lost money in grain futures. In the big real estate deal I’ve been working on there’s been delay after delay. I should have realized no one would loan him that amount of money without security, old friend or not. They don’t trust each other that much.”
“Theo, are you trying to tell me he kept a reserve of heroin to fall back on when he needed cash?”
She nodded slowly. “And I helped! Not knowingly, but there I am, right in the middle of it.”
“All right, Theo,” Shayne said. “Take your time.”
Suddenly her face went to pieces. It started quietly, but in a moment it took hold and she was weeping wildly. Shayne, one hand on the wheel, keeping an eye on the buoy, left her alone. As her sobs became more violent, she slipped off the table and crumpled to a heap on the floor.
He waited till the first paroxysm passed. Then he said harshly, with the brusqueness that is often more effective than sympathy, “Get up now, Theo. You must have known when you let Harry make love to you that it wouldn’t be simple.”
She took a despairing breath. “Why can’t it be?”
“The only time sex is simple is when you don’t see each other again after it happens, and that has drawbacks too. Get up and blow your nose. I want to hear what happened in France.”
She was quieter, but when she still didn’t move he said with deliberate roughness, “Get up, Theo. It won’t be pleasant for you, but it’s worse for other people. So long as that narcotics man is alive, Harry has a chance. Stop sniveling and tell me exactly what you know.”
She gave him one white, frightened glance, and came to her feet. Her glasses were askew and her face was streaked. She tottered against him. He gave her a little shake and kissed her lightly.
“All right?”
She reached out defiantly for the bottle. She took a long drink without coughing, then another. He took the bottle away.
“You can get drunk later.”
“I don’t think I was crying for myself,” she said in a low voice. “I suppose I was partly. Harry didn’t think he could get away from those policemen, Mike. He wanted them to shoot him. He knew he didn’t have a chance. He’d be sent to prison for a long time, for the thing he hated most. His friends would think he’d been a hypocrite all these years. What his friends thought was important to Harry.”
Some of her color had come back. She touched her temples with trembling fingers. She felt for a cigarette, and Shayne lit it for her. Then he turned back to the wheel, bringing it up a tick.
“He bought me that car in France,” she said behind him. “The Alfa. Even if I could have afforded it I wouldn’t have driven a car like that before I met him, I wouldn’t have had the courage. It’s custom-built. They kept installing new gadgets the two weeks we were there. Harry wasn’t as interested in sightseeing as I was, and I was off by myself part of the time. I was walking on the promenade-” She faltered.
“I’m listening,” he prompted.
“I saw him with two men at a cafe. One was the garage-man, the man who was working on the Alfa. The other-” She hesitated again, and went on with a rush, “I can’t describe him but oh, he was creepy-looking. There was a package on the table. I didn’t say anything to Harry. I don’t know why, I just didn’t. I suppose I knew that the package had money in it and he was paying the creepy-looking man for something he intended to smuggle back inside the Alfa. We came home separately. He flew and I came by boat, with my new car. And a few days after I was back something funny happened. I park on the street outside my apartment building. Late at night I felt like going for a drive, for no particular reason, just for the feeling of driving at night in a new white Alfa-Romeo. And it was gone! I didn’t call the police. I was afraid they’d ask me how I could afford a car like that on my salary. I called Harry. He said not to worry. He’d put the word around. If a local thief took it, it might come back by itself. And next morning there it was. I thought it showed the advantages of having such an influential friend. Now I know where it was that night-in a garage, being taken apart so they could get at the drugs inside it.”
She was silent for a moment, staring at her clenched hands. “The face of that man in the Nice cafe. Mike, I didn’t like that man’s face.”
Shayne swore to himself. “Well, maybe I’m wrong.” He swung the wheel, brought the throttle up and headed back toward the Miami Beach side of the bay. “I’d better see if Doc Waters is still at Harry’s. I think we can find a place to tie up on Normandy Isle.”
“I’d like another drink, please,” Theo said. “Don’t worry, I’m not getting drunk.”
He handed her the bottle. Over it she said brightly, “I’m sorry for Harry, but don’t think I’m not sorry for myself too, because I am. What am I going to say when the police talk to me? They must already know quite a lot, if they were waiting for Harry in New York. There’s no way out of it for either of us. No way.”
He glanced over his shoulder. She gave him the automatic smile of an efficient, self-possessed secretary. She began repairing her lipstick.
“I’m a newspaper figure from now on. Tim Rourke and his friends will have a field day. I don’t blame them-it’s their job. In plain English, I’m Harry’s mistress. He took me to the Riviera and bought me a five-thousand-dollar car and other expensive presents. I thanked him in the usual way. Will anyone believe I didn’t know there was heroin in the car? And the truth was, I had doubts about that disappearance and reappearance. I didn’t do anything about it so I wouldn’t have to put any serious questions to myself, such as what was I doing hanging around with these people? I wonder how long a sentence they’ll ask for. I wonder if my father and mother will want to attend the trial. They get so little diversion.”
Shayne didn’t like the hysteria in her tight voice, and, as he eased up on the wheel to make the turn around the buoy, he glanced at her again. She had a little automatic pressed beneath her left breast. Her eyes were tight shut, her arms and shoulders were rigid, and there was a look of concentration on her face.
He went sideward very fast. He gave her hand a sharp twist, as though turning a doorknob, and at the same instant he hit her shoulder, breaking her contact with the gun. There was a crisp explosion. She screamed and threw herself back on the gun before Shayne could get it out of her hand. She fired again. This time the bullet hit her. She staggered back against the table, gave a small cry, and all the rigidity went out of her body. He shook the gun out of her hand. The Nugget, coming about in the current, banged against the buoy, sending Theo into Shayne’s arms.
“Mike, it hurts!” she said accusingly.
“Don’t look at me. I didn’t do it.”
He lifted her into a seated position on the table, with her back to the wall. Blood was spreading across the shoulder of her dress, below the collar bone. He ripped the dress down from her shoulder. The bullet had gone in high, an upward angle. Possibly it hadn’t hit the bone.
“That was a stupid thing to do,” he said.
“It was stupid of me to miss.”
