times a year in greater New York, so naturally we’ve worked up a pretty solid routine. We can usually put our hands on those envelopes. Even after we get a conviction, if we get a conviction, we still hang onto them because the case may go up on appeal, or it may be reopened by a higher court ruling on something else. But a time comes when there’s no point in holding onto the evidence any longer, so what do we do? We burn it. This happens once every two or three years. We go through the property vaults, sort out the dead envelopes and truck them up to the Department of Sanitation incinerator on West Fifty-sixth Street. And it all goes up in smoke. Sometimes there’s a story in the papers about it, and even if there’s not, the news gets around. For a few days all the junkies in New York are very depressed.”
He had finally succeeded in catching Shayne’s interest. The redhead sat forward and said thoughtfully, “Two and a half million bucks worth of junk is a lot of junk.”
“About two tons,” Power said. He took a card out of his pocket. “Here are the figures for the last time. Total value $3,548,000. The heroin alone was $2.7 million. The rest was cocaine, marijuana, goof balls, odds and ends. Total number of arrests, eleven thousand over a three-year period. This time we’re cleaning house after two years, but the retail price has gone up. We’ll have an exact total later. Two and a half million is only a guess.”
“Give or take a million, still it’s something to shoot at,” Shayne said. “And negotiable, as good as cash. But I don’t see your problem. How many cops do you have in New York? About twenty thousand. You ought to be able to move two tons of junk across town without being hit.”
“Now wait. Who thought the Japanese would hit Pearl Harbor? Who expected anybody to rob the Brink’s warehouse? That’s the point. They can assume we won’t expect anything, because who in God’s name would have the gall? The stuff is downtown now, and our security is good there. Nobody’s going to walk in with a few handguns and walk out again alive. The incinerator at the other end is built like a fortress. We’ll have a bunch of people there to certify that the right envelopes are burned. That means the attempt has to take place between those two points. We’ll be out in the open for forty-five minutes and you know we won’t use twenty thousand cops. In the ordinary course of events, two would be enough.”
“Nobody would try it without some good information,” Shayne said slowly.
“Apparently they have it. I have an idea where it comes from, but never mind that now. Let him go on dreaming.”
“What I’d do,” Gentry said. “It’s like any narcotics action-something has to happen before you make an arrest. But hell. Use twenty or thirty plainclothesmen in unmarked cars. Land on them the minute they make their move. You’d have a nice pinch.”
“That was our first idea, Will. But listen.”
He heaved up out of the chair and began to pace. “This is no nickel-and-dime operation, two or three crazy amateurs shooting for a big score. A couple of tons of narcotics-you need an organization to market it. Maybe the organization. And if you want to find guys who are willing to take on two armed cops in city traffic, you have to spend some money. You’ll need a minimum of six people. Three or four vehicles. Maybe a hundred thousand dollars. I don’t want to pull in the small fry this time. I want the man or the men who hired them, who can always hire somebody else. And this time, damn it, I have a chance! I used to be in charge of Narcotics. I inherited the usual complement of stoolies, and I developed some of my own. About three weeks ago I began to get indications that something big was in the offing. A gun named Tug Wynanski turned down a job for a certain date, and that was the same day we’d reserved time at the incinerator. I hate to use shoo-flies, but sometimes you have to. I put men on every clerk in the property department, and seventy-two hours later I had the leak. We watched him around the clock. We put men on Wynanski. For a week now I’ve known exactly how many people are in it. I have their names and records. They’re holed up in a rented house on Staten Island, which I have under surveillance. How many times has it happened in your experience, Will, that you know in advance that a crime’s going to be committed, who’s going to commit it, and where you can put your finger on them whenever you like? As far as I’m concerned, it’s never happened!”
“If your surveillance is that good,” Gentry put in, “you should be able to tie in the higher-ups without using Mike. No?”
“Not unless I let them pull off the heist exactly as planned. That gets too risky. If we lost track of them somewhere along the line, I’d have some serious explaining to do to the Super.”
He took a quick pull at his beer. “Wynanski’s been tagged once or twice, always for small things. What he’s supposed to be good at is putting together a package. You bring him an idea and he handles the details. There’s one trouble with him, he has a temper and he likes to drink. He drives over to Manhattan every day, and on the way back to Staten Island he’s likely to stop at a bar. Here’s how I think we can get Mike in. Two days before D-day, we’ll pick up Wynanski for assault. They’ll believe it. He’s the main guy on the execution level. It’ll leave a large hole.”
Shayne snorted. “You’re out of your mind. What do I do, knock on the door and say I’ve heard on the grapevine that they need a man?”
“What I haven’t told you yet is that there’s a girl, a French girl named Michele Guerin. She’s the one who’s been handing out the advances. She has an apartment in Manhattan. According to her dossier, it’s her first time in this country, and she probably has the usual foreigner’s idea of how much everyday violence there is on the streets of New York. Now imagine this scene. She’s driving down Fifth. Shots are fired. A big redhaired hoodlum-no, we better dye your hair, Mike, that thatch of yours is too well known-not a red-haired hood, a black-haired hood, backs out of a bank with a gun in his hand. He shoots an off-duty detective and commandeers the girl’s car. Why wouldn’t she fall for it? She saw it happen.”
Gentry said, “One thing I don’t like about that idea. It’s too public. Too many things to go wrong. Because what if Mike runs into a real off-duty detective, shooting real bullets? How would you time it so the car would be there at the right moment, and then wouldn’t get jammed up in traffic? I think it ought to be inside. You’d have more control.”
Shayne looked at his friend in amazement. “Will, do you mean he’s already sold you on this pipe dream?”
Gentry’s eyes moved uneasily. “It sounds far-fetched the first time you hear it, Michael, but it takes hold. It could be worked. The way I see it, it’s in an elevator. No problem about the timing-you simply wait till the girl shows up. You only need two men. Your straight man comes in with her. Mike’s waiting. All three of them get in the elevator. If somebody else gets in, no matter. Mike pulls his gun. The straight man-say he’s a gambler, carrying a real roll. Mike has to slug him. He can use the old cackle-bladder routine from the con games-a plastic membrane filled with chicken blood. He has it in the palm of his hand, and claps himself on the forehead and all at once starts bleeding like a damn pig. Then Mike shoots the off-duty detective, on the way out. He grabs the girl and backs into the elevator and lays up in her apartment. A few prowl cars circulate around with their sirens going. That’s all the atmosphere you’ll need. The girl needs somebody like Mike. She offers him the job. Why not? We can think of a few refinements, but basically it’s all right there.”
Shayne shook his head morosely. “How many beers had you put away before I got here?”
“Quite a few,” Gentry said, “and every time I have one more it looks a little better. Where’s the hole in it, Mike? All we want to do is establish you as a gunman in trouble, and it shouldn’t be hard. She won’t know you’re shooting blanks.” Suddenly he smiled broadly. “Sandy, show Mike the picture of this doll in a bikini. He’ll stop arguing.”
Shayne said impatiently, “If she looks that good in a bathing suit, aren’t there any easier ways she can make money?”
“She’s definitely not routine,” Power said, “but none of the rest of this is, either. I’ll tell you what Interpol has on her. She’s thirty-two, and well preserved. For three years, maybe longer, she was the mistress of a Greek shipowner. She went along on yacht trips with some highly placed people. She spends money freely. They think she carried some stolen bonds from Paris to Macao a year ago. She was suspected of blackmailing the younger son of a minor king, and that’s all, except for one small fact. During the bond investigation an agent heard her phoning somebody named Adam.” He looked at Gentry. “Does that name mean anything to you, Will?”
Gentry shook his head. Power went on, “It meant something to me, and it meant something to the agent who put it in the dossier. Actually we know quite a bit about the man, considering that we don’t know if Adam is a first or a last name. He’s English, probably not by birth. What we all agree on is the nature of his business. He finances the international movement of guns, drugs, gold, stolen paintings-you name it. He may or may not use an actual bank, nobody knows. We don’t know if he’s one man or a group. We don’t know where his headquarters is. It could
