There’s always a place where you’ve got to hang tough or let them take you. Too goddamn many thieves really want to make mistakes so they’ll be put away in a nice safe cell with three sure meals a day. This Tug character who let himself get picked up-after a couple of days with these oddballs maybe he was looking for a way out. He took the small pinch instead of the big one. And that’s what these characters are thinking. They think he knew something.”
“Stop it.”
“It could work,” he said. “So long as you remember it’s going to take luck. And I have a feeling that the minute that cop recognized me in the subway, my luck changed. I may jinx this for you.”
“Nonsense!” she said sharply. “We go over it and over it, if necessary a hundred times, and cut down the possibilities. Then if something unlucky happens, you will move quickly and decisively and overcome it. That is my feeling.”
“I hope you’re right.”
She peered up at him. “Darling, that one policeman recognized you. What if there should be others? I believe we should at least dye your hair. Red, perhaps.”
Startled, Shayne let out a snort of laughter. “And maybe we can talk Ziggy into loaning me his mustache. No, baby. If something happens, it happens. That’s my philosophy.” He picked up his jacket, which he had thrown on the bed, and felt in the side pocket. “I want to give you back your watch and bracelet.”
CHAPTER 7
After she said goodnight, Shayne stripped off the Sanitation Department uniform and listened at the closed door. There was no lock but he manhandled the empty bureau in front of it. He went to the window. A room on the ground floor would have been better for his purposes, but there had been no way he could ask for one. He removed the sliding screen and swung out onto the shingled roof of the veranda, which ran around two sides of the house.
The shingles were dry and brittle underfoot. He edged carefully along the wall. The next window was lighted. He dropped to his knees and elbows and wriggled past. The shingles at the edge of the roof had split and peeled. The two-by-six beneath had begun to rot away from the nails. Shayne leaned on it and felt it give.
He heard a mumble of voices from the living room: Michele’s and Szigetti’s. The note of complaint in Szigetti’s voice carried it around the house without bringing any words along with it. While the detective hesitated he noticed a dead branch dangling from the gutter. He might be able to use that.
He freed the branch carefully, then let it down heavy end first and worked the tip inside the copper wire leading to the telephone box. One of the thumbtacks pulled out of the clapboard. Rotating the branch, he caught the wire on a protruding twig and fished it up. Another tack popped out. In a moment, reaching down, he was able to seize the wire and pull it free.
There wasn’t enough slack to reach his window. He unwound more wire from the outside of his battery case and performed a rough splice in the half-dark without tools. A rotten board gave way under his knee and he had to twist sideward to keep from going through.
Somebody had been moving in the bedroom on the other side of the wall. There was an abrupt silence. Shayne froze, spread-eagled on the roof.
Irene’s voice said clearly, “You’re beginning to jump, my girl.”
She came to the lighted window to look out at the night Shayne was too close to the wall to see her, but the shadow she cast was naked.
“Anybody out there?” she said in a low whisper. “If so, come in. No? Too bad, Irene. Another night shot to hell.”
Shayne waited till her light was out. Springs jangled as she climbed into bed, and under cover of the noise he wriggled past. He climbed through his own window and replaced the screen.
On his bed, he doubled his pillow to make a soundproof cave for his tiny phone. He signaled the operator and gave her a number. An instant later the voice of his friend Tim Rourke spoke from the button in his ear.
“Mike?”
“Yeah,” the detective said curtly into his cupped hands. “Tomorrow morning. Watch the ferry and the bridges. Dark green convertible.” He gave the license number. “Read it back.”
Rourke repeated the number. “Anything else?”
“No.”
Rourke said, “Well, Mike, you did it. Sometimes you amaze me. Good luck, buddy.”
Shayne withdrew the point of his screwdriver, breaking the connection. He moved the bureau away from the door. After sliding in under the sheet he put the hearing-aid button back in his ear. He smoked a last cigarette thoughtfully.
Like his friend Rourke, he was surprised at how well everything had gone. As Jake Melnick, the diamond dealer, Rourke had overdone the alarm and dismay, Shayne had thought, and when he had slapped the plastic membrane against his forehead he had produced a huge gush of blood, far more than would have been showing if Shayne had actually slugged him with a pistol. But the girl had been properly scared by it. Inspector Power himself had been the off-duty detective who accosted them in the lobby. The other roles had been filled by detectives from the Confidential Squad-the traffic patrolman outside, the workmen who blocked their escape with the piano, the uniformed cop, checking Michele’s apartment, who had been hit in the face with a wet towel. Shayne smiled in the darkness. Only the plump lady in the flowered hat had not been part of the troupe, and her performance couldn’t have been improved by three weeks of rehearsals. The one thing that had bothered Shayne-it hadn’t seemed to bother Rourke or Power, he noticed-was whether he could convince an intelligent girl that he was capable of stunning a defenseless man with a. 45, and then of putting a second bullet into a wounded cop. He made a wry face and stubbed out his cigarette. Perhaps the dyed hair made the difference.
The next day would be a difficult one. The day after that would be more difficult still. His main problem remained Michele, but he had no shortage of lesser problems. All Szigetti’s early suspicions had come back, during the poker game, and Shayne’s last look of the evening from the dapper former Marine had been hard and searching. Probably, Shayne thought, on one of Szigetti’s vacation trips to Miami or Miami Beach some local companion had pointed Shayne out, and he could make the connection at any time. It was going to be like sitting in the same room with a ticking bomb.
There was a rapid series of clicks in his ear. He sat up, instantly alert, and adjusted the hearing-aid button.
“Yes?” a man’s voice said.
“I found somebody,” Michele’s voice said without preamble.
“Excellent.”
The half-swallowed consonants went with an upper-class English upbringing, Shayne thought, listening carefully, but there was also something else, a faint whiff of another country.
“I have observed him in action,” Michele said, “and I think he will do well. After Wynanski I thought perhaps we should cancel everything and return to France. This one prides himself on common sense and directness and vulgarity, but there is something else too. I think he conducts himself as he imagines he should. He is flexible, he improvises well, and he unquestionably has courage. He can drink a great deal with little change in his manner. He lost his temper once or twice, but I think deliberately.”
“I see you’ve been watching him closely,” the voice said with a laugh.
“Yes, it was necessary that I do so. I have had to be careful with him. I will tell you about it later. I was in danger for a time. America! Never again, thank you. But I found that the danger stimulated the sexual responses to a surprising extent. Interesting. But I would dislike to have it happen again in just that way.”
“Ah.”
“Yes. He is desirable, this man, and I am wondering if I should take him to Europe with me. Perhaps not. But meanwhile, to be sure of him, I need a passport.”
“That can be arranged.”
“I have never met this precise type, you see, and at times I think he is not so simple. So you should know
