Sayyid murmured, “We didn’t expect any delay. We should move.”
“Don’t rush me.”
He unscrewed the cap with one hand. Heroin dropped into this bottle would turn the liquid deep blue. It was the same crude test used by narcotics agents, not for heroin’s purity but for its presence in a mixture after a cut. Rashid jumped down from the hearse.
“Sayyid,” he said sharply, and added something in Arabic.
“We can’t wait here, it’s dangerous,” Sayyid announced, and snatched the car key from Gold.
Gold was trying to do too much at one time with only two hands, and he dropped the damn bottle. As he went down to retrieve it before the liquid could gurgle out, Sayyid gave him a push.
And the door opened.
From a cramped position partly on the seat, partly on the floor, Gold looked into the hole at the end of a pistol barrel. The pistol was no larger than normal, but the hole looked huge. Gold had already begun to wonder if it had been smart to trust these enemies of the Jewish homeland. His pleasure at seeing the suitcase again had caused him to slack off, and his reactions were slow. He blinked up at a face he vaguely recognized. This was one of those people who do the small, dirty, high-risk jobs, and as a result spend most of their lives in jail. His face said that he had stopped caring. Gold had never had much contact with these men, and here he was, at the age of sixty-four, being stared at by one from the other side of a cocked pistol.
A second man of the same type got into the driver’s seat. No new car had arrived. They had been waiting for him, and it was apparent that they had known where to wait as a result of being tipped by the Arabs. The unnatural alliance was definitely over.
Sayyid said nervously, “All right? All right?”
He slipped away. The gunman came in and slammed the door.
“Barney’s going to scream when he sees that suitcase. Junk, Murray? And you were always such a big man.”
The name Barney explained something. Barney was head of a loosely-organized group of investors who wrote most of the organization bonds. Sale of the confiscated heroin would go a long way toward covering the losses they had incurred when Gold absconded to Israel.
The limousine and the hearse, with the Arabs inside, moved toward the exit ramp and disappeared. Artie Constable, as Gold could have predicted, had faded from view.
“In fact,” Gold said, “Barney’s going to be so glad he’ll give me a big hug and a kiss and put me on an airplane.”
The man seemed to doubt this. “But everybody’s been so pissed off at you, Murray.”
Artie, approaching the car from behind, didn’t try anything fancy. He fired through the window, hitting the gunman in the head and killing him instantly. Gold grabbed the pistol. The driver gave one backward glance, and his hands went up as though trying to catch a fly ball. Artie opened the door for him and he got out, his hands still high. Artie disarmed him, and Gold dumped the dead man at his feet. Artie contorted himself into the narrow space behind the wheel and they drove away, winding down to the exit, where they had to pay to return to the street.
9
Shayne had no trouble finding the Homestead Beach address. It was the upper half of a two-family house, three blocks from the ocean. Like many of the houses on the block, the For Sale sign was up; Homestead Beach had been hit hard by the cutbacks at the nearby airbase. The windows were curtainless. Shayne drove past. It was a street of nearly identical houses, most of which needed paint or other forms of attention. In a few more years, the only thing to do with the place would be to burn it down and begin again.
He parked and came back across-lots, approaching the house from the rear. The two-car garage was empty. He went quietly up the back stairs. The door was unlocked.
He turned the knob, and entered a kitchen. Like her mother, Helen felt no obligation to keep abreast of the dishes. The fare here was TV dinners, sardines and crackers, store pie, instant Sanka. Much beer had been drunk, many cigarettes had been smoked. The remains were everywhere.
He heard a belch. A girl walked in with a beer in one hand. When she saw Shayne she screeched and the can went flying. She had just come from the bathroom and her jeans were open. This was clearly Helen. She had her mother’s hips and thighs, from which she would probably have been glad to shed a few pounds. Her hair was in curlers. Without them, and with a new expression on her face, she might have been almost pretty.
“How are you making out down here?” Shayne said. “I’m Michael Shayne. A couple of questions to ask you.”
She grabbed her jeans as they started to slide. “Goddamn you, goddamn you. Two minutes later I would have been on the road. How did you find me?”
“You left footprints.”
She took a step forward. “What do people have to do to get a break in this world? Please, please! Don’t take me back.”
The shock of finding a strange man in her kitchen had drained most of the color from her face. Even her lips were white. She held out both hands to him and said desperately, “Please! You don’t know what he’ll do to me.”
“Your father? What will he do?”
“Beat me to a pulp. Do you think I’m kidding? You know how he does with the pot-heads. He comes home with scabs on his knuckles. Why do you think I kept dropping out of school? Because I was bruised up! Give me a break, Mr. Shayne?”
“Let’s find out what the situation is first. Where’s Gold?”
She stared. “She- it,” she said in disgust. “I hoped you didn’t know about that.” She came closer and picked at his sling. “I can’t offer you money because I don’t have any. I don’t suppose you’d be interested in-” She gave him a look. “No, I didn’t think so. But I’ve heard about you. You’re supposed to be halfway fair. I don’t care about Murray, I don’t care about anybody in the goddamn fucking world. I’ll confess every little sin I ever committed, if you won’t make me go home.”
“You still haven’t told me where Gold is.”
A calculating look fled across her face. “I’ll make a deal. I’ll tell you the whole thing, from the time I first went down on him, if you’ll say you won’t make me go back. You don’t know what it’s like there.”
“I’m beginning to get a pretty good idea. Maybe you can persuade me.”
She gave a relieved laugh. “Then come on in and have a beer or a smoke. Are you a pot-man, by any chance?”
“Sometimes, when I’m not working.”
The kitchen had a table and chairs, but the only furniture in the living room were two mattresses and a folding beach chair. Helen sat down cross-legged on a mattress.
“You’re the guest, you can sit in the chair.” She waved around. “Ghoulish, yes? And if I told you what they charge for this place!”
Shayne sat on the footrest of the long chair. Helen popped a beer can and offered it. When he declined, she took a quick pull at the beer herself.
“Luke,” she complained. Setting it down, she began taking out curlers. “I must look like a singed cat. Not too irresistibly attractive, huh? I know where you want me to start, and I’m not going to start any place until you give me your oath. If I answer all your questions to the best of my ability, so help me God, will you bug off and tell my old man you couldn’t find me?”
After considering for a moment, Shayne nodded. “Unless you’ve done something you can be arrested for.”
“You could probably get me for conspiracy, but that’s the shittiest law there is, and besides I’m a juvenile.”
“Conspiracy to do what?”
