“How’s the arm?”
“It’s O.K.,” Shayne said. “We may be cutting this close so let’s get underway. You see the red MG parked up there. There’s a guy in it. Do you think you can act like a junkie?”
“Junkies are usually thinner, but I can try. I wondered why you wanted the package of rags. We’re buying junk?”
“We’re working the handkerchief switch, only with shotguns. The money’s for somebody else.”
He told Coddington what to do. Like all good plainclothesmen, Coddington had worked up an identity for the times when it was important not to be tagged as a cop. In his basic undercover role he was a vacationist, a little drunk, with money in his pocket and looking for ways to spend it. Today he was unshaven, wearing the clothes he had put on for his expedition into the Everglades. Wetting his fingers, he picked up some dirt from the floor and rubbed it across his face. Then he shambled off.
Shayne watched through the field glasses. Coddington passed the parked car, but the brightness of the color and the fact that somebody was sitting in it pulled his eye. He looked back, stooped and played with a shoelace until a passing car was out of sight, looked around once more, and walked out in the street and back to the MG.
He showed his revolver, holding it close so Tibbett alone could see it. He was shaking with excitement. He ordered Tibbett out, to accompany him to a place where they could do business in private. He wasn’t a car-thief, he assured the sergeant. He wouldn’t know how to get rid of the MG even if he felt like bothering with it. All he wanted was Tibbett’s money and watch and shoes. He was half a day late. He needed medicine badly.
If Tibbett had tried to defend himself with the shotgun, Coddington had been told to shoot him. Tibbett decided to do as he was ordered, and unfolded himself from the car. The two men disappeared between houses. Shayne started his engine. The detective returned, a moment later, alone, carrying a pair of shoes. Shayne moved up and double-parked.
Tibbett’s new Winchester was lying across the second bucket seat in the red car, still wrapped, but he had broken the paper tape so he could get it out in a hurry. Shayne, while he was waiting, had loaded and rewrapped the gun he had doctored in the sporting goods store. Now he sealed that package and tore the tape so it would look exactly like the package in the MG.
Coddington made the switch and got into the Buick. Shayne circled the block, ending up back where he had started.
“How hard did you hit him?”
“Maybe too hard. You wanted him unconscious for exactly three minutes. That’s a tough thing to judge. Hey. There he comes. Three minutes and twenty seconds. That’s what I call a delicate touch.”
Shayne asked for binoculars, and watched Tibbett waver into sight. His face was a mask of blood. He wouldn’t be firing a shotgun at anybody until he got his coordination back. He stood in the street swaying and brushing at his face. Then he answered one of Shayne’s questions-was he operating alone, or was he in this with Helen? He walked away, some of the time on the sidewalk, some of the time on the grass. Reaching the house with the For Sale sign, he went in.
After taking the loads out of Tibbett’s shotgun, Shayne moved into the back seat and untied the carton of money. Taking out one of the bills, he held it to the light.
“Damn nice job,” he commented after a moment. “It looks real to me. It feels real.”
“One of the best fakes I ever saw,” Coddington said. “The giveaway is a little blot in the spinach on Ben’s collar. See where the line thickens?”
Shayne found the imperfection, which he would never have noticed if Coddington hadn’t pointed it out. He emptied his back-seat refrigerator, and filled it with money. Coddington took everything that had come out of the refrigerator to his own car, and stayed there.
Shayne moved back into the front seat, and the waiting resumed.
Tibbett reappeared, wearing two of the band-aids Shayne had seen in Helen’s purse. His balance was better, and he moved in a straight line. But as he crouched to enter the low car, he miscalculated the opening, and banged his head. The door stayed open until he recovered.
Waiting was a major part of Shayne’s job, and he had long since adjusted to it. But Tibbett moved nervously, lighting cigarettes and throwing them away almost unsmoked. Two boys went by on bikes, wearing bathing trunks. There was little through traffic, but an occasional car or delivery truck came and went. Mail was being delivered. A salesman carrying a sample case worked along from house to house, and gave Coddington and Shayne a close inspection as he passed.
And then it happened, though not precisely the way Shayne had planned.
A black Pinto, cruising at moderate speed, braked to a stop in front of the For Sale sign, and the driver honked. Shayne turned on the ignition and went into gear.
The Buick and the MG both moved out at the same instant. Tibbett accelerated hard. The twin shotgun barrels came out the window. The driver’s door of the Pinto opened. Coming abreast, the MG slowed abruptly.
The shotgun roared.
Over the Buick’s noises, Shayne heard a scream. The MG careened ahead, then darted off at an angle, mounted the low curb, and crashed smoking into the porch of one of the almost identical houses.
12
Shayne pulled up to the Pinto and got out.
The driver was a youth in his late teens, with long, untidy blond hair, in a black lightweight raincoat. Like Sergeant Tibbett, he had been driving barefoot. He had been smashed back into the car, his feet still outside on the pavement. Shayne’s makeshift weld had failed to hold in one of the Winchester barrels, and the bolt-head had been driven into the boy’s chest. But the obstruction had broken the close-range pattern, and some of the pellets had gone past to tear up the front seat and strike Murray Gold, hanging from his seatbelt on the other side of the wounded boy.
Gold stared incredulously at Shayne. “Mike Shayne.”
“Who did you expect?”
Gold moaned, and picked at the tangled harness. “Get me out of this.”
“Murray, I know this is going to be hard for you, but a man in your position has to learn to say please.”
Shayne left him hanging, and looked for the money. He found an old-fashioned leather satchel on the floor of the back seat. He swung it into his own car and followed it in. Gold was making plaintive noises behind him. Shayne turned the satchel upside down and dumped the money on the floor. He refilled the satchel with counterfeits from the refrigerator, replacing them with the genuine bills-at least he hoped these were genuine. By craning, Artie Constable could have seen what he was doing, but he was going fast. He clutched himself tightly beneath the breast bone with both hands. The acne on his face stood out like stigmata. A bubble broke at his lips.
Artie’s body and Shayne’s own back screened Shayne’s actions from Gold. “You son of a bitch,” Gold said faintly. “Please.”
Artie fell back. Doors were opening along the block. Women appeared on the porches. Coddington, as instructed, stayed where he was, waiting for Shayne to signal. Shayne took a gun from each of the boy’s raincoat pockets, two more from the floor of the Pinto’s front seat, and threw them into the Buick. He honked his horn and looked up at the second floor windows. When nothing happened he honked again, a long demanding blare, and Helen came out, looking mad and frightened. This time she brought Raggedy Ann.
Shayne circled the Pinto to open the door on Gold’s side. The old man was sighing heavily.
“I need some help here,” Shayne said. “I can’t carry him.”
“You bastard.”
“Don’t blame me. I didn’t shoot anybody.”
“Don’t blame you,” she said bitterly. “You really know how to spoil things, don’t you?”
Gold said feebly, “Baby, help me.”
“God, look at Artie,” the girl said.
Artie was clearly dying. His head was against Gold’s thigh. His hands fell away from the wound, which had
