Shayne punched a preset button and the indicator jumped. An unexcited voice was telling them what to expect in the way of weather: continued warm, a three out of ten possibility of showers.
Then: “Repeating the day’s top story. A woman has been found slain in a luxury suite at the Hotel St. Albans. Identified as Mrs. Lillian LaCroix, thirty-one, of this city. She was shot three times at close range with a heavy- caliber weapon. Robbery has been ruled out as a motive, police say. The expensively dressed Miami Beach woman was wearing a valuable watch and other jewelry, and carrying several hundred dollars in cash. The suite is registered in the name of Louis Solomon of New York, who is being sought for questioning. Further details as they come in.”
And he went into a commercial.
“Lou Solomon,” Gold said in a low voice. “What the hell.”
When he didn’t go on, Shayne reached for the dial.
“Leave it on, leave it on,” Gold said.
13
That commercial was followed by another.
“And all we’re doing is sitting here,” Helen complained.
Shayne turned down the volume. “Who’s Lou Solomon?”
“One of the big Jewish fund-raisers. Rich? It goes without saying.” He turned Helen’s wrist so he could see what her watch was telling them. “But what’s going on up there, will you kindly tell me?”
“What’s supposed to be going on?”
Helen moved restlessly. Gold shook her wrist without letting go.
“I’ll fill you in, Shayne, and when the news breaks we’ll go our separate ways. Give me a slight idea how much you know.”
“Helen told me quite a bit.”
“To get him to go, Murray!” she said. “He planted himself down as though he planned to stay all day. You were due any minute.”
“You used to be a hot pro-Israel man yourself,” Shayne said. “I seem to remember some arguments about whether or not they should take your money.”
“A long time ago,” Gold said. “And if I’d gone on acting one hundred percent pure, where would I be right now? In Ramleh prison, on indeterminate sentence, and I’d be dead in six months. I’ve got a heart condition, I’m a physical wreck. So when an Arab was willing to talk to me, I shouldn’t extend him the courtesy?”
“Murray-Daddy-” Helen said. “That’s ancient history. Tell him about it, but in a nutshell.”
“I needed their help with the bust-out, and that went off fine. And there I was, didn’t have a cent to my name, and all my friends were either scared to see me or I couldn’t find them. How I needed those Black September guys. They bought me some clothes and an airplane ticket, and they carried in a suitcase for me. But after they got over here, this is my neck of the woods and the shoe was turned around, they needed me. They had no phone numbers at all. Of course I let them think I’m bigger than I really am any more. But with help from this dear child here, I worked it. Though I’m willing to state for the tape recorder that she didn’t know she was doing anything against the law.”
“At the beginning,” Shayne said.
“She’s a bright kid,” Gold agreed, giving her leg a pat.
“Who had the idea for the kidnapping, you?”
The question embarrassed Gold slightly. “It came up. They’ve been wanting to pull some kind of trick in this country. Everything sort of fitted in. There’s this oil sheik who had a standing invitation to visit some big muckymuck in Boca Raton. They found out when the committee was having the quarterly meeting in Miami Beach, and timed it to overlap. All right!” he said defensively. “But what they don’t realize is that this won’t cut into the flow of funds at all. Wait till you see next month’s totals. Every Jew in America will bring out his checkbook. I grant you-it’ll be a big boost for the Arabs if it works.” He smiled slightly. “But not if they blow it.”
“Explain that,” Shayne said, and Helen added, “Quickly?”
“Artie and me supplied the vehicles,” Gold explained, “but before I turned them over I stuck in a couple of bombs. Timed to go off just about now.”
“The ping-pong balls!” Helen said.
“Incendiaries. You know what we’re talking about, Shayne? All the arsonists have been using them lately.”
On the radio a voice began speaking in great excitement. When Shayne turned up the sound, it proved to be merely the regular announcer praising a liquid floor wax.
“Goddamn it,” Gold said, worried. “They wouldn’t hold back a piece of news like that. They’d put it out right away.”
The girl put in, “If anything’s wrong, Murray, isn’t it all the more reason for you and I to be heading out to sea?”
“I kept hearing how everything had to be timed, to the goddamned second,” Gold said. “A guy named Rashid. I saw him work at Ramleh, and the cat is good. He’d be a colonel in any army in the world. When he said something would happen at such and such a time, that’s when it happened or some heads got chopped. We got the cars to them at a quarter to eleven. Game-time was eleven sharp.”
“I was talking to the manager of the St. A. when they walked in,” Shayne said. “Eleven o’clock straight up.”
“Eleven forty-five now,” Gold said, checking the watch. “Even if they ran into trouble right away, we ought to be hearing about it. They were going to collect everybody in Solomon’s room. Nine men on the committee, but a couple aren’t getting in till this afternoon. They had everybody’s room number. Like with the manager, they were going to take his secretary and everybody else in the office, to keep the lid on as long as they could. Phase one was fifteen minutes. If they couldn’t find somebody, forget it. Then down to the lobby for the announcement. They had a bullhorn. Rashid figured out the best place to stand. Eleven-twenty. ‘I’m Rashid Abd El-Din, known to my friends as the Palestinian Superman. The vile Jews, blah, blah, blah. We want one million apiece, and we want to see it at the airport in exactly one hour, sixty minutes. An airplane, and get it gassed up and rolled out on a runway, all by itself, with a full crew. And no monkey business or all the Jews will get killed. Which they’re used to, of course.’ Any questions? No questions. Off to the airport.”
“Taking everybody?”
“Just the committee. There were eight Arabs to start with, one kid didn’t make it in time. Just about one on one. I tried to tell them it would take over an hour to scrape up that much cash. What do you think, Shayne?”
“Six or seven million? Banks, racetracks.”
“His big point was that he didn’t want to get into one of those long negotiations, with everybody armed on both sides and getting more and more nervous. That’s why he didn’t make any demands on Israel. Everybody knows they don’t pay blackmail, period. If they didn’t have the cash by the deadline, too bad for the hostages. The hour was supposed to start at eleven-twenty. So what’s happening? I set those timers for eleven-forty, to go off about halfway between the Beach and the airport. They’re distributed like this. Three Arabs in a limousine, the rest in a hearse, two in the front seat, two in back with the Jews. They’re bowling along at fifty or sixty miles an hour. Bang. The guy who sold me the ping-pong balls said those flames are going to shoot thirty feet in the air. The explosion comes up through the floorboards and takes out the driver. They’re going to rack up, aren’t they? That takes out the limo. The hearse slams on its brakes. Thirty seconds later, another bang. I jammed the back doors so they wouldn’t lock. They fly open and six or seven Jews and two Arabs spill out on the highway. I think we can take them, if we jump fast enough. There’s going to be plenty of confusion, and that’s all to the good. The bomb in the hearse, I put it in on the right, and hopefully that’s where Rashid is going to be riding. The others aren’t in his class.”
“Murray,” the girl said admiringly, “you know you’re sort of a genius? Now can I make a suggestion? While we’re talking why don’t I divide the money?”
“Shayne wants to be in on that.”
“Get it up off the floor where I can see it,” Shayne said. “Do it by packages, throw one over and keep
