Without replying, Gold took off the glasses he was wearing and replaced them with another pair with thicker lenses. He touched the paint and then moved around the car to get another angle, with the light behind him. He hammered his fist on the roof and began to swear, in a voice choked with emotion, using rhetorical combinations that were unfamiliar to the Arab.
“I ask you again,” Rashid said. “Something is wrong. Please tell me. We are concerned in this also.”
“It could be bad,” Gold said. “Very bad.”
When Rashid tried his question again, the old man flared out at him. The Arab was a son of a dog, and copulated with his mother, using forbidden instruments and positions. He also ate shit. Rashid reminded himself again that the man was an enigma. There was real passion inside him, and enemies would be wise not to take him for granted.
“Why are you calling me these names?” Rashid asked. “Mother fucking? A really exotic practice. We had nothing to do with this, whatever it is.”
Gold continued to stare at the paint. “Mike Shayne,” he whispered. “That has to be who.”
“The conversation begins, finally. Who is Mike Shayne?”
“Trouble. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. The son of a bitch used a chopper on me.”
“A chopper? A sort of knife?”
“I kept hearing helicopters. But it was always right near an airport. I thought-”
Lines of concentration appeared around his eyes. He changed glasses slowly.
He half turned, turned back and said decisively, “Something you guys have got to do. You’ve got to kill somebody for me.”
“Indeed? This man Shayne? Why?”
“O. K.,” Gold was over his brief panic, and his tone was dry and businesslike. “Go back a couple of hours. I didn’t want to tell you because I know it’s going to make you nervous. Somebody did some guessing or had some fantastic luck, I don’t know which. I was spotted. I told you I took care of it. I thought I took care of it good. I haven’t had to hit anybody for a long time, but there isn’t that much to it, you pull the goddamn trigger and if your aim is right they fall over.”
“I’ve seen this happen.”
“I didn’t know Shayne was there, but he saw it. There I was with a dead body. I hope I’m not shocking you. I locked it in the car trunk and threw the key away. Cars come and go there, and the body wouldn’t be found till it started to smell. I was hoping to be on the other side of the Equator by that time. So Shayne called in, and the body was found tonight. I know it was Shayne because it was on the news, and I heard about it when I picked up the guns. I didn’t think it was too bad. I’ve had experience being tailed, and I know good and goddamn well I lost him.”
“But before you managed to do that, he put this paint on your car?”
“I didn’t know what it was. A big bang behind me. The chopper pilot picked me up from the air and Shayne could hang out of sight.”
Suddenly Rashid felt a spurt of adrenalin, and understood what the Jew was telling him, that a helicopter had followed him here. “When was the last time you heard a helicopter, as you entered this driveway?”
Gold shrugged. “They went to a lot of trouble. They wouldn’t knock off because it was after their bedtime or they crossed a county line.”
“So this Mike Shayne, whoever he may be-”
“He’s a private detective, and a bad man to know. Tough and smart and goddamn fast on his feet sometimes.” He looked up at the big house, an imposing Spanish-style structure of stucco and stained timbers. “So if he’s made the connection it’s not just me. It’s you guys and me, both.”
“We must move elsewhere at once.”
Gold was thinking, his eyes moving like cornered animals. He took several steps on the gravel and came back, several more and came back-these were the inside dimensions of his cell in the Israeli prison.
“This isn’t your house. You’re just staying here. If you start running around turning on lights, he’ll wake up the cops and move in.”
“You assume he’s nearby.”
“He’s got to be. He’ll want to know if he’s put me away for the night, or do I have some more errands. He’s driving a beat-up Buick with plenty of juice. Let’s set it up like this. I pull out and start south on One. Theoretically, I got rid of him hours ago, and I won’t be watching for headlights. I’ll take a couple of you with me, out of sight in the back seat. I’ll pick a spot and pull over. You come up behind in another car and we’ll wipe him out.”
“Making a certain amount of noise,” Rashid said skeptically.
“But fast. Then we scatter. I know that stretch of road. I’ll pick a place where we won’t be bothered.”
“I see why having this detective put out of the way would be a relief for you, to remove a witness to a killing. For us, it seems less urgent.”
“This is a special kind of private detective. I know him from way back.”
“But only one man, Murray. We can leave at once, now that you have been careless enough to lead him here. As for you, simply steal someone else’s car so that trick with the helicopter can no longer work. We can make sure he doesn’t follow you, without having to kill him. In my judgment, we should do as little as possible to draw attention before eleven o’clock tomorrow morning.”
“You can’t make book on this guy. All the people who’ve tried it have ended up dead or in jail. Without exception.”
“You’re an exception.”
“Am I?” Gold said bitterly. “He’s one of the big reasons I had to blow the country. Let me tell you about him. He’s no super-hero out of the comic-strips, but there are things he’s good at. He knows somebody on every block in town. He gets the feel of a thing, and anticipates. He’s stubborn as hell and when he’s underway he doesn’t give a shit about anything or anybody. Believe me. He can wreck us.”
“You, perhaps, if you’ve been rash enough to do murder underneath his nose. But we are a new species. All that experience of his will count for nothing. What sort of intuition will cause him to be waiting at the Hotel St. Albans tomorrow morning with a battalion of paratroopers?”
Gold shook his head. “He’s pulled off swindles I’ve never been able to explain.”
“No,” Rashid said. “We’ll take a chance with this miracle-worker. We didn’t come to this country to shoot somebody at the edge of a highway, like cinema gangsters. You say you know that road. You have a memory, from the last time you travelled over it. But things change. Here in America they change fast. There may be a police barracks there now, a hundred meters from the spot you choose. It is a strong principle of mine, to see the terrain, to prepare alternative plans, to know the strength of the enemy. Mike Shayne? Merely a name.”
“Let me tell you-”
Rashid interrupted, “I have decided. I am in command. We do it my way.”
“Then without me.”
“Sayyid,” Rashid called without turning his head.
“I am here,” Sayyid answered from the shadows at the edge of the garage. “I have a revolver. I am watching the Jew with it.”
Gold shrugged and started walking away. Rashid watched him go. He was bluffing, surely. That shipment of narcotics was worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, perhaps a million. Gold reached the grass.
“Those plastic bags filled with the white dust,” Rashid said. “What would you like us to do with them?”
Gold looked back. “You can shoot it up your ass. I want to live.”
Sayyid stepped into the light, and the two Arabs looked at each other. Apparently this American, Mike Shayne, was a genuine threat.
“Murray,” Rashid called, and Gold stopped and turned. “You hire somebody to kill him, one of your own people.”
“I tried that once. It didn’t work out. Can’t you get it through your skull that I don’t want people to know I’m back?”
“The killing of this one man would satisfy you? It wouldn’t become necessary to kill the helicopter pilot, and after that someone else?”
Gold came back a step. “No, the one good angle on Shayne is that he works alone. He doesn’t check in until he has his package all tied up, nice and pretty.”
