picked at the knot. It loosened all at once and Pedro came down in a heap. He sorted himself out and sat up with a long sigh.
“You know you people are bastards.”
“Are we?” Shayne said. “Maybe you’re feeling so sorry for yourself you didn’t hear what I said. I want you to understand it. This isn’t the ordinary hit. Usually when you go out to kill somebody, they know why. I don’t. And that changes things. You’ve tried twice. You lost both. I have to expect a third try, with new people, and they may be a little better at it. So I need some answers.”
“You were lucky.”
“I was lucky,” Shayne agreed. “But you were sloppy too, Pete. You should have taken a couple of days and researched it.”
Pedro’s moving glance stopped on the cognac bottle.
“Do you want a drink?” Shayne said. “Take one.” Pedro lowered the level of the cognac by a half inch. As he put the bottle back, Shayne caught his wrist and jerked him to his feet.
“Hold his arm, Tim. I don’t think he realizes we’re serious. Pedro, take hold of the top rail of the bed.” Rourke forced his hand down on the bed frame. Shayne reversed the. 45 and brought the butt down hard on his fingers. He yelled.
“This is the floor where they bring the accidents,” Shayne said, “so they’re probably used to yells in the middle of the night. You can’t go back with an alibi, Pedro. It’s time for you to look for a new career.”
Pedro was holding his mashed fingers, hopping. “You didn’t give me no chance, man. Tony Castle.”
“I was beginning to think it had that look,” Shayne said. “You probably need more cognac. Take as much as you like. We have another bottle.”
Pedro drank.
“Take a couple of days, man. Careful, careful. Get a shooter who knows how to shoot. Had to be tonight. Got it at noon.”
“From Castle himself?”
“His own hand. Enormous honor.”
“Now the price.”
“One thousand dollar. Not so much, you know, for so fast. You think this is the way I like? In Florida-very crazy, you know. But you not say no to Mr. C. You say yes.”
“Did he tell you where to find me?”
“At dog track, yes. He had pictures, envelope of pictures. Some younger than you are now. And he say to me this one thing. He was wanting to do it long time now. Now he has excuse.” He opened his hand. “I think fingers broken, Mr. S. Hurt.”
“We’ll have them set for you. But it’s too soon to stop talking.”
“Is all, I swear it on the name of the Holy Virgin.”
Rashid, the Pakistani doctor, stepped in. “Somebody heard a shout.”
“Yeah, we’ve got a man here who doesn’t know who he ought to be scared of most.”
Pedro said urgently, “Mr. S. Mr. C. in Nassau, you in Miami. I tell you, believe me. But is all I know.”
“Are you on his payroll full-time?”
“No. Now-and-then jobs.”
“Did you ever do anything else for him in Florida?”
“Once, I and Angelo, you know. We follow a man here one week and when everything is right, we beat the shit out of him.”
“A man named Max Geary?”
“I believe.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere,” Rourke said.
“And you didn’t know what that one was all about either?”
“He make Mr. C. angry some way. My fingers.”
Chapter 10
Rourke started to say something, but Shayne cut him off.
“If it’s a question, save it. I want Pete to concentrate. I haven’t decided yet what we’re going to do with him.”
“You’re going to let me go,” Pedro assured him.
“I don’t think we can do that,” Shayne said seriously.
The pain was getting worse. After a time Shayne gave him permission to go to the bathroom and soak the hand in cold water. He sat on the toilet seat with his head on the washbasin.
“Angelo. You want to know about Angelo? I know the phone number, the phone number is all. Mr. C? He has big office, big shining desk. You go in. Sit down. He says what he wants. Work out, he says. Don’t get caught, but if you do forget who sent you. Mr. S., if he know I talk to you, he send fellows after me and they dead me dead. Before he do that, I want you get him. I do want that.”
As he moved his head, the hoop rang against the porcelain.
“Don’t talk for a minute,” Shayne said. “I’m beginning to get an idea.”
In a moment more: “O.K., let me have the hoop.”
Pedro clapped his hand to his ear. “That twenty carat gold. That my lucky thing.”
“Maybe it’ll bring us all luck. Take it off.”
“Mr. S.-”
Shayne took out the. 45. “Or I’ll shoot it off.”
Pedro began fumbling with the catch. He couldn’t do it with one hand, and Frieda came in to help.
Shayne called to Rashid in the other room, “Do you happen to have a cadaver lying around?”
Rashid laughed. “A cadaver? We do, yes, several in the freezer for the anatomy classes. I think one is being defrosted for tomorrow.”
“Would the students mind if they had to work on a body without one ear?”
“An ear!” Rourke exclaimed.
“We can cut off one of Pete’s,” Shayne said, “but I don’t think it’s necessary. Castle wouldn’t recognize it, but he ought to recognize the earring.”
“I see it!” Rourke said. “Mike, that’s without a doubt one of the grisliest ideas you’ve ever come up with. You’re going to cut an ear off a corpse and send it to-”
“Yeah, with Pete’s earring in it. I think it may work. Castle’s grandfather was Sicilian. That’s the kind of message a Sicilian understands-a lot more personal than a phone call.”
Pedro had been following this with quick turns of the head. “Yes!” he said. “You are genius, Mr. S. I gladly give you the earring, though I had it from my sixteenth birthday. He will think I am dead. I go to New York. I thought I would like to do that sometime.”
“Not right away,” Shayne said. “Rashid, I want to ask another favor. I’d like to have him disappear for a few days.”
“I can do that,” Rashid said thoughtfully. “A broken back, perhaps.”
“Wait!” Pedro cried.
“It won’t be necessary to break the actual back. A body cast, a shot every six hours to help against the pain.”
“Blessed Virgin,” Pedro moaned.
“He can use my bed,” Shayne said.
“No, for Jesus’s sake! Somebody else may come to dead Mr. Michael Shayne. Please. The fingers first. Then some faraway room.”
Rashid and Pedro left. Shayne asked Frieda if she would like a few days in the Bahamas.
“If you can take it over tomorrow, we can be sure it’s delivered. There’s an eight o’clock breakfast flight. ‘From Mike Shayne-Personal.’ Put a note inside-‘Stay out of Miami,’ something like that. Hire somebody off the
