“Dave and I have been talking, and there are going to be problems. I mean from the technical end.”
Given his general hairiness and a pair of big-lensed glasses, not much of Dave’s face was showing, but as much as Shayne could see seemed friendly. His belly was held in by a wide belt with holsters for various tools.
“The closed-circuit cables are in channels in the walls,” he explained. “You can’t run a duplicate system without tearing everything out.”
“I’m thinking in terms of substitutions,” Shayne said. “Take the lockup kennel. There’s one camera there now. Leave it where it is, but cut it off. Hide another somewhere else in the kennel, and tie it into the regular circuit.”
“Why not?” Dave said. “In a duct, a light fixture. I know where we can get some two-way mirrors. Then the picture coming into the monitors is taken from a completely new angle. But the kennel guys don’t know that. Yeah. It would help if we had a wiring diagram. Then we could cut directly into one of the main feeds.”
“I think I can get you that. Can you tape the closed-circuit picture and play it back later?”
“No problem, depending on the size of their video machine. With ours, we can store twelve hours of action without changing tapes. You mean replay over the regular outlets?”
“The same way they replay a race after it’s over.”
“Simple as throwing a switch. Everything goes into the mixing console. Of course closed circuit is black-and- white, and the track cameras are color. You’ve got four of those working. They’re usually fixed, on an automatic swivel, but turn them loose, and you can film anything. Store it, edit it, mix it up, play it backwards. Hey, this is going to be great.”
“Let’s think in terms of ten cameras. How much time will you need?”
“To hide everything? Days. How much time do we have?”
“Between two A.M. and seven tomorrow morning.”
“Then it won’t be perfect. You’ll just have to arrange enough excitement so nobody looks real close.”
At Surfside, across the bay in Miami Beach, racing was well underway by the time Shayne and Dave had talked through the problem. Shayne would be shaping events, but he knew he couldn’t control them. He had to be ready to move in unexpected directions. He kept throwing out ideas. Dave, sometimes using diagrams or referring to the actual equipment, told him whether or not he thought they would work. If the answer was no, he explained why, and Shayne was sometimes able to come up with a modification. Dave had a rough working knowledge of the Surfside system, but in some cases he would have to wait till he saw the physical layout.
Nash arranged a forty-eight-hour floater policy with his insurance agent, to cover the borrowed equipment. Shayne left them dismantling cameras and preparing an inventory. Nash was still wavering between awe at the scope of Shayne’s proposals, and worry about all the possible things that could go wrong.
Shayne had fallen behind on his phone calls. Surprisingly, it was the sports editor, Wanamaker, who had turned up a link between Tony Castle and C. and W. Factors, which had loaned several bushels of money to Harry Zell. The Cuban detective who had been following Ricardo Sanchez reported that Sanchez had arrived early at the kennel, where without Dee Wynn he would be fully occupied for the next couple of hours, and the detective was about to have a drink with a cousin, who worked at the Pompano Beach harness track. Rourke had had no further word from Frieda.
Surfside’s phones had been put on the Centrex system, with automatic switching and a different number for each extension. Shayne dialed the number given for Public Relations. Linda Geary answered.
“You big ugly redhead,” she said hoarsely. “Where have you been all day? Why didn’t you call me? What are you up to, damn it?”
“Working on Sanchez. One or two other things. I’m going to need a little sponsorship. Can you arrange for me to have the run of the track tonight after everything closes?”
“For what nefarious purpose?”
“You don’t really want to know. You want to be able to deny you had anything to do with it.”
“Translated, that means you want to bug the kennels, and prove Ricardo is shooting up dogs. That shows nice professional enthusiasm on your part, Mike, but it won’t be necessary now. I’m calling you off.”
“Why?”
“I decided there was no point in going through third parties. I barged in on Mother with blood in my eye, and told her in no uncertain terms that unless she went ahead with the sale, and did it today, her guy was going to get the same working-over Daddy got, and from the same source-Mike Shayne. That drained the blood out of her face, I must say. She wants that boy with his limbs in working order. Hell, I don’t begrudge the old girl her little adventure. I wouldn’t mind a piece of that myself, not that she’s offering to share the good fortune. And she signed, Mike! She signed like a woolly lamb. We’ll finish the meeting, and then the wreckers take over.”
“What did she sign, exactly?”
“A purchase agreement. Harry’s been carrying it around in his briefcase for a long time. Surfside Kennel Club, your name will shortly be Harry Zell’s Palace.”
“When did this happen?”
“The ceremony took place about half an hour ago. Don’t be too disappointed now, Mike. You’ll have plenty of other chances to hector people.”
“Sometimes it’s harder to cut me off than it is to put me on.”
She said more sharply, “Remember, Buster, I’m holding a sledgehammer. That’s not my style, usually. Usually I whimper and beg. But it worked so well with Mom-she crumpled, she fell apart! — I’m going to see how it works with you. Lay off, or the full truth about your eighty thousand dollars from Surfside will be in all the papers and on all the news shows. You are talking to the lady who knows.”
“I hear you, Linda.”
“Stop in. I’ll buy you a drink on the expense account.”
“Maybe tomorrow night.”
“Look for me at the clubhouse bar.”
Shayne broke the connection gently enough, but then he banged the meaty side of his fist against the wall of the booth. After a long moment, he dialed another Surfside extension, the control tower. He asked for Lou Liebler, the tax man.
Liebler said carefully, “Too much going on here, I can’t hear you. I’ll call you back from another phone.”
When they were connected again: “Mike, we need a face-to-face. All that money flowing both ways and we’re not tapped in on it.”
“We may be fairly soon. Did you find out anything about Geary’s financing?”
“One or two things, but should we talk about it on the phone?”
“It’s high percentage nobody’s listening.”
“Well-I did better than I expected without a subpoena. During the renovations, the books show a series of advances from a New York company I never heard of. Some of those notes are still outstanding. Some have been paid off by transfers of stock.”
“Tell me that again,” Shayne said, frowning.
After Liebler repeated it: “Anything to connect the New York company with the Bahamas, or with Castle?”
“No, but there’s this. It’s from Wolf, in Tallahassee. It has nothing to do with tax matters-he stumbled on it. You know Geary was always going back and forth to Nassau, and it seems he had a whole second life there, house on the beach, boat, woman, different lifestyle. And Wolf says that the woman was planted on him by Castle, to find out where he was getting his extra money.-Mike?” Shayne must have made some sound. “Is it helpful, I hope?”
Shayne was gripping the phone hard. This was the woman Frieda had heard about, and decided to question.
“Thinking,” he said. “Hold on a minute.” But whatever was going on in Nassau, there was no way he could influence it from here, and he went on: “I want you to arrange something for me, Liebler. I’m as anxious as you are to get the flow started, but I can’t just walk in and wave a magic wand. I have to pinpoint it. I can do that mechanically if I have the run of the place for a few hours. I think early tomorrow morning would be the best time- very early, so I won’t be bothered.”
“I’ll meet you anyplace you say.”
