business.”
“It says seven o’clock,” Shayne said. “Were you on time?”
“Exactly on time. There was an out-of-order sign on the phone. Eddie was scrunched down on the floor with another note in his mouth.”
She took out another printed message, in the same green ink as the ransom note. This one had been rolled instead of folded. It said: “SORRY, EDDIE TRIED TO SAVE YOU SOME MONEY, HE’LL KNOW BETTER THE NEXT TIME.”
“Eddie,” she said, “my God, I’ve been married to him eighteen years. He wasn’t one of those show-off masculine types. He went along. He rolled with the punches. There were other things in his life besides money. He would have done what they told him, and made a funny story out of it when he came back.”
She had been doing well after a difficult beginning, but now she tightened up and began crying again. “We never had children. We were still trying. Eddie was so good with his nephews and nieces, the kids on our street. Something like a car crash, an accident, I could have adjusted to that. But if it’s some kind of political thing-”
They were watching her closely. She explained, “Not that kind of politics. To get control of those businesses, the gambling and all.”
“That’s what my blips have been telling me,” Rourke said with a glance at Shayne. “And if you can give us some more on that, maybe Mike will reconsider and say yes.”
She shook her head helplessly. “I’d wake up in the middle of the night and feel him lying there with his eyes open, stiff as a board. All he ever said was that he was trying to make up his mind which way to jump. He thought I was better off not knowing about it. I keep puzzling about things. What happened to his car? Why hasn’t it turned up? He was collecting money that day. He had a lot of cash. I saw it-a lot. What happened to it? And if this was an ordinary kidnapping, wouldn’t they try to collect and then throw the body in a canal? Isn’t that what you’d do?”
“That’s been standard since the Lindbergh baby,” Rourke said. “Have you told the cops any of this?”
“Certainly not. And I don’t intend to. I took the note out of his mouth and let somebody else find him. When they called me, I went down and identified him. Eddie Maye, reputed or alleged or reported to be a notorious loan shark, killed by one of his business rivals or by a customer he squeezed too hard. The police in this town don’t solve any of those. One criminal less is the way they look at it. Well, Mr. Shayne?”
She took three packages of bills out of her purse and put them on the desk, squaring them neatly. “This was in Eddie’s safe-deposit box. If it isn’t enough-”
“It’s too much,” Shayne said. “Put it away. I can’t take it. There’s a rule against working for two clients at the same time. Tim’s paper is paying me full rates, and they expect my full attention. But what you’ve been telling us is very interesting. Canada has been refusing to see us, and this gives us a lever.”
The phone rang, and Rourke dived at it.
“Frieda, Mike.”
Frieda Field ran her own detective agency, Field Associates, with an office in Miami Beach and retainers from several of the Beach hotels. The agency had belonged to her husband, who had been killed a few years before. She had elected to continue the business and had turned out to be good at it. Rourke had brought her in to keep track of the comings and goings of Philip J. Gold, the State Highway Commissioner, who might or might not have concealed dealings with Larry Canada, their principal target. Frieda was a handsome woman, dark-haired, slender, with a beautifully coordinated body, and yet to someone worrying about being followed, she was all but invisible. How could such a great-looking woman have the humdrum job of finding out if a certain state official was meeting the president of a certain road construction firm?
“I’m at a gas station off Route 10, Mike,” she said, “and I think he’s gassing up for the Interstate. He’s getting a sandwich, and it’s the wrong time for food unless he plans to skip supper.”
Shayne checked his watch. It was five-fifteen. “Anybody with you?”
“No. But I’ve got the van, and I’m dressed as a tourist. The bike on the rack-everything. I won’t be noticed as long as he stays on the highway. I’ll need help if he goes all the way. Here he comes now.”
Shayne quickly told her he would check with the mobile operator and pick her up above Palm Beach.
“To wind up what I was saying,” he said to Mrs. Maye, after hanging up, “I didn’t take this job with Tim because of the money they’re paying me-”
“Which is lucky,” Rourke said, “because they’re not paying him a hell of a lot.”
“And I don’t think many problems will be solved by putting Larry Canada in jail. People are standing in line to take his place. But I’ve spent a lot of time out in the Glades, and I hate to think what that highway could do to it. With a little luck, we may be able to stop this one. Before you came in, I was trying to tell Tim how I felt about Eddie. I’ve known legitimate bankers I’ve liked less. I’m sorry he’s dead, and killing is the one crime I can still get worked up about. Tim tells me we have a forty-eight-hour deadline, and I hope he can think of things to keep me busy. I’ll call you at the end of the week and let you know how it’s going. Meanwhile I think you ought to take it to the cops.”
She shook her head again and said quietly, “That would be the wrong thing, Mr. Shayne. The night before it happened, we were having one of those rigid periods around two o’clock, and Eddie suddenly got up and went to the window and said he was being followed by somebody. Everywhere. He was really worried about it. A cop. He didn’t tell me the name.”
Chapter 6
Werner French hesitated before getting out of the car and going in the house. Always a little too stiff and serious, he looked mad all the time now, with a sullen, rebellious set to his mouth. He would try to clean everything out of his mind and relax. Sometimes he was able to manage it for a minute or two, and then he would be up and walking, hammering his bunched fingertips against the side of his leg.
Pam came out of the bedroom to greet him. She had been extremely sweet since the catastrophe with Eddie Maye, he had to admit. She fucked like an angel, with none of her old brusqueness and asperity. And this had the odd effect of making Werner more aware of her faults. He had thought up this crazy kidnapping scheme to keep her from running off to New York. It had failed, it had failed fairly spectacularly, but even if the damn thing had worked, would it have been worth it? It would have knotted them together for the foreseeable future. And he could do without that excitement, the constant state of crisis, the mood swings, the ups and downs. He wanted some peace.
She came against him hard. “Baby, I can’t bear it when you’re gone that long. You used to be so predictable. Where have you been?”
As a matter of fact, Werner had been nowhere in particular, doing nothing furtive or dramatic. Feeling restless and impatient, he had wanted to drive around, just get in the car and drive the expressways, but he was terribly low on cash, and gas costs money these days, they no longer give it away free. So he had walked around the big downtown marina and looked at the big, brutal, expensive boats. Boats are less regimented than cars. They don’t need to stay on the highways. On a boat, you can go anywhere in the world that recognizes an American passport, and of course most places do.
“Killing time was all,” he said, moving away. “Thinking.”
“Don’t think!” she said sharply. “Drift. That’s the only way to get through this. And Werner,” she added as he opened the bottle, “maybe we ought to stick to coffee? A clear head would be a good idea if we have to do any fast driving. Jack may be calling any minute.”
“A lot of minutes have gone by lately, waiting for Jack.”
“Everything has to be just right. I want to get it over with, too, but if hurrying means taking chances-Baby, come to bed. I want to.”
Werner smiled, drinking. “We’ve been getting a lot of that, haven’t we?”
Actually, from the moment they loaded the dead body of Eddie Maye into the back seat of his VW and Downey drove off, their lovemaking had been practically continuous. They had gone back in the house and made love without even washing the traces of Eddie off their hands. It was astonishing to Werner that such a thing could happen, but it definitely did happen. And after returning to their own house, they continued to sleep and make love almost around the clock. If they ended up in separate cells, they would have much to remember. They crammed an
