Murder Takes No Holiday (11 page)

“The morning—” Shayne began hotly.

“Will be too late,” the sergeant said. “I believe you told us that already. But we have nobody’s word for it but yours, do we? And your bonafides are hardly of the best.”

He nodded to the two policemen, who had been standing alertly, one on either side of Shayne. “Take him in.”

Shayne whirled, a dangerous look on his scored face, his hands well out from his sides.

The sergeant said, “I wouldn’t recommend any resistance. My men are picked for both strength and dexterity.”

“Yeah,” Shayne growled. “But I can give them some trouble. You can make it easier on all of us if you listen to me for a minute. Alvarez and a bunch of goons—including one really vicious type whose first name is José, another named Pedro, the bartender from that pirate joint of Alvarez’, and one more whose name I didn’t find out—picked up Martha Slater ten minutes ago. They’re giving her and her husband a going over somewhere in the country, half an hour’s drive from the airport. You’ve got some of the Camel’s boys in jail. Lean on them a little and find out where this place is.”

“We don’t lean on people down here.”

“Then say please!” Shayne exclaimed in sudden exasperation. “There’s a big chunk of dough tied up in this deal. Play it too cool and you’ll end up in the morning with a couple more killings. Alvarez was talking about taking Mrs. Slater out for a one-way sail. Doesn’t that sound a little like the Luis Alvarez you know?”

The sergeant seemed half-convinced. “I would need a warrant.”

“You’ve had a murder. How many more do you need before you can get a judge to issue a search-warrant? Bring in the whole bunch and ask some questions. One of them is the killer, or I’m crazy.”

“Now, that,” the Englishman said coldly, “is an interesting possibility. And what is your motive in all this? Are you really naive enough to think that you can persuade us not to turn you over to the American authorities?”

“Raid this place before anything happens, and I don’t care what you do to me. If you need a motive, I don’t want to see anybody twist Martha Slater’s arm. She’s a good-looking blonde and an old friend of mine.”

The sergeant shook his head decisively. “And what am I to tell the inspector in the morning? That I kept my men up all night, blundering about the island in the dark on some wild-goose chase—and on the unsupported word of an American crook? No, thank you. I am not quite that wet behind the ears.”

He brushed at his mustache again in that oddly familiar gesture.

“You don’t need to tell him where the information came from,” Shayne said. “Take a chance. What can you lose?”

“Perhaps nothing, perhaps quite a lot. I know too little about this to act intelligently. I’m not convinced there is such an overwhelming need for haste. We’ll go into it in the morning, never fear. I’ll have Alvarez picked up, as well as this Slater chap, and we’ll see what exactly is what.”

Shayne’s time had run out. He had only one other card to play, and like the Wanted circular, it could easily turn into a firecracker and go off in his face. He said, speaking evenly and fast, “That flier on me was a fake. I’m not wanted by the cops in Florida, or anywhere else. I’m a private detective from Miami. Mrs. Slater knows her husband will be suspected of killing Watts, and she’s retained me to find out who did it. I also checked with the American customs before I came down. Alvarez and Slater have worked out some fancy way of beating the import duty. I dreamed up this gimmick with the picture and the police description, so I could get close to Alvarez in a hurry. It was taking a big chance, but it worked.”

The two native cops stood still. One of them had both hands on Shayne’s upper arm. The British sergeant looked at the redhead blankly, his mouth open.

“Are you trying to maintain that this was all a trick?”

“It didn’t do any harm,” Shayne said. “All it did was cost you some sleep. I still don’t know much about this set-up, but I know a lot more than I did. For one thing, I know that Alvarez keeps his contraband in a locked wooden box in an airspace over the desk in his office. I was up there over your head when you were looking for me. I know how he makes contact with his couriers. I went along on a delivery. I couldn’t have done any of this by barging into his office and showing him a private detective’s license.”

The sergeant closed his mouth with a snap. “I don’t believe you.”

“Is your name Brannon?”

“What of it?”

“How did you find out I was at the Pirate’s Rendezvous? Somebody called you, right?” He quoted: “‘I’ve got some information for you, and you can have it free because I want to pay off this guy.’ Words to that effect.”

Sergeant Brannon’s face turned perceptibly redder. “That was you?”

“That was me,” Shayne told him, watching the slowly reddening face. “I can’t show you my credentials, because I don’t have them. But would somebody who was really wanted by the cops call them and tell them where they could find him? And if you still don’t believe me, put in a call to Miami. The head of the customs there is a man named Jack Malloy. Maybe you’ve heard of him. This is a big thing for Malloy, and he won’t mind if you get him out of bed.”

“And what is your real interest in this, Mr. Shayne?” Brannon said through stiff lips, apparently having difficulty pronouncing Shayne’s name.

“Money,” Shayne said promptly, because by this time any other answer would have been too complicated. “I’m shooting for the fifty thousand bucks.”

“And you think—” Brannon said thickly—“you think you can walk into the British Commonwealth and defy established authority, flout and trick and trample on individual liberty, break laws right and left, the way you undoubtedly do at home? You think you can hoodwink Her Majesty’s police, bring them out after midnight on a fool’s errand, and come out of it unscathed? You are mistaken! You—are—very—much—mistaken!”

“Make up your mind,” Shayne said. “Which would you rather do, yell at me, or catch a murderer?”

“I’ll do a great deal more than yell at you!” Brannon yelled. “I’ll put you in my most primitive cell and forget about you until somebody brings you officially to my attention! I think you have finally decided to tell me the truth. I think you are actually what you represent yourself to be—a cheap, money-grabbing, conscienceless private detective. I know all about your kind. But you may come to regret that it ever entered your mind to play ducks and drakes with our backward little provincial constabulary. What you need is time for reflection, and I’m the man who can give it to you!”

Shayne, too, was beginning to get angry. “Did you ever hear of a writ for habeas corpus?”

“Often. You Americans stole it from us, you know. But I don’t think it will apply in your case. We have arrested a notorious American fugitive, who is wanted for unlawful flight to evade prosecution, in the language of an apparently official circular we received through the usual channels. We will notify our American friends that we have captured you, and let them begin extradition proceedings. We will send off this notification the first thing tomorrow, as soon as the proper forms can be made out, by the slowest available boat. We will address it to the FBI, who won’t have heard of your harmless little deception, will they? Oh, I foresee many interesting delays. You will have a marvelous opportunity to study the cracks in the ceiling of that cell.”

“And while you’re making your point,” Shayne said, “what happens to the murderer of Albert Watts? It doesn’t seem to me you were making much headway before I got here.”

Brannon’s flush deepened, if such a thing was possible. “We were making headway, in our slow, unspectacular, bumbling fashion. We will continue this process, without any help from American private detectives, eliminating one possibility at a time until only one is left and we are in a position to arrest and convict the killer.”

“Sure,” Shayne said sarcastically. “You’ll go on working from nine to five, with an hour off for lunch and another in the afternoon for tea. Meanwhile the killer will be working overtime. If one of the Slaters gets hurt, you’ll begin to feel a little more heat.”

“Ah, the appeal to the American eagle,” Brannon said. “I was waiting for that.”

“Goddamn it,” Shayne shouted, “can’t you break out of the tired old routine for once? If Alvarez can’t get Slater to talk, he’ll go to work on Slater’s wife. I had a small taste of the kid who’s going to be putting on the pressure. He’s a mental case. Nothing surprising about that—it’s another form of routine. Doesn’t it mean anything to you?”

“And after the various lies I’ve heard from you, why should I believe anything you tell me at this point, Shayne?”

“Why, you pompous little tinpot Napoleon! Just because something never happened to you before, you think it can’t happen. Open your eyes to what’s going on in the world! If you put me in jail I’m warning you—”

“That will be enough of that,” Brannon snapped.

He signed to his men, who closed in on the redhead. Shayne’s muscles were rigid. He stood rooted, staring into the British sergeant’s eyes. Brannon returned the look contemptuously, and flicked again at his mustache.

Suddenly Shayne laughed.

“Is anything funny?” Brannon snarled. “Share it with me.”

“I just remembered who you remind me of,” Shayne said. “You wouldn’t know him.”

For some obscure reason he felt much better. Physically there was no resemblance between the two men, but in every other respect, he had realized suddenly, this British sergeant was much like Peter Painter, chief of detectives in Miami Beach, and a longtime adversary of Shayne’s. After years of trial and error, Shayne had learned how to handle Painter. He had been in many tight squeezes, but Painter had never succeeded in besting him. And neither would Brannon, Shayne promised himself, in spite of the British accent, his immense assurance, his cops with their vehicles and their guns, not to speak of the fact that he was operating on his home ground among friends, while Shayne was a stranger, as solitary as he had ever been in his life.

Meanwhile, there was no point in tangling with Brannon’s men. He let them take him to the door. They walked him up the ramp and around the hotel, holding his arms in a professional grip, one hand above and one hand below the elbow, keeping the elbow locked. Brannon was a step or two behind, shining an electric torch on the path, his other hand resting on the butt of his revolver.

They had come in a four-door English Ford. Brannon passed the others to unlatch the rear door. This street, like most of those on St. Albans, had a high crown, but even so, Shayne thought, the car seemed to lean unnaturally far toward the sidewalk.

“Flat tire!” one of the native cops exclaimed.

Brannon muttered in annoyance. At that moment Shayne heard a man’s voice singing tipsily. Looking around, he saw a lanky figure wearing Bermuda shorts, a pipe clenched in the corner of his mouth, wobbling toward them on a bicycle which he seemed hardly able to control. As he passed under a street lamp, Shayne recognized him. It was the British anthropologist, Cecil Powys. He had some kind of long, clumsy object in the bicycle basket.

Shayne and the three policemen were a compact group, looking down at the flat tire. Powys’ bicycle came faster and faster, the front wheel swinging violently from one side of the sidewalk to the other.

“Watch out!” the Englishman cried, appalled at what was about to happen.

Leaning far backward, his balance more and more uncertain, he closed his eyes and squeezed the hand brakes on the handlebars. The front wheel turned at right angles to the street, but as the brakes took hold it whipped back around. The bike came abreast of Shayne and the three cops. Powys gave a drunken yell as the handlebars were wrenched out of his grip and the front wheel slammed headlong into Sergeant Brannon. The sergeant went down. His arms flailing, Powys pitched forward against one of the cops holding Shayne. The bike’s pedal caught the other cop in the knees and dropped him. As he fell he carried Shayne down with him. Powys himself landed on top of the heap.

The bike ended upside down, its front wheel still spinning.

Michael Shayne, twisting, grabbed at Sergeant Brannon’s holster. The flap was unfastened and his fingers slid across the cold hardness of the pistol grip. He tugged at it, but it resisted. Apparently the holster had a safety catch that would release the pistol only when it was pulled at the proper angle.

Only one of the cops had kept his two-handed grip on Shayne’s arm. The redhead bent his arm and drove the point of his elbow into the man’s midriff, with the full weight of his body behind it. The cop grunted but still managed to hold on until Shayne pivoted on one knee, straightening his arm suddenly and swinging it upward in a half arc. The cop’s grip broke. Shayne rolled and came to his feet, crouching.

Brannon was fumbling with the flap of his holster. Powys, drunk as a lord, lost his balance again and sprawled forward, arms and legs outflung, keeping the two cops out of action. So it was between Shayne and Brannon. The American threw a quick glance at the retaining wall, a dozen steps away. He could probably get over it before Brannon could draw and fire, but he didn’t like the idea of being hunted through loose sand by three men with flashlights and guns. He stepped quickly around the tangle of arms and legs, going into position to deliver a quick kick at Brannon’s head. But his foot struck the long object Powys had been carrying in his basket, and without any conscious thought he instantly switched gears.

It was one of the murderous three-pronged spears carried by skin-divers. He snatched it up, stepping backward. With a quick pass of his right hand, he cocked it, and in the same movement he released the safety. Now the broad rubber bands that gave the weapon its hitting power were at full stretch. He held it lightly in both hands, aimed just above the group on the ground.

“Let the gun alone, Brannon,” he said sharply.

The sergeant looked up at the vicious prongs, three feet from his head. Shayne grinned down at him wolfishly. The two cops ceased to struggle. Powys disentangled his long arms and legs; to Shayne’s surprise the pipe was still firmly clenched in his mouth.