“There you got it, Mike,” Rourke warned him. “She’s after you, boy. Picking your brain, that’s what she’s doing. Know when she took fire this morning and insisted on meeting you? When she found out about that Russian Lenski, that’s when. That it, Molly? A Lenski twelve-oh-seven, didn’t you say?”
Shayne turned his head slowly and found Molly Morgan looking at him with worried eyes and slightly parted lips. She looked suddenly like a little girl who has been caught eating the wrong dish of ice cream at a birthday party. She shook her head slowly and her voice sounded almost tearful as she supplicated, “Timothy is telling it all wrong. I saw that picture in the paper a few days ago and I wondered. It looked like a Lenski to me, but I wondered what one of them could possibly be doing in Miami. When I mentioned it to Timothy this morning, just casually, he told me about your experience last night, and so I wanted to meet you and talk to you about the possibilities. If the Cubans are bringing Russian weapons into this country, I wonder which faction and why.”
Shayne held her gaze steadily while she spoke. When she ceased, he asked coldly, “Where did you run into a Russian Lenski before?”
“In Paris, I think it was. Two or three years ago. I was covering a meeting of high NATO brass and they had a complete display of Russian armaments. That particular automatic pistol was pointed out as having been terribly effective during the Hungarian affair.”
The waiter came with a fresh highball for Rourke and an extra shot-glass which he set in front of Shayne. Shayne pushed it over in front of Molly and refilled his glass and set the bottle over for her to pour her own if she wished.
He scowled down at his own drink and welcomed an irrational feeling of antagonism that was beginning to build up inside him against Molly Morgan. She had no business being so damned smart and so damned sexually attractive at the same time. One or the other was fine. A man could understand that and cope with it.
He hunched his big shoulders forward and said coldly, “I don’t see that a couple of Russian pistols turning up in Miami is anything to get excited about.”
“But Timothy said it was absolutely new, Mike. Mightn’t that be very important? If it’s part of a larger shipment of arms, I certainly think our C.I.A. should be informed and given an opportunity to trace it down.”
“The C.I.A.” snarled Shayne. “Those bunglers? I wouldn’t trust one of those cloak-and-dagger boys…”
“Oh, stop it, Mike.” Molly put her hand on his forearm and squeezed it tightly. “Just because some mistakes have been made in the past, you mustn’t condemn them out-of-hand. I happen to know Eddie Byron very well, personally. He heads the entire operation here in Miami.”
“And I happen to know the unholy mess they’ve made out of the Cuban situation ever since Castro came into power,” said Shayne hotly. “Keep your Eddie Byron out of this.”
“He isn’t my Eddie Byron,” she retorted.
“Hey, you two.” Timothy Rourke spoke softly from across the table. “What’s the C.I.A. got to do with this?”
“I just don’t want them messing into my personal affairs,” Shayne said hotly. Without looking toward Molly, he reached over with his left hand and firmly removed her hand from his arm.
“But what’s personal about a shipment of Russian guns?” she expostulated. “It seems to me the patriotic duty of every American citizen to cooperate with our government…”
“I’ll take care of my own patriotism,” Shayne said coldly. “What’s personal about this is that I want to get my hands on those guns if any of them are available. And I expect to,” he added grimly, “if I’m allowed to go about it my own way without interference. Do you know what a dozen of them would be worth on the open market, Tim?”
The reporter shrugged and hazarded, “A thousand bucks?”
“Multiplied by six, at least.”
“Six grand,” said Rourke evenly. “Hell, Mike! You’ve got six grand.”
“That’s not the point. I’ve got a living to make. I don’t get a check from Washington each month, paid out of taxpayers’ money the way those fancy-pants boys do.”
He was conscious of Molly moving on the hard seat beside him, drawing farther away toward the wall, and he heard her cool voice telling Rourke, “This cognac doesn’t taste so good any more, Timothy. Might I have a good clean drink of American bourbon and branch water to wash a bad taste out of my mouth?”
“Sure.” Rourke chuckled hollowly and signalled to the waiter and gave the order. Then he leaned back and sighed and clucked reprovingly. “Get off your high horses, both of you. You just happened to step on one of Mike’s pet peeves, Molly.”
She said, “I’m very sorry. Should I apologize?” and her voice was laden with venom.
Shayne turned his head and looked at her bleakly. “You’re awfully sure of yourself, aren’t you, Molly Morgan? You’ve been twitching your butt and trading on your sex appeal for a long time, haven’t you?”
She regarded him steadily, her full upper lip curling a trifle and her nostrils distended. “And you’re God here in Miami, aren’t you, Mike Shayne? Good Lord! When I think how I looked forward to meeting you. I was practically in a tizzy when Timothy brought me here today. You know something, Big-Shot? You make me slightly sick at my stomach. I don’t think I’ll bother with that drink after all, Timothy. If Mr. Shayne will be kind enough to let me out of here where it smells better.”
Shayne said, “With the greatest pleasure, Miss Morgan.” And he slid out to the aisle and stood up while she moved past him and stalked angrily to the front of the restaurant. Timothy Rourke craned his neck over the back of the booth to watch her departure, and he whistled softly and murmured, “She sure enough does twitch that thing. Watch her go.”
Shayne sank back on the bench and exhaled a long breath. “You know how these self-important females get my goat, Tim. Just because she writes her guff under a by-line for some lousy syndicate…”
Timothy Rourke turned back, shaking his head wonderingly. “You know what’s the matter with you, Mike?”
“Sure, I know,” Shayne said roughly. “It makes my ass tired when a bitch like that starts telling me what my patriotic duty is.”
“Nuh-uh,” Rourke shook his head sagely. “She scared the pants off you, Mike. You were falling for her like a ton of bricks, and that’s what scared you. My God, I could practically feel the heat waves all the way across the table when you sat down beside her. She’s got a lot on the ball, that gal has, Mike. She’s one of the top foreign correspondents in the country, and she hasn’t gotten up there just by twitching her butt, you can bet on that.”
“It’s helped her along the way,” Shayne growled. The waiter brought the drink Rourke had ordered for her and looked confused when he saw the two men sitting alone.
The reporter said, “That’s okay. I’ll drink it. Want to order, Mike?”
Shayne said, “Cold roast beef sandwich on rye.” He poured another shot-glass of cognac and warmed it slowly between his palms.
“How well do you know her?” he demanded suddenly.
“Molly? I just met her this morning when she dropped into the office. But I’ve been reading her stuff off and on for years. She’s been in Miami about a week interviewing Cuban refugees and trying to get a line on things over there.”
“And in another week she’ll have the whole mess all figured out and neatly categorized, and she’ll go back up north to write a series of articles which will then become the basis for our future foreign policy.”