Again Shayne let his voice take on a hard edge. “And who shot a cop in the States? I can see how you figure, baby. I’ll have to jump when you crack the whip, or New York gets a long-distance phone call, the full details on where they can find me.”
She said quietly, “I hope I can think of some way to show you that isn’t so.”
“I hope so too, baby, but that’s all right. I’m a hard man to push. Right now you and I are going in the same direction. Maybe we’ll make it as far as Portugal. But don’t make any long-range plans. I’ve never been with a dame longer than two months.”
“But two months! It is an age!” she said with a delighted smile. “Darling, I knew we would agree.”
Shayne shook his head wryly. “One thing I will say. I never met anybody like you.”
“Take off your gun.”
“In a minute.”
“No, at once. So you are a hard man to push?”
Her mouth came down to his and he felt her probing tongue. There was something he had to do, he remembered. He had to keep her from listening to the news or reading the afternoon papers.
Without opening her eyes, she whispered, “Unfasten your pistol.”
“That’s not pushing,” he said. “That’s pulling. I’m an easy man to pull. Unfasten it yourself.”
“Where, here?”
He showed her. She showed him how to unfasten her white dress.
When Shayne noticed the time again, the afternoon was gone.
CHAPTER 10
They made it to Brooks Brothers as the store was closing, and picked up Shayne’s slacks and the pants to his new suits. He made one other stop, outside Grand Central.
“I want to stash the dough and pick up some liquor,” he said, reaching for the dispatch case. “Won’t take a minute.”
“You will be back?”
He gave her a direct look. “What do you think?”
He stopped at a liquor store in the arcade and bought two fifths of bourbon. He didn’t have to look around to know that she had left the car on the street and followed him in. He went down to the men’s room on the lower level. He paid a dime for a booth, opened the dispatch case and put in the diamonds he had taken from Tim Rourke the night before. They were real diamonds. He put the forged passport in his pocket.
He checked the dispatch case in a coin locker and started back to the street, giving Michele time to get there ahead of him. She smiled at him brightly as he got in.
“Please do not do that again, darling. It took longer than a minute, and bad things happened to my insides.”
He leaned across and gravely kissed her cheek. “Stop worrying.”
“I bought a paper while I waited. I thought you might-”
He snapped off the ignition. “Use your head. There’s a trash basket over there-get rid of it.”
She didn’t like his tone, but after an instant’s hesitation she took the folded World-Journal to the receptacle and dumped it.
Shayne’s face was still angry when she came back. “What if one of those psychos out on Staten Island reads about the cop-shooting and gets the idea it might be me? We have enough on our hands.”
“I am sorry.”
“The hell with it.”
He missed the Forty-first Street entrance to the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive and had to come back for it, but that was something even native New Yorkers must occasionally do, he thought. The little flare-up had gone no further, and they rode in silence with the radio tuned to the only sound available on A.M. stations at this hour, the pounding music currently popular among American teen-agers.
“We have it in France as well,” she told him. “If one could only understand the words.”
Much against Shayne’s will, he found himself beginning to like her, although he knew she was as phony as a three-dollar bill. Given a slight turn of circumstances, say a father with a job when she was growing up-
Unless, he thought suddenly, there had been no truth in that story about a poverty-stricken father and a roving mother? It could be, he told himself; it could very well be. There would always be a question with this girl where the truth stopped and the lying began.
Billy was watching for them inside the gate. “Better get up there very sudden,” he told Michele. “Spaghetti’s stoned. He’s trying to get a rise out of Brownie, and I can tell you that cat ain’t going to sit still much longer.”
Shayne came down hard on the gas.
“This is impossible, it has to stop,” she said.
“Yeah.”
He skidded to a fast stop in the gravel. An instant later, striding into the living room, he found an unshaven, bleary-eyed Szigetti, in a dirty sleeveless undershirt, cleaning his revolver on the sofa. Brownie was sitting across the room reading a paperback sex novel. He seemed indifferent to Szigetti, but Shayne saw that he was sweating. Irene was putting polish on her nails and drinking red wine. She looked up at Shayne, her eyes bright.
“Welcome.”
Michele clicked past Shayne. “Everything peaceful, the way I like it.”
“Look at that book,” Szigetti said thickly. “A bare-assed white girl on the cover. Inside just one juicy rape after another.”
“Your choice of reading matter seems to be irritating Ziggy,” Michele observed to Brownie. “Can you find something else? Has anybody eaten?”
Szigetti went on, “The only reason he picked it up was to see if he could get my ass. All he’s doing is holding it. He can’t be reading-I don’t see him moving his lips.”
“That will be enough!” Michele snapped.
Szigetti finished assembling his. 38, spun the cylinder and took deliberate aim at Brownie.
“It’s empty,” he said with a mocking grin, “but will you look at the man sweat?”
Brownie looked up from the book. “Kid stuff.”
Szigetti’s upper lip lifted and he pulled the trigger. The hammer clicked down on nothing. He repeated his mocking laugh.
Shayne walked in front of the. 38, towering over the drunken gunman.
“Out of the line of fire,” Szigetti said mildly.
“There’s one bullet in the gun,” Irene warned. “I saw it.”
Shayne bent down over Szigetti, who still held the. 38 extended in firing position. The muzzle touched Shayne’s chest.
“We need a drink,” Shayne said. “I brought a couple of bottles back with me.”
“Buddy. Please. One more. Six to one is good odds.”
“Try it on me. But if you pull the trigger you’d better hope it hits the live round.”
“Why should I do a dumb thing like that?” the smaller man protested. “Too few ex-Marines in the world as it is.”
“Please!” Michele said. “Have a drink, stop this silliness.”
Shayne, the. 38 still touching his chest, took hold of Szigetti’s arms and began applying pressure. He slowly backed away, bringing Szigetti to his feet after him.
“What are they feeding you, red wine?” Shayne said. “That stuff eats out the stomach lining. Let’s have a couple of jolts of booze.”
He continued to squeeze, and Szigetti’s body began to twist. He stopped resisting suddenly and the. 38 fell to the coffee table, knocking over a can of gun oil.
“You still keep in shape, don’t you, Sarge?”
Shayne let him go. Picking up the revolver, he broke it and spun the cylinder. There were no rounds showing.
“He palmed it on you,” he said to Irene. “Russian roulette without bullets. You can’t lose.”
“You got to do something to pass the time,” Szigetti said. “Where’s that bottle?”
Shayne brought in his suitcase and the liquor from the car. Irene came into the kitchen with him and leaned against him while he was getting the ice.
“Remember the last time I brought up the subject and you said later?” she said. “Like how much later?”
“Like I’m tied up, kid, if you know what I mean.”
“Oh, I do,” she said gloomily. “Michele, huh? I don’t suppose she’d consider making it a threesome?”