Without her dark glasses, she gave him a puzzled look. “You mean they were imported from some other city?”
“That’s possible, but there may be more to it.”
She shivered again. “First I must stop feeling so wretchedly ill, then perhaps I can think. Somehow they knew I was coming to see you?”
“That’s how it looks, if you’re part of it at all. I’m involved in more than one thing.”
Her face wrinkled as she smelled herself. “First I must clean this off, then we can talk.”
Shayne had brought the cognac in from the car, but he didn’t drink. The bathroom door-like all motel doors, a layer of air separating two layers of one-eighth-inch plywood-had been badly hung and gave her little privacy. He heard her clean her mouth and spit. She filled the basin and washed her dress. A bit later, she came out in her slip, and though she was wearing a bra underneath, she had arranged a bath towel modestly over her bare shoulders. Some of her color had come back. She had used a comb and lipstick.
She sat down on the edge of one of the double beds, knees together, but groaned faintly, piled two pillows together and lay back against them, her feet up.
“Take your time,” Shayne said.
“But that’s the point, you see. If I lie here being sick while everyone else is hurrying, I will go home with empty hands. And if you knew how much arguing before they agreed to let me come.”
She had left her purse in the bathroom, but had brought a small leather folder, which she opened to show Shayne.
“To start being formal. Though you don’t read Hebrew, I fear.”
“You fear right.”
“I am a member of the Shin Bet, which is a sort of police, but also part of the army. How much did the man from Washington tell you?”
“Not a hell of a lot, just to expect you and it had something to do with an arch criminal who broke out of one of your jails.”
“Arch criminal, I must remember not to say that any more. This is all you were told?”
“If it turns out I can help, the State Department will be paying my fee, and they’re so damn tight they wouldn’t suggest it unless somebody in your government thinks it’s important.”
“Which expresses it mildly. Very well, Murray Gold. We didn’t publish the reason at the time, but he was arrested for heroin.”
“For doing what with heroin?”
“For buying, to smuggle into the U.S. You realize his presence in our country presented a serious problem. Was he truly a poor Jew, or was that merely a ruse to persuade us to give him asylum? We were watching him, not very seriously. He had a young paramour in his house. We persuaded her to report to us who came to see him, how he filled his time. And she has vanished, by the way. We think she is no longer in the country.”
“Just a minute.”
Pulling the phone toward him, he dialled the combination to get an outside line, and then Tim Rourke’s number.
“Tim, this has to be fast,” he said when his friend answered. “Can you give me a better description of that woman last night?”
“The one we pulled out of the Ford?”
“Yeah.”
“The labels were cut out of her clothes. On the short side-say five-four. Broad through the can. She was shot in the face, and that changes anybody’s looks. Oh, heavy eyebrows-all the way across. When she rented the car she gave a New York address, but it’s a phony. Fingerprints negative. That’s about all.”
Shayne thanked him. After hanging up, he repeated the description to the woman on the bed.
“Those eyebrows!” she exclaimed. “Her most conspicuous feature, the very strong eyebrows. Hair pulled back tightly. You mean she’s here?”
“Her body’s here. Somebody killed her last night.”
“My word,” she breathed. “Gerda Fox is her name. How complex it becomes. What we think, this is the current theory about Gold, is that when he first came he was authentically without money. At the same time, not ready to take his place as a working Israeli. He was constantly looking about for some crooked way to recover his fortunes. And one fine day he had a visitor from America. He was very much taken by surprise, and he jumped out the window and sprained an ankle. But afterwards they talked companionably. It meant nothing to us, merely an old friend or so. But Gerda reported that from this time on he had money. Now we began getting hints that heroin was entering the country. After the laboratories were closed down in the south of France, the smugglers were setting up new routes. And we are determined to keep this filthy traffic on the other side of Israeli frontiers. Many of our people have money-grubbing in their background, and heroin profits are so huge! Our Murray was behind this, we believed, but in police work it is always nice to draw a complete diagram before the pounce, to be sure of getting everyone. This time we couldn’t wait. He was accumulating a shipment, of this we were convinced. Where it was hidden, how it would be transported, these things we had not yet discovered. A decision was reached, and we came down on him like wolves and put him in prison under the Emergency Regulations. We continued our investigation, and it proved to be very true. He had invested a large sum in Turkish opium, and installed refining equipment on a fishing boat. They did the work at sea, so if the boat should be stopped for a search they could dump the evidence over the side. That he is clever, we already knew. Today, thank heaven, there is nothing left of the organization he put together. All have been jailed or have fled.”
“Why didn’t you charge him and put him on trial?”
“Because his big cache was still missing. So long as he was on preventive detention, it was possible to hope that he would come to terms. He was not a young man, or a well one. Our offer was one year, to be followed by deportation, in return for a guilty plea and the handing over of the hidden narcotics. He declared himself innocent. Then he escaped. Now I should tell you why I am coming to you and not the regular police. That person who visited him before he became less poverty-stricken also visited him in prison. Usually detainees are allowed no visitors, but this man presented police papers from the city of Miami, and stated that he wished to interrogate the prisoner on some criminal matter. What was actually said between them, we have no way of knowing. The escape happened a week later. So you see why I must be careful. One has heard accounts of police corruption in this country.”
“What name did he give?”
“Those records were destroyed in the explosions. The commandant was killed. Two of the survivors remember the visitor, but their descriptions differ. They agree that the name commenced with a J sound, Jennings, Jenny. The first name was Will.”
“Will Gentry?”
“Perhaps. Do you know such an officer? Is it likely?”
“I know him, and it’s damned unlikely. But go on.”
“I’ve been assigned to this business for a matter of months. I take it a little too personally, I’m sorry to say. This man tried to fool us, claiming the protection that has been earned by genuine victims of persecution. It was an affront to the memory of the millions who perished. Now if he is to succeed, after all, and live to a prosperous old age with good food and liquor and corrupt young women, it would be painful to me, in the extreme. So here I am. I have been convinced that he would come to Miami. I believe that immediately after his escape he recovered the hidden drugs and managed to slip across the border. How? It couldn’t have been simple, because it is my firm conviction that we had totally smashed his group. Every person who had the faintest, most cobwebby connection with that scoundrel.”
“Why Miami? It’s true he comes from here, but it’s also true that everybody knows him.”
“First because of his Miami visitor,” she said. “If here is where the money came from, here is where the drugs will be delivered. Second.”