He passed the gate Rizzo must have used, parked again and came back. As he approached, he saw the cut chain. The bus had crept in without lights and parked twenty feet inside the fence, partially in shadow.
Shayne roused his operator and had her dial Frankie Capp’s number. Capp was on the phone at once. Shayne identified himself and heard a quickly indrawn breath.
“Shayne,” Capp said. “I was hoping you had a heart attack and dropped dead. What do we do now, negotiate?”
“I had a near-miss earlier tonight. Somebody planted a bomb in my car. I’m not sure I’m in a negotiating mood.”
“I don’t know about that, and I never heard of a spade named Page, either, so don’t ask me. But I’m realistic. I know you’re going to want some compensation. I thought half would be about right. Down the middle.”
“I know what you want me to do for my half. What are you planning to do for yours?”
“I made the contact. I take the chances. You don’t appear at all.”
“Only one thing bothers me, Frankie. Can I trust you?”
“Work something out where you’re protected. This isn’t a maiden race for you, Shayne. Anything reasonable I’ll go with.”
Through the fence, Shayne could see Rizzo leave the VW, holding long-handled wire cutters tightly against his leg.
“Let’s postpone it for now,” Shayne said. “The real reason I’m calling is to pass something on. You’re a local man. I know where to look for you. But I don’t like it when people come in from out of town and break up the patterns.”
“What are you talking about?” Capp said cautiously.
“Somebody named Pussy Rizzo or Rezzo. I understand he’s been ripped off by Tucker’s committee and he needs to recoup. A couple of other names — Angel, Pepe. There’s a fourth man with glasses, named Swenson. He’s some kind of expert, and I think what he’s an expert at is opening safes.”
“Why tell me?”
“It struck me that an old hijacker like you would hate to be hijacked, more than an ordinary person. Pussy has a connection inside the Baruch studio, an actress named Maureen Neal.”
“I know her,” Capp said grimly. “Has she been talking to Pussy about us? Is that what you’re telling me?”
“He wouldn’t come all the way from Los Angeles just to see the Atlantic. He seems to know quite a bit about Project X. That’s Domestic Relations, the Gretchen Tucker movie. At least he knows more about it than I do. He’s obviously planning to steal it.”
Capp said sharply, “Get off the line, Shayne.”
“So you can call the Warehouse? Not yet, Frankie. I want to make sure everything’s covered. You know about incoming calls. You can’t call out until I hang up. We started to talk about terms. I might have settled for half if you hadn’t pulled that trick with the bomb. I’m attached to that Buick, not to mention my own feet. So I want three quarters.”
“I always wonder with you — how much do you know? Three quarters of what?”
“I’ve heard a quarter of a million. That would make — I’ll need a pencil and paper to figure it out.”
“Give me the buyer’s name.”
“Pomeroy,” Shayne said promptly. “Have it ready in a used suitcase, in small bills. I’ll call again in exactly an hour. Be home.”
“Get off the line!”
“I can hear you,” Shayne said mildly. “I haven’t finished about Rizzo. You’ll want to hear this. They’re using the old freight hoist to get upstairs, and something was said about setting a car on fire. They’re driving a Volkswagen with ecology stickers. They probably stole it, because Pussy didn’t seem to be much of an ecology nut to me.”
Rizzo emerged from the shadows, having cut the telephone line, and started across the open space to the bus. Shayne wound up the conversation quickly.
“Now we’re colleagues. Don’t tell anybody I called you.”
He signaled his operator to break the connection.
“One other thing,” he told her. “Ten minutes from now, in exactly ten minutes, put in a fire call. The Warehouse Theater, Twenty-seventh Avenue, Northwest.”
“Mike, do you really want me to? Tell me exactly what to say.”
“Just say it’s on fire. Sound excited and hang up.”
“You know it’s against the law to turn in a false alarm?”
“I wouldn’t ask you to do that. The fire hasn’t started yet, but in ten minutes things are going to be different.”
“All right, but one of these days,” she said ominously, “I’m going to stop doing favors for you, and I’ll probably digest my food better. Ten minutes. I’ve made a note of the time.”
Shayne, too, was checking the time. Capp, driving fast, was fifteen minutes away, but he wouldn’t get started before wasting a few minutes trying to get through to the Warehouse. While Capp would be hurrying, Swenson and the others would be taking their time. Handling nitroglycerin, people think about what they’re about to do before they do it.
Shayne drank from his flask. There was a faint glow in the back of the VW bus. They were going over the plans again, by flashlight, checking the diagram against the building itself. Nearby, a car came to life and backed into the open, its headlights showing the four men in the bus, their heads close together.
All but Rizzo came out after another minute: Swenson, then the fair-haired driver and a slender youth wearing pants so tight that they would probably give him trouble climbing in the window. Swenson carried a heavy leather satchel slung from one shoulder. It pulled him down on that side, and he steadied it with one hand as he walked. The boys with him were dancing with excitement. The dark one goosed the fair one, making him jump.
In a minute, the group disappeared around the building.
Craning, Shayne picked out the silhouette of the guard in the front of the theater, under the darkened marquee. Another guard, in the open, sat on his heels beside a motor scooter. There was an underlay of noise from dashboard radios, an occasional laugh.
Five minutes passed. Another car departed.
At last the VW door came open and Rizzo stepped down, holding the wire cutters along his leg as before. Shayne turned on his overhead light to pick the plastic bomb out of the clutter on the floor of the back seat. The VW’s engine, of course, was in the rear, and he took an extra length of wire out of his own trunk. Then he pulled up the floor mat and took a loaded pistol from a dropped compartment.
A stick had been jammed through the hasp of the gate to keep it from swinging. Shayne replaced it after opening the gate enough to slip through.
Many of the parking bays had emptied completely, but another Volkswagen, this one a red beetle, was parked on the far side of the larger bus. A radio in it was playing softly, and a girl’s sandaled foot protruded through the window.
After reaching the bus, Shayne used his body to conceal what he was doing. He removed the distributor cap and tied in the wire, then paid out enough to reach the front of the bus, where he connected the detonator and pressed the lump of plastic out of sight under the dashboard.
A boy called from the smaller VW, “Won’t she start?”
“Loose connection. I can take care of it.”
A door opened. “I’m a VW freak, self-taught. Let me take a look.”
Although heavily bearded, he looked extremely young to Shayne, in blue jeans cut off at mid-thigh. He was only five feet tall, which for some reason made him seem even more friendly.
Shayne blocked him. “I don’t need any help, thanks.”
“You don’t need help? Man, you left that wire hanging there. It’s going to snag on something before you turn around.”
“Lester, come back,” his girl called from the beetle. “He said he doesn’t want to be helped. Believe him.”