In Miami, MacDougall proposed to try an entirely different approach.
“Crime enforcement is too oriented to particular cases,” he said. “A man rapes a ten-year-old girl. The police can’t put together enough evidence to convict him, so he rapes another, then another. Finally he rapes someone who is able to identify him, and he’s locked up. If he could have been treated after that first rape, society would have been spared three further crimes.”
Shayne laughed. “Psychiatrists aren’t looking for that kind of practice. They can’t buy Rolls-Royces with it.”
“I’m not talking about psychiatrists. What I’ve suggested to my board is that we turn Michael Shayne loose among the organized criminals of Miami, on an open assignment. Let’s talk about the Sherman Meister killing. I’ve seen the clippings. I’ve discussed it at length with Mrs. Meister. Wouldn’t you call this a typical Mafia execution?”
“It has the earmarks.”
“And do you expect it to be solved?”
Shayne shrugged. “Sometimes somebody gets lucky.”
“There were four hundred and forty-seven clearly identified gangland murders in the United States last year. How many convictions?”
“None?”
“Precisely. There were no indictments, few arrests. And even if the actual killer in one of these cases had been identified and convicted, by some odd chance, would that dispose of the matter? Not in my estimation. The gunman in these things is only the mechanic. What about the man who gives the orders? He seems to be immune.”
“Nobody looks too hard at that kind of murder. Who cares, is the idea.”
“Society should care. The immunity of these people is the basis of their power. The FBI hasn’t had much luck with organized criminals of this type. It always pains me to see some well-known mobster go to jail — if at all — for tax evasion or perjury or contempt of court or of Congress, never for any serious crime. Mike, a sworn FBI agent and a sworn member of the Mafia belong to two utterly different species. They don’t understand each other’s language or rules of behavior. They’re an enigma to each other. Can you imagine an FBI district director a caporegime in a Mafia family? Could an FBI agent ever win the confidence of a Mafia boss? Obviously not. But you might be able to.”
He talked on into the night. The next morning Shayne made two calls, one to MacDougall, accepting the assignment, the other to the airline canceling his reservations for Hawaii.
The contract was drawn up and signed.
Shayne stopped opening his mail and paying bills. Drunk in the afternoon, he had a pushing and shoving fight with a well-known sportsman in front of hundreds of horseplayers in the Tropical Park clubhouse. This man, not in the best of physical shape, managed to knock him down with a feeble right to the cheek, a blow that did less damage to Shayne than to his reputation. He was seen in various clubs and entertainment rooms with a variety of girls, usually drunk, often sullen and dangerously quarrelsome.
To account for his need for money, he spread a story about a loss he had suffered in the over-the-counter market on a television stock. Sherman Meister’s TV operation had gone public the previous year. The stock had been fought for. It was issued at 15 and hit 85 four months later. There was a general feeling that after being granted a license to one of those priceless channels, only an idiot could fail to use it to coin money. Meister, unfortunately, had suddenly decided to expand his public-service programming. Tim Rourke and a few others had been critical of his news department for blandness and overcaution. Meister responded by going on the tube himself with a weekly half-hour editorial, usually attacking organized crime. Rourke supplied him with facts and pseudo-facts from his anti-Mafia file. Meister’s mobile cameras began dogging De Blasio and other leading underworld personalities, including visitors from the North, and picked up some excellent footage of well-dressed hoodlums waving their fists or covering their faces with newspapers. The station’s constant goading stirred the police into action, and they made a number of harassing arrests.
The counteroffensive began immediately. Business spokesmen urged Meister to find another subject, on the grounds that his exaggerations were giving people the wrong idea of ordinary life in Miami. No resort town can afford a Puritan look; people on vacation like to sin a little. On the other hand, they don’t want to vacation in a place that is dominated by mobsters and killers, which seemed to be the impression Meister’s station was trying to convey. Couldn’t he forget the Mafia at least till the season was over?
Meister began losing accounts. He found himself having labor trouble for the first time. Various pressures were brought to bear, some on a very high level. A Federal Communications Commission investigator arrived and began going over his books. There were rumblings from Internal Revenue about an old tax case. Meister was denounced by a national Italian-American organization which objected to his use of the term “Cosa Nostra.” A spaghetti-sauce manufacturer pulled his commercials off the station. When Meister reported a fourth-quarter loss for the first time in the station’s history, the stock skidded catastrophically.
Shayne’s story was that he had bought a thousand shares on margin at 50, and his broker had sold him out on the way down. He moved out of the office he had occupied for ten years, and rented space in a six-desk operation in a grubby building in a deteriorating neighborhood. His office-mates, who shared a single telephone and secretary, treated him with contempt. He dropped eight thousand dollars in a Miami Beach crap game. He tried to borrow money from an organization judge.
Word of mouth did the rest.
Even Shayne was surprised at how fast the news spread. At first a number of old friends — more than he expected, because he took a somewhat dim view of human nature — offered to help, but he discouraged them with complaints and insults.
Now Shayne pulled into a huge parking area wrapped around two sides of an anonymous high-rise apartment near Biscayne Park, a block from the bay. No attempt had been made to provide downstairs security. Shayne rode an elevator to one of the upper floors.
He sounded a buzzer. The peephole clicked open, and Hugh MacDougall opened the door.
Twenty-four hours earlier on St. Albans, he had been masquerading as Gregory Nash, the hotel-supplies salesman from Chicago, using the simplest of disguises — a wig, a moustache, and a pair of rented sideburns. The thick glasses had been his own. Now he was back in his normal academic disguise. He grinned engagingly.
“Our amateur stickup artist. I thought you did that very well for a beginner.”
“You invested ten thousand in the deal,” Shayne said, “and got thirteen back. Speaking of con men.”
MacDougall laughed. “I thought that up on the spur of the moment. To make it more credible. And what did you think of the bomb?”
“Did you do that?”
“I did that. I couldn’t resist the temptation. I wanted to give them something to think about — I’ll explain in a minute.”
He took Shayne into the living room. He had rented this apartment for the sole purpose of having a place they could meet, and the only furniture was a battered sofa and a few chairs. To Shayne’s surprise, a woman was sitting on the sofa smoking a cigarette in a holder. He looked questioningly at MacDougall.