He went to the kitchen to fix himself a sandwich. Nicola, Carl’s plump and pretty wife, her face pleasantly flushed, was taking long loaves of fresh bread out of the oven. She insisted that he sit down at the kitchen table, and scrambled some eggs to go with the bread and a bottle of red wine. She was drinking Campari herself, and when she refilled her glass, Shayne noticed that she added a splash of gin. While Shayne ate, she rattled on about all she had read about him, how he had been pointed out to her once at a football game, and how surprising it was to meet him, after all, here at her father-in-law’s house.
“You’ll see a lot of me,” he told her. “He’s going to throw me some business. How do you like it in Miami?”
“Sensational,” she said too quickly. “The people might be friendlier, but Carlo says that’s because everything’s so stratified here. And all those old stories about the De Blasios. Racketeers. Gangsters. Don’t people exaggerate? I wanted to say — I had a nice long chat with Sarah, and I adore the way she looks. I’ve thought of becoming a blonde. If you’re going to be living on the island, why don’t you move in with us? That apartment isn’t exactly the greatest. We’ve got a guest suite with its own bathroom, right on the water. She says she plays tennis, but I know she’s better than I am, I can usually tell. The way she moves.”
Skeets found him as she was making still another gin-and-Campari. She started to drink it as they left. Her lips looked sticky.
They used the Imperial, with a driver. When they turned onto the causeway, Shayne explained about the stop he had to make on Collins. Skeets was very erect in his corner of the back seat, getting himself ready psychologically. He turned slowly.
“A garage? What for? This is all worked out. There aren’t supposed to be any departures.”
“I’m carrying too much cash. If anything goes wrong, I’ll need it for a lawyer.”
“What can go wrong? Did the Don say it was O.K.?” Shayne had the money in his side pocket in a folded-over envelope. He snapped off the rubber band and let Skeets see the denominations.
“All hundreds. If we’re picked up for anything, the cops get it. I’m not feeling that charitable.”
Skeets exclaimed in irritation, but gave the driver new orders. They went north to Arthur Godfrey Road before crossing the creek to Collins. At the garage, Shayne exchanged a word with the man in the office and was permitted to go in and find his Buick. He kept out several of the bills for expenses, and locked the remainder in the strongbox welded to the floor of the back seat. Then he unlocked another compartment and armed himself with a tiny Japanese camera, no bigger than a matchbox. He loaded it with film and checked the light meter and lens setting.
Skeets had gone into semi-rigor. “That took long enough,” he said through set teeth. “You threw off the schedule.”
“As a matter of fact, we’re early,” Shayne said easily.
Skeets looked at his watch. “We’re a little early,” he admitted. “Have you got that flask on you? I’ve got a case of the butterflies.”
Shayne uncapped his flask and held it out. “Go easy on it, Skeets,” he said, grinning. “When the time comes, I want to know you’re sober.”
“You son of a bitch.”
He drank deeply, checked the time again, and told the driver to move slowly along Collins with the traffic. After a few blocks, they turned into the curving approach to one of the big hotels. They dismounted under the canopy, and the driver took the car to one of the waiting zones.
Inside the lobby, Skeets’s manner became elaborately casual. He bought a magazine at a newsstand and studied the listing of events on the lobby board. They were joined here by a middle-aged man Shayne hadn’t seen before.
“If you’re looking for our friend,” this man said, “he went up ten minutes ago.”
Skeets wet his lips, and his nostrils flared. “Then what are we waiting for?” he said to Shayne.
Marcello Marti, who aspired to take over the shy-locking in this stretch of hotels, had been carefully scouted. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at this time he visited a woman in an eighth-floor suite. She was the wife of a public-relations man for the hotel association, who could be counted on to be away during the day.
Alone in an elevator with Shayne, Skeets relaxed. “They tell me you handled two broads at a time in St. Albans. How does that work out?”
“All right if you keep an open mind.”
Skeets chuckled, and he was still chuckling as they left the elevator on the eighth floor. Outside the woman’s door he became serious again.
“Don’t offer any help unless I ask for it, baby. The important thing is precision.”
He looked both ways. The corridor was empty. He pulled out two rolled-up stocking masks and gave one to Shayne. They pulled them on. Then he slid a key into the lock, turned it carefully, and eased the door open.
They went in fast, guns out.
Leaving Shayne to close the door, Skeets headed for the bedroom. Shayne was a step behind as he went through.
The two people in the room were both in their late thirties. The woman was naked, but the man on the bed wore an undershirt and over-the-calf socks. On the beach or at poolside, the woman was a bikini wearer. She was in fair shape. Shayne corrected that at once to better than fair. Marcello Marti, on the other hand, had skin of a uniform color, like light shoe polish. He was soft, paunchy, and hairy.
Their entrance was well timed. The woman, on her knees on the floor, was preparing Marti. He jerked away from her mouth and banged against the headboard, both hands raised.
“Don’t, don’t!”
Shayne, behind Skeets, had already made three pictures. He was shooting without concealment, knowing that Skeets was giving the man on the bed his full attention. The woman sat back, confused, her red hair flying. Shayne took her picture over Skeets’s shoulder.
“Go in the bathroom,” Skeets snarled at her. “Up, fast.”
But she was frozen. Shayne pulled her to her feet. Before she was completely erect, her knees folded, and she collapsed against him.
“You don’t want to watch this,” he told her, and hauled her into the bathroom, where he dumped her without ceremony. He turned on the shower to muffle the sound of the shots, and went back to the bedroom, the little camera out of sight in his palm.
Skeets was giving orders with little movements of his gun. Marti scrambled out of bed. He had lost his readiness for sex.
“Turn around,” Skeets told him. “Assume the position. Both hands against the wall. That’s right, baby. Hold it.”
“I’ll pay you—” Marti said frantically. “How much? We can—”
Shayne shot another picture as Skeets touched his gun to the half-naked man’s head. Marti in terror voided his bladder against the wall.
“You creep,” Skeets said, and pulled the trigger.
Shayne shot two more pictures as Skeets shook the gun and tried to get it to fire.
“Hell, here’s mine,” Shayne said.
Skeets’s head swung, and Shayne brought the butt of his reversed pistol down in a hard slanting blow. Skeets fell.
Marti had fainted.
Shayne pulled them side by side. There wasn’t enough blood for his final picture, so he opened his pocketknife, made a deep cut in Skeets’s arm, and let him bleed over the back of Marti’s undershirt. When the undershirt was sufficiently soggy, he moved Marti’s unconscious body so his head was out of sight beneath the bed, and shot another picture.
Then he went to the bathroom. The woman shrank back, and made a desperate attempt to smile.
“I won’t say anything. I don’t care that much about him.”
“You shouldn’t be having matinees with people you don’t like,” he said. “Fix your hair. You look like a witch.”