17
They continued to talk while Shayne’s cigar burned slowly down. The microphone-transmitter was in the final two inches, and Shayne had to stub the cigar before the metal cylinder emerged. It was a costly piece of equipment, and he hated to leave it, but there was a chance he could retrieve it when everything was over.
One of Burns’s men went off in a car and returned some time later with twenty-five thousand dollars, which Burns counted and handed to Shayne.
“And if this is a con…” he said, scowling.
“I’ve got enough people mad at me as it is.”
They had one more briefing session, with eight men present, and worked out the timetable. Burns thought Shayne should take part in the kidnapping because of his familiarity with the terrain, but Shayne vetoed this idea. The bomb explosion would conclude his role, and after that he planned to be elsewhere.
Returning to his car at last, he locked up the money. This was turning out to be a profitable job. On the other hand, he had invested six months in it, and his expenses had been heavy.
He left Normandy Isle, crossing to the mainland on the North Bay Causeway.
Pulling into the Seventy-ninth Street Shopping Center, he parked in a distant corner away from other cars and played back his conversation with Burns. For once, all the electronic devices had lived up to the claims in the catalogs. He transferred the voices to a portable tape recorder, eliminating a few speeches and drowning out others with feedback noises. It took him half an hour to get what he wanted.
He listened to it again. Burns asserted emphatically several times that he had come to Miami to eliminate De Blasio and destroy his organization, that he had strong financial backing and friendships with important northern bosses, that he took full credit for killing Meister, that if he was forced to compromise for tactical reasons, he would use the time to consolidate his position so he could take over completely as soon as it was safe to move.
Satisfied that this would convince De Blasio to call a high-level conference, he had his operator dial MacDougall’s number.
“How’d you make out with Gentry?” he said when MacDougall answered.
“I talked to him, Mike, but I’m sorry to say I didn’t make any headway at all. He says he’s been faked out by you for the last time.”
“The stubborn bastard. I’ve got a tape that might change his mind, but the goddamn thing is, will he hold still for it?”
“Not unless he’s under some form of restraint. But you won’t find him at his office. He’s here.”
“Can you keep him there?” Shayne said quickly.
“I think so.” MacDougall laughed. “I’ve got him handcuffed to the air-conditioner.”
“What?” Shayne gave a relieved snort of laughter. “Don’t unlock him. I’ll be right over.”
When Shayne walked into the apartment a few minutes later, he found that MacDougall hadn’t been exaggerating. Will Gentry was indeed handcuffed to the air-conditioner.
Gentry was a tough, honest cop, burly and redfaced, with strong opinions and a short fuse. Until the recent period he and Shayne had worked well together. But Shayne had deliberately set out to forfeit his respect, as a necessary credential for his acceptance by the organized underworld, and he had succeeded.
He glowered at Shayne and yanked furiously at the handcuffs. After a lifetime in police work he had a good command of profanity. He knew that Shayne, directly or indirectly, was responsible for his predicament, and he let him know it in basic terms.
“How’d you get him to fall for it?” Shayne asked MacDougall.
“I told him you’d give yourself up if he came here to get you. And then I maneuvered him over to the window and snapped on the cuffs. Mad, isn’t he?” He looked at the angry cop with cool interest, as though inspecting a chained beast in a zoo. “I thought he’d calm down eventually, but every time I say anything to him, he starts shouting again.”
“You’re carrying a gun,” Gentry said. “Kill me, Shayne. You’d better do it, because by God when I get out of these cuffs, I’m going to track you down, I’m going to track you down and tear you in chunks with my bare hands.”
Shayne set his tape recorder on the floor and turned it on. This was the undoctored tape, the conversation with Bobby Burns as it had actually happened. He spun the reel and halted it at random. The volume was all the way up, overriding Gentry’s angry muttering.
It was Shayne’s own voice, enormously amplified: “… NEED TO BAG SOMEBODY FOR THE MEISTER KILLING.”
“Another one of your goddamn tricks,” Gentry said. “I’m through playing fall guy for you, Shayne! Can’t you understand the simplest thing? I played along and played along…”
“… ONE THING WRONG,” the Burns voice said. “THAT WAS OUR HIT.”
MacDougall crouched beside the tape recorder. “Who said that, Mike? Who’s talking?”
“Bobby Burns. And if everybody will cool off for a minute, we can play it from the top and see if we can learn something.”
“This is as flimsy a stunt as you’ve ever pulled,” Gentry said. “Who’s going to believe anything you say? It could be anybody. Give somebody a couple of bucks to read lines…”
Shayne reversed the reels, went back to the beginning, and started over. Gentry was still unwilling to listen, but the volume was up so high that he had to hear some of it. After several moments he stopped pulling against the cuffs, and some of the anger died out of his expression, to be replaced by suspicion. When Shayne saw that he had him, he turned down the volume so the voices were more nearly human.
When it was finished, Shayne said quietly, “Now, Will, you can do one of two things. You can keep up this stupid feud and go on trying to get me killed. Or you can work with me for a couple of hours tonight and pull off something that might really make a small dent. I mean that. Here’s a chance to cripple these people. You took an oath of office once. ‘I solemnly swear to leave the city of Miami in the hands of the Mafia, so long as I can manage to score a few points on Mike Shayne.’”
“That’s an ambush,” Gentry said. “It’s not for the Mafia, it’s for us, because we know how you operate.”
“Will,” Shayne said patiently, “how do you think I got in to have that conversation with Burns? I worked it out with De Blasio. Right now I’m the Don’s favorite boy. Use your head. Would I be welcome on Ponce de Leon if anybody suspected I was still friends with the top cop in town?”
“Still friends,” Gentry said scornfully. “I stuck by you longer than most people, but when you got plastered and beat up Tim Rourke—”
“I don’t have time to debate it,” Shayne said. “I have a plane to meet. I’ll leave this tape. Play it as many times as you like. I’ll call back in half an hour and find out if you’ve decided to be reasonable. Here’s what I want from you.”
“I’m not interested in what you want.”
“But I think I’ll tell you. I warned Hugh at the beginning that he might be wasting the foundation’s money. Getting any kind of conviction against these guys is no easy matter, as you have more reason to know than most people. De Blasio hasn’t seen the inside of a police station in twenty-five years. Are we going to arrest anybody for murdering Sherman Meister? Probably not. But at this point that’s not the most important thing. Stop squirming, damn it, and listen. We’ve got a taped confession from Bobby Burns. It’s not admissible. There isn’t a thing in it we can use. What the hell, it may not even be true.”
MacDougall started to speak, but Shayne stopped him with a glance. This was between him and Gentry.
“Here’s what I’m shooting for. You remember the big Appalachian raid in New York State? That was more or less an accident, it just happened. And it was the first time the Mafia was hurt since Lucky Luciano was deported. Nobody stayed in jail very long, because there’s no law against eating barbecue at a friend’s house. But there was terrific publicity, and it did some damage, some real damage. Everybody knew what the thing actually was — it was a high-level Mafia meeting to work out a succession problem, and the anonymous people who were there weren’t anonymous any longer. They had to operate in a completely different way.”
Gentry was finally listening.
“I forget how many there were,” Shayne went on. “Twenty or thirty, and for the next couple of years those people had all kinds of legal trouble, heart attacks, quarrels with Immigration and Internal Revenue. We’ll have to be satisfied with the half-dozen or so who are already here in Miami.” He listed the Mafia figures who had homes in the Miami area, or who were currently vacationing on the Beach. “Naturally, I’m not going to play this whole tape for De Blasio. I’ve got a censored version, and as soon as he hears it, he’s going to want to call a meeting. Miami’s too important to these people. It’s like Vegas — they want to take it easy while they’re here, like everybody else. If De Blasio can show them evidence that this new goon murdered a TV-station owner, for the sole purpose of causing so much disturbance that he could move in and take charge, they’ll be forced to act like elder statesmen. They’ll tell Bobby to cool it, or he’s sentenced to death. Even Bobby must know he can’t get anywhere against that kind of opposition.”
Gentry said, “Tony Barbieri is here from Boston.”
“He’d be a nice catch.”
“Where’s this going to take place?”
“It’ll have to be on the island. De Blasio won’t put his head out until this is settled, and they’ll realize they have to come to him. I’d prefer to use local cops for the bust. It’s my town. But if you don’t feel like playing, I’ll try to understand, and bring in the FBI. I have a vague hunch they’ll be delighted. I think the director will be tempted to lead it in person.”
“You’re a son of a bitch, Shayne.”
“I know I have that reputation.”
“What about that bomb you were talking about, was that just talk?”
“Hell, no. I’m hoping to make some noise, so they’ll know I’m there. Burns was being cagey about how many men he could suit up — about twenty, I think. They’ll come across in two boats. We’ll need the Harbor Police, and we’ll need helicopters. Plenty of flares. You ought to have at least four cars to block the causeway. Collect the choppers at the Watson Park heliport. It’s too bad we can’t run a rehearsal, but be loaded and ready, and take off when you hear the explosion. If anything goes wrong with that, I’ll set one of the houses on fire. You ought to show up at just the right time. Drop the flares and come in yelling. I think you’ll start a nice little panic without much shooting. These are hoodlums, after all, not GIs.”
Gentry sighed. “Goddamn it, I don’t withdraw any of the things I said, but I have to admit I like it.”
“If we can believe him, maybe we can take off the handcuffs, Hugh.”
“I think so. It’s a cop’s dream, after all.”
He felt in all his pockets, and finally found the key and unlocked the cuffs. Gentry massaged his chafed wrist.
“Why didn’t you tell me all this six months ago?”
“I couldn’t take that kind of chance, Will. It had to be a real break.” He grinned. “And it was more interesting this way.”
“You couldn’t have planned the whole thing. You’re not that big a genius.”
“I set up the situation and let it develop. I’ve got one other little thing going for me. I remembered hearing some rumors about Carlo’s social life in college, and I did some research. The one disgrace a Mafia don really can’t stand is having a fruity son. I wouldn’t have risked any of this without that ace in the hole, and the funny thing is, I haven’t had time to use it. I still want to try to work it in — everything helps. Hugh, there’s something I want you to do while Will is getting this arranged.”
“Actually,” MacDougall said, “I’d like to go along in one of those helicopters. Why not?”
“Because I want you to stay alive so you can sign checks. Tim Rourke’s at Mercy Hospital. If he isn’t too doped up, tell him what’s happened to date. I’ll meet you there.”
Before leaving, he took another five minutes to go over the schedule again to be sure it was understood. The more Gentry thought about it, the better he liked it.
“God knows I’ve been looking for a pretext to get on that island. One thing, though, Mike, no matter how well it works, things are going to be different. There’s such a thing as being too tricky. From now on I’ll never know whether or not to trust you.”
“That’s your problem, isn’t it?” Shayne said.