“I need a clear head. How to explain that empty locker? Having lost thirty-eight thousand dollars, which I definitely can’t afford, and having had two jolts of Scotch in quick succession, I may not be my usual lucid self. But let me try to list hypotheses. That a common thief broke into a locked locker without knowing what it contained, and still doesn’t understand the significance of what he has. That somebody else than the extortionist knew about the extortion and decided to short-circuit it. That I paid money for nothing, that the extortionist never possessed the fragment, and bollixed the locker so it wouldn’t be so obvious to me that I too had been bollixed.”
“Do you have the letter?”
“It’s at home. But I went over it carefully, and I think I can give it to you more or less verbatim. Neatly typed. ‘Dear Uncle Sammy.’ Meri called me that. No one else ever did. ‘Dear Uncle Sammy, you’ve finally succeeded in convincing me. Why should other people always make the big money? Whether the mask sells for six hundred or six hundred thousand has nothing to do with its real worth. So I’ve been brooding. You’re probably out of your mind with grief — not for me, I know, but for the missing eye. Carpenter won’t pay you any fancy prices for a one-eyed Toltec god. I’m a little bitter. I want to punish you for some of those last remarks.’”
He explained, “We both said things designed to wound. I have experience, but she has youth and endurance. We came off about even.”
“Finish the letter.”
“She considered options. Her first plan was to call a press conference, and if anybody came to it she’d announce that my cover story was a damnable lie and she had letters to prove it. I don’t know what letters, but she had access to my files and I daresay I’ve been careless. I never anticipated anything like this. And that would blow my deal into tiny bits. Then she had second thoughts while she was out on the highway waiting for a ride. Cynicism set in. I’m quoting again now: ‘Go ahead, damn you, you’re typical of the whole bloody business, collect your money, but set a little aside for me, as payment for all the psychological wear and tear.’ That phrase I remember clearly. ‘Psychological wear and tear.’ ‘Thirty-eight thousand would be about right, and don’t give me a short count or I’ll call that press conference and make you really famous. They’ll take your professorship away and tear off your buttons in front of the adoring freshman class.’ That’s pretty much the way she talked — hyperbolic. After that, precise directions. Quote, the way it’s done on television, unquote. She knew I had money in safe deposit, and her guess at the amount was close. I kept trying to call you, to ask Frieda’s opinion, but the operator couldn’t get an answer. I was in a rush to get to the bank before it closed. I followed instructions exactly. The money in a flight bag. I left it in a certain outside phone booth, then to another booth halfway across town, and opened the directory to the page on which my own phone number appeared. There, as predicted, I found a note instructing me further. The tone was somewhat playful. Teasing. A tone she used when she thought I was being too pompous, too much the professor. I never for a moment doubted that the letter was from her and I was really buying the fragment back.”
“Signed?”
“A typed initial. It was pushed under my front door. The doorbell rang, and I almost didn’t go. I was in no mood for a Jehovah’s Witness or somebody selling dance lessons.”
Leaning forward, Shayne picked the phone off its bracket and asked the operator, “Did Professor Holloway call earlier?”
“Once. About five-thirty. Shall I look it up?”
“No, that’s O.K.” He put the phone back. “You didn’t try too hard.”
“I thought — well, the fewer people involved, the better. If Meri, or whoever, spotted a private detective hanging around when she came to pick up the money—”
“So far it’s our only link.”
“I thought the matter was closed. That was naive of me, I agree—”
“You thought Meri might be dead,” Shayne said, “and it was her killer who was selling you the fragment. You didn’t want a simple commercial transaction fuzzed up with a lot of sentimentality about death and punishment. You did a stupid thing, Holloway. At least it cost you some money. Where’s the rest of the mask? I’d like to see it.”
“I have it locked up at home. I’d just as soon keep it that way.”
“You’d better move it. Give it to the cops to hold overnight and put it in the bank in the morning.”
“I don’t understand,” Holloway said, bringing the eyebrows down.
“Whoever has the fragment, the one eye, is going to want the rest.”
“They couldn’t sell it!” Holloway said, alarmed.
“Why not? All they’d have to do is fake up a new set of papers. It doesn’t belong to you, as I understand it, it belongs to some museum in Mexico City.”
Chapter 9
They went in two cars, Holloway leading.
On the way, Shayne phoned the Highway Patrol. There were fourteen police cars working, within a circle with a fifteen-mile radius. So far they had found nothing.
Holloway lived in a divided pseudo-Moorish structure, within walking distance of the university. The streets in this section of Coral Gables were curving, tree-lined, and poorly lighted. When the brake lights came up on Holloway’s car, Shayne went to his own brakes and began looking for a parking place.
Ahead, he saw something move in the shadows, and picked up the glow of a cigarette. A long black sedan, with a bent aerial and oversize taillights, was waiting at the curb. The men who had searched Maxine Holloway’s house in Seminole Beach that morning had driven away in the same kind of car.
Shayne was already turning, hauling to the left into a short alley leading to a canal. He pulled into a private driveway, cut his lights and motor, and hit a recessed spring in the door panel. A loaded Smith and Wesson.357 dropped into his hand.
He kept to the grass on the tree line, moving more carefully as he approached the corner. A car door slammed. He crossed a lighted patch of sidewalk in one quick stride, and was swallowed up in a palm tree’s shadow. Holloway’s car had halted between the street and his garage.
Shrubbery hid what was happening from Shayne. He moved closer.
Holloway came into view, being marched rapidly toward the house between two men wearing ski masks. The man on his right was taller than average, and just enough out of proportion so he would be impossible to fit off the rack.
Shayne made another careful move. There had been four men in Seminole Beach. The driver — Shayne recognized his peaked tennis cap — dropped back into the car, and Shayne spotted the fourth man as Holloway and the two others started up the curving front steps. Also masked, this man crossed a lighted patch of lawn and went up the steps after the others, stopping outside the doorway.
Shayne thrust his gun inside his shirt and vaulted a low fence between houses. It was darker here. He used a pencil flash to pick his way to the back, then across a graveled yard. He turned the flash upward at the backside of Holloway’s building. The steps to an upper balcony were on the short side of the house, where they could be seen from the street. Avoiding these, he swung up onto the lower balcony, found handholds, and pulled himself up to the next level.
Bent double, he moved along the balcony to a lighted window. The shade was partially drawn. Inside was a bedroom. Holloway and the men with him passed the open door, along a hallway. Shayne moved to the next window. In a moment a light came on.
This was a long study, with a cluttered workbench. A larger-than-life stone head stood on the big desk; a modern beret had been added at a jaunty angle. The hooded eyes of the sculpture watched indifferently as the two masked men urged Holloway toward the front of a safe.