“Get that thing out of sight!” rasped the nervous man.
The swarthy man hefted the gun again. “Tool,” he growled. “That’s all you gotta do. Who gives a razz about bulls now? You said it yourself, Varga: No bulls charge while we’ve got a gun stuck in the mayor’s ear. Out of all your figurin’ in this thing, I like this part the best. I gotta hand you this one. It’s neat, makes us top drawer all of a sudden. Who’s gonna attack?”
Between the two men, Floppy Hat laughed suddenly. “How ’bout saving the jive till later, cats? Let’s split. I’m cramped.” He attempted to turn and look into the back seat as the man named Varga moved the sedan into the avenue traffic, then gave up. “Who’s the creep, Iris?” he asked.
“Fuzz.”
Floppy Hat shook his head. “I don’t think so. His armpits don’t smell right — and believe me, baby-doll, I know fuzzy armpits. Two months in Gentryville and the stink sticks, yuh know?”
Shayne was jammed into a corner of the back seat, the mayor beside him. Iris was on the mayor’s right, keeping the gun muzzle against the mayor’s neck. She stared across the mayor’s front at the detective.
“Let’s see your tickets, Red,” she said in the brittle voice. “Artist says you ain’t a cop.”
The girl’s gun wrist was less than an arm length away. A quick move, grasp, a snapping twist of her arm…
Shayne put down the thought. The mayor would die. The girl’s finger movement would be just that fatal fraction of a second faster than his arm.
His eyes unwavering against the stare of the girl, Shayne slowly took out his wallet and flipped it open to the identification cards.
She grunted. “Be damned. Artist, those two months you was drawin’ pictures for the cops wasn’t all bustville. You developed a good smeller. Man, this is gonna space you out. We got us a creep named Michael Shayne. Familiar?”
Artist laughed again. “The private fuzz. Ya-hoo!”
Varga turned the sedan from the busy avenue into a quieter cross street. “For Christ’s sake, will somebody take a look behind us?”
“Easy, honey,” Iris said. “No sweat. We’ve got tails, but we figured that. It’s what we want, remember? We get to the factory and they’re our meat.”
Shayne’s mind was working fast, soaking up names and connections, and it was obvious that as long as they held a gun against the mayor’s throat, these people felt confident, weren’t worrying about cops. They wanted cops, the girl called Iris had said. Why?
Shayne scowled as he stared straight ahead, his eyes riveted on the driver’s neck, a man named Varga. Varga was flinchy, and the swarthy guy had intimated all of this was Varga’s operation. Somehow, that didn’t fit. A leader was supposed to be cool. This one wasn’t, he was the goosiest of the bunch. Floppy Hat, Artist, had the cool, the swarthy man was savage and Iris was brittle. None of them fit, that was the kicker. They weren’t a unit, an organization, a gang. They were entities eons apart — and yet here they were jammed together in a plot of kidnapings and killings.
Shayne growled. They were amateurs, novices. But very damned dangerous.
“You got a problem, Red?” Iris’ laugh was a cackle as the detective flashed a look at her.
Between them, the mayor sat stiff and ashen, and he breathed fast and hard.
In the front seat, Artist laughed. “All the world is a problem, baby-doll. Ain’t you heard? Everywhere you look, problems. Everybody’s got a problem. All the cats, all—”
“Shut up, kid,” snarled the swarthy man.
Artist looked at him, silent for a moment. Then he laughed again and bent forward slightly and used fingernails to drum a little tune against the suitcase that stood on end between the swarthy man’s legs.
“But we got us a solution, huh, Pope? All that bread!”
“When we get to Mexico, kid,” Pope snapped. “When!”
“Ain’t that gonna be tonight?” Artist said, mocking surprise, taunting.
“Kid…” Pope growled in warning. He lifted an elbow high as if prepared to slash.
“Quit it!” Varga bleated. His voice skittered upward and he hunched another couple of inches forward over the steering wheel. “The both of you, quit it! Don’t you realize—”
“All of you shut up!” Iris said flatly without moving an inch. “Everything’s clicking. We’ve got the mayor, and we’ve got the green. The plane’s next. We’re moving. Let’s keep moving.”
They suddenly moved into an alley. Varga made the tires of the maroon sedan squeal and then they bounced into the alley and swung in behind an abandoned factory building. Vargo nosed the sedan into a long loading dock, rocked to a stop.
Shayne saw the blue and white car to his left. It looked five to six years old. It had a blue bottom and a white top. The windshield on the passenger side was shattered.
“Okay, out, fellas,” Iris snapped. “This way.”
She backed outside, moved away a couple of paces, held the gun muzzle steady on the mayor as he unfolded from the car. Shayne followed the mayor slowly, giving the police a couple more seconds to move in. He heard noises from down the alley, saw a shadow at the building corner.
Iris wiggled the gun. “Up on the dock, then inside.”
The mayor had trouble navigating the height. He balanced for a moment on the dock’s edge, his palms and one knee his only brace. Shayne shoved his buttocks, rolled him onto the dock platform, then leaped up, bent and caught the mayor’s hand, yanked him to his feet.
Varga had already disappeared inside. Artist and Pope stood in an entry, looking out. Pope had shielded his body with a wall, held Shayne’s .45 in sight. But Artist stood in full view, brazen, taunting, laughing softly.
Shayne knew Artist was a perfect target for police weapons. But no one triggered a shot. No one wanted to be responsible for the mayor’s death. Artist also knew he was safe. His laughter took on tempo.
Iris was on the platform. She had hoisted herself up on her buttocks. She swung the dancer’s legs up and then stood. Her face was blank as she wiggled the gun again. “Inside.”
They climbed four flights of wide, littered cement stairs. The fourth floor was cavernous, one room with narrow windows spaced evenly across the front and two ends of the building. The black wall was brick and blank except for a large, black square hole.
Shayne recognized the hole. Freight elevator doors were open, out of sight inside the brick walls. He saw nothing beyond the black gap. He knew it was open space, probably four flights of free fall.
Pope was at one of the narrow front wall windows. He had put down the suitcase, and now he stood with the wall between his body and the outside, but he was risking glances out of the window.
“The street is crawling with cops!” he rasped.
“It’s what we want, man!” said Artist. He laughed, went to another window, stood in full view as he looked out. Then he twisted his head, still grinning, and said to Iris, “Show ’em the mayor, cat — before I get shot.”
She moved the mayor to a window, forced him to stand looking out.
For a flicker of a second, Shayne tensed to dive. He figured he could slash the girl from the side before she could get the gun around, knock her sprawling. She could lose the gun in the spill. But even if she didn’t, he’d be on her with a pounce, wrench the gun from her hand, roll and cut down Pope.
But Pope was turned from the window now, the .45 held steady on the detective’s middle, his face screwed down, the mouth tight, the eyes blank and hard.
Shayne didn’t move a muscle.
“Donald-baby,” said Iris in a flat tone. “Tell ’em what we want.”
Varga skittered to a deep wall-floor shadow and brought up a bullhorn. He seemed to stand in indecision for a moment, and then he went to one of the windows and smashed the horn against the glass, making an opening. He attempted to say something through the horn, but his voice broke.