“I couldn’t take that guy twice in twelve hours. But the news you heard was a little exaggerated. True, they were shooting at me, but everybody missed.”
She looked at the cast on his left leg, running all the way from ankle to hip. “You didn’t do all that just to get out of talking to Painter.”
“Only partly.” He drank some of the cognac, and waited for the pleasant explosion. “See if you can tell me what the radio said.”
“Mike Shayne, implicated in dog track scandal, seriously injured in gunfight in Surfside men’s room. At St. Francis’s, leg smashed. There was a statement from the Surfside safety director, some Italian name, but he didn’t say much. What’s the bandage on your arm, more window dressing?”
“One of the guys had a knife, and he didn’t miss. Did you bring a gun?”
“A gun. I think I’m beginning to see. No, I hardly ever bring a gun when I visit somebody in the hospital. I have one in the car.” She stood up and looked down at him seriously. “Are you really up to this, Mike?”
“I think so, but I’m not going to try to prove it to you by doing pushups. It has to be tonight, Frieda, not tomorrow. Right now they’re feeling dumb and mad. That’s when mistakes happen. Somebody sent three men after me. That costs big money and he won’t be happy it fizzled. Now they have to go back and tell him they blew it. He may think they didn’t try hard enough, and it could be dangerous, depending on who the guy is. They probably have another payment coming, on completion, and they won’t get that. When another job comes along, they’ll be passed over. So when they hear I’m lying in a hospital bed, after a hard operation, won’t it occur to them that hospitals are easy places to walk into? Maybe they can correct their mistake and skip all the hassle.”
“That’s enough. I’m persuaded.”
She went for her gun. Rashid stopped in a few minutes later.
“I’m a little worried, Michael. You know it will be bad publicity for the hospital if anything goes wrong. Two of them left out of three. Are you sure you can handle two?”
“They’ll only use one. Attendants don’t walk around a hospital in pairs.”
“How would he get the number of the room?”
“Call the switchboard and say he’s sending over flowers. That’s not classified information.”
“Well, this is your profession, after all, and you know these people. I’ll tell the duty nurse on this floor to be busy somewhere else. I will watch the stairs, and give you a telephone ring when-if-someone appears. And if there is more than one, I will be very official and ask what they are doing here.”
“Rashid, stay out of it. Frieda and I will both have guns. If I had any serious doubts I wouldn’t have brought her in.”
That wasn’t entirely true. Frieda had made it clear from the start that if she was going to be working as a private detective, she couldn’t expect special treatment because she was a woman. At first that had been hard for Shayne to accept, but they had been in some dangerous situations together, and she had behaved with extreme coolness. He now trusted her completely.
Rashid nodded and left the room. Shayne had been put in a room in the accident wing, in a bed that was rigged to be used by a patient in traction. There were rotating pulleys overhead, and two on the facing wall. When Frieda returned, they made up the bed with pillows to look like an anesthetized man, and ran a line through two of the pulleys, ending in a noose on the floor.
Then they turned off the lights and began the wait. Fifteen minutes later, the phone tinkled a warning. “All right?” Shayne said quietly.
“Ready. You make the first move.”
Shayne had one end of the rope doubled around his hand and elbow. He braced himself for the pull. He was listening intently, but he couldn’t hear Frieda breathing.
A heel scuffed on the cork floor of the corridor. The door handle turned, and a figure entered.
“Mike?” a man’s voice said cautiously. “Asleep?” Shayne was already in motion. The noose tightened around the man’s leg, and Shayne’s weight jerked him off his feet. Frieda slammed the door and stepped out with her gun. The light flashed on.
It was Tim Rourke. Only his shoulder blades were still on the floor; everything else was airborne.
“Now we know it works,” Shayne said.
He came forward, and Rourke’s legs returned to the floor.
“What the hell?” he said weakly when he had his breath back. “I guess I was lucky it wasn’t a gun trap.”
“Let’s get that rope off,” Frieda said. “We’re expecting somebody.”
Rourke loosened the loop. “Guinea pig-that’s what friends are for. Christ, I thought the building collapsed.”
He came jerkily to his feet. He was a tall, bony figure whose long arms and legs often seemed to be following programs of their own.
“I see you’re walking around, Mike,” he said. “That can’t be too good for you after… No, I get it, I get it. Dawn breaks in the East. That diagnosis was for the bad guys. You’re really in good health.”
“More or less.”
“Can I stay and watch? I haven’t had a decent eyewitness story in months.”
“If you sit still and keep quiet.”
“I can sit still. I don’t know about quiet. I’ve got three thousand questions, and they’re fermenting. Who are we waiting for?”
“I don’t know,” Shayne said shortly.
“Mike, did you knock against something?” Frieda said.
“Yeah. Tim, get the end of the rope. You can help pull.”
“I brought you a bottle, but I see you’ve already got one. Can I take a drink once in a while?”
“Quietly.”
After they reset the snare, Rourke had trouble settling down. His little movements made Shayne aware that time was passing, and that the real dawn would soon be breaking. He heard the bottle being opened, and Rourke breathing out after drinking. There was enough light from outside for Shayne to see that he was being offered the bottle. He drank and handed it back.
Rourke continued to fidget. Shayne was about to tell him to wait somewhere else when he heard a faint noise in the corridor. This time there had been no telephone warning. Shayne’s grip tightened.
The door opened very fast. As Shayne went backward he caught a glimpse of a slender figure wearing hospital whites. A gold hoop swung from one ear.
The noose tightened, and he heard a head hit the floor. The light came on.
“Watch it,” Shayne told Frieda as she advanced. “That’s close enough. He has a knife.”
Cognac was gurgling out of the open bottle. Rourke, nearly all the way down, was holding the rope desperately with both hands.
“Mike, get the bottle.”
Shayne turned the bottle right side up. “You got him. Just hang on.”
“That’s not so-easy.”
At the opposite end of the line, Pedro was thrashing wildly. He was completely off the floor, suspended by one ankle. Each convulsive movement jerked Rourke up and down. With Frieda’s help, Shayne lashed the rope to the bed. Then he stepped in close and kicked their prisoner in the neck. The agitated movements stopped and the knife clattered down.
“Is that the same man?” Frieda asked.
“Yeah. The guns were to make me stand still so he could use the knife. Now it’s time to break some news. Tim, pay attention.”
Rourke was jacking himself erect, fingering his spine. “That’s the first real exercise I’ve had in months. Like hooking into a goddamn marlin.”
“Shut up, Tim,” Frieda said. “Mike has something to tell us.”
“I’m now denying that I took any illegal payments from Max Geary,” Shayne said.
Rourke’s head came forward. “What do you mean, what do you mean? If they weren’t illegal, what were they?”
“I never received them. Now let’s sit down and see if we can make any sense out of this.”