“But it’s an obvious phony!” Peter Painter said waspishly. “I’m surprised you’re taking it so seriously. It’s supposed to distract our attention so they can hit us somewhere else.”
General Turner started to speak, and Painter said hastily, “I’m not saying we shouldn’t take every precaution. I can assure you that my Miami Beach organization is ready for anything short of a natural disaster. If these radicals think they’re going to outflank me, they’re in for a surprise. There’ll be some skulls cracked tomorrow, I can promise you that.”
“Which may be just what they want,” Shayne observed. “And I’m prepared to oblige them!”
The meeting broke up twenty minutes later. One important decision had been reached: General Turner had made four phone calls, in ascending order of importance, and a battalion of airborne infantry was promised for nine o’clock the following morning. Security precautions were to be intensified at the airport and the hotel. The assassination tip was to be kept quiet. The printing plant that had printed Vega’s leaflets had been fire-bombed earlier that evening, and the leaders of every militant Latin American organization in Miami were to be picked up and held on high bail until Eliot Crowther had completed his speech and started back.
Berger and Shayne left the room together. Teddy Sparrow, who had bolted to the corridor the minute the meeting was over, intercepted them at the elevators.
“Mike,” he said, patting his forehead with a folded square of Kleenex, “could I have a word with you, more or less in private?”
“Be with you in a minute, Abe.” He took his plump ex-colleague further down the corridor. “What is it, Teddy?”
“Well, listen, I didn’t anticipate getting thrown in there with the top brass. I used to hold my own pretty well when I had the investigator’s license, but I know what your regular cop thinks of people in protection agencies. Glorified night watchmen. Painter! He looks down his nose at anybody who didn’t pass their civil service exams. Never mind that. I wanted to ask what you think about that telegram Devlin got. Do you think there’s a chance it was a fake?”
“A very good chance, Teddy,” Shayne said. “Gentry’s checking on it.”
Sparrow patted his forehead. “And the deduction I make from that is that something’s definitely going to take place at the airport tomorrow, and they wanted to get Devlin out of town. Not so flattering to yours truly, but let that go. Damn it, I may not have that much experience in airport security, but I know the physical plant inside out, and if I say it myself, I have good rapport with the men. Who are not all dunces, by any manner of means.”
“I’m glad to hear it, Teddy,” Shayne said impatiently. “Can you get to the point?”
“The point is this. The army and Berger and so on are planning to bypass us. You may have noticed that whenever I made a suggestion, it was received with an amused little smile. Well, it’s dumb! It’s all very well, bringing in paratroops, but those boys have never been in Miami International, and they’ll need Seeing Eye dogs to lead them around. Meanwhile, I’ll be getting in everybody’s way out of ignorance of the situation, when I could be making a contribution. I’ll be up all night if I can manage to stay awake, which is a problem with me, and if there’s anything you think I ought to know, I hope you’ll call me.”
“I’m pretty far down the chain of command this time,” Shayne said.
“Now, Mike,” Sparrow said, smiling. “But that’s neither here nor there. Bear it in mind, and here’s what I really wanted to tell you. Painter was sort of pooh-poohing that phone call you got, the voice from nowhere that said the potential assassin was a female. Something happened at the airport tonight, a peculiar little episode on the face of it, and I want to get your opinion. A lady went into the rest room on the main concourse. I can get you the time if you think it’s important. I made a note of it. About nine. As she told me the story, somebody was being sick into a washbowl. Another lady, naturally, that goes without saying. And she had a gun in her hand.”
Shayne frowned. “Why didn’t you bring this up at the meeting?”
“Mike, after the way Painter was cutting me down I didn’t feel like opening my mouth. And nothing came of it. I investigated myself. By the time I got down from my office there was nobody there. It was kind of touchy going into a lavatory for the opposite sex, but I gritted my teeth and went in. Right in the middle of the floor was this empty suitcase. I say empty. There were some crumpled-up pieces of The New York Times inside it, but nothing else. The flight tag was still on the handle. I checked that immediately. It was a New York flight and it came in at four o’clock this afternoon.”
“Did you get a description of the woman?”
“Absolutely. That was the first question I asked, but she was leaning over the basin, and of course the view was definitely from the rear. The impression my informant got was that she was kind of middle-aged, and maybe a Negro.”
Shayne considered for a moment. “Tell Will Gentry right away. He’ll want to talk with your witness and check the flight records. If she came in at four o’clock, why was she still hanging around your terminal at nine? Maybe the airline lost her suitcase. The baggage people might remember her.”
“Oh, my God,” Sparrow said, his hands flying. “The one thing I neglected to do when I interrogated that woman was take her name. I mean, I took down her verbatim statement and I thought that was adequate. I didn’t know anything about a possible assassination at the time.”
“We’ll have to work with what we have,” Shayne said, patiently. “She said a gun. Does that mean a handgun?”
“A pistol. Definitely not a rifle or anything.”
Will Gentry appeared with General Turner. Shayne left them conferring with Sparrow, who was having another nervous attack, smiling too much and continuing to pat at his forehead.
Berger and Shayne found a booth in a dim bar two blocks from City Hall. After ordering drinks Shayne told the Secret Service man about Sparrow’s account of the woman who had been seen in the ladies’ room with a gun in her hand. Berger listened skeptically, reserving judgment.
“How do you evaluate it, Mike?”
“I used Teddy a number of times when he had a private detective’s license. He’s not a complete fool. I admit I’d feel better if Devlin was here. He’s a known quantity. But Teddy can surprise you at times.”
Their drinks arrived. Shayne looked down into his cognac without drinking.
“I still can’t believe Gil Ruiz is here in Miami in person. But even if he’s masterminding it from a distance, we have to expect a certain amount of razzle-dazzle. I think Painter may have been partly right. Isn’t it one of the big theories that to win in guerrilla warfare you fake in one place, and come in somewhere else, where nobody’s expecting you?”
“That’s Chapter One. It’s like a football offense. You try to hide what you’re doing until the defense is committed.”
“OK. Somebody sent a telegram that decoyed Devlin out of town, leaving airport protection in the hands of Teddy Sparrow. So we concentrate on the airport. But Crowther won’t be using the terminal tomorrow. He’ll transfer to a helicopter on one of the taxi-strips. Anybody who wants to take a shot at him out there will have to use a rifle. This woman in the ladies’ room had a pistol. The only place the public will get close enough to use a handgun will be at the hotel.”
“Unless that’s the fake,” Berger said. “That whole scene sounds a little peculiar. Let’s see.” He ticked off the possibilities. “Either Sparrow’s witness was lying and there wasn’t any woman, or she had something else in her hand that only looked like a gun. Or she was really there, and really had a gun, but the scene was staged. Or she was really there and the scene wasn’t staged, in which case we’re dealing with a kook, and not a political assassin.”
Shayne drank half his cognac. “Don’t qualify it when you talk to Crowther. Tell him it’s a real woman with a real gun. It may persuade him to stay home.”