“I’ll try. But he’s convinced that if he doesn’t keep this date, he’s through in politics, and he could be right.”
“Do you think there’s a chance he leaked that story about the U.S. Metals retainer?”
“Why would he do that?” Berger said, surprised. “It was a slam. He’s known as a civil-rights man-it’s going to hurt him with the liberals.”
“Unless he’s looking for new backing,” Shayne said. “It costs money to run for senator. It’s just the kind of tricky move he’s famous for. He hasn’t had much exposure on the home screen lately, and from what I know about Crowther, I’m sure it’s been bothering him. This U.S. Metals story is what’s bringing out the demonstrators tomorrow. The more excitement, the bigger the headlines.”
“True,” Berger said doubtfully, “but he doesn’t go out of his way to stir up trouble. One of the few things I like about him, he’s a coward.”
When Shayne laughed, Berger said seriously, “That’s a compliment. A little realistic cowardice is a fine trait in an elected official. It’s the hunters and shooters, who don’t know what it means to be afraid, who drive me crazy. If he didn’t think it was vital to be here-and I don’t mean just important, I mean vital-he’d cancel like a shot. When I told him you’d been tipped off to an assassination, I really thought he’d turn white and call in his speech-writers to draft a statement of why, after all, it was impossible for Attorney General Crowther to go to Miami. It jarred him, but not much. He lit a cigarette, and his hand was hardly shaking at all.”
Shayne tapped his glass thoughtfully. “He usually follows your suggestions?”
“Always, Mike, he’s always been very docile. If I tell him to go in the back way he may gripe about it-they all do-but he goes in the back way. He takes his hate mail seriously. I remember once-” His eyes narrowed. “You had something to do with the Felix Steele case, didn’t you?”
“Not officially, and too late to change the outcome.”
“It’s a funny thing, but the first person I thought of when I listened to that tape you played us was Steele’s wife, I forget her first name.”
“Camilla.”
“Does she still live in Miami? She used to write Crowther regularly, and if you’re interested in threatening letters, hers were gems. I had a long talk with her myself, and I came to the conclusion that she didn’t really mean what she said. But Crowther thought she meant it. He got her a job, to give her something to think about. We had her arrested briefly, and I think the letters finally stopped. Anyhow they didn’t get as far as me. It’s something I’ll have to check.” He looked at the time. “I’m getting an eleven o’clock flight back, but I’d better phone him before he goes to bed. Conceivably the mysterious lady with the gun will convince him that Miami isn’t healthy. Order me another drink. It’s on the government.”
Catching the waiter’s eye, Shayne made a swirling gesture for another round. Something Berger had said bothered him. He returned to the start of the conversation and followed it through again, ending with the same dissatisfied feeling. He put out his cigarette, crumpling it viciously, and started over once more.
Berger returned, and took the top off his Scotch before saying anything.
“Here’s the current theory, and it’s a wild one. The Steele woman is still writing Crowther, mailing her letters from different cities and using words cut out of newspapers. They aren’t signed, but there’s something about the tone. A sort of playfulness, he says. Very macabre, apparently. He didn’t want to get her in any more trouble because of everything she’s been through, that’s why he didn’t report it. Translated out of Crowtherese, that means he didn’t think the evidence was good enough to get a conviction.”
“How current is this?”
“Very. The last one was two days ago, postmarked Miami. It was in a kind of elementary Spanish. Now I’m going to tell you a secret, Mike. Last month Jenkinson, the Supreme Court Justice, was checking his climbing equipment before he went off to climb some damn South American mountain. One of his nylon ropes snapped under a fifty-pound pull. He turned it over to us for analysis. On either side of the break, the strands had been weakened by acid.”
“What’s the connection?”
“Wait a minute. He thought it might have something to do with his antisegregation opinions, and that worried Crowther because he’d argued some of those cases for the government. Oddly enough, Jenkinson denied the last application for a stay of execution in the Steele case. Here’s Crowther’s notion. Maybe this madwoman plans to eliminate, one by one, everybody who had a part in her husband’s death. Unquote. He feels it’s his duty to force her hand and possibly forestall a number of other killings. So he’s coming. No change in plans.”
He drank angrily. “That sabotaged rope was like the anonymous letters-playful. Alpinists are careful people. Jenkinson tests everything very carefully before he starts up a mountain, and whoever weakened that rope probably knew it. It’s as though she wants to do something to notify her old enemies that she’s still around, still thinking about them. What if Sparrow’s eyewitness was actually Camilla? A mild hoax, and of course we all panicked. I don’t know. I expect she’ll be hard to find. That would be part of the joke. But find her, Mike. If Teddy can identify her we’ll get her committed.”
“I always thought she was quite a woman,” Shayne said. “So did I when I met her. What difference does that make?”
CHAPTER 9
Camilla Steele lived in a garden apartment in Buena Vista.
Michael Shayne and a city detective named Squires approached the building. Squires rang the bell. Getting no answer, he opened the door with a skeleton key. Entering, they turned on all the lights and carefully searched the empty apartment.
The air-conditioning was on high. A double bed in the bedroom was unmade. The condition of the sheets showed that whoever had slept there last had done considerable tossing and turning. In addition to being a restless sleeper, Camilla was a compulsively untidy housekeepeer. A container of cream had been left out in the messy kitchen. Numerous empty liquor bottles, torn pill containers and partially smoked cigarettes were scattered about. Shayne made a careful inventory of the medicine cabinet. There were several kinds of headache remedies, different brands of prescription tranquillizers. Amphetamine and barbiturate prescriptions had been written by different doctors. Her birth-control pills were dated in sequence so she wouldn’t lose track; she was currently three days behind.
There were more barbiturates in the bedroom, again from different drugstores, with different prescription numbers. The bureau was littered with unopened bills, loose change and a checkbook. She hadn’t added up the checkbook for three months. One of the bills was from a doctor named Irving Miller. Shayne tore this open. Dr. Miller was a psychiatrist, with a Miami Beach office, and Camilla Steele owed him for professional services which the doctor valued at $950.
Squires phoned headquarters and read a list of numbers he found scrawled on the card at the beginning of her phone book. Gentry, at the other end of the connection, asked to speak to Shayne.
After taking the phone, Shayne said, slowly, “I think we’d better get out an all-precinct call, Will. Her car’s not in the garage. She’s forgotten to take her birth-control pill for three days running. From the looks of the apartment she hasn’t been paying much attention to routine lately. There are enough pills in the place to kill three people. A week’s newspapers scattered around. There’s a picture of Crowther on the front page of today’s News, and somebody’s stuck three pins through it.”
“Hold on, Mike.” He told somebody in his office to get on another phone and find out the make and license number of Camilla Steele’s car. Coming back to Shayne, he said, “Does it look as though she was home today?”