“You don’t happen to have those calls on tape?”
“No, I’m guessing. It’s my guess that he’d use a trace of a Spanish accent, to tie it in with the Latin American demonstrations.”
Rourke shook his head decisively. “The trouble is, everything would have to work out exactly right, and how often does that happen? After he gave her the gun she wouldn’t be under his control.”
“Back off a step, Tim. I know it sounds complicated, but it’s really incredibly simple. I think we’ll find that Crowther and Justice Jenkinson know each other socially. At some point in the last few months he located Jenkinson’s climbing gear and switched ropes. After that, it was a matter of two or three phone calls. He couldn’t possibly lose. If she said no, he could stop worrying about the letters. If she agreed, and then found that she couldn’t go through with it after all, she’d be mad at herself, and the next time she tried suicide she’d make sure nobody was around to bring her back.”
“And if she actually did take out the gun and fired-”
“Sure. She’d miss. She’s been drinking heavily. There’s a chance she never handled a gun before in her life. Nobody’ll be surprised if she misses the target with all her shots, even at close range. Then one of two things can happen. Everybody’s going to be very tense and gun-shy. The place will be crawling with cops and Secret Service people. They’ve been warned that an assassin is around somewhere. Suddenly a wild-eyed woman starts banging away with a revolver. Their guns are going to jump into their hands, and it’s a fairly safe bet that one or two will go off.”
Rourke repeated his long whistle. “Son of a bitch. Tricky, all right, even for Crowther.”
“And if she lives through it, she’ll get a long jolt in jail or end up in a hospital for the criminally insane. Either way, she’ll be out of his hair.”
“Now wait. Wait. What if she doesn’t get off all the shots, and we find a couple of blank rounds in her gun?”
“In Crowther’s shoes, in one of the early phone calls I’d tell her to keep firing till the gun was empty. Five shots are better than one, and so on. I’d keep drumming it into her until I was sure she understood it.”
“Mike, it’s too fantastic to believe, but I’m almost beginning to believe it. If it worked, it would make his career. He’s important enough to demonstrate against. He’s important enough to try to kill. The publicity! My God, it would go on for weeks. The best kind of publicity. There was a story once about how he choked when he was flying somewhere and one of the engines caught fire. He went down on his knees and prayed. It hurt him politically. Everybody thought it was a little excessive, a little chicken. This would blot that all out. A cool head in a crisis. And why the hell wouldn’t he be cool, if he knew there weren’t any real bullets in the gun? Mike, it could make him President! What a story, what a story.”
“Are you convinced?”
“I didn’t say that. I said what a story. Because what’s it based on? A long series of guesses.”
“Up to a point. He’s prosecuted enough murder cases to know the importance of physical evidence. There’s one gap in the story the way it stands. If she fired five live rounds and missed with all five, what happened to the slugs?”
Rourke looked thoughtful. “That would certainly be asked. They couldn’t all fly out an open window.”
Shayne stood up decisively. Leaving the dais, he strode to the television platform.
“I may need your testimony, Tim, so pay close attention. Publicity is the key to this. You know he’d make sure the cameras were pointed the right way. All three networks are going to be here tomorrow. After he’s seated and while he’s speaking he’ll get full security coverage, and she wouldn’t be able to shoot more than once or twice. For Crowther’s purposes, the best time for the shooting to take place would be during the first minute or two after he gets off the elevator. A crowd will be milling around. He’ll want to be looking straight at the cameras when it happens, so people can see how calm and unruffled he is. That means the assassin ought to be standing just about here.”
He indicated a spot in the corridor, outside the arched entrance to the ballroom. There was a cigarette-shaped burn in the carpet, possibly put there as a marker. The burn pointed toward the elevators.
Rourke’s undernourished frame was coiled forward. “Goddamn it, Mike, you mean you’ve found some bullet holes?”
“Two,” Shayne said. “There may be others, but two would be enough. He wouldn’t want to have more holes than shots. If she fires twice and the unfired rounds turn out to be blanks, whoever loaded the gun made a mistake, that’s all. Here’s the line of fire.”
He extended his arm, an imaginary gun in his hand. Rourke followed the line down the corridor. Beyond the elevators, the corridor turned sharply. He examined the wall at the turn.
“Hell, I don’t see anything.”
“She fired high.”
Rourke peered up doubtfully. “I see a couple of black dots-”
Shayne brought him a chair from the ballroom. “Look closer.”
Rourke clambered up on the chair and straightened gingerly. The plaster was painted a dull green. The two holes were several inches apart, a foot or so below the molding. Shayne opened his pocket knife and passed it up to him.
“Dig one of them out.”
Rourke twisted the point of the knife in the hole. A moment later he stepped down with a bullet in his hand.
“There’s a time warp here. The gun that fired this bullet isn’t scheduled to go off till tomorrow morning. Mike, I’d say this is conclusive. But dear God, it’s extraordinary! On the basis of a goofy…”
He looked at his friend curiously. “Unless you put it there yourself?”
“That’s a dumb suggestion.”
“It’s just so goddamned extraordinary! On the basis of a goofy theory you decide there are going to be two bullet holes in a wall seventy-five feet away, nine feet from the floor, and sure enough, there they are.”
Shayne said impatiently, “There’s only one place she could stand so the TV cameras could get Crowther’s expression. Bullets travel in a straight line.”
“I suppose this slug was fired by the same gun she’ll be using tomorrow?”
“I think so. I also think there’ll be a silencer on it. I agree it’s extraordinary. That doesn’t mean it was especially hard to arrange. Crowther stayed in this hotel last week. Anybody can get off the elevator at this floor and look around. After one or two in the morning he’d have the place to himself. Again, there was no risk. No risk at all. If the rest of the scheme didn’t pan out, nobody would notice the holes until the next time the place is painted.”
“Well, it’s fantastic.”
Rourke tossed the bullet in the air and caught it as it came down. Shayne asked to see it.
“Twenty-five caliber,” he said. “That closes another loophole. It’s hard to buy twenty-five caliber ammunition in this country. If she fired the gun by accident, she couldn’t reload it.”
“Fantastic,” Rourke said again. “And we’d better call a meeting right away, because I can name a few people you won’t be able to convince in a hurry. Peter Painter, for one.”
“I don’t intend to tell Painter.”
Rourke went back to the ballroom, where he headed for the whiskey bottle. He replenished his glass and sat down.
“Now I want to see if I really heard that. You don’t intend to tell Painter?”
Shayne held the cognac bottle to the light to check the level, and poured himself another drink.