“You’ve surprised me a few times. What are we talking about, whether or not we sleep in separate beds?”
“Damn you, Mike. I made a few careless remarks on that subject, as I hope you don’t remember, but I am not that type of person. Not exclusively that type of person.” She lifted her hands in despair. “I’ve lost track. Don’t sit there looking so sure of yourself.”
“We’re both cops,” Shayne suggested. “This isn’t a pleasure trip. We’re here on business.”
“Precisely. And we’re both mature people. Simply because the job requires us to share a room-”
“Doesn’t mean we have to do anything we don’t really want to.”
“You’re twisting my words! And will you stop grinning? That’s better. It has nothing to do with wanting or not wanting. Mike, listen.”
She pushed back her hair. “When I was seventeen, I had a bad and cynical time. I did some foolish things. Jules LeFevre found me and helped me. He needed an agent who would be accepted by the world I was living in then, on the edge of the drug business, among small criminals and students and politicals. Later I became a bona fide member of the police. I worked for a time on the French Riviera, then in Lisbon. I was given money to dress well, so I wouldn’t look like a policewoman. I broke up a group of jewel thieves when I was twenty-two. I saw Jules only sometimes, and it was always business, but I had a special feeling for him. He had saved me, I think, from something very bad. All during the day today, at odd times, I have remembered that he’s dead. Killed perhaps by one of these people we are playing cat-and-mouse with. Tonight, Mike, I think we should do nothing to break our concentration. If I ever make love to you, I want it to fill my mind! After tomorrow perhaps-”
One foot grazed Shayne’s knee.
The little contact canceled her arguments, and she came in against him. But before their bodies had adjusted to each other the phone rang, not the phone in the Savages’ room, but the one on the table between the beds.
It went on ringing. By the time Shayne decided it had to be answered and reached for it, it had stopped.
“Damn it,” Christa said with a little laugh. “But you see? Definitely not tonight.”
She clicked for the operator and asked if she had a call for them. She made a sour face a moment later.
“Yes, he’s here.”
She handed the phone to Shayne. The familiar too-girlish voice of Mary Ocain exploded against his eardrum.
“Mike! Just what are you up to there, with your blonde bombshell? Why weren’t you answering your phone? You’re supposed to be working, according to the story you gave me. I think it’s too disgusting for words.”
“As a matter of fact,” Shayne said, “we were in the middle of-”
“Don’t tell me!” Mary screamed. “I know what you were in the middle of. I’ve been picturing the scene. Mike, I’m ensconced in bed with a liqueur, a box of chocolates and a ribald paperback novel. I’m wearing a new nightie I bought for this trip on the chance that I might meet some impetuous Latin. I have something to tell you, and I thought I might inveigle you into coming down? It’s Room 285, and my roommate, to everybody’s surprise, has been invited to have drinks with the captain and won’t be in till-”
“What do you have to tell me, Mary?”
“I really think you’d get more out of it face to face?”
She made it a question. “Sorry,” Shayne said curtly. “Could you move it along a little faster, Mary? I’m expecting another call. I don’t want to tie up the phone.”
“I see through that! That’s very transparent! You want to get back to your blonde. Well, I won’t keep you long, a minute or two at the most. And if at any time you want to interrupt me and come down, don’t hesitate.”
“Now that you’ve got that out of the way-”
“Yes, Mike,” she said meekly. “Coyness is one of my many vices. I know you told me to crawl back into the woodwork and leave the investigation to you, but you didn’t think I was going to plug up my ears and wear a blindfold, did you? I didn’t do anything imprudent. I took a very small risk, and it paid off. I’m alive to tell about it.”
“You aren’t telling about it yet,” Shayne said patiently.
“I’m coming to it. I was down on the beach, well-oiled because of the fact that I freckle, and there was quite a breeze blowing. In ten minutes my skin felt like sandpaper. We were supposed to stay another half hour, but I went up to the pool to rinse off, and I saw George Savage going into one of the cabanas. Nothing suspicious about that, but do you remember I told you about that big Japanese with a camera? As I was climbing out of the pool, he went into the same cabana!”
“And you decided it was just a coincidence and went up to your room to change for dinner, because you remembered I told you to stop acting like a character in a Hitchcock movie.”
“No, to be honest with you I didn’t. How often does anybody like me get a chance to do something about crime? Now, Mike, I can tell from the tense way you’re not saying anything that you don’t think it was a good idea. But I’m not a moron. I had my camera with me. If anybody saw me they’d think I was getting into position for a low-angle shot of the beach. And nobody saw me, I’m sure.”
“That’s great,” Shayne said through his teeth.
“Mike, you were right to give away that forty-seven thousand dollars! Of course, poolside cabanas are built of the flimsiest materials. I heard George say something about some arrangement he was making at the casino. I came in on the tail end of that and I didn’t know what he meant until tonight, when some of the other gals and I were arguing about why you didn’t keep the money. And it struck me. They were planning to sandbag you and make it look like a robbery!”
“Yes, Mary. Now, if that’s all-’”
“It’s by no means all! They mentioned a ship, the S.S. Mansfield City. They mentioned a location, La Guaira. For your information, if you’re not up on your geography, that’s the port for Caracas, Venezuela. And they mentioned two names.”
“Mary?” Shayne said when she stopped.
For an instant he thought the connection had been broken. Then she cried, “What do you think you’re doing? Get out this instant or I’ll-”
There was a guttural exclamation. She squealed almost comically and the phone fell. An instant later a click sounded in Shayne’s ear.
CHAPTER 11
Christa, sitting forward, questioned him with a look. He weighed the phone in one hand, then put it down.
“This may he the break I’ve been waiting for,” he said decisively. “Don’t leave this room. When Tim Rourke phones, tell him to come here.”
“Mike, we decided-”
He thrust the thirty-eight into the side pocket of his jacket. “They had no way of knowing she was calling me. It’s a chance to get everything sorted out so we’ll know where we are tomorrow. But if I do get booby-trapped, the gold is scheduled to go out of La Guaira on a ship called the Mansfield City. Give it to the cops, and let’s have everybody picked up when they make the transfer.”
“Mike, be careful.” She added softly, “Come back to me.”
Shayne gave her a slanting grin and ran for the elevators. On the second floor he looked for Room 285. The door was locked, but a locked hotel door never delayed Shayne for long. He entered carefully, his gun out. After waiting a moment, he snapped on the overhead light.
One of the two beds was turned down for the night. The other was badly tangled. A crumpled pillow and a spilled box of chocolates lay on the floor. Shayne took in the scene in a fast glance. As he turned, he heard the loud blast of an automobile horn outside. After going on too long, it broke off abruptly.
Shayne went quickly to the window.
This room was on the blind side of the building. He looked down on a dimly lit expanse of parked cars. The horn sounded again, this time briefly. A flicker of movement near one of the mercury-vapor lamps drew his eye. Three figures, a woman and two men, were struggling in the front seat of a white convertible. The top came down and hid them from view.