“Yeah,” Shayne said. “Very good idea. I spent four days up there last month. If they know anything about Adam, and I’m not sure they do, it’s classified. I didn’t have the proper clearance.”
“What the hell!” Gentry exclaimed. “You broke up that New York deal without any help from anybody. Doesn’t that qualify you-”
“I thought so,” Shayne said. “They didn’t seem to agree with me. They’ve got a jurisdiction to protect. And I guess it’s understandable. I broke a few rules.”
“Why, the bastards,” Gentry said in disgust. “I get along pretty well with the Congressman. Why don’t I see what strings I can pull?”
“Forget it. Will. I don’t belong to the club, and I do better that way.”
He stood up. Gentry remained seated, swinging from side to side in his swivel chair.
“You’re not being your usual hard-nosed self, Mike, I’m happy to see. I thought I was going to have trouble with you. I take it you’ll have no objection to talking to somebody who knows more about this Adam business than you or I do?”
“Who’s that?”
“A Frenchman named Jules LeFevre. He’s a prefect in the Paris police, on assignment to Interpol. Do you want to hear more?”
“Damn right I want to hear more. Keep talking.”
“You surprise me. I told him I thought you were just bullheaded enough to want to handle this by yourself.”
Shayne was scraping his chin with his thumbnail. “How much do you know about him?”
“I never saw him before today. But I had an idea you might be asking, so I called Paris. He’s who he says he is. I’m the cop on the beat and he had to check in with me, but he didn’t really tell me what he was doing so far from home.” He stood up and came around the desk. “When you find out, tell me, Mike. You’re a local responsibility. He’s at the Sans Souci, on the Beach.” He hesitated. “Better take a gun with you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I’m probably all wrong,” Gentry said slowly. “But he gave me the impression he wasn’t too serious. That’s the worst thing I can say about a cop. It’s a game with him, and people like that take the wrong kind of chances. Don’t hold me to that. As I keep telling you. I’m a meat-and-potatoes man. I know you’ve got a prejudice against carrying a gun-”
“Especially on the Beach.”
“Make an exception this time, will you, Mike?”
The private detective shrugged. “If you say so, Will.”
CHAPTER 3
Jules LeFevre had only one arm. His empty coat sleeve was pinned to his shoulder. He gave Shayne a reverse handshake with his left hand and drew him into the room.
“So you survived. Without a scratch. My heart jumped when I heard about it, I can tell you. What will you drink? I have Scotch and cognac, or we can order from the hotel bar.”
“Cognac.”
Shayne watched him pour the drinks deftly with his single hand. He was in his mid-fifties, with a sharp-featured face, a neat, narrow mustache, waxed at the points, thinning black hair which he combed across. His suit was sharply pressed, with a decoration in the buttonhole of the jacket. He wore narrow pointed shoes, a faint but unmistakable perfume. He chatted rapidly as he handed Shayne a snifter half full of brandy. His pronunciation was good, but he ran the words together in short, fast takes.
“I’m afraid there’s no doubt who thought up those devilish cameras, eh?” he said brightly, his sharp little eyes probing Shayne’s face. “It’s an Adam idea. Brilliant, but also definitely perverted. Why not simply come up to you on the street with an ordinary gun? Bang bang. You fall to the sidewalk. One more shot in the brain to make sure you are dead. But the commonplace is never good enough for Adam. The world must applaud his cleverness. And you knew, he was clever enough this afternoon so failure was almost as good as success. People will think you only escaped because the goddess of luck wrapped her cloak around you. I think so myself. Very well, Michael Shayne. You would like to take him, would you not?”
“Yeah,” Shayne said briefly. “Gentry said you have an idea about how to do it.”
The Frenchman took a long drink of straight Scotch. “I have an excellent idea. Why do you think this attempt was made today, not a week from today, or a month from today? He has an operation which he wishes to work through Miami. He will feel more confidence if you are lying in the morgue with a shattered skull.”
“What kind of operation?”
“Gold. Gold smuggling. And because it is Adam, of course, it is complex and ingenious. Do you know much about the illegal traffic in gold?”
“I see headlines about the gold drain. Big political policy stuff. As for the illegal traffic, it’s not something I think about very much.”
“It is one of my specialties. Adam is another. The two subjects overlap-for the last five years he has financed about a third of the world’s illegal gold movements, by our calculations. The profits, my dear Shayne, the profits have been glorious.”
He swallowed more Scotch. “The subject of gold makes me thirsty, for some peculiar reason. After I have finished my small lecture, perhaps you will show me what Miami Beach has to offer in the way of after-dark entertainment. I have a theory, unhappily not shared by the academic sociologists, that the quality of a given civilization can best be expressed in terms of its striptease. I don’t know if you agree with me. Have you dined?”
“Not yet.”
“Then perhaps you will dine with me. Meanwhile, take some pate or caviar. The pate is excellent, I recommend it. Now back to the business.” He pointed up the ends of his mustache. “The ordinary citizen, of course, cannot buy gold in the United States, but in certain European countries, Switzerland is a good example because of the anonymity of the banking system, if you happen to have fourteen thousand dollars in cash, a gold dealer will be delighted to sell you a bar weighing four hundred ounces. And in certain Asian countries that same bar is worth twenty-eight thousand dollars, which presents an overwhelming temptation to people who like a hundred-percent profit on turnover. Dowries in India and Pakistan are computed in gold. The currencies there are weak. Officials are bribable. And so the trade flourishes.”
His white, even teeth bit into a cracker.
“The typical route, we all know it, is from Europe to banks in the Middle East, and from there-all so far perfectly legal-to the ancient fishing villages on the Red Sea, on the Gulf of Aden, on the Persian Gulf. A Persian Gulf sheikhdom in a year’s time will import, legally, gold bullion amounting to some fifty million dollars. According to officially published records, it will export hardly a sou. Among the fishing dhows in the harbor, you see, there are three or four secretly equipped with diesel engines. Gold is loaded on these vessels in the dark of the moon for a quick run to the coast of Asia, where it is unloaded in shoal water at specified points, to be picked up later at the convenience of the gold merchants. Very simple. Very rewarding. I’m not sure how much you know about the role Adam plays in such undertakings?”
“Not a hell of a lot. All I’ve been told is that he provides the financing. The Treasury people don’t want to trust me with any more information.”
“At Interpol we’re a trifle more free and easy. Adam is basically an export-import banker, except that his deals are illegal and he trades in nothing but contraband. He has no formal organization in the usual sense. That makes him a hard man for the police to handle. For two years I’ve done nothing but defend against Adam. That was the most we thought we could do-make things hard for him, increase his costs, interfere with an occasional deal and keep harassing his subordinates, until eventually he himself as well as the people he needs to impress will begin to believe he’s losing his touch. We never expected to arrest him. All he has to do is stay in his exquisite Georgian house in the Mayfair district of London and we can’t touch him.”