To bring his anger under control, DeLuca forced himself to unwrap a stick of gum slowly and deliberately and chew it down.
“Well, you blew it,” he told the boy, shivering in the chill blast of the air-conditioning. “This has been embarrassing for me, and if that slob comes home, it could be a lot more than embarrassing. I feel like blasting you, I really do, and start over with somebody else.”
“Please-”
In fact, DeLuca was strongly tempted. The trouble was, the recruiting and briefing would all take time, and he shouldn’t even be here, he should be out accumulating the ransom.
“I’m going to give you one more crack. Better not fuck up twice. Stay here. No women. Be awake and dressed and straight by three-thirty.”
Chapter 17
Shayne, back in his own car, met the bondsman in Homestead. Half an hour later the man brought out the construction workers, Benjamin and Vaughan, who had been arrested the night before for the possession of heroin.
Shayne unlatched his rear door and said he would drive them to work. “I’m Michael Shayne. I’m a friend of Soupy Simpson. Which one of you is Benjamin?”
The stockier man nodded slightly. They were both in their thirties, in need of a shave and a shower, wearing work pants and dirty T-shirts. Shayne had two cartons of take-out coffee and a box of doughnuts. That convinced them he was friendly. They got in the car.
“That stuff was planted on us,” Benjamin said.
“Three ounces, they tell me. That’s a lot to invest in a practical joke.” He passed them the coffee. “I’d like to watch your reactions, but I’ve got to be moving. Everybody seems to think you’ve been stealing construction equipment on a regular basis. True or false?”
Benjamin took a swallow of coffee. “We’ll plead to that when the time comes.”
“That won’t be the charge. The rap is much worse.” The traffic light changed, and he moved. “First-degree murder.”
One of the men said softly, “How do you make that out?”
“Somebody hit the Homestead job last night and took everything that wasn’t nailed down. It all ended up in your trailer.”
“Why don’t you talk to Soupy about that? Take money.”
“As soon as Soupy understands what he’s mixed up in,” Shayne said, “I think he’ll be hard to get hold of. I’d give you the same advice, except that you’re in a lot deeper. But I think I see a way you can dig yourself out. That’s why I put up your bail.”
“Out of the kindness of your heart,” one of the men said ironically. “Now you want a return favor. First-degree murder. Who was murdered?”
“Two people. Eddie Maye, a loan shark, a kidnapping attempt that misfired. Somebody else burned to death in your trailer. He hasn’t been identified yet. I think they’ll find he was also shot in the stomach, which helped. One other thing. The big boss was kidnapped.”
“ Canada?”
“That’s right, a big fish, and they want a big price for him. Apparently the kidnapping and robbery took place at pretty much the same time. The police have decided both crimes were committed by the same people. Canada was meeting somebody in the command trailer. A secret meeting, highly confidential, and the other person won’t step forward to admit it happened unless he absolutely has to. You were working with Canada in a pilfering racket. People will say you set up that meeting to report or pass money, got him out there, and grabbed him. Now for the next step, the big one. There isn’t much doubt the Canada kidnappers are also the Eddie Maye kidnappers. It’s one of those things where you’re going to be presumed guilty unless you can prove yourself innocent. How does it sound, pretty rough?”
“We’ve been in the tank most of the night. We haven’t been running around mailing ransom notes.”
“Nobody thinks you did it all single-handed. You’d have somebody outside to handle the messages. Maybe you even set up the bust yourself so you’d have a fixed address overnight.”
Both men protested the absurdity of the idea, and Shayne went on, “When they rake through the ashes, they’re going to find a payloader wheel, an acetylene tank, a welding torch, and a lot else. They’ll trace it back. I happen to know where you got it. You got it from Soupy, and Soupy got it from me. You don’t have to understand how that happened, just how it looks, and it looks bad. So I know you’ve already made up your mind to help.”
For a moment there was nothing from the back seat, not even the sound of swallowing.
“How?” Benjamin said then.
After dropping the construction workers, Shayne called the bowling alley and asked for Soupy Simpson.
“Another moneymaking opportunity,” Shayne told him. “I’m paying three hundred for this, and you may be able to milk it at the opposite end. I want to plant a story so every cop in town above the rank of patrolman will hear about it before noon. I want to start it in three places-Miami, Miami Beach, and the sheriff’s office. How are your connections?”
“Good in all three. Go ahead, Mike, I’m listening.”
“Larry Canada has been snatched. His wife had a phone call so we know he’s alive. The asking price is one million, and Lou DeLuca is raising it. The deadline is four-thirty. They’re under strong pressure to keep the cops out of it.”
“And you want the cops in on it?”
“One certain cop. I don’t know which one.”
“Larry Canada snatched, one million, DeLuca.”
“Don’t leave out the phone call-Canada himself talking.”
“Got it. Mike, can you hand-deliver the money? I was listening to the morning news. A dead man in a trailer. I think I’ll take a little vacation.”
“Good idea. I was about to suggest it.”
Jack Downey was in bad shape. He dropped a couple of speed-up pills, and usually that was enough to enable him to get through the day. Today it merely had the effect of making everything spin. It was an ordinary Miami day, sunshine through smog, but the light hurt his eyes. It seemed to Downey that everybody looked at him strangely. He shouldn’t have been so greedy. Why hadn’t he settled for the small gain? He was a small man, what was wrong with small money? The details of the night were already beginning to recede. Those kooks, Werner and Pam, had talked him into it, and then when the going got rough, they ran.
After some bad experiences with partners, who invariably let him down, he had made his superiors acknowledge that he worked better alone. All they were interested in was results, and Downey got those, although it was fair to say that lately he had lost some of his edge. He had some paper work to get out of the way before he could coop up for the day. He was fighting the typewriter, making mistake after mistake, when Soupy Simpson called.
Downey stood up so abruptly that he sent the typewriter table squealing back against the next desk. The man there looked at him curiously. Downey asked Soupy a few low questions. It was a rumor, that was all, but Soupy had heard it from several sources, and he thought Downey might be interested, not that he saw any connection with the other thing Downey had been asking about the night before, the pilferage thing. “A phone call?” Downey said. “To the wife?”
“That’s what Lou DeLuca is saying. He has a tape he’s playing for people.”
Downey thanked Soupy for thinking of him, then sat down and tried to finish the form. After four wrong strikes in a row, he yanked the damn thing out of the machine and filed it. Alive? Of course Canada wasn’t alive. This was some kind of con. He put on his harness and left without telling anyone where he was going. He didn’t know himself. It sometimes helped just to get in the car and go.
Using an outside booth, he called a friend in the sheriff’s office and asked if they had anything new on the burned-out trailer. No identification yet; they were trying to get a dental chart, but the teeth were scattered all over. Downey drove a few blocks, pulled up at another phone, and called the Homestead barracks. Benjamin and Vaughan, in spite of having been caught with three bags of pure, were out on $10,000 bail. What did it mean?