Murder Spins the Wheel (16 page)

“How do you know what I wanted?” she said.

“I’m guessing,” Shayne admitted, “but I do know you didn’t want to go on working in an insurance office. You arranged a meeting with Steve Bass. He liked you. Soon you were working for his father.
He
liked you. A girl with your looks and style, working in his house most of the time, would have no trouble getting an invitation to the Riviera. Vince found out the name of a man to see in France. He sold the deal to Doc Waters, and Doc scraped up the money to finance it.”

Williams looked around at Doc, who smiled lewdly and spread his arms. “Frisk me, fellows. Anybody who finds any junk gets a free cigar.”

“Theo made the connection in France,” Shayne went on. “She wangled this Alfa out of Harry and brought it back through the customs loaded with heroin. But you didn’t turn over the entire shipment, did you, dear? You took your pay in kind, and waited. Vince had a handle that could produce a football fix some day. When he found out about a mare that was going to win a horse race at a long price, you were ready to move. For the key hour and a half this afternoon, when Harry might have softened the blow by laying off some of the bets, you kept him busy. And you’re right, the Constitution says you don’t have to tell us how you did it. Harry wasn’t supposed to spot the football fix, but he did. Everything else went like clockwork. We thought at first that the big thing was the double fix, but that was only step number one. The stickup was step number two. Step number three was where it was supposed to end—with Harry being picked up in New York on a narcotics rap which he couldn’t beat. You had the run of the house. You handled Harry’s plans. You could plant the heroin in any one of a dozen ways, and the arrest could take place anywhere, even here in Miami. But New York was better. It’s chilly there at this time of year, and you could insist he wear his topcoat. After that, an anonymous call to the New York cops. He would have been tried up there, where the judges are hard on narcotics wholesalers. He wouldn’t be back in his home town for twenty years, if he lived that long.”

“I don’t get that part, Mike,” Rourke said. “What was her object?”

“To take over,” Shayne said quietly. “This girl has ambition. She knows the ins and outs of Harry’s business, legal and illegal. Probably not much of it is written down. In the first days after Harry’s arrest, everybody would have to turn to her.”

“Shayne, you’re a nut,” Doc Waters said flatly. “There’s dissatisfaction around, plenty of it, but who’d accept a woman?”

“You would,” Shayne said. “She’s a smart girl, and I think she could have pulled it off. Not all at once, step by step. Nobody likes a Donnybrook, with everybody brawling for the top spot. For a while she’d carry on as Harry’s agent, and after maybe two or three years people would realize how good she was. And let’s face it, she’s good. Look at the generalship that went into this thing tonight. She’d be the
first,
like the first woman astronaut. She’d be rich, famous, and a credit to her sex.”

“Oh, I’m so brilliant,” Theo said bitterly.

Shayne continued, “But Harry didn’t like the idea of going to jail for handling narcotics, and he didn’t stop to think it over. He blew. Theo didn’t know this, of course. Am I right so far? She went to her brother’s boat to look for a bait bucket filled with money. I’ll tell you more about that bait bucket in a minute. She emptied it and put it with the rest of the take in her Alfa. She was a little worried about me, I think, because I was pointed in the right direction. She was with me when we heard about New York. That was a bad blow. She turned pale and she cried. They were genuine tears. I tasted one to make sure. I think she thought I was kissing her.”

He grinned at her. She said acidly, “You’re a real bastard.”

“Yes, Theo. The tears weren’t for Harry, but for what had happened to her plans. She had an elegant chess solution all worked out, and Harry had kicked over the board. Now if I could talk to Harry before anything else happened, I might be able to convince him to go to the hospital and lie down. She must have considered shooting me. But she only had a small gun, and it might not have stopped me. So she shot herself. She knew exactly what Harry would do if he made it to Miami. He’d head for Doc Waters. Harry knew Doc wanted him replaced, and he knew that Doc had been dabbling in narcotics. Naturally he thought Doc was the source of the heroin in the lining of his coat. Theo wanted the meeting to take place. If Harry killed him, which came close to happening, he’d still be tainted with narcotics and he’d have a murder to answer for, regardless of what happened to the New York cop. She managed to hold me up for a couple of hours, and it was nearly enough. Another five minutes would have done it.”

“Mike,” Rourke said, “there’s one big hole in this—what happened to Vince?”

“Well, Vince. The poor guy was really hooked on heroin now, and you can’t rely on a heroin addict to show any stamina under police interrogation. He was her little brother, and she was probably fond of him in a way, but she decided he had to go. They had a good cover worked out for him during the time of the stickup, and she turned it into a murder device. He swam across from La Gorce to Normandy Isle, an easy swim, after supposedly knocking himself out with a strong fix of heroin. Her empty Alfa was parked near where he came out of the water. Theo herself was over here typing, on the other side of the island. He changed into his stickup clothes. He’d organized two back-home boys to help—he really did most of the work, when you think how little he got out of it—and after the stickup they dropped him and Harry’s suitcase beside the Alfa. That’s why I was able to catch them on the causeway. Vince stashed the money in the car and got back into his scuba suit. There was one change in plan which I think was his own idea. Maybe he didn’t trust his sister. He towed an empty bait bucket across from the boat, and he towed it back with money in it.”

Rourke said, “But if she was here in the house, how did she kill him?”

“Here I go on guessing,” Shayne said. “Underneath that chilly surface she has a heart. I think she left him a shot of heroin, along with the works to inject himself with, on the same principle that the bear in the circus gets a lump of sugar after he does a somersault. Vince would be very dry and nervous by this time, and how could he resist? He’d figure on being back on the boat before it took hold. And even if he waited he’d still be out of her hair. How? Simple. She left him an overdose.”

“She killed him!” Steve Bass exclaimed.

“Think of the complications, Steve, if he’d survived. Like everything else she did tonight, this was surefire. It absolutely couldn’t miss. If he went under in the water, a sad death by drowning. If he climbed out and died in bed, his habit killed him. Cops don’t ask questions about a death by overdose. That’s the big way junkies die. He made it as far as the rope ladder on the boat, and he died in the water.”

Shayne tossed the charred bottle cap to Rourke. “What’s this look like, Tim?”

Rourke lowered it into the beam of one of the head lights. “A junkie used it to cook up his fix! You found this in the front seat of her car?”

He tossed it back to Shayne, who held it out to Theo. She refused to touch it.

“Wouldn’t anybody as brilliant as you say I am, clean out the car?”

Shayne shrugged. Rourke said, watching him carefully, “You mean she’s in the clear, Mike? She murdered her brother, she organized a stickup, she smuggled drugs, she framed Harry and fooled him all along the line so he ended up by killing a cop, and
there isn’t a thing we can get her on?”

“I don’t see how,” Shayne said. “This girl is really and truly one of the smartest I’ve ever met. Vince made all the contacts, and he’s not around to testify. Even the dough under the back seat isn’t going to hurt her. It hasn’t been reported stolen. I want twenty thousand, but the rest of it goes back to Harry. Any objections, Theo?”

“I’ll let you know in the morning,” she said with her usual coolness. “After I’ve consulted a lawyer.”

And suddenly there was the roar of a .45. Theo was knocked against the fender of her little car. Her face looked astonished and disappointed. She clutched her stomach with both hands. She stared in dismay at Harry Bass, on one elbow on the top step, trying to steady the .45 to get off another shot. Then she pitched forward on the gravel.

Shayne pounced on Painter as the little man raised his gun. Shayne paralyzed his forearm with a chopping blow, and the gun dropped. Harry twisted onto the .45, and there was another roar. The impact of the heavy slug kicked him backward against the railing.

Shayne strode across the gravel and looked down at him. Harry’s eyes were clear and in focus, bright with tears. He gave a crooked smile and lifted one finger in farewell. Then his head fell back.

After the two hammering shots and the quick flurry of action, no one moved for a moment.

Then Rourke said, “That was careless of you, Mike. I saw he was listening to that whole last part, but I didn’t know there was a gun beside him. You usually notice those things.”

“Yeah,” Shayne said wearily. “Don’t I?”