Brett Halliday

Last Seen Hitchhiking

Chapter 1

Laws prohibiting hitchhiking usually go roaring through, with a minimum of nays. Every member of every state legislature owns his own automobile; it is one of the unwritten conditions of being elected to office. Knowing how unlikely it is that he will ever find himself standing at the edge of a highway ramp with his thumb up, he has no hesitation in legislating against the practice.

But these are curious laws. Who is being protected, hitchhiker or motorist? No doubt the motorist, but no one has compelled him to pick up the hitchhiker, just as no one has compelled the hitchhiker to hitch. In every big city there is more crime on some streets than on others, but it is not illegal to walk those streets. To some authorities, anti-hitchhiking and anti-vagrancy statutes are closely related — attempts by settled communities to keep out itinerant strangers with no means of support. But there seems to be more to it than that. Hitchhikers, of course, would be silly to carry much money, but often they are students with access to money, not bums or tramps or drifters, who, if stranded, may do mischief or become charges on the public treasury. And yet the state troopers are as harsh with students hitching home from an expensive college as they are with truly penniless outsiders. It is not that hitchhikers are against automobiles; they travel in automobiles. But they are against the ownership of automobiles — the insurance, the 18-percent loans, the worries, the repairs, the status competition, the tensions of driving in expressway traffic, the parking problems. And this goes to the bone. State troopers, whose days are spent moving up and down the highway, are believers. They never would have taken up this line of work if they hadn’t loved cars. Cars are their specialty. They can tell a make and a model year at a glance, from eight hundred yards. And that may explain their savagery to hitchhikers. Not the hair, the dope, the freedom; hitchhikers adhere to the wrong religion. They are parasites, along for the ride. They have all the fun, none of the hassles. If the car they are in breaks down, they look for another ride. Clearly hitchhikers cannot claim the protection of the first ten constitutional amendments, which were adopted before the invention of the gasoline engine.

In spite of everything, hitchhiking flourishes, and this is probably a good thing. A car with a hitcher aboard consumes no more fuel and spews out no more hydrocarbons. Hitching has a history and a tradition and hundreds of thousands of adherents. It is cheap and convenient. It sometimes leads to surprising adventures.

Meri Gillespie was twenty-three. She had been a platform diver in college competition, and she still worked out two or three mornings a week, not as often as she would have liked. Under her sloppy traveling clothes — a loose work-shirt with the cuffs turned back twice, torn-off jeans — her body was trim and sleek. Her shoulder-length blond hair, washed that morning, was now in somewhat of a tangle. A much-used knapsack was slung over one shoulder.

Her first ride, the one she had arranged herself, took her out of Miami and to the Tamiami interchange on 826, The Palmetto expressway. She was waiting a few yards in on the northbound ramp. It was midafternoon. She was the only hitcher on the ramp.

A car passed, accelerating. The driver gave her a surprised sideways glance.

When she received the same kind of glance from the next car, she checked her appearance. Were too many shirt buttons open? No, only two, and there was nothing unusual about the rest of her costume, which was what most young people wore on the road. She was upset, jangly. Her perceptions were unnaturally clear. She was still enormously excited, a little in awe of herself, for she had just committed a crime. It had been justified, she thought, but it was incredibly risky. Most juries, she was afraid, would refuse to listen to excuses or explanations, and would put her in jail for years.

Still, she had no reason to think that any of this showed. In sunglasses, her hand resting carelessly on her knapsack because to raise a thumb or to signal in any way was against the rules, she thought she must look reasonably composed, a college girl just finished with her midyear exams and on her way home for a quick vacation.

Two women in another passing car pointed her out to each other. She did seem to be attracting the wrong kind of attention. And suddenly she remembered a headline in the Daily News. She didn’t read newspapers as a rule; there was too much else going on. She had looked at the first few paragraphs, but hadn’t followed the story inside the paper. A missing girl had been found somewhere in the northern part of the state. She had been butchered, and the pieces of her body had been buried rather carelessly in loose sand several hundred yards from a public beach. She had been hitchhiking. Another party of hitchers on the opposite access ramp had seen her accept a ride, and that was the last time she had been seen alive.

Meri knew perfectly well why she hadn’t read the story. She had been hitching since fourteen and had never had an ounce of trouble she couldn’t handle. She had no intention of giving it up. The year she left home to go to college there had been a spectacular series of hitchhiking murders in Massachusetts. The victims — it seemed to be standard — again had been girls in their late teens and early twenties. There was a pattern — the single girl hitchhiker, the failure to arrive at the destination, the excitement, the discovery of the body. Meri’s parents had begged her, and had finally ordered her to travel in public transportation. She had pretended to accede, going in one door of the bus depot and out the other, and those had been some of her most interesting rides. The point was, there were psychotics on the highways, as there were psychotics everywhere, even among college professors. But Meri had confidence in her own judgment and in her ability to look out for herself. She was deceptively strong. She could pick up the front end of a Volkswagen. She could beat almost anyone at arm-wrestling. She didn’t automatically take the first ride that came along. If there was only one driver, she talked to him for a minute before getting in. She didn’t carry a destination sign. If the wrong signals came out of the car, if she smelled gin or if the man looked too hard at her breasts or didn’t look at them at all, she simply said she was looking for a ride that would go all the way, and stepped back and closed the door.

Naturally she made an occasional mistake. She remembered one driver, an infantry colonel, who kept having the sensation that Russian Communists were trying to jerk the road out from under his wheels. Overcorrecting, he ran across the divider and dodged back and forth through the oncoming traffic. She very nearly didn’t descend safely from that one. Over the years there had been many dykes, several stoned carloads who had wanted her to join in multi-person sex, not excluding the driver, while cruising the Interstate at seventy miles an hour. She had handled all these crises with a minimum of difficulty. She was sincerely convinced that it was less dangerous to hitch than to travel by airplane. Airplanes crashed. Or they were hijacked. And the people you met on airplanes were so bland and predictable.

A car pulled past, getting well into the curve, then stopped and backed up. It was a station wagon, not in good shape, with a university sticker on the rear window. The driver was round-faced, with turn-up shades clipped to wire-rimmed glasses. He was a little overweight. A corner was missing from one of the teeth in his smile. He was driving barefoot.

He flipped up his shades. “That was a double-take, in case you don’t recognize it. Don’t I know you? From school, maybe?”

“Maybe. How far are you going?”

“Lauderdale, will that help?”

“It’s on my way.”

She dropped her knapsack in the back seat and got in front beside him. He went into gear.

“I don’t usually pick people up,” he said. “You can get yourself trapped in some weird conversations. Or those long silences, that’s even worse. No kidding, I know I’ve seen you. Do you go to Miami?”

“I’m in grad school, art history. I’ve just about decided not to finish.”

“The academic life,” he agreed. “It’s a long way from anything real.”

His eyes were brown, slightly bulging. He flipped down his dark glasses and they started up the ramp. The dashboard radio was muttering.

“Hitchhiking,” Meri caught, and her attention sharpened. It was a news program. It seemed that the governor had issued one more of his frequent warnings against the practice, and he had ordered the Highway Patrol to round up all hitchhikers and escort them to the nearest bus station or jail.

The driver made an irritated noise and snapped it off. “People always have to have something to be panicky about. Think of the number of cars on the road in Florida at any given minute. Hundreds of thousands. One little murder and everybody goes into orbit.” He gave her an approving look. “You’ve got sense enough not to fall for that bullshit. That’s really why I stopped.”

“I try not to let that kind of thing bother me.”

“There were twenty-five murders in Miami in the last few months, somebody told me. What’s everybody else supposed to do, leave town? Listen, put on your seat belt, will you? That’s one of the things I do believe in.” He was craning backward, waiting for an opening in the stream of northbound traffic. Meri had difficulty with the complicated harness. The belt seemed to be jammed.

“It’s an inertia belt,” he said, “off a reel. Pull gently.” When she still couldn’t make it come, he changed his blinkers and moved off on the shoulder. “Sometimes it sticks. It may take my delicate touch.”

He reached around to get at the belt, and she was enveloped by him suddenly. She felt a tiny spurt of alarm. Their bodies were in contact at several points. His forearm, grazing her cheek, felt sticky and woolly, like the belly of a caterpillar. The black glasses gave back a twin reflection of a girl, herself, also wearing black glasses.

“I guess it’s unnecessary,” he said, grimacing, “but goddamn it, I’d just worry.”

“If it’s that much of a thing, I’ll wait for another ride.”

“No, here it comes.”

He guided the belt off the reel with his right hand and pulled it across her breast.

There was a sparkle of sweat on his upper lip. She felt warm breath on her face. A sour smell came from the openings in his clothes.

His right hand was still behind her head, working forward and back. The strap tightened, and she realized all at once that she hadn’t been careful enough this time. Something sharp pricked her in the soft flesh behind the lobe of her ear. A needle; she heard the snick of plastic against plastic as the plunger came down.

She tried to strike out, but the belt was across both arms. He was almost on top of her. To people in passing cars, it must have looked like an embrace.

“I didn’t expect to get lucky today,” he whispered.

Like the dead girl in the News, she seemed to be both dismembered and struggling upward through loose sand. And then the car melted and folded in around her, and she slipped quietly down into the pain.

Chapter 2

So far in her life, nothing really bad had happened to Meri. She had never been seriously sick or hurt. She had been in the hospital only once, to leave her tonsils. Her parents, in a Cleveland suburb, seemed to like her well enough, and they approved of most of the things she did except her hitchhiking. Her marks had always been O.K. She had never needed money. She had been in love several times, always pleasantly, and all these affairs, with the exception of the most recent, had ended without hard words or tears.

Now, it seemed, her luck had changed.

She dreamed that she was stretched out full-length on a padded table. An arrangement of seat belts kept her from moving. There was a light in her eyes. When she averted her face, the light followed.

She surfaced abruptly and stared up into a frosted globe on a movable arm. A long moment passed before she understood that it hadn’t been a nightmare. It was happening.

She was naked on a doctor’s examination table. Her feet were in stirrups. It wasn’t a seat belt across her chest, but a broad leather strap. Her arms were stretched out, with a leather cuff at each wrist. A rope connecting the cuffs ran underneath the table, and it had been tightened almost to the limit of her stretch. She could move her hands a few inches, but only in the direction of the floor.

She raised her head.

The driver who had picked her up on the interstate, wearing a green doctor’s smock, with his longish hair tucked inside a cloth cap, was sitting on a leather sofa reading a medical journal and smoking a cigar. He had a bottle of beer at his elbow.

When he saw she was awake he put the journal aside. “Finally. Do you know how long you’ve been out?”

Her eyes felt grainy. She wanted to rub them, but of course she couldn’t.

He answered his own question. “Hours and hours and hours. With chloral hydrate you never know.”

He came across to her. “Meri Gillespie. I looked at your ID. And you told me the truth, which doesn’t always happen. You really are a Miami grad student. How do you feel, outside of terrified?”

She moved her head slightly. There were several steel and bakelite machines, on wheeled stands, around the table, a glassed-in instrument cabinet, sinks, a framed diploma on the wall. It looked like a legitimate doctor’s office. The only thing that didn’t fit was the doctor himself, beaming down at her through his thick glasses.

He asked again how she felt. She felt weightless, as though her flesh had been changed to some much lighter substance. Her skin was sensitive to the chill breath of the air conditioner. There were two girls on the table — one the victim, the other the observer, who had always been lucky and had done well.

“You may feel a touch sick to your stomach for a time,” he said. “If you want to throw up, I’ll get you a basin. Now I don’t want you to feel embarrassed. Just be natural.”

One hand, with the burning cigar between the fingers, rested on the table near her shoulder. With his other hand he touched her neck.

“Rigid. That’s no good. Relax. You must realize by now that you aren’t going to do any more hitchhiking for a while.”

He laughed good-humoredly. “Don’t worry, I’m about to explain. That’s the part I love best. Here, if you’re determined to strain your neck.”

He brought a small pile of paper towels and put it under her head.

She spoke for the first time, thickly, “Who are you?”

“Haven’t you guessed?” he said happily. “I’m that old standby from late-night movies, the mad doctor.” He made a Count Dracula face and did a capering dance step in his bare feet. “I manufacture robots with no souls, and drink human blood.”

He bent over her and she pulled in her chin hard. His fat, moist lips touched her neck.

“Right there,” he said, pulling back. “I need a quart a day, and I hope you’re Type O, because otherwise my circulatory system gets confused.”

His face changed again and he said soberly, “As a matter of fact, I’m a med student, and I’m engaged in some very tricky physiological experiments. My name’s Bruno. People call me Bud.”

He went back for his beer. “I know you’re thirsty, but you can’t have any. One of the conditions is, you have to be sober.”

He hitched a stool closer to the table. After drinking he touched each of her nipples lightly. His fingertip was cold from the bottle.

“Meri, if it takes three days, you have to relax. Not that it matters a hell of a lot, because the machines don’t care, but you’re very… nicely put together, shall we say. I couldn’t tell in those cruddy clothes. And that’s important. I like to get the full Beauty and the Beast effect. The frog who’s going to turn into a prince if she fucks him, and then he double-crosses her and stays a frog. I like it that you wear a regular bathing suit and not a bikini. White stomachs are one of the things I dig.”

She said with difficulty, “A tank suit. I dive.”

He was delighted. “Tremendous. I don’t because I look so ridiculous and I get water in my ears. I’m one of the last remaining sidestroke swimmers. This is going to be — how they say” — he kissed his fingertips — “perfection. First, the briefing.”

He took a swallow of beer. “I saw you look at the diploma. The office belongs to a gynecologist who has made pots of money out of the female ailments and is now on a round-the-world cruise with his second wife. Isn’t that grand? Nothing to do but eat, read novels, and indulge in sexual intercourse. I broke in and found some duplicate keys. There’s a notice on the door. None of the doctor’s patients will be bothering us.”

She swallowed some of his used cigar smoke, and it caused her to gag slightly.

“Would you like the basin?” he asked.

“No.”

“Then I’ll plunge right in. Have you ever felt an inclination to take part in organized sex research?”

She drew a quick breath and took in more cigar smoke and coughed it out. She shook her head slightly.

“I see why not,” he said, “with a body like that. There was an announcement on the bulletin board — anybody interested, call such and such a number. I thought, what the hell, I might as well find out. They paid seven-fifty per episode. You must know the kind of thing I’m talking about. Ever since the people in St. Louis made themselves rich and famous with live sex in the laboratory, it’s been one of the hot research areas. You might be astounded by how much grant money you can get for the flimsiest proposal. I’m not putting it down! It’s really good and valuable. Because there’s no getting around the fact that sex is the single biggest cause of emotional disturbance. Unhappiness. Suicide. I wasn’t sure I could perform, you know, to specifications, but I let them persuade me to try, in the interest of science.” He laughed.

“Are you” — she hesitated, and brought out — “imagining this?”

“No,” he assured her, “it’s a real place. The Reproductive Physiology Clinic, and they’ve been open a year and a half. When you think about it, it’s not all that startling. These same guys were in dream research when that was the fad. They did some ground-breaking stuff about sexual dreams — which comes first, the dream or the erection — and it was easy to move from there into sex per se between wide-awake people. On the simplest level, all they try to do is observe and measure exactly what takes place in the human body during the response cycle. I was one of their most enthusiastic subjects. Very productive. Never missed an orgasm. You may have noticed that I’m a little repulsive?”

He was still smiling. When she said nothing, he went on, “I believe in being objective. Whenever I get a turndown outside the laboratory, I take off my clothes and look in a full-length mirror, and I understand why. To be perfectly honest, my batting average in ordinary situations is point zero zero zero. Who wants to have sex with a slob? Of course there are plenty of female slobs who might be willing, but I don’t demean myself.”

He drank, and sighed. “Now I can see that you’re beginning to wonder if I’m crazy. I won’t give you a definite answer on that. The shrink at school says I’ve been working too hard. I get these blinding headaches, and all I can do is collapse for a day. I used to steal Tampax from drugstores — heaven knows why.” His voice changed, and became more brisk. “Tell me how sex is with you. Satisfactory?”

She forced herself to say, “Most of the time.”

“And yet one of the astounding things I’ve discovered is that even nonslobs have trouble! I’ve talked to one really beautiful girl who’s never reached orgasm. When anybody calls her on the phone, she stutters and perspires.”

“Could you — untie me?”

“No, that’s the main part. Now I have to ask a personal question. Have you ever been raped?”

Her body tightened all over. “Is that what’s going to happen?”

“Well,” he said almost apologetically, “if I get an erection. And I hope I can, because I invested a lot of time and went to a lot of trouble getting you here. I’ve been driving the interstate steadily for two days. The only girls I’ve seen have been in pairs or threesomes, and I can only process them one at a time. I ought to wait till some of the hysteria dies down, but I only have the use of the office for one more week, and my data is far from complete.”

He patted one of the machines.

“The electroencephalograph,” he explained. “Measures changes in the electric potential of the brain, and that’s where you get some of your most interesting material. I’m getting a little ahead of myself. You didn’t answer my question. Just nod or shake your head if it’s too embarrassing to say. Have you ever been raped?”

She shook her head.

“You’d be surprised how often the answer is yes, and then how hard it is to establish what we’re talking about, exactly. Thanks to Masters and Johnson, we have very comprehensive physiological baselines on orthodox consensual sex. We finally know exactly what happens when the human female has orgasm — vasocongestive release, vaginal contractions at point-eight-second intervals, areolae detumescence, and all the rest. We’ve exploded dozens of myths. When I say we, I don’t include myself personally, because I’m damned if I know what they learned from the program I was in.”

He drank. “Be patient another minute. Sometimes when I talk about it, my friend here begins to stir. Not yet, though. O.K., we’ve accumulated a body of knowledge about the sexual process that didn’t exist a few decades ago. After all the centuries of superstition and ignorance, you can’t know too much about that shadowy area. I imagine, to generalize, that by now we must know nearly as much about the organs of generation as about, say, the stomach and lungs. But!”

He kicked back his stool and went to open another beer.

“The more I read in the literature,” he said, coming back, “the more I begin to wonder. Sex isn’t purely physiological. If I tickle your nasal membrane, the chances are that you’ll sneeze. But if I tickle you down here, and if you hate me, if you’re repelled by me, if you’re thinking of getting back on the interstate, you won’t come, will you? Of course not. The orgasm is a psychophysiological experience, of biologic-behavioral origin, taking place within a psychosocial context. I’m quoting the textbooks, naturally. Triggered somewhere in the cerebral cortex, and I can’t reach that with a tickler, right? One more personal question — in percentages, how often do you come?”

She breathed in and out slowly while he looked at her. He actually seemed to consider this conversation normal, as though they both had drinks in their hands.

“About half,” she said faintly.

“About half. Because all those other factors intervene. What if somebody else walks in? Does the pill really work? Do I like him? Did I pass the exam? Is that hair-spray I smell or something else? What would my father and mother say? And that little switch stays closed. The guy can be beautiful, the most accomplished technician in Florida, doing all the right things according to the paperbacks, and you won’t feel a twinge. And the sex researchers know that perfectly well. They cop out by saying that all they’re interested in is the physical aspects, and as far as the machines are concerned an orgasm is an orgasm, whether you get it with a stranger at a party or with a loving husband, the father of your children. I may not be saying this right. At present it’s only a working hypothesis. But the big question in my mind is, are all those statistical tables skewed because they record the sexual behavior of volunteers?”

He wanted her to comment. She still wasn’t making the usual connections. She didn’t know what he was talking about, or how it applied to her.

The best she could do was repeat, “Volunteers?”

“Masters and Johnson, the high priests, used a research population of a few hundred, and that was strictly a volunteer army. They were all sure they could produce under the lights, and if they failed, or if they didn’t get that little extra charge that makes some kinds of sex more interesting than others, they didn’t get invited back. I hope you’re beginning to see where I’m trying to take you. These were picked people, remarkable people. Most of the women could reach orgasm if one of the doctors snapped his fingers. And not just one orgasm, but dozens. Some of these virtuosi kept coming, time and again, for hours, until they fell asleep from pure physical exhaustion. And the machines took it all down, the heart rates and the myotonia, the blood pressure changes, the contractions. Some of those graphs ought to be X-rated. But how much of all that was sexual response, is the question. As opposed to response to the peculiar setting, to the demands of their audience, to the desire to excel, to earn a fee?”

He stopped to put down some more beer.

“So Bruno decided,” he said, shifting to the third person, “to work out an experimental design in which the purely physical response can be separated from all those others. For this he couldn’t post a notice on a bulletin board. The subjects must be unwilling, frightened, hostile. You’ve been abducted from the highway, anesthetized, stripped, humiliated. You are about to be ravished—if his drooping lily can be persuaded to cooperate — by a madman. A repulsive madman! You won’t be trying to produce, you’ll be trying hard not to. You’ll be thinking of what comes next. Because,” he explained with a sharp look, “Bruno is not completely off his rocker. He has a sane streak. He’s not that far to the left of others in sex research. If he ever stands trial, which naturally he’s hoping won’t come to pass, the defense attorneys will have to admit that he is capable of understanding the charges against him. He is well aware that these experiments are very much against the law. You would make a damaging witness for the prosecution. So you know what has to happen when Bruno is finished. Look at the thing from his point of view.”

“You killed the others—”

He spoke with his first trace of irritation. “What happens to any laboratory animal at the end of an experimental series? It doesn’t live out its normal life span on Social Security. It is sacrificed! That’s the word we use. The only thing Bruno will promise is that he’ll do it humanely. He has enrolled himself in the assault on Victorianism, and he may turn out in the end to be a martyr to the cause of sexual enlightenment. He wants to help others! Think of those millions of people tortured by sexual hangups, simply because the most fundamental physical facts remain undiscovered.” He licked the taste of beer off his lower lip. “Do you agree with me, or what? Give me an argument. Maybe you can talk me out of it.”

“What do you hope—” She swallowed; her throat seemed to be on fire. She tried to do something about the dangerous numbness that affected her brain. “Those millions of people. What possible use—”

It went spinning away.

“Do you realize how little is scientifically known on the subject of rape?”

Again he seemed to expect an answer. She moved her head slightly.

“There’s a vast body of legislation on the subject, but zero knowledge. Old wives’ tales, folklore, superstition. ‘If you know you’re going to be raped, relax and enjoy it.’ My preliminary data indicate that this is impossible. Forcible sexual entry is a kind of symbolic murder, and no one enjoys being murdered. But if the body responds sexually, against its will, so to speak, if the blood reverses its flow and the nipples erect and Bartolin’s glands contribute the usual lubrication — and I won’t tell you whether this happens or not, because I don’t want to prejudice you — well, I can’t exaggerate the importance of such a finding. It will explode a few delusions. Far-reaching legal effects, possibly.”

She made another attempt. “But people who like to be hurt—”

“The masochist effect,” he said promptly. “Right. I think I’ve worked out a way to compensate for it. On the sadomasochist teeter-totter, Bruno finds himself perched at the sadistic end. He takes some pleasure from the sight of a helpless nude, in straps, open to penetration by any suitably shaped object. There. At the thought, Bruno’s instrument is beginning to rise.”

He pulled the gown over his head. “Naked, I know I’m disgusting looking?”

The answer was so obvious that he didn’t want to listen to it. “I have a passion for rich desserts. How I love deep-fried potatoes. And of course all that shows. All Bruno’s life, he’s been preparing for these moments. If there is anybody a girl like you would hate to be raped by, it’s Bruno. Those rolls of fat. The absence of muscle tone. Indeed, the absence of muscles. Flesh the color of long-dead flounder. Now a few preparations. They won’t hurt.”

He busied himself about the machines. He dabbed petroleum jelly on her temples and affixed electrodes. Another electrode went over her heart. He did something at the sink, and came back with a razor and a can of shaving foam.

“Standard procedure in obstetrics. But you’ve never given birth, have you? Too bad, because now you never will.”

He shaved her pubic hair and attached more electrodes. Her eyes were tightly closed and her body was as rigid as metal.

“I’d tell you more about what we’re trying to get,” he said, “but I don’t want you to be too interested. You’re supposed to think what a horrible experience. It can’t be happening to you. You’re Meri Gillespie. You won gold medals. You lie in the sun at the edge of a pool. Picasso’s painting really turns you on. You have nice lean friends. Fatties disgust you. So little willpower.”

He took off his glasses. “Ready. Set.”

The machines had begun to hum. Humming himself, he moved about adjusting the controls.

“Music? I think so.”

He turned on a radio and found a station with rock music.

“Now open your eyes and I’ll give you a big surprise. Bruno is rampant! If you hold yourself stiff like that it’s going to hurt more, but of course it’s entirely up to you.”

The weightlessness was back, and Meri felt herself floating, attached to reality only by the wires that snaked out from her body to disappear inside the machines. She was breathing shallowly and quickly; one of the revolving drums counted the breaths and recorded their quickness and depth. Whenever he touched her, a shiver or twitch of revulsion altered the surface of her skin, and the reaction was picked up by another machine.

He worked on her now as a lover. She blanked out briefly when she felt the touch of his tongue. He perceived the change instantly, and pinched her thigh to bring her out of it.

He peered at her nearsightedly. “I want you to stay in the same room with Bruno. Don’t run away. Does that hurt much? Does that?”

Throwing her head from side to side, she strained upward against the straps. They were both sweating heavily. And as she pulled and twisted, she made a surprising discovery. The cuff on her right wrist slipped partway down her hand. Her breath came out in a gasp. His glance jumped to the moving drum and noted the change in the line. It interested him. She was sure her heart was beating more rapidly, but there was nothing she could do to slow it down. He checked the cardiograph, smiling.

She understood now. He had loosened the cuff to be sure the data wouldn’t be compromised by what he had called the masochist effect. He wanted her to think about escape, not about pain. A masochist would submit to restraint, and respond to that. But his guess had been a bit off. The cuff was too loose. Pulling hard while trying to conceal the effort, she felt it slip over her wrist-bone and along her hand. And then she had it.

Watching his eyes, she continued to pull and struggle, contorting her mouth. He resumed what he had been doing.

“Don’t, don’t, please, please don’t, Bruno, don’t.”

“You can’t plead with Bruno,” he said, lifting his head. “He likes cunnilingus too much. So pretty. So silky.”

Then he stopped talking.

She waited, telling herself to let him commit himself fully, to let his excitement take over, before showing him that she was no longer helpless. The recording instruments oscillated wildly. The green cap came off, and his long hair spilled out on her thighs.

“Wait,” he said, perhaps speaking out loud. “Not yet.”

But she couldn’t wait. Dropping the cuff, she seized his hair. The rope whipped beneath the table. Her knees tightened convulsively. She clawed at the buckle holding the strap across her chest. It was under one arm, nearly out of reach. An electrode pulled loose, and the machine sparked and hissed.

She twisted, emptying her lungs so there would be less pressure on the strap. Her fingers slipped. Bruno was thrashing between her legs, hurting her with his teeth. She had a handful of hair, and she held on desperately. With all this going on, it was impossible to get the free end of the strap back through the buckle loop.

The loose rope with the empty cuff attached skittered around on her wet body. Giving up her attempt to open the buckle, she worked the rope under Bruno’s chin and looped it around his neck, pulling it tight. He was trying to force her legs apart with both hands, but he was in a bad position to develop leverage. As the rope tightened, the sputtering sounds he was making changed in pitch. He raked at her hands with his fingernails. He began to stab awkwardly at her abdomen, trying to find some place that would hurt her enough to make her let him go.

She held on, the rope snug around her fist. Her mind was sharp and clear. If he managed to get away from her now, she knew she was done for. She hadn’t believed him at first. There had been a playfulness about some of those speeches, as though the Bud side was mocking the Bruno side. It was all too extreme, and she expected her usual luck to come to her rescue. The gynecologist whose equipment they were using would come back early, or someone would be curious about the lights, or the building would catch fire and the firemen would chop their way in and unfasten her. The earth rotated on schedule. Things like this didn’t happen.

Now she knew for sure it was happening. She was in the power of a lunatic who had every intention of killing her.

Somehow, as they changed position, the rope loosened enough so he could get his chin inside the loop. Air rushed back into his lungs. She still had him in a convulsive grip, with both hands and thighs, but she could feel her strength going. He planted himself more firmly and strained backward, pushing the table. His face slipped several inches along the damp flesh on her thighs.

“Hurts, hurts,” he said.

Her grip on his hair was already less secure. Abandoning the rope, she clutched his hair with that hand as well and brought him back. He grabbed one wrist from below, and with a convulsive effort broke her hold.

At that moment the chest strap let go.

She sat up abruptly. The sudden change was unexpected by them both, and she went partway off the table, held only at the ankles. She could bend her knees now, lessening the strain on her thigh muscles, but he, too, had better position, and as soon as he adjusted he would pull her up and over. Throwing himself to the floor, he could break her grip, at the cost of leaving bunches of hair in her hands.

His back was pimpled. The soft buttocks were covered with unhealthy-looking fuzz. At the last possible moment, she closed herself on his head like a folding jack-knife. He pivoted his heavy shoulders and began to slide. He hung for an instant, and Meri released his hair, snatched up the squat cardiograph in both hands and clubbed him with it. There was a quick spurt of flame.

She pounded at him again. Blood spurted, making them both more slippery.

He went backward on his haunches, peering up through a red mist while she worked frantically at one stirrup. She freed it. With a shout, he flung himself at her. Seizing the whipping rope, he pulled her off the table. She was still attached by one ankle. The back of her head struck the floor.

The air around her quivered. For a moment she was unable to do anything about the strain on her twisted leg. Music poured over them.

He groped for her, but he seemed to be having trouble seeing, and his movements were sluggish.

Now her long hours on the ten-meter platform paid off. She flipped herself upward, straightened her leg and at the same time caught his nose smartly with her knee. It was a tricky movement, not one of those required in intercollegiate competition. As he sagged, she hit out at his defenseless-looking eyes with stiff fingers. He jerked back blinking.

The buckle holding her ankle was on the far side, where she couldn’t reach it. He wavered away, and came back pushing at her with the tall low-backed stool. He didn’t hurt her with it, but it got in her way. In a desperate maneuver that took all her coordination, strength, and timing, she unkinked and sprang erect on one foot. Now the buckle opened quickly, almost by itself.

Feeling movement behind her, she whirled. He was holding the stool high with both hands. He brought it down hard. She saw it coming and moved, but not quickly enough. There was an explosion of light.

She fell against him and they grappled clumsily. Then they were apart. The stool came at her again. She raised her hand too late. The pain was worse this time, much worse. It pierced her and made her helpless.

He went off balance and fell heavily against one of the machines, which seemed to blow apart. As she went down herself she heard him yell. All the lights went off and the music stopped.

Chapter 3

Harry Field, when he was an FBI agent working out of the Miami office, had been one of Michael Shayne’s few friends inside that suspicious, close-mouthed organization. On one occasion, Shayne had disarmed a demented youth who was holding Field hostage with a sawed-off shotgun. Shortly after that, following a dispute with the district director, Field resigned from the bureau and set up his own detective agency.

More and more in recent years, independent operators in this field had been moving the other way, closing their one-man offices to join a big nationwide firm that could provide a variety of services and send a single bill, usually a large one. Except for a few established people like Shayne, the independents who managed to survive did so by becoming experts in a single area and working it intensively. Field’s was property insurance, particularly jewelry and art objects. He and Shayne worked together once or twice. Field was cool and patient and likable. He also liked to drink. For a time he and Shayne were part of the same floating poker game. His business broke even from the start, and soon began making money. Shayne sometimes recommended him when he himself was too busy for something, or not interested enough. On one such case, which appeared to be a routine jewelry theft in a Miami Beach hotel, Field was shot and killed.

His widow, Frieda, elected to continue the agency.

She was in her mid-twenties, dark-haired and personable. It was generally agreed that she had been responsible for much of the agency’s early success, but few people in town believed that she could make it on her own. She herself contended that there were kinds of investigative work that could be done better by a woman than a man. This assertion startled many of her clients, and she had lost several big retainers. It was a question whether she could hang on until she established her own reputation. Shayne continued to steer business to her. She called him occasionally for advice, always reluctantly.

She caught him at breakfast.

“Mike, it’s your butterfingered friend once again. I’ve got another one I’m not sure of, and I wonder—”

Shayne had carried his coffee to the phone. “Sure, tell me about it. I’ve got a free day.”

“Have you, Mike? I’m hoping there may be enough money in it so I can bring you in as a consultant. I wish I could afford to learn by making my own mistakes, but this seems to be a little special.”

“Let’s see,” Shayne said. “First I was going to read the paper, then add up my checkbook, get a haircut, and play a few rounds of golf. The evening’s open. I was going to have dinner with somebody, but she just called it off.”

“If you’re serious — well, for various good financial reasons I had to take this, but I’m beginning to think it may be over my head.”

He assured her again that he had nothing on the calendar, which wasn’t quite true. He had never felt responsible for sending her husband to his death, but he owed her something, nonetheless. Field’s FBI experience had taught him nothing about that kind of hotel thief. Shayne himself, who better than anybody else in the area knew the Beach hotels and their regular guests and the regular criminals who preyed on them, might have sensed what was coming and been ready for it. But the case had been too small, too routine. He had given it to Harry Field as a favor. Some favor, it turned out.

He finished his coffee and made a few rearrangements in his schedule by phone before leaving. He met Frieda in her bay-front apartment in the northern part of the city. She looked very good to Shayne, fresh and lovely. Her long dark hair was pinned up in back. She rarely used makeup. In college, Shayne had discovered by chance, she had been admitted to Phi Beta Kappa in her junior year. She and her husband had played competitive bridge, and had been able to beat everybody in town. She was wearing white slacks this morning, a ribbed top, and a silver necklace.

She kissed him lightly.

“Michael, you’re a comfort. One of these days I may develop enough self-confidence to stop calling you.”

He grinned at her. “You mentioned money. The subject always interests me.”

“Potentially there’s money. But God, Mike, the complications.”

When she asked about breakfast, he admitted that he could drink another cup of coffee. She loaded a tray and carried it out to the little terrace looking across Miami Beach to the sea.

“Did you listen to the news?” she said, pouring. “There’s another hitchhiker missing.”

“Girls leave home every day,” Shayne said. “Some of them turn up, and some of them just don’t feel like telling their parents where they are. Then one of these scares gets started, and they’re all victims of the same mad rapist.”

“I guess so, and I hope it’s going to be that way with the girl I ought to be out looking for right now, instead of sitting here on a nice day with a nice man having coffee. Mike, I want to plunge right in, because I’ve got three or four people to tell you about. I don’t know how you are on art professors. Holloway. Samuel J. Holloway. He’s the client.”

Shayne scraped his chin. “At the University? He was an expert witness in some kind of art case a few years back. I don’t remember what it was about or which side he was on.”

“That’s the man. The museums use him to authenticate stuff. His period’s pre-Columbian, Mexico and Central America. He wrote the text everybody uses. I get the impression that when he’s called to New York or Chicago to give his expert opinion, the per diem fees are very handsome. He’s a bit pompous, but that seems to go with the job. Within those limits, reasonably O.K. We used him once on some insurance thing, and he was a little surprised when I showed up day before yesterday instead of Harry. But he told me what he needed, and I persuaded him I could do it better than some tough, cool red-headed free-swinging male, in marvelous shape, with a.38 in his pocket.”

She smiled and touched Shayne’s knee. “I’m not referring to you, Mike. In addition to all your other qualities, there’s a rumor around that you have brains.”

“I don’t know how that got started,” Shayne said dryly.

“To be serious, you also seem to have some kind of instinct for knowing when somebody’s lying, and that may be the thing I need right now. I’m picking some funny messages out of the air. There’s more tension than there ought to be, and it’s even the wrong kind of tension. Various things don’t jibe.”

She sugared her coffee. “Here’s our cast of characters. Start with a girl named Meri Gillespie. Spelled M-e-r-i, presumably her parents’ idea. Twenty-three, from North Olmsted, Ohio. Graduate student. Professor Holloway’s her adviser. He didn’t tell me so, but I find that the relationship has been a bit more personal than that. They’ve been living in the same house. He’s doing a new book on the Toltecs, and she’s been researching it for him. I have some pictures.”

She opened a folder and showed Shayne a posed graduation picture and two color snapshots, one in a bathing suit and the other in a sweat shirt and patched pants.

“She should have no trouble getting rides,” Shayne commented.

“Especially in the bathing suit, right? He forty-six, twice her age. She took two courses with him as an undergraduate, and he persuaded her to go on to grad school. I checked with some people in the department, and apparently this isn’t the first time such a thing happened. His ex-wife — I’ll get to her in a minute — was also one of his students. I don’t think I’d find him hard to resist, but to be fair, I’ve never seen him in action. He’s supposed to be one of the best lecturers there. So. Twelve happy months went by, with the professor flying around the country being important and Meri slaving away in his office — and his bed, too, I suppose, when he was in town. It couldn’t last. They had a big fight, and she walked out. She’d kept in touch with her college boyfriend. His name is Sid Koch, and he seems to be called Scotch by everybody. She’d been seeing him, and the professor didn’t like that. And probably some of the magnetism had worn off and she was getting restless. It wasn’t a quiet departure. A cup of coffee was thrown — I saw the mark on the wallpaper. All she took was a knapsack. He owed her a week’s salary, but she tore up the check and threw it at him. Probably the door slammed when she left. He didn’t sound too unhappy about all this — colleges get a new crop of girls every year. The unhappiness started when he discovered that she’d walked off with something that didn’t belong to her.”

“Something valuable.”

“It has to be fairly valuable, Mike, because he’s paying double my usual rates and he’s not being stingy about expenses. It’s a mask, part of one. A funerary mask.”

She showed him another color photograph. Shayne had never seen anything remotely like it. Bits of brilliantly colored stone had been bonded to some kind of ceramic material to make a mask. There were four colors, blue, green, black, and red. The facial expression was extraordinarily alive — bold and at the same time somewhat sly.

“He glued it together temporarily so he could photograph it,” she said. “If you look closely, you can see the fracture lines. He bought it from a dealer in Columbia, and he says several museums are interested in it. Meri knew what it meant to him. I saw that, too. He gets a religious look when he talks about it — and it really is an exciting thing. The piece she took is about one fifth, part of the forehead, the left eye, a slice of one cheek, and by itself it isn’t worth anything. His idea is that she saw it in the workshop when she went up to get her toothbrush, and decided to take it along, to make him sorry for some of the nasty things he’d said. You begin to get a picture of the parting scene. Bad feeling on both sides. He jittered around the room when he told me about it, couldn’t sit still. ‘She hates me, she’s capable of anything — smashing it, throwing it away.’ What I’ve been hired to do is overtake her before anything bad can happen to the fragment, and use my feminine trickery to get it back. And if I can’t, have her arrested.”

“Does he know where she went?”

“To Fort Myers. That’s where Scotch lives now, the ex-boyfriend. There’d been a phone call that morning, and Holloway overheard her end of it. That was how the fight started — what was he doing eavesdropping and so on. She’d already decided to leave, and she told Scotch she wanted to hitchhike over, to get the taste of Professor Samuel J. Holloway out of her mouth. I chartered a light plane with Holloway’s money and got to Fort Myers in plenty of time. She couldn’t have beaten me hitching. I don’t think I did anything wrong. I got a good look at Scotch and watched the house. I thought it would be better to intercept her before she saw him. She didn’t show up. I kept in touch with Holloway, and he was getting more and more frantic. He keeps thinking about these hitchhiking murders. If Meri’d been murdered, what would the murderer do with that fragment? Bury it, of course. Gone forever. I may be doing my client an injustice. I think he was also slightly worried about the girl herself.”

“You don’t seem to like the man.”

“I remember something you told me once — the client never tells you the full story the first time. At that point, he agreed I should talk to Scotch. Scotch was a student of his, and Holloway took him on some kind of field excursion last year. Scotch had already called the Highway Patrol — everybody’s jumpy. He said she’s the kind of girl who makes a point of not reading newspapers. He’d offered to bike over and get her, but she told him she’d been hitching all her life, and she wasn’t going to change at this late date. Well, there it is, Mike. The Highway Patrol has her picture. I don’t know what they’ll do with it.”

“Show it around, to toll-station attendants and gas jockeys and so on. If they don’t get any positive response, all they can do is wait for the body to show up.”

She made a quick face. “Fine. Meanwhile, I’ve been calling people. Friends, family. After she walked out, there’s a possibility that she changed her mind, and decided to go somewhere else to sort things out, not to Fort Myers. But Holloway was reasonably certain that she didn’t have more than a few dollars and change, not enough for bus fare. I pressed him on this, and he admitted that he went through her purse while she was making the call to Fort Myers. He was looking for mail. A matter of self-protection, he said.”

“How did he mean that? She hadn’t stolen anything at that point.”

“Don’t ask me. He says he always demands absolute loyalty from his graduate students. It does seem out of proportion. Anyway, there was a letter from Scotch, which he read in a hurry. She was working herself up to something, it wasn’t clear what, and Scotch told her to cool it, not to do anything dumb until he could talk to her. The letter wasn’t dated.”

“Maybe she was planning to take the mask, or as much of it as she could get hold of.”

“That’s the way it looks.”

“She must have friends. Maybe she didn’t leave town.”

“Holloway gave me a list. The first one I called was her college roommate, a girl named Joanne. She has her own car, and she drove Meri out to the 8th Street interchange, which means she definitely started for Fort Myers.”

Shayne moved his cup in a small circle, watching the patterns on the surface of the coffee for a moment, thinking.

“How did Meri seem to this roommate? Sad, happy?”

“Excited. Carrying on about what a jerk and a phony Holloway had turned out to be. Joanne had never liked the professor. She hadn’t expected it to last even this long. She didn’t sound too enthusiastic about Scotch, either. I tried to get her to tell me the conversation line by line, but there were long stretches of silence, apparently, with Meri sitting there seething. But one thing she said, and she said it twice, so it may mean something: ‘I don’t know how to handle it.’ Joanne thinks she was talking about her M.A., which is going to be hard to get with Holloway against her. It did cross Joanne’s mind that she might be pregnant. They talked about hitchhiking, and Joanne told her she was out of her mind to hitch alone. Meri said she was in a hurry and it couldn’t wait. In a hurry and it couldn’t wait. Joanne dropped her at the interchange and went back to town.”

“Without waiting to see her get her first ride.”

“Right, Mike. Hitchhikers don’t keep a regular schedule. When they’re traveling for fun, they don’t necessarily travel in a straight line. But after all the phoning I’ve done, I think I have a pretty good idea of this girl. She was a diver in college. You have to be serious about that to be good at it, and most of the time she was first. You don’t know how well a dive worked until the judges hold up their cards. You aren’t competing against time, but against three judges with their different ideas of perfection. If she started for Fort Myers, she would have stayed on the Trail until she got to Fort Myers, unless somebody forcibly removed her. I’m betting on that.”

“Unless she didn’t intend to go there in the first place.”

“And staged the phone call to Scotch because she knew Holloway would be listening. And then if he sent somebody like me after her, I’d go the wrong way. The thing about a right-angle interchange, you can go either north-south or east-west. And there’s one more thing. Last week Joanne was in an ice-cream place near the campus, where everybody goes, and she saw Meri talking excitedly, with gestures, to an older woman. And somebody said this was Holloway’s ex-wife and ex-graduate student, Maxine. I’ve asked around. She had five years with Holloway, the last three of them married. She worked on his book. Everybody says that if she were a man, she’d be an assistant professor. Instead of which, she runs a gift shop in Seminole Beach. She didn’t remarry, but there’s a man, a sculptor. So here’s a theory. Maxine was in on it. She’s an expert on pre-Columbian objects. She’d know how to market the mask, or how much to ask for it if they decided to sell it back to Holloway. Or how to go about returning it to Mexico. I called her, and I thought she hesitated a tick. She took time to breathe. And then to make up for it, for the rest of the conversation she was too fast and glib. But I don’t know! I told her I might drop in today, and I hope you’ll come along and listen and give me an expert’s opinion.”

Shayne finished his coffee and set it down. “But that’s not all you want me for, is it?”

She gave him a direct look. “No. Let’s check this first. If nothing comes of it, I’ll tell you my other idea.”

“Can I argue against it?”

“Certainly — freedom of speech. But I’ve made up my mind I’m going to do it. I really think I have to.”

Chapter 4

Seminole Beach, a whistle stop on the Florida East Coast Railway, was mapped out as a real estate speculation during the last days of the great 1920s boom. Canals were dug, street signs were erected. Then everything collapsed. When the boom resumed a generation later, proving title to the tiny lots, and putting them together into large enough parcels to meet the requirements of modern zoning, proved to be difficult. Patches of heavy development were separated by weed-grown gaps. Most of the canals had silted up and were almost too shallow to accept a surfboard. Maxine Holloway’s back lawn ended at one of these sluggish green ditches. The house had been hastily built, and sagged under the weight of an enormous television mast. Most of the gray trim needed to be refreshed.

Shayne was in second as he approached the house, but instead of slowing further to look for a curbside opening, he continued past.

“Mike,” Frieda said.

“Don’t look around.” He turned the next corner before explaining: “The front door is wide open. These houses are all air-conditioned. Why leave the door open and lose that expensive cold air?”

He told her to slide over and take the wheel. “I’ll see what’s happening, if anything. Give me three minutes, and come back around. Use the blinkers and the siren. When you don’t know what questions to ask, it’s a good idea to show up making some noise.”

She touched him under his left arm. “Are you taking a gun?”

He stopped halfway out of the car. “Is there something you haven’t told me?”

“It’s just the way everybody’s acting. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“You’re more likely to get hurt when you go in with a gun in your hand. It encourages everybody else to start shooting.”

“Wait, Mike. How do you turn on the siren?”

He showed her, and walked away.

Children were roller-skating along the sidewalk. He stepped around and walked past the house with the open door. The third car beyond was a dark sedan, a Chrysler, with a twisted aerial. A man slumped behind the wheel, his seat-belt on. A tennis cap was pulled low over a pair of wraparound dark glasses. He was smoking a small cigar.

When Shayne picked the cigar out of his mouth, he sat up abruptly. He was dark-skinned, with long sideburns ending in a point.

Shayne pitched the cigar away. “Let’s see your driver’s license.”

The man’s hand started for his hip pocket, and his jacket tightened. Shayne added, “And your permit to carry that hand gun.”

Alert now, the man demanded, “What am I doing? What’s the hassle?”

“People don’t sit in cars around here. They get out and go in the house. Where have you got the heroin?”

“Heroin! Heroin! You’re crazy, man,”

“That’s what I get the citations for. Would anybody normal do this kind of work?”

The man stabbed at the horn button, but in this model the horn didn’t work with the ignition turned off. Shayne’s hand darted in and released the seat-belt. He unlatched the door, yanked, and the man spilled out in the street. It was done very fast.

Shayne disarmed him and pulled him erect, holding his right arm stiff in both hands.

“Now, don’t yell. If you do I’ll break your arm. This can’t be that important to you. How many in the house?”

“Three.”

“We can handle three. I’m getting reinforcements in a minute.”

A venerable, once-red VW stood in the driveway. Shayne took his captive to the side door in the attached garage and told him to open it quietly. Maxine’s friend, the sculptor, had changed the garage into a studio. There was a workbench along one wall, and the floorspace was cluttered with scrap metal and fabricating equipment, as well as a few pieces the sculptor probably considered finished. They picked their way through.

“You’re doing nicely,” Shayne said.

Following instructions, the man opened a door into the kitchen. Two people had been having breakfast They had finished their eggs, but there was still coffee in the cups, and a cigarette smoldered in the ashtray. Shayne checked the time and kept moving.

In the living room, a man in a knitted ski mask was pulling books off a two-shelf bookcase. His back was toward Shayne. He had thin shoulders, a forward tilt. He was wearing orange work-gloves. There was what seemed to be a bundle of laundry at one end of the sofa. A pair of bare feet protruded from beneath a dirty sheet.

“García!” the man in Shayne’s hands shouted.

The siren sounded, and a tall man in the same kind of ski mask burst out of a bedroom. He was easily six feet three, but the extra height was almost entirely in his neck and torso, as though those sections had been artificially stretched. He took out a Luger, the long barrel and short butt seeming as misproportioned as his own body.

The siren, at full wail, turned the corner. Another man appeared. All four were shouting excitedly at each other in Spanish. When the tall man swung around toward Shayne, lifting the gun, Shayne pushed the driver at him. A consensus quickly emerged; it was time to leave. The driver was the first out the door, the tall man the last.

“Run,” Shayne told them. “You can make it.” Strangled noises came from the bundle on the sofa. From the front doorway, Shayne watched the black Chrysler zoom away. His own Buick pulled up, and Frieda leaned across to see what Shayne wanted her to do next. He signaled. She parked in the open slot, the siren dying.

Shayne returned to the sofa and unveiled a furious woman with her hands tied and a gag in her mouth. She was a little too plump, in shorts and a halter, with all the exposed surfaces nicely tanned. She was wriggling and gobbling, using body language to order Shayne not to stand there calmly lighting a cigarette but to rush after the intruders and apprehend them.

When Frieda came in, Shayne said, “Is this the professor’s ex-wife?”

“I’ve never seen her, but she’s the right age and this is the right address.”

“What do you think about all this?”

“Four men. It bears out my guess that there’s quite a bit of money involved. Shouldn’t we take that thing out of her mouth and ask her some questions?”

“Look around first. We don’t have a search warrant, and she might object.”

The woman made a strong objection, muffled but unmistakable, as Shayne began a slow search of the house, having to move sideways between jagged constructions of rusty steel, meaningless shapes a little too big to stand comfortably under a ceiling. The household was clearly in need of money. The carpet was threadbare where walked upon, frayed at the edges. Cigarette burns on the furniture had been left unrepaired. There were several Mayan and Mexican objects, a framed photograph of a Mayan temple.

“Am I warm?” Shayne asked her.

The woman had stopped wriggling. She watched without moving her head.

There were two bedrooms, only one of which had been used the previous night. In the bathroom, a man in a bath towel was sitting on the closed toilet, hands on his knees. The masked intruders hadn’t considered it necessary to bind or gag him. He didn’t seem surprised to see Shayne. He had a full black beard, which had been allowed to grow as it pleased.

“Can I come out now?”

“Not yet,” Shayne told him. “I’ll let you know.”

He looked through the medicine cabinet. Somebody in the house suffered from ulcers. Somebody else used anti-depressants. The woman, not the man, took the necessary measures to prevent conception.

Shayne spent a few minutes at the desk in the larger bedroom. Several of Mrs. Holloway’s recent personal checks had bounced, and her bank had fined her severely so she would remember not to do it again. More than one unpaid bill had the notation: “Please!” The Holloway textbook was out on the desk. When Shayne picked it up, it opened to a place marked with a Kleenex: a tipped-in four-color insert showing various Toltec funerary articles, including masks. A name was written on a memo pad by the phone: “Eliot Tree, St. Albans, until Tuesday” — the St. Albans being one of the Beach hotels.

He continued the search. Returning to the living room after several more minutes, he freed the woman’s wrists and ankles and finally removed the gag.

She sputtered meaningless sounds until her talking muscles were working normally.

“Who were those guys? Did they all get away? They walked in and grabbed me and didn’t let me say one single word.”

“We didn’t get here soon enough, I’m afraid,” Shayne said. “On the other hand, nobody got shot, which is a plus. Did they take anything?”

“I don’t even know what they were looking for! They didn’t take me into their confidence! They handled me like a sack of sugar. If they wanted any real loot, they sure as hell came to the wrong place. Andy!” she said suddenly. “He was taking a shower. Is he all right?”

“He seems to be. What’s his last name?”

“Anastasia. The sculptor. He’s been staying here. Is that O.K., or do we have to be married?”

“Marriage isn’t the sacrament it used to be,” Shayne said. “He seems to be comfortable in there. Mrs. Field wants to ask you some questions.”

Mrs. Holloway started to push up. “I know they slugged him.”

“They just told him to stay in the bathroom, Mrs. Holloway. Talk to us for a minute, and I’ll get him.”

“I can’t tell you anything. It’s all a big mystery to me.”

Shayne didn’t try to block her off from the doorway. He exchanged a look with Frieda, and went to see how Mrs. Holloway and her friend greeted each other after their adventure. They were embracing hard.

“Max, are you all right?” Andy demanded. “I’ve been going crazy in here.”

They caressed and hugged each other, and for a moment were both talking at once.

“Andy, I was so scared! They were getting madder and madder. They put a sheet over me. Then the sirens and the yelling—”

“Are you hurt?”

“Oh, God, darling, my wrists — look at the marks.”

Shayne let them question and reassure each other for a moment more before breaking it up. Andy was the first to pull away.

“Baby, he’s right. I mean, there are a lot more logical places in Seminole Beach; why pick on us? Maybe he can help figure it out.” He reknotted the towel. “Whoever the hell he is.”

“I’m Michael Shayne,” Shayne told him. “We’re trying to locate a missing girl named Meri Gillespie.”

The bearded man’s eyes jumped to Maxine, who said, “Missing?”

“She’s disappeared. Mrs. Field is trying to find out how and why. If we hadn’t come along when we did, you might have sat on that sofa and that toilet seat all day, so I know you’re grateful, and you’ll be glad to answer a few questions.”

“You’re private detectives,” Maxine announced. “Working for Sam.”

“That’s right. Professor Samuel J. Holloway.”

“Ph.D. Never forget to add that. Doctor of Phoniness and Philandering.”

They returned to the cluttered living room.

“You’d better know right away,” Anastasia said, sitting beside Maxine and taking her hand, “that nobody in this house is impartial on the subject of Herr Professor. A good piece of advice, don’t believe a word he tells you. What did he tell you?”

Frieda answered, “That his current graduate-student-in-residence ran off taking something of his. She was hitchhiking, and we’re all hoping she hasn’t been murdered. You were seen talking to her in Miami last week, Mrs. Holloway, and according to the girl who saw you, talking hard. About what?”

Maxine found her glasses and put them on, putting on at the same time what was probably her usual manner. The glasses slid half an inch down her nose, so she could look at Frieda over the rims.

“Does anybody want coffee? I don’t advise it, I make lousy coffee. Of course I talked to the girl. When was I down in Miami, honey? I bought those prints.”

“They don’t care when,” Anastasia said. “They want to know why. The ex-girl and the current girl. Besides Holloway and pre-Columbian art, what do you have in common?”

“She wrote me,” Maxine explained. “She had a research problem she wanted help with, if I wasn’t too bitter. To call her when I was down next. So I was curious, I called her, and we had some ice cream. Great for the figure. God, I hate girls like that! She had a double chocolate sundae with whipped cream, and you knew from the way she licked the spoon that she wouldn’t gain an ounce. The question was legit, I mean not just a pretext. I used to know quite a lot about the subject. I’m a bit rusty.”

“You keep up,” her friend said. “If I did as much reading as you do I’d go blind.”

She pushed up her glasses. “I try, but there’s too much, when I also have to make a living and keep the goddamn house picked up and be nice to a man. It happened that I knew where to tell her to look, and we got that out of the way in thirty seconds. After that we talked about Sam, really about why we broke up.”

“Why did you?” Frieda said.

“Sam’s version goes this way. Everything was companionable and easy, we were into the same things and I had respect for his brain and his power to hypnotize large masses of undergraduates, and then a guy named Andy Anastasia came along.”

Wrinkling her nose against the pressure of her glasses, she smiled at the man beside her. “There was no real comparison. Sexually Andy was major-league, hitting in the top ten. Whereas Professor Holloway, Ph.D, struck out too often and was strictly bush. My version of this is that I was disillusioned with Sam long before Andy loomed on the horizon. I didn’t care about those occasional episodes with his female students, the tutorial conferences ending with professor and student partially undressed. Sam needed that, and I could adapt. But living in the same house with him, I began to see the character flaws, the greatest of which was vanity.”

“Man,” Andy said.

“He wanted to be petted all the time. And the petting went only one way. When you find out that the man you’re living with is a bastard, the magic goes.”

“I sat in on one of his lectures once,” Andy contributed. “‘The Artistic Imperative.’” He put it in quotes with a quick downward slash of his fingers. “That’s why all his graduate students are women. Men see through the act quicker.”

“Another objective witness heard from,” Maxine said, patting his knee.

“I’ve never tried to conceal the fact that he burns my gass. Five thousand creative artists starving in this country, and creeps like that eat caviar and filet mignon.”

“I told Meri a few things Sam would really like me to keep to myself,” Maxine went on. “I can be a bitch, and over that scoop of lemon sherbet I was very, very bitchy. I haven’t felt so purged in years. Of course she already knew it all, she needed confirmation. He’d asked her to marry him — did I say that? Panic sets in as the hairline retreats. She didn’t need me to tell her she’d be nutty to do it. But she needed reasons. Reasons I gave her. It was the first time I’d met the girl, and I liked her, sort of. How did they part, friends? I guess not.”

“A cup was thrown,” Frieda said.

“Hey,” Maxine said, pleased. “I thought she might turn out to be that type. A little more militance is what we need.”

“Did she call you after that?”

“Not while I was home.”

She looked at the man beside her. He shook his head. Shayne put in, “Somebody named Eliot Tree, staying at the St. Albans. Who is he?”

She looked at him in astonishment. “Eliot Tree — you’re really out of it. The Fine Arts, in the big city. I thought he was the one museum director everybody knows. He used to be a curator down here and I knew him. He was trying to get the museum interested in pre-Columbian, but the time hadn’t come.”

She checked herself, adjusted her glasses again, and said slowly, “Did she pinch the Toltec mask?”

“A piece of it,” Frieda said.

“Terrific!” Maxine said with enthusiasm. “No wonder Sam was so quick to bring in detectives. I’ve heard of you, Shayne, the prices you charge. I knew it couldn’t be anything small. Now wait a minute. Wait one minute.”

She slid the glasses back and forth along the well-traveled half inch. “That’s what those guys were after. They thought it was here.”

“What did you tell the chick,” Andy said, “that if she wanted to shoplift something, you’d handle it for her?”

“No, no, no. She showed me a Kodachrome and she wanted me to give her a rough idea of how much it was worth. The quality, Andy! Sometimes you can’t tell from a photograph. The colors come out brighter than they really are. But this looked fantastic. Sam was authenticating it, I don’t know who for. If she knew, she didn’t tell me.”

“Holloway says he bought it in Colombia,” Frieda said.

“If so,” Maxine said, as her glasses slid, “that’s going to put him in a different bracket. He’s always been the technician, not the dealer. Of course he does love money. He was always talking about some pot or some clay dog he could have bought for fifty dollars that went for five thousand at Parke-Bernet. Interesting! Very.”

“Baby, a mask?” Andy said. “I don’t visualize it.”

“A mosaic,” she explained. “Colored chips on terracotta. Onyx, turquoise, jadeite, red crysolite. Human teeth, two fangs. Resin. A beard may have been attached to it once, not as wild as yours. There are some examples around — Chicago has one that’s eighty percent intact. The point is, this is one hundred percent, or ninety-nine plus, in mint condition. It was found in pieces, but all the pieces were there and the breaks ran along the mosaic lines, so putting it together was no job at all. Maybe something else of the same quality has been found while I haven’t been paying attention, but I doubt it. If it’s the only one of its kind, only the richest museums are going to be able to afford it, and that’s what I told her. Then I got to wondering. I happened to see that Tree was down for some kind of directors’ meeting. I called him. You get cautious awfully fast in that business, but he agreed — cautiously — that a mask like that might command a rather high price. He himself, in light of the stock market slide and the tightness of his board of trustees, wouldn’t be able to bid on it, which was too bad because he’s getting a big exhibition ready and he needs something spectacular to top it off.”

“Has it been offered to him?” Frieda asked.

Maxine hesitated. “I think so. He didn’t admit it to me.”

“When you say a high price, how high?”

“How high is up? How much do you think these pieces of Andy’s are worth? They’re worth exactly what people are willing to pay for them. They ought to sell for about a thousand apiece, and it’s my prediction that that’s going to happen someday. Right now, write him a check for a hundred dollars and you can have all three.”

“Sweetheart,” Andy said.

“They know I’m not serious, I’m making a point. A broken mask, like the one in Chicago, might go for nine or ten thou. A few years ago an intact mask like this one, with the right kind of papers, verified by a top expert like Holloway, well, thirty or forty thousand. But funny things have been happening lately. Five and a half million for a not very good Velásquez. Etruscan kraters. Seventy thousand used to be high. All at once along came a perfect example by the best-known Greek master, and everybody wanted it. Money was available, because gifts to museums are tax-deductible. A record-breaking price brings people into museums, not to see a famous piece of art, but to see a piece of art that has changed hands at a famous price. That’s how museums measure success, by the number of people they draw. So the krater went for a million three. Maybe the same kind of breakthrough could happen here. People have been saying for years that pre-Columbian was the next hot category. In an auction situation, with half a dozen hungry museums bidding—” She stopped, and looked grave. “A half million?”

“I did hear you say a half million dollars,” Andy said. “I know it sounds crazy, but one of these days pre-Columbian’s going through the roof. It has to happen. And this might be the piece to start it.”

“It’s disgusting. Why do any of us bother?”

“Did Meri tell you about any offers for it?”

“She wasn’t giving away anything more than she had to. But you realize, don’t you, that this whole traffic is highly illegal? Every Central American country has laws against export. To get to the United States, it has to be stolen first, then smuggled. Sam used to stay out of that whole end. The academic expert, clean hands. Always a witness, never a defendant. I hope you don’t think he really bought it in Colombia? Bullshit. What if Meri knew where he really got it? She’s an intelligent girl, privy to his secrets, as we say. She could blow him out of the water if she was feeling mean enough — get the mask confiscated and sent back. Money and effort wasted.”

She came forward and let go of Andy’s hand to make her gestures more emphatic. “Did Sam know she was going to be hitchhiking?”

“He overheard a phone call.”

“Then what if he’s the one who stopped and picked her up? Do you like that theory?”

“And killed her?” Shayne said.

“Taking advantage of all the furor about the hitchhiking murderer. Now you’re going to ask me if he’s capable of it. I lived with him five long hard years. If the price is right,” she said grimly, “he’s capable of it.”

Andy moved uneasily.

“All right, I know,” she said. “The ex-wife speaking. Frankly, I hate him.”

“But tactically,” Andy said, “it might be smarter to let these people figure some of this out for themselves. You did call the museum guy. Guys with guns did walk in and tie you up and take the place apart.”

“I admit I can’t explain it.”

“Maxine, honey,” Andy said gently, taking her hand again, “you’ve got to try, or they’ll go away thinking you’re the mastermind.”

Maxine said helplessly, “Somebody already thinks that. But who? Sam? Ellie Tree? I only had one conversation with the girl! I didn’t give her any advice on how she could screw Sam. I’m an innocent bystander.”

“I believe you,” Andy said, “and I just hope they do, because I’ve heard of Shayne, too, and I’ve heard he’s a bad man to have mad at you.”

Frieda took out her photographs. “I want to be sure this is the same girl and the same mask.”

“That’s Meri Gillespie,” Maxine said. “And that’s the picture she showed me. Do you see what I mean? My God! It leaps out at you. If it has that same quality in three dimensions, it’ll really pull people in. I hope to hell it hasn’t been dumped in some swamp somewhere. Well, I hope she hasn’t either, but there are plenty of young girls. This mask is one of a kind.”

Andy took the picture. “Half a million bucks? You’ve got to be kidding.”

“Mike, any questions?” Frieda said.

“You helped with his textbook, Mrs. Holloway. Do you get any royalties?”

“I do not,” Maxine snapped. “Nor do I get any alimony, which is something I don’t happen to believe in. I do believe in royalties, but unfortunately my name doesn’t appear on the copyright page or in the contract. At the time I didn’t think it mattered. We were husband and wife, so why be picky? And a year after the divorce, the book began to move.”

“Did Meri mention anything to you about somebody named Sid Koch?”

“Koch? No.”

“Did you expect to see her again?”

“Not really. She said if there was anything else she needed to know, she’d call.”

“When you were talking to Tree, did you tell him you knew who had a mask like the one you were describing?”

“I guess I implied it. And it did cross my mind — Tree’s in Miami, Sam Holloway’s in Miami. If the mask is still up for grabs, is that the real reason Tree happens to be in town?”

“What’s your own idea about what ought to be done with a thing like this? It’s stolen goods. Do you think it ought to go back?”

“I suppose I do,” she said slowly. “It comes from Quintana Roo in Yucatan. At least that’s what he’s letting us understand. The National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City is damn good, and that’s really the place for it. But if it was Guatemalan, my answer might be different. As the star piece in a North American collection, hundreds of thousands of people a year would see it, and presumably get something out of it. It would be well displayed and described, and carefully watched so it wouldn’t be stolen a second time. But if sending it back would mean doing Sam Holloway out of a dirty bonanza, I’d think very seriously about it.”

“We all have lots to think about,” Andy said. “But first we’d better find out if the kid’s been murdered. That would make the whole thing academic.” His face worked. “Academic — I even hate to pronounce the word.”

Chapter 5

“Now you see why I wanted you along,” Frieda said as they drove away. “You’re the expert. Were they lying?”

“There were things they weren’t saying. That’s normal.”

“Now you’re cheating. What I want to get you to admit is that it’s very likely — not certain, just likely — that Meri Gillespie was picked up and kidnapped by somebody, not because she had a piece of a Toltec mask in her knapsack, but because she was a young and good-looking girl. It doesn’t matter whether she was heading for an old boyfriend in Fort Myers or Maxine Holloway in Seminole Beach. She didn’t arrive. You know what I’m thinking about, Mike. I’m thinking about going out hitchhiking. If I can find out what happened, and find the knapsack, and if I’m right and the kidnapper didn’t know that that little bright fragment had any importance or value, I can buy myself into a game that seems to be played for rather high stakes.”

“It’s also a high-risk game.”

“Sometimes you have to take chances.” She was speaking soberly, looking straight ahead. “Here’s my situation, Mike. I try to look optimistic, because nobody likes to do business with a pessimist. But the agency loses a little more money every week. Not a whole lot more, just a little, little enough so it seems to me I have to stay open and hope for a change in the weather.”

“I didn’t know you were one of those people who think it’s disgraceful to go bankrupt.”

“I didn’t say it would be disgraceful. Just too bad. Have you ever seriously considered going into something different, or going to work for somebody else?”

“In the early days, sure. I’ve been at it longer than you have.”

“I’m stubborn. I still think there are things I can do that even you can’t. And this may be one of them! I’m not thinking just about money. I want potential clients to know I exist.”

“If you stake yourself out on the highway and capture the Interstate Rapist, you’ll get attention, I grant you. But nobody’s going to want their investigations handled by somebody who’s gone completely haywire. You’ve already got two strikes on you, as a woman. This isn’t your problem. If the cops can’t find him, the guy can’t be found.”

“That may be true, Mike. But I’ve been hired to locate a missing person and recover a piece of stolen property. If I’m willing to go hitchhiking in enemy country, those potential clients are going to be impressed, and you know it. It’ll put Field and Field on the map.”

“Or somewhere else. Do you want me to tell you how I figure the odds?”

She hesitated. “Better not. I’d probably agree with you. Let’s just fool with this for a minute. You said the totals in series murders tend to get inflated. Be conservative. Besides Meri and the two girls outside Jacksonville, there are three other pretty good candidates. All were hitching alone on a major highway. Between fifteen years old and twenty-five. I’m twenty-six, which puts me over the top range, but there won’t be many of us out today. We know what kind of clothes they were wearing. I think I’ll carry a guitar. I have a feeling that girls who play the guitar don’t pay attention to news broadcasts, and may have missed the warnings. Now for the odds. The odds against being picked up by the one man we want are probably a hundred to one. I know that doesn’t mean that if I take a hundred rides, I’ll finally hit the right one, because there may be something about me that won’t appeal to him at all. And if he does pick me up, the odds against anything happening are probably, again, a hundred to one. But the client’s going to like my attitude. It’ll show I’m trying. Mike, it’s better than advertising in the yellow pages!”

“I was thinking more about the odds against living through it.”

“I carry a gun. I used to be a terrible shot, but I’ve been going to the range and I’m much better. I know a few simple self-defense moves. In addition to all that, I hope you’ll be covering me.”

“I have a better idea,” he said. “Let’s charter a boat for a day’s sail. I’d like to get out in the Stream and see if any bluefish are waiting for me. You can lie on the bow, with or without bathing suit, and let your mind drift. That’s the way to find answers. Stop thinking about the questions.”

“If this was your case, would you go fishing?”

“Probably not. I wouldn’t dress up in a blond wig and stand out on the edge of the road thumbing, either.”

She laughed. “That’s what I was saying. You can’t. I can.”

“Why do you think so many police departments gave up using decoys? Too many got hurt. It’s a dumb idea, Frieda. It isn’t that important. A six-hundred-year-old funeral mask.”

“A twenty-three-year-old girl.”

“Those guys we surprised in the Seminole Beach house must have some kind of art-world connection. I know people I can ask. Let’s lean on this New York guy, Tree. Talk to Holloway’s colleagues. Koch. Give it another day, anyway, Frieda.”

She shook her head. “Will you help me, Mike?”

“Hell, no. Why should I take part in something I think is stupid?”

They were on the road by noon.

Frieda was wearing zip-up boots and old pants with a flowery patch on one knee, a tight purple sweater. Her hair was loose and blowing. Besides the guitar, she carried only a shoulder bag, holding everything she was taking with her, including a snub-nosed.38 revolver. A bright yellow scarf was looped around the handle of the guitar case.

They started at the 8th Street interchange, from which Meri Gillespie had set out two days earlier. Shayne drove ahead to the first gas pumps and parked. He had only a few minutes’ wait. He read the front page and the sports section of the morning paper, and was studying an open road map when Frieda passed him, the only passenger in a sports car. With her long black hair she was easy to spot, and to make the identification certain, she had closed the door on her scarf, which fluttered conspicuously from the side of the moving car.

Shayne folded the road map and followed. Frieda got out of the car at the next exit, having satisfied herself, apparently, that the driver was not the man they wanted. She waved Shayne past. He found another place to pull off the road and wait.

This first ride had been with a middle-aged man who didn’t seem to be tempted to use any of the sports car’s acceleration or power. He gripped the wheel tightly with both hands, except when he removed one hand to put a cigar in his mouth. He was leaning forward against the shoulder belt, in a state of some tension. Once Frieda was inside the car, he didn’t appear to give her a thought. When she tried to open a conversation, he replied in grunts, without removing his eyes from the road. He stayed in the right-hand lane, swearing under his breath when anyone passed him too fast, making his low-slung vehicle rock and swerve.

“I don’t know why,” Frieda said, “but I’m restless today.” She moved in the bucket seat, her inside foot close to his on the accelerator. “It must be the weather. Something interesting and out of the ordinary absolutely has to happen.”

“Mmm.”

“Not going anywhere special. Just going! That’s one of the things about hitching. A car stops, you get in, and you never know if it’s going to be nothing or something.”

He delivered another all-purpose grunt. After half a mile more she tried again.

“Times have certainly changed. People have begun to open up, finally, after so many centuries. Freedom! It’s wonderful.” She stretched her arms over her head. “This is a neat car. Can I drive?”

“Of course not,” he said sharply.

The window on his side was closed. She waved at the smoke that drifted in front of her, to leave by her window. She told him she didn’t believe in putting anything down that gave people pleasure, but the one thing that made her feel like throwing up was cigar smoke, and she didn’t want to mess up his nicely maintained automobile. Would he mind letting her out?

It made no difference to him, and he replied to her thanks with another abbreviated grunt.

A man and a woman, with children in the back seat, were the next to stop. Conceivably a schizophrenic could be a rapist by day and a family man by night, but Frieda thought it was unlikely that the two roles would overlap. She told them she was waiting for someone her own age, with a tape deck. A truck driver was next. He gave her breasts, in the tight sweater, more than one look. He started talking at once. Some of what he said was inaudible. She thought for a time that he was talking about women who had let him love them, for his tone was husky and sensual. Actually, she learned, he was telling her about different vehicles he had owned or driven. He was keeping a schedule, watching the time and the odometer, and he didn’t pick up on her hints that she was bored, ready to listen to any reasonable suggestion for getting off the hot highway.

So she left him.

Now she had a half-hour wait, while hundreds of cars boomed past, without slackening speed. She found a spot with a sliver of shade and tied the bright scarf around her forehead. The sun was like brass. Sweat ran down her legs.

A clean-shaven young man pulled over finally, and she felt a quick flicker of apprehension as he opened the door. She had been looking too long at the sundrenched concrete. There was a hot glitter in his eyes. She pulled her scarf free and let it catch in the door as it slammed.

His first remark after rejoining the traffic was: “You can thank Jesus for this.”

“I can? In what way?”

“He told me to pick you up.”

She shifted her shoulder bag to her lap so she could get to her gun quickly. “Why do you think he did that?”

The eyes, a very pale flat blue, red-rimmed, touched her again and slid along her body. He seemed to be disgusted with what he saw. He looked somewhat weatherbeaten, with a radiation of sun wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. His arms, emerging from the tight sleeves of a T-shirt, were like twists of bridge cable. In any physical struggle with this man, she would lose.

“Jesus,” he said lovingly. “The wind was in my ears. It was hard to hear all the exact words. I get flashes sometimes. The sky opens. Light blazes up, the breath is knocked out of my body, and I hear the voice. I believe you’ve been waiting to have Jesus Christ the Savior revealed to you.”

“Not consciously.”

“Jesus has his eye on girls on the highway. All the traveling girls — fleeing from something. They are ready for the flash, like Saul on the road to Damascus.”

Seeming to share his excitement, the speedometer needle had continued to climb until it stood straight up.

“Don’t you feel it? Don’t you feel it? See the shimmer rising from the roadway. What do you think that is, girl? Heat refractions? It’s the Holy Ghost. Open yourself. You’ll thank me. Consider the way you’re sitting there in the seat. So tense and unwelcoming. Part your knees. Prepare yourself to receive.”

“If you don’t slow down, you’re going to meet your maker quicker than you think. We’re twenty-five over the limit.”

“I live my life over the limit,” he said. “I get away with it because I believe in the power of prayer. Pray with me, all will be well.”

“We might have a better chance of being saved at seventy.”

“Those little details aren’t important. Sin is what matters. It’s sin that leads to hellfire. Thank you, Jesus.”

“I’ve done quite a bit of sinning, I’m afraid.” Her hands were tightly clenched. “It comes over me, and I think, ‘Why not?’ Slow down and tell me what I have to do to change.”

“Love Jesus!” he explained. “Unlock your knees and let the sweetness in. The honey of his love, let it fill you. He died for you. And what do you do for him? Stand at the roadside with the outlines of your body showing through your clothes. Girl, do you realize that your nipples are sticking out? That I can see the very hair on your sweet mount under the tight pants? You drink, you dope, you fornicate, you stay up late picking at that guitar.”

As the pressure grew inside his head, so did the pressure of his foot on the gas pedal.

“I feel it preparing to enter!” he shouted, gripping the wheel. “The truth! I see it. Oh!”

He closed his eyes and reared back. Fortunately they were alone on a straight stretch of concrete, and the seizure passed before their wickedness caught up to them and the ride came to a flaming finish. He blinked and said softly, “Wow.”

To Frieda’s relief, he began to slow down. The car was shaking, as though trying to shed its skin.

“That was far out,” he said. “Real communication that time. A flight of angels, their wings stretched out to us. I felt something delicate brush my face. Did you feel any of it?”

“I was too scared.”

“Scared!” he said, surprised. “Of the angels of Jesus?”

“Or something.”

He laughed, and in a changed voice said, “Turn the mirror and look at yourself. You’re as white as a painted wall.”

“You were going a hundred and five with your eyes closed.”

He went on laughing. “I may have peeked a little. With the off-eye.” His accent had changed slightly and was less rural. “How far are you traveling with me, girl?”

“Not far,” she said grimly. “I haven’t been to church for years, but I’m an Episcopalian and we don’t believe in enthusiasm.”

“But are you happy? Look at those tight thighs. You’re not happy. I’d say you’re about ripe for the kiss of Jesus.”

She gave him a closer look. “You’ve been putting me on.”

“What are you doing hitching without a bra, dummy? Haven’t you heard there’s a rapist prowling the interstate? Now I’m serious! Don’t you listen to the news, or what?”

“I’m into sensory awakening and Hermann Hesse. What can a news broadcaster say to me?”

“I thought that was it. For your information, people have been getting killed lately. How much have you got with you, in the way of cash?”

“I don’t carry money. It distorts the real things. Just a dollar for fruit and milk.”

“A dollar won’t buy you much public transportation.”

They were now moving at a legal speed. He glanced at her, shaking his head.

“Jesus wouldn’t want me to pass on the other side of the road, would you, Jesus?” He looked aloft. “I’m getting off at Pompano, and I really do mean it’s a damn-fool thing for you to be out doing right now, hitching. O.K., chances are that most of it’s propaganda, but it gives people ideas. Like somebody hijacks an airplane in a certain way, and all the copy-cats go to work and do just exactly the same thing. Everybody driving an automobile these days has to be a little cracked.” He hooted sharply. “Except me! And with all these rapists around who dig the sight of a couple of nice tits, you’ve got the only two on the road today, and the guys are going to be bumping fenders to get first crack at you.”

“I doubt that.”

“I’m coming up from Key West, and you’re the first girl single I’ve noticed all afternoon. That hair is crazy. I like it, and the rapists are going to like it. If they’re going the other way, they’ll turn around and come back. So if you’ve got a five or ten under the sole of your boot, blow it on busfare.”

“The difference between you and me is,” Frieda said, “I’m not paranoid.”

“In fact,” he went on, “do you absolutely have to travel? A week from now, if no more bodies turn up, the hitchers will be moving again, and you won’t stand out this much.”

“I can’t hold still and grow roots. I’ve got to move.”

He sighed. “All right. Show me your ID and make me a solemn promise to pay me back, and I’ll advance you for the ticket. I’ve been working a charter for some wealthy people, and the tips have been good.”

She let him persuade her to stop hitchhiking, and when they left the highway at the Pompano Beach exit, she admitted her financial situation was better than she had made out and she wouldn’t require a loan. At the bus depot, they exchanged names and addresses.

“And just in case I didn’t convince you,” he said before driving off, “stay off the big road, for the love of Jesus. So far nobody’s been raped on Route One.”

She remained on the sidewalk until he was out of sight. Shayne pulled up and she got in.

“Don’t say one word, Michael Shayne,” she said, furious. “Back to the highway, and if you want to make yourself popular around here, keep your mouth shut.”

“Did the subject of rape come up at all?” he said with a slight smile.

“It came up,” she said, tight-lipped.

“I clocked him at a hundred and seven.”

“With one eye closed. Now shut up!”

At the interchange, he pointed out that the afternoon sun was uncomfortably hot, and he had ice, gin, tonic, and glasses in the back seat. She allowed him to make drinks, and found herself beginning to relax.

“Sorry I snarled, Mike. There was a flight of angels overhead, and for a minute I thought they were going to swoop down and pick us up.”

Chapter 6

This time she tried the southbound ramp. She took a brief ride with a tanned man in a new Cadillac with a New York license, heading for Miami Beach. His clothes were expensive, and one of the things they had been designed to do was disguise the fact that any doctor would have labeled him an excellent candidate for a heart attack.

He kept glancing across at her. After five miles he offered her a hundred dollars to keep him company for the night. He liked adventurous, independent-minded girls. Dinner was included in the invitation, and if she wanted to go watch the dogs or the horses or the jai-alai, that would be just fine.

Presumably a rapist doesn’t offer his victims large sums in cash and an evening’s entertainment, and Frieda declined and asked him to let her out. Until that moment he had seemed supremely confident. He wore three rings, expensive shoes, and he had an expensive smell. But the unexpected rejection by a shabbily dressed nobody caused the flesh around his mouth to whiten. He spoke stiffly, as if under novocaine.

“I just thought — the Beach is one hell of a place when you’re there on your own.”

“You can get somebody. Stand in the hotel lobby holding that hundred-dollar bill.”

“But it’s so damn awkward with that kind of person. I never know what to say. You’re a customer, and they despise you for it.”

“Don’t you have anyone regular, a wife, for instance?”

The novocaine effect spread to his lower jaw. “Haven’t had time. My mother’s still living, and she’s very — time-consuming. I’m a business success, everybody’s afraid of me, but I’m really a rather empty person. I came on too fast, didn’t I? If I’d waited till we were about there—”

“It was too fast for me,” she said. “It may work with somebody else. I don’t know why you should have any trouble. Everybody I see in Miami Beach with this kind of car has a woman with him in the front seat.”

“I’m the big exception. I don’t suppose you’d be interested in the same program, minus the sex? A peck on the cheek, if that’s as far as you care to go.”

He had pulled over. “I don’t want to start feeling sorry for people,” she said, unlatching the door. “Feeling sorry for myself is a full-time job. Good luck.”

“Maybe rape is my answer,” he said bitterly.

“What do you mean?” she said, turning. “What kind of pleasure would that give you?”

“I’m not talking about pleasure! But not to pay for if, for once. I was just listening to the news. But I know me,” he added gloomily. “I don’t think I could.”

The next car to stop was a Volkswagen bus, already carrying a full load. But all they had was a banjo and a mouth organ, and they told Frieda they’d be glad to make room for a guitar. She looked in at the happy riders, as intertwined as a litter of drowsy kittens. Too bad, she said, she was carrying the guitar for a friend and couldn’t play it herself.

Hands reached for her. “Plenty of room. Beautiful Miami.”

She stepped back. “I get carsick with too many people.”

A police car swung in. The driver of the bus picked up its arrival in his side mirror, and announced, “Pick up a hitchhiker? It’s against the law, didn’t you know that?”

He clashed his way into first and the bus moved off.

The trooper dismounted.

He was a year or two younger than Frieda, and gave the impression of having taken the last remaining uniform that morning, although it was a size too small. His hat sat square on his head. Sunglasses covered the upper half of his face like miniature windshields.

“Hitchhiking. Get in. It’s a hot day, and give me any trouble and I’ll give it right back. Because I am purely pissed off at you people.”

He wrenched open the back door of the cruiser.

“There was a friend of mine in that VW,” she said. “They stopped to see if I wanted a lift. You heard me say no. I’m meeting somebody.”

The trooper had heard the excuse hundreds of times, and he didn’t think much of it. Leather creaked as he moved. The sunglasses showed only the absence of emotion, but his voice became ropier.

“I said get in the vehicle, baby-doll. This is what is called an arrest. Resist arrest, and I’m at liberty to use appropriate force.”

“All right, general. Before you pop a seam—”

She was on the point of producing her investigator’s license, but there was a strange mechanical quality about the way he moved, coming down hard on his heels, jerkily, with his ankles locked. One hand touched the butt of his issue revolver, which had been polished so lovingly it had its own halo. His other thumb was hooked between the broad leather belt and the overhanging belly. His mouth was small, with pointed teeth set in too-conspicuous gums. He eased himself at the crotch, and the thought jumped into Frieda’s mind that this might be the man. A single cop cruising the highway — it was a perfect cover. She fell back a step, her hand raised.

“Forget about it this time and I honestly promise I won’t ever do it again.”

“I took an oath to enforce the law. Get in there like I tell you or by God I’ll put your ass in with my two hands — and you won’t like that, I can guarantee you.”

“I don’t think it’s legal to bust me when you didn’t see me thumbing.”

“I’ve been right behind you. I saw you take a ride in that Caddy. I’ve got the documentation this time, and we’re going to sock you with a fine of fifty dollars, and if you don’t have that, fifty days in the county jail.”

He grabbed at her. She evaded him.

“Please don’t, will you? My dad’s the original stickler for law and order. He’ll give me holy hell.”

“And that’s a lot better than you deserve. He ought to take down your jeans and whomp on your white ass.” She glanced back, as though thinking about running. He seized her. She flopped about in his grip, and one of his heavy boots came down on her sneakered foot. The strap of her bag slipped from her shoulder.

“Goddamn you,” she cried. “I’ll get you kicked out into real life for this.”

He pulled her against him, feeling for the door-handle. She lost the bag in the struggle. When he had the door open, he thrust her in. The front and back seats were separated by heavy wire, and there were no inner handles on the doors. She went forward on her hands.

“Give me my things, bastard. If you scratch that guitar—”

“We’ll be going through everything with a fine-tooth comb, and you better hope we don’t find any of the wrong kind of grass — one single crumb, two years.”

He was calmer now. He put the bag and the guitar case in front and circled the car, which was still panting in neutral.

“You’re way out of line,” he told her after getting in. “Are you listening to me? Clothes from the Army and Navy, and carrying a Martin guitar. I know that make. Your daddy bought it for a birthday present, I’m sure. That set of teeth, perfect. Those kinds of dentists charge thousands and thousands. Everybody else has their own car or they take an airplane, but not you. Not you! You’d rather leech on people. Don’t give me any more mouth or I’ll climb in back and you’ll wish you were more polite.”

“Polite,” she said sarcastically.

She whipped her long scarf around her head, leaving one end loose so it would catch Shayne’s eye. The brake came off and they went back on the road with a whoosh, passing a sign announcing a food and fuel stop just ahead, where Shayne would be waiting.

“Fifty dollars or fifty days,” the cop shouted. “If it was up to me I’d make it a felony.”

He wound up to third, staying in each gear a little too long. Letting up on the gas suddenly, he swung to the left, through a gap in the divider labeled “Authorized Personnel Only, No U-Turn.” He headed north, coming down finally into fourth. She swung around to look out the back window. There was no sign of Shayne.

He left at the next exit, hardly cutting his speed at all, while his tires protested. There was slow-moving traffic in his way. He blasted it over with a blink of headlights and a quick goose from the siren.

“You’re going to want a lawyer,” he called back. “We’re not going to get you one. That civil liberties shit don’t trickle down this far. Everybody’s entitled to one phone call. Our phone’s been out of order all day.”

“There are worse things than jail.”

“You don’t know ours. Make it unpleasant, is the way we discourage crime. We don’t segregate, that wouldn’t be democratic. You’re going to be in there with nigger hoors.”

“Ghastly.”

“You may not be quite so much of a bleeding-heart after they’re done with you. Those are vicious women, in withdrawal, mainly. White hippy girls with guitars, they eat them alive.”

They were on two-lane blacktop and he was driving more slowly, one arm flung over the back of the seat. They approached a dirt road. He hit the brakes and turned in.

“Shortcut,” he said, showing his little uneven teeth. After a time he turned again, entering a citrus grove. They were still on dirt, and this road was heavily rutted. He scraped bottom twice before he stopped and snapped off the motor. Dust rose. Toads chirped cheerfully somewhere nearby.

“What is this?” Frieda said evenly.

He peeled off his dark glasses and pushed back the fancy-dress hat, leaving a red line across his forehead. He kneaded the flesh on the bridge of his nose.

“We got off on the wrong foot back there. We need to talk quiet, about where you stand legally. You pissed me off with your attitude.”

She waited.

“You know I don’t have to take you in if I don’t care to. I’ve already got my quota. Somebody gives me a hard time, I give them a hard time. That’s how the wheels go around, always has been.”

“I said please. What good did it do me?”

“You were fixing to run, and that would be a pretty picture, wouldn’t it, you and me chasing each other all over the countryside.”

“I plead not guilty. Now let me go. I’ll walk back.”

“It’s two miles, are you crazy? Not guilty! I can tell you one thing for damn sure, if I take you in front of that peace justice we’ve got, it won’t be not guilty. He dearly hates hitchhikers.”

“You’ve been coming on like a hitchhiker-hater yourself.”

“Some of them. You don’t seem as mangy as most. I’ve got a six-pack of Bud up here, not too icy cold by now but maybe you’re thirsty.”

“If I drink a warm beer with you, the bust is off?”

“More or less.” He kept swinging around to look through the wire, but he met her eyes directly only for a second or two at a time. He had the same blue eyes as the other driver who had scared her with his talk of Jesus.

“What we’re talking about is a little afternoon love-making?” she said.

“It could be great.”

Orange trees, in orderly rows, marched away in both directions. Some of the trees had recently been pruned, and the prunings had been left on the ground.

“I don’t suppose there’s anybody else within miles,” she said.

“I guess not within earshot.” He took off his hat, giving the act the same significance as if he had undressed completely, and got out of the car. “I can’t goof off the whole afternoon. I’m on duty.”

The back door opened. When she didn’t come out at once, he drummed his fingertips against the doorframe. “What are we waiting for, violins?”

“What if you go ahead and bust me anyway?”

“I’d be laying myself wide open.”

Pulling at her sweater, Frieda came out on the soft dirt. He groaned and grabbed for her. She slid away along the side of the car.

“Let me get my bag first. I want to put something in. You know, foam.”

“What are you talking?”

“You know, like for birth control. I don’t want to get messed up. It’s a tube and a plunger — you can watch me do it.”

The prospect made him breathe more quickly. His eyes seemed to retreat further into the pouches of sun-reddened flesh. He let her pass, and she opened the front door and reached across. That was long enough without contact. He caught her from behind, his hands going to her breasts, and thrust himself against her. She pulled away, and the bag was jarred off the seat, hitting the floor with a clunk. The pistol spilled out.

He saw it. She snatched downward. He hauled her back hard, still holding her breasts, and spinning around, slapped the door shut with a movement of his hip. She went with the pull. Hooking one foot behind his leg, she managed to drop him. She landed hard on his protruding paunch, and hot breath rushed past her ear.

Her sweater had ridden up and her breasts were out. He continued to grip her. He was stronger than he looked; a lot of the bulge proved to be muscle. Pinning her to the ground with one meaty leg and an elbow, he tore at the fastenings of her jeans.

“If you want a fight, I’ll give you a fight.” He began working her pants down over her hips. “Nothing like breaking a sweat.”

“You’re the one who killed all those girls.”

He said angrily, “What girls?”

“You picked them up on Ninety-five and raped them, and then you killed them and buried them.”

She lay beneath him quietly. He had removed none of his leather equipment, and it ground against her flesh. His pistol in its well-oiled holster was only an inch from her hand.

He blinked slowly. “Do you think it’s that hard for me to get laid? Yeah, I thought about it, how easy—”

“Some of them are probably buried right here, under the orange trees.”

He rotated above her, and the gun moved out of her reach. “I never raped anybody in my life. It just doesn’t appeal to me.”

“What are you doing right now?”

“I’m helping you get undressed. I gave you your free choice.”

“Have sex, or fifty days in jail.”

“Be honest, now,” he said. “Did I put it that way? I said if you’re nice to me I’ll be nice to you. You talked about putting the foam in. I don’t go places I’m not wanted! I get all the fucking I can handle, and they give it to me free. I don’t get any great thrill out of hurting girls.”

“You’re hurting me.”

Shifting, he saw the chafe marks on her stomach. “O.K.,” he said sullenly, “I’ll be careful. Rut I can’t take all my stuff off, because I’ve got to get back on the highway.”

Starting over, he tried to kiss her mouth. She turned her head, and his lips slid to the hollow of her throat.

“I like the salty taste. Be nice to me, darling.”

Shayne came around the car. “Do you need any help?”

“I can handle it, thanks,” Frieda said.

The trooper flopped over and stared up at the powerfully built redhead. His hand went for his gun. Frieda caught his wrist as Shayne dropped on his chest, knees first. Shayne planted one hand on the jowly face and picked the gun out of its holster.

“I wasn’t expecting you,” Frieda said.

“I thought I saw something yellow in a VW bus,” Shayne said. “A big tangle of people. I went back to see if you were still there, and I heard the siren. He was in too big a hurry, and I thought I’d better see if he was chasing anybody. Is this our man?”

“I’m not sure yet. It could be.”

The trooper hacked soundlessly, trying to get air back in his lungs. Shayne pulled him to his feet and stood him against the car.

“As soon as you can talk, I want to get your side.”

Gradually the trooper’s face turned back to its usual shade of red. Looking at something off in the distance, he said, “We came in here to smooch. No law against that.”

“There are all kinds of laws against it,” Shayne told him. “We’ve got a sexual assault charge here, and you don’t have a chance of beating it. It’s one of the few times when there’s a corroborating witness.”

“What’s the penalty for rape in Florida?” Frieda said.

“I forget.”

“It can be life, but whites usually get less. And this was only attempted rape. It seems to me I got here in time?”

“Just.” Stepping up to the trooper, she hit him a slashing blow with the back of her hand. Her ring opened a red line across his cheek, at an angle to the line on his forehead left by the tight hat. “I want everybody to know I put up a fight.”

“You’re the one who brought up the foam, not me!”

She frowned. “You’ve got a point there. But I can be reasonable. Give me something and I’ll try to forget this happened.”

“How much? But go easy on me, because I don’t have nothing to my name that’s a whole hundred percent paid for.”

“Not money. It’s hard to describe. It’s a piece of a Mexican mask. About so big.” She shaped it with her hands. “Little bits of bright-colored stone on terracotta. If you have it, or if you know where it is, you can buy out of this, all the way out.”

He was shaking his head. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. Terra-what? I wouldn’t know it if I saw it.”

“Then that’s too bad,” Shayne said. “Let’s go.”

“You know what happens when you’re a complainant?” the trooper said to Frieda. “You’re tied up for weeks.”

“In your case, I’ll be glad to spare the time.”

Shayne drove the patrol car, with the trooper caged in the back seat. When they came to Shayne’s Buick, Frieda shifted to that and followed him to the Lauderdale station. The trooper whined and complained the first five miles, then was silent. Shayne saw him booked, and Frieda swore out the complaint.

“Enough for now?” Shayne said after they returned to his car.

“I suppose so. That took a certain amount of adrenaline, and I’d better go slow until I can manufacture some more. Your timing wasn’t too good. A couple of minutes earlier, I was in real trouble. At that point I think I had him.”

Shayne gave her a sidelong look. It had been a dry and dusty few hours, and he was making drinks from the bar in the back seat.

“I didn’t want to break in the minute I got there. I thought I’d listen to some of the dialogue first.”

“Mike!” she exclaimed. “You mean you were there all the time he was trying to wrestle me out of my blue jeans?”

He smiled, dropping in ice cubes. “I knew you could out-think him.”

“You bastard.” She hit him with a clenched fist and then, surprisingly, she closed with him quickly and kissed him. “You were a pleasant sight, all the same.”

“And if I hadn’t wondered about that pile of people in the Volkswagen, I wouldn’t have gone back. We thought we had this worked out, but it didn’t occur to us that you might be picked up by a cop who could make a U-turn. There are too many possibilities, Frieda, and no way to cover them all. Don’t you think you’ve put out enough effort for the client?”

“Mike, I guess so, but the scary part was that I was in back and my gun was in front, with a wire mesh between. That won’t happen again.”

“There’s a new Italian restaurant on Key Biscayne. If we start now we can get there while they’re serving. I told Tim Rourke I’d show up at the radio station later, but that shouldn’t take more than half an hour. I made some phone calls while I was waiting. I didn’t get very far, but there are people who won’t talk on the phone who will talk in bars, and I think if we move around we should be able to pick up something.”

Frieda was playing with a loose thread in her jeans. “Naturally I know I can’t thumb up and down highways the rest of my life. But I think we’re on the right track. I’d like to stay out just a bit longer. Take the Trail to Fort Myers in the morning. Over and back, and if nothing comes of that, write it off. And one more ride tonight. I’m psyched up now, and I’ve got a funny feeling that this could be the one. The end of the afternoon. He’s been out all day. He knows he shouldn’t pick up anybody new until the excitement dies down, but he’s tired, he’s getting careless. It’s going to be dark soon. He’ll feel safe in the dark. And there I am, with my guitar and my yellow scarf, the first female hitchhiker he’s seen for hours, all by myself. And there you are, up the road waiting for us to drive by.”

“I don’t like it, Frieda.”

“I know you don’t, Mike, but let’s do it! And let’s go north again. That’s what the vibrations are telling me. And stay the night in Palm Beach. If that’s all right with you. If you can postpone Tim Rourke.”

They exchanged a look.

“All right, I’ll call him. Maybe this time it’ll be a harmless traveling salesman who just wants you to listen to him brag.”

Finishing their drinks, they started back to the interstate. Frieda came closer, so their shoulders touched.

“Mike, I’ve been wanting to say something. Maybe I can say it now, with the help of a strong gin and tonic. About the late Harry Field. The vibrations are talking to me again. Do you feel” — she paused — “well, remotely responsible for giving him that job the day he was shot?” She hurried on. “The whole thing was accidental, and he should have checked to see if the man was carrying a gun. But still—”

“I did give him the job. I always liked Harry, and I’m sorry it happened.”

“Everybody liked Harry. That’s not the point. I just don’t want you to carry this around with you. To go out of your way to help Harry’s widow because you had something to do with the way he died.” She moved a hand. “This doesn’t sound as convincing as when I rehearsed it, and I’ve been rehearsing all day. Because damn it, Mike — I don’t see any earthly reason we shouldn’t share a room tonight, do you? And I want to get it settled right now. It would be embarrassing as hell to argue about it when we get there. Harry’s been dead ten months. Did you know he was drunk that day?”

“How drunk?”

“Coordination poor, reaction time far from normal. So will you stop feeling that it’s your fault?”

“I didn’t know Harry was that kind of drinker.”

“He wasn’t, for a long time. At the end it was two or three times a week, and the intervals between were getting shorter. I did most of the work. That’s why I’m so determined to keep the agency going. It seems silly to me that before anyone will give me a retainer I have to have a man’s name on the door, whether he’s functioning or not.”

“You grieved for him,” Shayne said. “You looked like hell for six weeks.”

“It broke me up! I’ll tell you about it sometime. But it’s over, is all I’m trying to say, and I thought it would be easier.”

At the foot of the northbound ramp, they really kissed for the first time.

“Take care of yourself,” Shayne said. “For everybody’s sake.”

Chapter 7

Bruno Lorenz was cruising the expressway at sixty-five, being overtaken by everybody. Passengers in the cars fleeing past him looked in at him with open contempt: a fat, dough-faced youth who didn’t regard interstate driving as a good way to prove his masculinity.

He knew this was a bad day to be out looking. It was much too soon, after Meri. The truth was… he was still in a state of shock as a result of that fiasco and the way it had happened. Theoretically, as part of the experimental design, he should remain aloof from his subjects, but it never proved possible. Their reactions were so interestingly various. Meri had been the prettiest, by fashion-magazine standards, the kind of girl who outside the laboratory had never given him a second glance. To face the facts — and Bruno had had to begin facing these facts rather early in life — he was a schmuck. He wished he exercised more, but a pattern of inactivity had been set when he was a child, and it was too late now to change. On the tennis court he was an embarrassment. On the beach, children kicked sand in his face. At the Reproductive Clinic, none of that had mattered, your looks, your intelligence, your previous history of sexual acceptance. The one thing they cared about was how you performed. To the machines, a schmuck was as good as a gold-medal diver, even better. The team of doctors who ran the experiments were rather schmucky-looking creatures themselves, and they tended to be suspicious of athletes, as being too narcissistic, too self-absorbed.

Unhappily for Bruno, he had a freakish IQ, in the low-genius range, and all the time he was producing some rather impressive orgasms, his mind was at work. There was no subject more compelling than sex. Children were interested, old folks were interested. The doctors’ findings were going to be believed, and not only believed but acted upon. And if the whole approach was wrong, if by watching and recording the experience they changed it beyond recognition, the treatment might turn out to be worse than the disease.

Bruno tried to tell this to the doctors. They gave him the stock response they gave everybody, and went merrily on.

So Bruno dropped out. He had persuaded a girl to volunteer with him. The doctors had brainwashed her, and she remained in that numb condition. Bruno’s objections had no scientific validity, she told him. She herself was lubricating well and getting some great contractions. When Bruno persisted, she asked him not to call her any more. That closed down his only sexual outlet. He tried to open others. All he got was rebuffs. In the sexual arena, people feel they have a right to be cruel.

In the dorm, he noticed that girls invariably left the common room a minute or so after he walked in. He had a bad period of a month of two, with psychiatrists and medicine and a short stay in the hospital, from which he was released into group therapy. That proved to be not for him. Groups were supposed to be hostile, as part of the therapeutic technique. In Bruno’s case, he thought, they overdid it.

He retreated into fantasies.

He kept a journal of these. It didn’t take him long to discern that whatever the circumstances, they were all rapes. He drew the obvious and necessary conclusion, and began hanging around breakwaters and poorly lighted parks, looking for somebody helpless. He fastened on one, finally, a frail middle-aged woman with psoriasis. Catastrophe! He refused to think about it now. To succeed as a park rapist, you have to be quick and strong, and if Bruno had been that kind of person he wouldn’t have had to go in for rape. Rapist? He was more of an exhibitionist. If he continued, he would end up making dirty phone calls.

It came to him in a dream, his big idea. When he woke up, he was pleasantly relaxed for the first time in weeks. He decided to do it, but nothing would have happened, obviously, if he hadn’t noticed a paragraph in some paper that a gynecologist had remarried and was taking his wife on a trip around the world. His office was attached to his house. Bruno broke in, after fortifying himself with nearly a full bottle of whiskey, and found that the set-up was ideal. He started the next morning, picking up hitchhikers and accumulating data. Then, with all the scare-talk on the air, all the scare-stories in the papers, it became harder to get subjects, and he had more or less made up his mind that Meri Gillespie would be the last. A jock, clearly, and athletes spend so much effort on their bodies that they can’t understand how other people might prefer to let themselves go to flab. How she would hate having Bruno inside her! It would profane the temple. His sleaziness and schmuckiness would be like a venereal disease, something she could catch.

She was lovely. Undressing her and strapping her to the table, he had been so carried away, almost awestruck, that he had nearly been premature, which had never been his problem. He managed to save it by thinking of something else. He inspected her carefully, touching her everywhere. To a future doctor — still a possibility although he had stopped going to classes — anatomical knowledge was important. She stayed unconscious so long, much longer than the others, that he became alarmed. What a waste if she failed to come out of it.

Then she opened her eyes and tried to sit up.

Of course no one believed it at first. There was a frozen period. He had timed these, and Meri’s wore off sooner than any of the others. She accepted her predicament and began to consider what could be done about it. He knew the look; he knew how her mind was working. She was one of the favored ones, and the ending had to be happy or the audience would come out of the theatre feeling confused. She forced herself to think about his mad story, to see if there was any way she could reach him. What was it he claimed to be doing? Isolating the physiological from everything else, establishing the baselines for an entirely new concept in the field, the involuntary cycle.

And she had perceived the flaw. What about the subject who liked to be strapped down? He knew from the literature how common the rape-victim fantasy was among passive women. His sample was statistically so small that even one such person would spoil the data.

He explained to each subject what was going to happen. He was attempting something new, laying his own neck on the line. He was well aware that legally he was a disaster area. If he wanted to complete his experiments and make a place for himself in medical history, he couldn’t allow them to get down from the table and trot off to complain to the state’s attorney. He was sorry about this. In his pathology courses, it had always distressed him to sacrifice laboratory animals after they fulfilled their function. But he had steeled himself. He put on his creepiest look, telling them this, and of course they believed him.

Meanwhile, accidentally on purpose, he left one of the cuffs too loose. He had even rubbed Meri’s wrist with Vaseline so the cuff would slide. He certainly hadn’t expected her to get it all the way off. All he had wanted to do was occupy her mind.

The fight had been enormously stimulating. He had been erect throughout. Of course he couldn’t allow her to get away. He had to subdue her, and in a literal sense he was fighting for his life. As he forced her this way and that, in slippery contact with the whole length of her no longer helpless body, he felt himself filled with a potency of an entirely new kind. Perhaps he was onto something, a new kind of sex — a battle for survival. And she, too, felt the difference. It was clear in her eyes. He was no longer a flabby, unlovely object to be viewed with distaste and no particular interest. He was an adversary. A killer of women you have to take seriously.

She hurt him. He hurt her. Landing a punishing blow, he felt himself keenly alive, really communicating with a woman at last.

As long as her ankles were caught, the fight was fairly even. She was more agile than Bruno and, in the early going, more desperate. He became desperate only after she recovered the full use of her limbs. She bit his cheek. To get her to unclamp he had to half strangle her. Somehow she left his field of vision for a moment. He learned later that one of the stirrups had torn loose from the table. He sensed a hard object coming at him and felt severe pain. After that things were foggy. The struggle continued. Some of the equipment was badly damaged. It had taken him half the morning to mop up. Blood was everywhere.

He had been on the interstate the rest of the day, driving compulsively, in a light daze. The lane divisions were in continuous lateral motion. He was a poor judge of speed. He kept drifting off on the shoulder, where the slight alteration of the surface under his wheels would wake him up. He escaped death several times by inches and microseconds. He was just sane enough to know how crazily he was behaving. He shouldn’t be driving up and down, he should keep going in one direction, abandon this car and steal another, and take a new identity somewhere. He had money, he still had time.

But he couldn’t do it. His findings were incomplete. Even if he could get them published, no one would take them seriously. In one corner of his brain, he knew that he had worked up this pseudo-scientific apparatus as a way of getting sex, but nevertheless he had to finish. Meri had been a total loss. He had been getting some interesting brain-wave tracing, but during the struggle the machine had gone berserk, and the jagged line ran right off the paper. He needed one more. Then it would be all right to quit. This time he would cuff the wrists separately, so if one came loose he would still have control.

He longed to be back in the sanctuary, with the subject transfixed with terror on the table and the machines giving their low, comforting hum. The clocks were running. Enemies were looking for him, prissy-minded Victorians who didn’t understand that the happiness of millions depended on the discovery and publication of the true facts about sex. They were waiting at the fuel stops. They were talking about him on the air. Bruno knew these red-necked troopers, who kept passing him with their lights blinking. They would warn him that he had a constitutional right to remain silent and to retain counsel. And then the guns would go off.

Today hysteria had really taken hold. Literally no one was hitching. He switched to secondary roads, back to the interstate. He gassed up, emptied the tank and gassed up again. His face was hurting, where Meri’s teeth-marks were hidden under a flesh-colored Band-Aid. He was hungry, dizzy, extremely depressed. Probably he ought to stop soon to eat, but he knew if he did he would never set out on the hunt again. He wouldn’t have minded so much if his work had been complete. Then he would have brazened it out. Here are the facts! There had been only one way to collect them. Adventurers and iconoclasts throughout history had always been martyrized. Socrates, Galileo, Wilhelm Reich.

While he was checking an interchange, something pulled at his eye. It seemed to him, in his blurriness and fatigue, that he had glimpsed a girl’s long hair. This had happened before, and it had turned out to be a trick of the light, a function of the heat-haze and desire. But this time it was unquestionably a girl, a tired one, traveling with a guitar. A yellow scarf fluttered like a signal.

He was going the wrong way, and he had to back down a one-way ramp. People coming up didn’t like this and honked at him, but as far as he was concerned they could fuck themselves, so long as none of them were cops. Straightening himself out at the bottom, he glanced at his reflection in the rearview mirror and tried a smile. It appalled him. He would have to do better than that.

He took a long swallow from a pint of blended whiskey, chasing it with a Life Saver so she wouldn’t smell danger when he leaned across toward her. He tried to think of something happy, to make his face relax. And the fantasy that popped into his mind was the same old one, a naked girl spread-eagled on a table. He smiled to himself, a genuine smile this time, and he was still smiling as he drove under the expressway and made the turn.

She had marvelous skin, marvelous legs. A sweater, nice pointy breasts. A good ass, excellent ass. Cool expression. What a joy, to replace that coolness with terror.

She flashed him a smile. “How far are you going?”

He unlatched the door. “Oh — till dark. New York, eventually. Just what I need to eat up some miles, a passenger.”

He was putting out too much candlepower, and she seemed to hesitate. The Band-Aid was a hell of a handicap. Anybody looked sinister in a Band-Aid. He gave her a boyish grin — he hoped it was boyish.

“And sometimes I get my second wind and drive all night. But I need somebody next to me or I get interstate fever. What you could do is tinkle away on the guitar. Work your way.”

That convinced her, and she got in. The door closed with a satisfying bang. Now he had her.

He told her to fasten the seat-belt, he was a freak on the subject of car safety. The belt jammed. Her breath, like his, was perfumed with alcohol. Liking her better and better, he reached around her.

“This damn thing gives me more trouble.”

The loaded hypodermic was in its usual place, under a flap of upholstery behind her head. He was a little too anxious, feeling the effect of a very rough twenty-four hours, and he fumbled momentarily. The belt pinned her in place. His lips came back. He freed the needle, hit one of her neck veins and depressed the plunger.

The taut belt kept her from moving her body. Her hand plunged into her bag. She twisted hard, and for a terrible instant he thought she was going to free herself. Then her eyelids fluttered and closed.

He waited a moment longer, embracing her, and ran the belt back onto the reel. He cupped one of her breasts. Its weight was lovely in his hand. It was a risky thing, out in the open like this, but he pulled up her sweater. Her breasts were really and truly elegant. On the beach she wore a bikini so small it was possibly illegal. She was in good trim, but not competitive trim like Meri. That had advantages too. She was a bit older than she had seemed on the roadside, but never mind, he distrusted the Virgin Effect.

He rocked her until she slid to the floor. He ran his hand around the curve of her buttocks and between her thighs. The last, the best. The climax. Maybe he would get inside her while she was still in the grip of the anesthetic. Let her wake up from a rape-dream and find it happening. Perhaps she would scream. Only one of the girls had screamed.

Her knees were against her chest in the inside-the-womb position. He worked her down under the dashboard. Her long yellow scarf had caught in the door. He freed it, folded it several times, and put it under her head to keep her face off the floor.

Chapter 8

Shayne, a quarter of a mile to the north, checked his tires and the oil level and went into the gas station to draw coffee from the vending machine. After one taste he poured it out and returned to his car.

The phone was ringing. His operator told him she had a call from Professor Sam Holloway in Coral Gables. Did Shayne want it?

“Yeah, put him on.”

“Michael Shayne?” a voice said. “Is Frieda with you?”

“Down the road.”

“She gave me your name and operator’s number. I don’t know how much she’s told you about this—”

“Probably most of it by now,” Shayne said impatiently. “Do you want to talk to her?”

“Not necessarily, if you’ll give her a message. Tell her I’ve just received an interesting communication and she can call off this wild adventure.”

“O.K. Tell the operator where she can reach you. I’ll get back to you in five minutes.”

“But Shayne—”

Shayne hung up. He joined the northbound traffic and blinked his way into the high-speed lane. He set his emergency lights to warn all cars within collision range that he was about to make a forbidden move. As soon as he came to an opening in the divider, he ran off onto the parched grass, down a short incline and up the opposite side.

The southbound traffic was heavy and fast-moving. He used his siren to get in, and stayed in the fast lane, trying to keep track of the cars traveling north in the parallel lanes. He was on the wrong side to see Frieda’s yellow scarf.

At the cloverleaf, he left the expressway and came back underneath. Frieda was gone.

Without hesitation Shayne shot past the spot where he had seen her last and went back to the highway with his headlights on and all the Buick’s attention-getting gadgets in operation. By the time he reached the gas station where he had been waiting, he was doing ninety. He had missed perhaps twenty cars while he was southbound. He had already overtaken four. He continued to count. After reaching forty, he pursued and passed ten more, still without sighting the telltale yellow scarf.

He was swearing. He had known there were too many ways this could go wrong. At the same time, he could only have stopped it at the cost of losing her friendship.

He braked to a stop in the outside lane, set an emergency flare, drove another hundred yards and stopped again, forcing the oncoming traffic to funnel past him. He counted again. After sixty cars passed him, he backed down to the flare and put it out in the dirt.

A highway patrolman arrived, a young man with sideburns and a big mustache. Shayne showed his identification.

“Mike Shayne, sure,” the trooper said. “What’s going on?”

Shayne explained quickly.

“How long was she standing down there?” the trooper asked.

“Fifteen minutes at the most.”

“Hey,” the trooper said, beginning to show excitement. “This is as close as we’ve come to the son of a bitch. Let’s get a few checkpoints on the side roads.”

He jumped to his radio. Returning to his own car, Shayne signaled his operator and had her ring the number Professor Holloway had given her.

“We’ve lost her,” Shayne said abruptly when the connection was made. “But they’re working on it, and it may still be O.K.”

“Lost her!” the professor exclaimed. “How did you manage to do that? She told me you’d worked out a way so there was no chance of a slip-up.”

“Apparently not quite. What may have happened is that after she was picked up, the guy backed down the ramp. Or else he slugged her and put her on the floor so I wouldn’t see her. We’ll have another dozen police cars here in a few more minutes. What’s happened at your end?”

“I’m not sure I want to talk about it on this kind of telephone connection. I suppose it’s all right to say that I’ve heard from Meri Gillespie. Obviously that alters the picture considerably.”

“Yeah. Too bad we didn’t know about it fifteen minutes ago. Heard from her how?”

“By letter. We’ve been acting on a certain theory, namely that Meri was picked up hitchhiking and possibly killed. We know now that didn’t happen. She’s in good health, the greedy bitch. Which makes this thing with Frieda extremely painful. I have something important I must do right now, and you’ll be tied up there for a while, won’t you? Give me an hour and a half, and after that I’ll be home all evening. Will you call me?”

“Before you hang up,” Shayne said, “I have a friend on the News, Tim Rourke. He did a couple of pieces last summer about art objects being smuggled into the United States from Mexico and sold at high prices to museums. He’d be interested in this. He has a radio show. I could fix it for you to go on as a guest.”

After a moment the professor said, “I wasn’t sure Frieda had told you all that. I’d prefer no publicity, naturally. Are you implying that there’s some connection between this kidnapper of hitchhikers and the letter from Meri? I doubt it.”

“You haven’t told me what’s in the letter. All I can do here is stand around listening to calls on the police band. Maybe you can think of a way I can be more useful.”

“I could do with a little advice and assistance,” Holloway said slowly. “How far are you from the International Airport?”

“In Miami? Forty minutes.”

“Meet me in front of the Arrival Building. I know you’re red-haired. I expect I’ll recognize you.”

He clicked off. Shayne weighed the phone for a moment before putting it back.

He had started a cigarette. He threw it down as though it was a bomb that would detonate if it hit the road hard enough, and ground it under his heel. He strapped himself into the Buick and made another illegal U-turn across the grass. Using his siren, he began working his way south at a high speed, slipping back and forth between lanes.

Professor Holloway carried his head tipped well back with his chin out, thrusting a neat beard forward like a challenging question. He was a short man. His eyebrows were bushy, flecked with gray.

Shayne was a smaller audience than he was used to, but he gave it his best. If he had sounded less than sympathetic about Frieda on the phone, he made up for it now. He shook Shayne’s hand and at the same time pressed Shayne’s arm.

“Awful. Awful. I was very impressed with that young woman. Her air. She assured me the danger was minimal.”

“She knew what she was doing,” Shayne said shortly. “What have you got?”

“And yet, it’s ironic,” Holloway said, unwilling to let it go. “My dear Meri took full advantage of this hitchhiking business. She lay low and let just enough time lapse so she knew I’d be pacing the floor gnawing my fingernails. Something’s been left for me here. I’ll nip in and pick it up and then we can talk to our heart’s content over a drink.”

“What did you buy, a key or a baggage check?”

Holloway looked at him sharply. “A key. I suppose this is all familiar country to you, but it’s new to me, brand new, and needless to say, I’m hoping that nothing remotely like it ever happens again.”

They entered the crowded building. Holloway had been fingering something in one of his pockets, and now he brought out a key to a coin locker. They began looking for the matching number, finding it finally in a secluded corridor on the lower level, near the incoming baggage carousels.

Holloway made a sound as though he had been rabbit-punched without warning. The door of the locker was sprung.

He pulled it open, looked inside, and said “Shit!” in a booming voice. “I’ve been fooled.”

He slammed the door furiously. It clanged open, shut, open again.

Shayne motioned him aside and examined the lock. The thin metal covering the bolt had been pried out with an edged tool, probably an ordinary screwdriver, and then the bolt had been forced back — a crude, unprofessional job.

Holloway, blowing, had one hand over his heart, as though to keep it from battering its way out.

“The situation’s still the same,” Shayne said. “Two people are still missing. The only difference is that you’re out some money. How much did it cost you?”

“Thirty-eight thousand.”

“I’d better hear about that.”

“A drink—”

“We have a choice of some noisy bars. Or if you want privacy I have booze and ice in my car.”

“Shayne, that letter was authentic! I know the girl, I know how she expresses herself. Somebody else found out about it and beat us to the locker.”

“There’s been a lot of breaking and entering out here lately.”

At the end of the corridor, still dwelling on the unfairness of what had just happened, Holloway started in the wrong direction. Shayne set him right. With a visible effort, the smaller man tried to get back inside his usual public personality. It returned gradually — the cocky walk, the tipped head, the cold stare.

“Are you going to help me get to the bottom of this, Shayne?”

Shayne didn’t answer.

They left the building. It was a long, zigzag walk to where Shayne had left his Buick. Holloway started several questions, but a look from Shayne stopped him before he went all the way to the question mark.

Shayne made drinks.

“I’m going to tape this conversation,” he said. “Don’t let it bother you. I may want to check on something later. Pre-Columbian art has never been one of my main subjects.”

Holloway was drinking straight Scotch without ice. He finished the first shot and Shayne refilled his glass.

“I’ve never been much of a drinker, either,” Holloway said. “I’m making up for it today. I suppose you have some agreement with Frieda about splitting the fee.”

“I’ll deal with you direct. The fee is ten percent of the selling price of the mask, on recovery of the fragment.”

Holloway flinched. “That’s high.”

When Shayne didn’t dispute this, he went on, “Unless you don’t recover, in which case I get ninety percent of nothing. Do you know how much we’re talking about, in round numbers?”

“Your ex-wife suggested half a million.”

The overgrown eyebrows went up and down. “You’ve been to Maxine!”

“Meri’s been in touch with her. They exchanged views about Professor Holloway and Toltec masks. Frieda was beginning to think that instead of starting for Fort Myers, Meri really started for Seminole Beach.”

Holloway brought his hand in smartly against his leg. “A conspiracy of women! Maxine. She’d like nothing better than to cut me into bite-size pieces and feed me to the sharks. I’m fed up with that entire sex.”

“How close did she come to the price?”

“A bit low,” Holloway said with a glint of satisfaction. “Not five hundred thousand. Six. Not that it means a thing unless I can deliver, but the mere fact that the offer has been made is a tremendous achievement. I won’t pretend that I’m indifferent to money. It’s a nice thing to have. But I think what gives me the most pleasure is that this puts the art of our hemisphere on a competitive basis with European easel painting, at long last. And I did it all with my little hatchet. Everything clicked, click, click, click. The Carpenter Museum in Terre Haute, Indiana — do you know it? They’ve had a fabulous new bequest from the Carpenter family, and my mask is the piece they need to put them up with the leaders. And now.” He gestured. “That bitch — those two bitches — Meri, Maxine—”

He drank.

“How much is it worth without the missing piece?”

“Peanuts. I’d hardly recover expenses.”

“Can you make the sale legally?”

“No problem. And would you mind turning off your tape recorder?”

Shayne snapped a switch on the dashboard.

Holloway continued, “I bought it from a Bogota dealer who frequently acts as broker for collectors in Colombia and Venezuela. The old landholding families are chronically short of cash. Estates have to be settled. I’ve used this man before, and he’s completely trustworthy. His principal’s grandfather purchased the mask on a trip to Mexico early in the century. And so on and so forth. Naturally this has all been trumped up out of nothing, to circumvent certain quibbling requirements controlling the international transport of art objects. Everybody knows I dug up the mask in Yucatan last winter. By everybody, I mean everybody in the art world. My Columbia man gives me a provenance for the piece in return for his commission on a fictitious sale. I paid duty, on a declared valuation of thirty-five hundred. And God, it’s a lovely thing, Shayne.”

“Frieda showed me a picture.”

“But when you actually see it! We were looking for a temple site that was reported by a Peabody expedition in 1910, but never surveyed or developed. We did considerable floundering around, and never did find it. A few broken stellae, a ballcourt. The weather was bad and our helicopter pilot couldn’t come for us, so to keep the men occupied, I had them do some random probes where one of the chicleros thought he’d seen stone work. And when the mask came up, Shayne—”

He paused, seeing the scene again as it happened. “It lit up the jungle. That was a holy experience for me. Really. In fragments, of course. I washed them in the river and fitted them together. Complete! A breathtaking thing. All right. I’ve found an object or two over the years, and I recorded them all dutifully and I have letters of thanks and acknowledgment from the National Museum of Anthropology, from the Parco de La Vente. I’ve framed the letters, and as for the objects — some jade vases, a fine ornamental urn — they’re in some dusty basement, jumbled together with hundreds of other pieces. And I made a vow, Shayne, when I looked at the mosaic mask glistening with drops of river water, that this one was going to be different. All the currents of my life came together. And what happened? Meri happened! I had to involve myself with a confused, neurotic girl. I realize now that I should have had nothing to do with her at all, or I should have been more attentive. She wanted the day to revolve around her. She liked to be made love to at odd hours, in odd places. She wanted me to jog. I have achieved a certain position in the academic community, and can you picture me jogging around the streets of Coral Gables wearing a sweat-suit? I said no to a few other things as well. She became huffy, and off she went, taking the fragment with her. I had some murderous thoughts. Visions of smashed cars, ambulances, corpses at the side of the road.”

He covered his glass when Shayne offered the bottle again.

“I need a clear head. How to explain that empty locker? Having lost thirty-eight thousand dollars, which I definitely can’t afford, and having had two jolts of Scotch in quick succession, I may not be my usual lucid self. But let me try to list hypotheses. That a common thief broke into a locked locker without knowing what it contained, and still doesn’t understand the significance of what he has. That somebody else than the extortionist knew about the extortion and decided to short-circuit it. That I paid money for nothing, that the extortionist never possessed the fragment, and bollixed the locker so it wouldn’t be so obvious to me that I too had been bollixed.”

“Do you have the letter?”

“It’s at home. But I went over it carefully, and I think I can give it to you more or less verbatim. Neatly typed. ‘Dear Uncle Sammy.’ Meri called me that. No one else ever did. ‘Dear Uncle Sammy, you’ve finally succeeded in convincing me. Why should other people always make the big money? Whether the mask sells for six hundred or six hundred thousand has nothing to do with its real worth. So I’ve been brooding. You’re probably out of your mind with grief — not for me, I know, but for the missing eye. Carpenter won’t pay you any fancy prices for a one-eyed Toltec god. I’m a little bitter. I want to punish you for some of those last remarks.’”

He explained, “We both said things designed to wound. I have experience, but she has youth and endurance. We came off about even.”

“Finish the letter.”

“She considered options. Her first plan was to call a press conference, and if anybody came to it she’d announce that my cover story was a damnable lie and she had letters to prove it. I don’t know what letters, but she had access to my files and I daresay I’ve been careless. I never anticipated anything like this. And that would blow my deal into tiny bits. Then she had second thoughts while she was out on the highway waiting for a ride. Cynicism set in. I’m quoting again now: ‘Go ahead, damn you, you’re typical of the whole bloody business, collect your money, but set a little aside for me, as payment for all the psychological wear and tear.’ That phrase I remember clearly. ‘Psychological wear and tear.’ ‘Thirty-eight thousand would be about right, and don’t give me a short count or I’ll call that press conference and make you really famous. They’ll take your professorship away and tear off your buttons in front of the adoring freshman class.’ That’s pretty much the way she talked — hyperbolic. After that, precise directions. Quote, the way it’s done on television, unquote. She knew I had money in safe deposit, and her guess at the amount was close. I kept trying to call you, to ask Frieda’s opinion, but the operator couldn’t get an answer. I was in a rush to get to the bank before it closed. I followed instructions exactly. The money in a flight bag. I left it in a certain outside phone booth, then to another booth halfway across town, and opened the directory to the page on which my own phone number appeared. There, as predicted, I found a note instructing me further. The tone was somewhat playful. Teasing. A tone she used when she thought I was being too pompous, too much the professor. I never for a moment doubted that the letter was from her and I was really buying the fragment back.”

“Signed?”

“A typed initial. It was pushed under my front door. The doorbell rang, and I almost didn’t go. I was in no mood for a Jehovah’s Witness or somebody selling dance lessons.”

Leaning forward, Shayne picked the phone off its bracket and asked the operator, “Did Professor Holloway call earlier?”

“Once. About five-thirty. Shall I look it up?”

“No, that’s O.K.” He put the phone back. “You didn’t try too hard.”

“I thought — well, the fewer people involved, the better. If Meri, or whoever, spotted a private detective hanging around when she came to pick up the money—”

“So far it’s our only link.”

“I thought the matter was closed. That was naive of me, I agree—”

“You thought Meri might be dead,” Shayne said, “and it was her killer who was selling you the fragment. You didn’t want a simple commercial transaction fuzzed up with a lot of sentimentality about death and punishment. You did a stupid thing, Holloway. At least it cost you some money. Where’s the rest of the mask? I’d like to see it.”

“I have it locked up at home. I’d just as soon keep it that way.”

“You’d better move it. Give it to the cops to hold overnight and put it in the bank in the morning.”

“I don’t understand,” Holloway said, bringing the eyebrows down.

“Whoever has the fragment, the one eye, is going to want the rest.”

“They couldn’t sell it!” Holloway said, alarmed.

“Why not? All they’d have to do is fake up a new set of papers. It doesn’t belong to you, as I understand it, it belongs to some museum in Mexico City.”

Chapter 9

They went in two cars, Holloway leading.

On the way, Shayne phoned the Highway Patrol. There were fourteen police cars working, within a circle with a fifteen-mile radius. So far they had found nothing.

Holloway lived in a divided pseudo-Moorish structure, within walking distance of the university. The streets in this section of Coral Gables were curving, tree-lined, and poorly lighted. When the brake lights came up on Holloway’s car, Shayne went to his own brakes and began looking for a parking place.

Ahead, he saw something move in the shadows, and picked up the glow of a cigarette. A long black sedan, with a bent aerial and oversize taillights, was waiting at the curb. The men who had searched Maxine Holloway’s house in Seminole Beach that morning had driven away in the same kind of car.

Shayne was already turning, hauling to the left into a short alley leading to a canal. He pulled into a private driveway, cut his lights and motor, and hit a recessed spring in the door panel. A loaded Smith and Wesson.357 dropped into his hand.

He kept to the grass on the tree line, moving more carefully as he approached the corner. A car door slammed. He crossed a lighted patch of sidewalk in one quick stride, and was swallowed up in a palm tree’s shadow. Holloway’s car had halted between the street and his garage.

Shrubbery hid what was happening from Shayne. He moved closer.

Holloway came into view, being marched rapidly toward the house between two men wearing ski masks. The man on his right was taller than average, and just enough out of proportion so he would be impossible to fit off the rack.

Shayne made another careful move. There had been four men in Seminole Beach. The driver — Shayne recognized his peaked tennis cap — dropped back into the car, and Shayne spotted the fourth man as Holloway and the two others started up the curving front steps. Also masked, this man crossed a lighted patch of lawn and went up the steps after the others, stopping outside the doorway.

Shayne thrust his gun inside his shirt and vaulted a low fence between houses. It was darker here. He used a pencil flash to pick his way to the back, then across a graveled yard. He turned the flash upward at the backside of Holloway’s building. The steps to an upper balcony were on the short side of the house, where they could be seen from the street. Avoiding these, he swung up onto the lower balcony, found handholds, and pulled himself up to the next level.

Bent double, he moved along the balcony to a lighted window. The shade was partially drawn. Inside was a bedroom. Holloway and the men with him passed the open door, along a hallway. Shayne moved to the next window. In a moment a light came on.

This was a long study, with a cluttered workbench. A larger-than-life stone head stood on the big desk; a modern beret had been added at a jaunty angle. The hooded eyes of the sculpture watched indifferently as the two masked men urged Holloway toward the front of a safe.

Holloway had been roughed up on the way upstairs. His shirt had been torn. The shorter of the two men pulled the telephone cord out of the wall while his tall companion and Holloway argued about whether or not he would open the safe without being mistreated further. The tall man hit him. Holloway staggered and, putting his hand out tentatively, touched the dial.

Shayne went back to the corner of the building, but the door there was locked. He waited, thinking. So far he had seen no guns, but the four men undoubtedly had them. He would have to move quietly and deal with each man separately.

He swung over the railing. Dropping to the ground, he returned the way he had come.

The driver was out of sight in the car. A car passed, and Shayne used the noise it made to cover his own movements. He slid past a low bush and around a stone urn planted with flowers. The man on the steps was the one who had worn work-gloves that morning. He pulled at a cigarette, and Shayne saw a dark, irregularly shaped mark on his hand.

The night was quiet, except for the noise of insects and the low hum of air-conditioning machinery. Shayne picked up a pebble and flicked it into the driveway. When the man at the door turned, Shayne took a long step and caught him around the neck, one hand over his mouth.

They struggled in silence. Shayne forced him out of the light, keeping the pressure on, and pressed him against the stone balustrade. The masked face worked from side to side under his hand. Hands flailed, trying to fasten on something. When these movements became more sluggish, Shayne turned him and clipped him hard, dropping him to his knees. Shayne hit him again, removed a gun from his pocket, and dragged him along the shallow porch.

He heard hurrying footsteps in the house. The door opened. There was a light in the vestibule, but Shayne was standing to one side, in shadow. The two men went past, pulling off their masks. The tall man was carrying a white box. He said something to Shayne in Spanish, and went down the steps and across the grass at a half run.

Hesitating only a second, Shayne followed.

The tall man sat in front. Shayne and the other went into the back seat by opposite doors. Before the dome light snapped off, Shayne pushed one of his two guns against the side of the other man, and told him with a look to say nothing, on pain of being shot. The two in the front were still unaware of the substitution. The car moved out fast. The tall man said something with a laugh, turned, and froze. Shayne touched the back of his neck with the second gun.

“I hope somebody speaks English. Otherwise I may have to shoot all three of you. I want to see everybody’s hands.”

He had to prod the tall man to make him lift his hands from his lap. The driver kept the car moving, looking from his companion to the mirror, then back to the road.

“You are from this morning,” the tall man said.

“That answers one question. You speak English. Do I remember somebody you called García?”

“García, yes.”

“I’ve got two guns here. I have a carrying permit, and carrying includes permission to use. I’m not trying to hijack you. All I want is a few more answers.”

García threw a remark in Spanish to the driver. Shayne moved the pistol barrel and fired. A starred hole appeared in the windshield.

The tall man lifted in the seat, hands flapping. He said something loudly, still in Spanish, and clapped a hand over his ear.

“Do you wish to make me deaf?”

“Speak English. I thought of shooting your ear off, but I think you’re going to start cooperating.”

“These do not understand English, so Spanish is necessary.”

“Then let’s keep it between you and me. Don’t stop,” he told the driver, moving the gun to make the meaning clear. The car turned north on the Dixie Highway, toward the Miami Beach causeways. “The first question is, who are you working for?”

“We are independent, for ourselves.”

“That’s not the right answer,” Shayne said. “I’m not a city cop. My name’s Michael Shayne. I’m a private detective. You’ve just committed robbery with violence. Do you know the difference between a misdemeanor and a felony? Robbery with violence is a felony. I hope you didn’t bang Holloway around too much, because there’s a lot he hasn’t told me yet. He’s an educated man, a professor. If I take you in, you know you’ll get max. Another thing I could do is rip off the box, and see how much I can raise on it from a fence. But I don’t want to do that. It’s against the law. I’ll let you deliver it, but I want to come along.”

“Why do you want that?”

“I don’t feel like explaining everything right now,” Shayne said wearily. “Maybe I’m eccentric.”

“But you see,” García said with dignity, “I must know your purpose. Why should you shoot me, unless you are thoroughly crazy? True, I would dislike very much to be sent to prison. It is not a romantic place, I know. But I cannot simply pour out name after name, so you can arrest others than myself. Then I will lose my reputation, and when I come out I will have no friends.”

“Do you know anything about art, García?”

“A few small things. I myself have been a painter.”

They were approaching South Miami Avenue. Watching the driver’s hands on the steering wheel, Shayne saw the knuckles tighten.

He said quietly, “Tell him not to, García. If he tries to corner too fast I’ll shoot him through the back of the seat. Why not? He’s a criminal. He can’t even speak English.”

García murmured, and the driver’s grip relaxed. Later, at the approach to the Venetian Causeway, he checked García again. The tall man nodded. Some moments after that, when they had committed themselves to the causeway and become part of the traffic crossing to Miami Beach, Shayne tapped the driver’s shoulder with the gun and told him to stop.

“With so many cars?” García asked in surprise.

“Three are too many for me to handle. I want two of you to get out. It’s a little tricky here, but it’s better than going to jail.”

García was now convinced that Shayne was in earnest. The car was halfway across the bay by the time he succeeded in making the driver stop. Shayne disarmed all three and supervised the dismounting. He had them stand close to the car with their hands on the roof, on the traffic side, while García slid across to take the wheel. Shayne scaled the unneeded guns and a pair of brass knuckles out into the bay.

“All right, take off.”

The two men outside jumped for the shoulder as the car moved. Horns blared behind them. Shayne gave García directions, and presently they pulled up in front of the Miami Beach police headquarters.

García looked up at the entrance unhappily. “My first arrest for anything serious.”

Shayne said thoughtfully, “I’ve been thinking I had to choose between a bust and a rip-off, but why can’t I do both? Holloway’s going to identify you, and he’s the kind of witness a jury will believe. I can claim that when your partners got away, they took the loot with them. I don’t know if anybody told you what you’ve got here. Holloway has a firm sale on it — six hundred thousand to some museum in Indiana.”

García’s jaw dropped.

“I thought that might surprise you. I should be able to do about half that somewhere else.”

“Then don’t arrest me!”

“I’m not quite that loose. I have to go by a few rules.”

“Wait! That I understand this. If I tell you one thing, where I was going, then I will be unarrested and you will give up a chance at this immense amount of money? How can I believe you? What are your reasons?”

“A colleague of mine was kidnapped when I was supposed to be bodyguarding her. In my business, that’s bad. A very good-looking woman, and we had a date to spend the night at a motel. There’s more, but that’s all I have time for.”

“And when I tell you, it will help you find and rescue your friend? I do not see how.”

“O.K., García,” Shayne said unpleasantly, “get the hell out or I’ll take you in bleeding.”

“I will do it! It is dangerous for me, but I know I would be most unhappy in prison. We will go now to the St. Albans Hotel. There you will please take me upstairs at the point of a gun, so it will be clear that I am helpless.”

Chapter 10

García phoned from the lobby. He said only, “I have it,” and was told to come up.

After leaving the elevator, Shayne told him to hold still for a moment. When the Cuban turned, Shayne swiped at his face with the pistol barrel, drawing blood.

García went back. “But why?”

“Thinking of your reputation. You put up a great fight.”

“I am not a fighter. I use the gun if I have to, but as for hitting people with fists, never.”

Halfway along the corridor, he picked a door and touched a bell. When the door opened, Shayne gave him a blow from behind that sent him staggering into the room. He ran into a man nearly as tall as he was, but with the sections of his body in harmony. A long nose and prominent nostrils gave him a horsy look, and the sound he made when collided with by the moving Cuban was like a whinny. Shayne shut the door. His gun was showing.

“Are you Eliot Tree?”

“Evidently.” He gave García a displeased look. “I thought I was getting professionals.”

“We outnumbered him,” Shayne said. “There was a big fist-fight, but he’s a little awkward and he lost. He didn’t get a chance to shoot anybody, which is lucky for you because you’re already in serious trouble.”

Tree, Shayne had been told, was the director of a major New York museum, and people in that business, he was sure, were seldom exposed to the sight of guns and blood. But he was taking it coolly. He picked up the cigar he had been smoking.

“When did this fight take place,” he asked García, “before you finished your errand or afterward?”

Shayne handed him the white box. “They took this out of Holloway’s safe. Before we tell García to get lost, I want to ask him one question. Is it or isn’t it true, García, that this package never left your possession until we got to the hotel, and at no time has it been opened or tampered with?”

García looked confused. “Will you say that over, please?”

Shayne said it again, and García assented. “It is as we tied it when it came out of the safe.”

“Now get out. And next time don’t get caught.”

García took a step toward the door. “I am sorry about this, Mr. Tree—”

“I know, you were outnumbered.”

“That, but it may not be as bad as it seems. It is not a plain and simple robbery. This is Mike Shayne.”

“Are you trying to take a weight off my mind?” Tree asked. “I already know it’s going to cost me money.”

García left, and Tree looked at Shayne quizzically. “You want me to open this. I assume I’ll find that it’s not all here.”

“I’m assuming the same thing, but I’ve already had a few surprises. There seems to be a certain amount of chicanery in your business.”

“I’m distressed to hear that you think so.”

He took the box to a low table and used a silver cigar knife to cut the string. He removed a layer of tissue paper. Looking at Tree’s face and not at what was in the box, Shayne saw his nostrils open. He laid the cigar down carefully and lifted out a brightly colored fragment.

“Seems to be broken,” Shayne said.

“As you very well knew. But look at the color.”

There were seven pieces. He put them together, handling each delicately, as if afraid that some of the color he admired might rub off on his fingers.

“Who has the second eye?”

“I don’t,” Shayne said. “I’m fairly sure now that Holloway doesn’t.”

“A pity.”

“But I have an idea I want to talk over with you.” Leaving the mask loosely joined, Tree leaned back and laced his fingers behind his head, his cigar cocked at a sharp upward angle. He was in his early fifties. To judge by his skin, his clothes, the way he spoke, he had spent his childhood in a house with a big lawn, had learned to sail and play squash and tennis at an early age, had gone to a New England church school and a good college, and had spent his whole life among people whose histories were more or less identical with his own.

“An idea,” he said. “No doubt a money-making idea. But keep your aspirations within reason, Shayne, because the Fine Arts’ acquisition account is seriously depleted at this moment.”

“Very smooth,” Shayne said. “Is that why you’re dealing with a cheap thief like García?”

“Hardly cheap, hardly cheap. And I don’t accept your word ‘dealing.’ I have a legitimate reason for being in Miami. I’m not a hard man to approach. I answer the phone myself. I didn’t call him. He called me.”

Shayne touched one of the brightly colored pieces. “How much is this worth to you, as is?”

“Very little. We already have two post-Classic masks of good quality. They’re rarely shown because they’re fragmentary.”

Shayne picked up the piece he had touched and placed it on the floor. He took out his pistol, reversing it so he was holding it by the barrel.

“Then you won’t care if I smash this.”

Tree stirred. “Don’t do that, Shayne.”

“Nobody’s ever accused me of being cultured. I haven’t been inside any kind of museum for twenty years, and that time I remember I was looking for some guys who stole a bunch of gold coins. I saw the picture Holloway has been showing people. It didn’t impress me. Of course I have to have a certain amount of respect for anything that would bring that kind of price.”

His eyes narrowed. “I see I’m not getting through to you. I don’t think I’d be able to force myself to set fire to a ten-thousand-dollar bill. But this?” He touched the fragment with his toe, and Tree’s hand moved. “I know it means something to you, but it doesn’t mean a damn thing to me, so I don’t want you to be too lofty. I don’t have time to play games. I want answers, and I want you to forget for a minute that you went to Exeter and Harvard. But after three minutes I’ve taken a strong dislike to you, and for some reason I seem to be a little jumpy.”

He brought his gun down hard, missing the terracotta by a fraction of an inch. A strong jolt of electricity passed through Tree.

“For God’s sake! I know I alienate people, Shayne, but I can’t change my act at this late date. What you want is some honesty, is that what you’re saying?”

“That’s what I’m saying.”

Tree took a heavy breath. “All right, dive in. It’s St. Paul’s and Yale. I realize that’s not what you meant, but I have to get used to this gradually. My wife has a little money. I don’t.”

“What’s a little money?”

“Twelve thousand a year, but I’m sorry to say she’s divorcing me and she doesn’t plan to pay alimony. My contract has six months to run, and again, I’m sorry to say there’s a distinct possibility that it won’t be renewed.”

“That’s the kind of thing I like to know about somebody,” Shayne said, putting his gun away. He picked up the fragment and added it to the others on the table. “Tell me what makes this so important.”

“In general, or to the Fine Arts, or to Eliot Tree’s career at the Fine Arts?”

“All three, but boil it down. I’m on a short fuse.”

“First things first. Naturally I’ve been thinking about how I’m going to support myself in six months’ time if they drop me. I have standards to keep up. I’ve made a couple of small mistakes. I had to send a Tintoretto back to Italy, because of a certain unconscionable scamp in the Italian Office of Antiquities who made a deal with the prosecuting attorney. We didn’t recover a penny of the purchased price. To replenish, I sold a few odds and ends that have been gathering dust in the basement, including, unhappily, a Van Dyck that had been misattributed. The papers pilloried me for that, in spite of the fact that deaccessioning has gone on continually since the museum was built, and every transaction can’t be favorable. My portfolio managers have had some bad luck in the market. Income is down, gifts are way down, the trustees aren’t returning my phone calls, and I need something spectacular to recoup. At a time when I don’t have the funds to buy anything spectacular in the marketplace, and it’s inexpedient to raise funds by going into the basement.”

He returned Shayne’s fragment to its place. “This would do it. The times are right for pre-Columbian prices to move, and there’s no telling how high they can go. But there has to be a bellwether, something to get the buyers talking, particularly the Japanese — a dazzling show or a dazzling single piece. I happen to like this mask, I’m enchanted by it, in fact, but that’s not the point. This is the time for me to be enchanted by something from this hemisphere. It would be particularly great for us because so many other people have bid for it. We’ve been outbid too often lately.”

“How public was the bidding?”

“Not public at all. Only the necessary people.” He gave a short laugh. “Of course the necessary people are all blabbermouths. If I get it, and I hope you’re about to tell me how it can be done, Eliot Tree will once again be the man-of-the-minute in museum circles. Superstud! How did he wrest it away from Terre Haute and Los Angeles? Not by offering more money, because everybody knows the Fine Arts is practically broke. No, he used the wits God gave him. Wits plus experience plus connections. The trustees would be insane to rid themselves of such a man.”

“After the Terre Haute bid, what made you think it might still be available?”

Tree looked at the end of his cigar. “Should I or shouldn’t I protect my informants? Usually I’m scrupulous about that, but this is a strange, strange episode — Holloway’s ex-wife, Maxine. It’s a subject she knows about. She practically wrote the bastard’s book.”

“I’ve heard that. Did she tell you she had the mask?”

“Was I interested. I said I was interested but as to price, I would have to be permitted to handle the merchandise first.”

“You didn’t send García and his friends this morning to see if they could talk her into giving them the mask for nothing?”

“Certainly not,” Tree said. “Some things you can do, some things you can’t. You can receive stolen goods, we all do, but you can’t suborn robbery.”

“And she didn’t call you again?”

“No, and I couldn’t seem too eager, so I didn’t call her. Then a male voice, giving no name, a slight Spanish accent. Was I still in the market? For what, said I. For valuable Toltec art objects, very pretty, guaranteed genuine. Yes, indeed. He instructed me to return to my room at eight, and I would be contacted.”

“García?”

“It could have been García, forcing his voice. But what happened? They made Holloway open the safe?”

“It’s still question-and-answer time,” Shayne said, “but I’m asking the questions. I want to know how it would be possible for you to exhibit this when it was legally imported by Holloway after buying it from a dealer in Bogota.”

“I can have my own provenance in a matter of twenty-four hours.”

Shayne made a disgusted sound. “You people.”

“His papers are bogus, of course. That dealer will sell his signature for the price of a case of whiskey. At the same time, it’s important from the scholarly point of view to know where the piece actually originated, and under what conditions. We know this. Holloway’s expedition received a good bit of attention. We all knew there’d been a major find. What’s the difference between a dealer in Bogota, who ostensibly sold it to Holloway, and a dealer in Bern, Switzerland, who ostensibly sold it to Tree? I’ve been playing with the idea of finding it in my own basement. Perhaps not, though, a bit too subtle. This Bern collector stung us with a forgery a few years ago and we were nice about it. He owes us a favor.”

“Why wouldn’t Holloway yell? ‘It’s my mask, they stole it from me.’”

“He’s in no position to get on the wrong side of the Fine Arts. We can hurt his reputation or we can help him. I’m ready to be friends. We sell five hundred copies of his book in our bookstore a year, and that will jump if pre-Columbian takes hold.”

“Did you bring cash?”

“A bit. I’ve found that the sight of a table piled high with money has a powerful effect on a certain type of person. It’s in the hotel safe,” he added. “Not that I don’t take that gun of yours with a grain of salt.”

“How much cash?”

“Before I answer, don’t you think you ought to tell me what procedure you have in mind?”

“No. In my game you buy explanations. I’ve already told a number of people that who gets the mask and how much is paid for it isn’t the most important thing. Your money situation has changed. You don’t have to pay García.”

“I may have to give him something to keep him quiet.”

“I’ll find out who he is and what he does and keep him quiet for you. I want to hear a figure, and I don’t have time to bargain. I’ll be standing at your elbow when you open the safe, so I’ll know how much you brought down from New York.”

“I didn’t expect to spend it all.”

Shayne, losing patience, came to his feet. Tree said hastily, “For the complete mask, one twenty-five.”

A moment later, when Shayne made no comment but merely looked at him, he raised that to one fifty.

“Would you go to two if I push you? This would be legitimate, so you could write a check like ordinary people.”

“Legitimate?” Tree said, puzzled.

“I know it’s going to make problems for your accountants, but try something different for once. Two hundred thousand, and the opposition’s ready to pay three times as much. Your trustees will give you a dinner.”

“And with no publicity?”

“It can’t be done without publicity. This is going to get national attention. If it works and the mask ends up in your museum, you’ll draw big crowds, and isn’t that what you’re after?”

“I suppose it is, really. Tell me what would go in the press release.”

“Like this. You made a sensational buy in Switzerland. You’re keeping the price confidential. A mask, in pieces, and you left it that way so it wouldn’t look too important when you brought it through customs. You needed somebody to put it together and give you an expert opinion on whether you got a bargain, and you hired the best man in the business, Holloway. This was too important to trust to the U.S. mails, so you hand-delivered it. And then some dirty dog held Holloway up with a pistol tonight and stole one of the pieces. You want it back. It isn’t worth anything to the thief. Your remaining fragments aren’t worth much by themselves.”

Tree was nodding. “And we’re offering a reward for the missing piece.”

“With no questions asked. Get in touch with Michael Shayne. He handles this kind of deal for insurance companies all the time.”

“Two hundred is a touch high.”

“It’s a round number. For some reason it sounds much bigger than a hundred and fifty. If we’re dealing with a killer, that could be important.”

“What?” Tree said, leaning forward. “What about a killer?”

“Two people have been kidnapped and possibly murdered. One of them’s a friend of mine. But I don’t really expect any direct contact with the kidnapper. He’s crazy, by definition, and two hundred thousand may not mean anything to him. The reward is for information leading to the recovery of the fragment and apprehension of the thief.”

“I finally begin to see where you are in all this, Shayne.”

Tree made a few movements while he thought about it, manipulating the cigar, running his fingers through his longish hair, adjusting the fall of his pants legs. “I have a feeling I’m going to go for it,” he said finally. “A reward that big would establish the value of the piece better than a price of six hundred thousand at auction. And you’re right, the publicity could be good to excellent. But I’m shooting high on this. I want to make sure all angles are covered.”

There was a knock at the door. Tree’s eyes jumped to the fragments, then to Shayne. Shayne picked up one of the pieces and put it in his shirt pocket.

“To keep the game honest. See who it is.”

“Probably not room service.”

“Probably not,” Shayne agreed.

He replaced the pieces in the foam-rubber-lined box. Tree was examining the ash at the end of his cigar.

“If it’s the police, I know nothing about any Toltec mask. You brought these fragments to me to ask my opinion. Where you got them is your business. That means you do the talking.”

“Nobody wants to bring in the cops just yet. We’re still feeling each other out.”

“Holloway, perhaps?” Tree suggested. “Or Mrs. Holloway. With Spanish-speaking friends. With guns.”

Tree blew a thin plume of cigar smoke and stood up when the knock was repeated. “You know more about this than I do, and somehow I get the feeling that you have other things on your mind than the professional survival of Eliot Tree.”

At the door, he said, “Who is it?”

A woman’s voice answered cheerfully, “Delivery for Tree.”

Chapter 11

When Tree opened the door, it was knocked out of his hand. Professor Holloway came charging in. He had a girl with him, and Tree had been right about one thing: she had a pistol.

She waved it and told them excitedly, “Face the wall with hands over your head. Everybody!”

Shayne laughed. “My God, Holloway. Where’d you recruit this one?”

She was a full college generation younger than Meri Gillespie. She was wearing extremely short shorts, from the cuffs of which came a pair of long honey-colored legs. Holloway’s eyebrows might be graying and his manner might be getting a little anxious around the edges, but he hadn’t lost his power to fascinate. She was floating. Her eyes crackled, and her breasts seemed to give off a steady flow of static electricity.

She darted the gun forward and repeated her command. If this girl wanted him to stand against the wall, Shayne was ready to comply, and he advised the museum director to do the same.

Holloway had a reddish bruise over one eye, an equally large sense of grievance.

“Elly, I don’t know what’s happened to you. You used to be reasonably honest. Did you stop to consider that I might have been seriously hurt, or killed?”

“I’m sorry about that, Sam.”

“You’re sorry. He hit me with brass knuckles. He could have done permanent brain damage. I’m not some TV repairman, I need my brain to operate.”

“It wasn’t my doing.”

“I doubt that intensely, but it isn’t such a distinction, is it? They knew you’d buy what they stole, without any qualms. How is it that you happen to be in town at this particular moment, may I ask?”

“Pure chance.”

The girl had been following this with birdlike movements of her head. The gun was also in motion, and she was clearly itching to use it.

Shayne said, “Isn’t it time for everybody to disarm? I’m wondering if your friend really understands the situation.”

“How can she when I don’t understand it myself?” Holloway said. He put his hand on the girl’s arm. “It’s all right now. I’ve got my property back. I’ll hold the revolver.”

“No, I’d like to,” she said brightly. “I thought I’d shoot the redheaded one first. He looks more dangerous.”

“Thanks,” Shayne said, “but I’m not interested in old Mexican jigsaw puzzles. It’s pure chance that I’m here.”

“Pure chance,” Tree repeated.

Holloway tugged gently at the gun. “You’ve been splendid, Diane. I couldn’t have managed without you. But now if you shoot somebody we’ll be sitting around in a police station the rest of the night. Let go.”

She relinquished the weapon finally. Shayne turned, lowering his hands.

“How do you do it? You must hypnotize them.”

“She was mildly hypnotized when I picked her up,” Holloway said dryly. “I knew she’d scare you.”

“Jesus,” Tree said fervently.

“And how do I interpret this little scene?” Holloway said. “What were you doing, Shayne, negotiating a price for selling me out?”

“I don’t know who really owns the goddamn thing. Tree was about to show me papers proving that he bought it from a Swiss dealer.”

Holloway gave the museum director an unfriendly look. “Boëckli, I suppose? Your usual stooge. If you manufactured the provenance before you left New York, that proves intent.”

“But all the pieces aren’t here,” Shayne said, “as you have reason to know, Professor. We were discussing strategy when you walked in. I think I’d talked him into putting up a cash reward.”

“How much?” Holloway said suspiciously.

“Two hundred thousand bucks.”

The girl squealed. Looking at Tree, Holloway said slowly, “You really must want this, Ellie. I wish your finances were in better shape, so you could bid for it out in the open.”

“Unhappily—”

Tree had gone back to the sofa and his cigar. His manner was probably the one he habitually used in New York — cold, a little withdrawn. None of the people in the room could have concerned him greatly. But Shayne had been watching him closely, and when Holloway pocketed his gun and Tree’s hand slipped between the sofa cushions, Shayne swooped and caught his wrist. He brought Tree’s hand out and shook the gun loose. When the girl grabbed at it on the floor, Shayne stamped at her hand.

“College professors. Museum directors. Graduate students. I’m going to have to change some of my ideas.”

Holloway’s hand had gone to the gun in his pocket.

Shayne told him, “If it really matters that much, take your guns out in the alley, both of you, and shoot it out. I just don’t want to be there. I get shot at too often by people who have a reason for shooting at me. Here.” He tossed the pistol into Tree’s lap. “Duel him for it.”

The girl shimmered with excitement. She looked from one antagonist to the other, as though watching tennis. Tree took the cigar out of his mouth slowly, his eyes on Holloway, who, equally slowly, brought his hand out empty.

“As gunfighters,” Tree said, “it’s true we’re miscast. Of course it wouldn’t be a maiden effort for you, Sam, having killed a man in Yucatan last winter.”

“A Mexican sneak-thief,” Holloway said.

“Absolutely. Now don’t you think we ought to get back to the big question? Which I take to be, who is going to do exactly what?”

“We had an agreement, Shayne,” Holloway said. “We didn’t sign anything, but morally I’m your client. The mask is mine. That’s never been questioned. I’m going to collect my property now and get out of here. See that there’s no shooting and I’ll gladly pay your regular fee.”

“I said I’d take ten percent if I recovered the fragment and you could complete the Terre Haute deal. I don’t see any chance of that happening unless we spend some money. Tree’s offer is two hundred thousand. Can you match it?”

“Of course not. That thirty-eight thousand they swindled out of me tonight cleaned me out. That doesn’t alter the fact that the mask belongs to me.”

Shayne made a brusque gesture. “We have two claims, and to me they look equally good. It’s time to go to arbitration, and I’m appointing myself arbitrator. First I’ll ask for ideas. Stick to the narrow question of the missing fragment. How are we going to find out who has it and get it back?”

Nobody answered until Tree said, “Be fair, Shayne. Nobody’s told me the full circumstances.”

“The full circumstances are highly peculiar,” Shayne said. “The girl who stole it may be sitting somewhere laughing at us. She may have thrown it away. Or she may have been killed, and the killer has thrown it away. But I wasn’t really talking to you. What do you have to suggest, Holloway?”

Holloway shrugged. “Wait till something else turns up.”

“That’s not good enough. Here’s the arbitrator’s award. I award the mask to Eliot Tree, for a payment of two hundred thousand dollars. We won’t pay out a penny of that until the missing piece is recovered. If that happens, Tree’s museum has a bargain and you’re out in the cold, Holloway. But he tells me there are various lesser ways you can be compensated. And if you can locate the goddamn left eye without spending any of this money, we redeal. He gets the money back, you get the mask and you can go through with your sale.”

“Tell me I’m not hearing this,” Holloway said. “I’ll wake up in a minute. Who do you thing you are, the Supreme Court? What makes you think you can enforce a decision like that?”

“We all have guns in our pocket,” Shayne said. “I’m the only professional in the room.”

“My God, you are groovy,” the girl said, sparkling.

“But I have a better way,” Shayne continued. “Nobody really knows what Meri was planning. One theory is that she was thinking of calling a press conference to announce that Holloway’s famous Toltec mask didn’t belong to Holloway, he stole it and smuggled it out. I know enough by now so I can break the same story, with a bigger cast. New York museum hotshot and Miami U. professor caught with concealed pistols. It would get laughs. Goodbye mask. Why I should care where the thing ends up, in Mexico or New York or Indiana? It’s something I really and truly don’t give a shit about. Believe me.”

“I guess I believe you,” Holloway said.

“It’s a gamble, Holloway. Nothing or six hundred thousand. But if you don’t take it, you get nothing anyway.”

“And what’s to stop you from collecting the full reward, regardless, and handing the mask to Tree?”

“The difference between you and me is,” Shayne said, “if people don’t trust you in the private detective business you don’t get jobs.”

Holloway considered. “Elly? Disregarding the innuendo and the insults, are you going to buy this?”

“I think I have to, Sam. If I spend two hundred thousand out of acquisition funds and don’t acquire anything, I’m in trouble, but I’m in trouble already.”

“Sam?” the girl said. This was probably the first time she had used his first name; her lips had started to say “Professor.” “The thing we heard on the radio coming over. You were going to tell Mike.”

“I was about to,” Holloway said. “The newspaperman, Tim Rourke, wants you to call him, Shayne.”

“How did you get that message?”

“My car radio was on. Some kind of squalling homosexual argument — you know the kind of program. Rourke interrupted. He wanted to talk to Mike Shayne, and if anybody knew where he was, to pass it on.”

Shayne picked up the phone and punched the button for an outside line. A moment later he was talking to Rourke.

“See? It worked,” Rourke said. “That says something about my far-flung audience. This may not be anything for you, Mike, but aren’t you doing something about the hitchhiking killer, as we call him because we don’t know his real name?”

“Trying to.”

“A woman’s body has been found on the West Palm Beach municipal golf course. Do you want the few details I have?”

“How old is she?”

“Young is all I know. It came in as I was leaving the paper. In the rough on one of the late holes. Guy was playing around, trying to finish before dark. He saw something that looked like a body, but he was playing his best golf of the year and didn’t want to break his concentration. A real enthusiast. He finished the round before phoning the cops. The woman was naked, under some kind of rain cape. No shoes, no identification. Somewhat bruised. She couldn’t have been out hitchhiking without any clothes on, but whenever anybody finds a dead female these days, they think about the mad Mr. X.”

“You don’t know if she was blonde or brunette?”

“That wasn’t included, Mike. I’ve got to get back. It’s the time of night when my guests start to bicker if I’m not there to ump. Are you coming in later?”

“I hope to. I’ll check this out first. Tell your people not to go to bed. I’ll have a major announcement. I’m posting a two-hundred-thousand-dollar reward.”

“Gulp,” Rourke said. “And you’re using me as a vehicle? That’s nice. Hurry, Mike. I’ll pitch you an audience.”

Chapter 12

Shayne picked up his Buick where he had left it, near Holloway’s Moorish gatehouse in Coral Gables. He hit the interstate and went north at what was turning out to be his usual speed tonight, close to a hundred miles an hour. After juggling the times Rourke had given him, he had decided that he had a chance of arriving before the body was taken away. He kept his mind deliberately blank, concentrating on the road, the cars he was passing, the speedometer needle. If it was Frieda, there was nothing he could do except make the identification, and clear his calendar so he could concentrate on tracking down her killer.

He left the interstate at the West Palm interchange. He had never played on the municipal course here, but he knew how to reach it. The clubhouse was ablaze with light but cars were beginning to move out. Seeing an ambulance approaching, Shayne set his blinkers, flicked his headlights from high to low and back to high, and turned abruptly into its path.

A horn blatted. The heavy vehicle ran out on the shoulder and came to a stop with one blinking light less than a yard from Shayne’s fender. The driver came out yelling. Shayne dismounted without hurrying and stepped into the headlights.

“Are you carrying a body?”

“Yes, indeed, I’m carrying a body! And you nearly made a few more with that dumb move.”

“I want to look at her before you disappear.”

Other cars jammed up behind the ambulance, and a crowd gathered quickly. The top-ranking cop on the scene was a homicide lieutenant named Harmon. Shayne explained: he was trying to find a missing woman, and it was possible that she might be the one being taken away, though he hoped not. Noting from the way Shayne held himself that he didn’t intend to move his Buick until they did as he asked, the lieutenant signed to one of the attendants.

“Take a minute.”

With the air of a man being seriously inconvenienced, the attendant opened the double doors. Shayne climbed in. Harmon watched from outside as he turned back the sheet. Shayne’s face tightened.

“Do you know her?” Harmon asked.

After a moment Shayne said, “I’ve seen photographs. Her name’s Meri Gillespie. Spelled M-e-r-i. A University of Miami grad student. She was hitchhiking.”

“Hitchhiking,” Harmon repeated.

Shayne scraped his thumbnail across his chin, looking down at the dead girl. “But there are some fancy angles.”

“Like what, Shayne?”

Another moment passed. Answering was an effort. Shayne had begun to think that he had two separate problems, that Meri was still alive and had staged her own disappearance for her own reasons.

“Her employer got a letter from her tonight. He knows her well, and the letter seemed plausible. If she didn’t write it, whoever did, knew how she expressed herself and what she was up to. In other words, not a stranger.”

He folded the sheet all the way down. The overhead bulb was too dim. He asked for something stronger, and somebody handed in a battery lantern. He moved the light slowly from one contusion and discoloration to the next. The body had been badly battered. A mark several inches wide, with regular edges, ran across her chest.

“Seat-belt?”

“That’s what it looks like,” Harmon said. “There’s another like it on her left wrist, as though she had her hand looped in the belt. There’s a scalp laceration, and that may be what killed her. We’ll know in the morning. If we’d pulled her out of a wrecked car, cause of death would be obvious. Here on a golf course, in this rain cape—”

The cape, a square of red plastic with an attached hood, had been folded into a compact parcel and placed beside the body. Shayne shook it open.

“Any bloodstains?”

“We think so. The lab will tell us. My guess is that she’s been dead — oh, about five hours. She was about twenty feet in from the fence.”

After completing one sweep of the body, Shayne brought the light back and examined more closely several dried smears on the insides of the thighs. He looked a question at the lieutenant.

“Semen?” Harmon said. “Probably. The placement of bruises certainly says rape, but the M. E. is going to have to confirm it. You said something about what she was up to. Do you want to expand on that?”

Shayne pulled the sheet up over the body. “There’s no point in bringing you up to where I am, because that’s nowhere. I’ve had nothing but knuckleballs thrown at me the last couple of hours. She was carrying something various people wanted. That doesn’t mean one of them killed her.”

“I’d better get a statement on that, Shayne. Do you want to follow me in?”

“No. At least you have a name to put on the tag, which is more than you had before I got here.”

“You can get it out of the way in twenty minutes. I’d be happier.”

Shayne repeated his refusal. “I think things are about to start happening. I’ll call you in the morning.”

The others were looking at the ground, waiting for orders. Harmon made no attempt to block Shayne when he jumped down and walked toward his own car.

Raising his voice, Harmon called, “Don’t phone, Shayne. Come in. Nine o’clock sharp.”

“I’ll be there.”

He returned to the interstate, driving fast again, with the window flap reversed to send a stream of air into the face. Signs for the Seminole Beach exit rose ahead. His foot lifted, came down, then moved to the brake. He had told Holloway and Tree he had a plan, but it was really an absence of plan, like throwing a handful of confetti into the wind and hoping he could learn something from the way the scraps came down. Before he committed himself, there was one final thing he could try. His usual method, when he knew as little as he did now, was to keep moving and give the appearance of having a destination, to show up where he was least expected with an air of knowing everybody’s secret thoughts. If he had a piece of bad news to spring on somebody, he sprang it and checked reactions. Maxine, Holloway’s ex-wife, might be startled to learn her successor had been found dead — startled enough to tell Shayne a few of the things she had kept to herself that morning.

Some minutes later, he pulled up in front of Maxine Holloway’s deteriorating house on the nonfunctional canal. Artificial lightning flickered in the interior of the dimly lit garage. Maxine’s friend, the found-object sculptor, was working, in spite of the late hour. As Shayne approached, he heard Maxine’s voice.

“Oh, no. Not this time. You aren’t going to fall back on the old bit of the creative artist who can’t be bothered. You’re going to be bothered whether you like it or not. You’re going to be introduced to some harsh reality.”

Metal clanged. “Leave me alone, Max, let me work this off, or goddamn it—”

“Or goddamn it what? You’ll walk out? I’ll give you money for a tankful of gas, Andy. Andy. I want you to look at me when I’m talking to you.”

Shayne stopped on the porch and lit a cigarette. The quarrel was taking place in the workshop, but it had moved there from a different part of the house, and it still had to go through several stages before resolving itself in reconciliation or violence. Andy tried to ignore the strident voice. The welding arc flashed. Some metallic object was thrown, probably a small hand tool. He was a hypocrite, she cried. He was so full of the proletarian-artist crap that he was hateful to her. He believed himself to be irresistible to women. She was glad to tell him that this was a misconception. He had a compulsion about touching female flesh, swaggering and sweating in front of them in those tight pants and that faky belt that he cinched up so hard she wondered why it didn’t give him a hernia. Age and looks didn’t matter, the great Casanova was ready to dip into anybody. Although it was largely pretense, this supersexiness, he talked a great game. But when it came to execution he was definitely second rate, well below even Sam Holloway — though she hadn’t appreciated it at the time.

Such a phony. He pretended not to care about filthy money, and here he was, as corrupt and materialistic as all those people he reviled. Totally without talent. Expected to be fed and licked and petted. She couldn’t stand his smell or his slobby ways—

At that point he began to reply, stammering as he tried to put together the right arrangement of words that would really destroy her. They were stamping about. Much of what they were saying, or gasping, must have been unintelligible even to each other. Deciding that he was learning nothing from this, Shayne opened the garage door and stepped in.

Andy was wearing blue jeans, work boots, and a welder’s helmet, with the face-mask tilted back. He had Maxine by the arms and was bending her back over the bench. He had a weightlifter’s shoulders, and if she had been less angry she would have been overmatched. But he was having trouble holding her. She kicked. She spat. Her hair was flying, and with her color up she was a much better-looking woman than when Shayne had seen her that morning. The unattended torch sputtered, burning a gouge in the bench.

Shayne took Andy’s sweaty middle in both hands and squeezed hard. In a moment he felt a change in the electrical flow, as the sculptor realized that it was no longer a two-person fight. Shayne pulled, and Andy came away from the woman. She struck at his face. The metal mask tipped forward and reverberated when her knuckles rapped against it. Shayne continued to move, pivoting. Letting go, he sent the small angry man tumbling into the embrace of one of his intricate constructions of copper tubing.

He came around swearing. Recognizing Shayne, he went back on his heels and shook the sweat out of his eyes.

“This is no way to live. That tongue of yours, bitch,” he shouted. “It’s all over. There’s no chance anymore.”

“Finally,” she shouted back. “I’m delighted. Get the hell out. Animal. That fur on your body. My next man is going to be perfectly hairless. Let me know when you want to pick up your so-called art works, so I can arrange not to be home. Make it soon, before I put everything out on the sidewalk with the rest of the garbage.”

“One question,” Shayne said reasonably. “How many sales have you had in the last year?”

Maxine answered for him. “Zero! Showing that the art-buying public has a certain amount of taste.”

In an instant they were screaming again. One of the epithets she hurled at him hit home, and he snatched up the torch and darted it at her face. Shayne kicked upward. The flame swung around. He wrenched a length of tubing off the ungainly sculpture, feinted high, struck once at the nozzle and a second time at Andy’s wrists. The torch dropped.

“The fight’s over,” Shayne announced, snuffing out the flame. “It’s the lady’s house, and apparently she wants you to leave.”

“I’m leaving. Emotionally I’ve already left.” He picked up her purse from the bench and rummaged through it, removing a handful of bills. “Severance pay. With that great greeting-card business you’ve got, you can spare it.”

He picked up a blue work-shirt and threw it over one shoulder. He went out. A moment later a car could be heard moving off.

“At least he took his own car,” she observed.

She poked at her hair, taking deep breaths. Her face was flushed in streaks. She looked appraisingly at the sculpture Shayne had mutilated.

“I like it better that way. Three years! Finished. I’m going to get soused. That’s an old-fashioned word, but it’s an old-fashioned thing. Come join me. That couldn’t have been very high-style entertainment for you. I hate to get that mad. Everything’s been so upsetting and tense. I wish the damn girl would show up.”

Shayne said, “She showed up tonight on a golf course in West Palm Beach. Dead.”

Maxine’s hand went to her stomach, as though Shayne had hit her there. She rocked back. It was the reaction he’d been looking for.

“Tell me. Tell me, please.”

“She was wearing a red rain cape. Nothing else. No sign of her knapsack. They think she died from a blow on the head. That looked about a day old, but there were recent scratches. She may have got them climbing over the fence to get into the golf course. We’ll know more about it after the autopsy.”

Item by item, Maxine was putting herself back together. Saying nothing, she took Shayne into the kitchen, where she poured whiskey and drank it.

She breathed out in a shudder. “I’ve been hoping it might turn out to be all right for her. I suppose I knew it wouldn’t.”

She waved at the bottles and ice-bucket. “Fix yourself something. It’s so funny. Look at all the things involved in this — that huge amount of money, the reputations, the struggle of the great museums, one of the biggest art discoveries and art sales in years — and a psychotic killer wrecks it all by picking up a hitchhiker. Are you still interested in what my plans were for that mask? Probably less so now. I don’t mind telling you, if you want to sit still for it. Everything seems so — dirtied. Utterly, without any redeeming social value.”

Shayne made a drink and sat down. Having finished her first strong bourbon, Maxine poured herself another, with nothing to dilute it but the melting ice, and she clearly had no intention of letting it stay in the glass long enough to be seriously weakened.

She plunged ahead. “We were O.K. here, Andy and I. I think really O.K., as good as it gets. When the work’s going well, he’s nice and easy, and money has just never been a problem. We had enough to get by on. He worked in the store four hours a day. The sociability was good for him. Who makes money as a sculptor? About three people in the country. So you don’t expect it, and it doesn’t bother you. Then this. Six hundred thousand. I put Sam onto that site, incidentally. He’s saying he heard about it from chicle gatherers — not true. I figured it out from the field notes of a Boston expedition seventy years ago. Sam went down with foundation money, and sure enough, there it was. I wasn’t bitter about it. Such things happen all the time in real life.”

“And then Meri got in touch with you.”

“I was fibbing about that. I got in touch with her. This sale to Terre Haute was just too much. I worked her up. A nice girl, idealism running out of her ears. I persuaded her to pinch the mask, to bring it here and then we’d really set off a few fireworks. Blow that son of a bitch Holloway out of the water. Send the mask back to its proper owners, the descendants of the people who made it. That was the scenario I’d worked out, and she bought it, like a nice little liberal arts major.”

“But that wasn’t your real scenario.”

“Definitely not. The moment she walked in the door, the debriefing was going to begin. There are arguments on both sides, you know. What’s ethical, what stinks. I was going to have Ellie Tree talk to her, and when he gets going he can charm a bird off a bough. And if worst came to worst, and she still wanted to ship it back to Old Mexico—”

She stopped to drink. Shayne supplied, “You were going to mug her.”

“You know it. With some help from Andy. Did you notice his biceps and triceps? At that point the mask would be fair game. Sam stole it from Mexico, she stole it from Sam, we stole it from her. I had a big argument with Andy about how much of a percentage we should give her. I was surprised he was so greedy. He didn’t want to give her a dime. He hasn’t been sleeping more than a couple of hours a night lately. When you pass a half million, money takes on a certain glamour, you know?”

“Was Meri planning to steal the whole thing, not just one piece?”

“That was the idea, but I guess Sam felt something coming. Where is it now, what would the guy do with it after he killed her? He’d throw it away, bury it. Two hundred years from now, somebody’ll dig it up and wonder how the Toltecs got so far north.”

She drank again, and burst out, “I’m sorry about Meri, damn it! I didn’t stop to think about her, I was so busy thinking of ways I could take Sam. I don’t know if I told you he stole my thesis? Whole passages, word for word. It’s been eating away at me, I guess. What the hell! Get drunk. Take off your shoes. Because what can somebody do about this besides nothing?”

There was a clock radio on the spice cabinet beside the stove, already turned to FM. Shayne switched it on and found Tim Rourke’s station. Voices were arguing about whether or not the passive male homosexual experienced lubrication during the arousal phase.

“Stay tuned,” Shayne said. “We’re going to be talking about you in a few minutes.”

“About me!”

“If you hear anything you don’t agree with, call in.”

She looked up, her eyes partly closed, as though she was trying to make him out through thickening mist. “You don’t feel like staying?”

“Not tonight.”

“Because I think Andy’s going to come back, with blood in his eye. And if he lays a finger on me, I’ll shoot him. I know you don’t care enough about it to prevent a murder.”

“Be sure to hit him with your first shot.”

Shayne finished his drink and returned to the Buick, where he asked his operator to locate a police lieutenant named Harmon in Palm Beach. Shayne had broken out on the interstate by the time she completed the connection. Harmon was still wrapping the discovery of Meri’s body in the necessary red tape. Shayne described Andy Anastasia and suggested that Harmon send some men to watch Maxine’s house.

“Preventive maintenance. At this time of night, nobody’s going to want to volunteer. But these people are connected to the body you found, and there’s a big score in it for some lucky guy. I don’t have time to explain. Listen to WKMW in Miami. As soon as I get down there I’m going to start something a little weird. It may not work, but it ought to be interesting.”

Chapter 13

When Timothy Rourke, tall, gangling, unprogrammed, took over a moribund late-night talk show on a struggling FM station, few of his friends expected him to stick with it for more than a few weeks. He had been in charge now for six months, and the station was beginning to build an audience and draw advertisers. He still worked on the News as their Number One crime-and-corruption reporter, but he had been breaking some of his best stories on the air, to the disgruntlement of his editors. Rourke probably knew more people in Dade County than any other man, and he had no trouble filling the studio with guests, who were provided with all the booze they could drink and freedom to say absolutely anything they pleased.

He had a sure instinct for topics people wanted to hear about. Even by the freakish standards of nighttime radio it was an outrageous show. His high-water mark to date had been the occasion when a loanshark, describing the way he made his living, drew a pistol and shot and seriously wounded a police informer. After that Rourke made all his guests check their small arms in an outer office before going on the air.

When Shayne arrived, a carefully dressed homosexual in early middle age, with a tan so carefully acquired that it looked like stage make-up, was describing the qualities that attracted him to chickens. One such, a fourteen-year-old, the older man’s current companion, sat beside him with lowered eyes, working on his nails. Rourke teetered far back on two legs of a straight chair, a glass in one hand. When Shayne came in, he brought all four legs down.

“Excuse me, guys. As fascinating as this is, we’re going to change the subject. This is Mike Shayne, and at this time of night he often has some stories to tell. He’s been working on the hitchhiking murders, and he’s just back from West Palm, where the latest victim was found tonight on the municipal golf course. And the next sound you hear will be Shayne pouring himself a drink.”

He pushed a bottle of Shayne’s brand of cognac across to his friend. There were several half-emptied glasses. He dumped one onto the rug and gave it to Shayne.

Shayne said, “I’ve got to the point where I need some help, Tim. You keep telling me that the kookiest people in southern Florida listen to this show. Maybe we can mobilize a few.”

“Catch a thief to set a thief. No, it’s the other way around.”

“That’s the idea. But there’s a lot to explain, so if anybody wants to go out and get another beer, now’s the time.”

The older homosexual at the table was caressing the back of the boy’s neck lightly. “I take it this murderer is interested in girls?”

“So far, exclusively girls. A girl named Meri Gillespie started hitchhiking in Miami. We don’t know where she’s been for two days. But we already know quite a bit about her, who her friends were, who she’s been living with, where she was going, and why before she left Miami she stole a piece of a valuable Toltec mask.”

“Holloway’s,” Rourke said quickly.

“I didn’t know you knew about it.”

“I heard rumors about a big sale.”

“I want to tell you and your people everything I know and suspect about this mask. It’s going to feature some important names, including the well-known Miami U. professor Tim just mentioned, and the director of the New York Fine Arts Museum. This isn’t how we handle this kind of thing ordinarily. We move slowly and try not to scare anybody. We don’t throw charges around or make trouble for people who may turn out to be innocent. We can’t do it like that this time. We don’t know what applies and what doesn’t. We have to hurry. A colleague of mine, a private investigator named Frieda Field, has also been kidnapped. This was her case to begin with. She brought me in to provide protection while she did something that in my opinion was foolish and dangerous. I tried to argue her out of it, but she’s as stubborn as a goddamn mule. She’s trying to make it as a woman in a tough profession. She claims to be a good shot with a pistol. She’s competent, she’s tenacious, she works hard. And she’s very, very handsome. I’ll add here what I’ve already told several people. We were going to spend the night together. That’s happened three times in the last few years. We had one successful weekend in Jamaica while her husband was still alive. She won’t like the idea that I’m saying this on the air, but I don’t want any confusion. This is important to me. I’m willing to go to extreme lengths to see that nothing happens to her.”

“Mike,” Rourke said in a lowered voice, “you mean this same guy—”

“I think so. She went out as a decoy. We had a system worked out so that whenever she got a ride I’d follow her, but something went wrong. I bobbled it.”

“Man, this is heavy. That’s one hell of a woman. Now what can we do to help you?”

“I saw her last at the MacArthur interchange, northbound. She was carrying a guitar case and a shoulder bag. Bright yellow scarf, jeans, a flower patch on one knee, purple sweater, no bra, sandals. Dark glasses, loose black hair to her shoulders. She’s twenty-six, about one thirty-five, five-six. Except for the clothes, she looks like a model for perfume or jewelry.”

“Marvelous,” Rourke agreed. “I don’t usually pick up hitchers, but I’d make an exception in her case. No bra?”

“She was trying to get the attention of a sex-nut. All right. How many people do you think are listening to us?”

“Hard to say. The station isn’t rich enough to commission surveys. Raise your hands, everybody. Thousands, anyway.”

“And you’ve persuaded me that they’re special people. You wouldn’t advertise a floor wax to this audience. They don’t believe in waxing their floors.”

“Right. Or deodorants. We don’t care how we smell, so long as it’s natural.”

“Which automatically makes you all a little crazy. You sleep less than ordinary people. You believe in ESP and astrology.”

“We’re open-minded, Mike. I’m open-minded against, they’re open-minded in favor.”

“The point is, we’re talking to a kind of underworld, with its own culture, its own rules. New attitudes, new combinations. It would be too much to expect this killer to be one of your regular listeners, but he may have friends who are, if he has friends. Maybe somebody out there was hitching this evening and passed the MacArthur interchange during the crucial half hour. If there’s anything you can tell us, anything at all, call in. We think Meri was still alive when she climbed over the fence around the golf course, or when somebody lifted her over. She was wearing a red rain cape, bright red. What happened to her clothes, to a knapsack she was carrying? What happened to the left eye of that mask? I’m making the whole thing a single package, and the right answers are worth two hundred thousand bucks.”

“Better say that again,” Rourke said. “I’ve had time to adjust, but there may be people who didn’t hear it the first time. A dollar sign, a two, then five zeroes.”

“For information leading to the apprehension of and the recovery of,” Shayne said. “You understand, this mask has already been bid on by a museum for six hundred thousand. Whether they’ll want to go through with the deal after I’m finished talking is another matter. I’m going to lay out everything I know about it, and that will include the recent activities of the following people: Professor Holloway; a new girl of his named Diane; his ex-wife, Maxine, who runs a gift shop in Seminole Beach; her live-in man, Andy Anastasia, who thinks of himself as a sculptor; Eliot Tree from the big city of New York; a few assorted hoods; and one more I haven’t met yet, an ex-boyfriend of Meri’s, true name Sid Koch, nickname Scotch. But first.”

He picked up the cheap carry-on vinyl suitcase he had brought into the studio and turned it upside down over the table. Packages of money cascaded out. Rourke and his two guests responded with quick movements and sounds. In an age of credit cards, that amount of cash in one container still carried a certain magic.

“I hope the engineer could pick up that sound effect,” Shayne said. “Those were gasps. I’ve just dumped one thousand and fifty — one five oh — one-hundred-dollar bills on the table. I also have a check made out for fifty thousand and signed by Eliot Tree. He swears he has enough in the bank to cover it. How many phones do you have open, Tim?”

“Two. Maybe Jim and Art will be willing to help, and we can open two more.”

The older man stirred the money with his finger. “Sure, if you give us scavenging rights. I’ve always thought hundred-dollar bills were the prettiest kind.”

“Who’s going to divide the money?” Rourke said.

“I am,” Shayne told him. “I have a fee coming, supposedly, but I’m throwing that in the pot. I want three things. Frieda Field, alive. Unraped, if possible, but that may be too much to ask. She doesn’t take the crime of rape as seriously as some people. I want Meri’s killer. And I want a fully assembled mask. I don’t think the same person can deliver all three. If so, he gets the bundle. Otherwise, we’ll work out percentages, and I’m the one who makes the decisions. Are we ready?”

“Ready,” Rourke said.

“A good place to start would be Professor Holloway’s expedition to Yucatan last winter.”

Bright light was beating strongly against her eyes. Was she in a hospital bed? Her arms and legs were weighted, as though inside multiple casts. Music was playing. It was cerebral jazz, one of the quintets that flourished in the 1950s.

Cold air played across her body. She was naked. She tried to sit up, and found that she was strapped to a doctor’s examining table.

A voice said cordially, “Frieda Field, detective. Tell me, have you ever actually used that gun I found in your bag? You see a black thief running out of a delicatessen. What do you do, shoot him dead?”

A man came into view. He, too, was naked, except for a surgeon’s cap into which he had stuffed his abundant hair. In a part of the world where a year-round tan is a mark of normality, his skin was soft, pale, covered with light fuzz. His genitals were all but hidden in folds of fat.

She was beginning to remember. She had taken the ride with him because in spite of his studious appearance, he had seemed a little rushed. The upper and lower halves of his face said different things. He had the look of someone who slept poorly. While he was freeing the seat-belt, the pads of his fingers slid along her neck, and she had known with absolute certainty that this was the one she wanted. Her hand went to her revolver. Then a flare, and after that darkness and heaviness, and nothing else until now.

“What did you ask me?”

He smiled down at her. One of his front teeth had been damaged and never fixed.

“Something about a gun, wasn’t it? Just making conversation. Try raising your gun-hand.”

“I’ve already tried. Do you know a girl named Meri Gillespie?”

“With the funny spelling. Yes, that was me. That was I.”

“I’ve been hoping we’d meet. I didn’t expect it to happen quite like this. Will you tell me your name?”

“Oh, it’s Bruno, damn it. Quickly, without thinking: react to the word rape.”

“It’s all right for some people,” she said immediately. “I’m against it.”

Her quick answer startled him into a laugh, ending in a moist chuckle. She studied him. To come through this experience alive, she knew she had to diagnose him correctly and find a way to make contact.

She turned her head, to investigate her surroundings. He had some expensive monitoring equipment. She recognized the drum and recording stylus of an electroencephalograph. Before she had time to wonder about it, she noticed a small bright object on top of a bookcase filled with medical texts. It was the missing piece from Holloway’s mask.

Bruno caught the change in focus. “Do you know what it is?”

“Didn’t you give her a chance to tell you?”

“We were too busy to discuss it.”

“It’s the left eye of a Toltec funerary mask. Probably representing some god, but who knows? The whole piece is considered so spectacular that museums have been bidding for it.”

He was silent for a moment. “Now I understand why they’re sending private detectives after me. A missing girl or two — who cares? But missing property.”

“As a matter of fact, there’s quite a bit of feeling about the girls.”

“Hysteria. The great American middle class always has to have something to be afraid of. Communists. Martians. Shortages.”

“Rapists.”

“Rapists, absolutely. But that eye — I knew there was something about it. I burned everything else. But that I couldn’t throw away. It kept giving me looks, as though it knew everything there was to know about me. Doesn’t it give you that feeling?”

“Very much so. Will you move it or cover it with something? I like privacy when I’m raped.”

Again he gave his sudden laugh. “You’re cool, you know? I’m beginning to think you’ve been raped before.”

“I’ve imagined it,” Frieda said.

“It’s part of the collective unconscious. Tell me about it.”

“I’m told it’s quite common among women who had satisfactory sex and then all of a sudden had to do without. I was married five years. All of a sudden, for some reason, my husband went up from four drinks a day to about a quart, and that interferes with sexual performance as well as so much else. I didn’t know why it happened, I still don’t. Some of it was probably my fault. And then he died.”

“Yes?”

“Months went by. After a while I stopped missing him so much. I have a few friends who take me to dinner, but they all liked Harry, and so a glancing goodnight kiss is a major event in my life. Sometimes they make a move, but the instant I hesitate they stop cold, as though they’ve been caught committing some social mistake.”

“Gee, too bad.”

“I’ve been talking to a doctor about it. He tells me not to worry about the rape fantasies. I want sex to happen, but I don’t want to play any part in bringing it about. So are they really rapes? To be properly raped, to get the full benefit, I think you have to be scared, don’t you? Both consciously and subconsciously, all over. You have to be rigid, fighting.”

She was talking fast, trying not to look at him too closely. At least he was listening.

“The truth is,” he said dogmatically, “that nobody knows a goddamn thing about the subject. And yet it’s punishable by long-term confinement in a maximum-security institution. Pretty severe, for an act that may take only half a minute. Define rape for me.”

“Forcible entry, without the woman’s consent.”

“You’re beginning to sound fairly intelligent. Did that late husband of yours, who knocked back a bottle a day, ever come home from the neighborhood gin-mill, whip out his thing, and push it inside you without getting you ready first or asking what you thought of the idea? Rape. What did you do, put him in prison for life? You forgot all about it by breakfast the next morning.”

“We were married.”

“Rape. Murder. Marriage doesn’t entitle a husband to murder his wife. It’s an anomaly. All right, when he forced his way in without your consent, did your heart race and your nipples erect? What about those supposedly involuntary muscle spasms?”

“I think I had an occasional spasm. I don’t remember.”

“Listen,” he said, “I’m going to break a pattern here. I usually don’t give my subjects anything to drink. It fuzzes the reactions. I’m going to handle you a different way. We have time. Four days and four nights. You still don’t really believe it. After you’ve been tied up for four days, you may lose some of that cool. Nobody’s coming to get you. Was that yellow scarf a signal? Nobody saw it.”

“If you’re pouring drinks, make mine a Scotch.”

He laughed again. “Sweet baby, I love you. I’m going to feed it to you in little sips, because I can’t run the risk of unbuckling you. I see you’re a dangerous woman. But I’m dangerous too!”

“You don’t look it.”

“Because of my non-erection? Some people get big only when the woman’s helpless and screaming. I don’t mean you have to scream, Frieda. Scream if you feel like it.”

He leaned down. She gave herself orders to lie still, but she flinched — unfortunately less than an inch. His mouth closed on her breast. From the bookcase the eye of the Toltec mask stared down impassively. After a time Bruno withdrew, leaving her nipple wet and standing.

“See? And that’s in spite of the fact that you’re scared of me, and I must be one of the most revolting specimens you’ve ever seen.”

“As a matter of fact, I think brains are more important. My husband was overweight. He was like you — he didn’t believe in wasting time out on the beach.”

Bruno looked at her threateningly. “Don’t try to be too clever! I can see the wheels going around. If you don’t mind it, it isn’t rape. Right? So if you can persuade me you don’t mind it, maybe I won’t do it. But I’m Bruno! Bruno has put three people to sleep.”

“Only three?”

“He’s been getting credit for more, but I can only personally remember three. You’re the fourth. And I can see you’re going to be a challenge. You’re the kind of subject that makes scientific investigation worthwhile.”

“How do you know you have four days?”

“That’s when the doctor gets back. This isn’t Bruno’s office. He borrowed it. There’s food in the house. Food for me. I don’t think we’re going to let you have any, to see what difference it makes.”

“I didn’t mean that. If somebody wrote down your license number and they’re tracing it now, you ought to rape me right away and get it over with.”

“Bruno’s not ready.” He added, “The car’s no problem. I stole it.”

“A friend of mine, Michael Shayne, was watching for the scarf. You fooled us. Mike doesn’t get fooled too often, and he doesn’t like it. Do you ever listen to the Tim Rourke show?”

“Now and again. That’s a son of a bitch who’s really crazy.”

“Mike was planning to be on it tonight. Turn it on. This is the big story of the day. They may be talking about you.”

“We don’t care what anybody says.”

“Don’t you want to find out how much time you really have?”

He went behind her, and she heard the rattle of ice. After a moment’s pause, he went to the radio and changed stations. Her heart jumped. Mike Shayne’s voice boomed into the room.

Bruno came into view, bringing two glasses. At the name Meri Gillespie he halted, tightening.

“Is that Shayne?”

“My dear Mike. Naturally I’m hoping to see him again.”

“You won’t,” he promised her. “He’s big and tough, no doubt, and he could beat me to a pulp using only one fist. But we’re safe here.”

Head cocked, he listened intently while Shayne described the condition of Meri’s body and where and how it had been found. His chin fell to his chest. For an instant he seemed on the edge of tears.

“She was so alive. God, how she fought. You see—” he said, turning. “You haven’t been taking this seriously, have you?”

“Good God, Bruno. I come to and find myself strapped to a table in a room with a naked man who is obviously somewhat insane. Believe me, I take it seriously.”

“Not enough.” He took a step toward the table, trembling, and said furiously, “Don’t talk in that calm way. There is absolutely no possibility. Stop hoping. Stop trying.”

Chapter 14

“Meri Gillespie’s roommate in college was a girl named Joanne,” Shayne said. “I wasn’t told her last name. If anybody’s listening at the university—”

Rourke broke in. “I have a terrific following there. I’m the current thing at pot parties. Tim Rourke, who believes in legalizing everything.”

“I want to talk to this roommate,” Shayne said. “If anybody knows her, wake her up and tell her to come over to KMW, and we’ll let her finger some hundred dollar bills.”

A Palm Beach man called to report that he had seen a dazed-looking girl, wearing the costume Shayne had described, get out of a pick-up truck near the West Palm Beach golf course and wobble off. Shayne questioned him closely. Deciding that he was merely fishing for a piece of the money, Shayne cut him off. Two others said they had seen a woman who looked like Frieda, with a guitar case, being picked up on the interstate. They differed about the kind of car, but agreed that the driver’s face had given them a creepy feeling.

The switchboard was already beginning to overload. While Rourke read a message praising one of his public-spirited sponsors, Shayne gave the switchboard handlers a list of major names and instructions to screen other calls and put through only those that sounded important.

He was wearing a headset. He put it aside to use one of the three phones in front of him to dial the St. Albans.

“Mike?” Tree said thickly. “Woke me up. I thought I was through for the night; took a pill. Any news?”

“Not yet. Fair warning — this conversation is going out on the air.”

“What the devil do you mean?” Tree said more alertly.

“I think I explained to you that we can’t sit on our hands and wait. We have to force it, or we’ll be spending our time the next few days going to funerals. We’re on the Timothy Rourke show. He usually winds up at one, but tonight we have clearance to keep on talking as long as it takes, all night if necessary. Your money’s piled up on the table in front of me.”

“And we’ve had some very nice compliments on it,” Rourke put in. “Either the air-conditioning is on the blink or that money is warm. I’m sweating.”

“You really are broadcasting?” Tree said.

“Check it, 805 on the FM dial. I’ll hold.”

He waited until the museum director completed the loop.

“By God, you’re right, I’m getting an echo. Well, it’s no secret that I put up the two hundred thousand. It’s my signature on the check.”

“Are you still maintaining that you’re the mask’s legal owner?”

“I seem to remember some kind of arbitrator’s award. As I believe I told you, I employed my good friend Sam Holloway—”

“Holloway still claims the mask is his.”

After a moment: “We’re doing it that way, are we? Call me on another phone.”

“I’ve already told the story as far as I know it. I’m still not sure how many people are listening, but we’re beginning to get some feedback. I want our listeners to get everybody’s version — yours first, then Holloway’s, then Maxine’s.”

“Just don’t be too candid, Shayne, or you’ll find yourself on the receiving end of an action for slander.”

“I’ll defend on the facts,” Shayne said coldly. “If there’s any of this cash left, I’ll use it to hire a good lawyer.”

“You’re a bastard,” Tree said, but almost admiringly. “What the hell then, if the damage is already done. Unusual circumstances, unusual methods. One way or another, I fear I’m approaching the end of my string of years as a museum director. And I still don’t know what a museum is supposed to be, Shayne! Probably Holloway showed you some kind of papers. They’re fraudulent. I say that without hesitation, and if anybody’s offered him money on that basis, anybody in Terre Haute, for example, too fucking bad. There will be other masks. As soon as the grapevine picks up the fantastic amounts of money we’re making available, the jungles of Central America will be flooded with treasure hunters and thieves. I’ve done as much of this kind of thing as anybody. It was the only way I could get some of the things I coveted.”

“Coveted?”

“A strong word, I know. But it fits. I covet that mask. I want it for my museum. We have a small domed octagonal room. I’d hang the walls with bright fabric — orange, I think — and light the piece from above, as though it’s being picked out by a ray of sunlight. I know why you’re acting so unprofessionally here, Shayne — to save a life. As for me, I don’t care that much about any living person. I do care about that mask. So what the hell, as I think I said before. What else do you want to know?”

“Have you had any phone calls you didn’t tell me about?”

“One. In New York. This, again, was a male voice with a Spanish accent. I’d seen photographs of a certain mask, being offered for sale by, let us say, a certain Swiss dealer. Did I like it enough to come to Miami to hear more about it? I’m here, so obviously the answer was yes. This was two weeks ago.”

“I’ll file that,” Shayne said. “And while we’re talking about Spanish accents. A Cuban named García. He’s six feet three, and his neck is too long for the rest of his body. Mustache, heavy jaw. I’ll repeat my usual offer. The first person who tells this man to call in will get two hundred dollars of Tree’s money. Anything else, Tree?”

“When you call Holloway, ask about the chiclero who was killed in Yucatan. I’ll be interested to hear what he says. I’ll stay tuned.”

Shayne had been drinking coffee with a splash of cognac. Both of Rourke’s earlier guests had been drinking cognac in snifters, and the bottle was empty. While Shayne was winding up the conversation with Tree, he pushed his car keys to Rourke and made a drinking gesture. There was a fresh bottle in the back seat of his parked car.

The next call yielded nothing. The next after that was from Harmon, the homicide lieutenant in West Palm Beach.

“Mike, this may be the screwiest way to handle a murder investigation I ever heard of. Wait a minute, let me cut in another extension. I’ve got the radio coming in my other ear and it’s confusing as hell.”

In another moment: “Do you have any phones you can switch off so we aren’t on the air?”

“All I have to do is push a button, but why not keep it out in the open?”

“I feel funny about it, that’s all. It just don’t feel natural. But I guess it’s O.K., as far as that goes, because I just checked and there’s no radio aerial on the guy’s car. Anastasia?”

“Andy Anastasia,” Shayne explained to his listeners. “The sculptor, the boyfriend of Professor Holloway’s ex-wife, Maxine. Go on, Harmon.”

“You suggested I stake out the Seminole Beach house. I just got the report. He came back, like you said. I had to take that on faith, and I still don’t see how it ties in with the golf course body. Sort of sneaked in without turning on lights. The woman was in the front room, listening to the radio, like the rest of us. Quiet for ten minutes. Then pow-pow time. Bang, crash. Those two people don’t love each other anymore. To jump right in with it, Mike — he knocked her cold. He left, carrying a suitcase, with a suit on a hanger. My guys went after him. Seminole Beach sent somebody over to see if a murder had been committed. But no, she was up and walking around.”

He interrupted himself. “Now hell! If her radio’s still on, she’s listening to this. Mike, are you a hundred percent sure you know what you’re doing?”

“Hell, no. I’m making it up as we go along. Maxine, any comment? If you get a busy signal, keep trying. O.K., Harmon.”

“Anastasia. There’s probably some logical explanation for what he did then, but I can’t give it to you. He drives this old VW with holes in the exhaust system, so it makes plenty of noise, and I’ve got two cars on him with radio communication and two more on the way. So if they lose him — and they all have transistors, so I know they’re listening to what I’m saying — eight cops are going to be looking for employment. What Anastasia did, he stopped at a phone booth and must have looked up a couple or three addresses, because then he just drove around town and looked. Slowed down on one block, picking out house numbers, then speeded up and tried somewhere else. And then over to Route One and down. He’s doing the same thing in Boca Raton. First the phone booth. Then looking.”

“He doesn’t make any calls?”

“That’s the peculiar thing.”

“Is he in a hurry?”

“Yeah, out in the open he drives like hell.”

Shayne thought for a moment. “When your new cars get there, have one of them go back to the booth he used in Boca Raton and look in the phone book. See if any pages are missing.”

“See if any pages are missing,” Harmon said skeptically. “O.K., guys, did you hear that? Call me and verify.”

Rourke’s competition for the stay-awake audience was a battle-scarred veteran calling himself Biscayne Fats. He had been in the radio business his entire adult life, moving from station to station, through varying formats, until he reached Miami and decided to look no further. He was a celebrity-chaser, a dropper of names, a professional fan. Most of the show-business personalities who worked the Beach hotels were willing to spend one or two long nights with Fats, in return for being mentioned and reminisced about the rest of the year. Tonight he had a stand-up comic and a singer. For some reason, phone calls were few.

“I’ve got to break in here,” he said, when one of his guests paused. “I see a light on the phone. Some lonely person is trying to contact me. Good evening. Biscayne Fats. What’s on your little mind?”

A woman’s voice: “Fats, you ought to catch the Rourke show.”

“Speak louder, dear. I won’t repeat what I thought I heard you say, because we don’t acknowledge that man’s existence. He’s the competition. This is a competitive society, and I’m patriotic about that.”

“Tonight make an exception. Mike Shayne’s on.”

Click.

Fats sighed. “The damage has been done, I’m afraid. In beds, in trucks, in parked cars, human hands are reaching for the dial. Don’t desert me, fans. The sponsors will hate you for it.”

“Tim Rourke,” one of the out-of-town guests said. “Didn’t he win the Pulitzer last year?”

“You spoke the man’s name. That’s twice. A newspaper reporter, and he should have stayed in the medium he understands. He uses the word ‘shit’ on the air. Appalling. Going out across the airwaves and into the ears of some wakeful minor. The poor kiddie could be psychologically scarred for life. To my vast public, now leaving me in droves, I say, hold on a minute, rats. I’ll tune in the jerk and find out what’s going on. Be loyal. Don’t forget all the tranquility I’ve brought you over the years.”

A transistor set on the table came alive. He found Rourke’s station and listened for a moment.

“This is some kind of first,” Fats said. “Charlie,” he called to the engineer on the other side of the glass. “Charlie! Wake up and check the level. We’ve just joined the Tim Rourke show. That way my people will stay with us and listen to our commercials.”

Rourke came back empty-handed from his trip for cognac. He picked up one of the live mikes.

“Let me break in. For those of you who have just tuned in, Shayne sent me out to his car to replenish his liquor supply. It begins to look like a long night. That’s a terrific car, chock-full of interesting electronic gadgets. One of the best things is the back-seat bar, for those friends of his who happen to be drinkers. Tonight there’s something else in the back seat.” He waited a tick. “Ask me what, Mike.”

“What?”

“A body.”

“All right, whose?”

“I didn’t disturb it. We’ll have a minute of dead air here, and when you hear us next, we’ll be talking on a remote from the sidewalk in front of the station.”

WKMW occupied half of a low cinderblock building, a block from the river. Shayne had parked under the tall sign giving the station’s call letters. Rourke jacked a hand-mike into an outlet in the lobby. Shayne, a step ahead of him, opened the Buick’s rear door.

The body, on its side, lay huddled against the refrigerating unit. It was male. An open newspaper covered his face, to keep off flies.

Standing on the sidewalk, Rourke described the scene and what Shayne was doing. The newspaper was stuck to the face. Shayne picked it off. He looked at Rourke. “Nobody I know,” Rourke said.

Shayne used a flashlight, and moved the upper part of the body to let the beam illuminate the face. The bluish hole in the temple had been made by a small-caliber weapon, and there were marks indicating that the gun had been in contact when the trigger was pulled. It was the most common suicide wound. Shayne moved the beam until it picked up a.25 automatic. He left it where it was.

“Strange place to commit suicide,” Rourke said.

“If that’s what it is.”

Shayne moved into the front seat. Using his car phone, he reported their find, with Rourke extending the hand-mike into the car to pick up Shayne’s end of the conversation. Then Shayne returned to the back seat and felt the pockets carefully, finding loose change and a key, but no wallet or identification.

A car arrived. A girl dismounted and started into the building. Recognizing Rourke, she stopped and came over.

“I’m Joanne Stewart, Meri’s roommate. I don’t know if there’s anything I can—”

Shayne straightened, and she saw the body.

She took a step forward, shaking her head. Then she cried, “That’s Scotch! That’s Scotch! He’s dead!”

Chapter 15

She was a small, olive-skinned girl with her hair in bangs, too plump, wearing glasses. She had skipped a buttonhole when buttoning her shirt. The strap of one sandal was flapping.

“Scotch,” she said again, vaguely. “I don’t understand it.”

“And this is Mike Shayne’s automobile,” Rourke said, “the back seat of which, I’ll repeat, is a funny place for a body to turn up in.”

“It’s something to do with that damn mask!” Joanne said accusingly.

“Probably,” Shayne said.

She pushed her fingers through her bangs. “This is the first dead person I’ve ever — Can we sit down somewhere? I’d like a glass of water.”

“We have to stay here until the cops can take over,” Shayne said.

He put ice in a tall glass and filled it with soda. Rourke turned her so she could sit in the front seat, her feet on the sidewalk. She took her head in both hands, pressing hard. Then she accepted the glass from Shayne and drank thirstily.

“I still don’t have the faintest idea. Did Meri — has Meri been—”

“Meri’s been found.” Shayne said gently. “Whoever did that is still out and around. We’re going to have to waste some time after the cops get here. That can’t be helped. But we have a few minutes now for some fast questions and answers. Can you put these two deaths to one side and react to them later? Are you listening, Joanne?”

“I don’t know what you want.”

“How much have you seen of Meri lately?”

She looked at the sidewalk, then at Shayne, at Rourke, and then back at the sidewalk. Only then did she answer. “Not very much. I didn’t care for her professor.”

“Did she break up with Scotch before he went to Mexico with Holloway?”

“No, after they got back. He was miserable down there. He wrote her almost every day. Digging? That wasn’t Scotch’s usual kind of thing. Then they had an argument, arguments, and she shifted to Holloway — not much of an improvement, in at least one person’s opinion.”

She made a helpless sound suddenly and tears ran from her eyes. “There was nothing improper between Meri and myself! If that’s what you’re implying. We liked the same things. We really leveled with each other. She had such wonderful dreams for the future. Scotch!” she said with scorn, gesturing toward the body in the back seat. “He only cared about one single thing, himself, and I don’t see how she stood spending evenings with him, let alone nights. He’s been back lately, sniffing around. He was there in the house one night when I stopped by to take her to the movies. Holloway was away somewhere — Chicago, Indiana. Scotch gave me an extremely sour look and left. The world’s biggest ego combined with the world’s worst disposition.”

“What’s he been doing this last year?”

“Living in Fort Myers with his mother. Smoking, no doubt. Perfectly well satisfied with himself.”

“What did Meri say to you about the mask?”

“We talked about it a lot. I never saw it, but I understand it’s really something. She wasn’t too happy about the idea of selling it to some American museum. She had a thing about museums, but if it had to be in a museum at all, she thought it ought to be in a Mexican one. But that’s not the way the world is organized, according to her crooked employer.”

“Crooked?”

“The phoniest phony who ever pulled on a pair of pants, Mr. Shayne. If he was the one who was dead, I’d be sitting here drinking black velvets.”

“We haven’t heard from him lately,” Shayne said dryly. “Everybody’s been waving guns around, and we may end up with a casualty list longer than two.”

With sirens and lights, the police arrived.

Rourke kept moving with his microphone, letting his audience overhear the asides, grunts, and obscenities of night-shift policemen handling a corpse with a gunshot wound in the head. From time to time Rourke asked a question or dropped in a clarifying remark. After being photographed and dusted, the dead youth was pulled out on the sidewalk. His hair was receding, and this had probably bothered him, for it was layer-cut and sprayed. His slacks were almost too tight. As the cops put him down, one arm flopped out, and Shayne saw an irregularly shaped purple splotch, like an ink-blot, on the back of his hand.

Rourke was watching. “Something to say about that, Mike? Our listeners have been very patient, if we’re still plugged in after all this moving around.”

“One minute,” Shayne told him, and asked the girl, “Koch. What kind of accent did he have?”

“New York. But he was a great impersonator, in his own view. Sidney Greenstreet, James Cagney. French, Russian, Spanish, always performing, always a pain in the ass.”

“O.K.,” Shayne said. “Here’s one circuit I can finally close. Scotch, García, two others. They raided Maxine’s house this morning and Holloway’s tonight. They wore ski masks. Scotch had work-gloves on this morning, to hide that birthmark. At Holloway’s he stayed outside as lookout and he didn’t think he needed them. You notice the bruise on the side of his jaw. I put that there. I’ll give you details when we’re inside.”

Sandy St. John had been trying new names. Her old one was Hungarian. It didn’t fit her personality and was a drag to pronounce. Sandy St. John sounded a little fake, as though a press agent had thought it up, but wanting to sound like a girl with a press agent, she tried it, and so far it was holding up well.

She had fallen asleep as though hit in the face with a shovel. She had been doing that lately, going off in an instant like a doused light. Usually she stayed off, but tonight the switch flicked back on and she sat up abruptly.

There were two men and another girl in bed with her. One of the men opened his eyes when the bed shifted.

“Some more?”

She shook her head slowly. “I can’t remember who I am.”

He accepted that with a nod. “Kid, you and me both.”

She left the bed. The TV was running without sound. Horses galloped soundlessly. The guns were equipped with silencers.

She killed the picture and went to the bathroom, where she looked at the array in the medicine cabinet without being able to decide what she needed. She ran a glass of water. It tasted like ashes. The electric clock said she couldn’t have slept more than fifteen minutes, which was sort of a blow.

At this point, she found that she was confused not only about who, but about where. Motel rooms all looked alike with the blinds shut. It wasn’t her own place, she knew that. Her own place, which as a matter of fact probably didn’t exist, was comfortably furnished, rent-free, and none of the electrical appliances ever failed to perform. She glanced again at the sleepers on the bed. She knew who they were, to the extent that she knew the names on their driver’s licenses. She knew what they liked, sexually. But she wasn’t sure if any of them believed in God, or if they bothered to vote. Even what parts of the country they came from. Were their parents alive?

She began to remember the start of the evening. That was encouraging. Her forgetfulness was selective; she forgot those things she didn’t choose to remember. They had been to the dog races. To her astonishment, for she was usually the unluckiest person alive, she won a great deal of money. The winning dog had been named Bruno’s Pride, and one of the things she couldn’t remember was why she had liked the name. She looked for her purse, found it in the john with the money inside. So that part was real.

The feeling of the bills gave her a sort of early sexual excitement. She hadn’t known she cared that much about money. The thoughts that were roaring through her head were anything but disturbing. Perhaps, after all, she could get on a plane and go somewhere and make sense of her life. But what did she want? Everything! The whole schmear. That was the trouble.

She turned on the TV again, coming in on a cluster of commercials. A beautifully groomed woman held out a can of toilet-bowl cleanser, silently mouthing its praises. A man and a girl, both gorgeous, in bathing suits — toothpaste, she guessed, and toothpaste it was. Her stomach gave an indignant growl and she sent the beautiful intruders back to their hiding place in the tube.

The red eye of the radio was looking at her accusingly. It was on, the volume way down. She glanced at her sleeping friends. If it disturbed them, screw it. She needed voices.

She turned the control and heard Biscayne Fats, whose husky voice had whispered to her through many a wakeful night. But it wasn’t the usual Biscayne Fats. He was standing outside the studio, looking in on his show, except that it didn’t seem to be his own show. It was a strange effect that frightened her slightly. Nobody likes to hallucinate at the end of a party.

A police lieutenant was talking. It was a telephone voice, but that was all right, because Fats habitually took phone calls. But the lieutenant wasn’t talking to Fats. Fats was somewhere else, occasionally inserting a word or two to remind his listeners of his presence.

His man, the lieutenant was saying, had returned to the Boca Raton phone booth, as Shayne had suggested, and looked in the book. And sure enough, one of the yellow pages had been torn out.

Sandy, listening intently, was now about ninety-eight percent certain that she was inside a dream of some kind. A yellow page had been torn out. What could it mean?

In the studio — it was Tim Rourke’s studio, she realized, which was queer; were they conglomerating? — another Boca Raton phone book was found and comparisons were made. One of these voices she liked. It was deep and throaty, weary but patient, warm. She knew it came from a large, powerfully built man. She wished she had him face down on the bed beside her, so she could rub the tension out of his back and shoulders.

“Yeah,” he said slowly. “Here it is. Photographers. Pharmacies. Physicians and Surgeons. Pianos. Let’s rule out the pianos. The others are possible.”

“Not pharmacies,” the lieutenant said. “All the places Anastasia has been slowing down in front of are in the middle of the block. Drug stores are usually on a corner. One of my guys here has been keeping a list of addresses. Let me check.”

Sandy poured herself a glass of wine and settled down in front of the radio. She was going to make sense out of this if it took all night. Pharmacies? Pianos?

The lieutenant came back. “You realize this is approximate, Mike. I mean, we don’t have the number, just the street, something like ‘south side, apartment house.’ Seven places in Boca Raton. We could knock out photographers right away. It’s doctors, Mike. They’re all of them doctors, all seven. Can you explain it? When you need a doctor, you phone him and the answering service tells you to take an aspirin and call in the morning. Or you go to his house and bang on the door. That’s not what Anastasia’s doing. He just goes up and down, looks at the house, and drives on.”

Rourke’s voice: “Maybe there’s something distinctive about the house he’s looking for. Or there’s supposed to be somebody who’s still awake, with a light on.”

The lieutenant again: “Now this is funny. Not only doctors. They’re all obstetricians, gynecologists. Is that how you pronounce it?”

Sandy, finishing that glass of wine and starting another, was finding the conversation more and more bizarre. She was beginning to think the whole thing was a late-night, hoax, like the time Fats had three guests who had just come back from a ride on a flying saucer.

Mike: “Which is it? A gynecologist who collects Mexican art? Or a gynecologist who collects girl hitchhikers?”

“And rapes them,” Rourke put in. “And how the hell do you account for that? Considering his line of work. There he is, eight hours a day, bent over that examining table with his speculum and his rubber glove. Wouldn’t you get tired of that particular view, and want to go bowling or something?”

And suddenly Sandy had such a powerful intuition that she spilled wine on her leg. A gynecologist’s examining table — hitchhikers—

She went into a rapid time-warp, and when she returned to the present, Mike was taking a phone call from Fort Myers, on the other side of the peninsula. A dead youth from Fort Myers, Sid Koch by name, had turned up in the back seat of somebody’s car. Sandy puzzled about it, but it seemed to have no connection with gynecologists, or with anything else. Give it time, she said to herself. Sooner or later the kaleidoscope would stop spinning and patterns would emerge.

The caller, a Mrs. Goodman, was an acquaintance of Koch’s mother.

“Did you know Sidney was jailed on drug charges and he stayed there for a week until he could raise bail? God’s truth. The case was dismissed later, but you know the old saw. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. And there was smoke here. Marijuana smoke.” She gave a croak of laughter.

“Mrs. Goodman—”

“And that boy was always a trial and a disappointment to his mother, who is the sweetest individual on earth. There’s no father in the family. Never has been. She scrimped and she slaved to send him to college, and the thanks she got, he turned artistic on her. Not much of a living in that. All he was willing to do after he got the degree was sit around the house with his hair over his eyes playing the drums so loud it drove everybody on that street purely wild.”

The studio voice tried to interject something. Again she rode him down.

“Naturally, you know, his mother came to the end of her patience and cut off his funds, to get him up off his hiney and out in the world to find a job. For all the effect that had, he just went on in his usual ways. He always had money in his pocket, like in one of those fairy stories. You don’t need to be any mind-reader to know where he got it. From peddling marijuana among his age group, and the narcotics police got wind of it after a time. His mother thought they heard it from me, which is far from correct, but there’s been a certain amount of chilliness in that quarter since. I couldn’t care less.”

“Do you have anything more to tell us about Scotch?”

“You call him that too, do you? Plenty! He kept running off to Miami on his motorbike. I have my spies, don’t you know, and whenever he came back was when he was able to make those little purchases — long-playing record albums and the like. Parts for his motorcycle. A pair of boots costing well over forty dollars.”

“You’re saying there’s no legitimate way for him to afford an expensive pair of boots?”

“That’s precisely what I’m saying. His mother doesn’t allot him one penny. The only answer I’ve been able to come up with is marijuana.”

“What kind of friends did he have?”

“Scruffy. Guitar players, so on and so forth. Marijuana smokers all of them, not a doubt in the world.”

“Girls?”

“One in particular, and she happens to be my daughter, and that’s why I take such a special interest in what sort of a boyfriend she’s getting herself mixed up in. She’ll be heartbroken when she hears about it, a lot more so than me — not that I’m gloating. I personally thought he was more likely to go in one of those motorcycle skids. I still don’t think much of that suicide theory. Suicide? He was too egotistic. The reason I’m calling to strike in a claim for a piece of that money, and I know you’re going to be fair about that, Mr. Shayne, is that he’s been telling a lot of stories about how money was not a problem. He suggested to my daughter that they do some traveling together in Europe and so on. That was some time ago now, a matter of let’s say a couple of weeks. Lately he’s been very short-tempered. Disappearing and showing up and disappearing. My personal opinion, I think he was deep in the drug traffic, and that time he went down to Mexico was to line up a source of supply, which would naturally enter this country through the Port of Miami. It’s been giving me a bad case of insomnia, which is why I’m listening to the radio this late. My advice to you, Mr. Shayne, is to stop chasing around the countryside after pieces of masks. That’s not it. In my considered opinion, it’s marijuana. Marijuana,” she insisted.

The next call surprised everybody. A man’s voice: “Mike, are you by any chance a concealed homosexual?”

Shayne laughed. “I doubt it.”

“Because if you are,” the voice continued, “I hope you’ll come out of the closet and join us. You have the image we need. You could be highly effective in our struggle for recognition.”

Chapter 16

“This is García,” a strong accented voice announced next.

Sandy decided to drink one more glass of wine and listen to one more call. She hadn’t gleaned much from the Fort Myers lady, although from the way he had put his questions, Shayne had seemed to think she was saying some interesting things. The wine had started a slight buzzing. She had made a close study of her own reactions, and she knew if she laid much more wine in on top of everything else, the buzzing would swell in volume and intensity until she would be able to hear nothing else, and it would keep her from considering her problem. That problem was no longer whether or not she would call — she had decided she had to — but what name she would tell them. It had to be authentic, so they could send her some of the money.

García: “I do not trust you, Shayne. I am not one of those people who open their mouths and everything spills out. Tonight I have done a few crimes, perhaps. I am tall, I am easy for the finger to be pointed to. To disappear into the Spanish-speaking community is not so simple for me. So I want your friendship. I want money, because I have received nothing but pennies so far for all I have done. An acquaintance tells me you have questions. I didn’t shoot Scotch. Understand that. I would have no reason except annoyance.”

“Which one of you did the organizing?”

“He. Of course. Except in height, I am small man. Very much unimportant. But I have feelings.”

“When did he call you?”

“Yesterday.”

“Come on, don’t drip it out with an eye-dropper. What was your deal?”

“To bring two other guys, reliable, and meet in Seminole Beach. A car. No danger, no complications, that was his promise. No danger! No complications!”

“Did he pay in advance?”

“A small sum. Because of your interference, there has been no second payment. And I can tell you I have bills. The phone company, the gas company.”

“I left Scotch on Holloway’s front porch. Did you see him again?”

“We were to meet at a certain place if anything was wrong, if we were separated. I went, but nobody.”

“You had to be a little sore about what happened.”

García said uneasily, “I am refugee, not as yet citizen. It is not wise for me to be angry.”

“How long have you known him?”

“I was with them to Mexico, Holloway and the others. Only to translate. I am not archeologist. To carry things, to put up the tents.”

“Were you there when the Mexican was shot?”

“Indian,” García corrected. “Yes, the professor did that. Should I tell you? Would it interest you? He was a robber, he wanted to rob the professor of his watch, his American Express checks. There was a trail between the camp and the bathroom. The professor was careless, he should not have gone out alone. This raggedy man came up to him with a knife. Out came the professor’s gun. Down fell the Indian.”

“How did the local people react to that?”

“There are so few in the jungle. In the camp, some people said it was the usual gringo craziness, done out of fear. For my part, if it had been me on that path, I would take the knife away from him. Or give him the checks and the watch, and get them back through the rural police, who know everybody in the district. What does an ignorant chicle gatherer know about traveler’s checks? But the professor was nervous, from much looking, little finding. I worried, you know, that evening. The way people looked at him; whispered. But in the morning, the mask was found and everybody was happy after so long, excited. We all knew it would be famous. The professor was lucky. You need much luck in the jungle, among so many trees. You saw it after it was clean, repaired. When it came out of the earth it was not so splendid. But piece by piece. A finished mask, everybody said it was very rare.”

“What place did Scotch have in the expedition?”

“Always with painful ankles, weak bowels. Excuse after excuse. Little work.”

Shayne’s patient questioning continued. Sandy, looking down into her glass and turning it this way and that, almost stopped listening. A conscious step was to be taken, and she didn’t take so many of those that she could do it without working herself up. Would they believe her? Psychologically speaking, she was a mess, with a memory that stood on its head sometimes and did somersaults. She remembered things that hadn’t happened yet, for heaven’s sake, which was definitely not normal.

“Tim Rourke again,” Rourke’s voice said from the radio. “We’re rolling along, in one of the wooliest episodes in the recent history of nighttime radio. I’ve just been told that we’ve been joined by Biscayne Fats and his minuscule audience. Welcome, Fats and friends. Here’s that phone number again. If you know anything about hitchhiking murders or Toltec masks, call us. If you’re hesitating, pick up the phone and dial.”

That was the push Sandy needed. She dialed the number as Rourke said it slowly. She was sure she had done it wrong, and was immensely relieved when a man’s voice answered.

“KMW. Hello.”

“I thought I’d — I wanted to—”

“Sweetheart? Do you have something for Shayne?”

“About Bruno, the Mad Doctor.”

“About Bruno, the Mad Doctor,” the voice prompted. “Tell me who’s calling.”

“That’s the trouble! You’d think I’d know a simple thing like my own name, wouldn’t you? I don’t believe in God, I haven’t voted yet, and here are some of the things I like to do: drink, dope, ball, and hitchhike.”

One of the men on the bed sat up. “Who you calling?”

“Mike Shayne, on the radio. They’re talking about that guy who picked me up last week.”

The man at the radio station heard this answer, which she might not have been able to deliver straight into the phone.

“I’ll put you through. You sound a little flittery, but compared to some of the calls we’ve been getting—”

“Shayne,” a voice said a moment later. “Go ahead.”

“My name is—”

And that was as far as she could get. Shayne waited, in a relaxed way. Something came out of the mouthpiece. Some quality, she didn’t know what to call it. All she knew was that none of the men she had ever slept with had had it. Her mind stopped spinning, and she told the truth about herself for the first time in weeks.

“Natalie Kreczmer,” she said, “and the reason I think it’s Bruno, when I woke up I was on this table! Like when I had the abortions? He wasn’t a doctor, he was using the office while the doctor was on vacation. It was a real office, with all these machines. So—” She trailed off.

“Where are you calling from, Natalie?”

“I don’t know that either.”

The man on the bed said, “Bal Harbour, stupid. Listen to the waves on the beach.”

The only surf she could hear was beating back and forth between her ears.

“Everything’s inside everything else,” she told Shayne. “I’m talking on the phone, and my voice is coming back out of the radio, but it’s not the right program—”

“It’s a bad time of night, Natalie.”

“I get disoriented. That’s what Bruno said, and he said he gets that way himself sometimes. He’s a medical student, and he said to call him Bud. I was hitching. The seat-belt was stuck. I had to wear it, he said. He reached over to fix it and gave me this shot in the neck. It slid me right out of there. Mike, I was gone.”

Shayne sounded interested. “A hypo. That would explain why Frieda wasn’t able to use her gun. Our signal was a scarf. If he knocked her out and put her on the floor — yeah, he’d see the scarf and do something about it. All right, maybe we’re finally moving. Can you say something to give me a little confidence that this whole thing didn’t just occur to you a minute ago?”

“Don’t ask picky questions. How am I supposed to know that?”

The man on the bed was up on one elbow, listening to the radio voices. She had lived with him, off and on, for two months, and she was fairly sure of his name. It was Jake. He padded across and took the phone.

“Shayne? I don’t know what the hell’s going on. I just woke up. My name’s Jerry Ramsay. I’m the roommate.”

Jerry. Wrong again.

“A doctor’s office,” Jerry said. “I heard what you asked her. Did she dream that up this minute? She’s got a wonderful imagination, and the truth is, I didn’t believe it when she told me. But she told me last week. So that answers your question.” He added, “If you believe me.”

“We’d better get it firsthand,” Shayne said, his voice quickening, “if she’s not too zonked.”

“No more than usual. As a matter of fact, her name’s Sandy. She keeps changing, which isn’t a real bad idea, when you think about it. Here she is.”

She took the phone and let it lie in her hand, looking at it, until he said, “You were telling this cat about that rape-trip. Crazy fun, strapped to the table.”

Shayne’s voice said, “Do it any way you want, Sandy. Straight through or backward or upside down. But you’ve got a little selling to do. If this is the same man, he’s killed people. Why make you an exception?”

“That was all—” she said, “I mean, like part of the point. You’ve seen those Mad Doctor movies. Vincent Price. Part scary, part funny. I was there two days. But not really two days, he kept moving the clock when he didn’t think I was looking. That was so afterward I wouldn’t be sure it happened, and I wasn’t.”

Shayne didn’t push her.

“What is rape, anyway? That’s what he’s trying to find out. I was raped once, and I told him about it. I was thirteen. It hurt like hell. Oh, how I hated that guy. He was my uncle. I blacked it all out for years. And then it dawned on me, Mike! You know it was love? A kind of love. The poor guy wanted to make it with me but there’s a law against that. I mean, my uncle. So the only way he could do it was to act crazy… You have to be crazy to want sex with a thirteen-year-old niece. Everybody told him that afterward. I helped, too, I guess, by yelling and crying, so he did go crazy and he’s in a hospital today.”

“Sandy—”

“Natalie. Nat. Really. I think he was really interested. He took it all down. He’s going to write a book about it. The way he got started, he went to this sex research clinic, and he didn’t think they went about it the right way. He explained it. He showed me the records of his other cases. I was tied down on the table, understand. He finally put a pillow under my head, but most of the time he kept telling me he had to be cruel, or none of the work would stand up under criticism. And he was pretty damn cruel. He didn’t have to force himself that much.”

Her eyes filled, and she wasted a minute feeling sorry for herself. “Throw me that Kleenex, Jake.”

Jake brought the box, and everybody waited while she blew her nose. Then Jake did something very nice to her, not really in character. He scratched the nape of her neck under the hair and kissed her on the forehead. Nobody had done that to her in years.

“Natalie?” Shayne said.

“Yes. I mean, he made it sound sensible, but I knew all the time he was out of his skull. I’ve known nutty people and non-nutty people, and he was definitely nuts. He had all the clippings in an envelope, about those girls whose bodies were found. And he had the graphs of what happened to their insides when he raped them. You know I was scared! I was scared sick. He raped me, and not just once. Pretty continually. He did a lot of talking about how he didn’t have erections, but it didn’t seem to me that was much of a problem. It brought the whole thing back, with my uncle. That happened on the bathroom floor. I did some screaming, Mike, that day and the day it happened with Bruno. He said my electro-encephalogram was beautiful. That was the first time — later they weren’t so unusual, apparently.”

“Then he let you go?”

“It wasn’t that easy. We had to finish the movie. The Mad Doctor in love. I don’t think he killed those other girls. I think he read about them in the paper and that gave him the idea. He faked those graphs. All they were was a lot of up-and-down lines on a sheet of paper. He didn’t fall in love with me. No, no, no. He was too much of a scientist, he said. He fell in love with my tracings.”

“Hang on a minute,” Shayne said. “Tim Rourke’s waving at me.”

Rourke said, “I’ve got a call from somebody who thinks she knows the guy. Let’s take it.”

“All right?” Shayne asked Natalie.

“Sure. I’ve been wondering what he’s like.”

“Go ahead,” Shayne said, “you’re on.”

A woman’s voice, eagerly: “That has to be Bruno Lorenz. Ask her if he’s fat. I don’t mean really gross, just overweight.”

“Natalie?”

“He made a big point of it. He was such a slob physically, that made it worse being raped by him. There at the end, he sort of appealed to me. Crazy.”

The other: “I knew there couldn’t be two people with that name. We’re in the same co-op dorm. We all share the cooking.”

Shayne: “Do you know any gynecologist’s office he might be using?”

“No-o. It couldn’t be the University one, because somebody I know had an appointment there this afternoon.”

“Was he there for dinner?”

“I didn’t see him. Nobody comes to every dinner. You sign up a day ahead.”

“Do you keep the sign-up sheets?”

“That wouldn’t mean anything. You can change your mind at the last minute and miss dinner, and you have to pay for it anyway.”

“Then we can slow down,” Shayne said. “Do you know anything about the sex research project Natalie mentioned?”

“There’s been a lot of talk about it. But if Bruno applied — and I don’t think he did — they turned him down. This is a cool house, and people come and go, but Bruno has zero sex, as far as I know. He grinds. He got a couple of B’s last semester and he’s been at it hard ever since to get back to all A’s. Somebody else here wants to say something.”

Another girl’s voice: “He’s been having headaches and dizziness. He fell down one night washing dishes. I know he went to the Health Services shrink. The kind of advice you get there — take a couple of Valium and call next week if you don’t feel happier.”

“Do you like him?” Shayne said.

“Oh, he’s kind of a creep. He asked me to go to an X-rated movie once, and I thought to myself, better not. But he has some wild theories, and you have to dig somebody who gets that enthusiastic. Keeping pets is against the law here, and he has an illegal kitten. Maybe that’s not much of a reference.”

Shayne asked several more questions, talked briefly with the first girl, and came back to Natalie.

“A kitten,” she said. “That fits.”

“I think I’m beginning to believe this,” Shayne said. “Now tell me the end.”

“It got sort of emotional. He didn’t want to kill me but I could see he just about had to. I promised I wouldn’t tell anybody, but how could he trust me? We did sex once more, and this one was really fine. The myotonic contractions, if that’s the right word, were magnificent, he said, but he said I did it just to please him so he’d take pity. I went to sleep right afterward. I didn’t get sleepier and sleepier, everything turned off. Snap. I woke up in a motel off the interstate in Broward County. I was tripping. What he did, he fed me some tabs of very pure LSD, and when I came down naturally I didn’t know how much was trip, how much was Bruno. I called Jake to come and get me. I was wrecked for days. There were red marks on my wrists and ankles and I hurt in all the places you hurt if you’ve been raped that many times. But nobody believed me, and after I stopped hurting, I didn’t believe it myself.”

“You didn’t tell any cops about it?”

“I’m not too crazy about talking to cops. They have an attitude I don’t like. And what would I say? I don’t know what town it was in, what state, even. You know his name now, and I suppose you’ll get him sooner or later. But if you want to know what I think, not that I’m famous for the way my mind works, you won’t get the right man. I mean a killer. Because he never killed anybody. That was a movie. Just the only way he could get a girl.”

Chapter 17

“Do you really have a kitten?” Frieda asked.

Bruno moved distractedly about the room, sometimes where she could see him, but more often not. Her question embarrassed him.

“It was there on the back steps, meowing. I don’t even know if it’s male or female.”

He stopped in front of the radio. “I can’t listen to any more of this.”

His hand stopped short of the volume knob. Shayne was taking another report from Harmon, the police lieutenant in West Palm Beach. Andy Anastasia, in his noisy VW, had moved on to another town, where, again, he stopped at a phone booth, ripped a page out of the book, and resumed his search.

Bruno muttered, “What’s the bastard looking for?”

“Let’s talk about it,” Frieda said. “Maybe we can figure it out.”

He stopped at the foot of the table, his face sullen. “He’s looking for gynecologists. That means he’s looking for me. The police are following him, and he’ll lead them here. That’s what you want, isn’t it? Rescue. A kiss on the lips. Death to the mad rapist.”

“If you haven’t killed anybody—”

“I killed Meri Gillespie!” He clutched his head. “Now I have to kill you. You can see that.”

“I wonder. How many girls have you done this with?”

He walked away and came back. She said softly, “Tell me.”

“You’re the fourth!” he burst out. “The one we just listened to was first. She said her name was Becky. She’s even crazier than I am! At the end she wanted to make love with me strapped to the table, which wouldn’t make much sense scientifically, would it? I wonder if it’s true that her uncle raped her. I wanted to keep her longer, to find out, but I had to get back. I had a pathology exam.”

“What happened to the second?”

“She was going to Alabama. I fed her the acid and drove her all the way to Birmingham, even though I couldn’t really afford the time. I left her asleep in a bus depot.”

He exclaimed suddenly, “I know what Anastasia is looking for! Don’t go away, will you?”

He went out of sight. A door opened and closed. After a moment he came back, carrying a pink stucco flamingo. He was grinning.

“Not just any gynecologist, a gynecologist with his office in his house and a flamingo in the front yard. You don’t see many of these anymore. Houses look the same in Fort Lauderdale and Opa-Locka, but not many of them have pink flamingoes.”

“Which one is us, Lauderdale or Opa-Locka?”

“I’m not telling,” he said, his good humor partially restored.

“How did Anastasia know about the flamingo? Meri told him, of course. Where did you take her, Bruno?”

“She left under her own steam. Look — will you call me Bud? Nobody else will. I can’t even get my own father and mother to.”

His eyelid flickered. He ran his fingers back from the corner of that eye into his hair. “This whole side of my head is about to come off.”

“If you’ll unfasten one of my hands I’ll rub it away for you. I’m good at it.”

“I’ll live with it, thanks. I tried that with Meri, and look at what happened.”

“What did happen, Bud?”

“I didn’t even rape her once! I lost control of her. We hit each other with everything we could get our hands on. I’ve never hurt a girl before in my life. I recommend it to everybody. It’s an astonishing feeling! I was much thinner, and six feet two. You notice this Band-Aid. There are teeth-marks underneath. I made her bleed. I still don’t know how she got all the way loose — some kind of contortionist, that girl. Well, I’m sorry. I didn’t intend it to happen that way. I knew this was dangerous. That’s one of the things all the shrinks told me: I’m too cautious; I’d never get anywhere unless I was willing to take a chance. So goddamn it, that’s what I did! I took a chance! I took a chance and it paid off! If I hadn’t tried to work in that dumb variation and left one of the cuffs too loose. She had a heavy lab bottle. She looked like a cornered wolf. It went through my head in a flash. ‘You can’t let her walk out of here.’ I hit her with something; I don’t know what. I think the stool. She couldn’t see. Now was the time for me to grab her and get the straps back on, but then this damn vertigo. Everything whirled. Around and around and around. When I reached for her, she wasn’t even in the room.”

“I don’t suppose you want to tell me how far we are from where she was found.”

“Far enough. She found one of those phones where you can get a tone without using a coin. She made a collect call to Seminole Beach, to Mrs. What’s-her-name, and the guy was listening in on an extension, and she babbled about the mask, the flamingo. She wandered along the edge of the road and somebody picked her up. When he found out what shape she was in, he made her get out. She stumbled out on a golf course and died there.”

“You don’t know all that, Bruno.”

“Bud,” he said angrily. “No, I don’t, but who are they after? They know my name and the way I operate. They have a list of people I’ve supposedly killed.” He tried to smile, but it wasn’t much of a success. “The only thing they don’t know is where they can find me.”

In the WKMW station, Shayne decided to start tying the threads together. Using a battery of phones, he called Holloway in Coral Gables, Tree at the St. Albans in Miami Beach, Maxine Holloway in Seminole Beach, Harmon in West Palm. Rourke helped, one phone at each ear.

“Everybody leave the lines open,” Shayne said. “Any time you want to interrupt, we’ll switch you in. Start with Maxine. Are you sober enough to understand what I’m saying?”

A voice said faintly, “Barely.”

“Some of this has to be guesswork,” Shayne said. “Your friend Anastasia—”

“Friend?”

“Ex-friend. That fight I walked in on tonight, what was that about?”

“Do you need a special reason? I’m sick of the guy, sick of him—”

“The two main themes seemed to be money and women. Let’s get the money out of the way first. You’re overdrawn. Andy’s been living with you on the cuff. When he came back for his clothes tonight, the radio was on. A cash reward is being offered for a little piece of a stolen mask. He immediately jumped in his car and went looking for gynecologists. My question for you is, how would he know Meri was kept prisoner in a gynecologist’s office unless he talked to her before she died?”

“I don’t know what he knew or didn’t know.”

“Harmon,” Shayne said, picking up another phone.

“Yeah, Mike.”

“Arrange with Seminole Beach to have this woman brought in and booked for extortion.”

“Extortion!” Maxine cried. “What have I done that could possibly be considered—”

“Let’s go through this slowly,” Shayne said. “Bruno Lorenz. According to Natalie, who spent a couple of days with him, he picks up girls, scares them with some theatrical effects, rapes them, gives them a goodbye shot of LSD, and dumps them in a motel room, where they wake up hallucinating. Let’s assume he did that with Meri. LSD hits different people different ways. When she woke up she didn’t wait to get retracked. She remembered she’d started for Seminole Beach. She called you, and you went to get her.”

“A little farfetched, don’t you think?”

“So is Bruno. So are you and Eliot Tree and your ex-husband. You were surprised that she hadn’t brought you the mask. She hadn’t even succeeded in stealing the whole thing, just a fragment, and that fragment was missing. Probably you were disagreeable to her, you and Andy. She’d let you down badly. She’d cost you your chance at the big money, but wasn’t there time to squeeze a little something? Sure, if you worked it right. You wrote Holloway asking for thirty-eight thousand in return for the missing piece, which you didn’t actually have, and signed the letter Meri.”

He waited. Only silence came down the line from Seminole Beach.

“You used the right language and picked the right figure, and Holloway fell for it. He’s as greedy as you are, and he was shooting for bigger stakes. There’s a chance you may be able to sneak out of this, Maxine. I mean you, personally. When we bring Andy in I think we’ll find he’s carrying the full thirty-eight thousand. That’s why I was so sure he’d come back after I left, to pick up his half. But the temptation was too great. Why leave anything for you after all the names you’ve been calling him?”

“He’s a skunk. He’s capable of anything.”

Frieda said, “Everybody else in this is interested in money. Are you, Bud?”

Bruno gripped a cold glass of whiskey. He drank from it, sloppily, and rubbed his hand across his mouth. “What?”

“Two hundred thousand. That’s an attractive figure. There are ways you could collect it.”

He glanced at the bright eye on the bookcase. “If it hadn’t been for that damn thing, I wouldn’t be in so much trouble.”

“When Mike says no questions asked, he means it. He’s been go-between in some very big deals, and people know they can trust him. You’ll need a good lawyer, Bud. They cost money.”

“I’ve got to think. I’ve got to make some plan.”

“The reward is for two things. The mask and me. I can handle it for you.”

“What are you trying to get me to do? Think about it! I have to kill you, it’s the one chance I have. You have four hundred dollars and a gun. I have about five hundred and a car. I’m going to be moving from now on. Moving.”

“Tell me why, Bud,” Frieda said quietly.

“I killed her! Will you get that through your head? Accidental homicide, manslaughter. But do you think anybody’s going to let me bargain about what I plead guilty to? What about that girl up near Jacksonville, with her head cut off? I’m carrying newspaper clippings. I’ve told everybody I did it. That’s what I do! Murder girls! Maybe in real life I didn’t murder anybody but Meri, but the Mad Doctor can’t turn normal in the last reel, for God’s sake. I don’t even claim to be normal!”

He was in motion, swinging the drink. “We’ve all heard of the sexual revolution. Oh, yes. In ninety-nine cars out of every hundred at a drive-in, sexual intercourse is happening. And who’s in the hundredth car? Bruno! If I have a woman with me, we’re talking about the nuances and subtlety of the screenplay. It’s obvious that I’m out of my mind.” He swung around. “Isn’t it? Isn’t it obvious?”

“I think so, Bud. What isn’t so obvious to me yet is that you killed Meri.”

“You don’t know what you’re saying,” he said irritably. “The sound when I hit her. The way she looked at me. I killed her, all right. The victim doesn’t have to die on the premises.”

“According to Mike, she was alive when she got to Maxine’s.”

“She didn’t have to get that far. She called them up and died in the phone booth, and they came and got her and dumped her. If they were going to hit Holloway for money, they couldn’t just call the police and say here’s a dead body, come get it. Frieda, let me alone for a minute.”

“I can’t, Bud. You have me strapped to a table. All I can do is talk. Will you call the radio station and let me ask Mike one quick question?”

Chapter 18

“Your turn, Holloway,” Shayne said, picking up another phone. “Say something so I can be sure I pressed the right button.”

“Fantastic.”

“Anything else?”

“You’ve stirred up a wasps’ nest here, Shayne, no question about that. I’ve been waiting for this opportunity. If anybody has that fragment and can bring it to me, I’ll pay two hundred and fifty. Again, no questions asked, and inasmuch as I’m not tying it to the return of any missing women, you can count on being asked fewer questions. Did you cut me off, Shayne, or let it go out on the air?”

“I’m not censoring anything,” Shayne said. “You have six hundred thousand to play with, and I thought you might try to top our offer. So I reserved another piece when I was repacking the box in the St. Albans. I have it here somewhere. Yeah, here it is. Blue with red lines.”

“Talk about swindlers,” Holloway said through his teeth.

“Why did you shoot that Indian last year, Holloway?”

“You’re reaching. You’re reaching. That matter is closed.”

“Murder cases are never closed. And murder’s an extraditable offense. So worry about it a little. You killed him to call attention to your expedition.”

“Stick to something you know,” Holloway said pityingly.

“I’ve had it explained to me. You needed two stories. One was official, but nobody believed that. To make sure everybody heard about the Yucatan expedition, all the museum people and other potential buyers, you shot an Indian and planted a knife on him. At first I thought that must be what Scotch was blackmailing you with. Blackmail’s the only thing that fits his financial picture, small sums coming in after regular trips to Miami, a larger sum expected when you dealt off the mask to Terre Haute. Let’s kick this around for a minute. We have time.”

“I don’t see what you’re getting at,” Bruno said worriedly. “One quick question to Shayne. I know they wouldn’t have time to trace the call. What do you hope to accomplish? Seriously. You’ve had more experience than I’ve had. Explain it.”

“Assault is a better kind of trouble than murder. Natalie won’t bring charges against you. You’ve been seeing psychiatrists. That won’t help much, but it’s something.”

“If you think I’m going to sit there while people argue about whether or not I’m sane—”

“Bud, stand still and look at me. It’s hard to do any orderly thinking, tied down like this. Whenever I think I have it, I go out of gear and everything starts racing. You’ve been pretty convincing. If you think you killed Meri, you’ll think you have to kill me.”

“It isn’t what I think, it’s what they think.”

“Meri passed through two sets of hands, yours and Andy’s and Maxine’s. I know how Mike works. He’s been getting the facts together. Now he’s about to start pounding. Wait and see what they say.”

“I don’t have a chance!”

“You don’t have a chance if everybody just hangs up and calls in the lawyers. But Mike’s got them hooked. They want to know what’s going to happen to that two hundred thousand dollars. He’s going to turn them against each other and surprise them into saying damaging and imprudent things. Things that may clear you, Bud. And we can help.”

“I don’t get it,” he said stubbornly. “You’re trying to take advantage of this damn migraine—”

“He’s giving Maxine a breathing spell, but she’s the one he’s after, I think. If Mike’s right, Andy stole nineteen thousand dollars from her tonight, half the money they conned Holloway into giving them. Andy can be picked up at any time. Mike will work on them separately, and try to get one of them to cave in. Let me talk to him, please. I can’t tell him where I am, because I don’t know. Keep your finger on the switch. If I say anything you don’t like, cut me off.”

A light flashed in front of Shayne. He put Holloway on hold, and switched lines.

It was Harmon again.

“Anastasia may be getting discouraged, Mike. He’s been through seven phone books by my count, and now he’s having a drink in a bar. It looks as though he’s settling down. He paid for the drink with a fifty-dollar bill, if that means anything.”

“Holloway’s money, probably,” Shayne said, “out of the thirty-eight thousand. Unless he sold a piece of sculpture, which would surprise the hell out of me. Let him finish the drink, and then bring him in. Holloway?” he said, punching a button to put Holloway back on the air.

“I’m still here, naturally, although if I had any sense I’d go to bed and hope that tomorrow this will turn out to have been an LSD dream.”

“We were talking about Sid Koch. What kind of student was he?”

“Mediocre. I have some grant money for cataloguing and research, and I employed him briefly. I only kept him a few weeks. When I was putting the Yucatan team together, I couldn’t get some of my first choices. He filled in.”

“People have asked why. Heat, insects, diarrhea.”

“I confess I wondered myself.”

“Now I’m guessing again. I think he had a pretty good idea what you were going to find.”

“We had high expectations. We knew the site was there somewhere.”

“How did you date this mask, Holloway?”

“You’ve heard about radio-carbon. You can’t be that ignorant. And the cultural factors—”

“So the terracotta, at least, would have to be from the period.”

The remark dropped like a stone. Holloway let it alone for a moment, before saying with care, “Do I catch an implication? The mosaic chips are bonded to the terracotta. Onyx, chrysolite — I don’t need to say that each of those bits is undoubtedly millions of years old.”

“I’m told that what gives this mask its enormous value is that nothing’s missing. What if you had two partial masks and put them together? Would that still be forgery?”

“Of course. But you’re joking. I don’t know why I’m arguing this with you. You know nothing about the subject.”

“I don’t claim to,” Shayne said. “I’m working backwards, trying to find some logical explanation for the way you people have been behaving. Scotch was probably cynical about you to start with. If he saw something in your shop that made him suspect you were working out some kind of stunt, it would give him a good reason for going to Yucatan. He and Meri were still friends. He wrote her daily letters, which she may have kept. Finding the mask was a big thing, and he must have mentioned it to her. When she decided to block the sale, she could use the letter as evidence that your Bogatá papers were fakes. But if Scotch was collecting from you regularly, naturally he wouldn’t want her to do that.”

Rourke, across the table, told Shayne, “Eliot Tree’s trying to say something.”

Shayne took that phone and put Tree on the air. “Mike. Mike.”

“Yeah.”

“Are you serious about any of this. Did I put up two hundred thousand dollars for a fake?”

“Do you think Holloway’s technically capable of it?”

“Oh, he’s an excellent technician. He’s the expert. The authenticator. And good God, man, do you realize that just by raising that question publicly you’ve destroyed much of the mask’s value?”

“If that’s true, it’s the result of years of fraudulent practice. What do you think of my idea that the Indian was killed to get everybody’s attention up here, including yours?”

“I can accept that. Certainly it worked.”

“But it happened a day early, Tree, before the mask was found. I’m going to put Holloway back on now, to see if he disagrees with any of this. Holloway?”

“I disagree with everything. I want to know what your purpose is here.”

“My usual one,” Shayne said. “I’m trying to explain a particular act of violence, Scotch’s murder.”

“Or suicide.”

“Or suicide. But people don’t think he was the suicidal type. Much less than you are, for example. I think he saw you plant the mask and dig it up. If this whole value structure is so delicate that an unsupported assertion can knock a price down from six hundred thousand to nothing, his eyewitness testimony ought to be worth real money. You put him on temporary retainer, with the big payment to come after you cashed the Terre Haute check. I think a hundred thousand would be about right. And then Meri interfered. I don’t think Scotch knew she hadn’t taken the whole mask, merely a piece. If he could get his hands on it, he could sell it to Tree for up to two hundred, double the amount he could get from you. He and García and two goons have been looking for it all day. When they were working on you, I thought I ought to break it up, but I had to take them one at a time. Scotch was first. I went off with the others when they left. You came out on the porch, and there was the blackmailer, unconscious, who hadn’t been satisfied with one-sixth but wanted it all.”

“You aren’t saying I killed him,” Holloway said.

“Didn’t you? The one man who knew how that mask got to Yucatan. Of course you killed him, Holloway. Now the problem of what to do with the body. To dispose of it in your own car would take time you couldn’t account for later. You’d only heard one car leave. Mine had to be somewhere nearby.”

“This staggers the imagination! That out of all the cars on the streets of Coral Gables, I would pick Michael Shayne’s.”

“Why not? When I picked it up later I was still in a hurry, racing to Palm Beach to look at a body. I didn’t look in the back seat. It didn’t matter after that — you took off the ski mask before you killed him, and why would I connect him with the masked man, in the dark, on Professor Holloway’s front steps?”

“You don’t expect any jury to believe—”

“You never know about juries. But by the time it gets to that point, you won’t be a respectable professor in a big university. If your profession is like others I know, there are people all over the country who’ll be delighted to jump on you. Maxine is saying you based your textbook on a stolen thesis. After all this, more people will believe her. You may not find it quite so easy to get graduate students. But I think your real trouble is going to be in Mexico. Think about it. I get the impression they’re just about fed up with North Americans who steal their art and murder their citizens. Yeah. One way or another, you’re going to see the inside of a Mexican jail. Prison conditions down there are gruesome.”

He was still talking casually, conversationally, but his hand was tight on the phone. Rourke signaled that he had a call. Shayne shook his head. Several station officials, as well as Will Gentry, Miami Chief of Police, had joined the engineer in his glassed-in cubicle. The outer office was filled. The others caught Shayne’s tension. On the switchboard, Art, the middle-aged homosexual, stood up so he could see in.

The Holloway phone was the only one cut into the transmitter. There was the sound of heavy breathing. That was all for the moment.

Then Holloway said lightly, “Do you know something, I think you may be right.”

There was a thump, the sound of movement, a shot.

A girl’s voice cried an instant later, “Damn you people! Damn you!”

Shayne recognized the voice; it was Diane, the graduate student who had accompanied Holloway to the St. Albans. “What happened, Diane?”

“You know what happened! You tricked him. You knew he’d been drinking. He’s such a wonderful man, kind, intelligent. You were trying to get him to shoot himself.”

“He left one gun in my car with Scotch. I wasn’t sure he had another.”

“Well, it’s lucky I was here — it’s just in his shoulder. Will a doctor come quickly, please?”

A woman’s voice: “Mike Shayne? Is that really you I’m talking to, Mike?”

“Yeah, go ahead. Who’s this?”

“Nobody special, you don’t know me. But this is the one and only chance I’ll ever get to call you by your first name and I intend to take full advantage of it. All the time you-all were talking about gynecologists, Mike, I could feel something tugging and grabbing in the back of my mind. All of a sudden it went off like a bomb!”

Silence.

“Just taking a drink of my warm milk. I have that kind of doctor right across the street from me, Dr. Bertram Ainsworth, and he’s on vacation right now, a honeymoon as a matter of fact, been gone about three weeks. I go to him myself for the menopause. He left his lights burning to discourage thieves.”

“Where are you?” Shayne said quickly.

“I gave them the address when they asked what I was calling about. I’m right here in Lake Worth, and I can’t ever get to sleep before three in the morning. I raised the shade and looked out, and somebody’s using the house, Mike! Sure as you’re born. Because ten or fifteen minutes ago this fattish young man came out in a pair of pants and he took the flamingo in off the lawn. And I thought I’d call you and tell you. I had a terrible time getting through.”

Suddenly Art, on the switchboard, rose straight up, both hands flying. He rapped on the glass and signaled to Shayne, his small hoop-earring shaking.

“Three!” he shouted, holding up three fingers. “Three!”

Shayne cut his caller off abruptly and punched a button.

“Shayne.”

A quiet voice said, “Mike, this is Frieda.”

Like Art, Shayne came to his feet. The room was still.

“Go on.”

“I’m all right,” she said, “and I want everybody to remember that not much is known about rape or how rapists get that way, and I hope all those cops who are closing in on us will use their heads for once instead of their service revolvers.”

“Will Gentry’s here in the studio, and he’s nodding. He understands the message.”

“I’m allowed to ask you only one question, and it has to be quick.”

Gentry had left the engineer’s booth to get a trace started on the call.

“Let me say first,” Shayne said, “that it’s nice to hear your voice.”

“It’s nice to hear yours. The question is this. Was Meri raped?”

“You just made the point that rape is a hard thing to establish. ‘Sexually molested,’ we usually have to call it. We’ll know better after the autopsy. Can you be more specific about what you want to know?”

“Don’t try to drag this out, Mike. It’s a toll call and you can’t trap it. But I think it really is going to be all right. Just answer the question.”

“What sexually molested usually means is that there are traces of male semen on the woman’s labia. Put it like that, and the answer is yes.”

Bruno cut the connection abruptly. He was flushed and sweating, breathing heavily. He picked up the gun he had found in Frieda’s bag, examined it for an instant and put it down.

“He guessed what you wanted him to say,” he said.

“How could he, Bud? How could he know Meri got away before you were able to have any sex with her? I asked him a clear question. This proves you didn’t kill her.”

“Do you think they’ll take a semen sample and make a lab comparison? Do you think if I stand here waiting for them, they’ll really keep those guns in their holsters? For a private detective, you’re pretty dumb.”

“Don’t drink any more, Bud. I want you to listen to me for another minute, and after that decide what to do. I don’t know Anastasia, but don’t you get a picture of a man who’s eaten up with bitterness and resentment? Fakers like Holloway get the good jobs and the six hundred thousand dollars, while Andy Anastasia is supported by a woman and has to work four hours a day in a gift shop, which must be torture for him. Maybe Meri wasn’t as far gone as you thought when she left here. Sometimes a head wound can look really frightening, and after the blood’s washed off it may not even need stitches. Anastasia jumped at the chance to collect some old debts by writing Holloway that extortion letter. But Meri wouldn’t have anything to do with a trick like that. She wasn’t that kind of girl. If she woke up and heard them talking—”

“How can you know all that?”

“I’m like Mike, I’m trying to find an explanation that fits. Not the facts, because we don’t have many of those, but the people. If the money had already been collected, Meri could send both of them to prison, and she’d do it without a qualm.”

At least she had him thinking.

“How easy it would be to kill her, Anastasia would think,” she said. “How safe. One more victim of Bruno Lorenz, the Mad Doctor. Listen.”

On the radio, a voice Frieda recognized as Maxine’s was saying shrilly, “I had nothing to do with that! I went to Miami for the money. That was the one single thing I did, the only thing. I didn’t write the note, that was his idea. He’ll have to admit it. Yes, she kept talking about the flamingo! About the doctor’s table. When I came back she was gone! He told me she got excited and climbed out the window when he went to get an ice bag to calm her down. We looked all over, up and down the streets. We thought she fell in the canal. And she was on the golf course! Where he’d put her! And to make sure the rapist would get the blame, he came on her! The sick bastard. Oh, how he wanted that money.”

Suddenly Bruno muttered, “Watching us. Eyes.”

The gun went off. Frieda stiffened. He had fired at the Toltec eye on the bookcase. Taking more careful aim, he fired again. He hit the fragment, shattering the earth-colored terracotta. The pupil of the eye remained. He fired twice more. It danced to a new position.

“Can’t do anything right,” he whispered.

He went closer. Putting the muzzle less than an inch from the glinting bit of stone, he fired again.

“Now we can be alone for a minute.” He began fumbling at the strap across her chest. “I’ll take you with me. Call him again, call Shayne. Tell him if anybody tries to stop us, if I hear a siren, I’ll kill you. And I will, Frieda! I won’t want to, but I surely will. You’re so lovely, the best of the four.”

He fell on her heavily, kissing her neck, her shoulders.

“You should hurry, Bud,” she whispered. “They have the address.”

He pulled back and looked into her eyes. “Yes. We can do this later.”

He pointed the gun at her. “Now you understand? I’ll unfasten the straps carefully. You will come to the garage with me after you make the phone call to Shayne. Remember every minute how dangerous I am.”

“Bud, the gun’s empty. You used up the bullets.”

He looked down, perplexed. To make sure, he aimed the gun at Frieda, then changed his mind and pressed it against his own forehead, and to make a joke out of it, crossed his eyes and put on a goofy look.

“Me worry?”

The hammer clicked.

“I love you, Frieda. Passionately. You handled me very well. I hope you’ll be happy.”

He threw the gun down and ran from the room. In a moment more a car left the garage and went careening away.

She closed her eyes for a long moment, her fingernails digging into her palms. She breathed deeply and relaxed.

Rourke had taken back control of his program. The calls continued to come in. The listener across the street had seen Bruno’s car burst out of the garage. She described it. Another listener spotted it heading toward the interstate. A truck driver left a luncheonette and swung his trailer across the ramp and the approach road. Bruno reversed and darted away. Blocked again, he left the car and ran. He was caught in a cemetery some minutes later by three women, all regular listeners to the Rourke show, the wife of a banker, a waitress on a late shift, and a call girl between calls.

Shayne and the police were careful about breaking into the building. They made the final move only when it was absolutely clear that the reports coming in were true and Bruno was elsewhere. Frieda was crying as Shayne unbuckled the straps.

“Mike, you bastard. Telling everybody we went away for a weekend when Harry was alive.”

He smiled down. “I know it didn’t happen. I have a better memory than that. I wanted people to realize I was serious.”

He freed her wrists. Her arms closed around his neck.

“At the same time,” he said a moment later, “I don’t like to be known as a liar. What’s today — Tuesday. As soon as we can get rid of these cops, let’s find a motel and start the weekend early.”

Content

Brett Halliday
Last Seen Hitchhiking

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18