Shayne watched the envelopes flutter down a steep chute into the main incinerator, which occupied the whole of the first two floors. A fire burned there twenty-three hours a day. Each morning the grates were pulled and anything left unconsumed was loaded into scows for eventual dumping far at sea.
The marks on Shayne’s face were deeply etched. At this point he trusted nobody. The final burning of the narcotics was something he had had to witness with his own eyes. He was holding a fresh bottle of brandy in a paper bag. He drank occasionally, without offering it to any of the men around him.
“If you want to tell us about it here instead of in an air-conditioned bar, it’s OK with me,” McIntosh said, mopping his face. “You’re calling the shots. But let’s get on with it, Shayne. We’ve got some tidying up to do.”
“I’m not stopping you,” Shayne said evenly.
Tim Rourke put in, “I know how you feel, Mike. But it’s all new to these guys. Power kept the whole thing under his hat. They can’t talk to me because I’m an innocent bystander. They can’t talk to Power or Michele or Herman Kraus-they’re all dead. Mr. A., if there actually is anybody called that, is out of the country.”
“Did you say Mr. A.?” McIntosh said quickly. “Now listen, Shayne. Rourke’s a reporter. This is going to be off the record.”
Shayne turned on him. “Tim knows what to print and what not to print. He’s no maiden.”
“I can’t print a story I don’t understand,” Rourke said. “Climb down, will you? That’s not tap water you’re drinking. You’re one of the greatest drinkers I ever saw, but you can’t put away a fifth of cognac in two hours without losing some of your edge. I want to phone this in before the wire services get it.”
“Let me put it another way,” McIntosh said. “We’ve seized a large sum in currency. I understand you had an agreement with Power which might seem to give you a claim on a certain percentage of that money. Power’s no longer around. We’re not obliged to honor the agreement, and we won’t honor it unless you start cooperating. I have a well-deserved reputation for being very nasty when necessary.”
Shayne told him what he could do with the percentage and his reputation.
Rourke exclaimed, “OK! She was a beautiful doll, and it’s a shame she was hit! Do you think she’d rather go to jail for fifteen years? She was a hustler, Mike. She had no more moral sense than a flea. Be reasonable.”
His friend looked around at him and he said hurriedly, “No, I’m wrong. She was really a victim of circumstances. But I’ve got to write this the way I see it. If you don’t want her to sound like a hustler, you’d better do some talking. Who started it? Did she or did Power?”
Shayne was beginning to feel himself unclench as the cognac took hold. Slowly and deliberately he took another long pull. Then, looking down the chute, feeling the heat on his face, he began to talk.
“Kraus started it. But he didn’t know what he was starting. He wanted a certain girl, and he knew she wouldn’t go out with him unless he could take her places she didn’t otherwise go. He began selling drugs from the police stocks. It was a reasonably foolproof swindle. If an envelope says heroin, nobody’s going to take it to the police lab to find out if it’s really heroin. Kraus himself was the one who had to certify the envelopes before they were burned. Then Power found out about it, probably from stoolies. Kraus was an easy man to break, and Power got him to sign an undated confession. Then he broached the big idea. Why not turn this marginal operation into something that would really bring them both some money? Instead of faking just a few envelopes, why not fake them all? Kraus had to agree. He began working overtime. He began drinking and worrying. Meanwhile Power was looking for a buyer. Only somebody important could handle a deal this size. He put out feelers, and the feelers got through. But communication was all one way. The buyer contacted him, and naturally he was careful, because Power was an honest cop.”
“Honest?” Rourke said.
“Will Gentry thought so. But Power was getting close to retirement, and he probably figured out long ago that one big coup would make many years of calculated honesty worthwhile. They set up a deal. I think the half-million figure was probably fairly constant all the way through. How much were they paying on this last switch, McIntosh? How much was in Michele’s suitcase?”
“Half a million,” the narcotics man said.
“Yeah. And Power didn’t have much in the way of expenses. Then all at once Kraus conked out on him. Maybe cold feet, maybe he couldn’t stand the idea of all that junk going back into circulation.”
Shayne was beginning to be caught up in the explanation. He didn’t pretend to understand Power, but he knew what the man had done, and that was enough.
“When I saw Power first, he looked like somebody who hadn’t been getting enough sleep. All that work and planning, all those risky communications through unreliable channels, his last chance at important money-all down the drain because of one unimportant clerk. Kraus was essential. He was the man who had to make the certification. The next time the banker called, Power had to tell him the deal was off. The banker didn’t care too much. He hadn’t spent any of his own money yet. But it made a good story, and somehow it got through to Michele. And she had an idea. Did they need Kraus? Why not organize an old-fashioned stickup? It shouldn’t be hard, with Power giving them the route and the schedule, and putting only two cops on the truck. But now they had to invest some capital and run a few minimum risks, and naturally they wouldn’t pay Power the full five hundred G’s. He’d be lucky to collect a fingerman’s fee. He didn’t like that. He was too adjusted to the idea of half a million. Not to mention the fact that it would be out in the open, and the publicity would be bad for his reputation. That’s where I came in. With his own man in the gang, a man who would do what he told him, it wouldn’t be hard to get possession of the truck after it was stolen, and again he’d have something to sell.”
“How did he put it to you, Shayne?” McIntosh said.
“He appealed to my patriotism,” Shayne said wryly. “He also showed me Michele’s picture and offered me a fifty-thousand-buck fee. It was no problem to get in. Rourke can fill you in on all that-he had a part in it. It wasn’t complicated when it was happening, but it gets complicated when you talk about it. The plan for the stickup was a damn good one. We followed it right up to the final step, and then instead of going downtown, I went uptown. I set the ransom at half a million. This was supposed to smoke out the banker, and I think it might have worked, too, if Power hadn’t rung in another variation I didn’t know about. I passed on a set of instructions about how I wanted them to hand over the money. By that time Power had the banker’s phone number-he got it from Michele’s phone. Power told him to pay no attention to my instructions, but to shoot me in the shoulder, being very careful not to kill me. I had to be able-bodied enough to set off a fire bomb and destroy the truck. Of course he’d already switched trucks. At the end of that little episode, the way it looked was that the drugs were burned and the case was closed. But Tim and I got to thinking.”
“I got to thinking?” Rourke protested. “You got to thinking.”
“Whoa,” McIntosh said. “You can’t expect me to believe that Power, all by himself-”
“It was set up long in advance,” Shayne said. “This was the original switch, which he had had to drop when Kraus stopped cooperating. The envelopes were all prepared. He conned me into checking the cargo, so if there was any question, I could testify that the real truck had burned. I pulled out an envelope at random, and it really had to be at random. Whoever faked those envelopes had to be somebody with access to police files and materials, over a long period of time. It couldn’t be done in a couple of hours or even a couple of days. Kraus had already been killed. That left Power as the only possibility. Switching the trucks was simple. Those trucks all look absolutely alike except for the serial number, and I had no reason to notice that. He may even have changed the number, I don’t know. He had a key to the shop. I’d guess he slipped in the phony truck a couple of nights ago. There wouldn’t be a worksheet on it, and anyway the mechanics take those jobs in rotation and they’re way behind. Yesterday at four, when the shop closed, I was in a midtown motel waiting for a phone call. Power let himself in, switched trucks, put on a wheel and took off a wheel, switched spark plugs and put a dent in the fender. About a minute’s work in all. I didn’t get there till about twenty after.”