“This time I’m going alone, Adele.”
“I can’t argue about that, can I?” she said ruefully. “I could try to track down this Ruiz story. My roommate in college got very Red afterward. I think she’d know.”
“I’ll be in touch with your uncle.” He put his hands on her shoulders. “And be careful.”
“Don’t worry about that.” She pressed herself against him. “Mike, dear, do you think-this will ever happen to us again?”
“The odds are against it.”
“Do you have to be so realistic?”
Vega’s office was well out on 8th Street. Shayne would pass Adele’s house on the way, and she asked him to drop her. As he was about to stoop to get into the Buick, a quick spasm of pain crossed his face. He saved himself from falling by grabbing the door. Adele looked out anxiously.
“Mike, won’t you see a doctor? Get in this side and I’ll drive you.”
“I’m OK.”
He rested a moment at the wheel before driving off. He seemed to be handling the car with his usual skill. Adele said nothing more, and waited till the last possible moment, after he had made the turn onto 8th Street, before taking a.38 automatic out of her bag.
She took off the safety and went all the way over against the opposite door. She pointed the gun at him with both hands.
“Take the next right, Mike. All right?”
CHAPTER 6
Shayne glanced down. “You won’t shoot me, Adele.”
“After that nice sex I certainly don’t want to. Turn right and I won’t.”
He continued nearly to the end of the block, then pulled over into a parking space, cut the motor and swung around to face her.
“This would be a good place to do it. Naturally I hope you’ll decide against it. Your uncle knows you’re with me. The desk clerk at the hotel saw us go out together.”
“Mike, please. Don’t make me.”
“You’re new at this. You can use some advice. There’s plenty of traffic noise. Hold the gun low and pick your moment. Wipe off the fingerprints and drop it on the floor. After you get out, don’t run.”
“Mike, look at me.”
They exchanged a long look. Shayne said slowly, “I actually think you mean it.”
“But God, I’d hate to do it.”
“Does it have to be fatal, or would you settle for putting me in the hospital? Just above the knee would be a good place.”
The gun-barrel trembled, but she kept her voice steady. “Mike, I just can’t allow you to-This is very, very serious. Start the motor and do exactly what I tell you because I’m wound up so tight-”
Shayne raised his eyebrows humorously and snapped on the ignition. “You’ve convinced me.”
“Drive west to 17th. Then turn left. And don’t ask any questions because I’m not going to tell you a thing. Don’t talk at all.”
“Can I talk to myself?”
“No! It makes me nervous. You don’t want that.”
He made the turns as she called them, and before long he was slowing in front of a ramshackle house on 15th Court. A blue panel truck was parked in the driveway, surely the same truck that had almost decoyed him into a chase in which he would have lost a wheel.
“Pull in behind the truck,” Adele told him, with a movement of the.38.
Shayne accelerated. “I’ve changed my mind. I don’t think you’re really up to it. A pretty girl like you.”
“Mike, stop!” Her voice climbed. “This minute!”
He grinned at her. “This is my business, baby. Do you really think there are any bullets in that gun?”
“I can’t let you bluff me,” she said tensely.
She pushed the gun forward against his knee and pulled the trigger. The hammer clicked down on nothing. It clicked twice more. The blood drained out of her face.
With a sidewise swipe, he picked the gun out of her hand and tossed it into the back seat.
“You’re horrible!” she said. “You’re a horrible person!”
“That’s one of the things they say about me. It’s part of the image.”
He continued across Flagler and made another turn. She put her face in her hands.
“What are you going to do with me?”
“Not much, baby. In some ways you’ve been helpful.”
“I botched it. I botched it.”
Shayne pulled in against the curb and cut the motor. “A couple of things you did very well. The loose wheels-that wasn’t bad at all. If you could get me aboard the Mozambique, all you’d have to do was tie me up overnight and I’d miss the excitement tomorrow. But why should I trust you when I’ve never seen you before today? If that wheel had shaken off, we both would have been racked up. Then you had the old lady stop us. She was great. There was only one small thing wrong with the timing. The kid should have moved the minute I got in the car. Instead of that, he waited till you got in with me.”
She said bitterly, “We didn’t expect you to notice a little thing like that. You’re a monster. I’d like to know when you took the bullets out of the gun.”
“When do you think?”
“Do you mean when we were-”
She came at him angrily and struck him twice with her purse before he could take it away from her.
“You-you-she sputtered.
“Calm down, Adele. That sex wasn’t my idea. You practically raped me. No real harm was done. Your bag was on the floor. You shouldn’t close your eyes when you make love. It isn’t hard to unload an automatic with one hand.”
“You are-without a doubt-”
“What else happened at five o’clock?”
“What do you mean?”
“That sex episode held me up about fifteen minutes. And don’t tell me you have sex with every man you slug with an ax-handle, because except for your political opinions I think you’re probably a very nice girl.”
“What makes you think I’m the one who hit you? It could have been somebody else in the crew.”
“But it wasn’t.”
“No, it wasn’t. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I just wanted to put you out of action, and I didn’t even succeed in doing that… I wasn’t pretending about wanting to make love to you!”
“Yeah, it was politically OK.” He touched her shoulder. “No point in crying, Adele. You’re losing your eye-liner.”
“You certainly acted as though you liked it. Was that just-”
“I liked it,” he said gently. “But that’s not why it happened. You wanted to keep me there, and I wanted to get the bullets out of your gun. Everything else was incidental. What was happening in the outside world during that fifteen minutes?”
“You’ll hear about it anyway. Another Vega leaflet is coming out any minute. After he picks them up at the printshop he’ll be much harder to find. But that was only a pretext! Damn it, I-”
“We can analyze our motives some other time. What kind of leaflet?”
“Like the one this morning, nothing sensational… And there you were, sitting on the bed in a wrapper. It was ninety percent lust. I don’t care if you believe me or not.”
Shayne opened her purse. “Not as cluttered as some,” he remarked.
There was a small change purse, a few folded bills, the usual female grooming equipment, a library card, a magazine clipping. He unfolded the clipping. It was a photograph of a pale, tired-looking young man wearing a beret and jungle camouflage. He was thin and unshaven, with a preoccupied frown between his eyebrows. To Shayne, he looked neither glamorous or particularly dangerous.
“Ruiz?”
“Are you out of it!” she said. “You could ask anybody in this part of town. Of course it’s Ruiz.”
“What’s the attraction?” he said, studying the face.
“Mike,” she said definitely, “you don’t know a damn thing about it, I’m sorry to say. Can I get out now?”
“Any time.”
“Give me back my things.”
He put the picture of Ruiz in his pocket and stuffed everything back except the money, which he let slip between his knees.
“Educate me a little first. What’s going on, Adele? You don’t approve of your uncle’s politics, that’s clear. You don’t want me to interfere with Vega’s counterdemonstration, if that’s what you call it. But you don’t like Vega’s politics either, do you?”