Mary gave him a pitying smile. “If you couldn’t tell the difference between my voice and Naomi’s, you didn’t hear much, did you?”
Painter’s pencil was eating its way down a page of his notebook. It had barely begun, but Shayne was already tiring of the game. He forced himself to speak slowly and carefully. He was approaching the delicate point, and everything depended on balance and timing.
“It’s been a rough couple of days. Most of the people on the plane were pretending to be somebody else, and I’m still not sure I’ve got everybody checked out. Adam fooled me with a double story. He fooled me badly. He started off as a Negro clergyman. He didn’t do that one too well, but just when I was beginning to have doubts, he pulled out a forty-five and turned into a Treasury agent pretending to be a Negro clergyman. That explained the little mistakes. We had a bank inspector, a travel agent, a couple of phony guerrillas. But the funny thing about you, Mary, is that I think you’re what you claim to be. A schoolteacher, not a professional criminal masquerading as a schoolteacher.”
“Worse luck, you’re right. And, of course, I can prove it.”
“You’re homely and awkward,” Shayne went on bluntly. “You’re ill at ease with men-and with women, too, for all I know. Your hips are too big. You’ve probably never had many dates. You go to the movies, you watch television, you wish something would happen. Last summer in the Middle East, something did. But as you must know by now, that was all manipulated. Nikko only did what he’d been told to do.”
“That’s not true! He-”
Shayne made a rude noise. “I talked to him. You know how men talk when women aren’t around. It was pretty frank on both sides. He seduced you because they needed somebody who could move about without being seen. Needless to say, he didn’t get any enjoyment out of it. And the theft itself didn’t turn out to be very romantic, did it? Just a switch of a few crates. At least it took place in a glamorous setting and you had a cruise on a millionaire’s yacht as the temporary mistress of the handsome Greek captain. And after that, you went back to Milwaukee.”
“And I found it dull,” she said. “I found it very, very dull.”
“So when they made you another proposition, you jumped at it. And it’s been anything but dull, even though you’ve missed most of the real excitement, the bullets flying around, the dead bodies.” He reached for a cigarette. “I was very much in your way. The hijacking could only work with no armed opposition. You’d established yourself as an amateur busybody. I fell for that because it was so near to the truth. You fed me a few facts-what difference did it make if I knew about La Guaira? You didn’t intend to let the gold get that far. When you pretended to be kidnapped, naturally I raced off after you. You timed it all very well, the horn in the parking lot, the escape in the mountains. Adam wanted me dead, but not quite yet. He came after me. After the dust settled, I hid on the plane. One small thing-that twenty-two you pulled when I was wearing the monster mask. Why would you want to shoot your own monster? Sanchez told everybody to look straight ahead, but that wouldn’t apply to you, would it? You must have seen me slug him. Let’s see. Does that cover everything?”
Several voices began clamoring at once. Shayne held up his hand.
“Let’s make this brief. I’m beginning to-”
He waited until a haze of black whirling dots, which had appeared suddenly in front of his eyes, began to disperse. “I know, Carmody. The gold. I can give you a pretty good location, and you’ll probably want to send divers down to be sure, but you won’t find any gold in that luggage. I unpacked it last night and moved it into the tail-cone of the plane. Wait,” he said as Carmody came to his feet. “It won’t matter if it’s stolen. Adam knew the container fell out of the plane, but for some reason he wasn’t interested in finding out where. How do you explain that?”
“It wasn’t real gold!” Rourke exclaimed.
“Give the man a cigar. He set this whole thing up as an elaborate trap. He wanted three things-to expose the traitors in his organization, to find the gold he lost last summer, and to get me out of Miami so he could kill me. But what if something went wrong? He didn’t want to be burned twice. I think you’ll find that those bars are gold-plated.”
“Goddamn it, Mike,” Carmody said, “you swindled me into-”
“Into giving me a percentage I damn well earned. Don’t whine about it.”
Shayne leaned back against the pillows and his eyes closed.
“You don’t intend to charge me with anything, do you, Mike?” Mary said. “Do you? You know you can’t prove anything.”
“That’s probably true,” Shayne said wearily. “You were involved in a conspiracy to commit murder and to hijack an airplane, but most of the possible witnesses are dead. Petey may try to get an indictment, but that’s up to him. As far as I’m concerned, the hell with it.”
“Do you mean she gets off scot-free?” Christa said.
“I didn’t say that. If she wants my advice, she’ll start running right this minute, and keep running. It’ll be adventurous as hell.”
Mary stared at him.
“Because do you think Adam is going to let you off?” Shayne said gently. “He’s lost that million and a half for good this time. He’s lost a yacht worth a hundred thousand. He was holding a submachine gun on me at point-blank range, and he ended up with a bullet in his own shoulder. I doubt if he’s happy about any of this. I expect I’ll see him again. So will you. Think about it, Mary, and keep moving.”
“But I didn’t do anything! Not really! Even if I did have anything to do with that Persian Gulf business, which I certainly don’t intend to admit, the gold was illegal the minute it left that bank. I don’t see-”
“You killed three people, Mary.”
“I did not!”
“The Arab crew,” Shayne explained patiently. “You planted a bomb on their boat. They all drowned.”
“But they were only-”
She stopped short and looked around the room, the blood draining out of her face.
Painter said briskly, “Did she kill LeFevre, too? That’s the one I want explained.”
“Christa did that,” Shayne said.
Christa took a step backward. “Mike, you’re mad.”
“I’m a little mad,” he said. “Not crazy-angry. LeFevre was killed by a woman. That’s the one thing I know. He let her into the room himself. He liked women. He was hoping to hit a few striptease places later that night. He was carrying contraceptives. If he’d opened the door to Mary, he would have closed it in her face. But you, dear-”
“You don’t mean this, Mike.”
He raised himself on his elbows and said harshly, “You’re one of Adam’s people. Your assignment was to share a room with me until I’d done what he wanted me to do, and then kill me. Petey’s going to prove you were in LeFevre’s room. Leave him to himself and he goes yapping off in ten different directions, but point him right and he’s really not a bad cop.”
Painter flicked at his mustache.
“Thanks for nothing,” he snapped. “I don’t consider this case closed, by any manner of means. He shut the door in somebody else’s face. That’s the flimsiest basis for a murder accusation I ever heard in my life.”
“He wanted a woman,” Shayne said. “He wasn’t thinking about gold, but about sex. He opened the door, and Mary was standing there. As I remember the line, it was, ‘You look lovely.’ For God’s sake-look at her.”
Mary said, “You’re horrible. You’re a horrible man. He didn’t slam the door in my face! He let me in and I-”
“No, he didn’t, Mary.”
“You’re so wrong! You don’t know a thing about him or about me, either! I’ve had more sexual experiences than you can even imagine!”
“Get her out of here before she confesses,” Shayne said to Painter.
“I have!” she screamed. “Do you think men like to go to bed with Vogue models? Real men? You’re mistaken! Jules told me I was one of the best bed partners he ever had, and so did Nikko! Do you know how much they paid me for what I did last summer? Zero! Not a penny. What a sell. They thought I’d be satisfied with a little tumble. You’re so wrong about everything. That night in Miami Beach he was still putting me off. Sex, yes. Money, no.”