“I still don’t like-”
“To hell with what you like. You’ve stuck your neck out.”
Shayne stood up abruptly and turned to the row of reporters.
“I’ve never given you a wrong steer, boys. I’ve got a hunch this is something big, though I haven’t a goddamned idea what it’s all about. If you play this down tonight, you’ll be cutting yourselves in for a whale of a story later. Crack down, and I’ll leave you all in the lurch on the blow-off.”
He turned back to Painter and demanded, “Where’s my car?”
“I had one of the men bring it in,” Painter told him stiffly.
He pressed the buzzer on his desk and when a cop stuck his head in, said tersely, “Take Mr. Shayne out and give him the keys to his car. We’re not holding him.”
Disappointment spread over the cop’s heavy face. He snorted, then clumped down the hall ahead of Shayne. At the desk, Shayne recovered his keys and went on to his car which was parked outside.
The moon was overhead, dipping to the west, and the breeze of earlier night had died away. A smug grin replaced the scowl Shayne had worn on that last trip across the causeway.
As he drove with his left hand on the wheel, he fumbled in his pocket and pulled out the lacy handkerchief which he had picked from the dead man’s hand. He shook it out under the dashlight and saw there were no initials on it. Lifting it close to his nose, he drew in a deep breath and his nostrils caught an elusive, delicate fragrance. He thrust it back in his pocket and pursed his lips in a tuneless whistle.
He was in the middle of something-and didn’t know what it was.
He wondered, irrationally, whether the white-haired man in Marco’s office had escorted Marsha Marco straight home from the casino-and whether she had stayed at home.
Making the turn at Thirteenth Street into Biscayne Boulevard, on the mainland, he heard a newsboy shouting on the street.
“Detective held for playboy murder! Read all about the beach murder! Miami detective charged with shooting Harry Grange!”
Shayne stopped and bought an early morning edition of the Miami Herald. He spread it out on the steering wheel and stared morosely at a picture of himself in the middle of the front page. The cops and the handcuffs were plainly in evidence, but the picture of their prisoner was not flattering.
He grunted and folded the paper on the seat beside him, drove on down past Flagler Street and pulled up at the curb by the side entrance of his apartment-hotel.
A sedan with New York license plates was parked at the curb just in front of him.
A man got out of the front seat as Shayne locked the ignition and got out. He was short-legged and squatty, with a black felt hat pulled low over his face. He loitered forward on the sidewalk until Shayne stepped up on the curb, then moved to intercept him, saying hoarsely, “It’s him, Marv.”
A blunt automatic showed in his right hand. Shayne stopped and glanced over his left shoulder at the car. The muzzle of a sub-machine gun was pointed out through the rear window at him. He stood still and said, “Okay, boys. I wasn’t expecting you so soon.”
The squatty man motioned toward the sedan with his automatic. “Crawl in the front seat.”
“You can take everything I’m carrying right here,” Shayne argued mildly.
“You’re goin’ for a ride with us.” The voice was raspy.
Shayne said, “Okay,” and walked over to climb into the front seat of the sedan.
The squatty man followed him to the other side and got behind the wheel.
As the starter whirred, a silky voice spoke quietly from the rear seat. “Keep looking straight ahead and don’t try to pull any funny stuff.”
“I’m not in a humorous mood,” Shayne assured the unseen speaker.
The motor roared and they slid away from the curb, straight across the bridge over the Miami River and south on Brickell Avenue to Eighth Street, where the driver swung west and drove at a moderate speed out on the Tamiami Trail.
Chapter Six: AN ACCIDENT ON THE TAMIAMI TRAIL
The trail was thickly settled with both business houses and residences until they passed the huge stone entrance to Coral Gables on the left. Beyond this point the land was sparsely settled, and after passing the Wildcat and the cluster of small buildings near it, the Trail was open country.
None of the three men spoke until the Wildcat lay behind them and they were purring on into the swampy Everglades.
Then Shayne broke the silence by saying, “If this is a snatch you’ve got the wrong guy. There’s nobody this side of hell that would pay ten bucks for me, dead or alive.”
“You know what this is, all right,” the driver grated. Below the low brim of his hat, Shayne glimpsed a brutal, undershot jaw covered with a stubble of black whiskers. “It’s curtains, bo. Because you ain’t got sense enough to keep your long nose clean.”
“Take it easy,” Marv’s smooth voice warned from the rear as the driver accelerated up past fifty. “State cops patrol this road sometimes. No use taking any chances.”
“Curtains, eh?” Shayne had been sitting stiffly erect. Now, he relaxed against the seat and fumbled in his pocket for a cigarette. “In that case, I might as well get comfortable.”
“Yeh,” the driver jeered. “You ain’t got long to be comfortable in.”
Shayne struck a match to his cigarette. In front of them, smooth blackness of macadam glistened like molten rubber in the soft sheen of moonlight. Palmetto and gnarled cypress pressed close to the edge of the pavement on both sides, the gray-white bark of many dead cypress trees looming like ghosts against native pines.
An eerie silence encompassed them.
“Where do we bump him?” the driver jerked back over his shoulder.
“Just keep on taking it easy. There’s a deep canal along the side of the road pretty soon. With enough lead in him, a guy will stay down on the bottom a long time. Lots of people have accidents on this road,” he added in a conversational tone.
“Yeh. Jest las’ week a man-” the driver ventured.
“Shut up,” snapped the oily voice from the rear.
The swishing sound of air against encroaching tropical verdure was monotonous.
Shayne dragged in a lungful of smoke and exhaled it slowly.
“Mind telling me why I’m slated for the flowers?”
The brutal-jawed driver snickered. “He’s a card, ain’t he, Marv? Nervy sonofabitch, too. You’d think we was all joyridin’.”
“All we want,” Marv explained, “is what you took off Harry Grange tonight. Had to kill him to get it, huh?”
“I didn’t take anything off Harry Grange. And I didn’t kill him.”
“Naw?” Without warning, the driver jerked his right hand from the wheel and slapped Shayne, backhanded, in the mouth. “Think we can’t read, huh? How’d you talk yourself outta the pinch?”
Shayne placed both hands on his knees. His tongue licked out on his swollen lips. He didn’t say anything. In the faintly reflected moonlight his eyes were murkily red.
From the rear seat, Marv sounded bored.
“No use knocking him around, Passo. We’ll roll him for it after I’ve leaded him down.”
“I like to hit tough babies like him,” Passo said. “You’re a tough baby, ain’t you?” He leered sidewise at Shayne.
Shayne kept looking straight ahead as though he had not heard.
“Answer me, you bastard.” Passo swung the back of his hand again.
Shayne turned his face to take the blow on his cheek. Bleakly, he said, “Tough enough to take anything you can hand out.”
“Wait’ll I get both hands loose where I can go to work on you,” Passo promised jovially. “I’ll soft you up.
