Pulpy-like.”
“Take it easy and shut up,” Marv cautioned as their speed increased. “I think we’re coming to the canal.”
“What makes you think I took anything from Harry Grange?” Shayne asked stiffly over his shoulder.
“Because we know you’re wise, see? Else why would you kill a dumb cluck like Grange?”
“I didn’t kill him,” Shayne said patiently. “I-”
“Shut your trap.” Passo sloughed him again. “Think we don’t know you bumped into Chuck tonight and he give you the lay? And you was workin’ with your lawyer friend. Hell’s bells-”
“You talk too goddamned much with your mouth, Passo,” Marv interrupted silkily.
“What the hell does it matter? This tough baby ain’t gonna repeat nothin’ I say. Are you, toughie?”
Shayne didn’t say anything.
Moonlight glistened on still water by the side of the road ahead where a canal had been dredged in the swamp to build up a solid base for the Tamiami Trail across the Everglades, and for the further purpose of draining the marshy land.
Marv said, “Talking’s no good. I know this guy’s rep. He’s got too much guts for his own good. That’s why we’re going to leave him under water where he won’t pop up and make trouble. Anywhere along here’s all right.”
They were traveling along the smooth narrow strip of macadam at slightly less than fifty miles an hour.
Shayne’s right hand crept up to rest on the door latch. He braced his long legs against the floorboards.
As Passo’s foot lifted from the gas feed to the brake in response to Marv’s suggestion, Shayne’s left hand swept out and gripped the steering wheel, spinning it out of the driver’s lax hands.
Tires screamed in the still night and the speeding sedan lurched out of control. Shayne held a fierce grip on the wheel, sending it straight for the canal. As the car careened over the edge and plunged downward, his shoulder hit the unlatched door, and a tremendous drive of braced legs drove his body headfirst into the water and free of the sedan as it splashed, then heeled over to sink to the muddy bottom.
Shayne came up to the surface a few feet from the bank, caught a bunch of tough reeds, turned to watch the boiling eruption of placid water.
There was the frightened croaking of frogs down the bank, loud gurgling as the waters swirled over the sedan, covering it completely.
He dragged himself to the bank and squatted there. Night silence closed down again. A string of bubbles rose to break the surface of the water as the car squashed deeper and deeper into the yielding mud.
Then the water was placid, shimmering smooth again. He waited a long time, but no more bubbles came up. Water-soaked clothes were clammy and cold when he stood up and started walking east. Water squinched in his shoes at first, but it oozed out after a little time.
He walked swiftly, swinging his arms and gritting his teeth to keep them from chattering.
Headlights of a car going toward Miami showed in the distance. There was no place of concealment along the bare highway. When the lights were close, he slid over the edge of the pavement into the water until the car passed. Three times he hid himself by immersion, growing colder with each dip.
The chill gray of dawn was breaking when he neared the end of the waterway.
On either side of the canal in the marshes thousands of birds twittered of dawn. White herons flapped snowy wings and dipped into the shallow water of the marshland. Cranes, standing like statues on one foot against coral rocks, put the other foot down and lifted themselves in flight to the grain thickets. Blackbirds soared with raucous chatter. Quail scuttled away, fluttering in a loud whir as they rose in coveys. Silver-plumed gulls floated gracefully, circled, settled in the feeding ground.
Diverted by the beauty of winged creatures, Shayne was almost cheerful. He kept on walking swiftly, but when the headlights of another car showed behind him, he did not duck for cover. Instead, he stood in the center of the road and waved both arms frantically.
The car slowed cautiously, stopped about twenty feet from him. A straw-hatted head came out through the left window of the coupe and a voice called, “Hello, there. What’s up?”
“I am,” Shayne grinned. “Been up all night.” He walked slowly to the car, full in the glare of the headlights, arms swinging loosely at his side. “Can you give me a lift to town?”
The driver hesitated.
“I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t,” Shayne said quickly, and smiled disarmingly. “I’ve been lost out in that goddamned swamp since yesterday. I’m wet and half-starved.”
The driver said, “Get in,” after looking Shayne over carefully. “There’s a raincoat here you can sit on.” He spread the raincoat out and Shayne got in.
As they drove toward Miami, Shayne recited a fabulous story about setting out on an alligator hunt in the Everglades with a Seminole guide-the Indian had deserted him, and he had been lost for eighteen hours, fighting his way through snake-infested swamps until he stumbled out on the highway.
Luckily, the man was a traveling salesman from another part of the state, and he knew as little about the Everglades as most people. He swallowed Shayne’s story with bug-eyed enjoyment, and let him out of the car on Flagler Street just as sunlight streaked the sky over the Atlantic.
Shayne walked to his hotel and found his car parked by the curb where he had left it a few hours previously. He went in the side door and up to his apartment without being observed.
Stepping over the threshold, he hesitated with his finger on the light switch. Daylight streamed through an east window, lay wraithlike upon the figure of a girl curled up in a deep, overstuffed chair.
He didn’t turn on the light. Instead, he catfooted into the room and looked down at Phyllis Brighton. She was sound asleep, right cheek cuddled on her crooked right arm, her breath coming rhythmically through half-parted lips.
Shayne shook his head and moved around the sleeping girl. He took up the bottle of cognac he had left on the table last night. There was a good two fingers of liquor in it. He tipped it up and emptied the bottle without taking it from his stiff, sore lips.
An ague seized him. He fought against it and went to the telephone and quietly gave the operator a Miami telephone number, waited for an answer.
He could hear the bell ringing monotonously in the home of Will Gentry, chief of Miami detectives. After a long time, Gentry’s sleepy voice said, “Hello.”
Shayne put his lips close to the mouthpiece and said, “Hello, Will. This is an anonymous informant.”
“What?” Gentry sounded puzzled. “Who is this?”
“An anonymous informant,” Shayne repeated in a low voice.
“It sounds like Mike Shayne. What is it, a gag?”
Once more Shayne said evenly, “This is an anonymous informant, Will.”
“Oh, all right, have it your way, Mike. What’s up your long sleeve? I thought Peter had you under his jail.”
“There’s been an accident out on the Tamiami Trail. A sedan went into the ditch with two men in it. A mile or so beyond where the roadside canal starts. The skid marks on the pavement and tracks cutting the shoulder will spot it for you, but the car’s all under water. It’ll take a derrick to hoist it.”
“Yeh, I’ve got that, Mike. I’ll send a crew out.”
“You’ll find a sub-machine gun and at least one forty-five automatic in the car or in the mud,” Shayne explained. “It’d be nice to do some awful close checking on the men and the car and the guns, Will.”
“You bet.” Gentry was wide awake now. “Thanks for the tip, Mike.”
“From an anonymous informant,” Shayne cautioned him.
“Sure. I get it.”
“Thanks.”
Shayne hung up softly.
When he turned away he saw Phyllis sitting up, staring at him with dazed, half-open eyes. There was a red blotch on her right cheek where it had rested too hard and too long on her arm.
“Wha-a-t-?” she stammered, but Shayne cut her off abruptly:
“Go on back to sleep or something. I’m getting out of these wet clothes and into a tub of hot water pronto.”
