section began to thin out and there was little traffic.
Grim-jawed and tense, trying not to think at all, he held the speedometer needle at sixty until he slowed for the traffic light at Seventy-ninth Street and swung to the right. Leaving the lighted boulevard behind, he had the indicator shivering just below eighty when he rolled up on the first bridge of the almost deserted Seventy-ninth Street causeway, holding it at that speed until approaching the sweeping curve near the east end which he made with screaming tires.
He eased onto the peninsula, over a high-arched bridge spanning a canal, and the clock on his dashboard said he had been driving sixteen minutes when he turned south on the ocean drive, past hamburger stands and beach cabins, driving slowly and watching for a dead-end street with a car parked near the ocean with headlights facing out.
He found it after a few minutes, a palmetto-lined pair of sandy ruts. The headlights of a parked car burned brightly at the end where a sloping cliff broke down to the shore.
There were no houses near in either direction, and the only sound in the night stillness was the crash of waves below. He cut off his motor just in front of the parked car.
He got out, blinking into the blinding lights, waded through loose sand over his shoetops, and made his way to the shiny coupe with a single figure in the driver’s seat. The man was slumped down over the wheel as though he had passed out.
Shayne said, “Hello,” and put his hand on the man’s shoulder to shake him.
He didn’t shake him. He knew there wasn’t any use.
Harry Grange was dead.
By the faint light on the instrument board Shayne saw that blood oozed slowly from a small bullet hole in the side of Grange’s head.
Shayne removed his hand from the dead man’s shoulder and lit a cigarette.
He heard a faint whine above the rustle of palmetto fronds and the crash of ocean waves. It died away, then came more clearly. The shrill moan of a siren on a speeding car. Momently the siren grew louder-sped nearer.
Hastily, Shayne peered into the front seat of the coupe. One of Harry Grange’s limp tanned hands lay on the seat close to his thigh. A blur of white showed under the lax fingers.
Shayne pulled a lacy, feminine handkerchief from under the dead man’s hand as the noise of the siren died from a crescendo to a low moan.
He slid the handkerchief into his coat pocket and stepped back to make a quick search around the car. His eye caught the gleam of moonlight on blued steel lying on the ground just under the running board.
He picked up a. 32 automatic. The retracting carriage stood partially back, showing that it had been jammed after being fired.
The wail of the approaching police siren came nearer as he held the muzzle of the gun to his nose and caught the acrid odor of burned powder.
Hurriedly he examined the weapon, looking for-and finding-a small nick in the wooden butt.
The pistol which was missing from his drawer had an identical nick in the butt.
He didn’t have time to think. The police car was fast approaching the rutted turnoff from the pavement.
He whirled to face directly south, drew back his arm and threw the pistol overhand with all his strength into the thick palmettos.
He turned at the screech of brakes and watched a red-spotlighted police car lurch into the ruts directly toward him.
Shayne stepped into the headlights as uniformed officers swarmed out of the riot car before it reached a full stop.
Chapter Four: THE CHIEF OF DETECTIVES
Peter Painter, dynamic chief of the Miami Beach detective bureau, led the squad of uniformed men.
Painter was a head shorter than Shayne. His wiry, compact body was garbed in a double-breasted Palm Beach suit, and, with a turned-down creamy Panama covering his sleek black hair, he looked, as always, as though he had just been turned out by a competent valet.
His black eyes flashed in the headlights when he recognized Shayne. He peered past the redheaded detective at the other car and asked brusquely, “What’s going on here?”
“Murder.”
Shayne shrugged and jerked his thumb back over his shoulder, then took a deep drag on his cigarette.
Two motorcycle cops and a Miami Herald press car roared up, swayed into the dead-end street.
Painter contrived to give the appearance of strutting even while his gray sports shoes bogged through the deep sand on his way to the car. He peered in at the body of Harry Grange.
Shayne stood full in the headlights while Painter issued crisp orders behind him, and an ambulance sped up with the Miami Beach medical examiner.
Painter bogged back to stand in front of Shayne. Painter’s breathing was audible. He twitched a tan-bordered handkerchief from his breast pocket and touched it to his lips. He had small hands and feet, thin, mobile lips with a black, threadlike mustache running straight across the upper one.
He replaced his handkerchief so that the edges peeked out of his pocket before saying, “All right, Shayne. Why did you kill Grange?” His voice was metallic, biting.
“Sorry to disappoint you. I didn’t.”
Painter nodded to uniformed men on each side of Shayne.
“Shake him down.”
Shayne obligingly lifted his elbows out while they went over him thoroughly for a weapon.
After a time they stepped back and announced, “He’s clean, Chief.”
“Let’s have your story, Shayne,” Painter grated. “And it had better be good.”
A Herald reporter with flaring nostrils and popping eyes was standing close by, scribbling down notes as Shayne told the precise truth. Painter waited until he ended, then asked in a tone which would have been ominous from a bigger man, “Do you expect me to believe that?”
“I don’t give a goddamn what you believe,” Shayne whipped out.
Painter’s black eyes snapped past Shayne to the medical examiner who had completed his examination.
“What do you find, Doc?”
“Not much. The bullet ranged upward through the brain. Small caliber-probably a thirty-two. Within the last half hour is the best I can do on the time.”
“It took me exactly nineteen minutes to get here,” Shayne said quietly.
“Look, Chief, can’t you give me a statement,” the pop-eyed reporter exclaimed. “I’ve got to phone my story in to catch the early edition.”
Painter rubbed the tip of his right forefinger slowly back and forth along his beautifully trimmed mustache. With chin lowered and eyes raised to Shayne, he asked curtly, “You’re positive it was Grange who called you?”
“That’s the name he gave me when I insisted-but he didn’t sound like Grange.”
Painter said gravely to his men, “Put the cuffs on him. I’m holding him on suspicion of murder.”
The reporter’s nostrils quivered. “Can I quote you on that, Painter?”
“Yes,” the chief snapped.
“Hey, hold it a minute, willya!” the reporter appealed to the burly cop who reached for Shayne’s wrist with handcuffs ready. He yelled at his photographer who was snapping shots of the death car and body. “C’mere, Joe, and get a shot of the cops snapping bracelets on Mike Shayne.”
Shayne lit another cigarette and asked grimly, “Wouldn’t you rather have one of me groveling on my knees to Painter?”
“Naw. This’ll be swell, just reach the cuffs out toward his arm-and you on the other side there! Grab him like you’re afraid he’s gonna make a break for it.”
Shayne submitted mildly while the cops demonstrated their lack of histrionic ability and the reporter got a pose which satisfied his sense of dramatic values. Photographer and reporter then fled to the press car, to find it
