Shayne was learning things all the time, but unfortunately not fast enough. He put the Buick in gear and drove off without hurrying. The moment he was around the corner, where he could no longer be seen by Adele, he shot ahead.
He had picked his spot carefully. Three quarters of the way along the block he turned abruptly, without signaling, and plunged down a ramp into an underground taxi garage. A few years before, the owner of the cab company, one of the biggest in Miami, had had a valuable painting stolen. Shayne had recovered it for him. Now Shayne had a standing deal permitting him to borrow a cab whenever he needed one.
The dispatcher looked out of his office. “Another handkerchief switch, Mike? Take that one. It’s gassed up.”
Shayne left his Buick in a parking slot and transferred to the cab. As he passed the office, the dispatcher handed him a cap, which he put on. It was much too small.
Wheeling out of the exit ramp, he headed back to 15th Court, an address which Adele had blown when she thought she was threatening Shayne with a loaded gun. He was improvising. He had told her the truth-he had no plan at all.
Soon he was cruising down 15th Court. The blue panel truck was still parked in the driveway. He checked the time. Three and a half minutes had elapsed since he changed cars. Finding no money in her purse, Adele would be unable to phone. It would take six or seven minutes to cover the distance on foot.
He pulled into a gas station at the corner and checked his tire pressure, then got back behind the wheel and glanced at a copy of the
A moment later he saw Adele run across the street and enter the house by a back door. Her friends inside wasted no time. Shayne heard a door slam. The panel truck roared back out of the driveway. It proved to be easy to follow. It went west on 8th Street. At Ponce de Leon Boulevard, it turned south into Coral Gables.
There was less traffic here, and Shayne dropped back. On one of the curving drives near the university, the truck’s brake lights flared. Someone jumped out, a slender young man who somehow gave the impression of having slept in his clothes. He started up the walk toward a four-unit apartment building. He glanced around, hearing Shayne’s motor, and Shayne got a flash of dark glasses, large moustache, prominent front teeth. He noted the address and continued to follow the truck, which led him to Route 1 and back into Southwest Miami.
On 17th Avenue it swung north. Before long it stopped at an outside phone booth. Another young man jumped out. Shayne thought he was the boy he had seen run out of Dr. Galvez’ office, but he was wearing slacks instead of the checked shorts.
Shayne worked fairly close to the booth before parking. The boy stayed at the phone, making call after call, and at one point he had to go into a stationery store for change. Finally he hung up and waited.
Presently the phone rang. He talked briefly, then returned to the truck. It drove off, with Shayne still behind it.
It parked in front of a loft building between the railway tracks and South Miami Avenue. Shayne was in a good vehicle for a pursuit. A cab is hard to see when it is moving, but conspicuous standing still. He parked three blocks away, in front of a luncheonette. Leaving his cap in the taxi, he walked to the next corner.
There were two men in the front seat of the truck.
He was still feeling his way, but a few things seemed obvious. If Lorenzo Vega was to the right of Dr. Galvez, Adele and her friends were certainly to the left. After her blunder with the unloaded.38, the 15th Court address had become dangerous. She had warned its occupants, and they had promptly scattered. For some reason that was not yet clear to Shayne, they considered it important to keep him away from Vega. Luckily, like Galvez himself, they had an exaggerated idea of how much one private detective is able to do. If Vega had gone into hiding, Shayne, they thought, with his many Miami sources, would be able to find him. So they decided to find him first. Then all they had to do was position themselves and wait for Shayne to show up.
The boy who had done the phoning stepped out of the truck and concealed himself in the next doorway. Shayne instantly dropped into a new personality. Completely relaxed, he shambled up to a well-dressed man with a briefcase and asked for some change for busfare. The man shook him off irritably. Shayne panhandled his way back to the luncheonette, earning twenty cents on the way.
He used the dimes to make two phone calls. One was to Tim Rourke. He passed on the information he had picked up, and gave his friend instructions about what to say in case he received another call, which Shayne thought he might be able to set up.
After that he called the mobile telephone operator, who handled service to and from the radio-phones in moving automobiles, such as the one in Shayne’s Buick. He had never met this girl, but he had talked with her frequently. She listened carefully to what he wanted.
“One of these fine days, Mr. Shayne,” she said reluctantly, “I’m going to lose my job on account of you. Deceiving people, you know, isn’t company policy.”
“If you don’t want to do it I’ll arrange something else.”
“Did I say I wouldn’t do it? I know you wouldn’t ask me if it wasn’t important.”
He went into the luncheonette and ordered coffee, and found an empty booth from which he could watch the truck.
He was into his second cup when he saw the boy step out on the sidewalk menacingly. Two men who had come out of the loft building retreated quickly into the lobby.
Shayne returned to the cab. He started off fast, clapping on his taxi-driver’s cap and dousing the off-duty light. He had no doubt that one of the two men was Vega. If they needed transportation, he was ready to provide it.
He went down into low as he came abreast of the panel truck. Inside the lobby, Shayne saw a man stabbing at the elevator button while a second man, in a business suit without a necktie, hatless, faced the street with a Luger in his hand. Shayne had seen a photograph of this man in bathing trunks. He had been armed then, too, probably with the same weapon.
He saw Shayne and came out yelling, “Taxi! Taxi!” Shayne threw his meter-flag. Both men leaped into the back seat and Vega shouted, “Get away fast!”
“Is somebody after you?” Shayne asked mildly, going into gear.
“Driver!”
Shayne was maneuvering for a look at the driver of the panel truck, and he didn’t let up on the clutch until the man looked around. It was the tattooed salad chef from the
Shayne moved off, not fast, with the truck behind him. Vega was sitting far forward, throwing quick glances out the rear window.
“Twenty-five bucks over the fare if you can lose him. It’s a piece of junk. You can do it.”
“I’m driving a piece of junk myself. I take it slow and easy so everybody’s still alive at the end of the shift.”
“Fifty!”
“Fifty’s too high,” Shayne observed. “That makes me think you’re doing something to break the law.”
He swiveled the rear-view mirror so he could see Vega’s companion, who met his eyes with a scowl. He was a familiar type to Shayne. He had the sprung nasal capillaries of a middle-aged drinker. He had been in too many brawls.
He seemed anxious about Vega’s gun, which was still showing. He put out a restraining hand as Vega raised it and placed the muzzle at the back of Shayne’s skull.
“A little more speed, damn it.”
Shayne rotated the mirror to pick up Vega. “What are you worrying about, Lorenzo? Take a deep breath and think about something soothing, like running water. How many times in your experience does a taxi show up exactly when you want it? That doesn’t happen in real life.”
Vega wet his lips and sat back. “I understand. Excuse me for becoming excited. I had the impression they wanted to kill me.”
“You had the wrong impression. You’re more valuable alive. Who are they?”
“In the truck?
