“I figured we could handle up to four,” the kid said. “But just Bass and the driver, how can we lose?”
If he didn’t know, Sanchez didn’t intend to tell him. The incendiary canister had been set to go off in three minutes, and surely, he thought, the Cadillac had been in motion longer than that already. There was no sign of smoke or fire.
“Come on, come on,” he said, slapping the steering wheel.
Then a quick plume of smoke gushed out from the Cadillac’s side, seeming to come from directly beneath the driver. The brake lights flared. Sanchez rapidly overtook the other car, veering out to pass. The whole front end of the Cadillac was hidden in thick billows of smoke. The driver burst out of the front seat as the Dodge came abreast. He was a stocky Negro, with a powerful wrestler’s chest, wearing a black suit and a white linen cap.
Sanchez swung over onto the left shoulder and brought the Dodge to a halt. Something had just occurred to him. What if the Cadillac exploded? Nobody had mentioned that as a possibility. He was already out, brandishing a portable fire extinguisher and shouting incoherently to the Negro. He ran around the front of the Dodge, reaching the Cadillac as the Negro released the hood catch and the hood sprang up. A tongue of flame licked out through the smoke at them.
The extinguisher Sanchez was waving was a small spray can, designed for use against less serious fires than this one. “Where’s it coming from?” he shouted.
Shielding his face with one arm, he pressed the button on the top of the can and directed a powerful stream of carbon tetrachloride into the smoke. When the Negro leaned forward over the radiator, Sanchez brought the can up and around, keeping the button depressed, and sent the stream into the man’s eyes.
The Negro screamed thinly and staggered back. Sanchez stepped around him and clubbed him at the base of the skull with the short barrel of his. 38. The screaming stopped. Sanchez slapped him hard with the side of the gun as he went down.
The smoke gushed upward, as though escaping under pressure, and there was a strong smell of burning oil and metal. The kid and Pond had had plenty of time to close in on Bass, but the gambler must have moved fast, starting the instant the other car pulled around him. As Sanchez started for the sidewalk, stepping over the unconscious Negro, a suitcase flew over the stone wall at the edge of the golf course. A bald-headed man in a Madras sports jacket scrambled after it, moving fast. Pond grabbed for his leg. From the top of the wall, Bass kicked out savagely, crushing Pond’s false nose against his real one. Pond spat out a mouthful of phony teeth, and went up and over. The kid was right behind him. He had his gun out. So there wasn’t going to be any shooting, Sanchez thought bitterly.
The wall was only five feet high, but there was nothing for the sharp toes of his shoes to dig into. He got over because he had to, but he scraped his shins and the gun gouged his chest. Smoke rolled over him, making him cough. As he dropped off the coping he heard a shot.
He landed badly. He was in dark shadow, which he didn’t want to leave. He hadn’t believed for a minute that Bass wouldn’t be carrying a gun when he was carrying that much money. It was three against one, but Bass had an advantage-every time anything moved, he would know it was an enemy.
Sighing, Sanchez took out his. 38 and crawled away from the wall.
2
Michael Shayne, the big redheaded private detective, came onto Normandy Isle from the Beach end. People in the gambling business are particular about what they say on the phone, and all Harry Bass had told him was that he wanted to see him. Shayne had done several routine jobs for Bass in the past, and had been paid well. Occasionally he spent a weekend duck-shooting at Harry’s lodge in North Carolina. Harry Bass broke the law every day of his life, but in Shayne’s opinion it was a hypocritical law, one that couldn’t be enforced, especially in a resort town. In any real showdown, Shayne and Bass both knew that they would end up on opposite sides, but that day might never come, and in the meantime, they were friends.
After crossing the Normandy Waterway, the drive began to curve. Suddenly Shayne jammed on his brakes. The road ahead was blocked by two cars. One, a long black Cadillac, seemed to be on fire.
Swerving far over, he stopped and jumped out. Both cars had their headlights on full, and at first glance he thought they had been abandoned. It was an odd scene-an empty street, empty sidewalks, two empty cars, one of them burning. Several long strides brought Shayne to the Cadillac. The hood was up. Thick white smoke was pouring out of the motor. He sniffed sharply. He couldn’t identify the smell. It was pungent and acrid, like the smell of burned gunpowder. There wasn’t much heat. The smoke seemed to originate somewhere underneath, perhaps in the oil pan.
His foot kicked against a portable fire extinguisher. He retrieved it and found the button controlling the spray. Before he could use it on the fire, he saw a man lying face down on the sidewalk. The back of his jacket was burning.
With a quick burst from the extinguisher, Shayne put out the flames. The man was a Negro, not big but solidly built. Shayne stooped to pull him farther from the burning car. His white cap fell off as Shayne lifted him. The back of his head was bleeding. Under his arm, the detective felt the strap of a gun harness.
He didn’t like this at all. Two cars meant a minimum of two people. Here was one of them. Where was the other? He didn’t recognize the Negro or either car, but Harry’s house was only a couple of minutes away and he knew there had to be some connection with the phone call from Harry twenty minutes earlier.
He was still bent over the unconscious Negro when he heard a grating noise behind him. He whirled. A big man with a grotesquely twisted nose dropped on him from the top of the wall. Shayne tried to twist out of the way but he tripped on the Negro and was carried to the sidewalk with the big man on top of him. He rolled, bringing one elbow up in his assailant’s face. The man grunted and slammed a fist the size of a small ham against the side of Shayne’s head.
Shayne’s reaction was instinctive. He rolled with the punch and lashed out with his foot at the big man’s middle. As his foot went home, air rushed out of the big man’s lungs, and Shayne knew he could take him.
Then a second man jumped off the wall, a suitcase in one hand and a gun in the other, and Shayne was clipped behind the ear with something much harder than a fist. The Cadillac’s headlights blurred and overlapped.
“OK,” a voice said urgently. “Cool him and let’s get out of here.”
Shayne grabbed upward through the blur and dazzle. His fingers closed on the big man’s shirt and dragged him down. He had no leverage, and for the moment there was no strength in his arms. He twisted his knuckles in the big man’s eye, to mark him so he would know him if he saw him again. The nose broke away altogether, and Shayne realized it was part of a broken mask.
“Let me,” another voice said with a sneer. “You don’t want to ruin those high-price shoes.”
Three of them, the redhead noted, and another small explosion went off inside his skull. His grip on the big man’s shirt front loosened. He was kicked twice more, and then they left him.
A door slammed. The noise echoed back and forth painfully inside Shayne’s head before dying away. He made himself roll on his side for a better look at the car: a gray Dodge sedan with Florida plates. Slowly and patiently, Shayne slid his hand inside the unconscious Negro’s jacket and tugged the gun out of his holster. But by the time he had it the tail lights of the Dodge were around the curve. The gun slipped away, and when he scrabbled after it he only succeeded in knocking it underneath the burning car.
The fire was now blazing with an intensity that brought Shayne to his feet. His mind was functioning in short bursts. He knew his way around these bay islands and it was possible that they didn’t. When they hit Normandy Drive, which way would they turn? Probably they would avoid Miami Beach, with its bottlenecks and its difficult traffic. They would turn right, crossing to North Bay Village on the 79th Street Causeway, then on into the Little River section of Northeast Miami. If he could force himself into motion and move fast, he might be able to catch them on the causeway.
He lurched against the Cadillac. The doorframe was hot against his hand. He careered away at a slanting angle. The pavement tilted violently, tilted again, and he brought up against his Buick. The door opened for him and the motor seemed to start by itself. Time was moving in jumps. In an instant he was doing fifty.
He straddled the double line between the two lanes until his head cleared. A slower car appeared in front of
