“Just another ten-dollar bettor? What dog won the last race?”
“I was watching that one. Nothing looked good to me.”
“Everybody else has a program. Not you. Take everything out of your pockets and put it on the shelf.”
“Is that what this is, a stickup?”
“If you think so, yell for security. Somebody may hear you.”
“Yeah, and get myself shot in the ear with my own gun. I know the rules.”
He shifted to get to his pockets. When his wallet came out, Shayne thumbed it open.
“A Miami address. Angelo Paniatti. Funny I don’t know you. O.K., Angelo-a quick explanation.”
“Explanation of what? I paid admission. I don’t like people standing this close to me. We’re using the same air.”
Shayne slapped him with the wallet. When he tried to get up, Shayne held him in place and slapped him again. He was blocking the doorway, but the walls of the booth were glass, and some of the people streaming past must have seen what was happening. But as Shayne had remarked, they had more pressing things on their minds. The betting machines would be locked in another two minutes.
“The guy with the ring in his ear,” Shayne said. Angelo started another evasive answer, but Shayne’s expression stopped him.
“With the ring in his ear. All I know, his name’s Pedro. Pete, they call him.”
“What do you specialize in, Angelo?”
“This and that, whatever turns up.”
“You didn’t finish your pockets. There’s one more.”
Angelo put his hand on the outside of his jacket pocket. “Just some bills and junk. Mail.”
Shayne said patiently, “I know you’re not used to going one on one, without guns. Take it out, or I’ll slug you with something harder than a wallet.”
Angelo dug in the pocket and brought out a sheaf of glossy three-by-five prints, all of them of Shayne.
“About six hundred bucks in the wallet,” Shayne said. “I hope I’m wrong, for your sake, but this is beginning to look like a hit.”
“A hit?” he said, his voice rising. “What are you talking? I’m small scale. Burglary’s the most I ever-Ask anybody. You know the Miami cops, they’ll tell you.”
“This is between you and me, Angelo. We don’t need arbitration.” He threw the automatic’s slide, putting a round under the hammer, and jammed the muzzle against the man’s throat. “Why are you carrying my picture, in three sentences or less.”
Angelo squealed, a high note that cut through the echoing babble. Shayne didn’t think they could continue this much longer.
“All I know is,” Angelo said, “all he told me, he wanted to talk business where you wouldn’t be bothered. I was supposed to stand at the door and not let anybody in.”
“They’re paying six hundred for that?”
“I wondered, sure, but I didn’t think he’d do anything major here with this many people.”
“It’s the best place for it. Who’s he working for?”
“That’s all I know! A policy of mine, don’t ask too many questions.”
“Who else is in there with him?”
“Nobody.”
A voice behind Shayne said, “What’s going on here?”
It was one of the security guards, an off-duty Miami Beach detective, supplementing his city salary.
“Mike Shayne? Now what?”
“Nothing much,” Shayne said. “This is Angelo Paniatti, and he’s been ejected from every dog track in Massachusetts and Florida. He’s been buying up Double Q tickets. You take over. I don’t have time to process him.”
He walked away.
He crossed to the men’s room and went on to the exit, some forty feet further. Here, too, the open archway was blocked by an arrangement of baffles, two overlapping wooden panels. Inside the first, Shayne dropped to his knees on the filthy floor, got rid of the big hat and edged around the next panel.
The long gang lavatory was brightly lighted, and Shayne moved forward carefully. No feet showed in any of the stalls. He kept moving until he saw a pant leg and the striped Adidas shoe, at the sinks. He brought his legs up under him and went in at a bound, the. 32 in his fist.
Pedro, no longer expecting anybody, was combing his tight hair, bending forward to admire his reflection in the mirror. Shayne was on him before he could turn. His skin was extremely smooth, his eyes brown and soft. Shayne jabbed the automatic against him and he fell back with a groan. Shayne grabbed him around the neck, in the mugger’s position, and whirled him so they both faced the closed stalls.
But Angelo had lied to him. Before the movement was complete, one of the doors opened and a second man came barreling out, a wide figure in workingman’s clothes, pumping hard. He was armed with a more imposing weapon than Shayne’s, a. 45 that looked as big as a cannon. He fired it from chest level. It not only looked like a cannon, it made a bang like a cannon. A mirror shattered. Clearly Shayne couldn’t use Pedro as a shield; his colleague intended to shoot Pedro out of the way, and then shoot Shayne.
Shayne took a quick stutter step toward the moving man and threw Pedro at him. Pedro skittered across the tiled floor, sawing the air, and the two men collided hard. Both went down. Shayne kicked at a head, but missed. Pedro continued to slide, ending up against the urinals. There was another heavy hammering explosion. The shooter was up on one knee, his face contorted. That was the last shot he meant to miss. Shayne, still off balance, snapped a shot from five feet. He was firing at the man’s body but the bullet went high, striking him in the forehead.
It was the only place a small-caliber gun would have stopped him. The. 45 continued in an upward arc and went sailing. The man clutched at nothing and went forward on his face.
Pedro, still on the floor and groggy, fumbled with a knife. Shayne extended his arm and shouted, “Hold it!”
He retrieved the. 45, then came in on Pedro, kicked the knife out of his hand, and swung the heavy gun, checking it an inch from Pedro’s head.
“Say it fast. When you shoot one, they let you shoot the second one free. Who sent you?”
Pedro shook his head. The heavy hoop in his ear swung and glinted. Shayne picked him off the floor and slammed him against the urinals. He pulled him back and did it again.
“This is no fucking joke. It’s trouble for everybody. Who are you working for?”
Pedro spat in his face and tried to bring up his knee. Shayne hit him with the. 45, taking a little off the swing because he didn’t want to kill him yet. Metal crunched against bone.
The off-duty policeman who had broken in on Shayne’s questioning stepped in with his gun out. Angelo was behind him. Shayne had never been popular with the Miami Beach force, and now, after Painter’s press-conference charges, he was fair game. The cop looked at the body.
“It’s all over,” Shayne said. “Put it away.”
He was speaking calmly, but the cop had already started a sequence of movements that could only end with the gun being fired. He was in a tight crouch, his shoulders forward, the gun in both hands. Shayne had seen cops in that position before, and he didn’t hesitate. Gunfire was the only answer for gunfire. He fired at the long neon tube overhead. It exploded with a quick spurt of escaping gas. Glass pattered down. Shayne went to one side in the sudden darkness, and knocked against Pedro, who had a second knife or had managed to recover the first one. Pedro struck out, raking Shayne’s shoulder.
“Kill him!” Angelo yelled.
For an instant Shayne’s moving figure was outlined against the light from the betting room, and another shot was fired. And then he was through the baffle. He checked, seeing a security man coming toward him. Because of the crowd, Shayne didn’t believe there would be any more shooting, but he stopped believing that when the cop pointed his gun and fired.
Again Shayne went into the men’s room at a crawl, much faster than the first time. He was beginning to get pain from the knife wound.
He found the dead man and dragged him back through the baffle. The people behind him were moving cautiously, remembering that he was the one with the. 45. He heaved the body up to a standing position and
