Cuban’s kidneys. The Cuban’s grip on his waist loosened and Shayne twisted free.
Whitey was now at the inner edge of the sidewalk, Shayne at the curb. Whitey darted in, faked a swing at Shayne’s knees, then struck upward, sending the jackhandle spinning out of Shayne’s hand.
Shayne gathered up the Cuban and whirled him at his companion. The Cuban caromed off and hit the phone booth with such force that one of the corner uprights folded inward. Shayne ducked a whistling blow from the club and caught a second on his forearm.
The youth on the sidewalk flung himself on Shayne from behind. Shayne fell. He began his roll even before he hit the sidewalk. The Cuban landed on him. Shayne struggled to throw him off while Whitey stamped around the edges waiting for a shot at Shayne’s head. The tall long-haired youth was also part of the melee but not doing much damage. The Cuban butted upward, and the top of his head collided with the knockout point in front of Shayne’s ear. The detective was hurt for the first time.
The bat descended. Whitey was trying to connect with a short slashing blow to make Shayne hold still for the real one to follow. Shayne saw the moving shadow and jerked aside. The club hit the Cuban. Shayne came into a crouch, bringing the dazed Cuban up with his left hand. He brought him around against the iron pickets of the cemetery fence, nailing him with a powerful right as he hung there. The click as it landed told him the Cuban was through for the night.
He looked for Whitey, who turned as Shayne turned. The club was already on its way down. Shayne slanted upward to meet it, and the club slammed him across the back of the neck.
“You got him!” the youth cried. “You got the bastard. Spill his brains on the sidewalk.”
Whitey growled, “Back in the car.”
“Back in the car! Look at my hand. Give me that.”
“This is Mike Shayne, meathead. Did Jake say to kill him? We didn’t get paid that kind of dough.”
Shayne lay face down, his knees in the gutter. He could hear the voices, but the words were unclear. The Plymouth’s motor panted noisily beside him. Unconsumed gases washed over him from the leaking muffler. The blow at the top of the spine had cut his communication with his arms and legs. He strained to move. He could feel drops of sweat break out on his forehead. Willing his shoulders into motion, he lifted his head a few inches.
Whitey dragged the unconscious Cuban past and thrust him into the car. The boy, one arm dangling, kept on begging for the club.
“Just one lick!”
“Leave him be, goddamn it,” Whitey snarled. “In the car, in the car!”
Shayne raised his head another inch and sank his teeth in the boy’s ankle.
The boy was wearing white jeans with pipe-stem legs, which stopped halfway down his calves. Shayne bit down hard, trying to sever the Achilles tendon. The boy gave a high bubbly cry.
“Will you come on?” Whitey cried. “I said to leave him alone!”
With a choked obscenity, the youth took a step and snatched up the jackhandle. Whitey grabbed his arm as it came down. Shayne’s teeth unclenched and he rolled out of the way. His arms and legs were answering now, but sluggishly.
The youth pulled out of Whitey’s hands and ran to the driver’s side. The door there was open. He leaped in. Whitey wrenched the door open on the near side as the car careened recklessly backward. Twenty yards away it reversed and came back at Shayne.
The detective commanded his body to roll, but he could count the seconds before the movement started. The youth with his one usable hand and Whitey with two fought for control of the wheel. The Plymouth swerved, mounting the curb, then rocked back to the street before veering onto the sidewalk again. Shayne, his head on a level with the front bumper, saw the wheels begin to turn toward the street, but in one frozen quarter-second he could see that the correction wouldn’t be made in time. He struggled to bring his arm against his body. The car whooshed past, and he felt a blazing pain in his forearm.
There was a rending crash. The Plymouth’s front fender hooked the phone booth and knocked it over.
The car bounced away, swung all the way across the street and shuddered to a stop. Whitey burst out of the front seat and ran around to take the wheel.
Hitching forward in a crablike crawl, Shayne reached the overturned booth. The Plymouth starter was growling.
Shayne wrestled himself around, braced his feet against the booth and began to pull Teddy out through the bottom.
It was painful work, and he was no longer really sure what he was doing.
The Plymouth’s sudden stop had flooded the carburetor. The starter ground on and on, beginning to weaken. The open phone in the overturned booth buzzed and crackled, and Teddy moaned. Amid the confusion of noises Shayne thought he heard a siren.
The carburetor cleared and the motor took hold with a roar. Black smoke billowed from the exhaust. Shayne gave up the attempt to free Teddy and crawled in with him, pulling open his jacket. His hand fastened on the butt of the. 38 in the shoulder holster.
The gun resisted. The Plymouth wheeled over the opposite curb and moved away, accelerating. Shayne fought the. 38. Apparently the holster had a security spring to keep the gun from being drawn by anyone else but the wearer.
He changed his grip. The gun jumped into his hand and he fired without aiming.
The Plymouth was rounding the corner into 16th Street. Shayne’s snap shot blew out a rear tire. The back end careered through a ninety-degree arc and smashed against a utility pole.
Shayne fired again, aiming carefully, and drilled a hole through the safety glass in front of the driver. Whitey understood the message, and stayed where he was.
Shayne propped the gun on the large man’s buttocks, holding the front sight steady on the thug’s unnaturally white hair. He was in the same position when the police arrived. He still had the gun in an iron grip, and pressure on the trigger would have sent a slug through Whitey’s head. But Shayne was unconscious.
CHAPTER 6
The casualties were taken to Jackson Memorial, across the river on 12th Avenue.
The doctor on emergency duty when Shayne was carried in was an old-timer named Hugo Baumgartner, who had worked on him before. In addition to a lacerated ear and various contusions, Shayne’s main problem was his smashed left wrist. Baumgartner set the bones. After studying his work in hastily developed X rays, he rebroke them and did it again. When Shayne fought his way out of the anesthetic, Baumgartner was tidying up after putting on a light fingertip-length cast.
He looked at the detective solemnly. His face had long ago congealed in this expression; Shayne had never seen him smile.
“They hit you with a car this time, I’m sorry to see.”
“Where’s Sparrow?”
“Upstairs asleep. Kind of funny thing happened. Want to hear it?”
“I need a laugh.”
“He got out of bed when the nurse wasn’t looking. He didn’t know it was a hospital bed. He broke an ankle. Kind of complicated. His right leg’s in traction.”
“Yeah, that’s funny,” Shayne agreed, deadpan.
“I thought so. His speech and vision are O.K., but we have to wait till tomorrow to see about brain damage from the beating. Of course somebody who knows Sparrow tells me not to worry-you couldn’t tell the difference. Mike, I didn’t want to put on the final before I conferred with you. You’ve got a tricky fracture. If you want to regain the use of that wrist you have to be careful with it.”
“I’m always careful.”
“Yes-s,” Baumgartner said skeptically. “I know that telling a bank clerk to be careful isn’t the same thing as telling Mike Shayne to be careful. I was wondering. How would you like the same kind of cast I gave you the last time? As I remember, I put a sash-weight in the plaster and you broke a guy’s jaw with it.”
