Shayne glanced down. “You won’t shoot me, Adele.”
“After that nice sex I certainly don’t want to. Turn right and I won’t.”
He continued nearly to the end of the block, then pulled over into a parking space, cut the motor and swung around to face her.
“This would be a good place to do it. Naturally I hope you’ll decide against it. Your uncle knows you’re with me. The desk clerk at the hotel saw us go out together.”
“Mike, please. Don’t make me.”
“You’re new at this. You can use some advice. There’s plenty of traffic noise. Hold the gun low and pick your moment. Wipe off the fingerprints and drop it on the floor. After you get out, don’t run.”
“Mike, look at me.”
They exchanged a long look. Shayne said slowly, “I actually think you mean it.”
“But God, I’d hate to do it.”
“Does it have to be fatal, or would you settle for putting me in the hospital? Just above the knee would be a good place.”
The gun-barrel trembled, but she kept her voice steady. “Mike, I just can’t allow you to-This is very, very serious. Start the motor and do exactly what I tell you because I’m wound up so tight-”
Shayne raised his eyebrows humorously and snapped on the ignition. “You’ve convinced me.”
“Drive west to 17th. Then turn left. And don’t ask any questions because I’m not going to tell you a thing. Don’t talk at all.”
“Can I talk to myself?”
“No! It makes me nervous. You don’t want that.”
He made the turns as she called them, and before long he was slowing in front of a ramshackle house on 15th Court. A blue panel truck was parked in the driveway, surely the same truck that had almost decoyed him into a chase in which he would have lost a wheel.
“Pull in behind the truck,” Adele told him, with a movement of the.38.
Shayne accelerated. “I’ve changed my mind. I don’t think you’re really up to it. A pretty girl like you.”
“Mike, stop!” Her voice climbed. “This minute!”
He grinned at her. “This is my business, baby. Do you really think there are any bullets in that gun?”
“I can’t let you bluff me,” she said tensely.
She pushed the gun forward against his knee and pulled the trigger. The hammer clicked down on nothing. It clicked twice more. The blood drained out of her face.
With a sidewise swipe, he picked the gun out of her hand and tossed it into the back seat.
“You’re horrible!” she said. “You’re a horrible person!”
“That’s one of the things they say about me. It’s part of the image.”
He continued across Flagler and made another turn. She put her face in her hands.
“What are you going to do with me?”
“Not much, baby. In some ways you’ve been helpful.”
“I botched it. I botched it.”
Shayne pulled in against the curb and cut the motor. “A couple of things you did very well. The loose wheels-that wasn’t bad at all. If you could get me aboard the Mozambique, all you’d have to do was tie me up overnight and I’d miss the excitement tomorrow. But why should I trust you when I’ve never seen you before today? If that wheel had shaken off, we both would have been racked up. Then you had the old lady stop us. She was great. There was only one small thing wrong with the timing. The kid should have moved the minute I got in the car. Instead of that, he waited till you got in with me.”
She said bitterly, “We didn’t expect you to notice a little thing like that. You’re a monster. I’d like to know when you took the bullets out of the gun.”
“When do you think?”
“Do you mean when we were-”
She came at him angrily and struck him twice with her purse before he could take it away from her.
“You-you-she sputtered.
“Calm down, Adele. That sex wasn’t my idea. You practically raped me. No real harm was done. Your bag was on the floor. You shouldn’t close your eyes when you make love. It isn’t hard to unload an automatic with one hand.”
“You are-without a doubt-”
“What else happened at five o’clock?”
“What do you mean?”
“That sex episode held me up about fifteen minutes. And don’t tell me you have sex with every man you slug with an ax-handle, because except for your political opinions I think you’re probably a very nice girl.”
“What makes you think I’m the one who hit you? It could have been somebody else in the crew.”
“But it wasn’t.”
“No, it wasn’t. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I just wanted to put you out of action, and I didn’t even succeed in doing that… I wasn’t pretending about wanting to make love to you!”
“Yeah, it was politically OK.” He touched her shoulder. “No point in crying, Adele. You’re losing your eye-liner.”
“You certainly acted as though you liked it. Was that just-”
“I liked it,” he said gently. “But that’s not why it happened. You wanted to keep me there, and I wanted to get the bullets out of your gun. Everything else was incidental. What was happening in the outside world during that fifteen minutes?”
“You’ll hear about it anyway. Another Vega leaflet is coming out any minute. After he picks them up at the printshop he’ll be much harder to find. But that was only a pretext! Damn it, I-”
“We can analyze our motives some other time. What kind of leaflet?”
“Like the one this morning, nothing sensational… And there you were, sitting on the bed in a wrapper. It was ninety percent lust. I don’t care if you believe me or not.”
Shayne opened her purse. “Not as cluttered as some,” he remarked.
There was a small change purse, a few folded bills, the usual female grooming equipment, a library card, a magazine clipping. He unfolded the clipping. It was a photograph of a pale, tired-looking young man wearing a beret and jungle camouflage. He was thin and unshaven, with a preoccupied frown between his eyebrows. To Shayne, he looked neither glamorous or particularly dangerous.
“Ruiz?”
“Are you out of it!” she said. “You could ask anybody in this part of town. Of course it’s Ruiz.”
“What’s the attraction?” he said, studying the face.
“Mike,” she said definitely, “you don’t know a damn thing about it, I’m sorry to say. Can I get out now?”
“Any time.”
“Give me back my things.”
He put the picture of Ruiz in his pocket and stuffed everything back except the money, which he let slip between his knees.
“Educate me a little first. What’s going on, Adele? You don’t approve of your uncle’s politics, that’s clear. You don’t want me to interfere with Vega’s counterdemonstration, if that’s what you call it. But you don’t like Vega’s politics either, do you?”
“I despise them.”
“That’s the feeling I get. If he turns up tomorrow with a good-sized contingent, your uncle and his people will get their heads bashed. Why should you want that? On general principles? Because fighting in the streets turns liberals into revolutionaries?”
“I don’t dare talk about it. Look at the mess I’ve made. Now I’m going to start using my head. I’m just going to shut up and get out of this car.”
“Go ahead!” he exclaimed. “You’ve been acting like a goddamn child, and you don’t want to do anything sensible this late in the afternoon. That would be inconsistent. My God! Your uncle thought all he had to do was bring in Michael Shayne and pay him a fee, and his troubles would be over. I’d bare my teeth at Vega and the man would curl up and die. Think about it for a minute. What can I really do? Beat him up? Scare him? How can I prove whose money he’s spending? All I can do is plow ahead with my eyes closed, and hope somebody else will make the mistakes. And you made them. You worked out a complicated scheme to shanghai me. You exposed three or four of your people, you tried to put a.38 slug in my knee, you had sex with me-and that wasn’t ninety percent lust, baby, it was ninety percent calculation. You’re right. So far you’ve done a lousy job. And it was all totally unnecessary. I’m not Clark Kent or Mighty Mouse. Why not start over and tell me what’s really happening? I know Crowther and I don’t like him. If I knew more about Colonel Caldera I probably wouldn’t like him either. Ruiz is probably OK. He just doesn’t take a good picture.”
She hesitated, her hand on the door handle.
“You’re preparing something,” he went on. “If it’s not too illegal I might give your uncle his thousand dollars back and go up to Pompano and see if I can make some money on the trotters.”
She moved toward him swiftly and kissed the corner of his mouth. “I can’t tell you, Mike. I’m sorry, but I can’t.”
He made no effort to stop her. She got out of the car and walked away-a very nice-looking girl, whether coming or going.
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 News left by a previous driver. The next day’s anti-Crowther demonstration by Dr. Galvez’ group had been given the big headline.
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 Mozambique. They recognized each other at the same instant.
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? Alianza people. They think of themselves as being absolutely ruthless. Of course much of it is gas, but when anyone talks as much as they do about achieving success through violence, it is sometimes prudent to worry a little.”
His companion murmured something in Spanish. Vega said, “You are right in your count, Carlos, only two are visible. These we could handle. I never shrink from a fight when the sides are approximately equal. But I can guarantee you that there are others lying in wait inside the truck. You know their strategy as well as I do-never attack without overwhelming local superiority. That is why I say to this driver, for the love of the blessed Virgin, put on a little speed! At any moment they may pull up alongside and open on us with submachine guns. It happens daily in Buenos Aires, in Bogota.”
“Are they part of the Ruiz organization?”
“Ah,” Vega said. “That I am in no position to say of my own knowledge. Perhaps it is time we exchange credentials.”
Shayne grinned. “All you’re going to get out of me is my hackie’s license.”
Vega’s eyes flickered up to the license hanging from the back of the front seat, and returned to the mirror. “There is little resemblance,” he remarked.
“That’s deliberate,” Shayne said. “If you really want me to speed up, hang on.”
He accelerated sharply, and turned off 3rd Avenue, tires screaming. After two more quick turns, he ended at the ramp leading down into the taxi garage. The truck had good pickup and kept fairly close. In the garage, Shayne pulled in beside his Buick.
“Here we change cars.”
Both men got out readily.
“Not you, Carlos,” Shayne said. “Just Vega, if you don’t mind.”
Carlos minded, but there were several cabbies standing around watching, and he decided not to protest. Shayne slid behind the wheel. He slowed as he passed the dispatcher.
“Thanks, Eddie. Send me a bill.”
“What are you talking about, a bill? Any time.”
“Get down,” Shayne told Vega. “All the way down.” Vega crouched out of sight as the Buick came up the ramp. The panel truck had stopped with its motor running.
It didn’t follow. After turning a corner, Shayne told Vega to get back on the seat.