Will Gentry growled, “Wait a minute, Tim.”
Rourke laughed. “I stuck that in to see if you were still with me. All over the world, cops are crooked. But not in Miami. Our brave men in blue would never take a wrong dime, and they’ll all go to heaven when they die; thank you, Jesus. Forty kilograms of happy powder pulled out of the pipeline, thanks to Mike Shayne, which is wonderful news for the good guys. Hallelujah. That cat who mugged me tonight probably heard it on the six o’clock news, and he knows what it means. Higher prices for a few weeks, until the boys get the interruption taken care of. And who’s going to pay the higher prices? The dope-heads? Don’t be silly, they can’t afford the prices they have to pay now. We pay it, Will. They’ll just have to steal more. There’s going to be a sharp rise in street crime, starting tomorrow. Right? I’ll be carrying twenty-three bucks from now on, instead of seventeen.”
Shayne shook his head ruefully. Rourke was right, of course. Not only that, Shayne had been waiting at the weed-grown airstrip as a result of a roundabout tip originating somewhere in the established heroin network. Someone had wanted these two men removed. They had cheated, perhaps, or had seemed unreliable. Perhaps they were beginners, trying to carve a piece of the market for themselves. It was a complex and dirty business, and Shayne usually let other people worry about it.
He shifted down for a red light. Seeing no approaching traffic, he jumped the light and came back up into third. Rourke was taking a call from Washington. The caller wanted to speak to Mike Shayne. Rourke explained once more that Shayne had left the hospital and was on his way, and he advised the caller to try again in half an hour.
Shayne, an eighth of a mile away, was heading northwest along the river. He turned onto 7th Avenue, then, after several more blocks, into a narrower side street. He pulled the wheel too far and had to correct.
He parked a half block from the rundown one-story building which KMW shared with a travel agency and a record company. He cut the lights and ignition but left the radio on. Will Gentry, over frequent interruptions from Rourke’s other guest, was trying to respond. He defended his department’s use of informers; how the hell else could they enforce the law?
When Rourke interrupted to take another call, giving Gentry a moment to catch his breath, Shayne turned off the radio and began a series of careful movements that would get him out of the car.
As he opened the door, he heard a gunshot.
Shayne had been shot at too often to take the sound lightly. He jerked back, knocking his injured arm painfully against the wheel. Probably the shot had nothing to do with him, but nevertheless his left hand went instinctively into the door-pocket and came back with a. 357 Smith and Wesson. This was an accurate weapon up to a distance of twenty yards, but he had never had to fire it left-handed.
He listened hard, one foot out of the car.
There was a second shot, either muffled by something or farther away. Shayne was ready for this one, and recognized it as having been made by a small-caliber handgun, probably a. 25. Shayne, or Shayne’s car, was not the target.
The street and sidewalks were empty. There were parking spaces nearer the lighted WKMW sign; Shayne had chosen this one because he could get into it without backing. He stood up quietly, letting the door close enough to turn off the dome-light inside.
He was still a long way from normal. The sidewalk seemed to be slipping beneath his feet. He waited, holding the radio antenna, until he came into balance. After releasing the antenna, he waited another few seconds before he moved. He was very much off duty, and unlike off-duty policemen, he felt no obligation to intervene in other people’s quarrels. This was the main reason he was still alive, and reasonably healthy. But it seemed likely that this quarrel was over. One explanation for the two closely-spaced shots, one sharp, the other muffled, was that when the second shot was fired, the gun muzzle had been pressed against a body.
He moved past the station and on to the corner, keeping to the outside of the parked cars so he could go either way.
He stopped in the shadow of a parked truck, as near as he could get to the corner without coming out into the light. Diagonally across the intersection was a five-unit shopping center, a chain supermarket flanked by smaller stores. The parking space seemed excessive, and was probably rarely filled. There were two cars in it now, and several abandoned carts. Shayne studied the scene through the truck’s side window and windshield. The two cars were well back, facing the street. The shadows changed, and the rear trunk of one car snapped up.
It was a black sedan, with a license combination identifying it as part of a rental fleet. Someone was attempting to manhandle a bulky object into the luggage space. The angle was wrong, and the raised hatch concealed what was happening. The object was heavy as well as large; the person doing the lifting had difficulty getting it off the ground.
Suddenly a woman’s bare arm flopped into view.
Something fell and rolled. A figure emerged and moved to retrieve it. In the night illumination from the supermarket windows, Shayne saw a small man with a beard, wearing a light-colored fisherman’s cap with a long bill. He was in the open for only a second, stooping. There was something puzzlingly familiar about the slight figure, but he was gone before Shayne could pin it down.
Headlights were approaching. Shayne moved to the other side of the truck and waited, crouching.
In the parking lot, the man in the long-billed cap finished what he was doing. The lid slammed down.
Shayne lifted the pistol into the light, and was disgusted to see that the barrel was trembling slightly. He had already decided that he was too far away for an accurate shot. There was no nearer cover. In the ungainly, disfiguring cast, he was more visible than usual; certainly he felt more visible. The small man in the parking lot, now burrowing in the front seat of the rented car, would know he had been seen stuffing a body into the trunk, and he would hardly stand still and put his hands out meekly for the handcuffs.
The parking lot exit was within easy range, and ordinarily Shayne would have waited, and shot out a tire. He wished he had more confidence in his accuracy with his left hand. Making up his mind abruptly, he loped back to the Buick. His own luggage hatch was controlled by a release inside the fender. The lid rose soundlessly and a light came on.
Everything was carefully arranged. Reaching for a grenade, Shayne saw a spray can of luminous paint, and hesitated briefly. In the end he took both, the paint can and the grenade, tucking them into the elbow-bend of his sling.
He came back to the front seat, where he listened intently for an instant. Hearing nothing, he opened his phone and signalled the mobile operator.
When she came on he told her in a low voice to call WKMW and insist on being put through to Will Gentry, a guest on the Rourke show.
“Tell him there’s a black rented Ford in the shopping center on the next corner. If it’s still there, he’ll find a body in the trunk. And hurry.”
“Right, Mike, underway.”
Shayne heard a car door slam. He broke the connection and returned to the corner at a half-run, using his left hand to support the cast and the weight of the weapons. He was in time to see the fishing cap duck into the second of the two parked cars. This one, also a sedan but longer and heavier, was an off-white Olds, carrying scars from minor scrapes.