Right now he wanted to get close to the big blonde. She was his only contact with Dawson-the man who had slipped him the two hundred-dollar bills in exchange for passage to New Orleans. He had to work fast, gain her confidence somehow-
Shayne eased himself into the chair opposite her. She emptied the second half of the drink he had bought her, staring steadily at him over the rim of her glass.
Then she set it down, ran her tongue over her lips, and asked, “What’s all this monkey business about? I know Dawson was trying to get a plane out of town at midnight. If he’s run out on us-”
“I’ve got a couple of minutes,” Shayne interrupted her harshly. “Shut up and listen to me.”
Her eyes widened. “A couple of minutes?”
“Before some gunmen come in after me.” He turned his head to look at the open door of Bates’s office. He couldn’t see the proprietor but knew he was being watched from inside the room.
“That isn’t long enough to tell you what you want to know about your husband,” he said rapidly.
“My husband?”
“Sure. Only he told me his name was Parson.”
She said, “I haven’t got any husband.” Her eyes narrowed as she concentrated her gaze on his face. “I get you now. You were at the airline ticket office while I was asking about him.”
Shayne nodded impatiently. “I trailed you here in a taxi. Do we go somewhere and talk things over?”
“Where is Dawson?”
“I’m the only man in Miami who can tell you.”
“Well?”
“If I stay alive long enough,” Shayne amended.
The big blonde considered that statement for a moment, looking away from him.
Shayne leaned forward and took hold of her wrist. The bone was large under the generous covering of flesh. He said, “I’m not playing games. We’ve got maybe a couple of minutes to get away from here where we can talk.”
“And if we don’t?”
“Then you lose your chance to find out about Dawson.”
“Are you in trouble?”
“Plenty. I walked out of Bates’s office with a gun on my back. He’s got some boys on the way here now to take care of me.”
She nodded thoughtfully, and again her eyes traveled past Shayne to the rear of the room. She lifted her free hand and brushed her fingers across her forehead, then pressed her eyelids with the tips of two fingers.
Shayne realized she had reached that certain stage of drunkenness at which her thought processes were clear and direct but not swift-a condition in which her brain grasped the essentials of a situation and disregarded all side issues.
She said, “I wondered what Batesey wanted with you.”
“Is that gray sedan outside yours?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sober enough to push it?”
She smiled suddenly. It was the first time he had seen her smile. Her eyes crinkled at the corners and she smiled all over her face like a delighted child. “I’ve been soberer,” she told him, and added, “and a hell of a lot drunker.”
Shayne released her wrist. He said rapidly and in a low voice, “Go out and crank it up. I’ll wander out toward the door, but I’ll stay in the light, where there are too many people for Bates to do his stuff. Wheel the heap up as close as you can, and I’ll make a run for it.”
“What about him?” She inclined her head ever so slightly toward a rear table near the telephone booth where Fred Gurney sat glowering at them.
“Leave him out of it,” Shayne said lightly and swiftly. “You won’t be sorry, if we can get out of this together.”
The woman said thickly with a hint of excitement, “I don’t think I’d be sorry at that. But I could use a bracer-”
“Hell! Get going,” Shayne whispered furiously. “You’re carrying a big enough load now.”
Her face grew sullen and she started to protest, but after a long look into Shayne’s angry gray eyes, she got up and walked toward the front door without wavering. Shayne glanced at Gurney’s table and saw that the fellow had half risen as though to follow her. Gurney looked from her moving figure to Shayne, and Shayne shook his head not more than an inch. Gurney tightened his thin lips, and his scowl deepened, but he hesitated only a second before reseating himself.
Timing himself impatiently, waiting to give the blonde a chance to get the car to the door, Shayne wondered what sort of a deal they were working on together and what it had to do with Dawson. Why had she claimed at the airport that the dough-faced man was her husband, and now to him declared she had no husband? He wondered whether he was making a fool of himself and whether, after all, there could have been two men of the same description both trying to get tickets on Flight Sixty-two.
He glanced at the private office and saw Bates standing in the open doorway, his mouth grim and his worried, slate-gray eyes flickering from Shayne to the front entrance.
Shayne got up and went toward the door.
Bates moved quickly to intercept him. He said, loudly enough to be heard above the moan of the juke-box and the excited voices of the people in the room, “No you don’t, pal. You don’t get out of here without paying for the drinks.” His right hand was hidden inside his sagging pocket.
Shayne kept right on walking toward the door. He heard a motor racing outside. Then it was throttled down to a steady purr.
Bates was moving in at an angle to intercept him before he reached the door. He went on talking in a loud and angry voice. “You’re not walking outta here without paying. That’s a lead-pipe cinch. I don’t want trouble, but I-”
He was within six feet of Shayne, and his right hand was coming out of his pocket. Shayne hadn’t looked in his direction but now he whirled, took one lunging step sideways, and threw a left hook to Bates’s square jaw.
Bates reeled backward and went down.
Shayne sprinted toward the screen door. Bates’s. 45 roared behind him and a slug plunked into the door casing above his head as he went through.
The gray sedan was pulled up outside with the right-hand door standing open and the motor roaring. He dived into the seat beside the woman, and the car raced forward down the gravel drive to the macadam.
He said, “Nice going, baby. We just-” He sucked in his breath and added, “Maybe we didn’t,” as tires screeched, and a big car with dimmed lights lurched into the driveway.
Mrs. Dawson swung the steering wheel violently to the right and stepped hard on the gas to avoid a collision. There were confused shouts behind them as she swerved to the left into 36th Street in second gear. She sat erect with both hands loosely on the steering wheel. The sedan got up to fifty in second gear and was tearing itself to pieces before she shifted into high.
Shayne was doing some fast figuring on how long it would take Bates to give the reinforcements the hundred-dollar bill and send them racing after the gray sedan.
They heard a few scattered shots from the direction of the Fun Club. The woman looked up at the mirror and said, “My God! They’re coming-but fast.” She switched off her lights and added calmly, “We may make it yet, big boy.”
In the light of the moon, now shining in a pool of unclouded sky, the straight black macadam had a grayish sheen. The way the sedan trembled, Shayne knew it must be making more than seventy. He grinned into the dark and said wonderingly, “You’re doing all right. If you pull this one out of the bag I’ll owe you a lot of drinks.”
“I’ll be able to use a lot.” Her eyes were on the road ahead; she was gripping the wheel tighter. Lights flashed by on either side of the street, and Shayne realized that they were approaching the more thickly populated section of the city proper. The headlights of the pursuing car were relentlessly gaining.
“What kind of jam you in?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I think they’d rather get me alive, though.”
She lifted her foot from the accelerator and put it on the brake. The sedan settled back on its haunches with tires screaming. She said nothing but suddenly swung the wheel hard to turn into a side street. The sedan skidded and the left side rose from the ground. Then it crashed into a concrete guard rail of a bridge.