“Nuts! He’s the murderer, of course. The man who was driving the sedan. He recognized Lucy at the morgue, caught her by surprise, and hurried her out before she could protest. His Miami street address was the giveaway, Will. No one in Miami lives on plain Twelfth Street. It’s either Northwest or Northeast, Southwest or Southeast. That mistake proves him a stranger.”
“Why would the murderer go down to try and identify the body?” argued Gentry. “He certainly knew who she was.”
“God knows what he wanted. Maybe he hoped she still had her clothes on and was afraid she had something incriminating he hoped to get from her. The important thing right now is that he has Lucy Hamilton. What are you going to do about that?”
“Why, I don’t know, Mike.” Will Gentry’s voice was deceptively mild. He had been rolling the unlighted cigar between his lips, and now he struck a match and carefully applied flame to the end. “Since you seem bent on running my police department, suppose you tell me what to do.”
“Don’t, Will. It’s Lucy we’re talking about. I’m convinced the man who has her prisoner has already killed two people tonight. Why not Lucy, too?”
“I can’t think of any good reason.” The cigar was drawing well and Gentry regarded the glowing end approvingly. “Unless he’s holding her as a sort of hostage to force you to give him the money he’s after. If you’d handed it over in the first place, he wouldn’t have bothered Lucy.”
“Damn it, Will! I told you there was no money.” Shayne half-rose from his chair with clenched fists.
“I know. You’ve told me a lot of things the last fifteen minutes. What in hell do you expect me to do about Lucy? How do I know she wasn’t simply keeping an assignation down at the morgue and went off with him of her own volition?”
“Goddamn it, Will.”
“It would be on a par with all the other screwy things you and she have pulled tonight. Give me a description of this so-called murderer — if he exists.”
“He’s heavy-set,” said Michael Shayne between tight-clenched teeth, “and middle-aged. Wearing a gray suit and gray hat. Probably driving the car he stole from the Miami Beach resident who picked him up at the accident and got slugged for his trouble.”
“That’s not much to go on.”
“Do you remember Jack Bristow told Lucy that a dead man had shot him?”
“I recall you saying that Lucy said Bristow had told her that.”
“Does that give you any ideas?”
“None that you would care to listen to, I’m afraid. When you look at the whole crazy story, Mike—”
“Call New Orleans,” said Shayne angrily. “If you want a complete description of your man. Detective First Class Mark Switzer. The cop who was handcuffed to Hugh Allerdice when the police car went into the river there three days ago.”
“Now, look here, Mike. If you’re trying to tell me that a police detective—”
Michael Shayne got to his feet slowly. “I am telling you, Will. And you’re not listening. Just as you wouldn’t have listened to a lot of other things if I’d told them to you earlier tonight. You’ve accused me of acting like a one-man police force tonight, and you got a little sore about it. Maybe, by God, that’s what Miami needs. While you sit here on your dead butt and do nothing, I’m going out to find Lucy Hamilton.”
“How?”
“You wouldn’t understand,” snarled Shayne. “You’ve been Chief of Police too long to remember the rudiments of police work. Your brains have gone to fat and your guts have shriveled up. Come on, Tim.” Shayne whirled about and started for the door.
The newspaper reporter got to his feet cautiously, looking warily for some reaction from Chief Will Gentry to prevent Shayne from walking out. Instead, to his surprise, he saw a faint smile on Gentry’s thick lips, a twinkle in his eyes as Shayne stormed out the door.
He stopped Rourke from following, getting to his feet as he did so. “Wait, Tim.”
His hand went inside his coat to withdraw the .38 with which he had threatened Shayne earlier. He held it out butt-first to the reporter, telling him wryly, “Give this to Mike, for God’s sake. He may need it if he’s going out against a cop who’s turned kill-crazy.”
Chapter Sixteen
Outside police headquarters, Timothy Rourke reached Shayne’s parked car just as the redhead was slamming it back savagely against the bumper of a car parked too close to allow him to swing away from the curb.
Rourke jerked the door open and slid in beside him as Shayne rammed forward to gain a few extra inches, then backed hard again.
“Where you headed in such a hurry?” Rourke asked easily.
“I don’t know — yet. Away from here where I can think straight for a minute.” Shayne swung the wheel hard, went forward with his foot hard on the accelerator so the right end of his front bumper forced aside the rear bumper of the car ahead. The heavy sedan leaped forward in the street, and Rourke put his hand on Shayne’s arm. “Don’t be sore at Will Gentry,” he admonished. “He came through good there at the last.”
“I’m not wasting time being sore at Will,” Shayne ground out between set teeth. “I’m trying to think where in hell we go now.”
“Pull in to the curb,” said Rourke reasonably, “and let’s see what we’ve got.”
Shayne grunted something unintelligible, but took his foot from the gas as they swung into Flagler Street, and let the Hudson drift to the empty curb.
“He’s got Lucy and he hasn’t got the money,” said Shayne flatly. “You know what that means.”
“Sure,” agreed Rourke just as flatly. “He’ll torture her to learn what you and she did with the money. But he won’t kill her, Mike. As long as he thinks there’s any chance in the world you’ve got the dough, he’ll keep Lucy alive to put pressure on you. One thing that keeps bothering me — where in hell is Hugh Allerdice all this time?”
“Yeh. No one has even seen him tonight that we know of. Look, Tim. Did you talk to the taxi driver who picked Bristow up after he was shot?”
“I don’t know that anyone talked to him. He phoned his information in.”
“Was his name given out — to the papers or news broadcasters?”
“Not for publication. Gentry asked us to keep him incognito to avoid any possible reprisals and because he might be an important witness later.”
“But you know who he is?”
“Sure. Name is Joe Agnew, I remember. Lives in the Southwest section, I think.”
Shayne was breathing hard and the lines in his face were deep. He started his motor and pulled forward toward an all-night drugstore. “Go in and call Agnew,” he ordered brusquely. “You’ve got to have an interview tonight to hit the front pages tomorrow. Pour it on big that he’s a hero and your editor demands a personal interview. I want to hear him tell exactly what happened in front of that house on Eighteenth when he picked Bristow up.”
Rourke said cheerfully, “Can do,” and opened the door to get out. He paused on the sidewalk, reached down to pull Gentry’s .38 from under his belt. He laid it on the seat beside Shayne, explaining, “Chief Gentry’s parting gift to you. He figured you weren’t carrying one tonight, and that it might come in handy if you do catch up with Switzer.” He slammed the door shut and hurried inside the drugstore.
Shayne sat very still behind the wheel looking down at the blued steel of the police revolver that dully reflected the light from a street lamp. A warm feeling swept through him that made him clench his teeth hard and blink his eyes rapidly as he looked at the gun.
He reached out slowly and picked it up by the corrugated butt, studied it for a long moment precisely as though he had never seen a gun before in his life, then dropped it into a side pocket. It was quite true that he was unarmed tonight. Gentry knew that only on very rare occasions did he ever carry the gun he had a license for. And Gentry was right about tonight, of course. If the man he was looking for was a police detective from New Orleans who had gone bad, it would be the utmost folly to go up against him without a gun.