Nothing else in the world could have made Shayne feel so good at that moment as the weight of Will Gentry’s personal revolver in his pocket after all that had happened; and when Rourke returned from telephoning he was alert and eager to get going, knowing now that he couldn’t fail in what he had set out to do.
“It’s okay.” Rourke dropped into the seat beside him. “Ahead and south on Miami Avenue across the river. Mr. Agnew will be flattered to receive a call from the Press, and I gathered he hasn’t even gone to bed yet.”
Shayne swung right on Miami Avenue without asking any more questions. The streets were practically empty of traffic, and a few moments later they were cruising down a quiet street in the Southwest section where neat five-and six-room bungalows were ranged side by side in hundred-foot building lots.
The houses were uniformly dark at this hour, and they didn’t have to look for street numbers when they saw light streaming from the front windows of one house near the center of the correct block.
Shayne pulled up in front and got out to follow Rourke up a walk toward the front door. It was a white stucco bungalow with neatly trimmed lawn and a gravel driveway on the side leading back to a detached garage in the rear. The front door opened as they neared it, and a wiry young man was silhouetted in the light. Rourke pumped his hand and said, “I’m Rourke from the Daily News. Mighty good of you to let us drop in so late. This is a friend, Michael Shayne. He’s interested, too, so I asked him—”
“Mike Shayne!” Joe Agnew’s voice was reverential. “The private eye we’re always reading about? What d’yuh know? Come right on in, both of you. The wife and kids are in bed, and we can talk right here.”
He led them in to a small neat sitting-room, seated them in comfortable chairs, and urged them to have a can of cold beer, confessing unhappily that there was nothing stronger in the house, “Because my old lady raises hell whenever I bring a bottle home.”
They both told him beer would be swell, and waited impatiently while he went to the kitchen for it. Joe was a sandy-haired young man in his thirties, with a thin, shrewd face that was tanned the color of old leather from Miami’s sunshine.
“Gee, Mr. Shayne, I never thought the day’d come I’d see you sitting here in my house drinking beer,” he bubbled effusively when he returned. “It’s about that guy bled all over the back seat of my cab, huh? You catch him yet?”
“He’s dead, Joe. Somebody cut his throat after the bullet in his belly failed to do the job. There are two other unsolved murders tonight that have some connection with him. We need every damned thing you can tell us about picking him up.”
“Well, I’ll sure try to tell you all I can. Afraid it won’t be too much, though. I sort of knew there was something wrong when I first saw him there on Eighteenth Street. You know how it is? A hackie sort of gets a sixth sense about things, I say a hackie sort of gets a sixth sense if you know what I mean.”
Shayne and Rourke nodded gravely. Shayne pressed him: “Go back and tell it just as it happened.”
“Well, I was cruising, see? Had just dropped a fare up on Twenty-Fourth. A dopey old dame that gimme a nickel tip. I knew soon’s she got in my cab, I say, I knew soon’s she got in—”
“So you were cruising empty on Eighteenth?” Shayne put in.
“Nossir. I was running south when I hit Eighteenth and something just seemed to tell me to turn the corner there or I’d miss a fare. You get that way, hacking. Like as if you had a sort of—”
“Sixth sense,” said Shayne hastily.
“That’s right.” Joe Agnew beamed at him happily. “But I dunno for sure now. After, when I got to thinking I wondered if maybe I’d heard a shot that made me swing the corner. You know, seems now like I did. Only, then, I thought it was a backfire, I guess. I mean I didn’t rightly know it was a shot, except maybe I sensed it. So I slowed and turned the corner, and sure enough my headlights pick up this man in the street right ahead, kind of half running away from me. Not running really, but trotting, I’d say. And he looked over his shoulder and saw my cab lights and waved to me and out of the corner of my eye I see these other two guys on the sidewalk and they look like maybe they’re wrestling or fighting.
“But I didn’t think much about them. They weren’t looking for an empty cab. So I pulled up and leaned back to open the door and he sort of tumbled in on the seat. He was young and his face sort of white and kind of scared-looking, and he turned to look back, and then said sharp, ‘Get going, can’tcha?’
“So I started rolling and says back, not smart-alecky, you know, but throwing it back at him, ‘Anywhere special you want to go, or just for a joyride?’ And he gave me an address, then, the same one I gave the police later — I got it in my log — and sort of slumped back breathing hard and I saw in the mirror he was sort of holding his hands tight across his stomach, but I didn’t think much of it then, I say, I didn’t think much of it then, but after — when I did get to thinking—”
“You did think something of it,” said Shayne impatiently. “Did he say anything else to you?”
“Not much. Only one thing that was sort of funny. We were cruising along and I wasn’t thinking about nothing much when I notice he’s leaned way forward close to the back of the front seat like he’s trying to read the notice that there is in all cabs, you know. Got my picture and name and license number and all that. It’s faded and hard to read with the isinglass over it, and nobody never does look at it anyhow because what do they care what a hackie’s name or number, but I see he’s trying to read it and I grinned back over my shoulder at him and switched on the dome light and says, just to make a sort of joke, you know, I say, just to make a sort of joke you know, I says, ‘It’s me, all right. I got a license and everything.’ And he slumped back like he was frightened and then said like it worried him, ‘But I can’t read your name or number there.’
“So I told him. ‘Joe Agnew,’ I says. Number so and so and so. ‘Special rates,’ I says, just for a gag, only it ain’t really a gag because I own my own hack, you see, and do bring it home at night and sometimes do get special calls here at home after hours from particular customers who know me good and know I never mind getting up out of bed to accommodate them no matter how late it is, so I told him, ‘Special rates on special trips when I’m off duty. Just call me at home any time, I says, that you can’t get a cab no place else.’ And he said very polite that he might do that, and then I pulled up in front of that apartment house where he wanted to go and he got out and stumbled on the curb and I thought he was sick and going to fall.
“But he straightened up and said he was all right and stuck a wadded single in my hand and went up the walk. The fare was only seventy cents so that sort of evened up for the nickel tip I’d got just before but they do even up like that, I say, they do even up like that from morning to night so I say it’s never no use getting sore.”
“Did you see him go in the door?” demanded Shayne.
Joe Agnew hesitated and screwed up his eyes thoughtfully. “I think I did. The front door, you know. He was pulling it open, anyhow, when I drove away. So I thought no more about it, naturally, till half an hour later or so when I’d stopped for a cup of coffee and I heard the newscast telling about a broad getting herself choked on Eighteenth Street a little while before and I knew the address was just about where I’d picked that fare up, and it sounded like it had happened just about the same time, and I got to wondering whether maybe it was a clue or something and should I report it to the caps, but I don’t like to stick my neck out, I say I don’t like to stick my neck out, so I thinks to myself, ‘Better stay out of it, Joey boy. You know how cops are. They’ll have you up on the carpet and you’ll lose time and all for nothing,’ so I go back out to my cab parked outside and I’m just about to get in and cruise a little when something sort of seemed to make me open the back door and look in at the cushion.”