He eased up on the accelerator and concentrated on flying down the incline. The convertible took the drop smoothly. Suddenly he hit the brake in surprise. Up ahead, the tail lights of the sedan loomed much larger.
A crackling sound over his head made Shayne duck. Rain abruptly splattered him. He glanced up with an oath. The top of the convertible had been ripped, was continuing to split with a crackling sound all the way to the back window. He saw a spit of fire come from the sedan and the convertible window on the passenger side immediately shattered.
Shayne knew now why he was gaining rapidly on the sedan. The goons wanted him close. The first slug had ripped the convertible top, the second had shattered half the windshield.
The detective jammed a thumb against a dash button and the window at his side rolled down. Grabbing the .45, he poked his arm out the opening. The gun in his left hand was an awkward feeling, but he squeezed the trigger repeatedly.
The sedan began to sway crazily. Shayne threw the gun on the seat and concentrated on braking the convertible through the long skid as he attempted to keep the dark car ahead of him.
But the sedan abruptly pitched off the access road. Shayne saw it leave the ground briefly and nose back into earth as he slid past it, still moving fast. He rode the slide, finally regained control of the car, and eased it off the road onto a soggy ditch shoulder.
Rolling from the car seat, he went down on his palms against the road. He reached back across the seat and snapped up the .45. Then he wriggled in under the convertible and leveled the gun back toward the headlights that now were cocked skyward from the tilted sedan.
There was no movement back there.
He waited, breathing harshly, his chest heaving, feeling squashed in the flat space. Rain pelted the pavement. Still no movement at the sedan. Shayne wiggled on elbows and knees from under the convertible and dashed to the opposite side of the road. He was away from light reflection now, had stared at the sedan, watching for the smallest flicker of movement, the .45 ready. Behind and above him traffic whisked along the highway, but opposite him silence had settled on the sedan. He looked up and down the access road. No headlights. And there probably would be none. He knew it was a little used road. He approached the sedan cautiously, 45 leveled, and yanked open the driver’s door. The inside light showed him he no longer had trouble.
The driver of the sedan was slumped against the snapped steering wheel, his eyes popped and blood leaking from a comer of his mouth. Part of the steering wheel had penetrated his chest, allowing blood to leak there too. His companion had been pitched forward and his head had gone through the windshield. He seemed propped on jagged glass, his tongue out and his throat gushing. Shayne saw the dropped gun at the man’s feet.
The stolen corpse was on the back seat, a young man, maybe thirty, dressed in a blue suit, red necktie, white shirt, gold cuff links. The corpse looked very white, very waxy, and very dead.
On the floor beside the corpse was another dead man, spreading blood from a split skull.
Shayne figured it had been one of his .45 slugs that had split that skull. He stuffed the gun into his shoulder rig and frisked the three hoods. He didn’t recognize any of them, and he found empty pockets. Scowling, he stood tall again outside the sedan and sucked a long breath of fresh air.
The rain fell steadily, dripped from his hat brim. He felt soggy, bruised, skinned, and out of sorts with the world. He thought about Lucy Hamilton in her cozy apartment, the smell of good food scenting the air. Lucy would be prowling now, perhaps slightly irritated, wondering where he was. And she’d be very pretty in spite of the consternation.
Growling, Shayne reached into the back seat of the sedan and yanked the corpse out. He braced it against his front. The guy was stiff, didn’t want to bend. He lugged the corpse to the convertible and managed to fold him into the wet front seat. Then he stood back, scowling heavily.
Who was this dude? What made someone steal him?
Well, he wasn’t going to find out standing here in the rain.
He piloted the convertible back toward the city lights, jamming the dead man down on the seat so that he was out of sight. He didn’t need some car cop stopping him to ask why he was cruising around with a cadaver as a passenger.
Rain came through the split in the roof, kept him wet. He tried to light a damp cigarette, gave up. Rolling past the City Limits sign, he saw a public pay phone ahead and he debated briefly about calling in a report about the three goons. But they didn’t need help. All they needed was to be scraped up. Somebody could do that in the morning. Maybe it wouldn’t be raining in the morning.
The rain had eased off to a drizzle again when he reached LeJeune Road. He slowed and looked for the smashed hearse. He didn’t find it. Or even an indication that an accident had occurred on LeJeune that night.
He pulled into a curbing, sat drumming fingers against the wet steering wheel, a black scowl drawing the angles of his rugged face down as he realized he didn’t know the name of the funeral home that had lost a body.
Finally he snapped the convertible into gear and headed for police headquarters. His friend of long-standing, Will Gentry, chief of Miami police, was in Washington, testifying about gambling before some Senate subcommittee, but Jeff Collier had been left in charge. And the large Negro would listen, take the corpse, find the funeral home that had lost it.
Except...
When Shayne reached police headquarters, he found that someone had pitched a bomb inside the front door.
The bomb had exploded.
II
No one had the time or the inclination to talk to Mike Shayne. Police headquarters was in a turmoil. Two uniformed cops had been killed and three detectives had been injured in the blast. A soggy and irritated hulk of a private detective who claimed to have a stolen corpse in the front seat of his car was a nothing right then.
Shayne pushed through the debris, looking for Jeff Collier, the black man Gentry had personally tabbed to be an assistant chief of police was not to be found. Shayne finally spotted Sergeant Piper, who had been in charge of the Missing Persons Bureau for twenty years.
“Hey, Piper, hold it!”
“Get out of here, Mike. Can’t you see we’ve got enough trouble?”
“Piper, I’ve got a corpse outside. Where’s Collier?”
“On his way in. Man, he doesn’t sleep here! Now bug, Mike. We’ve got problems as you can plainly see. You got a stiff, go bury it!”
“Piper, I’m serious. Nobody’s called in about a missing dead guy?”
“Hey, pal, I’m in charge of finding live stiffs!”
Piper stomped off. Shayne stared after him, eyes hard, jaw jutting. Piper disappeared around a corner. Shayne whirled, saw a detective he knew.
“Reynolds!”
Reynolds ignored him, picked his way through the bombed front door and went outside to the drizzle.
“Mike?”
Shayne turned on the familiar voice and saw Tim Rourke approaching from the interior of the building. Rourke was a tall man, almost scarecrow thin, a hardbitten, cynical man who had been the police reporter at the Miami Daily News for years. There were not many men Shayne considered close, but Rourke was one of them. They’d combined talents to knock heads against crime for what sometimes seemed centuries.
Rourke stopped a couple of feet from Shayne, his experienced eyes inventorying minutely. “Who stomped on you?”
“Nobody,” the detective growled.
“You had a look at yourself in the last five seconds?”