He grunted and folded the paper on the seat beside him, drove on down past Flagler Street and pulled up at the curb by the side entrance of his apartment-hotel.
A sedan with New York license plates was parked at the curb just in front of him.
A man got out of the front seat as Shayne locked the ignition and got out. He was short-legged and squatty, with a black felt hat pulled low over his face. He loitered forward on the sidewalk until Shayne stepped up on the curb, then moved to intercept him, saying hoarsely, “It’s him, Marv.”
A blunt automatic showed in his right hand. Shayne stopped and glanced over his left shoulder at the car. The muzzle of a sub-machine gun was pointed out through the rear window at him. He stood still and said, “Okay, boys. I wasn’t expecting you so soon.”
The squatty man motioned toward the sedan with his automatic. “Crawl in the front seat.”
“You can take everything I’m carrying right here,” Shayne argued mildly.
“You’re goin’ for a ride with us.” The voice was raspy.
Shayne said, “Okay,” and walked over to climb into the front seat of the sedan.
The squatty man followed him to the other side and got behind the wheel.
As the starter whirred, a silky voice spoke quietly from the rear seat. “Keep looking straight ahead and don’t try to pull any funny stuff.”
“I’m not in a humorous mood,” Shayne assured the unseen speaker.
The motor roared and they slid away from the curb, straight across the bridge over the Miami River and south on Brickell Avenue to Eighth Street, where the driver swung west and drove at a moderate speed out on the Tamiami Trail.
Chapter Six: AN ACCIDENT ON THE TAMIAMI TRAIL
The trail was thickly settled with both business houses and residences until they passed the huge stone entrance to Coral Gables on the left. Beyond this point the land was sparsely settled, and after passing the Wildcat and the cluster of small buildings near it, the Trail was open country.
None of the three men spoke until the Wildcat lay behind them and they were purring on into the swampy Everglades.
Then Shayne broke the silence by saying, “If this is a snatch you’ve got the wrong guy. There’s nobody this side of hell that would pay ten bucks for me, dead or alive.”
“You know what this is, all right,” the driver grated. Below the low brim of his hat, Shayne glimpsed a brutal, undershot jaw covered with a stubble of black whiskers. “It’s curtains, bo. Because you ain’t got sense enough to keep your long nose clean.”
“Take it easy,” Marv’s smooth voice warned from the rear as the driver accelerated up past fifty. “State cops patrol this road sometimes. No use taking any chances.”
“Curtains, eh?” Shayne had been sitting stiffly erect. Now, he relaxed against the seat and fumbled in his pocket for a cigarette. “In that case, I might as well get comfortable.”
“Yeh,” the driver jeered. “You ain’t got long to be comfortable in.”
Shayne struck a match to his cigarette. In front of them, smooth blackness of macadam glistened like molten rubber in the soft sheen of moonlight. Palmetto and gnarled cypress pressed close to the edge of the pavement on both sides, the gray-white bark of many dead cypress trees looming like ghosts against native pines.
An eerie silence encompassed them.
“Where do we bump him?” the driver jerked back over his shoulder.
“Just keep on taking it easy. There’s a deep canal along the side of the road pretty soon. With enough lead in him, a guy will stay down on the bottom a long time. Lots of people have accidents on this road,” he added in a conversational tone.
“Yeh. Jest las’ week a man-” the driver ventured.
“Shut up,” snapped the oily voice from the rear.
The swishing sound of air against encroaching tropical verdure was monotonous.
Shayne dragged in a lungful of smoke and exhaled it slowly.
“Mind telling me why I’m slated for the flowers?”
The brutal-jawed driver snickered. “He’s a card, ain’t he, Marv? Nervy sonofabitch, too. You’d think we was all joyridin’.”
“All we want,” Marv explained, “is what you took off Harry Grange tonight. Had to kill him to get it, huh?”
“I didn’t take anything off Harry Grange. And I didn’t kill him.”
“Naw?” Without warning, the driver jerked his right hand from the wheel and slapped Shayne, backhanded, in the mouth. “Think we can’t read, huh? How’d you talk yourself outta the pinch?”
Shayne placed both hands on his knees. His tongue licked out on his swollen lips. He didn’t say anything. In the faintly reflected moonlight his eyes were murkily red.
From the rear seat, Marv sounded bored.
“No use knocking him around, Passo. We’ll roll him for it after I’ve leaded him down.”
“I like to hit tough babies like him,” Passo said. “You’re a tough baby, ain’t you?” He leered sidewise at Shayne.
Shayne kept looking straight ahead as though he had not heard.
“Answer me, you bastard.” Passo swung the back of his hand again.
Shayne turned his face to take the blow on his cheek. Bleakly, he said, “Tough enough to take anything you can hand out.”
“Wait’ll I get both hands loose where I can go to work on you,” Passo promised jovially. “I’ll soft you up. Pulpy-like.”
“Take it easy and shut up,” Marv cautioned as their speed increased. “I think we’re coming to the canal.”
“What makes you think I took anything from Harry Grange?” Shayne asked stiffly over his shoulder.
“Because we know you’re wise, see? Else why would you kill a dumb cluck like Grange?”
“I didn’t kill him,” Shayne said patiently. “I-”
“Shut your trap.” Passo sloughed him again. “Think we don’t know you bumped into Chuck tonight and he give you the lay? And you was workin’ with your lawyer friend. Hell’s bells-”
“You talk too goddamned much with your mouth, Passo,” Marv interrupted silkily.
“What the hell does it matter? This tough baby ain’t gonna repeat nothin’ I say. Are you, toughie?”
Shayne didn’t say anything.
Moonlight glistened on still water by the side of the road ahead where a canal had been dredged in the swamp to build up a solid base for the Tamiami Trail across the Everglades, and for the further purpose of draining the marshy land.
Marv said, “Talking’s no good. I know this guy’s rep. He’s got too much guts for his own good. That’s why we’re going to leave him under water where he won’t pop up and make trouble. Anywhere along here’s all right.”
They were traveling along the smooth narrow strip of macadam at slightly less than fifty miles an hour.
Shayne’s right hand crept up to rest on the door latch. He braced his long legs against the floorboards.
As Passo’s foot lifted from the gas feed to the brake in response to Marv’s suggestion, Shayne’s left hand swept out and gripped the steering wheel, spinning it out of the driver’s lax hands.
Tires screamed in the still night and the speeding sedan lurched out of control. Shayne held a fierce grip on the wheel, sending it straight for the canal. As the car careened over the edge and plunged downward, his shoulder hit the unlatched door, and a tremendous drive of braced legs drove his body headfirst into the water and free of the sedan as it splashed, then heeled over to sink to the muddy bottom.
Shayne came up to the surface a few feet from the bank, caught a bunch of tough reeds, turned to watch the boiling eruption of placid water.
There was the frightened croaking of frogs down the bank, loud gurgling as the waters swirled over the sedan, covering it completely.
He dragged himself to the bank and squatted there. Night silence closed down again. A string of bubbles rose to break the surface of the water as the car squashed deeper and deeper into the yielding mud.
Then the water was placid, shimmering smooth again. He waited a long time, but no more bubbles came up. Water-soaked clothes were clammy and cold when he stood up and started walking east. Water squinched in his shoes at first, but it oozed out after a little time.