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“Wrong with it, it’s sensational,” Pam said. “I can smell money from here.”

Downey nodded. “Then let’s get the hell out there and set up.”

Chapter 7

Gold, in his state car, came south on Interstate 75. He was over the limit, and at one point a highway patrolman chased him for a short way before noticing the low-number official marker. Frieda Field, behind him, had driven this highway frequently. Most of the time, she hung far enough back to keep her lights out of his mirror, closing with him only as he was approaching an exit. When he committed himself to the turnpike, she knew he was going all the way. She picked up the Orlando mobile operator and had her put through a call to Shayne.

Shayne met them at Palm Beach. He was parked at the foot of the West Palm ramp, hunched over the wheel, rearranging the pieces of the story they had been told by Chris Maye. He was trying to see some connection between her dead husband, Eddie, the small-time loan shark, and Larry Canada’s multi-million-dollar highway deals. They were on different levels, like the intersecting traffic here. The woman herself interested him. It had seemed to Shayne, listening quietly, that there was something she was holding back.

Frieda’s van sailed serenely past. It was a big Dodge Sportsman, somewhat top-heavy on secondary roads, but powered with a Mercedes engine, capable of staying with all but the hottest cars on the Interstate. Her headlights flicked, and Shayne moved smoothly into the entry lane. It was ten-thirty. There was still considerable traffic.

The Miami mobile operator connected the two cars and then backed out of the conversation.

“He may be running a bit late,” Frieda said. “It’s a dark blue Chrysler, a seal on the door and state plates. How do we proceed?”

“You stay back and I’ll pass him. Watch for me at Lake Worth. How are you, Freida?”

“Glad to hear a friendly voice. He’s a dull man, and I’ve been having a dull time.”

“There’s a deadline coming up, and we may be seeing some action. He drove down instead of flying. That may mean he’s meeting somebody he’s not supposed to know, like Larry Canada.”

“And wouldn’t that be nice?”

“We haven’t developed much at our end. Tim’s in one of his gloomy moods. Sometimes that’s when things begin to happen.”

“About time, in my opinion.”

Shayne pulled out to pass. The van clearly belonged to a vacationer, not a private detective. A bicycle was strapped to the back door. The bumpers were plastered with ads for various tourist traps between Miami and Chicago. She was using Illinois plates. Coming abreast, he held steady for a moment. Frieda was wearing a brief halter and a long-billed fisherman’s cap. She gave him a mocking salute, which he returned with a smile.

He zoomed past.

He ran up swiftly on the blue Chrysler. As he went past, he had a sideward glimpse of a gray-haired man, clean-shaven, wearing a bureaucrat’s steel-rimmed glasses and a look of generalized anxiety. He was gripping the wheel hard, and Shayne had the impression that he was going faster than he would usually think was safe.

At the next exit, Shayne dropped off, paid the small toll, and waited for the appearance of the Chrysler. It passed without slackening speed. The mobile operator had his connection ready, and Shayne told Frieda that their man was still on the highway. He picked up a new ticket and rejoined the pursuit. It was a system they had used before, and as long as the phones stayed open, it was almost impossible for even the most experienced dodger to lose them.

They continued south. The Chrysler followed arrows into the long bypass around Miami. This was newly laid highway, and most of the traffic dropped off at the Miami exits. Now the van, with the pretty young woman at the wheel, became more conspicuous. Gold began driving more slowly, perhaps pacing himself to arrive somewhere at a precise moment. Shayne waited to pass until he was partially screened by a truck, then sped ahead to the next-to-the-last exit. This was construction country, with occasional one-way stretches, long lines of flaring smoke pots and blinkers.

He was watching for the Chrysler, and saw the van first. He signaled for Frieda to pull over.

“The big construction five miles back,” Shayne said. “That has to be it. Let’s go back and take a look.”

The median strip, a wide buffer separating northbound and southbound traffic, had just been planted with grass. Signs warned them to keep off the shoulders, as there weren’t any, and they continued south to the next truck crossing, made the U-turn, and headed back toward the smoke-pot fires through an unfriendly environment that might have been blasted by B-52’s. A succession of increasingly urgent warnings alerted northbound cars to be prepared to shift into a one-way pattern that would continue for the next eight miles. It was a bottle neck during the day, but less serious at this time of night. Shayne pulled up as the turnoff approached.

“It’s passable,” he said when the van stopped alongside. “The Highway Commissioner doesn’t have to pay attention to his own signs. But we’d better walk in. They’ll be watching for headlights.”

Getting out, he moved some of the flaring pots so they could drive through. They parked the vehicles out of sight of the highway. Before leaving the car, Shayne pressed a recessed spring in the door panel and a Smith and Wesson. 357 dropped into his hand.

“It’s going to be like that, do you think?” Frieda said.

“There’s a huge amount of money involved.”

The gun went inside his shirt. He unlocked the trunk and from a well-organized built-in cabinet took a tiny camera and a pair of night-vision binoculars.

“Let’s use the bicycle,” Frieda said. “We don’t want them to be gone by the time we get there.”

“I haven’t ridden a bike in years.”

“That’s one of the things you only need to learn once.”

Unstrapping the bike from the rear of the van, she trundled it out on the smooth pavement while Shayne lined up the pots again to discourage other cars. He straddled the bike, an English ten-speed. Frieda perched on the center bar, where she blocked access to the shifting levers. Starting in one of the middle gears, they wobbled away, beginning to run true as they gathered speed.

Frieda gave a low laugh. “Mike, this is funny.”

“Is it?” he said, pedaling grimly.

The set of the handlebars invited him to crouch forward, but of course Frieda was in the way. A slight downward incline helped a little, and then their momentum carried them up one of the barely perceptible rises that are southern Florida’s equivalent of hills. He caught the rhythm and soon was pedaling more strongly. It was a black night, without stars or moon. The lighter-colored sand on the shoulders kept him on the asphalt. The median was wider here, twenty yards or so of broken ground strewn with construction litter. On the far strip, orange barrels and an occasional flare reminded drivers to stay in their own lanes. Freestanding concrete pillars loomed ahead like a roofless temple. Creeping out at right angles was the new highway, which in a few years’ time would allow wheeled traffic to reach Card Sound and the bay. There was nothing much there now except sand and scrub. The highway people urged skeptics to think back to the 1920’s. When the Florida East Coast Railway started south from Palm Beach, Miami was only a village, little larger than Homestead today. People would follow the highway.

Shayne came back on the pedals, forgetting that the brakes were on the handlebars. By the time he found them, he and Frieda were off in the sand, Frieda extricated herself. “Going back,” she whispered, “I’ll pedal.”

An immense culvert was being installed here to carry an irrigation canal, which had to cross the new highway. Great lengths of pipe blocked access to the other strip. A paving machine, waiting for daylight, dominated the smaller vehicles grouped around it. Shayne left the bike in its blacker shadow, climbed up carefully under the big umbrella, and broke out the binoculars.