He tried to make it a real smile. “Think I broke the ankle.”
Greco looked. A foot usually sticks out in the shape of an L. This was more of a W.
“Uh-oh. You won’t do any walking on that.”
“I took care of their Goddamn water for them, didn’t I?”
“Nick, the way you skinned up on that thing-”
Indeed, thanks to Nick’s exploit, they had accomplished what they had set out to accomplish. Greco felt a pulse of affection for the goofy kid. Nothing faggish about it, it was more of an army thing, one soldier to another. That didn’t help with the main problem. The nearest hospital was Miami, and they sure as hell were in no condition to hitchhike. How would they answer the questions when they got there?
The soggy mass on Nick’s stomach shifted, and if Greco’s own stomach hadn’t been somewhat uneasy by now, he could have looked inside and seen what his friend had eaten for supper. Nick was getting paler by the second. Greco could see he would have to do all the work. He folded the limp body into sitting position and tried to lift. It was too slippery. Nick was unable to give him any help at all.
Greco was casting about for some marvelous solution. He couldn’t come up with one. It would be hard enough to get out of this himself without being held back by a gut-shot cripple who from the look of it was going to die anyway. Even if he had an ambulance waiting, which he didn’t, Nick would be out of the picture before they were halfway. And leaving him here wouldn’t be much better. They’d get his fingerprints and check the hotels. They’d signed in at the Doral under their right names, which had probably been dumb. DeLuca? He wouldn’t even help with the lawyer.
He smelled Nick’s burned hair, and that gave him the idea. He had somehow managed to hoist his friend up on his one good ankle. Nick was already close to collapse, and they hadn’t gone anywhere yet. He tried to get his weight distributed properly, but Greco thought, why bother?
The two had gone to the same high school. Greco let Nick tag along on a couple of small deals. He sponsored him, in a way. Nick had a brother who dealt, and he could always get whatever he wanted for parties. They’d been having such a great time in Miami.
“Have ourselves a ball with that money,” Nick said feebly when Greco stopped to get a less slippery grip. “Mexico-” Trying to smile, he said it again like the Mexicans. “Meh-hico.”
True, there had been some stoned talk about taking the girls to Mexico City after DeLuca paid them off. It wouldn’t happen now. Greco started moving again, and when Nick understood, he whimpered in disbelief. Greco ran him straight at the fire. It was too hot to go all the way. About four feet from one of the sprung panels, he dug in and let go, giving Nick a hard final push combined with a lift.
It was a terrible look that Nick gave Greco, and at the last moment he was screaming. He went inside in a shower of sparks. Greco would remember that look and that scream, but it was just something he would have to learn to live with. He was doing his friend a favor, as well as himself, getting it over in an instant instead of leaving him to die slowly in pain.
A car was slowing on the highway. Greco ran toward it, and when he got within negotiating distance, he took out his gun. He must have been fairly wild-looking by now. There were two people inside, a kid at the wheel and the thin, jangly looking man Greco had forced out of the Dodge van. He waved his weapon, and they both got out.
“Not again,” the thin man said. “What happened to everybody?”
Greco couldn’t have answered that question even if he had wanted to. As soon as the car was empty, he jumped in and took off.
Chapter 15
The van was moving erratically between lanes. Shayne, in the pickup camper, closed with it rapidly, flicking his headlights. With a competent driver and its initial advantage, the van could have outrun them, but whoever was at the wheel was having all he could do to stay on the highway. As Shayne came into position, he saw that it wasn’t somebody hijacking Canada, it was Canada himself.
He overflowed onto the steering wheel. He gave them a dazed look. Frieda nodded pleasantly and showed him the gun.
His mouth opened, and he stamped on the gas. Shayne was a half-length ahead now. He bore in sharply and herded the van off the asphalt. The fat man finally went to his brake. He stopped well off the road.
Frieda descended, the gun still out. Shayne pulled past and parked. Canada recognized him when he came into the headlights.
“Mike Shayne. Am I glad to see you! I thought-”
“We’ll talk in a minute, Larry. If we stay here, we’ll collect a crowd.”
“Do you know what happened? They jumped me, they chloroformed me-”
“They?” Shayne said coldly. “What do you think this is, a rescue?”
Canada looked uneasily from Shayne to Frieda, and to the gun in Frieda’s hand. “You aren’t going to try to tell me-”
“Get in back and shut up.”
Canada’s jaw fell open. “You mean that was you in those masks? I don’t believe it.”
Shayne clicked his fingernail against the door. “Move, Larry.”
Canada had difficulty freeing himself. He sidestepped between the seats. Frieda came in back with him, returning the gun to her shoulder bag. Canada made a hard landing on one of the beds, looking misunderstood and confused. His white suit had been disheveled to start with, and it had deteriorated badly in the last several hours while he was moved from his smashed Cadillac to the sand pile and on into the van. He licked his full lips.
“You wouldn’t have anything to eat, would you?”
“Later,” Shayne said from the wheel.
He crossed the median and headed back toward the fire. Three cars had stopped. Rourke saw him, walked away from the group casually, and crossed the highway.
“You had me worried,” he said, coming in. “Then I saw the place where you cut your way out. That’s a good rule. Never get trapped in a burning trailer without the right tools. How are you, Larry?”
“You’re in on this, too?”
“You’re my project for the month. Maybe we ought to get moving, Mike.”
“No, I want Larry to see it. Struggle up, Larry.” Canada forced himself out from the wall, and Frieda parted the curtains.
“All right. A trailer. It’s on fire. So?”
“The people who set it on fire thought you were in it.”
He saw a flashing light coming fast and went into gear. The cops were only interested in what was happening on the southbound lanes. They would find one burned-out Ford, one trailer still burning too hotly for anyone to come near it, one abandoned pickup camper. They might also find one dead body, but by now, Shayne thought, everybody else had undoubtedly scattered.
After another moment Canada said quietly, “Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
“You arranged it?”
“That particular twist we arranged. The rest more or less just happened.”
He left the big highway at the next exit and turned north again at once, remembering a fishermen’s turnoff along the canal. After parking, he and Rourke both went in back, leaving the overhead light on so they could all look at each other.
Canada’s eyes were rolling, and he was struggling to stay upright.
“If you’ve got some coffee,” he said. “Everything keeps going in and out.”
Shayne set the coffeepot back on the stove. Canada leaned forward, supporting his head in his hands. His nostrils widened as they took in the coffee smell.
“All right, what is it? What’s going to happen to me now? The same thing that happened to Eddie Maye? Maybe I’m trying to talk myself into something, but I really doubt it. Mike Shayne? Tim Rourke? It isn’t your kind of thing.”
“And you may not know Frieda Field,” Shayne said. “She’s been following Phil Gold around for a couple of weeks.”
“She has, has she? I suppose she followed him all the way to Homestead tonight. That’s one small point taken care of. You don’t know who those people were any more than I do. Let’s get back to town.”