“That’s a chance we have to take. We can’t pass up this contact. Let’s see how we can figure it. He thinks he’s got us bluffed. That we won’t dare try to cover Lucy and cross him up because of the woman. So we do just that.”
“But how? He figured it smart, Mike. Having her walk on the Causeway late at night. There’s no place for anyone to hide out along the Causeway. You can’t follow along in a car without being conspicuous. Also, at least half the cars that pass her walking along there will stop to offer her a lift. It’s not like a girl walking along a street who may be stopping at the next house. Once anyone starts across the Causeway, it’s three miles to the Beach and most anyone will offer her a ride. Half of them will pull up and open the door on her side as he plans to do. If you get the whole police force out to patrol the Causeway, they’d have to start chasing and stopping every car that paused beside her. All he has to do is drive back and forth a couple of times to observe what happens to others before he makes his play. In fact, if he’s as smart as he sounds, he’ll probably stop and offer her a ride the first time just to see what the lay is. Damn it, Mike, it’s an infernally clever plan for collecting a payoff.”
“I know,” agreed Shayne, his rugged face furrowed with intense concentration. “Still, we’ve got to out-think him. He’s probably a killer. At the very least, he’s the key to two murders. One of which was totally unnecessary and the fault of my secretary.”
“Don’t be too hard on Lucy, Mike. Hell, Bristow might’ve died anyway from the slug in his belly.”
“Even so,” argued Shayne fiercely, “he could have been made to talk before he died. She prevented that by hiding him in her bedroom. We’ve got to figure now how to grab this present bastard when he collects the bundle from Lucy.”
“Look. If you’re going to try something like that, why not leave Lucy out of it? It’s bound to be dangerous as hell. If he is already a killer, chances are he may just think it’s simplest and best to bump her, too, when she gives him the package. So she won’t be able to identify him. Get a policewoman for the job, Mike. Wearing a hat at night, no one will know it isn’t Lucy. There’s that slim, pretty redhead on park patrol. Marge. She’s tough and experienced and has brought in half a dozen bad eggs on her own. It’s her job to take chances like this. It isn’t Lucy’s job.”
“This one is,” said Shayne bleakly, his face a mask of determination. “She started the whole thing by harboring Jack Bristow. I’ll be damned if I’ll let another woman risk her neck for something Lucy’s wholly responsible for.” He looked at his watch and got up decisively. “We’ve already wasted ten minutes, and there’s a lot to be done before eleven-thirty. Finish your drink and let’s get moving.”
Chapter Eight
At precisely eleven-thirty, Lucy Hamilton emerged from the front door of her apartment building and started walking toward 13th Street. She wore a tight-fitting dark wool suit and low-heeled walking shoes, and was hatless. Under her right arm she carried a package about twice the size of a cigar box, wrapped in brown paper and tied with stout string.
It was a cloudless, still night with bright moonlight, and with a light, refreshing breeze blowing in from the ocean. She walked southward at a steady pace until she reached 13th east of the traffic circle, crossed to the right side, and turned her face eastward toward Miami Beach three miles distant across the bay.
She was keyed up and nervous, but was determined she wouldn’t give way to fright. Shayne had gravely told her exactly how dangerous the walk might be, but had pointed out grimly that she, alone, was responsible for the situation, and that it was her duty to do what she could do to rectify her original mistake.
She had accepted the responsibility without demur. She was unarmed and walking alone into the night to keep an appointment with a man who was probably a killer and who expected her to deliver $70,000 to him.
She didn’t know where Michael Shayne was. She had no idea at all what precautions be was taking to protect her while she made the contact. He had disappeared from her apartment fifteen minutes ago after handing her the decoy package and giving explicit instructions for what she was to do when the right man stopped and told her to throw the package in his car.
Shayne had told her, only, that he would try to be around somewhere and that she should trust him to do his best. He had explained that she would act more naturally if she did not know what his plans were. She had also agreed to this without demur.
She was passing the steamship docks now, approaching the end of the mainland where the Causeway swung out across the bay. At this hour preceding midnight there was still a good deal of traffic to and from Miami Beach. She held to the extreme right and walked steadily, and cars passed her at the rate of about one each two or three minutes from both directions.
Shayne had told her he was quite certain the contact would not be made before she was well away from the mainland on the Causeway itself. He had been equally positive in his belief that she should expect at least two or three attempted pickups before the right man stopped beside her. One of those, he had explained, might well be the man himself—testing the situation out as it were, to determine whether she was being covered in any way.
She had just reached the Causeway when she heard the first car slowing behind her. She did not change her steady pace as a gleaming convertible pulled down close beside her and a masculine voice called cheerily, “It’s a long walk to the other side. Let me give you a lift.”
He was young and bareheaded, alone behind the wheel of the open car, with an attractive and smiling face. Lucy continued walking and told him distinctly, “No thank you. I love to walk at night.”
“Sure of that?” He continued to let the powerful motor purr idly to keep pace with her. “I’ll take you wherever you want and promise not to even make a pass if you say so. Cross my heart and hope to die.”
In contrast with his unaffected gaiety, her own voice sounded prim and stilted when she told him, “I’m quite sure I don’t want to be bothered.”
He looked puzzled, then shrugged and waved a negligent hand, and the convertible leaped ahead.
Three minutes later another car slowed beside her. It was a shabby dark sedan with a man and woman in the front seat. The woman had gray hair and a motherly face, and she leaned out the window to ask, “Could we give you a ride, young lady?”
Lucy stopped to smile apologetically. “Thank you so much, but I’m expecting a friend along any minute to pick me up.”
The woman smiled understandingly and said, “I see,” and the dark sedan went on.
At least five minutes passed before the next incident. There were two young college boys in a cut-down jalopy, and one of them emitted a long and piercing wolf whistle as they drew alongside her. His voice was slurred with drink. “Hi, beautiful. Here’s just what you’re waiting for. A free ride to fun an’ things. Hop in.”
Lucy gave them one disdainful look, then turned straight ahead without breaking stride. She heard the other youth remonstrating: “Heck, Andy, that’s the wrong approach. Can’t you see she’s a lady? Introduce yourself proper and ask her, for God’s sake, will she do us the honor of accepting our humble but free transportation across the bay.”
“T’ell with her,” the first one argued. “Stuck up, tha’ss what she is. Let’er walk.”
There was a brief further argument between the two before the exhaust roared and the old car shot past her.
Lucy Hamilton continued walking. Now, she thought. Any moment now. The next one may be him. Where is Michael?
She hadn’t seen Shayne’s car pass in either direction. She hadn’t the slightest idea where he might be or what he was doing. She was utterly alone in the night, and any one of the cars behind her might contain the man who believed she carried $70,000 in the brown parcel under her arm.
A station wagon pulled up fast, began slowing as it passed her. She caught a glimpse of a single burly figure behind the wheel. Her heart thumped excitedly as the station wagon p
ulled to a halt twenty feet ahead. The driver leaned over and unlatched the door on her side and it swung open as she came abreast. She shifted her grip on the parcel slightly, recalling Shayne’s minute instructions, and tensed herself to follow them.
A husky voice said, “Crawl in, honey. I’m going your way and what’s the use either of us being lonesome?”
Relaxation flooded through Lucy’s body in a great, enervating wave. She was barely able to say, “No, thanks,” in a firm voice as she marched on past the invitingly open door.
She heard it slam shut behind her, and then the motor take hold slowly. It eased up beside her and kept pace for twenty or thirty feet, and her heart began to pound again.
This might be him after all. Maybe his first approach had been tentative to see how she would react. Maybe this time he would open the door and say—
But he didn’t. He gave it up after idling beside her for a short distance without even winning a second glance from her. Then the station wagon speeded up—to search for more complaisant game, Lucy told herself wryly.
Then two young girls stopped in another convertible, giggling as they told her it was old-fashioned to walk home from a date; and a shabby coupe with a courteous old gentleman behind the wheel who professed himself profoundly shocked to discover such a young and beautiful maiden in distress, and he was the hardest to discourage of all because although he said the nicest and most courtly things, his cracked voice had a goatish leer in it that implied exactly the opposite of his words.
After he reluctantly accepted the inevitable and went on, there was quite an interval during which no one paid any heed to her. Lucy walked on steadily. She had covered about half a mile she thought, and she wondered if it was going to turn into a fiasco. It was not unpleasant walking, and she told herself that Michael would certainly be waiting for her in his car at the other end of the Causeway if she reached it without incident.
In a sense, she hoped devoutly that it would turn out that way. Even though she had worked with the detective for many years, she still had a normal distaste for violence, a normal shrinking from physical danger.
But Michael would be dreadfully disappointed, she knew, if the mysterious man failed to stop and demand the package. If this contact failed there was no other way at all they could get in touch with him. Michael had explained that to her very carefully in her apartment, stressing his belief that the man must possess definite information about two murders, and reminding her forcibly that it was entirely her fault that Jack Bristow had died before being forced to tell his story.
So, in a larger sense, Lucy Hamilton hoped with all her heart that each car coming up from behind would be the one she expected. She steeled herself to go over and over in her mind exactly what Michael had said she must do when the demand was made. Everything depended on careful timing. Both her own safety and the man’s ultimate capture.
She knew it would be he when the car began to slow some distance behind her. Traffic was lighter now than it had been when she started her walk, and her senses had become attuned to deviations in the speed of cars approaching from the rear.
None of the others had begun to slow down so far back. They had been surprised when their headlights revealed the lone figure of a woman on foot on the Causeway so late at night, and some of them at least had hesitated about bothering to stop until they were close enough to ascertain that she was young and not, at least, hideously ugly.
But the driver of this car was not surprised to have his headlights pick her out. Neither was he hesitating about slowing down until he could determine whether she was worth the bother.
She kept walking steadily as though unaware of the slowing car, edging farther to the right where a guard fence protected the edge of a steep embankment leading down to the bay waters below.
She nervously shifted her fingers on the package again, setting her teeth together tightly and feeling every muscle in her slim young body tense as a gray sedan drew abreast of her, moving no faster than she, and the man behind the wheel leaned far over to unlatch the right-hand door and swing it open.
She could not see his face beneath the low brim of a felt hat, but had the vague impression that he was big-bodied and middle-aged. The voice was harsh, with a strong and unmistakable Southern accent.
“Throw it in, sister.”
Her thumb and forefinger were achingly tight about a small round knob that protruded from the side of the package under her arm. She stopped and caught it with her left hand, tossed it lightly through the open door, jerking the small knob loose as she did so.
The car door swung shut and the motor roared and tires screeched protestingly as the sedan leaped forward.
Lucy flung herself sideways over the edge of the embankment as there was a loud explosion in the night from the front seat of the gray sedan some fifty feet distant and accelerating fast.
As she leaped over the guard fence, she saw the sedan lurch violently to the right, and to her horror realized that the fence was down at that point for a space of some forty feet and there was nothing at all to prevent the car from going over.
It did. She was sliding down the embankment when it hurtled over the edge a hundred feet in front of her, doing a lazy somersault in the air and landing with a sickening crash upside down in Biscayne Bay.
Chapter Nine
Lucy Hamilton landed on hands and knees in loose sand at the foot of the embankment, less than ten feet from the edge of the water. After the violent crash caused by the gray sedan landing upside down in the bay directly in front of her, there was almost utter silence as she crouched there trying to orient herself—trying to realize exactly what had happened—trying to think what she should do next.
Michael Shayne hadn’t planned it to end like this. She knew that definitely. He had planned and hoped to capture the man alive after she tossed the package into his car.
She had realized, from what Michael told her when handing her the package, that it contained some sort of bomb or explosive apparatus instead of seventy thousand dollars. He had warned her explicitly against pulling the small knob protruding from the side until the instant it left her hands, and had emphasized the fact that she must immediately fling herself over the edge of the Causeway after releasing it.
But there were two things Shayne hadn’t been able to take into account while planning how to entrap the man. He hadn’t known the driver of the car would accelerate so fast the moment the bomb landed, or (even if he did and thus lost control of the speeding vehicle when the explosion occurred seconds later) that the accident would occur at a point where there was no guard fence along the edge to hold the car on the roadway.
So Lucy knew miserably that she had failed in her mission as she crouched in the soft sand thirty feet below the roadway. The gray sedan had sunk without a trace in the deep ship channel of the bay which paralleled the Causeway here, and there didn’t appear the slightest chance that the driver could be rescued alive. So, for the second time this same evening, a man who might be a murderer and who certainly had some guilty knowledge of murder had died through some fault of hers before he could be questioned.
She shuddered at the thought and tried to thrust it into the back of her mind. On the Causeway above her, she could hear cars stopping now, shouts and excited voices as occupants leaped out and converged at the point where the sedan had gone over.
At the same moment, she heard a second sound. From out on the surface of the bay to her right. The loud splashing of oars, and then the low voice of Michael Shayne calling urgently, “Lucy! Are you there, Lucy?”
She scrabbled to her feet and saw him plainly. Bending his back into powerful oar strokes that were driving a light skiff toward the shore twenty feet ahead of her.
“Here, Michael.” She kept her voice low so it wouldn’t be heard above, but sent it floating out over the water so he would find her. So, this was the way he had planned it, she thought dazedly as she plowed forward through the sand to intercept him. He had been
offshore in a rowboat all the time. Pacing himself to the speed at which she progressed, waiting for the sound of explosion that would tell him the blackmailer had fallen into his trap.
The prow of the rowboat came in fast to ram against the sand directly in front of her just as the beams of two flashlights flashed down over the side of the embankment ahead of them and men began sliding down to the point where the gray sedan had gone under.
“In here quick, Lucy,” Shayne ordered, standing and stretching out his hand to take hers. The moment she stepped inside, he shoved off hard and swung the prow about to row toward the excited group at the foot of the embankment ahead.
He spoke low and urgently. “Sit quiet and let me do the talking. We’ve been for a midnight row. I know the man went over the edge and is probably drowned. Tell me just this. Did everything go as planned? Anyone see you before the accident? Anything to hook you up with it?”
“I don’t think so. There were no cars close when he pulled up. It was awful, Michael. If he hadn’t pulled away so fast. There was a loud explosion and then suddenly the car went over.”
“I guessed how it happened.” They were very close to the group by the water’s edge now. Shayne stopped rowing to call loudly, “What’s the trouble? From where we were out on the bay it sounded like a car went over.”
“Just what happened.” Several voices began to babble excitedly. “Deep water here. No one really saw it happen. Nobody seems to know—”
At that moment a brilliant searchlight lit up the scene from the roadway above and an authoritative voice called down gruffly, “Come back up here, all of you. Got to start moving your cars out of the way to make room for a winch truck. Any of you know anything, we’ll take your statements up here.”
“I’ve got a rowboat,” Shayne shouted up at the glaring light. “Want me to stand by here to help you locate the car?”
Death Has Three Lives Page 7
