Death Has Three Lives

Chapter Twelve

Lucy Hamilton swung back fuzzily to consciousness some time later. She had no way of knowing how much later. Her head ached terribly, and her body muscles were cramped and painful. She had no idea where she was at first, or how she had got there. She was constricted in a narrow space, and in a moment or so she realized she must be on the floor in the back seat of a moving car.

Then, suddenly, she remembered everything. Going to the morgue to see if she could identify Arlene, the man in the gray suit coming out from the rear door and acting so abruptly as though he knew her, seizing her and whisking her out the door before she could protest, knocking her unconscious with his fist just at the moment she recognized him as the man who had attempted to collect seventy thousand dollars from her on the County Causeway.

Her head ached intolerably as she shifted position, reached out hands on either side to affirm her guess that she was on the floor in the back of a moving car.

She wasn’t bound in any way. She had just been dumped in the back, unconscious, and he had driven away from the morgue with her.

He must have recognized her there at once, she thought. He had gotten a good look at her on the Causeway in the moonlight without any hat to hide her features. So he had known immediately who she was at the morgue. And he had acted swiftly and efficiently to prevent her from going down and looking at the woman who had died in the luggage compartment of his sedan while he was thrown clear before the car went over the bank.

Why, she wondered? Why had he grabbed her and rushed her out the door of the morgue before she could protest? Did he realize she was an old friend of Arlene Bristow’s and that was why she had come? Was the dead woman Arlene, and did he have some reason for wishing her to remain unidentified?

Who was he — and what did he plan to do to her now?

She twisted cautiously in the narrow space, flexing her aching muscles and drawing her knees up, straightening to full length on her back, and then bending her knees again until the cramped blood began to flow and she felt she had control of her own body again.

She lifted herself on her elbows and gazed unhappily at the back of the driver’s head silhouetted above and in front of her. He was driving steadily on a smoothly paved highway at a moderate pace — looking straight ahead and apparently paying no attention to her at all in the back. If she only had some weapon to bop him over the head with, Lucy thought disconsolately. It might wreck the car, but anything would be better than this.

Other women in a similar position, she recalled, had been known to take off a shoe and knock a man out by socking him on the head with the heel of it. But she hadn’t changed since her walk on the Causeway, and she was wearing the same sensible, rubber-heeled walking shoes she had selected for that jaunt. If she hit him over the head with one of those, she thought ruefully, it would just anger him so he would probably knock her unconscious again.

She felt the car begin to slow as he took his foot from the gas and braked gently, and she carefully drew herself to a sitting position so she could look out the rear window without attracting her captor’s attention. Out the right-hand window in the moonlight, she could see the feathery tops of Australian pines and an occasional date palm.

The car was slowing more and more, and she strained her eyes to read the street names on corner posts as they slid past intersections.

The only thing she could read was Biscayne Blvd. on two successive corner signs as they passed. So, they were on the Boulevard traveling northward. And she hadn’t been unconscious very long after all, because after they left the northern city limits of Miami the street signs would change.

She was certain, now, that he was braking for a turn. She sat very tense on the floor with her head just below the level of the seat in front of her, straining her eyes out the window to catch the next street sign.

And she was rewarded. The car swerved in a right-hand turn and she caught the name of the intersecting street in the headlights as they swung in an arc.

Saltair Street! It was completely unfamiliar to her. She hadn’t the faintest idea where it was except she knew it must be near the northern limits of the city and right angles to the Boulevard.

It couldn’t be far to the bay here, she thought, and she sank back to the floor of the car and lay relaxed with her eyes closed as he moved along slowly for a few blocks.

She continued to lie like that when the car came to a full stop. She heard him turn off the ignition and open his door and step out, then he swung the half of the front seat forward away from her, and she knew he must be standing there looking in to see if she had recovered consciousness yet.

She kept her eyes closed and tried to make all her muscles limp as she supposed an unconscious person would be.

She felt his hands on her shoulders lifting and pulling her roughly out, and she moaned faintly and fluttered her eyelids as convincingly as she could, staggering on the ground as he held her upright when she was out of the car, letting her eyes open wide as though she had just recovered consciousness, shrinking away from him and crying out pitiably,

“Where am I? What happened? My head hurts dreadfully. Who are you? I never saw you before.”

“Never mind who I am.” He shook her roughly and shoved her back against the car. “You’re Lucy Hamilton. Mike Shayne’s secretary.”

She slumped back weakly, put her hands behind her against the car to support herself. They were several blocks from the Boulevard, she saw, at a point where the street came to a dead end against the western shore of Biscayne Bay.

There was only one house visible. A large, three-story mansion on the right, built directly on the bluff overlooking the bay. There were no lights and the front windows were boarded up with wooden shutters the way many winter residents leave their homes during the summer and the early autumn hurricane season.

He laughed evilly as he saw her looking around in an attempt to orient herself, and said in his grating Southern voice, “Take yourself a good look, ma’am. Then start screaming your fool head off if you’re a mind to. Won’t nobody hear you. Won’t nobody ever come down this here dead-end street.”

“Who are you?” Lucy demanded again. “What — do you want with me?”

“Nothing particular with you, ma’am. I thought back yonder at the morgue maybe you’d recognize me, but if you do or don’t it don’t make no never mind to me now. All I want is that money from your goddamn smart redheaded boss. The money Jack Bristow gave to you or him tonight. That’s all I want, ma’am. And I sure as hell intend to get it one way or another.”

“We haven’t got it,” she protested weakly. “Jack didn’t have any money. Or, at least we didn’t see it.”

He shrugged and caught her upper arm to lead her away from the car toward the empty and deserted house. “Maybe Mister Shayne lied to you. I dunno. Maybe you lied to him. It don’t matter much. He’s sort of sweet on you, huh? That’s what I’ve heard tell.”

“No, he isn’t,” she said defiantly. “Don’t think you can put pressure on Mike Shayne through me. You can’t.”

“Maybe not. It sure can’t hurt to try.” He was half-dragging, half-supporting her around the side of the house that faced toward the bay. He stopped beside a ground-floor window from which the wooden shutters had been forced open and the glass shattered. He produced a flashlight and played it over the opening, told her harshly, “Crawl inside, ma’am. Friend of yours down the cellar like to have some company, I reckon.”

Lucy hesitated. There was no place to run to. No use shrieking for help, as he had pointed out. A friend of hers down the cellar? Could it be Arlene? Or was Arlene, as she suspected, the corpse back in the morgue whom he had prevented her from looking at?

While she hesitated, he caught her roughly and shoved her half over the window sill, snarling, “Get on inside. I haven’t got all night.”

She pulled herself over onto the floor with the beam of his flashlight on her, and he followed.

It was a library or study, she guessed, seeing the furniture with dust covers in the flickering light, but he seemed to know exactly where he was going, seizing her arm and leading her to an open door into a corridor, and down a passage to another door at the rear which opened onto a flight of wooden steps leading downward.

A dank, musty, almost suffocating odor smote her in the face as she went down timidly, with him pushing her from behind. It was a small basement such as is found in most Miami homes, with a damp earthen floor and concrete walls.

When they reached the bottom, he flashed the beam of his light around all four sides to show there were no windows, no other opening or means of egress except up the stairs.

“Just so you’ll know for sure how things stand, ma’am. You’re gonna sit down and write a little note to your boss telling him just exactly how things are with you, and then I’m going to tie you up tight and leave you here to rot with your friend I mentioned.”

As he spoke he lowered the beam so it shone on a female figure bundled up with ropes on the ground near the wall. Her mouth was plastered tightly shut with surgeon’s tape, and her face was white and haggard and desperate in the flashlight’s gleam, but Lucy Hamilton had no difficulty at all in recognizing Arlene Bristow.

He swung the light away from Arlene’s face with an evil chuckle and told Lucy, “She’s been here keeping right quiet and good since before dark, and hasn’t died for lack of air yet. Howsomever, with two of you down there breathing up the oxygen and with that door at the top of the stairs shut tight and locked, I don’t for sure know how long you’ll last.

“Just think about how it is when you start writing your boss that note. Think how long it’ll take you and your friend to die from lack of water or starvation locked up down here if Mister Mike Shayne is crazy enough to try and set another trap for me. Tell him just how things are with you if he doesn’t cough up that seventy grand he got from Jack Bristow.”

“But I tell you he didn’t get it,” said Lucy desperately.

“No matter about that now. I don’t care if he did or not. I got you right here where I want you, and you’re going to rot here unless he pays up. Tell him that in your note. In love with you, isn’t he? And you with him? Don’t tell me different. You’re a right pretty gal, ma’am. Reckon I’d pay out some cash to keep you from dying by inches here in a place like this. Squat right down here and use this block of wood for a table. Here’s a sheet of paper and a pen. Write it down like it is in your own words, so Shayne won’t be none mistaken about how things are. And you better make it good, ma’am. Pour on the sweet talk or whatever. Remember it ain’t only you that’ll die slow and horrible if anything happens to me or I don’t get the money. There’s Arlene Bristow over there, too. Now squat down and start writing while I hold this light for you. I ain’t got all night. It’s ’most one o’clock now.”

Silently, Lucy Hamilton took the sheet of paper and pen from him and sank down on her knees on the damp earth to compose the most important letter she had ever written in her life. In the faint light from the flash, she could see the shrouded figure of Arlene Bristow ten feet away. She knew Arlene had heard every word he had spoken to her. The man was insane, of course. But he did have the whip hand. So far as she could see, there was absolutely no chance that she and Arlene could be rescued unless their captor had his way and revealed their hiding place. Already, the air in the dank cellar seemed thicker and harder to breathe than when they first came down.

She shivered and looked down at the paper and slowly began writing, thinking of all the thousands of things she would like to say to Michael Shayne at this time, but knowing she must hold herself down to the essentials which would appear suitable to the harsh-voiced man who stood over her and read every word as she formed it on paper.