Death Has Three Lives

Chapter Sixteen

Outside police headquarters, Timothy Rourke reached Shayne’s parked car just as the redhead was slamming it back savagely against the bumper of a car parked too close to allow him to swing away from the curb.

Rourke jerked the door open and slid in beside him as Shayne rammed forward to gain a few extra inches, then backed hard again.

“Where you headed in such a hurry?” Rourke asked easily.

“I don’t know — yet. Away from here where I can think straight for a minute.” Shayne swung the wheel hard, went forward with his foot hard on the accelerator so the right end of his front bumper forced aside the rear bumper of the car ahead. The heavy sedan leaped forward in the street, and Rourke put his hand on Shayne’s arm. “Don’t be sore at Will Gentry,” he admonished. “He came through good there at the last.”

“I’m not wasting time being sore at Will,” Shayne ground out between set teeth. “I’m trying to think where in hell we go now.”

“Pull in to the curb,” said Rourke reasonably, “and let’s see what we’ve got.”

Shayne grunted something unintelligible, but took his foot from the gas as they swung into Flagler Street, and let the Hudson drift to the empty curb.

“He’s got Lucy and he hasn’t got the money,” said Shayne flatly. “You know what that means.”

“Sure,” agreed Rourke just as flatly. “He’ll torture her to learn what you and she did with the money. But he won’t kill her, Mike. As long as he thinks there’s any chance in the world you’ve got the dough, he’ll keep Lucy alive to put pressure on you. One thing that keeps bothering me — where in hell is Hugh Allerdice all this time?”

“Yeh. No one has even seen him tonight that we know of. Look, Tim. Did you talk to the taxi driver who picked Bristow up after he was shot?”

“I don’t know that anyone talked to him. He phoned his information in.”

“Was his name given out — to the papers or news broadcasters?”

“Not for publication. Gentry asked us to keep him incognito to avoid any possible reprisals and because he might be an important witness later.”

“But you know who he is?”

“Sure. Name is Joe Agnew, I remember. Lives in the Southwest section, I think.”

Shayne was breathing hard and the lines in his face were deep. He started his motor and pulled forward toward an all-night drugstore. “Go in and call Agnew,” he ordered brusquely. “You’ve got to have an interview tonight to hit the front pages tomorrow. Pour it on big that he’s a hero and your editor demands a personal interview. I want to hear him tell exactly what happened in front of that house on Eighteenth when he picked Bristow up.”

Rourke said cheerfully, “Can do,” and opened the door to get out. He paused on the sidewalk, reached down to pull Gentry’s .38 from under his belt. He laid it on the seat beside Shayne, explaining, “Chief Gentry’s parting gift to you. He figured you weren’t carrying one tonight, and that it might come in handy if you do catch up with Switzer.” He slammed the door shut and hurried inside the drugstore.

Shayne sat very still behind the wheel looking down at the blued steel of the police revolver that dully reflected the light from a street lamp. A warm feeling swept through him that made him clench his teeth hard and blink his eyes rapidly as he looked at the gun.

He reached out slowly and picked it up by the corrugated butt, studied it for a long moment precisely as though he had never seen a gun before in his life, then dropped it into a side pocket. It was quite true that he was unarmed tonight. Gentry knew that only on very rare occasions did he ever carry the gun he had a license for. And Gentry was right about tonight, of course. If the man he was looking for was a police detective from New Orleans who had gone bad, it would be the utmost folly to go up against him without a gun.

Nothing else in the world could have made Shayne feel so good at that moment as the weight of Will Gentry’s personal revolver in his pocket after all that had happened; and when Rourke returned from telephoning he was alert and eager to get going, knowing now that he couldn’t fail in what he had set out to do.

“It’s okay.” Rourke dropped into the seat beside him. “Ahead and south on Miami Avenue across the river. Mr. Agnew will be flattered to receive a call from the Press, and I gathered he hasn’t even gone to bed yet.”

Shayne swung right on Miami Avenue without asking any more questions. The streets were practically empty of traffic, and a few moments later they were cruising down a quiet street in the Southwest section where neat five-and six-room bungalows were ranged side by side in hundred-foot building lots.

The houses were uniformly dark at this hour, and they didn’t have to look for street numbers when they saw light streaming from the front windows of one house near the center of the correct block.

Shayne pulled up in front and got out to follow Rourke up a walk toward the front door. It was a white stucco bungalow with neatly trimmed lawn and a gravel driveway on the side leading back to a detached garage in the rear. The front door opened as they neared it, and a wiry young man was silhouetted in the light. Rourke pumped his hand and said, “I’m Rourke from the Daily News. Mighty good of you to let us drop in so late. This is a friend, Michael Shayne. He’s interested, too, so I asked him—”

“Mike Shayne!” Joe Agnew’s voice was reverential. “The private eye we’re always reading about? What d’yuh know? Come right on in, both of you. The wife and kids are in bed, and we can talk right here.”

He led them in to a small neat sitting-room, seated them in comfortable chairs, and urged them to have a can of cold beer, confessing unhappily that there was nothing stronger in the house, “Because my old lady raises hell whenever I bring a bottle home.”

They both told him beer would be swell, and waited impatiently while he went to the kitchen for it. Joe was a sandy-haired young man in his thirties, with a thin, shrewd face that was tanned the color of old leather from Miami’s sunshine.

“Gee, Mr. Shayne, I never thought the day’d come I’d see you sitting here in my house drinking beer,” he bubbled effusively when he returned. “It’s about that guy bled all over the back seat of my cab, huh? You catch him yet?”

“He’s dead, Joe. Somebody cut his throat after the bullet in his belly failed to do the job. There are two other unsolved murders tonight that have some connection with him. We need every damned thing you can tell us about picking him up.”

“Well, I’ll sure try to tell you all I can. Afraid it won’t be too much, though. I sort of knew there was something wrong when I first saw him there on Eighteenth Street. You know how it is? A hackie sort of gets a sixth sense about things, I say a hackie sort of gets a sixth sense if you know what I mean.”

Shayne and Rourke nodded gravely. Shayne pressed him: “Go back and tell it just as it happened.”

“Well, I was cruising, see? Had just dropped a fare up on Twenty-Fourth. A dopey old dame that gimme a nickel tip. I knew soon’s she got in my cab, I say, I knew soon’s she got in—”

“So you were cruising empty on Eighteenth?” Shayne put in.

“Nossir. I was running south when I hit Eighteenth and something just seemed to tell me to turn the corner there or I’d miss a fare. You get that way, hacking. Like as if you had a sort of—”

“Sixth sense,” said Shayne hastily.

“That’s right.” Joe Agnew beamed at him happily. “But I dunno for sure now. After, when I got to thinking I wondered if maybe I’d heard a shot that made me swing the corner. You know, seems now like I did. Only, then, I thought it was a backfire, I guess. I mean I didn’t rightly know it was a shot, except maybe I sensed it. So I slowed and turned the corner, and sure enough my headlights pick up this man in the street right ahead, kind of half running away from me. Not running really, but trotting, I’d say. And he looked over his shoulder and saw my cab lights and waved to me and out of the corner of my eye I see these other two guys on the sidewalk and they look like maybe they’re wrestling or fighting.

“But I didn’t think much about them. They weren’t looking for an empty cab. So I pulled up and leaned back to open the door and he sort of tumbled in on the seat. He was young and his face sort of white and kind of scared-looking, and he turned to look back, and then said sharp, ‘Get going, can’tcha?’

“So I started rolling and says back, not smart-alecky, you know, but throwing it back at him, ‘Anywhere special you want to go, or just for a joyride?’ And he gave me an address, then, the same one I gave the police later — I got it in my log — and sort of slumped back breathing hard and I saw in the mirror he was sort of holding his hands tight across his stomach, but I didn’t think much of it then, I say, I didn’t think much of it then, but after — when I did get to thinking—”

“You did think something of it,” said Shayne impatiently. “Did he say anything else to you?”

“Not much. Only one thing that was sort of funny. We were cruising along and I wasn’t thinking about nothing much when I notice he’s leaned way forward close to the back of the front seat like he’s trying to read the notice that there is in all cabs, you know. Got my picture and name and license number and all that. It’s faded and hard to read with the isinglass over it, and nobody never does look at it anyhow because what do they care what a hackie’s name or number, but I see he’s trying to read it and I grinned back over my shoulder at him and switched on the dome light and says, just to make a sort of joke, you know, I say, just to make a sort of joke you know, I says, ‘It’s me, all right. I got a license and everything.’ And he slumped back like he was frightened and then said like it worried him, ‘But I can’t read your name or number there.’

“So I told him. ‘Joe Agnew,’ I says. Number so and so and so. ‘Special rates,’ I says, just for a gag, only it ain’t really a gag because I own my own hack, you see, and do bring it home at night and sometimes do get special calls here at home after hours from particular customers who know me good and know I never mind getting up out of bed to accommodate them no matter how late it is, so I told him, ‘Special rates on special trips when I’m off duty. Just call me at home any time, I says, that you can’t get a cab no place else.’ And he said very polite that he might do that, and then I pulled up in front of that apartment house where he wanted to go and he got out and stumbled on the curb and I thought he was sick and going to fall.

“But he straightened up and said he was all right and stuck a wadded single in my hand and went up the walk. The fare was only seventy cents so that sort of evened up for the nickel tip I’d got just before but they do even up like that, I say, they do even up like that from morning to night so I say it’s never no use getting sore.”

“Did you see him go in the door?” demanded Shayne.

Joe Agnew hesitated and screwed up his eyes thoughtfully. “I think I did. The front door, you know. He was pulling it open, anyhow, when I drove away. So I thought no more about it, naturally, till half an hour later or so when I’d stopped for a cup of coffee and I heard the newscast telling about a broad getting herself choked on Eighteenth Street a little while before and I knew the address was just about where I’d picked that fare up, and it sounded like it had happened just about the same time, and I got to wondering whether maybe it was a clue or something and should I report it to the caps, but I don’t like to stick my neck out, I say I don’t like to stick my neck out, so I thinks to myself, ‘Better stay out of it, Joey boy. You know how cops are. They’ll have you up on the carpet and you’ll lose time and all for nothing,’ so I go back out to my cab parked outside and I’m just about to get in and cruise a little when something sort of seemed to make me open the back door and look in at the cushion.”

He paused a moment in his long-winded recital, a look of happy incredulity on his leathery face. “It was some kind of sixth sense a hackie gets, you might say. Because there was a spot of dried blood right there where the fellow’d been sitting. And I knew right then it was my duty as a law-abiding citizen to report it no matter how much trouble the cops gave me, and I did. And now I sure wish you’d tell me—”

Michael Shayne looked at his watch and drained off the last of his beer and arose hastily. “Some other time, Joe, you and I’ll get together over some drinks and have a real talk. You got a phone I can use?”

“You bet. Right here.” Joe Agnew jumped to his feet and led Shayne to a telephone stand in the hallway. The redhead dialed a number and waited, tugging at his ear lobe thoughtfully until Chief Gentry’s gruff voice answered.

“Mike Shayne, Will. Thanks for — the loan of your gun.”

“Hope you find some use for it,” rumbled Gentry.

“I think I’m going to. If you’ll do me one little favor, Will. That’s all I’m going to ask.”

“Some simple little thing like blowing up City Hall?”

“Not quite. Have you got a stake-out on the rooming-house on Eighteenth Street where the girl was strangled?”

“Man on the front door checking everybody in and out.”

“Pull him off, Will. Right away.”

“Now, look, Mike. I don’t—”

“I haven’t time to explain why. Just do it. For half an hour. Put him back on after that if you want. I’m counting on you.”

Shayne hung up and turned to the archway into the living-room where Rourke and Agnew were talking while the reporter took notes.

He said, “We’ll be back another time, Joe. I bet you’ve got plenty more stories to tell, you being a hackie and all with a sort of sixth sense about trouble. But Tim Rourke’s got to make a deadline to file his story all about how you helped solve two murders. But before we run, Joe, is that right what you said about bringing your cab home at night and always being on call if one of your customers needs you in an emergency?”

“It sure is, Mr. Shayne,” Joe Agnew assured him earnestly. “Couple times a week, maybe, I get a call like that and go out special. I never charge but the regular fare for it, but I will say most people do dish out a fat tip for the extra service.”

“I’ll keep your name and phone number in mind, Joe.” Shayne wrung his hand hard and started toward the door. “Don’t suppose you’d mind a little free advertising on that, would you? Makes a good human-interest touch, don’t you think, Tim?”

Tim Rourke, who had not uttered a word since entering the house ostensibly to interview Joe Agnew, muttered that he guessed it would, and thanked Joe for the beer, and then hurried out after Shayne who was already getting in his car.

“What a monologuist,” he groaned. “If you got anything out of that drivel—”

“I got plenty out of it.” Michael Shayne’s voice was strong and he sounded sure of himself for the first time since Rourke had encountered him earlier. The reporter looked at him in utter surprise, but Shayne was driving away fast and going on briskly.

“Doesn’t the Daily News sponsor a nightcap news broadcast at two o’clock?”

“Yes.”

“Know the man who does it?”

“Sure. Dick Farrel’s on it now.”

“Friend of yours?” Shayne snapped at him.

“He owes me plenty of drinks.”

“Good. I’ll drop you and you get hold of him. Have him kill some of the junk he’s getting ready to rehash over the air and do a story on Joe Agnew. Get in the salient things Agnew told us about Bristow. The way he acted in the cab demanding Joe’s name and number. And I wasn’t fooling about giving Joe some free advertising about his extra-curricular activities if anybody calls him at home at night to make an extra trip. Be damned sure you get that in. Such enterprise should be rewarded.”

“Are you serious, Mike? Dick Farrel won’t like my telling him what to say on the air.”

“I’m damned serious. Ram it down his throat, Tim. Get him tight and take the microphone away from him to do the broadcast yourself if you have to. But get that stuff on the air at two o’clock. That’s just eighteen minutes from now.”

Timothy Rourke didn’t argue with him. Many times in the past, nearing the end of a case, he had seen this same change come over the rangy private detective. And each time it had happened, it had spelled out headlines for him the next day.

All indecision had vanished from Shayne now. All doubts had been swept away. He was surging forward on the tide of some inner strength which grew out of an intense personal conviction that he now knew the answers to the questions that had previously bothered him.

He pulled up hard at the corner of Flagler to let Timothy Rourke out, and his voice was harsh as he said, “I’m leaving it up to you, Tim. For God’s sake, don’t let me — or Lucy — down.”

Rourke met his demanding gaze briefly and nodded. “Be seeing you.” He stepped out and slammed the door shut, stood on the curb and wonderingly watched the black sedan leap across the intersection northward.