Death Has Three Lives

Chapter Eighteen

Joseph Leroy Agnew was dreaming. It was definitely one of his better dreams. There was a girl in it who looked something like he remembered his mother had looked, but he Knew the girl couldn’t be his mother because then he wouldn’t have felt about her the way he did.

They were in the front seat of a car, parked under two palm trees silhouetted against an intensely blue sky. The automobile horn started blaring when he kissed the girl, and it wouldn’t stop. As though some unseen hand were pressing it as a warning to him that he shouldn’t go any further with the girl in his arms.

So he stopped kissing her, but the horn kept right on blowing. It was uncanny, that’s what it was. His sixth sense didn’t seem to be working very well because he couldn’t understand it at all.

Then he rolled over in the double bed and his left hand encountered his wife’s warm, bare rump, and he woke up and the telephone beside the bed was shrilling insistently, and for a moment he was so sore when he realized it was the phone that had spoiled his dream that he thought he wouldn’t answer it.

But Irma was awake now, too, and she shook him and reached out to turn on the light and he yawned and rolled over to pick up the telephone and mutter, “Whatsit?” into the mouthpiece.

A man asked, “Is that Joe Agnew? The taxi driver?”

Somehow, he thought he recognized the voice but couldn’t quite place it even with his sixth sense. He mumbled, “Yeh,” and his caller went on briskly, though in a lowered, confidential tone.

“I’m in a real bad jam, Joe. Need a cab quick as you can get here.”

“Wait a minute,” protested Joe, glancing at the bedside clock. “It’s past two o’clock. Whyn’t you call one of the all-night companies?”

“Be a good scout, Joe, and do a fellow a good turn. One of my friends told me you didn’t mind going out after hours on special trips. This is a special trip, see? Real special. My car’s broke down and the lady that’s with me — she’s real anxious to get home without anybody seeing her. Catch on? Call one of the regular companies, the trip gets entered in the log and all that. Have a heart, will you?”

“Well... sure,” Joe agreed. He knew how it was, all right. A man out with some other man’s wife at two o’clock in the morning! Sure. He got it. Ought to be a nice tip in it.

He asked, “Where you at?”

“Hundred and Forty-Eighth off the Boulevard to your right about a block. I parked here, see, and now the damn engine won’t start.”

“Take it easy,” said Joe with a grin. “Be out there in about thirty minutes.” He yawned again and replaced the phone, winked at Irma, and told her, “Some sport stuck with a dame that ain’t his wife.” He swung thin shanks over the edge of the bed and stood up to strip off his pajamas.

“You ought to let a man like that fry in his own juice, Joe Agnew,” said his wife tartly. “Aiding and abetting adultery, that’s what it amounts to. You work hard enough all day long, you need your night’s sleep.”

“Probably make as big a tip out of this one trip as I’d collect all day in dimes.” He was pulling on his clothes as he spoke, keeping his face averted from Irma so she wouldn’t see the sly grin on his face. Women were sure funny the way they resented a man getting a little bit of fun that didn’t rightly belong to him. Sometimes he thought they were that way just because they never got a chance to slip away and have some fun. Take Irma, now. He was sure she never had had another man except him. But he bet, by God, she’d like to. Way down deep inside, that is. He’d seen a look on her face sometimes when she’d be half-tight on two cocktails.

You bet, she’d like to. But she didn’t dare. And so it made her mad to think of some other woman having a little fun outside of bounds.

Far as he was concerned, he’d help a man out of a mess like that any time even without the expectation of a fat tip. Men had a way of sticking together, he thought, that no woman seemed to understand. He pulled on his hackie’s cap and felt in his pocket for his keys, told Irma, “Turn out the light, hon, and go back to sleep. I’ll be real quiet when I come back so’s not to wake you up.”

He went out whistling softly to himself, let himself out the back door into the balmy night air that gave him a sort of lift as he breathed it in deeply. A thing like this gave a man a sort of good feeling of adventure. Wheeling a cab around the city all day was pretty humdrum business. Made you feel alive and sort of young again to get called out like this on a mission of an amorous nature.

He had his key ring out as he approached the garage, and in the moonlight selected the flat key to the padlock on the door.

He stopped and frowned when he found it wasn’t even locked. Now that was funny. He always locked it when he put the taxi up at night. Long as he could remember, he’d never forgot to lock it before. He tried to think back and recall why he had neglected doing it the evening before.

Let’s see now. He’d been a little late getting home. Nothing really unusual. Well, maybe he had been a little excited about calling the police and all, he conceded as he opened the double doors wide and got under the steering wheel.

Yeh. That must have been it. He’d been going over in his mind the story he would tell Irma. Sort of building it up a little bit, maybe, to make it sound more important than it really was. But that was just to please Irma. She always waited up for him no matter how late he was, and was always pestering him to tell her all the interesting things that had happened to him that day. She never could get it out of her head that hacking was just like any other kind of work. She’d ask him what important people he’d carried, how pretty were the women and did any of them make passes or invite him into their houses for a drink when he took them home.

And generally he couldn’t think of anything much to tell her, but last night had been different and he’d been full of it when he put the taxi up and went in.

He was so full of remembering about it now as he backed the cab out of the driveway to the street that he didn’t pay any attention to the dark automobile parked inconspicuously at the curb half a block away.

There wasn’t any really good reason why Joseph Agnew should have paid attention to the parked car. It might have been the automobile of any householder along the street who’d come home late and hadn’t bothered to garage his car.

But Joe’s sixth sense was a little lacking when he failed to note that the parked car pulled away from the curb without headlights and swung in behind him as he turned the first corner onto a northbound avenue; and that before he had traveled two blocks on the avenue, twin headlights of a car turned the same corner behind him and continued to follow along a few blocks behind while he hurried to keep the rendezvous.

But he was too full of thinking about how he had finally had something interesting to tell Irma, and how he’d added on a few touches to make it sound like he’d been smarter than the police.

She’d listened to the embellished story with open-mouthed admiration, too, making him out to be some kind of hero for reporting it to the police and all, and even wondering if there mightn’t be a reward for him if the girl killer was caught as a result of his quick thinking.

He’d discouraged that idea, but now he remembered the interview with the skinny reporter from the Daily News and the famous detective, and how the reporter had promised to write up a story all about him maybe put in, too, how he was on call at home at night if anybody needed a cab special. If he did put that in the paper, Joe Agnew reasoned happily, thousands of people would read about it and as a consequence there might be a lot more calls like this one tonight in the future.

Maybe he’d even be able to build up a sort of special clientele in time, so he could really be in business on his own and not have to split with a company.

By that time he was on Biscayne Boulevard speeding smoothly northward with no traffic to think about, so he daydreamed happily on, the one-man taxi business mushrooming to a volume that required him to put on a whole fleet of cabs, and with very special and trustworthy drivers, of course. Fellows like him who had a sort of sixth sense about certain things you might say, because he would build the reputation of his company on that sort of special service and he’d take mighty good care that any driver working for him was absolutely discreet and could be trusted to do a job like this one tonight and never open his mouth about it. No, sir. Not even if the lady’s husband was to have her trailed and come around and offer to pay him a lot of money to tell where his wife had been before he brought her home.

Now, that was a good thought. It had never happened just that way in the past, but maybe the talk with Michael Shayne had brought it to his mind and made him see just what might happen.

Suppose a private detective like Mr. Shayne, now, was to be hired by the husband of the lady he was going to pick up on 148th Street. Suppose, now, that a private eye like Shayne was to be hanging around her house at two a.m. to see who she came home with.

And he drove up with her in his cab. He. Joe Agnew. He would drop her there and then drive on. And it wasn’t difficult to envision another car following him, forcing him into the curb a short distance from her house, a man like Shayne getting out and talking tough out of the side of his mouth while he demanded to know where the woman had been that evening.

Well, not a private eye like Michael Shayne, Joe Agnew conceded to himself. A man like that had more important cases than just checking on an erring wife. Seemed like he’d read that Shayne didn’t take cases like that.

All right. Some other private eye. One not so famous who did take cases like that.

So... all right. Some other detective pushing him over to the side of the road, getting out of his car, tough and mean, talking out of the side of his mouth. First threatening and then, realizing that threats would get him nowhere, cajoling and offering money (huge sums of money) for the information he wanted.

And Joe Agnew spitting (figuratively) in his face. Joe Agnew explaining concisely that he didn’t run that sort of business. That a client of his who called him out on a special run in the middle of the night expected and deserved confidential treatment. He saw his upper lip curling contemptuously as he explained this to the importunate private eye. No threats, no amount of money, would induce him to divulge a confidence.

And that, by God, was the basis on which he would build the future of the Joe Agnew Cab Company. Complete and utter confidence in any driver furnished by Joe Agnew. The men would be bonded, by God! That was it. He would advertise that. Bonded not to talk under any circumstances.

Our Lips Are Sealed.

That was it! That was the ticket. Once get that reputation, and your fortune would be made. Like tonight. Like this man tonight who had telephoned him and waked him up and got him out of bed instead of phoning one of the regular cab companies.

Why?

Because someone had told him Joe Agnew could be trusted. Someone had told him Joe’s Lips Were Sealed. That no threats of physical violence, no offers of huge sums of money would ever induce him to violate a confidence.

Nossir. He had a sort of sixth sense about that. He knew when it was important to keep a tight mouth and when it didn’t matter. That’s why he was out here tonight, by God. That’s why he was slowing, now, on the Boulevard for the turn-off on 148th. Why his cab was doing the job instead of someone else.

It was a small thing, Joe Agnew told himself judicially as he negotiated the turn off the Boulevard. This thing tonight was just a straw in the wind. But a mighty important straw. No one knew what might develop from it. If he handled this delicate situation right — anything might happen.

He was so absorbed in his own daydreaming that he paid no heed whatsoever to the car that had been discreetly and efficiently behind him ever since he pulled away from the driveway of his house. It slowed down to a snail’s pace behind him as he turned to the right, and his eyes were only concerned with looking ahead for a glimpse of the woman whom he was to gallantly pick up and escort home so her reputation might not be smirched.

He saw the car parked beside the road a short distance ahead, and the man standing beside it. He slowed and pulled up behind, discreetly cutting his headlights as he did so. Let her get in the back seat without being seen by him. That way, he could honestly deny in the future that he recognized her as the woman he had picked up that night.

Things like that were important, Joe Agnew thought smugly. A man like this, now, would recognize the delicate perceptions of the driver of this particular taxi.

He was walking toward Joe’s taxi in the moonlight. He did not appear a particularly romantic figure in his gray suit with a gray felt hat pulled rather low over his eyes. Sort of middle-aged and heavy-built, he looked to Joe.

But that was the kind, he told himself. That was the kind that got into troubles with a married woman and needed Joe’s help to get out of it.

He didn’t see any woman, though. Just the parked car and the man walking toward him. Maybe she was hiding out until the man fixed things up. Maybe, by God, she was lying in the back seat of the parked car with her dress disarranged and—

The man in the gray suit stopped beside Joe momentarily and asked in the same voice Joe had heard over the telephone, “You’re Joe Agnew?”

“That’s right, mister.” Joe tried to make his voice light, but not too light; confidential, but not too confidential. “You wanted me to pick up a fare here?”

The man just grunted. He reached out his hand to open the back door of the cab.

At that exact moment the car that had followed Joe all the way out the Boulevard turned into the side street fast, switching on a powerful searchlight on the turn so the cab and the man were suddenly bathed in bright light.

The man in the gray suit whirled away from the cab and dived for the fringe of underbrush beside the road.

Two things happened at the same moment. The oncoming car jerked to a stop on screeching tires, a man tumbled out brandishing a revolver, shouted, “Halt,” and began firing at the man pinpointed by the searchlight.

At the same moment, the rear door of Joe Agnew’s cab came open from the inside and Michael Shayne’s rangy figure catapulted out from the cramped space in which he had been hiding since picking the lock of Joe Agnew’s garage shortly after two o’clock.

He had a gun in his hand, and he was also shouting, but his voice was directed at the man from the other car, yelling for him to hold his fire, for God’s sake.

Shayne was too late. In the glare of the searchlight mounted on the second car, their quarry was seen to stagger just on the fringe of the underbrush, plunge forward on his belly, and wriggle convulsively a couple of times.

He had stopped wriggling by the time Michael Shayne reached his body. The redhead straightened to glare at the two police officers who came trotting up with drawn guns.

“Goddamn you both to hell for blundering idiots!” Shayne shouted hoarsely. “I’d have had him alive in one more second. Now he’s dead. Of all the fast-triggered bastards—”

“Shut up, Mike!” One of the officers was the same Sergeant Loftus whom Shayne had encountered earlier in front of Lucy’s apartment. “I ordered Powell to shoot. How the hell were we to know you were in the cab waiting to grab him? If we’d known you were there, we’d let you have him. But when we saw him escaping—”

He shrugged and knelt beside the body, rolled him over on his back, and nodded somberly as he put his head down to listen for a heartbeat that wasn’t there.

“Dead, all right,” he announced unnecessarily, since half the side of the man’s head was torn off with a soft-nosed slug. “Know who he is, Mike?”

“Never saw him before.” Shayne was breathing heavily, knotting big fists in an effort to control his futile anger at this outcome of his carefully prepared trap. “I think, though,” he went on harshly, “you’ll find out he’s one of your pals from New Orleans. Detective First Class Mark Switzer, to be exact.”

“Yeh,” muttered Loftus defensively, spreading back the gray coat to go through the dead man’s pockets. “Chief said something about a New Orleans cop maybe going bad.”

He rocked back on his heels with a wallet, flipped it open and nodded soberly. “Here’s his identification. God knows, he deserved killing, Mike. When a cop does turn wrong—”

“Sure, he deserved it,” snarled Shayne with lips drawn back from his teeth. “But he’s got Lucy Hamilton somewhere, goddamn it! And probably another innocent girl he kidnaped in New Orleans and brought here. All I wanted, for God’s sake, was two minutes alone with him. That’s why I didn’t tell you cops what I was planning. I knew you’d interfere. And now you did interfere. And now he’ll never talk to me or anybody else.”

“Tough about Lucy,” said Sergeant Loftus gruffly. He began to explore the other pockets in the dead man’s gray suit, came up with a folded sheet of paper which he opened and read carefully in the glare of the searchlight.

He looked up at Shayne with a troubled expression as he finished reading it, hesitated momentarily, then passed it to the angry detective, saying, “Guess this is meant for you.”

Shayne took it and read: