Death Has Three Lives

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 pulled 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.