Brett Halliday: A Redhead for Mike Shayne

“Hear that, Dix?” said Bull over his shoulder happily. “Just like I tol’ you this mornin’. You take a pro like Mike Shayne… why should he get sore for a little slappin’ around? He’s handed out plenty his ownself, you can bet.”

With the two men in the back seat of his car, Shayne got onto the Palmetto Speedway and sped south to its intersection with Highway Number One, and made the 18-mile run to Homestead at high speed. At Florida City, Number One became a two-lane road leading south to Key Largo and eventually to Key West.

He drove through Florida City at exactly 10:30, and made the next seventeen miles in seventeen minutes, leaving the rich and heavily populated country behind him and entering a desolate area of scrub pine and palmetto as the road drew close to the coastline.

At that point he found an old paved road leading off to the left, and he swung onto it at reduced speed, checking his speedometer. It was a narrow, twisting roadway through hummocky wasteland with blazing sunlight overhead, no habitations on either side, and no other cars travelling in either direction.

At the end of six miles of bumpy road, Shayne said over his shoulder in a conversational tone, “You two had better get down on the floor now and have your gats ready. I turn off on a dirt road in about half a mile. Keep your heads damn well down because I promised to come alone and unarmed. It will be somewhere along that dirt road. I expect two of them, and they won’t be amateurs. Keep out of sight until I stop, and I’ll try to get them both around to my side of the car, and I’ll jerk the rear door open. That should give you a jump, but for God’s sake start shooting fast when the door opens. They’re going to be tough cookies, and loaded for bear. Got that clear?”

“Sure. We’ll take ’em,” Bull grunted happily, hunching himself down on the floor of the car directly against the left door.

Dixie got down beside him, and Shayne slowed still more, watching his speedometer and for a dirt road on the right. He saw it, and there was a faded wooden sign, LODGE, nailed to a pine tree at the turn-off.

He glanced swiftly over his shoulder as he turned to see that the hoods were properly hunkered down with drawn guns, and then proceeded along the rutted road between palmetto hummocks at ten miles an hour.

They were very close to the coastline and the smell of salt water was strong in the air. In less than a mile there was a sharp turn around a hummock over a small rise, and the weathered rock walls of a sprawling fishing lodge showed through a thin growth of pines in front of him and not more than a hundred yards away.

Two men stepped into the middle of the road fifty feet in front of him. He braked gently and muttered over his shoulder, “Two of them like I guessed. Wait till I open the door.”

He came to an easy stop with his bumper almost touching the pair who blocked his way. He put his head out the window and asked, “This Enders’ place?” And then stepped out quickly, holding his hands in the open and well away from his body.

One of the men was very tall and thin, with cadaverous, darkly tanned features and very white teeth which showed in a saturnine smile as he surveyed the detective. He wore a pongee suit and had his arms folded across his thin chest with his right inside the lapel where there was a formidable bulge.

Shayne knew that would be Slim Yancy.

His companion was a head shorter than Slim, bald-headed and perspiring. He was coatless and wore a wide leather belt with an open holster on his right hip… a big and curiously designed holster which would just about fit a Lenski twelve-oh-seven. He had his hand on the butt of the weapon and he stood flat-footed on the side of the road facing Shayne.

Shayne slammed the front door shut and surveyed them coolly. “I don’t think we’ve met. I’m Shayne.”

Pug Slezar said, “Yeah. We know. This here’s Slim.”

Shayne said, “I thought this was a social call. Where’s Roy Enders?”

“He sent us out to see if you were clean before you came in.” Slim’s lips barely moved as he uttered the words. He sauntered happily around the front of the car, bringing his hand out from under his lapel with a big Lenski gripped in it. His deepset eyes were cold, and glittered like polished agate. His head was thrust forward on a long, thin neck.

Shayne took two backward steps, holding his arms well away from his body, his right hand resting casually on the handle of the rear door as though to steady himself. “I’m clean,” he protested. “I came out to talk business. This is a hell of a way to greet a guy.”

Pug stepped forward in front of Slim, hand still on his holstered gun. He said calmly, over his shoulder, “Why don’t we let him have it right here?”

Slim said, “We do,” and moved up beside his shorter companion.

Shayne jerked the car door wide open and dived for the ground at the rear of the car at the same instant. He hit it rolling, and kept on rolling while the racket of gunfire blasted the silence behind him.

You couldn’t count the shots, but Dixie and Bull got theirs off first before the automatic Lenskis blasted like submachine guns.

Shayne lay flat on his belly with his head pillowed on his arms until the last racketing echo died away. Then he rolled over and sat up and saw Slim lying flat on his back with the hole made by a.45 slug in the middle of his face. Pug was sitting on the ground near him with a look of dazed bewilderment on his broad face and with the fingers of both hands laced tightly together in front of his belly. Blood came out between his fingers and he looked down at it disbelievingly. Then he toppled over on his side, moaning softly.

There was no sound from inside the car.

Shayne got to his feet stiffly. He dimly heard shouts, and looked around to see men running through the pine thicket toward them. He walked around to the right-hand door and opened it and peered inside.

Both men were cramped down on the floor in unnatural positions, and both were quite dead. Somehow, one or both of Enders’ men had managed to get off blasts from their Lenskis before they went down, and the 50-caliber bullets had created terrible havoc inside the car. The top half of Dixie’s head had literally been lifted off, and Bull’s chest was shredded with the heavy slugs.

Shayne closed the door hastily and went around the back of the car to meet Will Gentry who came puffing up followed by half a dozen men dressed like farmers, some of whom Shayne recognized as plain-clothes detectives from Miami. Directly behind Gentry was a tall, black-mustached man wearing a big revolver and a Sheriff’s star, and tumbling along behind him was Timothy Rourke.

Gentry glanced at the two men on the ground and peered inside the back of the car, then turned angrily on the redhead and demanded, “What in hell are you pulling off here, Mike?”

“I?” Shayne arched ragged red eyebrows at the unhappy chief of police. “Am I to blame if some damned hoods choose this place to settle one of their feuds?” He waved toward the rear of his car. “Couple of hitch-hikers I picked up along the way. How the hell was I to know they’d start shooting the minute I stopped the car. Why don’t you ask them?”

“They’re both dead,” Gentry said angrily. “Hitchhikers hell! You set this up, Mike…”

“This one’s still alive,” Rourke called out cheerfully, kneeling beside Pug. “But I don’t think he will be long.”

Gentry and Shayne went to him. Blood was spreading out behind Pug’s hands still gripped in front of his belly, but his eyelids were flickering.

Gentry bent over him and demanded, “Where’s Enders?”

“Inside. Cellar.” Pug’s reply was faint and strained.