Brett Halliday - Six Seconds to Kill

Presently the phone rang. He talked briefly, then returned to the truck. It drove off, with Shayne still behind it.

It parked in front of a loft building between the railway tracks and South Miami Avenue. Shayne was in a good vehicle for a pursuit. A cab is hard to see when it is moving, but conspicuous standing still. He parked three blocks away, in front of a luncheonette. Leaving his cap in the taxi, he walked to the next corner.

There were two men in the front seat of the truck.

He was still feeling his way, but a few things seemed obvious. If Lorenzo Vega was to the right of Dr. Galvez, Adele and her friends were certainly to the left. After her blunder with the unloaded.38, the 15th Court address had become dangerous. She had warned its occupants, and they had promptly scattered. For some reason that was not yet clear to Shayne, they considered it important to keep him away from Vega. Luckily, like Galvez himself, they had an exaggerated idea of how much one private detective is able to do. If Vega had gone into hiding, Shayne, they thought, with his many Miami sources, would be able to find him. So they decided to find him first. Then all they had to do was position themselves and wait for Shayne to show up.

The boy who had done the phoning stepped out of the truck and concealed himself in the next doorway. Shayne instantly dropped into a new personality. Completely relaxed, he shambled up to a well-dressed man with a briefcase and asked for some change for busfare. The man shook him off irritably. Shayne panhandled his way back to the luncheonette, earning twenty cents on the way.

He used the dimes to make two phone calls. One was to Tim Rourke. He passed on the information he had picked up, and gave his friend instructions about what to say in case he received another call, which Shayne thought he might be able to set up.

After that he called the mobile telephone operator, who handled service to and from the radio-phones in moving automobiles, such as the one in Shayne’s Buick. He had never met this girl, but he had talked with her frequently. She listened carefully to what he wanted.

“One of these fine days, Mr. Shayne,” she said reluctantly, “I’m going to lose my job on account of you. Deceiving people, you know, isn’t company policy.”

“If you don’t want to do it I’ll arrange something else.”

“Did I say I wouldn’t do it? I know you wouldn’t ask me if it wasn’t important.”

He went into the luncheonette and ordered coffee, and found an empty booth from which he could watch the truck.

He was into his second cup when he saw the boy step out on the sidewalk menacingly. Two men who had come out of the loft building retreated quickly into the lobby.

Shayne returned to the cab. He started off fast, clapping on his taxi-driver’s cap and dousing the off-duty light. He had no doubt that one of the two men was Vega. If they needed transportation, he was ready to provide it.

He went down into low as he came abreast of the panel truck. Inside the lobby, Shayne saw a man stabbing at the elevator button while a second man, in a business suit without a necktie, hatless, faced the street with a Luger in his hand. Shayne had seen a photograph of this man in bathing trunks. He had been armed then, too, probably with the same weapon.

He saw Shayne and came out yelling, “Taxi! Taxi!” Shayne threw his meter-flag. Both men leaped into the back seat and Vega shouted, “Get away fast!”

“Is somebody after you?” Shayne asked mildly, going into gear.

“Driver!”

Shayne was maneuvering for a look at the driver of the panel truck, and he didn’t let up on the clutch until the man looked around. It was the tattooed salad chef from the Mozambique. They recognized each other at the same instant.

Shayne moved off, not fast, with the truck behind him. Vega was sitting far forward, throwing quick glances out the rear window.

“Twenty-five bucks over the fare if you can lose him. It’s a piece of junk. You can do it.”

“I’m driving a piece of junk myself. I take it slow and easy so everybody’s still alive at the end of the shift.”

“Fifty!”

“Fifty’s too high,” Shayne observed. “That makes me think you’re doing something to break the law.”

He swiveled the rear-view mirror so he could see Vega’s companion, who met his eyes with a scowl. He was a familiar type to Shayne. He had the sprung nasal capillaries of a middle-aged drinker. He had been in too many brawls.

He seemed anxious about Vega’s gun, which was still showing. He put out a restraining hand as Vega raised it and placed the muzzle at the back of Shayne’s skull.

“A little more speed, damn it.”

Shayne rotated the mirror to pick up Vega. “What are you worrying about, Lorenzo? Take a deep breath and think about something soothing, like running water. How many times in your experience does a taxi show up exactly when you want it? That doesn’t happen in real life.”

Vega wet his lips and sat back. “I understand. Excuse me for becoming excited. I had the impression they wanted to kill me.”

“You had the wrong impression. You’re more valuable alive. Who are they?”

“In the truck? Alianza people. They think of themselves as being absolutely ruthless. Of course much of it is gas, but when anyone talks as much as they do about achieving success through violence, it is sometimes prudent to worry a little.”

His companion murmured something in Spanish. Vega said, “You are right in your count, Carlos, only two are visible. These we could handle. I never shrink from a fight when the sides are approximately equal. But I can guarantee you that there are others lying in wait inside the truck. You know their strategy as well as I do-never attack without overwhelming local superiority. That is why I say to this driver, for the love of the blessed Virgin, put on a little speed! At any moment they may pull up alongside and open on us with submachine guns. It happens daily in Buenos Aires, in Bogota.”

“Are they part of the Ruiz organization?”

“Ah,” Vega said. “That I am in no position to say of my own knowledge. Perhaps it is time we exchange credentials.”

Shayne grinned. “All you’re going to get out of me is my hackie’s license.”

Vega’s eyes flickered up to the license hanging from the back of the front seat, and returned to the mirror. “There is little resemblance,” he remarked.

“That’s deliberate,” Shayne said. “If you really want me to speed up, hang on.”

He accelerated sharply, and turned off 3rd Avenue, tires screaming. After two more quick turns, he ended at the ramp leading down into the taxi garage. The truck had good pickup and kept fairly close. In the garage, Shayne pulled in beside his Buick.

“Here we change cars.”

Both men got out readily.

“Not you, Carlos,” Shayne said. “Just Vega, if you don’t mind.”

Carlos minded, but there were several cabbies standing around watching, and he decided not to protest. Shayne slid behind the wheel. He slowed as he passed the dispatcher.

“Thanks, Eddie. Send me a bill.”

“What are you talking about, a bill? Any time.”

“Get down,” Shayne told Vega. “All the way down.” Vega crouched out of sight as the Buick came up the ramp. The panel truck had stopped with its motor running.

It didn’t follow. After turning a corner, Shayne told Vega to get back on the seat.

After another quick turn he parked. Using the car phone, he called his old friend Will Gentry, Miami chief of police, described the panel truck and the two men who had followed him, and gave its location and license number.

“Pick them up and hold them overnight,” he said brusquely. “I’ll let you know what charges to bring against them.”