Brett Halliday - Counterfeit Wife

He was within six feet of Shayne, and his right hand was coming out of his pocket. Shayne hadn’t looked in his direction but now he whirled, took one lunging step sideways, and threw a left hook to Bates’s square jaw.

Bates reeled backward and went down.

Shayne sprinted toward the screen door. Bates’s. 45 roared behind him and a slug plunked into the door casing above his head as he went through.

The gray sedan was pulled up outside with the right-hand door standing open and the motor roaring. He dived into the seat beside the woman, and the car raced forward down the gravel drive to the macadam.

He said, “Nice going, baby. We just-” He sucked in his breath and added, “Maybe we didn’t,” as tires screeched, and a big car with dimmed lights lurched into the driveway.

Mrs. Dawson swung the steering wheel violently to the right and stepped hard on the gas to avoid a collision. There were confused shouts behind them as she swerved to the left into 36th Street in second gear. She sat erect with both hands loosely on the steering wheel. The sedan got up to fifty in second gear and was tearing itself to pieces before she shifted into high.

Shayne was doing some fast figuring on how long it would take Bates to give the reinforcements the hundred-dollar bill and send them racing after the gray sedan.

They heard a few scattered shots from the direction of the Fun Club. The woman looked up at the mirror and said, “My God! They’re coming-but fast.” She switched off her lights and added calmly, “We may make it yet, big boy.”

In the light of the moon, now shining in a pool of unclouded sky, the straight black macadam had a grayish sheen. The way the sedan trembled, Shayne knew it must be making more than seventy. He grinned into the dark and said wonderingly, “You’re doing all right. If you pull this one out of the bag I’ll owe you a lot of drinks.”

“I’ll be able to use a lot.” Her eyes were on the road ahead; she was gripping the wheel tighter. Lights flashed by on either side of the street, and Shayne realized that they were approaching the more thickly populated section of the city proper. The headlights of the pursuing car were relentlessly gaining.

“What kind of jam you in?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I think they’d rather get me alive, though.”

She lifted her foot from the accelerator and put it on the brake. The sedan settled back on its haunches with tires screaming. She said nothing but suddenly swung the wheel hard to turn into a side street. The sedan skidded and the left side rose from the ground. Then it crashed into a concrete guard rail of a bridge.

The car turned over on its side, and the big blonde was on top of Shayne, pinning him against the door beneath.

She was inert and heavy, and blood trickled down on his cheek and seeped under his collar as he tried to push up against her dead weight.

He could hear shouting voices and running feet. Then someone was climbing up on the overturned car, and the left-hand door was opened. He twisted and lifted the solid hulk of the woman upward toward the opening, calling out hoarsely, “Take her out, quick. I’m afraid she’s badly hurt.”

A flashlight glared down from above. Shayne pushed from below as someone above dragged the woman out.

He then managed to stand up and pull himself from the tangled wreckage of the sedan.

There were men and women and a few children swarming around in various states of disarray, and in the midst of them the big blonde’s body was outstretched on the roadside a few feet away. A man bent over her with a flashlight.

Shayne took a couple of steps toward her, but was halted by the feel of a gun in his ribs and a harsh voice in his ear.

“This way, bud. Keep it quiet.”

Shayne turned slowly and saw a big black sedan parked on the other side of the bridge with headlights burning brightly. He knew by the intonation and by the feel of the gun that he couldn’t bluff this off as he had bluffed Bates.

On his way to the black car he thought, morosely, that he had encountered three very chummy guys within a couple of hours. He had been called “brother” and “pal” and now “bud,” and two of these chums had held pistols on him, and one had stuffed two, probably counterfeit, hundred-dollar bills into his hand.

He hoped the woman wasn’t badly hurt.

They reached the side of the black sedan, and the man with the gun swung an ape-like arm past Shayne to open the rear door. He stood back and said, “Get in.”

Shayne got in; the man followed, closing the door.

The man in the driver’s seat wore a stiff straw hat tipped far back on his head. Shayne could see the profile of a flat, black face, but that was all.

The man beside Shayne said, “Get rolling, Getchie,” and the car moved smoothly forward.

The man sat quietly for a moment, then said, “I reckon you’re not carryin’ anything or you would’ve showed it. But I’m not taking chances. Twist down with your face against the seat and put your hands behind you. If you move, I’ll split your head open.”

Shayne followed directions and got his hands clasped behind his neck with an effort. His left shoulder had been wrenched in the accident. At first it had felt numb, but in this uncomfortable position it began to ache. His head ached, too. The blood on his face was beginning to clot, and it itched.

He lay very still and tried not to think about things. The car was being driven smoothly on paved streets, making a lot of turns which Shayne made no effort to memorize. He wasn’t familiar with this northeast section of the city, and he had a feeling that he wasn’t going to have any particular desire to retrace the route even if he did have a chance to do so later.

It wasn’t more than fifteen minutes later that the car turned off the street and went down a steep incline into a place that smelled strongly of grease and gasoline. Shayne guessed that it was a basement garage. The man beside him said, “End of the line, bud. Get out that door.”

Shayne sat up and unlatched the door and got out. They were in a big concrete-walled and concrete floored room and there were half a dozen other cars parked around the walls. A twenty-watt, fly-specked bulb in the ceiling gave off a dim light.

The man with the gun followed Shayne out of the car; the driver came around to stand beside him. The gun was poked in Shayne’s ribs, and he was told to go straight up the stairs.

The stairs were wooden and shaky, ending at a small landing faced by a closed wooden door with a bar across it. Shayne lifted the bar and stepped into a narrow, dark passageway. The men stayed close behind him and the gun stayed against his back. He bumped into another door in the dark, found a knob and opened it onto a brightly lit room with a Persian rug on the floor and overstuffed furniture around the walls. The men closed the door when they entered, and Shayne turned to look at them.

The driver, Getchie, was a Negro. His nose had been smashed flat against his broad face, and he had a long grayish scar on one cheek. His forehead was low, and he looked mean and sullen.

His companion was white, rather tall, and fairly bulky. He gestured toward a davenport with his. 38 and said, “Sit down there an’ I’ll tell the boss you’re here. But wait a minute,” he added, as Shayne started toward the long couch. “Shake him down, Getchie.”

Shayne stopped and lifted his right arm high. But his left arm balked when pain shot through his shoulder. The Negro frisked him carefully, stepped back with a grunt and a negative shake of his head. “He ain’t totin’ nothin’, Mistuh Perry.”

Perry nodded. “Watch him, Getchie.” He went to a door at the end of the room, opened it and called, “We got that guy from the Fun Club, boss.”