Бретт Холлидей - Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 46, No. 9, September 1982

Shayne shrugged. “Digging can uncover a lot of things. Maybe evidence that you and Aguilar have been having an affair for a long time. Positive proof that Lomack’s books have been doctored.” Shayne smiled savagely. “Maybe even the gun you used to shoot Morrall, or the money you were going to use to start over somewhere far away from Corpus Christi.”

Aguilar laughed. “It’s your word against ours, Shayne. An out of state PI versus a police lieutenant and the wife of a prominent local businessman. How are you going to even get anybody to believe you long enough to do that investigating you’re talking about.”

Shayne took a deep breath. Aguilar had a point; Shayne was sure his theory was right now, but proving it would be another matter entirely.

There was only one other thing on Shayne’s side.

“Jack Lomack will believe me,” he said. “In all the years I’ve known him, I never lied to him, and he knows it. We’ll go to the hospital right now and stay there until he gets his wits back. Once the sedation wears off and I’ve laid the story out for him, he’ll want to get to the bottom of it.”

“He’d never believe you,” Maggie said positively. “He loves me too much.”

“Then he’d want to prove me wrong, wouldn’t he?” Shayne counterpointed. “And the only way to do that would be to look into what I’ve got to say, find out once and for all who’s telling the truth. How about it?” Shayne’s mouth stretched in a grin, but his eyes were as hard and cold as ice. “Let’s leave it up to Jack Lomack to decide.”

The moment of silence that went by dragged like weeks. A bead of sweat rolled down Aguilar’s forehead. Shayne felt like he had been standing there holding the gun forever.

“I won’t go back to him,” Maggie whispered. “I’ll never go back!”

Shayne swung his eyes toward her just as she exploded off the bed, lunging toward him, getting between him and Aguilar. Shayne saw Aguilar grabbing for his gun again. He cursed, swung his free hand, snapping it around in a backhand blow that caught Maggie and sent her spinning away. She fell against Aguilar as his gun came around toward Shayne.

The gun blasted. Maggie jerked forward and screamed.

Shayne saw the sudden blossom of red on the front of her blouse, high on the right side. He was leaping forward even as Aguilar triggered off that first hasty shot. His arm lashed out, the barrel of his pistol seeking Aguilar’s head.

The blow missed as Maggie slumped forward. Shayne felt her limp form tangling with his legs. Aguilar fired again, the shot sounding like an explosion in the small cabin. The bullet whipped by Shayne’s head as he fell.

Shayne hooked with his leg even as he was falling, trying to knock Aguilar’s feet from under him. The policeman sidestepped nimbly, face twisted in a hate-filled grimace, and sprinted for the door, banging through it into the night.

Aguilar’s cool had deserted him under fire, and Shayne felt a grim thrill at that. He came up into a crouch and paused only a second to check Maggie Lomack. She was breathing, and her pulse was slow but strong. With medical attention, she would probably be all right. There was no phone in the room, so Shayne hoped that someone else had heard the shooting and had already called for the cops.

He ran out of the cabin, hearing as he did so the squeal of tires on the street. Aguilar’s car was gone. Shayne ran toward the street, past the palm trees that bordered the courtyard in the middle of the cabins, and saw Aguilar less than a block away. Shayne threw his gun up, sighted, prayed, and fired.

He squeezed off four fast shots. One of Aguilar’s rear tires blew, and the rear window of the car shattered. It slewed from side to side, glanced off a tree and a garbage can, then rocked to a stop in the parking lot by the beach.

Aguilar was out of the car and running a second later, apparently unhurt. Shayne charged after him. There was a lot of shouting now. People were still out fishing, some of them on a pier extending out into the water, some of them on the concrete jetty that formed the boat basin. The curious shouts turned into frightened cries as Aguilar spun around, spotted Shayne, and sent slugs screaming toward him.

Shayne dove to the side, away from the gunfire. He rolled and came up running again. He might have been able to drop Aguilar with a shot, but there were too many innocent people around to risk it. He was going to have to take the killer hand to hand if he could.

Aguilar wasn’t far ahead of him now. There wasn’t much more room to run, either. He had come up against the basin with its multitude of shrimp boats. Another direction was closed off to Aguilar because there was nothing out there but the waters of the Gulf. And Shayne was behind him. That left the jetty, and it was a dead end.

Aguilar was too panic-stricken to think about that. He raced out onto the two-foot wide wall of concrete.

Shayne started after him. The waves were up slightly, splashing over the jetty, and the surface was slick. Aguilar turned and fired again. Shayne went to one knee for a second, then trotted forward again. He glanced over his shoulder. All the fishermen that had congregated in the area had cleared out now; they were there to catch fish, not to dodge bullets.

And then Shayne’s eyes narrowed. One of the fishermen hadn’t left. He was further out on the wall, and Aguilar was moving right toward him.

If Aguilar took the man as a hostage...

It was time for Shayne to do some shooting of his own, before it was too late. He dropped to a knee again, lifting his gun and calling into the night breezes, “Aguilar!”

Aguilar had almost reached the confused fisherman now. The burly, middle-aged man was only a few feet beyond the killer. Shayne wanted a clearer shot, but it didn’t look like he was going to get it.

Aguilar turned again, not paying any attention to the fisherman. His own gun came up, and he and Shayne faced each other on the jetty, twenty feet apart, in one of those moments when time seems to freeze.

Neither one of them fired.

The startled fisherman loomed up behind Aguilar, holding a net on the end of a long metal rod. He swung it, cracking the rod down on Aguilar’s wrist and sending the gun spinning out into the water. Shayne was on his feet again in an instant, charging across the space that separated them.

Aguilar cursed and tried to duck, but Shayne wasn’t going to be denied now. His knobby fist shot out, brushing past the other man’s feeble efforts to block the blow, and slammed into Aguilar’s jaw. Aguilar’s feet came up off the jetty. Arms pinwheeling, he flew off the concrete wall and splashed into the water a good five feet away.

The punch had made Shayne’s arm hurt all the way up to the shoulder. It was a damn good feeling.

“Thanks,” Shayne said, nodding to the fisherman. “You just helped capture a big one.”

“Well, he made me lose the biggest fish I caught all day!” the man exclaimed.

Shayne smiled and turned away. There were sirens blaring from the shore, and when he turned around, he saw the flashing lights.

It had been a long, hard day. It was going to be an even longer night, Shayne knew.

But now Jack Lomack would have the answers.

“It hurts like hell,” Lomack was saying a few days later. “And it’ll take me a long time to even believe it, let alone get over it.” He sighed and looked at Shayne, the sadness going deep in his eyes. “I guess I just loved her too much. It made me blind.”

“They say that happens sometimes,” Shayne agreed.

“I’ll be all right,” Lomack went on, looking out at the ocean across from his home. “Hell, there’s still plenty of work to do. We may have got all the money back those two were going to steal, but with John dead and that rig lost... Well, I’m going to be plenty busy, let me tell you.”