SHAYNE HIT THE THICK GREEN TURF, swerved sharply around a corner of the building as two shots blasted through the window. He zigzagged through clumps of shrubbery to a quiet side street, heard shouts and the sound of racing motors behind him.
A department store delivery truck was parked on the street with the back doors swinging open. Shayne sprinted toward it, saw the driver with a bundle in his hand ringing the doorbell of a house.
He stuck his head and shoulders inside the back of the truck, eased the doors forward to cover a part of his body. Leaning far inside with his rear end and long legs fully visible, he pretended to grope for a bundle.
He heard one car, then another race past him. Footsteps coming down the walk betokened the return of the driver. At the same time he heard Peter Painter cursing and panting behind him as he trotted to the sidewalk.
Shayne put his palms on the floor of the truck and lifted his body inside, crouched there in the semidarkness while the driver sauntered to the back and latched the swinging doors, then got under the wheel and the truck started forward with a lurch. It careened around the next corner and went west two blocks, stopped to make another delivery.
Shayne held himself as inconspicuously as possible against the front end while the driver swung from the seat and went to the back for another package. Luckily, he was a methodical sort and had his bundles placed in order for delivery. He reached in and took one out without looking toward the front.
When he left to make the delivery, Shayne eased the rear doors shut, went to the front of the truck and slid over the back of the seat under the wheel. The motor was purring softly. He started the vehicle and drove away at high speed with the driver’s shouts echoing through the street.
He drove on recklessly toward the bay shore, though he knew it would be insanity to attempt to cross either causeway to the mainland now. Painter wouldn’t lose any time throwing barricades across the only exits from Miami Beach, and the truck driver, too, would have officers searching for the stolen vehicle.
He stopped a few blocks from the east shore of Biscayne Bay and continued on foot, reaching the bay approximately halfway between the County and Venetian causeways, an area dotted with fishing-wharves and boathouses.
Strolling along the beach past picnicking parties and the swankier docks with their trim fishing-craft for hire, he came at last to an isolated and dilapidated wharf which was deserted except for a single Negro fisherman who was preparing to embark in a small rowboat tied to the end of the pier. The Negro was gnarled and old, wearing a battered straw hat and a dirty pair of too-large overalls.