“It’s just a little ways now. Take it easy and I’ll tell you. Is this really going to be a payoff? Is that what you meant by asking me about ten grand? That’s what you dicks call ten thousand dollars, isn’t it? Why’s the guy so worried about you bringing the cops? Is he the murderer? Gosh, if I’d thought that I’d of turned down his fifty bucks flat. But you’re used to it, huh? Playing ball with murderers? Or was it maybe the wife that did it and he’s covering up for her?”
“I don’t know,” said Shayne absently. “How far is it now?”
The young man was peering ahead uneasily. “The next turn-off, I think. Yeh, that’s it. To your right and down to the bay. That’s where he said to bring you.”
Shayne turned right off the boulevard, drove past a couple of small frame houses, and then along a deserted stretch of paved street that dead-ended against the shore of Biscayne Bay.
The moon was dipping low on the horizon and there the faintest pre-dawn glow was in the sky. His headlights picked out a parked car at the end of the street. Its front bumper touched the steel cable stretched across the road.
Shayne let his car roll up on the right side of the car and looked curiously into the front seat. It appeared to be empty.
As he bent slightly forward and down to cut off his lights and motor, he felt his passenger shift his position on the seat beside him. He started to turn in that direction when a bomb exploded against his head.
Chapter six
The morning sun, in a cloudless sky, slanted through the windshield and one window of the car. Michael Shayne’s body lay uncomfortably sidewise on the front seat, his right leg was bent beneath him, and his left foot drooped against the brake pedal.
Consciousness returned slowly. He tried to shift his numb right leg. The movement brought searing pain to his head. He opened his eyes a crack, and the bright sunlight stabbed his injured nerves like a lance.