He picked up a ballpoint and began to doodle on a sheet of scrap paper in front of him.
“You have no clue to this capper’s identity, Mr. Shayne?” the publisher asked.
The detective said, “All I saw was the back of his head as he drove off.”
“You didn’t get his license number?”
“No way.”
“What do you propose to do?”
Shayne spoke quietly. “I propose to find other leads to the Rainey girl’s whereabouts. I’ve only been on the case one day.”
“What if they’ve killed her, too?” Latimer asked. His questions came like bullets.
“Then I’ll find her body, if it still exists. If she’s been trash-compacted or tossed into the ocean, I’ll find out.”
“That could take time,” the publisher reminded him, “and time is what we’re damned near out of. This is Thursday night.”
“I’m aware of it, Latimer. But my deadline record is not too bad.”
“I’m aware of that, Shayne.” The publisher ran a hand over his balding head, turned to his attorney, added, “What if Shayne does find evidence that Rainey is dead? Will that help us?”
Again James Lowman seemed to shake himself out of a trance. He said, “It should help — at least toward getting a further postponement out of Judge Garvey.”
“Cathy Whiting’s murder won’t do that?” Latimer asked.
“Not unless we can tie it in with Myra Rainey’s disappearance — and thus far I have heard nothing that suggests hard evidence.”
Latimer turned to his editor and star reporter on the opposite side of the table, said, “Carl, I expect you to use the full resources of the News either to find Miss Rainey or to link her apartment mate’s murder with the lawsuit. If Shayne needs help, give it to him. That’s all for now, gentlemen.”
He rose and strode from the room, a worried but still cocky little Napoleon of a man. James Lowman stood up, rather unsteadily, the detective thought, and assembled the papers in front of him for transfer to his attaché case. As he did so, several sheets slipped to the carpet and the redhead picked them up and returned them. Lowman nodded his thanks and Mike Shayne joined Tim and Carl Dirkson, who were walking toward the door.
When they passed into the hall toward the elevators, Shayne heard the attorney say, “Operator, I want you to get me...”
The number Lowman requested was inaudible as one of the elevator doors clanged open.
“What do you think?” Carl Dirkson asked the redhead.
“I think Jim Lowman is dead on his feet.”
“He’s got a hell of a rep for this kind of case,” Tim Rourke suggested. The elevator halted at the third floor, the city room level. “Coming in, Mike?” the reporter added.
“I don’t think I’ve got time,” Shayne replied. He rode on down to the lobby, with its photomurals of the best News photographs and its slowly revolving world globe in the center. Outside, the doorman was getting out of a black Coronado.
Shayne said, “Is this Mr. Lowman’s car, Dave?”
“He just called for it. He’s coming down now, Mr. Shayne.”
“Thanks, Dave.” The detective slipped a fivespot into an unreluctant hand, winked and went on to the parking lot, where his own Buick waited.
Although it might have been caused by indigestion or any number of other malaises, Lowman’s behavior puzzled Shayne. He had an intuitive feeling that it lay rooted in brass-chill panic. He had all but smelled the aura of fear as he bent to retrieve the spilled papers.
From his newsmen friends’ elevator comments, Lowman’s trancelike behavior was not usual. This buttressed the redhead’s intuitive assumption that the attorney’s abstraction had been brought about by fear. Question — what did James Lowman have to be afraid of? Two — if he was in panic, did said panic result from news of the murder of Cathy Whiting?
Mike Shayne determined to find out...
IV
The most direct avenue of approach, he decided, would be to follow the attorney home and ring his doorbell shortly after his arrival, a confrontation for which the redhead felt far from prepared. On the other hand, if he followed Lowman and the lawyer did not drive directly home, Shayne would at least know where else he was going.
When Lowman pulled out of the News parking lot, the detective waited out a slow ten-count, then followed him discreetly, sliding into the light night traffic a half dozen cars behind. Shayne knew that the well known attorney lived in the opulent area across Indian Creek. He was therefore surprised when Lowman turned south instead of north when they reached an artery.
Two of the intervening cars took the north turn, three headed south after the attorney’s car — and one of them, the redhead saw, was a sleek grey Mercedes as it slid past a battery of bright sodium lamps.
The last time he had noticed such a car was when it took the driveway turn on two wheels, fleeing the scene of Cathy Whiting’s murder. A frown creased Shayne’s forehead as he let another car pass him to widen the pursuit gap. The odds against its being the murder car were a good hundred to one. Still...
One of the cars between the Eldorado and the Mercedes peeled off onto a side road, then another. The driver of the Mercedes let the other intervening car pass him... and then the one in front of that took a left turn to be followed by the last of the cover vehicles.
It was shortly after this that James Lowman must have become aware of the fact that he was being followed. From a dignified fifty-five miles per hour, the Cadillac suddenly spurted ahead. By his own speedometer, the redhead saw that it was going sixty-five, seventy-five, then eighty-five miles per hour.
The Mercedes held its own, as did Shayne’s Buick. All intervening cover was gone, the highway was empty save for the three of them — but evidently the man in the Mercedes, his attention focussed on the car ahead, was unaware that he, too, was being followed. The redhead eased off just a bit, keeping only the Mercedes in view.
A couple of miles further on, in thickening traffic, both cars ahead began to slow down. The detective kept pace with them, barely managed not to pass a right turn around a tree masked corner as the taillights of the foreign car turned off. It was Shayne’s turn to corner on two wheels.
The byway was ill-lighted, its darkness further increased by an arcade of lofty palms that virtually shut out the night sky. Neither the Mercedes nor the Eldorado was in sight. The detective cruised it slowly, both ways, noting the name on the corner sign as he got back to the highway — Las Palmas Drive.
He drove back to the city’s heart battling a mounting sense of frustration. Somewhere behind him, he again heard the mournful whine of distant police sirens.
Flagler Street was still bright as day when the detective emerged from the small parking lot behind his office. Over the past fifteen years, the once relatively quiet thoroughfare had become the main drag for the half million Cubans Miami has absorbed since Castro came to power in their native land.
The sidewalks were crowded, the kiosk coffee hot as hell, the conversation-table explosively high. But the big redhead enjoyed the sometime vitoperative, always vivid vitality of the round-the-clock scene.
Letting himself into his two-room office, Shayne used Lucy Hamilton’s monitor board to put in a call to James Lowman’s residence, which was listed in the directory. To his surprise, the attorney answered.
“Just wanted to be sure you got in safely,” the detective told him. “I had reason to think you were followed.”