But Angelo had lied to him. Before the movement was complete, one of the doors opened and a second man came barreling out, a wide figure in workingman’s clothes, pumping hard. He was armed with a more imposing weapon than Shayne’s, a. 45 that looked as big as a cannon. He fired it from chest level. It not only looked like a cannon, it made a bang like a cannon. A mirror shattered. Clearly Shayne couldn’t use Pedro as a shield; his colleague intended to shoot Pedro out of the way, and then shoot Shayne.
Shayne took a quick stutter step toward the moving man and threw Pedro at him. Pedro skittered across the tiled floor, sawing the air, and the two men collided hard. Both went down. Shayne kicked at a head, but missed. Pedro continued to slide, ending up against the urinals. There was another heavy hammering explosion. The shooter was up on one knee, his face contorted. That was the last shot he meant to miss. Shayne, still off balance, snapped a shot from five feet. He was firing at the man’s body but the bullet went high, striking him in the forehead.
It was the only place a small-caliber gun would have stopped him. The. 45 continued in an upward arc and went sailing. The man clutched at nothing and went forward on his face.
Pedro, still on the floor and groggy, fumbled with a knife. Shayne extended his arm and shouted, “Hold it!”
He retrieved the. 45, then came in on Pedro, kicked the knife out of his hand, and swung the heavy gun, checking it an inch from Pedro’s head.
“Say it fast. When you shoot one, they let you shoot the second one free. Who sent you?”
Pedro shook his head. The heavy hoop in his ear swung and glinted. Shayne picked him off the floor and slammed him against the urinals. He pulled him back and did it again.
“This is no fucking joke. It’s trouble for everybody. Who are you working for?”
Pedro spat in his face and tried to bring up his knee. Shayne hit him with the. 45, taking a little off the swing because he didn’t want to kill him yet. Metal crunched against bone.
The off-duty policeman who had broken in on Shayne’s questioning stepped in with his gun out. Angelo was behind him. Shayne had never been popular with the Miami Beach force, and now, after Painter’s press-conference charges, he was fair game. The cop looked at the body.
“It’s all over,” Shayne said. “Put it away.”
He was speaking calmly, but the cop had already started a sequence of movements that could only end with the gun being fired. He was in a tight crouch, his shoulders forward, the gun in both hands. Shayne had seen cops in that position before, and he didn’t hesitate. Gunfire was the only answer for gunfire. He fired at the long neon tube overhead. It exploded with a quick spurt of escaping gas. Glass pattered down. Shayne went to one side in the sudden darkness, and knocked against Pedro, who had a second knife or had managed to recover the first one. Pedro struck out, raking Shayne’s shoulder.
“Kill him!” Angelo yelled.
For an instant Shayne’s moving figure was outlined against the light from the betting room, and another shot was fired. And then he was through the baffle. He checked, seeing a security man coming toward him. Because of the crowd, Shayne didn’t believe there would be any more shooting, but he stopped believing that when the cop pointed his gun and fired.
Again Shayne went into the men’s room at a crawl, much faster than the first time. He was beginning to get pain from the knife wound.
He found the dead man and dragged him back through the baffle. The people behind him were moving cautiously, remembering that he was the one with the. 45. He heaved the body up to a standing position and walked it out.
The crowd had finally realized that something dangerous was happening, and was draining toward the exits. The cop was standing ten feet away, still in the grip of the shooting hysteria. Having fired his gun once, he wanted passionately to fire it again.
The track announcer was calling, “And going into the backstretch it’s Josie S. on the inside-”
Shayne lifted the body so the feet were clear, and ran at the cop. Unnerved by the shattered face and the rotating arms, the cop tried to go two ways at once, and stumbled. Shayne released the body with a yell, and jumped at the escalator.
Several customers were riding up from the ground floor. Shayne, a frightening sight himself by this time, swung out on the strip between the two staircases and slid to the ground floor.
A security guard was running to warn the others at the turnstiles. Shayne made the opposite turn, away from the gate. He wrenched open a door-“Press, Public Relations”-and walked in, colliding with Linda Geary.
She recoiled, and said accusingly, “You got blood on me.”
“That’s because I’ve got blood on me,” Shayne said. “It’s nice to meet somebody for a change who isn’t waving a gun.”
She stared at him, brushing at the blood on her hands. “For heaven’s sake, what happened?”
“I’ve been shot at and knifed, and don’t ask me why because I don’t know. Your cops think the only way to stop me now is to kill me, so will you lock the door and tell them you’re lying down with a headache?”
“There’s no lock on the door. Who shot at you?”
“I’d say they’re professionals. That’s all I have time for.”
Blood was dripping off his fingertips. He put the. 45 in his belt and worked his jacket off his injured shoulder. Linda made a small distressed sound.
“Do you think your father was murdered, Linda?” Shayne said.
“No!” She raised a hand as though she thought he was about to hit her. “ Murdered! He was drunk, he went off the road-”
“Maybe somebody was parked there waiting, and nudged him off. Did he believe in using his seat belt?”
“The car made an awful noise when he didn’t.”
“It was sitting out there in a dark parking lot all evening. Sprinkle a few pints of gas on the motor, and it’d be sure to catch on fire. That might explain why everybody seems so tense.”
He was using his ripped shirt to sponge off the blood. The knife blade had gone deep into the muscle, and had probably touched bone. Linda had the back of her hand to her mouth.
“It’ll look better when it’s sewn up,” Shayne told her. “You know your way around this place. What about emergency exits?”
“I’m sorry,” she said faintly, “but I have to-”
She plumped into a chair, her face very pale. After a moment she gave her head a hard shake. “And I’ve been complaining this job was so dull. You’d better have some water.” She waved toward a closed door. “But don’t expect any needlework from me. I’m no good at that kind of thing.”
This group of offices had its own small washroom. Leaving the door open. Shayne filled the basin. When the water turned red, he emptied it out and ran more.
Linda pushed to her feet. “Do I have to watch? You do that and I’ll check something. Don’t go away.” When Shayne looked around at her she said hastily, “I hired you to take care of that Cuban. You can’t do that if you’re full of holes. Trust me.”
He let her go. Five minutes went by. When she came back, he was sitting on the corner of a desk, bare to the waist, a towel knotted around his upper arm. Some of her color had returned.
“I had a quick Scotch,” she explained. “Very therapeutic. My God, Shayne-you’re as scarred as a redwood.”
“Always room for one more.”
She gazed at him, blinking her prominent eyes. “You’re a-magnificent-looking man, do you realize that? I’m sorry I threw a drink at you. Who would have realized, with your shirt on-”
“I accept the apology, Linda, and I’d like to be moving. What’s going on out there?”
“They’re running around looking for a crazy killer, and it seems they have a body to prove it. You didn’t tell me you killed somebody.”