Mermaid on the Rocks

by Brett Halliday

  He was holding a switchblade knife in his left hand, his thumb at the base of the blade. His first motion showed Shayne that he knew what he was doing.

  “Do you know who I am?” Shayne said.

  “Mike Shayne,” Brad said in a low voice, and moistened his lips. His eyes flickered around to Kitty. He forced a sneer to his lips, deciding on the tack he was going to take. “In the bathroom with only a pair of pants on. I’m just going to have to kill you too, Shayne. That’s too damn bad because I know it’s going to be work. Just take one step this way. O.K.?” He waved Shayne toward him with his right hand. “One step.”

  Kitty reached for the whiskey bottle on the bedside table. Brad heard the slight readjustment of the bedsprings, darted his knife at her arm and snatched up the bottle himself as Shayne threw his jacket at him. He ducked beneath it, moving amazingly fast, and drove up at Shayne’s mid-section with the knife all the way out. Shayne was twisting even before the thrust started. It came very close.

  Off balance, the detective chopped at Brad’s forearm. His hand glanced from the bone. The knife licked out at him again.

  The old man’s spittle was flying. Shayne had no room to maneuver. He went down and away, and the point of the knife left a hot trail of pain across his shoulder.

  He hit the wall and rebounded. He missed with a kick. Brad was unbelievably fast for a man his age.

  Shayne came to his feet with the chair in his hands, its legs outward. For an instant everything stopped, as though frozen by a stop-action camera. Brad was nearest the door, his eyes darting from one enemy to the other. Kitty had recoiled against the headboard, still clutching the sheet to her breast. The sheet had pulled out at the bottom of the bed, and Shayne saw the butt-plate and crosshatched grip of the .38.

  “Shall I scream, Mike?” Kitty said quietly.

  “Not yet,” Shayne told her.

  He began to move, watching Brad’s eyes. Brad had seen the gun. Of the three, he was nearest by a step. He smiled viciously, showing gleaming false teeth.

  “A gun. What do you know?”

  He stepped toward a point where the knife would intersect with Shayne if the detective lunged. Then they both moved at once. Brad whirled the bottle at the lamp. There was a flash, then darkness. Shayne stabbed out with the chair, trying to get between Brad and the bed. He was late again. One of the legs hit something, but only Brad’s shoulder. Brad swore.

  Shayne lifted the chair and brought it down with his full strength. A leg broke. Shayne sprang away.

  For a moment there was no sound. The blackness was absolute. There was a wall switch near the door. Shayne knew where it was, and he could reach it in one fast motion. But he couldn’t risk turning on the light if Brad had the gun.

  His hand went out to the top of the bureau and fastened on a small jar. He tossed it across the room. Brad fired at the sound.

  “Now I know it’s loaded,” Brad said. “I know I didn’t hit you, Shayne. You threw something, didn’t you? The old tricks are always the ones I fall for. Kitty doll, did I hit you, I hope?”

  No one answered.

  “You don’t want to talk,” Brad said. “That’s O.K. I know I’m no Gary Grant. I live with it. Shayne? Throw something, so I won’t feel lonely.”

  Shayne stood absolutely still. This was going to be a bloody business in the dark.

  “They don’t give me jobs any more,” Brad said. “I don’t impress people, they tell me. That’s the thing when you’re making collections. One look, and they pay up. Now I give them the look and they think what is this? What’s this old party trying to accomplish? So I have to clobber them, and that’s not so good, it gets the cops in on it. I’m as good as I ever was. I can outwalk, outdrink, outswim and outfight any ordinary person twenty-five years of age, and what good does it do me? They don’t pay pensions in my line. Social Security never heard of me. Now I get a chance at a bundle. One chance, and this bitch stands in my way.”

  His voice was coming from the far side of the door. As Shayne’s eyes adjusted, he was able to detect a slight difference between the doorway and the surrounding wall.

  “I got the whole night,” Brad said. “You have to come to me, man. How can I miss? Turn the light on and I get you with the gun. Leave it off and I get you with the knife.”

  Moving slowly, Shayne lifted a pillow from the bed and wedged it between the legs of the chair. He probed with his foot until it touched his jacket. Scooping it up, he buttoned it around the pillow.

  “What did she tell you?” Brad continued. “That she and Cal was just good friends? Don’t believe it. She switched around in them tight skirts and got him so heated up he didn’t know if he was coming or going. Listening to me, baby? Or did you faint?” Shayne moved into position.

  Brad’s voice continued, “And she was giving you more of the same when I came in, wasn’t she? Everybody’s got his own methods. Now with Ev. Would Ev take her to his room at that time of the night if she didn’t promise him something juicy and good?”

  A slightly darker shadow drifted into the doorway. Brad was going for the light switch, as Shayne would have done in his place.

  Brad said lazily, “Nobody making any remarks?”

  Shayne thrust the chair at him and Brad struck like a snake.

  The knife plunged through the jacket into the pillow. Shayne gave the chair a hard downward twist. Brad’s arm was caught by the rungs before he could withdraw the knife. Shayne whipped the bedspread off the foot of the bed and sent it over his floundering figure. Brad fired twice. Shayne vaulted the bed and came back low from the right, going for the gun.

  The old man was still partly trapped in the chair. He was crouching, covered by the bedspread. Shayne was high with another chop. Catching the old man around the neck, he threw him violently, kneeing him in the back as he went down. He located the gun at last. He brought Brad’s hand back hard against the bed. In the dark, hampered by the billowing bedspread, nothing worked. Keeping pressure on the gun, Shayne came to one knee and stamped on it hard.

  Brad cried out as his fingers broke, and threw off the bedspread, which wrapped itself around Shayne like a basketful of snakes. The old man slipped away and Shayne was left with the chair.

  He hurled it aside and vaulted the bed again. Kitty was no longer on it. Gambling that Brad hadn’t been able to shift the gun from his right to his left hand, Shayne went for the light. At the last moment he reminded himself not to underestimate this antagonist. He whirled. The knife sliced up and hit him high on the right arm.

  Shayne was moving away from the blow, and he kept on moving. Checking himself abruptly, he took two careful paces to one side. Brad’s only chance now, while Shayne had no weapon, was to keep him from the switch. He would be groping around in front of him with his injured right hand. The instant that made contact he would slash out with the knife.

  Shayne’s leg brushed the bed and he stopped moving. Crouching, he felt about on the bed until his fingers closed on the neck of the broken whiskey bottle.

  “You had a chance when you had the gun,” he said softly. “I’ve got a broken bottle. Touch me once and I’ll have to kill you. You ought to be out playing shuffleboard with the other old men. You’re not what you were, are you, Brad?”

  Brad sneered. “You’ve got nothing but bare hands.”

  “Turn on the light and find out.”

  Shayne took a long stride forward, turned and eased back against the bed. He was listening intently. Hearing a faint rustle where he had just been standing, he sliced the flat edge of his left hand around in a wicked arc at what he judged to be throat-level. He hit the side of Brad’s head and instantly raked out with the bottle. The old man grunted. They broke apart instantly.

  Shayne circled, listening for Brad’s breathing, waving his left hand slowly as though feeling for cobwebs. He was wound up tight. Listening hard in the tense silence, he heard something dripping near the door.

  The dripping stopped. For another long moment the sile
nce was complete. It was broken by the rattle of a sauce pan in the kitchen. Shayne moved fast. Halfway across the living room he slipped on the backgammon board and crashed to the floor. He rolled in the same motion and went into the kitchen in a crouch. He found the switch and flashed on the light for just long enough to make sure the kitchen was empty.

  He listened at the open window. There was a faint clanging noise several flights below. Thinking about it later, he realized that Brad had made this noise by dropping something through the iron slats of the fire escape, probably a coin. Actually he was crouching on the sixth floor landing, in the pool of deep shadow against the building, waiting for Shayne to come through the window so he could knife him from behind and then go back inside to finish off Kitty.

  Shayne swung up on the sill and put one leg out the window.

  He straddled the sash for a moment before deciding to let the old man go. He had come this far in a kind of reflex, as a part of a linked series of actions that had started when they had been feeling toward each other in the dark, each with an edged weapon. But Brad had used up his menace for tonight.

  Shayne was wrong. As he started to pull his leg back in, Brad lunged upward, trying to hamstring him.

  He missed the tendons as Shayne’s leg jerked. The knife entered Shayne’s calf.

  Shayne was blinded by a sudden surge of rage. He uncoiled through the window and followed the old man as he plunged recklessly down the iron steps. Halfway down the first flight Shayne’s leg gave way and he had to grab the railing.

  Brad was two floors below, scuttling like a cockroach. Gripping the railing tightly, Shayne watched him go.

  A light on the fourth floor came on. Reaching the second floor, Brad hurled himself out on the vertical ladder. It tore loose with a screech and jammed halfway down. He danced on the bottom rung in an effort to free it. Shayne found that he was still holding the broken bottle. Leaning far out, he threw it at Brad. It crashed into the court and Brad jumped from the ladder.

  He landed badly, trying to start running too soon, and went down on his left fist, in which he still gripped the knife. When he lurched to his feet he was staggering. His crippled right hand dangled at his side. Wiping his eyes with the back of his left hand, he reeled along the delivery alley to 19th Avenue, where he stood for a moment, outlined in the light of a street lamp at the corner of 19th and 28th Street. Then he disappeared.

  Other lights came on in Kitty’s building. Shayne turned to go back up the half-flight to the open window, and then Brad backed into the light at the end of the alley.

  A voice shouted. He turned and started across the street at a shambling half-run, clutching his stomach. The shout was repeated. It was followed by a single shot.

  Brad went down in a heap. A man walked into the light, his gun ready. He stopped warily a few steps from the crumpled figure. A moment later he was joined by a second man, also holding a gun. When the old man didn’t move they approached him together and looked down at him for a moment before putting away their guns.

  Shayne hesitated, thinking.

  Then he hobbled back to the sixth floor and swung in through the window. He forgot the saucepans. He kicked them out of the way angrily, snapped on the light and limped into the living room.

  “Kitty?”

  There was no answer.

  “It’s O.K.,” he said. “He lost.”

  When there was still no answer he went into the bedroom and turned on the light there. The room was a shambles. He looked in the bathroom, in the closet. Then he got down on hands and knees and looked under the bed, afraid she had been hit by one of Brad’s random shots. After that he checked the coat closet in the living room and returned to the kitchen.

  At that point he accepted the fact that she was gone.

  chapter 7

  Shayne dropped onto the sofa, where he uncorked the gin bottle and took a long drink, after which he rolled up his pant leg to look at the damage.

  It wasn’t as bad as he had feared. He went to the bathroom, where he found nothing more elaborate than band-aids in the medicine cabinet. He tore up a sheet, washed the cut as well as he could without being able to see it, and was binding it up when he heard a tapping at the outer door.

  He unlocked it without bothering to use the peephole. It was Kitty, wearing Shayne’s jacket, which came down nearly to her knees. She looked lost inside it.

  “I locked myself out,” she said faintly. “I went up to the roof.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re hurt!” she exclaimed, seeing the trailing bandage.

  “It’s not too bad. It’s just a hell of a place to get to.”

  “I’ll do it.”

  They returned to the bathroom. Kitty pushed back the long sleeves, took Shayne’s clumsy bandage apart and put on a better one, which stopped the bleeding. Using a wet towel, she sponged off his back and shoulder. Her touch was deft and sure.

  “You can use a few stitches, Mike. In your leg, mainly. These cuts up here can take care of themselves.”

  Using cotton at the end of a short stick, she sponged the cuts carefully with antiseptic. He was straddling a chair while she worked on him from behind.

  “If I’d known what I was getting you into!” she said. “First I all but drown you. Then I win your money and more or less force you to make love to me. And right in the middle of that I get you involved in a knife fight with a crazy old man.” She gave a light nervous laugh. “I was so scared! I couldn’t make out what happened at the end. Was that a policeman who shot him?”

  “Yeah. Sometimes they’re around when you need them. Not often, but sometimes.”

  “He was staggering.”

  “He had to jump from the fire escape,” Shayne explained. “I think he fell on his knife. All the emergency switches were turned on by then, and when the cops told him to hold still and explain the knife, all he could do was run. Now I want you to hold still, Kitty. I need an explanation of a couple of things.”

  Her hand stopped on his back. “Yes. About me and Cal. You want to know if what Brad said was true. Yes, Mike. More or less.” She sighed. “It lasted for—oh, about half a year. I got in the habit of denying it, and that’s one subject it’s too easy to lie about. I wasn’t ashamed of it at the time. I am now, a little. I don’t need to be told it was the wrong thing to do. I’ve tried to understand why it happened, but you’d have to know Cal. He made me feel so—important, Mike. I thought it was love. There were other things mixed up in it.”

  Her voice was dry and flat. “And that’s why I don’t want to let those zombies sell the Key! They didn’t give a damn for Cal when he was alive. Now all they care about is how much money they can squeeze out of the one thing that ever really mattered to him. Mike? Say something. You can see why I didn’t tell you.”

  “People don’t usually tell me the truth the first time they talk to me,” Shayne said dryly. “Did you go to see Ev Tuttle the night he burned to death?”

  She answered quietly. “Yes. He lost his only income when Cal died. I gave him money sometimes when I had it. He phoned me from a bar that night and I met him there, a seedy little bar on the other side of the river. I gave him a few dollars and he used it to get drunk So indirectly perhaps I’m responsible for what happened. If he hadn’t been drunk, he wouldn’t have fallen asleep with a cigarette in his mouth.”

  “Did you go to his room with him?”

  “Certainly not. He lived in a terrible hotel. I wouldn’t have dreamed of it.”

  “I need the truth this time, Kitty.”

  “That is the truth,” she said. “I don’t know what Brad meant about a witness. As far as I know there was never any question that it was an accident.”

  “He started to say something about gold. I couldn’t catch it.”

  “I don’t know what that was all about. Unless he thinks he’s located that Spanish treasure ship. But what connection could it have with the sale to Florida-American? It’s beyond me.”

  Shayne
stood up and looked at his watch. “I think you’d better stay with Natalie the rest of the night.”

  “Mike”—she hesitated—“I know you have to go to the doctor, but won’t you come back?”

  He didn’t reply. He was looking around at the chaos in the bedroom. “What the hell was the point of these dirty playing cards?”

  He picked up several of the cards which Brad had flung on the bed. They were dog-eared and grubby. The pictures on the backs were the usual black-and-white photographs of naked men and women practicing various perversions, without seeming to be enjoying themselves. The quality of the photography was extremely poor.

  Seeing something else amid the litter, he picked up a cheap pocket comb, gummy with hair grease, the tines partially clogged with dandruff. Several long black hairs adhered to the grease. He sniffed it and made a face.

  “It’s a mean one, Kitty,” he said. “These are all props for a sex killing. You can see how he wanted it to look. The killer wouldn’t be some anonymous creep who was looking for a door he could force. Your door wasn’t forced. To the cops that would mean it had to be somebody you brought home yourself. The comb was the kicker. They’d look for a youth with black hair. Probably a Cuban.”

  She put her arms around him from behind. “Mike, Mike, I wish—” She paused. “One of the things I wish is that I’d come in your bedroom half an hour sooner. I know we can’t do anything about it now, everything’s so horrible. But I wish you’d come back. Please. I’ll clean up this mess and make the place look halfway habitable, and the hell with everybody! I don’t see how they can hurt me now.”

  He turned and took her by the shoulders. “Neither do I. But I want to make sure. There are three of you left. You, Shanahan, Cal’s daughter Barbara. Brad knew you’re planning to leave town in the morning. Barbara must have called him right after you called her. While she was telling him that, did she also tell him to give you a final chance to sell, and to kill you if you refused? Someone was watching the building earlier tonight from across the street. That means it was underway before your phone call to Barbara. These are all things we need to know, Kitty. I have to talk to Barbara about it, and it won’t work unless I do it tonight.”