Brett Halliday - Violence Is Golden

Shayne thumbed back the hammer of his thirty-eight and drifted slowly into the window opening. Both men were intent on the woman. Her wrists were still together, but Shayne could see that the cord had been severed.

The Japanese swore softly. A knife in his hand flicked open.

“But leave me out of it.”

He leaned down and sliced the cord around Mary’s ankles. Thompson folded his glasses and put them away, then went down on his knees.

Shayne swung into the room. Thompson looked around, blinking, and at that moment Mary brought both hands, fingers laced, down on the back of his neck.

There was a sound behind Shayne. Before the detective could turn he was hit very hard with a short length of two-by-four. He fired, but he was off balance and the bullet went into the wall. The two-by-four came back in a chopping arc and knocked the gun out of his hand.

The blow drove him out of the way of the Jap’s savage rush. Shayne caught his knife hand as it went past. George Savage, his face a peculiar greenish white, was swinging a leg over the low sill, the two-by-four ready. Shayne levered the Japanese around, trying to use him as a weapon. But his responses were slow, and there seemed to be a heavy curtain in front of his eyes, curling out gradually to wrap itself around him.

The Japanese slipped out of his grasp and sliced his hand at Shayne’s throat. Moving slowly, with the desperation of motion in a dream, Shayne caught the blow on his shoulder. Mary was gone. Thompson, he saw, was stretched out face down on the floor. The Japanese swung viciously again. Shayne went backward, blood in his eyes. He collided with George, grappled with him weakly, feeling little resistance, and subsided to the floor.

As he slipped the rest of the way into unconsciousness, he heard the roar of a car motor. Mary. The Pontiac had been parked some distance from the house, and all she had to do was keep the pedal all the way down for about thirty yards, and they couldn’t catch her.

Shayne came back gradually, an inch at a time. He was straining against imaginary ropes, unable to move. Slowly the ropes turned into real ones. His mouth was plastered with tape. His head was bleeding.

Outside in the darkness, George was being sick again. Light glimmered in Shayne’s eyes. He tried for a moment to move his head to a less sticky spot, then gave up and rested.

The puzzle began to assume a kind of shape as more pieces fell into place. He heard voices, and after a time, they began speaking intelligible words.

“I thought Japanese were supposed to be karate experts.” That was Thompson. “She threw you about twelve feet, or was I seeing things?”

“It was aikido,” the Japanese replied. “I was never trained in aikido. And what do we do now? We have perhaps twenty minutes before the police arrive. The first thing to take care of-”

Shayne opened his eyes as a shadow came between him and the light. The shadow changed into an arm. The muzzle of a gun was pressed between his eyes.

Thompson said sharply, “Not yet.”

He knocked the gun away. The Japanese said mildly, “I can wait. So long as you understand that I am the one to do it. I have a debt to pay from Miami.”

“I think we can use him before we kill him. There is a way out of this, if we can think of it.”

“It will take much luck,” the Japanese said flatly. “None of us knows these mountains. We must go different directions and make our way to the coast. We have no chance together.”

Thompson hissed for silence. “I hear something.”

The Japanese was quiet for a moment. “Not the police. It’s too soon.”

“Tell George for God’s sake to be quiet. Let’s get Shayne-”

Shayne felt himself being pulled over on his back. Lights whirled around him. The two men dragged him into another room.

The floor here was unfinished. Thompson worked him onto a plank and pushed it across the floor joists.

“Can you hear me, Shayne? I hope so, for your sake. Don’t wriggle around or you’ll go through to the basement. That’s a ten-foot drop to a concrete floor.”

He returned to the other room and Shayne was left in darkness. Now a new sound was added to the others in his head. A car was laboring up from the main road. Headlights slid across the bare joists overhead, and he heard the familiar tapping valves of the old Checker taxi.

A car door opened.

Reverend Crane Ward’s voice called out cheerfully, “Anybody around? Hello. Hello. Is anybody home?”

Thompson answered, “Well, for the love of God, will you look who’s here? Are we glad to see you! I thought we’d be stuck up here all night. Come in, come in. Careful of that plank.”

Shayne heard footsteps crossing the crude bridge leading up to the front door.

Ward exclaimed, “Mr. Thompson! What are you doing out here in the middle of nowhere?”

Thompson groaned. “It’s a long story. This is a friend of mine, Yami Koniusha. Reverend Ward.”

The two men exchanged greetings, and Thompson went on, “I didn’t think we had a chance of getting back in time to catch the plane. Friend of mine back in Kansas City is building this place. He’s had nothing but trouble-strikes, mistakes, late deliveries. His foreman walked off with a week’s payroll. Finally he closed down to dig up some refinancing. He asked me to come up and see how it looked. Did you pass a Pontiac convertible on your way up?”

“I think I did. Going about sixty-five.”

“That’s the one. We brought a girl with us, a real wack. She took it into her head that we enticed her up here to take part in some kind of an orgy, and off she went, leaving us stranded.”

He paused, and Ward put in, “I’m looking for Mike Shayne. You haven’t seen him, have you?”

“You mean the big redhead? The one with the blonde?”

Ward chuckled. “That’s a good description. It’s a funny thing-he went barreling off in a taxi about an hour ago, and the taxi came back without him. Should I be worrying about Mike Shayne? Crazy, isn’t it? But I’m worrying about him, just the same. The driver told me where he dropped him, but he refused to go back. So I thought I’d hire the taxi and wander up to see if Shayne could use a lift back. I wonder if he could have been following you people.”

“We haven’t seen anybody.”

“There must be some explanation. He told the driver some wild story about an unfaithful wife, and unless I took the wrong road somewhere-”

Shayne, on the other side of the plywood wall, was inching toward the open doorway. His progress was steady, but much too slow. The men in the other room were winding up their explanations and preparing to leave. Shayne hooked his heels against one of the joists, and pushed off hard. The plank skidded away.

“Did you hear that?” Ward said, alarmed.

Thompson brought the lantern to the door and directed the beam around the unfinished room.

“Must be an animal,” he said. “Well, let’s get out of here. It’s a little spooky. We can cruise around and see if we can find him.”

When the light left the doorway, Shayne pivoted on one hip. For an instant his body was parallel to the joists and he was in real danger of slipping through. He completed the pivot, twisting, came forward on his knees and toppled into the room. When he looked up he was surprised to see that Ward was holding a heavy forty-five automatic.

“Put your light on the floor, Thompson,” he said pleasantly.

Thompson bent down slowly. George Savage, for the second time that night, appeared in the window opening, directly behind the clergyman. He had Shayne’s thirty-eight revolver. He looked almost too weak to stand.

Shayne began making gobbling noises behind the tape, bobbing his head at Ward and willing him to turn around. George stepped, almost fell, into the room and pressed the pistol against the small of Ward’s back.