Brett Halliday - So Lush, So Deadly

Shayne was well below table level, where he intended to stay. Looking up, he concluded that he would get neither help nor opposition from these boys and girls, whichever they were. They were far too cool.

He retrieved the knife and crawled along the wall. A fat youth at the phones blocked him until Shayne pricked one of his bare feet and he hopped aside. Shayne touched one of the many cords snaking down from the music platform to a gang plug in a baseboard outlet. He twitched the whole plug out and plunged the knife into the slot.

Everything blew.

The sudden silence was deafening. Leaving the knife where it was, Shayne rose to his feet in the darkness and stepped up on the platform among the musicians. One of the amplifying panels fell over. A musician struck at him and Shayne pushed him hard. In a minute the platform was a tangle of musicians and instruments and wires.

“A raid!” Shayne yelled. “Narcotics raid. Narcotics!”

He took a guitar away from somebody and began swinging it. Several musicians fell into the crowd. Girls screamed as they stampeded. There was no crush around the exits, as the entire front of the cafe opened onto the street. The crowd drained in that direction and Shayne went with it. He picked up a chair and pulled it apart as he went.

By the time he reached the street, the block was jammed with excited young people. A line of uniformed cops had formed at the end, barring entry into the park, and the damn fools had already begun to swing their clubs. The crowd surged away, then held and came back, overrunning the thin police line.

Paper bags of water were being thrown from the windows.

Shayne waited against the wall until the crowd divided into small running groups. With his carrot-red hair, his powerful shoulders, the clothes he was wearing, he was clearly a foreigner in this part of his home town, and a natural target for water bombs. He was hit twice before he reached the next street. At the corner he was hit from behind by something more serious, a bicycle chain wound around an Angel’s fist.

He was hit several times more. He was later to find many unexplained contusions on his head and upper body, but by that time he was unconscious.

When he swam back, coming out through a psychedelic haze punctuated by blazing lights and sudden overpowering noises, he found himself in a doorway. His head was on a girl’s lap. Her face was upside down, and he didn’t recognize her at first. She was wiping blood gently from his forehead.

“Those jerks,” she said. “They could have killed you, but why should they care?”

“What-” Shayne said with difficulty.

That was as far as he could take it. The battle had ended, or had moved elsewhere. A siren sounded. There was a patter of feet and an excited girl ran across from the opposite building and leaped into the doorway.

“They’re shooting!” she cried. “Shooting real bullets! Get inside, H. Who’s the guy?”

“A friend of mine,” Shayne’s girl said. “He gave me his burger.”

Shayne now realized that he was being mothered by the girl who had been living with Henry De Rham.

“They’re going through houses rounding everybody up,” the other girl said. “If you’ve got any acid or anything better get rid of it.”

“I’m all right,” H. said. “I only tried it once and I didn’t like it.”

Shayne tried to raise his head, but fell back with a groan. “Where’s Henry?”

“Who cares? I don’t, I can assure you of that.”

“I’ve got to-”

“You know what you’ve got to do, Mr. Shayne. You’ve got to lie here till an ambulance comes and gets you.”

Shayne didn’t try to shake his head for fear something would go wrong inside, but this time when he endeavored to sit up he made it.

“Can you drive a car?”

“Yes, but you’re not-”

Shayne tried to stand. It was too soon, and he went under again. This time he had a harder fight to come back, and the surfacing was unpleasant.

“The beating they gave you,” she said. “They were just out of control. I completely lost my temper. I said things, I did things-”

“H.-”

“Helen.”

“Helen, I have things to do or people’ll get killed. Help me. My car-”

A battered Ford stopped with a screech of tires and Tim Rourke leaped from it. He had dressed hurriedly, and Shayne noticed with a temporary return of his usual clarity that he was wearing only one sock.

“My God, what a story. Did you start this, Mike? Tell me later. Where’s a phone?”

“In the cafe.”

“The cafe’s a shambles. Well, maybe the phones are still working.”

He dashed off.

“How long’s this been going on?” Shayne said.

“Half an hour. Nobody knows what happened, it just exploded. Everybody started running. The police have been dreadful. Unbelievable. I’m going home to my family. I’ve made up my mind that I’m not going to stay here another night.”

Moving slowly, by careful stages, Shayne sat up again. “What does Henry think about that?”

“I’ve given up on Henry. Do you know he paid those boys to beat you? Ten dollars apiece, seven boys, seventy dollars. And he told me he was so broke! I’ve been scrounging for food. I washed dishes in the cafe one night. He didn’t give me one cent the whole week, and suddenly it turns out he has ten-dollar bills to throw around.”

Shayne was feeling himself to see where he hurt most and he was only half listening. But a little warning flag went up. He repeated what she had said slowly, and it registered on him.

“The whole week, Helen? He’s been here two weeks.”

“Six days, to be exact. I ought to know, and half the time he’s been God knows where. I think he’s been seeing that wife! Right along!”

“What makes you think that?”

“I could smell her perfume. Expensive perfume-Dior’s. The hypocrite. I left home to get away from hypocrisy. He said he liked how peaceful it is here, nobody bugging him, no pressures-he said he was happy for the first time in his life. That’s what he said. But he wasn’t happy. He lay awake most of the night. I couldn’t help him. He wouldn’t talk to me. The whole thing has been such a fiasco.”

Rourke came running up. “Into the car, boy. We’ve got some talking to do.”

“Got the tape recorder?”

“Yeah. On your feet, Mike. I’m a ninety-pound weakling, and I’m not going to carry you. So you got knocked out. Worse things happen to you all the time.”

“You didn’t see what they did to him!” the girl cried.

“Honey,” Rourke said, “you don’t want to sympathize with Shayne. It’s bad for him. I’m this character’s best friend, and I’m always sorry to see him bleeding. But right now we’re both working. You can help him if you want to. You’re a female. He won’t mind leaning on you.”

Rourke stood by, his eyebrows cocked skeptically, while the girl tugged at Shayne and got him to his feet. She steered him across the sidewalk to Rourke’s Ford. The reporter’s only contribution was to open the door.

Shayne put his head against the back of the seat and rested. Helen reached in and kissed the corner of his mouth. She started to say something, but Rourke, meanwhile, had leaped behind the wheel and was impatient to drive off. She let go of the door and gave a tentative half wave.

“Good-bye. I hope-”

Rourke came down hard on the gas, and put a strain on the transmission going up into second.

“One of these days we’re going to have to start double-teaming you, Mike. One-man coverage is hardly enough. What’s the program?”

Shayne moved his hand. “Flagler Terrace. Left my car there. Need a drink.”