Brett Halliday - Guilty as Hell

“Don’t worry. He’s got a broken arm. Get on your bicycle. Camilli won’t want to lose out on this pinch-he won’t wait more than a couple of minutes.”

“And if Shayne catches up to me,” she said bitterly, “so much the better, huh? More blood, more broken bones. Well, it’s lucky I’m young. I can bounce.”

“We’ll bounce all the way to New York, kid. Jesus, I love your skin. See you.”

The door opened and closed. Shayne, on the terrace, heard the girl give a long sigh. The box springs rearranged themselves as she changed position.

He stepped into the doorway.

She was unwrapping a stick of gum. Her long black hair was almost to her shoulders, and her features seemed to be crowded into the center of her face by the abundant hair. She had nice breasts and hips. She was sitting on the edge of the bed in an unbecoming slump, her thin shoulderblades like undeveloped wings. The whip had left a slanting mark across her thighs.

She mashed the gum between her teeth and dropped the wrapper to the floor. Then she looked up and saw him. Her reaction carried her back against the wall.

“You don’t really think anybody’s going to take you to New York, do you?” Shayne said.

She swallowed the gum. She looked at him in terror, not able to understand how he had sprung into being in what she had thought was an empty apartment.

“Mike Shayne,” she whispered.

Then she uncoiled and bolted for the door.

Shayne reached it at the same moment and let her wrench it open. It struck his solidly planted foot. The doorknob was jolted out of her hand. He swung the cast upward without taking it out of the sling and touched her bare breast with the curved point of the hook. She shivered away.

He slapped her with the back of his hand, using his full strength. She went spinning against the bed and across it, to bang hard against the wall. Her eyes crossed for an instant. She touched her face, then crawled off the bed and across the floor toward him.

“Please. Please, Mr. Shayne. I didn’t want to.”

When she reached him, he hooked his toe under her chin and flung her over on her back.

“If you were out there, you heard me,” she cried as he advanced on her. “I pleaded. I only agreed to do it if I didn’t have to go to court.”

“We can take our time,” Shayne said deliberately. “We won’t be raided until a man walks in, and I’m already here. Let’s allow half an hour. You can answer a lot of questions in that time.”

She looked up from the floor. “I don’t know anything.”

He threatened her with his foot and she shrank back. “I don’t! I wasn’t trying to be smart-alecky.”

He stripped the mattress cover off the bed and flung it at her. “Put this on.”

She was taking quick shallow breaths. “You’re going to beat me up, aren’t you?”

“I might,” he said evenly.

She stood up, watching him, and decided to try something different. She filled her lungs, sucking in her stomach and thrusting her breasts toward him. She rubbed her hands slowly against her thighs.

“If we’ve got half an hour-”

Shayne went to the closet and took out the long whip.

She said hastily, “I just meant I’d cooperate!”

She pulled the coarse cotton mattress cover around her shoulders and brought it together in front. “Boy, is this ever unsexy.”

She tried it another way, bringing it over one shoulder and across like a sari, leaving an arm and a shoulder bare. This she considered slightly better, and she glanced at Shayne’s face to verify it. She still didn’t like what she saw there.

“Mr. Shayne,” she said, trying to sound younger, “if you knew what I went through before I said I would-”

Shayne made a slight gesture with the coiled whip. “Answer my questions. Is Jake’s last name Fitch?”

She nodded.

“What does he do for a living?”

“Different things. Right now he tends bar.”

“Who paid him for setting this up?”

“You know-those people. Some snooty girl.”

“Candida Morse?”

“That’s her name. One of those very snooty blondes.”

“How much are you getting?”

“Jake said a grand. I think more. I’ll find out, don’t worry.”

“Do you know anything about a report on a paint called T-239’?”

She shook her head. He slapped her again, using the whip handle and the coiled whip but not hitting her really hard. She fell on the bed, her hand to her face.

“I never heard anybody mention it, even! Mr. Shayne, I’m a junior in high school! I’ll tell you how much I got out of this so far-a couple of hundred skins. What paint? Jake never tells me why, he just says do it.”

“Do you know anybody named Hallam?”

She shook her head.

“Walter Langhorne?”

“No.”

“Who’s Josie?”

“My guy! I mean, on top of Jake. He pays the rent for this place. We come here every Wednesday night when his wife plays bridge with her mother. He’s kind of cute, really. Jake took a couple of shots of us, you know-”

A key turned in the lock. Shayne and the girl looked into each other’s eyes, feeling a common emotion at last. The detective whirled. When the door opened, he was standing behind it, his cast part of the way out of the sling, ready to pivot. There would be two of them, and he didn’t really think he could take care of them both.

The door closed. Shayne’s swing was already underway. He checked it by catching the cast with his right arm. It wasn’t Vince Camilli, the vice cop. It was Jose Despard.

His tailoring was impeccable, as usual. He had a bedside table in one hand, a small lamp in the other.

“Deedee!” he said, pleased. “You’re here! What a perfectly delightful-”

Shayne’s figure caught the tail of his eye, and he was given a different kind of surprise as he swung around. “Shayne!”

That was all Shayne let him say. He knocked the door out of his grasp and threw the bolt. When the raid began, he and the girl had to be somewhere else. He jerked Despard around with the hook. “Do what I tell you. We’re going to have cops in a minute.”

“Cops!”

Despard made an involuntary movement toward the door.

“They’re between you and the elevator,” Shayne snapped.

“They’ll want to know who signed the lease. Tell them. Don’t say anything else. Pull some rank. Don’t choke up and you’ll be O.K.”

He snatched up the long whip he had dropped when the door opened.

“A whip!” Despard exclaimed. “Shayne, I want an explanation.”

“A black Buick parked on Sycamore Lane,” Shayne said. “Across the canal. Drive off in your own car and come back. I’ll meet you there.” He waved the whip at the girl, as though giving directions to a lion who knew no other language. “O.K., Deedee.”

The girl was frozen on the bed. Shayne stuck the coiled whip in his sling, took her by the back of the neck and marched her to the terrace. Her improvised garment came apart as she moved and Despard saw the streak of fresh blood across her thighs.

“You’ve been whipping her! You think you can get away with this?”

He rushed the detective, who met him with an upward movement of the loaded cast. The hidden knuckles clunked against the side of his jaw and he went down.

Shayne kept his hard grip on the girl’s neck. She was whimpering. They were outside on the terrace by the time he heard the first noises at the door.

One long continuous terrace had been cast for each floor. It had then been partitioned by light metal panels, providing a separate terrace for each tiny apartment. Shayne had hoped to swing around the partition to an adjoining apartment, reaching the elevator or the fire stairs while the cops were occupied in 9-C. But lights were on in the apartments on either side. He looked over the rail. The apartment directly beneath them was dark.