Brett Halliday - Mermaid on the Rocks

Brad interrupted her with a yell. “And if that don’t stick, there are other ways! I mean if worst comes to worst I’ll be happy to! You put out for Cal and don’t tell me different because I happen to know, he told me himself. But I stink! I’m a low-income slob. You wouldn’t pull down that sheet for me now, would you? Christ, no!”

He shifted ground abruptly. “Can’t you get it through your head? There’s only three more days! Jesus, when I think of that gold just laying there-”

“Stop it, Brad.”

“I’ll raise our offer to seventy-five, and throw in whatever that shack of yours cost you. When did you see seventy-five G’s? Put on some fancy duds and move to a Beach hotel for the season. Get yourself a husband with real dough. I know a couple of good prospects I can steer you.”

“Brad, you don’t get the idea. I want the place. I don’t want the money.”

When Brad spoke again his voice was almost plaintive. Again the change in tone caught Shayne as he was about to open the door.

“I’m saying if you don’t sign the paper I’ll have to kill you,” Brad said. “Who do you think killed your cat? That was to make you realize.”

“You aren’t killing anybody tonight,” she said.

Brad cackled, a high old man’s cackle. “I do like the way you handle yourself, baby. Naked as a clam under that sheet, and it don’t bother you a bit. I got an idea. Why don’t I switch over? I’ll take care of Babs and that shyster, that’ll leave the two of us, and how many years have I got? I wouldn’t bother you much. I don’t hardly ever do it more than once a night any more.”

She said slowly, “You’re a disgusting old man.”

He cackled again. “I hope to tell you! But I ain’t a day older than Cal was when you opened up for him. You’re turning me down? You wouldn’t touch me with a ten-foot pole? Then let me tell you, baby, I got some disgusting plans for right now. Here’s some pictures to start with.”

“Playing cards!” Kitty exclaimed.

“Yeah, if you tried to play poker with this deck, your mind would keep wandering. Look at them positions.”

“Mike, he has a knife!” Kitty called.

Shayne pulled the door out of his way.

Brad whirled, a thin, tough old man with straggling gray hair. He needed a shave badly. His eyes were small and bloodshot and very mean. He wore sneakers, dirty jeans, a cheap short-sleeved shirt that showed the gray thatch on his chest, tattooed forearms that were like a twist of bridge cable.

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.