Brett Halliday - Mermaid on the Rocks

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 silence 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.

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.