Brett Halliday - Mermaid on the Rocks

“It’s not the Fontainebleau,” Kitty said lightly.

The kitchen window gave onto the fire-escape landing. Shayne freed the anti-burglary bolts on each side, lowered the top sash and looked out.

“Do you agree about the fire escape?” Kitty said from the doorway, sounding worried. “Don’t do it if you think it’s silly.”

“It may not work but it’s not silly. You’re the bait. Let’s see if we catch anything.” He closed the window, shot the bolts into the prepared sockets and drew them up tight. “Put the front door on the chain. I’ll be back in five minutes. I don’t want to park nearby.”

“All right, Mike. I’ll call Barbara and have everything ready so when you come back we can do some serious drinking.” She came in close against him. “It’s a comfort having you around. I’m beginning to realize I was on the point of coming unstuck.”

She pulled him in hard. Coming up on her toes, she kissed the corner of his mouth, then let him go.

He heard the chain clank into place as he went to the elevator. He had a cigarette in his mouth when he emerged from the building. Stopping on the sidewalk, he lit it deliberately. There was no movement on the block, but as he snapped the lighter shut, something pulled his eye to the facade of the building across the street. This was another apartment building like Kitty’s, dating from the same period and faced with the same parti-colored brick. He adjusted his sideview mirror before getting into the Buick. The little glint he had noticed came again, appearing and vanishing in a dark fourth-floor window.

The window was up four or five inches from the bottom, in spite of the fact that the squat bulk of an air-conditioning unit protruded from the next window, surely part of the same apartment if not of the same room. Binoculars, Shayne thought. That would explain why the window was raised, so the dirt and smears on the pane wouldn’t distort the image.

After getting behind the wheel, he turned on the dome light and consulted a road map, unfolding it and folding it again so the unseen watcher, if there was one, would be sure to see it.

Accelerating rapidly, he drove away.

At the next corner he joined the traffic on 17th Avenue, drove two blocks and slid into a parking slot near the YMCA. He strode rapidly back to 27th Street, the street before Kitty’s. Reaching a point which he judged to be about even with the back of her apartment building, he struck in between two buildings and across a paved yard.

The lowermost flight of the fire escape leading to Kitty’s window on the sixth floor was a vertical iron ladder, held in place by a counterweight, beyond the reach of even a professional basketball player. He tried the back door. It was locked.

Before going to work with his lock-picking equipment, he checked the next building, a twin to this one, with the same number of stories and a common wall. The back door was warped and had failed to latch. Shayne entered and rode the elevator to the top floor. A final flight of stairs took him to the roof.

He went cautiously to the front coping and looked over, careful not to let his head show in silhouette against the sky. The fourth-floor window which had been open before was now closed. There were still no lights in that apartment. Shayne waited another moment. When he saw the red glow of a cigarette or a cigar, he crossed the roof to the intervening wall and swung over to Kitty’s building.

There were eight floors, which meant that he had two kitchen windows to pass. No one was home in the top-floor apartment. A light was on in the window below. There was no way to get by without being seen. He clattered down the iron treads without trying to muffle his footsteps.

A woman was slicing onions at the counter in the little kitchen. She stared at him, her lips parted. The onion had made her cry but behind the tears her eyes were frightened.

“I forgot my key,” Shayne said loudly. “It’s really O.K.”

When he could see that she wasn’t going to yell he nodded pleasantly and continued past.

Kitty was waiting. She quickly pulled the bolts and lowered the window. He swung one leg through the opening and jackknifed his big body in after it.

She hugged him quickly. “You said five minutes. It’s five minutes on the dot. I’m beginning to see how people could come to rely on you.”

“Did you get Barbara?”

“Yes. I decided not to tell her where I’m really going. I said Mexico City, and I sort of jumped it at her, to see how she’d react. She didn’t react one way or the other. She just wanted to know if I’d changed my mind about signing. I said no, and that was that. At the end she gritted her teeth and told me to send her a postcard, the hypocrite.”

Shayne decided not to mention his suspicions about the apartment across the street. They would find out soon enough what that meant, if it meant anything.

She had brought out a bottle of whiskey, a bottle of gin, a bucket of ice cubes, and soda and water. Shayne made the drinks. She had an Ella Fitzgerald record on the record player, turned low.

“I’ve been trying to think if there’s anything else I ought to tell you,” she said nervously. “I can’t think of anything, and there’s no point in going around in circles. So to change the subject, how are you at backgammon?”

“Fair,” Shayne said, handing her the drink.

“Mmm. Now does that mean you’re really only fair, or that you’re very good and you don’t like to boast? Because I was going to suggest that we put a little money on it.”

Shayne smiled slightly. “There’s only one way to find out how good I am. Five bucks?”

She studied him for another moment before assenting. She moved the bottles aside and laid the board on the low coffee table.

“On guard,” she said, rattling the dice in the cup. “Expect no mercy.”

After a time, when bending over the table became awkward, they moved to the floor. Kitty kicked off her shoes. She was drinking steadily. She also won steadily, and by eleven, when the phone rang, Shayne had dropped three games in a row and was out fifteen dollars.

They looked at each other across the board while the phone rang again. She was on her knees, about to throw the dice, her eyes bright with excitement. She put the dice box down quietly.

“It’s a funny thing. I’d completely forgotten why you were here.”

She reached the phone and picked it up before it could ring again. After listening a moment, she held it out to Shayne.

“Tim Rourke.”

Shayne took the phone. “Yeah, Tim.”

“What’s that I hear?” Rourke’s voice said. “The faint tinkle of ice cubes? Soft music? The usual pattern, buddy. You relax while I keep my nose pressed to the grindstone.”

“Did Natalie kick you out?” Shayne said with a grin.

“She’s threatening to. Mike, this girl doesn’t know that the world is going through a sexual revolution. She’s still playing by grandmother’s rules. I want to talk about love and she wants to talk about real-estate prices.”

“What’s she say about real-estate prices?”

“In a minute. My thoughts are all organized, and don’t try to short-circuit me. First-you scoffed when I said I might get that air tank analyzed. It’s Sunday night. Everything’s closed. But you don’t want to underestimate my connections. I know a nurse who works the night shift at Jackson Memorial, and she had a lab technician run off the tests. It’s nitrous oxide, Mike.”

Shayne rubbed his thumb the wrong way along his jaw. Kitty had her head close to the phone so she could hear what the reporter was saying.

“The ordinary hospital anesthetic?” Shayne asked.

“That’s it. Ideal for the purpose. You can’t taste it. You can’t smell it. And so easy to get-every medical supply house has it, no prescription needed. Any time I want to murder a scuba diver, that’s what I’ll use. CO or CO 2 could get in by accident. Not nitrous oxide-that has to be put. The kid in the lab said it was about half air, half nitrous oxide. You still had about ten percent oxygen, a tick less than you’d get on the top of Mt. Everest. That was to give you plenty of time to get out of sight before you conked out.”