Brett Halliday - The Careless Corpse

Shayne studied the array of bottles behind the bar, and pointed to a brand of Portuguese brandy that he knew and liked. “A double shot of that brandy with ice water on the side.”

The bartender said, “Si, Senor,” cheerfully, and set out a glass which he poured full to the brim. Shayne sat half-turned with his back to the wall, so he could watch the entrance unobtrusively. He had taken only one sip of the brandy when he was conscious of the smell of strong perfume on his left and the insinuating pressure of a soft buttock against his thigh. Without turning his head, he said, “Hi.”

A soft giggle answered him. “You weel buy me a drink, Senor?”

“If you’re one of the really good ones,” he said over his shoulder, grinning at the waiter and nodding to him while he spread out three bills on the bar.

“That you mus’ say for yourself, Senor. After we ’ave a dreenk, maybe.”

He said, “Maybe,” still without looking at his feminine companion. The bartender set an amber-colored highball in front of her and scooped up Shayne’s bills, leaving a little pile of silver. The carioca changed to a rhumba, and the dancing continued without Shayne being able to see any change in the gyrations of the dancers.

He lighted a cigarette and sipped his drink and casually kept his gaze on the entrance as he waited for Laura to appear, and suddenly he became conscious that the stool beside him had been vacated and that another person stood very close beside his left shoulder. From the smell of hair oil and pomade he was sure that the newcomer was not one of the girls who gave the place its name.

He started to turn on the stool to take a look, but by the time he faced directly forward there was a stinging pain in his left side just below the ribcage and a sibilant warning hissed into his ear:

“Do not move, Senor. Thees knife, she ees sharp.”

“So is this one, bud.” A new and heavier voice spoke behind his right ear as he sat rigid on the stool facing straight ahead. The needle-sharp point of a second knife broke the skin at a similar place on his right side.

“Take it easy an’ you’ll make out okay,” the second voice advised him. “One word or a sudden move out of you, an’ Jose an’ me’ll spill your guts over the floor. That right, Jose?”

“That ees right.” The knife on the left moved a trifle, and Shayne gritted his teeth as he divined its eagerness to enter his body.

“Here’s what you’re gonna do. Turn slowly to your left on the stool without jerking or turning your head. Keep your hands out in front an’ we’ll stay close behind, like three real good buddies headin’ for the can. You slide off the stool an’ walk real slow down the corridor to that door at the end marked Hombres. You got that straight?”

Shayne’s face was deeply trenched and rivulets of sweat began running down the trenches. He knew what a sudden thrust of either of those knives would do to his guts. He said out of a dry mouth, “I got it.”

“All right. Start moving.”

Shayne swung slowly and cautiously on the stool toward the rear, giving the man on his left plenty of time to step back and stay out of sight while holding the knife in position.

He stood erect very slowly, and so far as he could tell neither the bartender nor anyone along the bar was paying the slightest attention to what was going on.

An aisle led off the barroom to a white door at the end that was lettered Hombres. Shayne drew in a deep breath and held himself rigidly and began walking toward the door. The two men kept pace with him and he was helplessly cornered in the dead-end corridor.

He reached the swinging door at the end and hesitated, and the gruff voice said, “Go on inside.”

Shayne put out the palm of his hand flat against the edge of the door and pushed it slowly inward. As it opened, he slid his fingertips around the inch-thick board and got a solid grip on the inner surface.

Then he drove his body forward, shoving the door open to slide through and slamming it shut behind his body with all his strength.

There was a shriek of pain beyond the wooden barrier as he whirled to throw his weight against the door, and a long-bladed knife clattered to the floor at his feet, dropped from dangling brown fingers at the end of a sinewy arm that had been trapped by the closing door and the bone in the forearm broken.

Shayne kept his full weight remorselessly against the door with the broken arm pinned between it and the frame while he stooped down to snatch up the knife that had recently threatened his life.

Then he jerked the door open and a body crumpled to the floor just outside when the pinioned arm was released. A burly man was running into the big room at the end of the corridor shouting Spanish words in a badly accented voice.

One glance at the man at Shayne’s feet showed him writhing on the floor, his face contorted with pain.

Shayne realized it would be utterly hopeless to face the roomful of excited and vengeful Latins at the end of the corridor. He drew back and slammed the door shut instead, throwing the latch on the inside to gain a few moments before they could break it in, and then whirled about to look at the cubicle in which he was imprisoned.

There was a urinary on one side and a wash-bowl on the other. Beyond was a sagging door leading into a toilet stall, and shoulder-high on the far wall was a window about two feet square.

There was an excited babble of voices and a rush of feet outside the door behind Shayne. It rattled and shook as angry fists began pounding on it.

Shayne hesitated one brief moment while he tried to orient himself and judge whether the rear window overlooked the river or not.

Before he could decide, he knew that the question had become academic. The door was straining inward now, and the latch would give way at any moment.

Shayne leaped forward and caught the crosspiece above the sagging inner door with both hands. Using the impetus of his leap, he swung his legs and lower body high off the floor and drove feet-first at the window, arching his body to carry him through the aperture and downward, accompanied by fragments of broken glass.

He went into the muddy water of the Miami River feet-first, and sank into soft mud before he was waist-deep.

Three strides carried him to the bank where he scrambled up behind the kitchen just as there was a crash inside the restroom and excited shouts came out the broken window.

Shayne loped around the side of the kitchen to the parking lot, darted to Rourke’s car and leaped inside. There was no Cadillac convertible parked in the lot.

He got the key in the ignition and the motor roared to life just as the vanguard of the angry mob poured out of the front door.

He went away with screaming tires and with his lights off, and drove several blocks before he eased into a stream of traffic and turned them on.

He drove west a dozen blocks, heard a siren racing in the opposite direction behind him, and then north a few blocks until he found a small bar with an empty parking space in front. He got out and went in with his muddy shoes and his clothing dripping from the waist down, and pushed up against the end of the bar where the lower portion of his body was hidden from the bartender’s sight.

He said, “A double cognac straight,” and then motioned to the telephone behind the bar just out of his reach. “Would you push that a little closer, please?”

The bartender set the phone where he could reach it, and got down a bottle of cognac. Shayne dialed the Peralta number from memory. It rang six times before Freed’s unctuous voice answered, “Mr. Peralta’s residence.”

“Mrs. Peralta, please. Sergeant Olson from police headquarters.”

“One moment, Sergeant. I believe she just returned.”