Brett Halliday - Kill All the Young Girls

But there was an undercurrent of menace somewhere that wouldn’t let him relax. He smoked three cigarettes, lighting each from the stub of the last.

He got up quietly. Kate seemed to be asleep. She lay on her side with one bare arm flung up over her eyes.

Leaving only one lamp burning, Shayne began to undress, piling his clothes on a chair. Suddenly Kate exclaimed and sat up.

“Who is it?”

“A friend,” he said. “Go back to sleep.”

She stared at him. She was sitting bolt upright, her fists clenched so tightly that her fingernails dug into her palms. He waited without moving until she recognized him. Her hand came up to brush back her hair.

“Mike. Is it going to be all right?”

“Why not?”

She looked at her watch. “I conked out. My God, I was tired. I nearly went to sleep in the shower.”

He pulled off his shirt and tossed it on the back of the chair. She slid down in bed, pulling the sheet back over her breasts.

“You know, you’re beautiful, Mike? What’s that scar on your shoulder?”

“Knife wound. I’ll tell you about it tomorrow.”

“Baby, people have really worked you over, haven’t they? Can I apologize now? I must have sounded like a madwoman. Make love to me; and I’ll give you a reward, a couple of morsels of information… Hey, will you scratch what I just said?”

“Sure.”

“It’s the way I automatically think, that lovemaking is something you bargain with. I never used to be that way.”

“Do you understand now that there’s nothing more you can do? You’re going to let Larry Zion alone?”

“I’ve made myself an enemy there.” She sighed. “Nothing like a refreshing half hour’s sleep. The awful thing is that I would have been good in that part! Adios, Doña Isabella. Now we concentrate on survival. And as for you and me, would you be willing to start over? You sleep in that bed; and I’ll sleep in this one, the way we used to do in pictures in the days of family entertainment. And tomorrow let’s not say a word about the movie business for the entire day.”

“We don’t have to stay in Miami.”

“No, we don’t, do we? Let’s go to the Bahamas and gamble. Mike, get the ice. We’ll have one last, innocent drink, in separate beds; and then we’ll sleep.”

Rolling on one elbow, she reached for the gift bottle of bourbon. The ice bucket was on the floor by Shayne’s chair. He bent down to get it; and at that moment, there was a terrific, slamming explosion in the room.

He felt a surge of warm air wash over him. Stunned, deafened, he went forward on one hand and one knee. The pain was so general that he believed at first that he had been blinded. His head filled with the crash of heavy surf.

The ice bucket had been knocked over, and what brought Shayne back was a burning sensation in one hand. He was holding an ice cube. His grip tightened, and it squirted away.

He straightened slowly.

The light had been blown out. There was a harsh, acrid smell in the room.

“Kate?”

He groped for the lamp, but it was no longer where it had been. Reaching behind him, he pulled the short cord on the Venetian blind. The room was on the Collins Avenue side of the hotel, and enough light came in so he could pick his way to the bathroom. The bed in which Kate had been lying seemed to be empty. He stepped in a wet mess on the carpet and swore savagely.

He ran his hand along the bathroom wall and located the switch. Bright light streamed out across the beds.

His upper lip came back. The bed’s pale satin headboard was flecked with red.

He moved back more carefully. Kate had been blown into the narrow space between the beds. Scraps of the scarlet paper in which the presentation bottle of Old Grand-dad had been wrapped lay on the crumpled sheet and on her body. Shayne stepped on a twisted fragment of metal. It was warm. What had happened was clear as soon as he saw the way she was lying. Instead of a bottle of bourbon, she had opened a bomb. It had gone off against her chest, tearing her face and the front of her body cruelly.

Shayne moved the foot of the unmade bed aside so he could reach her. After a moment he came erect, his face hard. He wiped his fingers on the sheet.

There was a sudden scrabbling sound on the floor, and he pulled back quickly. It took him a moment to understand that the phone had been blown off the table and the switchboard operator was trying to get in touch with somebody.

“Hello? Yes. Hello? Can I help you?”

Shayne needed help, but not the kind she was offering. He weighed the phone for a moment, thinking. He heard excited voices outside in the corridor. Doors were opening.

He put the phone back on the table and closed the connection. Stepping across the bed, he looked for his clothes. They had been fully exposed to the blast. The chair he had put them on had been knocked over. For some reason, the pants, which had been on top, were only slightly torn. Everything else was shredded and soggy with Kate’s blood and bits of her flesh. He pulled on the pants, checking for his keys and money-clip and the wallet buttoned up in his hip pocket. He found one shoe easily but had to hunt for the other. He slipped them on without bothering with socks. Then he gave himself a quick inspection in the bathroom mirror and rinsed a spatter of blood off his bare shoulder.

Much had happened, but no more than two or three minutes had passed since the explosion.

Before he let himself out, he went back for the magazine and tore out the gatefold. He folded it into squares and buttoned it into the pocket with the wallet.

Bundling up his clothes — one sock was all he could find — he pushed them all the way back on the closet shelf. Then he unlocked the door and went out.

The people in the corridor were all talking at once. Shayne broke in, “Did you people hear a loud bang?”

A woman who had come out of the room across the hall cried, “It sounded to me like it came from your room. Somewhere in there.”

“No, from below,” Shayne said. “Definitely. It came up through the floor. Damn near knocked me out of bed. If I didn’t know we don’t have earthquakes around here…”

The woman was barefoot, in striped pajamas. Her face had been creamed for the night, and her hair was an explosion of rollers.

“I was brushing my teeth. The toothpaste shot all over.”

An old man in an undershirt declared, “I say it was on this floor. Don’t you notice a funny smell? I don’t know about anybody else, but I’m getting out of here!”

“I’m with you,” Shayne said quickly. “These hotels are supposed to be fireproof; but if you get caught in an elevator, it’s goodbye.”

Other doors along the corridor had opened.

“I smell smoke!” Shayne shouted. “Stay out of the elevators.”

They looked at each other. Shayne yelled again, and they broke for the red light marking the fire stairs. But before Shayne himself had taken more than a step, the elevator door opened and the security party appeared. Shayne knew the officer here, a hard-drinking Swede named Lindholm. Two others were with him. Shayne had no chance of getting as far as the stairs without being recognized, and that would be that for the rest of the night. He swerved toward an open door. The woman in the pajamas and curlers sighed heavily. Her eyes rolled up, and she fell into his arms.

He took her full weight. One of her rollers scraped his face.

He pivoted, walked her back into her room, and kicked the door shut. He felt her stiffen in his arms before he had her as far as the bed. She wrenched herself away and looked at him in horror.

“If you scream,” he told her, “I’ll knock your teeth down your throat. I mean that.”