Brett Halliday - Kill All the Young Girls

Fishnets were spread to dry on a huge reel. There was a rattle of small-arms fire from the tavern behind him: the little peck-peck of the.22, the sharp crack of a.38, then the authoritative report of the big Colt. He left cover, walking without haste along the hard sand in his bare feet.

The black, shiny package he had seen from the platform was now partly out of the water, rolling heavily as it was nudged by small waves set in motion by the motorboat’s wash. It took on definition as Shayne approached and turned into a prone figure clad in a black wet-suit, with an oxygen rig strapped to its back. It lay mask-downward. One hand, flung up on the sand, had three splinted fingers.

Shayne went up to his ankles in the water and hauled the figure into the shadow cast by a low shed. He flipped up the mask. There was just enough light to show the features of Turkey Gallagher. He had stopped getting oxygen some time before. There was a gout of blood at the corner of his mouth.

A sudden boom that seemed to come from one of the anchored ships caused Shayne to look up.

The motorboat swung around and headed back toward the ship. A voice shouted, “On fire!”

A man pounded past. He glanced at Shayne but kept going. The lights on the ship’s deck were darting around. Shayne saw a flicker of flame, swallowed immediately by a rush of oily smoke. Another man ran out on a short finger of dock and dropped into a power launch.

Shayne snapped on his lighter again and located the zipper tab under Gallagher’s rubber-clad arm. He worked the zipper, and water ran out of the suit.

He stood the lighter in the sand and undressed the dead man. Under the wet-suit, Gallagher was wearing only shorts. His chest was sticky. Shayne brought water in his cupped hands and rinsed him off, finding the entry hole of the bullet under the left nipple, hidden in a matted tangle of hair. The bullet had remained in his body.

The gunfight Alix was having with herself in the tavern petered away. The loaded launch cut loose from the dock and headed out for the ship. From the noises that reached Shayne across the water, it seemed that the fire was being brought under control. A plume of water arced into the air. Men from the small boats swarmed aboard.

Shayne checked the oxygen tank. It hissed reassuringly. While Zion’s men were preoccupied with fighting the fire would be a good time for Shayne to depart. He skinned out of his clothes. The wet-suit fitted him snugly.

Someone on the ship called to the approaching launch. “We’re okay, Larry. It looks okay. I think we got it.”

Zion called up a question; and the voice answered, “One of those little stick-on bombs from the outside.”

Shayne adjusted the straps on the face mask. Keeping low, he rolled into the water. As soon as he was clear of the sand, he kicked out hard, driving himself along the shelving bottom, heading away from shore at an angle. After a dozen strokes, he curved to the left, trying to parallel the curve of the shore. But it was impossible to tell how deep he was in the black water. He swam blindly for a time, then took a deep breath, and stopped moving until he rose to the surface.

He came up too fast and broke water with a splash. He was beyond the end of the fence, off Consolidated-Famous property. Nevertheless, the dog was desperate to get out in the water and bite him.

Shayne remained quietly on the surface, working his flippers. The guard lost patience and batted the dog on the muzzle with his gloved hand.

Shayne bent forward at the waist and submerged. When he surfaced again, the guard had dragged the dog back to the gate; but Shayne continued to hear excited barking as he came ashore and stripped off the rubber suit.

He continued along the shore until he came to deep ruts where Gallagher had turned his car around so it would point in the right direction in case he had to leave in a hurry. It was the same yellow MG Shayne had seen him in earlier. Shayne turned on the inside light by opening the door. Gallagher’s clothes were on the driver’s seat, the ignition key in the pants pocket. Shayne dried himself with Gallagher’s undershirt and pulled on the shirt and pants.

He drove without lights and scraped bottom several times going out. Once, he slammed down into a pothole and thought he had snapped an axle. Presently, with everything still working, he reached the road that was maintained by Consolidated equipment; and in another few moments, he was on the expressway heading back to Miami.

He had three and a half hours before the stockholders’ meeting. He was setting up a list of things that had to be checked when he was overtaken by the highway patrol as he came off the Thirty-eighth Street ramp. The patrolman ranged up abreast, dropped back to check his plates, then came up again, blinking. Shayne pulled over.

The patrolman was very young, with an Alabama accent. All his clothes seemed a trifle too tight, including his hat and boots. He had never heard of Michael Shayne, and Shayne had no credentials to show him. He had Gallagher’s license; but that wasn’t good enough, inasmuch as Gallagher’s wallet proved to contain two other drivers’ licenses in different names. But what impressed the patrolman most was the fact that the car had been stolen.

Shayne asked to be taken to the barracks. These things could be explained, but he didn’t want to have to do it twice.

“Out,” the patrolman told him, picking at his holster flap. “Get out and turn around and stand there, like the book says. This is my first day in this job.”

“In that case, I’ll be glad to do what you tell me,” Shayne said.

The patrolman had him empty his pockets. Gallagher had been carrying a money clip holding $500 in fifties and twenties, a serrated set of brass knuckles, an airplane ticket to Las Vegas, gonorrhea pills, a hypodermic needle, and a glassine envelope filled with a white powder. The patrolman commented on these items individually as they appeared. He also noticed that Shayne was wearing a shoulder bandage, and there seemed to be bloodstains on his shirt. Very carefully now, his gun drawn, he walked Shayne to the patrol car and called for help.

The pace of events had been fast for some hours. Now, it slowed abruptly. He and the patrolman waited twenty minutes at the side of the road. To show what he thought of clapped-up junkies who carried brass knuckles and drove stolen cars, the patrolman refused Shayne a cigarette, although he smoked steadily himself. Two more patrolmen arrived at last, driving a sedan with wire mesh between back and front seats and no inside handles on the rear doors.

The sergeant at the Miami Springs barracks agreed that Shayne had a superficial resemblance to pictures he had seen of Michael Shayne, but he wouldn’t assume any further responsibility. Whoever Shayne was, he had certainly been carrying a great deal of incriminating stuff; and he deserved to be locked up for the rest of the night, until the day-shift lieutenant arrived.

Up to this point, Shayne had been doing his best to understand their problem.

“Did you listen to the news tonight, Sergeant?”

“Eleven o’clock, why?”

“A movie actress was murdered in a Beach hotel. Put in a call to the cops over there, and ask if they’d like to talk to Mike Shayne. A few minutes later, you’ll hear sirens.”

“In the morning.”

“Another very good looking girl was beaten up at a drive-in movie. That was in Miami. The guys who did it came to the movie in a stolen MG. It’s outside now. She was slugged by the guy who belongs to these clothes I’ve got on. He’s dead now, in still another jurisdiction. Those are the high spots. There won’t be much else on the front page tomorrow. Police work is your career. The spotlights are going to be on, and you don’t want to look too stupid.”