So Lush, So Deadly

by Brett Halliday

  He had learned to trust his instinct in these matters. Reaching in, he rolled down the windows and conducted his search from the outside, alert for any new sounds on the block. He emptied the glove compartment, felt along the underside of the dashboard and pulled up the floor padding. He brought out his picks again and opened the luggage compartment. Finding nothing, he bent down, gripped the frame between the doors, and straightened, tipping the little car on its side.

  He saw the flat, cloth-wrapped package wired to the inside of one fender-well almost at once, and at the same instant his built-in radar picked up a surreptitious movement not far away. He moved fast. He slipped one of his picks between the package and the wire and used leverage to snap the wire. Stepping back, he saw Henry De Rham coming toward him. Shayne wrenched the package loose and slipped around to the other side of the car. Now he heard running footsteps. He dropped to his knees, keeping in the shadow. He saw a catch basin in the curb, and with a quick sideways flick, he scaled the tape toward it. It slithered across the asphalt, bounced against the grating and dropped in.

  “That’s my car!” De Rham cried, “It’s tipped over!”

  Shayne straightened. “De Rham,” he said calmly. “I didn’t recognize you. I didn’t know you owned a car.”

  “What’s the bitch trying to do to me? Why can’t she leave me alone?”

  Shayne, a savage grin on his face, whirled to meet the rush of two barefoot youths who had slipped between parked cars. One was swinging a short length of chain. Shayne went beneath it and drove upward, using his shoulder. He caught the second youth in a powerful grasp, tying him up and turning him, but before Shayne could do anything about finishing him, two more of the youths piled on him from behind.

  That made four, not counting De Rham, and there were probably more on the way. The first glance had told Shayne that these were the ex-Dirty Angels he had heard about from Tim Rourke, members of the banned motorcycle club, a loose organization of wild young men who made savagery a cult. Two or three he might have been able to handle. Really dirty alley-fighters are more interested in fighting dirty than in winning, and they lay themselves open to retaliation from above. Shayne hammered downward, brought his knee up in one youth’s face, stamped and pivoted hard with an elbow out.

  De Rham shouted, “Goddamn cops. Think you can come down on us whenever you like. I knew you’d be back! You’re going to get your ears knocked off, Shayne.”

  He was carrying a piece of two-by-two lumber. He aimed it at Shayne and hit one of his own boys on the shoulder. After that he stayed back, keeping a running diatribe going against the brutality and stupidity and corruption of cops, who ignored depravity among the rich and harried people whose only crime was their long hair.

  His friends didn’t need the encouragement. They were fighting for pleasure. Shayne caught one around the neck and smashed his nose with his fist. They were barefoot, and they were used to fighting in boots. Shayne, badly outnumbered, was trying to capitalize on the fact that he was wearing shoes. He connected seriously only once, and that youth staggered across the sidewalk with several broken toes.

  Shayne himself had been hurt. Two other youths stopped to watch, and Shayne caught the reek of marijuana. If things went badly with him, it was only a question of time before the whole neighborhood joined in.

  De Rham commented with disgust, “Somebody ought to educate these narcotics cops.” He screamed suddenly, waving his club, “Break him up! Let’s teach the mother a lesson he won’t forget!”

  One of the watchers pinched out his cigarette and put it away.

  Shayne picked up his smallest assailant by the neck and the crotch, spun him around and let him go. Breaking loose, he headed straight for the two newcomers and straight-armed the nearest one between the eyes.

  He ran toward the park. He had been rabbit-punched repeatedly, and his midsection was on fire. His brain was still turning, but slowly. It was as though the amphetamines had lost their force and the chloral hydrate had taken over again. One knee was injured. A wave of pain shot through him at each step.

  One of the boys, faster to recover than the others, nearly overtook him. Shayne swung around, snarling, as the boy dived, aiming for his genitals. Shayne chopped down, using his full strength, and left him on the sidewalk unconscious and bleeding.

  Replacements had appeared for those Shayne had put out of action. A grin was still fixed on Shayne’s face. A long rip in his shirt showed the depth and power of his chest. He began to back away. They came after him warily. If they all moved together they could pull him down, but someone had to take that first step, and they had all lost some of their first eagerness.

  De Rham, behind them, threw his piece of wood. It bounced from Shayne’s arm. He stopped and swept it up, whirling it at the youths and making them pause again.

  Then he turned and ran into the park.

  The old men had gone to bed, leaving the benches to guitarists and young lovers. Shayne’s quick eye picked out several plainclothes detectives. Short of imposing a curfew, all they could do was make an occasional marijuana arrest, and wait for trouble. The Dirty Angels couldn’t close in on him here, but Shayne, equally, couldn’t ask for a police escort. He would have to answer too many questions. The whole object of this diversion, he realized now, had been to put him out of action, and he had to hurry. He had got into this without police help, and he had to get out of it the same way.

  He stopped an untidy girl and asked where he could find a public phone. She suggested the café.

  He limped there, followed at a short distance by De Rham and the boys. Shayne stopped in the doorway and looked back. De Rham was conferring with one of the youths, the only one Shayne hadn’t managed to mark. He had two gaps and a stump in the front of his mouth, an inflamed complexion and blonde hair hanging over his eyes. Brushing his hair aside, he looked at Shayne evilly.

  Shayne made his way among the crowded tables, wincing when he banged his knee. There were three wall phones. He dialed Tim Rourke’s number.

  Rourke answered after a half dozen rings. Shayne shouted at him and Rourke shouted back, but there was too much noise; they couldn’t understand each other.

  The sounds coming from the group of musicians on the raised platform stopped abruptly. Cupping his hand around the mouthpiece, Shayne made his friend understand who he was and what he wanted.

  “A tape recorder,” Rourke said. “Yeah, I’ve got one. I know where you are. There’s only one rock ‘n’ roll place in town open this late. Are you having trouble?”

  “Damn right,” Shayne said distinctly.

  “Be right with you, Mike,” Rourke said quickly, and hung up.

  Shayne found the ugly gap-toothed Angel standing beside him with a foolish grin on his face and a kind of glitter in his eye. He was high on something more powerful than ordinary tobacco. He had a knife in Shayne’s ribs.

  “Introduce myself,” he said politely. “I’m Finn. I’m a—I’m a—I’m a dangerous rapist. That’s what the judge said. Blow your cool, man, and I’ll c-c-carve myself some red meat.”

  “Can you get a drink in this place?”

  “Only C-C-Coke.” The knife dug in far enough to draw blood. “Turn around, baby. Walk.”

  The amplified group had returned to the attack. Shayne moved carefully, gauging his chances. Another Angel was going through the room alerting those with motorcycle backgrounds to the man-to-man showdown taking place between one of their own and Mike Shayne, a detective sent into teen-age country to harass a drop-out from a rich marriage. Only this selected group would take part, Shayne could see. All the others would stay out, and possibly they wouldn’t even bother to watch.

  He grinned back at the grinning Angel. “Hot in here. I feel sort of—”

  He put his hand to his forehead and let his eyelids flutter closed. He slid to the floor.

  There was hardly room for Finn to stoop down beside him. “Get up, man.” He slapped Shayne’s face. “Trying to fake me out. That�
�s a phony dive, and don’t think I don’t know it.”

  Shayne stayed limp, even when Finn dug the point of his knife viciously into his stomach.

  “Cold,” Finn said contemptuously. “Big tough man got scared and passed out. Hey. Give me something to throw on him, somebody, an orange drink or something.”

  He looked up at the faces above him. Shayne seized his wrist and wrung it hard. The knife fell. Shayne went on twisting and Finn went with the twist, his ugly face contorted. His chin was exposed, but Shayne waited until he could do it right, and then delivered a short powerful jab to the knockout point.

  Somebody above laughed and sprinkled them both with a soft drink.

  Shayne was well below table level, where he intended to stay. Looking up, he concluded that he would get neither help nor opposition from these boys and girls, whichever they were. They were far too cool.

  He retrieved the knife and crawled along the wall. A fat youth at the phones blocked him until Shayne pricked one of his bare feet and he hopped aside. Shayne touched one of the many cords snaking down from the music platform to a gang plug in a baseboard outlet. He twitched the whole plug out and plunged the knife into the slot.

  Everything blew.

  The sudden silence was deafening. Leaving the knife where it was, Shayne rose to his feet in the darkness and stepped up on the platform among the musicians. One of the amplifying panels fell over. A musician struck at him and Shayne pushed him hard. In a minute the platform was a tangle of musicians and instruments and wires.

  “A raid!” Shayne yelled. “Narcotics raid. Narcotics!”

  He took a guitar away from somebody and began swinging it. Several musicians fell into the crowd. Girls screamed as they stampeded. There was no crush around the exits, as the entire front of the café opened onto the street. The crowd drained in that direction and Shayne went with it. He picked up a chair and pulled it apart as he went.

  By the time he reached the street, the block was jammed with excited young people. A line of uniformed cops had formed at the end, barring entry into the park, and the damn fools had already begun to swing their clubs. The crowd surged away, then held and came back, overrunning the thin police line.

  Paper bags of water were being thrown from the windows.

  Shayne waited against the wall until the crowd divided into small running groups. With his carrot-red hair, his powerful shoulders, the clothes he was wearing, he was clearly a foreigner in this part of his home town, and a natural target for water bombs. He was hit twice before he reached the next street. At the corner he was hit from behind by something more serious, a bicycle chain wound around an Angel’s fist.

  He was hit several times more. He was later to find many unexplained contusions on his head and upper body, but by that time he was unconscious.

  CHAPTER 15

  When he swam back, coming out through a psychedelic haze punctuated by blazing lights and sudden overpowering noises, he found himself in a doorway. His head was on a girl’s lap. Her face was upside down, and he didn’t recognize her at first. She was wiping blood gently from his forehead.

  “Those jerks,” she said. “They could have killed you, but why should they care?”

  “What—” Shayne said with difficulty.

  That was as far as he could take it. The battle had ended, or had moved elsewhere. A siren sounded. There was a patter of feet and an excited girl ran across from the opposite building and leaped into the doorway.

  “They’re shooting!” she cried. “Shooting real bullets! Get inside, H. Who’s the guy?”

  “A friend of mine,” Shayne’s girl said. “He gave me his burger.”

  Shayne now realized that he was being mothered by the girl who had been living with Henry De Rham.

  “They’re going through houses rounding everybody up,” the other girl said. “If you’ve got any acid or anything better get rid of it.”

  “I’m all right,” H. said. “I only tried it once and I didn’t like it.”

  Shayne tried to raise his head, but fell back with a groan. “Where’s Henry?”

  “Who cares? I don’t, I can assure you of that.”

  “I’ve got to—”

  “You know what you’ve got to do, Mr. Shayne. You’ve got to lie here till an ambulance comes and gets you.”

  Shayne didn’t try to shake his head for fear something would go wrong inside, but this time when he endeavored to sit up he made it.

  “Can you drive a car?”

  “Yes, but you’re not—”

  Shayne tried to stand. It was too soon, and he went under again. This time he had a harder fight to come back, and the surfacing was unpleasant.

  “The beating they gave you,” she said. “They were just out of control. I completely lost my temper. I said things, I did things—”

  “H.—”

  “Helen.”

  “Helen, I have things to do or people’ll get killed. Help me. My car—”

  A battered Ford stopped with a screech of tires and Tim Rourke leaped from it. He had dressed hurriedly, and Shayne noticed with a temporary return of his usual clarity that he was wearing only one sock.

  “My God, what a story. Did you start this, Mike? Tell me later. Where’s a phone?”

  “In the café.”

  “The café’s a shambles. Well, maybe the phones are still working.”

  He dashed off.

  “How long’s this been going on?” Shayne said.

  “Half an hour. Nobody knows what happened, it just exploded. Everybody started running. The police have been dreadful. Unbelievable. I’m going home to my family. I’ve made up my mind that I’m not going to stay here another night.”

  Moving slowly, by careful stages, Shayne sat up again. “What does Henry think about that?”

  “I’ve given up on Henry. Do you know he paid those boys to beat you? Ten dollars apiece, seven boys, seventy dollars. And he told me he was so broke! I’ve been scrounging for food. I washed dishes in the café one night. He didn’t give me one cent the whole week, and suddenly it turns out he has ten-dollar bills to throw around.”

  Shayne was feeling himself to see where he hurt most and he was only half listening. But a little warning flag went up. He repeated what she had said slowly, and it registered on him.

  “The whole week, Helen? He’s been here two weeks.”

  “Six days, to be exact. I ought to know, and half the time he’s been God knows where. I think he’s been seeing that wife! Right along!”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “I could smell her perfume. Expensive perfume—Dior’s. The hypocrite. I left home to get away from hypocrisy. He said he liked how peaceful it is here, nobody bugging him, no pressures—he said he was happy for the first time in his life. That’s what he said. But he wasn’t happy. He lay awake most of the night. I couldn’t help him. He wouldn’t talk to me. The whole thing has been such a fiasco.”

  Rourke came running up. “Into the car, boy. We’ve got some talking to do.”

  “Got the tape recorder?”

  “Yeah. On your feet, Mike. I’m a ninety-pound weakling, and I’m not going to carry you. So you got knocked out. Worse things happen to you all the time.”

  “You didn’t see what they did to him!” the girl cried.

  “Honey,” Rourke said, “you don’t want to sympathize with Shayne. It’s bad for him. I’m this character’s best friend, and I’m always sorry to see him bleeding. But right now we’re both working. You can help him if you want to. You’re a female. He won’t mind leaning on you.”

  Rourke stood by, his eyebrows cocked skeptically, while the girl tugged at Shayne and got him to his feet. She steered him across the sidewalk to Rourke’s Ford. The reporter’s only contribution was to open the door.

  Shayne put his head against the back of the seat and rested. Helen reached in and kissed the corner of his mouth. She started to say something, but Rourke, meanwhile, had leaped behind the wheel and was
impatient to drive off. She let go of the door and gave a tentative half wave.

  “Good-bye. I hope—”

  Rourke came down hard on the gas, and put a strain on the transmission going up into second.

  “One of these days we’re going to have to start double-teaming you, Mike. One-man coverage is hardly enough. What’s the program?”

  Shayne moved his hand. “Flagler Terrace. Left my car there. Need a drink.”

  Rourke was still in second when he came up behind Shayne’s Buick. Shayne heard him swear. He opened his eyes and pulled himself forward, then slowly opened the door and got out.

  The red Volkswagen lay on its side as Shayne had left it. In retaliation, De Rham and the Angels had wrecked the Buick, as well as they could wreck it in a limited time without heavy equipment. All four tires were flat. The headlights and taillights had been smashed. All the glass was gone except the windshield. The body was battered, the doors were sprung and off their hinges.

  “As I think I told you, some of these guys aren’t too sold on nonviolence yet,” Rourke said. “Old habits.”

  Shayne checked his liquor supply in the back seat bar. They had cleaned him out.

  “I grabbed a couple of pints on the way out of the house,” Rourke said. “You never know when it’s going to come in handy. Stop panting—I’ll give you a drink.”

  They returned to the Ford. Rourke took a flat bottle of cognac out of his glove compartment and opened it for him. A pint of cheap blended whiskey—Rourke claimed he couldn’t tell the difference between that and more expensive brands—was already open. They clinked bottles.

  “Cheers,” Rourke said.

  Shayne drank and breathed out luxuriously.

  “Mike, I know you’re a fast recuperator. But this time I think I’d better check you in at St. Clare’s and let them take a few stitches. Whatever it is, it can wait till breakfast. You look pretty feeble.”