Guilty as Hell

by Brett Halliday

  The bat descended. Whitey was trying to connect with a short slashing blow to make Shayne hold still for the real one to follow. Shayne saw the moving shadow and jerked aside. The club hit the Cuban. Shayne came into a crouch, bringing the dazed Cuban up with his left hand. He brought him around against the iron pickets of the cemetery fence, nailing him with a powerful right as he hung there. The click as it landed told him the Cuban was through for the night.

  He looked for Whitey, who turned as Shayne turned. The club was already on its way down. Shayne slanted upward to meet it, and the club slammed him across the back of the neck.

  “You got him!” the youth cried. “You got the bastard. Spill his brains on the sidewalk.”

  Whitey growled, “Back in the car.”

  “Back in the car! Look at my hand. Give me that.”

  “This is Mike Shayne, meathead. Did Jake say to kill him? We didn’t get paid that kind of dough.”

  Shayne lay face down, his knees in the gutter. He could hear the voices, but the words were unclear. The Plymouth’s motor panted noisily beside him. Unconsumed gases washed over him from the leaking muffler. The blow at the top of the spine had cut his communication with his arms and legs. He strained to move. He could feel drops of sweat break out on his forehead. Willing his shoulders into motion, he lifted his head a few inches.

  Whitey dragged the unconscious Cuban past and thrust him into the car. The boy, one arm dangling, kept on begging for the club.

  “Just one lick!”

  “Leave him be, goddamn it,” Whitey snarled. “In the car, in the car!”

  Shayne raised his head another inch and sank his teeth in the boy’s ankle.

  The boy was wearing white jeans with pipe-stem legs, which stopped halfway down his calves. Shayne bit down hard, trying to sever the Achilles tendon. The boy gave a high bubbly cry.

  “Will you come on?” Whitey cried. “I said to leave him alone!”

  With a choked obscenity, the youth took a step and snatched up the jackhandle. Whitey grabbed his arm as it came down. Shayne’s teeth unclenched and he rolled out of the way. His arms and legs were answering now, but sluggishly.

  The youth pulled out of Whitey’s hands and ran to the driver’s side. The door there was open. He leaped in. Whitey wrenched the door open on the near side as the car careened recklessly backward. Twenty yards away it reversed and came back at Shayne.

  The detective commanded his body to roll, but he could count the seconds before the movement started. The youth with his one usable hand and Whitey with two fought for control of the wheel. The Plymouth swerved, mounting the curb, then rocked back to the street before veering onto the sidewalk again. Shayne, his head on a level with the front bumper, saw the wheels begin to turn toward the street, but in one frozen quarter-second he could see that the correction wouldn’t be made in time. He struggled to bring his arm against his body. The car whooshed past, and he felt a blazing pain in his forearm.

  There was a rending crash. The Plymouth’s front fender hooked the phone booth and knocked it over.

  The car bounced away, swung all the way across the street and shuddered to a stop. Whitey burst out of the front seat and ran around to take the wheel.

  Hitching forward in a crablike crawl, Shayne reached the overturned booth. The Plymouth starter was growling.

  Shayne wrestled himself around, braced his feet against the booth and began to pull Teddy out through the bottom.

  It was painful work, and he was no longer really sure what he was doing.

  The Plymouth’s sudden stop had flooded the carburetor. The starter ground on and on, beginning to weaken. The open phone in the overturned booth buzzed and crackled, and Teddy moaned. Amid the confusion of noises Shayne thought he heard a siren.

  The carburetor cleared and the motor took hold with a roar. Black smoke billowed from the exhaust. Shayne gave up the attempt to free Teddy and crawled in with him, pulling open his jacket. His hand fastened on the butt of the .38 in the shoulder holster.

  The gun resisted. The Plymouth wheeled over the opposite curb and moved away, accelerating. Shayne fought the .38. Apparently the holster had a security spring to keep the gun from being drawn by anyone else but the wearer.

  He changed his grip. The gun jumped into his hand and he fired without aiming.

  The Plymouth was rounding the corner into 16th Street. Shayne’s snap shot blew out a rear tire. The back end careered through a ninety-degree arc and smashed against a utility pole.

  Shayne fired again, aiming carefully, and drilled a hole through the safety glass in front of the driver. Whitey understood the message, and stayed where he was.

  Shayne propped the gun on the large man’s buttocks, holding the front sight steady on the thug’s unnaturally white hair. He was in the same position when the police arrived. He still had the gun in an iron grip, and pressure on the trigger would have sent a slug through Whitey’s head. But Shayne was unconscious.

  CHAPTER 6

  The casualties were taken to Jackson Memorial, across the river on 12th Avenue.

  The doctor on emergency duty when Shayne was carried in was an old-timer named Hugo Baumgartner, who had worked on him before. In addition to a lacerated ear and various contusions, Shayne’s main problem was his smashed left wrist. Baumgartner set the bones. After studying his work in hastily developed X rays, he rebroke them and did it again. When Shayne fought his way out of the anesthetic, Baumgartner was tidying up after putting on a light fingertip-length cast.

  He looked at the detective solemnly. His face had long ago congealed in this expression; Shayne had never seen him smile.

  “They hit you with a car this time, I’m sorry to see.”

  “Where’s Sparrow?”

  “Upstairs asleep. Kind of funny thing happened. Want to hear it?”

  “I need a laugh.”

  “He got out of bed when the nurse wasn’t looking. He didn’t know it was a hospital bed. He broke an ankle. Kind of complicated. His right leg’s in traction.”

  “Yeah, that’s funny,” Shayne agreed, deadpan.

  “I thought so. His speech and vision are O.K., but we have to wait till tomorrow to see about brain damage from the beating. Of course somebody who knows Sparrow tells me not to worry—you couldn’t tell the difference. Mike, I didn’t want to put on the final before I conferred with you. You’ve got a tricky fracture. If you want to regain the use of that wrist you have to be careful with it.”

  “I’m always careful.”

  “Yes-s,” Baumgartner said skeptically. “I know that telling a bank clerk to be careful isn’t the same thing as telling Mike Shayne to be careful. I was wondering. How would you like the same kind of cast I gave you the last time? As I remember, I put a sash-weight in the plaster and you broke a guy’s jaw with it.”

  “Yeah,” Shayne said faintly; the pain in his wrist was very bad.

  The doctor went on, “Not that you have to worry about catching the three guys who jumped you. They’re caught. I’ve got two of them here, and they won’t go anywhere under their own power for a few days. I had to go to the saw to get the brass knuckles off without taking the boy’s fingers. The third one’s in jail. He was driving a stolen car, to begin with.”

  He mixed plaster as he talked. “I gave you a shot and you’ll be with us at least till tomorrow noon. We want to do a set of spine X rays to see if you’ve got any nerve injury. And after that you’re under orders to stay off your feet for a full twenty-four hours. Will you do that, Mike?”

  He waited, but the detective didn’t answer.

  “You don’t seem to be enunciating too well, so I’ll answer my own question. No, you won’t, not if you’re on a case, and I assume you are. So the first thing we’re going to do is build an armature around the wrist and pack it with foam rubber. Anchor it on both sides of the break.”

  He worked in silence for a time. Shayne, already half asleep, no longer felt any pain. When Baumgartner spoke again, the words d
rifted down to him from a great distance.

  “I was going to use a sash weight again, but here’s an idea. How about the brass knuckles? They’re lightweight. They’re lethal. I sawed them in two, and I’ll point one half one way and the other half the other. Under a sixteenth of an inch of plaster you’ll have a dangerous left hand. You can’t use your fingers, so why don’t I close the cast at the end and put on a hook? And a scalpel, Mike. I’ll lay it on top and slap on enough plaster to hold it. Bang it against something and you’ll have yourself an edged weapon. This cast is going down in the annals of medical science.”

  He was still working when Shayne fell asleep.

  It was daylight when Shayne awoke. He tried to lift his left arm to look at his watch. He thought at first someone had strapped that hand to the bed. Then the pain hit him and he blacked out briefly. When he came to, he raised his head from the pillow and looked around.

  “And the top of the morning to you, too,” Sparrow said sourly from the next bed.

  Shayne rolled over. The mountainous private detective was sitting up, his right leg attached to a rig that was attached to a hook in the ceiling. His head was swathed in bandages. Nothing showed but his little eyes, a nose with a large scab on it, and a long cigar.

  “A simple little follow job,” he commented, the cigar still in his mouth. “A hundred-and-ten-pound blonde. Wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

  “You’ll get combat pay,” Shayne grated. “Medical expenses plus five bills. How did it happen?”

  “Why, that sexy blonde in the low dress suckered me, Mike. That’s what happened. Before she came out of Larue’s, she did some phoning. Having no bug on the line, I can’t quote it to you, but the gist I think I can give you.” He tapped cigar ashes into a vase of cut flowers on the table between the beds. “She called a certain small-time rat named Whitey Grabowski.”

  “The name’s familiar.”

  “She told him to pick up a couple of pugs and meet her in the park across from Woodlawn. Then she got in a cab and rode around till they got themselves organized. When she paid off the cab at that park, something told me. But it was either follow her or lose her, and you told me not to lose her.”

  “What was wrong with your gun?”

  “They hit me before I could get it out. A cop was telling me this morning about finding me in the phone booth, but I don’t remember putting in that call to you, Mike. I didn’t even know I knew your number without looking it up, and I sure as hell didn’t look it up. I think they dialed it for me and left me just about three percent conscious. You were the one they were mainly after.”

  “Somebody mentioned the name Jake. Does that mean anything?”

  “Jake Fitch! When you come right down to it, this ain’t a too-big town. Whitey and Jake Fitch, they’re a twosome. They take these kinds of assignments. Low-level stuff.” He gave a hoarse laugh. “The one thing I regret, I wasn’t awake to see it. They tell me you couldn’t get in the phone booth so you pushed it over.”

  “You ought to lose a little weight, Teddy.”

  “Don’t I know it. And look at that.” He pointed to a two-pound box of chocolates beside the flowers. “My nutty girl friend. Skinny as a pencil, and she eats more than I do.”

  Shayne reached for the button to call the nurse. She came in before he pressed it, a dark, pretty girl in the usual semitransparent uniform.

  “I need a phone,” Shayne growled.

  “Uh-uh,” she said, shaking her head. “You’re supposed to take it easy till noon.”

  “What time is it now?”

  “Twenty to,” she admitted.

  He snorted, beginning to feel better.

  “All right,” she said reluctantly. “I’ll bring you a phone and you can make one call. Then I have to take your temperature and give you a bath and bring you breakfast.”

  Shayne grinned at her. He had hopes of being back in action before anybody washed him by hand. She left. He swung his legs over the side of the bed, but before he could dismount, the room whirled and he pitched forward against Sparrow’s bed.

  “Play it cool, Mike,” Teddy told him. “I’d get up and help if I didn’t have troubles of my own.”

  With the help of the hook attached to his cast, Shayne clawed his way back to his own bed and fell in as the nurse returned with a phone.

  “The switchboard has a call for you,” she said. “What’s the matter?”

  “A little dizzy.”

  She helped him into position against the pillows. He made a whirling signal with his good hand and she cranked up the head of the bed. As it rose, the objects around him swam back into focus. She plugged in the phone and handed it to him.

  “Shayne,” he said.

  “Oh,” a girl’s voice said hesitantly. She sounded young and scared. “Gee, Mr. Shayne, I hope you didn’t get banged up too bad.”

  “Who’s this?”

  “Nobody. I mean I don’t want to tell you my name. This is strictly my own idea. But what do I care? And don’t try to keep me talking so you can trace the call.”

  “You can’t trace dial calls,” Shayne said. “Say what you have to say and get the hell off the line.”

  “Well, if I don’t watch my step, what happened to you last night will happen to me, only a heck of a lot worse. One of those three fellows, and I’m not going to tell you which, happens to be a good friend of mine. He just did what somebody else said, so why should he go to jail for it and the other persons be walking around as free as the breeze?”

  “Yeah,” Shayne said. “There’s no justice. I already know who hired them. That wasn’t meant to be a secret.”

  “And maybe you don’t know as much as you think you do, too. This isn’t just last night. I believe in keeping my ears open. People make phone calls after they think other people have gone to sleep. Does the date April twenty-third mean anything to you?”

  “No. What happened on April twenty-third?”

  “Nothing much. Not a great deal, really. A certain individual got fifty thousand clams from somebody named Bagley or Babcock or something, that’s all. Are you digging me, Daddy?”

  Shayne pushed himself up in the bed. “Go on.”

  “I thought you’d be interested. I don’t know can I trust you, is the trouble. If I give you some information, will you promise you won’t bring charges against those three guys last night?”

  “Sure, you can have all three. I’ll gift-wrap them for you.”

  “And your friend,” she said suspiciously, “the fat one, will he make the same deal? Huh?”

  “He’s right here. I’ll ask him.” Shayne looked across at Teddy. Without covering the mouthpiece he said, “A girl wants to know what you’re planning to do about the assault last night, anything?”

  “Forget it,” Sparrow said promptly, taking the cigar out of his mouth. “I’m supposed to be able to take care of myself. What kind of image do I come out with if I go bawling to the cops? If anybody asks me, it was too dark to see who was doing what.”

  “Did you hear that?” Shayne said into the phone. “Do you want me to put him on?”

  “I guess not,” she said doubtfully. “How do I know you won’t say one thing now and do something different later?”

  “Let me think about it,” Shayne said. “Do you want to come here?”

  “To the hospital? Are you crazy or something? These people don’t kid, or didn’t you realize that yet? Tonight. After dark. I wouldn’t set foot anywhere near that hospital. If you’re still in, we’ll have to make it tomorrow.”

  “You name the place and time. Before we go any farther, you’d better understand that all I can control is the assault rap. They were driving a stolen car. If you want to make an arrangement on that, you have to make it with the D. A.”

  She gave a faint moan. “I wouldn’t know how to begin. I thought you could—”

  “I can put in a recommendation. They don’t always do what I tell them.”

  “Damn it! I didn’t think they’d
pay attention to a little thing like a car when they can get somebody for murder.”

  “As far as I know,” Shayne said with no change of expression, “nobody’s been murdered.”

  “That shows what an expert you are. That’s my last word on the subject.”

  Shayne scraped a thumbnail across the reddish stubble on his jaw. “How would this be? I’ll make a statement for the six-o’clock news, strong enough so I can’t pull it back tomorrow without looking dumb. Six o’clock—WTVJ. The boys there owe me a favor. If it doesn’t sound good enough, don’t show up. Where do you want me to meet you and when?”

  She swallowed. “I wish I knew how to do this!” After another long hesitation, she poured it out in a quick rush. “Eight o’clock. In Buena Vista. Four ninety-seven Bayview Drive. Apartment nine C.”

  “Wait a minute.”

  Shayne snapped his fingers at Sparrow, and the other detective tossed him a ballpoint pen. Shayne had the girl repeat the address, and he wrote it on his cast.

  “At eight,” she said. “Now listen. Ring the bell just once, longer than you would usually. But not too long! If I don’t happen to be alone, I don’t want the other person to think it’s funny. Eight on the button, so I’ll know it’s you. When I buzz for the door, I’ll give one long buzz if it’s O.K. One buzz, come up. Three or four short buzzes, don’t. Get sort of lost. I’ll come out as soon as I can. I’ll stand on the front doorstep and fix my stockings so you’ll know it’s me. God, I’m scared.”

  She clattered the phone back on the hook. At the other end of the broken connection, Shayne scraped his jaw thoughtfully with the phone before putting it down.

  “That’s one difference between me and you,” Sparrow observed. “When I’m on a case, I can sit looking at the phone for days and days, and nobody calls me.”

  “Something phony about this,” Shayne said, the thoughtful look still on his face. “I think somebody’s trying to sandbag me. I don’t like that to happen two days in a row.”