Mermaid on the Rocks ms-55

by Brett Halliday

“And it must pay very well,” Barbara said cheerfully. “I see you’re driving a new car.”

  “I’ll get some coffee,” Eda Lou said disapprovingly.

  The moment the housekeeper was out of the room Sims’s hands came out of his pockets. He took Barbara in his arms and kissed her hard. At first she tried to twist away. That lasted only an instant. Then her arms came up and the embrace became deep and mutual.

  He broke off abruptly. “What have you been up to?”

  “Nothing too exciting,” she said shakily. “Damn you, anyway. After Kitty walked out I thought you might at least give me a ring once in a while.”

  “After who walked out? I walked out, for cause, and that’s how it’s going to be in the action. Goddamn it, when money’s going around the table I want my share.” He put his hand on her breast. “I wanted to call you. I almost did a couple of times but things were too involved.”

  He dropped his hand as Eda Lou came in with a tray.

  “Coffee.”

  Giving Sims a narrow look, she put down the tray and went out.

  “Somehow,” he said, looking after her, “I get the feeling that somebody around here doesn’t like me. She’s got colored blood, do you know that? There’s a thing about the half-moons on the fingernails-you can always tell. How you two can be so palsy-I’d go out of my skull.”

  “Eda Lou is a very old and very good friend.”

  “Yeah. You didn’t put on a bra, I notice. That was foresighted.”

  “I hardly ever wear one down here.” She moved a chair to the low table. Leaning forward over the tray, she poured the coffee. “I forget about you. Cream and sugar?”

  Sims picked the cognac bottle off the sideboard. “Stick some of this in it.”

  “Not a bad suggestion. I believe I’ll join you.”

  She poured cognac into both their cups and passed one to him. He watched her for a moment and said abruptly, “Are you really bucking for judge’s wife?”

  “That’s one way to put it. He’s another old, dear friend.”

  “Christ! How far along is it?”

  “Quite far. His work keeps him busy. We’ll be married after court recesses in June.”

  “I know how busy he is,” Sims commented. “On the go every minute. Babs, I think about you a lot, especially lately.”

  “I know precisely how much you think about me.” She made a circle of her thumb and forefinger. “Not at all. I don’t blame you. Nobody gives you foundation grants. You have to think about yourself, and that’s a big subject.”

  “Will you cool it, Babs? I may be a son of a bitch in some ways-”

  “In some ways?”

  “In all ways if you like that better. You mentioned the car. It’s not mine. I borrowed it from a certain connection. He don’t know I took it. And the way luck has been running for me lately, some orange-picker’s going to bang into me on the way back to Miami and he won’t have any insurance.”

  “That old song and dance. Unlucky Hank. What’s so important it can’t wait till after breakfast?”

  “I’ll tell you in a minute. I want to get some more of this so-called coffee inside me before you kick me out.”

  Something moved near the corner of the house. Eda Lou came out of the boathouse carrying a wooden footstool and something else which Shayne was unable to identify. She put the stool on the clamshells under the rear window and stepped up on it. The object in her other hand took shape. It was a bullhorn, probably the kind with a two-way amplifier, which can send voices a long distance across open water and can also pick up ordinary sounds at the same distance, like a gigantic hearing aid.

  She put the mouthpiece to her ear and pointed the bell of the horn toward the open window.

  “I’m always the one who gets burned,” Sims was saying. “With anybody ordinary, it evens out. Sometimes a thing clicks, sometimes it don’t. If you happen to be born lucky, maybe it clicks for you seven out of ten. With me it’s the other way. Seven times out of ten, year in and year out, I end up with horse turd in my face. Where I’m concerned they suspended the law of averages.”

  “Hank, you’re just no damn good, that’s the only trouble with you.”

  “But I know it!” he said quickly. “That makes a difference. You wouldn’t keep wondering where I was all the time. You’d know I was somewhere I wasn’t supposed to be. Wouldn’t that give you a kind of security? God knows I make a lousy husband. Ask Kitty.”

  “You’re not telling me anything.”

  “But I could tell you a couple of ways I’d be an improvement on your ordinary jerk, even if I don’t go to the barber for a trim every second Friday. Even if I don’t think the goddamn jokes in The Reader’s Digest are funny.”

  Barbara laughed. “Hank, you make out a very good case.”

  “It’s nothing immediate,” Sims said gloomily. “First I have to cut my own marriage ties and get that in writing. Then if you decide not to share Frank’s sunset years-”

  Barbara interrupted. “What did you want to show me, bearing in mind that whatever it is, I’m not paying you anything?”

  “You’re not too dumb at that,” he said. “I thought maybe I could peddle it for a couple of G’s. But I know me. I’d get it all bollixed up and walk out owing you money.”

  He put the cup on the table and said seriously, “We’ve been batting that pingpong ball back and forth, which is O.K. as far as that goes. Knock me. I’ll knock you right back. But in back of this beard I’ve got feelings. I don’t know what it is about you, but goddamn it, it appeals to me.”

  “I have part ownership of a property a land company’s offering to pay one million dollars for, that’s what there is about me. I know what makes you tick, beard or no beard, and I hear you ticking.”

  “Baby!” Sims exclaimed. “One million bucks! This is news to me. You mean to tell me you have a buyer for Gaspar?”

  She gave a silvery laugh. “The reason you don’t own a white convertible of your own is that you’re such a lousy liar.”

  He pulled up his blue knitted sports shirt absentmindedly and scratched his stomach. “One, comma, zero zero zero, comma, zero, zero zero. One million bucks. I honestly didn’t hear one word about it. Who would tell me?” Reaching back into his hip pocket, he pulled out an envelope and rapped it on his knee. “I don’t have the funds to hire a private eye. Kitty wants me to give her one of those no-contest decrees. Be polite and get the hell out. You know the bitch-she can’t understand why I want to be nasty when she’s being so civilized, not asking for alimony. Hell! I’m the aggrieved party. I’m the one who ought to get the alimony! She laid your old man, and got paid off with a big one-fifth of his property. One-fourth now. And you tell me that may be worth something in the way of real dough.”

  “Hank, men don’t get alimony.”

  “That’s going to be changed! She’s got a good job. It begins to dawn on me that I may be unemployable. I know the courts won’t see it my way-they’ve been paying off the wives for too many years. This has to be under the table. Before I sign any papers she’s going to give me a three-year contract. I’ll be her personal-affairs consultant, I’ve got it all worked out. Monthly payments for thirty-six months.”

  “Why tell me?”

  Opening the envelope, Sims whipped out several sheets of stiff white paper, folded in three. “Just giving you the background. I’ve been tailing the kid. What a crummy thing to do, really. But I had to. It never occurred to me to get any photographs of her in bed with your old man. All right. She’s been going to a certain room in the St. Albans Hotel on the Beach.” He unfolded the papers and slapped them on the table. “And that room is registered to a certain fiance of yours named Francis X. Shanahan, believe it or not, and why should I care if you don’t believe it?”

  “Frank-”

  “Baby, I checked and I double-checked. I’m like you-I didn’t think it made sense. I thought at first he was loaning a friend of his the key. But when I saw him go into that room on three separ
ate occasions when my wife was inside.” He stabbed at his eyes with his spread fingers. “With these two eyes. He’s a hustler, we know that. Kitty likewise. Well, nobody’s going to hustle me if I can help it. Maybe it isn’t sex. Maybe she’s helping him with his legal research. But it sure looks like sex, and all I’m interested in is the way it looks.”

  “Hank, it’s fantastic.”

  “I knew you’d say that, which is why I brought along these affidavits.” He shuffled them apart so he could read the signatures. “Robert Truehauf, bellman. Emory J. Sedge, assistant night manager. Helena Csern-Czerniewicz. I can’t pronounce it. Maid. All notarized. Testifying to the occupancy of said premises on said dates and so on-I put it in my version of legal language, probably got it all wrong.”

  He poked one of the sheets in front of Barbara and jabbed it with his forefinger. “One time it was all night, anyway till the night man went off shift. All there in black and white. Do you know what you’re looking at, baby doll? You see words. I see dollar signs.”

  Shayne, in the tree house, took out an envelope and a pencil and made a quick note.

  Barbara snatched the affidavits and threw them at Sims. The corner of one of the stiff pieces hit him in the eye.

  “You’re a dirty, crawling person.”

  “Dirty?” he said, gathering his sheets and returning them to the envelope. “Crawling? And did I ever have any chance to be different?”

  Barbara gave a sudden shriek of laughter which ended in a sob.

  “Hell, Babs,” the bearded man said in embarrassment, “I didn’t know it would hit you that hard. I go on the theory that when I’m dying of cancer I want the doctor to tell me. What’s so surprising? You knew he’s a tomcat. He’s always been a tomcat. He’ll always be a tomcat, as long as he has the strength.”

  “Shut up! Get out!”

  “I’m on my way. I didn’t do this the way I rehearsed it, which is what generally happens. Hell, honey, I know you won’t agree with me now, but I’m doing you a favor. Why be a tackling dummy all your life? If you want somebody’s hairy chest to cry on, mine’s available.”

  She threw a coffee cup at him.

  “I’m better than nothing!” he shouted. “That’s all I’m saying!”

  She went at him with both fists. He tripped on the bunched edge of the carpet and went down. Snatching up the cognac bottle, she hurled it at him. Shayne heard the crash, but she must have missed his head because he came to one knee a moment later and seized her around the waist.

  Eda Lou, alarmed, was getting down from her stool to help. But the battle seemed to be over, or at least its nature had changed. Barbara was holding Hank’s shaggy head against her stomach.

  “Hank?” she said faintly. “What are you doing?”

  Eda Lou changed her mind and came back to the stool. She listened at the mouthpiece for a moment, then stepped up on the stool, reversed the amplifier and put the bell mouth against the screen.

  “SIMS, YOU CRUD, QUIT THAT AND GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE!” she bellowed.

  Shayne had the rheostat all the way up, straining to catch the strangled exchange of dialogue. The sudden roar of the bullhorn almost blew off the top of his head. Barbara and Hank froze.

  Shayne’s hand shot toward the rheostat, and at that moment an alien noise, very close, penetrated the static in the earphones. He started to turn, but before he could bring his head all the way around he was hit, very hard, from behind.

  chapter 14

  The bullhorn went on roaring in his ears. He was trying hard to yell when he lost consciousness.

  His first impression was that the Key had blown up around him. He was out of contact with the ground for a time, and then he was plunging down into the crater through a hail of flaming debris. He came to rest at last, and after an unknown period of time he began the long climb back.

  When he opened his eyes, the brightness was so painful that he closed them again.

  He tried to move. Nothing happened, and he thought at first that his nerve centers were still blocked. Then he discovered that his ankles were bound together and his wrists were lashed behind his back. He was gagged.

  He told himself his name and profession. After making that effort he had to rest. Then he told himself where he was. He was on one of the Middle Keys, Key Gaspar. He had been slugged with something hard and jagged. He put his mind to that for a moment. It was unimportant, except that at this stage he had to clear up each confusion before moving on to the next. The nature of the pain suggested something long and narrow, like a spike. He opened his eyes again, and found himself looking directly into the sun. If the sun was up, he had to hurry.

  He twitched forward. The earphones and binoculars were gone. The tin can full of cigarette stubs had been knocked over, and stale butts and ashes lay all about him. He twisted so he could look through the hole in the floor. The climbing spikes had been pulled out of their holes and lay scattered about in the long saw-grass at the foot of the tree. In the old days of the buccaneers, prisoners had been either killed or marooned. Though he had been left alive, Shayne had been marooned in a tree house twenty feet in the air.

  Arching his back, he was able to see out through the broken wall. The Moorish house, unshaken by the earthquakes and volcanic eruptions that had taken place in Shayne’s vicinity, stood where he had last seen it. The surface of the ocean beyond was flat and unoccupied. There was no sign of life anywhere.

  He rested another moment before taking a fresh inventory. It still turned up the same objects-cigarettes, peanut can, a short flagstaff flying a torn bit of black cloth. His attention came back to the can.

  It had been opened by peeling off a narrow strip of tin. Finding the top with his thumb, he tested the cutting edge. It was as dull as a butter knife. Working entirely by touch, he maneuvered the can until he was able to get a grip on it with one hand. He bit down hard on the gag and squeezed. The can crumpled slowly under the pressure. He bent it back with his thumb and crumpled it again, then again, trying to tear the edge. It got away from him. He groped after it blindly, looking for something that would give him more leverage.

  Bending both knees, he kicked out a rotten plank from one of the side walls. When the plank splintered it left a rusty nailhead protruding from the two-by-four. He jackknifed around with a difficult backward contortion of his rangy body and brought the can and the nailhead together. Several minutes later he was able to open a small, jagged sawtooth in the lip of the can.

  His wrists and ankles were bound with the same wire he had traced through the underbrush in the dark. He turned the can end over end and snagged the wire around his wrists in the little nick. Applying only minimum pressure, he began to work his wrists back and forth. The can shot away from him again.

  This time it stopped at the edge of the hole in the floor, where the tiniest nudge would send it over. Shayne brought it back to safety with a quick movement of his feet.

  He decided to work on his ankles first. By bringing his knees up hard against his chest and straining downward, he could just reach the wire. He worked one strand into his improvised sawtooth, alternately tightening and relaxing his leg muscles while holding the can steady in his numb fingers. He was able to generate a small friction. A moment later the wire snapped.

  He freed his ankles quickly. But the quick success made him careless. The hard downward pressure had tightened the wire around his wrists and his fingers were now nearly dead. He wrestled himself into a sitting position, trapping the can against the wall. He leaned back slowly, feeling the sharp point of tin bite into his forearm. He brought it toward his wrists, using the pain as a guide to where it was. It touched the wire for only an instant, then slipped. When he looked for it, it was gone.

  Somehow he forced himself to his feet and out on the nearest branch. No one knew where he was but his assailant. If he didn’t get down by himself, he wasn’t going to get down. And he had to do it fast. There was no longer any feeling in his hands at all.

  He
straddled the branch and began to inch slowly backward. Coming to a lesser branch, he rocked forward, swung one leg over the obstruction and worked slowly past.

  Slowly the branch began to sag under his weight. Soon he would have to decide whether to stay with the branch till it broke, or drop off while he had some control over where he would land. The branch cracked while he was still trying to make up his mind.

  He landed in a low-growing thornbush, reeled into the open, tripped and went headlong. He came back to his feet by slow stages. He looked up at the tree to get his bearings and began hunting for the path.

  He found it and lost it. The vines seemed determined not to let him go this soon. The thick green canopy above seemed to wheel in ever-widening circles, and when he broke out onto the clamshell driveway, caught up in the clockwise rotation of the landscape around him, he turned the wrong way. He kept veering toward the dense wall of foliage, first on one side, then the other. He rounded a bend and saw nothing ahead of him but a long white streak of clamshells. After a long moment he turned back.

  Some time later he went around another bend and came upon the house. He lurched up two steps and fell against the kitchen door. When it failed to open, he backed off a step and came at it from the side, trying to reach the knob with his numb hands.

  There was a gasp from inside. Eda Lou called, “Who’s out there?”

  A figure swam toward him, stopping on the other side of the screen. “Mike Shayne?”

  She tried to open the screen, but Shayne had propped himself against it.

  “Je-sus! Move. Don’t fall down, for God’s sake. You must know I can’t carry you.”

  Shayne pivoted, the door came open and he fell through.

  chapter 15

  Eda Lou ran to a drawer for a pair of shears and freed his wrists. He brought his arms forward, and levered himself up on his elbows.

  “Hold still, I’ll get that thing out of your mouth.” She touched the side of his head to keep it from wavering. “You’re in great shape, aren’t you?”