So Lush, So Deadly

CHAPTER 14

Shayne started in Jennings Park and radiated outward. The neighborhood still throbbed and jumped. An open-fronted cafe on one of the side streets blazed with light and loud music, and the sidewalks in that block were jammed with drifting teen-agers. De Rham wouldn’t leave his car this close to the park. Most of his new set was opposed to the ownership of cars, including economy-sized imports.

Shayne found it on Flagler Terrace, in a quiet district where people went to bed early-a red VW with dealer’s plates. He double-parked and walked back.

The little car was locked. Using his picking apparatus, he had the front door open in less than a minute. He stooped to stuff himself in. But then he hesitated.

He looked around carefully. He was under a streetlight. There was an indistinct roar, punctuated by the solid thump of amplified drums and guitars, from the crowded blocks nearer the park, but here it was quiet and nothing moved. Finding the Volkswagen had been as easy as finding De Rham himself earlier. Both times Paul Brady had given him the lead. Things sometimes turned out to be simpler than Shayne had expected, but it rarely happened twice in a row. The little car suddenly seemed like a trap. Once inside it, he thought he might have trouble getting out.

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 cafe.

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 cafe 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.