Mermaid on the Rocks Read online

  Brett Halliday

  Mermaid on the Rocks

  chapter 1

  Michael Shayne, wearing flippers and double-tank diving gear, sliced downward through the clear, green-gold water off Key Gaspar.

  As always at this depth, he had a sense of perfect ease and freedom. He could do as he liked, go where he pleased. He was alone, with no duties and no obligations. The dangers down here, unlike those he kept meeting in the ordinary daylight world, were simple and predictable.

  He said goodbye to the anchor rope, which led not only to the bottom but back to the surface. He went into a forward one-and-a-half somersault, for no other reason than to find out how it felt. He added a half twist at the end, grinning inside his mouthpiece. He was well aware that in the tight fraternity of scuba divers this kind of horseplay was frowned on except in pools. There was too good a chance of forgetting which way was down and which way was up. But today he had decided that the time had come to disregard the rules. They were meant, after all, for the cautious amateur, who wanted to move like a fish, in a fish’s element, while never forgetting for a moment that he was actually a man, with all the usual human worries.

  He looked at the depth regulator on his wrist. He looked at it again, puzzled. The needle had given a sudden twitch. As a matter of fact, there appeared to be two needles, and the tiny numbers on the dial, which usually stayed in one spot to let the needle overtake them, were now whirling so rapidly that they kept overtaking each other. The mechanism was definitely out of order. Shayne was feeling too fishlike to let it bother him. Did a fish worry about where it was in relation to the surface? Obviously not.

  He was enjoying himself more than he had in weeks. He had been shot at three times in the last twenty-four hours. Two of the men who had shot at him were dead; the third was in jail. This was just exactly the therapy he needed—clear water, absolute stillness except for the singing of the lung regulator, no criminals, no police, nothing living but himself and the fish.

  A savage-looking creature slithered toward him. A barracuda, by God, a big one, only two or three feet shorter than Shayne himself. Shayne waved his big fist in the fish’s bared teeth. It flickered away.

  The waving blob of a jellyfish was drifting below him, or perhaps above him, depending on whether he was swimming up or down. Shayne veered away, into a small disciplined army of spade fish. They scattered past.

  The charts showed the reef at this point to be eighty feet down. But it shoaled sharply to the east, and Shayne hoped he would strike a trench which would carry him down to a hundred feet or beyond. He had always known, he realized, that by passing the invisible hundred-foot barrier he would break into a new and far more interesting dimension.

  The high, steady singing of the regulator set off a peculiar overlapping echo in his head. Without understanding the reason for it, he found it far from unpleasant. He had been working too hard, drinking too much, sleeping too little. Once he was down to a hundred feet, he felt sure, the echo would disappear and his vision would sharpen. The truth was, something odd was beginning to happen to the light. Instead of staying a constant shade, somewhere between green and gold, it shifted to violet and was steadily darkening. The color now was like a spreading stain in the water.

  Another large, supple fish swam at him through the violet murk. But it wasn’t a fish at all, Shayne noted with surprise. It was a mermaid wearing a white bikini.

  And then as it approached closer, the creature’s tail turned into flippers. It was only a woman after all, Shayne was disappointed to see. She had long blonde hair, which was waving like seaweed. Her features were concealed by a glinting face plate. He wondered vaguely how she managed to get along down here without air. He checked his depth regulator again, and now, instead of two needles, there were none at all. The figures on the dial had swum away.

  Looking back at the wavering bikini-clad figure, he decided it would be foolish to cross the hundred-foot line by himself. He wanted her to come with him.

  He flipped his powerful body upright. She was shaking her head, her lips moving as though he had done something to make her angry. A thought struck him. She had a wonderful figure, a nicely shaped mouth, but perhaps she was one of those ordinary women without gills? That didn’t have to be a problem. He had enough air on his back for them both. There was a recognized technique for sharing an aqualung. Like every experienced diver, Shayne had been checked out on it.

  He took a deep breath, which made the light blink on and off, as though it was stage lighting with some kind of faulty connection. As he loosened his mouthpiece and offered it to her, she became more angry. He couldn’t be sure because of the face-plate, but she appeared to be frowning. She made an incomprehensible gesture. Propelling herself closer, she gripped the strap over his shoulder and began to tug.

  A stab of irritation threatened to spoil Shayne’s pleasure. What was going on here? These face-plates had one disadvantage: they made communication difficult. If she didn’t want to go down to the reef with him, that was her business. He would go alone.

  A quick flutter kick took him safely out of reach. She clutched her throat and pointed upward. There was a twinkle of light. She was gone.

  He hung where he was, waving his arms slowly. He decided he liked the strange things that were happening to the light. There was something dull and monotonous about daylight and darkness. But this combined the qualities of both. In a moment he would continue down, to see if the effect was the same at a lower level. He was in no hurry. He would hang around here a little longer on the chance that the girl would change her mind and return.

  And there she was, suddenly. This time she swam up to him, took his shoulder straps in both hands and kicked out hard. Shayne laughed to himself. This was better. He put his arms around her, pulled her in against him and their face-plates clashed. He tried again. Again there was that clash of face-plates, convincing him that a kiss was impossible. But if they tried hard enough, perhaps they could manage to think of something else.

  She wriggled provocatively in his arms. The contact was pleasurable, and Shayne was glad to find that she wasn’t as aloof and reserved as she had seemed at first. There was only one thing wrong. She wanted to go one way; he was determined to go another.

  He shook his head, still grinning, tightened one arm around her waist and brought the other around in a long sweep.

  His movements had lost some of their usual quickness. He must be more tired than he realized. All at once it seemed that he had either lost his flippers or someone had fastened a heavy weight to each foot. There was a time lag between telling himself what to do and getting around to doing it. He still had a certain amount of kick left, however, and when he at last completed his slow scissoring movement, she went with him. Their joined bodies described a graceful parabola, like one of the carefully rehearsed maneuvers in an underwater ballet.

  At the end of the long curve he lost her.

  He groped after her. A second Michael Shayne, which had separated itself from the first, watched him critically. He was damn slow. He would never capture the girl unless he could speed up a little. She hovered just beyond his grasp, a very attractive girl, long-legged, deeply tanned. Communication being what it was, he had to get his hands on her to pantomime his appreciation of the way she looked and moved.

  Again she danced away. A suspicion began to penetrate his tired brain. She was leading him back to the surface. He wagged his head and let her go. He had come out on the reef to dive.

  “Later,” he told her, moving his lips elaborately.

  And was she even real? Consider the way she appeared and disappeared, without proper breathing equipment. There was something definitely off about this entire encounter. After he had gone do
wn to one hundred and one, he would come back up. Perhaps she would still be there and he could question her.

  He waved goodbye. Moving with agonizing slowness, he doubled forward to start the dive.

  The girl, furious at being abandoned, clenched her fists at him. She reached around between her shoulderblades, fumbled with something and shrugged off the top of the bikini.

  Shayne stopped. He had wondered if she was real. She was real, all right.

  The tiny scrap of cloth drifted away. What the fish would make of it, Shayne didn’t know. It seemed smaller off than on, but even in Shayne’s trancelike condition he was surprised to see what a difference it made. The girl beckoned. Perhaps in a moment he would follow. He wanted to think it over first.

  That coral reef had been down there for centuries, and it was still growing. It would still be there, still growing, another weekend. The girl, on the contrary, might choose to vanish, as she had done so suddenly before. And yet, was it wise, was it prudent, to let her think that all she had to do—

  A flutter of her long flippers took her away. She looked back over her shoulder to see if he was following. He remained nearly motionless in the water, his head rolling. She returned. He saw her white teeth.

  She stripped off the bottom half of her bikini, revolved once before him completely, and with a meaningful flirt of the tail, shot away.

  This time Shayne tried to follow. But it seemed to him that the weights he was dragging must have fouled on the bottom. He felt a terrible heaviness in both his arms and his legs. He fumbled at his weight belt. As it fell away he looked up dreamily at the lovely naked girl and saw that he was catching up to her.

  He reached the surface. As he broke abruptly into blinding sunlight, he lost consciousness.

  chapter 2

  The next thing Shayne knew, he was being hauled over the side of a small power-boat by several pairs of hands. He commanded his muscles to help, but the command didn’t go anywhere.

  His mouthpiece had been wrenched aside, and he was breathing ordinary uncontaminated air, quite a change from what he had been getting below the surface. There was a shattering pain above and between his eyes.

  Tim Rourke’s voice grunted, “Heavy bastard, isn’t he?”

  “All together,” a girl’s voice said. “One. Two. Three.”

  Again Shayne tried to move his legs. Again he could get no response. He went on breathing, but it took all his strength.

  At the second count of three, his rescuers heaved him in over the low freeboard. His head bounced on the hard deck of the after cockpit.

  “Turn him over!” the girl ordered sharply. “Hurry.” Hands hauled at Shayne’s shoulders. Lying on his back with the sharp flanges of the air tanks cutting into his shoulders, he stared up at a pelican wheeling above the boat against the sharp blue of the sky.

  The blue hurt his eyes. He closed them for an instant, opening them in alarm to find himself being attacked by the same naked blonde he had followed up from the depths. She kissed him passionately, forcing his mouth open with her tongue. Her breasts pressed against him. Her fingers were caressing his face.

  Lifting one heavy hand from the deck, he prodded her shoulder. It was probably impolite to mention it, but he had a headache. He also wanted to get out of this cumbersome gear.

  “He’s breathing,” Rourke said.

  The girl sat back. The pain in Shayne’s forehead slackened slightly and he was able to remember her name.

  She wasn’t a figment of his imagination after all. She was a real girl named Kitty Sims. She owned a simple, modern beach house on the Key, and Shayne, his friend Tim Rourke and a second girl named Natalie something had been invited down for the day. Kitty had loaned the detective her diving apparatus so he could go down and look at the coral.

  “Boy!” she said fervently.

  Shayne rolled his head and looked at the other girl, a pleasant brunette in a one-piece yellow bathing suit. She shook her head, smiling. Rourke, the lank, bony reporter who was Shayne’s closest friend, was standing above him, all knobs and angles in the skimpiest of bathing trunks. He raked angrily at his untidy hair.

  “I thought you were supposed to know how to dive, for Christ’s sake. Unless that was all a dodge to get some mouth-to-mouth respiration? There are easier ways.”

  Shayne tried to lift his head. His face contorted with pain and he let it fall back.

  “Get this stuff off me,” he said hoarsely.

  Kitty worked the face-plate over his forehead and unbuckled the straps. The other girl unfastened the long ungainly flippers.

  “Mike Shayne,” Kitty said softly, “you’re a hard man to convince.”

  Her long wet hair framed a face which, at the moment, was unnaturally pale. Her blonde bangs came down almost to her eyebrows. Her eyes were gray and direct, her cheekbones well marked. She shivered. Drops of water sparkled on her lashes.

  All at once Shayne remembered how she had lured him to the surface when he had wanted to go on with his suicidal dive. His lips moved in the beginnings of a grin.

  Realizing abruptly that he was conscious again and she was kneeling on the deck beside him with absolutely nothing on but flippers, her hand flew to her mouth. “Natalie, for heaven’s sake throw me that towel!” The other girl, smiling, whipped a large striped towel around her. Kitty worked herself into it and knotted it under her arms. A flood of color had rushed to her face.

  “I thought there was something missing,” Rourke said. “I didn’t want to say anything.”

  Kitty pushed back her wet hair defiantly. “Well, damn it, I tried wrestling with him. That didn’t work. He outweighs me.”

  Rourke gave a hoot of laughter. “Don’t worry about it, baby. You’re a genius. That’s the one sure way to manage Shayne.”

  “Shut up,” Kitty said, trying not to smile. “Mike, how do you feel?”

  “I’ve felt better.”

  Coming to his elbow, he looked for the cognac bottle. He knew there was one there, because he’d had several belts before deciding to try Kitty’s aqualung. He motioned impatiently to his friend, and Rourke poured him a slug of cognac in a paper cup. Shayne rolled the first mouthful around in his mouth to kill the taste of the bad air. Then he emptied the cup in one long pull.

  He looked up at Kitty. “I couldn’t understand how you got down that deep in a free dive. I thought I was down to fifty. It couldn’t have been anywhere near that.”

  “Goodness no. You were at about ten. I was fooling around with the snorkel, and I knew right away something was wrong when you swam away from the rope. And then that crazy somersault. You know better than that.”

  “Euphoria of the deep,” Rourke said, reaching for his highball. “I wrote a Sunday piece about it once. Of course this is the first time I ever heard of a case at ten feet. Well, we had a happy ending. Drink up, friends.”

  There was something evasive about his manner, but Shayne put it down to the fact that his own hold on reality was still somewhat shaky. He sat up, checking himself as another stab of pain struck him between the eyes. Kitty offered to help, but he wanted to see what he could do by himself. He made it to a canvas deck chair and settled into it with a sigh. Rourke poured him more cognac.

  “That’s enough diving for one day,” Shayne said. “How long was I in the water?”

  “Three or four minutes,” Rourke said.

  “Three or four minutes!” The detective made a wry face. “Kitty, when we get in, let’s talk to the man who sold you that air.”

  She was busy stacking brightly colored pillows against a stanchion. She leaned back against them and lit a cigarette. She and Rourke looked at each other. Rourke puffed out his breath and shrugged.

  “We might as well tell him. At this rate he’ll figure it out himself in another minute.”

  “Figure out what?” Shayne said.

  Kitty frowned at her cigarette. “Mike, I’m always careful about where I fill my tanks. I know you’re thinking about carbon monoxide, b
ut I go to a place in Marathon that makes a big point about being absolutely kosher. Their compressors are water-cooled. There’s no chance of oil vaporizing, which I’ve always heard is the big thing to worry about. And if it was monoxide, it wouldn’t take hold that soon, would it?”

  Shayne’s eyes narrowed. “It depends on the concentration. It would have to be pretty high.”

  She took a sip of the gin drink Rourke handed her and said brightly, “There’s no point in wondering about it. There must be three-quarters of a tankful left. We can have it tested and find out for sure. Anybody hungry?”

  Rourke dropped into a deck chair and pulled a tattered straw hat forward over his eyes. “Get a little sun first.”

  For a moment no one spoke. Shayne took a deep breath, wishing perversely that he were back beneath the surface, where, although he had had a serious problem, he hadn’t known it. Here he was back in the real world.

  “It begins to seep through,” he said. “There was more to this invitation than sun and a few drinks and an afternoon on the water.”

  “I’m afraid so,” Kitty murmured.

  Rourke said, “Now don’t get hard-nosed, pal. The girl’s in a jam and we’ll tell you about it when you feel better.”

  Shayne hooked the cognac bottle with one bare foot and pulled it within reach.

  “How about you, Natalie?” he asked the second girl. “Are you in on it?”

  “Not me,” she said hastily. “I came for the sun and the drinks and the water. I also thought it would be sort of a coup to meet Mike Shayne.”

  Rourke sat forward, pushing his hat back with his thumb. “Mike, I know you’ve been working hard. I’ll be the first to admit that you deserve a rest. But there’s a deadline on this thing. In a couple of days, when you get bored with having nothing to do, you’ll take the Do Not Disturb sign down off your doorknob and be ready to go back to work. But this can’t wait.”

  “Go on,” Shayne said evenly.

  “Kitty happens to be a good friend of mine. She needs some assistance, and she needs it right now. It’s a tense little problem, the kind you can handle with your left hand. This expedition this afternoon was my idea. I thought if I could get you down here, feed you a steak and some good cognac, surround you with cute babes in minimum bathing suits, you might say yes. If you said no you’d say it politely.”