Bodies Are Where You Find Them by Brett Halliday

cloud obscured a bright moon, but he clamped his teeth hard, doggedly hanging on to consciousness.
    “Down to the corner of the wall, Donk,” the smaller man directed in a vicious undertone. “There’s a cab pulling up—They’ll think he’s just a drunk being bounced.” With Donk propelling him from behind, Shayne was rushed along the sidewalk to the north wall of the Bugle Inn property. Half a dozen unoccupied water-front lots separated the wall from the next building. The vacant space was thick with a growth of scrub palmetto.
    Donk paused when he reached the end of the wall, and his companion ordered, “Drag him out in the middle of the clearing and we’ll work him over. He dodged me once tonight, but this time he won’t do no dodgin’.”
    Strength was flowing into Shayne’s legs and awareness to his brain, but he let his feet drag in the sand until the chinless man ordered, “This is far enough. Nobody’ll notice us from the street. Is he out?”
    “Acts like it.” Donk let go of Shayne’s elbows. The detective sprawled forward limply into a matted growth of pin-edged palmettos. “Yep,” Donk said with a faint note of regret, “he’s out cold. You shouldn’t orta hit ’im so hard, Johnny.”
    “He’s supposed to be tough. Wouldn’t surprise me none if he was possumin’.” Johnny kicked Shayne in the ribs. Shayne gave no sign that he felt it.
    “Turn ’im over,” Johnny ordered, “and I’ll stomp him in the face good. Arch said for us to work on ’im if he tried to crash the gate tonight.”
    Donk bent down and got a hold on Shayne’s shoulder to turn him over. Shayne came half erect and drove his head into Donk’s belly with the force of a battering ram.
    Donk grunted and stumbled back over a clump of sharp palmettos.
    Shayne whirled and lunged at Johnny, ducking a vicious downswing of the blackjack. He drove his forearm against Johnny’s Adam’s apple, which protruded at a point where his chin should have been, and the smaller man went to his knees clawing at his throat.
    Shayne grabbed the blackjack from his lax fingers and whirled to meet Donk’s lunge.
    The larger man parried a blow with his forearm and laughed happily. He smashed a left to Shayne’s stomach and straightened the detective up with a looping right to the chin when he jackknifed forward. Shayne swayed backward with his feet seemingly rooted in the sand, his angular face turned up to the moon and the stars.
    Donk planted himself and put two hundred and forty pounds behind a piledriver right to the detective’s unprotected jaw.
    Shayne’s senses swam lazily into a mist of nothingness. The moon and the stars were again blotted out.
    Johnny came to his feet still gasping and sputtering. “By God,” he chattered huskily, “it takes you to cool off the toughies, Donk.”
    “He wasn’t so tough,” Donk disclaimed modestly. “When I give ’em the ol’ one-two they mostly stay down.”
    Johnny picked up his blackjack and shoved it in his pocket. “We’ll leave him lay there,” he decided. “When he comes up for air he’ll be all outta the notion of seein’ the boss.”
    The two men strolled off leaving Shayne quiescent, face downward in the soft sand.
    For a long time Shayne lay still. Presently he stirred to get his face out of the sand. His breathing became stertorous, mingling with the swishing sound of waves flowing gently on the shore. He made two efforts to sit erect before achieving results, then linked his arms around his knees and shuddered with nausea.
    His upper lip was cut, and there was the taste of blood in his mouth, gritty sand between his teeth. Nausea convulsed his body, and he retched on the sand. The spasm passed, and his head cleared.
    With an effort he lifted himself to a standing position, then made his way unsteadily to the edge of the lapping waves. Bogging in the wet sand, he scooped up handfuls of water and dashed it over his face, poured another handful into his mouth to rinse