“It depends. If he's close enough to take real good aim, he'll say to himself, 'That can't be bitty Dev Morraigne,’ and if he's too far away to notice, I expect he'll miss me. Oh ... Lord."
“Having second thoughts?"
“No ... well, yes. But not about what you think."
I told him briefly of my adventure at the old supermarket, or part of it, adding, “So, Dev, if I happen accidentally—or any other way—to get killed, take the keys reverently from my body and let long-suffering Clam out of the Cad's trunk. If, that is, long-suffering Clam is not long-suffocated."
He whistled. “Don't you suppose he might have preferred going to jail?"
“I know he'd have preferred going to jail."
“By the way, Shell, Faisuli phoned me. I guess it was right after you left him."
“I know. I gave him your number, having become convinced you wouldn't mind."
“You're forgiven. I got the distinct impression that Sheikh Faisuli thinks you're quite the red-hot hot-shot investigator."
“How perceptive that man is. I am a red-hot hot—"
“Cool it. But, ah, now I have to thank you myself—again. For so courageously pursuing, and doggedly rescuing, my harem. I mean, of course, my temporary harem."
“Temporary, yeah. Yeah. I didn't think he was going to give it to you. I mean, not to keep. But, even temporary, I suppose that's better than nothing in these difficult times."
“I'll try to make us even one of these days."
“Don't worry about it, Dev. Who knows? I may, eventually, think of something suitable myself."
“Shell, I'll be honest, I've got to hand it to you for getting those gals back, any way at all. But to stumble onto them in an old building that happened to be owned by Trappman, well, admit it, you've got to be the luckiest damn—"
“Lucky? You foolish imbecile, luck had nothing to do with it."
“You'll never convince me, pal. I really think you were shopping for Corn Flakes and took a wrong turn—"
“Dev, I went to that old supermarket because it was one of the old empty buildings owned by the kidnapper, or at least the guy who engineered the job. Where else was he likely to hide in a hurry six tomatoes in those transparent cornflakes they were wearing?"
“Come on, after the fact it's a great story, but you couldn't have known Trappman had hauled the girls off—"
“Who else? Oh, sure, I thought about you and your doodle-mm-ahh-olaselector, and big oil companies, dark conspiracies, all that rot. But I ignored such remote possibilities in order to look closer to home, primarily because of an affliction in Virgo."
“A which—in what?"
“Exactly. Very good, you got it on the first try."
“I didn't think you bought astrology."
“Do I have to buy it? I'm not talking about some sort of astrological inevitability, anyway. That bit about some kind of afflicted planet in his stomach is a term Cynara used—when referring to Gippy—shortly before he took a slug in his Virgoish digestion."
“They're all Virgoish, not just his. I mean, ruled by Virgo—"
“Must we really care? My point is Gippy, our own Gippy Willifer, and I don't care if the Big Dipper rules his gallbladder. Look, whoever shot at you and/or me earlier today"—I pointed ahead, for we were now turning into Granite Ledge Road—"right up yonder, almost had to be the same bastard, or one of the plural bastards, who hit me outside the Spartan. Or do you feel like arguing that point?"
“No argument there, but—"
“Hold your but, please. If the same guy tried to scratch both of us, or even tried twice for me, the first time being coincidentally at your home—which is what I buy, incidentally—at least we can agree it was essentially one cat responsible, one basic motive, one ‘case’ to put one word on it. OK?"
“So far, sure."
“So add another element, that affliction in Virgo—which is merely my playful way of referring to the sad but undeniable fact that somebody for sure shot Gippy Willifer in his affliction last night. Gippy, your friend, for whom you psyched out the Roman Well—and my client, for whom, with his spouse, I was casually checking on this same puny well, among other things."
“You mean you think the Roman well is the whole—"
“It's not the whole anything, just a piece. But a pretty big one—it's the piece that damn near got Gippy killed. Look, if we agreed there was one guy, one basic motive, when considering only the attacks on us, do we now say the shooting of Gippy Willifer was a crime entirely unrelated? And that whoever shot Gippy is a mysterious stranger, his attack on the one having no connection with attacks on the other two—shall we say, the other two of us three?—a tall stranger from Philadelphia, skulking in the shadows—"
“You make it sound ridiculous."
“On purpose. I say it's not ridiculous. I say it's not three cases and three motives and three skulking strangers from Cincinnati—"
“Philadelphia."
“That's another case entirely. As for Gippy, that rough-cob son of a bitch Arnold Trappman personally put the slug into his belly. Either did it himself or had someone else do the job—he's played crooked footsie for years with Easy Banners. And Banners has plenty of hood connections, both from while he was in and when he was out of stir, if they needed that kind of help along the way."
“Shell, you go on like—well, hell, you can't think Trappman went out and lay murderously in wait for Gippy because of this miserable Roman—"
“I don't. I told you that was part of the mess. No, Trappman wanted our small friend killed because Gippy was the only other man alive who knew Trappman was with the late Ben Riddle an hour, or maybe only minutes, before Trappman killed him."
“How could you ... ?” Dev didn't finish it; I did.
“Gippy didn't know who the guy was, just that he saw somebody with Trappman Wednesday night about eight p.m. So he was as good as dead if Trappman found out Gippy had seen Riddle there with him at his home. Which, obviously, Trappman did find out. I can give firsthand testimony to that disaster, because....” I paused. “I'm the fathead who told him."
"You told him? But if Gippy himself didn't know who it was—"
“I didn't either, not till tonight. Maybe I'd half guessed, but I didn't know. However, I told Trappman Gippy was there Wednesday night, brilliantly managed to mention the significant hours, and even before that I'd asked Trappman's secretary if anybody had taken a shot at him—enough, Dev. More than enough.” I swung into the last curve before reaching his home. “So, I have a more than casual interest, this time, in the welfare of my hospitalized client."
“Yeah, well.... You can't be positive about all of this, Shell.” He sounded a bit subdued.
“So who's positive? Yet, I mean. But you can bet your squeaky harem I will be pretty damn quick."
“Well, sho-nuff,” he said, obviously attempting to switch the conversation to a lighter level, but not doing it exactly brilliantly, “if it is abrasive Arnold up yonder, sho—"
“Will you quit that?"
“— nnn. But if it isn't—what do we do then, a nine-second hundred?"
“I couldn't dash much faster than a fertilized plant, tonight. But I do not plan to be moving briskly about."
“If it becomes necessary, don't expect me to trot alongside you. In college, I was the fastest man in the entire United States."
“With what, high-school girls?"
“In addition to them and younger dropouts, the hundred-yard dash, and the fifty—wasn't at my best in the two-twenty and up, but in the shorties I could go. Still can."
“Like a quarter horse, huh?"
“Right. Champeen sprinter, ver-ry speedy out of the gate."
“I'm supposed to be fascinated by this?"
“I was afraid you might not be."
Morraigne's steeply up-slanting driveway was half a block ahead on our right. The night lighting was as Dev had promised, the only illumination coming from street lamps along the road, so that arou
nd and near the house it was not fully dark, but neither was it so bright that one man could be sure of recognizing another more than ten feet away. Which was part of what I'd been counting on.
“Into the back, pal,” I said.
He swiveled around and left his seat, moved into the rear. I gunned up the drive, pulled sharply right and stopped in an open area well short of the carport. I wanted plenty of room around me for as long as possible. I cut the engine and headlights, stepped back near Dev. He had already picked up his “Holaselector” and was holding it ready for me. I'd hefted the real thing, and it weighed a good seventy pounds or more. Which meant its “working” insides accounted for better than sixty pounds of the total, because this outer metal box seemed almost feather-light to me.
As I took the black box, making sure all the impressive dials and doodads were still visible in its top, Dev whispered, “I just realized, I didn't even bring a gun, they're all in the house. What if I have to—"
“You won't have to anything, you imbecile,” I whispered, about as savagely as one can whisper. “Stay here and keep quiet—and don't whisper so loud."
“Why, you idiot, you're—"
"Will you shut up?"
“OK,” he whispered. “I can understand your being a little nervous."
“Me? Nervous? Don't be ridiculous. Well....” Holding the box in my left hand I made my right into a fist, shook it over my head, and whispered earnestly, "Let's win this one for the Gippy!"
“I'm sure glad you're not nervous."
“Maybe a little,” I whispered casually. “Well ... goodbye, old buddy.... Well.... Don't forget about those keys. Well...."
Then, with the impressive-looking doodlebug still balanced on my left hand—the one attached to the more painful arm of my two—I used my other hand to open the rear doors, and stepped out onto black asphalt, into dim light, feeling a soft rippling chill over my skin despite the warmness of the night air.
I stepped around the mobile home, took one long stride toward the house, and there were at least a dozen things moving in my mind right then. There was the conviction that I was right, yet there was doubt; a kind of thin fear like a shiver of nerves joined with the familiar sweet excitement, pulse-quickening anticipation, awareness that within me glands were pouring more of their juices into the blood.
And, as always there were the sharpened perceptions and more alive senses, a kind of brilliance to everything, even in near darkness, that you miss during ordinary moments, or at least that I miss. As I took another step toward the house I was aware of its bulk yards ahead and, closer to me, the bumpy korean grass I would soon step upon, the near wall of the carport on my left and almost level with me now, and beyond it the slanting hillside rising to another street above.
But more than those things, there was the clear chirping of several crickets, hum of an insect near my head, something briefly glittering behind me and on my left near the junction of asphalt and hillside, halfway up the hill a tree that looked to me, whether it was or not, like a grapefruit tree, and a sweetness from unidentified blossoms I hadn't been aware of before this moment.
These were all familiar things; I'd felt them dozens of times before, but this time they all seemed filtered or strained, diminished, as if I was still too calm, wasn't charged up enough.
Missing was a—something, hard to put into words. A kind of fever or mental trembling and slowing of time, a lot of apparent and probably even subliminal things. I just didn't have it. At least, not yet. But maybe it wasn't important. Maybe nothing requiring that slight extra “edge” was going to happen....
For no special reason except a half-formed hunch, I had been expecting him to appear well over on my left, past the far wall of the carport. But soon I would be on that korean grass, nearing the back door of the house, and as I swung my right leg forward again, feeling the now-familiar ache from increased pressure on my taped ankle, two disturbing thoughts crisscrossed in my mind.
One was that I was blithsomely toting my priceless seventy-pound Magnesonant Holaselector around as if it were a mere eight or ten pounds of empty box, which of course it was; the other was the idle thought, a silly one really, that if anyone was behind me, I hoped my—or Dev's—pants hadn't split any more, which of course they had.
This completely unhelpful thought occurred to me as I stopped and planted both feet, bending forward and pretending to tussle with my burden, getting a firmer grip on it, as from behind me the man said in a deep, rumbling voice, “Don't move, no sudden movements. I've got a gun on you. Turn around, slowly—easy now."
Just as simply as that it came.
Not from the place I'd expected it, but from the man I'd expected—and that's when I felt it, and it was something like a scab pulled from nerve and swift fire in my blood as I turned to face him.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“Now, very easy, put that thing down, Morraigne."
He was about twenty feet from me and walking slowly closer, bent a little forward, right arm thrust out before him. I caught a faint rippling shine where his hand would be, explaining that quick glittering I'd seen moments ago.
He hadn't recognized me yet, but it wouldn't be long now, so I said, burlesquing the lines a bit, “Well, I'll be darned, if it isn't Arnold Trappman! Where did you come from?"
He stopped instantly and stood perfectly still.
“What-who the hell ... ?"
He moved slowly forward again. “Don't be a goddamn smart-ass, don't try anything. If I have to, I'll kill you."
“You'd damn well better not, Trappman,” I said—and he made me on that one, stopped ten feet away.
“Why, you—it's that miserable asshole—I'll be God—it's Scott, that goddamned smart-mouthed miserable stinking son of a bitch—"
“That's who it is, all right,” I said. “At least, it's me. And, as I seem always to be doing, I asked you a question, Trappman."
He actually responded to that. “A question?"
“Yeah. What are you doing here?"
It took him a while to answer. He didn't have to answer at all, needless to say. But, obviously, things here were not going the way he'd planned, just as obviously, that was the way I wanted them to go.
“What happened to Morraigne?” he said finally. “Why isn't he here?"
“He fell down the hospital steps,” I lied easily, remembering what Gippy had said to Trappman, “and broke his nose. And maybe an arm or two. They carried him back up the steps and smack into the hospital again."
Trappman seemed to be only half-listening, moving his head around, but of course seeing nothing of great interest. Then he looked straight at me again. “More important, what are you doing here, you goddamned miserable son of a bitch?"
“Why, I told poor Morraigne I'd bring his dingus here for him,” I said. “He seemed quite worried about it for some reason."
But then I strained and puffed and grunted while turning slightly to one side and raising my heavy black box a foot-and-a-half, and said sharply, “But if you keep swearing at me, you godamned miserable son of a bitch, or even come one step closer, I'll take this Magnetica—this Holawhosit—this—this thing, and I'll smash it on the asphalt—"
“NOOO—"
Just about like that, short, quickly cut off, and very loud.
I suppose he'd started to say “No, don't do that,” or something similar. It didn't matter, because from that moment on I felt like king of the mountain. Almost the entire foundation of my at least partially assumed and diligently pumped-up confidence had been a near certainty that Trappman wouldn't even think of shooting Devin Morraigne, which is to say me, unless he absolutely had to of course, until the priceless black box—for possession of which virtually everything he'd done had been done—was safely upon the level ground. And that “NOOO” told me it had been a solid foundation.
So I started talking to him, or more like at him, demonstrating surprising strength by continuing to hold the black box fairly high, telling him what I k
new and what I'd guessed, and that baby listened.
I threw a question or two at him during my monologue, but the first thing he said when I finished was, “OK, you've had your yack-yack so put the box down, Scott. And easy, or—"
“Sure, I'll put it down right away, and then you'll shoot me right away, won't you?"
“I'll plug you right now if I have to, you goddamned—"
“Hold it. And be reasonable, Trappman. Just answer those unimportant questions I asked, satisfy my idle curiosity, and I'll get rid of this thing. I really will. Take my word for it. And, hell, you already know I've got you tagged all down the line. You're here, aren't you?"
He said slowly, “You will? No crap?"
“You've got my word on it, Trappman."
“You'll set that thing down, nice and easy?"
I hadn't told the bastard that. I'd told him I would really “get rid of” it. But if he hadn't been listening closely, that was his tough luck.
I said belligerently, “Didn't you hear a word I said, Trappman?"
“OK. I'll take your word on it, Scott. But if you're lying, if this is some kind of trick, I swear to God I'll pump six into you."
"Trick? You are a suspicious—"
But I shut up, because he was still talking.
“Sure, you and that miserable Willifer poop both know I killed Riddle ... but it was self-defense. The bastard got greedy, went clear off his nut. Anyhow, you already know the only way for us to get any oil we might pump from the Roman Number One well to a sales line was by laying pipe through Riddle's land—you asked me about that yesterday, why I didn't have a right-of-way agreement with Riddle in writing. I did have, of course, you can bet your ass I did, before we even spudded the Roman. But when the son of a bitch came in so big, I wasn't going to let that much money go to poops like Willifer, not from my well. So I made a deal with Riddle to tear up the signed agreements. I'd claim I hadn't got anything in writing from him before we completed the well, and afterwards he refused to give me the right of way—and Riddle would back me up, tell the same story. Then I could hold off on production, keep delaying, till the investors got fed up and wanted out. Hell, I paid Riddle ten thousand of my money, more than he deserved. But Wednesday night at my house he tried to squeeze me, said either he got more cash or he'd blow the whistle on what I was up to, and.... Well, he jumped me, crazy ... and I had to shoot him."
The Sure Thing (The Shell Scott Mysteries) Page 25
