The Sure Thing (The Shell Scott Mysteries)

by Richard S. Prather

  The creep, even when he was confessing he had to lie a little. I had no doubt most of what he'd said was true, probably including Riddle's attempt to squeeze him. But the self-defense bit was a lie, and I knew it, which might come as a surprise to Trappman. Along with, perhaps, another surprise or two. But I wasn't inclined to interrupt him when he was rolling along so good.

  “Afterwards, I had to get rid of him, so I dumped the body in that unfinished well back of his own house. I figured there was no way I'd be connected with his death, no proof, nothing, and I only needed a couple days more....” He left that unfinished, adding, “And the way it was, I had to shoot him, couldn't help it."

  After a brief pause, he went on, “So that takes care of one question, Scott. What was the other ... ? Yeah. Sure I tapped Morraigne's phone, after I studied the figures on those five wells of mine he hit in a row, and found out from checking around he'd hit a dozen others in the last year. Easy got the stuff for me, but I did the job myself, no sense bringing anybody else in, not when this deal was shaping up as such a goddamn big thing. So naturally I knew this freaky prince or sheikh, or whatever the hell the jerk is, was flying in today and I knew why by then. I knew Morraigne was in Texas someplace and was supposed to get back today, but I didn't know where he was or what time he'd be back, and I had to keep those two from getting together, any way I could figure it, until I could ... until I could get to Morraigne myself first. Well, even as important as that was, I wasn't anxious to snatch some goddamned foreign head of state or whatever he is, but I'd heard the crumb telling Morraigne he was bringing that gang of broads along, only he called it a succulent and aromatic handful of hareem or some such bullshit. Well, it was clear as a fart to me why he was bringing those yielding fleshinesses or whatever else that freaky foreigner called the broads—what is he, some kind of international ass peddler?—so I set it up with Easy, and a guy he could call on for help, to snatch the broads, figuring that would at least help put a monkey wrench...."

  Clam!

  As soon as Trappman mentioned Easy Banners and “a guy he could call on for help,” I remembered Clam again. Poor old Clam. I hadn't meant to put the guy through such a long, cramped, confined, and undoubtedly excruciatingly boring captivity; it was just that I'd had other things on my mind, and kept forgetting the guy. It distressed me so much I almost missed what Trappman was saying.

  “...came off like it was greased, it was so smooth."

  I must have missed a little bit after all, because Trappman stopped talking then, after adding only, “The rest of it you already figured out close enough. And that's it, Scott."

  “Well, ahh.... Then I was right when I said you ... ?"

  The worst thing, about Clam, I couldn't help thinking, was that I'd had so much equipment and junk in my trunk already, that stuffing him in there had been like adding an extra sardine to the can. Or, perhaps more correctly, a clam to the sardines. I'd felt bad about it at the time. By now he must have got the wire off his wrists and ankles—but where could he go? I was really going to have to apologize to him. If I didn't get killed here, of course.

  Trappman was still waiting for my question. At least, he hadn't shot me yet. So I finished it, “...that you shot Gippy Willifer yourself? And me?"

  “Not you. Easy and a couple men he picked up tried for you at Morraigne's, then at your place—I'd told them to leave Morraigne the hell alone until I could be certain of getting ... what I wanted from him. But, sure I shot Willifer myself, it was a pleasure. All right, that's it, Scott. Put the thing down—"

  “Let me tell you one last bit first, you cold-blooded bastard. Part of it's about this ‘thing’ you want me to put down. But part is because I wouldn't want you to think you've conned me here, tonight. Sure, I'll buy it that Riddle got greedy, but it wasn't just for a few G's. And you didn't kill him because of the Roman well alone. You murdered him—that kill was not self-defense—not merely because if he blew the whistle about your deal with him you might lose all the gravy you meant to suck out of the Roman well, but because that would blow any chance you had of getting your hands on this."

  I lowered the box, held it below my waist with the impressive top slanted toward him. “And for this you shot Riddle while he was standing with his hands raised. I saw his body and the shirt he was wearing, and the only way those holes could match was if he had his hands stretched as high over his head as he could get them. You killed him in cold blood, probably with the same gun you've got in your hand, for a doodlebug—”

  “It's not a doodlebug!"

  “Well, it is now,” I said shortly, but I don't think he would have heard me if I'd yelled, because he hadn't stopped speaking, was going on even more loudly.

  “You son of a bitch, I told you—any tricks and—all right, you bastard, you've asked for it and now—"

  This really was “it,” I was convinced.

  Trappman had even gone automatically into a sligh’ crouch as his voice rose to a roar, and I saw light glimmer on the gun as he moved it slightly He was either squeezing down on the trigger, or damned close to squeezing it when I spoke, and maybe I got it out barely in time, but I did get it out.

  “Here you go, baby,” I yelled at him, "catch!"

  Then I threw my arms up and flipped my hands and tossed the empty box—or the very-real-looking umpteen billion-buck Magnesonant Holaselector—just about as high into the air as anyone might have expected me to fling it, considering my varied injuries and temporary debilities.

  More, having really expected to be painfully shot two or three times before I got all that said, the amount of extra juices pumped into my bloodstream was increased instantly from micrograms to a teaspoonful, and I speedily became more overjuiced than I really needed to be, now that I didn't need it.

  I didn't need to watch the thing flying up—I knew where it was going and from whence it soon would come back—but Arnold Trappman watched it. You can bet he did.

  He not only watched it as if it was a super-powerful magnet and his eyes were solid steel, but accompanied the soaring black box in its graceful flight with a howling sound of stupendously tragic proportions.

  “HoooaaaAAAAHHNOOOOOO—"

  Something like that. But a lot louder.

  And right then there was also a separate bang and a crash and clatter and the slap-slap of feet—yes, that's who it was, dashing Devin Morraigne, dashing very speedily forth to rescue me.

  During this, the magnificently crescendoing “AAAAHHHNNOOOOOOO—” continued.

  “Hey, Dev—” I called, but he paid me no heed. There was no heed to pay, all else was squeezed out of his awareness except that one beautiful purpose.

  Even if he'd heard me, though, it would have made no real difference, because by the time I'd said even that much he was as close to Trappman as I had been to him that time when he gave me such a calamitous shot in the head. The head again, I thought. Must be something screwed-up in Aries today. Screwed-up somewhere.

  I had no opportunity to explain to speeding Dev Morraigne that Trappman wasn't paying any attention to him at all. That there wasn't really any danger that Trappman would shoot me because he was much too busy watching a box. And, of course, going “AAAAHHHHNOOOOO."

  Too, after Dev leaped from his motor home as might a champeen sprinter from his blocks, and sprinted with wonderful singleness of purpose toward Trappman, and was about halfway to his intended victim, I had very clearly seen agonized Arnold spreading his arms and opening his fingers, thus better to catch the falling box, which of course required that he drop his little gun, whether he was aware of that or not, and I think not.

  So Dev needn't have been in such a foaming sweat about it all, really. But he was, I realized, doing a courageous thing. Dumb, maybe, but courageous. He was risking his life—or at least thought he was risking his life, and for sure was risking almost certain multiple dislocations if he hit his target or anything else going at that terrific speed—to spare me from getting shot and murdered.

>   How I could get murdered by a gun lying unattended on the ground, or even by a guy armed to the teeth and looking straight up into the air with his arms outstretched, and his mouth also outstretched to just this side of fracturing, was not immediately apparent. But, I thought, why lessen for Dev the flavor of this moment when, later, he thought back upon it with quiet pride and self-congratulation? Why tell him it had all been a dumb waste? Why, indeed? There were lots of reasons why. Good ones, too.

  Perhaps I wouldn't tell him, though. Certainly I would never reveal to him that Trappman's gun, throughout Dev's entire heroics, was not only on the ground but aiming kitty-corner up the hill at a grapefruit tree. But ... never was a long, long time. Maybe never was too long. I suppose a lot depended upon how badly Dev hurt himself.

  And I wouldn't have to wait much longer to find that out. In fact, not any—he had reached Trappman and they were about to —

  It was the goddamnedest sound I ever heard.

  I couldn't have imagined it in a million tries.

  And nobody could pronounce it, or, certainly, spell it, and because the identical circumstances couldn't possibly occur again, there was no way that sound could even happen again.

  It was a one-of-a-kind thing like the Magnesonant Hola-selector itself, which shortly after that weirdly shocking SSSHHPNGGGCHK with lots of air coming out of it—no, that wasn't it, maybe there's no way ... not GGNNGGGCHCHGG, there's just no way, it wasn't SHPP-UGGGHBBK or SHMMCCCCCOCOCHPPH ... it was just a noise, maybe like two dinosaurs falling off a cliff, into the Grand Canyon, and landing on a brontosaurus, and some rocks—tumbled the rest of its way lazily through the air and landed on the asphalt with a tiny, tinny clink.

  Landed, indeed, exactly where Arnold Trappman had been, but of course no longer was. He wasn't even close. He hadn't been anywhere near there since Dev CHCH-HGGCCHD, or whatever into him; I hadn't seen him since his howl stopped on its last “O—and there was blessed silence except for the sound of something, a couple of guy's bodies, actually, rolling over some asphalt and then rustling some leaves.

  * * * *

  When I found them, I waited until Dev came to.

  “Goddamn," he said groggily. “What'd I hit?"

  “Well, first there was Arnold Trappman. You did that right, Dev. You did hit him—boy, did you! He's over there someplace. But, after that ... well, I'm afraid you'll have to tell me, Dev. Or else neither of us is ever going to know."

  “Right now ... I don't think it's very important.” He felt his chest, arms, head, neck. “I think I broke my neck,” he said finally.

  “No. No, looks OK to me."

  “What would you know?"

  “Very little, actually."

  “Well, at least he didn't get to shoot you,” Dev said dully.

  And I said, “No, and do you know why, you dingdong? Because...."

  Couldn't do it. Not that minute anyhow.

  “Because that was a very brave dumb thing you did,” I said.

  “Hell, I didn't think about it at all,” he said. “Not at all. If I had, I wouldn't even have considered it."

  After a few moments he said, “I think I ruptured something inside ... maybe my spleen. Where is the spleen, exactly?"

  “Oh ... it's ... in there."

  Just before he passed out, I said, “Look, Dev, old buddy, if you're going to be laid up for a while—and it does seem likely doesn't it?—well, what are you planning to do with your harem?"

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “So the important thing is,” I said to the Willifers, “that when some experts—honest experts—go back into the Roman Number One well and complete it right, it should produce better than five hundred barrels a day. I haven't figured out what that would mean to the two of you, but it's got to be better than a couple hundred thousand a year."

  Gippy was propped up in bed, pillows behind him, and Audrey sat in the wooden chair next to him, where she'd been the last time I saw her here in the Morris Memorial Hospital.

  Nobody else was here yet—but the whole gang, you might say, soon would be. There had been general agreement that it might be fitting, before we went our separate ways, to hold a brief and—since Gippy was still being fed through a tube, and not yet very lively—subdued party, here in his hospital room. I had already been to my apartment and changed clothes again; but I was getting down to outfits I wasn't really crazy about.

  As I finished speaking, Audrey just looked at me from eyes that appeared enormous, doing something fidgety with both hands in the area of her solar plexus, but Gippy scratched his ear, his neck, his quite ample nose, then shook his head.

  “You must of made a serious mistake somewhere,” he said. “A couple hundred thousand? In a year?"

  “Yeah, every year for quite a while. As I told you, when the well came in, only Trappman and Easy, the driller, and a couple of the roughnecks Banners hired to work on the rig, were there.” Roughneck is a term common in the oilfields, not part of the hoodlum's argot, but in this case both sources were applicable, because Banner's roughnecks were also part-time hoods. “So they were the only people who knew the initial test indicated production of about five hundred and fifty barrels of oil a day."

  “And they did what?” Gippy asked, still dubiously. “Took out all the pipe and screwed up the bottom some way?"

  “They pulled the whole string of drill pipe, which they had to do before putting in casing anyway, then ran casing in the hole and completed the well in exactly the same way anybody else would have done it—with one exception. The exception being Trappman's interesting idea that the first, or bottom-of-the-hole, length of casing be one he had taken pains to plug thoroughly with cement. So thoroughly that nothing—like lots of oil—would come up through the top of that forty-five-foot-length of pipe. Then he had holes perforated through the casing wall above that bottom length of plugged-up casing, and still got a small amount of production, but not much. Also, he gimmicked the records, substituted an electric log from another well entirely, and—I told you about his deal with Ben Riddle, the rest of it."

  “But ... it's just too damn good to be true,” he said dully, like a man in shock.

  “Gippy, nothing's too good to be true. Certainly not if it happens to you. And, dammit, it has happened to you."

  “Huh ... I got to remember that,” he said. “It takes ... getting used to....” He was silent for a while. “Who'd think he'd put a plugged-up pipe down there? How the gawdamn hell did he come up with something like that?"

  “He had seventeen years to think about it, Gippy. The first time he pulled a similar deal—without the plugged-pipe gimmick, and not quite so carefully thought out—was that long ago. Trappman's Oil and Gas Company was just getting started then, he was feeling a financial squeeze, pretty much like this past year in fact, and his company drilled a well for a guy named Dikes. Hit it pretty big, like the Roman well, over three hundred barrels a day—"

  “I thought you said my well was over five hundred a day."

  “I did, and it is. The other well, not yours, was three hundred plus. And, Gippy ... ,” I smiled, “the Roman well isn't all yours. Not yet. But you probably will wind up with part of the Trappman and Banners interest, under the circumstances.” For a moment I looked curiously at him and Audrey, wondering what the Willifers would be like a year or two from now.

  But I quickly ended such profitless conjecture and went on, “With the help of Easy Banners, even way back then, Trappman screwed up the hole, falsified records, and claimed that in the opinion of the operator there wasn't enough production to justify connection to a sales line. Usually that would have ended it and the hole would have been plugged and abandoned—temporarily, in Trappman's view. He figured he could wait months or even years, and work things out so he could go back into, or at least very near to, the same hole again, this time minus what he calls the poops ... pardon, without any other greedy investors in his well. He's like that, when there's something he wants he starts thinking it's already
his."

  Gippy nodded briskly. It bothered me, somehow.

  But I went on, “This guy Dikes, though, knew quite a bit about the oil game—the kind of investor Trappman tried to avoid from then on—and he refused to settle for a dry hole, brought suit. To make a long story short, our boy Arnold wound up completing the well right and paying Dikes a good chunk extra to pacify him, besides signing over to Dikes all of his and Banners’ interest in the well."

  Gippy nodded some more, but it didn't bother me as much this time because he said, “I still can't comprehend it all, Sheldon. But I sure got to be grateful Dev was around, since I'm one of them dumb poops you mentioned, no way of denyin’ it. Looks like I'll have to study some more about this oil game, yessir. And I got to be grateful to my little Audie, sure enough, for bringin’ you into this, Sheldon. Why if it hadn't of been for you—"

  “Don't forget your progressed sun in Scorpio now, trining all kinds of junk."

  “Hey, don't tell me even you finally—"

  “Little joke, Gippy, merely a little—anyway, on this Roman well Trappman lucked out, for a while at least, because he did have that extra forty-five-foot length of casing at the well's bottom, extending down into the oil zone. Because when Dev checked on that—as he did, you know—he knew the hole had been drilled as deep as he felt it should be, that there was pipe down there, the casings went all the way into the reserves he'd mapped. He was pretty sure something was wrong, but he wasn't sure what."

  “Yeah, I remember him saying something was screwed-up to beat hell, and he'd check out his Holaselector, maybe it was ... something or other. I can't understand him much when he talks about the insides of that thing."