Kill Him Twice (The Shell Scott Mysteries)

by Richard S. Prather

  As I walked past I sort of circled around him. No sense getting close enough so he could grab me. Don't get me wrong. I wasn't afraid of him. Not exactly. I'm not afraid of dying, either. Really I'm not. It's just that there are lots of things I'd rather do.

  I let myself out and closed the door gently behind me.

  SIXTEEN

  I drove back toward Hollywood, top down on the Cad and wind scrubbing my face. I was thinking about the interesting interview just concluded. Interesting and, I believed, profitable.

  Slade hadn't once asked me to sit down, I realized. He hadn't been the perfect host. Which, I guess, made us about even. I hadn't been the perfect guest, either.

  I wondered if Slade had been telling me the truth or if he'd been giving me an artistic — more, a truly masterful — snow job. If snow, then he was a lot better actor than producer. One hell of a lot better actor than producer. He should have been starring in the Goos. As chief monster. Even as the hero, if he was that good.

  I had to admit he'd come out of the interview in excellent shape. Which meant maybe Vivyan Virgin was mistaken about many things or was feeding me phonies. Well, time would tell. Time, and the rest of the pieces when fitted together. So I climbed into the Cad and drove off to do some more fitting.

  Which thought made me wonder if Slade was still fitting — that is, continuing his fit or whatever he'd been building up to. Or was he slapping his thigh and laughing? I really would have liked to know. Even then I knew that was one of the important answers.

  Back at my apartment I hung my jacket in the closet. It was part of my third change of clothes today — had to take care of the garments; this case was raising hob with my wardrobe.

  As I swung the door shut, the mirror affixed to it caught the reflection from another mirror propped against the wall, and it gave me a dizzy moment.

  A few days before — actually, it was at night — I had cracked the full-length mirror on the closet door. Never mind how I cracked it; that is not germane. Germane is the fact that a day or two later I picked up an even larger, man-sized job, and some of those little clamp things and screws, so that with a little mechanical wizardry and positive thinking I could put the mirror on the closet door myself. The enterprise would require positive thinking because, while I am a very lucky fellow, a dark fate seems to hang over my do-it-yourself jobs like a malevolent cloud, as if in compensation for other luckinesses. Skip the times I blew fuses, broke circuit breakers, taught a toilet to unflush; the point is, all these things were challenges. I could hire a man to fix my closet-door mirror, but it would be an admission of defeat. You can't let inanimate things lord it over you; if you do, they soon start laughing at you dumbly, and then you are in a fix. Then they don't live in your world, you live in theirs; they've got you.

  No, though I might crack another mirror or two before I was through, and bark a thumb, and fly into maniacal rages, I would not hire the man; I would, for probably no more than three or four times what he'd charge me, do it myself. Then, whenever I looked at myself in my mirror — the hell with it.

  What caused the dizzy moment was this: With the closet door at an angle it caught my reflection in the other mirror slanted against the bedroom wall. The latter was so slanted, with its base a foot or two out on the carpet, that my reflection was not only of me from the side, looking away from me, but apparently floating at an angle in the air below as if about to spring up at me.

  Now, we rarely see ourselves as others see us, that is, in profile or from the back or screwed sideways. Think about it. At least, we don't unless we're expecting to see such a reflection, as in a tailor's three-mirrored booth.

  And we almost never see us thusly and, in addition, floating slanted in the air as if about to spring up at us.

  It was the first time for me.

  I hope to hell it's the last.

  It didn't help that I'd just come from watching Slade apparently giving birth to something large and jagged.

  My first thought was, "Who is that ox?"

  My second was, "Damn, I better kill it."

  I actually yanked out my gun and very nearly ruined my do-it-yourself job before it even got started.

  I might have done it too, except that the ox also yanked out a gun and pointed it — but away from me, and up into the air.

  Of course, then I knew what had happened. I had a little laugh at myself. I was immediately back to normal.

  I waggled my gun. He waggled his. I waved, he waved. I peeled my lips up and slid them down and ground my teeth together and stuck my tongue way out. Yeah, it was me. Or I. It was both of us.

  Just a reflection of a reflection, that was all. But I breathed a lot easier when he put his gun away. Then I went into the kitchenette and mixed myself a dark, dark bourbon and water. You should have seen him peeling up his lips and grinding his teeth and all.

  After a healthy belt, I carried my drink over to the divan, propped my feet on the squat and scarred coffee table, and picked up the telephone. There was checking to do with the people on my list, finding out if any of them had picked up an item or word I could use, and adding a few more requests and suggestions to my previous ones. I had about an hour on the phone ahead of me.

  At three places my contact was out, and at each I left word for him to call back. I didn't say who was calling, but did leave the number of my bedroom phone — the unlisted one — and said I would be at that number for the next hour. Nearly all my contacts already had that number and thus would know who had called, but — I hoped — nobody else would. Just about the only people who have that unlisted number are crooks and girls. You can imagine how suspenseful it is when I'm awakened at two or so in the morning, when the bars have just closed.

  After twenty minutes nothing of interest had developed, but that's often the way it is. A lot of any investigator's time is spent on the phone. Sometimes it's simply routine work that has to be done, but once in a while a single call saves fifty miles of legwork or even breaks a case.

  So I took the last swallow of my drink and reached for the phone again. And the bedroom phone rang. Zip, I'd bounced up and over the back of the divan while it was still clanging, four big bounds and I was in the bedroom, and I plucked up the receiver in the middle of the second ring. If nothing else, that phone would help to keep me in shape.

  "Hello," I said.

  The voice wasn't one I'd expected to hear. It was bright and bubbly, and it said, "Shell? Hi, this is Cherry."

  "Well, hello."

  "What are you doing?"

  I winced slightly. At any other time I would have been more than delighted to hear Cherry's zingy voice in my ear, but with the possibility of up to half a dozen calls coming in from potentially helpful citizens, including Jim Gray, this wasn't the time I would have chosen for a long, chatty conversation — even though I had been looking forward to long, chatty conversations with Cherry Dayne.

  Thinking about that I was maybe just a little abrupt. "Frankly, I'm waiting for a bunch of calls, Cherry. I've been on the front-room phone for about half an hour, and some of the people may call back."

  "Oh, that's right. This is your special phone. I forgot."

  "Not so special. It's just — "

  "I won't keep you, Shell. I thought of something to tell you. Say, why don't I come over? Or would you rather — "

  "Of course, Cherry. I'd love to have you come over. I've been scheming how to get you into my bachelor's apartment. But — "

  "I shouldn't have said that, should I? The man's supposed to do the asking. You must think I'm awful."

  "I told you this morning I thought you were magnificent, 'then and now,' I believe I said, if memory fails to fail me. So add another now to it."

  "Then and now-now? It sounds like those tribes in Africa — "

  "Cherry — "

  "I'm sorry. I'm cluttering up your phone, aren't I?"

  "Not clut — "

  "I'll come over. Is it all right?"

  "Sure. Only if yo
u've got something to tell me, you can tell me on the phone. After all, we've already been on it for — "

  "You don't want me to come over."

  I could feel my hand tightening around the receiver as if it were a deadly mamba — which is a very poisonous African snake — and I had to throttle it before it made me very poisoned. Women, and their yak-yak-yak, I thought. But, ah, I thought, when they stop yakking . . .

  "Cherry," I said, "come over here this instant, you hear?"

  "I will. I just remembered something else about that man I saw this morning. But I'd rather come over and tell you, anyway. Maybe you'll give me a drink."

  "I'll ice the champagne. Or at least cool the gin. But — "

  "Bye."

  "Hang on a minute. Before you . . . Cherry?"

  She'd hung up.

  I had wanted to tell her she shouldn't go charging around pell-mell, flinging caution to the winds. There was still a guy who — by now — might know who it was that had spotted him at Slade's location this morning. In fact, the guy she'd just been talking about, I guessed.

  I clunked the phone down on the receiver, but before I got out of the bedroom it rang. However, it wasn't Cherry calling back to tell me I hadn't said good-bye, but an old retired box man passing on some info he'd picked up. It was about another matter, though, and had nothing to do with the case.

  When I hung up after a fast, rational dialogue, Cherry was even more on my mind. I could feel a lump of worry growing. I used the living-room phone to call her number, but there wasn't any answer. Apparently she was already on her way. Maybe I was being an old maid; probably there was nothing to worry about. Besides, her hotel was only a few blocks from here.

  The bedroom phone rang again. Zip, bounce, second ring. It was Jim Gray.

  "Yeah, Jim. Something?"

  "Not much. But it could be in line with what you were talking about. This actress dame got pooped by a guy using a rifle, right? Right. Well, somebody brung in a out-of-town dropper for some kind of job. Got in just this morning. Expert with the little pieces but also a top man with the big heat. All I know is his name's Pete."

  "Good work, Jim. I'll be in touch. Anything else?"

  "That's it."

  "You know what he looks like? Or who brought him in?"

  "Nothin' about him — I was lucky to get this. Didn't dig it out, just happened to hear somebody mention seeing him get off a bus."

  "Bus from where, you know?"

  "Nope. And, man, I wasn't going to ask the guy I heard talking about it, neither. Not even for a bonus. It'd be what you call posthumorous."

  "You get the bonus anyway. No more about Gant, huh?"

  "Nothin'."

  "I'm getting more and more interested in finding out if there's any connection betweeen Al and Jeremy Slade."

  "Couldn't prove it by me one way or another. But here's something. If you could get a squeeze on Mooneyes somehow, get him to talking, he could probably tell you — that and a slew more."

  "Mooneyes? That dim-brained — "

  "Yeah. He's a dummy, all right. But he always drives the boys' heaps, and what he don't hear you wouldn't want ears for anyways. He just soaks it up. Goes without saying he wouldn't spill nothing about Al unless you had him by the fly with a eighty-pound vise, but might be that some time he'd fill you in on the other guys if approached proper. I just pass that on for free, Scott." He paused. "Actually, that is the cutest damn little radio-TV I ever did see."

  I grinned. "Glad you like it, Jim."

  The phone is right by my bed, and in the wall behind the headboard, toward the side next to the street, is a window I usually keep open. Sitting on the bed's edge, as I was then, I can look out the window on an angle toward North Rossmore, which runs in front of the Spartan.

  So I spotted Cherry's pale blue Corvette Sting Ray when she slowed near the Spartan then swung in toward the curb, as her car passed out of my sight.

  But then I saw something else, and between one second and the next my throat got dry. It was another car behind her. Nothing funny about the car itself. But whoever was driving doused his lights and angled in to the curb. He turned off the lights — while still out in the street — and then swung in to park.

  Which is doing it backwards. Unless maybe you're worried about being spotted and move in too big a hurry.

  "Thanks, Jim," I said quietly. "I'll see you." And hung up.

  The car was just inside my line of vision, about half a block down the street. A dark sedan — it looked like a black Imperial. Nobody had gotten out of it yet. Cherry would be walking toward the Spartan now.

  I moved to the window, eased the .38 from my holster, and leveled it at the car, just in case. But nothing happened. Nobody got out. I didn't notice any movement.

  A few seconds passed. A man got out of the car on the right side — not the driver's side — and then walked across the street. If he'd been in the driver's seat he almost surely would have come out that side. So probably two guys had arrived in the car. Whoever they were.

  The man stepped quickly across Rossmore and continued on his way, toward the Spartan. My door chimes rang. Cherry.

  I started to pull back from the window when the man left the sidewalk, moved quickly into the near-darkness alongside the building.

  That did it.

  He was walking toward the door at the rear of the building.

  I couldn't think of any good reason why he'd want to come in that way, to avoid going through the lobby and past the desk. But I could think of a couple of bad reasons.

  I might feel silly if he turned out to be just the tenant three doors down the hall, coming in the back way because he felt like it. But I don't mind feeling silly from time to time in this life when death might be the alternative. Death for me, or for somebody else. Besides, I had that feeling. The tightness at the back of my neck, the small spot of coldness in my gut, the kind of electric tension over every inch of my skin. If that guy was the tenant three doors down the hall, every cell in my body was a liar.

  The chimes bonged again.

  I ran to the door, stood to one side — gun in hand — and yanked it open. It was Cherry, all right. I put the gun away quickly, but not before she saw it. I didn't even give her time to squeak, grabbed her arm and yanked her inside, slammed the door.

  She opened her mouth — her big blue eyes were already the biggest I'd ever seen them — but I stopped her before she started.

  "Be quiet, Cherry. This may be a false alarm, but — " There wasn't time for explanations. I said, "Just do what I tell you. There's an open window in the bedroom." I pointed. "Stand next to it. Somebody may come to this door, right behind you. If so, there might be some noise — noise, hell. I mean shooting. If there is, and I call to you, just stay where you are. But if I don't call, drop from the bedroom window and run. You got that?"

  Something in my voice — or maybe the way I must have looked — got to her. She knew I wasn't playing games, this wasn't a gag, I was dead serious. She nodded, then said in a whisper, "If there's — noise, and you call, stay there. If not, go out the window."

  If the man was coming here, he'd just about be starting up the stairs now. Twenty seconds, maybe twice that, depending on how fast he moved.

  "One more thing," I said. "And this is important. Don't run toward the street. If this is anything at all, there's probably another man on Rossmore in a parked car — one that parked right after you did. Don't go that way. Run — and I mean run — away from the street and alongside the building. Get to a house, hotel, anything, and make a lot of noise. Get off the street and call the cops."

  She nodded. "Yes. I can do it." She nodded again, nervously. She was pale. "But . . . what if you don't call. What — will that mean, Shell?"

  My nerves don't usually climb out of my skin and squirm around, but for a second or two there they seemed to. Maybe it was the way she said it, and the sudden thought of what it would mean — the kind of thing you should never, never think about at a t
ime like this. Or maybe it was the memory, too fresh because so recent, of the way the big boy died.

  I said, "It'll mean you better run like hell."

  I gave her a shove toward the bedroom, stepped to the wall next to the door, and pulled out the .38 again. Mentally, I was swearing. Swearing because Cherry was here; because if there was gunplay, even if I didn't get killed, I'd sure as hell have to kill the other guy — and I didn't want dead ones, I wanted them alive. I'd wanted the Collector alive. But you have to take what you get.

  Damn it, I thought. If Cherry hadn't been here I might at least have dropped out the bedroom window, then tried to run around and come up behind the guy. This way we were just going to have to stand here two feet apart and let it happen.

  The thoughts had been racing through my mind like a succession of moving pictures, among them the imaginary sight of me dropping from the window, falling the few feet to the ground.

  But that one came back, not moving for some reason, but still like a snapshot. A snapshot of me suspended in the air.

  And I thought of that ox.

  I moved.

  It wasn't a chain of thought, not a logical progression from A to B to C, it was all just suddenly there — beginning, middle, and end.

  Six feet away was the big heavy leather chair I like to lounge in. I jumped to it, spun it across the carpet, and placed it four feet from the door, its back toward the door but slanting into the room.

  Then I ran to the bedroom. I'd figured I had twenty, maybe forty seconds. How much time had passed since then I hadn't any idea. Maybe twenty seconds; maybe fifty. Most of it had been passed just thinking, and you can't measure thought in seconds or split-seconds, not in normal time. But I knew it was time now. It was time.

  I grabbed the big mirror leaning against the bedroom wall, rushed back, and propped it against the chair, as straight up and down as I could get it. Pressed against the wall next to the front door and looking into the mirror I could see the door itself, smack on. Not my reflection, but the door. When the door opened, I would see him — whoever he was — and he would see me. Or, rather that big-ox reflection of me.