Kill Him Twice (The Shell Scott Mysteries)

by Richard S. Prather

  "It's O.K. I talked to him just a minute ago, and he said he'd do it. Not too happy about it, but he's game."

  Well, there was plenty more I wanted to know, but there wasn't time. The key to this whole caper was to get Mooneyes off balance and keep him that way. We had to ease him into a strange new world just familiar enough to seem real, then start him spinning and keep him spinning — and time or, more accurately, timing, was of the essence.

  So I settled for one more question. "You got somebody for prosecutor?"

  He grinned again. "Yeah. The district attorney. Me."

  I started to tell him the guys with speaking parts were the ones most likely to get into trouble. But instead I said, "Well, maybe it won't come to that, Ed. Let's go."

  He opened the double doors. I marched back to Mooneyes and grabbed his elbow again, pulled him toward the entrance. He came along, sort of shuffling his feet. Gill and Tony followed, also sort of shuffling their feet. Tony did that bit with his arms again, up and flop.

  The prisoner and I entered the courtroom.

  Ed marched ahead of us down the aisle between the rows of seats on our left and right, through the swinging door, and right to a long table before the spectators' seats. A quick glance showed me a nice crowd, and I recognized several familiar faces — a couple of Slade's monsters whom I'd seen outside of their oyster shells, Vivyan Virgin, another young gal I'd last seen wearing something like a gauze bikini and an elaborately jeweled headdress. But now they looked like a gang of citizens gathered to view a trial in Superior Court. Which, of course, is what they were supposed to look like. Up front I saw Ron Smith seated at a little table on which was a stenotype machine. He looked pretty sick, but he was there.

  We got almost to the front of the courtroom before Mooneyes snapped out of his daze. I felt a tug on my hand as he stopped, yanking his elbow back.

  "Hey," he said. "What the hell? This here is a courtroom."

  "Of course it's a courtroom. What did you expect?"

  "But I — don't I got to be busted, and my prints took, and arranged first?"

  "Arraigned?"

  "That's it. Arranged."

  I shook my bead. "Mooneyes, don't tell me my job, O.K.?"

  "But — "

  "An arraignment is bringing the prisoner before the bar of a court to answer an indictment. Right?"

  "Uh — "

  "Well, that's what we're doing. We're bringing you before the bar of a court."

  "But — I got to go to jail first, don't I?"

  "Are you an idiot or something? Do you want to go to jail?"

  "Well . . . Who wants to go to jail?"

  "Now you're talking."

  While the wheels were still turning in his head, I moved him through the swinging door and left to another long table, got him seated behind it, and sat down next to him.

  Mooneyes turned slowly in his chair and looked at the people behind him, looked all around, even at the ceiling. Yes, he was in a courtroom, all right. Couldn't deny that. But something was amiss.

  I leaned close to him and said, "Mooneyes, you've got one chance. Turn State's evidence and I'll let you cop a plea. I hear this judge is a tough baby, a regular hanging judge — "

  "Hanging? They don't — "

  "And if he gets a chance he'll throw the book at you. But if you come clean — about last night, about how Al Gant's been milking the suckers with that sweet blackmail setup, the rest of it — you might get off easy. So be smart, Mooneyes."

  He scowled. "You think I'm gonna puke on Al, you're stirry." He looked around again. "I want a mouthpiece. I got a right to a mouthpiece."

  There hadn't been enough build-up. I'd gotten him close to the edge, but not over it.

  Well, there was no help for it now.

  We were going to have to go ahead with it. We were going to have to try him. And sentence him. And maybe even execute him.

  I looked at Ed, and nodded.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Ed flashed some kind of signal to a short thin man sitting near the judge's bench.

  He stood up and cried, in a remarkably loud voice for so small a man, "Oyez, oyez, oyez, know all men by these presents that this here court — " He flipped his hand over his mouth while mumbling something unintelligible — "Superior Court, County of Los Angeles, State of California, in these United States, Judge Blaine presiding, is now in session. All of you, rise up!"

  I closed my eyes, groaning inwardly. Maybe Tony should have been the tip-off. I had a whole courtroom full of hams. I could imagine what this trial was going to be like: the fragmentary memories of a hundred Hollywood courtroom scenes, half sheer bluff and bluster and the rest, chaos. People might leap from their seats in the audience, fighting to take the witness stand. I felt as if I were coming down with something. Like the hives and heebie-jeebies. And creeping over me was a feeling. A feeling that I was in trouble.

  But I'd asked for it. I had to go through with it now. When I opened my eyes the door to the judge's chambers had opened, and striding through it was Morrison Blaine, eighty years old, doddering, smacking his gums, wearing a long black robe and a powdered wig. What in hell, I thought — and where — had those Trials of Elizabeth Dugan been conducted? But it didn't bother me. I wasn't going to let it bother me. I wasn't.

  Mooneyes said, "Jumping Jehosaphats. What in hell is that?"

  "Didn't you hear the guy yelling his name? That's Judge Blaine. The Hanging Judge," I added maliciously.

  "He looks mean as hell."

  "He is mean as hell. Well, you had your chance."

  "Where's my mouthpiece? Don't I get a mouthpiece?"

  "You got one."

  "Where?"

  "Here."

  He looked all around. "Where?"

  "Here." I pointed at me.

  "You?" His eyes were like saucers of milk.

  "Me. I'm your mouthpiece."

  "Omigawd. It can't be. How can it be? I never heard — Ah, come on. You ain't my mouthpiece."

  "You see another one anyplace around here?"

  He surveyed the courtroom again. "Damned if I do. But . . . you'll stab me, you'll shoot me down, you'll ruin me, you'll — "

  "You bet I will."

  His mouth was quite a ways open, and he was breathing through it. Then he clicked it shut. "Somethin' weird is goin' on — "

  Bang! The judge used his gavel. "Silence in the courtroom!" Judging by the judge's appearance, I had expected a high, quavering voice to come from him, but the voice at least was O.K. A little cracked, but fairly deep, and strong enough.

  "Case of the People versus Joseph Garella . . .," he went on, reading from a slip of paper — which, I assumed, was the basic info Ed Howell must have hurriedly jotted down for him. Too hurriedly. ". . . Known to all and sundry as Mooneyes Garella. Charged with . . . mmm . . . Assault with a DW."

  Judge Blaine looked over the, courtroom as if about to launch into a lengthy speech about Justice, Truth, Crime, and Motherhood. It occurred to me that, without a script, it might be difficult to turn these people off.

  But Blaine caught himself in time and said, "Take the witness."

  Then he looked at the empty witness stand. He looked at it for a long, long time, then sort of shook himself and peered out over the courtroom. His peer came to rest on me, and he smiled in satisfaction. Here was his cue. "Is the witness — mmm . . . defendant represented by counsel?"

  I glanced at Mooneyes. His mouth was hanging open again. His eyes were wide. His lower lip was quivering just a trifle. I decided he was ripe; if he'd gone along with this much, he'd go along with anything.

  I rose to my feet. "Yes, Your Honor. I represent the victim."

  "He don't!" That was Mooneyes.

  Bang! That was the judge. "Contempt of court. Fifty dollars."

  I looked at Mooneyes. "I told you he was mean. Now you've antagonized him."

  "Oh . . .," he said. "Uh . . ."

  "And the trial hasn't even started yet."

  "Fine
," the judge said, "fine and dandy. Now, is the pros-ecourter in the cute? Mmm . . . cutor in the court?"

  Ed Howell got slowly to his feet. "I'se gwine persecute him," he said.

  At first it shocked me — he was laying on that too-long-laid-on Hollywood stereotype of the Negro, the phony burlesque of rolling eyes and the Stepin-Fetchit whining drawl, never seen or heard in the flesh anywhere on earth except a Hollywood sound stage. It shocked me — and others here, too. I heard a few soft gasps, the sudden intake of breath — from some who knew him, some who had worked with him.

  But it shocked me only for a moment. Because as Ed continued the thing took on a kind of rhythm; it was starting to play, to swing. And I thought I was beginning to understand the reason for that exhilarated expression on Ed's face out there in the corridor.

  More, another look at Mooneyes' face convinced me Ed had hit the right note, twanged the right chord. Because Mooneyes' mouth was open now to its maximum aperture, and it stayed open while he swallowed about once a second, his Adam's apple bouncing.

  "I'se gwine persecute him," Ed went on, "for assault with a DW and auto battery, for committin' mayhem and raisin' Cain, for ADW and KKK and shootin' people dead!"

  One small sound I heard came from Mooneyes' open mouth.

  But there were more. A couple of people in the audience said softly, "Yeah!" And I heard the single clap of one pair of hands. There was a kind of rhythm and swing and bounce to Ed's delivery that almost made you want to snap your fingers and call out or join in. Those first soft cries had come from two Negroes sitting together on the right side of the courtroom — but immediately after that half a dozen more spectators caught the mood, raised their heads and sighed "Yeah!", and then clapped their hands together. One of them, I was pleased to see, was Vivyan. It takes some of us white folks a little longer to catch the rhythm, but most of us get it in time.

  Ed had been standing quite still during his opening remarks, but now he walked around the table, shuffling his feet, while his shoulders sort of hunched forward and then swung back, saying, "Now, he's guilty, ain't no doubt 'bout that." He stopped shuffling and looked at the spectators, leaned forward, and said slowly, "Is they? Is they any doubt?"

  Well, it wouldn't have come off if Ed hadn't been performing before people he knew — all of them actors, at that. But he'd gotten the message to them, the rapport was near perfect, and it came off.

  It was only a little ragged, all thirty-odd simultaneously crying "No!", with a few trickling on alone, "They ain't no doubt."

  All — except five.

  Ed had told me "four or five" people had been left over from Judge Croffer's earlier session here in this same courtroom. The number was five exactly. Because five faces looked — well, you can imagine.

  Ed was shuffling and slinking again, grinning — obviously enjoying himself. I decided he was a bigger ham than most of the rest put together. He was looking at Mooneyes, moving closer.

  I felt a tugging at my sleeve. It was Mooneyes tagging.

  "Say something," he said. "Do something."

  "It's not my turn yet."

  "When — when is it?"

  "I may not get a turn. It depends."

  He didn't like that. "On what?"

  "On the judge. And you already got him mad at you."

  Ed said, "Well, I done proved he's guilty. Now, whatever happens to him is up to the court. I don't care, what it is just so it's plenty. Whatever it is, I agrees with it, just so it's the fullest penalty the laws allows."

  Tugging at my sleeve again. Mooneyes hissed, "What's he mean, he's proved it? He ain't proved nothin'. He ain't presented no evidence."

  I shook my head, looking grim. "That's for the judge to decide," I said.

  Ed had turned to face the judge following his last remarks. "Your Honor," he said, "I respectfully suggests two life sentences to run out concurrently, and as soon as possible."

  Judge Blaine said, "If I interpret counsel's counsel correctly, you recommend a double death sentence?"

  "Perzackly, Judge."

  "Sounds reasonable to me," Blaine said, raising his gavel.

  "What the hell kind of — " That was Mooneyes.

  Bang! "Contempt of court. Hundred dollars."

  I looked at Mooneyes, shaking my head. And right then it happened. The farce — if he'd ever really thought of it as one — stopped being a farce. Farce, fraud, frame-up, total madness — no matter; Mooneyes believed it. He was scared.

  Put it like this. Did you ever spend a night in jail? If you did, probably at some moment the thought came to you that has come to so many other law-abiding people who stumbled into the can for one night. For a while, after that door clanged shut, maybe it was something to be angry about, or maybe it was almost amusing. But somewhere along in there — inevitably — must have come the realization of your total, your absolute helplessness. You can't get out. There's nothing you can do. Yelling's no good. You can't crash through those walls. They've got you, and there isn't a damn thing you can do about it. They can do anything they want to do with you. O.K., so you're innocent. So walk out.

  Something like that must have been going through Mooneyes' horrified brainbox. Maybe it was wrong, crazy, impossible — it was happening. They had him. If he couldn't get a lawyer — except me — couldn't phone, couldn't get word to Al, couldn't do anything . . . they could do whatever they wanted to do.

  He tugged at my sleeve again. His usually pink face was pasty. "Scott," he said in a loud, hoarse whisper. He licked his lips. "Scott, I think maybe I'll cop that plea. Yeah, I think maybe I will." He meant it, too.

  I turned my head and looked at Ed Howell, near enough to have heard Mooneyes' plea, and I winked.

  Then I said to Mooneyes, "I'm afraid it's too late."

  Breath sighed out of his lungs like trapped gas from a water faucet. "But . . . but . . .," he said. "You're my mouthpiece. You got to do something."

  I said, deliberately, "Mooneyes, I neglected to tell you something. I'm a friend of the DA. I want him to win this case."

  Mooneyes' eyes got enormous. He looked at Ed Howell. "Him?"

  "Him."

  Silence. Then he said dully, "Why, you white-haired sonofabitch. You big — "

  "That'll get you ten more years."

  " — white-haired sonofabitch. You big — "

  "Your Honor," Ed said, stifling a grin, "the persecution rests."

  "O.K.," the judge said. "Before the court passes sentence on the guilty party, would counsel for the defense care to comment on the comments of the counsel for the offense?"

  I stood up.

  "Your Honor," I said. "Ladies and gentlemen. Friends, Romans, countrymen."

  Ed slapped his thigh. His lips formed the word, ham.

  I scowled at him and went on, "We have gathered here to bury Mooneyes, not to praise him. As counsel for the condemned crook I must protest that the evidence against my client is so . . ." I paused and glanced at my client. Hope flickered. Flickered and died. "So overwhelming," I continued, "that I have been unable to prepare a proper defense. In fact, I haven't been able to prepare any defense at all. Therefore I would like to request — " I cut it off.

  This guy just might misunderstand if I didn't kind of help him to a decision. "Well," I said, "you wouldn't consent to a postponement? You wouldn't, would you?"

  "Eh? A postponement? What kind of postponement?"

  "Oh, say a year or so. It will take that long to — "

  Then he got it. Bang! "No. Postponement overruled."

  "That," I said, "tears it. On behalf of my client, then, we plead guilty and throw ourselves on the mercy of — "

  "No! Not on a mercy of — " My client wouldn't keep his big mouth shut.

  Bang! "Two hundred dollars."

  "No! You — "

  "Five hundred dollars."

  "Nnn . . ."

  He was really ripe. I leaned over and put my mouth near his ear. "Mooneyes, it looks bad."

  "It looks
. . ." He'd been in some kind of trauma. Slowly he came back a little. "Horrible."

  "You got that part about two death sentences to be executed concurrently, didn't you?"

  "Yeah. What's it mean?"

  "Means you get executed twice, just to be sure you're dead. First the gas chamber, then electrocution — that's the current in concurrently. You're the con, and — never mind."

  "I get it. Means they gonna kill me."

  "Yep. You got it."

  "I confess. I trow myself on a mercy of the court."

  "That's the only chance you've got, Mooneyes. If you'll take the stand, and spill your guts — "

  "I'll spill 'em."

  "Pour out everything you know about Pike, Waverly, Natasha Antoinette, the works . . ."

  He was nodding.

  "O.K. I'll see what I can do."

  I stood up again. "Your Honor, may I approach the bench?"

  "I don't see why not."

  "Thank you, Your Honor." I walked up before him, looking into my wallet. There was one lone hundred-dollar bill left, and I got it out, handed it up to him. "Beautiful job," I whispered. "Just right."

  He beamed.

  "I'm going to put this creep on the stand," I said. "So don't sentence him to torture or anything unless I give you the high sign. But if he slows down, it wouldn't hurt to stick him a little."

  Blaine nodded. "I was good, eh?"

  "Fine. Keep it up."

  I went back to Mooneyes. "You can testify — that is, spill your guts," I said. "It may help and it may not. That's up to you."

  He swallowed. "What'd you do up there? I seen you give him something."

  "It was a C note. I bribed the judge."

  "Smart thinkin' . . ." Hope flickered, and died. "With a C note?"

  "That was merely so you could testify. Now get up there, Mooneyes — and sing. O.K.?"

  "You bet." He nodded, thinking. "Gonna kill me twice, how about that? Boy, once is plenty. In fack, it's once too much."

  "Then take the stand and I'll cross-examine you."

  He got to his feet.

  I said, "But no games, Mooneyes. Once you start, you'll have to go through with it, the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth."