"Kind of strong, huh?" I said to her.
She looked straight at me, then let her eyes slowly cross. "I have been bitten by a gin snake," she said, "with vermouth fangs."
"No vermouth," Jim said brightly.
"Jim," I said, "maybe we should switch to Blastoffs."
"No, not that. But — I have it. Ladies, how about vodka poured over hot rocks? You drink the steam with your nose."
"It's a gasser," I said.
"I'll try a snort," Laurie said, and Eve merely finished her Gintini, or whatever it was. But then she'd had a ten-minute head start on Laurie. Jim generously refueled her glass.
Well, we each had three of those things, so when Jim said, "What say we eat?" Laurie cried, "Why not?" and Eve said, "Ah, pour me an appetizer first," and I said, "Drink up before the glasses crack."
And Jim went on, "Everybody relax." And I let air bubble happily from my lips, and Eve yawned hugely, and Laurie slid gently to the floor, and Jim continued as if nothing had happened, "Because I am going to prepare our supper. And, kids, it is going to be a flaming supper. Isn't that exciting?"
"Go ahead and bum it," Eve said.
"In paper plates," Laurie said. "I'll scrape up the dishes."
Jim sprang from the bar and busied himself somewhere out of sight, then called to me to help him carry a variety of objects back to the girl area. In a few moments we were all sitting comfortably on the floor, on the harem pillows, and Jim went to work.
Despite all the horsing around, that after-midnight supper was extraordinarily good. Jim fixed everything at the table — or rather the floor — in chafing dishes, and not only was it all delicious but he put on quite a show as well.
We started with a creamy hot cheese fondue into which we dunked chunks of day-old French bread torn from a huge loaf, went on to a spicy soup, and then another fondue in which large juicy morsels of filet mignon steamed and sizzled, and wound up with ambrosial crêpes suzette. As a finale Jim poured a bit of Remy Martin cognac into brandy snifters, rolled the liquor around to coat their insides, lighted them, let the flickering blue flames heat the snifters, then poured a healthy dollop of brandy into each glass. With that food inside us, and sipping the warm liquor, it was not surprising that we were wrapped in an aura of almost sinful luxuriousness. Or luxurious sinfulness. Whatever it was, it was good.
After accepting rhapsodic compliments on his culinary prowess, Jim said, "Now, friends, the movies."
Every hair on my head, neck and ears, sprang to uneasy attention. I followed Jim to a closet from which he took a sixteen-millimeter projector and screen, and said to him, feeling more than a bit uneasy, "What's this? Jim, what's this?"
He merely smiled and said all would soon be clear.
That's what I was afraid of. Not that it was absolutely out of the question; but you just don't go tossing things like that at people without suitable preparation. As Jim set up the screen and projector, I said to him suspiciously, "Movies?"
"Yeah, movies," he said brightly.
"What kind of movies?" I asked, even more suspiciously.
"You'll see," he said.
I knew Jim was an expert photographer, and that both still and movie photography were among his numerous hobbies. Maybe these were home movies of his trip to Hawaii. Only he hadn't made any trip to Hawaii.
I was sure of it. I was appalled. I just knew, when the picture flickered on the screen, there would be a droopily mustached Latin character fidgeting about and peeking through a window at a shapely tomato doing something horrible, I just knew it.
With me sort of dragging my feet, we trooped into the living room carrying our big pillows and got settled. Jim turned out the lights, turned on the projector, and said, "This is a mm I made myself."
"You what?" I said, aghast.
"Made it myself," he said happily. "I'll bet you find this interesting."
"Yeah," I said. "I'll bet."
Then I turned to look, eyes wide and watery, at the screen.
Chapter Four
At first I couldn't figure out what was on the screen, but almost immediately my uneasiness left me, though it was replaced by perplexity. Because whatever this was, it was at least not what I'd been imagining.
Then Jim started explaining, and it made sense, and I — all of us, I think — began really enjoying the film.
"This," Jim explained, "is time-lapse photography. I set up a movie camera and tripod on the deck, aimed it over the Sunset Strip down below us, and rigged it with a timer so one frame of film would be exposed every fifteen seconds."
He went on to explain that normally movie film is taken at a speed of 16 frames per second and also projected at that speed, thus exactly reproducing whatever movement the lens captured. But for Jim's film only four frames had been exposed during each minute of the day and night, though the developed film would be run at the normal speed of 16 frames per second. Thus, while it required four hours to expose 960 frames, that length of film would run through the projector in one minute. Or, to put it another way, into one minute of viewing time was compressed four hours of the day.
Merely to hear Jim explain it wasn't very interesting, but the sight itself on the screen was fascinating, more so with each minute that passed.
The things which remained motionless for more than fifteen seconds naturally were captured on more than one frame of film, so trees, buildings, parked cars, were recognizable. But moving cars were merely dots or blurs; little puppet-people danced about like jumping fleas. Jim had used a wide-angle lens on his camera, so not only was the ground immediately below us visible but also the sky above. And probably most strange and interesting of all was the sight of that living, boiling sky, and the sensation it gave of the weird acceleration of time. It was night; then suddenly it was day, the sky brightened. Clouds raced over the blue, formed swiftly and dissolved just as quickly, bunched into masses, then thinned and disappeared. The light softened, and night fell with a rush. The Sunset Strip itself wasn't visible from here, but other streets were thin arteries with lights streaking both ways along them, and a traffic light at the screen's right flickered in a faint pattern of reds and greens with an occasional quick flash of yellow. The sun rose and set three times while we watched, the moon sailed across the screen, stars wheeled through the dark sky.
Then the film came to an end. Jim nipped on the lights.
"That was marvelous," Laurie said. "And, you know, if you'd told me what it was going to be, I probably wouldn't have been interested in seeing it."
"That's why I didn't tell you," Jim said. He looked at me, grinning, proof that he had known all along what was giving me fits, and said, "Now the movies I smuggled out of Tijuana."
"No!" I yelled.
But the girls laughed, and Jim said he was only kidding, and we went back up to the floor near the bar and had a drink. Normal drinks this time, bourbon and water for Jim and me, brandy Alexanders for Laurie and Eve.
Something was bothering me though. Something in that film we'd just seen . . . or maybe it was a feeling I'd gotten earlier, talking to Jim about Laguna Paradise, Brea Island, and Adam, that Jim had been holding something back, not telling me everything. Whatever the reason, a prickle of uneasiness kept sticking me. But the conversation zipped along dandily, and my uneasiness ebbed. We were having a ball, we were all marvelously relaxed. . . .
I don't really know how it happened.
All I remember is that in the middle of one of Jim's stereo albums was an old oldie, "Strip Polka," and that lit the fuse for several more comments, and suddenly Jim had a deck of cards in his hands and was shuffling them. Oddly enough, Eve, who had broadly hinted at such an eventuality earlier in the evening, seemed even more reticent than Laurie now, and resisted quite a bit of coaxing from Jim — and, I'll admit it, from me — but finally, when Laurie merrily repeated that phrase often heard for the first time in grammar school, "I will if you will," Eve took a deep breath, aimed, practically fired, and said, "I'm trapped. I'm trapp
ed. So deal."
Jim dealt.
The way Jim was playing the game, there was no ante, and only the high hand was not required to pay a forfeit, while all three other gamblers were required, in poker vernacular, to "sweeten the pot" As luck would have it, Laurie won every one of the first three hands.
Jim and I lost our shoes and jackets but were in no immediate danger, since we had slyly begun the game with several more articles of apparel than either of the girls. This became rather startlingly apparent after the third hand, since Eve had already lost both shoes, and she was wearing no hose. So. . . .
"My goodness," she said, looking at Laurie. "You haven't lost anything, have you?"
"No," Laurie squealed. She looked at me, laughing, her brown eyes sparkling. "Not a thing."
"Bah," I said.
"Eve, quit stalling," Jim said in mock savagery.
"Oh, dear," she said. And for perhaps five long seconds there was a sticky silence. Then she scooted nearer Laurie and whispered in her ear. I thought: What's she saying? But then Eve turned her back to Laurie, who deftly unhooked something, and then pulled a long zipper down, down, down. . . .
There is no sound like that sound. None.
Then Eve stood up, lifted her hands to her shoulders, and in a moment the orange dress slid slowly down her arms, over her breasts, slipped past her hips and crumpled in bright disarray on the floor.
She stepped from the dress, and there was another silence — but not sticky this time. This time it was a charged, pulsing, electric silence that crackled almost audibly. Eve, in the outfit worn by the girls at Laguna Paradise, had been an eye-socking sight; but now, in a low pale-pink brassiere and brief bikini-like step-ins, she was damn near blinding. Eve was a vast expanse of lovely white flesh, her near nakedness interrupted only by the wisp of pink at her hips and another bit of pink partially concealing those superbly abundant breasts. Partially concealing, for above the pink cloth mounds of creamy whiteness rose in swollen voluptuousness.
Eve sat down again, folding her long legs beneath her, white flesh trembling. Then she leaned toward Laurie, rested a hand gently on her thigh, and said, "You'd better lose pretty soon, honey." And she smiled a very enticing smile. So she was smiling at Laurie, of course, but at least she was smiling. She might have let out a high scream and wailed, "I can't go on," whereupon, at this point, both Jim and I might have dived off the deck onto our heads.
But after that one moment of silence — that moment of truth, so to speak — there was merely an inaudible snap-crackle-and-pop in the electric air, and the conversation ripped easily along.
"Gimme the cards," I said.
"Deal!" said Jim.
I shuffled grimly, looked at Laurie. "Lose!" I said.
She cocked her blonde head to one side, looking very cute, stuck out her tongue and said sweetly, "I'll try."
"Five-card stud," I said, and dealt the first card face down, the next one up. I had a king in the hole, a queen on the top. My next card was a queen, the fourth a deuce, the last a king. Two pair. Jim had a pair of sevens showing, Eve a possible straight, and Laurie four hearts.
Then we turned up our hole cards.
Laurie turned up a club — nothing. "Ah-ha!" I said.
Jim had a pair of sevens. And Eve's hole card filled her straight.
So I lost a sock. So what? Laurie supped off a shoe. A step in the right direction.
Eve won the next hand, too. Another sock — my feet were bare. And Laurie contributed a second shoe. Laurie, I had noted, wore no hose, either.
It was Eve's deal again. She shuffled, dealt five cards for draw poker. We drew, and I wound up with my best hand of the night, three kings.
"Oh, dear," Eve said. And, "Oh, oh," said Laurie.
"Aces up," Jim said.
Then I showed my three kings. Neither of the girls had even a pair. I'd won.
Jim unbuttoned his shirt, saying, "When do I win a hand?" and Laurie and Eve looked at each other.
Laurie said, "I might as well say it — you'll know soon enough, anyway. I'm . . . not wearing a brassiere."
That was good.
Eve glanced at the ceiling, then said to Laurie, "Well, I'll zip you, honey."
"The word," I said, "is unzip."
Laurie glanced at me, her mouth round, her honey-brown eyes wide and bright. She turned sideways and Eve did the unhook-and-zip bit, and the sound literally sizzled. Eve turned her back to Laurie and said, "Your turn, Sweetie," and Laurie unhooked those tricky little businesses. As the last hook parted, the pink cloth fell away from Eve's skin a little. Just a little. She moved back to her pillow, faced us. Laurie ducked her head, pulled the strap from behind her neck and over her blonde hair, then put her hands at the top of the dress.
Eve shrugged her white shoulders and the pink bra fell downward of its own weight, came to rest in her lap. Her breasts quivered momentarily, quivered and then became still. She picked up the bra, dropped it to one side — but by then I was watching Laurie.
Laurie looked straight at me, eyes slightly narrowed, ran her tongue over her lower lip. Then she arched her back, breasts thrusting forward, and moved the black cloth down. And the phone rang.
Laurie jumped, but it was nothing to my jump. If it could have been measured it would surely have been a new record from a standing sit, or whatever it was. From absolutely immobile rigidity I went at least two feet in the air.
"What in the hell?" said Jim.
"It's nothing," I said rapidly. "Nothing. Probably somebody's alarm clock — " And the phone rang again.
Laurie was motionless, the dress lowered a few inches, two swelling mounds of white and a small arc of pink pressing against the black cloth.
The phone shrilled again . . . and again.
"Hell," Jim said, "hold everything." He got up, went to the phone. "Yeah, hello?" he said.
The phone was up here near us, on a stand against the wall, and I could see Jim's face as he listened silently. Laurie said, questioningly, "Saved by the bell?" but something had already gone out of the evening. She tugged upward at the neck of her dress, and Eve, I noticed, was putting her brassiere back on.
Then I saw Jim's face. He paled as I watched him. His jaw sagged and he put out one hand as if to steady himself. He mumbled something into the phone, then hung up. He just stood there.
"Jim," I said, "what's the matter? What is it?"
"Adam's dead."
"Dead? What — how, Jim?"
"He's dead." His face was twisted; he seemed in shock. "Adam's dead. Shot. Murdered."
Chapter Five
I parked the Cad in front of Adam Preston's house. Two police cars were at the curb ahead of us. Jim had come with me, but he'd spoken hardly at all on the way.
I said to him, "Jim this is bad, I know. But pull yourself together. When we get in there . . ." I stopped. "How come they called you? Could it have anything to do with Laguna — "
"No." He interrupted me. "I — " He stopped, swallowed and sighed heavily. "You see, Shell, his name isn't really Adam. It's Aaron." He looked straight at me. "Aaron Paradise. He's my brother."
Jim got out of the car before I could say anything in reply. Silently we walked up to the front door. A uniformed officer stood there. He was expecting us, and we went in.
A plainclothes lieutenant named Wesley Simpson was in the living room, jotting something in a notebook. He turned, nodded to me, and said, "Be with you in a minute, Shell."
Jim stood next to me, arms hanging at his sides, his face still looking bleached. I put my hand on his arm. "Jim — "
He shook his head. "Later, Shell."
Simpson snapped his notebook shut and walked over to us. He nodded to me then looked at Jim. "You're Mr. Paradise?" They spoke briefly, then another officer led Jim through a door in the far wall. Obviously the police knew Jim was the dead man's brother. Which meant they also knew the dead man was Aaron Paradise. I wondered if that was why Jim had told me Adam was his brother — because the poli
ce already knew.
Simpson had stayed here with me. He was a solid man, thirty-eight years old, always neatly dressed. Now his eyes were a little bloodshot and the lids looked heavy — probably from lack of sleep. It was well after midnight and the Hollywood Division would be closed, the men off watch, so the first officers here would have been from the Detective Headquarters Division downtown; but they would have notified the Homicide team from Hollywood, including Simpson.
"You look beat, Wes," I said.
"I was just taking off my pants when the call came in," he said. "So sleepy I damn near came here without putting them back on. It's been a rough week."
"What's the situation?"
"Victim's still here, in the bedroom. We're just finishing up."
"He was shot, right?"
"You get a cigar. Left side, a contact wound, killed instantly. Bullet drilled right into his heart. No sign of struggle, which isn't surprising, since we figure he must have been sound asleep. He was nude in bed, which also figures — looks like he'd been having a . . . well, a party earlier. Gal left, and he conked right out. We figure the killer waited till Paradise was alone, and sleeping pretty good after the, uh, party, then let himself in and shot him."
"Let himself in? Any signs of forcible entry?"
"No, but it's a simple lock. A pro could just walk right in. Paradise didn't let him in, though. You got that?"
I nodded. "He wouldn't have gone to the door and let anybody in — not nude — and then gone back to bed. So he was shot, while asleep in bed, by somebody who picked the lock. Or had a key," I added as an afterthought.
"You get a cigar."
"How come you knew his name was Paradise, Wes? He used the name Adam Preston."
"Didn't know at first. Old Rosie was the first Homicide detective here. He remembered the dead guy's face from when he was in the Bunco section, but the name didn't fit. He checked with R and I and got the dope. And the brother's address."
Joker in the Deck (The Shell Scott Mysteries) Page 3
