Joker in the Deck (The Shell Scott Mysteries)

by Richard S. Prather

  "There's objections."

  "You object? What for?"

  "Not me — this isn't my plant. I just run it for Lorimer."

  "Horace Lorimer?" I asked. "He's been trying to buy the island, hasn't he?"

  "Not that I know of. You'd have to ask him, but he ain't here today. He owns the plant, I just manage it, keep the boys, the workmen, in line."

  "So what's the objection?"

  Lou scratched the gob of hair at his throat. "For one thing, he don't want a mess of builders and machinery, and then tourists and kids, cats and dogs and no telling what-all tromping around, maybe getting into his vegetables. Besides, he's going to need more land — the right kind of land — so he can grow more spinach and beans and stuff for the canning."

  I waved a hand in the direction of the already planted acreage I'd noticed. "Seems plenty more land out there," I said. "On this half of the island. He's got a lease, hasn't he?"

  "Sure, but the best land's on the other end. For what he wants, anyway. He grows his spinach and tomatoes and all that organical — you know what that is, organical?"

  "Without fertilizers?"

  "That's only part of it. You don't use no chemical fertilizers, you use only natural stuff instead, like crushed rocks, and decomposed plants and leaves that's natural, like Nature does it in real life. But also you don't spray the plants with poison sprays like DDT and chlordane and dieldrin and those toxic poisons, see?"

  Was this Greasy Louey talking? I could hardly believe my ears — especially as he really did seem to know what he was talking about. For example, poisons are sure toxic.

  He went on, "Doing it like this, you get vegetables and fruits which are a lot healthier. They look better and taste better, and got more vitamins in them besides. In addition to which they're so healthy the bugs can't chew on them, so you don't need to spray much if any — which keeps any poison from being on the stuff which is going to be eaten up by the little infants."

  For a while I couldn't say a word, trying to digest the indigestible. Finally, with real interest, I asked, "Lou, what in hell has come over you? The last time I saw you — "

  "That was then, Scott. I've turned over a whole new leaf. I told you, I'm legitimate." He snorted. "Why won't you guys ever give an ex-con the benefit of a doubt?"

  "Where did you come up with all that dialogue about organic planting and such?"

  "Well, I — " He stopped, glowered at me, and said, "While in stir, I was the gardener. I grew all kinds of junk, everything from peonies to lobelia, carrots to potatoes."

  "You did this?"

  "It's a fact. I read in the library all about organical farming and gardening, and how all of us is being poisoned and killed slowly to death with poisons we eat. And drink. And smell, like smog."

  "You can say that again."

  "Planting them things in the earth, then watching little sprouts come up where there wasn't nothing before, I found — " He cut it off, then said, "Well, it made me feel peaceful and all."

  I got the impression he'd started to say, "I found peace," and it gave me a very queer feeling for a moment. I would almost have walked over to him and started shaking his hand — except that I remembered last night, remembered Mickey M., remembered Aaron Paradise in a bloody bed.

  So I said, "By the way, Lou, I ran into Mickey M. last night."

  "You what? What's a mickeyem?"

  "Right now it's a dead man. Michael M., who was one of your boys a few years back."

  "Oh, him. Sure, why didn't you say so? Hell, I don't have nothing to do with them guys no more. Haven't seen Mickey — he's a dead man? Since when?"

  "Since last night."

  "What happened to him?"

  "He got shot."

  "I'll be damned." Lou snorted. "Well, it was bound to happen."

  I was puzzled. Lou was quite convincing. Almost completely convincing. Almost. I wasn't ready to swallow this new Lou the Greek whole, however. Not yet. I said, "Funny thing, the man Lorimer leases this part of the island from was killed last night, too."

  "Yeah." He nodded. "I know. That's tough."

  "How come you know about Aaron Paradise, but didn't know Mickey was dead, Lou?"

  It shook him a little. Just enough so he missed the important part of the question. "It was in the papers, so Lorimer give me a call and mentioned about Paradise," he said. "Seeing as how it might affect business, him holding the lease and all. Naturally there wasn't no reason for him to mention Mickey, if he even knew about him."

  "Uh-huh. You've got phones out here, forty miles from the mainland?"

  "You mentioned it yourself, Scott, there's a thing like radiotelephone. Like ship to shore, you know?"

  He smiled, and while he was feeling pleased I stuck him with the rest of it. "Sure. And how come you knew his name wasn't Adam Preston?"

  "Huh?" He blinked, scratched the hair on his neck, then the hair on his head. "What you mean by that, Scott?"

  "Practically everybody else knew him as Adam Preston. His real name was Aaron Paradise. Which, apparently, you already knew."

  He chewed on his lips, bushy brows pulling down in a scowl. "That's what I said, huh? Well, I guess that's what Lorimer told me. I don't know who in hell either of the bums was. O.K., Scott? Or are you getting kind of big-mouthed?"

  "Not me," I said genially, and had the feeling it was time to vacate the premises while I was still ambulatory. "Well, never mind all that," I said. "I've got to get back. See you, Lou."

  He nodded, and I walked out.

  Nobody stopped me, and that not only relieved me but surprised me more than a little. I kept glancing back, and could see Lou the Greek talking to two men. They looked in my direction. That didn't have to mean a thing. But something else might mean quite a lot.

  I was looking toward Lou and the two men, and happened to glance to my right. A guy in the building, several feet down from the office, was eyeing me through a window. I got just a glimpse of him, but a glimpse was enough.

  It was a face easy to remember — a round, fleshy face the color of mashed potatoes, with a lumpy, globular nose in its middle, sparse light hair on the head — the face of a guy called Ants. Anthony Cini, another of the boys who, like Mickey M., had been in Lou's old gang. "I don't have nothing to do with them guys no more," Lou had said.

  Well, maybe. Maybe Ants Cini, too, now planted seeds in the ground, and found peace by watching green things growing.

  In a pig's eye.

  Chapter Ten

  When I was hidden from anybody who might be watching from the factory I started running, veered right and went up the side of the low hill until I could look over its crest. From here the factory was about three hundred yards away — but two hundred yards away were a couple of chaps moving fairly rapidly in my direction. They weren't running — not yet — but they were walking like men in a big hurry.

  I turned and ran some more. When I reached the bunk-house I yelled Jim's name and jumped inside. He wasn't there. I called his name again and heard him yell, "Out here, Shell," his voice a little muffled.

  When I got outside and moved around the corner, I saw Jim. He'd pulled away a loose board, flush with the ground at the end of the bunkhouse, and was just crawling out. There was oil, or grease, on his hands and staining his trousers.

  As he climbed out he was talking. "After you mentioned it, Shell, I noticed the bunkhouse was bigger outside than inside. There's a little room at this end, sealed off, no door or anything."

  "The hell with that — "

  "Looks like they were fixing up a giant can for this place, or a still," he said grinning. "Or else it's a Sputnik. Some kind of pipes under there, but they aren't connected to anything yet — "

  "Jim, if you don't shut up, the next sound you hear may be guns going off."

  "Guns? What in hell are you talking about?"

  The men were in sight now. I'd made real speed getting here, but they were only two or three hundred yards away — and running, making prett
y good speed themselves.

  "I have just listened to a lot of jazz about gardening and pure baby foods," I said, "and maybe it's true. And maybe I was just supposed to think it was true. But those two — "

  "Gardening and baby — "

  "Listen to me, Jim. The guy who tried to kill you last night was Mickey M. Mickey M. used to work for Lou the Greek. The guy running that damned baby-food factory over there is Lou the Greek."

  He nodded, listening intently now.

  I pointed. "Those two guys may be bringing us some fresh cucumbers. But that's open to serious question, so you hightail it to the boat while I stall them."

  "I'm not going to leave — "

  "With you on the boat, where they can't get at you, it's not likely they'll try anything with me. Assuming they've anything unpleasant in mind." The two men were still coming toward us, but more slowly now. They were staggering, and not making a lot of headway, clearly in lousy condition. But they were too close to suit me.

  I knew there was a flare gun complete with colored distress signals on the boat and I told Jim to cruise off shore near the factory and in twenty minutes start shooting off the flares in the direction of the factory, but not near enough to hit it; just near enough to excite lots and lots of interest.

  He said, "Crazy," but spun around and ran toward the cruiser.

  He had nearly a minute in which to sprint away before the two men reached me. I even had time to take a peek past that loose board at the end of the bunk-house. It was dark in there, but enough light came through cracks in the thin boards forming the walls so I could see a goofy conglomeration of pipes and valves rising six or eight feet above ground level, but not connected to anything at its top. It looked like a giant erector set designed for grown-up nuts; or maybe Jim had been right and it was a still, like for manufacturing triple Zombies.

  "Crazy," I echoed Jim, then stood up and kicked the board loosely back into place as the sound of galloping feet reached my ears. I stepped away from the building as the two men staggered up, stopped a yard from me, and stood there, tottering and making wretched noises. One of them was the lanky beanpole. He pointed at the fleeing Jim and said, "He . . . Where's he . . . Oh-h." It took him another half-minute before he could say, "Where's he going? Wha — what's be . . . running for?"

  "What were you guys running for?"

  "Why, uh . . . We, uh . . . Uh . . ." He never did think of an answer. But he went on, "The boss, Lou, he says we should ask you and — " He looked toward Jim, a dwindling dot now about to climb aboard the Matthews. "You and, uh, your friend to come back to the office."

  "Why?"

  "Why? Well, he forgot something."

  I said, very pleasantly, "Maybe he wanted to know for sure who was with me, and how many of us there were, and sent you to make certain nobody failed to respond to his kind invitation."

  "Now, that don't make a bit of sense," the beanpole said.

  "Maybe not. Well, let's go see what Lou wants."

  Lou was seated behind his desk in the office this time. When the three of us came in he looked at us then past us, as if expecting somebody else. After looking a while, and frowning ferociously, he pulled his face into an expression approximating pleasant good-fellowship and said, "There you are."

  "Here I am, Lou."

  The beanpole said, "There was another guy with him, but he run to a boat."

  "He's out there listening to the two-way radio," I said.

  Lou kept his stiffly happy expression on and said, "Ah, that don't matter. I really wanted to see you, Scott."

  Sure, and he grew peonies as a hobby. I said, "The boys tell me you forgot something, Lou."

  "That's . . . right."

  He looked stricken. He had forgotten what he'd forgotten. I tried to make it easy for him to remember, because that was the reason I'd come back here so peaceably. "Hell, Lou," I said sincerely, "I thought you wanted to apologize for blowing up when I asked a simple question."

  "What question?" There was hope in his eyes.

  "When I asked if I could look through the factory. Believe it or not, I've never been through a baby-food factory."

  "Damned if that isn't it, Scott," he said jovially. "I shouldn't of blown up at you like that, and I realized it just the instant you was gone out of here. And I'd sure like to show you through the factory. Yes sir."

  "You've got a heart of gold, Lou."

  "Be with you in a shake." He got up from his desk and went into the next room, taking the two men with him. He came back without them and jawed with me for a minute — possibly, I thought, so his boys could do whatever he'd told them to do. Such as getting Ants Cini out of the way, or hiding the submachine guns. I looked at my watch. Just over five minutes left. When those flares went off, maybe nothing would happen; but possibly it would take a little attention off me. What I'd do then — if anything — I had no idea.

  Then the tour started, Lou Grecian conducting it himself and the beanpole tagging along. The whole building — except for about a fifth of it at one end which contained Lou's office, a kitchen, and some other offices and storerooms — was one huge room devoted to the production of canned baby foods. I'd almost expected to find nothing here, but the place was crammed with complex machinery and cardboard cases of small cans packed four dozen to a case.

  I stopped and picked a can out of one of the cases and looked at it, while Lou was explaining that "in them big vats over there" vegetables were stewed before being canned. The can I held had a picture of a healthy, rosy-cheeked baby on one side, and the crossed-spoons-on-white-triangle trademark on the other. I finally figured out that the white triangle was a diaper, and shuddered. The can was strained peas and carrots, and I put it back into the box.

  Lou was pointing out some of the machinery and explaining how the empty cans were carried along on moving tracks, filled with the still-steaming mush, and efficiently sealed. It was all very impressive. I was convinced that canning really was done here, but there wasn't a piece of machinery in operation, and the three of us were the only people in the huge plant at the moment.

  I said, "The joint is wild with activity, isn't it?"

  "Hell, not now," he said. "Not on Sunday. There's only a stand-by crew here on weekends, rest of the boys go home Fridays on the company boat." He waved a hand toward the area where hundreds of cases were stacked. "You should of been here Friday when we finished canning this batch. We'll ship most of it out tomorrow."

  "You really ship it out, Lou?"

  He looked straight at me, and for a moment his eyes were hard, but then he got that good-fellowship look again and said, "He jokes. Always a joker." He stepped forward and picked up a sheaf of papers. "This shipment goes out to San Pedro tomorrow, Scott. Ordered by the M. W. Wilson chain. Here's the papers on it."

  He showed them to me. Lou was really anxious to convince me. Or so it seemed. But the papers did show that about a hundred cases of Da Da Baby Foods, broken down into a dozen different kinds of vegetables and fruits, were going out on tomorrow's date to M. W. Wilson. And Wilson's was a widely known chain of supermarkets.

  So they shipped baby foods. So what? It was a baby-food factory. Maybe I was nuts. The twenty minutes had passed, and probably Jim was shooting off his flares now. Again, so what? I hadn't seen anything of much interest to me.

  Glancing around, I noticed two cases, filled with the little cans, separate from all the other cases. They were against the wall, under a table, one case on top of the other. The sight interested me mildly, and I walked toward them, saying, "What are those cases, Lou? Rejects?"

  It was really only mild interest at that point. But as I stepped forward, the long beanpole on my left jerked as if stuck in the hind end with a sharp stick. Before I could take another step, he got in front of me.

  Now my interest was no longer mild, so I managed, clumsily, to step on the guy's foot. "Hey!" he said.

  "Sorry," I said, and managed to land on his foot again.

  Lou said, "That's
right. That's some rejects, like you said." He kept stealing my ideas. "Some of the cans get sort of crimped around wrong going through the line, and naturally we can't send those out."

  "Naturally not."

  It had been twenty-three minutes by now, and I decided Jim's flares hadn't caused any curiosity at all. Or else the old flare gun hadn't worked. But I had let hope die too soon. At that moment a man stuck his head in the door and shouted, "Boss! Boss!"

  Lou looked around and screamed, "Quit yelling. What's eating you?" From his tone, something was eating Lou.

  "There's a funny thing . . . A guy in a boat is shooting something at us. Flares — or rockets — or . . . something."

  Lou swore and said to me, "What're you trying to pull, Scott?"

  "Me?"

  He let go with a few more choice expletives and started toward the door. Then he stopped and turned back toward us. I looked away at the silent machinery, so I don't know what kind of signals he gave to Beanpole, if any. But from the corner of my eye I saw Beanpole nod slightly.

  Lou walked briskly out, slamming the door behind him. That left the lanky guy and me alone in here, so I took a step and managed to bounce on his foot again, bumping him a bit in the process.

  "Listen, you lousy bastard," he said, and grabbed my right arm. So I swung my left and popped him. I got him a good one on the underside of his chin and he sailed away from me, landing on his back. He lay there silently, and I was moving as he landed.

  I grabbed a can from the nearest case, which turned out to be filled with strained spinach, ran across the big room to the two cases beneath that table. I slid the top one to the floor and grabbed a can from the middle of the bottom case. This stuff was labeled "Mashed Bananas." Maybe that's why they were rejects. Who would eat mashed bananas? I dropped the spinach into the empty space in the banana case, hoisted the second case atop it again, and sprinted back to the spinach. When I dropped the banana can where the spinach had been, all appeared normal. I fumbled in my coat pocket, found a ballpoint pen, lifted the case and scratched a big "X" on its bottom, dropped the case and put the pen back into my pocket. Then I leaped back to stand over the still unconscious man — barely in time.