What in He’ll do you mean? Of — I cut it off. Well, I’m not feeling too hot at that, Sam. Had a little trouble up here. I couldnt think of a way to tip him, not any way at all, now that my one try had flopped.
So I gather, Sam said. Look, Shell, you sounded a little . . . stirred up, you know? I called the owner of the Sun and Sage — after all, before I made a fool of myself I wanted to know more of what was going on.
He stopped. Uh-huh, I said.
Sam sounded apologetic. This Cordiner said youd been banged up pretty good, and he had a doctor in to look at you. So I spoke to this doctor . . .
Uh-huh, I said again: Good old Brown. While talking I’d been walking back and forth continually, a few feet each way. This time I’d almost reached the door, and turned toward Clyde. He popped a couple inches into the air, but controlled himself, moved across the room keeping his distance.
Yeah, Doctor Brown, Sam said. He claimed you wouldnt let him treat you — you had a paranoid reaction directed at doctors. He was going to give you a sedative and you told him you werent a bull. Then something about getting bitten by a horse. He thought you were going to hit him. And I hear you jumped naked out a door at some old woman. And there was something about you breathing through hollow tubes —
Never mind, Sam There was more; but I didn’t want to hear any more. Thank God he didn’t know all. It occurred to me that it would be very easy, by proper selection, to prove a perfectly normal person crazy; after all, I’m perfectly normal — and obviously I was mad as a hatter.
Sam went on, After that, you can understand I didn’t push too hard to get authorization — you can understand can’t you?
Sure, I said dully. Sure, Sam. I can understand. I take it you didn’t get any authorization to exhume —
Christ, no. You arent still going to tell me Garbin flew out that window and floated away into the sunrise, are you?
Well, I suppose I could have told Sam, bluntly, right then and there, some of the truth — what was happening now, or that Garbin really was alive, or that a man named Clyde was holding a gun on me — and have evidence in support of my words by letting Samson hear the shot that killed me. Besides, at this point, Sam would probably assume I’d had a paranoiac-schizoid reaction directed inward and shot myself to get even with me.
I said, No, of course not, Sam, and felt my spirits sinking, lower and lower, felt the fire that always keeps me going, going out.
Thank God for that, he said. I was, well, really getting worried about you, Shell. That was the He’ll of it. There just wasn’t a nicer guy anywhere than Sam and he probably was worried about me.
Dont worry, I said. I’m . . . fine. Life has never seemed sweeter than at this moment, Sam.
Clyde was grinning that miserable grin. Well, if nothing else I’d completed one full circuit of the room, letting the twenty-five-foot phone cord play out behind me. That cord lay on the floor in a wavering oval.
Then Samson said, Shell, take it easy, will you? Dont — well, dont overdo it, hear? He really sounded concerned. Come in when you get back. Look, I’m five minutes late now — meeting with the Chief. Glad youre O.K. See me when you get back, right? Well . . . so long, Shell. And he hung up.
Just like that. Click. And it was over.
With that click, the zip just went out of me. If my spirits had been low before, they had been soaring compared to now. It seemed as if I sort of crumpled inward, as if everything just sort of squeezed in toward the middle. That had been my one chance at Sam, and it had been a bust; Garbin and his hoods had the girls; Clydes gun was steadied on my chest. That moment, that long second, was for sure the lowest point, the depths. The fire flickered, and went out — well, almost. Not all the way out. It hadn’t ever gone all the way.
Clyde wasn’t grinning now. Not many guys grin when theyre going to kill a man. And Clyde was preparing to kill his man.
It would probably take him a few seconds to work up to it. Not many; a few.
So now was the time — my time. Right now.
Clyde was eight or ten feet from me. The plastic-covered cord hung from my phone to the floor, then ran in that wavering oval over the carpet, ending at it’s outlet in the wall. And the ovals rim opposite me was about a foot from Clyde — a foot behind Clyde.
I stepped toward the little stand against the wall as if about to hang up the phone, extending it in my right hand — while with my left hand, at the same time, I started gathering in the cords slack. The cord snaked over the floor, pulled taut against the back of Clydes shoe.
And good old Clyde, for the first time, looked down.
I straightened fast, cord gripped tight in my left hand, flipped it up and yanked as hard as I could. I really yanked, dropping the phone and getting my other hand on the cord, getting arms and turning body into the movement, and the cord pulled clear out of the wall.
But first it had flipped up and caught Clyde almost squarely behind his knees. His gun blasted and the slug smacked the wall behind me. Even toppling, he’d managed to keep the muzzle pointed toward me and pull the trigger, but the bullet was wide. Then he was falling backward.
I took one step and jumped, hit the floor next to him swinging my right fist. Without anchorage for my feet there wasn’t real power in the blow, but it landed on his chin and snapped his head up and back. I skidded, got a handful of face in my right hand, scrambled to my knees and tried to pull his face off, snapped my body around and hit him on the mouth with a solid, jolting left.
That one dazed him. The next one dazed him more. Because I got a little leverage into that right hand, and let my fist come down from high over my head, slamming his nose as if I were driving a nail with a hammer.
He wasn’t out. But his eyes lost focus and his hands moved without direction. I started to slam him again, but held back the blow; his nose was broken, pouring blood over his mouth; his lips were already puffing. Instead I bound his wrists and ankles with the phone cord, bound them tight enough to encourage gangrene.
Then I leaned over Clyde. All right, you bastard, I said. Now it’s my turn. How much that you told me was the truth?
All . . . all of it. The words were thick and mushy, but he could talk.
How many men at the cabin? And who are they?
Five, he said: Five besides Jules. Hal, Dodo . . . Green . . . A tooth fell out. Pete, Farmer . . .
The girls are there — and all right.
They were . . . they were.
I jumped to my feet — and just stood there.
For seconds I didn’t move, thinking, or rather trying to think — but it all added up to zero. I knew where they all were, even how many men, but there wasn’t a thing I could do about it. To get to that cabin I’d have to walk a quarter of a mile, in the open for a good four hundred yards at least, with hardly any cover. And even if I could become invisible and get there, which I couldnt, there wasn’t a hope in He’ll that I could take six armed men by myself. There was nobody here to help me either. Just about every able-bodied man had gone to the Running M, and even if one or two were still here theyd probably never handled a gun in their lives. Even a machine-gun expert would hardly join me in committing suicide, though. But I couldnt just sit here, I bad to do something.
I could call the sheriffs department, but — even without the fix in, according to what I’d heard Garbin say — it would take them an hour to get here. And I couldnt wait that long. Nor could April, Zia, Choo Choo, Delise. I swore aloud.
Scott. It was Clyde, trying to sit up on the floor.
Shut up, I’m trying to think. I had been trying to think for a good two minutes, banging my brains on a brick wall. Nothing. I was getting nerve-jangled, panicky. I had to move, but I had to have some kind of plan or it was sheer, simple suicide.
Clyde said, No, listen. Let me go.
I turned and stared at him blankly. Let you go?
Yeah — wait a minute. Look, I’ve been in with Jules here the whole year. I did heavy time back east, I’ll
admit, but I havent pulled anything here — except tipping Jules — bartenders hear everything. Jules has been lying low, except for working on some politicians trying to get a legalized gambling bill into the legislature.
So?
What I mean, youve got nothing on me, except this — me making you call the fuzz.
Coming here to kill me, you mean.
He’d worked himself onto one elbow, stared at me. O.K. I’ll even admit that. Sure, I was supposed to blast you. But I didn’t. What I’m saying is this, Scott. Except for you there’s no charge, no complaint, if you let me go. And the partys over. Jules will kill me himself if he gets out of this — but you know the whole score now. It’s all going to He’ll. It was good only as long as nobody suspected Jules was still living.
What are you getting at?
I’ll make you a trade. I know everything — how come Jules is alive, who got killed in Hollywood, what happened to Jeanne, all of it. I’ll spill it all to you — just let me powder.
Why, you miserable — I stopped. Maybe he was making sense. He wasn’t the guy I realty wanted, anyway. And there were still a lot of things I wanted to know. In fact, if I was going to get killed, which seemed a pretty good bet, it would help a little if I knew the whole score before I died. Not much, but a little.
Besides, I thought, I’d been racking my brains and not producing anything but confusion, getting my thoughts more jumbled. If I turned my mind from the problem of getting to the cabin, maybe that Unconscious Detective would stir something up. And, too, there was just a chance that the more I knew, the more I learned from Clyde, the better chance I’d have of staying alive.
So I said, I’ll make you a deal — but this is it. I wont let you go now. But I’m going up to the cabin, and if I get back I’ll turn you loose then. Not before.
Are you nuts? You go up there and youll get slaughtered, you wouldnt have a —
That’s it, Clyde.
He swallowed. I got your word on it?
Youve got it.
Great. A lot of good itll do me. Youll get kill —
Take it or leave it. And hurry up.
I’ll take it.
I stepped over to him and squatted by him. Then talk, and make it fast. Start with Jules. I know damn well he jumped through that window in the Hollywood-Crown. But he sure as He’ll didn’t land. So who did?
Booster named Dandy Eddie Wirtz. He did bits in Q a couple times, you can find his mugg in the L.A. books.
How was it worked?
It was all set up, everything planned. A beautiful caper — like robbing a bank. Jules went over and over it with Hal while he was in jail — he knew he was going to get the book, probably gas. Then Hal rehearsed us a dozen times. It had to be planned and timed like the Brinks heist.
Rehearsed what?
How Jules could keep from killing himself, that’s what. He knew he had nine hundred chances to kill himself even if it all went right and he got the chance to try it. But he didn’t have any chance in the gas chamber. The way they set it up, Green and Pete had Eddie Wirtz in a room two floors down, right under Jules penthouse. Still alive, of course — so when he fell he’d yell good and loud. When Jules went through the window on the sixteenth floor and let out his yell, Green and Pete shoved Eddie out the window down there on fourteen — and then, naturally, Eddie started yelling.
Naturally. For just a moment I shivered, putting myself in Eddies place. Starting down.
Clyde went on, It went just like Jules figured. He crashed out and grabbed the ladder and they hauled him up to the roof — and Eddie hit the bricks.
Ladder? I said. What ladder?
Sixteenth floor is the top of the building. On the roof was Dodo, since he’s the strongest, and Farmer. They got a ladder like the kind you climb on boats with, only not made out of ropes. It’s a nylon ladder, they call it. Thin, but strong enough to hold up Jules. It’s tied to a pipe on the roof, with Dodo and Farmer letting it hang down alongside the window Jules means to jump out of, and hanging onto it themselves, besides. Jules, when he’s pulling back the carpet in his bedroom, could look out and see it dangling off to one side there before he went through the window, see? All he had to do was grab it — a He’ll of a lot easier with a ladder than a rope, which was the idea — and hang on good, while Farmer and Dodo hauled him up to the roof. That’s how it was, didn’t take more than five seconds to have him on the roof and out of sight — dark up there, anyway. Well, once up there he changed coats with Pete, stuck on a fake mustache, a hat and dark glasses, and walked down during the time when everybody was flipping — walked right past his dead body. It wouldve been embarrassing if Jules had missed the ladder, naturally, since then thered of been two guys splashed on the bricks. And the boys would all have been in the soup. Especially Jules. But it worked just like Jules planned it.
This guy. Dandy Eddie. They had him dressed in one of Jules suits well in advance, same kind of shirt and tie, that sort of thing?
Yeah. Hal fixed all that up, made sure there wouldnt be anything obvious to give the switch away. Hal said when Eddie landed after falling fourteen floors he’d get knocked cockeyed. Eddie looked a He’ll of a lot like Jules — which is why he was picked for the switch — but not that much like Jules. It was essential, said Hal, that his head bust open, which it would. And did.
Then Jules came straight here?
Yeah, with Green as gun and bodyguard, and Farmer for the wiretaps and tapes, odds and ends. Chose here because it’s isolated but close enough to the action — and he’s got good contacts here. Besides, along with changing his hair and mustache and all, the cowboy duds he can wear make him look nothing like what he did.
You mention Green and Farmer. Was one of them the other cowboy who tried to blast me when I got here yesterday? Along with Hooper?
That was Farmer.
How about Jeanne Blair? My guess is she was killed because she recognized Jules up here.
You guessed right. I was working the bar when it happened. Saturday night almost everybodys out at the barbecue or dance, so Jules and Hal and Farmer were alone in the saloon having a drink. This Jeanne came in. He’ll, nobody even knew she was anywhere around, it was like she came out of nowhere. She sat at the bar, and I noticed she kept watching the guys in the booth by looking in the mirror behind the bar. I didn’t know who she was. She looked kind of shook up, got a creepy expression. Then she turns and just stares at the booth — at Jules, it turns out. Finally she walked across the room to Jules, reached out and took off his dark glasses, and let out a scream you wouldnt believe. Then she ran out like something was after her.
Something was. Jules sent Hal after her, I suppose.
Yeah. Go get that bitch, he says.
And . . . who killed her? Was it Hal?
No.
I was surprised at the sense of relief I felt when Clyde said it wasn’t Hal. He went right on, Hal took her straight to Jules suite, and Jules made her stay the night with him there, then the next morning, early, Jules took her for that last canter. Pops her on the head. That’s it.
And that was it as far as I was concerned, too. I stood up.
I wish you werent going to get killed, Clyde said.
Quit saying that. Every logical atom in me insisted it was total battiness for me to think I could charge a quarter-mile, in broad daylight, up an open canyon, arriving with bullet holes — and possibly even spears, and bows and arrows sticking in and out of me — and then casually dispatch to their just rewards six maniacal hoodlums. Thered be no help from the sheriffs department, nor from Samson, nor from anybody else here at the ranch — which left it up to me, if anybody. And that was a laugh. What I needed was about forty good marines.
Well, I was an ex-marine, and by God I was going to do it. At least, come He’ll or high water, I was going to have a crack at it. Crack? Either my head was opening, or little bony castanets were clicking, or something was stirring again in the mind of Shell Scott, the Unconscious Detective.
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It was odd, but the very moment I decided, come He’ll or high water and in defiance of logic, sense, and maybe even sanity, to go ahead and give it a try — then, right then, the answer, or some kind of answer, came.
It wasn’t all at once, not in a rush, but a slow surge of thought, pictures, goofy images clicking before my minds eye. It started with a tickling sensation on the back of my neck, a chilling of my spine, and then the whole thing, the fruitcake answer. Maybe it was still bats; but not totally bats. At least there was a chance it would work.
Then I got my two guns, slipped the Colt .38 into it’s clamshell holster under my fringed buckskin jacket, and dropped the pearl-handled six-shooter into the holster on my hip and stuck Clydes nine-shot automatic in my pants pocket, and put on my white sombrero. All I needed was a horse — but that I could do without. Instead of a horse, I ran to my Cadillac. There was no point in overdoing this thing.
Then with Jules Garbin, four beautiful tomatoes, and numerous ugly hoodlums revolving under my sombrero, I galloped off in the Cad, headed that away.
chapter eighteen
I gunned the Cad to the stables, past the stalls in which Vixen and Diablo stood eyeballing me as I zoomed by, and slid to a stop at the little office where Russ and I had been once before.
Inside the office I spotted the peculiar rifle which Russ had used for calming that obstreperous bull, grabbed it and the box of syringes, then jumped back into the Cad and was on my way again.
I had my weapon now. Only one more item was needed. My disguise. In the jungle warfare of World War II, Japanese soldiers tied gobs of jungle on themselves, so they would not look like Japanese soldiers, but like gobs of jungle. Where I was going, up that open canyon, there was no jungle, at all. But there were little desert shrubs, sandy brown earth, and lots of rocks and boulders.
So far, so good. Here I was, armed with my tranquilizer rifle, and disguised as a rock.
Not exactly a rock. A boulder. Taking the long — safe — way around from the ranch to the lake I’d traveled by Cadillac; from the lake to here I’d traveled by feet. More precisely, foot-by-foot by feet, walking inside the big gray Hollywood-prop boulder, hanging onto the two-by-fours inside it. And hiding behind other boulders whenever possible.
The Cockeyed Corpse (The Shell Scott Mysteries) Page 14
