“Yes. I was home all evening. Watched television. The police came about eleven or a little after. Joe had been out for an hour or two then. I didn't know where he was. He'd just told me he was going out to see a friend of his, a fellow named Harry Zerkle, for a little while. That was about nine or nine-thirty, I think. Next thing, the police were here telling me he'd been hit by a car. They asked me some of the same questions you have, but I guess I didn't pay too much attention, I was so frightened.”
As soon as she'd mentioned Harry Zerkle, I got a picture in my mind of the little guy with the meat-loaf face in Dragoon's office. I said, “Zerkle? Did you say Joe left to see this Zerkle?”
“That's right.”
“Friend of his?”
“Yes. I think it was someone he'd met fairly recently down where he worked. One of the horse-players, I imagine; I never met the man.”
I filed that away for later. I said. “Anything else?”
“Not much. The police asked me a few questions about Joe and then I had to go down and identify him. It was pretty awful.” She shuddered violently and put her glass to her lips. She seemed surprised that it was empty.
She sighed and shook her head. “Let's not get morbid.” She smiled. “Drink?”
“O.K. One more, then.” I didn't want to make a pig of myself. It was sure good bourbon. But what bourbon isn't? The way I was beginning to feel, it must also have been potent bourbon.
The little mixing table was between us and she leaned over and poured and mixed. She leaned way over. I've mentioned the four-button blouse she had on with three buttons unbuttoned. This time I didn't close my eyes; I was practically through investigating anyway. For the time being.
She didn't have on a brassiere. I wasn't guessing; there wasn't any doubt about it. No brassiere, just the stuffing. But what stuffing!
I was admiring the stuff with my eyes protruding when she looked up and caught me. She didn't straighten up or get bashful or try to hide anything. She just smiled. a little wickedly I thought. I hoped.
“Newest style,” she said.
“How?”
“Style. It's all the rage.”
“Rage. Yeah. I've been waiting years for it.” I swallowed a couple of times, took another look, and said stupidly, “Nice. Yes sir. Looks cool.”
“It is,” she said. “Nice for summer.”
“Nice for summer. Uh-huh.”
She finished mixing the drinks and sat up. Everything went back into its proper place including my eyes.
I had it all planned. I'd take the drink, toss it down and ask politely for another. But instead we sat there and sipped at our drinks and made small talk. I found out her parents were both dead. Mother when she was born, father just after she graduated from Hollywood High. No, she hadn't ever thought of going into the movies, ha, ha. Silly boy. No, really, I mean it. Silly, silly, silly. She'd worked around at various jobs: movie usherette, cashier, waitress for a while, did a little modeling now. I told her I'd got the fine scar over my left eyebrow from brass knuckles—thirteen hoods had attacked me and I'd pulled off their limbs and beaten them to death. Yeah, thirteen. Yeah, beat them all to death. By the time I'd massacred all those hoods, it was eight o'clock.
I stood up weaving hardly at all. “Thanks for the information, Robin. I've got a couple places to go from here. Did I bring a hat?”
“You didn't bring a hat.” She saw me to the door. opened it and leaned against the wall. “Come back if you need anything else,” she said.
I ground my molars together, nodded at her, leered and went out.
Chapter Three
THE SUN was long gone, but half a block down Windsor, a steady stream of cars rushing east and west lit up Beverly Boulevard. Friday night—people going out on the town: high school kids with three months’ savings heading for the bright lights in rented tuxes; movie people wrapped in mink and dark glasses on their way to a reserved table in some exclusive club on the Strip. Somewhere in L.A. or the flicker city maybe, a guy getting rolled in an alley or the back room of a cheap hotel. Laborers, executives and clerks out on the town—and all of them sweating like drunks in a steam bath. Damn, it was hot. Someone should make underwear out of blotters. There'd be a fortune in it.
I climbed into the Caddy, rolled out the wind-wings and pulled into the packed traffic on Beverly, headed toward downtown L.A. and police headquarters. No Ciro's or Mocambo for me, not tonight anyway. After this case, maybe. There was a big fee in it when I was through. And the guy paying for my superlative services could well afford it; he had plenty of the folding green.
The way it started, I was feeding the dozen guppies I've got in a ten-gallon aquarium in my office in the Hamilton Building on Broadway downtown, when the phone started making sounds like a cash register. I hoped.
The guy on the other end of the phone was the man with all that folding green. Victor Peel, calling from his ultra swank night spot on Wilshire Boulevard. It was a job, he said, would I please come over? I would and did. That had been at six o'clock, approximately two hours back.
Peel's night spot was appropriately named the Seraglio, which Webster defines as a harem or, loosely, a place of licentious pleasure. I'd been there before but never on business. Not this kind of business.
You go inside and after the at least partial visibility on Sunset, it seems like suddenly everything goes black. But after your eyes get accustomed to the gloom, it's cool and pleasant.
One of the reasons it's pleasant is the hat-check girl on your left. You check something with her and admire the lady's costume. And the lady. Her costume is repeated on all the other concession gals in the Seraglio and you don't mind the repetition a bit: sparkling imitation jewelry studding a dangerously skimpy brassiere which looks transparent but isn't; and a pair of long, bloomer affairs resembling the things Turkish gals wear in B pictures, made out of cheesecloth or similar stuff which looks transparent and is. After you've admired the check room cutie's costume while she smiles at you like one of the Sultan's favorite wives, you do an about-face, stumble down three steps and you're in the night club proper. Some people say night club improper.
At a quarter after six in the P.M., the place was just a long, dark wood and chromium bar on the right facing twenty empty stools, and a bunch of white-covered tables grouped around the small dance floor squeezed in front of an empty bandstand.
I skirted the bandstand on the right and walked up to a velvet-covered archway. A big guy with a beautiful red nose stood in front of the archway with thick arms folded over his barrel chest. The small gardenia in the lapel of his dark dinner jacket wasn't nearly big enough to hide the bulge under his left arm. I stopped in front of him and admired the splendor of his nose.
“I'm Shell Scott,” I said. “Peel wants to see me.”
“What's he want to see you about?” He had a rumbling voice like San Pedro Harbor on a foggy night.
“I wouldn't know. He just wants to see me. Let's ask him.”
He thought about that a while, like a man moving a piano with his brains, then said, “O.K., come on. You first.”
He followed me through the archway, down a narrow hall past a couple dressing room doors which unfortunately were closed, then left down another hall to a door marked, “Private.”
He knocked and in a minute the door opened and a chunky guy with blue eyes like ice cubes, long sideburns and a thick brown mustache looked out at us.
“Yes?”
“You called me,” I said. “Shell Scott.”
“Of course. I'm Victor Peel.” He said it like it was Abraham Lincoln.
He nodded at Red-Nose behind me and I went in.
Peel shut the door and the room got very quiet. Soundproofed. Then he nodded me to a chair and asked, “Do you drink, Mr. Scott?”
“Almost anything.”
I told him what I preferred and he got busy at a bar on the left of the room while I sat down in front of a huge mahogany desk and watched him. He was heavy, about five-
feet-ten and a hundred and ninety pounds. Close to forty-five, with a mat of thick, dark brown hair flecked with gray at the temples, and well-dressed in an obviously tailored brown suit. His face was heavy, square, with little blobs of what looked like fat at the back of his jaws. He made the drinks with an efficient economy of motion, handed me mine in a tall glass and sat down.
“How would you like,” he said, “to make five thousand dollars?” His speech was soft, clipped, almost bookish.
“All right,” I said. Depends.”
“On what?”
“On what I have to do to get it.”
He grinned. I noticed his teeth were a little crooked. “I expected something like that,” he said. “It's nothing illegal. Probably it will be just routine for you, Mr. Scott. If I had wanted something illegal done I should have chosen another man. I checked very thoroughly on you, Mr. Scott, in my limited time. I'm a thorough man.” He rubbed his chin with a thick-fingered hand. He needed a shave. He continued, “I want you to investigate the death of a man named Joe Brooks. On Wednesday night he was killed in what was apparently an accident. Hit-and-run. He was apparently hit by a car and his body was discovered on Solano Avenue about eleven at night. I say apparently, because for reasons of my own I suspect that he was murdered. I want you to determine the facts and if Mr. Brooks was murdered, which I am quite sure is the case, determine who killed him.”
“Let me get this straight,” I said. “It looks like this Joe Brooks gets hit by a car and killed. You think it's murder and you want me to find out who and why. Right?”
“Exactly.”
“Screwy.”
He frowned at me from the brittle blue eyes by lowering his straight, thick brows a quarter of an inch. “Mr. Scott,” he said deliberately, “I have not the slightest interest in whether or not this is, as you say, screwy. I've told you what I want and I believe you'll find in time that it is not an unusual request. If you do not wish the case, you have merely to say so. All this is, of course, in confidence.”
“Sure.”
“You'll take the case?”
I thought it over for a minute while I looked around the office: beige walls, slightly darker ceiling, indirect lighting, three heavy leather chairs, desk, swivel chair, Venetian blinds, bar. Nice. And expensive.
“O.K.,” I said. “I still think it's screwy.”
“Fine.” He showed me his crooked teeth again and pulled a long, ostrich-leather wallet from his inside coat pocket.
He riffled a mass of bills and pulled out a thin sheaf of green, slid it across the smooth dark top of the mahogany desk. I picked it up and thumbed through it. Hundreds, ten of them. Ten C-notes. I slipped the pretty things into my wallet.
“A thousand now, four thousand when you've finished,” he said.
“Suits me.”
He leaned back in his chair and caressed his thick mustache with big, blunt fingers. Wiry brown hairs sprouted from the back of his hand. “Now,” he said, “I have certain information which may be of help to you. This Brooks works or, rather, worked for a betting commissioner named Fleming Dragoon.”
“I know him.”
“You know his place?”
I nodded and gargled some of his bourbon.
“Good,” he continued. “Mr. Brooks lived, I understand, with his sister, a Robin Brooks. He had been there for some months.” He handed me a slip of paper with a North Windsor address written on it. “So far as I know, he had been in no outstanding trouble. If he had, I naturally want to know about it. As a matter of fact, Mr. Scott, I want to know every slightest development in the case. That must be clearly understood.” He glared at me.
“Don't pop a blood vessel,” I said. “It's understood.” He blinked. “That's all the information I have. I'd like you to get started on it immediately.”
“Tonight,” I said. “Right away.”
I finished my drink, walked over and put the glass on the little bar. “I'll come back in to see you when I get anything,” I told him. “I'll report to you personally. No written reports. I'm my own secretary. If things start to pop, I might be out of touch for days, maybe weeks. I'll keep you posted as much as I can. When the thing winds up, I'll make you out a report if you want it. In triplicate.”
He pursed thick lips together, then said, “That will be eminently satisfactory.”
“How about a little more,” I said.
“A little more what?”
“Dope. Information. What's your angle? Where do you fit in with a guy getting knocked off on a dark road. I'd like to make a little sense out of this set-up.”
He wound his hands together on the desk and patted two thick thumbs together. “I have my reasons for desiring this information, Mr. Scott. They are private reasons; you are a private detective. Enough said.”
“Not enough. But I'll buy it. For now. But,” I growled at him, “I reserve the right to return your retainer,” I tapped my hip, “and get the hell out if I think the deal's starting to stink.”
He didn't say anything for a minute, then nodded. “Fair enough,” he said. His eyes looked frozen; he looked as if he could be rougher than Red-Nose outside in the hall.
I looked at my watch. It was six-thirty. “I'll get to work,” I said. “There's probably somebody still at Dragoon's. I can start there.”
“All right, Mr. Scott. The matter is now in your hands. One thing more, you're completely free on this, except I wish you to leave me entirely out of the investigation.”
“O.K. You're out.”
I didn't see him press any buzzers or flash any signals, but the door behind me opened and Red-Nose stuck his beautiful beak in. “Everything O.K., boss?”
Peel nodded, “Mr. Scott is leaving, Charles.”
I walked over to Charles. “I know,” I said, “me first.”
At the velvet-draped archway I said, “Charles, you'd better get a bigger gardenia.” He started moving pianos again and I left him.
I stopped at the check room and gave the willowy blonde my ticket. She unhooked my handkerchief from the elastic band of her Bagdad bloomers and handed it to me.
She tilted her head back and looked down her nose at me. “It's an odd thing to check,” she said smiling.
I grinned at her, “It's also an odd place to check it.”
“I'm lazy.”
“I'll bet. I don't wear a hat; that gave me an excuse to come back.”
She moistened her lower lip with a pink tongue, “You don't need an excuse, mister.” She smiled some more and I took a deep breath and went out.
That's how it started.
Chapter Four
SAMSON looked up from behind his paper-littered desk and gave me a big friendly frown. Samson's like that. Big and extremely hard boiled—on the outside—with iron-gray hair and a strong, clean-shaven jaw. Detective Captain Phil Samson, eighteen years in the department, thirteen in homicide. A good, honest cop. I liked him.
I pulled up a chair, straddled it and lit a cigarette. There was another guy already talking to Samson. A young, nice-looking kid about twenty-five or so, clean-cut, not very big and neatly dressed in a dark blue, pin-stripe suit.
“If you're busy,” I said, “I can come back later, Sam.”
“We're about through. But don't bother me too long,” he growled pleasantly, “I'm ready to hit the hay.” He turned to the kid, “Meet Shell Scott, Kelly. Shell, this is Tommy Kelly, reporter on the Examiner.
We said how-do-you-do's and Sam stuck a black cigar in his mouth. He asked around the cigar, “What's it this time, Shell?”
“Guy named Joe Brooks. Hit-and-run Wednesday night. I'm checking it for a client. Anything fishy about it?”
Samson gave me a funny grin, “You and Kelly should get together. We were just talking about the same thing. Not Brooks especially but hit-and-run. You know the stink the papers are making about it.”
Kelly chimed in, “Yeah,” he said in a high, eager voice, “the Sentinel's riding high on it. How I'd love to get
a scoop on that outfit.” He grinned boyishly then subsided into silence.
“We've been checking this hit-and-run thing a couple months now,” Samson said slowly. “Checking back. A lot of them have been screwy. His big jaw wiggled like a lump of cast iron while he chewed viciously on his cigar. “Not much I hate worse than a hit-and-run. Some mugg gets charged up or drunk and behind the wheel of a car, bangs into some guy, then runs off and leaves him dead or getting ready to die. Or crippled.”
“What's with homicide?” I asked.
“There's been some screwy angles. Like we get a guy on a hit-and-run call looks like he's been clipped on the highway somewhere. Only he's all beat up maybe. Or maybe the only mark on him that could have killed him is like a monkey wrench instead of a car bumper. Maybe the guy's supposed to be home eating dinner only he's ten miles away on a dark road. Things like that.”
I took a last drag and ground out my cigarette. “So what does it add up to?”
“It adds up to something big. And vicious. Same old story with a new twist. You know how it is, Shell. In a big city there's always a lot of big guys. The big guy wants somebody out of his hair or just out of the way. And the big guys don't do their own jobs. They almost always hire it done like we'd hire someone to wash the car or mow the lawn. A simple business transaction, that's all.”
Samson stopped and lit his cigar. I'd been waiting for that; I knew he'd get around to it sooner or later. Usually it was later. He got the cigar dragging to his satisfaction and said from behind a cloud of foul-smelling smoke, “The way it looks, the kill boy, or organization or gang, whatever you want to call it, gets paid for a job. They fix the guy—bang him over the head, beat him, tie him up, anything—then smack into him with a car or run over him and that's the end of that. Maybe they dope the victims; we've picked up dead hay smokers, hop-heads, drunks, a little of everything.”
I said, “Aren't you maybe reaching a little for that one? This master-mind or organization stuff, Sam?”
The Scrambled Yeggs (The Shell Scott Mysteries) Page 3
