“They're sure as hell careful,” I said. “But that's understandable.” I looked at Kelly. “You don't have a thing more than before you were taken out there, do you? You didn't recognize anybody, or any voices or anything. Right?”
“Right.”
“No scoop, then.”
He shook his head sorrowfully, “No scoop. Just a mess of trouble for everybody. I'm sorry as hell.”
“Maybe it isn't as bad as it looks. At least something's stirred up. And, one thing, we know there's some kind of organization behind a lot of the killings in L.A. You didn't get any line on how they planned to do the job?”
“Not a thing. Not a darn thing.”
I sat and thought a minute. “If the whole conversation was down on a tape recording—your name and the whole works—what a beautiful blackmail caper that could be worked into.”
He shook his head some more. “Isn't it awful?”
“I don't know. Maybe you really fell into something, Kelly. You better get down to headquarters fast. I've got a couple of things to do; I can't very well go lock myself up till this blows over. The payoff isn't supposed to be till tonight, so probably nothing's supposed to happen till tomorrow anyway. But you can imagine what happens when you don't show up to pay off. Can you get downtown?”
“I've got my car.”
“Okay. Flash down there right now, give the boys at headquarters the whole works and get them to assign somebody to stay with you. If Sam's there and he doesn't pass out completely when you tell him what's up, he'll probably want a regiment on your tail. Tell him I'll be down later. I want to check in with my client and I've got some other things to do. You know, Kelly, I think you've given me a couple of leads that may percolate into something. So maybe it's not all wasted.”
“I sure hope so,” he said ruefully. “I feel kind of bad.”
“Just take it easy,” I said. “And be careful. Go straight to headquarters. These guys are specialists; ruthless, cold-blooded killers. The worst kind of killers. So watch your step.”
He nodded at me and went out. I polished off the toast, gulped the last cold swallow of coffee, left four-bits on the table and took off. I figured I'd better bring Peel up to date. After all, the guy was paying me.
Chapter Fourteen
I STOOD BY the check room and let my eyes get accustomed to the gloom inside the Seraglio.
I said to Maxine, “Hello, blue-eyes.”
She said, “Hello, you wolf.”
“Hey now,” I said. “Be nice. Where do you get this wolf stuff?”
That's what it looked like last night when you left. With that ... that overstuffed female.”
“Business, purely business. Say, you get my message?”
She tilted her blonde head back and glared down her nose at me. “I still say baloney,” she said. “Business!”
I grinned at her and went down the three steps into the club and over to the velvet-draped archway. Charles greeted me with a foggy, “Hi, Shamus.”
I said, “How's about seeing Peel?”
“Sure. You first.”
I went on into the narrow hall. The door to the first dressing room was open and it was immediately evident why they call them dressing rooms. Gloria Wayne squealed, “Scotty, don't look at me,” grabbed a silk robe and threw it around her delicious shoulders.
Hell, she'd left the door open, hadn't she? Of course, I'd stopped.
“Hello, Gloria,” I said and grinned. “It's good to see you.
“You're awful,” she pouted. “Why didn't you come to see me last night? I thought I asked you real nice.”
“You did. Real nice. But I had work to do. I'm an investigator, remember?”
“How is the investigating, anyway, Scotty? Any good clues?”
“So-so. I pick up a clue here, a clue there.”
“Anything interesting?”
“Yeah, you're interesting. And that robe's about two sizes too small.”
“You startled me; I just grabbed the handiest thing. When'll I see you?”
“Dunno. I may be pretty busy for a while.”
“No kidding?”
“No kidding. I might have my hands full.”
She grinned at me. “I'll bet you will, Scotty. I'll bet you will.”
I grinned back and went on down the hall.
Peel opened the door and said, “I was wondering when you'd be in to make a report, Mr. Scott. Sit down.” He indicated a chair in front of the desk. I relaxed in it and lit a cigarette.
“I've been busy,” I said. “But things are moving right along.”
Peel caressed his brown mustache with a thick finger and fixed his icy blue eyes on me. “Do you know yet who killed Mr. Brooks?”
“No, I don't know who killed him, but I'm getting ideas. I've covered quite a bit of ground so far and that's all I've actually got—ideas.” I brought him up to date on all I'd dug up, with the exception of Kelly's little caper, while he stared at me from under his straight, heavy brows.
When I finished he said, “Very good. You've done quite well, Mr. Scott, in this short time. I hope the investigation continues to progress as satisfactorily.”
“I think it will,” I said. As a matter of fact, it should be faster; the groundwork's all laid now. I might have something definite for you tomorrow.” I got up. “I've got some ideas I want to work on so I'd better get started. I just wanted to bring you up to date.”
“Fine. I appreciate it, Mr. Scott. Would you care for a drink before you leave?”
“No thanks. I'll stop outside and have a drink with dinner. My stomach's growling.”
The door opened right on cue and the red beak was stuck inside. I preceded Charles down the hall and at the archway I said, “You sure pop in and out without any warning.”
He pointed to the wall behind the velvet curtain. “Buzzer,” he said. “The boss rings when he wants me.”
“I'm a big boy now,” I told him. “I can find my way in and out.”
He shook his head. “Boss's orders. That's the way he wants it and I ain't gonna argue with him.” His big face creased in a healthy grin, “I gotta have something to do, don't I?”
I said I guessed he was right and went on out. Prime-ribs was on the menu again but I settled for a thick steak.
Gloria came out and had a drink while I devoured my steak. She engaged me in light conversation and pumped me about the case and looked glamorous in a gold lamé gown cut low in front revealing square inch upon square inch of her claims to fame. I convinced her that I couldn't wait around and take her home tonight and, pouting, she let me leave.
As I passed the check room on the way out, Maxine said, “I can't believe it.”
“What can't you believe? My friends again?”
“Nobody on your arm.”
I laughed. “Must be slipping. No, I decided if I couldn't have a willowy blonde, I'd settle for nobody.”
“Am I a willowy blonde?”
“Sure. Do something willowy.”
She clasped both hands behind her neck and swayed easily from one side to the other. It was willowy enough for anybody. I told her Salome had nothing she didn't have except more veils, and left before she started doing the bumps. Not that I'd have minded.
I left the Caddie parked at the curb near the entrance to the Seraglio and walked to the drugstore on the corner. It was after seven o'clock and lights were on all up and down Wilshire Boulevard, chasing away the darkness. I went inside the drugstore, found a phone booth and put a call through to Samson.
He answered and I said, “Sam, this is Shell. Did Kelly give you the lowdown on what happened last night?”
When he answered, his voice was taut, strained. Something was up. “No,” he answered. “I don't guess he will. Did you see him?”
“Yeah. What—”
“How long ago?” he interrupted. “Couple hours or less. What's up? Didn't Kelly talk to you?”
“No, he didn't, Shell. Kelly's dead.”
It got to me slow, but it got to me just the same. For a minute I thought Samson might be kidding me, then it sank in. They'd got him. Kelly's little play of the night before, the Saturday night “lark” he'd started out on, had got the kid killed. And I'd been halfway responsible for that myself. I felt as if I were going to be sick.
Noises sputtered out of the receiver, “Shell? Shell?”
“Yeah, Sam,” I said slowly. “That hit me where I live. I sent him down to see you about an hour and a half ago. I was afraid something might happen to the kid. Damn it! I thought if he got down to see you he'd be all right. How'd it happen? When?”
“Just got it a few minutes ago. I phoned your office but you weren't in. A call came in to the complaint board and the fast car went out. I guess he was beat up pretty bad and dumped from a car at high speed. Just about the same as a lot of the others. Only there wasn't much of a try to cover it up.”
“Sure. It had to be that way, Sam. That's their way of telling us to lay off.”
“What do you mean?”
“The kid got to that kill mob last night and tried to give them a fast story. It didn't work. So they got him. They probably worked him over good before they killed him. And they gave it that hit-and-run technique just to rub our noses in it. One thing, that ties the cocky bastards in with the hit-and-run kills.”
“You mean Kelly actually went through with that crazy deal you told me about?”
“Yeah. It was a fool play from the beginning. If I'd taken the kid seriously when it came up, maybe this wouldn't have happened.” I gave Samson a sketchy outline of the story Kelly had given me earlier in the afternoon.
He said, “Of all the damn fool—”
“Knock it off, Sam. It's done.” My numbed brain started working a little. “Sam,” I said, “I left Kelly a little before six o'clock. It wasn't dark yet. All he had to do was drive down to headquarters and he didn't have any reason to go roaming around. They must have picked him up between where he left me and your office. They must have had a tail on him. They must have been tailing him all the time."
He thought of it at the same moment. “Shell, if they tailed him, they must have seen him talking to you. They know sure as hell he spilled to you.”
The sickness started fading a little and I began getting mad. I could feel the anger rising up in my throat and I realized I was grinding my teeth together till my jaws hurt.
“Shell,” Sam said, they'll be after you next. I'll send somebody out.”
“Never mind. They wouldn't get within ten blocks of me if I had an army of cops around. I've got something to do.” I thought of something else. “How about Mrs. Kelly? Does she know?”
“I don't see how she could, Shell. We just got it ourselves, probably doesn't know anything about it.”
“I'll tell her, I said. “I feel like maybe I ought to tell her.” I told Sam I'd see him later and hung up.
I took the .38 Colt out of the holster and stuck it in my right coat pocket. I kept my hand on it as I left the booth, went out of the drugstore and walked back to the Cad. In the car, I put the gun on the seat to my right and pulled away from the curb. And I was hoping that the same guys who'd got Kelly would come after me. Those boys needed killing bad and right then I felt ready, willing and able—and maybe even a little eager.
Chapter Fifteen
I DROVE OUT fast, feeling sick and bitter, burning with anger. I didn't pay much attention to the road behind me; I was more worried about what was up ahead. How the hell was I going to tell his wife? What was I going to tell her?
I parked on Norton in the darker blot between two street lamps, left my gun on the seat and went inside the Holloway Hotel.
The clerk at the desk gave me the room number and I went up. I knocked on the door and a small, pretty woman in a dark print dress opened the door and looked at me out of cool, grave eyes.
“Mrs. Kelly?”
“Yes. What is it?”
“I'm Shell Scott. May I come in a minute?”
“Why, certainly, Mr. Scott. Please do.”
I went inside and took the chair she offered me. She sat down on a couch at the side of the room a few feet from me. I looked at her and then at the floor; I honestly didn't know what to say. You can't just blurt out that a woman's husband has been killed, that he's dead.
She said it. “Something's wrong. Something's wrong, isn't it?” Already there was a trace of panic in her voice.
“Yes,” I said. “I'm sorry. There's been an accident.”
She sat very still for a moment, looking directly at me, then her lips pulled back against her teeth and the muscles in her neck stiffened and drew taut. “It's Tommy,” she said in a tight voice. “It's Tommy, isn't it? Isn't it?” She was almost hissing at me between her clenched teeth.
I nodded at her dumbly as if I didn't have a tongue.
“How bad...” she started, then stopped and looked at me. She looked at me while I swallowed and wet my lips. Realization seemed slowly to grow on her face and somehow, with that strange, intuitive awareness women sometimes have, she knew.
She said suddenly, “He's dead. Tommy's dead. Tommy's dead.” She said it over and over while her face got blank, her eyes staring. Then her neck went limp and her head rolled forward over to the side as if she had no control over it. I stood up, went over to the couch. I thought she was going to faint, but she raised her head and stared blankly at the wall, her hands clenched, tears rolling down the tight-set mask of her face. I sat beside her and mumbled ineffectual words of sympathy that she didn't hear.
She sat like that, quietly, for long minutes. Then she shuddered, sighed and said in a dull monotone, I'll be all right, Mr. Scott. Thank you for staying. I think I'd like to be alone with little Tommy, with the baby.”
I told her where she could reach me if there was anything I could do, and went out.
They picked me up in the hall.
They didn't wait for me to get outside where I could make a run for it—if I'd wanted to run—and they were neat about it. Practiced, efficient. As soon as the door closed behind me, I spotted the first guy lounging up against the wall to my left, hands stuck deep in the pockets of his jacket. At almost the same instant, a guy I could barely glimpse out of the corner of my eye slammed the muzzle of a gun into my ribs.
He said in a scratchy voice, “Keep your trap shut, Scott,” and fanned me expertly with his left hand. He said surprised, “He's clean. Imagine that. Pretty boy's clean.”
The guy lounging against the wall jerked his head back toward the stairs and straightened up, his hands still dipping into his pockets. He was big, with the flabby, almost obscene bigness of the hypo-pituitary and his eyes were tiny red slits in his dough-white face. He made me think of a writhing pile of maggots I'd once seen, with one bigger and fatter than the rest squirming at the top like the king of the roost.
I turned my head and looked down at the other gunman. I'd never seen either of them before. The guy on my right had a bald head that came just up to my nose, but he had the long, thick torso of a much taller man. It was his legs, stunted and bowed, that made him look short and squat and deformed. His eyes were set wide apart over a big hooked nose and thick, red lips.
I said, “You murdering son of a bitch.”
His eyes narrowed and he drew back the gun in his hand, ready to smash the butt into my face.
“Jug!” The word snapped from the throat of the big slug on my left with surprising crispness and a note of authority.
The little guy's face screwed up, he lowered the gun and spat deliberately into my face. His spittle struck my chin and dropped onto my shirt.
I rubbed my hand across my chin and said, “You murdering son of a bitch.”
He looked straight into my eyes and his face relaxed a little. He said in a scratchy voice, “Oh, brother. Oh, brother,” and smiled as though the right half of his mouth was paralyzed. He jabbed the gun into my side so hard that it forced a grunt from my lips. “Move,” he said.
<
br /> I turned and walked down the hall. The fat guy waited till we'd passed, then fell into step a couple yards behind us. The gunman called Jug slipped the gun into his coat pocket and said, “Easy, brother. Real easy.”
It was all very quick and quiet. Nobody heard us, nobody saw us. We walked down the one flight of stairs and the little guy mumbled, “Say goodnight to the guy at the desk.”
I nodded to the clerk, said goodnight and we walked outside and turned left. I could see my car gleaming about ten yards ahead and another few yards beyond it a long, black job. The black job was probably theirs.
I was seething inside. The anger was like a red flood in my brain. The way I felt it seemed I could take them with six slugs in my guts, but I wanted that gun on the seat of my car. I couldn't know if these goons intended leaving the Cad or taking it along.
We drew abreast of the Cad and I took a quick step toward it, stopped, then started back down the street as if I'd suddenly changed my mind.
Jug grabbed me by the arm and bored his gun into my spine. “What's the matter, pretty boy? What you tryin’ to pull?”
Fat Boy came up behind us and said, “What's the play, Scott. Want to leave your car here?”
They held a short, whispered conversation behind me. There wasn't anything said that I could hear, but the little guy pulled me back to the Cad and said, “Get in, brother. Keep your hands up and slide under the wheel.”
I eased inside, keeping my hands in the air in front of me, planted my behind on top of the .38, and slid under the wheel. The .38 slid along with me.
“Both hands on the wheel, brother. Twenty miles an hour. Get back on Wilshire. Any faster than twenty and you get it in the guts.” He had the long-barreled revolver out of his pocket and aimed at my middle.
I eased the car into gear and crawled up Norton to Wilshire.
The little guy snapped, “Turn right. Straight out toward Beverly Hills.” I turned right; the black job, a big Lincoln, hugged close behind us.
The Scrambled Yeggs (The Shell Scott Mysteries) Page 13
