The Scrambled Yeggs (The Shell Scott Mysteries)

by Richard S. Prather

  “No, I'm all right. The doctor's for Peel, Victor Peel, owner of the Seraglio, and my ex-cient.

  “Ex-client? What goes on?”

  “I'll give you all the dope when you get out. And get this: you're going to bust into a safe out here, so bring somebody along from Burglary to check it.”

  “You loony? We can't go around busting open safes.”

  “You can this one. Peel's not going to object. Look, Sam. I'll explain everything. Just get out here and get your boys started out and bring along the doctor. It's all right, believe me.”

  I put the phone back in place and felt sick. I got up and felt sick. I walked over to the door and cracked it open and walked back and sat down and felt sick. I put my head down on the desk and kept swallowing. I don't know why I didn't just get sick and have it over with.

  I lifted up my head a few minutes later when Samson came in the door followed by a little guy with a black bag and gray hair.

  I felt as if I might have a few gray hairs, myself.

  Chapter Seventeen

  I SAID HELLO to Sam, then pointed at Peel lying in the corner. He still hadn't moved. I hoped he wasn't dead.

  “Better take a look at him, doc,” I said. “His mouth's mashed up a little.”

  The doc walked over by Peel and opened his black bag.

  Samson said, “What the devil's coming off, Shell?”

  “Safe man on the way over?”

  “Yeah. Ones coming out from Burglary. He's practically here. He'll probably recommend a safe expert from one of the safe companies in town.”

  “Okay. Just so it's fast.”

  Samson frowned. “Now, what's it all about?”

  I jerked a thumb toward Peel. “My client. Anyway, he was till half an hour or so ago. He's your boy, Sam. He's what's left of the kill syndicate, the hit-and-run artists. He's the boss-man and he's all that's left. He's also the bastard that had the job done on Kelly.”

  Samson's mouth dropped open. “You kidding me?”

  I shook my head wearily. “Straight stuff, Sam. There were only three of them to begin with. Peel here and two thugs. The other two were just legmen, the boys that did the actual dirty work. Peel's the brains of the outfit and the other two are in a black Lincoln out on Doheny Road. They were earlier. Both dead. I called it in to the complaint board an hour or so ago.” I lit a cigarette. “You might check on Charles. He let you in?”

  “The big guy with the nose?” Sam nodded, “One of the boys is outside with him now.”

  “I think he's clean,” I said. “Peel says he just works here, so I imagine that's all he does. I hope so. For no reason, I kind of like Charles.”

  The doc snapped his black bag shut and came over. “You'd better get this man to the hospital. He's pretty well banged up.”

  Samson said, “He's not going to conk out on us, is he?”

  The doc shook his head. “No. He needs attention though. He has a concussion, but he should be all right if he's given proper attention. Needs some new teeth, too.”

  Samson got on the phone and called for an ambulance. As he hung up, another man in civilian clothes came in the door.

  “Man for the safe job,” Samson said. “What's the deal?”

  I brought him up to date. I explained to Sam all that Kelly had told me earlier in the afternoon and briefed him on the last half hour I'd spent with Peel. I wound it up by saying, “So, when you get that safe open, you should have as big a mess of dirty murders on your hands as there's ever been in this or any other county. There isn't any reason to believe the recordings aren't in the safe. Peel had an idea I'd never live long enough to tell anybody about them. And he was almost right. You've still got Peel for anything else you want. You ought to have a whole cityful of unsolved murders all wrapped up in that safe.”

  Samson said, “I'll be damned,” shook his head and stuck a black cigar in his mouth.

  I said, “You can get off to a good start by picking up Eddie Kash, Sam. That's a pleasure I'd almost like to reserve for myself. Kash got pressed for money along about the first of the year and I think you'll find when you go over his records that he started making out checks to a fictitious firm or firms that didn't exist except in his chiseling mind. He'd make out the checks himself—for goods that were never delivered—then endorse them himself, too, in the name of the fake company, the Middleton Manufacturing Company.

  “You'll find somewhere in those recordings that Eddie hired Peel and his boys to take care of his partner, Elias Johnson, when Johnson got on Kash's neck. That's what started the whole vicious circle I've been running around in. Eddie didn't know who the murder boys were that did the job for him on Johnson, but he did know that whoever it was had the records. Maybe they wouldn't stand up in court, but it sure as hell wouldn't do him any good. That made him a soft touch when Joe Brooks—or Joey Maddern—started his little squeeze play. You can bet that when he found out the guys he'd hired didn't know anything about the blackmail touches, he almost fell on his face. Then he gets to thinking. If it isn't the syndicate, then who is it? Now, if he found out that, instead of a gang of professional killers, it was just some punk like Joe...”

  I stopped talking and let my mouth hang open foolishly. It didn't come up at me, wham, and slap me in the teeth. It just sneaked up into my brain, insidiously, and started doing a minuet in the gray cells. Slow and easy. It started dancing a little faster and kicking up its heels and banging into things. Some of them it knocked over, and some of the others joined with it and pretty soon my whole brain was jumping like crazy. I stood up slowly and started for the door.

  Samson said, “What the hell. Where you going?”

  I stopped and turned around. “Did you say you didn't see Joe's body?”

  “Yeah. What about it?”

  “Anybody here that did?”

  He shifted his cigar to the other side of his mouth and shook his head. “What the hell—”

  I turned and started out the door.

  “Where are you going?” Samson yelled.

  I kept on going. I kept on going down the hall, lightheaded and mentally beating myself about the ears with a blunt instrument.

  I walked into the night club and it surprised the hell out of me that people were laughing and drinking, having a big time. It seemed as if I'd been a thousand miles from the gaiety and music in the Seraglio. I walked on through, out the front door and down to my Cadillac. I started the car and headed back toward downtown L.A. At Temple Street I parked the buggy opposite the Hall of Justice, ran across the street and went down into the basement.

  It was cool in the morgue.

  Emil, the attendant that I knew from several previous trips to the morgue, got silently up from his chair and came toward me.

  I started taking off my tie. “Good to see you, Emil.” I took off the tie, draped my coat over his chair and started unbuttoning my shirt. “I've got a question. Then I might want to look at one of the deceased.” At the Los Angeles County Morgue the stiffs are the deceased.

  I peeled the shirt down off my back, turned around and let him take a look. “Ever see anything like that before, Emil? On one of the deceased?”

  He stared at my back and shook his head, “Man, you get tangled up with a wildcat?” He furrowed his brows and added, “Yeah. Yeah. Got a deceased in back kinda like that.”

  “He still here?”

  “Yep. Wanta look?”

  “I sure do.”

  Emil turned and led the way. I followed him down between cloth-covered tables to one halfway down the room. Emil reached for the cloth covering. “Think this is it,” he said.

  I looked down at the still, composed, dead face with the little wisp of a mustache and the blond hair full over the ears. There was a rectangular tag on the big toe of his right foot: “Joseph Louis Maddern.” I was finally meeting little Joey.

  I said, “I'd like a look at his back, Emil. Okay?”

  He nodded and turned Joe's body carefully over on its side. I looked
. There they were—furrows dug into the flesh like the furrows I'd seen the night before reflected in the mirror in my apartment. Like the furrows on my back.

  I stared at them a minute, then said, “Thanks, Emil. That does it.”

  He looked at me quizzically. “What's it all about?”

  “Murder,” I told him. “A funny damn murder. Thanks for the help.”

  I buttoned up my shirt, stuffed my tie in the pocket of my coat and put the coat back over my shoulder. I went out and walked heavily up the steps and across Temple to my car.

  I said softly, “The little bitch. The damned little bitch.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  I ROLLED OUT the wings and let the breeze blow against my face as I drove. The breeze was cooler tonight and it felt good on my skin, but it couldn't go down inside me and take the hard lump out of my stomach. End of case. Party's over. And I didn't even feel very happy about it. I looked at my watch. Eleven P.M. on this Sunday night. I didn't feel much like doing what I was going to do, but it was one of those things that have to be done sooner or later.

  I slipped the .38 out of the holster and ejected all the shells. I dropped the shells in my pocket with the tie and stuck the gun back where it belonged and listened to the purr of the Cad's engine.

  She was still up and she looked wonderful, smiling at me. I went inside and walked over and sat down on the divan. She came over and sat down beside me and looked at my face, puzzled.

  She asked softly, What's the matter, Shell? You look funny. What's wrong?”

  I looked at her and kept on feeling sick while I said, “It's all over. I've been going around in circles, but just tonight I got wise. It's all put together and everything fits and it's funny I missed it this long. I know you murdered Joe and I know why and I've got to call the police and tell them to come on out and get you.

  She didn't say anything. Just looked at me.

  “I'm sorry,” I said. “I really am. I'm sorry as hell, Robin.”

  She didn't go into an act or throw a fit or anything. She looked at me out of the wise, beautiful brown eyes and said, “You're not serious, are you, Shell? Not really?”

  “I'm serious. I wish I weren't, but I'm serious. It's finished, beautiful. You're washed up. Maybe you'll be lucky.”

  Her eyes narrowed and she shook the masses of rusty-red hair that made me think of sky over a South Pacific Island. “I didn't,” she said. “I didn't kill him, Shell. Believe me.”

  “Uh-Uh, Robin. It was you. I liked Eddie Kash, but I checked him and he was clean. It wasn't Dragoon. It narrows down to you.”

  She eased over by me on the divan, pressed close against me. “Forget about it, Shell. Please forget about it.” Her breath was warm on my cheek. She muzzled her mouth into my neck and whispered, “You don't know. You couldn't know anything.”

  It was odd. We sat on the divan, close together, her face buried in my neck, her hair tickling the skin of my face. And we talked about it. Quietly. No screams, no violence, no anger. Just quietly and calmly as though it was an afternoon tea or we were going to laugh and have a drink in another minute. But there was a coldness in my stomach and I knew we weren't just playing a game.

  She knew it, too.

  I said, “Robin, you told me Joe didn't run around with the girls, with other women. You told me yourself you loved him, wanted to marry him. You were living with him. You had him under your skin. So, when you found out he was two-timing you with somebody else, messing around with another women, you killed him. Say you killed him because you loved him, maybe, or because you were jealous, or call it revenge. Anyway, it was murder and you're it, Robin.”

  The blood seemed drained from her face and she put her hands on my shoulders and pulled me close to her. “Stop it. Stop it,” she hissed at me. Then softly, tenderly, “Shell. Shell kiss me. Please kiss me.”

  I turned my head, looked down at her. She reached up with her left hand and pulled my head down to hers. Her lips were cold, dry, stiff under my own.

  It would have been easy to stop her. She was obvious, clumsy. But I didn't. I let her go ahead, wondering if she really would, wondering how far she'd go. Her right hand crept under my coat while she pressed my lips hard with her own. She nibbled gently on my underlip with her teeth, but I could feel the gentle pressure of her hand as it found the gun.

  Then her lips were gone and she shoved away from me and sprang off the divan, the gun in her hand. Her face was twisted, her lips parted and tight against her teeth. She stood facing me, the gun in her right hand, her legs spread apart on the carpet.

  And she didn't wait. She didn't wonder about it, didn't hesitate for a second. She raised the gun in one smooth motion and pointed it at my chest. She breathed once through her teeth, “Shell,” and pulled the trigger.

  The hammer fell with a sharp click and she pulled the trigger again and again, the gun pointed at my heart. I didn't move. I sat on the divan and watched the puzzled, then frustrated expressions grow and die on her face. I watched her face go blank and fall apart when she realized what had happened. And I watched while she stopped being beautiful.

  Her face got dead and her lips came open and the flesh sagged around her mouth. The gun dropped from her limp fingers to the floor and she slowly crumpled and lay sobbing on the carpet.

  After what seemed a long time, the words bubbled haltingly out of her anguished mouth.

  “It doesn't make any difference now. I've been living in hell anyway. I loved him,” she sobbed and her soft body quivered as she lay on the floor. “I accused him of being with another woman, cheating on me and he laughed. He laughed at me. Told me he was tired of me, he was going to leave me. We had a fight, an awful fight. We'd both been drinking a lot.”

  She slowly pulled herself to a sitting position and sat and stared at me dully, mascara smeared in black smudges on her cheeks and under her eyes. “It made me hate him more than I thought I could hate anyone in my life,” she said in a flat, empty voice. “I kept on giving him drinks and he gulped them down like water while we argued. He got groggy and I went around behind him and hit him with one of the bookends. I kept on hitting him. I must have been out of my mind. He slumped over on the divan and I guess I sort of went crazy. I didn't know what I was going to do. I tried to pour some more liquor down his throat and on his clothes and buttoned up his shirt and somehow I got him outside and into the car. I just started driving, wondering what I was going to do. I remembered something in the newspapers about a lot of accidents and I thought this would maybe look like just one more accident. When I got out on one of the dark streets around Elysian Park, I opened the car door and shoved him out. I didn't even know what street it was. It was dark, that's all. I was going fast and for a minute I thought I was going to lose control of the car.”

  She shook her head and looked down at the carpet. “Maybe it would have been better if I had,” she said. “I came on home and parked the car and waited for the police to come. I almost went crazy, waiting.”

  I got up and walked to her and pulled her to her feet. I led her over and sat her down on the divan.

  I said, “You might as well tell me the rest of it, Robin. How about the things you left out? Eddie. The blackmail angle.”

  “You know about that, too?”

  “Most of it. I know Joe was squeezing Eddie dry. At least I think it was Joe—it could have been you. But you knew about it.”

  “I knew about it,” she said listlessly. “But it was Joe. Eddie kept losing and losing at Dragoon's and Dragoon wouldn't let him bet any more. Then Eddie's partner got killed and Eddie had a lot of money all of a sudden. Joe got an idea and made a phone call to Eddie and said he knew he'd killed his partner. He didn't give any name, but it worked anyway. Joe was surprised it worked so easy, but just so he got the money he didn't care. It was his idea that I get pretty close to Eddie so I'd be able to keep an eye on him and know if he got suspicious. Joe wanted me to pretend he was my brother. It wouldn't have looked very good to E
ddie if he'd known I wasn't just a sister to Joe.”

  “Hardly,” I said. “That's the way it figured. Tell me, Robin, you weren't thinking of keeping up the squeeze on Eddie all by yourself, were you?”

  She snapped her head around and glared at me from her red, mascara-ringed eyes but didn't say anything.

  I said, “Anything else you want to tell me?”

  She didn't answer but leaned forward and hugged her legs, her face pressed against her knees. I walked to the phone, dialed the number of Victor Peel's Seraglio, and asked for Captain Samson. He was still there and while I waited for him to answer, I took a last look at Robin. She wasn't the same; she was older, uglier, emptier. I probably looked ugly, myself.

  It's a lousy business.

  Chapter Nineteen

  ROBIN was gone, taken unresisting and quiet by the husky boys in the blue uniforms. The heavy brass bookends were missing from the little table, gone too, on their way to the laboratory for examination, and Samson and I sat in the front room that Robin had just left.

  Samson worried the inevitable black cigar and said, “I guess that does it, Shell. How'd you settle on Robin for the Joe thing?”

  “Well, there were five of them close enough to count and some little ones on the fringe that didn't mean anything. The big ones were: Victor Peel, who hired me but wouldn't give me his reasons; Robin, the passionate ‘sister'; Fleming Dragoon, where Joe worked; Fleming's screwy sister, Sara; and Eddie Kash. I liked Eddie for it so much I hated to lose him. It seemed he really had the motive, but I checked his alibi myself and it was cast-iron. Out Eddie. You know why Victor Peel was out. That's two gone. It could have been Dragoon because Joe was dipping into his till, he was a sticky-fingered little guy. But there was a funny angle on Dragoon—he didn't know for sure that Joe was dipping into the profits until he beat it out of a little guy named Harry Zerkle. Zerkle and Joe were in on the chisel together and Dragoon had to beat the truth out of Zerkle. If Drag had been the guy who knocked off Joe, he'd already have known the whole story before he killed him. And beside, Joe would probably have been messed up a lot more than he was. I've seen Fleming at work and Joe would have spilled his guts once Drag or his hoods started working him over. So, out Dragoon. That leaves it narrowed down tentatively to the two dolls, Sara and Robin. Sara might have had a motive. Joe was chummy with her and winded up kicking her around a little.” I grinned. “I know because I saw the bruise and it was still fresh enough to have happened within just a few days.”