Take a Murder, Darling (The Shell Scott Mysteries)

by Richard S. Prather

  Didi said, “Golly, you're big, aren't you?”

  I smiled losingly at myself some more. “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the fairest slob of all? But enough of this—I'm supposed to see Lawrance. Where'll I find him?”

  Didi pointed to a door fitted into the wall so neatly that it was almost invisible, except for a pink doorknob the size of a grape. “Through there and down the hall to the door that says Mamzel on it. He's in there.”

  “Ah-ha! Now the truth comes out Fabulous Lawrance is Mamzel.”

  She chuckled. “Hardly. He's just using her office today. Lita Korrel is Mamzel, and she looks nothing like Fabulous Lawrance—who is probably wondering where you are.” She smiled then, and a very nice, bright smile it was. “I'd hate it if you got fired.”

  I thanked her for her concern, went to the door, turned the pink grape, and walked down the hall beyond.

  The hallway was lined with closed doors on the right and there were a couple of closed doors midway down the hall on my left. Apparently on my right were the Mamzel's offices, beyond which was the parking area, and through those doors on the left was the real Mamzel's—the machines, and weights, and steam baths, the equipment to be used for improving the gals’ equipment. Soft sounds penetrated the wall on my left and floated pleasantly up against my eardrums. I didn't know what the sounds were, so I just let my imagination run riot.

  And then I saw the word Mamzel in a feminine script written in red letters on a door to my right, a miniature of the name outside over the entrance doors. I knocked and a man's voice said, “Come in, come in.”

  I stepped inside. A guy was coming around the side of a white desk as feminine as false eyelashes, his hand extended toward me. The room was done in pastel colors, pale blue walls, pink chairs and other frilly effects, and in these surroundings almost nobody could have looked more out of place than Fabulous Lawrance. Because he definitely wasn't the frilly type.

  I recognised his features from pictures I'd seen of him in the newspapers. It was a strong face, not very good-looking, but virile and with sharply delineated features. His hair was brown with a little gray in it, though he looked too young to have gray hair. His eyebrows were straight dark lines above his brown eyes, eyes that bored into mine as he grabbed my hand firmly and shook it. He was a little under six feet, heavy set but not fat.

  “You're Shell Scott?”

  “That's right. How do you do, Mr. Lawrance.”

  He steered me over toward the white desk, pointed to a pink chair near it and said, in his too-fast staccato, “Sit down in that, Scott. I might as well find out right off the bat how much nerve you've got. Actually, the thing is stronger than it looks. It may even hold you.” It did. Lawrance sat down behind the desk and asked me, “You ready to start working for us this morning?”

  “If I take the case. What's the trouble?”

  “All kinds of trouble. Let me give you a little background first. Mamzel's is a chain of body-contouring salons, a big name in the field—the biggest. Lita Korrel—she's the original Mamzel, the major stockholder, and founder of the Mamzel's chain—hired me to make the name even bigger. There are seven shops in the chain so far, and Monday we open three more. Tomorrow, Sunday, at three o'clock, there's a big TV reception and cocktail party at Horatio Adair's estate—reporters, TV cameras, the works—to kick off the biggest publicity campaign I've handled since the Medico Cigarette account. You remember that one—smoke your own penicillin, give your lungs a lift, all that. Anyhow, you can well imagine that this is the worst possible time for Mamzel's to run into trouble, right? All clear so far?”

  He got up and walked away from the desk, wheeled around, then came back and perched on the edge of his chair. Either he had so much energy it was plain leaking out of him, or his shorts were too tight.

  “All clear,” I said. “Now what's the trouble?”

  “Not just one thing. That's the hell of it. There's this dead woman—that may turn out to be the worst of it. But ... well, I'll take it in chronological order. First, we're having difficulty with Roy Toby. That's not all, but it's a good start.”

  “Sounds like a bad start.”

  “It is bad. One of the things I want you to do is keep it from getting worse. I called you because I gathered from Randolph's broadcast last week that you don't like Toby any better than I do. And that you're not afraid of him. You're having a fight with Toby right now, aren't you?”

  “Off and on. And with sixteen-ounce gloves, you might say. No bloodshed yet.”

  “If you work for us, you may have to take the gloves off.”

  “Suits me.”

  “Good. Now, all I really know about your beef with Toby is what I heard on the Randolph Broadcast. You mind telling me the whole story?”

  Actually, there wasn't a great deal to it. Roy Toby was one of the biggest crooks on the West Coast, a hoodlum busily engaged in building up an empire of slobs who weren't considered successes until they put the muscle on a grandmother, or shot holes in somebody with his back turned. He ruled over one of the slimiest, most vicious and dangerous groups of punks that had ever, so far as I'd been able to determine, been gathered together into one Southern California group. Toby should have been put out of business long ago, but except for a one-to-ten rap which he'd done in thirteen months a few years back at Quentin, he'd been free and unmolested.

  One of the guys who hadn't liked Toby's remaining free and unmolested was John Randolph. At least Randolph, during the last couple of months had been going after Toby hard and fast. And he had the power to make it hurt. The News and Commentary of John Randolph was a must in fifty million homes, if his publicity could be believed. As part of his campaign to expose some of the lesser publicized facets of Toby's revolting personality, Randolph had hired me to tail Toby for one complete day, in the hope that I might come up with some interesting info for his Saturday-night telecast. As it happened, the little I came up with was enough to please Randolph hugely.

  This past Saturday night, Randolph had quoted over the air several lines from the informal written report I had submitted to him. My reports are almost never examples of the way reports should be written, but Randolph had read it straight. He'd said: “I quote from the report to me of Mr. Sheldon Scott, the well-known local investigator. ‘I can testify that on the sixteenth of this month Roy Hoskins Toby, otherwise known as Kid Toby, did meet and consort with Manny “Hey-Hey” Koon, unofficial undertaker for the Jack Spratt Gang, and Paul “Ice Cream” Cohen, bad-check artist who did two bits at Q for carelessly forging ahead. All three of them went hunting, and Roy Hoskins Toby thus not only handled and fired a thirty-thirty rifle but also fired six shots from a forty-five automatic which he miraculously produced from under his coat. It is probable that these bums hunted rabbit with thirty-thirty rifles, forty-five automatics, and a twelve-gauge shotgun only because they didn't have their machine guns with them. And while Toby shot only at rabbits and hit air, it is my guess that he was merely keeping in practice for people.'”

  Then Randolph had hammered at the fact that Toby, who was on parole, did consort with known criminals and possessed and fired guns—both items in violation of his parole. Randolph had dwelt at length on those points and asked why Toby was still rubbing elbows with innocent men and women on the streets of Los Angeles.

  I explained to Lawrance how I'd happened to do the job for Randolph, and added that a couple of Toby's men had called on me the day following the telecast, which had been last Sunday, and warned me to lose all interest in Toby, or simply lose all interest. Then I asked him, “What kind of trouble has he been giving you?”

  “He wants a big piece of Mamzel's, and he's willing to pay for it—at the rate of about a nickel on the dollar. Or else. You know how he operates.”

  “Yeah, with a dull knife and no anesthetic. No anesthetic except a sap on the head, that is. One of his saps comes along and bangs you on the head. Who gave you the ultimatum?”

  “Toby came here himself about th
ree weeks ago and explained that he was particularly interested in Mamzel's since he controls Jason Fleece's Gym. I didn't know he was connected with Fleece's, did you?”

  “Yeah. He's the money behind Fleece. Now, anyway; maybe he got into that business the same way he's trying to worm into Mamzel's. He's got an office in the gym.”

  Jason Fleece was a man built like the realized dream of a 96-pound weakling. He'd been runner-up one year in the Mr. Universe Contest, right after which he'd opened a men's gymnasium here in Hollywood. Shortly afterward—or maybe before the opening, for all I knew—Roy Toby had become connected with the establishment. Jason Fleece's Gym was, you might say, the male counterpart of Mamzel's.

  I added, “Maybe Toby's trying to get a monopoly on bodies. Corner the meat market.”

  “Maybe. At any rate, the or-else wasn't spelled out. But Toby managed to make it clear to me that much unhappiness is in store for all of us connected with Mamzel's if he isn't made captain of the team.”

  “And he wouldn't have been kidding,” I said. “What do you want me to do? Shoot him?”

  Lawrance grinned, showing crooked white teeth. “I want you to convince Toby, if you can, that it would be very unwise for him to molest anybody connected with Mamzel's. That he would, in fact, be wise to forget he ever heard of Mamzel's. In other words, convince him that he has more to contend with than just a bunch of shapely women—and get him off our necks. Think you can do it?”

  “I can give it a try—but all the muscle in Jason Fleece's didn't keep him from worming in there. What I'm getting at is that I can't actually shoot him, or just walk in and bust him one in the mush. But I can and will let him know you're not going to knuckle in to him—and that I'm on your side.”

  “Good. That's exactly what I want.” He paused. “O.K. That takes care of the Toby mess. Now the even bigger mess. Early this morning, a woman named Zoe Avilla was found in a shallow grave a few miles out of town. Police traced her to the house she was living in, and there they found a list of some kind. Written on it were the names of practically everybody connected with Mamzel's. So the police came here first thing.”

  “What kind of a list was this?”

  “I don't know. Police asked me what it was all about. The way they glared at me, you'd think I killed the woman. Anyway, Scott, with our campaign really kicking off tomorrow, we need some help fast. I want to know what that dead woman had to do with Mamzel's, if anything, and what all our names were doing on that list—my name was on it, too. And I'd never even heard of the woman before. Well, there's the gist of it. You want the job?”

  “O.K.” We settled my fee, and then I asked Lawrance, “Anybody here know this Avilla woman?”

  He shook his head, “Nobody's admitted knowing her, anyway.” He got up and walked halfway across the room and back. This time he didn't sit down. He said, “Do you realize what a little beef now—when we're just starting to let go all barrels in publicity for the chain—could do to us? It could be ruinous. This is a million-dollar operation that could turn into penny ante if we get fouled up now.”

  “Back to Toby for a minute. He wanted to buy in? He mention a controlling interest or anything?”

  “No amount mentioned. It was a kind of funny deal.” Lawrance sat down again. “Toby must have heard about all the preparations for the big push, the publicity kick—it's no secret. He came here and talked to me for not more than ten or fifteen minutes. Basically, all he said was that we were going to be partners. There weren't any ifs or buts about it. He said I could have a week or two to get used to the idea, because he preferred to do these things in a quiet way. Without violence.”

  “Who shares in the profits now?”

  “Huh?”

  “Who owns Mamzel's, the name, the stocks, the works. Who makes the dough?”

  “Oh. Well, Lita owns sixty percent. I've got twenty—Lita let me buy in before the campaign, fortunately. But it cost me plenty. The other twenty percent is owned in varying amounts, by the ten girls who work here. The Mamzel girls. And Didi.”

  We talked a few minutes longer, but there was little more he could tell me. I got to my feet and said. “O.K., Lawrance. I'll move around a little and check back with you later.”

  Lawrance's phone rang. He grabbed it and said hello, then frowned. “Who in Florida?” He nodded at nothing, then looked at me, made a face and pointed his index finger at his head and waggled his thumb as if he were blowing his brains out. In the next second he smiled horribly and said, “Harry, old pal, how are ya, boy? Yeah? Swell to hear from you Harry.” He looked at me, his face sour, and shook his head slowly back and forth. I gathered that it wasn't so swell to hear from Harry. I waved a hand at Lawrance and left.

  When I swung out of the Mamzel's lot and headed down Sunset, a blue Chrysler Imperial across the street pulled away from the curb and fell into the traffic stream behind me. The only reason I noticed was because the Imperial is a good looking car, and I admire its lines. But the Imperial stayed about the same distance behind me, even though I changed lanes a couple of times.

  I wasn't really suspicious, but out of habit I swung right off the freeway before hitting the Civic Center. Just to see what the guy in the Imperial would do.

  He followed me.

  Up ahead, at the intersection, was an old warehouse that blocked the view of the street to the right. There was a stop sign at the corner. I glanced in my rear view mirror and noted that the Imperial was about a block behind, then tromped on the gas and picked up speed fast to the corner. I went past the stop sign without slowing down and swung right, slammed on the brakes and skidded to a stop at the curb.

  The Imperial skidded around the corner after me, right through the stop sign, tires screaming. The driver was caught completely by surprise. He spotted my Cad and started to stop, then changed his mind, stepped on the gas and shot by me, on to the corner ahead and around it out of my sight. But I got a look at him as he went by. From the way he filled his side of the car I guessed that he was a big man. He was good-looking, maybe handsome, with sharp features and dark hair. I had never seen him before.

  It seemed likely though, that I would see him again.

  CHAPTER THREE

  I drove directly downtown to the Police Building, parked in the lot and took the elevator up to the third floor. In Room 314, Homicide, I found Captain Samson chewing on a long, black, unlighted cigar and staring at several papers strewn on top of his desk. Sam is big and burly, rock hard, with sharp brown eyes and iron-gray hair, and a chin like a boulder. He looked up and grunted when I came in. “Well, which one of your clients is killed now?”

  “No client, Sam. Gal named Zoe Avilla got herself done in.”

  “Where'd you get onto that?”

  “I now represent Mamzel's. And all the lovely lovlies.”

  His clean shaven pink face grew an expression of disgust. “Mamzel's, huh? All them women! I'll bet you paid to get the job.” Sam shook his head. He's a career police officer, with eighteen years in the department, thirteen of them in Homicide, and as honest as Univac. Finally he said, “There's no secret about the Avilla thing. We don't know much except that she's dead.”

  “How was she killed?”

  “Strangled. Somebody wrapped his hands around her neck and choked her to death. Coroner's doing a PM—should be through by now.”

  “Strangled. The crime of passion, the sudden homicidal flip.”

  “Maybe. It's not always that pat. You jump to a lot of conclusions.”

  “Who, me? Sam, you know I'm the Sherlock Holmes type.” He snorted and I asked him, “You got any leads?”

  “One, maybe. A cuff link.” He used the phone, said, “Joe, bring that cuff link in here, will you?” and hung up.

  “How'd you identify her?”

  “We had her prints in the files. She fell from here.”

  “What for?”

  “She did a couple of a one-to-ten jolt on a five-eighteen P.C. at Tehachapi. When we knew her name, it wasn't
hard to find out where she lived. We were lucky to make it so quick, though.”

  “How long ago did she get hit with that sentence?”

  He told me, and when I had translated Sam's language I knew that eight years ago Zoe Avilla had begun serving two years of a one-to-ten-years sentence at Tehachapi for extortion, since 518 is the number of the paragraph in the California Penal Code which defines extortion.

  “When did she get killed, Sam?”

  “It looks like she got it last night. You want to look at her?”

  “Yeah. And I want to look at the spot where she was found.”

  He told me where the shallow grave was located, and added, “Couple kids were out hiking early this morning and found her, found the grave with a couple fingers sticking out. Looked like a quick job of burial, somebody in a hurry. The place isn't very far out.”

  A policeman came in, put something on the desk and left. Sam pushed the thing toward me. “One cuff link,” he said. “It was found near the grave.”

  I picked it up. It was big and heavy, about an inch square, apparently made of sterling silver with some black material inlaid to make a design that looked like small lightning flashes. I put it back on the desk and said, “One of my clients is Lawrance, the Fabulous press agent.”

  “Yeah. We talked to him this morning. Got ants in his pants.”

  “That's him. He told me a sheet of paper was found in the dead woman's room, and it had on it the names of a lot of people connected with Mamzel's. What was that all about?”

  “Here.” Sam pawed through the papers before him, selected one and handed it to me. It was an Ozalid copy of the paper which had been found in the dead woman's room. Written in pencil at the left side of the sheet were several names, and opposite them were figures. The first name was “Lawrance.” After his name was the figure “5.” The second name was “Horatio,” also followed with the figure “5.” The next three names and numbers were: “Ad ... 10,” “Felicca ... 2.” “Gedder ... 1,” and under the figures a line had been drawn and the total, “23” had been entered; a line had been drawn through this and “25” written alongside it.