Dead-Bang

by Richard S. Prather

  “Yeah, well, that’s first base as far as I’m—”

  “I am not speaking of you, Sheldon. I would be offended if you failed to realize it. Essentially, I am speaking of individuals like the Lemmings of the Lord, and others less fanatical and less miserable but almost equally misled. Misled by ideas that have become dominant in Christian doctrine over the last sixteen hundred years. Long ago …”

  He stopped, examined both sides of his thumb, then folded his hands on the table and looked at me. “No, I will not burden you with the full catalogue of names and dates, chapters and verses. We would be here throughout the day and into the night. We would have to examine all major influences on Christianity, from times both before and after the birth of the first Christian, who, as you recall, was crucified—or hanged on a tree, according to Peter and Paul and other Apostles … but no matter. We would be required to examine very carefully the singular influence upon Christian origins of Gotama the Buddha, who for presumably good reasons is vastly revered to this day, and who in a huge burst of brightness, concluded that life was pain, sorrow, suffering, misery—not merely for him, but for everybody—so the only solution was to get out of it.”

  “Get.… How do you do that without killing yourself?”

  “I don’t know. Buddha knows.”

  “Doesn’t sound like a burst of brightness to me.”

  “That is because you are not spiritual enough—which brings me back to my point. The Buddha was an unusually sheltered youth of twenty-nine when he left his parents’ home and set forth to find wisdom, and though it took him perhaps seven years to achieve illumination under a tree, he did find it.”

  “The tree?”

  “Wisdom.”

  “In that case, I think I’ll settle for dumbness.”

  “In this case, that is wisdom.”

  “Something is cracked—”

  “Something, perhaps. But it could not have been Gotama—Buddha is merely a title, by the way, meaning teacher, and the man was named Gotama as other men are named Bill or Tom or Pete—for Gotama the Buddha was an Avatar, one cosmically enlightened, who discovered Truths. That’s with a capital ‘T,’ Sheldon. People like you or me, or Bill or Tom or Pete, may stumble upon little truths, but we must depend upon Avatars like Gotama, and the cosmically illumined, and our religious teachers, to discover Truths. Particularly Spiritual Truths.”

  “Who says so?”

  “They do.”

  “Sorry I asked.”

  “And that is how we know—as found to be one of the greatest, if not the greatest, of Truths by Buddha—that the reason life is so miserable is desire. And desire at its very worst is exemplified by woman, whom we must therefore avoid like the seven-year itch.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I’m quoting. Well, accurately paraphrasing.”

  “But, pretty quick, nobody would be left—”

  “Precisely. That is the idea. Is it not brilliant? Our interest is that, from Buddhist wisdom, this idea sneaked into and became part of the Truth ennobling and glorifying Christianity. You see, possessed of all this wisdom—I shall not burden you with the rest of it—Gotama became consumed by the desire to share with others, hopefully all mankind, these pearls of his wisdom. So he did. At least, he did his very best, which turned out to be quite good, with the result that even today hundreds of millions of people, including the majority of Christians, while perhaps renouncing Buddhism by name, have unknowingly absorbed its pearls. Such as, the flesh is evil and woman a snare—”

  “Wait a minute. You say Buddha was consumed with desire to spread this bilge to everybody?”

  “Yes. Precisely. Well put, Sheldon.”

  “But—consumed with desire? Isn’t he the same Avatar who said desire is undesirable?”

  “Yes. Precisely.”

  “This is maybe a different desire?”

  “No. Same one.”

  “Then how …?”

  “You ask very perceptive questions, Sheldon. Of course, I practically forced this one upon you. Still, you asked it. Therefore I shall insist that you answer it.”

  “But I can’t.”

  “Ah.” Bruno smiled. “Then we are all in the same leaky boat, aren’t we?” He leaned back, crossed one long leg over the other, and clasped his hands around his knee. “Enough of the Buddha. More, we shall not even look at similar views of the major author of our New Testament, Saint Paul of Tarsus, or at the Manichaeans and their one-time disciple, Saint Augustine, not at the numerous major and minor Popes and popes and innumerable life-hating poops, not at Wesley or Calvin or Saints or even Festus Lemming.”

  “I’m glad of that. I’ve got to go to the john, Doc.”

  “Suffer a little. It is good for the soul.”

  “The hell with that. I could get constipated.”

  “Naturally. You are supposed to get constipated. Now, we are discovering why so many loving Christians hate Erovite—”

  “We are?”

  “More correctly, you are discovering it. I already know. Very simply, there is a belief, a rumor, an assumption abroad that the God of all the Universe made man of flesh and of spirit, and that the spirit part of man is marvelously good, but the flesh part of man is marvelously evil. It is clear to discerning minds, then, that God goofed. Obviously, He did not know what He was doing—”

  “How—”

  “Please. I am telling you what our teachers tell us. And, because I cannot, I will not explain it. Ah, well.” He straightened up, stretched his long arms. Then he relaxed once more and said, looking not at me but at one of his trees, “Surely, the fall of man came, not when we are told it came, but when some men declared the flesh evil and other men believed the lie. Festus Lemming is the logical abortion of that bastard conception. And he must oppose Erovite, or else admit to himself that his entire life has been a waste and a ruin.”

  I’d put the bottle of Erovite on the table before me. Bruno leaned forward, picked it up, and looked at it with a gentle smile on his face, like a boy looking at a new puppy.

  “Perhaps now you understand a little better why—among many others—the Sainted Most-Holy Pastor is leery of this glop.”

  I grinned. “Yeah, quite a bit better.” I looked at the brown bottle in his hand, wondering about it, even wondering about a couple of things Samson had said to me last night. “Doc, does Erovite really do everything you and Dru, and apparently a lot of other people, say it does?”

  He nodded a couple of times, not speaking.

  “And you and Dru, and Dave Cassiday, are the only people alive who know the formula? The full, complete … Formula B, I think you called it?”

  He looked at me, eyebrows arching upward above his bright blue eyes. “Dru and I, yes. But Dave doesn’t know it What gave you that idea, Sheldon?”

  I didn’t answer him for a while. Finally, I said, “I suppose I assumed it because he’s the manufacturer, he made the stuff for you—at the Cassiday and Quince Pharmaceutical Company. And last night you mentioned adding more glop to the glop, saying you and Dave did it. He doesn’t know what’s in Erovite?”

  “Not everything. The basic formula, yes. And I meant that only Dave was present when I added the rest of the formula to the vats, not that he knew what I added. But—what difference does it make?”

  “Maybe none. Maybe a lot. I figure the best chance right now of finding out who’s responsible for putting the snatch on you—assuming it wasn’t the bright idea of those mugs who did the job—is to get next to the two mugs still alive and loose, and lean on them. Whoever’s behind it, we’ll find somebody with motive—money, revenge, cleanse the world, who knows? Until this minute I assumed Cassiday had no motive because he already knew the entire formula. Hell, the way you tell it, Erovite could be worth hundreds of millions at least.”

  “It is. But you can eliminate Dave from your investigations, and even suspicions, Sheldon. He’s an old friend, completely trustworthy. I’m sure you realize there could be at leas
t a thousand men, now unknown to us, who are not only aware of Erovite’s value but greedy and conscienceless enough to employ any violence in the hope of gaining possession of the formula.”

  “I’ll go along with that. But when it comes to where and how I go on a job—and my suspicions—I’m afraid I’ve got to be my own buddha, Doc. Before I’m through, I may suspect you of snatching yourself.”

  He smiled. “You have had no success in locating, or even identifying, the two men?”

  “Not yet. Captain Samson started checking them out last night, and the police machinery has a better chance of tagging them than we do. Incidentally, Sam made a good point when I talked to him. Those two toughs might have moved the bodies of their pal and André from the house, or they might have taken those shots at Lemming, but considering the time element they couldn’t have done both.…”

  I stopped, as a thought sort of tickled my brain, then hauled off and smacked it. “I’ll be goddamned,” I said softly. “Of course. How could I have missed it?”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Those two toughs who grabbed you took the shots at Festus Lemming, all right. Or, rather, they didn’t shoot at him.”

  “They did … but didn’t? Sheldon, how—”

  “They fired the shots, but not at Festus. They were trying to kill Regina Winsome.”

  14

  “Regina?” I said. “This is Shell Scott. Let me in.”

  “No!”

  I looked at the number on the door. Right place. Before leaving Bruno’s home I had checked on Miss Winsome’s address, Unit Thirty-four of the Canterbury Community, a sprawling condominium on Flower Street in L.A.

  “Go away! You—you—”

  I groaned. Sure. Yeah. I hadn’t phoned the luscious—but still Lemming—Regina. I had simply raced here at reckless speed to warn her, possibly save her from violent death. But I had forgotten there was a fate worse than death. Worse, I had failed to consider the probability that by now I was a fate even worse than the fate worse than death.

  “Regina,” I said, “you’re in trouble, a lot of trouble, you’re in terrible danger, and I came here to—”

  She screamed.

  “Not danger from me, you idiot,” I roared. “I came here to warn you, to help you.”

  “Go away! Go—”

  “Goddammit, let me in! I’m not going to hurt you, or … anything. You hear me? I’m not going to, ah, anything. Do I have to break the goddamn door down to save you?”

  I slammed the wooden panel with the side of my fist a couple of times, then stopped, took a deep breath, and another. Why did this babe get me so shook? Probably because she looked like a tomato grown in the Garden of Eden, but acted like a cucumber destined to be a pickle. Which would have been depressing even to a vegetarian. And I’m carnivorous. Or maybe I just react negatively when gorgeous babes scream at the mention of my name.

  Movement to my left caught my eye. Twenty feet down the enclosed but open-to-the-sky walkway another door was open, and a small man stood in it. He had a wispy mustache, straight brown hair, and wore rimless glasses through which he bugged me with startled eyes.

  I smiled at him. Smiled, sort of. “Something?”

  He disappeared like a wraith and the door closed softly.

  “Regina!” I said to the door. “Be sensible. I suppose Pastor Lemming, Earth’s Mr. Clean, said some dirty things about me last night after I left? Behind my back?”

  “He told us everything about you, everything! Go—”

  “What a rotten bit of luck,” I said. “Look, Regina, I suppose you still think I shot at Pastor Lemming?”

  “You did! You did, you did, you—”

  “Will you knock it off?”

  “Well, you asked me.”

  “Yeah. I’ve got to give you that one. Regina, dear. Just listen for a moment. I did not shoot at your Pastor. In fact, nobody shot at him.”

  “They did! You did. I was there—”

  “That’s my point. Those shots weren’t at Pastor Lemming. They were at you.”

  Silence.

  “They were,” I repeated, “aimed at Regina Winsome. Two slobs—not including me, two other slobs—tried to kill you, Regina.”

  Finally, in a much smaller voice this time, “Me?”

  “That’s right. And remember, you’re the one who got nicked, not Lemming. Lemming didn’t bleed even a drop. Not that I’m sure he could … ah. Just let me in, Regina, and I shall explain all this to your entire satisfaction.”

  She kept me out there arguing for another minute, but finally I heard rattling as the door chain was removed, then more rattling for another door chain, then the click of a key in the lock.

  “Why don’t I climb in a window?” I asked ungraciously. “No sense making you dial the combination.”

  But then the door opened, and Regina stared wide-eyed at me, and backed away as I stepped into the room. Even backing away, however, which isn’t quite what a red-blooded man hopes for in his heart of hearts, she looked better than most gals running at you. I had only half-remembered the sweet bright beauty of that soft face, the enormity of those liquid eyes, eyes like light purple or deep lavender in the reflected sunlight.

  And, too, she was not now wearing that droopy gray robe, or the shower-cap thing on her head, so I could not only see that her hair was long and thick and the color of chestnuts roasting on a charcoal fire, but that an accurate description of her figure would undoubtedly require breaking several canons of the Church of the Second Coming.

  Looking at Regina in a soft pink turtleneck sweater and white skirt as she breathed much more deeply than normally, perhaps due to anger or fear or both, white skirt hugging rounded hips flaring from the slim waist, sweetly curving lips parted and eyes even bigger and wider than they usually were, I could not understand why simply joining the Church was not grounds for her instant excommunication.

  You may think that I, having spent quite some time recently with extraordinarily yinny Dru Bruno, should not have been nearly so interested in, and certainly not fascinated by, the carnal and fleshly phenomena displayed so prominently by Regina Winsome. You may think I should have considered almost with disinterest, if not actual boredom, the distinct probability that beneath her sweater was no contraption cleverly designed to lift, spread, squash, separate, increase, disguise, decrease, or conceal Regina, but only the unencumbered deliciousness of Regina. And you may think it should never have entered my mind that the way the slightly fuzzy pink cloth clung to the warm abundance of Regina’s deliciousness with a caress that covered but did not really conceal was much like the way peach skins cling to prize peaches overdue for plucking.

  You may think that. You have my permission. You may think any fool thing you want to.

  “How much longer are you going to stand there?” Regina asked me.

  “What? Well … how long have I been standing here?”

  “Quite a while. I thought you wanted to explain a bunch of things to me.”

  “Well, there you are. You just can’t trust anybody these—ah, yes, those two dirty rats were shooting at you, Regina. At you. And I am going to kill them the first chance I get.”

  “Kill, kill! Can’t you think of anything else?”

  “You’d be surprised.”

  “The very first thing, you say you’re going to kill a bunch of people. You are a foul murderer, just like the Sainted Pastor said.”

  “The hell with that ding—listen, two isn’t a bunch. Anyhow, maybe I’ll only wound … arrgh. Can you keep quiet a minute? You shake me up enough with your mouth shut. Look, let’s lie down on the couch—I mean, sit on the bed … arrgh. Let’s stand here on the floor while I explain. This is important. Really.”

  She didn’t say anything.

  “O.K. That’s better. Now.…”

  I could feel a slight breeze cooling the back of my neck. The door was still ajar, since I hadn’t closed it when I walked inside. Doors ajar—especially under the circum
stances I was, soner or later, going to describe for Regina—fill me with” considerable unease. So I stepped to the door, shut it, picked up the chain and prepared to stick the metal doohickey into the slot, and

  “What are you going to do!”

  I dropped the chain and it tinkled on the wood. I damn near tinkled on the wood. There had been in Regina’s voice the high shrill note of innocent children meeting goblins in the forest, and it went through me like light through a bulb.

  I found I had my eyes shut, teeth clenched, lips spread, arms down and rigid at my sides. I stood there and noticed that, without my willing them to move, my hands went out and up and then down, pat, and I felt I was beginning to understand the terrible stresses Doctor Bruno must have been experiencing lately.

  I wiggled my shoulders, shook my arms, then turned my head. “I don’t know how you did that,” I said. “But please don’t do it again.”

  Regina had retreated a couple of yards farther into the room. Her arms were crossed over her chest, left hand cupping most of her right breast, right hand full to overflowing with the left one. Her knees were slightly bent, and she was in a little crouch as if preparing to hop straight up into the air for about an inch.

  “What am I going to do? Why, I am going to leave,” I said. “And I will make sure the door is wide open, so the bad men can peek in and see you and shoot you. I’ll go wait for you at the morgue. Isn’t that nice?”

  “Bad men?”

  “They’re not exactly good.”

  “I—I’m sorry, Mr. Scott. I thought … our Sainted Pastor told us last night that you …”

  I sighed. “We’ll get to our beloved tattletale in a minute, maybe.” Behind her was a door, ajar, visible beyond it a bed and a nightstand with a lamp on it. “Right now, Regina, you go into that room.” I pointed. “And shut the door. Lock it. Put the bed against it. Then we’ll talk. We seem to do better with a door between us. Not much, but some.” I sighed again. “I really do have to explain why you may have celebrated your last birthday. How many have you had, by the way?”