Dead-Bang

by Richard S. Prather

  “What a coincidence! That’s what I was trying to tell you, Sam. You must’ve got the report an instant before—”

  “What happened?”

  “Couple guys—same two we’re interested in, no doubt—let some fly my way. Took off in a dark blue sedan. You’ll be happy to know they missed me. Didn’t hit anybody else, either.”

  “When did these sharpshooters let some fly your way?”

  I sure didn’t like the way he sounded. “Just happened,” I said earnestly. “Maybe a minute before I phoned you. To … tell you all about it.”

  “Fine. I’m pleased that you phoned me, Shell. Hold it.” This time there was mumbling I couldn’t make out, a little silence, then Sam, “As I was saying, Shell, your call saves me the trouble of putting out a local on you.”

  “A local? On, ha-ha, me? Sam, you wouldn’t send my friends, the fuzz, out to arrest me. Would you?”

  “Got another report here. From the Canterbury, too. Isn’t that curious?”

  “What?”

  “Seems there was a big ugly man with white hair pounding on a door. White hair—old fellow, I suppose.”

  “Getting … older, Sam.”

  “Apparently this old fellow was trying to break an apartment door down. And right after that a girl screamed.

  “I can explain all this junk. It isn’t what it sounds like.” I paused. I had a sickening feeling that, especially the way Sam sounded, I would be explaining for about three days, once I started. I thought about it, and the alternative was no less sickening, but I made up my mind. “In fact, I will explain it all, Sam, as soon as I can get to the police building. But I’ve got a couple—”

  “Get your ass—”

  “—things to do first. There’s really no more to tell, but I’ll go over it again—”

  “—down here right now or so help me I’ll—”

  “—just as soon as I can, Sam.”

  I hung up.

  “What’s the matter? Why are you making that face, Mr. Scott?”

  I discovered I had my eyes squeezed shut and lips stretched away from my teeth again. I relaxed my face, shook my head, opened my eyes. Regina was standing near me, holding a suitcase.

  “Got your toothbrush?” I asked her.

  “Yes. And—”

  “Never mind. Let’s go.”

  The cabin was only a mile and a half off the freeway, but isolated and alone in a spot so quiet you could hear the birds peep, at the end of a narrow, winding, dirt road. It wasn’t a shack, however. The place was owned by a bachelor friend of mine, a lovely character who, though only three or four years older than my thirty, had made two million bucks in the stock market. And kept it.

  Consequently the “cabin” contained fourteen rooms, a well-stocked bar, crammed refrigerator and freezer, all the conveniences of home—if home is without phones, radio, or television, but equipped with such extras as the latest in stereophonic sound systems with tape deck, two infrared ovens in the kitchen, a swing built for two in the living room, barbecue pit, and a heated swimming pool complete with pushbutton operated waterfall behind the house.

  When I stopped near a shallow reflecting pool dotted with lily pads, Regina looked at the stained redwood and native stone house, at a clump of weeping willow trees behind the shallow pool, back at the house, and then at me. “This is a cabin?” she asked.

  I grinned. “Yeah, about a hundred thousand bucks’ worth. It is also your hideout for the next day or so. You may be lonely, but you won’t be uncomfortable. I know, I’ve spent a couple of weekends here.”

  Regina gave me a suspicious look. I climbed out of the Cad, opened the door on her side, ushered her to the cabin. Then I walked around the side of the house, eyed the six feet of stone at its base, found the triangular chunk of split granite, eased it out, got the key, and used it to open the front door.

  Inside, we walked down three steps into the living room, and Regina said, “Why, it looks positively sinful.”

  “Yeah, isn’t it great?”

  The lavender carpet, with its foam-rubber padding, was a good two-inches thick, sort of a thin wall-to-wall mattress, and the draperies over two of the walls were of the same color. Two massive divans faced each other about ten feet apart, with a low red-lacquered table before each of them, narrow ends flat but with the long sides convex, like rectangles pushed in at the ends and bulging out at the sides. There were three man-sized easy chairs, and a dozen huge brightly-colored pillows scattered over the floor.

  I conducted Regina on a quick tour, showing her the essentials like frozen and canned foods, and even a few luxuries, including the swimming pool and a very wild-looking round bathtub much too big for merely one bather.

  Back in the living room I said, “Next to the bed in the bedroom we peeked into, the one with all the mirrors, is a little table with a drawer in it, and in the drawer is a gun. I’m sure you won’t need it, but sometimes it’s comforting to know a heater is handy. It’s a revolver, so you just point it and pull the trigger. Any questions?”

  “I guess not.”

  “No phone here, but I’ll get back when I can. So enjoy yourself.”

  I had the door open when she said, “You’re … leaving?”

  I looked over my shoulder. “Yeah.” I grinned at her. “Of course, if you’d rather I didn’t—”

  “No! No.… It’s just …”

  “Let me guess. You thought, once I got you out here in the wilderness, I would at least ply you with booze, and when your eyes grew dull and your wits addled—”

  “Oh, you dirty—you awful …” She stopped. And then Regina’s sweet lips curved in a small sweet smile, and she said, “I guess I did. You know, you … well, you aren’t at all like Pastor Lemming said you were, Mr. Scott.”

  I smiled. “Neither is anything else. By the way, call me Shell.” I went out.

  Five minutes later I was on my way back to town. I used those five minutes making sure the small sports car usually kept in one slot of the three-car garage was still in its slot, and transferring its license plate to my Cad.

  In case Captain Samson had put out a local on me—and I felt it not entirely unlikely that he had—the illegal plate would give me a small edge. Yes, illegal. I had broken the law. And as I drove back to the freeway and headed for Beverly Hills, I was thinking, in such little ways can a career of crime begin.…

  Dave Cassiday’s home was a good-looking two-story house on Roxbury Drive in Beverly Hills. I drove twenty feet up a cement drive to a gate—part of a high wrought-iron fence paralleling Roxbury and continuing on all around the large residential lot.

  Doctor Bruno had not only given me Dave Cassiday’s address but described the place, including the gate of upright spearlike rods which Dave had put up about four months back. Some anti-Erovite people had learned that here lived the Cassiday of Cassiday and Quince, friend and associate of Bruno the sex magician, and almost instantly a group of MOMS had picketed the place. When they wearied of their duty another small group, presumably court-martialed from the Salvation Army, began beating a drum on the lawn and singing about the New Jerusalem. That did it. Dave had put up the wrought-iron bars and gate in self-defense.

  I got out of the Cad and reached into a small box at the right of the gate, took out the phone there. In half a minute I heard a man’s voice. “Hello.”

  “Mr. Cassiday? Dave?”

  “Yes.”

  “Shell Scott. You busy?”

  “Busy as hell. Come on in.” There was a buzzing sound and a click. The two halves of the gate slowly swung inward, kept moving until they were open wide. “You can park in back,” Cassiday said.

  “Right.” I started to hang up, but he said, “Scott, I’m glad you came out. I guess Doc told you we’re having a meeting of Citizens FOR today.”

  “Yeah, he mentioned it.”

  “A bunch of the gang’s here now. You’ll get to meet them—think you’ll enjoy them, Scott.”

  “Great.” I hung
up.

  As I drove in, the gates closed automatically behind me. The driveway continued on to the rear of the house, where there was a large green lawn upon which were parked at least a dozen cars. I found a space and cut the engine, got out of the Cad.

  Dave was standing in the back doorway. He waved a hand as I walked toward him and said, “You smell of fire and brimstone. Welcome.”

  I grinned, shook his hand.

  He pointed inside and as I walked past him he asked, “Anything new?”

  “Yeah.”

  We walked a few feet down a hallway and through an open door into a small room I guessed was Cassiday’s den. Leather couch and a couple of easy chairs, small desk, walls panelled in blond wood. It was warm, pleasant, masculine, and there was an odor of pipe smoke in the air.

  Dave sat behind the desk as I took a seat on the couch and said, “First, I suppose, we should touch lightly on the matter of suspects. Aside from the lobs who actually grabbed you and Bruno, and numerous godly and ungodly others, there’s a new one I hadn’t considered until this morning.”

  “A new suspect?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Who?”

  “You.”

  16

  Dave Cassiday started to smile, but half of it stayed down, as if an unseen hook had caught one side of his mouth.

  Finally he said, “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

  “Erovite’s an extremely valuable product, Dave. At least it is if it can be freely sold.”

  “You can say that again.”

  “So anybody who might be able to get the formula would conceivably profit immensely. And thus has motive for the snatch, even murder.”

  “Sure. I still don’t get the point.”

  “Until this morning I thought you knew the formula. Now I understand only Bruno and his daughter know the whole thing, and you’re familiar merely with the basic compound, not what Bruno adds to—the glop, as he phrased it.”

  Cassiday seemed to relax, and he got his crooked smile all the way on this time. “I see. I guess that’s what Doc told you, right? About his mumbo jumbo, adding secret ingredients at the plant?”

  I nodded.

  He leaned back, propped his feet on the desk top. Still smiling he said quietly, “I’ve known Doc a long time, understand him better than you do, Scott. But you’ve been around him enough to realize he’s—O.K. if I say eccentric?”

  “O.K. by me.”

  “Well, in the first place, he’s a man of great integrity. Reliable, honest, no sham about the man. He might object to rules, laws, some of the FDA regulations, but he’d go along with them. In other words, he wouldn’t file one formula with the FDA and then try to manufacture and sell a different one.”

  “Bruno told me he always adds something to the stuff, a compound apparently only he and Dru know about—”

  “Sure. Told me the same thing. He wants us to think he’s pouring in some esoteric elixir, and has therefore managed to keep the formula secret. Maybe to deliver us from temptation, maybe he doesn’t really trust anybody, even me.” Dave took a pipe from his pocket and reached for a round tin of tobacco on the desk. “So Doc and Dru know what the formula—the complete Erovite formula—is. So do I, so does the Food and Drug Administration, maybe a lot of people in the FDA.”

  “You mean Bruno doesn’t add a damn thing to—”

  Dave waved a hand. “No, he does add a gallon or so of—” he grinned—“dark brown glop to the dark brown glop already in each of the vats at the plant. Usually at night, just him and me there. But I’d say it’s the identical glop. Adding Erovite to Erovite. Or maybe blackstrap molasses in distilled water, what the hell? If it makes Doc happy to think I believe he’s performing some wonderful kind of alchemy, what difference does it make to me?”

  “Can you prove that?”

  He frowned. “I don’t get you.”

  “Can you prove what Bruno adds to the vats is no different from what’s already in the vats?”

  The frown stayed on while he chewed his lower lip, then Dave slowly shook his head. “Come to think of it, no. Not right this minute, anyhow. Never thought I’d have to.”

  I grinned. “I’m not saying you do, Dave. But could you prove it if you did have to?”

  “Probably, if I had one helluva complicated analysis done.” He chewed on his lip some more, looking at me. “Well … maybe yes, maybe no. Some of the ingredients in Erovite are homeopathic remedies, biochemic substances, cell salts. If there really is anything in them there’s no way we can analyze what, or how much. Not the higher potencies, and not with the scientific equipment available today.”

  “What do you mean, if there’s anything in them?”

  “Well, take a homeopathic substance. Hypericum, Arnica—anything, animal, vegetable, mineral, they’re all in the homeopathic Materia Medica. The potency is described by a number, and a letter, X or C or M. For example, Aurum Metallicum 1X—that’s metallic gold, by the way—signifies one part of gold thoroughly mixed, blended, triturated, or diluted as the homeopathic physicians say, with nine parts of milk sugar, or a dilution of one to ten. Take one part of this Aurum Metallicum 1X and mix it with nine parts of milk sugar and you’ve got Aurum Metallicum 2X, and that’s not one part in twenty, remember, but one part in a hundred. Do it again and the 3X is one part per thousand. So Aurum Metallicum 6X is one part of gold to a million parts of milk sugar, 12X is one part per trillion. When you get up around 40X or 60X you’ve produced what most doctors call the middle of a zero, or the short end of nothing. Up at 100X you switch to 1C, which is the same thing. And 10C or 50C—well, the mind gets a bit dim. And when you get into the M dilutions, for some the mind goes out completely upon contemplating the infinitesimal minuteness of the absence of anything.”

  “Seems like there wouldn’t be enough molecules or atoms or whatever to go around.”

  He made a circle with his thumb and middle finger, nodding toward me. “You’ve got it. There wouldn’t be.”

  I waggled my head. “Hell, if there isn’t anything in it, what good is it?”

  “That is precisely the question modern medicine and science ask of homeopathy. Homeopaths, in fact, claim the higher the dilution—the less of the material substance there is in the remedy—the more effective or potent it is.”

  “Are you having a little fun with me, Dave?”

  He smiled. “Not at all. In fact, there’s a good deal of evidence tending to support the homeopath’s claims—but you’ll find none of it in the J.A.M.A. or other medical journals. I said the less of the material substance there is, Scott. Homeopaths contend that in the process of dilution, an essence or vibration or something of the substance—its spirit, to lay Doc Bruno’s usual word on you—is transmitted to the carrier. And, to continue with what Doc claims, since science can’t yet analyze or weigh or measure the spirit in man, it isn’t entirely surprising that they can’t discover the spirit, or essence, in the higher potencies of homeopathic medicines.”

  The conversation was getting away from me. “O.K. Maybe Bruno adds Erovite to Erovite. But what if he adds some of the—the nothing under discussion? Would that change the formula, or at least make Bruno think it changed the formula?”

  “There’s no question Doc would think the formula changed, and frankly I’d be inclined to agree with him even if chemical analysis couldn’t prove there was any difference.” Dave paused. “From the FDA point of view—assuming tablets of a few very-high-potency homeopathic substances were dissolved in distilled water, say—analysis would reveal the presence only of water and milk sugar. So they’d undoubtedly feel there was no basis for concern, or action. I just don’t think Doc would do even that. He’d think it dishonest … deceitful.”

  “O.K., you know him better than I do.” Dave was scowling slightly so I asked, “Something the matter?”

  “No, I was just—you got me thinking a little. I hope he hasn’t been pouring pulverized elephant testicles into the vats.”
r />   “Would that help?”

  “I haven’t any idea,” Dave said. “Sure wouldn’t help the elephants.”

  There was silence for several seconds. Cassiday finally started filling his pipe, then asked me, “Have my carefully considered remarks removed me from the number-one spot on your list of greedy suspects?”

  “You never were number one. But I’ll put you at the bottom.”

  “Fine. So what else is new, Scott?”

  “After we split up and I took Bruno home, I had to go down to the LAPD and tell the police what I knew. They’ve since talked to Bruno. I suppose they got around to you, too.”

  He nodded. “Not much to it. I think they’d already talked to Doc by then, and also had your story, of course. So I suppose I was just another check. Two detectives were here for maybe half an hour. That was after Doc called me, you know—you were there then, weren’t you?”

  “Yeah, I was with the Doc and Dru at her place.”

  “So he’d already told me about police going to the house, finding the place empty. Man, that shook me up—you realize, if we hadn’t gotten out of there when we did, we might have been there when those guys came back?”

  I nodded. “We cut it pretty close.”

  “Funny thing, the officers didn’t even mention that to me last night. You sure those bodies really were gone?”

  “They were gone, all right. But the police usually don’t say any more than they have to. So I guess you don’t know they found the bodies this morning.”

  He stared at me. “Found them? Well … why in hell doesn’t anybody tell me anything?”

  “I’m telling you now, Dave.”

  His muscular face slowly relaxed, and he smiled. “I didn’t mean you, Scott. But the cops sure don’t say any more than they have to, do they? What happened, where’d they find them? Police have any luck identifying that heavyset bastard? Or figuring out what the hell was injected into Strang?”