“You don't have to be sarc—"
“If some miserable thug is pointing a gun in my general direction and squeezing the trigger, and I get a chance to blow the creep away, I'll blow him right off the planet. If he misses and I'm lucky, that violence solves my problem. And if a meatball tries to cave in my head with a hammer, the first chance I get I'll kick the bastard in his balls and solve another problem—"
“Do you have to be vulgar? And sarc—"
“Yes, Spree, I do. Consider: two guys in California, two more—at least—here in Arizona. That spells out planning, organization, specific and probably criminal intent. How did they know we were flying from L.A. to Phoenix? How did they know when we'd arrive here?” I was silent for a moment. “Maybe I'm overreacting. But I don't think so. And I sure don't want anything happening to you."
After a short silence Spree said, “I ... don't either. But thanks, Shell, for worrying about me. Don't ruin all my illusions, though."
“Look, all I'm trying to tell you is nobody wants to get hit on the head or ripped off or shot, but sometimes it happens. Even in fairy tales. Something had to turn that prince into a frog in the first place, right?"
I stopped at the intersection of Van Buren and Central, took a right. The fourteen-story Hall-Manchester Building was a mile away on Central Avenue, and that was where we were going. Not as the crow flies, however. Halfway up the block was a Mobil gas station. I spotted an outside pay-phone booth, pulled the Chrysler alongside it, and got out. It was nearly dark at 6:45 p.m. but there was an almost metallic glow in the desert air, and it was hot. The air temperature was probably ninety degrees Fahrenheit, but after the air-conditioned coolness inside the Laser it felt like centigrade. I dialed Worthington's private number. He answered immediately.
“It's Shell, Bentley. The lady and I just got here. But there was a tail on us in L.A., and a couple jokers waiting for us when we landed at Sky Harbor. We're a few blocks away on Central now, but we aren't about to stroll in through your front door inviting unpleasant attention if we can help it. Any suggestions?"
He said briskly, “Go to Second Street, two blocks east of Central. The Dillingham Building faces Second and backs up near the rear of the Hall-Manchester. The two buildings are separated by a small alley. Go out the back of the Dillingham, and into the rear of the Manchester."
“Sounds good. I know there are four elevators in your lobby, but—"
“Don't use those. When you come in the rear entrance, turn left. Freight elevator there. Only about ten feet, you can't miss it."
“OK. Anything new come up since I talked to you on the phone this a.m.?"
“Not really. Our mutual client phoned me shortly after you did this morning."
“Romanelle? What did he want?"
“Merely reported that he had spoken with you, and that I should expect to see you and his daughter some time this evening. Asked me to call him when his instructions had been carried out.” Bentley paused, then added, “He sounded terrible."
“Yeah, he's got several varieties of flu, apparently. OK, we should see you in about ten minutes."
After parking in the Dillingham's lot. Spree and I walked through the building, across the alley, and into the Manchester. No problems. We found the freight elevator, stepped inside it, and I pushed the “10” button.
“I thought we were going up to the twelfth floor,” Spree said.
“We are. We'll walk the last couple."
“Shell, you keep making me—nervous. Do you really think all this ... cloak and dagger is necessary?"
“Maybe not. But isn't it fun?” She gave me a bleak look, made no comment.
We creaked up to ten, stepped out and found the stairs, walked up to eleven, then on to the closed door leading into the hallway on the twelfth floor; the passenger elevators would be halfway down it on our right. Twenty feet farther, but on the opposite side of the hallway to our left, was the main entrance to Worthington's suite.
I twisted the doorknob, began easing the heavy door open an eighth of an inch at a time, one eye near the slowly widening gap between door's edge and frame. Spree was standing close on my right, and I saw movement as she shook her head. I glanced at her and she silently mouthed the word “fun."
Little did she know. When the door was cracked half an inch, I could look all the way down the hall, see the closed door to Worthington's suite of offices. But I could also see, not quite halfway down the hall, or about ten feet short of the elevators, the forms of two men.
They weren't looking my way, but toward the elevators and Worthington's door beyond them, their backs toward me. I eased my viewing crack wider until I could see clearly enough to be sure. The shorter of the two men was black, and lounged against the wall. He wore gray trousers and a white cloth jacket. The taller man, wearing a beige western-style coat, stood with his legs wide apart, hands thrust into the hip pockets of whipcord pants.
No doubt about it, even though I hadn't seen their faces yet. They were the two men who'd been waiting near the VOS rental Cadillac at the airport.
I eased the door shut, started taking off my shoes.
Chapter Eight
spree said, “what—” but I flipped my right hand up, pressed a finger over her mouth. Her eyes got wide when she realized I wasn't playing games.
Holding my finger against those soft lips, I whispered, “The two characters who were waiting for us at Sky Harbor are waiting again. Right down there.” I took my finger from her lips and pointed.
There were a lot of questions in those big green eyes, but she didn't ask any of them. I said, “When I get this door open again, hold it, OK? So it doesn't clunk shut. What I don't need for the next minute or so is any noise—unless I make it."
She nodded, her eyes enormous.
I added, “If you happen to hear any gunshots, just get the hell out of here. And, whatever happens, I don't think you'd better watch.” I thought about it. “Yeah. I don't want you watching any of this, OK?"
When I got my big shoes off, she automatically took them from me, held them under her right arm. I eased the door open again. The men were in the same positions as before, looking away from me. When I pulled the door wide enough for me to slip through, the tall cowboy moved and I froze. But he reached into his trousers pocket, took out a pack of cigarettes, got one lighted, left the smoke in his mouth, and stuck his hands into those hip pockets again.
The men were nearly fifty feet from me. It looked longer. But I took a deep breath, slid through the doorway, made sure Spree was holding it open, then moved fast. I went forward in a gliding half run, thick socks on my feet sliding silently for an inch or two after each long step. The men were thirty feet away, then twenty. I saw the cowboy's right hand come out of his pocket, reach for the cigarette in his mouth. If either of them turned around, or glanced this way —
But they didn't. They were ten feet from me, and then I came to a stop right behind them, a foot and a half from the nearer of the two, the cowboy type, who was about an inch or more taller than I, at least six-three. I balled my right hand into a fist and hauled it back, ready to launch it if I had to. Then I yelled at the top of my lungs, as loud as I could yell, “FREEZE!"
They went straight up into the air. Both of them. The smaller guy, the black, had been leaning against the wall, and he just went right up against it for, I'd swear, at least two feet, before he started down.
“DON'T,” I yelled again, with equal loudness, “DON'T turn around or I'll blow your goddamn heads off!"
The big guy had landed and gone into a crouch, right hand high at the left side of his chest, while the black man was still kind of tilted against the wall, with one arm extended straight out in front of him, fingers splayed. Why he'd stuck his arm out there I didn't know. Probably he didn't, either. Their heads were waggling, moving a quick half inch toward me, but then back the other way. They weren't quite willing to look at me.
I felt the clenched fingers of my right hand start to re
lax a little. “Lyle,” I called—not so loud this time—"watch these apes while I shake them down. Spina, keep that smokepole on the fleepers. Just be goddamn sure you goddamn miss me if you have to bring ‘em down."
After that, it was a ridiculously simple thing to reach around the tall guy, brushing his still-frozen and slightly trembling hand, and haul out his Smith & Wesson .38-caliber revolver from a shoulder clip, then pat the second man and kidnap his Colt .45 automatic from a belt holster.
The adrenaline was still flowing, almost squirting in me, from that fifty-foot glide over the polished floor, and I simply proceeded with what, it seemed to me, was the logical progression of events already begun. I hauled back my right hand again, but this time with the heavy Colt automatic gripped in it.
Without really thinking about it in any depth, I knew I couldn't simply shoot these guys, and I had nothing to tie them up with, and I couldn't at the moment turn them over to the law—something flickered nervously in my mind at that point, but then faded and died without becoming more than a flicker—so I simply swung my gun-weighted hand around in a tight arc, pivoting slightly on my sock-covered left foot to maintain my balance, and clunked the cowboy solidly on the back of his skull. He didn't make a sound. He didn't even grunt. Just went straight down like beef falling from a hook in the meat-market freezer.
And that was the precise moment when that flicker flickered again, more brightly this time, and I thought an almost paralyzing thought that somehow had not occurred to me before this too-late moment:
“Oh, boy,” I said to myself, “could these guys possibly be cops?"
It didn't seem likely. But who the hell knows what is really likely at such a moment. I knew, however, that I had crossed my Rubicon, burned my bridges, and whether the cowboy was a crook or a cop, or even the mayor of Phoenix, it did not matter much at this juncture because whoever he was I had really clunked him a terrible one on the back of his head.
And there was one more clunk to go. Right or wrong, I couldn't stop now, not with the job I'd set out to do only half done. So I hauled back the heavy Colt again, starting to size up the black guy's head.
And at that moment two things occurred one after the other, each of which disturbed me plenty, but the louder one disturbed me considerably more than the initial softly gassy one. The first thing was that the cowboy's various muscles, relaxing completely, allowed what apparently was quite a bit of accumulated internal gases to escape from the nearest point of exit, with a kind of bubbling musicality that even at another time and place where it would have been more appropriate might have been considered unduly prodigious and even inconsiderate. What bothered me about the event was my knowledge that this sort of thing, and more, came to pass when a man died. But all I'd done was knock the guy unconscious. Hadn't I? It was a confusing moment. Made even more confusing by the really loud event.
I was just starting to swing the Colt at the side of the black guy's head, aiming at the tight-curled black hair just above his ear, when some woman—in only an instant I realized it almost had to be Spree, because there weren't any other women up here—let out a horrendous ear-piercing wail that sounded like, “NOooooOOoo—don't DO that!"
Whatever, it was of such curdling intensity that I almost missed the black egg's head entirely. But I got him somewhere in that general neighborhood at the very instant his impossibly-wide-open eyes fell on my chops, and with sufficient neatness that he, too, went away, if not into the hereafter at least into a more peaceful place. Presumably one where guys did not get slammed on the head by blunt gun-instruments.
With both men sprawled on the polished floor at my shoeless feet, I turned and scowled at Spree, who was standing not more than two yards away from me. Me and the two unconscious cops, I thought nervously. Then I groaned. What I'd meant to think nervously was crooks. It was ridiculous to assume they might be police officers. It was only because of that mental process whereby, if you get some dumb idea or picture—like a blue-striped giraffe—into your head, even after you shoo it sternly away the damn thing keeps sneaking back in unbidden and bugging you.
So there I was, thinking about cops and a blue-striped giraffe instead of doing whatever came next, which I hadn't figured out completely yet, not with the sound of Spree's stupendous shriek still rattling my eardrums.
She was an odd but nonetheless still pretty sight. Yes, pretty, even with her mouth open and her tongue sticking out of it, and both arms held rigidly at a forty-five-degree angle from her sides, fingers splayed much as had been the black guy's until I hit him.
Scowling at her, I began, “Dammit—"
“Don't hit me! Don't hit me!"
“Don't hit—will you shut—I won't hit you. That's dumb. Of course I won't hit you."
“Are you ... sure?"
“Am I sure? What kind of ridicu—dammit, I told you not to look."
“I looked."
“I know. I heard you. I guess those are my shoes, huh?” They were on the floor near her feet. Must have fallen there when she stuck her arms out in that angular way. “Thanks."
I put my shoes on, then checked the two guns I'd taken from the men before they became unconscious. The .38 revolver was fully loaded, but only three bullets were in the automatic, two in the magazine and one in the chamber. When I slapped the clip back into the butt of the .45, I was feeling a trifle better about the men. Not many police officers carry half-loaded .45-caliber automatics. But I checked their wallets to be sure. No police ID, no badges. The tall cowboy was Jay Groder, forty-one years old, with an address in the Arcadia district between Phoenix and Scottsdale. The slim almost handsome black guy was Andrew H. Foster, thirty-two years old, five feet ten inches tall, weight 155, address in Tucson, Arizona.
I stuffed the wallets back into their coat pockets, thought about moving the men, then straightened up and glanced at Spree. She had been watching my every move, fascinated.
“We'd better get you into Worthington's office,” I said, “even before I clean this mess up. Some of their pals might be—"
She ignored my comment, peering soberly up at my face. “That was a terrible thing you just did to those poor men,” she said.
Ah, I thought. Not fascination after all. Revulsion, maybe. Or sudden disillusion. I had clunked two innocent bystanders on their heads.
“I thought of asking them to dance,” I said. “But sapping them on their skulls seemed like more fun. I haven't time to explain. There could be others—"
“But, Shell, they hadn't done anything to you."
“That's because I sapped them on their heads,” I said, with what struck me as irrefutable logic.
But then, finally, Spree seemed to hear an echo of what I'd been trying to tell her. “Others?” she said. “Other men? You mean that Lyle and Spina you yelled at?"
“No, no, those are my guys. My team.” I pointed vaguely at the ceiling. “I made them up. I was referring to possible reinforcements for the two lobs here on the floor. So let's get inside."
I took Spree by the elbow, guided her to Worthington's office entrance. On the dark paneling of the door, in small gold block letters, were the names “Worthington, Kamen, Fisher, Wu, & Hugh."
Before going inside, I stuck the Colt automatic under my belt at the small of my back, and tried fitting the S&W .38 into my holster. I was still wearing the gun harness, but that clamshell holster had been specially molded to fit my own .38 Colt Special, and the S&W, though also equipped with a two-inch barrel, didn't slide in as smoothly or nest there as tightly as my own gun would have. If I jumped around a lot, the thing might even fall out. But, no matter: I felt much better than I had before.
I opened the door and Spree started to step inside, but I stopped her, poked my head in, and looked around before letting her come in with me. Before us was a wide, low receptionist's desk with a white leather chair behind it, empty. Soft lights illumed the dark mahogany-paneled walls, two oil paintings in heavy ornate frames, two overstuffed chairs covered in what loo
ked like pink silk. Thick gray carpet was underfoot. On our left, light streamed past very large carved double doors that stood open. As I looked past them into the spacious office, Bentley X. Worthington appeared in the doorway, smiling.
“I see you made it,” he said in the rich, caressing baritone voice that had swayed dozens of juries, and now either soothed or stimulated—depending on his intent—a lot of well-heeled clients.
“After only a couple of problems,” I said. “Which, in about half a minute, I've got to finish taking care of.” But then I stepped forward and gripped Bentley's outstretched hand. As Spree came up near us, I said to her, “This is your father's—and your—attorney, Bentley Worthington. I can't tell you for sure how good he is—it's rumored he's top of the hill—but I guarantee you can trust him. Bentley, this is Spree, or Michelle Esprit Romanelle."
He took her hand in both of his, gazing at that radiantly beautiful face. “My God, you are an exquisite creature,” he said.
She said, “Thank you, Mr. Worthington,” and smiled. And Bentley, I knew, was lost.
He cleared his throat. “Herrum, I will have to charge you an exorbitant fee, if only to prove I have not lost my wits because of you, Miss Romanelle."
“It's Miss Wallace now. Formerly Romanelle."
He looked at me and started to speak, but I said, “This can't wait, Bentley. We met two guys outside, who, it may be presumed, were not lurking in the hallway to consult you about torts. They are temporarily indisposed. Have you got a closet, small room of some kind, where I can lock them up while we conclude the business here?"
“Yes. Storeroom. Several of them. But first, Sheldon, the young lady states that she is Miss Wallace. Formerly Miss Romanelle. Is there any doubt whatever that this is the fact? Before proceeding, I must have your unequivocal assurance—"
“Don't worry about it. You've got it. She's Claude Romanelle's daughter."
Shellshock (The Shell Scott Mysteries) Page 13
