“I hope I ... like him. Now, that's odd enough, isn't it? I hope I like my own father? But it's as if I've never met him, not really."
“Well, neither have I, Spree. Just talked to him on the phone those two times. Incidentally, when I spoke to him this morning he sounded like a guy with multiple pneumonias, so don't be overly disturbed if he's less than a hundred percent."
“I understand.” She leaned forward, hands clasped. “How much longer?"
“Nearly there."
Romanelle lived on Desert Fairways Drive, so called because it bordered several fairways of the Paradise Valley Country Club golf course. It was a prestigious area where many of the well-to-do and even very rich rich lived. We were a block from the traffic signal at Tatum Road, and as I pulled into the left-hand lane, the light ahead turned green.
“Just across Tatum we take a left, then slide into the next little street, which is Desert Fairways. So call it another two or three minutes."
“That soon?” she said softly.
I checked my watch as we swung off Lincoln at the entrance to the Camelback Inn, then took the next left into Desert Fairways Drive. It was straight-up 9 p.m. Another block or two and I could see the house on our left. It was a one-story rock and redwood place, low and wide, set back behind what they refer to as “desert landscaping” out here, which to a Californian looks exactly like a lot of dirt and cactus. The street number was in red and white mosaic tiles on the face of one of two stone pillars flanking a black asphalt driveway that curved up and around before the house. A light was on above the entrance door, as though to welcome guests. But it was enclosed in a wrought-iron and red stained-glass box and the glow from the bulb inside spilled splashes of reddish pink across a flagstone deck before the entrance, like shallow pools of anemic blood.
I drove slowly by, checking the place out. Just past it was a vacant lot and I turned around there, letting the Chrysler's headlights illumine the lot, briefly revealing a stretch of green fairway beyond its farther edge and then sweeping over the side of Romanelle's house. I didn't see anything disturbing, so I swung into the asphalt driveway, parked close to the flagstone deck opposite the entrance doors. I left the engine running, the Chrysler facing toward Lincoln Drive. Then I turned to look at Spree.
“When I get out,” I said, “I'll slam this door and both doors will be locked, windows rolled up. You get behind the wheel. I'm going to look around a little. If anything ... unusual happens, get the hell out of here fast and find some cops."
“Couldn't we get some cops first?” she asked.
“No way. They'd think we were freakos. Nobody's done anything to us yet. No menace, no threats even. Hell, the shoe's on the other foot. I recently assaulted two upstanding citizens and turned them into downfalling citizens, who may even have reported me for assault and battery by now. I'm not joking. It's happened to me before—and that was in Los Angeles, where most of the cops like me."
“I wish there was another way."
“I can't think of any offhand."
“But you'll be so ... exposed. It scares me."
How about that? I thought. I had assumed Spree was tense and nervous merely because she was about to meet her father. I had underestimated the lady. She'd been up with me all the way, maybe ahead of me.
“You think our lads might be out there among the cacti, too, don't you, Spree?"
“Of course. You had damned well better be careful."
“Count on it."
“One other thing—and don't argue, Shell. If anything unusual does happen, you get back to this car as fast as you can. I promise to open the door for you.” She smiled. “No one else."
I started to argue, then said, “Play it by ear,” and got out of the car, pressed the lock button down, slammed the door. The air outside was hot, really hot. I pulled the Smith & Wesson revolver from its holster, thumbed back the hammer, held the gun down low against my thigh. I could smell the scent of orange blossoms. Odd, I thought, to smell orange blossoms in October. Maybe false bloom or mock orange; but the scent was thin and sweet in the desert air.
I walked halfway down that curving drive, trying to see into the darkness, feeling most of my muscles trying to form granny knots. But nothing happened. There was a garage down there, its door open, glint of metal and chrome inside. That was all. I turned around, walked in the other direction and past the idling Chrysler, on down nearly to the rock and cement pillar near Desert Fairways Drive. Nothing. Except that the soles of my shoes were getting warm. The asphalt, baked all day by the Arizona sun, was like a heating pad under my feet.
When I got back to the car and crooked a finger at Spree, she turned off the engine, pulled the keys from the ignition, opened the door on her side. I held her close with my left arm around her shoulders, kept the revolver in my right hand as we walked over the flagstone deck to the reddish entrance door.
I poked the button, looked around as a deep velvety clonngg boomed somewhere inside the house. When I pulled my head back toward the door, it opened suddenly and a short heavyset man about fifty years old, wearing glasses that reflected the reddish light, poked his big bald head toward us, saying rapidly, “Mr. Scott? Miss Wallace? Is this really little—really Spree? We thought you were going to phone—"
He went on to say something that I think was, “Come in, do come in, Claude is in the Arizona Room,” but I wasn't listening closely. This fat pappy would never know how close he'd come to getting shot.
I lowered the revolver, eased its hammer down, slipped the gun into my coat pocket. “Who the hell are you?” I said.
“What?” He looked at me, blinking owlishly through the horn-rimmed glasses. I noticed a faint thin scar low on his left cheek. “Oh, of course, you wouldn't know. I'm Dr. Simpson. Robert Simpson. I'm attending Claude—Mr. Romanelle."
“I didn't know doctors still made house calls."
Yeah, he was a real doctor. That bugged him. Stiffly, with his heavy chin thrust forward half an inch, he said, “Claude is not merely a patient. He is a friend."
He turned, and we followed him across a big living room warmed by half a dozen lamps, all glowing. I got an impression of heavy couches and easy chairs, colorful pillows, heavy Oriental-looking table lamps, as we went on through a second room and then through an open archway into what the doctor had referred to as the Arizona Room, which in California we might call a patio room, or even a den. This one, as are most in Arizona, was at the very rear of the house, adjacent to the backyard or patio beyond which would be the Paradise Valley Golf Club's eleventh fairway.
As we stepped into the room several separate impressions brushed my mind. First, Claude Romanelle, not on his feet to greet us, not dancing over the off-white carpet to embrace “little Spree” or even shake my hand, but seated at the near end of a long low couch on our right, facing the rear of the house and what my first glimpse through glass patio doors suggested was a heavily landscaped yard with palms and lush greenery surrounding an oval swimming pool, underwater lights turning the water a softly rippling blue.
Romanelle was wearing an expensive-looking shiny black robe edged with yellow piping, his head was turned toward us, and as the three of us entered he pushed against the divan's arm with his left hand and started rising, apparently with considerable effort, to his feet. This was the first time I'd seen my client in the flesh, but I recognized, from Worthington's description, the high wide forehead and face narrowing down to the pointed chin. Also he was the right age, about fifty-five to sixty. Still, for all I knew, this guy could be middle-aged Joe Schmuck with a high forehead and pointed chin, so I looked him over pretty good. He was quite pale, almost shrunken, and until he managed to stand erect I thought his height was less than Romanelle's even six feet. But once he was standing I could see he was only two or three inches shorter than I.
He glanced at me, nodded, then fixed his eyes intently on Spree and said in a hoarse, soft voice, “Is it really you? My God, are you my Spree?"
It was
a very curious moment. The reunion of strangers. Nobody seemed to know quite what to do. Romanelle stood there, one hand pressed against his middle, the other arm raised toward Spree, with the palm up, as if he were offering her a gift. I had moved well into the Arizona Room, just getting out of the way. Dr. Simpson stood inside the open archway where we'd entered. Spree was four or five feet farther into the room, standing immobile, facing Romanelle.
After what seemed a long time, she said quietly, “Yes, Daddy. I'm Michelle. I'm Spree."
Then she stepped toward him. Romanelle raised both hands, clasped her hands in his own, and said something too soft for me to hear. Then, hesitantly, he put one arm around her shoulders.
I glanced out at the green-filled patio and blue-water pool. Reflected in the big sliding-glass Arcadia doors I could see Spree and Romanelle close together, the doctor still in the doorway to the room. And I knew something was out of joint.
I hadn't made up my mind yet just what was digging at me, but I knew something here was very queer indeed. It wasn't the fact that I couldn't be absolutely sure the man was Romanelle. Or the presence of the doctor, Simpson—or a man who'd said he was Dr. Simpson. My unease was based on something else. Maybe several something elses.
I still had my right hand in my coat pocket, palm pressed against the revolver's butt. I tightened my fingers around the gun's grip, index finger resting on the smooth curved trigger. Everything slowed down, almost stopped. Except my thoughts. Thoughts, one after another:
In that second conversation with Romanelle, on the phone this morning. He hadn't asked to speak with Spree, his daughter, not seen or spoken to for twenty years. Odd. Nothing to build a felony case on. Just—odd.
But also in that conversation he'd never called me simply “Scott,” but always “Mr. Scott.” Which was how Romanelle, in our initial conversation, had referred to me only when expressing real or feigned umbrage, irritation, threat. Throughout that second call it had been “Mr. Scott” each and every time. Odd.
I thought I smelted the faint perfume of orange blossoms again. Maybe it was my imagination. But that real or imagined scent made me remember the muscle-knotting walk along the asphalt drive out front, down the drive and back. And—nothing. That's what was bugging me. That nothing. Considering what had preceded this moment, somebody should have been out there, waiting for us, waiting in the darkness outside. And nobody had been waiting. At least not outside. But, maybe...
A small slow ripple of movement was reflected in the glass door, something glittering like a snake's eye, there where Romanelle stood. Romanelle and Spree. I was already moving. Not thinking about it, just doing it, turning and lifting the gun, feeling the hammer catch on cloth, ripping it free.
The Smith & Wesson was still pointed at the floor but my head was twisted around far enough for me to see the man and Spree. He held her tightly with his left arm, right arm extended toward me. That snake's-eye glitter at his fingers was light reflected from a heavy gun he held, a gun that blasted enormously. I could see flame spit from the round muzzle, feel the cracking sound of the gunshot slap my eardrums.
Spree was just starting to struggle, trying to break free from that encircling arm. Probably that's why he missed me. I heard the slug snap past my head, heard the long-drawn-out shattering and crisply tinkling sound of glass in a window behind me breaking and starting to fall, separate pieces whirling in the air and colliding with silvery tinks and clings.
I got my right arm up, parallel to the floor. Butt of right hand cupped in left palm and fingers, right hand pressing forward while the left pulled back. Legs bent, squatted in a low crouch, thigh muscles stretched and trembling. I had the hammer thumbed back on the gun, but couldn't fire. Spree was moving, jerking. Still held close, too close.
He fired again. Nicked the top of my left shoulder. It felt like a blow of a hammer. And I still couldn't fire. I learned a lot about what I felt for Spree then, in that unending second or two. The heavy gun in his hand wavered away, exploding again, harmlessly, as Spree jerked—silently. Not a sound from her. I could see her lunge, twist, see the golden shower of her hair, see her red lips stretched, teeth pressed together. I was holding my breath, could feel the thud and thump of blood inside my head, clear down into my arm, into my hand squeezed around the gun's butt, into that finger light on the trigger.
Spree raised one foot, slammed it down, heel driving at the arch of the man's foot. I heard him yell, saw him jerk, saw the heavy gun swing away then back toward me, dead on me, saw Spree spin, whirl, topple away from him.
Just far enough. I shot the sonofabitch three times.
One, two, three. Low, middle, high. Three bony fingers plucking at that shiny black robe he wore. Low, in the groin. Middle, centered in his chest. And high was in his throat. That last slug tore through his neck, ripped open the carotid artery. Blood spurted from his throat, spurted astonishingly, a red ropelike arc glistening in the overhead light as it curved outward and down, fell splattering onto the white carpet. His gun took an impossibly long time to fall.
The man's legs bent loosely, simply came unhinged, as if all the muscles and nerves and tendons had been instantly cut, and he went down slanting backward in the air, his head striking the arm of the low couch and then thudding against the floor. He lay there, arms still raised, legs slightly lifted and moving. It looked in a queer, shocking way as if he were trying to get up. He wasn't. He was dead, or no more than half a heartbeat from death, but for a stretched-out taffylike segment of time his hands clawed, legs pumped slowly, like a man riding an upside-down bicycle in quicksand. Then his legs straightened, the arms dropped, his fingers stopped moving, still curled into pink-flesh claws.
I walked toward him. I knew he was dead, but I pulled back the S&W's hammer one more time. Spree was screaming. Running. Running somewhere. I stopped over the dead sonofabitch and almost shot him again. Instead, I swore at him. But there weren't any intelligible words, just a husky grunting sound. Grunts, mumbles, and my teeth gritting together.
Slowly, time stopped standing almost still. Slowly, I eased the revolver's hammer back down. Slowly, I felt my lungs fill with breath, smelled the acrid scent of gunpowder, felt my chest rise, became aware of the fire, the burn, jagged teeth biting at the tip of my left shoulder. I could feel a little stream of blood running down the arm, cooling on my biceps.
Those high harsh screams had stopped but I could still hear the chilling sound inside my head. Neither Spree nor the irritable doctor who made house calls was in sight, and I heard no sounds of running—heard no sounds at all, except the soft hum from a pump behind me, out there at the swimming pool.
I called out, yelled “Spree!” Nothing. I ran to the front door, outside. “Spree!"
A car, black sedan, Lincoln, was sliding right at the end of the driveway, lunging into Desert Fairways Drive. My rented Laser sat where Spree and I had left it—how long ago? Twenty minutes? Fifteen? I looked at my watch. Four minutes ago.
I ran down the drive, past the now-empty garage, along both sides of the house, then inside again and through all the rooms. I checked the area around the pool, crashed through vines, thick-leaved green plants, flowers. “Spree! Spree!"
I wouldn't let myself think she might have been in that speeding Lincoln, in it with the good doctor, who might soon get his own one-two-three plus one more in the head. She was around here somewhere. Scared, sure. But nearby. She had to be.
I went out front once more, walked over the flagstone deck, opened the Chrysler's door, and slid inside, not really thinking what should be done next, just wanting to sit and think for half a minute. Maybe if I started honking the horn —
“Shell?” It was tiny. Muffled. I barely heard it.
“Spree?"
“Oh, Shell. God, I was so scared.” She was behind me, rising up from the floorboards in back. She came tumbling over the seat, sort of crooning, “Scared—and sick, really sick, I thought I was going to throw ... up..."
“Hush."
She was pressed against me, her face buried between my chest and right arm. I pulled her close, held her. She was shaking. Well, so was I.
“Oh, God, it was awful. I saw him, trying to shoot you. And then—him. When he fell. I got sick, really weak. All that blood. I started to shake, I couldn't—"
“I know. Hush. It's OK now, Spree. Really. It's OK."
Then, for a while, I just held her. Pulled her into my arms, my mind, my breath. After a while she stopped trembling, quivering. And finally she moved away. Not much. An inch or two. And looked at my face.
“I'm all right. I suppose we could go somewhere else, don't you think?"
“I sure do."
I started to switch on the ignition, then stopped. I hadn't heard any sirens yet. There'd be plenty soon; but maybe there was time.
I asked Spree, “Will you be all right for half a minute? I mean, right here, alone."
“Yes. But why?"
“I've got to go back inside. Just for a few seconds."
“All right."
I wanted to know who it was I'd just shot. Shot three times with somebody else's gun. If it was Claude Romanelle, that was one thing. I'd merely killed my client, and Spree's father. If it was not Romanelle, then who was it? Who had sent him here? Or had it been his own idea to shoot me, at his earliest opportunity, preferably in the back, and then take Spree—where, for what?
And, finally, if the corpse there in Claude Romanelle's Arizona Room was not my client but merely a deservedly dead stranger, then where in hell was the real Claude Romanelle?
I swung the car door open, got out.
Out into the humid heat of an Arizona October night.
Smelled yet again the faint sweetness of orange blossoms.
And heard the distant—but not distant enough—sound of approaching sirens.
Chapter Ten
the dead man lay on his back, oddly twisted. The blood that had spurted from his ripped throat had landed four or five feet from the body and now formed a thick snakelike stain, clotted like a bloody bas-relief on the white carpet. It was shockingly red, dark scarlet against the tightly woven nap. And on the front of the man's black robe, on the white shirt and dark trousers underneath it. His neck, too, was smeared with thickening blood, brilliantly red like cuts of meat under those special lights in a butcher's display.
Shellshock (The Shell Scott Mysteries) Page 15
