Shellshock (The Shell Scott Mysteries)

by Richard S. Prather

  “Then the last part was to his ex-wife—I mean wife, they wasn't divorced yet. I heard she left him six, seven months ago, went back to Minnesota with their kid. Anyways, he says to her in the note he really did it for the money and the shares of stock, but when this come out they'd go into the toilet. He didn't say it like that, just when it come out, meaning I suppose his killin’ hisself and the note and all, the Golden Phoenix shares would go back down to where they belonged, somethin’ like that. Anyways, he writes to his wife he hoped with that money plus what he expected from sellin’ the shares at the top, he hoped he could get her back, he still loved her more than all the world, that kind of crap. Then just ... I remember how it ended, he didn't sign it or nothin', just wrote ‘And this is how it ends.’ Nothin’ dramatic like that ‘Good-bye, cruel world’ you were given’ me when I was suppose to blow out—"

  He'd interrupted the monologue himself, finally, so I tried a question. “It all makes sense, Andy, but maybe you can fill in a couple of little points. The assay report he faked, I suppose he was paid off for that by Alda Cimarron, right?"

  “Well...” He hesitated.

  “Dammit, Andy,” I said vehemently, “I told you going in, I already know the answers to most of the questions I'll ask you; and all it takes is one goddamn wrong answer—"

  “Hey, it ain't that. Don't pop your cork. It's just, it wasn't Alda made the arrangements and slipped him the cash and all that, he don't get out front much, stays in the background, you know? The guy made all the arrangements was Claude."

  “Claude? Claude Romanelle?"

  He glowered at me from the brown eyes, raising and lowering the arched black brows. “Huh. You didn't know, did you? You bullshitted me—"

  “I thought it was somebody else, Andy. Ah ... I see. Because Toker's contacts had all been with Romanelle, when Claude got shot Toker had pretty good reason to think he might be the next target."

  “I dunno about that, except what Toke wrote in the note. I never heard nothin’ about anybody plannin’ to poop Toke. He could've just imagined that and got his head frazzled, which it must of been or he wouldn't've been killin’ hisself."

  “OK, all the contact was with Romanelle. But wouldn't Alda Cimarron have had to approve or give the go-ahead on anything like that? Particularly something as important as a faked assay?"

  “Oh, sure, hell yes. Nothin' about Golden Phoenix gets done unless Alda says do it. He's the president, but he's also a guy you don't want to screw with."

  He rubbed the side of his face again, and wiggled his jaw a bit.

  I said, “So, then, it's certain Cimarron would have had to OK. Romanelle's approaching Toker. Just as certain as that, later, he had Romanelle shot. Right, Andy?"

  “Well..."

  He was looking past my left shoulder—which, it occurred to me, didn't seem to be aching anymore—and I could clearly see a little wobble of his eyes, just a fractional movement, left-right-left-right, and I had a very strong hunch he was getting ready to lie to me about something.

  “Foster,” I said sharply, “I've already warned you a couple of times—"

  “Yeah, yeah, sure, it was Alda says do it. Who else? He's the big cheese, I told you. Don't get so hot over nothin'."

  “Just want you to keep your part of the bargain, Andy. Because if you do, I'll keep mine."

  “Yeah. And my heap. You know I'll have to steal a car, don't you?"

  “Andy, you don't have to—"

  “You take my wheels, you're the same as forcing me into a life of crime. You're suppose to be a legit guy, ha-ha, now I got to go steal—"

  “Andy, let's keep it on track here. I'll tell you what's happening from where I sit, and you tell me if I'm on the mark, OK?"

  “OK by me."

  “The Golden Phoenix is a complete scam. A con game, a rip-off. The idea is to take some worthless shares and run them up with slick promotion, maybe a boiler-room operation, then a faked assay report or two, dump the shares and split with multimillions, leaving behind a lot of shareholders in a barrel filled with worthless paper. How close is that?"

  “Well...” His eyes didn't do their little dance this time, so I assumed he was merely considering what I'd said. “Pretty close. Actually, you say it some worse than it is. The idea is to goose the stock up, sure, and get out. But it won't go down to nothin'. Maybe two, three fish, but the idea is to dump everything they can on the way to and just under thirty, which they—Alda, mainly—figure is where they can goose it to. Or did figure. This today, this Toke screw-up, changes a lot of things."

  He paused, but without prompting from me went on, “You're right about the boiler room. Alda had twenty guys on the phones awhile, eased off for a few months, then brought ‘em all in again this week. This week and the next couple, after another assay report even better, is suppose to be the time to grab it all and get out healthy. Dunno what'll come off now. Of course, nobody outside knows yet about Toke knockin’ hisself off. Except ... you do. You know."

  That didn't make my position sound too wonderful if Cimarron or some of his pals got their hands on me, or even got close enough to blow me away.

  With that depressing thought in nay mind, I said, “It looks like Cimarron put the hit on Romanelle right after the Toker report was released. Was that the trigger? Doesn't seem to make a lot of sense if it was Romanelle who arranged for that fake report in the first place. Did I miss something?"

  “You sure did. But there's no way you could help but miss it, bein’ on the outside. See, startin’ way back, two, three years back, Alda and some of us guys moved a lot of stock whenever there was good news to hype—I worked the boiler-room spiel myself sometimes, Claude and Alda together, somehow, I don't know all the ins and outs, come up with the idea of these mailing lists, especially of rich guys what had bought stocks and other things through the mails or after bein’ called on the phone. The ones that done it before is the best marks for doin’ it again, OK? Well, they made up all these lists for their own, got it onto computers, everything slicker'n spit on a tit, a beautiful setup so they have three or four hundred names to hit again. When they wanted to bail out, you know?"

  I nodded. “Sucker list, but it sounds like a fairly sophisticated one."

  “Yeah, man, names, phone numbers, net worth, change of address if there was one, all kinds of crap they figured was important when it come to the blowoff. Which, as I kind of mentioned, was suppose to be about now and the next two or three weeks. Well, after Toke's first assay, natural the stock steams up pretty good, and we start callin’ the marks. Some was interested—I mean, like crazy, wanted all they could get. But the idea is, keep ‘em on the string for a little, tilt the price is up some more. But then the goddamn catasterphobe."

  “The what?"

  “Disasterville, ruin-damn-nation. It comes out, a bunch of the marks who'd bought Golden Phoenix, them that had gone for at least ten thousand shares when it was way down—so they now got a bee-yootifil profit, right? On paper, but these marks always got it spent in their heads, so they're ripe, fifty or sixty special marks practic'ly askin’ to be took. These are the main ones Alda was countin’ on for the big buys when he unloads, see?"

  “Like after the next marvelous, exciting assay report that's sure to send the stock to eighty or ninety."

  “You got it, they had it figured so they could unload all they had to move without runnin’ the price down to a nickel, see? Nickel, that's a joke, but you get the idea."

  “Sure. So where's Disasterville?"

  “Oh, yeah. It comes out, and pretty quick they got this horrible picture from the computer, maybe thirty of these dudes, maybe half of the whole package, has already sold their shares to ... somebody. They wasn't supposed to sell any, they was supposed to buy more, a lot more, when Alda and his inside guys was ready to lower the bim-bam-boom. But when they was out of it, havin’ no more interest in the goddamn stock, they sure weren't gonna be in the market for more of it. No, they was useless for the purpose
intended. See?"

  I liked the way he'd put that one. Useless for the purpose intended. No longer available for the final screwing, “So who bought all those shares from the marks? And how many shares were involved, by the way?"

  “They figure it come to somethin’ like seven or eight hundred thousand shares."

  I blinked. That—almost—told me the rest before he said it.

  “Not that the seven, eight hundred thou by itself is puke city, but that the five, six million they got to unload fast ain't got no place to go now. At least, not so many places. Which, talkin’ about maybe six million shares, is a real cramp in the ass. And when Alda gets a cramp there, that's a goddamn lot of cramp."

  “So who'd been buying all those shares? Several guys? One guy?"

  “One guy.” His eyes did that little dance, very briefly, but he went right on and told me. “Claude."

  “I think I'm getting a better idea why Romanelle was shot. Let's see ... shot on Monday, September twenty-fourth. Toker's report was made public the Friday before then, on the twenty-first. Which was also the day the October Exposé was mailed."

  “You're not so dumb, once I explain everything to you. But you got it. Claude had been buyin’ up all the stock he could get—payin’ reasonable since he knows it's goin’ to near thirty or maybe over—for a year, year and a half. Used a lot of different names, that sort of thing, nominations, or ... ?"

  “Nominees?"

  “Like that. Well, it all come out in the computer paper, and Alda like to disemboweled hisself runnin’ to the crapper. Them cramps I mentioned. He was so steamed he damn near pressed his pants from inside hisself. He knew, in the first instant, them that sold their stock was no good to anybody once they was unsuckered. So...”—his brown eyes wobbled slightly, briefly—“that was the exact instance when Alda put out the word, and sent a couple of us—them.” His brows shot way up, and his eyeballs literally quivered. “That's when he sent a couple of them, them other guys, to blow Claude away."

  Sure. Maybe now I had a clue as to why Andy's eyes had been dancing. It had been a couple of them other guys. Andy hadn't been one of them. He hadn't been anywhere around.

  I said, “I'd guess Cimarron was a mite disappointed when Romanelle didn't get wasted after all."

  “You'd guess? A mite? Disappointed? Man, you don't know that lousy ... that irritable chap at all, do you? Why, he only went ca-razy, I thought he was going to kill uh ... them two guys. Them guys what did it. Or, akchully, didn't."

  “Incidentally, I saw Cimarron myself this morning, at his home. Is that where he was when you took him the note and gun?"

  “That's where he was at—still waiting in case Toke showed up—when I called him about finding Toke. Who, obvious, wasn't going to show up anyplace. So Alda says he has to get back to the Medigenic, and for me to meet him there, and that's where I give him the stuff, there at the hospital.” Again, perhaps unconsciously, he rubbed his swollen jaw.

  “And he gave you that?” I said.

  “Yeah. Just slapped me. Didn't hit me with a fist, which would prob'ly have made my head look like Toke's does now. He got pissed off because I pumped those extra two in Toke's back.” Andy shook his head wearily. “See, when I call him from Toke's, and tell him what's what, he does a lot of colorful swearing and then says for me to meet him at Medigenic, bringing the note and gun to make it look like a hit instead of a suicide. He said make it look like a hit. So that's what I done. Then that lousy ... then he says, after I done it, he meant just take the gun and note, because that all by itself fixed it to look like a hit. I made a mistake then. Or my mouth did. I says, funnylike, ‘Ha-ha, now you tell me’—and pow. I ducked, so he only got me with maybe two, three fingers, and knocked my ass over my belt buckle. I went around like a pinwheel and was out cold a whole minute. They tell me."

  “What was Cimarron doing at the hospital?"

  “Helpin’ Doc Bliss keep an eye on Claude."

  “Romanelle—he's there, at the Medigenic?"

  Andy nodded, a strange look on his brown face.

  “OK. Just one last thing to tell me and you can split. What's the best way for me to get Romanelle out of there? Without getting both of us killed?"

  “Uh ... Well ... Maybe there ain't much point in gettin’ him out."

  “There's plenty of point. All you have to tell me is how to get to him and I'll do the rest. You can tell me where he is, and the best way for me to get in and out, can't you?"

  “Yeah, sure. But that ain't what I was implicating. I mean, Alda and Bliss figured they had to make Claude tell them everything and then some, but he is a tough old cookie. So they sent some kind of electricities through his brains to make him unclam his chops. That is, the doc did—"

  “Electricity? What do you mean—electroshock?"

  “Whatever. Some electricities, with a machine they got there and some kind of paddles, that's what they called ‘em. Crazy things, don't look much like paddles. Anyways, I guess they kind of overfried his brains some."

  “Overfried? What the hell did they do to the man?"

  “I don't know the technicals of what they done, but I seen old Claude up there and he ain't a very lively cat. More like a dead one."

  Chapter Sixteen

  I stared at Foster's handsome brown face, his last words blending unpleasantly with the image of that dead cat I'd seen on Cimarron's property.

  Finally I said, “Romanelle is still alive, right?"

  “Barely. You can tell he ain't diseased yet because he drools. And moves a little once in a while. But otherwise he looks like he been embalmed."

  I swore.

  “Yeah,” Foster said. “It's a shame, all right. He was such a brainy guy, really smart. Twice as smart as Alda, and Alda ain't nobody's dummy.” He sighed, rubbing his jaw. “Pretty bad, especially when you see him. Hell of it is, I liked Claude, he was always good to me, treated me good."

  “Look, if he's not dead yet, then maybe..."

  “Maybe. Sure. They—Alda and Doc Bliss, and a couple of the guys, they're goin’ cuckoo, and Alda's about to have a colonary. They're tryin’ everything they can think of to bring him around. But I think they fried his brains, like those onion rings you get at Jack-in-the-Box."

  “They're trying to bring him around? Help him? Why—because they didn't find out everything they were after?"

  “Why, prob'ly because they're humanitarians,” he said dryly, “don't you s'pose?"

  I stood up, anxious to get moving now that I knew—finally—where my client was. Or, until very recently, had been.

  Foster explained, in response to my questions and with as much detail as he could recall, exactly where Romanelle was on the Medigenic's fourth floor and how I might get to him. He added that at various times Dr. Bliss, Alda Cimarron, and Cowboy Jay Groder were with him; they might all three be there, but at least one of them was invariably present. Romanelle was never left alone.

  I already had the keys to Andy's Subaru XT coupe in my pocket. So I said, “I really don't like taking your wheels, Andy, but it's necessary,” and told him the name of a parking lot where I'd leave the Subaru in a day or two.

  “I'll prob'ly be in Abyssinia in a day or two."

  “Might be a wise move. You got any money?"

  “Sure, I got enough dough. Unless you was fixing to pay me for my car."

  “Andy, consider my use of it payment for your loitering about with Cowboy when I and ... my companion arrived here at Sky Harbor. And loitering again on the twelfth floor of the Hall-Manchester Building. Or, rather, for what you intended, but fortunately were unable to consummate, doing to us."

  “We wasn't ... Well, we wasn't going to...” His eyes were dancing.

  “You weren't planning to kill us both instantly? Maybe going to turn us over to Dr. Bliss first? Don't bull me—"

  “Hey, I leveled with you. Straight goods so far. So don't put me down."

  “Alda Cimarron sent you out for us, didn't he?"

&
nbsp; “Yeah. Sure, it was Alda. But he says, bring—bring them, that is the two of you, to him personal."

  His eyes were telling me there was at least a little something he was leaving out, something not absolutely on the level. So I said, “Or be sure the lady got safely to him, right? And if I happened to be a little too much trouble, maybe if I didn't make it to Alda's, he'd forgive you?"

  “Um ... ah, somethin’ like that, pretty close. I didn't have no idea how much trouble you was gonna be."

  “OK, Andy. You can stay here or split, whatever you want to do. We're quits. But remember, if you screw up—more specifically, try to screw me up—I'll absolutely dismember you, I'll make it a personal crusade. But besides that, if you talk to the law I can tell them a lot of things about you, including your attempt to kill Romanelle. And if you cozy up to Cimarron all I have to do is tell him you puked to me, reciting chapter and verse, and I won't have to do zilch about you, he'll pluck off your arms and legs one at a time himself."

  “He'd prob'ly pluck ‘em off all at once, that bugger. But the law won't do too good with me on the Claude hit."

  “Why not? You were there, you and Cowboy, right? Even if you haven't come straight out and said so."

  “Yeah ... I think I'll tell you. I really walk, right? You're really gonna let me split, like you said?"

  “Like I said."

  “Be damned. OK, well ... yeah, it was me and Jay Groder on that hit. But I missed. Deliberate. Think back on all them shots, and Claude got hit only three times—all three times by Jay. I hit a couple of parked cars with my .45, which is what I was aiming at. I told you, I liked old Claude, he never screwed me or nothing, treated me like I was a friend of his. Which, damn, I think I was, you know?"

  “You mean you blew it, made sure you didn't hit Romanelle?"

  “That's exact. Hey, I figured Jay'd blow him away easy, I just didn't want it on my conscious. Look, man, I do the grift, some con, I steal from a time to a time. But I never killed nobody, and I got no plans to take it up even for a sideline.” He waggled his head, but his eyes stayed steady on my face. “I don't know why the hell Alda sent me on that, except maybe to get more things to hold on me. And I guess he figured, like I did, Jay was enough by hisself. He's killed a lotta guys already, eight, ten, I don't know—maybe he don't. Him and Keats, they were the only shooters in this setup. And you know what happened to Keats lately. I guess you know."