Dead Heat (The Shell Scott Mysteries)

by Richard S. Prather

  True, Doody had been with Wyndham only three weeks, she’d said, but she might have learned a lot in three weeks, a lot that I should know. Clearly, I would be remiss in my duty if I did not mulct all the information I could out of Doody. And, if you could have seen her walking down the hallway a mere three or four feet ahead of me, you would have agreed with me 100 per cent.

  So I quickened my pace, drew abreast — or at least alongside — of Doody and said, “We didn’t really get a chance to talk much, Miss Duden. May I buy you a drink, or dinner, while we — ”

  “That would be fun.” I blinked. I hadn’t actually told her what we were going to do. “And don’t call me Miss Duden,” she went on. “I don’t like that either. Call me Doody.”

  “Yeah, sure.” We’d passed through the front doors and were on Santa Monica Boulevard, so I grinned at her and said, “Well, let’s . . . do it now, hey?”

  “That’s the spirit,” she said. “Like that old maximum, don’t put off today what you can do tomorrow.”

  This time the warp twanged in my ear a little. I ran over it once, trying to take it apart, but it seemed to have come unglued before I got to it. So I merely shrugged and said, “To say the minumum. You know any place handy where we can start with a cocktail?”

  “You can start with a cocktail anywhere. There’s the Matador.”

  “The what?”

  She pointed. Across the street was the glass-and-black-marble front of a cocktail lounge. Over the door was a large neon bullfighter, waving a red cape with a stiff awkwardness that surely would have gotten him gored in the ring. A sign gaudily announced that it was indeed the matador.

  “Great,” I said, and steered her toward it.

  Inside we found a booth and ordered drinks. I had my usual bourbon-and-water, and Doody ordered one of those gooey feminine concoctions. It was green, with a little froth on it, and looked like something that had been bitten by a rattlesnake. I glanced around at colorful serapes, painted gourds, bullfight posters, and wide-brimmed straw hats on the walls.

  Then I raised my glass and said, “Salud y amor y pesetas,” quoting part of one of my favorite Mexican toasts.

  She smiled. “Oh . . . parlez-vous Español?” she asked brightly.

  “No, it’s just a toast I — what?”

  “Well, let’s drown the hatch,” she said, and had a swallow of her drink. I had a healthy gulp of mine. And the conversation for a minute or two went along at the same dizzy pace. At the end of the minute or two I had become totally convinced: Doody, clearly, was not the brightest babe in the world. But I was also convinced I didn’t really give a hoot. She was animated, happy, bubbling with laughter, her beige-brown eyes sparkling, lips softly curling. Her voice was a little too high, with a slightly twanging nasality that might have been annoying issuing from lips less provocatively incandescent, but there was a sweetness in it that made the sound almost pleasant. And too, every once in a while she took a deep breath before unleashing a gush of conversation, and when Doody took: a deep breath it relegated intelligence to a series of numbers like 38-22-36.

  I stubbed out my smoke and reached for another, finding the pack empty. So I excused myself and walked to the cigarette machine at the bar’s end, where there was also a glassed-in phone booth. As I got a fresh pack of smokes I noticed a man in the booth just dropping a dime into the slot.

  It was the guy-in-a-hurry, the stubby character who’d nearly bumped into me when leaving Wyndham’s office. So, curiously, I watched from just outside the booth as he dialed, 988-4584. He put the phone to his ear, glanced around — and looked right at me. His jaw went down and up again as it had in Wyndham’s office, and he very suddenly hung up.

  He stepped out and smiled tightly, as if his teeth were coming loose. “Busy,” he said without conviction, then stood there watching me.

  I entered the booth, dialed my office number, let the phone ring a few times and hung up. I stepped out and said, “Nobody there.”

  Back at our table I said to Doody, “Remember the guy who charged out of Mr. Wyndham’s office just as I arrived?”

  She nodded.

  “Who is he?”

  “He said his name was Mr. Foster.”

  “Had he been there before?”

  “Not that I know of. I don’t think I’d ever seen him before. Why?”

  “Just curious. Had he been with Wyndham long?”

  “No, he came in just a minute or two before you did. He seemed in a hurry, didn’t he?”

  “Yeah,” I said, wondering why. And wondering why he’d reacted so peculiarly both times he’d seen me.

  He was in the phone booth again now, making a call, looking toward me — or Doody, or maybe both of us — from time to time. When he came out he had a drink at the bar and then left.

  I said to Doody, “What’s Wyndham’s phone number?” She told me, but it wasn’t the one Foster had dialed. Doody said she didn’t know whose number it was. “Why don’t you call it and ask them?”

  “A capital idea,” I said, and did just that. But nobody answered, so I went back to Doody.

  She was hungry — as was I, for that matter, having had no chow today except my breakfast mush, which is nutritious, but so lousy the way I cook it that I seldom eat much of it, and which had been so lousy this morning I hadn’t eaten any of it. So we ordered dinner. My choice was an extra-thick cut of prime ribs, as rare as I could get it, and Doody had a crab Louie.

  While we ate I brought the conversation around to Universal Electronics, her boss, Matthew Wyndham, and allied subjects. She had a good word for everything and everybody, which wasn’t much help to me, since I was looking for bad words. Doody asked me what kind of work I did, and since Wyndham already knew I was a detective there seemed no harm in telling her. After that she seemed more interested in asking me about my work than in answering my questions, an attitude widely touted as a way to Win Friends and Influence People, but again not of much help to me.

  Finally I said, “I guess the Ryder Tangier thing was long before your time.”

  “Oh, yes. He’s the man who stole the money, isn’t he?”

  “Allegedly.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Well, he’s alleged to have embezzled the loot — he was accused of it, anyway.”

  “He must have done it then, mustn’t he? They sent him to prison, I thought.”

  “That’s right. He’s in the clink now.”

  “Well, I don’t know anything about that. It all happened while Miss Brandt was working for Mr. Wyndham.”

  “Uh-huh. Incidentally, you told me she went away somewhere. Where’d she go?”

  “I don’t know, exactly. We’ve been friends for over two years — we both lived at the Lanai Apartments on Sunset, that’s where we met — and Alice told me she was going to quit her job and go back east. Her family is back there, I think.”

  “Where back east?”

  “Just back east, that’s all she said, and there’s a lot of it back there. Anyway, she said if I applied for the position I’d probably get it — if she knew Mr. Wyndham. Whatever that meant.”

  I had a hunch I knew what that meant.

  Doody went on, “So I applied for the job and got it. Was I surprised! I can type and all that, but I don’t know much about electron things. Mr. Wyndham said it didn’t make much difference, isn’t that funny?”

  Eying Doody’s other-than-typing talents, and recalling my impression of Matthew Wyndham, it didn’t strike me as particularly funny, certainly not hilarious. I said, “This Alice Brandt was rather attractive, wasn’t she?”

  “Oh, yes. But she’s an older woman. She must have been . . . maybe thirty.”

  Thirty is my age. I said, a bit stiffly, “That’s not exactly what I — ”

  “But she was remarkably well preserved, as the saying goes. She looked a little bit like me, only older of course. I mean, she’s blonde and not skinny or anything.”

  Not skinny or anything. If tha
t was how Doody thought of herself, it was good enough for me. Miss Brandt must have been a wow. Another blonde too. As I recalled, the photo of Mrs. Wyndham had been of a gal with hair the color of mice. Was this a clue?

  And, idly thinking in that fashion, a rather peculiar sequence of events struck me. Ryder Tangier had been sent to Q a month ago. A week later — about three weeks ago, when Doody got her job with Wyndham — Miss Alice Brandt quit and “went back east.” At approximately the same time, Julie Tangier had simply disappeared from the Watson-Parker. I didn’t know what significance that had, if any, but it left me with a mild uneasiness. An uneasiness accented by the undeniable fact that John Kay had been killed only yesterday.

  “Doody,” I said, “you meet everybody who calls on Wyndham, don’t you? Before they go in to see him?”

  She nodded. “Yes. That’s part of what I’m hired for, to make appointments and like that.”

  “Do you remember a man named John Kay calling on Mr. Wyndham?”

  She frowned again, and got the intent expression that told me she was thinking hard about it. I said, “He was a detective, though he might not have said so. A man about fifty — ”

  “Oh, him. The other detective.” Her face brightened. “Yes, I remember him now. He came to see Mr. Wyndham . . . about a week or so ago. Thursday or Friday, I think it was. And again this last Wednesday.”

  Wednesday. And he’d been killed Thursday. Which could have been a coincidence,

  “One other thing,” I said. “How often does Axel Scalzo come around to see Mr. Wyndham?”

  “Who?”

  “Axel Scalzo. He’s been in to see Mr. Wyndham, hasn’t he?”

  She shook her head. “Not that I know of. I don’t even remember that name from anywhere.”

  Doody had that hard-thinking-and-intent expression on again. “Why are you asking me all these questions?” she said suspiciously. “About this detective, and Mr. Wyndham, and Alice and all. I thought you wanted to buy me a drink — like it’s romantic, or something.” Her voice went up the scale two notes. “If you think you can ply me with drinks and undermine my loyalty — ”

  “It was only one drink, and there wasn’t anything in it except some green — ”

  “. . . and ply me with crab Louies while you put the wool in my eyes, well, you’ve got another think — ”

  “Doody, please. Relax. We’ll talk about anything you want to talk about.”

  “Well.” Her face smoothed a bit. “All right. Then why are you asking all those questions?”

  “Uh,” I said. “Well, I represent a large stockholder, interested in the company.” I repeated much of what I’d said to Matthew Wyndham, adding, “But enough of that. Let’s talk about you. Us. About the glorious future beckoning — ”

  “So. You invited me to drink and dinner so you could ply me — ”

  “Doody, dammit — ”

  “Well, didn’t you? Tell me the truth.”

  Why did she have to put it that way? I took a deep breath, looked at her narrowed eyes, and said, “Yes.”

  Silence. She looked, I thought, a little hurt. After a moment I went on, “At least that was part of the reason. There was another part, Doody. And how there was another part! And if you can’t figure that part out by yourself, then none of the superlatives on the tip of my tongue would convince you.”

  Slowly her narrowed eyes went back to normal, and a small smile finally curved those wild red lips. “All right,” she said. “Then let’s say good-bye to the bygones, and all that.”

  “Fine, Doody, let’s . . . let’s do what?”

  “Actually,” she said, “when you came into the office, I thought, ‘Boy, there’s a big one.’ I mean, you must be two hundred pounds if you’re an inch, and I don’t like a man who’s too perfect, anyway.”

  “You don’t, huh?” I considered that more, liking it less. “I’m not sure I know precisely what that means. . . .”

  “You know, you came in like you owned the place, or were going to wreck it maybe, and besides, you look like a man who’s lived, you know. Maybe too much.”

  I kept trying to get a big boost from her complimentary remarks; but I couldn’t quite make it. I sat there with, I guess, a kind of dull hope on my face, a hope that was not to be fulfilled, as she went on, “Some women like handsome men, the almost pretty type, but give me a big wreck any old time.”

  Well, I thought. Well! I realize that I’m no Cary Grant or dashing Rip Cord, idol of teen-agers; and that my nose has been broken a couple of times and a little tiny bit shot off the top of my left ear; and that I have been clobbered in and about my chops by everything from eight knuckles at once to the flat side of a meat cleaver; and that I do indeed bear a few little scars, most of which are not visible — at least not when I’m sitting in a nightclub with a big-mouthed tomato — but a wreck?

  Suddenly I realized Doody was laughing silently, her light-brown eyes squinting merrily and small gay sounds issuing from her lips. “Oh, you should see your expression!” she said in sheer delight.

  “I’ve had quite enough jazz about my expression, Miss,” I said loftily.

  “Oh! I’ll ruin my mascara.” She plucked at a paper tissue and dabbed at her eyes.

  “Fine,” I said. “That’s fine with me — ”

  “Oh, Shell,” she said. “Shellie. That’ll teach you to ply me with things, and play fast and loose with me.”

  Maybe she wasn’t so dumb after all. I said, “I wasn’t exactly plying you, Miss Duden. And as for playing fast and loose with you . . . uh, Doody, that’s another story. What do you mean, fast and loose?”

  “Oh, you men. All you can see is — the outside. Beauty is only skin deep, you know.”

  “Baby, that’s deep enough.”

  “You know what I mean. A woman is more than sixty-five cents’ worth of chemicals, or whatever the scientists say.”

  “I never said it. Man — I mean lady — Doody, I didn’t even know it was sixty-five — I mean, let’s start over.”

  She laughed and said something I simply didn’t understand at all. And that’s the way it went. We finished dinner, had coffee, and soon were standing next to the table as Doody said, “Thanks so much, Shellie. I forgive you for being so mean. I do have to run.”

  My head was whirling. When you’re used to logic, and when you try very hard to pursue trains of thought to their logical conclusions but instead wind up with train wrecks, and when this is accompanied by the sight of the disturbingly physical lovelinesses of a Doody, it is inevitable that your head will start whirling.

  So I said, “It’s been grand. Yes. We’ll have to do this again, whatever we did. In fact, if I didn’t have to work tonight, maybe we could do it tonight — ”

  “Oh, but I have a date tonight. Didn’t I tell you? Or is that what you meant? Anyway, I do have to run.” She smiled up at me. “I didn’t mean all the things I said.” Then she reached up and patted my cheek with cool, soft fingers, patted gently, smiling wondrously, and said, “Anyway, you’re a nice old wreck.”

  And was gone.

  I stood there for a few seconds. Then I sat down in the booth again. The shape I was in, it just wouldn’t do for me to go out into the world. Not just yet.

  “Waiter,” I said, as he walked by, “please bring me another drink.”

  What had happened, really? Well, for one thing, I’d spent a lot more time telling her about me and what I was doing than in learning from her the intimate and possibly sinister secrets of Universal Electronics and such vital matters.

  But I had learned that Doody, though perhaps not overly familiar with what some refer to as “the intellectual life,” knew quite enough about plain old life, knew a lot, one hell of a lot, about men.

  And I had learned that very cool fingers could nonetheless leave a very warm brand on a man’s cheek.

  I finished my drink. Then, almost back to normal, I went out into the real world again.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Sh
ortly before 7 p.m., I parked the Cad on Third near the South Seas, checked the .38 Colt Special I was wearing under my tan coat, then stuck the gun back into its clamshell holster and got out of the car.

  Sick Eddy hadn’t had much time to pick anything important off the underworld wireless, but he was good; he knew the places to listen, and when and where to speak, so I figured there was a fifty-fifty chance he’d have something of interest to me.

  I had checked the gun, not because I was going to meet Eddy Sly but because I was going into the South Seas — the joint owned by Axel Scalzo.

  Not that there was any real reason to expect trouble — certainly not at this point in my budding investigation of Universal Electronics. So far there wasn’t the slightest trace of any connection between Scalzo and Wyndham or other UE people. Possibly I’d put too much emphasis on the simple fact that Scalzo had been buying a lot of UE stock. But going armed and somewhat warily into Scalzo’s dive was what Doody — in one of the remarks I was beginning to think of as her “Doodyisms” — might have called the pound of prevention.

  Not only was there a chance I’d run into Axel Scalzo himself in the South Seas, but I knew that a number of unsavory characters — along with, and unsuspected by, the normal night-clubbing solid citizens of the area — liked to drop into the place, either alone or with buddies or babes, for a drink or several. Especially on Friday nights, since the hoodlums among us enjoy the sway of before or swing of behind just as much as the non-hoodlums among us, and sometimes even more so. Consequently I might come face to face with characters whom I had previously met in circumstances that could by no stretch of the imagination be called enjoyable, characters who would probably object to my presence, and even to my existence.

  Then there was Scalzo himself, of course. I’ve mentioned that we’d never tried killing each other, or come to blows, but whenever we got close, even though not a word was spoken, people around us seemed to sort of edge away, like extras in Western movies when the gunfighters start stalking toward each other down the dusty street. It was as if they unconsciously knew something calamitous was likely to happen, but just hadn’t happened. Not yet.