Dead Heat (The Shell Scott Mysteries)

by Richard S. Prather

  Standing at the window overlooking Broadway, I saw him leave the building and walk past Pete’s and into the parking lot there. In a minute he came out driving a year-old Ford.

  I watched him drive down Broadway, then went back to my desk and got on the phone. First I called the police. There was nothing new on the murder of John Kay; no leads, no suspects, nothing. I talked to men in Homicide, R and I, and Missing Persons, and asked several questions about Julie Tangier. There had been no Missing Person report on her, no report of disappearance, accident, death — a zero, in fact, on Julie Tangier. I asked the same questions about Ardis Ames. Zero again. Nothing from Missing Persons, the morgue, Homicide; R and I, the Records and Identification Division, had nothing on her. It was the same story when I checked on Alice Brandt, Wyndham’s former secretary.

  I stayed on the phone a few minutes longer, hung up, and sat doodling on a scratch pad, thinking. Then I called Gabriel Rothstein and told him I was ready to make an initial report if he wanted it. He wanted it. In another minute I was on my way to his office.

  “Hello,” he boomed as I walked in. “Our stock is down an eighth. You’ve lost one hundred and twenty-five dollars.”

  “That’s nice. I had to shoot a guy, I’ve been wounded in the rear end and socked on the head, and this morning I feel as if vampires had used me unkindly during my minute’s sleep. Now I’ve lost one hundred and twenty-five dollars. Well, easy come, easy go.”

  He laughed, apparently thinking that was marvelous, and stood up behind his desk to shake my hand.

  “What have you learned?” he asked.

  “Not much, really. Or, rather, a lot of little things that aren’t tied together yet. I’ve found no direct link between Scalzo and Wyndham, but there are several people who know both of them — a con man named Quick, posing as a doctor; Wyndham’s new secretary, a beautiful dumb blonde named Nell Duden; a hoodlum or two, one of them the guy I shot last night. Both Scalzo and Wyndham deny knowing each other, and I think they’re both lying but can’t prove it. Not yet. No leads so far to Kay’s killer. Incidentally, I think you’re being watched — this building, anyway.”

  “Oh? What makes you think that?”

  “A little while after I left here yesterday I went to see a man named Eddy Sly. A couple of musclemen knew I’d gone to see him. The odds are they knew because they saw me go to his hotel, which means they must have been on my tail before then. Almost surely they had no reason to tail me until I took this job. They had a pretty good idea of what I was checking on, so they must have picked me up here.”

  He nodded slowly, ran a big hand over his short black hair. The almost chill blue eyes under the black brows were fixed on my face.

  “Another thing,” I added. “When they were bouncing Eddy around they asked him if I was working for you. Apparently they didn’t know I was, but had reason to believe I might be. Say I was seen coming into this building. Well, there are a lot of other offices in it and I just might have been going to one of the others.”

  “I see,” he said. He pulled at his nose. “Your complete report. Start at the beginning.”

  I brought Rothstein up to date. Just the facts, without comment or interpretation.

  When I finished, he said, “Interesting. I presume you are intrigued by the same elements which now intrigue me. The peculiar unavailability of Miss Tangier, and of Miss Alice Brandt, Mr. Wyndham’s former secretary, and his new secretary’s familiarity with many of our dramatis personae. And, too, the very recent death of Mr. Kay.”

  “And what about the mysterious Mr. Quick?” He paused. “I presume you have visited the Western Insurance Building to determine if he has an office there as Dr. Noble?”

  “I’m going to do that when I leave here, but I’m pretty sure what I’ll find.”

  “Your conclusions from all this?”

  “In abeyance for the moment. I’m getting a picture, but it’s still fuzzy. With luck I’ll have more for you later today or tonight. Whatever’s cooking should by now be at a boil. We’ve applied some extra heat, and the animals should be pretty well stirred up. At least one of them was concerned enough to try buying me off.”

  “Yes.” He nodded again. “When you tore those bills in half, was that a mere exhibition of contempt or anger, mere theatrics?”

  “No.”

  “I thought not”

  “Nobody — whether it’s Scalzo, Wyndham, or somebody else — is going to toss five thousand bucks into the ash can. So in the next few days, or possibly even today, those bills will be presented somewhere for redemption, perhaps deposited to an account if we’re lucky. It depends on whether the owner thinks my act was something more than mere theatrics.”

  He reached for a phone on his desk, dialed a number, and spoke briefly to someone he called Harry. Then he hung up and turned back to me. “That was the president of a bank where I have a rather large account. He’ll let me know if the bills are deposited or redeemed anywhere in this area.”

  “Good. I’ll check with you later.”

  He smiled pleasantly. “Since you have refused his offer of money, what will the man — assuming it is a man — do now?”

  “Whoever it is, he’s worried. At least five G’s worth. If it’s merely a worried citizen, perhaps nothing more will happen. If it was Scalzo, he’ll probably try to kill me.”

  “And that doesn’t concern you?”

  “Don’t kid yourself. It concerns me plenty. Maybe I should have been more alert to the possibility of somebody following me yesterday, but it seemed too early in the case to be worrying about a tail. But that won’t happen again.”

  “What do you intend to do next?”

  “I’ve got a big agency checking on Universal Electronics personnel, and I told them this morning, by phone, to dig into the possible whereabouts of Julie Tangier and Alice Brandt as well. Also this Ardis Ames I mentioned. If they fail to come up with anything, I’ll try that route myself — but it’s the kind of thing that can take days of checking and legwork, time I can better spend on the people who are available now. For the same reason I haven’t gone through the police mug books looking for the second man who was working Eddy Sly over, and who clobbered me last night. Even if he’s got a record here, it might take all day to find his picture, and he may not be in the L.A.P.D. books at all, which would mean more time wasted. Right now I’ll check the Western Insurance Building, then I’m going to have a talk with Murphy.”

  “He’s the man with whom Mr. Kay was sitting at the race track?”

  “Right. The police got nothing from him, but there’s a chance they missed something. Not that they aren’t thorough; they are. But the police don’t know as much as I do about what Kay was working on, and Murphy just might know something without realizing its importance. After that, well, part will depend on what Scalzo and Wyndham and the others do from now on. And I’ve got enough already, I think, to squeeze Matthew Wyndham. I’m just going to play it by ear. Push a little here, pull a little there, see what develops.”

  “Do it your way, Mr. Scott. I don’t care what methods you use. All I require is total and absolute success.”

  I grinned. “Suits me. It’s my stock too, you know.”

  “Yes.” He grinned back at me. “Down an eighth.”

  * * *

  In the lobby of the Western Insurance Building I studied the register. There was, of course, no Fleming Noble or Dr. Noble listed. There were several doctors listed, however, and it would have been a simple trick to remove the name of one and insert, say, “Fleming Noble, M.D.”

  I took off and headed for the home of Mr. William Murphy. He lived on Pelham Avenue in West L.A., in a big white house fronted by recently mowed green lawn. I found him behind the house in a hammock slung between two Chinese elm trees with a can of beer and a racing form. He was a pleasant man nearing sixty, wearing rumpled slacks and a colorful sports shirt, and didn’t mind my interrupting his search for a winner.

  “Do me good to get my m
ind off it for a few minutes,” he said. “Maybe my subconscious’ll gimme a horse in the sixth.” He rubbed faint stubble on his chin. “It’s a tight one.”

  He went through his story again for me. There wasn’t anything new, nothing I hadn’t already been told by the police. “Only thing I noticed was he didn’t bet on any of the races. I guessed he just liked to watch ’em run,” Murphy said.

  I spent another five minutes with him, but it wasn’t any help, and it was with more than a little disappointment that I prepared to leave. “Well, thanks very much, Mr. Murphy.” I grinned. “Hope your horses are all in the money today.”

  “You play the ponies, Mr. Scott?”

  “When I can get to the track.”

  He handed me the form. “Who you like in the sixth?”

  “Well,” I said after a minute or so, “Sirocco looks pretty good. Came in second at a mile five days ago, made up two lengths in the stretch. Should be sharp if he runs today.”

  “Kind of like him myself. Last out was his first time in the money for a while, too. Might be a good price.” He paused. “Usually I go to Hollypark alone, easier to concentrate when I’m by myself. But you seem to know your horses. If you’re at the track today, I’d be glad to make an exception and have you join me.”

  It struck me. Not because he’d said I could join him, and the last man to join him had been Kay, but because he’d said he’d “make an exception.” Something floated in my mind, just out of reach.

  I said, “You’re usually alone at the track? I mean, you prefer being alone?”

  “Well, ordinarily.” He grinned. “I’m pretty serious about the horses. Not that I bet real big, nothing like that. But I keep records of money won and lost, you know? So far I’m three hundred and eight dollars ahead for the season.”

  “Mr. Murphy, if you usually prefer being alone, how come you didn’t mind John Kay’s joining you? He didn’t know beans about horses.”

  He was silent for a moment, then lifted his trousers leg. On his left foot was a built-up shoe with an almost two-inch heel. “Doesn’t bother me,” he said. “But being kind of handicapped myself, I guess I’ve got, oh, a little more understanding of other handicapped people. Or sympathy — empathy, is that what you call it?”

  “Handicapped? What do you mean? Kay didn’t have anything wrong with him.”

  Murphy blinked. “He was deaf. I’d call that — ”

  “Deaf? He could hear a gun cocked two blocks away.”

  “Well, if he wasn’t deaf, I don’t know why he’d be wearing one of those hearing-aid things in his ear.”

  But I did. Suddenly, and with a quick surge of energy in my body. There was only one reason why a man with perfect hearing — especially an investigator like John Kay — would have been wearing a “hearing-aid thing” in his ear.

  Slowly I said, “Mr. Murphy, was he carrying anything? A box, brief case, attaché — ”

  “Why, yes, he did have a brief case, but — ”

  I thanked Murphy again and left so fast he must have thought something had bitten me. In a way, something had.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  I headed for Inglewood and Hollywood Park, but stopped on the way and put in a call to Gabriel Rothstein. An idea was starting to take form, and if perchance Rothstein had news for me, I wanted to know about it now.

  He did have news for me. “I’m glad you called, Mr. Scott,” he said. “I heard from Harry — my friend at the bank — not more than ten minutes ago. That money was deposited within the last half hour at the Security-First National Bank branch on Cañon Drive in Beverly Hills.”

  “Who deposited it? To what account?”

  “It was turned in for credit to one of the accounts in the name of our friend Mr. Scalzo. Does that surprise you?”

  “Not much.”

  “I don’t know the name of the man who brought in the money, but he answers the description of the individual you told me about.”

  “Uh-huh. What does surprise me a little is that he didn’t take the cash straight to Scalzo himself. He must have phoned and told him I’d turned down the offer. But the little man must not have told Scalzo about my bisecting the bills. It’s eight to five Scalzo would have tumbled if he had.”

  “There was one rather odd circumstance,” Rothstein continued. “The amount was not five thousand dollars, but only forty-nine hundred.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I kept one of the bills. Now that I know it came from Scalzo, I think I’ll return the C-note to him.”

  Rothstein was silent for a few seconds. Then he said, “But won’t that let Mr. Scalzo know you’ve learned he was behind the bribe attempt?”

  “Sure. I want him to know. You want action, don’t you?”

  “Yes, of course, but . . .” A short silence again. “Isn’t it possible that Mr. Scalzo might become violent?” It was one of the few times Rothstein’s voice hadn’t sounded like an overturning gravel truck. He sounded almost subdued.

  “Not possible,” I said. “Inevitable. Hell, after last night, the moment he spots me he’s going to become frenzied.”

  “I really don’t intend for you to get murdered, Mr. Scott.”

  “You and me both. Look, Scalzo’s probably not in the jolliest mood of his life right now, but I’m going to increase his depression, if possible. Couple things I want to tell him. If I can shake the burn up enough, maybe I can shake something out of him.”

  “I hope you know what you’re doing, Mr. Scott.”

  “So do I, Mr. Rothstein.”

  We hung up.

  And I changed my mind and headed for the home of Axel Scalzo. It was on Hollyridge Drive, adjacent to Brush Canyon, on the outskirts of Hollywood. I’d seen the house before but had never been inside. It was a big brick-and-redwood place, and there was nothing humble about this home. Scalzo had poured a hundred thousand bucks or more into the house and grounds.

  A cement driveway led off the street to a double garage in which were parked a new Cadillac sedan and a Lincoln Continental convertible. I pulled up behind them and walked over flagstone steps set in dark-green Korean grass to the front door. I rang the bell. Nothing happened. I rang again. Soft chimes once more inside the house, that was all. So I took a walk around the side of the house.

  Maybe Scalzo — and no telling who else — was in back. Somebody was here, or else the guy owned three cars. There were enough trees around this joint to make a forest, plus a lot of green stuff, ferns and bushy shrubs and large-leaved tropicals. I was walking over more of the flagstones which ran parallel to the house, but a narrow dirt path led off to my right, and glancing that way I caught a glimpse of white.

  So I walked over the dirt path to a small clearing, well protected by the planting around it but open to sunlight pouring in from overhead. Face down, on her bare stomach, a gal lay on a blanket in the middle of the clearing, and she was either dressed in less than the law allowed or the law had been changed since the last time I looked. I’ve always figured that law ought to be changed anyway.

  She was a blonde, splendidly curvaceous, wearing a pink Bikini bottom, the top caught beneath her bosom, its strap untied to allow the smooth play of sun on her back. She heard me breathing or something, or maybe my feet coming to a sliding stop, and flipped over onto her back, propping herself up on her elbows. Man, bosom wasn’t the word; those were big, trembling breasts, not-yet-sun-pinked but tipped with pink-like jutting exclamation points, and they sure got a couple exclamations out of me.

  In the middle of my exclamations she said, “Who the hell are you?”

  Leisurely she reached behind her and picked up the Bikini top, then put it in place. Not exactly, but close enough. It was the blonde I’d seen with Dan Quick in the Angeles-Sands Hotel last night. Mrs. Quick — or would it be Mrs. Noble? Maybe even something else by this time.

  I said, “I’m not a peeking Tom, miss. Or peeping whatever . . . um. Ah, is it miss?”

  In a voice chill enough to freeze alcohol in distant
thermometers, she said, “Mrs.”

  That was all; there wasn’t any more. And I could tell there wasn’t going to be any more. “The truth is,” I said, “I came here to see Scalzo. Axel. Nobody answered my ring, so I . . . Ah, Axel around?”

  She was squinting up at me, forehead slightly wrinkled, but nothing else wrinkled, the Bikini top even less exactly in place. “He’s in back, by the pool. Who — Ye gods! You’re Shell Scott!”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Ye gods. Don’t go back there . . .”

  “Something I shouldn’t see?”

  “It’s not that. He’ll just . . . have a hemorrhage probably. You must be nuts, coming here. Out of your skull, psycho.” She paused. “You’re really going back there?”

  “Yep.”

  “This I’ve got to see.”

  She rose smoothly to her feet, gave a little tug to her Bikini top, and another little tug to her Bikini bottom — neither of which did a bit of good — then padded after me as I walked back to the flagstone path and on to the rear of the house.

  It looked almost another half acre back here. Surrounded by smooth white cement, was a forty-foot-long swimming pool. On the left was a stone barbecue pit, a massive natural-wood table near it. This side of the pool were two metal tables with red-and-white-striped umbrellas over them, canvas-backed chairs around them.

  Scalzo was next to the pool, sitting under one of the striped umbrellas, hairy hand hiding a highball. He was in swim trunks, and honest to God he looked as if armed attendants should have been tossing him hunks of raw giraffe meat. He was built along the general lines of a cement mixer anyway, and seeing the jungle of hair all over him I began to understand how come he was bald. For a guy to grow that much fur that fast his hairy metabolism must have sucked everything but his scalp right off his head and down through his brains and out every which way. He was really hairy.

  He didn’t see me for a few seconds as I walked toward him. But Hale did. Hale, Scalzo’s shadow, the guy always protectively near Scalzo. My buddy. He was fully clothed, lying in a chaise longue a few feet beyond his boss.