Dead Heat (The Shell Scott Mysteries)

by Richard S. Prather

  Slowly Hale sat up, eying me, his mouth opening.

  “Hello, Scalzo,” I said cheerfully.

  He swung his bald head around and fixed those pale-gray eyes on me. He didn’t move or blink, just stared. Then he said, “Scott. You got your nerve, you miserable sonofabitch.”

  “I shall pop you into the pool, Axel. Watch your mouth.”

  For a while there I thought he was going to let out the battle honk of the bull moose and come at me. He stood up, filled his chest with air, balled his right hand into a fist, Muscles writhed over his forearm, biceps, and shoulder.

  Then he relaxed the arm, but not the rest of him. “You could get killed,” he said, “sneaking in here like this.”

  “I didn’t sneak. Fact is, I rang the bell but there wasn’t any answer. I came out here to give you something. Give something back, that is.”

  “Huh?” He was puzzled.

  I took my wallet from my inside coat pocket — easily, and keeping an eye on Hale, who almost yanked out a gun and shot me anyway — and took the two halves of the torn hundred-dollar bill from my wallet. I handed them to Scalzo and he took them, an expression of great perplexity on his face. Which told me clearly enough that he didn’t know anything about my tearing the bills in the first place.

  So I told him the tale. “Your secret’s out, Scalzo. I guess your messenger boy has to go stand in the corner.”

  “That dumb sonofabitch,” he said. Then he looked at me and grinned. Not pleasantly, just grinned. “O.K., so what? You should of took the five G’s, Scott. It would of been the easy way.”

  “What’s the hard way?”

  He took two long strides toward me, stopped a foot away. He glared up at me, and his voice was soft, level, and very cold indeed. “Why, you get yourself killed, you sonofabitch.”

  I felt my hand jerk. I balled it into a fist, but managed to hold the hand at my side. I did not intend to get shot in the head — or, for that matter, to shoot anybody else in the head — unless it became absolutely necessary. I could feel the tightness spread from my arm into my back muscles, slowly down into my thighs.

  “The mouth,” I said finally. “I told you, I shall pop you into the pool.”

  He laughed. “Well, I can wait. You aren’t gonna last, Scott.”

  “You’ve got it backward. I’ve got you pegged now, Scalzo. You’re shook up enough so you tried to buy me off, and now you know I know it.” I grinned at him. “That’s all I needed; that ties you in, Scalzo. So I’m going to ruin you, and whatever crooked caper you’re pulling. I’m going to put a bug in Wyndham’s ear — about Dr. Quick, for one thing. I know most of it already and I’ll have the rest in a matter of hours. Enough. Enough to put the chill on you, Scalzo.”

  He swallowed, as if startled. “Sure. We’ll see. And I still owe you one for last night — ”

  The words ended in a grunt. In the middle of the sentence he pivoted fast toward me, bringing up his beefy arm and slamming his right fist at my chin. He almost got it.

  I ducked, turning, and his knuckles bounced off my ear. The sound of his fist landing was an explosion inside my head and the impact pushed me a little off balance. Just a little. But he was way off balance, pulled forward by the force of his swing.

  By the time he’d started to straighten up I had my feet planted and was swinging at him, a solid left jab that landed on his forehead. Beyond him I could see Hale scrambling to his feet, hand digging under his coat. That left wasn’t the hardest punch I ever threw, but it was hard enough to pop Scalzo into the pool.

  Fortunately — for me — on his way backward one of Scalzo’s flailing arms banged into Hale’s battered face, staggering him. Hale’s leg hit the chaise longue behind him and he flopped on it, a .45-caliber Army Colt in his hand catching the sunlight.

  Scalzo went over the pool’s edge, lit in the water with a huge splash. Hale leaned forward, starting to snap the heavy automatic toward me, but by then my own .38 was in my hand. I threw my fist toward him, finger tightening on the trigger.

  Neither of us said a word. But he saw me in a crouch, the gun’s muzzle trained on his chest. He froze, his automatic still aimed a foot or two away from me. I don’t know how long we stayed that way — and, I’ll wager, neither did Hale. It couldn’t have been long, because Scalzo was still under the pool’s surface, and there was a lot of swirling but no more splashing yet.

  I said, “Throw it into the pool, Hale.”

  He licked his lips.

  “Throw it.”

  He let out his breath in a shuddering sigh, and tossed the Colt into the water just as Scalzo’s head popped above the pool’s surface.

  If the sound he was making wasn’t the battle honk of a bull moose, it would do till a real moose came along and honked. It was a great, hoarse, crescendoing ululation, accompanied by terrific splashing and kicking as Scalzo clawed the water, clawing in my direction.

  It’s time to get the hell out of here, I thought.

  I turned and started back alongside the house, headed for my Cad. Leaning against the rear wall was the blonde in her pink Bikini. Her eyes were pretty wide.

  As I passed she said, “Well, I guess I’d better finish my sunbath. Too bad you can’t stick around.” And her voice, this time, would not have frozen alcohol in thermometers.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Isn’t it?”

  Behind me was a great splashing, and much whooping and yowling.

  I did not stick around.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  I left my Cad in a lot at Hollywood Park, as near to the main grandstand entrance as I could get, a few minutes after 11 a.m. First post wasn’t until one-thirty this afternoon, but hundreds of cars were in the lots, early birds already here, working over their forms and charts and dreaming of long-shot parlays.

  Colorful pennants atop the grandstand rippled in a light breeze as I paid my admission and went through the turnstile, headed toward the rotunda. At their small stands under striped umbrellas, men were hawking Racing Forms, programs, pencils. Saturday, a big day at the track; everything under way even at this hour.

  The man I was looking for was Dave Carter, chief of Hollypark’s track-security detail — more accurately, the Thoroughbred Racing Protective Bureau, or TRPB, which polices plant and personnel for member tracks of the Thoroughbred Racing Association. Dave, like many others in the TRPB, was an ex-FBI agent. That did not, however, make him a splendid judge of horses. I had not only known him for years, but he had — jokingly, I guess — generously given me three hot tips so far this season, the hottest being a horse named Flyaway, which finished fourth in a ten-horse sprint, the other two sure things coming in last and next-to-last in their races. So I figured he owed me a favor. Besides, he would be interested in what I had to tell him.

  I found Dave in his office at the end of the Operations Tunnel. I told him I was checking up on the death of John Kay, gave him a sketchy idea of the background of the case, and repeated what Murphy had so recently told me.

  Dave was a tanned, round-faced, medium-size man, affable and easygoing — unless crossed. He listened quietly while I talked, then said without surprise, “A bug, huh?”

  “Sure. Little speaker in his ear, wire leading down his coat sleeve to a power pack and receiver in his brief case, maybe even a miniature recorder. And a compact wireless transmitter somewhere here at the track.”

  “Which covers three hundred and fifty acres. But we might be able to narrow it down for you, Shell.” He chewed on his lip for a moment. “You figure whoever killed Kay spotted the ear speaker and knew what it was, or knew who John Kay was, and shot him?”

  “Or found the transmitter, then tumbled to what Kay was up to. Look, we know he was wearing a hearing aid and carrying a brief case, neither of which items was on him when your men and the local police checked him over. It figures either he dumped the stuff before he was shot, or his killer did later. If so, it might have been turned in to your lost-and-found department.” I stopped.
r />   “Go on,” Dave said quietly.

  “Hell, that’s it. I figure Kay was probably sitting where he could not only listen to whatever characters he was bugging but could watch them at the same time and know for sure who was talking. Well, he was sitting with Murphy. So where was Murphy sitting?”

  “I’ll show you. But take a look at the lost-and-found stuff first. You were right about the bug and brief case.” He jerked a thumb at closed locker doors in the wall. “They were turned in here Thursday, after the ninth race.”

  “Well, damn you. Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

  He grinned. “I wanted you to tell me a little more first, Shell. One look at the equipment and it was clear somebody was using a wireless rig here at the track, but it could have been any of forty thousand people. There wasn’t any evidence pointing to a specific person. Not until now.”

  You wouldn’t believe what there is to be found in a lost-and-found department at a race track. You wouldn’t believe people could lose all those things. On a good day, though, as many as sixty to seventy thousand people watch the ponies run, and sometimes they get all excited. So excited, in fact, that the items at the moment included wallets, crutches, an inner tube, an artificial leg, a dollar bill, two pairs of women’s pink pants, a ticket for a recent “Matsonia” sailing, and among a great variety of other unclaimed goodies, one set of false teeth and three pairs of protuberant falsies.

  The important items to me, naturally, were a small ear speaker that looked like a hearing aid, a brief case containing a compact radio receiver complete with two mercury batteries, and finally a sugar-cube-size Tracer Microphone Transmitter, with its twelve-inch antenna extending from one end and from the other a nine-inch battery line tipped with a snap-on battery clip attached to a tiny mercury battery. Traces of some hard, opaque substance were on the base of the transmitter, battery, cable, and antenna — clear evidence that it had been glued or cemented to something.

  “That takes care of Kay’s deafness,” I said. “Have you tried the setup?”

  “Sure. It’s a good unit, works fine if you keep it away from metal. But don’t forget, almost everything here that isn’t cement is metal.”

  “I’ve a hunch he was bugging a box, Dave. They’re steel, aren’t they?”

  “Right. And if that little mike was close to steel, transmission would be very greatly reduced.”

  “Uh-huh. Which may be another reason why Kay would have had to be close to his people. Well, let’s try it out. Where was Murphy sitting?”

  “Come on, I’ll show you.”

  We walked out of the tunnel and then left through the Clubhouse gate, past the bronze statue of Swaps in the Clubhouse entrance gardens, then up the double escalators and into the Clubhouse.

  Dave led the way down one of the aisles, stopped, and pointed below us and to our right. “There’s Murphy’s box,” he said, “where Kay was sitting that day.”

  I looked around. We were standing at the end of Aisle 2, the finish line to our left, slightly left and below us the paddock and winners’ circle. It had turned into a beautiful day, clear and cloudless, warm for May. The brown oval of the one-mile track enclosed the vivid green infield, bright banks of flowers accenting the cool smoothness of the infield lakes. On our right were rows of individual chairs comprising the reserved-seat or loge section. Below them and stretching to the right, and also massed to our left, were the painted mustard-yellow boxes, in each of which were four cushioned metal chairs. Farther left and below, on the ground level in front of the grandstand, was where John Kay had been shot.

  “O.K.,” I said. “Now, do you know if a man named Matthew Wyndham has a box here?”

  “Not offhand. I can check it.”

  “How about Axel Scalzo?”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Scalzo? Yeah, he’s got a box.” Dave pointed to our left. “Down there. Had it for the last five or six seasons. Why are you interested in Scalzo?”

  “Kay might have been checking up on him.”

  “Oh.” He shook his head, eyes sober. “Scalzo, huh?” He glanced right, at the Murphy box, then to his left again, measuring the distance. “Pretty close, but I don’t know. Everything’s metal and cement here, Shell.”

  “Wait a minute.” I’d spotted something. At the front of each box were double shelves five or six feet long with about six inches of open space between them. They provided places where the racegoers could put their programs, charts, drinks. “Those little shelves, Dave. They don’t look like metal.”

  “You’re right, they’re wood. Only wood anywhere around here.”

  “Well, if I were doing it, I’d cement my mike and battery inside one of those things, beneath the top shelf.”

  “Damned close to the steel in front of the box, Shell.”

  “Yeah, but at least there’s no metal above or below where the bug would be. Which is Scalzo’s box?”

  We went down a couple of steps and left along a narrow cement walk. The third or fourth box from the aisle where we’d been standing had a small name plate affixed to its back: axel scalzo. I stepped inside, kneeled in the front of the box, and ran my fingers along the underside of the top shelf. Nothing. If the little microphone transmitter, antenna, and battery had been affixed there, some trace of the glue or cement should have remained. But I couldn’t feel anything.

  I looked at the name plates of the boxes on each side of Scalzo’s. On the left was George M. Williams, on the right, Arthur Mayberry. I stepped into the Williams box and checked the shelf there. This time it was easy; I found what I was after.

  I showed Dave the little hunk of glue or mucilage I’d peeled off the wood. “Some kind of cement,” I told him. “The whole transmitter, with antenna and battery cable, would cover a straight line about twenty-two inches long, and I could feel this stuff under the shelf for roughly that distance.”

  Dave took the transmitter from his pocket and compared the gunk on it with the bit of dried cement. “Looks like the same stuff all right,” he said.

  “Chemical analysis should prove it, but this is good enough for me,” I said. “So who was Kay bugging — Williams or Scalzo? Who’s this George M. Williams, anyway?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll look it up for you though.”

  We went back down to his office and checked his records. The box had been rented for the season, and payment made by mail, by George M. Williams of 1015½ Laurel Way, Beverly Hills. Which didn’t mean anything to me. Not yet. While we were at it we checked on Axel Scalzo. He had also made payment for his box by mail, had for several years, from his home in the 2300 block of Hollyridge Drive — where I’d so recently been, socking him. It was interesting to me that both Scalzo and Williams had made application for their boxes this season on the same day.

  “Let’s try out that mike and receiver, O.K.?” I said to Dave, “See if it works?”

  He nodded and we went back up to the Clubhouse. With the Tracer Microphone Transmitter, complete with antenna and battery, resting on the bottom shelf in the front of one of the boxes, Dave began speaking in a normal tone. I moved away from him, carrying the receiver in the brief case and with the hearing-aid speaker in my ear. The signal was weak, but carried for several yards before fading out completely. Reception was pretty good under these circumstances.

  I gave all the equipment back to Dave, thanked him for his help, and he went back to his office. I smoked a cigarette, thinking, then found a pay phone and called Matthew Wyndham’s office at Universal Electronics.

  Doody’s voice came on.

  “Hello, Doody,” I said. “Shell Scott.”

  “Oh, Shellie. What happened to you last night? Was Mr. Scalzo mad! I thought he was going to kill somebody or something.”

  “I’m sure that’s what he had in mind. And still does. Doody, is your boss there?”

  “Mr. Wyndham?”

  “Who else?”

  “He didn’t come in today. He phoned and said he wouldn’t be in.”

 
“I don’t suppose he said why.”

  “No, just he wouldn’t be in. Shell, what happened to you last night? You were standing there, then zowie — ”

  “Well . . . maybe we’ll talk about it later. For now, I’m interested in Wyndham.”

  “Why?”

  “I want to ask him some exciting questions, O.K.? Listen, do you happen to know if he ever goes to the race track?”

  “Race track?” She was silent for several seconds. “Why do you want to know that?”

  “I just have a hunch he does, that’s all. And it’s important for me to be sure.”

  “Why?”

  “Doody . . . you know I’m a detective, right?”

  “Yes, you told me, but — ”

  “Well, I’m detecting. See? Look, you’re his secretary. I assume, if he intends to be at the track, or his club, or on a picnic in Cucamonga, he might so inform you. Right?”

  “Sometimes. Where’s Cucamonga?”

  “It’s . . . not important. It was just a figure of . . . Doody, does Wyndham ever come out here to Hollywood Park?”

  “Out here, you said. Is that where you’re at?”

  I sighed. “Yes. Doody, I’m having a frustrating time getting an answer to a simple question. If you don’t know — ”

  “But I do know.” She was silent for a few seconds again. “But I don’t know if I should tell you.”

  “You don’t, huh? That’s nice. Why — ”

  “You see, he didn’t tell me. I just knew he does go to the races sometimes. I happened to see him once.”

  It started puzzling me a little bit then. “You just happened to?”

  “Yes. Last Saturday. I don’t know anything about horses, but I’m terribly lucky. And I went to the races last Saturday with a friend, and I just happened to see Mr. Wyndham.”

  “With a friend. It wouldn’t have been Dan — Dr. Noble, would it?”

  “Oh, no. I only met Dr. Noble a few days ago. Last night was the first time I went out with him.”

  “That’s good. I guess. Where was Wyndham sitting when you saw him? In one of the boxes?”