Dead Heat (The Shell Scott Mysteries)

by Richard S. Prather

  In a normal situation Deke would never have shoved his gun into my back and left it there, not where I could feel it, know where the gun was and where he was. But this wasn’t a normal situation. Hale was moving toward me when I turned sharply to my right and plunged my right arm backward in the same movement. My elbow hit Deke’s fist under my wadded coat, jarred it and the gun away from me. I kept turning, raising my right arm, swinging my left foot around and planting it as I faced Deke. He was inches away, arm angled across his body. I threw my open hand down with all my strength and its edge hammered his wrist. The gun was falling as I slapped my left foot back and turned, swinging that right hand up again before I even saw Hale.

  When I saw his face he was almost on me, arms out stretched, but my right hand was in a fist by then and the fist was moving. It moved up between his hands and landed under the point of his chin. He spun like a man hit by a bullet.

  Something grabbed me, tripped me. I fell onto my side. A fist slammed my head, banged it hard against the concrete. I squirmed around as Deke hit me again, got a hand on my throat, thumb digging violently, painfully against my windpipe. My vision blurred momentarily, but I could see his other hand move, fingers curling around the butt of his gun lying on the cement.

  Probably neither of us thought of the crowd, the people who now were almost surely watching. I know I didn’t. I was still on my side, pain roaring in my head, right arm against my chest. I forced the arm up, squeezed my fingers around the butt of my .38.

  Deke’s thumb felt as if it were poking a hole in my throat. He swung the big automatic toward my face. It loomed ridiculously large in front of my eyes, inches from my forehead. The gun was aimed at my skull and his finger was on the trigger. But my own Colt was in my hand and I was trying to shove my hand clear into his gut.

  I pulled the trigger twice.

  The sound was very faint, like sticks breaking. His face hung in the air near me, features twisted, lips pressed together. Then slowly, like a man starting to smile, his expression softened. The lips relaxed, became more full, the corners of his mouth moved up a little. He still held the gun near my head, but slowly his features smoothed, and then the gun drooped, came to rest on my chest.

  I shoved him away from me, onto his back. He moved like rags. As I got to my feet he lay still, but his eyes rolled, slanted toward me. His chin hung slack, and a little blood oozed up from inside him, spilled over the corner of his mouth and down the side of his jaw. Then his eyes moved for the last time, with a little jerk, and were still.

  It had all happened so swiftly that the track announcer was just calling the names of Thunder Boy and Silver Arrow, and after them the third and fourth horses. Scalzo looked down at Deke’s body, then his eyes raised to my face.

  The gun was still in my fist. I stepped toward him, leaned over the rail and grabbed the front of his coat in my other hand.

  “Don’t pull that trigger,” he said rapidly. “It’d be murder. Don’t do it, Scott.”

  The sound died suddenly around us. The race was over, fans returning to normal. Near us a woman screamed. I looked up and saw a tiny middle-aged woman across the aisle and above us, looking down over the rail at Deke’s body. Her mouth was still open, but she screamed only that once. She stared at the stain of blood on Deke’s shirt. A man swore aloud. Other voices were raised then, in question or shocked comment, a spreading circle of voices around us.

  “The placing judges have called for a photo,” the announcer was saying. “Please hold all tickets until the results of the race are declared official.”

  I put my gun away.

  Sweat was beaded on Scalzo’s forehead. He said thickly, “It would’ve been murder, Scott. Just like this was.” He nodded toward Deke. “I’ll swear that’s what this was.”

  “It wouldn’t stick and you know it.”

  Behind me a man said loudly, “He shot him. I saw the gun. He shot him.”

  I swung my head around and spotted him, a red-faced man with abundant brown hair, stiff finger pointing. He shut up suddenly. But a lot of eyes were on me now.

  Scalzo said, “Sure. And you’re real thick with the local fuzz. But they’d hold you, Scott. And it might stick. You know I’ve got pull, you punk sonofabitch. But even you don’t have any idea how much pull.”

  He looked past me, up and to his left, and smiled. I didn’t know what he had to smile about. But I was beginning to think I didn’t have much to smile about either. I had killed a man, and it was a sure thing that more than a handful of people had seen me do it. Witnesses are funny. They’d remember my shooting the man, all right, and especially my standing up, standing over him with a gun in my hand. And maybe they’d remember what had happened before that, remember what the other man had done, the gun aimed at my head.

  Maybe. But for all I knew, fifteen people here might swear I’d stabbed Deke in hot blood. Not that any of the charges would actually stick, but they could get sticky. Especially since it is a psychological truism that once people have made an accusation, they immediately start convincing themselves that the charge is absolutely true.

  Hale moved one of his feet. Then he groaned softly. Scalzo glanced up and beyond me again as he had before, and smiled again. Then he said to me, “You lose, killer. I got you where I want you, you punk sonofabitch.”

  Well, I’d warned him. I’d even let his last foul-mouthed crack at me pass without comment. I might do that once; but this made twice.

  While he was still smirking, I hauled off and slammed a fist into his smirk. It was a good blow; I got my weight solidly behind it and his lips peeled open. He bounced backward, hit the front of his box and slumped. I didn’t wait to see if he got up.

  I headed back up the steps. I was in a hurry, but I didn’t run. There’d been quite enough action just now to suit me, but it hadn’t really taken much time, not clock time anyway.

  The race had been over for less than a minute; and the time of the race itself had been one minute and forty-two seconds. It was only about a minute since I’d shot Deke; it might be another minute before the real hue and cry began. And it had been at most three minutes since I’d spotted the guy with the scarred lip. . . .

  Yeah, that creep. What had happened to him?

  I remembered Scalzo saying something to him as I’d headed that way, then the guy had taken off like a rabbit. Taken off, but for where? Well, that would keep; I’d find him.

  I started toward the seat where I’d left Doody.

  Only Doody was gone.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  It was well past 6 p.m., and I was parked on a side street off Manchester, two or three blocks from Western Avenue and a few miles from Hollywood Park. My gun was reloaded, six slugs in the chambers; I was ready to go — but with no place to go. And I was alone. I hadn’t found Doody.

  After discovering she was gone, I’d run down the Clubhouse stairs to the ground floor and cut through the Winner’s Circle food bar, then down the curving ramp and outside. There’d still been a good deal of confusion back there around Deke’s body, I guess; at least nobody had stopped me. I’d tried to check cars leaving, but there were thousands of cars and it was an impossible job. I’d even gotten a hat and dark glasses from the trunk of my Cadillac and gone back into the Clubhouse to check our seats again from a distance. But there’d been no sign of Doody — or of Scalzo, either, by then.

  Doody wouldn’t have been cashing tickets on the seventh race; I hadn’t bought any tickets on the seventh. And if she’d left for a minute or two she would have come back to our seats right away. No, either she’d simply left, taken off of her own free will, or — the only alternative — she’d left unwillingly.

  That scar-lipped hood, of course, had spotted me with Doody. And Scalzo had been telling him something before he’d run. Besides that, I remembered Scalzo’s glances up into the stands — toward the reserved-seat section where Doody and I had been sitting — and his self-satisfied smiles.

  If Scalzo’s man — and m
aybe Scalzo himself by now — had Doody, did they still think she was fluttery, harmless Nell Duden? Or did they suspect, perhaps even know, that she was Julie Tangier?

  My palms kept sweating and muscles in my stomach were hard with tension. I had already phoned the Lanai Apartments in Hollywood: Miss Duden had left early in the morning and had not yet returned. I called Scalzo’s home on Hollyridge Drive but the phone rang unanswered. I even called the Watson-Parker and talked to my contact there; no soap, nothing. Maybe it was too soon. I still didn’t accept the possibility that Scalzo had Doody, but I couldn’t get it out of my mind. And I had to ask myself what it meant if he did.

  If he knew she was Julie Tangier, there was a damned good chance he’d just kill her. But my being alive, knowing he might have her, would complicate that part of it for him. So if he did have her, it seemed likely he’d keep her alive at least until I was out of the way, no longer a threat to him. If I knew Scalzo, anyway; and I thought I knew him well enough.

  And if I did know him, if I was right, there was a way to find out for sure. Scalzo would be anxious for me to know he had her. He’d be almost as anxious to reach me as I was to get my hands on him.

  So I made another call, this time to the Spartan Apartment Hotel.

  Jimmy, the night man, was on the desk. “Shell, Jimmy. Any calls for me?”

  “Yeah. Some guy, he’s called every ten minutes for the last half hour. Last time was just a couple minutes ago.”

  “He leave any number for me to call back?”

  “That’s the funny thing. Every time he calls he gives me a different number.”

  “It’s not funny, Jimmy. Probably they’re different pay phones.”

  “You know what it’s all about, huh?”

  “I think so. What was the last number?”

  He gave it to me and I hung up, dialed the number.

  I knew the voice as soon as he said hello. “This is Hale, Scott. You make a squeal to the fuzz yet?”

  That answered all of my questions. Or at least all of them but one. “No,” I said.

  “Don’t.”

  “Go on.”

  “There’s a couple things Axel wants you to do instead, and you better do them, Scott. Just like he says.”

  “Or?”

  “Or we kill the girl.”

  I felt my mouth getting dry; my blood seemed to cool a little, sending a slow chill over my skin. And the next thing Hale said answered that last question.

  “Yeah, we’ve got the girl,” he said. “We’ve got Julie.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  I didn’t say anything.

  Hale waited, then went on, “In case you think this ain’t on the level, here’s how it was. Soon as Luke spotted you with the babe he tells the boss, and right away Axel tells Luke to grab the twist and hustle her out, we’d hang onto you long enough so he could pull it off. She’s with Axel right now. No sense you lookin’, he’s takin’ her to his safe pad. So play ball or she gets killed that much quicker.”

  In Hale’s language, the “safe pad” would simply be another house — or maybe apartment, cabin, anything — where Scalzo could be safe, could lie low when his usual hangouts got too hot for him. It’s a not-uncommon precaution among hoodlums, and Scalzo was a hoodlum. But Hale had told me something else, maybe, without meaning to. He’d said Scalzo was “taking” Julie there, not that they were there now. Which probably meant they were on their way, or had been when Hale started phoning the Spartan. Which almost surely meant it wasn’t in Inglewood.

  “No sense you lookin’, Scott,” Hale went on. “Only three of us besides the boss knows where the pad is.”

  “So what am I supposed to do? Go stand on a corner where you bastards can shoot me?”

  “Oh, nothing like that, Scott,” he said with oily sincerity.

  “The boss knows you wouldn’t go for nothing like that. Just two easy things. First, you keep your mouth zippered. Second, there’s a plane leaving tonight from L.A. International, for Mexico City. You take the plane, that’s all. A ticket’s waiting there for you. By the time you get back — if you’re dumb enough to come back — everything’ll be under control here.”

  Sure. It was only a little better than a street corner. It could have been Burbank Airport instead of L.A. International, or a depot, bus station — any place where they knew I’d be. They had to know where I was going to be, and approximately when I’d be there, before they could be reasonably sure of killing me.

  “Generous of Scalzo,” I said.

  “Hell, you got him over a barrel, kind of. And Scott, crack wise if you want to, but do it. Don’t think killing the babe bothers him.”

  “I don’t.”

  “You try to tip the fuzz, or toss your weight around, she’s dead. Wouldn’t be no strain either. Nobody knows we got her — nobody but you. And anything you’d say wouldn’t make no difference, you couldn’t prove nothing, Scott. Nice and clean, she just turns up dead.”

  She’d turn up dead anyway, now that they knew who she was. Even if they let me catch that plane, which they wouldn’t, she’d be dead before it got a hundred feet in the air.

  “When does the plane take off?” I asked him.

  “Seven-fifteen.”

  It was a little after six-thirty now. “Hell, that’s less than forty-five minutes,” I said. “That’s not enough time — ”

  “It’s all the time you got, Scott. You can make it — so long as you go straight there, and don’t try nothing funny.”

  “How do I know she’s alive?”

  “You don’t, I guess. But she is. Axel said if you got to be convinced, he’d let her phone you, so’s you’ll know she’s O.K.”

  “At the airport?”

  “That’s right. Just before you climb aboard.”

  I swallowed. “I told you, that’s too soon. I can’t — ”

  “Knock it off, Scott. You got no choice.” He paused, then went on deliberately. “Axel said to make a big point of this. The Tangier girl is alive — even if she knows too goddamn much already. But if you don’t answer that call when you’re paged at the airport, she won’t be alive no more. The boss’ll know you’re trying to cross him, and right then, Scott, right then, we take the girl out in the hills.” He chuckled. “Such a good-lookin’ sweet-stacked twist, though, maybe first we have ourselves a little fun with her.”

  “You sonofa — ” I cut it off. Hale didn’t say anything.

  I licked my lips, but my lips stayed dry. Finally I said, “All right, Hale. Have her call me at exactly seven-ten, five minutes before take-off. And Hale, if she doesn’t call, I won’t be on that plane. I’ll be looking for you and Scalzo. You tell Scalzo that.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So be damned certain she makes that call,” I said, and hung up.

  And stood there. Where do you go from here? I was not going to the airport, that was sure.

  I was getting a little panicky. If I went to the airport it wouldn’t help Doody, and I might get shot myself; if Scalzo could kill both of us he’d be clear, home free. But if I didn’t go to the airport . . . I was damned if I did and damned if I didn’t. By the time that call was put through to L.A. International, I had to find Doody. And seven-ten was only thirty-five minutes from now. What in hell could I do in thirty-five minutes? I didn’t even know where to start.

  It was a thousand to one against their being holed up at Scalzo’s home, or any other place I’d be likely to check. Probably it would be somewhere in or near Los Angeles, or Hollywood — and I was still only a few miles from Hollywood Park in Inglewood.

  But I couldn’t stand here. I had to do something.

  I had thirty-five minutes to find out where they were.

  Find out — and get there.

  * * *

  I’d gunned the Cad down Manchester to Western, then swung left on Western, headed for Hollywood. So far I’d been stuck at only one red light and had made good time, but ten minutes were gone by the time I reached Wi
lshire Boulevard. The light there was red, and as I hit the brakes, something like a sudden small explosion went off in my head.

  Thoughts had been tumbling in my mind as I drove. I’d been able to think of only two people I had a chance to find in a hurry who might know where Scalzo was. One was Dan Quick, but Scalzo would have thought of that too. Quick could even be with Scalzo now. The other was Matthew Wyndham, who lived in Beverly Hills, but it was a hundred to one against his knowing a thing. Even if by some freak chance he should know, I’d get nowhere asking him polite questions over the phone — and Beverly Hills was too far away to visit. Even from where I was now, it was a good half-hour drive, and it was 6:45 p.m. Only twenty-five minutes left.

  There simply wasn’t time. But thinking about phoning Wyndham closed a mental connection and made me remember that number Foster had dialed when I’d been with Doody in the Matador bar: 988-4584.

  Since then I’d called it myself several times. Once when I’d been with Doody and three or four times the next morning — this morning, it had been, though it seemed a week ago. But there’d been other things to do, more urgent and important things. I hadn’t even thought about that number for half a day.

  Foster had been tailing me last night, I was pretty sure. Once I was settled with Doody at our table, he might simply have made an innocuous call. But, and a very big but it was, there was a good chance he’d been phoning his boss, in which case that number would be Scalzo’s number. I knew it wasn’t his home phone, but maybe it was another phone in the “somewhere” I had to find.

  The light changed and I swung left into Wilshire, then off onto a side street and parked in a gas station next to its pay-phone booth. Ordinarily I would simply have phoned the police and told them what I wanted. But I knew by now the police would be eager to talk to me, and even though many of them are friends of mine, they would hardly be doing me favors until I’d answered a lot of questions.

  So I fished Gabriel Rothstein’s card from my wallet, and called him at home.