The foot floated toward me as if legless, disembodied. I saw it all, the heavy sole, and intricate design of little holes on the cap, leather glossy and gleaming in the sunlight, the round leather laces, and above that the silk stocking and cuff of trousers. Just before the pointed toe crashed into me there was one thought swirling in my brain:
That big foot is going to land right on my chin and half kill me.
As usual, I was right.
Chapter Four
The earth revolved around the sun like a green-blue-and-brown marble on a string of light, for billions of years, and the sun dimmed and went out. Then a brightness came swirling out of darkness, many-armed and pinwheeling, and slowly took form and was a sun and earth again. From wherever I was I floated in closer to the blue-green-brown marble and it swelled into an earth and swelled still more until...
It was a foot. It was that ugly, rock-hard foot again. No ... it was a different foot. There were no little holes in the cap of the shoe, and it wasn't moving. That was good, because neither was I moving. I felt like not moving for about another billion years. But I tried anyway. And surprisingly enough I could still work.
The message went down from my brain to my hand and it flattened on the solidity below it, the arm tensed and extended. Good for you, Scott; you're moving. You've made an inch. You can do anything. I did it, too, an inch at a time.
I got up onto my hind end and just sat on it for a while, bathed in sweat. Finally I raised my head from those feet—I could see two of them now—and up the pants legs and over the coat to the face.
It was the insolently smiling guard I'd chatted briefly with at the gate. And he was insolently smiling. I was still in the gatehouse with him. I managed to look around. We were alone. I sat on the floor and considered the fact.
The guard said happily, “Wasn't nothing I could do to stop them, sir. It was over before I knew what was happening, sir.” The sir had a very nice twist to it. He was pretty good.
I carry my gun in a clamshell holster at my left armpit. A little more rapidly now, because I was getting back to normal except for the skull-splitting throb somewhere inside my brain, I reached up and slid my hand inside my coat.
The Colt Special was there. I guess if they'd wanted to take the gun they would also have taken me—out into the low dry rolling hills. I pulled the .38 out, and it just happened to point at the tall thin guard.
He got taller and apparently thinner. He went sort of up on his toes and his mouth got a funny pucker to it and his eyes went wide. “What the hell?” he said. “They should of —”
“But they didn't. What's your name?”
“Goose!” It came out high and thready.
“O.K., Goose.” I held the gun on his nose and thumbed back the hammer. A gun pointed at your nose is bad enough; but the same gun with the hammer laid back like a cobra's fanned-out hood is one of the most unpleasant sights in the world.
Goose said, “Sir. I didn't do nothing. I swear I didn't, sir.”
It was a different sir this time. It was a far cry from the same word before, practically in a different language. But that figured; it was from a different man.
“Is that right?” I said. “You just watched.”
“Yeah. That's all.”
“You just watched while Gangrene sapped me and Rio slugged and kicked me.”
“Yeah. I ... well, there wasn't time to do nothing. If I could of, I'd of done something.”
“Yeah. Like standing on my ear.” I paused. “No lies this time, friend. You understand?”
He nodded, eyes never leaving the bore of the .38.
“You're Rio's boy, right?”
He nodded again.
“He put you on the gate. Why?”
“Just to keep an eye on who goes in and out—like you, for instance. What goes on. Just the usual thing for him. He got some money in the joint.” Ah, he was respectful now. His words dripped sweetness like honey. Why, he wasn't a bad man; he was just an erring boy.
I was beginning to feel reasonably good physically. I got to my feet, during which operation Goose closed his eyes briefly. When he opened them they focused on the gun muzzle again. I went on, “Tell me what Rio's part is in the blackmail play here.”
“There ain't none, not so far as I know.” I wiggled the gun. He got paler, but said, “I swear. If Lou's working some kind of shake I don't know about it. He don't say nothing to me anyhow.”
That was about all he could tell me, it seemed. There was little point after that in standing there with my gun on him so I eased the hammer down and put the Colt back in its holster. Goose looked very relieved. It seemed Lou was, among other things like working off his perpetual anger and getting back at me in part for my trial testimony, showing his contempt for me by leaving me on the gatehouse floor.
“Goose,” I said. “One last question. Where did Lou and Gangrene go?”
“To see Feldspen.”
“You mean they're still here? On the lot?”
“Yeah. Lou wanted to see Feldspen, he said. He also told me to tell you...”
“Spit it out.”
“Tell you to get off the lot and stay off if you didn't want more of the same lumps.”
I turned and walked out of the gatehouse and into the lot again. Marie, the blonde secretary in Feldspen's outer office opened her mouth and started to smile when I stormed in, but I barged on past, threw open the door and walked into Harry's big office. The first thing I saw was Lou Rio's fat face.
He was at the left of Feldspen's long desk. I walked toward him with the mark of his fist and shoe on my face, the lump from Gangrene's sap on the back of my head, and the desire to break his neck on my mind.
Movement on his left was Gangrene. There was quite a lot of movement in the big office, it seemed, but my attention was focused on Rio's face—which looked at least unhappy and maybe even a little scared—and I didn't even wonder what the movement was at first. Somebody yelled, “Shell!” but I kept on going.
That young-Death face moved closer, and Rio yelled something at me.
Some of the other movement got a little clearer in the next half second as I continued to move forward. I was looking at Rio, but from the corner of my eye I got glimpses of white hair that I assumed was Feldspen's, and then the swirl of hair that was long and black. Then I caught the not-red, not-pink glow of hair I'd seen before, and the blur of a white face. There was something else, too; the room seemed loaded with people. But then I pushed all that from my mind and yanked my eyes from Rio's face as Gangrene reached for me.
He didn't come at me with the sap this time. Maybe he was just trying to keep me from the boss, reaching for me or swinging a fist at me. I didn't know and I didn't care at all.
I was moving forward, so I just moved faster, pivoted as Gangrene's hand slapped the lapel of my coat. And then I got my left foot planted solidly again and leaned forward. I just leaned into him, left foot shoving and left fist driving, leaned way into him and pounded my fist into his belly.
He had teeth after all. His mouth came open so wide that I actually saw the yellow-stained, twisted things in his mouth, and the air burst out of his throat so fast it seemed odd that it didn't carry those frail-looking teeth along with it. Gangrene reeled backward, arms flapping, and I knew he would be taking no part in the action for quite a while. So I turned and headed for Rio again.
“Shell! Are you out of your mind?”
This time it got through the pink haze in my brain. The voice was Feldspen's. I looked at him, at his shocked face. An expression like revulsion mixed with a kind of fright was written on his features. This wasn't in a movie, after all. This was for real, and right here in his office. This was 3-D and real blood. Feldspen looked stricken. And that was what stopped me.
I stopped a yard from the left end of Feldspen's huge desk, four or five feet from Rio, who had gotten up out of a leather chair there. I looked at him and he stared back, not moving.
It was very quiet. I cou
ld hear a whispery, brushing sound. That would be Gangrene, moving painfully down there on the carpet. I didn't look at him.
The silence seemed to last forever. I managed to get a good grip on my anger, to throttle down the steam in me. Then I said softly, “Lou, you made a mistake out there. Up till now, it wasn't a personal thing between you and me. Now it's personal.”
The voice that answered me was Feldspen's. “Shell,” he said in a tight voice, “what's the meaning of this?”
I looked at him. As I turned my head I saw Valentine standing at the other end of the desk. He'd looked bad enough before, but he seemed on the way out now, a man with milk in his arteries and clabber in his veins. He reached up with a twitching hand and yanked unconsciously at his neat mustache as if he were trying to pluck it. That Cary Grant valley in his chin seemed even deeper, as if his face were starting to split apart there. How he managed to remain fairly good-looking I don't know, but he managed it.
I said to Feldspen, “The meaning is that this slob Rio and his punk gunman worked me over outside. So I came in to—well, to register a complaint.”
As I spoke I was turning my head to the left side of the room—and to the people against the wall beyond him. There were three of them. Most important was the fiery-haired one: Coral James. She looked straight at me from those pornographic brown eyes, and they still looked hotter and more exciting than strip poker with three brunettes, but there was no smile in those eyes now.
Seated next to her on a long low leather couch was the dark-haired woman I'd seen briefly. She appeared to be a little taller than Coral, a little heavier, her body a bit fleshier, more earthy and openly sensual if not quite as classically beautiful. This one was beautiful, too, but with dark lush beauty of Mexican and Spanish women—though I felt sure she wasn't Latin. She had the deep full breasts and smooth olive skin, the bright black eyes and long black hair of many Latin women, though. Those eyes were large and soft and dark, with a look of deep pain in them.
Gangrene was doubled up on the floor, both hands pressed to his middle. Farther to the left, a couple of yards from the couch the girls were on, a man was leaning against the wall. He was about six-four or maybe six-five, a good 250 well-distributed pounds, wearing faded blue jeans and a brown-corded white silk shirt. On his feet were intricately worked red, green and white cowboy boots. He had a face as open and rugged and honest as a split-rail fence. He was Johnny Palomino.
Then it clicked. Palomino and James—that meant the black-haired beauty would be Suez. All three of them here.
What was going on?
Feldspen said, crisply, “All right, Shell. Tell me once again, slowly and in more detail this time, what brought this about.” He had regained not only his composure but his high seat behind that desk.
I decided against a long drawn-out explanation and said simply, “I met Rio and his human goofball outside. We—well, we've been saving up for a beef for a lot of months. Today we stopped saving up and had it.” I looked at Rio. “Had the first one.” Then I said to Feldspen, “Now tell me something, Harry. What's going on here?”
I was facing that wide desk and I had temporarily forgotten about Gangrene. But I heard a sort of scuttling sound—and then a shrill scream, louder than you would think a scream could get, a veritable masterpiece of a scream. I swung around just in time to see Gangrene coming up off the floor, a heavy .45 automatic already in his right hand.
I grabbed for my Colt, jumping to the side, but on Gangrene's left Palomino was already moving forward, one long leg swinging. That chased-leather cowboy boot caught Gangrene's hand and the gun flew clear across the room, smacking into the wall. Gangrene didn't even turn his head. His eyes were on me, his face was without expression except for the usual cold, corpselike fixity of his features.
My fingers touched gun metal, but as Gangrene's automatic flew through the air I let my hand drop again. Gangrene didn't even appear to realize the gun had been kicked from his grip. His eyes stayed on my face and their black-ice look was dulled now, more like black dry ice, and it looked like death. It was like seeing eyes in the skull holes of a corpse as he got to his feet, as if some elemental ugliness stared through those sockets at me. He got to his feet and took a step toward me. Oddly, nobody moved. They all seemed either caught by surprise, or held in a momentary paralysis, unable to say anything or stop him.
I said softly, “Hold it there, Gangrene. This time something's going to break.” I didn't ball my hand into a fist but spread it open; if he came at me again I wasn't going to just knock him down, I was going to ruin him. He acted as if he hadn't heard me. A shiny smear of saliva glistened at the side of his mouth. He took a second step toward me, another. His hands came up easily in front of him. I got ready to swing at him.
Rio said suddenly, “Ganny! Cut it.”
He moved away from the desk toward Gangrene, who didn't pay any attention to him. He was reaching for me when Rio slapped him on the cheek. It wasn't a hard blow, but only a light tap—as if he'd done it before.
Gangrene stopped and just looked at me for a moment, while his eyes seemed to undergo a change. This boy was like some kind of Frankenstein monster dug up and given ugly life and movement for a while, and now running down, running out of juice. His eyes seemed to change focus, and then he let out a faint sigh and licked his lips once.
“O.K., Lou.” he said in a thin voice.
So I merely said to Rio, my voice tight, “Get him out of here.”
He looked at Gangrene. “Come on, Ganny. Ain't no more we can do.”
Gangrene said to me, hardly moving his thin lips, “You're all caught up, Scott. All used up.”
I looked at Rio. “If you don't get this punk out of here I'm going to embalm him again myself.”
He gave Gangrene a little shove, pushing him toward the door. Gangrene didn't say anything else, but Rio looked past me to Feldspen. “I'll call you, H.J.”
Feldspen didn't speak. The two men went out.
Somebody released breath in a puffing sigh. Valentine moved, pulling a chair up from behind him and dropping into it as if exhausted. He probably was. I know I was. After what seemed a minute of silence, I walked around behind Feldspen's big desk and got the .45 automatic off the floor, checked it, and dropped it into my pocket.
Then I looked at Palomino and said, “Thanks, friend.”
He grinned slowly. “Ah must've been out of my haid.”
“Wherever you were, I'm darned glad you were here. I owe you one.”
He just grinned some more, relaxed as a cat.
I turned to Feldspen. “Well, Harry? Did I miss something?”
He gave it to me straight. “Mr. Rio came in and found Theodore; I was temporarily out of the office. He told Theodore that you had informed him of the blackmail threat. He demanded the story and Theodore gave it to him. All of it. At that point I returned. Mr. Rio then requested that we summon the three stars in question to my office and ask them about the, ah, suspicions. I did so.” He paused and, undoubtedly noting the unhappy expression on my face, added, “If I had not done so, he undoubtedly would have hunted them up himself.”
Which was no doubt true. I felt like swearing, but I said, “So what do we know now?”
Feldspen said, “Not a bit more than we did an hour ago.”
Somehow I had expected that. Palomino spoke on my left, and I turned as he said, “Sure is a funny thing about how it added up like to us three. That figure you mentioned —” he looked at Valentine—“Coulda been grabbed right out of the air, you know. If it wasn't all made up to start with.” He paused, then added—directly to me this time—“I already told ‘em I sure don't know a thing about any blackmail.” He grinned once more. “Not that I've got such a angel-like past, but nothing I'd pay good money to hide.”
“I beg your pardon,” Feldspen said suddenly. “In all the ... excitement, I forgot you haven't met.”
I grinned. “Not formally.” I looked at Coral James, and her brown eyes were fixed
on me. She wasn't smiling, though.
Feldspen performed introductions and explained why I was here, that I was a private detective. Coral managed a little smile when we said how-do-you-do's as if we'd never seen each other. In repose like this, face flushed, she was even lovelier than when I'd almost run into her at Feldspen's door. She had it, all right; the magic was there.
The dark-haired girl was Suez, as I'd guessed. She was quite a dish herself, one who would have been monopolizing virtually all of my attention if Coral hadn't been in the room.
In Hollywood, “exotic” means anything farther away than San Francisco, but this one looked exotic in the authentic sense—beauty with a truly foreign flavor, and the flavor was delicious. She looked like a woman who might have lived in the Casbah, ridden camels past the Sphinx, danced naked around a tribal fire in Africa, strolled down the Champs Elysees in spring. She was warm and sensuous and lush, like the earth on a summer morning. To say the least, she was interesting; to say the most would be against the law.
As we were introduced, Suez gave me a soft smooth hand and said, “That was awful. That awful friend of Lou's. You're a bear, aren't you? A regular grizzly bear.”
“Not really.” I grinned down at her. “This little episode here was not typical of my days—or nights. I really loathe this sort of thing. See? I'm not at all grizzly.”
She smiled, teeth startlingly white next to her velvety skin. “I know a grizzly bear when I see one,”
“Well, have it your way.”
Coral wasn't looking at us, and seemed not even to be listening, but she had a mildly annoyed look on her face, as if a tiny fly had lit in her ear. I finally let go of Suez’ soft smooth hand and Coral said, “Do you want us any more, Mr. Feldspen?”
“I suppose not. Is there anything you want to ask, Shell?”
There were things I wanted to ask, but it was worse than useless to ask any one of them about blackmail in front of the other two, and in front of the three of us. So I said to Feldspen, “I guess you've covered the important questions. That's good enough for me.”
Slab Happy (The Shell Scott Mysteries) Page 4
