I hit the ground before he did.
When a man is shot, it isn't like putting a hole in a paper target. It isn't a matter of just a small circle appearing in him with little or no other effect on the man. It isn't like television or movies—or anything you ever saw unless you've seen a bullet hit a man.
A .45 slug would have tossed him clear off the path, even hitting him in the chin, but whatever this was it spun him around with his fat arms flying up into the air as if they were pushed by steel springs. A squeak came out of him, not a yell or a scream, but a squeak. And then he was falling—and I saw his body jerk again, sharply, as he fell. As the second slug slapped his flesh my foot slammed hard against the path, slipping on the sand but providing enough leverage so I could hurl myself forward and hit the ground rolling, hand under my coat and out with the Special as I came up onto my knees again.
Pain gouged my knees and shoulder and there was a roaring of blood in my ears that drowned out everything else. On my knees I slapped my left hand onto the ground to steady myself, and turned back in the direction from which those two shots—or maybe more by now—had come.
Even as I'd dived forward my mind had automatically been figuring, plotting the course of the bullet which had hit the kid, deciding almost coolly, and as if separate from myself, where the man must have been standing so that a bullet would throw the chunk of chin away from the kid's face and to my left. From right to left, and away from me—so that meant he had been behind me and to my right.
That's just about where the thin guy would have been if he'd kept walking, the man about thirty-five who'd got up from his bench as I'd arrived. I didn't actually think about any of it—I just hit and rolled, slammed down my left hand and jerked my body around, gun coming up in my right fist.
I didn't see him. My sight was a little blurred, but I could make out the path, trees. That old lady wasn't listening for birds now. She was yelling like a young lady with strong lungs. Maybe that's why I didn't hear the gunshot, though by now it would have been a fairly loud sound—but the bullet hit near me. It missed me, and probably that was why he came into view, so he could get a clean shot at me and finish me.
He had been behind one of the park statues, a gray stone ugliness that loomed above him now as he moved away from it. He didn't step far from it. Just enough so he'd have a clean, straight shot at me. It was enough—enough for me. I could see all of his right side.
The sudden shock that had sent my brain into an accelerated kind of activity and gripped it in an icy coolness, seemed to guide my arm and hand as if it were not a part of me, almost as if it were somebody else's arm and I was teaching him how to fire a gun. There seemed to be plenty of time, and I got off the first shot without haste or trouble. I saw him jerk. My slug turned him halfway around. He pulled the trigger of his gun, but it wasn't aimed at me; the bullet kicked up sand near his feet I heard the gunshot this time, but it was so faint that even now I almost missed it. Like a twig snapping, or a man cracking his knuckles.
I just took my time—all the time in the world, it seemed. I could hear that blood-rushing sound like a surf in my ears, and the hard crack of my gun, and then the crack again. He jerked and fell, dropped his gun and tried to get up. I ran toward him.
He got onto his knees and waddled horribly forward, like an amputee trying to walk on stumps, and fell onto the base of the statue, clutching at it, splitting his lip on the cement, then rolling over onto his back.
I reached him, grabbed the front of his coat and jerked him up off the cement foundation toward me. “All right, who set this up? Who sent you?”
Blood spilled out of his mouth.
I said, “You don't have much time, friend. Tell me fast, if you're going to tell it.”
“It ... was...” He pulled his lips away from his teeth in a grimace, straining at the words. I could see the freshly broken tooth in front, where he'd landed on the statue's base.
He tried, he really tried. The words were there, and, as the darkness grew behind his eyes, he struggled to get them out. It was obvious he wanted to do that much. He just didn't have enough time. Hanging by his coat from my hand he had raised his head up away from the cement below him, straining to speak, and when the life went out of him the muscles relaxed, his head falling with a solid, heavy jar against the cement. It made me wince, even though I knew he couldn't have felt it. It was the kind of sound you hear for a long time.
I let go of his coat and he crumpled the rest of the way to the ground, with that perfect relaxation of the newly dead. The iciness that had cloaked my brain and thoughts melted and he looked different to me. I turned my head and saw the still body of the young guy who'd phoned me. He lay with one leg under him, both arms outspread, blood spreading in a brown stain on the sandy earth beneath his head.
I felt hollow, as if something had sucked the insides from me. There was a taste of ashes in my mouth. I have been shot at before, even shot. This wasn't the first time I'd pumped bullets into a man myself, or seen men violently, brutally killed, lying ugly in their own blood. But something about this, maybe the way it had happened, the way the kid had got it, the woman's yells, or all of it together, seemed to have taken some of the life from me, too.
There wasn't any question about Valentine's death now; he'd been murdered. That meant all three of those “witnesses” had been lying. And the dead men here were proof my phone had been tapped. That last item seemed important, very important—something about it bothered me, but I couldn't pin it down.
When the police cars arrived, I was in reasonably good shape. In the first police car to arrive were Keynes, a sergeant, and another officer. They walked up to me, frowning.
“Scott,” Keynes said, “what in hell are you doing here?”
“Come on. I'll show you.” I'd met them at the sidewalk, and now I led them back to the center of the park. On the way I explained the highpoints. As the two bodies came into view I said, “My phone's tapped, and somebody heard the kid —” I pointed toward him—“tell me he'd seen Valentine tossed off the Madison's roof. That's why he was killed—whoever had the tap put on, sent that wiper out to get the kid. Get us both for that matter.”
We walked to the man I'd shot.
I said, “Before you got here, I checked the punk's gun. There are marks around the base of each bullet. I think he took the bullets from all his cartridges and spilled out about half the powder, then put the pills back in—so the gun would make very little noise when one of those bullets was popped. Fairly neat job, but you can see the work was done.”
Keynes blinked at me. “What put you onto that?”
“The gun's a Smith and Wesson .32 and it's got a gag on it, but there are five empty shells in the cylinder and one full round. So he fired five times—but the only shot I heard at all was the last one, and it wasn't loud. Not even a silenced .32 puts out so little noise normally, and I wondered why. So I looked. Probably there's only half a charge in that sixth cartridge.”
He nodded. “Pretty good. Well, that sure makes him a pro, doesn't it?”
“Not any more.”
I was getting very tired. Something was nagging at my brain, but it wouldn't come through. I tried to pull it out where I could look at it, but it stayed hidden.
Keynes said, “Who was it called us, you know?”
“There was a lady here, knitting.” I remembered thinking of her listening sappily for birds. “She yelled loud enough to get you here without a phone. She was a regular wireless station all by herself.”
I looked at the dead punk and the young kid he'd murdered, and for just a moment I saw again how ugly it really was. Then I pushed that thought out of my mind, and a different one took its place. It was ironic, even a little funny, and I wondered what my expression had been like lately.
Keynes said suspiciously, “What're you smirking at?”
“Huh? Nothing. Nothing, Sergeant.” I couldn't tell him that I'd just decided the expression on the face of an old lady sitting i
n a park, knitting and listening to birds, couldn't really have been so sappy at that.
It was nearly one p.m. The bodies were gone, everything was wrapped up here and I'd told my story six times. I would have to tell it again downtown, to a stenographer, and then sign my statement, but I'd received permission to postpone that job temporarily.
I was about ready to leave, but in all the bustle and interrogation I still hadn't found out the name of the man I'd killed. Finally I saw Lieutenant Rawlins, an old and good friend out of Central Homicide, downtown. After we'd exchanged a few words I asked him about the hood's identity.
“Name's Dodo,” Rawlins told me. “You did us a turn. Shell. We've got four of those scratched up slugs down at the office, same marks around the bases of all of ‘em.”
“From pulling them out to dump part of the powder, huh?”
“Yeah. These four slugs were dug out of three dead ones. More of Dodo's work, only we didn't know until now who was doing the jobs.”
“He went to a lot of trouble. Well, that just about proves his business was murder. It's good riddance. But I still wish it had been Gangrene.”
“Gangrene? You mean Rio's right hand?”
“Yeah. Now I've still got him to worry about. Can't figure why Lou didn't send him.”
Rawlins frowned. “You mean you think this was one of Rio's boys?”
I had assumed from the beginning that Rio had tapped my phone, and thus had sent his wiper to the park. I said, “I don't have any proof, but it figures.”
“Figures, hell. You mean you really don't know who Dodo worked for?”
I blinked at him. “Not for sure. Do you?”
“Yeah. As far as we know, he never worked for anybody out here except Nick Colossus.”
Chapter Eight
I swung left off Highway 60 at three-fifteen in the afternoon. I had never before visited the Desert Trails Guest Ranch because, while I am a great one for swimming pools, and shapely dolls, and plush cocktail lounges and dining rooms—all of which I understood the Desert Trails had in abundance—I have never been swept off my feet by horses and chuck-wagon breakfasts at the crack of dawn.
In fact, there is some unfortunate thing between horses and me. It's not that I dislike them. But when I get around the animals they seem to slit their eyes and lay back their ears and get ready to bite me. Or maybe it's all in my mind, because they are beautiful animals with very large teeth, and I would hate to think they might really chew on me.
Besides which, I'd had my fill of animals for one day. On the way here I had stopped at one of those roadside hamburger-joint-plus-zoo monstrosities which are scattered over the western states, and while putting away a hamburger I had eyeballed the mangy hyena, allegedly-fourteen-foot python, mangier monkeys, and scarlet-and-blue tropical birds, among other things which completely destroyed my appetite.
So maybe horses wouldn't look so bad to me today. In another five minutes I might be near lots of them, because by then I would be descending upon the Desert Trails. This was not an episode upon which I was embarking light-heartedly—in fact, I had talked again to Lieutenant Perkins and told him to pick up Nick Colossus first, even before Lou Rio, if I got killed—but it had become a necessary episode.
The road turned left and slanted downward. A mile ahead were the buildings of the Desert Trails. All of them were low and flat except the main building, which was two stories and had some kind of rectangular construction in the middle of its flat roof. A number of small buildings sat to the right of the hotel, apparently separate living quarters for guests who felt like really roughing it. The whole thing was like a geometric oasis in the desert; there was nothing else but cactus and lizards for miles in all directions.
Around all the buildings were patches of green that stood out like jewels in this arid desert land, splotches of color where somebody had planted flowers. An oval swimming pool glittered under the hot sun, and beyond it dozens of automobiles gleamed in a rectangular parking lot at the left of the main building.
I drove on down, by a long plain building on my left and rustic-looking cabins, then past the pool to the lot. I got out and walked back to the main building. It was a lavish, low, ranch-style structure beyond a natural-wood fence and healthy green lawn. As I faced it, more cabins were on my right, and on my left was the pool, in which about a dozen people were splashing. The rim of the pool was fashioned to resemble a thick rope, a simulated running knot at one end of the pool with the “rope” extending on to become the leading edge of a wet bar, like a hundred-foot-long lariat with its loop enclosing the water. Fifteen or twenty people were guzzling highballs, while behind the bar a four-piece combo played a soft and very pleasant Don't Fence Me In, an oldie that built the right mood out here.
I could go for this place myself, I thought. Hadn't even seen a horse yet, and the rear view of some of those dolls at the bar, a number of them in swim suits, was a source of immense satisfaction to me. But I shrugged and turned toward the hotel; work, always work, I thought. I went through chrome-and-glass double doors into the Desert Trails lobby.
About the only concession to the Dude Ranch spirit made by the management was the trimmings outside, including some big prickly saguaro cactus planted on the well-tended lawn, and several items of Western-style furniture and decoration inside. But basically this was a rich, plush, comfortable hotel plunked down in the middle of the desert. Expensive, too. I checked at the desk and, though I didn't intend to spend the night, learned that the cheapest rooms were forty dollars a day. Then there were cabins outside if you wanted to spend more, and a few ultra-plush cabañas near the pool, presumably for people who had just discovered uranium on their oil land. There were two bars and a dining room off the main lobby, and at one end of the lobby stairs led up to rooms on the second floor.
The clerk at the desk was surprisingly accommodating. He was a middle-aged man, not too bright in appearance, but pleasant. I expected difficulty, perhaps because I knew the place was owned by Nick, and Nick wouldn't give me directions to the bathroom if he could help it. However, the clerk knew nothing of Nick's antipathy for me, and obviously didn't know who I was, so when I asked him if I could check the registration cards for the previous weekend he hesitated only briefly.
Twenty bucks ended his hesitation and made him even more agreeable. He handed me a half-inch-thick pack of cards and merely asked me not to be obvious about going through them. I started with Saturday's registrations. The name of Theodore Valentine was there, the card filled out in his sprawling script. He'd been alone and had been in cabin 24. There were some other names I recognized, movie and TV people, and one fat-cat L.A. politician. I noted the names of two MD's who'd registered Saturday, one of them getting Cabin 26. I was playing a hunch, but a hunch based on logic, so I jotted down their names in my notebook. I was almost through the pack of cards when I came upon a name that stopped me. I picked up the card and looked at it, wondering if it was significant or just a coincidence, of no special interest to me.
On the card signed in large letters in bold green ink, was the name Suez.
Back into my mind came the picture of lovely dark-haired Suez paling when I'd told her of Valentine's death, registering sudden shock and then taking off in a hurry. I wondered where she'd been racing to, and why. What was it she'd said? “I should never have —” I was going to ask her about that again.
The clerk didn't have any idea who Valentine was, so I didn't push it. I asked him if the two doctors were still at the ranch. He pointed at one of the two cards I'd separated and said, “Doctor Clark's still here. I remember he signed up for two weeks—first vacation in three years, he said.” The clerk sighed. “Them doctors, they got it hard.”
Doctor Clark was the man in Cabin 26. He'd registered for himself and his wife. That cabin was across from the one Valentine had occupied. It was worth a check.
I called his room but there was no answer. I went through the rest of the registration cards and got some other info from
the clerk. Valentine had signed up for the weekend, then stayed an extra day, through Monday. Suez had checked out Sunday. There wasn't anything else of interest to me in the cards for Sunday and I gave them all back to the clerk. He said he didn't know where the Clarks would be, but I might try the pool or bar. Trying the bar seemed like a dandy idea—I hadn't had a drink all day—so I headed for it immediately.
By the time I reached it, I had seen several more guys dressed in outfits identical with the clerk's. I had thought it more than passing strange when I first lamped it on him, but other things had been on my mind then. Now, though, it became apparent that this was sort of an official uniform for the employees of Desert Trails Guest Ranch, the clerks and waiters and bellhops and bartenders, all of them.
They all wore white trousers and sporty off-white shoes with tasseled bows, white turtle neck sweaters and brilliant scarlet jackets. On the left breast pocket of each jacket was a gold-embroidered wagon wheel. They looked just about as much like cowboys as they did like Watusi dancing boys, but I had to admit they looked striking.
They were striking, too. If you got one step out of line they'd strike you right in the teeth. This I knew because I recognized some of them. I would estimate that I'd seen a dozen to fourteen of those resplendent cats, and so far I had recognized six of them. All six had either been in prison or were almost sure soon to make the grade. I started thinking about leaving, even though I hadn't done all I'd come here to do.
I honestly hadn't thought when I'd driven in here that there was real danger of my getting shot full of holes or otherwise given a one-way ticket to limbo; this was a very public place filled with responsible and irresponsible citizens, and even though I'd known in advance that numerous hoods would be present, I hadn't thought it likely that they would work me over, or under. But looking at the mugs on those six—and others, whom I soon spotted—I began reconsidering. None of them was at the mental level of, say, a good forger, and a couple were not even at a mental level, but rather at a decided slant. Whitey, for example.
Slab Happy (The Shell Scott Mysteries) Page 8
