I said, “Snap out of it. Right now.” My voice was harsh, purposely, to bring her back to normal fast if I could. I'd made up my mind. With a lot of luck, we could make it to McGannon's in fifteen minutes. That would give me maybe five minutes before the services. Without that much luck—well, I didn't even think about it.
“I—I'm all right,” Suez said shakily. “It was so fast. So awful.”
“Get your car started. I mean it. Quick.”
I ran to my banged-up Cad, jerked the keys from the ignition and then opened the luggage compartment. I grabbed a box of .38 cartridges and the black makeup kit, then paused, trying to think. I forced myself to calm down as much as possible, looking ahead to McGannon's—and also to the possibility I wouldn't get there in time.
Then I pawed through the stuff in the trunk, grabbed a heavy, leather-covered sap, a pencil-sized flashlight, and a ring of picks and skeleton keys, dropping them into my coat pockets. That was all I could think of, and I ran toward the Thunderbird. The cars and men would have to be left as they were, in the street. Police would be all over the place in minutes, anyway. My name on the registration slip of the Cad would let the officers know where to put blame for the mess.
Suez had done as I'd told her, and was just starting the car as I climbed into it. “What's the matter?” she asked me. She sounded frightened.
“Don't worry. I just have to be at McGannon's mortuary in ten minutes.”
“McGannon's—but why? It would take twenty or thirty minutes —”
“It will if you sit there yakking. Get going.”
She got going. As she drove, I loaded the .38, then opened the makeup kit and started smearing black gunk on my hair and eyebrows. That would help; not enough, but it was a step in the right direction—and my face was marked up a bit anyway from the two beatings I'd had in the last three days.
As I worked on my face, I said to Suez, “Baby, you've got a lot of explaining to do. You'd better start right in.”
“I suppose you mean about yesterday—when I phoned you.”
“You bet I do. But...” I thought a moment. There were approximately eighteen things I wanted to ask Suez about, but under the circumstances that four-page “letter” Viper had told me was in Rio's coffin was far and away the most important. It was, after all, the reason I was making this wild ride—and with Suez at the wheel of her thundering Thunderbird it could hardly have been wilder. “Tell me this,” I said. “Did you give some kind of letter to a little hood this morning?” She glanced quickly at me out of those wonderful black eyes, then back to the road. I went on. “Some kind of letter written by Ted Valentine?”
“Yes. How—how did you know?”
“I'll tell you if we have time. What was that letter and why was it so important? How did you get it? Why did Valentine write it? Or did he?”
“He did. It was a suicide note, Shell. And at the same time, a confession.”
When she said “suicide note” the whole thing opened up in my mind like one of those Fourth of July fire-flowers. I could probably have guessed most of the rest of it then, even if Suez hadn't said another word.
“I'll just tell it the way it happened, all right?” I nodded and she said, “I lied to you when I said nobody was blackmailing me—but that's the only lie I told you. For several months I've been paying money to a little crook they call Viper. Months ago, when I was considered for that part I didn't get in Sins of Messalina, Ted Valentine called me into his office and said Magna was getting ready to go all out on a publicity campaign for me.”
It was about the same story that Coral had told me. Ted had asked Suez if there were anything in her past which, if it became public knowledge, might hurt her; the studio could cover it up and so forth.
“Well,” she said, “I told him—something. A month or so later this little creep came around and asked me for money. I, well, I paid. I just kept on paying.”
“Did you know Valentine had given him the info?”
“No. I thought maybe be had, but Val was always so great it was hard to believe. I liked him. There wasn't any proof, anyway. Not until I got this letter.”
I looked up from the makeup kit and said, “If I could get my hands on that letter, would it be worth risking my neck for? Would it really hurt Nick Colossus, for example?”
“It really would.” She bit her lip. “But it ... it's not available any more.”
“Yes it is.” I glanced at my watch. “For about fifteen more minutes it's available. But then it's gone forever. So speed up the story.”
She went on, speaking rapidly. “Saturday, almost two weeks ago now, I went to the Desert Trails for the weekend—I didn't even know Nick Colossus had anything to do with it then. It was just a fun place. Val was there, too—not with me. He was just there. We said hello, and that was about all. Until Sunday.”
Suez handled the little T-bird as if it were a four-wheeled rocket. She was a surprisingly good driver, but I had almost told her to slow down two or three times already, despite my hurry.
She was continuing. “I was coming back from the pool Sunday afternoon. My cabin was 34, down past Val's and he called to me. I stopped and went inside his cabin and talked to him, and ... well, he looked funny. Very calm and quiet—and you know how twitchy he always was. He asked me when I was checking out, and I told him I was ready to leave. He gave me a sealed envelope and asked me to please take it off the Ranch and mail it. Personally. He stressed that I shouldn't mail it from the Ranch and I promised I wouldn't.”
“Who was the letter addressed to?”
“The District Attorney of Los Angeles. It had a special delivery stamp on it, too. Val told me he was staying another day, then I went to my room. Well, I took a lot longer to get ready to leave than I'd supposed I would. For one thing, I spent a real long time in the shower.”
For just a moment I almost lost the thread of the narrative there. It is, I suppose, a flaw in my character, but whenever a lovely tomato talks about being in a shower or tub or anything remotely resembling either, I almost invariably see the tomato in the place and state she describes—and while this may be a flaw, it is not the kind you would be especially anxious to get rid of.
Consequently, when Suez spoke of a “real long time in the shower” everything else just faded away. I have said or intimated that Suez was a truly exotic beauty, that her body was so warm and vibrant it did everything but steam, that her curves of breast and hip were sweeping and lush and sensual, a delight and provocation to behold, even from a distance.
But in that shower, with clear water pouring over those deep full breasts and streaming down that smooth velvety skin, her black hair even blacker from the moisture clinging to it, she was enough to get a man lathered without soap, and it took a near collision with a red convertible to snap me back to reality from that better place where I'd been.
I looked at Suez with bright new eyes as she said, “Because I was so long getting dressed I was still there for all the activity. Besides, Val had acted so funny I thought something must be going on. Anyway, I saw a doctor come out of Val's room carrying his bag. A little later I asked him what had happened. He told me a man had ‘accidentally’ taken too many sleeping pills, but I knew different. After seeing Val. Well, I checked out and drove back to Hollywood and home. But then I read the letter he'd given me to mail. Four pages of it.”
She was quiet while maneuvering around a corner on two wheels and when I got my breath back I asked, “And it was a confession. That he'd been a party to blackmail, right?”
“Yes. It told the whole thing, even named names.”
I said, “Was it obviously a suicide note?”
“Yes, it made that very clear.” Suez paused. “For a while I didn't know what to do with the letter. You see, until I read it I didn't know that the person really blackmailing me was Nick Colossus—the only man I ever saw was that little creep. I didn't know either, until then, that others on the lot were in the same fix I was in. I couldn't mail
the letter to the District Attorney, and I couldn't give it back to Val—it was my protection as long as I had it, my bargaining point. But I didn't know how to use it at first. Val naturally asked me about it when he got back on the lot, but I told him I'd mailed it.” She paused. “And then he killed himself. He really killed himself.”
I had known for so long that Valentine hadn't killed himself that it surprised me to hear Suez's words, and realize she still thought he'd committed suicide.
She went on. “It's too late now, but I guess I should have given the letter back to him. He probably would have wanted to stay alive if I had; I can't help feeling as if I ... killed him.”
“You did react like a gal going into shock when I told you about Valentine's suicide. But put your mind at rest, Suez; you had nothing to do with his death. I think he did want to live, after once being so close to dying. And naturally he would have wanted that confession back—he called the D.A. about it two or three times. But he didn't kill himself. Nick Colossus had two of his men sap Valentine and throw him off the Madison roof.”
She gasped. “Are you sure?”
“As sure as I am of anything else in this case.” I squinted at the mirror in the lid of the makeup kit. I'd been using the brush that came with the bottle to put on the hair dye, but it was a ticklish operation. The small towel around my shoulders was a mess, but my hair and brows were dark enough. I used the towel to blot and further dry my hair, then hunted through the kit, found some rolled cylinders of cotton and stuck one into my cheek. It helped. I looked lumpy and sick, but even less like Shell Scott.
I found another cotton roll for the other cheek and said to Suez, “O.K. Here's your big question. Why did you phone me from Partridge Street yesterday? And very nearly get me killed?”
She took a deep breath and moistened her red lips. “I had decided to try trading Nick that letter for—for what he had that I wanted.” I wondered for about the tenth time what it was in Suez's past that she so desperately had tried to hide, and was still hiding. She went on in a rush. “So I phoned Nick early yesterday morning at the Desert Trails and told him I wanted to figure out a trade for the things he had about me, that I was tired of paying and paying and worrying all the time. Well, that was as far as I got.”
“What do you mean?”
“It was surprising. I never even got around to mentioning the letter—not then. Nick seemed to be very glad I'd phoned and said he thought sure we could work something out. He said he'd have to think about it, but he was coming into town and would call me when he arrived. He did, and asked me to come to a house on Partridge Street. I went out there, but I didn't take along the letter. That was my ace in the hole, and if I could get what I wanted from Nick without it—and it looked then as if I could—so much the better. When I reached the house, Nick said all he wanted me to do was make two phone calls, and if I did he'd give me back the—the papers and things I wanted. It seemed simple enough. Too simple.”
Here it comes, I thought. “What were the two phone calls?”
She bit her lip, hesitated. Then she said, “One was to Lou Rio. The other was to—to you.” She rushed on, “But I honestly didn't think I was going to get you into trouble, Shell. Honestly. Please believe me.”
“Give me a chance. Tell the tale, and we'll see.”
“Nick said he wanted me to phone Lou Rio and ask him out to the Partridge Street house. Nick knew that Lou liked me a lot—Lou did, he really did. I didn't pay any attention to him, but he wanted me to be—You know what I mean.”
“I know.”
“Nick told me that this was the only way he could get to see Lou without Gangrene setting in—that's what Nick said.”
“Sounds like him—always a barrel of fun, Nick is.”
“Shell, Nick was so agreeable—charming even. And so persuasive—it all seemed like a big joke. I believed him. I didn't think he was going to hurt anybody. Not then, I didn't. Now I know better.”
“If you don't, think back to those two chaps in the street before your house.”
She winced, then said, “I was to phone Lou—and I didn't think he'd be hurt, not really hurt. Then I was to phone you and ask you to call the police.”
“Slow down,” I said. “If you'd told me that, it wouldn't have been so bad, my sweet. But instead you told me to charge out to Partridge Street and help you...” I stopped. Actually, Suez had said no such thing. Now that I thought about it, it hadn't been her words so much as my interpretation of the little I had heard her say. “Never mind,” I said. “Go on.”
“I phoned Lou and he said he would come right out, alone. I saw him drive up. I'd asked him to come to the back door, and Nick's man went out back to meet him—Nick and I were in the front room at the phone. All the doors were shut, so I don't know what Nick's man said to Lou, but I didn't see Lou again.
“Probably Jabber—Nick's man—went out there and swatted poor old Lou over the head. Or maybe just stuck a gun on him.”
She winced again. “As soon as Lou drove up, Nick told me to call you. He'd told me what to say. I still remember it exactly. I was supposed to tell you who was calling and that I needed help, and then say, ‘I'm at 1854 Partridge Street, in the bedroom. I came here to meet Nick Colossus, but when I got here he was gone. There's blood on the carpet and I'm afraid something terrible has happened. Please call the police and send them out here.'”
Suez looked at me out of those wide, deep, dark eyes and went on. “Nick said we'd break the connection then if you asked too many questions. I didn't know why he would want you to call the police, but I supposed it was something to do with having the officers catch Lou or arrest him maybe. But when I'd barely started talking to you Nick broke the phone connection. In a moment he dialed a number himself and talked to somebody. I don't know who it was.”
“Shortcake,” I said.
“Who?”
“A guy watching my apartment building. It's not important.” “Anyway,” she said, “right then, when he broke the connection before I'd finished talking to you, I started realizing what he'd done. And I started getting scared.”
She paused, and I ran over in my mind what she'd said. It could have happened just that way. Nick had probably started figuring how to frame me as soon as he took my gun at the Desert Trails, and when Suez phoned him he probably saw immediately that he might be able to use her to get Lou and me together, unsuspecting, for that neat frame. It was all logical enough, and workable enough—except for one thing. Nick just didn't let people—even people as lovely as Suez—walk around loose when they knew as much about his plans as she had known.
I said casually, “So he thanked you and you took off, huh?”
She blew air out her nose. “Hardly. I think he was going to kill me.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yes. Oh, maybe it was my imagination, I was so scared. But I asked him for the—papers he'd promised me and he just laughed. A big, awful laugh.”
“Yeah. I've had some experience of Nick's laughter—and promises—myself.”
Suez said, “That man really scared me. He said he'd decided it wouldn't be necessary to give me back the papers, but, he added sarcastically, he did thank me greatly for the help. So, then I got mad and told him about the four-page letter I had. Val's confession involving him in blackmail. It was the first time I'd mentioned it. He didn't believe me at first, but I quoted some things in it that I couldn't have known unless I was telling the truth. He just exploded. I thought he was going to hit me, kill me right then. He was just a wild man.”
I could understand now why Nick would have been a wild man. Suez's words would have been his first knowledge that there existed a letter or confession written by Valentine, a second suicide note which could put Nick right behind the eight ball. Especially since Nick was responsible for Valentine's murder—not merely blackmail, as Suez had then thought.
She said, “I told him I would still make a trade, that letter for what he had of mine. I told him the
letter was safe, with a policeman—it wasn't, but he didn't ask me much about it then. He just said all right, he'd trade, and then let me go. In fact, he told me to get out in a hurry. He really scared me. I left as fast as I could.”
That made sense. Nick would have wanted Suez to beat it fast, if he let her go at all, I thought, because by then I was well on my way to the Partridge Street address; Suez and I must barely have missed each other. He couldn't afford to kill her, not until he had that letter of Valentine's. He had undoubtedly decided right then to let Suez go, meet her terms and complete the trade, and then kill her. Which was just the way it had happened—except that Suez was still alive.
She was saying. “I was almost too frightened even to go through with the trade today. But I worried about it a long time and figured a way to manage it safely, I thought.”
And I'd heard that story from Viper. I told Suez I had and she said to me, “Then that's all of it. It was true, too. All of it. Do you believe me?”
I looked at her. “I ... yeah, I believe you.”
She smiled. “Thanks.” Then she sobered and seemed to be thinking seriously of something. Slowly she said, “I suppose you've wondered what it was that Nick was able to blackmail me with.”
“The thought crossed my mind, but —”
“I'm going to tell you. I owe you at least that much. You saved my life back there—and you didn't even know then that I hadn't purposely drawn you out to that house yesterday.” She paused. “I'd like for you to understand how important getting back those papers was to me, Shell. Why I lied to you about being blackmailed, and lied to Val. I ... kind of think you should know, anyway.”
She swung left on Forest Street. McGannon's was less than a mile away now. About a minute away. I looked at my watch. It was seven minutes of three. Suez said, “Everything's here in this manila folder.” She tapped an envelope on the seat between us. “And I don't believe it could be duplicated now. These are photostats of the records, licenses, birth certificate and so on—but the originals aren't available now.” She glanced sideways at me. “At least I managed that in these last few months. In the envelope is proof that my parents weren't married. I'm a—I'm an illegitimate child.”
Slab Happy (The Shell Scott Mysteries) Page 17
