Her brown eyes were icy. “Cannon gave me this yesterday. I don't know where he got it or how—and up till now I didn't want to know. He's given me other things, but never anything so nice. He's been trying to—buy something from me, by giving me things, but he hasn't bought anything yet because it's not for sale. Or maybe he has bought something.” She paused, looking at me, her oval face sober, then added, “And I don't like you at all, Shell."
Neither of us said anything after that for a while, but finally I said, “I wonder whatever made me think I was a detective? Hey, what say we have another quick one, then take off for the high spots."
“You still want to go?” Her voice was dull.
“Sure."
We each had a short drink and some rather deadly and dragging conversation, and then we left. She was awfully quiet going down in the elevator and I said, “Lois, honey, give me a grin. Let out a whoop or something. Come on, we'll have a big kick tonight, let down your hair."
She smiled slightly. “I suppose there's no sense wasting the evening."
“Of course not. We'll run around screeching, we'll get higher than rockets and yip at people. Baby, we'll dance in the streets—” The elevator stopped, so I stopped, but she shook her head at me and the smile was a little wider, a little brighter.
She looped her arm through mine and we went out onto Wilcox Street. I steered her toward the Cad, but just before we reached it I heard something scrape on the sidewalk and Lois said, “Why Cannon! What—"
And then there was a grunt, and a great whistling and roaring and clanging of bells, and my last sad thought after that monstrous fist landed like an artillery shell alongside my head was: There'll be no dancing in the streets tonight.
7
I came to this time in my Cad, slumped behind the wheel. The first time this had happened, I had been more than a bit peeved at Cannon. But now I was seriously considering killing the son. I was so mad that it felt as if the top of my head were going to pop off and sail through the roof of the Cad like a flying saucer. It was five minutes before I calmed down enough to start thinking about anything except smashing my fists into Cannon's ugly face.
Then I got out of the car and went back to Lois's apartment. She wasn't there; at least there was no response to my ringing the buzzer and banging on the door. I checked the Zephyr Room but Lois had “gone home with a headache” and hadn't come back. No, neither Cannon nor his pals had been in. Yes, I did have a black eye, and would you like a couple? I left the Zephyr Room and went back to my apartment, still burning.
It was a little after ten. I looked up Lois Sanders in the phone book and called her half a dozen times, but each time the line was busy. Finally I flopped on the bed, still in my tux. The phone ringing woke me at midnight.
I woke up with everything still fresh in my mind, grabbed the phone and I suppose I snarled into it, “Yeah?"
“Scotty ... Scotty, I'm plastered. Oh, woo, am I drunk. Scotty? That you, Scotty?"
I groaned. Diane. Oh, Lord, now Diane. I'd completely forgotten about her. I said, “Where the hell are you?"
“I'm at the Groove, Coc'nut Groove, an’ you're not here, Scotty, you're not here."
She sounded moist. I said roughly, “For Pete's sake don't bust out bawling. I'll come down and get you."
“Will you? Will you, Scotty?"
“Yes, of course. Just hang on, I'll be there in fifteen or twenty minutes."
She said, “Goodie,” and I hung up. Well, at least I was dressed for the Grove. Almost. I hadn't been wearing my gun up till now. I went into the bedroom, dug out the .38 Colt Special and shrugged out of my jacket, slipped on the gun and harness. With the jacket back on it bulged over the gun, but that was all right. Now I was dressed. If I saw Cannon, and he so much as sneered at me, I was going to aim at his right eye and pull the trigger. Then when he fell down I was going to aim at his left eye and pull the trigger. Then I was going to kick him in the head, real hard.
In the bathroom I took a look at myself, and I looked terrible. The left side of my jaw was swollen considerably and my right eye was purple and almost closed. I could see out of it still; well enough to aim a .38 anyway. I headed back toward the front room and somebody outside pressed the buzzer. I opened the door and gawked at the guy in a gray suit and the cop in uniform.
“What's the matter?” I asked them. I know a lot of guys in the department, but these were strangers.
“You're Scott?"
“Yeah."
“Better come with us."
“Huh? What for? What is this?"
They were both medium height, both husky, one about twenty-five, the other in his forties. The older one was in plain clothes, the other in a patrolman's uniform.
The older guy showed me his shield and said, “Where'd you leave your Cad, Scott?"
“It's down in front. I parked it on the street, sure, so I get a ticket. I was pooped, and—"
He interrupted. “What happened to your face? You have an accident?"
“I was in a fight. I guess it was a fight. This some new kind of traffic citation?"
“No ticket, Scott. Hit and run. You didn't leave your car on the street. Not this street."
“What?” It hadn't even penetrated.
He smelled my breath. “Drunk? All sharped up, too. You usually have fights in those clothes?” His voice hardened. “Come on with us, Scott. We want you to look at somebody. In the morgue."
We were in the prowl car and headed toward downtown L.A. before it hit me. Oh, my God, I thought. Not ... not Lois.
They took me downstairs in the Hall of Justice and back into the morgue. The body was covered with the usual cloth and they stood me alongside the table and peeled the cloth back.
The plainclothesman said, “Well? You know who it is?"
I felt sick. I said, “I've told you twenty times you've got the wrong guy. I didn't do it.” I looked at the battered corpse again, “But I know who it is. His name was Joseph Raspberry."
The next few hours were long ones, and lousy ones. It seemed that I answered a thousand questions a thousand times each, but finally the pressure eased off a little. About twenty of the cops I know in the department, all friends of mine, came around and they were on my side as much as they could be. Even Phil Samson, Captain of Homicide and my best friend in L.A., climbed out of bed and roared down when word reached him. He threw his substantial weight about the place for half an hour; and I about half convinced the cops that I wouldn't slam into a guy with my car, then leave the car out where it could be spotted.
The police story was simple enough, once I got it. Calls concerning both the body lying at the side of a darkened road and the black Cadillac coupe convertible parked a mile away had come in at almost the same time, close to eleven-thirty p.m. The Cad's right front fender was caved in, with blood and bits of hair on it. My name, of course, was on the Cad's registration slip. The cops had looked into the trunk, too, where I keep all kinds of gadgets useful in my work, ranging from loaded grenades to an infrared optophone, and not knowing me they'd figured I was either a master criminal or a mad scientist about to blow up the city. But that was all squared away when Samson and some of the other cops came around at headquarters.
My story was simple enough, too: I told them exactly what I'd done all evening, except that I didn't mention the fact that Joe had given me the tip that set me off—I had a reason—and I didn't mention Cannon's name. I just told them I didn't see who had slugged me and I figured it was a jealous suitor, which was true. My car obviously had been stolen and used to rub out Joe, apparently, I said, by somebody who wanted to give me trouble, and had.
It was long and wearisome, and the only break was when, at one-thirty in the morning, I sprang out of my chair and almost to the ceiling yelling “Jesus, Diane!” It had come to me in a flash that she was probably lying under the table by now, her eyes glassy. Samson was ready to leave then, so he said he'd pick her up and see that she got home and—ha, ha—tell her
I was in jail.
The upshot of it all was that I got mugged and printed, but out on bail shortly after eight a.m. Before nine I was back in my office without the thousand-dollar bill in my kick, all the morning papers spread on the desk before me, and the gripe, the anger, the fury in me feeding on itself and growing big enough to fill all Los Angeles and a substantial part of the universe.
I had a good deal of information now, facts which satisfied me but wouldn't last two seconds in court, even though one fact led to another and another right up to the valid conclusion. Naturally the boy I wanted was Cannon. But I had to tie him up so tight he'd never wriggle out. And I had to do it my way, do it myself, and do it fast. And for several reasons.
If I didn't, I was probably through as a private investigator, at least in L.A. I've mentioned that a detective wouldn't last six months without his informants and stools. The guys in and around the rackets would know by now that Joe had tipped me, and that Joe had been given the canary treatment. I knew that right now in the underworld of Los Angeles the word was spreading, the rumble was going from bar to back room to poker game to horse parlor: “They got Scott's canary.” And the unspoken question would be, What was I going to do about it?
One of the things demanded of the guy tipped is that he protect or cover for the tipster; canaries stop singing when it isn't profitable. If I sat still, most of my tips and leaks would slow and eventually stop. I could have told the cops what I thought and let them pick up Cannon and his chums, question them, and with nothing solid against them let them go—whereupon Cannon would sit back and laugh at me, and so would the rest of the hoods and hooligans. No, I had to get him myself, and get him good.
There was more reason, too. I looked at the newspapers on my desk. Only one of them had the story headlined, but all of them had something about it on the front page. The stories merely said I was being questioned—I'd still been in the can when the reporters got the word—but they all had my name spelled correctly. Too many people would automatically figure me for the hit and run, even though my friends would know better. Most newspaper readers never see the “alleged” and “authoritative source” and “suspicion of.” They take the conjectures as facts and you're hung on the newspaper's banner. I was. A year from now a lot of people hearing the name Shell Scott would say, “Yeah, he run over that little guy."
My office phone rang and I grabbed it, feeling like biting off the mouthpiece. It was Jules Osborne.
“Mr. Scott? What's happened? Have you seen the papers? Diane phoned me last night. She was drunk; it was terrible. And I don't know what—this is—"
“Don't get giddy. And yeah, I've seen the papers. What the hell do you want?"
“Why, I...” he sputtered a little. “Naturally I was concerned. I..."
“Look, Mr. Osborne. I've had a trying night. I know what I'm doing, and I'm getting close to what you want. Just relax for a while and read the papers."
I listened to him chatter for a bit, then I said, “No, I didn't mention you to the cops—I won't. Nobody knows a thing. And I won't put a word on paper, no reports or anything."
“But Diane—she's all upset What—"
“I'll talk to Diane. I'll chew her ear off. She won't bother you. Good-by.” I hung up. I just didn't feel easy going.
And I was pooped. I'd had only about an hour and a half of sleep—not including the two short periods at the Zephyr Room and behind the wheel of my Cad, which didn't count. My jaw hurt, my right eye was damn near closed, and I was wandering around in broad daylight in that stupid tuxedo. My Cad was being gone over by the lab boys and I wouldn't get it back till this afternoon, so I left the office, flagged a cab, and told the driver to take me out to Hollywood and the Spartan Apartment Hotel.
Diane's house wasn't out of the way, so I had the driver wait while I went to her door and rang. It took her so long to get to the door and open it that I'd almost decided she wasn't home. But finally dragging feet came unsteadily through the front room, the door opened, and a strand of red hair and one blood-shot blue eye peered out at me. There were no glad cries this morning.
“Oh,” she said. “You."
“Me. I dropped by to tell you I'm sorry about last night."
“You're sorry!"
“Samson pick you up?"
“That old man?"
“He's not so old."
“That's what you think."
What I thought was that Samson, a happily married man who never looked at another woman unless she was about to be booked, must have had one hell of a time with this little tomato. But I said, “And I wanted to ask you to lay off Osborne. Every time you yak at him he yaks at me and I've got no time for yakking. I'll get your pretties back."
“Oh, too,” she said, then told me without humor what I could do with her pretties. She wasn't very gay this morning, either. I left.
After a shower and change to a gabardine suit, complete with gun and holster, I phoned Lois at her apartment. No answer. I went back into downtown L.A., into the back rooms again, the smelly bars, and the horse parlors. I hit hotels and rooming houses, and I spent six hours and four hundred dollars, and sometimes I was a little brutal, but I was in a hurry. I got what I was after. Like the dope from Slip Kelly, for one thing.
I found Slip shooting pool in a dump on the wrong side of Main Street. I took him back into the men's room, shut the door and leaned against it.
“Slip, I guess you heard about Joe."
“Joe Raspberry?"
“Come off it. You know what Joe."
He licked his lips. “Yeah. It—was in the papers."
“Sure. So now you tell me every goddam thing you know about Cannon and Tinkle and Artie Payne."
“Huh? I don't know nothin'—"
I didn't lay a hand on him, but I said, “Shut up. I know you do. You practically grew up with Tinkle and you did a bit at Quentin with Artie. Listen steady, Slip. Big Foster's back in town. He knows I puked on him at the trial, but he doesn't know who belched to me. He'd sure like to know."
It didn't take him long to figure that one out. He frowned and said, “You couldn't do nothin’ like that."
“I could, Slip. And I would. The squeeze is on. I'm in a spot, man. I'm a little mad about Joe, too. And nobody would ever know I finked on you except you and me. And Foster. And then just me and Foster."
He told me what I wanted to know.
Dazzy Brown was a knocked-out, easygoing colored boy who played trumpet so sweet it made Harry James sound like a man with a kazoo, and Dazzy inhaled marijuana smoke as if it were oxygen. He'd been in stir for stealing eight saxophones and a trombone, so he knew what stir was like, and I sidled up to him at a west-side bar, threw a friendly arm around his shoulders, planted my chops three inches from his and said softly, “Listen, cat, I just learned you grow that gage in flower pots, so come along with me, boy, you're going to the house of many slammers where they don't play no blues,” and it was remarkable the way he cooperated.
Then there was Hooko Carter, the long-nosed grifter with a heroin habit, who had never given me the time of day before this, but who was going to give me all twenty-four hours very soon now. I got him out of bed in his rooming house, and he didn't have anything to say either. At first. So I told him:
“Hooko, you're my pal, I want you to know that. You're also Artie Payne's pal; and there's a rumble you and Cannon used to be closer than Siamese twins. Something else I know: it costs you forty skins a day for reindeer dust, and you need that steady supply. You get it from Beetle, but you don't know where he gets it. I do, but I don't have enough on the guy to put him away—just enough so he wouldn't like antagonizing me. He'd be glad to do me a favor. What's it like when you can't get your dynamite, pal?"
So I got a little more from Hooko. By four o'clock in the afternoon I'd made a few more enemies, and one gunsel had spit through his teeth at me, and maybe he'd do it again, but he sure wouldn't do it through teeth. I'd been a real rip-roaring wildcat, all right, and
a lot of the things I did I wouldn't have done on an ordinary day, but this was no ordinary day—and I'd got what I wanted, even more than I'd expected.
And one thing was sure: there was a new rumble in the back rooms and bars and hangouts now, the grapevine was twitching and hoodlums and hipsters were bending ears all over town. The question now wouldn't be: What's Scott going to do about it, but Who's gonna get killed? The canaries would feel a little better, and keep on singing, but I wondered what Cannon and Tinkle and Artie would be thinking now. Because they'd be on the grapevine too; they'd know I was throwing a lot of weight around, leaning on them, even though they wouldn't know for sure what I'd learned or what I was going to do next. But Cannon would know by now that I figured on killing him.
I'd found out for damn sure what I'd already been sure of, that Cannon and Tinkle and Artie were the boys who'd been pulling the ten-to-two jobs—and most important of all I learned there was a job set up for tonight. If the job went through, there'd be four of us in on it; if it didn't, I'd try another way. From bits and pieces I'd made my plan.
From Hooko I found out, among a lot of unimportant things, that Artie Payne was called the “Professor” because he had such a valuable think-pot, and because he'd been librarian at Folsom for three years; from Slip I learned the Professor had worked in the Westinghouse labs from the time he was twenty-six till he was thirty-four, and he'd naturally learned a lot about lighting, all kinds of lighting and lights. I already knew Tinkle, the Cowboy, had been a locksmith. And I figured, from personal experience, that Cannon could break a man's neck with one blow of his big fist if he hit him squarely with his three hundred pounds behind it. It was adding up, fitting together.
At two-thirty in the afternoon I put in a third phone call to Lois. I'd called her a second time at one, but there hadn't been any answer then either. So I hadn't seen or talked to her since that sad moment when she'd said, “Why, Cannon. What—” and I'd heard Cannon grunt as he started to swing. But I'd done a lot of wondering. I'd just about rejected any idea that she was “in” with Cannon on any of his capers—it was hardly likely she'd have showed me the hot rocks he'd handed her if she were—but whether she'd known the stones were stolen or not I didn't know. I kind of leaned toward the idea that what she'd told me last night was true: that she hadn't known and hadn't wanted to know; the implication being that the snake-eyed hoop was a damned handsome chunk of sparkles, and she hoped it was clean. And the word I'd got from the boys around town was that Lois was simply a solid tomato, on the up and up, whom Cannon was hot for. I liked it that way, because I'd begun getting somewhat steamed up about Lois myself—and I was more than a little worried about her. I thought again about how I'd felt starting for the morgue last night.
Three's a Shroud (The Shell Scott Mysteries) Page 15
