Shell Scott's Seven Slaughters (The Shell Scott Mysteries)

by Richard S. Prather

  My eyes travelled upward, just a little, and then a little more, and a little more, and by the time I got to her face she had been standing in front of me for at least three seconds—but there had been so much to see on the way—lyrelike hips and dainty waist, bold breasts that said “I dare you” and cleavage that said “Why not?” and then lips that had to be warm and soft, hot eyes, heavy lidded and dark.

  She said, “Are you trying out?"

  “I'm game,” I said. “What does it mean?"

  She frowned slightly, but not unprettily. “I thought I was the only one auditioning. I'm going to sing. What do you do?"

  Then it penetrated. “Ah—no,” I said. “I guess I'm not trying out, at that. You sing, hey? I'll bet you're great."

  “I don't know. I've never sung professionally before. Just in the tub and shower, and at parties."

  That smacked me like a hot wet washrag. “Tubs—and showers, huh? And at parties. Not tub and showers at parties."

  “Oh, my goodness, no!” She laughed softly. “What a crazy thing to say. I'm probably not very good, anyway. Ordinarily, I'm the cigarette girl, you see. And a couple of days ago Mr. Finney asked me if I could dance or sing or anything. I told him I sang a little. You know what he said?"

  “No, what did he say?"

  “He said a little would be enough.” She paused, then added, “I'm going to do a special song as my audition. A friend of mine, a television producer and director, wrote it just for me. It's called, ‘The Cigarette Girl's Song.’ That way I don't have to get a new outfit. Isn't that clever?"

  “Well, I'll say this much. The outfit is sure clever."

  She laughed delightedly. “It does show my legs, doesn't it? And they're really my best part."

  I just couldn't help looking her over again. “Oh, I don't know. It's sort of two of one and a couple of the other, what? I mean—"

  “I know what you mean. And I think I like it,” she said. “I dance a little also, while I sing the song. Like this.” She broke into a sort of a jig step of some sort, and she was dressed in so little that a small jog turned into a massive jiggle. It was more than I could just stand there and watch.

  “Stop. Stop dancing, stop moving entirely. Please."

  She stopped. “You didn't like it,” she pouted, but I got the impression that her eyes were twinkling with merriment, and the pout was largely for effect, and that she had deliberately done this to me.

  “No, no,” I said. “It's not that. I did like it, yes, indeed. But, that's not what I'm here for. I mean, fun is fun, but—"

  I didn't get to finish whatever I was trying to say, which was probably a good thing. Right then, before our conversation deteriorated into a complete shambles, the guy with the cigar in his mouth called from the dance floor, “O.K., Martin. Snap it up."

  “That's me,” she said. “Lucy Martin. Well, here goes."

  She walked to the dance floor, stopped in front of the microphone there. The blond guy at the piano struck a chord, played an introduction, and Lucy Martin wiggled back and forth a bit, very nicely. Then she sort of flung her arms out to the sides and began to sing.

  Well, words simply cannot tell it. She sang like a woman being eaten alive by ants. It was as if she had forgotten the tune, or maybe repressed it and it kept struggling back. In a word, she was horrible. But she moved around more than a little, while crying, “...love that's unrequited ... Life that's crushed and hope that's blighted ... Cigarette Girl in her brief attire ... tells you ‘Where There's Smokes There's Fi-yer!” And it was a good thing that she moved around quite a bit, because that made it nearly bearable.

  Finally it was over. The guy with the cigar in his mouth said softly, “Let's run through that again, Honey. This time, soft-pedal the song, see? And throw a little more zoom into the dance. Try it that way."

  I'd been here before, and knew that Finney's office was behind a plain door at the left end of the bar. I walked to the door and knocked. A man's voice said, “Come in,” and I went into Finney's office.

  Lou Finney was sitting behind a green desk, a sheaf of papers in his hand. He was a hard-looking man. You have heard of guys who seem to have a steely surface over a cream-puff interior; and guys who look soft on the outside but are steel on the inside; well, Finney looked like steel on the outside over steel on the inside.

  He was a little over six feet, maybe an inch shorter than I am, but quite a bit thinner. It was a muscular, tight-drawn, honed-down thinness, though. His face was dark, sober, not a face that had ever smiled much. It was a series of straight lines—level black eyebrows, under them a straight nose pointing at a firm, flat mouth, line of the jaw sharply angled. His usual expression was that of a man with ten ingrown toenails.

  When I stepped inside he looked at me for two or three seconds, then lifted a cigarette to his lips, dragged briefly and shot the white smoke out through his nostrils. Then he said, “Well, come on in.” And deliberately he added, “Punk.” He dragged on his cigarette again. Theatrically. “You're the last man I expected to see out here, punk."

  I sighed, and swore softly under my breath. “Finney,” I said, “you've got a big mouth.” I walked toward him, left hand down at my side, and I kept it open, not bunched into a fist. There was no good reason to warn him.

  But he must have known that I was about to slam a handful of knuckles into his mouth, because he moved a little too suddenly. The movement was not an obvious one, and ordinarily I wouldn't have noticed it, but my starting so suddenly toward him must have caused him to move with less care than he normally would have used.

  From the movement of his body it looked as if he'd pressed his knee or thigh to his right. I had a hunch that Finney was utilizing a common enough technique, the buzzer under the desk—common enough, at least, among men like Finney who live on the edge of sudden death.

  There was a chance I was wrong, but I yanked my .38 out in a hurry, anyway, and jumped back to the wall alongside the door. The gun was pointed at Finney and I said, “Don't wiggle, friend. Maybe you better even hold your breath."

  He looked as if he were already holding it. His face started getting red, and the way he looked now made his previous flinty expression seem like unrestrained joy.

  When the guy came in he came in fast, slamming the door open and going right past me, a big, blunt, ugly .45 Colt automatic in his left hand. But he saw me out of the corner of his eye and began to turn. His head turned before his body, though, and he saw the .38 aimed at his right eye. He froze and got a stricken look, and he didn't turn any farther. He closed that right eye, then barely cracked it, pulling his head slightly away from me. He was a little guy, hardly more than five-2” or -3", with a pink face, big ears, and sparse hair, and he was so thin that he looked as if his suit were holding him up.

  I reached for the door, slammed it shut. “Drop the gun,” I said.

  He hesitated. “Better do what he says. Windy,” Finney told him.

  Windy dropped the gun. I had him kick it toward me, then said, “Get over to the wall."

  He moved over and, placing his feet a yard or so out from the wall, leaned forward with his palms on the wall like a man who had done it often. Finney said, “You're not being smart, Scott."

  “Knock it off. If I'd let your boy get in here behind me I'd either be bleeding right now, or out cold—with a busted head."

  He ignored that. “What are you doing here?"

  “I've got a client named Mrs. Alvin Hamilton."

  His dark face didn't change expression. “So?"

  “I hear you were chummy with her husband and Erik Douglas."

  He moved his mouth as if he were chewing on something sticky. “You hear from who?"

  “A gal who should know."

  He just looked at me with cold anger, but then it was as if he'd suddenly thought of something he didn't like, or there'd been a small explosion somewhere inside him. He let out an ejaculation that sounded like “Bah—” or “Bar—” but choked it off, surprise
appearing momentarily on his face and then going away as he forced his features back to their normal appearance.

  He continued to stare at me, but finally he said, “I suppose you've been talking to May Sullivan."

  “I talked to her. So what was your business with Hamilton and Douglas, Finney? I don't suppose you'd have any objections to telling me, would you?"

  “I wouldn't even tell you how to find Hell. As for Hamilton, let's say I never heard of him. Or Douglas."

  “Sure. You convince me."

  “I'm worried about you, Scott. I'm worried that you might leave us."

  “Well, since you knew Douglas and he left us, and Hamilton and he left us, it's possible that practically anybody you know might leave us."

  “I told you I didn't know either of them. You wouldn't be calling me a liar, would you?"

  “Sure I would,” I told him cheerfully. “So I don't suppose there's any point in asking if you know a couple of muggs named Frank ‘the Mouse’ Washer and Noodles Costain."

  “No point. I never heard of them."

  That, as far as I was concerned, was the end of the conversation. I emptied the little man's automatic and tossed it into a corner, then said, “Don't send Windy or any of your other boys after me, Finney. I wouldn't blame them so much; I'd blame you."

  We looked at each other in hostile silence for several seconds, then Finney grinned gruesomely, like a man opening his mouth for the dentist, and said softly, “We're sure going to miss you when you're gone."

  I went out.

  I stood in the gloom of the club and lit a cigarette. I'd get no more info from Finney himself, I knew, but there was another way. Two of the men who had jumped me last night were still alive; if I could find either Noodles or Frank the Mouse, and if I asked the right questions in the right way, there was a good chance I could learn enough to sew up this case.

  The muggs of Frank and Noodles, which I'd gotten at the Police Building last night were in my coat pocket. Now I took them out, held them while looking around the club. I had a strong hunch, considering all the circumstances, that both Frank and Noodles would have spent some time here with Finney, or at least in the club; but I wanted more than a hunch, and I wanted to get my hands on them.

  The blond egg was still at the piano. On the floor, those six gals were stomping around and singing la-la-la-la-la in tinny voices. Then I spotted the cigarette girl, alone at a table, having coffee. I wanted to be out of here and far away, but one more minute wouldn't make much difference, and shapely Lucy Martin might turn out to be an involuntary ally.

  She smiled up at me as I stopped alongside her table.

  “Hello again,” I said. “You get the job?"

  “Not exactly. I'm supposed to take some dancing lessons.” She laughed. “In the meantime, I'm still the cigarette girl. I guess my song didn't really go over."

  “It practically went under."

  “I'll stick to tubs and showers."

  “Now you're talking."

  “Maybe I don't sing so good, but Ed Bornse didn't do the best job in the world, either."

  “Bornse?"

  “The producer and director who wrote the song for me. He produces and directs TV commercials."

  “I should have guessed.” I had indulged in the dialogue with Lucy primarily for the purpose of keeping the chatter light and frothy, in the hope that it would take her a little while to get her mental guard up—assuming she might have any reason for so doing. Now, without any pause in the conversation, I tossed the pictures onto the table in front of her and said, “These boys hang around here, don't they?"

  The photo of Frank the Mouse was on top and Lucy looked at it and her eyebrows went up a little way. “What an awful picture of Frankie,” she said.

  I almost held my breath, kept my tone from changing in any way and kept the dialogue light. “Well, naturally; it broke the camera. He probably looks even worse right now.” I was, of course, playing it by ear, but that remark got the right words out of her. Or some of them, at least.

  “I guess he does,” she said. “I heard he's in Doc Layne's Sewing—"

  She stopped speaking suddenly and her face got a fixed, frozen expression as if she'd realized she might be saying too much. Then she looked at me and went on rather feebly, “I don't think that's him after all."

  I knew then that it was no use, but I asked her “What about the other guy? Noodles been around? Maybe to see Finney?"

  “I'm afraid I don't know him.” She didn't even look at the second picture. Her reaction made me glad that I hadn't come right out and asked her about the men; at least this way I'd picked up a word or two. That was all Lucy had to say today. But maybe she'd said enough. I got out of there.

  When I was far enough from the White Crow so that I could relax, I found a pay phone and started calling the numbers on a special list—the list of my informants and acquaintances among the lawless element of L.A., the ones I'd phoned last night. I asked each of them if there were any word about Noodles and the Mouse, and also questioned them about “Doc Layne's Sewing” something or other. I drew blanks, and I was beginning to think that Lucy Martin had been babbling nonsense, when I got James Hay on the phone.

  Hay was a successful con-man. He said, “I haven't been able to get a line on either of them, Shell. But Doc Layne's place is sometimes called the Sewing Center. Just as a joke. Doc's a funny little fat guy with a beard."

  “Sewing Center? What kind of joint is it?"

  “Big old wreck of a house that Layne turned into a kind of private hospital. Did this babe say the Mouse was out there?"

  “Not in so many words, but close enough.” I was thinking that Frank the Mouse was probably pretty well banged up from our meeting in the garage last night, and might well have needed treatment and repair. But hoodlums cannot check into the County Hospital, say, for the treatment of such items as bullet holes and knife wounds. So they have to patronize lesser publicized spots, not necessarily legal. And that is what Doc Layne's undoubtedly was. If my man was there, it might be difficult for me to get to him. I thought about that, then said to Hay, “How'd you happen to know about this place? I just checked with four other guys who didn't have any idea what I was talking about."

  “Not many of the boys know about the joint. I know a gal who works out there. Keeps books and once in a while helps out with the casualties."

  “Can you check with her and make sure about the Mouse?"

  “Can do. You still want to talk with the guy? Surprise him?"

  “Definitely. If he sees me, and has a gun, he'll surprise me."

  “I'll call you back."

  In less than ten minutes. Hay phoned and talked to me again. He'd learned from the girl that a man had been brought to Doc Layne's place late last night with “about a thousand broken bones” as she had phrased it. She hadn't known his name, but from her description it was Frank the Mouse; she hadn't seen anybody who looked like Noodles Costain.

  Hay went on, “I told her there was five C's in it for turning the guy up, and we'd split it. She says there's always a big ape on the front door, but she might be able to get you in the back."

  “It's worth a try. What's the next step?"

  “I got it all set up. She's home now, leaving for work in about an hour. You go out to her place and talk to her, and you two take it from there, O.K.?"

  “Fine. And thanks, Hay."

  “Yeah. Maybe you better mail me the fiver before you try sneaking into the joint. I'll split with Julie."

  I laughed. “You aren't afraid I'll get killed, are you, Hay?"

  “No, I know you'll make out, Scott. But—I could be wrong. By the way, don't get the wrong idea about Julie—this gal. She's on the up and up."

  “Oh? Then why's she working at a place like Layne's?” “She flunked out of nursing school or something, the way she tells it—anyhow, she can't be a nurse in a regular hospital. But she wants to help people when they're sick. Get it?"

  “Yeah. And
she probably keeps three canaries and a lame cat."

  “Nope. She's really a nice little doll. Scott, I think you're in for a surprise. Well, mail that check, boy."

  I did mail it, then drove to the address Hay had given me. Maybe I drove too fast. Whatever the reason, when I rang the bell of the girl's apartment in the not-exclusive Mauger Arms, it took a while for her to answer. But then the door was cracked and a bright dark eye under damp black hair peered at me.

  The girl said, “Are you Shell?"

  “Yeah."

  “Hi, Shell."

  “Hi."

  “I'm Julie. Come on in."

  She stepped back and I went into the front room of a small apartment that seemed to be inexpensively but tastefully furnished. But I didn't waste any time looking at it because this little Julie had apparently been in the shower when I rang, which was probably why it had taken a while for her to get to the door. Her face was still wet, hair matted on her head, and she was wearing a pink bath towel and, I felt quite sure, nothing else.

  The towel slipped a little and she casually pulled it back up and said, “So you're the fellow who did all that to him?"

  It seemed obvious that she was referring to the condition of Frank the Mouse, so I said, “Yeah. But he was trying to do it to me. He still there at your—your hospital?"

  “Yes. Until Jimmy Hay phoned and talked to me, I thought the man had been ruined in a wreck. But it was you."

  “Yes, ma'am. I am the wreck that ruined him. Of course, I'm not a complete wreck."

  “I should say not.” She smiled brightly. “He's in traction. You broke his leg, too?” She really seemed interested.

  “I didn't inventory the damage, because another guy was beating me on the head, but I broke everything I could."