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

by Richard S. Prather

  I tottered down the one flight of stairs into bright June sunshine on Broadway, thinking that my client would have to wait an extra five minutes even though he'd been in a hell of a hurry. But he'd been in a hurry the last time, too, and nothing had come of it. This Frank Harrison had first called me on Monday morning, three days ago, and insisted I come right out to his hotel in Hollywood. When I got there he explained that he was having marital troubles and wanted me to tail his wife and see if I could catch her in any indiscretions. When I told him I seldom handled that kind of job, he'd said to forget it, so I had. The deal had seemed screwy; he'd not only been vague, but hadn't pressed me much to take the case. It had added up to an hour wasted, and no fee.

  But this morning when I'd opened the office at nine sharp the phone had been ringing and it was Harrison again. He wanted me right away this time, too, but he had a real case for me, he said, not like last time, and it wasn't tailing his wife. He was in a sweat to get me out to the Roosevelt's bar, the Cinegrill where we were to meet, and was willing to pay me fifty bucks just to listen to his story. I still didn't know what was up, but it sounded like a big one. I hoped it was bigger than the last “job,” and, anyway, it couldn't be as big as my head. I went into Pete's.

  Pete knew what I wanted as soon as I perched on a stool and he got a good look at my eyeballs, so he immediately mixed the ghastly concoction he gives me for hangovers. I was halfway through it when his phone rang.

  He listened a moment, said, “I'll tell him,” then turned to me. “That was Hazel,” he said. “Some dame was up there looking for you. A wild woman—"

  That was as far as he got. I heard somebody come inside the front door, and high heels clicked rapidly over the floor and stopped alongside me. A woman's voice, tight and angry, said, “There you are, you, you—you crook!” and I turned on my stool to look at the wild woman.

  I had never seen her before, but that was obviously one of the most unfortunate omissions of my life, because one look at her and I forgot my hangover. She was an absolutely gorgeous little doll, about five feet two inches tall, and any half-dozen of her sixty-two delightful inches would make any man stare, and all of her at once was enough to knock a man's eyes out through the back of his head.

  “Oh!” she said. “You ought to be tarred and feathered."

  I kept looking. Coal black hair was fluffed around her oval face, and though she couldn't have been more than twenty-four or twenty-five years old, a thin streak of gray ran back from her forehead through that thick, glossy hair. She was dressed in light blue clam-diggers and a man's white shirt which her chest filled out better than any man's ever did, and her eyes were an incredibly light electric blue—shooting sparks at me.

  She was angry. She was so hot she looked ready to melt. It seemed, for some strange reason, she was angry with me. This lovely was not one I wanted angry with me; I wanted her happy, and patting my cheek, or perhaps even chewing on my ear.

  She looked me up and down and said, “Yes. Yes, you're Shell Scott."

  “That's right. Certainly. But—"

  “I want that twenty-four thousand dollars and I'm going to get it if I—if I have to kill you! I mean it!"

  “Huh?"

  “It's just money to you, you crook! But it's all he had, all my father's saved in years and years. Folsom's Market, indeed! I'll kill you, I will! So give me that money. I know you're in with them."

  My head was in very bad shape to begin with, but now I was beginning to think maybe I had mush up there. She hadn't yet said a single word that made sense.

  “Take it easy,” I said. “You must have the wrong guy."

  If anything, that remark made her angrier. She pressed white teeth together, and made noises in her throat, then she said, “I suppose you're not Shell Scott."

  “Sure I am, but I don't know what you're babbling about."

  “Babbling! Babbling! Ho, that's the way you're going to play it, are you? Going to deny everything, pretend it never happened! I knew you would! Well—"

  She backed away from me, fumbling with the clasp of a big handbag. I looked at her thinking that one of us was completely mad. Then she dug into her bag and pulled out a chromed pistol, probably a .22 target pistol, and pointed it at me. She was crying now, her face twisted up and tears running down her cheeks, but she still appeared to be getting angrier every second, and slowly the thought seeped into my brain: this tomato is aiming a real gun at me.

  She backed away toward the rear of Pete's, but she was still too close to suit me, and close enough so I could see her eyes squeeze shut and her finger tighten on the trigger. I heard the crack of the little gun and I heard a guy who had just come in the door, let out a yelp behind me, and I heard a little tinkle of glass. And then I heard a great clattering and crashing of glass because by this time I was clear over behind the bar with Pete, banging into bottles and glasses on my way down to the floor. I heard the gun crack twice more and then high heels clattered away from me and I peeked over the bar just in time to see the gal disappearing into the ladies’ room.

  A man on my left yelled, “Janet! Jan!” I looked at him just as he got up off the floor, and I remembered the guy who had yelped right after that first shot. He didn't seem to be hurt, though, because he got to his feet and started after the beautiful crazy gal.

  He was a husky man, about five-ten, wearing brown slacks and a T-shirt which showed off his impressive chest. Even so, it wasn't as impressive as the last chest I'd seen, and although less than a minute had elapsed since I'd first seen the gal who'd been behind it, I was already understandably curious about her. I vaulted over the bar and yelled at the man, “Hey, you! Hold it!"

  He stopped and jerked his head around as I stepped up in front of him. His slightly effeminate face didn't quite go with the masculine build, but many women would probably have called him “handsome” or even “darling.” A thick mass of black curly hair came down in a sharp widow's peak on his white forehead. His mouth was full, chin square and dimpled, and large black-lashed brown eyes blinked at me.

  “Who the hell was that tomato?” I asked him. “And what's happening?"

  “You tell me,” he said. And then an odd thing happened. He hadn't yet had time to take a good look at me, but he took it now. He gawked at my white hair, my face, blinked, and his mouth dropped open. “Oh, Christ!” he said, and then he took off. Naturally he ran into the ladies’ rest room. It just wouldn't have seemed right at that point if he'd gone anyplace else.

  I looked over my shoulder at Pete, whose mouth was hanging completely ajar, then I went to the ladies’ room and inside. Nobody was there. A wall window was open and I looked out through it at the empty alley, then looked all around the rest room again, but it was still empty.

  I went back to the bar and said, “Pete, what the hell did you put in that drink?"

  He stared at me, shaking his head. Finally he said, “I never seen nothing like that in my life. Thirteen years I've run this place, but—” He didn't finish it.

  My hand was stinging and so was a spot on my chin. Going over the bar I had broken a few bottles and cut my left hand slightly, and one of those little slugs had apparently come close enough to nick my chin. I had also soaked up a considerable amount of spilled whiskey in my clothes and I didn't smell good at all. My head hadn't been helped, either, by the activity.

  Pete nodded when I told him to figure up the damage and I'd pay him later, then I went back into the Hamilton Building. It appeared Frank Harrison would have to wait. Also, the way things were going, I wanted to get the .38 Colt Special and harness out of my desk.

  At the top of the stairs I walked down to the PBX again. Hazel, busy at the switchboard, didn't see me come up but when I spoke she swung around. “What's with that gal you called Pete's about?” I asked her.

  “She find you? Wasn't she a beautiful little thing?"

  “Yeah. And she found me."

  Hazel's nose was wrinkling. “You are decomposing,” she said. “Int
o bourbon. How many shots did you have?"

  “Three, I think. But they all missed me."

  “Missed you, ha—"

  “Shots that beautiful little thing took at me, I mean. With a gun."

  Hazel blinked. “You're kidding.” I shook my head and she said, “Well, I—she did seem upset, a little on edge."

  “She was clear the hell over the edge. What did she say?"

  “She asked for you. As a matter of fact, she said, ‘Where's that dirty Shell Scott?’ I told her you'd gone to Pete's downstairs—” Hazel smiled sweetly—"for some medicine, and she ran away like mad. She seemed very excited."

  “She was."

  “And a man came rushing up here a minute or two after the girl and asked about her. I said I'd sent her to Pete's—and he ran off.” She shook her head. “I don't know. I'm a little confused."

  That I could understand. Maybe it was something in the L. A. air this morning. I thanked Hazel and walked down to the office, fishing out my keys, but when I got there I noticed the door was already cracked. I shoved it open and walked inside. For the second or third time this morning my jaw dropped open. A guy was seated behind my desk, fussing with some papers on its top, looking businesslike as all hell. He was a big guy, husky, around thirty years old, with white hair sticking up into the air about an inch.

  Without looking up, he said, “Be right with you."

  I walked to the desk and sank into one of the leather chairs in front of it, a chair I bought for clients to sit in. If the chair had raised up and floated me out of the window while violins played in the distance, my stunned expression would not have changed one iota. In a not very strong voice I said, “Who are you?"

  “I'm Shell Scott,” he said briskly, glancing up at me.

  Ah, yes. That explained it. He was Shell Scott. Now I knew what was wrong. I had gone crazy. My mind had snapped. For a while there I'd thought I was Shell Scott.

  But slowly reason filtered into my throbbing head again. I'd had all the mad episodes I cared for this morning, and here was a guy I could get my hands on. He was looking squarely at me now, and if ever a man suddenly appeared scared green, this one did. Except for the short white hair and the fact that he was about my size, he didn't resemble me much, and right now he looked sick. I got up and leaned on the desk and shoved my face at him.

  “That's interesting,” I said pleasantly. “I, too, am Shell Scott."

  He let out a grunt and started to get up fast, but I reached out and grabbed a bunch of shirt and tie and throat in my right fist and I yanked him halfway across the desk.

  “O. K., you smart sonofabitch,” I said. “Let's have a lot of words. Fast, mister, before I break some bones for you."

  He squawked and sputtered and tried to jerk away, so I latched onto him with the other hand and started to haul him over the desk where I could get at him good. I only started to though, because I heard somebody behind me. I twisted my head around just in time to see the pretty boy from Pete's, the guy who'd left the ladies’ room by the window. Just time to see him, and the leather-wrapped sap in his hand, swinging down at me. Then another bomb, a larger one this time, went off in my head and I could feel myself falling, for miles and miles, through deepening blackness.

  I came to in front of my desk, and I stayed there for a couple of minutes, got up, made it to the desk chair and sat down in it. If I had thought my head hurt before, it was nothing to the way it felt now. It took me about ten seconds to go from angry to mad to furious to raging, then I grabbed the phone and got Hazel.

  “Where'd those two guys go?"

  “What guys?"

  “You see anybody leave my office?"

  “No, Shell. What's the matter?"

  “Plenty.” I glanced at my watch. Nine-twenty. Just twenty minutes since I'd first opened the office door this morning and answered the ringing phone. I couldn't have been sprawled on the floor more than a minute or two, but even so my two pals would be far away by now. Well, Harrison was going to have a long wait because I was taking no cases but my own for a while. What with people shooting at me, impersonating me, and batting me on the head, this was a mess I had to find out about fast.

  “Hazel,” I said, “get me the Hollywood Roosevelt."

  While I waited I calmed down a little and, though the throbbing in my head made it difficult, my thoughts got a little clearer. It seemed a big white-haired ape was passing himself off as me, but I didn't have the faintest idea why. He must have been down below on Broadway somewhere, waited till he saw me leave, then come up. What I couldn't figure was how the hell he'd known I'd be leaving my office. He certainly couldn't have intended hanging around all day just in case I left, and he couldn't have known I'd be at Pete's —

  I stopped as a thought hit me. “Hazel,” I said. “Forget that call.” I hung up, thinking. Whitey couldn't have known I'd show up with a hangover, but he might have known I'd be out of here soon after I arrived. All it takes to get a private detective out of his office is—a phone call. An urgent appointment to meet somebody somewhere, say, maybe somebody like Frank Harrison. Could be I was reaching for that one, but I didn't think so. I'd had only the one call this morning, an urgent call that would get me out of the office—and from the very guy who'd pulled the same deal last Monday. And all I'd done Monday was waste an hour. The more I thought about it the more positive I became.

  Harrison might still be waiting in the Cinegrill—and he might not. If Harrison were in whatever this caper was with Whitey and Pretty Boy, they'd almost surely phone him soon to let him know I hadn't followed the script; perhaps were even phoning him right now. He'd know, too, that unless I was pretty stupid, I'd sooner or later figure out his part in this.

  Excitement started building in me as I grabbed my gun and holster and strapped them on; I was getting an inkling of what might have been wrong with that black-haired lovely. Maybe I'd lost Whitey and Pretty Boy, but with luck I could still get my hands on Harrison. Around his throat, say. I charged out of the office. My head hurt all the way but I made it to the lot where I park my convertible Cadillac, leaped in and roared out onto Broadway. From L. A. to downtown Hollywood I broke hell out of the speed limit, and at the hotel I found a parking spot at the side entrance, hurried through the big lobby and into the Cinegrill.

  I remembered Harrison was a very tall diplomat-type with hair graying at the temples and bushy eyebrows over dark eyes. Nobody even remotely like him was in the bar. I asked the bartender, “You know a Frank Harrison?"

  “Yes, sir."

  “He been in here?"

  “Yes, sir. He left just a few minutes ago."

  “Left the hotel?"

  “No, he went into the lobby."

  “Thanks.” I hustled back into the lobby and up to the desk. A tall, thin clerk in his middle thirties, wearing rimless glasses looked at me when I stopped.

  “I've got an appointment with Mr. Frank Harrison,” I said. “What room is he in?"

  “Seven-fourteen, sir.” The clerk looked a little bewildered. “But Mr. Harrison just left."

  “Where'd he go? How long ago?"

  The clerk shook his head. “He was checking out. I got his card, and when I turned around I saw him going out the door. Just now. It hasn't been a minute. I don't—"

  I turned around and ran for the door swearing under my breath. The bastard would have been at the desk when I came in through the side entrance and headed for the Cinegrill. He must have seen me, and that had been all; he'd powdered. He was well powdered, too, because there wasn't a trace of him when I got out onto Hollywood Boulevard.

  Inside the hotel again I checked some more with the bartender and desk clerk, plus two bellboys and a dining-room waitress. After a lot of questions I knew Harrison had often been seen in the bar and dining room with two other men. One was stocky, with curly black hair, white skin, cleft chin, quite handsome—Pretty Boy; the other was bigger and huskier and almost always wore a hat. A bellhop said he looked a bit like me. I told hi
m it was me, and left him looking bewildered. Two bellboys and the bartender also told me that Harrison was seen every day, almost all of every day, with a blonde woman a few years under thirty whom they all described as “stacked.” The three men and the blonde were often a foursome. From the bartender I learned that Harrison had gotten a phone call in the Cinegrill about five minutes before I showed up. That would have been from the other two guys on my list, and fit with Harrison's checking out fast—or starting to. I went back to the desk and chatted some more with the thin clerk after showing him the photostat of my license. Pretty Boy—Bob Foster—was in room 624; Whitey—James Flagg—was in 410; Frank Harrison was in 714.

  I asked the clerk, “Harrison married to a blonde?"

  “I don't believe he is married, sir."

  “He's registered alone?” He nodded, and I said, “I understand he's here a lot with a young woman. Right?"

  “Yes, sir. That's Miss Willis."

  “A blonde?"

  “Yes. Quite, ah, curvaceous."

  “What room is she in?"

  He had to check. He came back with the card in his hand and said, “Isn't this odd? I had never noticed. She's in seven-sixteen."

  It wasn't at all odd. I looked behind him to the slots where room keys were kept. There wasn't any key in the slot for 714. Nor was there any key in the 716 slot. I thanked the clerk, took an elevator to the seventh floor and walked to Harrison's room. There were two things I wanted to do. One was look around inside here to see if maybe my ex-client had left something behind which might help me find him; and the other was to talk with the blonde. As it turned out, I killed two birds with one stone.

  The door to 714 was locked, and if I had to I was going to bribe a bellboy to let me in. But, first, I knocked.

  It took quite a while, and I had almost decided I'd have to bribe the bellhop, but then there was the sound of movement inside, a muffled voice called something I couldn't understand, and I heard the soft thud of feet coming toward the door. A key clicked in the lock and the door swung open. A girl stood there, yawning, her eyes nearly closed, her head drooping as she stared at approximately the top button of my coat.