He must have stopped breathing for those moments, but then, he filled his chest with air, licked his lips a few times and stood up. You know what you’re full of, don’t you, Scott? You talk like a crazy man. I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about. He breathed deeply again. But no sense arguing with you, pal. Call in the fuzz and let’s get going. I didn’t say anything.
You did come here with a carload of cops, didn’t you? he asked pleasantly. You wouldn’t be dumb enough to try taking me alone. Or would you? He paused. Maybe you are that dumb, Scott.
I grinned, but didn’t answer.
I could just about imagine what he was thinking: probably I wasn’t alone; but if I was, and he could take me, he might have several hours, at the very least, before the law put the arm on him. In those hours he could make his plans, phone attorneys — even skip the country in case the evidence against him appeared conclusive.
I knew the moment when he made up his mind. He stood a little straighter, his lips pressed together a little tighter. He took a step toward me, then stopped, looking at the revolver in my hand.
He was in shirt sleeves, no bulges, no gun on him. I grinned, broke my Colt and ejected the cartridges, dropped them into my coat pocket. A small table stood near the door. I placed my revolver on it, took off my coat and dropped it on top of the gun, watching Cherry. He smiled as I stepped toward him.
A yard from him, I stopped. His chin was tucked down and he looked up past the black brows at me, starting to move aside, around me. I didn’t do anything except keep facing him. Suddenly he started a left jab toward my head, stopped it and threw his right fist at me.
He was fast, but I had seen plenty who were faster. I caught the blow on my forearm, swung to my left, carrying his arm out, slammed a cupped hand under his chin and shoved. His head snapped up and he went back two steps. The chair was behind him and his foot hit it, putting him off balance.
While he was still unbalanced, I stepped in close and whipped the back of my hand across his face, then brought it forward, palm smacking the side of his jaw, smacked the back of it against his cheek again. I wasn’t trying to be fancy; I wanted to make him mad. He was too cold, too much in control most of the time, and I wanted to bring him to a boil. I did; he started boiling.
When Cherry came back at me his face was twisted, his mouth open, lips pulled apart, tight against his teeth. The veins in his neck stood out. And he was wide open. I was set, waiting for him, and I hit him with everything I had. It was a long right hand, straight in, no feint, no nothing, just a right hand with my shoulder and every ounce of my weight behind it.
My fist smashed his nose. Pain filled my right arm. It didn’t run from wrist to shoulder, the pain was just suddenly there, the whole length of my arm. It felt as if I’d broken my hand. A tight, scratchy sound grated from Cherry’s throat as he staggered backward. He hit the chair again but went over it this time, the chair toppling. He sprawled on the carpet, legs moving queerly.
After nearly a minute, he got to his hands and knees. I stayed where I was. He was motionless for a while, blood dripping from his nose and landing on the carpet. He stayed there, obviously until he felt steadier, stronger; but I didn’t try to hurry him.
When Cherry got to his feet, he moved easily enough. He looked all right, except for his nose, and the scarlet wetness running down his mouth. I moved in on him. He stepped toward me, cocking a fist. But he didn’t use the fist — he kicked his right leg forward, viciously. I turned, barely in time, caught the point of his shoe on the front of my thigh. But it gave Cherry time to throw a punch. It was his left, and it was hard. The blow landed solidly on the side of my head, rocked me. He was close to me, one of his feet behind my leg, his body jarring against me.
I went down over his foot, landed heavily, rolled and started up. Cherry had stepped toward me, was swinging his foot at my head. If I hadn’t already been on my way up, it might have landed there; instead it dug into my chest. But then I was on my feet again. The kick had turned Cherry’s body to one side. I’d intended to use nothing but my fists on him, none of the tricks. But with the two kicks Cherry changed my mind.
I held my arms in front of me, hands open loosely, let him turn, swing. He threw a right at my head, and I crouched, raising my arms higher, crossing them with my right arm closest to his body. As his swinging wrist jarred against my crossed forearms, I clamped my left hand above and inside his wrist and stepped in close, sliding my other hand up his arm to grip the outside of his biceps. I pivoted to my left and slammed my shoulder solidly into his armpit, dug the fingers of both hands into his arm and pulled hard as I bent forward. He grunted once, flipped over my head and sailed three feet through the air. I hadn’t realized the wall was so near. His feet were higher than his head when his back crashed against the wall. His rear end hit first, then his skull bounced on the wood. He landed in a heap on the floor, sprawled awkwardly, not quite unconscious, hardly moving.
His fingers moved first, then one arm. He got one leg under him, knee against the carpet, made it a foot from the floor and flopped prone. I sat down in the chair he’d been using earlier, lighted a cigarette. It was half-smoked before Cherry finally wobbled to his feet.
As he stood there swaying, blood on his mouth, his chin, his neck, I said, That should cancel a few of the lumps your boys gave me. Cherry. A few. But I still owe you some. Not to mention Danny and Frank and McCune. I ground out the cigarette. And Ruth Stanley, little Ruthie. I got to my feet, moved toward him. And God knows how many others, dead and dying. God knows how many others, Cherry.
He got his hands up, shook his head from side to side. Then he peeled his red lips apart and swore at me. I let him finish and said, You can call this off any time you want to, Cherry.
He swung at me. I wouldn’t have believed it could happen, the shape he was in, but somehow he got past my left and landed under my chin, his knuckles digging into my throat. I stood flat-footed, hit him twice, grabbed him as he bounced off the wall, and hammered my right hand into his mouth.
I’ll say this much for Joe Cherry — it’s the only thing I can give him, in all I ever learned about him and his life, but I’ve got to hand him this — he got up, all told, seven times.
Chapter Nineteen
When I called Samson he took two steps and was inside the room. He apparently had been right outside the door for a while.
I asked, Where’s the girl?
She’s O.K. Rawlins came out in another car — good God. He was staring at Joe Cherry. What in hell did you hit him with?
Me.
He looked at my bloody, puffed hands, then walked silently to Cherry, kneeled by him and felt for his pulse. I put my coat on, reloaded the Colt and pressed the gun into its holster.
Samson said, Well, he’s alive. That’s something.
Yeah. It’s too bad.
He grunted. I guess he had it coming. In fact, I know damn well he had it coming.
We left Cherry, went into the front room. Rawlins and another plainclothes man were there. June sat quietly on the couch.
Shell, she said.
I looked at her. Yeah?
The captain talked to me while — he told me about the — you in jail.
The frame you mean — that happy little party you helped the fellows plan?
Yes. I did help them, Shell. And I lied to you. But I didn’t know they were going to — murder. And do such a horrible thing to you. I thought —
Oh, nuts, June. Or, rather, nuts, Mrs. McCune. I sounded tired. I was tired. Especially my arms. They felt like big lumps of bone-bruises. It’s a little late —
But it’s true. I thought they just wanted you out of the way for a few hours. Joe told me to do it, and, well, I did. But I swear I didn’t know —
Oh, go to hell. Tell it to a police stenographer.
She dropped her eyes, studied her hands folded in her lap
. Samson spoke to Bill Rawlins, who went out to his car. He came back in, said he’d called for an ambulance and it was on the way.
June raised her head and looked at me. There were actually tears in her big blue eyes. She must have worked pretty hard on this bit, I thought. She said, I’ve already told the captain the way it was. All of it. Except this. I did lie to you, Shell. But only about overhearing the phone call in the mortuary that night — you know there wasn’t any call — and about who I was. But I didn’t lie about the rest of it. She paused. Not the — rest of it.
She give it all to you, Phil?
He shrugged. Seemed to.
Sounds like the straight stuff?
Well — could be. She admits knowing her husband was a minor partner with Cherry in the narcotics traffic, fronted for him in the Mortuary and Cad agency. Claims she didn’t know it for a long time, only found out in the last few weeks. She couldn’t decide what to do. Then McCune disappeared.
She didn’t know why he new? She didn’t know about the narcotics heist that flopped?
Claims not. It’s possible.
I smiled. I told you she was good, Phil. I looked at June. Did she say she knows Joe Cherry killed her husband?
Yeah, that, too, Shell. Says he must have had it done, the way it looks now. She believes he’s responsible.
She believes he’s responsible. You mean she didn’t tell you she fingered her husband for Cherry?
June didn’t move a wet eyelash.
Samson said, What’s that?
I told him about the phone calls to and from the Orange Coast Motel, stressed the times. Then I said, So clearly McCune, after the heist blew up and he’d been lying low for about a week, on Sunday the twenty-first at 11:56 a.m. phoned his loving wife. Probably to get news of the heat here — maybe he even wanted her to join him. He either told her where he was calling from or else left his number, because nine minutes after he called his ever-loving, somebody did phone the motel — but strange to relate, not from his home here. The call was from Zenith 4-6089, which — surprise, surprise — is Joe Cherry’s number. An hour later, Jake and Pot showed up at the Orange Coast Motel, and away went McCune with them. I sighed. Never to be seen alive again.
A call from here to Cherry’s number wouldn’t be long distance, but I decided to bluff it anyway. Eight-to-five, when you check, there’ll be a record of a call from this number. Zenith 4-4394, to Zenith 4-6089, at about — two or three minutes after noon. Roughly.
June said, You won’t have to check. I made the call. It’s true James phoned me that Sunday, and left his number. I called Joe and told him what the number was. But —
Ah, those buts, I said. I grinned at her. Now you tell us. When you know we can find out anyway.
That’s not the reason I didn’t mention it before, Shell. I just — I was afraid it would look bad.
You were right, sweetheart. It looks terrible.
But I didn’t know Joe was going to kill him. He told me James had stolen something from him, he only wanted it back.
Samson’s eyes met mine. Joe Cherry had, by Mrs. McCune’s admission, told her McCune had stolen something from him. We knew what it was — Heroin — and that McCune had only tried to steal it. Which was what had started the ball rolling in this mess, brought Evelyn Spring to my office.
I smiled at June. You didn’t know Joe Cherry was going to kill James, hey? Who was it said the things we don’t know can’t hurt us? But how does it happen you know hubby is decomposing?
I — She swallowed, her lovely face pale. After it happened, Joe finally told me. It was an accident, you see. James got frightened and ran, and one of the men had to shoot him.
Of course, they had to. And while James was rapidly fleeing away, they shot a remarkable bullet after him. This bullet caught up with him, curved around and drilled him right smack in the forehead, lifting much of his skull off his brain.
She managed to get a little paler.
I added, And left powder burns on his face.
I — that’s what Joe —
You should have seen James there in the casket, June. Half his brain gone, the rest spilling from his skull case like moldy scrambled eggs. And him in a casket with another dead guy. Like Danny and Frank. Some accident
She let out a gasp, swayed a little. But she hung on, and said, her voice very soft and thin, All I know is what Joe told me.
Sure. When did Joe Cherry tell you about this tragedy?
Last Monday. He said it happened the day before.
So, of course, the sensible thing for you to do — once he was dead — was to file a missing person report.
Well, I — I did file the report that same day, Monday. She was pretty chalky now, and her gorgeous blue eyes wobbled a little. Yes, I knew James was dead. But Joe made me file the report. He didn’t want anybody else to think James was dead, and he told me to do it. He might have killed me, too — I was afraid of him. He can be very frightening. Shell.
Yeah, I know. He’s got a growl in his eyes. I thought about my last look at Cherry. Anyway, he used to.
Chapter Twenty
Well, mrs. McCune testified against Joe Cherry, and later stood trial herself. But her attorney was smart and arranged for a fixed jury: all men. She went to Tehachapi, but not for long.
Truepenny testified against Cherry, too, and so did I. At least we tried to, but much of the testimony was inadmissible as hearsay, or for some other technicality. Man, you wouldn’t believe there are so many technicalities for protecting the guilty. Even so, it would have looked good, except for one thing.
While in the hospital, Vince Potter decided to cop a plea, if he could, and told us Cherry had ordered the frame for me, and the rest of it. The way Pot told it, he sounded almost innocent, but we could put it together the way it must have been. Jake had used the sawed-off shotgun to shoot Tony Kovin with the bullet from my gun — Kovin being the only man still alive, other than Pot himself, who could prove Cherry trafficked in narcotics. Ruthie had been a possible danger to Cherry because of her association with Frank Eiverson, and because Cherry learned I had talked to her.
So Ruthie was sapped and taken to Twenty-first Street one night. After killing Kovin, Jake drove my Cad down dark and empty Twenty-first to the point where Pot stood holding the unconscious Ruthie alongside his Buick. When Jake raced down the road, Pot simply had thrown Ruthie in front of my Cad, then driven away in the Electra. Jake just kept on going. Later — after getting the word from Mrs. McCune — he’d switched Cads and called the law. By then, of course, Ruthie’s crushed body had been found and taken to the morgue. The rest of it, I knew.
But Pot was cagey, and though he told us all that while in the hospital, he never signed a confession. Then came the day when he was to be transferred from the general hospital to a cell in the police building.
I was there that day. So was Samson, plus a couple of uniformed officers. We walked down the steps, the uniformed policemen at Pot’s left and right, Samson and me a few feet behind them. And suddenly Pot fell.
We thought at first he’d stumbled. There wasn’t the sound of any shot. Samson said, What the hell —
That was as far as he got. We all heard it. But it wasn’t a gunshot. It was the sound of an explosion, a sharp, solid blast. High in a building a block away, on our left, a spot of flame bloomed and vanished. The window frame and glass splintered and flew outward, fragments falling to the street below. Something else fell, too, clattered against the sidewalk.
Samson, one of the officers, and I ran up the street. Bits of wood, shards of glass, and a twisted length of metal lay on the sidewalk. The metal was bent, but it was still recognizable as the barrel of a rifle. Only splinters of the stock remained.
Samson squatted by it, craned his head up at me.
I said, You don’t think — I stopped, pretty sure what had happened, even th
en; but I wasn’t quite ready to say it.
Samson swore softly, fluently. Yeah, he said. That’s what I think.
I started to run for the building’s entrance but Samson called me, Hold it, Shell. There’s no rush.
I stopped. He was right.
Samson got slowly to his feet, heavy shoulders slumping a little. He pulled his neck back and looked up, toward the window where the explosion had occurred. There’s no rush, he repeated. You know what we’ll find up there. Another dead man. A very messy dead man.
That’s what we found. He was in the middle of the room, on his back. One arm dangled loosely from exposed muscle and shattered bone, the hand blown away. His face bad been ripped into shreds by the force of the blast. This was a new one for the Los Angeles Police Department, too, but we all knew how it had been worked, even before the report from SID came in.
The high-powered rifle was equipped with telescopic sight and efficient silencer, but it was a very special instrument for killing in another way. A most ingenious artisan had hollowed out the stock and concealed therein a sizable quantity of explosive, so arranged that pulling the gun’s trigger and firing a cartridge set off, in the next fraction of a second, a bang violent enough to eliminate completely whoever fired the gun.
Thus, I thought, no worry this time about the hired killer getting caught — and talking. No loose ends. The trail ended here, in a blood-spattered room.
A few minutes later we stood next to Pot’s body. A crowd had gathered. Pot had died instantly, a bullet in his brain.
Samson’s brown eyes were hard as rock when he looked at me, but his voice was gentle, almost casual. Nice shot, he said.
Yeah. Wonder who the guy was?
We’ll probably get a make on him in a day or two. Samson shrugged. For all the good that’ll do us. He watched silently as Pot’s body was placed on a stretcher. Then he said softly, Too bad.
He had it coming. In fact both of them had it coming.
Them? I wasn’t thinking about them. I was thinking about the guy who dreamed this up. Giannomo Ciari.
Dig That Crazy Grave (The Shell Scott Mysteries) Page 14
