The Cheim Manuscript (The Shell Scott Mysteries)

by Richard S. Prather

  Ah, come on —

  Well, you sounded awfully funny to me, daddy. And after the way youd been looking at me, and acting — and what had just happened to me with Wilfred, and his threats to tell people about me — what was I supposed to think? Besides, you said you knew about Wilfred and me, and you were trying to follow in his footsteps, and even that youd prefer not to do it right there in the doorway —

  Stop! That’s enough. I wont listen to any more —

  Well, you can understand why I thought —

  Stop!

  And just like Wilfred, you said you didn’t want any money, so naturally I thought —

  Sylvia Ardent, goddammit, if you don’t shut your dumb mouth I will do something terrible to you.

  Well, I wouldn’t mind so much, now I know you’re not a dirty extorter —

  That is not what I meant, I said icily.

  Then I noticed that the corners of her full lips were curving upward, and that her eyes twinkled. I flipped my hands into the air, looked at the ceiling, the wall, the furniture. Then back at the far end of the couch. And Sylvia.

  She had crossed her legs, and the upper curve of one white thigh almost hid the fragile strip of yellow. She still lay back on the pillows against the arm of the couch, one hand behind her neck and the other resting palm up at her side, fingers curling. The big green eyes were half closed as she looked almost sleepily at me.

  Don’t do that, I said.

  The smooth lids slid up a bit. I’m not doing anything.

  Well, quit it. Look, earlier you were talking about Gideon, Wilfred and me — when you were still suffering from that stupid delusion about my motives — and you said, or at least intimated, that it all started with Gideon. Would you mind explaining that?

  She sat up suddenly, uncrossing her long legs and folding both arms over her breasts. Then she waggled her head and said, I might as well tell you all the secrets there is, daddy. Pretty soon I wont have any secrets from you, will I?

  Gideon?

  I made those pictures for him — the first two I mentioned. Bombs. Oh, they made money, but they were from starvation. I was awful. And I was tied up in a long contract, nickels and dimes. Gideon was always calling me into his big office for one thing and another. Wed just talk, and he was always real kind, almost fatherly, but I could tell he was trying to worm his way into my good gracious.

  Your what?

  One day he gave me a script. A real script. It was a marvelous part. Too good for me, really; I’m not that good an actress.

  If you ask me —

  Let me finish. She wiggled over the couch and stopped next to me, put a hand on my shoulder. He had a new offer for me. Id make a hundred thousand dollars for doing the part — ten times what I got from the others. Plus a better contract. And the part could almost make me a star, it was so good. But there was a catch.

  I think I know whats coming.

  Sure, you do. Wilfred all over again, only before Wilfred. History repeating itself before it happened. She stopped for a second or two. That wasn’t all of it. If I didn’t — didn’t make the picture, there were lots of things he could do to me, he said. He was still about the most powerful thing in Hollywood then. She paused. Well, anyway, I made the stinking picture.

  I didn’t say anything, just sat there waiting for her to go on. Or maybe that was all of it. But after looking steadily at me for several seconds she said, Well?

  Well what?

  Arent you going to give me the missionary bit? Like what a bad girl I’ve been, the wages of sin is death and all that?

  Baby, if the wages of sin is death I’ve been trying to kill myself for years.

  I knew I could trust you. Do you think Id have told you all this if I didn’t think I could trust you?

  I suppose not. But, frankly, how do you know I wont blab this salacious intelligence all over town?

  You just wouldn’t. I can trust you. After all, you had a chance to rape me, and you didn’t.

  Sylvia, how many times must I repeat, I do not rape —

  Don’t shout at me, daddy. She shrugged. Well, you had your chance. I’ll bet you hate yourself in the morning.

  I hate myself already. Listen, we have carefully plumbed the depths of your depravity — if nothing else — but I still don’t understand how Cheim got the dope on your background.

  Oh, that. Well, I was all set to do the big picture, you know, but there was still that condition — the arrangement — to take care of. So — well — we arranged, um, the arrangement. She sighed. I kept my end of the bargain, but all that time before then he’d been like a father to me. I felt like I was committing insect.

  He bugged you, huh?

  Daddy, I’ll tell you, it was an experience I’ll never remember if I can forget it. If he hadnt been so sennilee —

  So what?

  What do you mean, so what? Maybe its not important to you, but it meant a lot to me, daddy.

  I mean, what was it you said he was?

  So sennilee — real ancient. Old, practically dying.

  Senile?

  Whats that?

  Skip it. You were saying?

  That’s why it made me feel like — you do know what committing insect is, don’t you?

  Putting bugs in the bughouse, I suppose. If killing them is insecticide —

  You’re making that up.

  Uh-huh. I thought Id go along with —

  Incidentally, why do they call it insane when you’re crazy? Shouldnt it be outsane?

  Frankly, I never thought about it. Not even once.

  Anyway, like I was saying, for weeks after he kept winking at me and pinching me hither and yon, and acting like Gods gift to poor working girls. One day when he was pinching and crowing at me like a rooster I got fed up and really let him have it.

  Again?

  I told him not to be such a swell head, and to quit acting like he was the first man in my life and all. That’s when I told him Id been a call girl for six months once and it wasn’t like he was number one with me but more like maybe one million. I just made that up to make him mad, of course.

  I rather hoped you were exaggerating a little.

  I really said some sharp things to him, and he got cold and mean and like he was going to have a bunch of strokes. That must be when he had some investigating done — I think he hired some detectives. I know he hired lots of detectives when he was head of the studio. They must have checked back to when I was a call girl. That’s the only way anybody would have known about it; I sure wouldn’t have mentioned it to him except he got on my nerve so much.

  I was trying to absorb all that when Sylvia jumped up. I don’t care what you say, she said. I’ve got to move.

  She walked over to the door and back, then to the rustic wooden bar in the corner, and sat facing me on a stool there, arms pushed straight down before her, hands between her thighs and curled around the arc of wood on which she was perched.

  Something I still don’t get, I said. Why would Cheim have told Jellicoe all that info about you?

  She shook her head. I don’t know. Wilfred didn’t tell me how he knew. But he knew. That was enough.

  If Cheim had detectives check up on you, I suppose its possible Jellicoe got a look at their reports to his boss. Either that or Cheim told him. I paused. Do you suppose Jellicoe also knew about Cheim and you? The — ah — arrangement?

  I think he did. I cant be sure, but he was so close to everything, contracts and the goings on. And he acted a little funny around me, after. Id take a bet he did know.

  How long ago was that? The deal with Cheim, I mean.

  Four and a half years. When I got the TV offer, the picture was a big hit, and I managed to get out of the movie contract. No trouble — Gideon didn’t try to keep me.

  I was just wondering if maybe Jellicoe had been sort of eating his heart out for four and a half years. He had a couple of pictures of you in his suite.

  No kidding? I didn’t know that. She slid
off the stool. Well, that’s how it happened, daddy. There it is, the story of my life, if you can call it living.

  Why do you keep calling me daddy?

  Its not like father, you dummy. I don’t know . . . when I like a fellow real well, I just call him daddy.

  Oh?

  She walked across the room toward me. You don’t look so fierce when you smile like that, she said. You look real good to me. But I’ll call you Shell if you want. Daddy — that’s just a pet name. Like if you had a pet name for me, what would it be?

  Well . . . Mammae?

  Whats it mean?

  Look it up.

  No more questions?

  I guess not.

  I suppose you have to leave.

  Pretty quick. I’m going to conduct a little session with Gideon Cheim, one way or another.

  Don’t tell him I told you —

  I wont.

  I can trust you?

  You can trust me.

  I wonder. Maybe you don’t mean everything you say.

  Now what are you getting at?

  Well, I know you’re not a dirty old blackmailer now.

  Yeah? So what does that mean?

  She didn’t answer. Not at first.

  Instead she took one more long gliding step toward me and stopped only inches away. Her arms were hanging at her sides, palms of her hands pressed against the smooth, firm thighs. Then she slid her hands up slowly, to the roundness of her hips, up a little more.

  Well, she said, smiling down at me, you say I can trust you. You’re not a blackmailer. Or even a missionary. You say you’re not a mad rapist or anything.

  I didn’t say or anything.

  She hooked her thumbs in the top of that narrow band of yellow, still smiling. And as she moved her hands down again, down slowly, very slowly, in the tone of one utterly rejected, abandoned, the woman scorned and alone — she was an actress, after all — she said, I guess its true. You’re really not going to rape me, after all.

  I smiled at Sylvia Ardent.

  Well, I said, not . . . exactly.

  5

  Gideon Cheim had suffered two heart attacks, the first a couple of years back and the second only recently, the last one being a massive coronary occlusion that nearly put an end to Gideon Cheim. He had, however, undergone open-heart surgery about a week ago and was still alive and kicking.

  After leaving Sylvia Ardents lodge, I had done some research on Cheim, most of it checking clips from recent newspapers. He was recuperating in the Weston-Macey Hospital, a small private institution on Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena. It was not only small but exclusive, the prime requirements for admission being an ounce of illness and a ton of money.

  He’d had a very close call. Cheim had been admitted to Weston-Macey on Sunday, August 27, and was operated on the following day. The day after that, Tuesday the twenty-ninth, he was dying — at least to judge by the virtual obituaries in the stories Id read. Wednesday was a repeat of Tuesday, more of the same. But on Thursday, the last day of August, he’d begun to improve, and then practically sprang out of the casket. He was taken off the critical list that night, rapidly gained strength and relative vigor, and by Friday afternoon was sitting up in bed. Sometimes its like that.

  I reached under the dash for the phone and called my office number. Hazel, at the Hamiltons switchboard, came on: Sheldon Scott, Investigations. She was also Barton and Blaine, Attorneys at Law, Tracers, Inc., Universal Novelties and half a dozen other companies.

  Let me speak, I said, to that scourge of evildoers, that rugged, industrious, sober —

  You must mean Shell Scott himself, she said.

  Why, how did you know?

  Oh, I just knew. But I fear you cannot speak to Mr. Scott, sir. He is lying drunk in his office, with his head in the spittoon. No Jellicoe at any of the hospitals, Shell, and I haven’t got anything new on him. Three calls for you in the last hour but they were all from the same man. He seemed extremely anxious to talk to you.

  He leave his name?

  Yes. It was Mr. Gideon Cheim. He also left his number —

  I’ll be damned.

  Whats the matter?

  Nothing, except that I’m on my way to try seeing the guy right now. He say what he wanted?

  No. Only that it was most urgent, exceptionally urgent, and he wants to see you in person — he’s in a hospital.

  I know. Thanks, Hazel. I’ll buy you a strawberry milkshake to go with that hamburger.

  Youll buy me champagne and a ruinously expensive dinner at Scandia.

  Shortly after two oclock, when I was halfway to Pasadena on the Freeway, I began wondering if there was a tail on my Cad. I noticed the dark-blue Lincoln because it stayed one or two cars back, and once, when a sleek Cougar pulled out and went past, thus putting the Lincoln directly behind me, the driver had seemed deliberately to slow until another car passed him and fell in behind my Cad.

  I was rolling along at sixty miles an hour, but I slowed gradually to fifty, and finally forty-five. A red Mercury was following me, the Lincoln behind it. The Mercury passed me with a roar and cut in sharply, presumably to evidence the drivers ire at the slowpoke on a freeway. Not so the Linc. I thought the guy was going to stop entirely, and when I resumed normal speed there were two cars between that dark-blue sedan and me.

  When I reached the end of the Freeway I kept going on the Arroyo Parkway to Colorado Boulevard, turned right and poked along for a few blocks, then pulled into the sizable parking lot at Macfadden Square, a large shopping center. I parked in a slot before a supermarket, cut the engine and turned to watch as the Lincoln swung into the lot and slowed to a stop only a few yards in from the street, a good fifty yards from me. I could see figures in the front seat but not clearly enough to recognize them. Nobody got out of the car.

  In the Cads glove compartment I keep a little three-inch-high Bushnell 7x26 Custom Compact binocular. I grabbed it and walked into the supermarket. Standing behind stacked boxes of detergent and looking out through the stores window I could still see the Lincoln. When I raised the binocular to my eyes and focused it, a couple of customers pushing half-loaded carts gawked at me with blank expressions.

  As the blurred image sharpened I could see two men in the car, both in the front seat. They appeared to be only a few feet from me, and I was glad they only appeared to be that close. Because the name of one guy was Mac Kiffer — whom I have already mentioned briefly — and the other was Putrid Stanley, but both of them were spelled Trouble.

  Putrid, seated on the drivers right, was a tall, lean and lanky guy with a long bald phallic head and a beard nearly tough enough to scratch diamonds. He could shave at eight in the morning and have five-oclock shadow by 9 a.m. His name was Wallace Stanley, and his unique handle had not been bestowed upon him because he bathed only on George Washingtons birthday, or failed to use bug-killer under his armpits, but because several years back another hood had taken a few slices at him with a spring-blade sticker.

  One of the slices got Stanley on the forearm and another wreaked havoc on and about his nose, with the result that his beak and flaring nostrils were perpetually twisted into a kind of nasal grimace which, combined with his small round mouth, made him appear constantly to be smelling something which filled him with vast unease. Wallace got even with his assailant — by pumping six slugs from a .45-caliber heater into his back — but from that day to this he had been called Putrid.

  His companion — and boss — the guy behind the wheel, was equally lovable. Mac Kiffer had done two years at San Quentin, for bribery and suborning perjury, but had escaped stir time for several cases of aggravated assault and at least two murders that I knew about. He was tall, maybe six two, with lean hips and wide shoulders, smooth black hair and sleepy-looking brown eyes, just an average man-in-the-street sort of guy. He wore horn-rimmed glasses and had a weak chin — and, so it was rumored, was weak in the guts department as well — and might have been an accountant or a clerk in a bookstore.
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  Both of those mugs were unpleasant characters, dangerous and deadly when a foul mood was upon them, which was a large percentage of the time. But Id never had trouble with either of them, or with any of Kiffers half-dozen other boys — not any serious trouble, at least. So why would the two slobs be on my tail?

  It gave me a queer feeling to recall that only a few hours ago I had been gazing upon Mrs. Gladys Jellicoe with at least mild apprehension, and thinking idly about Mac Kiffer — and the slugs singing past his black-haired skull yesterday. Slugs, according to the rumble, aimed Macs way by one of the heavies working for Eddy Lash, probably our towns top hood. Whether at the top or merely close to it. Lash was without doubt a very successful businessman and lived in a ridiculously expensive — but beautifully designed and furnished — penthouse suite atop one of twin buildings on Wilshire Boulevard called the Ghian Apartments.

  I say Lashs penthouse was beautifully designed not because Id been in it — for which I could probably thank my lucky stars — but because I had attended a swinging cocktail party, some months back, in a penthouse suite adjacent to Lashs twin.

  I suppose the sight of Mac Kiffer had set me to thinking about Lash not merely because of yesterdays attempt to hit Kiffer in the head, but because it wouldn’t have surprised me nearly so much if it had been Eddy Lash or one of his five or six employees on my tail — even though it had been nearly two years since Lash and I had tangled. Lash, however, was not a man of short memory, nor one at all absentminded about people in whom he would like to produce a condition of deadness; and I had no doubt be would greatly enjoy producing that condition in me — but that’s another story.

  I lowered the glasses, got out my notebook and jotted down the license number: HFZ440. The car was Mac Kiffers own, undoubtedly. He bought a new Lincoln each and every year, always the same color, dark blue. Then I strolled back to the Cad and drove on out of the lot. When I turned left at the first traffic signal the blue Lincoln was still tagging along. So I lost them.

  I hit a couple of lights just before they turned red, went down an alley or two, then when I was sure Id shaken my unwelcome companions I headed for the Weston-Macey.