The Cheim Manuscript (The Shell Scott Mysteries)

by Richard S. Prather

  I stepped closer to her and took her shoulders in my hands. Sylvia, there’s no way Pine could know Jellicoe’s body has already been discovered. I doubt that he’s sweating any bucketfuls yet. But we do know about Jellicoe — and so, now, do the cops. Theyll know even more when I’ve finished filling them in. And they will make sure you’re not assaulted — attacked — I mean molested . . . ah, not endangered.

  She looked up at my face, her green eyes half-lidded again, though surely she was no longer sleepy. I do understand now, Shell. And . . . thanks.

  For nothing.

  I mean, for worrying about me. I’m not even mad at you anymore.

  Mad? At me? Why, that’s . . . madness.

  I was still hanging onto her soft, white, yielding, warm, yummy shoulders, and it was creeping up on me that this was not a good idea, since there was work to be done.

  So I let go of her shoulders and said, Just tell the fuzz — I mean the police officers — what you’ve told me. The truth, everything.

  As though her voice were half-lidded, like her eyes, she said, Everything?

  Well, everything pertinent.

  And out I went, with not even a backward look. Steely stuff, that’s what I’m made of. Yeah, sure. I stood outside the door for at least ten seconds, wondering if I should ring Sylvias bell again. But instead I strode ahead, through the incensed air of Indian Ranch, reached my Cadillac, climbed in, and once again grabbed the phone.

  Last of this little lark coming up. Wouldn’t be long now. A piece of cake.

  Maybe it takes me a while to learn my ABCs, but I knew — or at least felt pretty sure I knew — the whole alphabet now.

  If you drive up Wilshire Boulevard from LA, about a half mile before you cross San Vicente Boulevard and go on into Beverly Hills, youll see to your right, or on the north side of Wilshire, the very attractive Ghian Apartments, each of which faces south and the sea — less than ten miles distant to the southwest — while behind are the Hollywood Hills.

  That’s where I was at three-fifteen of this Tuesday morning in September.

  The so-called complex consisted of two identical and adjacent twelve-story units, joined only at the top by girders at the front and back. The Dual Ghians, somebody had dubbed them, and the name had stuck. They were separated by only forty feet, but that space of just over thirteen yards was landscaped with what appeared to be at least fifty yards of variegated and thickly massed planting.

  The fact of importance, however, and my reason for being here, was that at the very peak of the westernmost twin of the Dual Ghian, in the better — and substantially more expensive — of the two penthouse suites, lived Eddy Lash. Also in the penthouse was a two-room cubbyhole wherein resided, in near-constant attendance upon the master, Victor Pine.

  My intention was to drop in, or rather up, unannounced and see if Eddy and Vic were home, and try not to get myself killed in the process. Therefore, my contemplated visit required some planning. I had done some. Maybe not enough.

  I had already passed on the pertinent info regarding my most recent visit to Indian Ranch — only not this time to Captain Samson, who, though my good friend, might nonetheless have become justifiably suspicious and instituted severe measures to contain me. Instead I had phoned his friend Slattery of the Beverly Hills PD, and told all, including the danger which might very possibly menace Sylvia Ardent.

  He had thanked me warmly for my cooperation, and seemed especially keen on the idea that Sylvia Ardent required close and careful coverage. It was not mentioned, but I got the impression that Captain Slattery of the Beverly Hills PD, having long ogled Girls Dorm with avid eyes, would himself not be averse to giving Sylvia Ardent close and careful coverage.

  At any rate, I was not any longer concerned for her safety. Still, I couldn’t get rid of the peculiar unease that had stuck with me, a malaise of the mind, that little snake of worry which kept wiggling occasionally.

  I hunted for it, briefly, then shunted it aside. Or tried to. This was a time to focus all my attention on the problem of getting into Lashs suite.

  It was a problem primarily because anyone taking the elevator to the twelfth floor was exposed to the eye of a closed-circuit TV camera as soon as the elevator doors opened onto the hallway bisecting the penthouses, and thus would, if he hoped to escape detection, have to take certain elementary precautions such as becoming invisible. So the apparently easy way — taking the elevator up and ringing Eddys bell and saying, Hi, there, Eddy! — could well turn out to be the hard way, like me standing at Eddys door feeling very sick about the five or six slugs in my midsection.

  Now, some might ask why in hell didn’t I just go home and sack out, and let the legally constituted authorities proceed in their legally constipated ways? That might, most of the time, have been a very good question. I just didn’t happen to think it was, in this particular case at this particular time.

  Increasingly, the gears and pinions of the laws machinery must be oiled with several different types and viscosities of technicality slickum before it can begin to move, and even then the ensuing movement often turns out to be wasted motion. That, however, did not apply to me, a private person. Or so I told myself. At any rate, I was ready to go ahead, and had done what I could in preparation, much like a man preparing to swim among sharks taking along an extra pair of swim trunks.

  I had prevailed upon a girl friend named Pat to phone Lashs number, ask alcoholically for Ray Stout, and then, giggling, confess she must have dialed a wrong number. But a man had answered the phone. So though I had no idea who the man had been, I knew somebody was up there in the suite. And that was enough for me.

  As I mentioned awhile back, I had never been in Eddy Lashs apartment. But I had, at that swinging party months ago, been in the exactly similar — except that all in it was reversed — penthouse of the eastern half of the Dual Ghian. Thus I could see, in my minds eye, everything in Eddy Lashs apartment, even including the marble-tiled bathroom.

  More, bridging the forty-foot gap between the twin halves of the Ghian Apartment complex, as though binding them into one, were those quite attractive painted-steel girders at both the front and rear of the buildings roofs, from which descended various vines and liana-like flora.

  Therefore, I thought a man could, if he was able to reach the top of one building, merely walk over one of those girders from the eastern half of the Ghian to the roof of the western, or Eddy Lash, half. Which is what I intended to do.

  Already I had steeled myself not to think of slipping, and plunging twelve stories, to end as a dull thud. And I had further prepared myself with the only item of equipment I thought I would require — in addition to the fully loaded Colt .38 Special snug in its shoulder clip — this being a fifty-foot length of thin but strong rope, knotted at every foot of its length.

  So I simply started in. And it beats hell, but it did go like a lark. Well . . . almost. It sure started out with ease and a kind of gladsomeness. I walked through the entrance of the eastern half of the twin buildings, strode to the elevator, went in and punched the button labeled, modestly, penthouses in solid-gold letters set in ivory. Up I went, 9, 10, 11, 12. Out and into the hall. Under the eye of TV cameras, sure, but so what? Not under the eye of Eddy Lash.

  A lean, bald-headed, hawk-nosed gentleman, who looked as if he’d lived approximately forty-five summers and ninety winters, opened a door on my right and looked out at me dully.

  I stood there facing him, with the coil of rope looped over one arm, and smiled. I did not tell him I was a TV repairman. But I talked at some length about television antennas, and union troubles, and asked him how to get onto the roof.

  His eyes were steady, but sort of leaden, upon mine. There’s a TV antenna on the roof?

  Haven’t you ever been up there?

  No, come to think of it, I haven’t.

  Well, I said, somebody must have been up there.

  There’s a way, the old duck said. But I didn’t know anybody ever used it.


  Where is it?

  He pointed toward the other end of the hall and said, Its, the little door down there that says Danger! on it. I suppose that’s so people wont walk out onto, like, maybe a little platform, and fall off the edge and go plummeting —

  Don’t.

  — down twelve —

  Don’t. Whats there? Elevator? Ladder? Stairs?

  I don’t know. I’ve never been out there. Never even opened the door. When doors say Danger! on them —

  Well, thank you, sir, thank you indeed. Bless you. Sorry to have disturbed your rest.

  I wasn’t resting, he said irritably. I was sleeping.

  I walked down the hall as the door was shut forcibly behind me, and went — cautiously — through the door marked Danger! Beyond it was a little room like a closet, but there wasn’t anything dangerous about it. A steel ladder was affixed to one wall. I suppose what the sign meant was that it might be dangerous to go up the ladder onto the roof, because if you went up there . . .

  When Id climbed to the ladders top it was necessary merely to push open a three-foot-square hinged door, step through, and I was on the roof. Even at this early-morning hour there was enough illumination from the citys lights so that I could see where I was going, so I walked briskly toward the rear of the building. Less briskly the final ten feet. In fact, barely moving for the last couple. Then I was standing facing the girder that extended from this roof to the one opposite. It was about a foot wide. Plenty of width, I said to myself. Lots wider than my feet.

  I would have liked to loop the rope under the girder, sort of as security if I should slip and . . . But those dangling vines and green curly things prevented my even attempting that, so . . . so I just stood there.

  But not for long.

  Not more than a minute or two.

  Then I stepped onto the girder and walked straight across, every step sure, not once hesitating, just banging on ahead come what may . . . I guess. Really, I don’t remember. One moment I was stepping onto the girders end, and the next moment I was dropping to my knees on the roof that had been my destination.

  From there on — for a while — it was easy. I found a metal pipe around which I could tie one end of my knotted line, and when Id walked to the roofs edge it was clear that I had more than enough line left to reach down to the bathroom window.

  The bathroom window. That was and had from the start been my destination. But I was beginning to have another reason for wanting to get to that bathroom.

  I looked over the edge of the roof, and said, Ooohhh, then lifted my eyes from the street and sidewalk below, looking for the window. I couldn’t see the window. I not only couldn’t see it but realized, a bit late, that because it was flush with the buildings flat and extremely perpendicular wall, I wasn’t going to be able to see it. Not unless I leaned way out in the air in order to reach the proper angle for viewing a window, should one be there. And I had not the slightest intention in the world of leaning way out into the air.

  I thought back to that party, reviewed the pictures Id let slide before my minds eye earlier. I knew where the master bathroom window should be: west side of the building, clear at the back corner.

  My rope was already tied securely in approximately the right spot. I held it tightly in both hands, stood at the edge of the roof with my back facing emptiness, and slowly started letting myself down. It wasn’t really difficult. By hanging tightly, with both hands, to knots in the rope, and leaning out from the building, feet pressed against the wall, progress was slow and sure enough, if a bit precarious.

  When Id lowered myself about four yards I spotted the window. It was no more than two feet away, on my left. It took only a few seconds for me to inch over until the window — the bathroom window — was squarely in front of me.

  Now, it is a curious fact, but a fact nonetheless, that people — even in houses in the city or country — are more likely to leave unlocked the bathroom window than any other window in the house. They may secure everything else, lock and padlock the doors, close and lock the other windows, but time after time, they will leave the window of the bathroom unlocked.

  Now you understand why Id chosen this spot, right? It wasn’t a mere whim, but a logically reasoned choice, right?

  Why is it that people most often leave the bathroom window unlocked? Don’t ask me. I merely state it as a curiosity. They just do, that’s all.

  Eddy Lashs window was closed, but I reached confidently to its side and pushed, so it would slide open. I merely pushed. . . .

  Yeah.

  17

  Who would think Eddy Lash, way up in the air on the twelfth floor of the Ghian Apartments, would lock his goddamn bathroom window? And why? What for?

  And, man, now more than at any previous time in my life I wanted into a bathroom. Not just Eddy Lashs bathroom. Any goddamn bathroom. I would have settled for a wooden outhouse buried in snow and sleet if I could just have been able to enjoy it for a little while.

  It took me maybe half a second to consider and eliminate the alternatives, and then I broke the glass of the window.

  I used the butt of my Colt to do it, which meant I had to let go of the rope with my right hand, but I hung on well enough and in the few seconds following the crack and tinkle of the glass breaking — there was, fortunately, very little noise as the shards hit the floor, which must have been carpeted — I reached through the jagged hole, found the lock, turned it and shoved the window open. And climbed through.

  With my eyes accustomed to darkness I could see all the fixtures: toilet, shower, basin, toilet, dressing table, toilet. . . . It may sound as if there were lots of toilets, but there was really only one. It was merely that I gave it an unusual amount of my attention. But there was no time even for that.

  Its hell when life gets so rushed, the pace so frantic, that a man cant even stop to relax once in a while. But when one reaches the point where there isn’t even time —

  Hey, Luddy! That you, Luddy? What the crud you doin?

  No, no time.

  It was, for a moment, just a little difficult to remember why I was here. But with the instant recognition that the yelling voice was Eddy Lashs, I not only remembered all Id planned to do, but did it. At least, I started in to do it.

  Still holding the Colt in my right hand, I yanked the bathroom door open with my left and, without hesitation, went through in a great bound. I wouldn’t do that again, either.

  As I landed with a jarring thud, I heard a loud slam, as of a door slamming, somewhere on my left. The bright light half blinded me for a moment, but I had no trouble seeing a dressing table clear across the room, a table atop which was a heavy lamp close on my right, and beyond it a king-size bed, so I not only knew where I was but that in the middle of the room, maybe fifteen feet from me and gawking as though he felt his mind had come totally asunder, was Eddy Lash.

  Eddy Lash, the master of this aerial manse. Which figured. For this was — as I had known it would be unless my calculations were tragically amiss — the master bedroom. Which was why I had planned to enter by way of the master bathroom.

  But I couldn’t let my thoughts stray like that. Just couldn’t afford to think about bathrooms at all. That was the only safe way — if, that is, there was in this perilous situation any safe way whatever. Because two things came clearly and at once into my mind: Eddy had called for Luddy, thus Luddy was presumably close by, too close by; and Eddy was digging into the pocket of his suit coat for something which even the simplest logic said had to be a gun. Probably the Magnum with which he had previously shot me.

  I already had my Colt gripped in my right hand, but I honestly didn’t want to shoot Eddy Lash. Well, I mean, I didn’t want to kill him. I did want to shoot him. But, primarily, I had intended — still did, if I could manage to do it — merely to hold my gun on Eddy, or Eddy and Luddy, or whoever happened to be here handy, and make them hand over to me the stolen manuscript and missing papers, or maybe even search for them myself and
wrap everything up in a pink ribbon.

  For some reason, however, the things I plan seldom work out exactly the way I plan them. But I couldn’t just stand here and let Eddy plug me in the bladder — not anywhere, for that matter — so I lifted my Colt and took aim.

  Lash was digging at his coat pocket and staring at me, and even from fifteen feet away those cold eyes of his looked as if they could put frost on several square yards of sun-baked desert. Those eyes looked the same as when wed met in the Weston-Maceys hospital corridor. The eyes did, but not the mouth.

  Some stitches had undoubtedly been taken in his upper lip, and a white bandage covered it like a bleached moustache, but he was peeling his lips apart and I could see the gap between his front teeth. That gap was, I suppose, part of the reason why he kept digging for his gun, even though by now I had my .38 pointed straight at him. He was simply so filled with hate that there was room for only one idea in his brain.

  I heard, and in fact for a couple of seconds had been hearing, the sound of thudding, as of walking feet, from somewhere on my left. Luddy? Vic? Somebody else? From the heaviness of the thudding I guessed it was big Clarence Ludlow.

  All of this, of course, happened in much less time than it takes to tell. It is, however, true that Id come in here certain Victor Pine must have brought the manuscript and papers to Lash. And I knew that in those papers Lash would himself be named. Thus no matter what happened, or what I did to him, the papers would when examined by me and a lot of others prove that Lash had been guilty of numerous crimes — and I, thus, could not and would not be censured for merely combating crime, which is a thing much needed nowadays.

  But for a moment I felt an icy little chill and, thinking, hesitated. I was thinking: Keerist, what if he doesnt have the papers, what if I’m wrong? And I shoot the bastard, and kill him? What then? Well, then I am in the soup for sure.

  Naturally all this thinking took some time, even though the stress of the moment put me mentally, I felt, at an unprecedented peak of braininess.