The Cheim Manuscript (The Shell Scott Mysteries)

by Richard S. Prather

  Sheldon. Sometimes he called me that when we were cracking wise with each other. Sometimes when he was on the verge of doing something ghastly to me. In fact, it was what he’d called me the last time he’d clapped me in the jug.

  Well, anyhow, I said cheerily, I’ve got the case all wrapped up. Yes, sir. Isn’t that great, Sam? Tied up in a little pink ribbon.

  That is marvelous. Simply marvelous, Sheldon. A pause. How many people did you kill, maim or dismember to accomplish your end this time?

  Oh, Sam, I didn’t kill . . . Well, its not — not like last time, Sam. Old buddy.

  That’s good. What was it like this time?

  Well, you see, I had to shoot — in self-defense, you understand; don’t I always shoot in self-defense? — Eddy Lash. And I kind of fixed things with Luddy so he wound up unconscious. But he’s all tied hand and foot so he cant get away. Just in case . . . he comes to.

  Silence.

  I knew youd be glad to hear that, I said. So when you add it all up, the only one I killed was Eddy. Well, two, if you count Burper. But they sure had it coming to them, didn’t they?

  You’ve got the case in a — what? A little pink ribbon?

  You just bet your life. Except for a few incidentals. Like — I paused, thinking. Sam, you didn’t sound very surprised when I told you about Eddy Lash.

  Surprised? Why should I be surprised?

  Why not? I said, feeling less gay than I tried to sound.

  I suppose it had not occurred to you that the booming and banging of gunshots, in an area where gunshots are a quite unusual phenomenon, might induce nearby citizens to phone the police and report this unusual phenomenon?

  Tell you the truth, it hadnt. But it was only because I’ve been so busy, and because my damn bladder —

  He went right on. Therefore, we have known for some time that Eddy Lash had been mur — that he was deceased, due to three bullets which found their way into Eddy Lash. And that Clarence Ludlow has a concussion of some kind and possible skull fracture, but, whatever he has, remains to this very moment in a state of profound unconsciousness.

  Uh-huh. Yeah. I see.

  Further, Sam went on, a thorough search of the premises failed to uncover any evidence of the manuscript, or package, or steel box, which Victor Pine is alleged to have hauled away from Indian Ranch —

  Oh, I’ve got that, Sam.

  You? You’ve got it? He sounded a little brighter.

  Yeah. I was going to tell you in another minute. I was . . . sort of saving it. You see, its all tied in with Eddy and Luddy — but you know about that now. Anyhow, the steel box, manuscript, the works, was in the penthouse — in Vic Pines rooms. Which, of course, is why I went there — in the face of enormous personal danger, I might add, Sam, so I could get it. Which I did.

  You’ve got it right now? With you right now?

  Sure thing — that is, its outside in my Caddy. . . .

  Good God, Sam said dully. You left it outside? In your car?

  Who would swipe — Back in a minute, Sam.

  I laid down the phone, zipped out to the Cad, raced back, grabbed the phone.

  As I was saying, Sam, got it right here. Right here a couple inches from me. And itll sizzle your eyeballs — manuscript, investigators reports, the Ogres confession, the whole shebang and more.

  Well, that does help. Yes, it does. After a moment he continued, You mentioned having the case in a pretty ribbon. Except for some incidentals. Like?

  Well, there’s Vic for one. I told you about that, and why I raced like mad to Zena Taburs here. Hell, he may still show up —

  No, he wont.

  — but if he does, I’ll be ready for him. Thing is, Sam, he’s the key to this whole mess right now. He’s the only link weve got between Jellicoe’s murder and Eddy Lash, who obviously ordered Vic —

  I stopped, thinking back a little. But then I went on, See, heres the way it had to be. Lash ordered Vic to get the Cheim info from Jellicoe. Vic did, killing Jellicoe in the process. He took the info straight to Lash — else how would it have been in Eddys penthouse suite? Pretty good logic, right? OK, so maybe Eddys dead and Ludlow is unconscious, but Vic is really the key to the works, so all we have to do is get our hands on him. . . .

  I stopped again. Sam?

  Yes, Sheldon?

  Didn’t you say something a little bit ago, like, No, he wont?

  Yes, I did.

  No, he wont, what?

  He wont be showing up at Zena Taburs tonight. Or anyplace else.

  Say just a little more about that, will you, Sam?

  He, Victor Pine, wont be going anyplace. Or, more accurately, he has already gone. He is deceased.

  That means dead, doesnt it?

  Pine is in the morgue.

  He’s really . . . dead?

  No, we just felt like putting him in the morgue because he looked a little pooped.

  Uh-uh, Sam wasn’t in that just-right mood yet.

  Neither was I, not at first. For maybe five seconds I felt crushed, empty. It took only that long for my brain to begin working again — I really owed a lot to Zena, I figured.

  Then that almost wraps it up, Sam, I said. I understand now why he’s dead. Why he had to be killed. Howd he get it? Gunshot in the back of his head?

  No. Apparent accident. Ran off the road in his car, slammed into a tree. Bashed the front of his head in, among other things. Sam paused. But heres a little bit you might want to play with, an oddity. Kind of thing you like. Half the police in town know him on sight, but there wasn’t anything on him to identify him. No wallet, nothing, not even any change in his pockets. You must have an explanation for that.

  Come on, Sam, lay off. I’m in enough trouble — Hey. Let me think a second.

  It was more like a minute and a half. But then I said, Sam, this may be a little wild. But there’s one way, just one, that fits the rest of it. Officers have already carted Lash away, and presumably have examined Ludlows effects, right?

  That’s right.

  What did Luddy have on him?

  Just a minute. I imagined he was rummaging through papers on his desk. Then, The usual. Wallet, comb, handkerchief, car keys and other keys. Three-eighty in bills, ninety-four cents in change. Watch, ring, address book. And — this is the odd one — another watch and ring in his coat pocket. Looked expensive.

  I smiled. They were. A twelve-thousand-dollar ring and a twelve-hundred-dollar watch.

  Come again?

  I’ll come downtown instead, Sam. That’s the last of the little pink ribbon.

  18

  I walked back into the bedroom. Maybe I had made a total shambles of my love life, but there was still a chance of putting the remnants of this case in good enough order so that Captain Samson would at least not airmail me to San Quentin.

  And, too, I felt that I should tell Zena good night — or rather good morning — actually good-bye — like a gentleman.

  Besides, I wanted one last look at what she was wearing.

  I stood at the foot of the bed and said, Good-bye.

  She didn’t say anything. She just lay there.

  I said one last time, rather dramatically, I thought, Good-bye!

  She didn’t say anything. She just lay there.

  Well, see you sometime, I mumbled, then turned and walked from the house.

  But as I was going out the front door I heard her call something softly after me. It sounded like, . . . bientot.

  Yeah, I was pretty sure that was it. I’m not so hot on French. Actually, I’m not too tremendous on English. I did know Hasta la vista meant Make haste till I see you, or something like that, in Spanish. But it wasn’t what Zena had said this time. And . . . bientot slipped from my exceptionally loose grip on the French language.

  From the sound, I supposed it meant, I hope your toe is well. Or maybe, You have your toe — wed say foot here in America — in your mouth. Something like that.

  But I put Zena and all that — or tried to put Z
ena and all that — out of my mind, and, carrying I!, the autobiography of Gideon Cheim, and all the rest of the junk in my little steel case, headed — for the last time this week, I hoped — for downtown LA, the Police Building, and the Central Homicide Division. And Sam.

  While Id been talking to Samson on the phone from Zena Taburs home, Clarence Ludlow had regained consciousness.

  He had since been pronounced medically sound and whole except for a splitting headache — but not split head; I had not, after all, fractured that thick skull of his — and while I was in Samsons office talking a blue streak, Luddy had been transferred to the LAPD, where he was now undergoing interrogation in the same I room where we had all talked before.

  With him were two attorneys, a medical doctor, and — invisible, but nonetheless very much there — a majority of the members of the United States Supreme Court.

  Whos knocking it? I am merely telling you who was there to take care of his rights. Me? I hoped to help take care of some — a few — of his wrongs.

  Sam, I continued, maybe even a psycho like Vic should have known he couldn’t get away with knocking off big-time stars like Zena Tabur and/or Sylvia Ardent, but its very likely he didn’t, and he sure as hell knew that either of them could blow his alibi apart. Undoubtedly he told Lash about the alibi and that he felt he should get rid of the girls. Maybe well never know for sure — not with both Vic and Eddy dead — but it doesnt make any difference. All weve got to do is look at the situation from Lashs point of view.

  Samson was playing with one of his cigars. Yeah, I know what you’re going to say. But you might as well get it said.

  Heres Lash with exactly what he wanted — the Cheim manuscript, the rest of the papers and especially the Ogres confession, naming Lash himself and the others. Vic has just brought the whole package to Lash. But Lash knows his boy Vic was spotted near Indian Ranch, he knows the alibi is going to be blown sky high, probably in hours, and he knows there’s no way to keep the cops from getting to Vic — short of knocking off the two gals, Zena and Sylvia, which Lash was not about to do, or for that matter let Vic do. There was one way out. One way to keep Eddy Lash safe, to eliminate the link between Jellicoe and Lash, to avoid personal involvement even when the girls spilled. And for Eddy Lash that one way was also the easy way, the natural way.

  Sam stuck the cigar in his mouth, rubbed a hand over his iron-gray hair. Uh-huh. Kill him.

  Sure. Especially since Eddy already had a good reason for wanting Vic dead. When we did our ABCs in here we agreed that the four hoods mentioned by Kiffer were Vic Pine, Henny Augrest, Casey and Kiffer himself — F, G, H and I — and now that weve seen Hennys confession we know we were on the button.

  So?

  So the only hoods around who were in on that four-year-old kill and cover-up — aside from Lash himself — were Kiffer and Pine. Henny skipped after selling his written confession. Casey was dead. And as soon as Eddy knew Kiffer had been killed — after all, he’d been trying to get the guy knocked off since Sunday — Eddy also was aware that the only one of his boys left of those original four who might someday, like Kiffer, decide to spill, was Vic. Hell, he’d already decided to knock Vic off, so the alibi-girl bit just added one more reason.

  Maybe. But the only thing we know for certain about Pines death is that he is no longer living. You say Luddy did the job on him, and you base that merely on the fact that he had an extra watch and ring on him?

  Mainly — but not merely. We know Vic was questioned by the police at eleven-twenty-two p.m. on Tanglewood Lane. If he went straight from there to Lashs penthouse he’d have gotten there in maybe twenty minutes, at most. Say by a quarter of twelve. Luddy was tied up — tailing Kiffer, planning with Burper to kill me, and being interrogated here — until he was sprung at two a.m. Give him half an hour to reach Eddys penthouse.

  I’ll give him anything he wants if youll give me a hint of what you’re getting at.

  Just this, Sam. A good hour and a half after Luddy was sprung, at close to three-thirty a.m., when Id climbed in the window of Lashs bathroom and then took a big leap into his bedroom, I heard a door slam on my left, then big feet thudding, also on my left. That was Luddy. Just getting in, Sam, not from the Police Building, from somewhere else — just coming back. Vic wasn’t around. Why? He’d just finished having his unfortunate accident, that’s why. When Luddy came in there at the penthouse, at that moment he had Vics watch and ring in his coat pocket. I paused. Fortunately, Sam, I didn’t give Luddy time — or vice versa — to take them out of his pocket.

  Why is it every time you do some fool thing you wind up saying fortunately it happened like that?

  Well, isn’t it fortunate Luddy still had the watch and ring on him, and that the body of very recently dead Victor Pine did not have them on him? Because they were the property of Vic Pine, and Luddy could only have taken them from him after he faked the convenient fatal accident ordered by his boss. I just happened to be in the right place at the right time. Id call that fortunate. Wouldn’t you?

  Sam had an odd, fierce expression on his chops. You were in the wrong place, goddammit. You shouldnt have been there in the first place. Keerist, breaking and entering, dancing along girders —

  I didn’t dance, you can damn well bet —

  — homicide, assault and battery. Even theft, if you want to be honest about it. Isn’t it true you stole that case and manuscript from the penthouse suite —

  Sam, please! I merely recovered some stolen property. I was a concerned citizen, diligent in the exercise of —

  The hell with it. Shall we see what, if anything, Clarence Ludlow has to say?

  You mean I can come along?

  You might as well. At least there I can keep an eye on you. He added grudgingly, I might even give you another crack at him. I know its unorthodox, but he seems . . . looser with you.

  Actually, I think, this time, and for perhaps the first and only time in his life, Luddy wanted to talk. I mean, wanted to spill the works. To puke, as the cons themselves sometimes put it, in their gentle argot.

  It does happen that way on occasion. More frequently, perhaps, than the general public knows. A hood reaches a point — that point — and you don’t have to hunt around for religious conversions, or Freudian nutsiness or any kind of psychiatric mental doodle to explain it, though maybe part of the truth does lie somewhere therein — and he pukes.

  As far as I’m concerned, that’s enough to know.

  We went into the I room after Luddy had been repeatedly advised of his rights, not to mention having been cautioned endlessly to clam entirely by his mouthpieces. Luddy was trying to say something, but one of the attorneys interrupted to tell him he was not required to speak a word, and so on, and on.

  Samson said to me, OK. Take your crack at him, Sheldon.

  Still Sheldon.

  I walked over and sat on the edge of the table. Hi, Luddy, buddy, I said.

  The big, dumb, horselike and somewhat bruised face swung toward me. Gawdamn, I thought I had you there for a second.

  I thought you had me for longer than that. About a minute, Id say. Which seemed like an hour. I lit a cigarette, held the pack toward Luddy, but he shook his head.

  What in hell did you hit me with? he asked me.

  Well, the real good one was when I got you from behind with a lamp. That’s the one that did it. Of course, right afterward I kicked you in the head.

  He gave me the pleasantly comic grin. Yeah, I seen that comin, out of the corner of my eye. But I didn’t give much of a mind about it at the time. It was mainly the lamp, huh?

  Yeah, I really cracked you with it. Should have popped your head open like a pumpkin.

  Not my head. I been hit some good ones. He slowly shook the head. Too gawdamn many good ones, too many times.

  He fell silent. I didn’t say anything.

  Then he looked up at me. Eddys dead, aint he? He looked sad, like a clown doing an act. Only it wasn’t an act.

  He’
s dead, I said.

  He spat out a foul four-letter word. Strangely, it didn’t sound foul right then. I’ll take that cigarette, he said.

  I gave him one. And, right then, I felt he was going to talk. It was that time for Luddy. So after he lit up his smoke I said, Eddys gone. Sos Burper — but you know what happened to your buddy. Most of the old boys. And Vic. You know about Victor, too, don’t you, Luddy?

  Yeah, I know about Vic.

  Babble from attorneys. They knew — and presumed Luddy did not know — that there wasn’t supposed to be any way Luddy could be aware of Vics death, since nobody had informed him of it. No way, unless Luddy had killed him.

  But Luddy looked at the attorneys, the defenders — and rightly so — of his rights, and said, not gently, Chop it. You been givin me that crap so long I can give it back at you without missin a syllybal. Now bag your heads, huh?

  They bagged their heads. That is, they shut up.

  Luddy said to me again, Yeah, I know about Vic, and added, I ought to.

  Lets pretend I was right the last time we talked in here, Luddy. Try it again that way, what say?

  Good-o. Thatll be a gas. He scowled. Forget I said gas, will you?

  Done. The gas used in the apple-green execution chamber at San Quentin is cyanide.

  I told Luddy what we knew, what Id told Sam, covered the bit about Vics watch and ring being found in Luddys pocket, then said, Now lets say you killed him.

  OK, lets say that. Well pretend it was just like I’m going to tell it. Well . . . He paused for a moment, then went on, Well, a few hours back. Vic comes into Eddys with the case, the papers and that junk there was such a sweat about. Gives it to Eddy. Obvious, I don’t know nothin about that till I get to Eddys myself, since while these events is goin on I’m out on the streets or being talked to by the fuzz, then sitting right here where I’m now at.

  He stopped briefly again, then went ahead. When I get sprung I go straight to Eddys. Him and Vic is lookin through them papers. Right away Eddy takes me off in a room, where I fill him in on what events had been happening. Eddy, I guess he’d already made up his mind what was going to be done. Why? Don’t ask me. He tells me, I do it. Always did, anyways.