The Cheim Manuscript (The Shell Scott Mysteries)

by Richard S. Prather

  Usually the sight of myself in that Chinese-silk masterpiece of joyous depravity lifts my spirits, brightens the inner eye. But not even my handsome robe had helped this time.

  I flopped upon the often-flopped-on chocolate-brown divan in my living room — having already blown a kiss to Amelia, my yard-square nude over the fake, or gas-log, fireplace . . . Amelia, who is ravishing, twinkling of eye, bawdily beautiful, though perhaps a trifle ample in the rear-end department — and planted the phone on my chest.

  I dialed, and waited, hoping I woke Cheim up.

  Much earlier I had phoned my original client, Mrs. Gladys Jellicoe. Woke her up, too. So what? Did anybody care if I got any sleep? But Id broken the news to her as gently as I could. Shed been depressed by the news. She was sorry about dear Jelly, of course. But how was she going to get along without the three-thousand-dollar-a-month alimony? Of course, that conversation filled my heart with gladness.

  The familiar, harsh, booming voice answered.

  Hello, I said. Is this the latter-day Marquis de Sade? I mean, Gideon Cheim?

  Of course its Cheim. What do you mean by that Marquis —

  This is Shell Scott, Mr. Cheim.

  Oh! Ah! Have you . . . He couldn’t bear to ask it.

  I’ve got your manuscript back, Mr. Cheim, I said. Yes, sir. Managed to grab the whole kit and kaboodle. Had to kill Eddy Lash and another fellow to do it, but I got the job done.

  Oh, you do have it! I cant tell you how grateful —

  I didn’t want any gratitude yet. There were a few things I felt he should know first. So I merely went on merrily, You have to admit, when I set out to do a thing I stick with it through thick and thin. And this time it was pretty thick.

  But you got it, that’s the main — A short pause. You had to kill Eddy Lash? Then he cant blackmail me any —

  He stopped. In his fever of excitement he had, at last, given himself away. Not that it mattered. No, I said, he cant blackmail you anymore. But wouldn’t it have been helpful if youd told me it was Eddy Lash? Silence. Maybe you werent certain it was Eddy, but surely you had a kind of hunch, what? More silence. Anyhow, he can no longer blackmail you. Not about the girl, at least. Not anybody about anything.

  The . . . girl?

  Let me tell you a story, Mr. Cheim. See if you think it would make a good movie. Well star a fellow who, as I well know, is often in the grip of violent emotion even today, lying on his back in a hospital bed. When younger he must have been a beaut. Also, he’s a horny old bastard. Put those two bits together. When he was, say, nine years younger he killed a girl — not on purpose, apparently. He merely gave her an overdose of cantharides and a few other too potent aphrodisiacs to jazz things up a bit. Anyhow, it killed her. Oddly enough, she was a prostitute, working for a Hood who was pretty big in the girls-for-hire racket at that time. The Hood found out about it, quashed any investigation but his own, and then held that knowledge, and proof, over our Stars head like . . . well, like a Sore of Damocles, as somebody once said to me. So our Star paid, and paid, and paid.

  In the meantime, though, he began hiring detectives, gathering mountains of info about all kinds of people, including male and female movie stars, TV people, big people, little people. But nothing on the Hood. What put new life into the old boy was when a sort of ogreish hoodlum approached our Star with the offer to sell him info which would get the Hood off his back. Our Star used it, too. So it was an extortion standoff, a kind of blackmail balance. Until — and heres where it gets exciting — one day a womanlike fellow who worked for the Star got too big for his britches, or maybe Waltermittyed himself into thinking he, too, could be a Star, and used some of that info supplied by the little hoodlum to put the squeeze on a Western Hero. Then it all hit the fan — when Wilfred Jefferson Jellicoe used the info to blackmail Warren Barr.

  Believe it or not, usually voluble Cheim hadnt interrupted me once. Even when I stopped he didn’t speak for several seconds. Then he said, I can . . . explain all this, Mr. Scott.

  I’m afraid youll have to. First, there are a few other things Id like to tell you.

  Cheim took another tack. Mr. Scott. His voice was severe, even menacing. You have betrayed my trust. You have examined my private property, the contents of that steel case which —

  Hold it. You’re talking about betraying a trust? Besides, I told you I wouldn’t commit any felonies for you. I also said God help you if you werent, finally, leveling with me. Anyhow, either Vic Pine or Eddy Lash had already opened the case, so since it was already open I did look over that juicy material.

  But . . . you do have my manuscript with you? All of it?

  All of the manuscript, yes. But not —

  Then I demand you bring it to me at once! Instantly!

  Stop demanding, will you? Youll get yourself all frustrated. I’ve got a little more to tell you, anyway. And this little will, I promise you, hold your interest, complete and entire. I paused. I’ll be back in a minute. You wont hang up, will you?

  He spoke a short sentence of remarkable violence.

  I put the phone down, walked into the kitchenette and made myself a second bourbon-and-water. I felt entitled to another belt. It had been a long day and night.

  Sprawled again on the divan, drink in one hand and phone in the other, I said, I’ve not broken any agreement or promise I made you. Even if I had, I told you all bets were off if you were lying to me. I had a sip of my bourbon. And you did fib a little, didn’t you?

  He said the same short sentence again.

  I went on, Now, there was much in your manuscript and the accompanying material which was evidence of indiscreet, and possibly criminal, and in some cases undeniably felonious behavior. It would have been felonious of me, myself, had I failed to do my duty as a citizen and bring this material to the attention of the proper authorities —

  My God!

  — in this case, the Los Angeles police. Certain experts have carefully read your autobiography and made duplicates of some pages. They have also examined the supporting and documentary material, I believe you called it. Not all will be acted, upon, but some of it will. Much will go into the Intelligence Divisions files — as, for example, the connection of a certain top romantic male lead, famed for his roles in movies and television, with several upper-and lower-level Mafiosi.

  It wouldn’t be true to say Cheim failed to interrupt me this time. But it wouldn’t be completely accurate to say he did interrupt, either. What he did was several times say, or go, Gahg, and Ahk, and Ckk, or things very close to those.

  Are you all right? I said. Silence. Mr. Cheim?

  Goddamn you, Scott, I’ll ruin you. One way or another I’ll see you in hell. No matter what I have to do. Get that manuscript to me at once, do you hear me?

  Do I hear you? Man, I’ll bet the head doctor in the hospital can hear you. I’ll bet the foot doctor in the hospital can hear you. I’ll bet —

  Are you coming to the Weston-Macey immediately?

  There are one or two other things you should know, Mr. Cheim. The attitude of the police, for one. And also — this is most important — we haven’t really settled my fee. I remember you did say I could have anything, anything you possess.

  I’ll stand by that, goddammit. Within . . . reason. Don’t try to hold me up.

  I wouldn’t do that. But I was just thinking. What Id really like to have is I!, your life story. Its better than Fanny Hill out of Mein Kampf by Jock the Raper. Id like to have it, sir, so that, in the fake fireplace here at my cozy little apartment, I could burn it.

  I wouldn’t really have done it, of course.

  At least, not if Gideon Cheim had told me not to.

  But when I became silent at my end of the phone there began a whole chorus, a real cacophony, of noises at the other end.

  I wanted to tell Mr. Cheim I was only kidding, Id bring him his damned manuscript — yes, but after I got about twelve hours sleep. However, I couldn’t get through to him. There were those — well �
�� those noises.

  At first it sounded as though Gideon Cheim were trying to say, or go, Gahg and Ahk and Ckk one right after the other and then all simultaneously, but whatever it really had been, it was followed by a word-thing or sound-thing of such uniqueness as to be absolutely beyond my limited powers of description.

  That in turn was followed by a clatter, a thump, a kind of gargle. I guessed he’d dropped the phone. I could hear the squeak of squeaking shoes, soft, loud, soft again. Must have gone right by the phone.

  Hello! I said. Hello! Gideon? I say, old chap —

  Somebody picked the phone up, spoke into it. The voice was a womans; I deduced that, very likely, it was a nurse.

  Hello? she said.

  Hello. Whats going on? Whered Mr. Cheim go?

  Why, he — oh, he — oh, my. I don’t really know where he went. She was all excited. New nurse, I guessed. He just dropped . . . dead.

  No kidding? I said.

  She asked me who was calling — which struck me as a rather useless question, since it was clearly apparent that the rooms occupant wasn’t going to answer. At least, not anymore.

  So I hung up. And sat. And thought.

  It was a bit cool in the apartment, I thought. With the sun just coming up, a slight breeze stirring, that nice coolness we sometimes get at dawn in Southern California. . . .

  And that is why you have not read, and will not read, I!, the autobiography of Gideon Cheim.

  20

  With my third stiff bourbon-and-water in my hand, I leaned out the window and breathed in some early smog, filling my lungs with gasoline, kerosene, radioactive fallout, strontium 90, DDT, the heady fumes of diesel oil, parathion and other aromas of the waking city.

  They say deep breathing is supposed to be good for a man, but somehow I didn’t feel much better. Depression — gad, it wasn’t like me. Maybe it was the sunrise. The suns rim was barely above the horizon, but I could see gobs of oily grays, some ghastly scarlets, a few gangrenous shades of greenish blues, and a little jaundice yellow, among other hues. Natures Paintbrush, fooey. Nature should take up something else for a hobby.

  Maybe that was it, the gooey sunrise.

  Or maybe it was because so many people had been kicking off lately. In the last few hours. Even in the last few minutes. Not just here in LA-Hollywood, but here, there, everywhere. Probably all over the world people were making strange noises and keeling over and dying like flies. It was a depressing thought.

  Dwelling on death isn’t very jolly. But usually I think about live people. And, man, I mean live people.

  That set off another train of thought. Possibly an additional reason for my unusual sense of depression, a feeling that I was drained of energy, was the fact that I had careened and caromed through this case for free. Well, practically.

  I wasn’t going to get anything from Cheim, the dead bum. And though the case had not required quite twenty-four hours of my time, since it had been composed of almost constant activity — except for the twenty minutes Id spent sleeping — and occurred during two calendar days, I was charging Gladys Jellicoe two hundred dollars. She didn’t think that was nice. She had told me so earlier on the phone. I had told her, if she thought that was too much, then she could shove the two hundred dollars, in dollar bills, one by one . . . Well, I got a little peeved.

  So, no billions or even millions from Cheim. Maybe two hundred dollars from dear Gladys, maybe not even a bean from Gladys.

  But who says money buys happiness? Not me. Of course, it sure as hell helps a lot. However, ignoring money, there was the other side of the case, there were the positive values.

  I hadnt been shot this time, not once. I hadnt been sapped, kicked or stomped on the head. Id been in only one fight, and Id won that one, had even come out of it virtually unscarred.

  Best of all, though, most of all, though, that which made all the rest of it as nothing at all, though, was — or, rather, were — Sylvia Ardent and Zena Tabur.

  Yes, indeed, there had been Sylvia Ardent and Zena Tabur. Seldom in a lifetime does a man have the good fortune to meet and, shall we say, get to know even one woman such as Zena, or one such as Sylvia. My cup, I thought, runneth over. Or had runneth over? Anyway, it had been pressed down and overflowing, to continue with what little I remembered of Holy Writ.

  Yes, nobody could take that away from me. Nobody, of course, but me. Id fixed it with those babes for sure. For a moment I felt a vast sense of loss, but only for a moment.

  Didn’t I have my memories? My grand memories? Of course I did. They were and would always remain a splendid vision, part of an action-and-word-and-etc.-filled twenty-four hours in which at least the etc. could always be before me, as though written in flaming letters in the sky.

  I was actually still in the window, looking up at the skies, the purples and pinks and flaming yucks. The heavens appeared to be I’ll, about to breathe their last gargling gasp —

  Behind me, the phone rang.

  Who in hell could be calling at this hour? Another Gladys, maybe? That would be loads of fun. Id known as soon as I lamped her face and that boa-constrictor figure — No, not likely it would be a Gladys. Not too many of them around.

  I knew several people it couldn’t be. Eddy Lash, Burper McGee, Mac Kiffer, Victor Pine, all dead. Add to that Gideon Cheim. And Wilfred Jefferson Jellicoe. Nor could it be Clarence Ludlow, Warren Barr, a certain bartender and a few others, all of whom were in the clink. A whole flock of people in the cooler, others dead and cooling. . . . It seemed as though everything I touched turned to cold. Well, not everything.

  I grabbed the phone. Yeah? I growled into it. Youd better not be a —

  Zhell?

  Hmm?

  Zhell, is that you?

  Well . . . hello. Zena? Yeah, this is Shell. What — what do you want?

  You, Zhell. She sounded a little odd, not quite like zizzling Zena Tabur.

  Me? I said cautiously.

  You.

  What . . . for?

  I’ll tell you when you get here.

  When I get there? Hell, I just left there — forever . . . I presumed. Uh, Zena?

  Yezz?

  You sound . . . funny. A little different, I mean.

  Zazz becauze zizz iz Zylvia.

  I got absolutely rigid for about two, maybe two and a half seconds. Zzz — Sylvia? Sylvia . . . who?

  Sylvia Ardent. And then I heard her merry laughter.

  Zhell?

  Sylvia?

  No, this is Zena. You want to talk to Zylvia?

  Listen. Just listen, see? I’m in no mood for — for . . . What did you have in mind?

  Well, you woke Zylvia up. Then you woke me up. And now were both waked wide up.

  That makes a great deal of sense. I think. But Sylvia was at Indian Ranch when I woke her up, so how come —

  Zhed already called me, but I had the things in my ears and couldn’t hear anything. But when you woke me up, I phoned her, and we talked about everything, and zhe came over here.

  What do you mean, about everything?

  There was no answer, so I said dully, She came over there, huh?

  More softly, as if the phone was farther from her mouth, I could hear Zena saying, He wants to know if you’re here, Zylvia. What do we got to do to convince him?

  Then they both started yelling and yacking at the same time, Zhell, and Shell, and Were both here, Zena and me, while the other one was saying, That ought to prove zomething — couldn’t you hear Zylvia talking the zame time as me?

  Yeah. So? I thought about it. Ah, I continued. I’ve got it. I woke Sylvia up. Then I woke you up. So you female monsters got together and decided to get even with me. By waking me up. Well, ha-ha, I wasn’t even asleep yet.

  Apparently both of those babes were listening at the same time, two dainty ears near the one receiver, because first one spoke and then the other:

  Shell, we did decide to get even, in a way. You’re an absolutely horrid man, you know. You’re �
��

  You’re a zex maniac, that’s what you are —

  You’re a wolf, the absolutely worst kind of depraved —

  You ought to be azhamed of yourzelf —

  We took a vote on it, Shell. And we decided —

  I got a word in edgewise. Vote? Vote? On what?

  On if Zena and I should forgive you —

  At firzt we didn’t think it was pozzible, but after we had some gin and tonic and watched the zun coming up —

  Gin and tonic? I got some more words in — and, believe me, that’s tough when you’re carrying on a dialogue with two tomatoes at the same time. Especially such dizzy and crazy . . . luscious . . . shapely . . . hot-blooded . . .

  My mind was wandering.

  While it wandered, the dual dialogue in my ear continued:

  Firzt vote was two to nothing. You lozt.

  Then we voted again and it was one to one. And the last vote it was two to nothing again.

  Only upzide down. Different from the firzt one. You won the election, Zhell.

  I did, huh? Man, that must be strong tonic you’re drinking. What the hell kind of election did I win?

  It isn’t the kind of thing I wanna zay on the phone. I think it kind of loses zomething on the phone.

  Well explain everything when you get here, Shell.

  Well, zay zomething. You coming over?

  You mean, come over there? While you’re both there?

  Zure.

  Why not?

  Ah, I said. I’ve got it. You put your sly female heads together and decided to kill me.

  Who zays, were gonna un anything?

  Shell, are you afraid to come over?

  You’re zcared. That’s what it is. Zhell Zcott is a zizzy. He zhoots and zocks men around, but when it comes to girls he’s a zizzy —