The Amber Effect (The Shell Scott Mysteries)
Page 3
This Edward
February,Sam said quietly, leaning back in his swivel chair, eyeing a long yellow legal pad held in a big-knuckled hand. Seven months ago.
Right. Known close associates, both before and after his jolt in Q, Alvin
You can leave out the dead ones. And your usual gratuitous, and exceedingly annoying, embellishments.
You’ve got to quit looking things up in the dictionary, Sam. Also, one Virgil Kovick, former all-pro lineman — tackle with the Rams, I think — now pro heavy man, sometime wheelman. Hasn’t been much on him, though, last couple of years. Finally, one Charles E. Ellisohn, engraver, forger, paper hanger, possible counterfeiter. Nice bunch, what?
Beautiful.
While in the joint this last trip, Brett’s cellmates during the first few months were a first-timer named Norman Amber — probably not important, no prior convictions, a scientist, physicist, and inventor it says here — and two-timer named Fred Luntz. But, locked up with Brett for more than a year — our item of current interest — was the aforementioned Elroy
Sam ignored my last comment, slid his yellow pad back onto the desk. Go ahead and finish it. I recognize that dumb look on your face.
I fished in my pocket, pulled out the three mug shots, spread them on Sam’s desktop. I checked the packages on Brett, Hauk, and Puffer Werzen. Seems those last two have been almost as close since Puffer got out of stir — four months ago, middle of May — as they were while locked up. First picture there, Alvin Hauk, that’s the guy I braced on North Rossmore, right after eyeballing Brett’s corpse.
Samson blinked, showing more than mild interest at last. You’re sure?But he was already picking up his phone, growling into it. He passed on the info, gave orders to check Hauk’s last known address, then hung up and said to me, I hope you just found this out.
Just did. Came straight here from R and I, Sam. That’s where I found out he’s called The Clam, or sometimes Clammy. Looked pretty clammy to me, I’ll tell you. Some kind of cold fish for sure.
That’s not where he gets the handle. We’ve had him in here five, six times, suspicion of one thing or another. Never got a word out of him.
Not very cooperative?
Not very. What I mean, he doesn’t say word one. Just clams. Won’t even say hello. Attorney always showed up to spring him, but Al the Clam never asked for one. How could he? Never opened his goddamned mouth.
One of those, huh? And you can’t coax the chaps very much these days.
Doubt it would do any good with Hauk, Shell. Some very hard boys grabbed him a half-dozen years back, wanted him to tell them something they greatly desired to know. These hoods pounded on him, strung him up by his thumbs, beat his bare feet — you know?
Yeah, bastinado — a little like walking on broken glass with your bare stumps. Some sweeties tried it with me once. If there hadn’t been an interruption, I might have spilled.
Not him. So, all over Southern California he’s known — respected — as Al the Clam. He may look a little spindly, but that one’s tough. Or else he’s got a very low pain threshold.Sam chewed on his cigar. O.K., what do you propose to do in the hours and days ahead? About Buddy Brett, I mean.
I suppose I’ll nose around a little, try to dig up —
Let me put it this way. Is the lady, Miss Fields, your client?
Sure. We haven’t settled my fees and such yet, but — yeah, she’s my client. Why?
I am painfully aware, Sheldon, that you seem often to lose your acquaintance with caution, even reason, when blundering pell-mell to the aid of a damsel in distress. Especially if she’s got a big pair of —
Sam, I thought you had to see the chief a couple of minutes ago. And what do you mean, blundering —
How long have you known this girl? Does she have a criminal record? Was she, or was she not, acquainted with the late Edward Brett before this afternoon? Is it possible, or is it not possible, that Buddy Brett did not in fact fall in a lifeless heap on her living room floor but instead passed away after strenuous exertions in Miss Fields’s bedroom — indeed, in her bed itself — and was thereafter carried or pulled or rolled from there by Miss Fields herself to the spot where you first observed the deceased? How long has this girl resided at the Spartan Apartment Hotel, in which establishment you —
Sam, you make me nauseous when you talk like that. But I’ll confess, I have not yet explored all of those fascinating areas. If I ever get out of here, perhaps I may. But, Sam, why? What’s the use? Why not concentrate on the important things?
The items I’ve mentioned, they’re not important?
Well, to a cop, sure — but where’s the fun in that? Watch it, Sam, I was only kidding. . . . Ah, I mean, Aralia — Miss Fields — has told me her tale, and I believe her to be reliable. For one thing, she has an honest face. Among other reliable things. Hey.I stopped. You were just tossing some wild possibilities at me, weren’t you? I mean, she didn’t really know Brett before, did she?
Samson shrugged. I don’t have any idea. She might have. But if someone failed to mention such obvious possibilities, Shell, I fear they might not occur to you in this century.
You’ll make a cop of me yet, won’t you?
Dear God.He rolled his eyes toward the ceiling, then glanced at his watch. Get out of here. You might be interested in these items.He slid some folded sheets of the yellow paper over the desk to me. I won’t repeat what I said to you this morning. But you will keep it all in mind, won’t you?
You can count on it.I stood up, put the wooden chair back where I’d gotten it. How did Miss Fields make out? The boys take her home yet?
She completed her statement, and was through answering questions, half an hour ago. But, no, she hasn’t been taken home. She is waiting, presumably biting her nails to the bone, in the lobby below.
Waiting?
For you. As reported to me, she couldn’t bear to leave without seeing Mr. Scott again. And thanking him. For being so wonderfully helpful. So dear. So sweet.
It sounded odd, coming around Sam’s black cigar like that. But I grinned and said, I know you, you old codger, you’re just making all this up to make me feel good.
He was growling into his phone again as I left.
Aralia was indeed waiting for me in the lobby.
I drove her home. We chatted a bit, and even had a drink in my apartment. But that was all we had in my apartment. Didn’t have anything in her apartment, either.
During our chat, however, I did elicit from her several important facts I either had not known or had only guessed at. For example, she was five feet six inches tall; thirty-eight, twenty-three, thirty-six; weighed one hundred and twenty-seven pounds; and was twenty-five years old.
That was convincing enough. But she also vehemently denied that she’d ever seen, or heard of, Edward BuddyBrett before this afternoon. Nor did she have the least idea why he might have wanted to kill her.
We were sitting on the chocolate-brown divan in my front room, and I said, Any chance he made a mistake? Thought you were somebody else, maybe?
She shook her head. He called me by name. Aralia. He knew who I was. That’s what makes it so . . . It’s just crazy.
How long have you been living here at the Spartan?
Only three weeks. I just got my phone connected yesterday. And I need a phone, for modeling calls.
You’re a model? I never got around to asking what you do.
Part of the ti
me.
Aralia explained that she’d had secretarial training, and convinced me she was a whiz at typing and taking dictation and everything around the office— whizwas her word, too — but had held only one secretarial job in her life, and lost that one six months back when the small advertising agency where she’d been whizzing went bankrupt. Possibly the demise of the firm had nothing to do with the fact that the agency’s number-one account at the time was paying big bucks for a crash campaign to create catchy advertising slogans to be printed on Loving Touch toilet paper. On the other hand, possibly it did.
Since then, Aralia had lived on her small savings, income from some modeling jobs that apparently paid quite well, plus cash from a prizeshe’d very recently won. I hinted, but she didn’t say what the prize was or what it was for. I hinted quite a lot, but she never explained to my satisfaction. More accurately, she didn’t explain it at all.
She hoped to continue with her modeling, perhaps apply for another secretarial job but not with a dumb ad agencythis time, and might even win another prize before long if she was awfully lucky.In addition, like approximately ninety-four percent of all babes under forty-nine years of age, she was an aspiring actress. So far, in that area, all she’d done was aspire.
Well,I said, finishing my bourbon and water, that’s fascinating. Like another drink, Aralia?
Not tonight, Shell. I’m pretty tired.
After this day, I can understand that. You get along O.K. with the officers downtown?
Oh, yes. It’s just that I was never in a police station before, and it was, oh, kind of scary. But the policemen were awfully sweet.
Huh. Cops are sweet, too, huh?
What?
Never mind. You’re living here alone, Aralia? I mean, is your family in Los Angeles?
I don’t know, really. And I don’t much care.
Maybe she saw me blink. Anyway, she continued. I suppose that sounds strange, Shell. But my father died before I was born, my real father, I mean. Ma got married again, to a man named Charles Fields, but he ran off somewhere after two or three years, so I never knew him, either. And, finally, I ran off, too, at least I left home nine years ago. When I was sixteen. All the time I was growing up it was just Ma and me and my brother Petey, a year older than me, and it wasn’t the happiest home I ever heard of. I haven’t even been in touch with either of them for years, since I was about eighteen.
She spoke without bitterness or self-pity, almost as if she were reciting mildly unpleasant facts about somebody else. After a moment’s silence she said, Last I knew, Ma and Petey were living in Burbank, but I don’t know if they still are or not. Well . . .She stood up.
I didn’t try very hard to talk her out of leaving; she did look more than a bit tired. But my offer to look for and overpower any suspicious characters lurking in her apartment was accepted; and there, after grumbling about not finding any, even under the bed, I went back to my own apartment again.
Showered and between the sheets, I glanced once more over the typed pages Captain Samson had given me, essentially info about associates of the late Buddy Brett. There was also a statement that the Lincoln Continental I’d checked on Rossmore had been reported stolen a couple of minutes before six p.m. At least that was the time when the owner had phoned the report in. The owner was, of course, the man whose name — Gunnar Lindstrom — I’d noted on the car’s registration slip.
Lindstrom himself, judging from all available info, was not merely cleanbut a very accomplished and respected citizen, not only from the official police point of view, but in the estimation of the scientific community, of which he was a well-known and several-times-honored member. It seemed he was some kind of super-scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor with more than eighty patents in a number of different fields. That was interesting. Second scientist-inventor I’d run across today. Who was the other one? Amber? Yeah, Norman Amber.
I glanced sleepily at the additional paragraph about Lindstrom — head of the prestigious Lindstrom Laboratories on Olympic Boulevard here in L.A., recipient of this award and that award during the past twenty years, and other highly soporific intelligence — then I turned out the light.
I thought briefly about Buddy Brett, the somewhat ghoulish smart-mouthed Al Hauk, hoods, Samson, even the crook whose leg I’d cracked, and then about Aralia.
Not so briefly, more leisurely, about Aralia. About the eye-bruising beauty of her face and the gland-cooking curves of her remarkable body, her bright eyes, warm lips, gentle smile. She moved in my mind . . . lingered in thought . . . and deliciously dissolved into dream. . . .
CHAPTER FOUR
IN the morning I came to, then slowly awakened, and not long thereafter opened my eyes a crack, which is the way I usually spring forth from slumber to greet the glorious dawn.
I smacked my lips, uncracked my eyes, opened them a slit again, bubbled air between my lips. Undoubtedly, there was a glorious dawn out there somewhere, but not where I was at; no matter the time of day or season, I wake up at midnight on Halloween. Later in the day, any day, I am full of beans, yes; I am possessed of almost obnoxious vitality; but that condition is not something I arrive at instantly, or even close to it.
So I sort of wallowed over and got all set on the edge of the bed, planted my feet on the black carpet, scratched the hair on my chest, stuck out my tongue and slowly hauled it back in again. With the morning’s calisthenics thus completed, I got to my feet and trekked toward the shower, not forgetting to plug in the coffeepot on the way.
Soon life would be once more a thing of considerable virtue. Not quite yet, but soon.
There was a bit of gloom in the Southern California air, thin gray clouds overhead accenting soft blueness beyond them while briefly dimming the sun, but all was bright and warm inside me as I rolled up Wilshire Boulevard, the Cad’s windows open and the slightly chill nip of September air scrubbing my chops. I felt great. Clearly, I had come a long way. Despite my five minutes with Bernie Hooten.
After three cups of coffee, two bites of lumpy oatmeal mush — I have not yet discovered how to keep those little lumps out of the stuff — and four cigarettes, I had managed to depart from the Spartan without forgetting to put my pants on. There followed a couple of hours during which I talked to a few of my less savory acquaintances, doing what I generally do at the commencement of a case, putting my lines out, letting a handful of my best informants know what I’m looking for.
Usually, if those lines hook anything at all, I don’t get the word until hours or days later, since ordinarily you can expect to fish quite a while before catching anything. But this time I picked up, from a retired box man named Hooten, an item worth filing away — mainly because of the timing — even though there was only a chance in ten, if that, of its having anything to do with Aralia, or Buddy Brett and his lethal chums.
I found Hooten in a dark, damp, sour-smelling bar on Sixth Street, where the whiskery clientele ordered mostly beer and wine, and drank it alone at small round tables covered with cracked and peeling linoleum. And where Hooten spent most of his mornings. He was the only man I knew who actually dumped a shot of booze into his beer and then drank the mixture, which struck me as even less appetizing than little lumps in mush.
I’d bought him a shot of Early Times while telling him my tale, and he said, I dunno. Funny. Maybe.
Maybe what, Bernie?
He steadied the shot glass on the rim of his beer mug, tilted it, watched with interest as a thin stream of brown bourbon dribbled into his beer. I don’t know who it was done it, Scott. Or for who — I mean, to hit who. But somebody here in L.A. called a pro back east to come here and kill somebody. Late last night or early this ayem, it was. Looks like pee, don’t it?
What?He finished trickling the bourbon into his beer. Oh, yeah. I guess,I said. A pro?
One of the best, way I get it. It’s outa my field, you know, Scott. I never run with no wipers, even when I was openin’ a can a week. Didn’t pack no heat myself, never.
And I don’t know nothin’ about on this end, because I got it from a friend who I know on the other end.
Where was that? Other end where?
He didn’t answer. I sighed.
But this guy I mention to you, the pro,he went on, is maybe here already by now. It was like special delivery, he’s suppose to get his ass here fast so the business can be over with quick. Wish I had more for you, Scott, but that’s all I know. That and his handle. And where he come from.
He gulped down half the beer-and-booze drink. Smacked his lips.
I sighed again. It always depressed me when I talked to Hooten. The name, his handle,that was one. Where he come from,that was number two. Extortion at very close to its lowest level. But, still, extortion. I caught the bartender’s eye, held up two fingers.
The bartender nodded, patted his bulging stomach, burped a couple of times, coughed wheezily, and ran an index finger swiftly under his nose before wiping it on his pants.
O.K.,I said to Hooten. What’s the guy’s name?
All I got’s the monicker, how they tag him.He glanced around, saw the bartender pouring, and only then went on. One-Shot.
I didn’t know if that was a question or not, so I said, Fat Mike’s bringing a couple over, Bernie.
Knew I could count on you, Scott. Ain’t what I meant, though. That’s his handle, One-Shot. And I guess, since he is in the business of hitting people in the head, and he’s s’pose to be like about the best there is, it means he don’t use a machine-gun.
O.K. You got this from the other end, wherever it is this guy’s coming in from?
He nodded. And waited. And I waited. The sweet-sour air in there was beginning to make my nostrils feel greasy.
After Fat Mike brought the new mug of beer and placed it, plus two shot glasses brimming with Early Times, on the linoleum-topped table, Hooten finished his other drink, carefully shoved it aside, then picked up both shot glasses and balanced them opposite each other on the fresh mug’s rim.