She had me there. Yeah,I said glumly. But — four hundred times?
1:54 p.m.
I had been thinking back over the morning’s events, wondering if there’d been anything in those hours that might have given rise to my increasing sense of unease. It wasn’t a panicky kind of concern, but more a queasy little worry.
After completing the necessary preparations here this morning and making a test run of the Aralia image or duplicate, I had driven back to the Spartan Apartment Hotel and the flesh-and-blood Aralia.
Nothing significant thereafter. Talk, a bite to eat, a few last minute cautions and explanations to her. Then together in my Cad to the Doubless Ranch, brief mingling with a few of the early arriving guests, then into the teahouse, where we still were.
The hell with it. Probably it was the mild but now constant apprehension that came from walking around without my Colt .38 clamped in its holster under my coat. That, and coldly logical awareness of the many things that could go wrong in those sixty seconds speedily approaching.
Outside in the crowd there were occasional whoops that rose from the general hubbub, or individual voices that could briefly be heard separate from all the others.
I cocked my head on one side, wondering if I had heard what I thought I’d heard, just as Aralia said, Isn’t this exciting, Shell? I mean, even if I’m not really going out there the first time, nobody else will know it isn’t me.
Hey, Shell!
That had leaked in from outside somewhere. Not loud in here, but quite audible — and, surely, more than merely audible out there. That was what I thought I’d heard before, but I’d missed whatever followed my name then.
I just wish I could tell you how it makes me feel, Shell, every time, walking out there nude in front of all those men. I can actually feel what they’re thinking, and I won’t pretend I don’t like it. I love it! Right now I’m so charged, so hyper, so up, I can hardly stand it. I mean, I’m turned on.
Listen. I’m trying to . . . Turned on? Baby, you better put yourself on tilt, this is no time — or place —
Hey, Shell — again.
Something familiar about that voice. Disturbingly familiar.
And another voice. Shell, sweetheart, a bunch of us already called the fire department to put out your pants!
And that first voice, continuing, blending with part of the other guy’s dumb yodel, I just spent an hour getting a great big present for you. You getting any for me?
Oh, boy,I groaned. I’d recognized that first voice, the guy with the presentfor me. He was a jolly and fun-loving fellow named Roscoe, who possessed a sense of humor that might at times — times like this, for sure — be considered awesome, if not catastrophic. I didn’t know yet who the yodeler might be, but it mattered not; it was enough to know I was in trouble.
Oh, boy,I groaned again. That’s what’s been bugging me, I’ll bet a bunch, or at least a banana.
What’s the matter?Aralia asked.
I almost had it a little while ago. I was thinking three minutes was cutting it close, barely time enough for me to get where I’m going. What I should have been thinking was that I’ve been planning to walk out of here only three minutes before you make your eagerly awaited appearance.
Only?
Yeah. At least four hundred of those four hundred howling citizens must be curious to know why I’ve spent so much time in here with you. We have been in here a long time, you know. A long time. And it’s already damn close to the moment of your appearance, which has of course been bruited about as an enchanting appearance in the altogether. Which means, at least to those uncouth —
Oh . . . I see. You mean I should be taking my clothes off about now. But of course. I wouldn’t wait till the last minute, would I? So I’m stripping right now, getting ready! They think.
Yes. They think. He thinks, they think, everybody thinks. Only I do not think.
Golly-golly,she said. Said excitedly, it seemed to me. At least, not as one totally overcome by waves of shock and cruel embarrassment. I’ll just bet some of them, maybe a lot of them, think right this very instant you’re . . . stuporizing me?
Stuprating. Not that it matters. Oh, boy.
Well, Shell, if they already think it . . . How much time’s left?
That one went right by me, clean as a whistle.
I peered at my wristwatch and the stopwatch. At the plink, it will be one fifty-five and a half, or exactly one minute and a half to go. Plink.
And then there’s three more minutes, too. Well? Why not? You might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, Shell. Or is it hung for a wolf —
Hung how? What?
You sound like a Chinaman.
What? Where the hell did that come from —
You were telling me about Rich Butterfly and all, and those names like Hoochie-Coochie and —
I get it. Jesus, you scared me. Sure, I get it. Ah, pretty frower, ah-so, me Hung How, queer samurai, right?
Samurairite? I never heard of those before —
Yesss, Hung How, master of singing sword, not to mention humming daggeroo. Pretty frower, I gonna rove you rike nobody rove you come rain . . . What are we doing? What the hell has happened here? Aralia . . .?
Not a peep from her when I needed it.
Leggo, Aralia.
Still no peep.
Aralia. Let go, please. I had no idea you were serious. For all things there is a time, even a season, but this is nooooooo —
Then I just stood there, thinking. No, not that. I was thinking several other things. Like:
I’m pretty sure I was all right only a minute ago, but how can I be sure? This had to be one of those 3-D movies, anyway. It couldn’t really be happening. Of course not; the idea was ridiculous. This was only a bunch of dots or squiggles on a piece of plastic or something. How could I be here like this, with Miss Naked California, on a partially dismantled movie set, in a teahouse, surrounded by hundreds of giant apes, only a minute before leaving to climb a hill on the wild assumption that I might thus catch a hood who was trying to shoot a picture, and kill it? I couldn’t be. There was simply nooooooo . . .
Well, it’s time to split,I said.
Really?
Yeah, gotta go. In thirty seconds, that is. But that’ll be over in a minute or two.
Gee, that’s a drag.
You’re really wigged out, aren’t you? Have you got everything straight, Aralia? Strike that. Are you sure you know what to do?
What do you think?
Does it matter?
I watched the second hand of my stopwatch. Well, if I leave here, Aralia, and some of those idiots outside decide to come inside, I wash my hands of everything. I can do no more. It will be up to you.
I can handle it.
Ah, so. Well . . .
Tick-tick-tick.
1:57 p.m.
I pushed the switch to On,and it had begun.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
SOMEONE wrote that the best laid plans gang aft a-gley, which has been interpreted as meaning they often come totally unglued. This explains why even worse things aft happen to plans not well glued to begin with.
I had actually spent considerable time thinking out my moves and planning ahead, but most of that thinking had been concentrated on one rather nebulous if.If a man, with murder in mind and rifle in hand, accepted this publicized opportunity to draw a bead on Aralia Fields while she stood alone in the sunlight, a perfect target, how should I most efficiently proceed in order to foil him without getting shot myself?
I had parked my Cadillac a hundred yards away on the only road providing access into the ranch and the Butterfly set. Two hundred yards farther away a side road led north, rising to the single-lane blacktop road I’d checked this morning. I knew I could drive the half mile from where the Cad now was to a spot near the massed trees north of and above the set, and then trot from there into those trees themselves, in not more than one minute. Leaving two minutes, less the time required for me to reach
my car, before the start of Aralia’s appearancebelow. Already in my car was a high-powered pair of binoculars; and a Colt .45 automatic was locked in the glove compartment.
My thinking had been focused on what my actions would be after I reached the Cad, including the question of whether I should take that fully loaded automatic pistol along when I left the car. Just in case. And maybe shoot, and kill, somebody with it, just in case. Maybe that should have been an easy question to answer; but, for me, it wasn’t all that easy.
The gang-aft-a–gley part of this was that I automatically assumed I would be in my heap and driving toward that side road in maybe a half minute, or less. I had not for a single negative-thinking moment considered the possibility of my being somewhat delayed before I even got started. But there is much to be said for negative thinking, when it is the positive thing to do. Unfortunately, I did not become positively — and shockingly — aware of this great Truth until moments after I pushed that little switch to Onand stepped through the teahouse door.
I hadn’t even realized there would be a band.
It was only five or six pieces — I didn’t count them — including drums and bass and what sounded like a few dozen trumpets and tubas and other brassy things, and what each instrument lacked of beauty and sweet harmony it more than made up for in loudness.
BLAAAAAHH!
I guess it was supposed to be a fanfare — greeting me, the Spartan soldier, as I returned home from the Pubic Wars — but it had all the earmarks of wars themselves, the clashing of axes on shields or an attack on the fort, and it absolutely transfixed me.
I had stepped from the teahouse and taken two long, purposeful, there’s-a-man-who-knows-where-he’s-going strides forward. Then: BLAAAAAHH! And I couldn’t have moved another inch if somebody had slipped a hot poker into my shorts.
This, of course, was in plain view of the assembled throng, including the out-of-tune symphonic orchestra on my right near that segment of the Great Wall of Japan which, oddly, was still standing. And this, needless to say, was at least part of what the assembled throng had been awaiting with fiendish anticipation. Their fondest fiendish anticipations were fully realized. Certainly, I must have come to a stop that impressed them as humorous.
It didn’t help much that something in that unexpected and unearthly sound sent my head straining toward the sky and pulled my arms up bending angularly at the elbows while the fingers of both hands spread way apart, while simultaneously my knees bent and I squatted just a wee bit, for this was a maneuver accomplished not as speedily as my halt, which had been absolutely instantaneous, but with what, especially by contrast, must have appeared to be extraordinarily leisurely fashion.
At some point in time during my spasm, I realized my mouth was open quite wide, with my tongue sticking out of it, so I pulled it back in, and this loosened me up enough to crank my head around and gaze upon the assembled baboons, who were howling and whooping, while a few even beat upon their chests in typical dumb fashion. The hubbub diminished in volume enough that the left-handed musicians could be heard playing their right-handed instruments. One of them wasn’t even playing, he was singing a cappella while the band played — something . . . what was it?
The tune was one from way back, an oldie from the thirties or forties, with a cute bounce and ripple. Cute then. I had to hear only two lines to realize that some demented practical joker here had conspired against me, because the first line was sung in a horrid tenor voice by the one musician but the second line — the title, and repeated refrain, of the dumb song — was bellowed energetically by all the baboons together.
Tenor: Oh . . . kiss me once, and kiss me twice, and kiss me once again. . . .
Then the baboonery: IT’S BEEN A LONG, LOOOONG TIME!
It went on with Never felt like this before since can’t remember when — IT’S BEEN A LONG, LOOOONG TIME!and similar crud, but I had recovered considerable power of movement by then, at least in my mouth.
Well, you smart-asses — I growled, but they couldn’t hear me. Not when the whole crowd was singing and laughing and falling down like that.
I straightened up, started to walk with as much dignity as I could muster across the grass and away from there. It was only then that I noticed two of the baboons were over on this side of the pool, next to the microphone.
One of them was Roscoe, whose voice I’d recognized when inside the teahouse. Where I wished I still was. The other was a guy named Art Jacobs, a magazine and paperback book wholesaler and distributor, a longtime — at least until now — friend of mine. I was disturbed by the close proximity of those two jokers, particularly considering the enthusiastic way Roscoe seemed to be leading the band, and the crowd, waving his arms wildly and yelling, LOOOOONG TIME!Something big and white was flapping from one of his hands as he yelled and waved.
I stepped toward them, started to go past. But both Jacobs and Roscoe, grinning like idiots, grabbed one of my arms while Jacobs yelled for silence and got enough so he could be heard fairly well speaking into the mike.
Here he is, men! Yes! It is he — at last — our clown of the year, whom we have all been waiting — and waiting — and waiting for. In recognition of his many exhausting researches into the subject of female anatomy, which he refers to modestly as
Whereupon Roscoe, turning to face me, chortled, And here it — they — is — are. Congratulations, or whatever.
And he handed me the white thing that had been flapping from his hand.
I took it automatically, my mind occupied with the thought that I had to get out of here in a hurry before ten more playful guys grabbed onto me for the hell of it, and either it was an accident or else Roscoe carefully maneuvered the thing so I’d grab it just right.
Whatever the reason, the garment — that’s what it was — unfolded like a weathered old flag with weathered old Betsy Ross still in it, and I was holding by the shoulder straps, its convex bulges facing out and away from my chest, what had to be the biggest brassiere ever gazed upon by the stunned eyes of man. It wasn’t just large, it was dismaying. Naturally, the cretins in the audience were cracking up.
Art Jacobs said, chuckling, Well, say something, Shell. It’s expected of the winner.
No kidding? Of the what? Well, if I do, will you two clowns let go of me so I don’t have to use up a lot of time hitting you?
They nodded happily, and I looked at Roscoe. You know Sammy Shapiro, the emcee of this madhouse, don’t you?He smiled, still nodding happily. Will you make sure he introduces Aralia, Miss Fields, at exactly two p.m.? Not any later? Or else do it yourself by then? Exactly two on the button?
Grinning, he said he would.
I figured a quick Thanks, boysand some junk could get me off and away before half of the other men here decided to join the three of us. So I leaned toward the mike, forced a smile, and said with my voice as deep and rumbling as I could get it, Well, I never thought I’d be lucky enough to win a hippopotamus’s jockstrap.
There were whoops and howls — and something flashed, glittered on the hill out there in front of me, above me. High on that hill, at the near edge of the grove of thickly massed eucalyptus trees.
I got a sudden chill, a feeling as if my spine were coated with thin ice, a shiver in the hairs at the back of my neck. I looked up, searching, but there was nothing more. Just that quick flash, which could have been sunlight glancing from moving metal. It sure as hell hadn’t been a wiggling leaf, or a rock rolling, not that bright metallic flash. Something — someone — was up there.
I really felt chilled, the skin suddenly cool all over my body, cold sweat oozing out onto my face and beading my upper lip. Only a small part of it was realization that someone might be aiming at me, starting to squeeze the trigger, not waiting for Aralia at all.
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I leaned toward the mike and wrapped it up fast, speaking briskly and with my voice flat, almost expressionless, but nobody seemed to notice.
Forcing a rigid grin, I went on mechanically. I just don’t know how to thank you, so I won’t. Fellas, I may not know much about Roscoe and Art, but I know what I like — and this isn’t it. Well, I’ve got to run now.
And then I ran.
I mean, ran. Holding the ballooning bra high and letting it flutter and swoop like a very strange windsock at a breezy Amazonian airport. All I’d wanted was to wrap the bit up and get out fast; but I heard yocks and hoots and boozy laughter fading behind me as I sprinted to the Cad.
The last fifty yards of my run was close to dozens of pepper trees growing on the sloping hillside to my right, and I couldn’t be seen from that spot higher on the hill. In the Cad, jamming my key into the ignition and starting the engine, I took the stopwatch from my coat pocket, checked its sweeping second hand.
Nearly two minutes used up. Too much, not enough time left, not enough. But I was shoving my foot down on the gas pedal, picking up speed, then sliding right and gunning the engine some more.
When I turned into the black-topped one-laner I’d checked this morning, I saw another car a quarter of a mile or less ahead of me. It was a racy blue Jaguar, pulled over onto bumpy earth at the road’s right, parked there. I switched off the Cad’s ignition as I slid to a stop behind the Jag; nobody was in the car. I checked my stopwatch and then dropped it into my coat pocket — only forty seconds until Aralia’s appearance, which didn’t leave me any time for cautious creeping around.
Or, rather, forty seconds left before appearance of the pseudo-Aralia, and a mere minute of that; after which, for all I knew, the wacky babe might be unable to restrain herself from prancing personally out onto the greensward, waving, waving all over.
I jumped from the Cad, carrying my binoculars, then ran at full speed toward the mass of eucalyptus trees. I was almost to them when I realized I’d jumped from the Cad without taking that loaded Colt .45. I’d been hurrying, hadn’t thought of it. Or maybe, unconsciously, I’d wanted to leave it. But it didn’t matter now. I went on ahead, and in among the trees.
The Amber Effect (The Shell Scott Mysteries) Page 17
