I don’t quite see why it was such a crisis. . . .
Well, Puffer and Hauk, of necessity, knew more about what Ragan was up to than any of the other men involved. And, remember, when Puffer lamped your picture — and, more important, your name — it was late Wednesday night. Norman Amber was already dead by then, murdered. On the page before Puffer’s puzzled eyes was that unusual name, Aralia, and coupled right there with it, the last name Fields. And who had Vincent Ragan been dickering and conniving with? Who other than Mrs. Fields? Former wife of genius Norman Amber, the late but still cooling Norman Amber, father of only son, Peter, who was sole and rightful heir to fantastic goodies since Amber’s daughter, Aralia, had purportedly died. . . . The hell with it. You can see how it went from there, my sweet.
Yes, I can. All the inheritance and everything could get all bollixed up if I was alive.
Plenty bollixed. You might even have filed a petition to be named executrix of your father’s estate, any number of disturbing possibilities. No olive in the martini this time, right?
So they hunted me down, tracked me through the city —
Not exactly, you’d recently moved into the Spartan here, and your phone had been in only a day or so, thus they merely checked with the operator —
And that’s why they sent Buddy Brett to kill me.
You bet it is,I said. And, you know, if you hadn’t won the title of Miss Naked California — I mean, if you were not so constructed, put together, marvelously fashioned, all that, so you could win the title, and did win the title — it is possible that horny Buddy would merely have done you in, without piddling around on the way —
So, really, in one sense, it’s the way I’m built that saved my life, isn’t it?
In several senses. Which, when carefully considered, makes a lot of sense.
At least that’s true about the first time. But you saved me the next time, Shell.
I smiled.
They really tried to kill you, too, didn’t they? Because you saved me!
Well . . . partly because of that, dear. But they had a lot of reasons for wanting to knock me off. To mention merely one, I saw your mother and brother with Vincent Ragan, at his home, on Friday night. This, significantly, after both your father’s murder and Brett’s attempt to kill you. Also significantly, Ragan knew instantly who I was even then, and tried to allay any growing suspicions I might have had by referring to the lady as Mrs. Green. I’d already shot Puffer by then, but it was immediately after this that Ragan sent Hauk and Virgil Kovick out to fill me with double-ought buckshot at the Spartan. Which doesn’t make me feel so bad now about Virgil’s poor head.
Who’s Virgil? His head?
Really, none of these things is important now. What’s important is . . . um, would you quit fiddling around with those olives, Aralia?
It seemed a long time ago when I’d had that conversation with Aralia Fields. It hadn’t been long, really. Only seven days. That had been the last Monday night in September, and now it was Monday again. But, now, it was October.
The first day, and the first Monday, in October. A mere two days after the Saturday on which Aralia Fields won the title of Miss Naked USA. Of course she won it. I know; I was there. It was all quite vivid in my mind: Miss Naked Alabama . . . Alaska . . . Arizona . . . Arkansas . . .
And then:
There she was. . . .
The continuing parade, all the representatives of all the rest of the fifty states, and then the crowning of the queen, hubbub, squeals, excitement, photographers, reporters, a rather pleasant pandemonium.
Especially for Miss Naked USA.
I’d known she was going a long, long way.
Already, she was gone.
In the week since that climactic Green MesaMonday, there had been other events of some small interest. Gunnar Lindstrom had kept, in trust, all the profits he’d personally made from the invention conspiracy,and was making efforts to straighten out patent rights, protection, compensation for those deserving of it, that sort of thing. Complicated, yes, and in some instances now impossible; but he would, I was sure, work everything out as well as it could be done. He wouldn’t go to prison, I was reasonably certain; there were compensating factors, many of them, and nobody, really, seemed eager to bring severe charges against Gunnar Lindstrom.
He had continued to make that ridiculous offer to me, about paying me a hundred thousand bucks, all sorts of things. I did work him down to ninety thousand, and we finally settled for that. To his displeasure. He really wanted to give me the whole hundred G’s. So, to sort of compensate him for his loss, I let him make me a present of one of the complete laser-and-projector things — with the promise of an entire new camera-and-projector unit with which I could easily make my own 3-D movies, when the unit was polished, perfected, ready for marketing — and one of those films we’d made, too. I’ll let you guess which of the films it was.
Odds and ends. Talks with several people — Harry Feldspen, for one. Aralia had been with me then, too. The three of us had lunch at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Among other things, Harry was almost in a fit of excitement about Lindstrom’s photographic process — what we know, of course, as the Amber Effect — since he was now aware that the real, living, breathing Aralia Fields he’d seen at the Doubless barbecue had been light only, patterns of light, without substance.
I could see the S-curves and straight lines — or dollar signs — in his eyes as he spoke. Shell, you just don’t understand, this is the biggest thing to come down the pike. It’s bigger than color, bigger than sound.
Pretty big, Harry.
Bigger than that. Look, those pictures are so real you can take pictures of them, right?
Sure. Just like taking pix of the real thing. Lindstrom told me —
So now get this. We’re shooting on the set. I need the Parthenon, that’s in Greece, in the shot. We don’t go there. Don’t build a piece of it, don’t even use a process shot. We use the goddamn Parthenon itself, right? All we do is take a picture of it and project the damn thing right there on the set. The real thing, no way to tell any difference. Actor could walk right up into the joint — no doors he’s got to open, which of course wouldn’t work, could even go clear out of sight behind one of the columns. You get it?
Yeah, I’m the guy told you —
I never had such a great idea in my life. Parthenon — St. Paul’s Cathedral — a street in Paris, a dive in Rome — you need a tree, shoot a tree out there. Goddammit, I’m a genius and nobody’s going to ever tell me any different. The Taj Mahal? Sure, I’ll build it right here — for a buck and a half, sweetie. How does that grab you? And just think for a minute what I can do with Miss Fields here.
It would take more than a minute, Harry.
Throw your imagination lines out and lasso this idea. Can you see that bod of hers, which is starring in a film from a script I supervise to give it the Feldspen touch, the class, the zoom, released simultaneous in a thousand theaters? You don’t build the goddamn theaters, you show the movie outside on the ground, with seats of course, and project a theater around the whole place. How does that grab you?
You really want me to tell you, Harry?
I’ve already got a great idea in mind. For Miss Fields, I mean. It’s all complete, now I turn it over to some writers to sort of polish it up a little. I wrote it down myself in twenty-five words. Here’s part of it: This broad gets here from Venus somehow — the writers can stick that in — and she’s used to going around naked. How’s it so far?
Not very original, judging —
Original, original, the dumb writers can stick that in, what do I pay ‘em for? Listen to this, it’s good. She’s naked, a bee-yutiful broad, and she’s twenty feet tall.
Harry, if I hadn’t told you about the twenty-foot-tail Jolly Bronzed Giant —
She’s thirty feet tall, O.K.? Now, shut up —
How about two hundred and fifty? Hair like tangled mangrove roots in the Okefenokee Swamp, that’s in
Florida —
— now we get to the twist. You got to have a twist, right?
Or a broad.
Where she comes from — she’s considered ugly. Yeah? Well, all of a sudden she’s adored, a goddess, everybody wants to get in her pants. Which she don’t have any of, of course. But there’s an obstacle.
No kidding.
She falls in love with the hero, vice versa, and he’s only five feet nine. No . . . for our audience here —
You aren’t planning to release it on Venus, are you?
He’s got to be somebody like Kerry Wilder, he’s six-three, no difference. And there they are, madly in love, crazy about each other. How do you like it?
How do they overcome this obstacle or discrepancy, this problem, of him six-three and her thirty feet?
Well, you dumb —
Got it. The writers can stick it in.
How do you like it? Really?
I think it stinks, Harry.
He looked at Aralia then. He hadn’t been paying much attention to her until that point.
How do you like it, doll?
I love it, Harry. Or . . . Mr. Feldspen. I really do.
Call me Harry.
That was pretty much how it had gone for those seven days. Scenes like that. Little things here and there. Wrapping up the loose ends.
But now I was sort of at loose ends myself. A little uptight, even. I didn’t quite know what to do with myself. It was that in-limbo kind of feeling that comes along once in a while, to everybody. I suppose to everybody.
I was thinking of the last time I’d seen Aralia, though it had only been yesterday, Sunday — last time for a while, anyhow. She’d signed with Feldspen, but her contract allowed her to make outsideappearances, pick up a little change here and there. We’d been in the front room of my apartment then, too, and she was dressed, packed, leaving for a soon-to-begin national tour — one result of her winning the Miss Naked USA title.
We shook hands. Yeah, shook hands.
It’s been wonderful, Shell,she said. Really wonderful.
Wasn’t half bad,I said, still holding her hand.
We’ll see each other again. Lots.
Sure. Can I give you a lift or —
Oh, I forgot to mention it, somebody’s picking me up.
Oh? Who — no. Forget it.
You’re an awfully nice guy, Shell. Really. I really, really mean it. My sweet Prince Charming Hung How —
Yesss, master of sayonara, now student of seppuku —
Golly, is it that late? ‘Bye, darling. See you.
Quick peck on cheek. Out the door. I didn’t see her out, or down the Spartan’s stairs. I was just — just standing there in the middle of the empty room. It was as if something very much alive, wondrously warm, an essential thing, had left and the room wasn’t quite right anymore.
And I was standing now, this first Monday in October, almost exactly where I’d stood then, yesterday. Which didn’t strike me as a whole lot of progress, not for one of those man-on-the-move type guys.
Couldn’t call Aralia. But she wasn’t the only babe in the world. Ten minutes later I hung up the phone for the third time and said the hell with it. Mavis had been wonderfully bubbly and friendly, but this was just a bad time. She didn’t say exactly why.
Another delighted lovely was packing for a flight to New York, a modeling job there. The last babe I checked on was the worst case of the bunch. She’d gotten married.
It all gave me a kind of chill. A bring-down, that loose ends blaaah feeling, a cool wind sighing through the core of my bones.
And this wouldn’t do; it would not do.
It’s splendid to be always optimistic, magnificently positive, right up there on top of the world every minute of every day; it’s also impossible. But if you’ve got a lock on the world, when you know the bruise in the blood or dull ache in your gut is a temporary thing if only you can con yourself into believing it is, nine times out of ten you can tighten those loose ends and warm the chill wind sighing inside, turn the snake of sadness around until it bites its tail and things start spinning, livening up, getting right again.
So I went downtown, into L.A., to the Hamilton Building, and up the stairs to my office. Fed the fish, watched them a while, marveled — for many reasons — at the industrious scavenging of my little Corydoras paleatus. Then I hastened downstairs, and into Pete’s bar, conveniently next door to the Hamilton Building. It was early; the place was empty.
He nodded, reached for my usual bourbon.
Give me something else, Pete. Something I’ve never had before.
He moved a few feet away behind the bar, cocked his head, started picking up bottles. No comment; we’d known each other a long time.
When he placed before me a murky, suitably dangerous-looking concoction in a tall glass, I heard the front door open, then shoosh closed. I took a sip of my drink, glancing around to see who’d come inside.
A woman. Tall, dark-haired, young. She’d come in out of the night, and in a strange way it was as if she’d brought part of the night, or dark, inside with her. She sat at the far end of the room, around the curve of the bar, in shadow. It could even have been someone I knew, but the light wasn’t bright enough so I could be sure.
Soon she slid from her stool, walked around the curve of the bar and up to me. Tall indeed, and very lovely in an odd, foreignway. Full-formed woman’s body, simple expensive-looking dress, dark, smooth, smart.
Do you know me?she asked. You were looking at me so . . .
Well, what the hell, I thought. Nothing ventured —
Sure,I said. Don’t you remember? We met that glorious weekend in Acapulco. I was diving off a rock —
Oh, way up high there, at La Perla?
No, it was just this rock. Well, how has it been Madelyn? I mean, of course, how have you been?
Wonderful.
I knew it!
But my name isn’t Madelyn.
Boy, you don’t remember any of it, do you?
It was a slow smile. Until then she’d been quite sober, serious.
I said, Why don’t we move to a booth? I’ll have Pete bring us booze in champagne glasses. Doesn’t that sound fun?
No. No, it really doesn’t. But I think I’d like to, anyway.
You’re starting to remember. Maybe if I describe this rock —
You see, perhaps you can help me. I came here, to Pete’s, because a friend of mine told me there’s a detective who gets bombed here some nights. But he’s supposed to be quite good, even if he drinks and all.
What do you mean, and all?
My friend said this fellow’s name is Shell Scott, but I don’t know anything about him. I thought maybe you could help me find him?
There’s no maybe about it. Lately, there have been several of them around. But, ah, it happens I have some small talent in this detecting business myself — though you would never know it to look at me, would you?
Goodness, no!
You’re not supposed to say that.I stood up. Come with me.
I led her to a booth, waved at Pete, ordered drinks, waited until they were before us. Then I propped an elbow atop the table, propped my chin against my fist, and, comfortable enough to last through even a long story, looked with interest at her interesting face. And briefly at what is lifelessly called cleavage,which I haven’t mentioned because you wouldn’t believe it.
What would you do with a detective, Madelyn,I asked her, if you had one?
She told me.
And perhaps I’ll tell you one of these days soon. It was a fantastic story. Almost incredible. You may not believe it. But I think you ought to try — for your own good, of course. I didn’t doubt what she told me for a minute.
Maybe you remember: If you don’t believe good things are going to happen . . .
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r hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1986 by Richard S. Prather
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The Amber Effect (The Shell Scott Mysteries) Page 23
