“Go ahead.”
As the two officers went out, both reporters came into the John. You know how it is with some reporters, nobody has any privacy any place. The gal had a thin body, thin lips, thin brain, a face like those pictures on poison packages, and straggly hair done in a bun. It looked like a bun with a couple hot dogs in it.
I said, “Ma’am, was there something you wanted to use in here?”
She frowned and said slowly, “There were supposed to be some naked women…” She sounded disappointed.
I reached for a towel and wrapped it around me, then pulled the shower curtain about halfway back and stepped out onto the floor. Right toward the female reporter. Keep them off balance, I say. Don’t retreat, attack! She retreated.
Flannery and Wilkins came out of the bedroom wearing frowns. They hadn’t found anybody. I’d known they wouldn’t. I dripped into the front room and looked out the window. I could see Grieg sitting in his Continental. And then came my best break of the day.
Around the side of the building staggered the tired tiger, with one hand pressed against the side of her undoubtedly aching skull, and not a stitch on. She saw the white Continental, shook her head, and then loped toward it. She had regained consciousness at precisely the right time.
“Well, look at that, would you?” I said to Flannery.
He stepped alongside me and looked and his mouth dropped open and his eyes got wide and then glazed over as if somebody had spilled milk in them. He let out a sort of tooting sound. Wilkins took a look and his eyes got about the same as Flannery’s.
The nude gal was trying to get into Grieg’s car. He was probably trying to push her away, in horror, but it appeared that he might instead have lost control of himself.
I said to the officers, “Surely that sort of thing is against the law. Do your duty, men.”
Maybe there were supposed to be two or three other nude babes around here somewhere, but that wasn’t important to Flannery and Wilkins. A bird in the hand is worth two or three in the bush, and they took off like hungry eagles.
The male reporter was quick to follow them. Only Skull-and-Crossbones remained. I smiled at her and said, “Make yourself at home, dear. I’m going to finish my shower—love to feel clean … clean.” I went back to the john. In a moment I peeked out, but she had given up and was gone. A quick look toward the street showed me the whole gang of them waving arms. Grieg’s face was a splendid color. The blonde was in the Continental, looking out and yakking.
So that took care of that. Grieg and I weren’t through with each other—barely started, in fact—but I figured the interruptions were finished for a while. I knew Wilkins and Flannery well, and that gang wouldn’t be back—at least not today. I took a look out my bedroom window. One floor below, Agony and Lomey were sprawled on the lawn where I’d dropped them, still unconscious. They had made a relatively soft spot upon which to drop the tired tiger.
I went back to the bathroom. I opened the shower curtain all the way. My two nude lovelies were still there quiet as can be, big-eyed and pressed back against the tiled wall. Like the Purloined Letter.
“They gone?” the bronzed blonde asked softly.
“Yeah, all’s clear. Well, you can get dressed now—I stuffed your clothes in the laundry bag, along with the camera.”
The redhead grinned. “Keep your shirt off. What’s the rush? You said they were gone.”
I heard a siren. “There they go now,” I said. “I, uh, did I hear —”
The blonde spoke, smiling an incandescent smile. “Torchy and I were talking … just a second ago … and she said…”
Torchy, huh? It was high time I learned their names. The blonde—Brandy—told me what they’d been saying.
I had to chuckle. Me, Shell Scott, the guy who is usually examining the dead ones…
The Da Vinci Affair
I caught up with Lupo in the Happy Time, and it was a very unhappy time for Lupo.
He was in a rear booth of the small bar on Third Street in downtown Los Angeles, having a highball with an older man, and he appeared to be unusually jolly. But his jollity died a horrible death when he glanced up and spotted me as I stormed through the door.
It was past ten o’clock at night, but the Happy Time was not one of the favorite spots of most L.A. nightgoers and only a half-dozen other customers were in the joint. That suited me fine, but it didn’t suit Lupo at all. His eyes got very wide and his mouth puckered as if he had swallowed a pickle. He blurted something to the man with him, and the guy lit out, headed for the back door.
For a half-second I thought the man might be Alston Spaniel, one of the two chaps I was eager to kill, but this guy was too large and flabby to be Spaniel. In fact, he looked like a man I’d seen with Lupo earlier, but that was singularly unimportant to me at the moment. The important thing was that the other chap I wanted to shoot, right in the eye, was Lupo.
Lupo tried to slide from the booth himself, but he didn’t make it.
By then I was close enough to whack my open left hand against his chest and slam him back to the wall. He hit, and his head clunked hard against the wood. His eyes wobbled, then focused on me—still very wide.
I said, “Surprised to see me again, Lupo?”
It took him a while, and he wet his lips a couple of times, but finally he said weakly, “Surprised?”
“Yeah, surprised. Astonished. To see me alive, I mean. You didn’t know anything about that art heist, huh? Not much you didn’t.”
“I didn’t steal the damn thing, Scott. I swear. I didn’t heist that Da —”
I cut him off. “I never said you did, Lupo. But you sure as hell know who grabbed it. And it’s eight to five you knew the last time I talked to you. Right, pal?”
He licked his lips again. “The last time? I don’t get it.”
“You will. I just got through killing one guy —”
“Killing?”
“Yeah, shot him twice in the guts. You wouldn’t believe how much he bled. Let’s just say it was horribly messy.”
Lupo wasn’t all bristly and lumpily masculine to begin with, and his pallor paled considerably. Soft breath sighed from his mouth, and the lids drooped over his long-lashed dark eyes. He liked gay conversation, brittle witticisms, dialogue about Byron and Shelley and Keats and such. He didn’t like talk about blood and guts, or anything in that general area.
So I said, “I thought he was going to puke everything but his veins all over my pretty gold carpet. But it could have been me throwing my guts up, right?”
He didn’t look at all well.
I went on, “I know why he tried to kill me, of course. We both do, don’t we?”
“I don’t know what you mean, Scott. I don’t —”
“Sure you do. And you can guess what I’m going to do to you, can’t you?”
I reached under my coat, pulled out the .38 Colt Special and cocked it.
“Lupo, you’re going to think I’m a mean sonofabitch, but it can’t be helped.”
I pointed the gun at his right eye and pulled the trigger.
The hammer fell with a sharp click—since I had taken pains to be sure an empty chamber would be under the hammer when it fell—but even though Lupo must, for an instant, have realized he wasn’t dead yet, the effect on him was unusually striking. He fainted.
I swore softly, stuck the gun back in its clamshell holster and glanced around. One couple at a nearby table was looking my way, but apparently nobody had noticed the gun. At least no customers were racing for exits.
Lupo had sprawled peacefully across the table, overturning his highball glass. The liquid spread over the dark tabletop, dripped to the floor. I waited.
If I was wrong about Lupo, I would apologize for leaning on him, and even for saying blood and guts; but it wasn’t likely I was wrong about Lupo. In which case he was getting off easy. I hadn’t really shot him. Not yet.
He lay so still it worried me. Maybe he was dead. But I felt his pulse and
it was still pulsing. I was glad, because actually I rather liked Lupo—at least I had until tonight. I didn’t care for his associates, or his brand of perfume and such, but he was neat and tidy, joyous and witty—usually, that is.
Right now his left eyebrow was lying in a puddle of what smelled like brandy, and it was eight to five he wouldn’t feel joy and wit stirring in him for quite a while. A little noise rose from his throat.
I waited for more noises, and ran over the sequence of events in my mind. Yeah, it almost had to be Lupo.
This night, a balmy Wednesday in September, had started out on a very different plane. I’d been at home—that’s Hollywood’s Spartan Apartment Hotel, on North Rossmore across from the green acres of the Wilshire Country Club—having completed a satisfactory day in and out of my one-man agency, Sheldon Scott, Investigations.
I was fresh from the shower, wrapped in a towel and preparing to get dressed, ready for whatever this warm new evening might bring. No plans—just hope. I’m a very hopeful fellow.
The phone rang. Hopefully, I grabbed it. “Hello?”
“Shell?”
“Who else?”
“This is Antonia.”
Hot dog, I thought.
“Antonia, darling!” I said.
“Are you doing anything?”
“Just putting my pants off—on—up—getting dressed. What are you doing?”
“I’m—oh. Shell. Are you sober?”
“Of course I’m sober. Haven’t had a drink all … why? Do I have to be sober?”
“I hadn’t thought about it.”
“Neither had I. Now you mention it, I need a drink. Why don’t I put my pants wherever the hell I was putting them, and come over, and we’ll go out into this warm September madness and —”
“Fine —”
“I haven’t yet told you what I have in mind, dear —”
“What shall I wear?”
“Well, pants, of course. Antonia, forget I said that, will you?”
“Forget my pants?”
“I don’t know why I am suddenly so obsessed with pa—skip it. Wear one of your—I’ve got it. Remember that slinky black contraption you wore two weeks ago? The one that goes clear up to your neck in front and is cut way down in back?”
“Yes.”
“Wear that one backwards.”
“Shell! I won’t, either. I’ll surprise you.”
“That would surprise me. And seven thousand other —”
“Why don’t you pick me up here?”
“OK.”
“What time will you be over, Shell?”
“About two minutes before you finish dressing, if you’ll take it easy.”
“Sevenish?”
I glanced at my watch. Six thirty p.m. on this wild September evening. “Sure.”
“I’d better hurry, then.”
“Yeah, you’d better.”
We hung up.
I did a little hop and skip into the bedroom. I felt good. Life was good. Antonia was good. Actually, just between you and me, she was sensational.
Holding my pants in one hand and shorts in the other, I stood in the bedroom, thinking: Antonia, darling!
I could see her in my mind’s eye: a long, luscious Italian tomato with thick amber-colored hair; dangerous heavy-lidded eyes, passionate plump lips, breasts like twin Vesuviuses momentarily dormant, white skin smooth as ice but warm enough to melt the wax in your ears, a 37-ah, 22-oh, 36-wow steamy Italian pizza fresh from the Mediterranean oven, still cooking.
Better get cooking myself, I thought. Four minutes later my six feet, two inches and two hundred and six pounds were draped in a lightweight blue-gray suit, unstarched white-silk shirt—Italian silk, just for Antonia—splendidly bright Windsor-knotted tie, and gleaming Cordovans on my big feet.
I looked in the full-length mirror.
“Hot dog,” I said—but not because I was impressed with myself; I was still thinking about Antonia. Then, however, I took a good look in the mirror.
My short-cropped white hair was still combed straight up into the air, just as the barber had left it three days ago. I waggled the sharply angled white brows, twitched my slightly bent nose, stuck out my tongue.
Well, that’s life, I thought, that’s what thirty years of smog will do to a man. Nothing I could do about any of it. But my tongue looked great. Probably my best feature, I thought philosophically. Which put me in the same class as the guy with perfect feet.
I glanced at my short-barreled revolver and harness on the dresser, wondering if I should wear it. There are, strange to relate, numerous guys in Southern California who would like to kill me, for one reason or another, and I almost never go out among my enemies, men, without the heater handy. But I figured I wouldn’t need it tonight. Not with Antonia.
The phone rang again. I hopped to it, but this time it wasn’t Antonia. It was a guy named G. Raney Madison.
I had heard of G. Raney Madison; everybody except the newborn in Somaliland had heard of G. Raney Madison. But I not only hadn’t met him, I’d never seen him—except on the covers of Fortune, Time, and the local newspapers. He’d made millions in real estate, doubled his money in oil, plunged into and out of the stock market, endowed foundations, collected old masters and new Impressionists, and published a best-selling book, The Magnificent Leonardo, which even I had read and greatly enjoyed. He was worth at least fifty million bucks, I guessed, which must have been a comfort to him.
That was about all I knew of G. Raney Madison, but I was favorably impressed by the minute or so we spent on the phone.
After the preliminary hellos, he said, “I would appreciate it if you could come to my home this evening, Mr. Scott. I would like to discuss an important and highly confidential matter with you.”
“Well, I did have something … cooking.”
“I considered most of the private investigators in Los Angeles before deciding to phone you. However, if you are unavailable I can call the number-two man on my list.”
I wanted to ask him who the number-two man was. But I guessed it wasn’t all that important. Not if I was number one. I liked G. Raney already.
“Well…” I said.
“This is extraordinarily important.”
I sighed. “OK. I’ll come over. Actually, I just had a date tonight, is all. With a woman, I mean. I mean. But she’ll forgive me. I hope. Can you tell me what the problem is? On the phone?”
“I’d prefer not. I will say this. I have, shall we say, lost something. Something quite valuable.”
“Money?”
“Indirectly. Something worth, roughly, a quarter of a million dollars.”
I gulped. “That’s pretty rough.”
“You will be able to come to my home, then?”
“Almost immediately.”
I called Antonia back. “Darling, steel yourself for a catastrophe.”
“Oh?” She sounded suspicious.
“I can’t come over. You’ll forgive me, won’t you?”
“The hell with you.”
“Antonia, you don’t mean that. You know I’m like a—doctor. Got to be ready —”
“One of your other girls called you, I’ll bet a million —”
“I don’t know a million girls.”
“I meant dollars.”
“I don’t even know a million dollars. Not yet. Sweet, think of all we’ve —”
“The hell with you.”
“Antonia, darling.”
“Darling? Dar … Why, you pigheaded pizza, you can’t talk to me like that!” She’d hung up. Right after her second the-hell-with-you.
I went into the bedroom again, but this time I didn’t go hop-skip. It looked as if another case was starting.
Sometimes my jobs are enjoyable, even fun. But sometimes there are bullets in broad daylight, and knives in the night. Sometimes there is blood and pain and death. You never know.
And I could feel the faint chill, a kind of spine-stretching anticipation,
the beginning of that not unpleasant tension which never leaves me entirely until the case is over.
I got my gun harness, strapped it on, shrugged into my coat again. Then I went downstairs and out of the Spartan Apartment Hotel, climbed into my sky-blue Cadillac convertible, and headed for the Bel Air estate of G. Raney Madison.
I rarely have doors opened for me by butlers. This one was tall, thin, and quiet as a shadow. His “Good evening, sir” was smooth and cold as syrup on yesterday’s pancakes, and when I said “Shell Scott,” he did not brighten visibly. But he did pull the door open, and I went inside.
Mr. Madison was coming down a wide staircase approximately as far from me as the distance between my front door and my bedroom window. It was a roomy house.
He smiled and said, “You’re Mr. Scott?”
I told him I was, and he came on down the stairs. We shook hands as he said, “I hope your young lady will forgive you for coming here. You had to break a date?”
“Yeah, I broke it. I shattered it. But perhaps she’ll let bygones be bygones. I may need a signed, notarized statement from you, swearing you’re not a wild tomato, but … forget it.”
He looked puzzled momentarily, then said, “Shall we go into my den, Mr. Scott?”
It was small and warm. Books halfway up one wall, thick blue carpet, man-sized leather chairs. Two half-charred logs were in a small fireplace. Above the bookshelves the smooth dark paneling of the wall was bare, except for a couple of brackets as though for pictures. But no pictures.
We sat in the leather chairs and Mr. Madison offered me a cigar. I shook my head, lit a cigarette, and he got his thin cigar going. I knew Madison was fifty-four years old, but he could have passed for ten years less than that, more than ten in a dim light. He was five-nine or so, slim, his skin smooth and his eyes bright. He didn’t wear glasses, and still had plenty of hair, dark brown with a little gray in it.
“Are you acquainted with details of the recent auction held at the Hall-Warner Gallery in Pasadena?” he began.
“Auction?”
“Of paintings. Several valuable and well-known works were sold, among others a Gauguin, a minor El Greco, and a recently discovered drawing by Da Vinci.”
The Shell Scott Sampler Page 3
