“I don’t know any Alston. I don’t believe you. Besides, I am his one true love.”
“Yeah. Well, we’ll see.”
After my thunderous knock on Mrs. Otterman’s door in the Laguna Hotel, there were sudden sounds inside. Rustling, thumping, then footsteps coming toward us. The door opened and the shapely black-haired gal looked out, dark brows knit in a frown.
I pushed the door open and she said, “What’s the meaning of this?”
Her face was angry—but by that time I’d poured the infrared light over her and the evidence was unmistakable. Luminous streaks on her face and throat, her bare shoulders and the upper swell of her breasts.
With the door wide, both Ardith and I could see she wasn’t dressed to go out. She had a striped beach towel wrapped around her, beneath her arms and reaching down nearly to her knees, and quite clearly she wore nothing beneath it.
Ardith swept past me, and the black-haired tomato moved away from her. I stepped inside and slammed the door, then looked around and peeked into the john, but the room appeared empty except for the three of us.
Mrs. Otterman obviously didn’t know what was going on, and a little fright was beginning to show on her sensual face.
I stepped close to her, letting the light pour onto her face and shoulders, and glanced at Ardith. “Maybe Spaniel isn’t here now, but he sure as hell was here. Satisfied?”
She didn’t speak to me. She glared at Mrs. Otterman and said, “You bitch! Where’s Al?”
Al. She’d got it right that time.
“Al?” said Mrs. Otterman. “Who?”
These babes, they sure weren’t going to admit they knew Al. He trained his one true loves well. They weren’t going to talk about Al. Not much, they weren’t.
“You know who!” Ardith screamed.
Then in one swift movement she reached out, grabbed the beach towel, and yanked. It came free and Ardith threw it to the floor, pointed at Mrs. Otterman’s marvelous, jutting breasts, pointed here and there and practically everywhere, and yelled: “That Al, that’s who!”
Mrs. Otterman reacted automatically, I suppose.
The towel had barely hit the floor when she threw her right arm way back and out as if reaching for the brass ring on a merry-go-round, then swung it forward and thwack! She got Ardith on the cheek and knocked her halfway across the room.
But not down. Not down, and a long way from out.
“Eeee!” Ardith yelled, and charged at Mrs. Otterman. Sock, thwack! Slap!
“My Al!”
“Your Al? Why you —”
Thwack!
Friends, it was the battle of the decade. Maybe even the heavyweight championship of the century. It was glorious. Midway in the first round, Mrs. Otterman got one hand in Ardith’s red hair and another wound in her black dress and tried to yank them both off. She got the dress three fourths off, but couldn’t manage the hair, and by that time Ardith had kicked her in the stomach and knocked her flat on her back, going “Ooooph!” and gasping.
It was a combination of boxing, slapping, screaming and wrestling, and I saw a few blows and holds that not even I—with years of unarmed defense, judo, aikido, karate and unnamed systems behind me—had witnessed or even experimented with before.
Ardith lost the rest of her dress and finally was fighting to the death in a pair of black lace pants, which made it easy to tell her from Mrs. Otterman, who was wearing nothing except lots of Caress!
The fight ended when Ardith hit Mrs. Otterman with a ceramic lamp, then fell, exhausted, to her hands and knees. Mrs. Otterman lay flat on her back, eyes slowly opening and closing, and saying, “Gug … ahp…”
And then something sneezed, under the bed.
Something? I smiled.
“Come on out, Al,” I said.
He came out—but not like a man defeated, dejected, surrendering. He came out in a hurry, his handsome face contorted with rage, frustration—and perhaps a sense of irrevocable loss. He came out, onto his knees, up in a hurry, and at me swinging his right hand.
Even while swinging he got a glimpse of his two true loves in approximately equal states of nudity and sheer exhaustion on the floor, and he let out the cry of a wounded elk, then concentrated on knocking my block off.
But he didn’t concentrate hard enough. And he shouldn’t have swung that right hand at me in the first place. In fact, he shouldn’t have swung any hand at me.
It was a two-punch fight. His, which whistled by my ear as I bent my knees and pulled my head aside two or three inches, and mine which cracked on his chin with the sound of a baseball bat breaking.
Then Alston was sprawled next to the wall, silent; Mrs. Otterman was gasping her last “Gug…” and trying to struggle to a sitting position; and Ardith was still on her hands and knees, breathing like a long-distance runner.
I didn’t say anything for a while.
I looked at Alston, at Mrs. Otterman, at Ardith. I took a good look, since perhaps never again would such a sight present itself to my eyes, and I wanted to remember every little detail, in case I should some day write my autobiography.
Finally, having memorized all of Chapter One, clear up to the flashback, I said, “Well, girls, shall we now discuss this sensibly? Come, let us reason together….”
* * *
I caught up with Lupo—this time—in Dolly’s. Not at the Happy Time. Back where it had truly started. From Dolly’s, to the Happy Time, to Dolly’s again. But this was the really unhappy time for Lupo.
On the first occasion he’d merely been scared; and of course, now, I knew precisely why. At our second meeting he’d been horrified, afraid I was actually going to shoot him in the eye. But this time the jig was up, and he knew it.
He was already in a booth. Two men sat opposite him. His back was to me, but one of the other guys saw me striding their way and apparently told Lupo that a large, white-haired, fierce-looking individual was descending determinedly upon them.
Lupo craned his head around the side of the booth and spotted me. He just looked. He didn’t spring to his feet, or try to run, or do anything violent. Just looked. The Colt Special wasn’t in its holster; it was in my right-hand coat pocket and my hand was around it, but as it turned out I didn’t need it.
When I stopped by the booth Lupo looked up at me and said, very quietly, “Well?”
“I’ve got all of it, Lupo,” I said. “The Da Vinci bit, the m.o., who and why, even the phony lead to Spaniel. Hell, I even know who gave you the idea about Alston. I gave you the idea. Right?”
He raised one hand weakly and waved it at the two men, as though waving good-bye. Well, he was waving good-bye. They left.
I slid into the seat they’d vacated and said, “I’ll tell you about it, Lupo. I’ll even buy you a drink.”
“Thanks a bunch,” he said.
After the highballs arrived I said, “I’ll skip the details. Just let it be said that Alston Spaniel, true to form, had two women with him at Laguna, stashed in separate pads. And both of them told me everything they could think of about Al, which was plenty. I can account for virtually every minute of his time for the last forty-eight hours and more. For example, last night he was with one of them till about eight p.m., then went directly to the other one—what a life that man leads.”
“Yeah,” said Lupo gloomily.
“For a better example, I know that on Wednesday night—when I first asked you to listen around for rumbles about an art heist in Bel Air—Alston was with one of his lovelies from about five p.m. on. At the Hollywood Roosevelt by the way, not the Westmoreland, as you told me. Around ten thirty p.m. Al got a phone call from somebody, whereupon he and the lovely packed a couple bags and headed for Laguna Beach. He was with her constantly, and did not make any phone calls or go out into the city. In other words, Lupo, he did not and could not have contacted a killer or set up a hit. He didn’t send that gunman to blast me.”
Lupo moistened his lips but didn’t speak.
“Interestingly enough, the
killer didn’t even say Al Spaniel sent him to plug me. What he said when I asked him who sent him was, ‘Spaniel. He told me his name was Al Spaniel.’ Get that, Lupo. He told me, the bum said. Which means he didn’t know Al by sight, but merely accepted the word of the guy who hired him.”
I grinned. “Obviously he didn’t know you by sight, either, Lupo.”
He lifted his glass and I saw his Adam’s apple bounce as he took three or four successive swallows. When he put the glass down there was less than an inch of liquid left in it.
I went on, “I heard Alston talking to somebody on the phone last night about a two-thousand-buck payment, but I thought he was making the payment. Hell, he was getting the two G’s, wasn’t he, Lupo? Two G’s—from you, of course—for taking a quick expense-paid trip to Laguna. For leading me on a wild-goose chase. To get me out of L.A. while you disposed of the Da Vinci. Was that the whole payment, or were you going to give him enough to settle with Joe Pappa when you got your cut?”
He finished his drink, that was all.
I leaned forward. “You’re going to tell me, you know.”
He swallowed. “Yeah, I know. Go on. Or is that it?”
“Not by a long shot. Spaniel didn’t heist the Da Vinci, so who did? Spaniel didn’t send that hood gunning for me, so who did?”
“Maybe … maybe he did send the hood, Scott,” Lupo said hesitantly. “Just because he didn’t know by sight the person who hired —”
“Quit trying. There’s plenty more. For one thing, Spaniel didn’t get that phone call when he was with Ardith Mellow until a little after ten thirty.”
“Ardith Mellow? You’re kidding. Nobody can be named —”
“That’s her name. You must have seen Alston with her, in order to be able to describe her—and very well, by the way, a superbly fat redhead with green eyes, to change your description a little. But you didn’t get in touch with Spaniel the first time I talked to you. You just gave me a song and dance and got in touch with that hood instead. After I charged in on you the second time—still alive, and full of fun—then you called Al. The important point is, Spaniel didn’t get that call from you until after the hood had tried for me at the Spartan and missed. That hood was dead and all through bleeding by ten p.m.”
He rolled it around in his head, nodded slightly, looking depressed.
“Lupo, I told you I suspected three men of the heist, one of whom was Alston Spaniel. You yourself told me the only one of the three you contacted was Spaniel. So the guy who sent that hood to stop me—to stop me from getting to the guy who really stole that quarter-of-a-million-buck Da Vinci—was one of four men who knew I was on the prowl for it. And he was the one with the most to lose. Either Spaniel himself, you, a guy named Zeke to whom I told the same story I gave you, or my client. I arbitrarily eliminate Zeke for many good reasons. Good enough for me, anyway. It wouldn’t have been my client, says the simplest logic. From talking to Spaniel’s two tomatoes—and Spaniel himself, for that matter—I know it wasn’t Spaniel. That leaves you, Lupo.”
“I wish you were dead,” he said, almost brightly.
“Yeah, I know.”
“You want to buy me another drink, Scott?”
“Sure. I’ll buy you champagne if you want it. This is a night for celebration.”
He smiled sadly.
I ordered one more drink, for him. Mine was three fourths full. But that’s usually the way it is, you can almost look at the glasses and tell who’s been doing all the talking. Lupo’s turn was coming, though.
“Hell,” I said, “I should have realized Spaniel wouldn’t have been cavorting with two babes, not if he was preparing to get rid of a hot Da Vinci. Not even Alston Spaniel. And if he wasn’t selling the Da Vinci, who was? But there’s one more little item—then it’s your turn, Lupo.”
“What’s the item?”
“The first time I saw you Wednesday night, here in Dolly’s, you were at the bar, talking to a flabby, heavy-set man. He disappeared, almost immediately. The second time I saw you, in the Happy Time, a guy—who, I noted even then, looked much like the character I’d earlier seen with you in Dolly’s—was jawing with you. And he took off like a scared rabbit. Just like the first time. I’ll give you eight to five he was your customer, the guy you were dickering with about the price of the Da Vinci. How much did you get, by the way?”
Lupo was looking at his drink. Finally he raised his eyes and stared at me silently for maybe ten long seconds. Then he said, “A hundred thousand. He had it with him the second time you spotted us together. My cut was forty G’s.”
“Who took it off your hands for the hundred big ones?”
“Finster.”
At first the name didn’t register. Then I remembered where I’d heard it. Sure; it made sense. “OK, Lupo,” I said. “The rest of it.”
This time, while he talked, I did the drinking.
* * *
It was only a few minutes after eleven p.m. when G. Raney Madison once more opened the door of his Bel Air home and looked at me. Looked wearily at me. Undoubtedly the hours since I’d left here hadn’t been especially pleasant for him.
But then he turned his gaze toward the man with me and said, “Who is this gentleman, Mr. Scott?”
“He’s the guy who heisted your Da Vinci.”
Madison suddenly stopped looking weary.
Inside, we left Lupo standing before the big carved-wood doors and went on into the library. The whole gang was still gathered here, all looking uncomfortable. One of them, of course, exceedingly uncomfortable, even if the totality of discomfort failed to show clearly as yet.
I walked toward the group sitting on the divan or standing near it, and stopped.
“OK,” I yelled. “You can come on in.”
Then I turned and said pleasantly, “I want you to meet a friend of yours, George.”
Uh-huh. George. Even if I hadn’t already been sure it was young G. Raney Madison, Jr., I would have known from his reaction when he lamped Lupo. Already pale as milk, he clabbered. He got about the color of a winter turnip; his jaw sagged; breath sighed from his open mouth.
I merely noted all that, then turned to look at my client.
G. Raney Madison looked worse than Junior. I’d told him to be ready for anything, even for the worst; and I think probably he already knew, or at least feared he knew. None of that helped, though. He looked like a man beginning to die. And maybe he was, at that. Requite thee with death, I thought.
There was thick silence, which thickened some more.
It was broken only when George Raney Madison, Jr., said something.
It was just one word. But it was not a lovely word….
Theodore Finster—whom Madison had told me was one of the final three bidders on the Da Vinci—also lived, conveniently, in Bel Air. The trip to his home, and picking up the Da Vinci, was anticlimactic. It took less than thirty minutes for me to drive there, do the job, throw the fear of ghastly retribution into him, and drive back to Madison’s for the last time.
With the Da Vinci once more on the wall of his den, Madison turned from his examination of it, looking tired and old.
I said, “At this point it’s really none of my business, Mr. Madison. So just tell me to blow if you want to. But did you really believe it was Jim Chance?”
He hesitated before answering. Then he said, haltingly, “I think so. I know I wanted to believe it, painful as the thought was. The other was simply too —” He didn’t finish.
We were quiet for a while. I was thinking of George, who had liked the idea of upping his weekly allowance by approximately $60,000 for the week; and of Theodore Finster, unsuccessful bidder, who had liked the idea of buying a $280,000 Da Vinci for $100,000. And of Lupo, who was in it for $40,000. I couldn’t know what Mr. Madison was thinking, not for sure, but I had a pretty good idea.
Finally he said, “Did my—my son approach Mr. Finster?”
“No. It was his idea, but the guy he approached was Lupo.
”
“How did George happen to know such an individual?”
“He met him at Doll—well, at a bar. What he was doing there isn’t important now, but it’s important that he did meet Lupo, and knew quite a bit about him—for example, that he was an ex-art thief. At least, I thought he was ex. Maybe when George told him the setup it looked like too soft a touch to pass up. George did know, of course, who the other unsuccessful bidders were and passed the info on to Lupo. Lupo took it from there. In fact, he was still dickering with Finster when I walked in on them the first two times.”
“He really tried to have you killed?”
“Yeah. He knew—even if I didn’t then—that I’d seen him with Finster, with the guy who was going to buy the Da Vinci, which linked them together like handcuffs. Incidentally, George had phoned Lupo shortly before I found him, and told him I’d just been talking to you, and must be on the case—so when I walked in on Lupo he knew what I was after. He might even have thought I was already onto him. If I pinned the job on him he’d go back to the slammer, not to mention the fact that he’d lose his forty thousand clams—and guys have been killed for forty cents. Anyway, it gave him enough of a scare so he sent a wiper to poop me.” I paused. “Actually, if he hadn’t, I might not have gotten onto him. But he reacted like a guilty man, which is the hell of being guilty.”
“Poop?”
“To plug me, shoot, kill. To erase me entirely.”
“Yes. So this Mr. Spaniel you mentioned had nothing to do with the theft?”
“Nothing. Hell, he was too busy with—other things,” I finished. “It was clever enough of Lupo to send me on a wild-goose chase, sure, but what he did was listen to me tell him what I suspected and then feed it back to me. No wonder I believed it—it was my own idea. Lupo figured, correctly, that with all my attention focused on Spaniel I wouldn’t even think of checking on anybody else, including Lupo himself.”
“Mr. Scott,” Madison said soberly, “when I first spoke to you on the phone I said I knew of your reputation for getting things done, even though sometimes by unusual methods.”
The Shell Scott Sampler Page 8
