The Shell Scott Sampler

by Richard S. Prather

  The one who’d been waiting to take my car check had simply run about a block, then come back. When I talked to the young guy who’d been trotting toward the lot he said, “I heard the shooting and plain hit the deck.” He’d hit it pretty hard; his chin was skinned and a little blood had dripped onto his shirt and tie.

  “What about the car?” I asked him. “The guy must have been parked in the lot for several minutes. In fact, I’m pretty sure I saw him drive up and turn in there.”

  “So did I,” he said. “But the kids come here to neck sometimes. Usually after closing, but not always. It’s a great view, what the hell?” He shrugged. “I figured that’s all it was. Why would I worry about it? Some guys like to park their own cars. Who’d think some nut would start shooting the place up?”

  He was right, of course. Who would? More important from my point of view, who’d really been the target? Blaik—or me?

  Those slugs had covered a pretty wide area. The bullet that nicked my left hand had either been fired at me or else the gunman had missed Blaik by at least four or five feet. Another of those slugs had whistled past close to my head, too.

  Judging by the spot from which the shots had been fired, it must have been one of those bullets going past me which had hit Lynn. She was lucky not to be dead right now. For that matter, so was I.

  I could think of several reasons why guys with guns might want to knock me off; but if the creep had been trying for me he’d missed me by several feet with at least one slug—the one that killed Blaik. And, vice versa, if he’d been aiming for Blaik. It was, of course, possible that somebody had a motive for wanting Blaik dead; but I couldn’t think of a single reason why any man would want to kill both of us.

  I was sure of a couple things, though: Blaik was dead; and, if the gunman had killed him by mistake, he knew he’d missed me. Missed me, and still had to get me.

  By the time I’d finished talking to officers at the scene and driven to the Police Building in downtown L.A., it was after nine p.m. and the story was on all the news broadcasts and telecasts. The bare facts were covered: Blaik killed; his companion Lynn Duncan shot and taken to the Emergency Receiving Hospital with a concussion and possible skull fracture; Shell Scott and Miss Jasmine Porter had escaped serious injury.

  But there was a good deal of conjecture, too. In part because Blaik had been a well-known attorney, but mainly because I had been involved, not for the first time, in a shooting. At least one commentator wondered audibly why I had been with Blaik, and covered the same point in my mind by adding, “It is not yet known whether the fusillade of bullets was intended for Vincent Blaik or for Shell Scott, who was wounded in the hand. But the police are confident —” and so on.

  I hadn’t exactly been wounded in the hand, but in more like a thirty-second of an inch of skin. The commentator had also made it sound as if a whole army of hoodlums had been shooting up the county. Of course, for all I knew there could have been two, or more, people in the car at that. I hadn’t really seen anything except muzzle blast and a glimpse of the car itself.

  I took the elevator to the third floor and walked down the hall to the Homicide squadroom.

  Samson was in his office, solid jaw wiggling as he chewed on one of his uniquely foul-smelling, but fortunately unlighted, black cigars. As I walked in he flicked the sharp brown eyes at me, continued growling into the phone.

  When he hung up he took the well-chewed cigar from his wide mouth and gazed upon me with exaggerated distaste. “I think an invisible black bird follows you around, from time to time swooping down on the corpses which litter your path —”

  “Sam, I’m wounded.”

  “Wounded!”

  “It said so on the broadcasts.”

  He swore for several seconds remarkable for their richness, then said sincerely, “Undoubtedly some would-be benefactor of all mankind was trying to kill you, and unfortunately managed to shoot Blaik instead.” He stuck the cigar back into his mouth. “You took your time getting here.”

  “Well, first I had to staunch the flow of my hot blood,” I said. “And then I was there at the scene of the crime, Sam, cooperating with the forces of law and order, decency and justice. Namely, the fuzz. Then I had to see that my girl got home —”

  “Ahk,” he ejaculated. “You and your girls.”

  “What’s wrong with girls?”

  He proceeded to tell me more of what was wrong with me. Finally he said, “All right, tell me what you think happened. And how you’ve managed to solve the crime already.”

  “Well, I haven’t solved it yet, Sam. I’m all at sea, would you believe it? But here are the facts.” I told him what had happened.

  “Jazz hadn’t met Blaik,” I finished, “and I didn’t know the girl he was with. But Jazz did. Seems the Duncan gal works at a bar and restaurant called the Skylight Lounge. Part of a private country club and estates, homes on the golf course and such. She’s a waitress out there.”

  “Where’d she meet Blaik?”

  “Beats me. I talked to Jazz after the shooting, but she didn’t know much about her. Met Lynn when she was at the Lounge for dinner a couple of times.”

  Samson ran a hand over his iron-gray hair. “That’s all you got?”

  I nodded. “You dig up anything on Blaik since I phoned?”

  “Well, I’ll give it to you the way I got it. About six thirty this evening a lady phoned the Hollywood Division to ask about her husband. She’d been expecting him all afternoon, but he hadn’t shown up and she was worried about him. Far as we know, he still hasn’t shown.”

  “So tell Missing Persons. Why tell me, Sam?”

  “The lady’s name was Moulder. Mrs. Georgina Moulder.”

  I kept on looking blank. “That’s wonderful.”

  “Wife of Leslie Moulder.”

  “Leslie Moulder, huh? How about that? Good old—wait a minute.” I stopped. “He’s the boy fell for theft, or embezzlement … went to Q a year or so back?”

  “You got it. Grand theft, sentenced to San Quentin.”

  It was the kind of case I don’t pay special attention to ordinarily, and it had been in the newspapers last summer. But I remembered a little about it. Leslie Moulder had been accused of stealing twenty or thirty thousand bucks from a safe to which only he and one other man had the combination. The other man was out of town when the theft must have occurred, and was able to prove it. Other details were brought out at the trial, but Moulder’s defense, I recalled, had been little better than no defense at all. Anyhow, he’d been convicted and jugged.

  So far, so good. But I knew Sam wouldn’t be gassing without good reason, so I probed in memory some more. I remembered that Moulder and the other man had been partners. Moulder and … Gordon. Robert Gordon. Gordon was much the wealthier of the two. Moulder, though not exactly out of the chips, was a contractor, a builder and developer—but on a much smaller scale than Gordon, who had hotels and country-club estates all over the landscape.

  That jiggled another fact loose. Gordon and Moulder had cooperated in building one of those “country-club” developments here in Southern California. The Hollywood Hills Estates in Hollywood, in fact. Nine-hole golf course, clubhouse, homes on the fairways and such. Plus hotel-type accommodations, and a luxurious restaurant and bar, the Skylight Lounge.

  “I’ve made him,” I said. “Hollywood Hills Estates, Moulder and Robert Gordon. But wasn’t there something else? End of the trial…”

  Sam nodded. “When the verdict was read he raised a little hell.”

  “More than a little, if I recall—took a swing at his attorney, didn’t he? Yelled that the s.o.b. had sold him out—ah, Blaik. Hell, his attorney was Vincent Blaik.”

  Samson smiled. “The late Vincent Blaik, yes. Moulder took a swing at him, right there in the courtroom…”

  “Also swore he’d kill the s.o.b.—Moulder’s choice of words. Yelled it about three or four times, with some vehemence, if I correctly recall the reports.”

&nbs
p; “You do.”

  “OK, so what? Moulder’s languishing in Q … Wait a minute. Mrs. Moulder called the Hollywood boys? She was expecting her husband to show up this afternoon?”

  “You do get there in time, don’t you, Shell?” Samson sighed, rubbed his eyes for a moment. “That’s it. Moulder did his bit. He’s out.”

  “When?”

  “Today. Only a few hours ago. Not so few he couldn’t have made it to L.A. with some hours to spare, though.”

  I thought about it. “Well, I still say, so what? You don’t expect me to think you’d pay any attention to a threat made in anger more than a year ago, do you?”

  “Ordinarily maybe I wouldn’t. But we don’t have much else to go on.”

  It was true enough. But that old “I’ll kill you” line has been tossed at a large percentage of the attorneys, policemen, D.A.’s—and private detectives for that matter—in the country. And ninety-nine times out of a hundred it’s no more than hot air.

  Still, I thought, there’s always that one other time out of the hundred.

  “Something else interesting,” I said. “Moulder was one of the owners of the Hollywood Hills Estates, wherein is the Skylight Lounge, wherein it seems our Miss Lynn Duncan works. And the chap she was dining with tonight is the—late—attorney who defended Moulder.”

  “Who got sprung today. Yeah, we’re working on all of it.”

  “How is the Duncan girl?” I asked him.

  “In Emergency, last I checked. They’re fixing her head—but it’s not serious. She’ll make it.”

  “Moulder hasn’t shown up yet, huh?”

  “Not the last I heard. I called Mrs. Moulder myself a couple times. First time was over an hour ago. Couldn’t reach her then, but talked to her at eight thirty. Still no husband. Told me she was taking a shower when I called before. Now why would she tell me she was taking a shower?”

  I grinned. “Why, Sam?”

  “You, now, that I could understand. Even if she doesn’t know you, she must have heard about you. Aren’t you always talking to babes in showers?”

  “Only when they’re roomy enough for both of us. And there’s lots of hot water. And —”

  I cut it off, because Sam had dug out a big wooden match and was preparing to light his cigar.

  He knew I gagged on the effusion from those unbelievably foul smokes of his—which was why he lit them. He fired one up whenever he wanted to get rid of me. It always worked.

  “Sam,” I asked him, “what are those things made out of? Poison-ivy?”

  He’d got the end glowing. “They are manufactured from pure horse manure,” he said complacently.

  “Damn sick horses,” I said, out of my chair and edging away.

  He puffed, an expression of contentment spreading over his clean-shaven pink face.

  “You could get cancer in your fingers, you know,” I said. “Just from holding those things.” But by then I was at the open door.

  Usually Sam simply let me go, relishing his victory. But this time as I started out he said, “No need for you to meddle in the case now. Right, Shell? I won’t have to worry about you in my hair?”

  “Well, if it was that hundred-to-one chance, and Moulder did the shooting, I suppose I can relax and forget about it. But what if it wasn’t Moulder, old buddy? Besides, no matter who it was, I do not take kindly to fellows tossing pills so close to me as those pills were tossed tonight.”

  “I was afraid of that,” he said.

  Home is a comfortable three-rooms-and-bath in Hollywood’s Spartan Apartment Hotel, on North Rossmore opposite the grounds of the Wilshire Country Club. At ten minutes till ten I was unlocking the door of 212.

  The living-room phone was ringing, but by the time I got inside, walked over the yellow-gold carpet, flopped on the low chocolate-brown divan and grabbed the phone, nobody was on the other end of the line.

  So I mixed a healthy bourbon and water in the kitchenette, took it into the bathroom and drank it before, during and after a quick shower. I was half dressed when the phone rang again. This time I got to it on the second ring.

  “Mr. Scott?” It was a woman’s voice.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Oh, good. I’ve been trying to reach you for over an hour. Could you please come to see me? It’s dreadfully important.”

  “Well, I suppose so. I’m a little pressed for time, though. What’s it about?”

  “It’s—it concerns my husband. My name is Mrs. Moulder, and I have the most ghastly apprehension —”

  “What? I mean, you’re who?”

  “Mrs. Moulder.”

  “Mrs. Leslie Moulder?”

  There was a brief silence. Then she said, “Oh. You know about him, then.”

  “Know what about him?”

  “Well, he … It’s very embarrassing. I’d much prefer to tell you in person. Would you come to my home, Mr. Scott?”

  “Right away.”

  She gave me her address, one of the homes along the first fairway of the golf course at Hollywood Hills Estates. I finished dressing in a hurry, including my reloaded Colt. As I pushed the revolver into its holster a ridiculous thought occurred to me. Wouldn’t it be funny if, for a motive as yet incomprehensible to me, Leslie Moulder had in fact been the chap who’d shot at me earlier … and was now enlisting the aid of his freshly showered wife to lure me out onto the fairways, where with a double-barreled shotgun…

  I found the front door of the Moulder residence with ease, and with no shock other than the sight of Mrs. Moulder when she opened the door.

  Only seconds after I rang she threw the door wide and light spilled over me. It also spilled all around Mrs. Moulder. And though she was clad, she was not clad in enough to keep her warm should the temperature fall below eighty degrees.

  “Oh,” she said, as though disappointed. “Are you Mr. Scott?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She was gazing upon me the way people sometimes look at mangy dogs, shivering in the cold. “Oh,” she said again. Her shoulders slumped, and she sighed.

  “I am sorry, madam,” I said a bit stiffly, “but if you were expecting somebody who looks like Lord Byron, or even Sherlock Holmes —”

  “No, no, it’s not that. I thought perhaps it would be Leslie.”

  “Ah, I see. Well—no word from your husband yet?”

  “No, nothing.” She squinted at me. “How did you know I was expecting him?”

  “I just finished talking to the police, Mrs. Moulder. I had a rather interesting experience earlier this evening.”

  “You mean getting shot at?”

  “Yeah. You know what happened, huh?”

  “I heard it on several news programs. In fact, that’s why I called you. Because your name was mentioned. But…” She frowned. “You say you know I was expecting Leslie, because you’ve talked to the police? But that means—the police don’t suspect Leslie, do they? They can’t suspect Leslie!”

  She was stretching her features and wiggling them around, and waving her arms about, her voice screeching into the upper octaves.

  I said, “Do you mind if I come inside? I feel a little—I know it’s silly, really, but I’d rather not stand here in the doorway.”

  “Oh, of course.” She stepped back and as I went in shut the door behind me.

  A television set was glowing in the corner, on the screen four boys, or girls, thumping guitars and singing in what was apparently a brand-new key. The song appeared to be about an H-bomb that blew up the world: “…boom it went, a great big boooom!” But Mrs. Moulder walked to the set and turned the volume down just as the entertainers got to the last boom, which made it less scary.

  Standing before the set, Mrs. Moulder said, “I presume you know that my husband was sent to prison, and that he was released today?”

  “Yes. I’ve a general idea of the background.”

  “I’ve visited him every week or two during this past year. We planned to meet here this afternoon—he did no
t want me to meet him at the prison, but rather in … less ugly surroundings. You understand?”

  I nodded.

  She was a big, good-looking woman, about thirty or possibly a couple of years older. She had a pretty face. Not beautiful, but pretty, with very large wide-set eyes, long-lashed and dark, as her most striking feature. Most striking feature of her face, at least. Good nose, warm-looking mouth. She was made up, with rouge and lipstick and eye shadow artfully applied, as though ready to go out on the town. Not dressed to go out on the town, however.

  “We agreed he would fly from San Francisco to International Airport and take a taxicab from there. I arranged for him to have sufficient money. I was to be here, waiting for him, with…” She paused. “With everything ready for him.”

  She waved a hand toward a long, low, black divan. Before it, on the antique-gold-mirrored top of a wide table, sat a silver bucket in which was a bottle of champagne. Three vases of cut flowers added brightness and color to the room. The top of an intricately carved stereo set was raised and I could see a stack of records resting on the spindle.

  After a year in stir a man would greatly enjoy a drink, some champagne, music, even fresh flowers. Then there was, of course, Mrs. Moulder.

  She asked me to sit down, so I plunked onto the black divan. The ice in the champagne bucket had melted, I noticed.

  As Mrs. Moulder continued talking she began pacing the floor, which was rather an interesting occupation, since she was wearing a pale-blue negligee and thin robe or peignoir which did not entirely conceal the outlines, and even some of the inlines, of her undeniably lush and lovely figure.

  She had heavy breasts, high and pouter-pigeon plump, and now exceedingly active, as though endowed with a vigorous life of their own; a strong but not thick waist; full hips and long slim legs. As she paced back and forth she said, “It’s simply ghastly. I don’t know what to do. There’s been no word at all from him.”

  She clutched the front of her peignoir, squeezed it, released it. “He hasn’t even phoned me.”

  I didn’t say anything. It often takes even calm and collected women quite a while to get to the point.