Double in Trouble (The Shell Scott Mysteries)

by Richard S. Prather

  Double in Trouble

  A Shell Scott Mystery

  Richard Prather

  Contents

  Me? I'm—Shell Scott

  The Name's Chester Drum

  Scott Shells It Out

  The Goons Beat Drum

  Shell Scott Shoots Off His Mouth

  Chester Drum Is Hoodwinked

  High-Flying Scott

  Drum Is Fit To Be Tied

  Shell Scott Catches It Cold

  Chester Drum Plays It Cool

  Broad-Minded Scott

  Drum Sticks His Neck Out

  Shell Scott Looks At The Bare Facts

  Chester Drum Strings Along The Brass

  Scott Takes The High Road

  Drum Gets A Kick Out Of Scott

  Shell Scott Sweeps Up Some Crumbs

  Chester Drum Beats Up Some Yeggs

  Scott Dresses To Kill

  Drum Feels Beat

  Shell Scott And Chester Drum Hit It Off

  Two Private Eyes Out Of Focus

  The Whites Of Their Eyes

  Scott And Drum Kill An Evening

  The Eyes Have It

  Shell Scott And Chester Drum

  For RICHARD CARROLL

  ME? I’M—SHELL SCOTT

  Hollywood, 3:00 A.M., Monday, December 14

  I’m a private eye.

  Most of you know me. You know I work out of Los Angeles and my cases are usually in the L.A.-Hollywood menagerie, that I’m six-two and two-hundred and five pounds, with inch-long white hair sprouting cropped-wheat fashion over my head and upside-down white V’s I call eyebrows, that I like bourbon-and-water and rare prime ribs, that I’m happy-go-lookie and my favorite hangouts are women.

  You’ve gone along with me while I got slugged on the head—and the heart. While I met unbelievably lovely women and believably unlovely men, chased and got chased, shot and got shot, invaded nudist camps, and even flew through trees like Tarzan and dangled from airborne balloons.

  There was much of the same this time. Much of the same—plus something more. This time I met Chet Drum.

  Most of you know Chet Drum, too, the private eye who works out of Washington, D.C., with the world his beat. We didn’t just meet; we collided. And when Chet Drum and I collided, blood flowed like bourbon, guys died like flies, and we set off the wildest gang war this side of the Syndicate assassinating the Mafia—with us in the middle.

  But it all started when that beautiful blonde rang the chimes at the door of my Hollywood apartment.

  The chimes going off bonged me slightly awake. I crawled out of bed and staggered around, grumbling, got my bearings and clumped in darkness over the bedroom’s black carpet, over the living room’s yellow-gold carpet with the thick shag nap that tickles feet—and has tickled lots of feet—and up to the front door. I flicked on the light, leaned against the door and closed my eyes.

  Maybe if I didn’t say anything, it would go away.

  The chimes bonged again.

  “Okay, okay,” I said, cracked the door and peeked around it, trying to focus the one peeking eye.

  “Mr. Scott? Are you Sheldon Scott?”

  “Yeah.”

  It was a woman’s voice. I could see her sort of blurrily, and she was a tall one, ample, curving, protruding, projecting, sweeping and swooping—in a word, stacked. All that, I could see from one sleep-doped half-lidded eye.

  She watched the eye as if it fascinated her. Then she blurted, “It’s dreadfully important, let me in.” She even got off a word or two like “kidnaped ... awful ... ghastly.” I got the fuzzy impression she was talking about her father. She sounded badly frightened.

  But I wasn’t about to let her in, not immediately. First I had to at least put some pants on. I sleep in nothing at all—I’m a sleep faddist—and I had tottered out there without even grabbing a robe. So I said, “Yeah. Just a minute.” I shook my head. “What time is it?”

  “Three o’clock in the morning.”

  “There’s no such hour as three o’clock in the morning.”

  Silence. Then, “You’re the detective, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Please let me in.”

  “Just a minute.”

  I moved my eye away from the door-crack, fully intending to go put some pants on and splash water on my face and heat the coffee pot—maybe even shave and shower. I really didn’t know exactly what the hell I was going to do at that point, but as I moved back half a step the gal clunked into the door and leaped in very rapidly.

  She eyeballed me with eyes I noticed in a flash were bright blue and lovely and extremely wide, getting extremely wider and wider, and then she let out a great shout and spun around clapping both hands over her eyes, and leaped out of the apartment even more rapidly than she’d leaped in. Crash, went the door.

  Well, my eyes were pretty wide, too, by that time. I raced to the bedroom and grabbed a robe, trotted to the front door again. I opened it a bit and looked out. She was still there. And this time, awakening, and using both eyes, I got the message: long healthy blonde hair hanging full and loose behind her head, a stray loop brushing the clean whiteness of her face; skin the smooth ivory of rich whipped cream; lips that were full, well shaped, and looked warm. And now I noticed the marks of strain and fear in her face, the knitted brows, hands clasping and unclasping. She had bitten her lipstick off, too. It didn’t make her lips seem pale, though; they just looked nude.

  I threw the door wide. “Hello, hello. Good morning. Good three o’clock in the morning. Come in, miss. Miss?”

  She didn’t smile. She didn’t do anything except walk inside. She blinked at my white hair, my slightly broken nose, on down to my big bare feet—they’re too big, really, especially bare—and then up to my face again. Not however, as if discovering something gay and modern and exciting, but rather as if studying a crumbling old statue in a museum.

  “You really are Sheldon Scott, aren’t you? You really are the detective?”

  “Yeah, I really am. Is that ... so horrible?” She had lit the fire, but was starting to put it out. I am not crazy to have well-stacked blondes study me like crumbling old statues.

  “I ... just didn’t know what you looked like. You’re, well, not exactly what I expected.”

  I’m usually not, worse luck. Well, now she knew what I looked like. Thinking about it, I had to stifle a grin. She must have been thinking there with me, because she was also suppressing a smile.

  With her nude lips curving up at the corners, she said, “For one thing, you’re so tall, so—” she smothered a chuckle—"so big. I rather expected a little short man.”

  “Well, I ... have elevator feet. I suppose I should cover them up with socks, or old gunnysacks—”

  “No, it’s all right. I don’t mind ... feet.”

  It sounded sort of weird. And she was still looking me up and down. There must be something, I said to myself, uneasily. So I looked me up and down. Of course. It was the robe. I had grabbed it in the dark, and it is the robe I wear only on intimate occasions—when the two of you sit on the floor drinking gin out of Martini glasses, or Martinis out of gin glasses, playing wild Oriental-type music over the big Altec-Lansing speakers, and playing the kind of games two play when you sit on the floor drinking, and so on.

  It was red and white and had a purple green-eyed dragon on it, and the dragon was breathing fire on fleeing Oriental tomatoes, whose wispy garments were not of asbestos. “I can’t seem to do anything right this morning,” I said. “I didn’t know I had this robe on.”

&n
bsp; She started to smile again.

  “I mean,” I said, “I didn’t know I had this robe on. I would never have worn it. Ah ... I usually only wear it in the dark. I mean, ah.”

  “It’s all right. I rather like it.”

  “You do? Well, now that you’ve admitted it, I’ll tell you the truth. I’m crazy about it. It was a gift, anyhow. You know what they say, give a man enough robe.... Little French-Chinese gal named Fou-Fou gave it to me. Bought it in Hong Kong for me. Never did know her last name. Just called her Fou-Fou Manchu. I don’t know why I’m telling you all this. Perhaps I can get out of this mire if you’ll tell me what to call you.”

  “Oh.” She seemed to come back from somewhere. “I’m Alexis Frost.” She paused. For a little while there she’d been more relaxed, the worry lines in her face had smoothed. But suddenly they came back. She looked frightened again. “I ... almost forgot, for a moment, why I came here, Mr. Scott.”

  “Shell.”

  “It’s my father. I think something’s happened to him. Something awful. He’s not at his home. I’m afraid he’s been killed, or—”

  She was getting all wound up again, her voice rising. I said quietly, “Please sit down. Miss Frost. Is it Miss or Mrs.?”

  She smiled, but without much warmth this time. “Miss. I’m not married.” She silently worried her lip.

  I left her briefly, threw on some clothes. When I went back into the living room Alexis was looking around. She examined the two tanks of colorful tropical fish to the left of the door, and the gaudy yard-square nude of “Amelia” on the opposite wall above my fake fireplace. She reacted normally for a woman. Audibly, with approval of the pretty little fishes; inaudibly, but with eloquently disapproving eyes and mouth for Amelia. She glanced around a moment more, then walked to the monstrous chocolate-brown divan and sat down. I joined her, tried to size her up. She wore a knitted wool dress, and knitted wool on a well-shaped woman does perhaps more than any other cloth to emphasize the charming hills and valleys, the provocations and undulations, of the well-shaped woman. This Alexis had the landscape, but there was something missing. Something—I didn’t know what.

  She was a big, healthy tomato with plenty of tomato juice in her, but somehow without all the usual seasoning. It was as if the bold promise in Alexis’ curves was given with Alexis’ fingers crossed; as if she were a gal who would surely wear gauzy and frilly and enticing wisps—but that the fact would remain a matter for conjecture. And there was a hint of chill in her blue eyes, just a hint. They weren’t the blue of spring skies, but of thin winter ice. The beauty was there, but it was a kind of unthawed beauty. Or maybe I was goofy. Maybe she merely required defrosting, like a refrigerator.

  I said, “Now, what’s the trouble. Miss Frost?”

  “I went to see my father tonight. He lives near here, on Harvard Boulevard. When I arrived, he wasn’t there. We had something to discuss, something important. He would have been there if he possibly could.” She paused. “But he’s gone. And his house has been searched.”

  “Why would anybody search your father’s house? Who is he, anyway?”

  She turned the blue eyes on me and said, “It isn’t just that his house was searched. There’s more to it than that. Do you know anything about the Hartsell Committee?”

  “Sure. Quite a bit, in fact.”

  Technically the committee Alexis had referred to was composed of members from both the Labor and Welfare Committee and the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the U.S. Senate, but the popular name was “Hartsell Committee” after its chairman. Senator Blair Hartsell. For two years or so the Committee had been turning up corruption in labor-management relations, and another series of hearings was scheduled to begin in Washington, D.C., on Monday, December 21. This was Sunday night—actually early Monday morning now, the 14th of December—so those hearings would begin a week from today.

  The target this time was the National Brotherhood of Truckers, the biggest and, for my money, most corrupt union in the national picture, headed by a tough, hard-boiled union boss named Mike Sand.

  Although I’d never had anything to do with Sand or the Brotherhood’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., I had banged against the muggs who ran the local here in L.A. There were so many crooks in Local 280, the Los Angeles Truckers local, that in my job I’d tangled with the officials or their goons on several occasions.

  Another of the personal reasons for my interest in the Truckers, and what Hartsell might turn up, was that one of my best friends, a red-haired Irishman named Braun Thorn, was a dues-paying member of the Truckers L.A. local. But he paid the dues—because he had to pay them or lose his job—under loud and continuing protest. He was perhaps the most vocal of the rank-and-filers actively opposed to the corrupt local leadership, and had thus become, literally, a Thorn in the union’s side here.

  Twice in the last two years, following up leads Braun had given me, I’d tangled—inconclusively—with the local’s leadership, and its president, an ex-con named Ragen. John Ragen. And he and his fellow officials were almost as much fun as a knife in the back.

  I mentioned some of that to Alexis, ending it with, “So I know quite a lot about the local boys, and a little about the national operation.”

  “That makes it easier to explain. You probably know then, that Senator Hartsell announced he would produce a surprise witness when the hearings begin again.”

  “Uh-huh. Got a little play in the newspapers. Supposed to be bad news for the Truckers, something like that.”

  “Yes. The surprise witness is—or was—to be Dr. Gideon Frost. He’s my father.”

  She’d hooked me. The big labor racketeers look with a bloodshot eye—often their shot, your blood—upon people who can accurately testify that they are, in fact, big labor racketeers. I’d heard Frost’s name, but knew only that he was an authority on labor-management relations, some kind of economist or professor who had made a massive study of the labor movement.

  I looked at Alexis. “You said he was to be a surprise witness. The way I got it, nobody except Hartsell and a few others knew who the surprise was going to be.”

  Alexis said slowly, “Yes. It wasn’t supposed to be known until he appeared before the Committee and actually testified. Partly to—for his own protection. But, well, these things leak out sometimes.” She paused, turned those blue eyes on me again. “I don’t even know yet if you’ll help me, Mr. Scott.”

  “Shell, Sure, I’ll do all I can.” I told Alexis she’d hired a private investigator and we settled my fee. Then I asked her if she’d gone to the police. She hadn’t.

  “If you have to talk to the police,” she said, “try to avoid connecting Dad’s disappearance, if that’s what it is, with the Hartsell Committee’s work. And you must give me your word to keep my name entirely out of your investigation. Don’t tell anybody that I came to see you, or hired you. I mustn’t be involved at all.”

  “Want to tell me why?”

  “I’ve good reasons. They have nothing to do with your investigation, Mr. Scott.”

  I let it ride. “You’re pretty sure that if your father’s in trouble, it’s because he was going to testify against the Truckers, right?”

  She nodded. “And there’s no question in my mind. He is in terrible danger—if he isn’t already dead.”

  “I don’t know much about Dr. Frost except that he was going to hack at the union boys. Could he have drawn blood?”

  “Gallons.”

  “Okay. I’ll check out the Truckers. Any specific suggestions?”

  “Only the obvious one, Mike Sand.” She moistened her lips. “Not only my father’s testimony, but the whole Hartsell Committee Hearings, are aiming at him, because he’s the president. Him specifically, the union generally. Others, too, but mainly Mike Sand.”

  Alexis told me what she could about her father: his address, description, habits and so on. Then she stood up to go.

  “Where can I get in touch with you. Miss Frost?” Us
ually by this time it would have been Shell and Alexis. But to her I was still Mr. Scott, and that thin ice in her eyes kept me calling her Miss Frost.

  “I’m registered at the Ambassador Hotel, Mr. Scott.”

  “Shell?” It didn’t work this time, either.

  She went to the door and I let her out.

  I stood there thinking about it all for a minute, then shrugged, stepped into the hall and locked the apartment door behind me.

  The Spartan Apartment Hotel is on North Rossmore in Hollywood, a couple of minutes’ drive from Hollywood and Vine. My late model Cadillac, a sky-blue convertible coupe, was parked a short distance down Rossmore. As I walked out of the Spartan, Alexis was just leaving in her taxi. A block down Rossmore to my right a car pulled away from the curb, moving in shadow. Something was odd about the car, but it didn’t register right away. I was wondering about Alexis. After years of talking to people, interrogating witnesses, sifting the truth from lies, a guy develops a sort of invisible nostril, which sniffs the fishy exclusively. And mine was now twitching. There’d been something fishy about Alexis, or her story. But I didn’t have any idea what it was.

  I walked toward the Cad, and the car I’d noticed seconds before passed me on the street, continued on in the direction Alexis’ cab had taken. And then I figured out what had seemed odd about it. The car was a new gray Buick sedan—and its lights were out. As Alexis’ cab disappeared around a turn in the road, the Buick’s lights went on and it jumped forward as the driver stepped on the gas. I’d noticed two men in the car, but that was all, just two forms.

  I sprinted to the Cad, jumped in and whipped it around in a U-turn, jammed down the gas pedal. Half a minute later I spotted both cars, the cab at a stop sign, the Buick half a block back. I pulled up close behind the Buick as it slowed for a sign, tried to read the license number. I couldn’t. The plate was smeared with mud. Mud. It hadn’t rained in L.A. for three weeks.

  I followed the two cars as they swung left and then turned into a side street. I started to close in on the Buick again—and it turned right. The parade was suddenly two cars, just the cab and me. I shook my head and grinned. Me and my invisible nostril. So the Buick’s owner hadn’t washed his car in months. Of such acorn items are oakish clues made.