Double in Trouble (The Shell Scott Mysteries)

by Richard S. Prather

  Egg. That made me think of breakfast. I am not much of a guy for breakfast, since it always tastes lousy. And eggs are for the birds. In fact, breakfast is for the birds. But I figured I would surprise Kelly. I surprised her. At precisely nine-fifteen that Tuesday morning she called from the bedroom, “Shell? Shell?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I smell smoke. Is something burning?”

  “Well ... yeah. But don’t worry. I can handle it.”

  “What’s burning?”

  “Well, some toast and...”

  “And?”

  “Oh, potatoes, and eggs, things like that.”

  “It’s all burning?”

  “Yeah. Don’t worry. I can handle it.”

  I heard some thumping sounds and scraping movements and the click of a door. In a moment Kelly, her flaming hair tangled, green eyes still a little heavy with sleep, walked barefooted into the kitchenette. She’d found an old robe of mine and had it, tentlike, around her. It dragged on the floor. She wrinkled her abundantly freckled nose and blinked at the shambles of my kitchenette. It was pretty shambled, and you wouldn’t believe how smoky.

  I was just drying off the toaster when she came in.

  “What in the world are you doing?” she asked me.

  “Drying off the toaster.”

  She shook her head. “Do you mean to say you washed the toaster?”

  “Of course not. Who would wash a toaster? I just happened to drop it in some water in the sink and it blew a fuse.”

  She closed her eyes and looked pained. Then she fixed her eyes on me again and said, “Shell, how did you just happen to drop the toaster in some water?”

  “I pushed the toast down a second time and forgot it. When it started to smoke I upended it over the sink to shake the toast out, and it sort of slipped. While I was putting another fuse in, so it would go again, the potatoes got a little ... ruined. Then by that time the eggs—”

  “Never mind, Shell. You go sit in the corner. I’ll fix breakfast.”

  “I thought I’d have everything all ready for you,” I said brightly.

  She looked at the blackened toast floating in the water, the eggs which now might well have been fungused Betta eggs, and the little-ruined potatoes. Then she grinned at me, and the grin widened. “I appreciate it. Shell. I’d appreciate it if you’d go sit in the corner, too.”

  Kelly didn’t say anything else, but her eyes were eloquent. She shooed me out and fifteen minutes later we sat down to breakfast. And I mean breakfast. I don’t know where she found all the fixings, but we had orange juice, then fluffy omelettes stuffed with cheese and bacon and some little crunchy doo-dads I never did identify, but which were delicious. Plus oven-baked pineapple rounds, and golden buttered toast. It was ambrosial.

  No wonder I’d never gone for breakfasts. I hadn’t been having breakfasts. Halfway through gustatorial ecstasy I said, “Kelly, I have been living in a fool’s paradise of burned toast and mush, or eggs sunny-side all over. This proves it. I need a woman around the house.”

  “You sure do,” she said. Then she added, “I mean ... I suppose so.”

  Suddenly she was very shy. Her eyes met mine only briefly, then moved away. It was a pleasant breakfast, but when the excitement of putting all the kitchen fires out had worn off, Kelly became quite a bit more subdued.

  The phone rang. It was Chester Drum calling from Washington, D.C.

  Three minutes later I slammed the receiver down on the hook.

  Kelly was cleaning up the kitchenette. Now she called, “What’s the matter. Shell?”

  “Plenty. And it’s all Chet Drum. That call was from him, in D.C.”

  “Who’s Chet Drum?”

  “I wish I knew. Twenty-four hours ago I thought he was a pretty good private eye. Now I don’t know. Last night I heard Ragen talking about him—and just now Drum tried to find out if I know where Dr. Frost is, who’d hired me to find him. And then the slob had the gall to threaten me with a subpoena.” I felt the heat boiling up in me again as I thought about it.

  “How can a private detective subpoena you?”

  “Claims he’s working for Hartsell. Maybe he is. Ragen would like nothing better than to plant one of his men inside the Committee.” And how, I thought; that would tell Ragen everything he wanted to know, including the name of Hartsell’s surprise witness. Dr. Frost.

  The picture in my mind was getting even uglier, when the phone rang again. The guy calling was a little ex-cannon named Bitsy, one of the boys I’d phoned yesterday morning.

  I said, “You got something, Bitsy?”

  “Nothin’ on the Braun thing or that doc.” He had a high, weak voice. “But you asked about any rumble on them Trucker ghees.”

  “Yeah.” I sat up straight.

  “I don’t know if it’s nothin’, but I’ll pass it on. A couple of Trucker organizers been askin’ around today about a box-man supposed to of turned a trick Saturday night.”

  A box-man in Bitsy’s parlance was a safe-cracker. Saturday night was when Braun had swiped the stuff from Ragen. And all of a sudden it hit me. The obvious thing. The answer. The big thing I’d completely missed.

  “Bitsy,” I said, “did they find him? You know who the pete-man is?”

  “No. I only just heard this—”

  “Where was the can?”

  “I dunno.”

  “Let’s talk money, Bitsy. How much to make you go all out on this? I’m in a sweat, I want to know who did the job, and fast. So name it.”

  After a few seconds of silence he said, “A couple C’s?”

  “Done. And Bitsy, don’t keep it to yourself—you won’t lose by it. Spread it around. No matter where it comes from, you still get the two bills. And a bill for whoever gives me the steer. But I want it fast, see?”

  “Okay. I ... think I know where to go, Scott. To get the rest of it. But them ghees lookin’ for the box-man is droppers. Makes it a tough gaff.”

  Droppers—hired killers. I said, “Bitsy, I’ve got to get to him before they do.”

  “Yeah, it figures. He won’t be much good if you don’t.”

  “You’ve already got a hundred coming for this. Get to work on the two C’s.”

  “I’m there, man. Call you?”

  “If you get anything, call here and tell the desk I’m to get in touch with B. Then I’ll ring you. And I’ll check with you during the day, besides.”

  “Okay.” We hung up.

  Kelly had perched beside me on the couch. “What was that?”

  “The most important part of any detective, policeman, sleuth, what have you. A tip from a tipster.”

  “Was it good?”

  “I think it was very good. But I only got part of it; I need a couple more. I think I know where to get one part, myself; Bitsy’s working on the other.”

  “I couldn’t understand all that talk. Just what happened?”

  “A safe-cracker blew open a safe Saturday night. Ragen’s boys are looking for him. To kill him, I think.” She didn’t get it. I said, “Honey, they’re looking for the guy who helped Braun.”

  She blinked at me, the green eyes opening wider. “How did you know somebody helped him?”

  “I didn’t until just now. But I should have. We know whatever Braun got from Ragen was plenty important, and that he got it Saturday night. It doesn’t make sense that it would be lying in a filing cabinet, or in a desk drawer where he could just walk in and grab it. Braun knew that, and got somebody to help him, somebody whose profession was or is undoing safes.” I lit a cigarette. “It’s an honorable profession in the—underworld.”

  She got it then. And caught up. “Then that man can tell you...”

  “Yeah, he can fill in some blanks. Tell me plenty, maybe. Maybe the most important part, what was in that safe.”

  “But you said somebody might—kill him.”

  “And how somebody might.”

  “How awful.”

  I dragged on my cigarette. “Maybe
it won’t happen. Bitsy’s digging right now. He might get the info for me in time. And he might get a bullet in the back of his head for his trouble.”

  She was obviously concerned about it. Her face was serious, eyes frowning. “He really might be killed,” she said, “And you just let him go.”

  “Yeah, I just let him go. In fact, I told him to make it snappy.” I looked at her and said slowly, “That’s the business, Kelly. My business. It goes on all the time.”

  She swallowed. “Somehow it didn’t seem real when you were talking on the phone. But now it’s ... real. And I don’t like it, Shell. I don’t think I like your business.”

  I jammed my cigarette out in the tray. “Sometimes I don’t like it myself. But it isn’t just my business, Kelly. It’s the way the world is—and there isn’t any ‘underworld,’ just this world, the pretty gift-wrapped one we’re in.”

  “Don’t yell at me.”

  “Who’s yelling.” I lowered my voice considerably and said, “I mean it’s not something hidden away, it’s the guy at the next table maybe, the fellow across the street or down the hall, a wino or a gal drinking champagne with a nice-looking boy who couldn’t possibly push dope. And, surprise, that’s how he got the money for the champagne.”

  I stopped, then said quietly, “I remember something Braun said to me once. He was talking about unions and even their rank and file, especially the Truckers but most of the others today, too. He said the trouble was they were out for all they could get, instead of all they could earn. Honey, there in a nutshell, Braun summed it up. And that is also, and precisely, why there’s an—underworld.”

  Finally she smiled slowly. “I don’t have to like your job, do I? Isn’t it enough if I just like you?”

  I grinned at her. “Honey, of that, I’ll take all I can get.” I stood up. “Ready to go?”

  “Ready.” She lifted her handbag. “Nothing to pack.”

  Last night I’d told Kelly I would be moving her to a hotel. While I was with her, my apartment was safe enough. But I was going to be roaming around today. And Mink and Candy just might find out I was gone, and come here a-calling. And so might Drum’s subpoena server.

  Before we left I called the Garden of Allah Hotel and reserved a villa for Miss Kay Sheldon. Then I hung up and said to Kelly, “Come on, Kay Sheldon. How’s that?”

  “Sounds sinister,” she said, smiling, and we left. I took pains to make certain I wasn’t tailed, and when I take pains, I am not tailed. After a while I drove up from La Cienega to the Sunset Strip, took a right to the Garden of Allah Hotel and wheeled in. In, and out of sight.

  That was one of the things I liked about the Garden of Allah. It’s big and sprawling, lovely, with a huge pool, and individual villas, complete with kitchen apartments, so that if she wanted to, Kelly could stay inside the villa and still eat.

  After Kelly had checked into a luxuriously furnished villa, she talked me into one drink at the bar. “I’ve never had a drink at a bar with you,” she said. “And I feel sinister.”

  It was fun. About five minutes of fun. And I would sure have enjoyed making it five hours. Maybe she was trying to hang onto this time now, put behind her momentarily all that had happened; but whatever the reason, she was gay, fun, quietly but effervescently wonderful.

  She finished her drink and looked at the lipstick-smeared rim of her glass, then got out lipstick and a mirror from her handbag and fixed her lips—being very sinister about it, glancing sideways at me from the soft green eyes and carrying on something awful. She picked up the napkin her glass had been on, one of the Garden of Allah napkins, with the little minarets and bearded Arab printed colorfully on it, and blotted her lips the way gals do.

  I looked at the delightful red mouth on the paper square and said, “Gad! Your lips look almost as good off you as on you!”

  “I know your kind,” Kelly said airily. “You do that with all napkins.”

  “Only yours, Kelly.”

  She folded the paper into a small square, stuck it into my coat’s breast pocket and said, “Then keep this to remind you. And don’t look at any other lips. You can’t play fast and loose with sinister Kay Sheldon.”

  I grinned. “It’s a deal.” I actually took the napkin out, looked at it—and stuck it back into my pocket. Sometimes I haven’t a brain in my head.

  Ragen lived in the Hollywood Hills in a sprawling fourteen-room pile almost as luxurious as the Garden of Allah. I knew that he also owned a private plane, a twin-engined DC-3 he used for “union business,” and a thirty-eight foot Chris Craft inboard cruiser. He really made a dues-dollar go a long way. I had already phoned his home without any response, so I drove up the white-graveled half-moon drive, stopped before the white steps leading up to the big white double doors and let the Cad’s engine idle while I pushed on the horn with the butt of my Colt Special.

  Nothing happened. I cut the engine, opened the trunk, got my kit of pick-locks from the trunk and went around behind the house. In two minutes I had the back door open. Nobody was home. I put the Colt back in its holster, started prowling. The safe was in a big room up on the second floor, a room with dark-wood panelling on the walls, massive furniture, thick coral carpeting, and a built-in bar. The bar was in one corner of the room, and the safe was behind the bar; it had been behind a wooden panel in the wall. But now the heavy steel door hung crookedly from its hinges, warped, edge discolored from the blast. It had been blasted, blown, a soup-job. Nitroglycerine, undoubtedly. The safe was empty.

  Now I knew why Ragen had seemed to talk so freely in his office Monday night. I had erroneously assumed that Braun had broken into the Truckers Building—not Ragen’s home. It had been to Ragen’s advantage that I continued to labor under that erroneous assumption, so he’d built it up for me, even to admitting that Braun had run into Mink. The big difference was that Braun must have run into Mink here, not down at the Brotherhood’s headquarters.

  So that wrapped this part of it up. The who and the when and the why and the where. All but the what. Bitsy, I thought, get me that guy with the what ... while he’s still alive.

  The smog was bad as I drove down Olympic into L.A. Smog is the foul belch of Los Angeles, blowing back into its face. And blowing into everybody else’s face for a hundred miles around. It bit at my eyes with its sharp, diseased teeth, bored into my lungs, cast an ugly pall over the city. I drove past Alvarado and swung into the lot alongside the Truckers building, parked and went up the tan cement walk to the wide glass doors.

  Just inside the door, on your right, is a small office, open to your view. There’s a wide counter, waist-high, and I leaned on it, looked beyond it to a couple of filing cabinets, a table, pine desk with papers, a typewriter, and a phone on it, and behind the desk a large swivel chair. In the chair, a large Tootsie Mellerbam. That is really her name. Tootsie Mellerbam. Maybe the Tootsie was a nickname, but nobody ever called her anything else.

  In all the years I’d been working the detective dodge in L.A., occasionally visiting the Truckers Hq. on one kind of business or another, Tootsie had been the gal just inside the door, even several years back when the hall had been on Maple Street.

  John Ragen had made sure the top men around him were jailbirds of his feather, but that didn’t apply to Tootsie. She was as honest as they come, an enormously efficient secretary. I liked her, and we got along very well.

  I said, “Hello, Tootsie.”

  “Shell. Haven’t seen you in a too-long time.”

  She smiled. It was a big smile, because Tootsie was a big gal. Somewhere between thirty and forty, she was very fat, but on her it almost looked good. I always thought of her as a very pleasant couple.

  “I was in the joint last night. Didn’t you hear?”

  She shook her head, plump cheeks wiggling a bit. “Should I have heard?”

  “Well, I knocked Happy Jack on his ear.”

  She opened her mouth wide and blinked her eyes at me. “What? Why?”

  “I think he
had Braun Thorn killed.”

  After a long pause she said, “You wouldn’t kid a girl.”

  “I wouldn’t kid a girl. Ragen here?” She shook her head. “Mink and Candy?”

  “Where he is, they are. They called in word they’d be out, but not out where. Shell, about Braun. We all heard what happened. But do you really think Ragen...”

  “Yeah. You ever hear of a man named Dr. Gideon Frost?”

  “No.”

  “Try a couple more names.” She nodded, and I said, “Try Townsend.”

  She frowned. “Sounds familiar. But I’m pretty sure it’s nobody here. Shell.”

  “Try another: Chester Drum. You know anything about him? Did Ragen ever mention him?”

  She thought about it, shook her head.

  “Okay,” I said. “You’re a good gal, Tootsie. And Braun was a good guy. If you knew, or picked up, anything that might help me tag the boys who gunned him down, you’d give it to me, wouldn’t you?”

  “You know it.”

  “Even if it was Ragen?”

  “Even if it was Ragen. Maybe especially. Even if it was Cesare Lombardi.” Cesare Lombardi was an Italian movie idol who practically gave Tootsie coronaries. She had seen his epic The Dying Gladiator four times, and cried every time he died.

  That was good enough for me. I said, “Has there been any noise about something stolen from the Truckers or from Ragen? Not just from this building here, but from Ragen’s home?”

  She shook her head. “No. What was stolen?”

  “There you have me. But according to Ragen, it’s no secret. Well, I’m going to take a look in back.”

  “Nobody there but Flo.” Her voice was mildly contemptuous.

  Flo was Ragen’s ‘personal’ secretary, and she was about as personal as a gal could get. She typed with two long red fingernails and wore lace pants, slit up the sides. Or so I’d heard. I nodded at Tootsie, walked on down the hall toward the glass doors I’d come through last night, turned left and stopped before Ragen’s office. I knocked, then went in.

  Flo was sitting in Ragen’s swivel chair, with her long, curving legs propped on his desk. She was quite a sight. She wore a tan blouse and brown skirt, and the blouse billowed out alarmingly, and the skirt hung away from her nyloned calves and un-nyloned thighs and so on. I could see a great deal, but let it merely be said that there could be no doubt that Flo was a girl.