She let go of the bright, clever monologue. We looked at each other. Sometimes it is like that. What you plan is one thing and what you get is something very different and very much better. I took her hand. We turned as if this had all been staged, and moved through the doorway. Our hips bumped there. Then we were in the bedroom. Buttons ran down the back of the pale blue blouse. I took care of them. Her skin was pale and creamy smooth. She pivoted toward me and let me slide the blouse off her arms.
That was when the telephone extension on the night-table rang.
Neither one of us went quite so high as the ceiling. On the second ring Hope crouched for her blouse, scooped it up and quickly slipped into it, as if the phone had eyes. On the third ring she went around the bed, the blouse on backwards, parted in front. With one hand she held it together at her breasts, with the other she picked up the receiver.
“Hello?” She sounded breathless.
“Yes, Mr. Holt,” she said. “No, of course not. What calls? No, they haven’t been logged, you know that. Sure, of course, if you don’t want me to. Tomorrow? I see. I’ll meet you at the office. All right, yes. G’bye.”
Hope hung up and smiled at me over her shoulder. But her smile was shy now. “Talk about timing,” she said, making a face.
I sat on the edge of the bed and leaned over toward her. She got up shaking her head. “Not now. Please, Chet. He ... it kind of broke the spell, didn’t it?”
I didn’t say anything, but I didn’t push it. Hope’s cheeks were pink. She went on talking, rapidly, nervously. “Listen, I want you to know something. I was going to ... it started out ... the coldly calculating wench was going to use what appeal and talents she had to find out ... if my brother was in trouble ... but then all of a sudden...”
“You don’t have to tell me,” I said.
She went right on as if I hadn’t spoken. “All of a sudden it was different. All of a sudden I just ... plain wanted ... you.” Her face got even redder. “You must think I’m terrible.”
She was so damn contrite, as much about her deception as her wantonness, that I felt sorry for her. So I said, “It’s been a pretty rough day for both of us. Why don’t we just start from scratch, Hope? Dinner tonight?”
Seated with her back to me, she hadn’t moved. “Boy meets girl. I like the sound of that, Chet. But...”
Which was as far as she got. We both heard the front door open. Charlie Derleth called, “Hope? What are you doing home so early?”
Hope sprang up as if the mattress was straw and someone had touched a match to it. Her eyes searched wildly. There was the bathroom, but half my clothes were in there. Hope just stood rigidly. I took two big steps toward the bathroom when I heard Charlie Derleth shout from the bedroom doorway. Then he was pounding across the room at me, and I had to turn to meet him.
He wore a windbreaker, still zipped. The overhead light gleamed on his bald head. His jaw hung slack in amazement, his eyes were wide with rage. He telegraphed a right-handed haymaker from halfway across the room. He lunged and swung. It tore a sob from his throat. Missing me by two feet, he collided with the bathroom doorjamb.
Abacus Abbamonte stood in the bedroom doorway, almost filling it. He was still puffing from the climb up two flights of stairs. He wore a tweed topcoat, unbuttoned, and a white silk scarf. He was hatless. His girth, framed by the doorway, was something to see. He seemed almost as wide as he was tall. He looked like Nikita Khrushchev with a little hair.
He said; “Well, if the little sister ain’t home playing on office time.”
Hope’s face had gone blank. She was buttoning her blouse, not that it mattered.
Turning, Charlie swung on me again. When I caught his arm, he stumbled and went down to one knee. Tears of frustrated rage filled his eyes.
“Stop it, Charlie,” Hope said.
“You filthy little hooker!” he screamed at her. Veins stood out like white worms on his bald head. “After all I done for you, all I got to do is turn my back and...”
“You’re too loud,” I said, “and you’ve got it wrong.”
“You sonofabitch, don’t you tell me...”
“Chet, please,” Hope said quietly. “You’d better leave now. Please. I can take care of it. All right?”
I shrugged but let go of Charlie’s arm and started to turn. Hope sobbed. A small handgun had materialized like magic in Charlie’s right fist. “I’ll kill him,” he said. “I’ll kill the sonofabitch.”
Reluctantly Abacus Abbamonte drew his small eyes away from Hope’s body. He had been enjoying himself. “Now, Charlie,” he said, “be smart. No little bitch is worth it, not a wife, not a sister, not one of them. You put that gun away, Charlie.”
“Don’t tell me what to do, you fat slob!” Charlie cried.
Abacus Abbamonte moved. It was incredible. He must have weighed two hundred and sixty pounds, but he came across the room as if he weighed a third of that and had six legs. There was no place for Charlie to go, so Charlie stood waiting for him. He might have had time—but only just time—to use the gun. He didn’t. Abbamonte grabbed the gun and hit him with a shoulder. Charlie banged against the wall and off it and sat down at its base. The room shook. Abbamonte put the gun in his pocket.
He looked me over and then asked conversationally, “The boys wanted to kill you, huh? You got what they say a charmed life. Take it and get out of here while you still got it.”
Hope kneeled near her brother. His eyes were open but unfocused. I went into the bathroom and put on my undershirt, shirt and jacket. I stuffed my tie in a pocket. I looked at Hope’s blue-bowed glasses on the edge of the sink and went back to the bedroom.
“If that guy comes near you again I’m gonna kill him,” Charlie was telling Hope, his voice ragged. “I swear to God.”
“Will you be all right?” I asked Hope.
“Yes. Please go.”
“After you, Mr. Abbamonte,” I said.
He looked at me. Then he smiled. “Sure, what the hell. It can keep, Charlie. And Charlie? Don’t ever get in an uproar like that around me again, huh? Huh, Charlie? It ain’t so good for the blood pressure.”
We went out together. I got my coat in the living room and followed him downstairs. A black Caddy was parked outside and he climbed in ponderously. The rim of the steering wheel indented his belly. He started the motor, then rolled down the window. “Hey, grifter! The girlie’s got herself a nice build. She should be smart. She shouldn’t ought to waste it on a cheap grifter like you.”
I took a step toward him. He laughed. The car sped away smoothly and left me standing there in the lightly falling snow. I walked a couple of blocks and found a cab and went home.
Over my breakfast coffee I found a listing for Derleth, Charles in the phone book. I dialed it.
“Hello?” Hope said.
“This is Chet. How goes it?”
“I ... I feel like such a damn fool. Charlie calmed down a little, but first he paddled me. Maybe I deserved it at that.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Where’d the man go?” Hope asked lightly.
“When can I see you?”
“I don’t know. You know what will happen if Charlie finds us together. Besides, I’m worried about him.”
“Worried about him why?”
“Maybe you know he used to be a trucker. He always said anybody who became involved with Abacus Abbamonte had rocks in his head, but you saw how they came in together yesterday. Chet, what am I going to do?”
“You can start by packing your bags and getting out of there.”
“Oh no. I couldn’t do that.”
“If it’s Charlie you’re concerned about, I don’t know what you can do.”
“I guess I shouldn’t have asked. But I do want to see you again. Really.”
“I’ll call you,” I said, meaning it but feeling impotently angry about her attitude toward Charlie.
I made another call, this one to Senator Blair Hartsell’s home. The maid put
me through with reluctance.
“Morning, Senator. Sorry to bother you at home, but you’re a hard guy to get hold of at the office.”
“Always a pleasure talking to you, Chet,” he boomed. “What’s on your mind?”
“Know anything about a strategy conference of all the Brotherhood bigshots? One’s pending.”
“So I heard. We don’t know where or when.” Then the Senator added, “Tell you who really needs a strategy conference, though. The Hartsell Committee does.”
“Why?”
“Well, maybe Moody’s on to something in L.A. A guy was murdered out there Monday. Shot to death in the outskirts of L.A. He was a member of the L.A. local, but if he was on the take Moody never heard about it. Guy name of Braun Thorn. And the damn thing is, Moody saw Thorn visiting Gideon Frost a couple of times.”
“How come? Was Frost being watched?”
“Sure we were watching him. For his own protection. He managed to give Moody the slip when it mattered though.”
“Can you use the Thorn killing?”
“If we can prove a union tie-in we can.”
I thought about telling the Senator what I knew about the Hank Cambria killing, but decided against it. He’d put Moody’s opposite number in D.C. on it and with the two of us snooping around the case could clamshell on me. So all I said was, “Let’s hope you can, Senator.”
“Well, I like the sound of this strategy conference. If you can learn the where and the when, we’d like to know.” He chuckled. “We might even try to bug it. Keep in touch.”
I said I would. I had almost hung up when the Senator boomed, “Chet! About this Shell Scott guy now. It’s funny, him popping up just when Frost disappeared and right after Braun Thorn got shot to death. Maybe a couple of coincidences, but I don’t know. Moody thinks he may be involved in the Thorn killing. Ever look into it?”
“I gave him a call. He played it cagey, I don’t know why.”
“Want Moody to subpoena him?”
I thought of Scott playing it close to the vest—too close. “Why not?” I said.
“Okay, boy. Moody’ll serve the papers. Keep in touch.”
I hung up, wondering about Shell Scott. Before this case ended I would have my hands full of Scott, but of course I didn’t know that yet.
I spent an hour and a half in my office typing out the report on the Richmond case. It was eleven-thirty. I thought of Hope. I wanted to see her. I had no place to go, nothing to do, no medals to win. Nobody would care if I opened a hole in the ground, jumped in and pulled the hole in after me. “Cut it out,” I said out loud. There are days like this.
Just then the telephone rang. I picked it up on the first ring. “Drum speaking.”
“Mr. Chester Drum? One moment please for Front Royal, Virginia.”
I didn’t know anyone in Front Royal, a town in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. I waited with the whispering sounds of the long distance circuits against my left ear.
“Chet? This is Hope.”
“You’re in Front Royal?” I asked stupidly.
“Thank God I reached you.” Her voice was strange, utterly without inflection.
“What happened?”
“Townsend Holt wanted me to come out here. The Nels Torgesen place in Front Royal.” Torgesen was the deposed president of the National Brotherhood of Truckers who had stepped down a few years back in favor of Mike Sand. There was talk that by resigning Torgesen had avoided a prison sentence.
“They murdered him,” Hope said.
“Who? Did you call the cops?”
“I can’t. Charlie...”
“Charlie’s been killed?”
“No. Charlie, he ... Please come, Chet. Come to me. I can’t call the cops. Come to me, Chet.”
Then I was holding a dead line in my hands. I placed the receiver back on its cradle and buckled on my shoulder rig. The revolver that fitted the holster was a new one, a .44 Magnum. Compared to it my old .357 Magnum was a pea-shooter, and except for the .44 Magnum there is no handgun with a greater muzzle velocity than the .357. Some people like powerful cars. I like powerful guns, and the .44 Magnum had enough stopping power, like a rifle, to knock you down if it hit you anyplace at all. Foolish, inconsequential thoughts. I felt foolish and inconsequential. Hope was two hours away at top speed in a fast car. She needed me.
In the hall the elevator indicator pointed to the first floor. I hit the fire-stairs on the run and sprinted down seven flights to the street.
I got there in just over two hours, driving on ice and snow most of the way. A traffic cop in Front Royal directed me to the Torgesen place, which stood a quarter of a mile back from and above the road to Shenandoah Park. It was a big white rectangular box of a house with a pillared portico out front. Two cars were parked in the driveway, a Chevy and a Rambler. But there were other tire tracks, and footprints too. I parked behind the Rambler, got my Magnum clear of its rig and ran over the snow toward the house.
The door was not quite big enough to get a dinosaur through. It opened just before I reached it. A small, slat-thin, hard-faced man in a cop’s whipcord uniform stood just inside. If the .44 Magnum in my hand did anything to him, such as making him miss a heartbeat, his face didn’t show it.
“You-all better give me that thing and come inside, mister,” he said. He had a rasping voice that went with the hard face but not with the Virginia drawl.
He held his hand out. It was a small hand. The skin looked like leather. I didn’t give him the Magnum. He shrugged and turned his back, on it, as if he knew I would follow him meekly. I spun around. A uniformed figure was running through the snow toward my car. Another one passed him on the run, heading toward me. This one held a revolver that trailed a lanyard from its butt to his belt in his hand.
“Drop it, mister!” he shouted.
He came up to me panting. I gave him the Magnum. Scowling down at it, he said, “What the hell you doing with a Magnum, planning to hunt rhino?”
The slat-thin, hard-faced cop turned around and laughed. He stood in a dim hallway just beyond the door. At the far end of the hall light glowed and I could see the gleam of sun on glass.
“Lets have a make on him, Lindzey,” the little hard-faced cop said in that odd mixture of rasp and drawl.
The cop called Lindzey put my Magnum .44 in his coat pocket and showed me the palm of his hand. I put my wallet on it. He went through the cards quickly. “Chester Drum,” he said. “Private detective license 2487, D.C. Private detective license 480, Commonwealth of Virginia.” He gave me back the wallet. “A double-barrel private-eye, Lieutenant Ballinger.”
“You-all better step inside,” Ballinger said.
I followed him along the hallway. Lindzey followed me. We went into a large room at the back of the house. It had a big sweep of floor-to-ceiling window. Through it I could see three police cruisers with Front Royal markings and a hearse or an ambulance parked out back.
The room was cluttered with massive leather and dark wood furniture. There was a bearskin rug in front of the fireplace, and on it under a tarp lay a body. A man sat hunched over a teak desk drawing a diagram of the room on blueprint paper. Between him and the body on the rug a stand of fireplace tools lay on its side. The wrought-iron shovel and brush were where they belonged. The heavy poker was on the floor between the tool-stand and the body. Its black tip gleamed dully with blood.
“Where’s Torgesen?” Lieutenant Ballinger asked me. “I don’t know.”
“You-all work for him?”
“No. I never even met him.”
“What are you doing here then?”
I reached for my wallet again. That made Lindzey reach for his gun. “Take it easy,” I said. “All I want is the wallet. There was something you missed.”
I showed Ballinger the Special Investigator ID card I’d got from Senator Hartsell’s office. “That’s what I’m doing here.”
Ballinger gave the card back to me. He stooped suddenly over the body and pu
lled the tarp back. “Know him?” he said. I looked, and shook my head. The dead man had been young, not out of his thirties. No one had shut his blankly staring eyes. Something hard and heavy—probably the poker—had dented the side of his head above the left ear. There wasn’t much blood.
“Name of Townsend Holt,” Lindzey said.
“You-all investigating him?” Ballinger asked me.
“Among other things,” I said. I wondered where Hope was. If they knew she’d been here, they kept the fact to themselves. “The nature of my investigation is confidential. Why not check me out with the Hartsell Committee?”
Lindzey looked at Ballinger, who shrugged. “A Senate Investigation?” Lindzey said. “It ends at murder, don’t it?”
“Exactly what were you-all doing down here?” Ballinger asked.
“Confidential work for the Hartsell Committee,” I told him.
“One of those,” Lindzey said. “Downtown, Lieutenant?”
Ballinger nodded slowly. “I reckon.”
They took me outside the back way. The air was cold and bracing, the sky clear. You could see a long way to the white humps and ridges of mountains in Shenandoah Park.
“You hit him in the head?” Lindzey asked suddenly.
“Sure. I came back here because I figured this was the best place to hide out.”
Lindzey got into the back of one of the police cruisers with me. The heater was on. A driver sat over the wheel in front.
“You know where,” Lindzey said.
We started rolling.
HIGH-FLYING SCOTT
Los Angeles, 1:30 P.M., Tuesday, December 15
I came to slowly, painfully. Throbbingly and achingly, I came to. And wouldn’t you know? I was thinking about Flo’s lace pants, slit up the sides.
Gradually it filtered back. From the Truckers’ building to the parking lot ... the gunshot, sight of the car across Olympic ... then the second shot. And blackness.
I hadn’t died after all. They’d missed my brain. Of course, it would take a real sharpshooter to hit my brain. I finally figured out where I was: the Los Angeles County Hospital down near Mission Road. There I underwent numerous awesome tests. Later I got the word. The word was, “Nasty blow, Scott, but there’s no pressure on the brain, no damage.” The speaker was a doctor, whom I knew, since I know a couple dozen of docs at the County.
Double in Trouble (The Shell Scott Mysteries) Page 10
