Double in Trouble (The Shell Scott Mysteries)

by Richard S. Prather

  “No pressure, that’s good, I guess. I can leave, huh?”

  “Sure, Scott. After you spend the night.”

  “Ha. I can see me spending the night in this joint.”

  “I can see it, too.”

  He could see better than I could. I spent the night in the joint. But before the night had really started. I remembered Kelly. By that time I was in a pleasant private room, and the nurse—unfortunately, an old hag—hauled a phone in for me. I rang the Garden of Allah, got Kay Sheldon’s villa. Kelly answered on the first ring.

  “Shell, honey,” I said. “Everything all right?”

  “Yes. Except my nerves are hanging out. I’ve been waiting and waiting for you to call. Where are you, Shell? I’ve been worried about you.”

  “I’ll tell you. But first, everything is now under control. All is dandy.”

  “Now, what do you mean, now?”

  “Well, I got shot at. Are you listening?”

  “What happened!”

  “Like I said, I got shot at. In, actually. A mere bagatelle, but I’m in the hospital—”

  "Shell! In the hospital?"

  “I told you, all is dandy. I just wanted you to know why I won’t be around tonight. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Are you badly hurt?”

  “Of course not. It was just a flesh wound, anyway. They shot my head, but all it hit was fat. A glancing blow, at that.”

  “You must be all right. I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re not hurt at all. What does your nurse look like? You have a nurse, I suppose.”

  “I suppose,” I said, thinking of my nurse. “Did you miss me?”

  “Of course.” Her voice got gentle. “Shell, you’re really all right? Will you ... look the same?”

  “Yes, unfortunately. Except to an extremely tall man looking down at me. It’s really nothing. See you tomorrow.”

  “Oh, Shell! Can’t you be serious?”

  “Tomorrow. Tomorrow I’ll be serious. Good-by, honey.”

  “’Bye...” But she didn’t hang up just then. First she said a few things in her soft, cool voice, the voice that kind of pattered, I thought, lightly over the words. Kelly was less shy on the phone. And her words were sweet.

  I was discharged from the L.A. County Hospital, with a bandaged headache, at eight a.m., Wednesday, December 16. Fully dressed, up to and including a loaded .38 Colt Special, I walked down the hospital steps. First, though, I looked all around very carefully. From now on I was going to look around very carefully.

  While in the hospital I’d done some phoning, without learning anything new. The police had no lead to the men who’d shot me, and were getting nowhere on the Braun Thorn killing. I had by now phoned the Ambassador Hotel twenty or thirty times, and had left my number for Alexis to call. But she had not been in at any of those times, and there’d been no call from her for me. It was as though she hadn’t even come to my apartment, almost as if she’d never existed. And for the first time I began thinking, seriously, that she might be dead.

  I was still wearing the clothes I’d had on when Kelly and I had enjoyed our drink at the Garden of Allah bar, so I went to the Spartan and changed clothes, then concentrated on the search for Dr. Gideon Frost. I phoned, or later saw, all my contacts who’d been running down leads to Frost. There were blanks from every check I’d gotten under way, all the leads had come to dead ends. From Downtown I phoned the Spartan again—and this time B had left his message. Bitsy. I dialed his number and waited anxiously. When he answered the phone, relief swept over me.

  “This is Scott, Bitsy. Did you get it?”

  “Yeah. That dude was tougher to find than canned goods in a cat-house. But I made him.”

  I didn’t ask him how. You don’t ask the Bitsy’s how. I said, “Who and where?”

  “Blue Eye Louie, 1266 Guirado, Apartment 14 upstairs in back.”

  The rest of it was easy.

  Guirado is in the Boyle Heights district of Los Angeles. I found Blue Eye there, told him who I was and why I’d called on him, and that Ragen’s gunmen were probably not far behind me. He’d been a friend of Braun’s and knew my name, so in a couple of minutes he told me his story. Braun had asked him to blow the safe at Ragen’s home; he didn’t know why, but because of his liking for Braun he’d done the job Saturday night. He’d left Braun at Ragen’s, at nearly midnight, but before leaving got a look at some of the stuff inside the safe. Blue Eye told me there were some papers, but the thing he got a good look at was some tapes.

  When Blue Eye reached that point I asked him, “What kind of tapes?”

  “Recording tape. Like for music, you know?” He grinned. “Don’t seem likely it was music, does it?”

  “Not in a crib. Especially Ragen’s crib. These were regular spools of recording tape then?”

  He nodded. “Braun grabbed those first thing. Excited. Stuffed them in his pockets and that was the last I saw. When I left he was digging into the box, looking for more.” He looked at the floor. “I didn’t think there’d be no trouble. I should of stayed with him.”

  “Don’t blame yourself, Louie. You just did what Braun asked you to. That’s the way he wanted it.”

  He stood up, put out his cigarette. “That’s all of it, Scott. Time we were moving.”

  A little after three p.m. I reached the Garden of Allah, walked past the big swimming pool and on to Kelly’s villa. She let me in, and it was five minutes before we got away from the door. After things settled down, and I’d showed her the neat white bandage on my skull—hardly noticeable in my white hair, I thought—and explained all that needed explaining, we sat on the low, modern divan and had a highball. It was so pleasant that I could hardly get up and leave. In fact, I didn’t get up and leave. Not right away, that is.

  I reached the National Brotherhood of Truckers, Southern California Local 280, minutes before five p.m. Nobody shot at me on the way in.

  Most of the people were gone by this time, but Tootsie, good old Tootsie, was still at her post, I leaned on the counter and said, “Hi.”

  She looked up and her eyes got wide. “Shell. I heard about—you shouldn’t be here!"

  “I know. I’m supposed to be at Macduffy’s.”

  “Macduffy’s?”

  “Yeah, they call him the greedy undertaker. He’s even got an installment plan ‘Pay now—Go Later.’ But I fooled—”

  “I mean it’s dangerous for you to be here.”

  “I believe you, Tootsie. Anyone here I know?”

  “Just me and a couple truckers in the hall, Shell. You—you’re all right? I thought I’d die when I found out what happened.” She looked seriously at me.

  “Sure, I’m fine, Tootsie. Anything develop on what we were talking about yesterday?”

  “Yes.” She nodded emphatically. “Sure did.” She got up from behind her desk and walked over to the counter, a billowing mass of womanhood. She looked down the hall, then spoke softly to me. “I’ve got a lot of friends in the Brotherhood, several in the National office in Washington, and I talk to D.C. by phone quite a bit, you know. So I phoned D.C. a few times, routine calls, and asked what was going on. I just finished talking to one of the girls there.” She shook her head. “I thought we were having excitement here, but there must be as much or more in Washington.”

  “Excitement?”

  “You asked about Townsend Holt, remember? He’s dead. He was murdered today.”

  It came at me so suddenly that I just stared at Tootsie. I felt my jaw sag slightly and I said dully, “Murdered? Somebody knocked him off?”

  “Only a few hours ago. It just happened.”

  I didn’t say anything for a while. I sure wouldn’t talk to Holt now, not in D.C. or anywhere else. But, more and more, things happening out here pointed straight to Washington, D.C. Washington and the National office of the Brotherhood—and Mike Sand. Washington and Holt. Washington and the Hartsell Committee. For a moment the thought brushed my mind: Washington and Dr. Frost ... maybe
?

  Tootsie was saying almost gaily, as if excited, herself, “I heard that other name again, too. That Drum you asked me about.”

  Mentally I added: Washington, and Chet Drum. “What about him?”

  “I just hung up the phone before you walked in, Shell. An old girl friend of mine works in the Truckers’ Headquarters on New Jersey Avenue there in D.C. She’s in Public Relations, and when she heard about Holt getting killed, she naturally checked, talked to the police and all.”

  “That’s part of her job?”

  “Not exactly. She works under Hope Derleth, Townsend Holt’s number-two man in Publicity.” Tootsie smiled slightly. “Only she doesn’t look anything like a man. I’ve seen her. Wow. Anyway, Holt wasn’t there—naturally; he was off in Front Royal. And Hope Derleth was gone, too, so my friend was temporarily in charge of the office. Well, when your Public Relations Director is murdered, that’s about the worst public relations you can get.”

  “It sure isn’t good.”

  “So she learned everything she could from the police and all and she said that just a couple of hours or so after they found Holt’s body, the police took this Drum to jail.”

  “Jail? Where?”

  “Right there in the town where it happened! Holt was killed in a place called Front Royal, Virginia. That’s where this Drum was jailed. His name is Chester Drum, by the way. He’s a detective.”

  “Yeah. I know that. Why’d they lock him up? He kill the guy?”

  “My friend didn’t know anything about that. But here’s the funny thing. Do you know who Eric Torgesen is?”

  “Any relation to Nels Torgesen?”

  “His son.”

  Nels Torgesen, I knew, had been for years the crooked national president of the Brotherhood of Truckers. It was not likely that son Eric was a fine, true-blue, upstanding All-American Boy.

  “Around five o’clock Drum was released from jail. The man who arranged his release was Eric Torgesen.”

  I lit a cigarette, had a few puffs in silence. Then I squinted at Tootsie. “You said he was sprung about five o’clock. It’s barely five now.”

  “Here it is. Back there it’s—” she looked at a watch on her fleshy wrist—"six minutes after eight p.m.”

  That was right. I’d forgotten the three-hour time difference. So Drum had already been out of the can for three hours. No telling what the guy had done by now. Maybe he’d even killed a couple more people. I said, “Hear anything about Frost? Dr. Gideon Frost?”

  “I asked, Shell, but I couldn’t find out anything. Just that nobody back there seems to know where he is.”

  “You ever hear of Dr. Frost’s daughter, Alexis?”

  She shook her head. “That’s all I was able to learn, Shell.”

  “That’s all? It’s enough.”

  She smiled, pleased. Looking happily at me she said, “Would you say I came up with something really good, Shell?”

  “You bet it’s good, honey. You really came through for me in fine style.”

  She smiled one of those wide, happy smiles of hers. Too bad she wasn’t better looking. And about fifty pounds lighter. She was really a nice gal.

  “And I appreciate it,” I added. “I don’t know how I’ll ever be able to thank you, Tootsie.”

  The smile got a little pinched, and she gave me an odd look. Not exactly odd, just ... different. I didn’t get it. She looked as if she’d remembered this was her day off, and she shouldn’t have been working. Or a small ant had bitten her. Or as if a tooth had just started hurting her. That was probably the closest; it was the kind of expression people get on their faces when a tooth gives a small sharp twinge.

  “Well,” I said, “I’ve got a busy night ahead of me.”

  She was still looking at me.

  I said, “What’s the matter?”

  “Oh. Oh, nothing.” She glanced away, then back at me. “I guess I was just thinking that you look a little bit like Cesare Lombardi.”

  “Lombardi?” Then I remembered the name. He was the egg in The Dying Gladiator. I grinned at her. “You mean I look like I’m dying?”

  “No. I just ... Is there anything else I could do?” Her voice sounded funny.

  “You’ve done plenty, honey. I don’t suppose you’ve heard any news of Ragen or his monkeys.”

  “No. If I hear anything, you could call me.”

  “Okay. Don’t go asking any more questions. Just keep your ears open, that’s all. Don’t take any chances.”

  She didn’t say anything.

  “So long,” I said. “I’ll see you around.”

  Tootsie still didn’t say anything. I went out.

  I stopped in a bar, had a beer and phoned a man named Patrick Donovan, a member of the Truckers union, and driver for Pioneer Trucking lines. He’d been Braun Thorn’s closest friend. I told Pat I was having trouble locating Ragen and his gunmen, Mink and Candy, asked him if he could lend a hand by putting some of the other truckers to work looking for signs of the bums. He was enthusiastic about the idea, said he could probably find forty or fifty men who would keep their eyes peeled for Ragen and Company.

  I hung up, finished my beer and started to leave. As I passed the end of the bar a guy sitting there opened a newspaper and began to read the front page. Something on the page caught my eye and stopped me. I stared.

  When I got it, when it penetrated, it shook me. It really shook me. Without thinking, I grabbed the newspaper, jerked it from the man’s hands.

  “Hey!” he yelled.

  I was staring at the paper, at a picture heading the left-hand column, at the caption and start of the story beneath.

  The guy grabbed at the paper. “What the hell are you—”

  I blinked at him. “I’m sorry. Really. But ... just a minute. Let me look at this, please.”

  He started to say something, shrugged and told me to go ahead. I looked over the story again, and the picture. I couldn’t understand. It was too crazy—twisted, even. I didn’t get it. But it was there in black and white. There wasn’t any doubt about it.

  The picture was of my client, Alexis Frost. And the caption told the rest of it.

  My lovely client was—Mrs. Mike Sand.

  Ten minutes later I was still in the bar. Before me was another beer and a copy of the L.A. Examiner in which the story was front-paged. It was headed double trouble for union leader, and the picture showed Alexis Frost—"Mrs. Mike Sand”—standing by her husband. The picture had been taken several months back and showed Sand in trunks.

  I had never met Sand, though I’d seen photos of him before. Never, however, in trunks. And, especially in trunks, he looked like a guy I wouldn’t ordinarily want to meet. The face was one to bruise eyeballs and knuckles, hard and aggressive, with heavy-lidded eyes and a solid, belligerent chin above a bull neck. His black hair was short-cropped, and so was he short-cropped, but even though he wasn’t tall the shoulders would have been large on a six-footer. He had muscles all over him, and his chest looked as if it was made of hair.

  Alexis was wearing a two-piece bathing suit, and it would have pleased me, normally, to look upon such an interesting photograph. It was interesting even now, but it didn’t please me.

  In fact, I was so little pleased that I mashed the paper together in my hands. This I had to think about for a while. Alexis Frost—Mrs. Mike Sand. No wonder I hadn’t been able to find her; she hadn’t wanted me to find her. It seemed almost certain now that she’d been acting for her husband when she’d hired me. I smoothed out the crumpled newspaper, read the article again. It didn’t give me anything new this time. The first paragraph indicated that Sand and his wife were on the outs; but the way it looked to me they were still in, and deep. It also told me that former Truckers President Nels Torgesen now resided in Virginia. Front Royal was in Virginia. That was where Townsend Holt had been murdered, and where Chet Drum had been jailed, to be sprung by Torgesen’s son.

  I found a phone booth and called the L.A. Examiner, got one
of their top reporters and feature writers. We’d done business before, and I told him who I was, asked if he knew anything about Dr. Gideon Frost and his daughter.

  “Sure, Shell,” he said. “I’m just doing a piece on the missing doctor. You got anything for me there? Hear you’re looking for the man.”

  “I am, but I haven’t anything to pass on, except a headache. How come you’re doing a piece?”

  “The guy was supposed to show for the Hartsell thing in D.C. and he’s suddenly missing. Looks like another racket story there to me. Frost is the surprise witness Hartsell promised a while back.”

  “Not much surprise any more,” I said. “Where’d you get that?”

  “Hartsell just released it. Reluctantly, I imagine, but the only thing he could do under the circumstances. If the horse is stolen, it can’t hurt to open the barn door now. It’ll be in the morning editions.”

  “I just found out Dr. Frost’s daughter is married to Mike Sand.”

  “So did the rest of us. Married and maybe about to be unmarried, according to the latest.”

  “Isn’t it kind of peculiar that Dr. Gideon Frost’s daughter, of all people, would be hitched to one of the biggest crooks in the union field?”

  “In one way, yes. I guess you know Frost is one of the top labor experts in the country.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Great fighter for the legitimate rights of labor, against the illegitimate demands of labor, and all that. The way I’ve pieced the story together. Shell, this Frost spotted Mike Sand way back—well before he helped shove Torgesen out and took over the Truckers—as a bad one, and a guy who might make the grade. It worried Frost, and it seems he talked about Sand so much, his daughter got interested. Or maybe curious is a better word.”

  “Interested, apparently. She married the thug.”