Double in Trouble (The Shell Scott Mysteries)

by Richard S. Prather

“True, but that came later. First she was curious. Curious enough so she managed to meet the beast. Maybe she likes beasts. Anyway, that was it, the chemistry was there. Wham-bang, six months later they were married—secretly. Managed to keep it a secret, too, until now.” He paused, “You ever meet Sand?”

  “Not yet. I’m going to.”

  “I can understand what might have happened to the gal. I’ve met Sand several times. He’s not tall and handsome, not pretty to look at, but he’s enormously powerful. A vital, energetic egg—virile as a bull-rabbit, I hear. A lusty bastard. Hell, you figure it out.”

  “The way you tell it, it makes sense. Make some more for me. Where’s Alexis Frost—or Alexis Sand—now?”

  “I dunno. Frost originally lived in New York, came out here a dozen years or so ago. When the daughter got hitched to Sand she took up residence with him in D.C. Where she is now, I wouldn’t know. I’d like to know. See that shot of her in today’s late edition?”

  “Yeah, I saw it. She’s probably in D.C., huh?”

  “Could be.” He paused a moment. “That interview in D.C. was handled by a reporter on the Washington News-Herald, so it was likely there in D.C. He could tell you.” He gave me the reporter’s name.

  I thanked him, hung up and called Washington, D.C. The News-Herald gave me their reporter’s phone number and I caught him at home. He said Mrs. Mike Sand had been at the Statler when he’d interviewed her. I called the Statler. Yes, Mrs. Sand had a suite there; no, she was not in at the moment.

  I called Los Angeles International Airport, talked to the reservation clerk. He checked the passenger manifest for the Monday morning flight to Washington, D.C. An American Airlines Jet Flagship had left International Airport at eleven a.m., arriving in D.C. at six-thirty p.m. Monday, D.C. time. One of the passengers had been Alexis Frost.

  I was lucky enough to reserve a seat on the Mercury flight taking off from Inglewood for D.C. at eight-fifty-five p.m. Lucky, that’s me.

  Mike Lyman’s Flight Deck Grill at International Airport is softly lighted and provides a beautiful view, through big plate-glass windows, of the runways. I sat in the lounge section on the second floor, at a table beneath one of the windows, nursing a bourbon and water and the fine blue flame burning in me.

  There was quite enough to take me to Washington now even if Alexis wasn’t there. If she was, that settled it. I had twice long-distanced the Sand suite in the Statler without any answer. I had also phoned Kelly here, told her I was flying to Washington, and other less formal things. At eight-forty-five p.m., eleven-forty-five D.C. time and ten minutes before my flight was scheduled to leave, I tried the Statler once more. And got results.

  A man answered the phone in the Sand suite, and I said, “Hello, I’d like to speak to Alexis Sand.”

  “Scott? Shell Scott?”

  What the hell, I thought. I hadn’t mentioned my name—and that voice sounded familiar. Then I remembered where I’d heard it. He must have remembered, too. The man on the other end of the line was Chet Drum!

  And everything fell into place. Chet Drum in Mrs. Mike Sand’s Statler suite, minutes before midnight in D.C.—it fit the pattern now; it even had a kind of nauseating beauty. My hand tightened on the phone’s receiver as my thoughts nipped back over things that had happened in these last three days. When I added Drum to the picture they all made sense. Drum and Ragen. Drum and Holt. Drum in Front Royal. Drum sprung from jail by Torgesen’s son. Drum with Mrs. Sand. Drum with Alexis Frost.

  I said, not pleasantly, “Still going to slap me with a subpoena, Drum?”

  “Unless you tell us who your client is.”

  “I already told you I can’t spill that to anybody. And especially not to you.”

  “That makes sense—if your client is a punk named Ragen.”

  This guy was out of his skull. I said, “Drum, you sound sick. If Mrs. Sand is there, put her on.”

  “Use your head, Scott, and cooperate with us. We’re having enough trouble without—”

  “The ‘we’ being Sand, Torgesen, and the rest of your chums, huh?”

  “You’re a little mixed up, aren’t you?”

  “Not any more. And I guess you know now what you can do with that subpoena.”

  “What’s the matter, don’t you believe in constitutional democracy?”

  “Not your kind.”

  “Scott, I’m getting more than a little tired of you.”

  My steely control slipped just a fraction. About nine-tenths. “Then get the hell off the phone and put Mrs. Sand on. Kick her out of bed if you have to, but put that woman on.” I was kind of roaring, I decided.

  There was a great crashing sound and for a moment I was sure it had punctured my eardrum. At first I thought he’d hung up. But in a minute the soft voice I remembered from early Monday morning in my apartment caressed my punctured eardrum.

  “Mr. Scott?”

  It was Alexis. That was really all I’d wanted to know. She was there. With Drum at that.

  “Yeah, this is Shell Scott, Mrs. Sand. Or Alexis Frost. The lady who didn’t know anything about Mike Sand.”

  “I ... can explain that. Our marriage was secret until a reporter caught me here Monday night.”

  “Hell, I can explain it now.”

  She said, “Have you any news of my father?”

  “No. But if I did, you wouldn’t really expect me to tell you, would you?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You don’t, huh? All right, then, since you say you can explain, explain about the two muggs who followed you away from my apartment Monday morning. And took a couple shots at me.”

  She gasped. “You’re lying.”

  That did it. There wasn’t time for more, anyway. There’d be time in D.C. I said, “Good-by, Mrs. Sand. For now.” Then I hung up and sprinted for the plane.

  I barely made it, but I made it. I got my seat belt fastened, the surge of powerful jets started pushing us down the runway. In four and a half hours I would be in Washington, D.C. That was fast, hardly any time at all. But not fast enough to suit me. Dear Alexis, I thought; you’ve got a lot more explaining to do. And Drum. For him I had a message.

  I remembered I’d heard Drum’s name for the first time in this mess Monday night, outside Ragen’s window. Just two nights ago. It was funny how little it had meant to me then.

  And how much it meant to me now.

  I was on my way to Washington, the Brotherhood of Truckers, Mike Sand, and no telling what else. On my way to Alexis Frost ... to Mrs. Mike Sand.

  And my pal. My buddy. The doublecross I had to bear.

  Chet Drum.

  DRUM IS FIT TO BE TIED

  Front Royal, Virginia, 4:00 P.M., Wednesday, December 16

  The lockup was on the second floor of the police station in Front Royal. “Right next to the other one,” Lindzey told the turnkey, who was a fat balding man with a red face and a fringe of pink-gray hair.

  “What’s the charge?” I asked.

  “We can hold you without one a piece,” Lindzey said.

  “I get to make a call?”

  “Not until we book you,” the turnkey told me.

  “What the hell,” Lindzey said. “Go on and use the phone.”

  I called Senator Hartsell’s office. The Senator wasn’t in. I told Luscious that Townsend Holt had been murdered in the Torgesen place in Front Royal and that I was being held pending charges. She said they would send one of the Committee lawyers at once. She sounded very indignant.

  Five minutes later I sat on a cot in a small ten-by-ten cage in the lockup. Three walls were wire mesh. The fourth had a small high window, too small to need bars, through which the mid-afternoon sun shone weakly. In the adjacent cage, one wire mesh wall serving for both, Charlie Derleth lay on the cot smoking a cigarette.

  “Charlie,” I said.

  Charlie Derleth rubbed a hand over his bald head, sat up and stepped on his cigarette. “I don’t wanta talk to you.�
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  “Did you drive out there with Hope? The Torgesen place?”

  At first Charlie didn’t answer me. Then he said, “Holt was dead when I got there. I heard a car, got scared and ran for it.”

  “That was probably Hope. She’d seen you.”

  “I thought it was the cops at first. I hurt my leg. My goddam ankle. I almost froze out there. It wasn’t the cops. There’s a road back of the place. I tried to make it to my car. Then I saw Hope. She was going the wrong way.”

  “Couldn’t she pick up your footprints in the snow?”

  “I dunno. Maybe there were others. I called her and she didn’t hear me. Then the cops picked me up.”

  “What were you doing there?”

  “Screw you, shamus,” Charlie said.

  “You got a tow-truck to haul Glasses and Rover off the Memorial Parkway Monday night, didn’t you?”

  He got up to sneer at me through the wire mesh. “You’re nuts.”

  “Am I? You think they have it all arranged as to who picks up the pieces when Mike Sand’s house of cards comes tumbling down?”

  Charlie just went on sneering.

  “Holt was feeding some kind of information out West to Ragen and the L.A. Truckers. Did you know that? If you didn’t, ask Hope. But Holt got himself killed, and unless you killed him, Charlie, that means there’s more than one faction here in the East. If they killed Holt, what makes you think you couldn’t be next?”

  “I still say you’re nuts.” But Charlie was beginning to look worried now.

  “Abbamonte sent you out here to do a job. What it is I don’t know. But either someone else had other ideas and cooled Holt before you could reach him or the job Abbamonte sent you to do was a phony and you were set up to take the rap—or maybe you really did kill him. You tell me which.”

  “Ha-ha. Me take the rap. That’s a good one.”

  “Sure. This place is a hotel. You’ve got the best room in the house.”

  Fear and confusion twisted Charlie’s face. “Listen, shamus,” he said hoarsely, “the word got around Torgesen was playing footsie with Townsend Holt. Torgesen had some papers, some stuff on Mike Sand. I came out here to find it. That’s all.”

  “For Abbamonte?”

  “Nobody set me up for any rap!” Charlie shouted.

  He wouldn’t answer any more questions. I sat down on my cot and went through the last of my cigarettes. The weak, watery sun sank below the level of the high window and it became chilly. Just before five o’clock the red-faced turnkey came into the lockup from the far end. With him was a young guy I had never seen before. Pale and blond, he was dressed conservatively and expensively. They came past Charlie Derleth’s cage to mine. The turnkey’s keys rattled and the door to my cage opened.

  The young blond guy stuck his hand out. I shook it. “The Senator send you?”

  “That’s right. The name is Erickson. Let’s get going, Drum. You’re a free man.”

  Charlie looked at me and at Erickson and laughed. “Sucker,” he said. I was slow on the up-take. I didn’t get it then.

  Downstairs, the turnkey gave me everything I’d come in with except the .44 Magnum. He knew nothing about that. The cops had driven my car into Front Royal, and it was parked outside. Erickson said he’d taken the train.

  Just before we reached my car. Hope came across the snow-covered sidewalk with Lindzey holding her arm. She seemed startled to see me and Erickson. I went toward her.

  She backed away as if I’d struck her. “Keep away from me,” she cried, “you no-good lying rat!”

  “Wait,” I said. “Listen—”

  “I see you got sprung, huh?” Lindzey said. He spat on the snow. “Big man with connections.” Erickson didn’t say anything. “Why don’t you try and spring the girl?” he challenged us. I looked at Erickson, who shrugged. “You couldn’t do it with an H-bomb,” Lindzey went on. “Know what she is? A material witness to murder.”

  He walked away from us with Hope. Her back was very straight.

  “What about it?” I asked Erickson.

  “They didn’t tell me anything about a girl.”

  “Can we call the Senator?”

  Erickson shook his head. “He’s at some kind of banquet, I think.”

  That meant Hope would have to remain on ice until we got back to Washington. But why had she looked at me like that? What did she think I’d done?

  Erickson and I got into my car. “In a hurry?” I asked him.

  He shook his head. “What’s on your mind?”

  “The Torgesen place. I’d like to pay it a visit.”

  “Why?”

  “The girl’s brother is in the cooler. He was sent out there to find some papers Torgesen had. The Senator might want them if they haven’t already been taken. Hell, the Senator would give his right arm for them.”

  “I’m with you,” Erickson said. I started to drive.

  It was dark by the time we reached Nels Torgesen’s big colonial mansion. The huge white box of a house was dark too. I parked out front and we checked the back before going inside. The cop cars were gone. French doors opened out back off the big room in which Townsend Holt had been murdered. I put on a glove and punched a pane of glass near the doorknob, then stuck my hand through and turned the latch from the inside.

  Erickson and I went in there. I groped on the wall and found a light switch. At that moment a car stopped out front. Erickson went tense alongside of me. “Christ, now what?” he said.

  We heard a car door slam, then a key turned in the front door of the house. A man’s voice called, “Eric? You home?”

  Then Erickson surprised me. Moving away from me, he said, “We’re in here, Pop.”

  The man came in. He was only six-feet-four with a mane of white hair that made him look three inches taller. His eyes were a pale, almost colorless blue, he had steel-wool worms for eyebrows and a big arrogant prow of a nose pink and purple with the burst capillaries that came from prolonged heavy drinking. I recognized him right away. I’d seen his picture in the papers often enough, though not for some time. He was Nels Torgesen, the deposed president of the Brotherhood.

  “What the hell goes on here, Eric?” he said. “You sent me on a wild goose chase. Holt wasn’t home. I took that whole damn drive for nothing.”

  “Not for nothing, Pop,” the man who had called himself Erickson said. “You see, Holt came out here.”

  “Yeah? Did you know he would? I ought to wallop you.” The pale eyes blinked in my direction. “Who the hell is this?”

  “His name is Chester Drum, he’s a private eye working for the Hartsell Committee and he’s about to take a little trip with me. So are you, Pop.”

  That made Erickson Eric Torgesen, Nels Torgesen’s son. I’d been suckered. Charlie Derleth had known it in the lockup, had probably recognized Eric Torgesen. And if Hope had recognized him outside, which seemed likely, that explained her anger. I wasn’t working for the Hartsell Committee, I hadn’t come out to Front Royal to help her, I was in deep with the Torgesens. What else could she think?

  I asked Eric, “Which one of those comic opera cops told you to make like a Committee lawyer? Lindzey?” But I could answer my own question. It had to be Lindzey. Ballinger hadn’t been around when I made the call.

  “Where’s Holt?” Torgesen snapped at his son, who hadn’t answered me. “I want to see him.”

  “You’re on the wrong side, Pop. You’ve got this dream of making Mike Sand suffer the way he made you suffer, but believe me it won’t work out that way. You’re backing the wrong horse.”

  “Where is Townsend Holt?” Torgesen demanded.

  “Why not try the morgue?” his son suggested blandly.

  Torgesen’s stare was bleak. “He’s dead? You killed him?”

  “Me? Don’t be ridiculous. Holt was doing his best to feed Happy Jack Ragen the kind of stuff that could send Mike Sand to the federal pen. So were you. You think I’d finger my own father? Get wise, Pop. The point is, if they
hit Holt they could try to hit you next.”

  “I don’t know what you would or wouldn’t do,” Torgesen said bleakly. “Maybe you’d sell your own father out to Mike Sand.” Torgesen gazed at the ceiling for inspiration, but all he could come up with was, “To that filthy scum.”

  “What’s the matter with you, Pop? I’m trying to help you.”

  “I don’t need your help. I don’t want it!”

  “Listen, will you, for crying out loud? I’m taking Drum to see Abba tonight. With Holt knocked off, Happy Jack Ragen’s up the creek without a paddle. But if you think Mike Sand’s going to pick up the pieces, or if you think I think he’s going to, you’re nuts. Because Sand doesn’t know it yet, but he’s all finished—just like you are.”

  Torgesen hit him. He struck with his open hand, but his hand was big and he struck hard. Eric fell down, almost on the exact spot in front of the fireplace where Holt’s tarp-covered body had been. He got up shakily. Twin streams of blood were oozing from his nose and he used the back of his left hand to wipe them because he held a small, nickel-plated automatic in his right.

  “You shouldn’t ought to have done that, Pop,” he said.

  They faced each other, glaring. I took one step and grabbed Eric’s right wrist with my left hand, palmed his chin up and back with my right. He tried to kick me. I moved away from it and turned his wrist. He cried out. I got the automatic.

  While he rubbed his wrist and glared at me, I removed the magazine from the butt of the nickel-plated automatic and took the cartridges out of it. “We going to pay Abbamonte a visit?” I asked.

  “Not with you packing a rod. They’d never let you in.”

  I gave him back the unloaded automatic. “You’re not taking me anywhere at gunpoint.”

  He shrugged, put the empty gun away and headed for the French doors. His father followed him mutely. I followed them outside and around the house to my car.

  Eric told me to do the driving. “Get in front with him, Pop,” he said, climbing in back himself. I’d taken the pills from his gun, I outweighed him by thirty pounds and his father outweighed him by fifty, yet he was still playing the tough guy. You had to give him that.