Double in Trouble (The Shell Scott Mysteries)

by Richard S. Prather

  It was almost eight-thirty when I followed Eric’s instructions and pulled up in front of the National Brotherhood of Truckers Headquarters in Washington. No windows were lighted. An unmarked panel truck waited at the curb ahead of us. I cut the motor and the lights. A man got out of the panel truck and came toward us. Eric opened the rear door of the car.

  “Jesus, what took so long?” the man complained. “I almost froze my ass off waiting.” He was a small man in a tweed topcoat and he had a whining voice. He wore glasses. The last time I had seen him he had also worn brass knucks.

  “What’s the old man doing here?” he asked.

  “He better come too,” Eric said.

  “Well,” Glasses said, laughing phlegmily, “he ain’t my old man.”

  Nels Torgesen said out loud, “They used to say yes sir and no sir every time I opened my mouth.” But he was really talking to himself.

  Glasses looked at him. “Them days are gone forever.”

  While I was locking the car, the two Torgesens went to the rear of the panel truck. They opened the double door and got in. I followed them and Glasses climbed in after me, shutting the doors. The Torgesens were seated on the bare floor, their backs against the front wall of the truck body. The two small windows in the double doors in back had been painted black. Glasses banged on the wall over Nels Torgesen’s head. The motor coughed and caught and we started rolling.

  The truck ran smoothly. It stopped several times, probably for traffic lights. What little light we had came from a red distress lantern on the floor of the truck. At first I heard the sounds of traffic, horns blatting, three-hundred horsepower engines roaring away from the traffic light stops, the growl of big diesel semi-trailers bringing produce into Washington in the unseen night. Then I heard other sounds—train sounds. That meant we were heading either northeast out of D.C. on New York Avenue past the freight yards or southeast out of town on Florida Avenue and Benning Road. Whichever it was, we left the sounds of the shunting engines behind us. After that traffic thinned out too.

  “Where are you taking us?” Nels Torgesen asked.

  “To see the boss,” Eric said. “He’ll want to see you.”

  In the glow from the distress lantern, Glasses looked nervous. “You hope,” he said. “The boss, he only asked for Drum.”

  Eric Torgesen laughed. It was a thin, inconsequential sound swallowed by the rumble and vibration of the truck. “Matter of fact,” he said, “the boss didn’t ask for anybody.”

  Glasses looked bewildered. “Kee-rist, what are you talking about?” He took off his glasses and gave Eric a vacant, bewildered stare. “On the phone you told me—”

  “I told you what I had to tell you. I know what I’m doing.”

  “Yeah? You better.”

  Fifteen minutes went by. Twenty. We didn’t pick up any more traffic, but the road surface was good. That ruled out New York Avenue, which outside the city limits became the Baltimore-Washington Parkway and was always crowded with traffic. We might have been further north on Rhode Island Avenue, which fed Route 1 outside the city, but Route 1 would also be busy at this hour. I began to like Florida Avenue and Benning Road. They led southeast out of the city to Upper Marlboro, Chesapeake Beach and the other Tidewater Maryland towns. At this hour traffic would be light on Benning Road.

  Just as I was thinking that, the truck turned, bounced over a badly surfaced road for a while and came to a stop. Whoever was driving cut the engine. I heard a door slam, heard footsteps on a hard surface.

  “Hold it,” Eric called. The footsteps had stopped at the rear door of the panel truck.

  Eric took a dark silk scarf out of his coat pocket. “Turn around,” he told me. Now that we had arrived, apparently without sanction from above, Eric sounded as nervous as Glasses.

  I turned around. Glasses held a gun in his hand, but I only saw it for an instant because Eric slipped the silk scarf over my eyes and tied it behind my head. Glasses laughed phlegmily. “Don’t try to take it off till we tell ya.”

  Nels Torgesen mouthed an exclamation of surprise and indignation. They were blindfolding him too. “Okay,” Eric called.

  The rear doors of the panel truck opened. Either Glasses or Eric held my arm as I climbed out. A cold wind blew against my face. The air was damp. I could smell the brackish tidewater. And I could hear something fluttering in the wind nearby. At first I didn’t know what it was, then I decided on a flag, a flag on a high pole whipped by the strong tidewater wind. Underfoot the surface was hard and solid. We walked a little way. I touched something with my right hand. It was a cyclone fence, waist-high.

  We walked a little further, then the hand on my arm pressured me to stop. I heard a pounding sound. Someone banging on a metal door.

  “It’s me, Glasses. Open up.”

  The door opened. Warm air and the faint smell of gasoline fumes hit my face.

  “What the hell is this, a convention?”

  At first I didn’t recognize the voice, then I knew it belonged to Morty, the kid who’d roughed up Marie Cambria at Brotherhood Headquarters.

  “Tell the boss we’re here. With company,” Eric said.

  “I’ll tell him, dads. He may not like it, but I’ll tell him.”

  We waited. I had a strong urge to remove the blindfold, but decided that would only earn me the butt of Glasses’ gun. In a little while Morty came back. “Come on in,” he said. “But the boss ain’t delirious with joy.”

  The door shut behind us. Someone worked at the knot of the blindfold behind my head.

  The first thing I saw was a dream of a face. Halo’d by blonde hair, it was almost on a level with my own face. That was because the girl it belonged to was tall and wore spiked heels. She also had the kind of exaggerated, long-legged, full-blown figure of a calendar pinup and a face of patrician, haughty beauty that had no-sale written all over it. She wore a tan linen dress that clung electrically to the curves and hollows of her body.

  “Hello there,” she said uncertainly. “You do get around.”

  “Sometimes I even get around under my own power, Mrs. Sand.”

  The man standing with her asked, “You know this guy, Alexis?”

  “I told you about him. His name is Drum.”

  The man was short and heavy-set. He was only five-six but must have weighed a hundred and ninety pounds. He had huge shoulders and a bull neck. His face was sleepy-looking, the eyes lidded and the brows puffed with scar tissue. I put his age at thirty-five. He wore a blue worsted suit and no tie. He had short-cropped black hair and very dark, almost black eyes. He would have been a pretty impressive-looking guy if he wasn’t in the same room with Abacus Abbamonte. Even seated, Abbamonte made him look anemic.

  The place looked like the interior of a garage that had gone out of business. Bare cinderblock walls, green-shaded lights dangling from chains, a high ceiling and no windows, a grease-stained concrete floor. The only items of furniture were a bare wood table and a chair. Abacus Abbamonte sat at the table, its surface cluttered with slips of paper. Abbamonte was a man who took his work with him wherever he went.

  “Get a move on, Abba,” the man with Mrs. Sand said. “We don’t have all night.”

  Mrs. Sand patted his hand. “Take it easy, Mike.”

  Mike Sand shook his wife’s hand off irritably, but he looked down at Abbamonte’s enormous head and didn’t say anything. Behind Abbamonte, the punk Morty lounged insolently against the wall. In front of him were the Sands, Nels Torgesen and son, Glasses and the big hood called Rover, who must have been driving the panel truck, and a private eye named Drum who hoped the confusion didn’t show on his face. Whoever heard of Mike Sand being scared by Abacus Abbamonte?

  We held it that way for close to ten minutes. Abbamonte went over his loan slips with a stub of a pencil and Glasses paced nervously. Once, for no reason at all, Glasses laughed. The only sign that Abbamonte had heard it was that the pencil stub stopped moving on the loan slips. Glasses stopped laughing. He even sto
pped pacing.

  “Eric,” Abbamonte said finally, tapping the table with the pencil stub, “this here says you owe me six thousand five-hundred smackers.”

  Nels Torgesen gasped. “I never dreamed—”

  “You kidding?” Abbamonte said. “You been dreaming ever since Mike moved in on you.”

  Mike Sand laughed. It was meant to be a hearty, that’s-the-way-I-like-my-right-hand-man-to-operate laugh. What it sounded like was the choked, sob-preventing laugh of a man who just found out he had an incurable cancer.

  “I’m working it off,” Eric said earnestly. “I’m working it off right now.”

  “You’re doing great, kid,” Abbamonte told him sarcastically. “Why’d you bring them out here? You know you ain’t never supposed to bring anybody out here without first you ask me.”

  “Drum was at my old man’s place, snooping. He—”

  “And your old man is playing footsie with Townsend Holt and Happy Jack Ragen. That ain’t news.”

  “Sure it is, Mr. Abbamonte. Drum was prowling around when the body was found.”

  Abbamonte bit his teeth together. “What body, kid?”

  “Holt. Hit in the head in Front Royal. Dead.”

  Abbamonte shoved back from the table and lunged to his feet. The table went up on two legs and righted itself. Loan slips fluttered to the floor. Morty scooted after them on hands and knees.

  “Okay,” Abbamonte said. “Okay, Holt’s dead. Anybody wanna cry?”

  Mike Sand smiled. “We ought to celebrate, Abba. He was an opportunist. We all know how the wolves gather when a guy gets his lumps from Congress. It happened before. Look at Nels.”

  “You look at him,” Abbamonte said. “He makes me sick. He should of been chilled when he stepped down, Mike. I always told ya. Know what’s been going on behind your back? Torgesen, Holt and Ragen. They been planning to move in.”

  “I know,” Mike Sand said eagerly. “But that’s all changed now. We—”

  “Say the word, boss,” Glasses said, “and you don’t have to sweat about Torgesen no more.”

  “When I want—” Mike Sand began, but Abbamonte cut him off with a wave of his hand.

  “Glasses wasn’t talking to you.” Abbamonte came ponderously around the table and planted himself like a redwood tree in front of Glasses. With every word he jabbed a thick index finger against Glasses’ puny chest. “You stupid cross-eyed bastard, the beginning of the week you was taking orders from Holt and Ragen. Every time you open your yap you wanna bite a guy’s whadyasay jugular vein. For Holt and Happy Jack. For me. For anybody or nobody. You and Rover. A couple of real brainy guys I got.”

  Rover said, “You’re the only guy we take orders from now, boss.”

  “How long? Till next Sunday maybe?” He slapped Glasses’ face with a hard, horny hand. Glasses took it without moving. Rover winced. Abbamonte swung around abruptly to face Mike Sand. “What you got to say for yourself, Mike?”

  “I was out of town. I got in touch with Alexis, and she said you wanted to see me. That’s why we’re here. You’re a good, loyal man, Abba. You always have been. Let’s keep it that way. And we have good news for you too.” He looked at Alexis. She avoided his eyes. “My wife brought most of her father’s papers in from the Coast. Enough of them so we’ll know what we’re up against, enough so—”

  “I never said I’d give them to Abacus Abbamonte,” Alexis Sand said coldly.

  “Abba? Who’s talking about giving them to Abba? He works for me.”

  “I wanted to help you, Mike. I felt sorry for you.”

  “Abba works for me!” Sand roared. White brackets of rage ringed his mouth.

  “Rover,” Abbamonte said softly. “You got a gun?”

  “Yeah, boss.”

  “Take it out.”

  Rover did so. It was a Colt .45.

  “Point it at Mr. Sand.”

  Rover did that too. Mike Sand just stood there.

  “What would you do if I said squeeze the trigger?”

  Rover looked puzzled. “Maybe like I’d ask you how many times,” he said, suddenly brightening. “Yeah. I’d ask you how many times.”

  “Okay. Put it away.”

  Rover put the gun away, looking mildly and confusedly disappointed.

  “You ain’t the boss, Mike,” Abbamonte said. “You stopped being the boss. You get it? Is it clear enough? Hey, Mike? Ragen and Holt wanted power; Nels is just dreaming up a storm. You, Mike, you were so damn busy looking out for number one, you kind of lost sight of the organization. Me, I got the organization in my hip pocket.”

  He returned to the table and pounded a fist on it. “I got everybody I need, Mike. I got them right here, on these slips. You honest to God think I need you now? I say the word, and they find your body on a beach on Chesapeake Bay. The best thing you can hope for is to make like Nels. Just fade away slow, with the loot you got stashed. Oh yeah, and one more thing.”

  Mike Sand studied the concrete floor like an infantryman studying a contour map in enemy territory.

  “I want those papers you got, baby,” Abbamonte said, looking at Alexis Sand.

  “You’ll never get them from me.”

  Abbamonte shrugged, turning back to Mike Sand. “How would you like to see the boys here do a gang job on her?”

  Glasses licked his lips. He was suddenly salivating copiously.

  “You know,” Abbamonte went on. “Glasses, Rover, Morty. With you in a ring-side seat.”

  “I’d kill you, Abba,” Mike Sand vowed. “I’d kill you for it.”

  There was a tense silence. I used it to put my two cents in. “You’re going to let her go, Abbamonte,” I said. “You’re going to let her walk out of here, and I can tell you why.”

  His massive forehead ridged by frown lines but his fleshy lips parted in a grin, Abbamonte said, “Get a load of him.”

  At the same time Mike Sand shouted, “That’s my wife you’re both talking about! I’ll kill the man who touches her!”

  “She ain’t your wife any more, the way I hear it,” Abbamonte said calmly. “I said you’re a has-been. More ways than one. So shut your yap.”

  Mike Sand hurled himself, bellowing like an animal in pain, at the table.

  He never reached it. Glasses got in his way and he hooked his left fist at Glasses’ face and the little hood fell down. I started toward them, but Morty pointed a short-barrelled revolver at me, waving me back. “Sit tight, dads.”

  Rover took three long strides to Mike Sand’s side and slugged him with the .45. Sand turned and looked at him foolishly. Then Rover laid the barrel of the .45 along the side of Sand’s jaw, and Sand thudded to his knees. Rover stood over him, while Alexis, ignoring the big hood, sobbed and went down on her knees next to her husband and cradled his head against her breasts. That was when Glasses got to his feet, fumbled for his brass knucks, slipped them on and stood over Mike Sand.

  “Cut it out,” Abbamonte ordered. “All of you.” His deepset eyes swung to me. He said, as if nothing had happened, “Why’m I gonna let her walk right out of here, cop?”

  I looked at Morty and his revolver, at Rover and his big automatic, at Abbamonte’s almost atavistic face. But the caveman kisser and the almost illiterate speech hid a tough, shrewd mind. And Abbamonte had just declared himself in for the biggest slice of pie. He had sent for Mike Sand to humble him, and it had worked. He had tested his hoods, once loyal to Sand, then loyal to Townsend Holt, and that had worked too. He was feeling his way, now, as their boss.

  I took a deep breath. What had been a dangerous situation had suddenly become a deadly one. He might have them gang-job Alexis Sand just to show he could pull it off. And he might not let me leave here alive for the same reason.

  “Well, cop?” he said. “You tell me why.”

  “I’m a special investigator for the Hartsell Committee,” I said slowly. “How do you think it would look if one of their guys got murdered right before the hearings? Because if you don’t let Mrs. San
d go, you’re going to have to take me out the hard way.”

  Rover made a noise that was almost barking. “You give us the word, boss, we’ll do it. This is the s.o.b. who caught us on the Memorial Parkway.”

  “Shut your stupid yap!” Abbamonte roared. “If you had it your way, you’d of chilled Drum right in the goddam Brotherhood Headquarters.” He looked at me again. “And if I let you go, cop?”

  “You’d have to let Mrs. Sand go with me.”

  Alexis raised her blonde head. “I’m not going anywhere—without Mike.”

  “Both of them then,” I told Abbamonte.

  “That ain’t what I mean. You know what this place is?”

  “I can take a guess. If the Hartsell Committee pops into Brotherhood HQ with a search warrant, they won’t find a thing but the furniture. You’ve got what records you couldn’t destroy here, right?”

  “I like a guy that thinks on his toes, cop. Maybe you and me can do business. Huh?”

  That was a hard one to answer. I remembered the tidewater smell outside and the strong onshore wind. We were close to the water. The wrong answer might earn me a cement overcoat.

  I shook my head. “No sale, Abbamonte. We can’t do business.”

  He laughed. “You want to know something, cop? If you had made like we could, I’d of told Glasses and Rover to do a job on you. Hartsell Committee or no.”

  “Can you get up, Sand?” I asked. “Can you walk?”

  Mike Sand mumbled something. “He’ll make it,” Alexis promised.

  I stared at Abbamonte. He stared right back at me. “On your feet then,” I said. “We’re getting out of here.”

  I didn’t offer to help. If Mike Sand had any pride left, he wouldn’t have wanted that. He shoved Alexis away from him and struggled to his feet like a drowning man rescuing himself from a hard heavy surf. The side of his jaw was swollen and blue.

  I took a deep breath and held it. Time went away, and the world. If Abbamonte called my bluff, the gray cinder-block walls stark and pockmarked in the glare of the hanging green-shaded lights might be all of the world I would ever see again.

  “Blindfold Drum and the broad,” Abbamonte said. “Glasses, you and Rover are gonna take them back to town.”