Double in Trouble (The Shell Scott Mysteries)

by Richard S. Prather

  Glasses tied a handkerchief around Alexis’ eyes. He used the black silk scarf on mine. Apparently Mike Sand knew where we were, because they didn’t blindfold him.

  “Listen, Mike,” Abbamonte said. “No hard feelings. I took orders from you for years, now you work for me. I’ll admit you got one thing I don’t. You got the rank-and-file eating outa your hand. I’m gonna need you.”

  Mike Sand didn’t say anything. I heard the metal door clang open. “And Mike,” Abbamonte called after us. “If the wife has her old man’s papers, I want them. You get them for me, Mike. You get them.” Then, as we left, he was talking to the Torgesens.

  We got into the back of the panel truck with Glasses. Rover would do the driving. Before he shut the doors on us I could hear the high unseen flag whipping in the wind.

  “Is he asleep?” I asked Alexis Sand.

  “I think so. Do you think I ought to call a doctor?”

  “He needs sleep more than he needs anything else.”

  We were in the living room of her suite at the Statler Hotel. Glasses and Rover had delivered us downstairs at eleven o’clock, and I had helped Alexis get Mike Sand into bed. He had been conscious but drowsy.

  “Can that—that animal—really take over as he claims?” she asked now.

  “Sure he can. If the Hartsell Committee doesn’t stop him. If your husband doesn’t. If your father doesn’t. Your father is Gideon Frost?”

  “Yes. He’s missing. I suppose you know that.”

  “You hired a P.I. on the Coast named Scott to find him?”

  “Scott?” She licked her lips. “I ... never even heard of him.”

  “What about those papers of your father’s?”

  For the first time Alexis Sand’s icy composure seemed headed for a thaw. She lit a cigarette. Her hands were trembling. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I brought them East not knowing if I would give them to Mike at all. I was mixed up. He was in the worst kind of trouble. I knew that. But my father ... I certainly won’t give those papers to Abbamonte.”

  “Mike may ask you to.”

  She didn’t say anything, so I said, “May I use your phone, Mrs. Sand?”

  “Of course.”

  I called Senator Hartsell’s home number. He answered the phone himself. “Where the hell are you?” he boomed. “I sent one of our beagles to Front Royal to get you off the hook. You were gone when he got there.”

  “It’s a long story. Is he still out there? There’s a girl named Hope Derleth who—”

  “I know all about her. They let her go when her brother confessed to the murder of Townsend Holt.”

  “Confessed?” I said blankly. “Charlie Derleth confessed?”

  “He confessed, all right. But I have something more important to tell you.”

  “Where’s Hope?”

  “Home. She’s under protective custody, don’t worry. The Committee has subpoenaed her. We can use that girl’s testimony. We won’t let them touch her.”

  “I’ve got something important to tell you too,” I said, but my mind was on Charlie Derleth. Somehow I hadn’t thought he’d killed Holt. I told the Senator about the union hideout and how I’d got there. “It’s out in Tidewater Maryland, just off Benning Road probably. An old garage. There’s a cyclone fence in front of it, and a flag. I think I can find it for you.”

  The Senator was jubilant. “That’s great, Chet. If we can pull a raid and get some of those union records we’d have something to go on until we find Dr. Frost. Meet me at the office as soon as you can. We’ll get started on it right now. You can sleep on the plane tomorrow.”

  “On the plane? Where am I going?”

  “That’s what I wanted to tell you. Moody called.”

  “From Los Angeles?” I said. Alexis looked at me.

  “Right. He’s onto something big. A lead to Dr. Frost maybe. He needs help. Will you go?”

  I did some quick thinking. Hope was safe. Her brother’s confession could keep. Maybe the best place for Charlie under the circumstances was the Front Royal lockup. And if I could set up the raid on the Benning Road hideout, they could pull it off without me.

  “Sure,” I said. “I’ll be at the office in twenty minutes.”

  I hung up, and Alexis said, “You told me one of the people who could stop Abbamonte was Mike. Do you really think so?”

  “That’s up to Mike. You know him better than I do. He’d have to get up off the canvas to do it.”

  Alexis pouted. “Mike’s tough, take it from me. How tough, you couldn’t possibly know. Don’t get the wrong idea from what happened tonight. Abbamonte’s play came like a bolt out of the blue. It was a shock to Mike, but he’s going to fight. I know him.”

  As if to prove she was right, I heard Mike Sand stirring in the bedroom. Alexis went in to him and in a few moments both of them came out together. The bruise on the side of Mike’s jaw had darkened. “...rank-and-file,” he was saying. “That’s something Abba doesn’t have, and it’s something he’s not going to get.”

  “Be reasonable, Mike. You need rest.”

  “I need to get started.” Mike Sand was unsteady on his feet. He was holding Alexis’ shoulder and she was half-supporting his weight. He sucked in air and pushed her away gently. His face blanched. “I got to get started now.”

  “What are you going to do, Mike? You’re hurt.”

  He blinked, and wobbled, and took another deep breath. “I’ve got to start lining up the union stewards and foremen.”

  “Listen, Mike—”

  “You want to talk, ride down the elevator with me. I’m on my way.”

  Alexis gave me an I-told-you-so look. Separated or not, she was proud of her man. Mike never even looked at me. I was part of the furniture as far as he was concerned. They went out into the hall together.

  Abbamonte and Sand at each other’s throats. It was shaping up that way, and I liked it. I lit a cigarette thinking about it. And then the phone rang.

  “This is the switchboard operator, sir. We have a call for you from Los Angeles.”

  “Los Angeles?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Yeah, sure, put it through.”

  She did, and the next voice I heard was Shell Scott’s.

  Scott and Ragen? I wondered two minutes later as he asked me to get Alexis out of bed. In our line of work you don’t go around broadcasting your client’s name, but I was a Hartsell operator and Scott seemed to swallow at least that much; he was worried about the subpoena. Which left exactly one reason why Scott couldn’t identify his client: the man who’d hired Scott to find Dr. Frost must have been John Ragen.

  I slammed the receiver down and thought about that, then Alexis came back into the room. “Who is it?” she asked me.

  “Scott. On the Coast.” I added suddenly, “I thought you said you never heard of him.”

  “That’s right,” she told me quickly. “I didn’t. What does he want?”

  “Somebody, maybe Ragen, hired him to find Dr. Frost.”

  Her eyes widened. “Really?”

  “Really,” I said. If she was lying, she was a smoothie. But she didn’t have to be lying. Scott, searching for Dr. Frost, would naturally call his daughter.

  I gave her the phone. “Mr. Scott?” Her eyes went wide again. “I can explain that. Our marriage was secret until a reporter caught us here Monday night. Have you any news of my father?” Then her eyes narrowed angrily. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Another pause while she listened to Scott. “You’re lying!” she gasped. For a moment she looked at the receiver, then hung it up.

  “What was that about?” I asked her.

  She shook her head, saying, “I know you saved me from a very unpleasant experience, Mr. Drum. I’m very grateful.”

  “But you can’t tell me what the boy friend wanted?”

  “The boy friend? Oh, I see. You mean Mr. Scott. No, I’m sorry. I can’t. You’re right, though. He is looking for my father.”

  I g
ot up. “So Mike is going to stop Abbamonte, huh? Are the Truckers supposed to jump for Joy? Mike’s been running them into the ground for years.”

  Before she could answer, if she was going to answer, I got out of there and went downstairs and called a cab.

  “Senate Office Building,” I told the driver.

  SHELL SCOTT CATCHES IT COLD

  Washington, D.C., 4:30 AM., Thursday, December 17

  The jet flagship came down on the runway at Washington National Airport smoothly. It was four-thirty in the morning here in Washington, D.C., and snow was falling. Snow.

  That was dandy.

  I was wearing the same Southern-California-style clothes I’d had on when I’d left L.A. Tan gabardine slacks, a yellow sports shirt with bright pink goblins on it, and a tan jacket. My hind end, numb from the plane seat, started freezing almost immediately. I have been in better moods.

  I slopped through slushy snow to the coffee shop inside the terminal, gulped a cup of hot black coffee, then climbed into a cab.

  “Where to, pal?” the driver asked me. Then his eyes fell on my gaudy getup. “What...” he began, than cut it off.

  “The Statler Hotel. And don’t spare the horsepower.”

  He moved. Snow fell through the headlights’ beams like glistening white feathers. We reached the Statler a few minutes after five a.m. and a minute later I was asking the desk clerk the number of Mrs. Sand’s suite.

  The clerk was tall, young, thin, and stooped. He wore horn-rimmed glasses on a thin, fragile-looking nose that appeared on the verge of quivering. He eyed me with frank and haughty disapproval, glanced, elaborately, at his wrist watch. “I’m not sure I should give you that infor—”

  “Listen, friend. Ordinarily I am gay, light-hearted. But take my word for it. At this moment I am not gay, light-hearted. Either I start knocking on every door in this establishment, or you can, please, give me the number of the Sand suite.”

  He opened his mouth, ran his tongue out about halfway, as if dunking it in air, then plopped it back in and said, “Twenty-six.”

  I went to the elevator, up one flight, down a plushly carpeted corridor to number 26, banged on the door. All I got was an echo. Twenty dollars and a larcenous bellhop got me into the suite. It was empty. I saw the phone Drum had banged down a few hours ago, ruining my ear. I saw a rumpled bed—which didn’t raise my spirits—and a few clothes in a closet. Nothing else of importance. No Alexis. No Drum.

  Back at the desk the clerk saw me coming and tasted the air again. It seemed to be a kind of nervous reflex with him.

  I said, “Mrs. Sand isn’t in her suite. You have any idea where she went?”

  “She left, sir. Several hours ago. I’ve no idea where she went.”

  “You knew that when I asked for her?”

  He nodded.

  I smiled at him. “Why didn’t you say so?”

  “Frankly, sir, I feared you might strike me.” He flapped his tongue out, twitching a little. This boy had not far to go, and he would be gone. I said, “Okay. I’m sorry if I barked boorishly. But I’m, uh—”

  “Not gay, light-hearted,” he supplied hopefully.

  I said, “You saw her leave, but you don’t know where she went?”

  “That’s correct, sir.”

  “Was she alone?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Thanks.” I turned to go, then said, “You know if she took a cab?”

  He didn’t know. I went out. Into the snow.

  It was still snowing at noon. I had spent seven hours getting my socks wet. That was my big accomplishment. Walking through the D.C. streets, climbing into and out of cabs, that unbelievably wet snow—it isn’t dry, you know, no matter what you’ve heard—had soaked through my clothes, my shoes, and abundantly into my socks. My ears ached, my nose ached, my lungs ached, and I guess you know what else ached. What I would have given for just one miserable, choking, strangling breath of hot smog. But I continued soggily on.

  By noon I had several times phoned Chet Drum’s office, getting only a switchboard gal who told me Drum was out. The phone book gave me the address on F Street. At noon I went there. The address was in the Farrell Building, and on the top floor was an office, its frosted-glass door bearing the words chester drum—confidential investigations. But there was no sign of Drum himself. There was no other office or home address listed for him in the phone book or City Directory, and I went back down to F Street.

  In the same block as the Farrell Building was a place called the F Street Cafeteria. I went in, hungry for anything hot, grabbed a steaming bowl of soup and warmed my hands and insides with it. On my way out I said to the curvy dark-eyed gal behind the cash register, “You happen to know a guy named Chester Drum, miss? His office is just a—”

  She didn’t let me finish. “Oh, sure, I know Chet,” she said. She was actually smiling, as if knowing Chet were something grand. “He comes in here almost every morning, when he’s in town.”

  “He come in this morning?”

  She shook her head. “Do you know Chet?”

  “We ... haven’t met. I’m a brother detective.” I thought about that and added, “Though brother is probably not the right word. I’m, uh, going to meet him soon. What kind of guy is he?”

  “Oh, he’s awfully nice. You’ll like Chet.”

  “I will, huh?”

  “Oh, sure. He’s ... oh, you know. Sort of a man’s man, and a woman’s man, all at once.”

  “All at once?” Obviously we were not talking about the same guy. I said, “This Chet Drum to which I refer has an office in the Farrell Building—”

  “I know. I’ve been there.”

  She seemed to know a lot about the guy. I said, “You wouldn’t happen to know where he lives, would you?”

  “Sure, I’ve been there, too, a couple—” She stopped suddenly. “I mean, he told me where he lives.”

  “Grand,” I said, with real enthusiasm. "Maybe I can catch him there!" Undoubtedly I spoke with too much enthusiasm, and it could have ruined everything. But it worked out. I smiled. “I’ll just run over there. Where is it?”

  She said, “It’s over in Georgetown.”

  “Swell. I’ll go over and see old Drum in Georgetown. Yes, sir. I sure bet he’ll be surprised to see me.” I laughed, as if overjoyed. I was overjoyed.

  She wasn’t sure of the address, but said it was near Canal Road and described the location well enough so I could find it. She sure had a good memory for what Drum had told her.

  Among other things, I thought, this Drum was a despoiler, a ravisher, of sweet young womanhood. I took another look at the little lovely. Man, it would be fun to ravish and despoil her, too.

  She smiled, looked at my clothes. “Where you from, Africa?”

  “No, no. Just Los Angeles. Hollywood, really.”

  “Oh.”

  What did she mean, “Oh,” I wondered. But I said, “Thanks. I’ve got to run. But if I have any more soup, I’ll have it here.”

  She smiled with her lips and her dark eyes. Only the hope of catching Drum could have got me out of there.

  I had the cab wait while I went inside the building. I told the almost pleasant but somewhat acid-faced and acid-tongued landlady that Drum was in great and grievous danger, that it was essential I get a look inside his apartment to be sure he was still alive, among other things all true enough; I just didn’t explain all of the why. Reluctantly, she let me in, but stayed at my shoulder while I looked around the place. She actually seemed worried about the guy and I wondered why—until I learned how much rent he paid. The place was neat enough, but the bed was still unmade. It had been slept in. I shrugged, thanked the landlady, and left.

  National Headquarters of the Brotherhood of Truckers was clear out on New Jersey Avenue, almost at the north end of the street. The driver pulled into the big lot before the building and I asked him to wait, got out and looked at Mike Sand’s headquarters.

  It was a monstrosity. For one thing, there
wasn’t a palm tree in sight. It was a great, rambling place which seemed to be cracking up, and it was naturally all messed up with snow. But it wasn’t amusing. From here, from this building, stretched out lines of influence and power which could paralyze the entire continent. A word from the boss man here—after a token “vote” or meeting of a joint or executive council, of course—and trucks would stop, shipments to and from a thousand kinds of businesses would stop, deliveries or pickups of fuel, garbage, raw and refined materials, milk and fruit and vegetables and steaks, and you-name-it, would come to a screeching halt. The Truckers controlled movement of it all.

  Even that which came in by ship or train or plane had to be further transported to the center of manufacture or distribution—again, Enter the Truckers. More, often the success or failure of other unions’ strikes depended largely upon whether or not those unions received Truckers support. So Mike Sand, or whoever sat in the boss man’s seat inside the building now before me, automatically became one of the most powerful men in the United States. In the world. Only the best, most capable, honorable and loyal of men, should sit in that seat. And what did we have? We had Mike Sand.

  I shuddered. Not nice happy thoughts while I stood there in the snow. But, then, my socks were wet. Besides which, the thoughts were true.

  I walked from the parking lot to the entrance. Over the door was a boldly-lettered welcome sign.

  Welcome Ragen, Mink, Candy. Welcome, Al Capone, Dillinger. Welcome, Dracula.

  Welcome, Shell Scott?

  I went inside, and into a big room.

  It wasn’t just big, it was huge. There were a lot of wooden tables, chairs, the inevitable coffee urn, but still the room seemed mostly empty space. Otherwise it was much like the Truckers’ big hall in L.A. About twenty men were present, roughly dressed. I asked one of them where I could find Mike Sand.

  He said, “Just a minute,” and walked to the far side of the room, spoke to a young guy wearing tight jeans held up by a very wide belt, a black turtleneck sweater, and heavy clodhopper-type shoes. The young guy started toward me. I almost expected him to putt-putt across the floor at me on a motorcycle. He walked up to me, rolling slightly on his feet as if the ship were about to sink. “Yeah, dads?”