Double in Trouble (The Shell Scott Mysteries)

by Richard S. Prather

  Forty or fifty feet above me, a faint glow filtered through pine limbs. That would be a light in the cabin. I gripped the Colt tighter, started up again. A loose step wobbled under my foot; another squeaked with startling loudness, even above the roar of the rain.

  I stopped for a moment, straining my ears, but could hear only the rain. Only that and the rush of my blood, a whisper in my ears. I started up again, breathing through my mouth, eyes straining at the darkness, pulse pounding through my body.

  Suddenly harsh white light flashed in my eyes from only a few feet away, slightly above me on the stairs. Automatically I ducked, tensing my right leg and starting to drive forward as a man’s voice cracked, “Hold it right there.”

  But I was already snapping my right leg, springing forward and up, flipping the Colt toward him. I saw the gleam of light bounce from gun metal, saw the form moving behind the light. And, at the man’s feet, another form, crumpled, sprawled on the rickety steps—a man in a deputy’s uniform.

  In the same moment I saw the man holding the flashlight, snub-nosed gun in his right hand, saw with sharply etched clarity in the light bouncing from me and spreading from the flashlight’s rim, the man’s face.

  I’d seen it before, in a newspaper morgue yesterday in D.C. And I had heard the name, heard it too many times now. The name, the face, the gun suddenly swinging down at my head and glittering in the light, all belonged to the man I’d been hoping, for days, to meet. I’d met him now.

  I’d met Chet Drum.

  DRUM GETS A KICK OUT OF SCOTT

  Blue Jay, 10:08 P.M., Friday, December 18

  I heard the sound of a horn in the darkness down below. That would be the cabbie, warning me. Then faintly the sound of footsteps coming up the redwood stairs.

  When the man was very close I stood up suddenly and snapped on the flashlight. I said, “Hold it right there.”

  But he didn’t stop. The beam of the flashlight caught a husky face with white eyebrows, the forehead topped by short-cropped white hair. I swung the Magnum at him, but he picked it off with his forearm. He had a gun and swung it too. I ducked and parried the blow with my left hand, dropping the flashlight. We came together hard over the deputy’s body. I tried to shove him back down the stairs, but he held on and got his left hand free to judo-chop the side of my head. A little lower and he might have broken my neck.

  Then we stumbled over the deputy’s legs. The Magnum went off, searing the night harmlessly with orange. And we went down the rickety stairs together. Sections of the handrail gave like matchwood under our combined weight. It was a thudding, tumbling, bone-jarring fall for both of us. I never knew when we reached bottom, but all at once I felt oozing mud under me.

  When the white-haired man rolled clear, I got to my knees and then collapsed in the mud, wondering vaguely but not really caring at the moment if any bones were broken. I tried to rise again and went down on my face.

  A woman’s voice said, “Shell? What happened, Shell?”

  But it was me she came to, and then her voice changed. “You’re not...”

  I looked up at her. She was wearing an oyster-white trenchcoat. Her face was gleaming with rain. She was Alexis Sand.

  “Why ... you’re Chet Drum!”

  Footsteps came pounding down the redwood stairs. I groped in the mud for my .357, couldn’t find it.

  “Drum?” a voice cried hoarsely. It was the white-haired man. He made it to his knees, took a lurching step toward me and fell in the mud. She had mistaken me for him, had called him Shell. It didn’t take much to know I had met Shell Scott at last.

  “Drum?” he said again, and “Scott?” I bellowed at the top of my voice, and we moved toward each other like grapplers in a slow-motion film of a mud-tank wrestling match.

  There weren’t any more footsteps on the stairs, and then Alexis cried out, “Behind you, they—”

  And then the back of my head split open to admit the rain and the darkness; and everything else, even Shell Scott, went away.

  SHELL SCOTT SWEEPS UP SOME CRUMBS

  Blue Jay, 10:10 P.M., Friday, December 18

  All I could see clearly before me was his face, Chet Drum’s face. The swinging gun was a blur in my consciousness and I must have thrown my left arm up without thought.

  The hard metal of the barrel cracked against my forearm. I swung my own gun at his face, felt it hit somewhere on his hand or body as the flashlight jerked in his grip, the beam spraying tree limbs above us. And then we hit. Our bodies smacked together hard, the impact jarring me, pain ripping through my head. From the corner of my eye I saw the flashlight fall, spinning, heard it clatter on the wooden steps. He shoved violently at me and I sliced my open left hand at his throat, felt its edge bounce off his skull.

  He lunged forward over the deputy’s body, his gun blasting the night, light flaring momentarily around us as we fell together, crashing against the steps, rolling. I held onto my Colt, tried to club him with it, but then we smashed into the handrail. And suddenly we were falling.

  I lost my grip on him, fell through darkness. The blackness below became solid, hurled itself against me. I landed on my side, rolled, felt my neck snap over, head pounding into the mud. For a moment it felt as if the top of my head were coming off, the sharp knife of pain stabbing into my brain.

  I couldn’t move. The breath had been smashed from my body, and I gasped for air. Mud that had oozed around my face and slid into my open mouth was sucked into my throat. I coughed, spat, rolled onto my knees, head seeming to split open and close, spinning, throbbing.

  Faintly I heard a woman’s voice. Alexis. She was calling my name. My head cleared slightly and I heard the sharp rise of her voice saying, “Why ... you’re Chet Drum!”

  I couldn’t see him. I called, “Drum ... Drum!”

  He shouted my name in reply. I placed the voice, swung my head toward him. It had sounded as if he were several yards away, near the stairway. Alexis cried something—as I heard the pound of feet on the steps above. A lot of feet, as if several men were moving rapidly down the stairway.

  A light flashed on, swept over the muddy ground toward me. In its glow I got a glimpse of Alexis and saw two men near the bottom of the stairs. I couldn’t know how many were up above the light, but the two below were a heavy-set man with bushy gray hair, his arms behind his back—Dr. Gideon Frost—and Candy. Big, hulking Candy, gripping Frost’s wrists, shoving him forward.

  Before the flashlight’s beam fell on me I snapped a shot at it, fired again and heard the slug hit, then rolled fast to my left, still out of the beam of light. I rolled over once, mud squishing beneath me—and then the night erupted in a blast of sound as at least two guns, maybe more, crashed, the flare of the shots swelling and almost instantly dying. The bullets plowed into mud near me; one smacked into a tree.

  I heard a man wailing, mouthing unintelligible words. The man I’d hit, the one holding that light. The light had fallen, was out now. I stayed motionless in the darkness, left hand against the rough bark of a pine tree, right hand gripping the slippery butt of my Colt.

  Rain droned around me, hiding sounds of movement. I got to my feet slowly, waited, took a step forward. Then I heard the grind of a starter, the roar of an engine—and a second car’s engine. In moments lights flared. I started to run as the sounds increased in volume.

  My right foot struck something and I sprawled on the ground. The sound of the car engines got fainter. It took me a while to get up and for a crazy moment, in the complete darkness and with my brain spinning, it seemed almost as if I floated in thick black space, with no sense of touch, no awareness of up and down, completely disoriented. I might have been suspended in air, or buried in that thick mud. It was a crazy moment, a frightening moment.

  And then I heard a noise. It was an ugly sound, weird. It came from behind me and I turned, staring, seeing nothing. The noise was repeated, a muffled sucking sound, repeated and again repeated. And with it was a high soft moaning, a mouthing of unint
elligible words, almost like a child babbling, crying softly in the darkness.

  I moved toward it slowly. And as my foot pulled from the deep mud it made that same sucking sound. Relief washed over me, and I forced my mind ahead, mentally following the man. It bad to be a man there, walking in the mud.

  The sucking sounds grew more rapid, fainter. I heard something thump, as if he’d stumbled into a tree. And then I heard his voice, weak, torn with pain and shock, “Oh, God ... Oh, my God. Help me, help ... Oh, God...”

  It was the man I’d shot. I knew the voice. And not even those words twisted in his throat could make me sorry he was hit, bleeding, maybe dying.

  It was Mink’s voice.

  There wasn’t any other sound but his moans, and the drumming of rain. I moved toward him. When I found him, finally, he had staggered, stumbled, quite a way from the cabin, then fallen and rolled part way down the steep hillside. I listened for his whimpering in the darkness, found him.

  I knelt by him. “Mink,” I said. “You hear me?”

  “Help me.”

  “Sure. This is Scott, friend. Shell Scott.”

  He moaned. I felt for him, ran my hand over his body. My fingers slid into blood on his chest. One bullet had hit him high near the center of his body. His moan was liquid, bubbling. The slug had torn his chest, ripped into his lungs. Blood was crawling up into his throat now, bubbling there. It would be oozing from his mouth, melting in the rain.

  “Mink,” I said. “You’re hit bad.”

  “God, I know. I’m...” There was a long pause before he finished it in a gurgling whisper, “...dying.”

  “Yeah, Mink. Like Braun. Like Braun Thorn. So this helps even the score, doesn’t it?”

  “I ... got to tell you. Scott, I didn’t kill him. Ragen and Candy.”

  “Sure.”

  “I swear. Candy and me was tailing Sand’s wife all the time from Frost’s to your apartment. When she left there we shook you and—agh!” His voice twisted again in his throat as a wave of pain hit him. In a moment he said, “Oh, dear God. I’m dying. My God, I’m dying!”

  “You are, Mink. You haven’t long.”

  For a little while he spoke rapidly, his voice soft with fright, as if he were trying to get it all out in a rush. “Shook you and tailed her to the Ambassador ... phoned Ragen, he had Thorn with him then in Spring Canyon. He said for me to keep the tail on the dame, Candy to ditch the Buick and meet him. The car was hot ... and you’d seen it. Candy left, met Ragen, it was him and Ragen. Not me, Scott.” He paused, said weakly, “Where’s Ragen ... the boys?”

  “They left you behind. While they beat it. It’s just you and me now. Mink. So spill it. That gray Buick you were in. That’s the car you used to run Braun off the road?”

  He forced himself to speak. The words sounded bloody. “Yeah. Me and Candy. We was ... watching Frost’s, knew Thorn would probably go there, account of them tapes he grabbed. We ... seen Thorn when he left, picked him off and brung him to Ragen. Frost must of powdered while we was busy with Thorn.”

  “I know how Braun got those tapes, Mink. What was so important about them? And did he get anything else?”

  “Yeah, but them ... tapes was the main thing. Of Sand, phone calls he made in D.C. Some to L.A. Not from the Truckers, but ... phone booth near there. Sand thought it was safe, but...” Mink stopped for seconds, and the rain seemed to swell louder in the silence, then he started again, “...Ragen got Holt to bug it. Ragen knew them tapes would ruin Sand, but Frost ... might not use ’em. Sand’s wife—”

  His voice trailed off. I said, “What about Braun Thorn? What’s the rest of it?”

  Mink groaned, went on. His words sounded like individual cries now, each one a gasp. But he got them out. “Told me later, beat him, shack on Spring Canyon ... Thorn wouldn’t spill a word. Thought he was out cold, but he ... started running. Candy was the one been working him over, Ragen had the gun out, shot him. Didn’t want to kill him ... until he spilled, so they’d know for sure if he’d passed them tapes to Frost. But ... cars on road ... couldn’t let him get away.”

  He stopped speaking. I thought he was dead.

  I felt for the pulse in his throat, found it, the skin slimy under his blood. The pulse was weak, but he was still alive. “Mink!” He didn’t answer. I shook him and he groaned again. “Mink,” I said. “Where did they go? They had Frost, didn’t they?”

  “Yes.” I could barely hear him. Rain drowned out the sound. I leaned over him, put my ear close to his mouth. Softly, whispering, his voice came, “Ragen ... plane. Flying with Frost and ... stuff Thorn give him...”

  “Flying where?”

  “Meeting, Sunday night. With Sand ... Abba ... showdown, settle—”

  He coughed, warm clots of blood spewing from his mouth onto my face. I swallowed, kept my ear close to his lips. “Where, Mink. Where?”

  “Out of D.C. South ... on Ben...” His voice stopped. It didn’t start again. It wouldn’t.

  I got up slowly, wiped a hand over the side of my face, let the rain beat on it. The night was quiet now. They were all gone. I remembered Alexis and called her name, called again. There was no answer.

  I made my way to the Cad, slipping and sliding. Alexis wasn’t in the car. Neither was the suitcase she’d brought along from the Statler, the one she’d had with her all the time. Probably she was with Ragen, I thought. The men would have seen her. She would have seen them, too—with her father. So they could hardly have left her behind.

  They would have to go back down Rim of the World Drive if they were heading toward an airfield. I didn’t think I could catch them. But I had to try. I backed the Cad up, swung it into the dirt road. As I turned, my headlights illumined the rain-darkened boulder, fell on three cars still there: Volkswagen, sheriff’s car, taxicab. Ragen’s Cadillac and the Mercury were gone. Nobody was in sight. I headed down the road, swung left and hit Rim of the World Drive, going down.

  CHESTER DRUM BEATS UP SOME YEGGS

  Blue Jay, 10:40 P.M., Friday, December 18

  “Neat,” a voice croaked. “Ragen’s goons were up in the cabin with Dr. Frost, ready to come down. They had Shell Scott waiting off the road, in case of trouble. Then I came along. Trouble in knee-pants. They took me out of the play like a junior G-man.”

  “All right, all right, take it easy,” a second voice said. This one I could recognize. It belonged to the taxi driver. I saw his dark form huddled in the rain. I was on my feet. The first voice, not near, not far, but lost in the middle distances between consciousness and unconsciousness, belonged to me.

  “They’re all gone,” the cabbie said, latching onto my shoulder when I began to move aimlessly around the muddy turning circle. Dr. Frost’s VW, the black and white patrol car and the cab were still there. Deep tire-ruts criss-crossed the mud. “They came trooping downstairs like an army,” the cabbie added. “One of them slugged you. There was some shooting. I guess I was kind of hiding off in the woods.”

  I couldn’t blame him. He’d have had no reason to mix with the pros. Even I had come off second best. But if Scott was waiting for Ragen and his boys, I thought, waiting to help them, what was Alexis Sand doing with him? I shrugged. She’d come to Washington once to deliver her father’s papers to the Brotherhood, hadn’t she?

  No, that wasn’t quite right. She’d brought the papers East for Mike Sand. She’d refused to surrender them to Abbamonte. Then maybe Sand, I thought, had decided to salvage what he could by lining himself up with Ragen, against Abbamonte.

  The sheriff’s deputy came down the redwood stairs, lurching at their base and stumbling in the mud. When I identified myself and outlined as quickly as I could what had happened, he spent a few minutes on the patrol car radio.

  “It’s probably too late for roadblocks to do any good,” he told me, “but we’ll try.”

  “What about the airports and train stations?” I asked.

  “You think they’ll take Dr. Frost out of the country? You don’t think t
hey’ll kill him?”

  “They need him. The Brotherhood’s splitting wide open. Some of them will want Frost on their side. And they’ve got his daughter.”

  The deputy made a face, then used his car radio again. After that we went up the stairs together to Dr. Frost’s cabin. We saw evidence of occupation by one man—the single bed, the unfinished meal set out on the plank table, what clothes were left on the wall hooks in the bedroom. We couldn’t find any signs of a struggle.

  The cabbie drove me back into L.A. When I took out my wallet in front of the Moody house, he shook his bead, pushed my hand aside and gave me Rex Marker’s automatic. “I don’t want any of your money.”

  I couldn’t get him to change his mind. “Anyhow, listen,” he said before he drove off. “I got me a feeling about you. You’re going to clobber those Brotherhood guys good. I’ll be there in spirit, pal, when it happens. That’s all the pay I want. Good luck to you.”

  Cora Moody said, “He’s out of danger. He’ll be all right. He...” Then she surprised me, and it all came out fast. “He’s so ashamed, Mr. Drum. He was trying to tell you. He couldn’t, though, because ... it made him look like a coward, but he’s the bravest man I ever...”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Dan. Don’t you see? He wanted me to tell you. Marker told him where Dr. Frost was hiding. You see, Marker was going to give his testimony to Dr. Frost, then Frost left town, then he called Marker from Blue Jay, but by then Marker was worried and anyway Dan had got in touch with him. Ragen’s hoods made Dan tell them what Marker had told him. About Blue Jay. They hurt him. You saw how he was.”

  I didn’t say anything right away. Who the hell was I to blame Dan Moody? But at least it explained how Ragen and Scott had got a line on Frost’s whereabouts.

  “He...” Cora began to cry. “If only he’d told you earlier, you would have got out there before they did. You would have...”