Double in Trouble (The Shell Scott Mysteries)

by Richard S. Prather

  “Okay. It’s done. Dan couldn’t help himself.”

  She blew her nose, cried some more, sniffed and blew her nose again. “Really? You’re going to just—forget it?”

  “What do you expect me to do?”

  She had no answer to that. She told me there was a phone call for me from Senator Hartsell. I was to return his call at any hour.

  She put some coffee up and gave it to me strong and black and laced with brandy while I put the call through.

  “They got Frost,” I said on the phone. “He was hiding out in a cabin and they got him. Ragen’s goons and Shell Scott.”

  “Scott? I heard he was here in Washington.”

  “When?”

  “Thursday.”

  “Well, he flew back to the Coast.”

  “Not before he stirred things up here.”

  “What things?” I sipped some coffee.

  “For one thing, Charlie Derleth’s sprung.”

  “I thought he confessed to killing Townsend Holt.”

  “That’s what I thought. The Front Royal cops deny it now. They’ve got a warrant out for the new suspect. And extradition papers. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

  I took a long swig of the coffee and brandy. I had a hunch who the new suspect would be.

  “You’re their man, Chet,” the Senator said, confirming it. “They’ve got a couple of Brotherhood punks named Kane and Mahoy who’ll swear they saw you running out of the Torgesen place in Front Royal at the time of the killing.”

  “Then why, for crying out loud, would I have gone back?”

  “Because you were scared off and didn’t get what you’d gone out there to find.”

  “Torgesen’s papers?”

  “His diary, yes. We got that little piece from Hope Derleth. You see, Holt had gone out there after Torgesen’s diary, but while he wanted what was in it he had his own reasons for leaving the diary put. He’d called Hope Derleth to take down what he wanted in shorthand, but when she got there he was dead.”

  I finished my coffee and fingered the swelling on my head. “Why didn’t he just take the diary and get out of there?”

  “Strategy, Chet. Get the overall picture. Holt was selling Mike Sand out to the California bosses. To Ragen. But he didn’t want the diary to appear as evidence any more than Mike Sand did. Figuring Torgesen would destroy it if pressured by Sand, he decided to take the poop be needed. Or Ragen needed. With it, but not incriminating Holt in the process, Ragen could lever Sand out of the top spot in the union and pick up the pieces after our investigation. But Holt was killed and the diary apparently stolen or destroyed.”

  “Ragen’s going to have his own troubles,” I said, and explained how I would bring Rex Marker back to Washington with me. The Senator was delighted. Since the hearings would begin on Monday, and with Frost still among the missing, Marker gave the Committee something to open with.

  “And that’s not all,” the Senator said. “Charlie Derleth did some talking. Not to us, but to his sister. And she’s playing ball.”

  “What kind of talking?”

  “You can be filled in on the details when you get here. Which you can do, by the way, despite Kane and Mahoy and the warrant for your arrest. It was a pretty feeble framing attempt, especially since they have a pretty good cop—hell, a real crackerjack—in Front Royal named Ballinger.”

  “But a rotten apple named Lindzey.”

  “Exactly, and Ballinger’s been getting wise to him ever since Lindzey let Eric Torgesen impersonate a Committee lawyer. It was also Lindzey who must have destroyed Charlie Derleth’s phony confession. Why he did, I don’t know.”

  “Lindzey must have scared Charlie Derleth into confessing. They’d brought his sister in and Lindzey must have convinced Charlie they could pin it on Hope. The only trouble was, if Derleth was dumb enough or scared enough or bewildered enough to take the rap, that would bring the Brotherhood loan-shark, Abbamonte, into the picture. And Abbamonte wouldn’t want that.”

  “Sure, but so what? If Mike Sand needed a fall guy, wouldn’t Abbamonte be tailor-made for him?”

  “Derleth works for Abbamonte and Mike Sand’s just a loner now, heading out on greased skids. Abbamonte’s taking over.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned. Then that means Lindzey’s working for Abbamonte too, doesn’t it?”

  “Indirectly. He probably jumps when Eric Torgesen blows the whistle, but it’s the same difference. Little Eric owes Abbamonte six thousand bucks. Chances are they’re gambling debts. Chances are Eric was in debt to some local pros, Abbamonte got wind of it and bought his IOU’s at a discount. Better men than Eric Torgesen have been bought that way, and for less money. Anyhow, it was easier for Lindzey to destroy Charlie Derleth’s confession than to have him repudiate it, Senator.”

  “Just as soon as it can be proven Lindzey was taking orders from the Brotherhood, that will take care of that. But the interesting thing is this: they didn’t try to close the frame on you until this Shell Scott arrived in the D.C. area. So apparently he was either a messenger boy for Happy Jack Ragen or he was giving orders on his own.”

  I didn’t say anything for a minute. There is no fraternal organization of private detectives. The most successful ops, outside of the big outfits like the Pinkertons and the Burns’ army, work alone and are proud of it. Which is why it is so pathetically easy for one guy like Shell Scott to put the whole profession under a cloud.

  “Listen, Senator,” I said. “Scott will probably go East for the Brotherhood strategy conference if we don’t catch up with him out here. If he does, I’ll want a favor. I’d like a few minutes alone with Mr. Scott before the boys with the nippers get him.”

  “Under the circumstances that sounds fair enough. Are you flying East soon?”

  “Pretty soon,” I said. “But there are a couple of things I’ll try to clean up out here first. Any luck with that Benning Road place, by the way?”

  “No,” the Senator growled. “And we’ve been all over the area with a fine-toothed comb.”

  “What about putting a tail on some of the union big shots in Washington?”

  “We’ve tried that too. Nobody’s been out that way. Or if they have, they managed to give us the slip. Are you sure you have your facts straight?”

  “As sure as I can be, but don’t forget I was blindfolded.”

  “It’s that damn flag you hear flapping. A big flag means a public building like a school or maybe a courthouse or even a post office. We’ve tried to match that up with a garage and a cyclone fence off Benning Road in Tidewater, and all we get is a blank.”

  The Senator told me to call again before flying home so a man from the D.C. sheriff’s office could pick up Rex Marker for safe-keeping. Then I hung up. Cora Moody had a bed waiting for me, and I crawled into it. If someone turned the lights off, I didn’t remember who.

  Saturday morning I put on my other suit, the one that didn’t look as if it had been dragged fifteen miles through a muddy riverbed, and went down to police headquarters. They had a dragnet out for Ragen and Shell Scott. No warrants issued as yet, but they were wanted for questioning as a result of the statement I’d made to the deputy from Arrowhead. They had issued a warrant for the arrest of a Brotherhood thug named Norman Candello, who’d been identified by Dan Moody as one of his assailants, but neither the dragnet nor the warrant got any results. Ragen and Scott had disappeared and Candy had disappeared with them. Candy’s partner, Roe Mink, was found shot dead at Blue Jay.

  At eleven o’clock Kelly Thorn was brought in for questioning. She was very indignant when the cops tied Scott’s name to Ragen’s. Scott was trying to find her brother’s killer, she said. I liked her, and maybe some of the cops in on the cross-questioning liked her too, but I don’t think anyone in the room believed her.

  The cops were banging their heads against a brick wall, and knew it, especially since the roadblocks around Blue Jay had come up with nothing but indignant tourists. So, though I’d
told the Senator I had a few things to clean up in L.A., that wasn’t the way things worked out. By noon I knew I was wasting my time here, and by one o’clock I had picked up Rex Marker at the county sheriff’s office, after paying a quick call to the hospital where Dan Moody was smilingly awake and even said he had an appetite.

  Two sheriffs deputies drove Marker and me to International Airport. At two o’clock we took off in a Boeing 707 bound for Washington.

  And, I hoped as I had never hoped for anything in my life, another meeting with one Sheldon Scott.

  SCOTT DRESSES TO KILL

  San Bernardino, 10:50 P.M., Friday, December 18

  I made it to Highway Eighteen and almost to San Bernardino again, then pulled to the side of the road. It was the second time I’d had to stop. Halfway down the mountain road, fighting dizziness and nausea, I’d slid on the muddy shoulder at the wrong side of the asphalt, almost gone over—and down. A long way down. I had known then that I wouldn’t catch the men ahead of me. But the meeting, as far as I was concerned, had just been postponed a little.

  I lit a cigarette, dragged the smoke deep, and thought of what had happened there at Blue Jay, what Mink had said. I didn’t know it all yet, but I knew a lot more. I knew who’d killed Braun. Barely alive after Ragen had shot him, Braun had phoned me. Everything then had centered around Dr. Frost, who had the key, the tape recordings. So Braun had managed to force out that one word, “Frost...” Undoubtedly he’d meant to say a lot more—including naming Ragen and Candy—but just hadn’t been able to make it. He’d sure tried.

  The conspicuous omission in Mink’s story had been any mention of Drum. But Mink hadn’t had a lot of time; not time to tell me everything.

  He had told me where Ragen was headed. But roughly. Washington, D.C., and Ben-something. “South on Ben...” he’d said. It didn’t mean anything to me. Maybe it would when I reached Washington again. And that would be just as soon as I could get there.

  An hour later I pulled into a gas station on the outskirts of Los Angeles, parked in shadow at its rear. In the rest room mirror I resembled a man made of mud. The stuff was in my hair, on my face, all over my clothes. I scraped off what I could, washed my face and hair in the basin, then went out. Next to the rest room was a pay phone booth and I called Tootsie.

  In fast sentences I told her what had happened. “The one I ran into was Chet Drum, on the stairs. I don’t know where the law came from, but it looked as if Drum had just slugged a deputy. He half ruined me up there, too, or I might have—”

  Tootsie finally got a word in, interrupting me, “Shell, are you all right?”

  “Yeah, I’m okay.”

  “I mean, the police haven’t got you yet?”

  “Police? Of course not. Why would they ... what do you mean, yet?”

  “I know what happened. It just came over the TV, the news. The police are looking for you and Ragen.”

  "Me and Ragen!" I yelled at the phone. “What in hell’s the matter with—” I stopped. Drum had seen me there. So I probably had him to thank for this miserable development.

  I asked Tootsie to give me the story slowly. What it boiled down to was that the police knew Dr. Frost had been taken forcibly from his cabin at Blue Jay; a deputy sheriff from Arrowhead had been slugged; John Ragen and Sheldon Scott were being sought for “questioning.” Tootsie didn’t know any more about Ragen’s plane, or destination.

  I said, “That phrase, ‘South on Ben,’ doesn’t mean anything to you?”

  “I’m sorry. Shell.”

  “Don’t be. If I hadn’t called you, I might have walked into the Police Building to ask what was new. And they’d have told me. Thanks again, Tootsie.” I hung up.

  It would not now be wise even to phone the law. Enough of the L.A. Department knows me, and my record, so it would work out all right in time. In time—but that might be a day or two from now, when much of my story could be checked. I was not about to spend a day or two in the can at this point.

  I went back to the Cad, smoked another cigarette. I thought of what Mink had told me, especially about Candy beating Braun Thorn and Ragen shooting him in the back. Perhaps most of all I thought of the tapes that Braun had stolen from Ragen and given to Dr. Frost, that he’d died for, as it had turned out. Ragen would have them now, along with the doctor and Alexis.

  By now, or certainly soon, Ragen would be in the air on his way to D.C. Also by now, my description, plus the description and license number of my Cad, would be on the police radio. With thousands of cops keeping their eyes peeled for me, I couldn’t roam around asking questions, hunting for him here. In Washington, D.C., maybe I could. But how to get there? A train was too slow. A Jet Flagship was fast enough, but the law would be covering trains and airports, especially. Besides which, I knew I didn’t have much money left. I checked my wallet: thirteen dollars.

  I used the phone again to call International Airport. The next jet flight was scheduled to leave before dawn. It would arrive in Washington as soon as Ragen’s slower prop job, maybe sooner. But the passenger list was filled, and there was a waiting list. There wouldn’t be space available for at least five days. Even so, I stayed on the phone and tried to scare up some money. I scared up nothing.

  I pushed it around a minute more, then went to the car, opened the luggage compartment. In it I keep equipment I’ve used in my work. Electronic equipment, large portable tape recorder and small Minifon, extra cartridges for the Colt, among other things. I rummaged through it, got a snap-brim hat, the brim of which was no longer snappy, and the largest pair of dark glasses I own. The glasses were large enough to cover my brows and a good chunk of forehead. I couldn’t do any more about the muddy clothes, but there was an old, still fairly good-looking raincoat in the back of the Cad, and I hauled it out. I never smoke a pipe, so I found a beat-up briar which I sometimes stick into my mouth when tailing a man on foot. I grabbed a box of .38 Special cartridges, dumped them into the coat pocket and slammed the luggage compartment door.

  Then I walked a block away, put all the stuff on somebody’s lawn. I didn’t want the guy in the service station describing a man dressed in a raincoat, wearing a hat, dark glasses, and smoking a pipe. Then I walked back to the station.

  A lot of such small stations are run by the owner. I went inside and asked the man seated at a paper-littered desk, “You own this place?”

  “Yeah.” He’d been writing something and he glanced up at me then.

  I said, “How would you like to buy a hot car?”

  “Huh?”

  “Cheap.”

  He had an open, honest face, which worried me. But suddenly it got more open and less honest. “Do what?” he said carefully.

  “Buy a new Cadillac.” I pointed.

  “Ho—hot?”

  “As it stands, base price and what I’ve put into it, the Caddy’s worth seven thousand dollars. It’s yours for three thousand.”

  “Two thousand?”

  “Sold.”

  It had been a little too fast for him. I told him the price didn’t include my equipment in the trunk, but I was short of time and needed cash and he’d have to make up his mind in a hurry.

  It took two more minutes. He turned from the open cash register. “I got eleven hundred dollars, that’s all.”

  “Give me the eleven hundred and your note for nine hundred. Don’t report the sale, if at all, for—” I looked at my watch—"at least four hours, and I’ll tear up the note. Okay?”

  He was all excited. “Okay.”

  I signed over the pink slip, gave him the keys, took his cash and the note for nine hundred. If he gave me the four hours, my plane would be in the air. He could call all the cops he wanted to then. Of course, that was cutting it kind of close if I missed the plane. I didn’t mean to miss the plane.

  But I did need those four hours. “Friend,” I said softly when our business was over, “if you don’t wait four hours, I’ll come back here.”

  He swallowed. “I’ll wai
t.”

  I took a last look at my car, that beautiful Caddy, and felt a swift, sharp twinge of pain. Then I walked rapidly to the corner, put on my coat, hat, and glasses, chunked the pipe between my teeth and—"disguised”—got out of there.

  The third taxi I’d used during the evening dropped me a quarter of a mile from International Airport. I walked the rest of the way. I had phoned Kelly again, told her I’d be out of touch for a while. At the airport, I walked to the desk. No space, no cancellations.

  Thirty minutes before flight time I found my man. By then I had directly or obliquely approached fourteen others and received fourteen direct No’s. But he said maybe.

  He was a small man named William Flinch, and he had to be in Washington on Monday. This was Saturday morning just getting started, but he was the careful type. Besides, he wanted to jazz it up a little over the week end. I told him how nice it would be if somebody else paid for his plane ticket—on a later flight from this or another airport. Think how he could jazz it up. When he weakened a little, I convinced him. All I had to do was give him enough money to cover his round-trip plane fare. That, and five hundred dollars.

  But I got his ticket. At the last minute before takeoff, with his hat pulled down over his big dark glasses, wearing an old but still fairly good-looking raincoat, a large, pipe-smoking William Flinch boarded the Jet Flagship about to take off. There wasn’t any Shell Scott on the passenger list. It was close, but I made it. And I couldn’t help hoping the smaller William Flinch made it, too, by Monday.

  I didn’t really relax until the jet took off and left Los Angeles behind us, pointed toward Washington, D.C. I was on my way, and I was eager. More than just eager. I thought of the hell I’d been given, the slug bouncing off my skull, the wreckage of my apartment, even my Cad—somebody else’s Cad now—and there was no one word that quite summed up my almost joyously anticipatory emotion. I had the feeling it was almost over, that the wrap-up, one way or another, was just a little way ahead, getting closer every minute. It was all coming to a head like a bloody boil.