Double in Trouble (The Shell Scott Mysteries)

by Richard S. Prather

  I had nearly four hundred dollars, a loaded Colt Special and a pocketful of extra cartridges, and I’d made it to here. Everything was going my way. Nothing could stop me, I told myself.

  Yeah, that’s what I told myself: Nothing could stop me now.

  So who’s right all the time?

  DRUM FEELS BEAT

  Washington, D.C., 2:15 A.M., Sunday, December 20

  After I delivered Rex Marker to a man from the District Sheriff’s office at Washington National Airport at one-thirty Sunday morning and took a taxi through the clear cold night to the slushy streets, I had a feeling of being let down. I’d been living on the thin edge of violence since Monday night. I’d seen a simple man who’d driven a hack for a living get beaten to death. I’d been clobbered with brass knuckles. I’d walked in on a dead man who I didn’t know at all in a house bought with misused union funds that I couldn’t have put the down payment on with every cent I had to my name. I’d seen a good man, Dan Moody, come as close to death as you can without being carried out for the last time feet first. I’d been unable to prevent the kidnaping of a famous citizen who got himself written up in Who’s Who more times than I’d applied for a renewal of my pistol permit. And I’d almost made love to as nice a brunette lovely as I was likely to meet this year or any year. Some of it ugly and some of it frustrating, and here I was driving along Canal Road in Georgetown heading for my apartment, and still I had that let-down feeling.

  I let myself into the apartment, left the B-4 bag unopened on the living-room floor and went into the kitchen to make myself a tall, stiff drink. I drank it off too fast, in the time it takes to smoke a cigarette. Then, leaving the B-4 bag where it was and shutting lights behind me, I went into the bedroom, unlaced and took off my shoes, took off my tie, jacket and shirt, told myself it was too late to call Hope, stretched out on the bed, and smelled perfume.

  Then I heard a sleepy sigh, and the leather chair across the room from the bed creaked. I sat up, turning on the night-table lamp.

  Hope Derleth was curled comfortably on the black leather chair. She stretched, and as I got up her eyelids fluttered. Her blue-bowed glasses were on the dresser near the chair, and she was using her camel’s hair polo coat for a pillow. She wore a dark gray or black suit, and as her eyelids parted her lips did too, in a warm, cozily sleepy smile.

  “You’re back,” she said. “You’re here. What time is it?”

  “Oh, about two-thirty, I guess.”

  Her smile widened. “Why don’t you look at your watch?”

  I was too busy looking at her, but I didn’t say that. I looked at my watch. “Twenty-five after two.”

  “The Senator told me you were due in tonight. I came right over I—I was such a fool out in Front Royal, Chet. When I saw you with Eric Torgesen, I thought you were giving me a line all along, thought you were working for Abbamonte. I’m sorry.”

  “How’d you get in past the booby traps?”

  Hope laughed. “The only booby trap was a crotchety-looking old landlady who’s really pretty nice once you get to know her.”

  Hope was still seated on the chair. I still sat on the edge of the bed. I felt awkward suddenly and stood up. “Like a drink? As a reward for breaking and entering?”

  “Yes, but just a mild one, please.”

  I realized then that she felt awkward too, and though her eyes were smiling there was something else lurking in their depths. Fear? Worry? Something was eating at her.

  I went into the kitchen and made us drinks. Hope didn’t follow me. The overhead light was on in the bedroom when I returned with the tumblers. Hope stood with her back to the dresser and her hands behind her on its edge, her breasts thrust forward against the fabric of her jacket. We toasted each other silently and worked on our drinks for a couple of minutes.

  Then I went to her and put my arms around her, and then her fingers dug into my shoulders.

  “I’m so glad you’re back, Chet, I’m so glad.”

  “I’m glad to be back. Now. Did they give you a rough time in Front Royal?”

  “Not me. They ... Charlie ... I don’t want to talk about it. Not now.” She stepped back away from me. “It’s funny, I came here wanting to talk about it. I have a lot to tell you. I ... but all of a sudden I don’t want to talk about it. I guess I ought to be with Charlie, but—”

  “Where is he?”

  “Home. He won’t budge out. Oh, he’s safe enough, I guess. They have a twenty-four hour shift of police watching the apartment. I sneaked out. But Charlie—he’s so lethargic. As if he knows ... knows...”

  “Hey, take it easy.”

  “...he’s going to die. There was a cop named Lindzey in Front Royal, he told Charlie they had me all set up as Townsend Holt’s killer. One of the things that hurts, Charlie believed him.”

  She hadn’t wanted to talk about it, but once she started it all came tumbling out almost compulsively. “Our parents died when I was very young. Charlie’s been like a father to me, and he ... he was always suspicious that any man ... Lindzey told him that I was having an affair with Townsend Holt and there was some trouble, and ... well, I was out there with Holt, that much Charlie or anyone could believe. What really had happened, Holt called me. There were some notes I had to take for him in shorthand, but when I got there he was dead. He was already dead.”

  “Did you see Charlie there?”

  “No. No, I didn’t. And he didn’t kill Townsend Holt!”

  “I didn’t say he did.”

  “I—I’m sorry. I think I could use another drink now.”

  I brought the bottle back with me, and when I poured Hope tilted it further, then held the glass in both hands like a little girl and started drinking.

  “Here’s what throws me,” I said. “Then did Lindzey kill Holt himself? Is that why he was so desperate for a quick confession? Or maybe he was protecting someone else. The Senator said he was working hand-in-glove with Eric Torgesen, but—” I shook my head.

  “What’s the matter?” Hope asked.

  “Figure Charlie went out there to get the diary for Abbamonte. That would leave Lindzey out of the picture, because if Abbamonte had wanted Lindzey to get it, he wouldn’t have sent Charlie. Which means there ought to have been someone else.”

  “Nels Torgesen?”

  I shook my head again. “Eric sent his father on a wild goose chase. It could have been Eric. Eric could have gone in there after the diary, found Holt with it and killed him. Except that Eric’s job was to get his father out of the way so Charlie could search the place. They were both working for Abbamonte, and—”

  “Why couldn’t Eric have done the job for Abbamonte? Getting the diary, I mean.”

  “Because whatever was in it would hurt Nels Torgesen as much as it would hurt anyone, and Abbamonte probably didn’t trust Eric enough—not to the point where he’d incriminate his own father. So Abbamonte sent your brother, but before he got there someone else showed up, fought with Holt and killed him. And that’s where Lindzey comes into the picture. Whoever this someone else was, Lindzey thought he was working with Abbamonte and thought he would need protecting.”

  “But you’re going around in circles. Charlie was working for Abbamonte too, and Lindzey worked on getting a confession out of Charlie.”

  “Sure, but Lindzey was wrong ten ways from Sunday. He thought this other guy, call him X, was more important in Abbamonte’s setup than Charlie. He had to act fast, and he made the wrong move. It was Charlie who, pressured, could tie the Holt killing around Abbamonte’s neck. The last thing Abbamonte would have wanted was Charlie taking the rap. Because, though Lindzey thought X and Abbamonte were working together, Lindzey was all wet and they weren’t. X had to be someone who Abbamonte wouldn’t want to protect, someone who Abbamonte would be delighted to see take a fall, but also someone who had to get his hands on Nels Torgesen’s diary. Someone like—” I drained my drink—"Mike Sand.”

  “You mean Mike Sand killed Holt?”

 
; “That’s just what I mean.” I thought about it, liking it better all the time. “Look, Lindzey was just on the fringe of things. His connection with Abbamonte may have been no more than doing an occasional favor for Eric Torgesen. How was he to know Abbamonte had muscled Mike Sand aside, had taken over the Brotherhood himself? So of course, thinking Abbamonte worked for Sand, he’d want to protect Sand. Which is why he leaned on Charlie.”

  “And I didn’t want to talk about it,” Hope said, shaking her head and smiling a little.

  I hardly heard her because I felt that sense of elation I always get when I’m on the verge of cracking a case. I lit a cigarette and went on, “Then figure Lindzey got his new orders on Thursday, when Shell Scott showed up in town, figure—”

  She took the cigarette from my fingers, drew on it and dropped it in her whiskey glass. There aren’t many girls who can do it, but Hope looked up at me and those dark eyes were laughing and snapping mad at the same time. “I came here,” she said. “Just for once, just for tonight, I wanted to get away from all of it—all the ugliness and the violence and Charlie like that and I—I had to pick a private detective. Next time maybe I ... I ought to fall for a Fuller Brush salesman. I put on my best suit, as the feller said, and you ... you...” Her voice trailed off and she turned and flounced to the dresser and grabbed for her blue-bowed glasses and put them on.

  “And you stand there jabbering and it’s almost three o’clock and if you want anything, Chester Drum, you’ll have to come and ask for it, if you want what nobody else could ever have and what’s yours and ... I’m getting out of here.”

  Flouncing again, she left the bedroom. But she didn’t go very far. She went as far as the dark living room and sat down on the sofa.

  I saw a face in the mirror, and the face had a foolish grin on it. “Sap,” I said very softly, and went into the living room after her.

  The first thing I did was sit down next to her. She moved away a little. The second thing I did was remove those blue-bowed glasses. The third thing I did was take her face between my hands and kiss her lips. Then it got pretty wonderfully wild because we’d both been waiting for it since that time in her apartment. But she was playfully kittenish and once she fended me off, but not very strenuously, long enough to say, “You haven’t asked me anything,” and then she added quickly, “But I guess a man’s home is his castle and you...”

  “Now who’s jabbering?”

  So I lifted her up, and carried her back to the bedroom brushing the overhead light switch with my elbow on the way in. That left the dim night-light on, and it stayed on.

  She wore a pale blue blouse under the dark, fitted suit jacket, the curves of her breasts bold against it. It came off charged with static electricity, rustling. Her skin was like ivory against the black bra she wore under that. I touched her white throat and could feel a pulse racing there, then she clung to me and her heart was beating against my ribs. Beneath the black skirt she wore a half-slip and beneath that a pair of black lace panties as insubstantial and as apt to stay where they were as a spider web in a hurricane.

  “Victorian woman,” she murmured. “Layers and layers of clothing.” But her voice was unsteady and she didn’t say anything else because the layers and layers of clothing were now on the rug and then she was against me, her long thighs firm and warm and a long time after that we got under the covers together and drifted off in each other’s arms.

  Dawn was faintly blue at the window when I awoke. I was alone in bed. I heard the throbbing hiss of the shower, and pretty soon it stopped and Hope came out of the bathroom with a big towel draped around her.

  “You up?” she said.

  “No. I’m probably dreaming.”

  “What are you dreaming about?”

  That was an easy one. “You.”

  “Me too. About you.”

  She came close to the bed. She smelled warm and steamy from the shower. Her hair glistened. I grabbed an end of the towel and pulled. The towel came off and she spun down to my side, her skin pink from the shower, her head back, her hair dampening the pillow, her lips moist.

  “I feel as if I’ve known you a million years,” she said. “But I also feel as if I just met you. I ... like that.”

  I liked it too. It was fully light out when I shaved and showered.

  And, after we dressed, she was as shy as a virgin on her first heavy date. When we’d eaten I said lightly, “That was good. You’re going to make somebody a fine wife.”

  Her cheeks colored, and she smiled a little. “Pardon my wistful look, but I take it Chester Drum is not the marrying kind.”

  “I tried it once. It didn’t work out.”

  We didn’t say anything for a while, then I asked, “What makes Charlie so sure they’re going to gun for him?”

  Hope looked startled. “I ... gosh, Chet. I had a whole night when I didn’t even have to think about it at all. For which, kind sir, I thank you.” She took another cigarette from her pack. I lit it for her. “Two reasons, I guess,” she said slowly. The first you already know. If the Committee calls him, he can testify how Lindzey tried to scare him into a phony confession in Front Royal, so if the relationship between Lindzey and the Brotherhood can be spelled out—”

  “It can. Have they subpoenaed Charlie?”

  “No, not yet. But Senator Hartsell had a talk with us. I think the Senator’s a little afraid Charlie won’t cooperate. If he doesn’t he can do more harm than good at the hearings.”

  “You said there were two reasons.”

  Hope stood up and went restlessly to the window. With her back to me she said, “I wasn’t sure I’d tell you when I came here. I’m still sort of mixed up. The truckers need a union. Charlie remembers what it was like in the thirties, before they had one.”

  “They need a good union. One that can work for them, not against them, Hope.”

  “I guess I know that, but I ... well, here goes. As a taxi dispatcher, Charlie has friends in the Virginia State Police. Well, the night Hank Cambria was beaten to death in his cab, there was some luggage.”

  “I know. The cops impounded it along with the cab. Alexis Sand had her father’s papers in it. They’re dynamite. But at least they’re safe with the cops.”

  “That’s what I’m getting at. Charlie has the luggage now, got it from his friends in the police.”

  “Charlie! Abbamonte would kill to get his hands on those papers.”

  Hope turned around. Her eyes were big with fear. “Oh, that fool!” she cried. “That fool! He was scared, knew he’d need something to bargain with. He called Abbamonte.”

  “And told him about the papers?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “When was this?”

  “Yesterday.”

  “What did Abbamonte say?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I got Hope’s polo coat from the bedroom and my trenchcoat from the chair I’d draped it across in the living room. Take it easy, I thought. It’s going to be all right. He’s under police guard, isn’t he?

  “Your car here? Mine’s down at Brotherhood Headquarters.”

  “No. I took a cab.”

  I called for a cab. Fifteen minutes later, at a quarter to nine, we were heading north toward the Derleth’s apartment.

  Sunday morning, the gray, cold streets almost deserted. I paid the cab off and heard a church bell toll somewhere, distantly. A lonely sound. I took Hope’s arm and went inside and upstairs with her. The uniformed cop outside their apartment door touched the bill of his cap to Hope and gave me a questioning look. I showed him my identification.

  Hope let us into the apartment. Charlie came out of the bedroom in pajamas and a bathrobe. “Get dressed,” I said. “We’re going to issue a subpoena for you and put you on ice in the District Sheriff’s keeping. It’s your only chance.”

  “In a pig’s neck. And I thought I told you to keep the hell away from my sister.”

  “I’m begging you, Charlie,” Hope said. “Listen t
o him.”

  “Yeah?” His eyes were bitter, and the veins stood out on his bald head. “Where were you all night? My own sister, after all I did for you. My own sister with a pair of round heels.”

  “That’s enough, Charlie,” I said.

  “Is she any good. Drum? I can’t picture—”

  I hit him. He spun halfway around and went down on his knees. Hope took a step toward him, stopped. Glaring up at us, he climbed to his feet then moved on wobbly legs through the doorway into the bedroom. Hope started to go after him, but he came right out again holding a .45 in his hand. “I’m giving you a chance,” he said. “Get out of here, get out of my life. And get out of hers.”

  “You’ve been seeing too many TV shows. Go ahead, pull the trigger. Give a punk a gun and he thinks he owns the world.”

  “Who you calling a punk?” Charlie shouted hoarsely.

  “You’re acting like one. What good’s the gun going to do you? There’s a cop outside, Charlie. Or are you going to shoot him too?”

  “Keep away from me!”

  He had backed up until he was against the window and had nowhere else to go. And then Hope ran between us. “You’re sick,” she cried. “You’re sick if you really want to use that.”

  Charlie dry-washed his face with his left hand. Hope grabbed his right arm. The gun went off.

  Then three things happened almost simultaneously. Charlie thudded back against the windowsill, a shocked look on his face. Clutching at her forearm, Hope cried out and stumbled to her knees. And the cop came in on the run through the front door, a revolver in his fist.

  “What’s going on in here?”

  I took the automatic out of Charlie’s hand. He surrendered it meekly, looking down at Hope. “Oh Jesus, Hope,” he said. “Jesus, what did I do?”

  I knelt near Hope. There were tears in her eyes, but she was trying to smile. “It’s nothing,” she said. “It’s nothing, honest. He didn’t mean to do it. He didn’t mean it.”

  Tenderly I pushed back the sleeve of her black jacket. It was torn and at the rip, wet with blood. A red three-inch furrow, the trail of the bullet as it had grazed her, marked her forearm. It was bleeding freely and it looked like hell, but the slug hadn’t penetrated.