Double in Trouble (The Shell Scott Mysteries)

by Richard S. Prather

  The man on the desk was Eric Torgesen. The big man was his father.

  “Oh, Christ, I’ve been hit,” Eric said. “I’ve been hit.”

  His father sneered at him. “It’s just a scratch. You’re hardly even bleeding. You’ve got to go back in there. No son of mine is going to be called a coward.”

  “What good would I do in there? I couldn’t hit the side of a barn.” The boy cowered as his father raised a big hand.

  “Use your head, damn it. Stop whining. Someone’s going to come out on top of this mess. It doesn’t have to be Sand. It doesn’t have to be Abbamonte. It could be us.”

  “You’re dreaming, old man.”

  Nels Torgesen struck his son. Eric stumbled off the desk, his hands before his face. “I’ll kill you myself before I let them see what kind of a coward you are,” the older man vowed.

  I said, “I’ll tell you who’s going to come out on top. Sand and Ragen.”

  Surprise made Torgesen’s face go blank of all expression. He hadn’t seen me till now. “What are you talking about?”

  “You think it’s Ragen’s own idea to shoot up the place? Abba had Sand down, and Sand knew it. This is his way of getting back.”

  Nels Torgesen didn’t say anything right away. Eric looked up at me. “Don’t listen to him, Pop. He’s a Hartsell op.”

  “Sure I’m a Hartsell op. Your old man’s right, Eric. The Senator knows someone has to pick up the pieces of the union. You can if you’re smart.”

  Just then someone banged on the other side of the door I had locked. Glasses, I thought. Glasses had talked. I hadn’t jumped from the frying pan into the fire, but I was dangling.

  Torgesen looked at me, and wheeled, and opened the door behind the desk. The sound of gunfire was suddenly very loud. I heard men shouting. “Close that damn door!” someone bawled. “The light, you bastard. The goddam light!”

  “I’m coming in,” Torgesen hollered back at him, then he was gone. Eric stood cowering near the desk. I waited a moment, then followed his father.

  It was dark in the administration wing. Dimly I could see figures crouching near broken windows. Abbamonte’s army. The acrid stench of gunfire filled my nostrils. Its sustained roar almost deafened me. A dark silhouette rose in front of one broken window and flame spurted from his outstretched hands as he let go a chattering blast with a tommy-gun. Abruptly he dropped the tommy and fell. A man next to him stood quickly and let go a blast from a pump shotgun. Others were firing handguns out the broken windows.

  One man paced back and forth, not shooting. I recognized the huge shoulders and short squat figure of Mike Sand. His words were all but lost in the continuous din of gunfire. He’d approach one man, try to drag him away from the window, pace again, approach another. “...saps...” he was shouting at the top of his voice. “...all the Senate needs ... crucify us. Stop it! Have you all gone nuts?”

  When the chips were down, really down, only Mike Sand had kept his head. He knew a firefight here at Haycox Airport would finish the union brass, whoever won. The rest of them were thugs, answering gunfire with gunfire, but Sand knew that only the Hartsell Committee could win now, no matter who remained alive to count corpses when it was over. He knew, and was powerless to stop it.

  His powerful figure jerked suddenly. He had been hit. I reached him as he fell. He hit hard on his back and sat up immediately. He tried to stand but couldn’t.

  I got down on my hams near him. “Where’d they take Hope?”

  It didn’t register at first. “Shoulder ... nothing ... got to stop these lunatics before ... Drum? God, what are you doing here?”

  “I want the girl, Mike.” I had to shout into his ear to be heard.

  “...never should have taken her. Crazy fool Abbamonte. Small-change loan-shark in a big man’s world.”

  “The girl, Mike.” I shook his shoulder, then realized as my hand came away with his blood that that was where he’d been hit.

  “Cellar. Over there.” He jerked his head to one side.

  As I got up, a big man shambled toward us. It was Nels Torgesen. He hadn’t been heeled in the garage, but he held a gun in his big fist now. “You sold us out to Ragen, Mike,” he said through clenched teeth.

  Sand’s old fire returned. “Me? You stupid has-been!”

  Torgesen raised his gun. I slugged him over the ear with the Magnum as hard as I could. He went down all of a piece, like a felled tree, across Sand’s legs.

  I found the stairs that led down to the basement. Took them down two at a time. There was a damp cold corridor with a single naked lightbulb on one wall. At either end of the corridor, a door. I went to one of them and opened it.

  To see a small room. Abbamonte’s hulking form was bent over a desk. He was cramming fistfuls of paper into a briefcase, working in a frenzy. It was cold in there, but the back of his jacket was dark with sweat.

  I hadn’t heard the door at the other end of the short corridor open. Something hard prodded my back. “Drum,” a voice said. “This is gonna be a pleasure.”

  One thing you should not do if a man is desperate and quick is get that close to him with a gun. I was desperate, and quick enough. I jabbed back with an elbow and flung myself to one side and down, whirling. Abbamonte had dropped the briefcase and raised a gun to shoot me. But it was Rover, standing in the doorway with an automatic in his hand, who he shot. The single slug from Abbamonte’s gun turned Rover’s left eye to red pulp. The other eye barely had time to look surprised. Rover was dead before he hit the floor.

  I vaulted his body and plunged down the short corridor. No footsteps pounded after me. Abbamonte had gone back to job one, his briefcase. If he crammed it with the right papers and got away, he might have a chance. His loan slips could pull strings for him—at least enough, maybe, to get him out of the country. What happened to me didn’t matter.

  Another door, just like the first. I opened it. The room was bare, except for a couple of packing crates. Hope sat on the floor. Lindzey, kneeling, had the fingers of his left hand entwined in her short dark hair, pulling her head back, arching the white column of her throat. Her blouse was torn. One bra strap had parted. There were red welts on her chest and her nose was bleeding. In his right hand Lindzey held a lit cigarette near the whiteness of her throat.

  “...last time,” he was saying. “If Holt knew, you knew. What was Holt planning with Ragen?”

  Hope’s eyes widened. She didn’t see me. She tried to fight Lindzey off with her hands, but he was very strong. He heard me come in. His back was to me. “She’ll spill, Mr. Abbamonte,” he said. “She’ll spill if I have to burn her.”

  I said, “How are things in Front Royal, Lindzey?”

  He let go of Hope and sprang to his feet, hands empty. This was the part I would have to live with later, this was the part that would bother me. But he had done that to Hope. Kill him in cold blood? No, not cold blood. He had done that to Hope.

  I shot him as he reached for his gun. The slug hit bone on his chest and sent him reeling backwards and down.

  Hope was only half-conscious. I went to her. I stroked her hair. She made a crooning noise against my chest. Her eyes blinked. “Chet,” she said. “Chet, thank God. You’re here. You’re here.”

  Take her back upstairs with me?

  But she’d be safer down here.

  “I have to leave you alone for a few minutes more, baby.”

  “He tried to ... Chet, don’t leave me.”

  “You’ll be safer here. Can you stand?”

  I helped her to her feet. The door was thick raw wood. It had a bolt. I gave her Glasses’ automatic.

  “Lock the door after me. I’ll come back. If anyone else tries to come in, shoot if you have to.”

  “Don’t leave me. I couldn’t...”

  She was crying. I kissed the tears on her cheeks. “It won’t be long. I’ve got to leave you. Shooting war upstairs.”

  Then she saw Lindzey’s body. I had to keep her from falling. I tugged a
t her earlobes.

  Violence piled on violence. The body didn’t mean a thing now. Later, I would remember. But not now. Hope, though, had been through a different kind of hell. I dragged the body out into the corridor. Hope came to the door after me.

  “Lock it,” I said.

  She tried to smile. She shut the door. I heard her ram the bolt home.

  Behind me Abbamonte pounded up the stairs with his bulging briefcase.

  I ran after him. Fat man in a hurry, I thought. But he’d know which papers to take. Even if he got away with them the cops in Washington and L.A. and a dozen other transportation hubs would be rounding up Brotherhood thugs for months. But the big ones, the behind-the-scenes fixers and organizers, the interstate and local czars of commerce who’d sold out to Sand and Ragen for vicuna coats and deep freezes and the big houses on their wooded hills and the fast cabin cruisers and the sleek cars and the sleeker wet-mouthed blondes—these would get away untouched if Abbamonte fled Haycox Airport with his briefcase.

  The gunfire upstairs was sporadic now. Only a few dark silhouettes huddled at the shattered windows. A door slammed. I didn’t get it at first, then I heard the sound of a car outside in the wind and the pelting rain and I knew that Abba’s goons were fleeing the airport.

  Two men moved at a running crouch toward the door that had just slammed. I sprinted past Mike Sand’s big bulk on the floor. He was crawling slowly, laboriously, toward the door. I didn’t think he would reach it and even if he did, in the condition he was, he wouldn’t be going anywhere. I reached the door just as the two men did. They kept going. I didn’t. I saw a massive figure sprawled on the rain-lashed tarmac a few yards outside.

  It was Abbamonte. He had slipped and fallen. He scuttled crabwise for his briefcase. He looked like a big black crustacean, too, glistening in the rain. As he got to his feet with the briefcase I pointed the Magnum at him and fired. Heard the click of an empty cylinder. I hurled the revolver at him, missing. Then I reached him. Turning, he slammed the heavy briefcase against my chest, reaching at the same time for his pocket and the gun that lived there.

  I hooked my right fist into his meaty jaw. It knocked him down again. But Abbamonte didn’t cry out in unexpected pain. I did. I hadn’t used my fists on anyone since the fight with Scott. They were swollen puffy. Hitting Abbamonte had sent pain streaking up my arm to the shoulder socket. It felt as if a couple of knuckles were broken.

  Abbamonte’s gun flashed orange as I dropped on top of him. The slug missed me. Gunpowder seared my face. Abba was immensely strong and incredibly quick for a fat man. He scuttled out from under and then his weight—almost three hundred pounds of it—came down on me. I caught his right wrist with my left hand, deflecting the gun-muzzle. His flesh was slippery and cold. His left hand, the fingers the size of a bunch of bananas, closed in my hair. My head struck the tarmac, lifted, struck again. Ineffectually I pawed at his face with the broken fingers of my right hand. I couldn’t hit him hard enough, now, to hurt him. Instead I found his fleshy lips. Something ripped, and all at once my hand was wetter than the rain would have made it. Abbamonte fell away from me, striking for my head with the gun. Missing. Metal clanked on concrete as his right shoulder rose over me. The force he had used, and his weight, loosened his grip on the butt of the automatic. Not long, but long enough. I grabbed for the gun and got it. Smashed it as hard as I could against his face.

  The first time was nothing. The first time he merely grunted. Scott had been strong the way a human being is strong, but Abbamonte was a monster. Again I struck with the gun. Abbamonte made a bird-like squawking sound. I hit him again. He raised both hands in front of his face. I struck them down with the gun and hit his face again. Something gave under the barrel of the gun. He whimpered and shuddered.

  I got the briefcase and stood up. Another car roared by. Rats deserting a sinking ship. They didn’t matter. They were known hoodlums and the cops could round them up. What mattered was the briefcase.

  The car’s headlights raked the side of the administration building. A little man stood in the doorway, glasses ludicrously askew on his face. The gun in his hand was not ludicrous. He was Glasses. I swung Abbamonte’s automatic toward him, trigger-finger groping at trigger-guard. All in a split-second of instinctive response.

  But my trigger-finger, swollen twice its normal size, wouldn’t fit through the trigger guard. Glasses’ gun pointed straight at me. “Where do you want it, you son of a bitch?” he shouted. I waited in the rain and the night to die.

  THE EYES HAVE IT

  Tidewater, Maryland, 11:15 P.M., Sunday, December 20

  Shell Scott

  Bile choked my throat. I could feel wetness spill over my lips.

  Candy leaned over me, but I still held his wrists. I couldn’t hang on. He shoved me backward, yanked his wrists free, snapped the gun toward me.

  I hit the concrete hard on my back, rolled convulsively, forcing my right hand under my coat to the .38 in its holster there, rolled as quickly as I could. But not quickly enough.

  His gun barked behind me and the slug caught me in the side, sliced through the flesh. In the back. The way Braun had gotten it—in the back. He was a blur above me as I rolled all the way over, gun coming up in my right fist. And it came up firing. I squeezed the trigger three times, as fast as I could. Candy got off one more shot, but it was wild.

  I don’t know which slug got him. One of them did. It tore through his grinning mouth, out the back of his head. I jerked my eyes from him as he fell. Another man was on his knees near me, hands pressed against his chest. Beyond him I saw Ragen. The dark, pitted face and black eyes staring. The spur-like nose, and scar livid now on his lip.

  He was shouting, fists clenched and shaking before him in hopeless rage. Ragen had surrounded himself with thugs whose first impulse on hearing a gun go off was to yank out a beater and blast away. So he was getting no more than he’d asked for, a kind of crazy justice—it was too late for his angry shouts to stop the war Drum and I had started.

  He saw me then. But anger had swept any fear from him. His eyes fell on me with an almost tangible impact and he shouted something, lips curling. But then he turned and ran. Ragen must have known his only chance now was to get away—like others who’d already run.

  I got to my feet, dull ache deep in my belly and groin, fire in my side. The blood was warm, oozing down my hip now. Half a dozen cars were parked on the concrete ahead of Ragen and he headed for them. I ran after him, trying to straighten up.

  I caught him before he reached his car. My gun was back in its holster by then. I yanked him back, drove a fist into his gut, held him with one hand and started to hit him in the face. His fist cracked under my chin, jarred me, slammed into his mouth. He jabbed stiff fingers at my eyes but they dug into my forehead.

  I slapped my hands around his throat.

  I felt my fingers dig in, sinking into the flesh, felt rubbing of bone, slide of muscle. His hands wrapped around my wrists. I held him, choked him. A kind of craziness settled in my brain, craziness and ugliness.

  Ragen’s grip loosened on my wrists.

  Movement fluttered in the corner of my eye. Two men were running from the administration building, racing toward those cars which were behind me now. They ran past us. At least one car, maybe more, had already left.

  Another form ran from the open administration building door. A dumpy man, waddling as his short legs pounded over the rain-wet concrete, feet splashing in puddles. His foot hit the raised edge of a crack in the concrete and he went down. And then, for the first time in what seemed an age, I saw Chet Drum again. He sprinted toward the fallen man.

  It all seemed strange to me, unreal. Ragen hung from my hands. I tried to pull my fingers from his flesh, but they seemed buried there, as though mired in sticky dough. The two running men had reached the car, started it, were in motion. The headlights swept over me, touched the open administration building door.

  I saw a small man there. He raised his arm,
aimed a gun, pointed it at two men scuffling. Everything seemed to be happening very slowly now, time warped again, out of joint. The men clutched together were that dumpy man and Drum. His broad back was to the man in the doorway. I felt my hands peel open from Ragen’s throat. He fell at my feet as I stared at the little man just outside the building. He was aiming at Drum’s back, then he brushed at glasses on his face. Slowly I realized the little man was Glasses, brushing sleet from his thick specs.

  I saw Drum get up, turn, a gun in his hand. He didn’t fire. Glasses raised his arm again, steadied the gun on Drum’s chest.

  The Colt came smoothly into my hand, automatically, easily. Behind me was sound of some kind, a rising whine. The light got brighter, brighter. I could see Glasses clearly. My finger caressed the trigger and I saw Glasses swing around, gun blasting up into the night sky. The sound was louder behind me, the light brighter.

  Glasses turned toward me, bending gently forward. I fired again, saw him twitch and fall.

  Chester Drum

  Glasses crumpled in the doorway. He fired once at the rain as he fell.

  I turned around. Ten yards across the tarmac, his shortcut white hair plastered to his head, Shell Scott was standing in the rain, a revolver in his big right fist.

  Then I realized I could see him too clearly. He stood there, grinning. He was sharply etched against the night.

  Light moved and brightened behind him and to his left. I heard the roar of a car engine racing. Saw headlights growing behind Scott. I tried to shout a warning. The rain and wind swallowed it. Scott just looked at me. The grin left his face as I charged across the tarmac toward him. He looked at me and the gun in his hand.

  “What the hell—” he began.

  Now the headlights were very big and very close. I dove at Scott, catching his middle jarringly with my right shoulder. It jack-knifed him and we went sprawling together on the tarmac as the car sped past about a foot behind me, its tires spewing water at us.

  Shell Scott