The Meandering Corpse (The Shell Scott Mysteries)

by Richard S. Prather

  “You've got a big mouth, haven't you?” he said.

  “I've been told."

  He put the pleasant, icky expression back on. “Well, it don't matter. I'm telling you the truth. We don't want trouble. Not with you or anybody. I brought the boys back because I want you to meet them, know who they are, so there won't be no mistakes made.” He paused. “I figure you know I'm Nickie Domano."

  I nodded.

  “This here is Charles.” He nodded toward the thick, muscular ape. “Charles Haver. Called Chunk. Maybe you've heard of him?"

  “Never heard of him."

  Chunk grinned sort of foolishly and stuck out his hand. “You gettin’ it straight,” he said. “Don't none of us want no trouble."

  Maybe these guys meant it, but I had my doubts. About a million of them. I shook his hand, though. First I got my feet planted the way I wanted them, and I grabbed the front of his fingers so he couldn't squeeze down on my hand, and I kept the corner of my eye on Domino.

  Nothing.

  Like I said, I'm suspicious. Maybe too suspicious.

  “And that's Jay over there,” Domino went on. “Jay Werme."

  I glanced toward Jay as he moved toward me fast. Too fast. I might still have kept part of my attention on Domino despite that too-sudden movement, except that right then a stray thought strayed through my mind. Domino had said he'd brought these two mugs back here so I could meet them, but he'd also said he hadn't known anybody was in here with Lilli. So how could he have brought them to meet me if he hadn't known I was here?

  Well, this was no time for me to be playing with little mental puzzles, and it was no time for me to be giving most of my attention to Jay Werme. But the combination of his movement and my thought was enough to keep my gaze on him for an extra second—and the back of my head toward Domino.

  That was all sugar-pie Nickie Domano wanted: the back of my head. He got it. He got it good. The sap came out so fast he must have carried it in a spring clip. I heard the swish—either as it came out of his clothes or moved through the air, I don't know—but then I wasn't hearing, I was feeling. Feeling the impact like a padded two-by-four smacking my skull, the almost audible roaring of pain through my head and down the back of my neck.

  I knew my knees were buckling but I couldn't feel their movement; I felt the impact when they hit the floor, though. Jay hadn't stopped coming toward me. He swung a leg toward my side. I managed to get my arm in front of his shin, but it didn't stop the toe of his shoe from digging into my ribs. Another movement near me must have been Chunk. I was still almost erect though on my knees, but when the big fist slammed my right ear, I went down.

  I don't know if I went out or not, but the next thing was Nickie Domano's face near mine, sort of floating in the air. He was smiling gently, and his voice was soft, syrupy. “I told you we don't want no trouble, Scott. But maybe you didn't understand what I was getting at. You understand now?"

  I must have been on my side because I felt a sudden sharp pain in my back. The toe of that shoe again, probably. I couldn't quite figure it out at that point. I had another problem. I was trying to figure out how to get my hands on Domino, but I couldn't find my hands.

  “I don't like trouble, especially trouble with fuzz, Scott. So I hate killing guys one at a time—means too much heat, and I try to avoid heat, got it? That's why you're not dead yet. Stay out of my way, don't bug me no more, or next time you're dead. Got it?"

  I'd found one hand. I straightened it out, fingers stiff, and jabbed the fingers at his eyes.

  I missed them, but my thumbnail scraped his cheek, gouged a small furrow there. I saw it start to fill with red.

  I saw the sap, too, this time.

  Then Domino's face, the sap, the room, everything faded away. The pain dulled and disappeared. Darkness billowed like a storm around me, picked me up, and became blackness.

  Peace, it's wonderful.

  2

  Peace had ended. War was about to be declared.

  I'd come to in my car, flopped on the front seat. For twenty minutes I had moved very little, except for probing several sore spots, but I'd achieved one major accomplishment. I had managed to sit up.

  No bones appeared to be broken, except those in my head.

  At least they hadn't killed me. More, I still had my own .38 Colt Special in its clamshell holster at my left armpit, and the car was my sky blue Cadillac convertible. So they weren't all bad; only ninety-nine per cent.

  It was nearly eleven p.m. I'd been out close to three hours. I sat in the Cad for a few more minutes, then slid outside and walked around the car a couple of times. I could navigate. My gun was loaded. So I put it into my coat pocket, kept my hand on it, and went back into the Jazz Pad.

  The ringside table was empty. I'd kind of expected it would be. Domino, Werme, Chunk, and the thin, gray-hatted citizen weren't in sight. I went back to my Cad, started it, and drove perhaps three feet. Then I got out and looked at the tires.

  Make that a hundred per cent. All four tires were as flat as my head—flatter, since I had felt my head, and it was lumpy. They hadn't just let the air out of the tires, either; they'd used a sharp knife, slashed them, ruined them.

  I climbed behind the wheel, lit a cigarette, and swore for a while.

  Then I thought for a while. Things like: How did I get into this? Why did I get into this? Ah, yes, Zazu. Dear little Zazu.

  With an expression that was probably very similar to the one stamped on Chunk's face, I sat there and thought about the glorious evening I had earlier been anticipating. Until Zazu ...

  It was six-thirty p.m., dark outside the Spartan Apartment Hotel, and everything—including me—was ready, even though it would be an hour before I picked up Sivana, my Irish-Egyptian belly dancer. Well, she wasn't actually mine. Not yet. But I'd met her at a late nightspot on the previous evening, shortly after her last number.

  During a particularly fascinating movement her ruby had popped out and rolled almost to my feet, so naturally I picked it up and kept it for her. I even kept it warm for her. It was easy. By the time she came slinking up to reclaim her priceless jewel, I had ascertained from the bartender what Sivana drank, when she drank, and I had two Melted Pearls waiting on the table. Also two bourbon-and-waters, for me.

  After we'd drunk those, Sivana confided that she had “absolute muscular control” and that her ruby never popped out unless she popped it out. She could even aim it.

  Absolute muscular control, hey? I'd said. Well, you just come up to my little old apartment tomorrow night, and bring your ruby, and I'll dig up a marble, and we'll play chase. Unlikely as it may sound, she thought that might be exciting. Might be, hell, I told her. It might be the damndest marble game L.A. had ever seen.

  What's in a Melted Pearl? I asked her. Milk. Milk? Ye Gods, you drink milk? Only when she was working. Tomorrow night she'd drink Martinis. Could I mix Martinis? Ha! Could I mix Martinis! Why, I could mix a Martini that would pop that ruby out all by itself. She might wind up wearing a pimientoed olive. Or even a dilled tomato. Or even a dill pickle. Could I mix Martinis? Why —

  But she'd only have a couple of hours. Had to make the ten o'clock show. Uh. Couple of hours, huh? Well ... O.K., so we'd start with a couple of hours.

  Thus was I thinking, in my spic-and-span apartment at the Spartan. I'd cleaned up the joint, bought some dandy stuff for hors d'oeuvres at a nearby kosher delicatessen, selected some belly-dance-type records, and mixed a large jug of Martinis. The jug, with the ice removed, and minus one Martini, was now resting in my freezer chilling even more. It was minus one because I'd sampled my handiwork and found it satisfactory; it was beginning to bum in my stomach like a hot ruby.

  I went into the living room, where I had fluffed up the thick shag nap of my yellow-gold carpet. I moved the two leather hassocks into a more exciting ensemble, then sat on my low, chocolate-brown divan. On the squat, scarred, highball-glass-stained coffee table before the divan sat, in solitary splendor on a square o
f black velvet, a large, round, marvelously veined agate. I wanted Sivana to know I'd meant everything I'd said; she could trust me.

  Time passed as if something was holding it back. After a while I poured myself another Martini. Halfway through it I wondered if maybe I should glue my marvelously veined agate in my navel—but rejected that idea right away. Might depress Sivana. Besides, I didn't like the thought of glue in my navel.

  Cling-clong.

  That was the chimes at the door of my apartment.

  I'd told Sivana where I lived. She'd come early. A whole half hour early. That helped. She hadn't even waited for me to pick her up. It wasn't even seven p.m. yet. I sprang to the door and threw it wide.

  “Good evening, Mr. Scott."

  It wasn't Sivana. I didn't know who it was. I didn't care. It wasn't Sivana.

  This one was a little blonde gal, standing there in the hallway, looking up at me with soft brown eyes. Maybe little isn't the word; she was maybe five-four or five and might have had a rather nice figure—it was covered by a white coat that buttoned clear up to her neck and bulged extravagantly over her breasts—but she was young. Not more than twenty or twenty-one, I thought, maybe nineteen. She was a kind of plain mouse. She had good, regular features, though; maybe it was the absence of make-up.

  I said, hopefully, “You didn't want this apartment, did you?"

  “Yes. I'd like very much to talk to you, Mr. Scott."

  “What about?"

  “May I come in? Please?"

  I hesitated. But both my office phone and the listed apartment phone are in the book, and my ad is in the yellow pages. There was half an hour left, too. I could spare this mouse ten or fifteen minutes.

  “O.K.” I stepped aside, shut the door behind her as she walked in.

  She sat on the divan, and I plunked down on one of the hassocks. “What did you want to see me about, miss?"

  “It's because you're a detective. And a good one. I know a lot about you, Mr. Scott. I think you're the best detective in Los Angeles. I honestly think you can do things nobody else can do, nobody in the whole world!"

  She spoke with the gushing enthusiasm of a high school kid describing some teen-aged Albert Schweitzer. It was flattering, but between her and me, on my coffee table, was my marble.

  I said, “Well, thank you. But what exactly did you have in mind for me to do?"

  “I want you to help my daddy."

  “Uh-huh. What's your daddy's problem, and what do you think I can do to help him?"

  “Well, he's a businessman. And some other businessmen are trying to run him out of business!"

  Everything she said was very dramatic, filled with exclamation points. Actually, she was kind of a cute little mouse, I could see now. Vivacious, good voice, lots of energy and animation. With just a little artfully applied make-up she could have been quite attractive. But she was too young. Certainly too young for me.

  True, I'm only thirty years old myself. But a while back, during the Johnny Troy case, a miserable hood had killed a little gal in my apartment. Raped her—and killed her. Some of the hood's friends had spread word that I'd been responsible, and though I was able later to prove the allegation totally false—and also able to shoot the bastard who'd actually done it—I had a very sticky time of it for a while. Consequently, since then I had been very circumspect, at least in public, and was seen about the town only with tomatoes who had ripened, at least minimally, on the vine.

  Sivana, for example, was at least twenty-three or twenty-four. Possibly a year older than that. Yeah, Sivana—time to wrap this up and get on my way.

  “Look, honey,” I said gently, “that sounds a little out of my line. Usually I'm working on a burglary or blackmail case, maybe a murder case. But interfering with normal business competition isn't in my field."

  “This isn't normal,” she said, wide-eyed. “These other businessmen would just as soon muscle Daddy as not."

  “Muscle?” The word sounded foreign coming from those fresh, young, unrouged lips.

  “They'd just as soon shoot him as not."

  “Shoot? They'd—"

  “Why, they tried to shoot him today."

  I started getting a queer feeling, like when you sit down in a puddle of water. I knew of one killing this afternoon, but ...

  “They tried to shoot him?” I said finally. “Today?"

  She nodded vigorously. “Yes, they did!"

  I could feel the slow cooling of my spinal column. As though somebody had playfully poured a Martini over it. Even then I was starting to think about wasted Martinis.

  “Dear,” I said softly. “What's your name?"

  “Zazu."

  “Za—Would you say that again?"

  “Zazu. I'm Zazu Alexander."

  The Zazu didn't mean anything; but the Alexander did. At least, maybe it did. “And ... your father?” I said.

  “My daddy's Cyril Alexander."

  First the Martini, then the ice cubes.

  Cyril Alexander was merely the biggest mobster in town. Los Angeles is a cleaner city than most, at least as far as the rackets are concerned; but in any big city there's plenty of dirt. And Alexander controlled most of that dirt.

  Cyril Alexander was the titular and actual head of the “Alexander gang,” and what little the Alexander gang didn't control in L.A. wasn't worth controlling. In fact, for the last two or three years they hadn't even had any competition to speak of, other hoodlums of any states steering clear of the City of the Angels.

  Until today, maybe. This afternoon Cyril Alexander and one of his bodyguards, a grossly fat, dark-skinned and black-mustached trigger-man named Geezer, had walked out of a used-car lot Alexander owned. Somebody driving slowly by in a black sedan had let fly with six slugs, four of which had hit Geezer, two in his enormous mid-section, one in his heart, and one in his head. Alexander, except for getting mussed by diving to the sidewalk, had been uninjured.

  “Zazu, dear,” I said, still gently, but firmly, “your daddy is not a businessman. He's a crook."

  She didn't even blink. “It doesn't make any difference what you call him. He's in trouble, and I want you to help him."

  “I don't work for crooks."

  “I know that. But I thought maybe you would this time. There has to be a first time. I've thought all of this out very carefully, Mr. Scott."

  “Maybe so. But there doesn't have to be a first time for this."

  “You're real good friends with Captain Samson, aren't you?"

  I nodded.

  “And he's worried about some murders the newspapers have been writing about? And especially what happened today?"

  “You can say that again."

  Sam, as Captain of Homicide, was responsible for the investigation of all murders, as well as a lot of other things, and recently there had been a couple of still-unsolved homicides in the Central Division, one of the victims being a well-known and wealthy man. In consequence the newspapers had been riding the L.A.P.D., particularly the Homicide Division, pretty hard. Sam had even been called on the carpet by the chief a few days ago, where he'd had a small fire lit in his pants.

  That was almost routine, bad enough all by itself. But lo there was this, today. Something that had all the earmarks of a gang shooting. And another body on the street.

  Gang wars, with guns blazing in the street and such, went out decades ago. But there are still a few hoods who settle their differences that way on occasion; possibly this afternoon's violence had been one such occasion. The Intelligence Division downtown had picked up rumors that some out-of-town mobsters were in L.A. and might make trouble, but there'd been no corroboration of the rumors—unless fat Geezer's murder would corroborate them. The I.D. didn't know yet, and Sam didn't, and neither did I.

  But if so, more important to Samson—and to me, for that matter—was the fact that retaliation, and more gunplay, might well mean the deaths not merely of hoodlums but of innocent citizens. A couple of those flying slugs this afternoon had n
arrowly missed an old character who until then had been interested in buying a three-year-old Chevrolet. He promptly lost interest and had a mild heart attack.

  He'd been treated and released from a hospital, but the next time might be different. Next time a slug might hit a citizen, maybe a woman or a kid. A kid like this Zazu, for instance.

  She went on, “If you helped Daddy get rid of these other businessmen...” She let it trail off, and smiled for the first time. It was a nice smile, believe it or not. “These crooks,” she went on, “you'd be helping your friend Samson, wouldn't you?"

  It was a good point, I had to give her that. “True. But that doesn't make any difference.” I had to give her something else. She'd said she had thought this out very carefully, and it was clear she hadn't been kidding. I started to wonder what else she had up her sleeve.

  “Daddy's done you a lot of favors, too."

  “Also true—in a way. But not out of the goodness of his heart. If there's any in it."

  She was referring to the fact that Cyril Alexander had on several occasions tipped me off—or the police—to the operations of other thugs in town who were invading what Cyril felt was his own rightful area of thievery. As a result several guys were doing big time at San Quentin. And Cyril had less opposition in L.A. It was undeniable that he'd given me info that helped me to close two or three tough cases, however.

  Zazu had been quiet for a while. Now she said, “There're lots of reasons why you should help Daddy get rid of this other gang, Mr. Scott. Aren't there?"

  “Let's skip that. In the first place, we don't even know there is another gang."

  “I do. It's the Domino gang. Nickie Domano. And fifteen of his men."

  I blinked. She'd sounded a little harder, right then. Even looked a little harder. But more, it checked with the info that the I.D. had been given. Nickie Domano and his boys. But they hadn't known how many.

  “That's very interesting,” I said. “What else can you tell me?"

  “Not a thing. Unless you promise to help me."