7
The “same place” was a service station on cahuenga—a Shell station, at that.
Nineteen minutes after Ben Kahn's call, I left the Cad next to the gas pumps, asked the attendant to fill it up—with Super-Shell—and walked into the men's room.
Nobody was in sight, but the door of the enclosed john was shut. “Benny?” I said.
He came out, lit a cigarette. “'Lo, Scott. Maybe I make another C-note."
“I hope, so, Benny.” I did. Not only was he staying straight, and putting his girl through, college, but I hoped his information was worth that much.
He didn't waste any time. “You're still interested in where Nickie Domano and his men are, right?"
“And how."
“I'm not sure, but I think maybe I made it. I was driving in about an hour ago, on Cypress. Some guys in a big Imperial passed me, going like hell—I was hitting sixty—and I got a look at the guy on my side as they went by. Guy was Pete Peters, they call him Irish Pete, on account of he drinks Irish whisky. Know him?"
I shook my head.
“Works for Nickie. Was in the Engineers when he did his bit in the Army, blew up bridges and stuff, got out and started blowing safes. Expert, can figure to the ounce what it'll take to pop the can open. Damn good man. Main thing is, he works for Nickie."
“He's the only one you saw?"
“Three, four others in the car, but he's the only one I made. Should be enough. About a mile ahead of me they took a left on a dirt road. I didn't stick around to watch, but maybe half a mile in, up pretty high, there was a house all alone. Not much out there, just trees and junk growing in the ground. Could be where they're at. Some of them, anyhow."
“Good enough. You've no idea why they might be holed up out there?"
He shook his head. “The bit worth a C?"
I thought about it. “Yeah, if you can pin down the location."
“Easy. Little ways past where they turned off, I drove by a big old wood house looks like it's going to fall down. Out front was an old guy looks like he's going to fall down. He was digging some holes—said he was going to put up a sign, ‘Eben's Animal Farm,’ he says. Going out, you pass that zoo place—only house along there—and keep on maybe a mile, little under. Then you'll see the dirt road going up to your right."
“Zoo? You mean, like animals in a tent?"
“Yeah, only there's no tent, just some pens back of the house. From there I couldn't see the place where it looked like Nickie's boys were headed, and if I couldn't see it, they couldn't see me, so I stopped and jawed with the old duck. Jawed a minute and then worked around to asking if he knew who else lived around there, or if he'd noticed a bunch of guys moving in, like that. He knew from nothing. He'd just moved in himself, from some dump fifty miles or so away where he'd been sticking the farmers two bits to look at his animals. Or maybe him. Put him in a cage, I'd pay two bits to look at him myself. I could afford to see him four hundred times. I think."
He was hinting. I pulled out my wallet, extracted a hundred-dollar bill, and handed it to him.
“Don't put it away,” he said. “I got another one. The big one."
I smiled. Maybe a little thin, but I smiled. “Saved the big one for last?"
“It's business, Scott."
I found a fifty, two twenties, and a ten, kept them out, and put my wallet away. “About this big?"
“Easy. You won't even kick."
I folded the bills in half and held them out toward him.
“Try me."
“Your phone's bugged."
I stared at him. “You're sure?"
“Sure enough. In fact, it's both your phones."
I gave him the hundred.
“You know the Tropics, don't you?” he asked.
“Sure.” It was a jukebox bar in downtown L.A., owned through a front by a two-time loser who enjoyed having birds of his feather around. It was a bar where a man fresh out of stir could go for a drink and feel he was among friends. Tourists who stumbled in would probably think the place very drab and colorless; but if you knew the hoods’ lingo, and weren't a tourist, you could on occasion hear some very interesting and colorful conversations.
“I was in there last night,” Benny said, “having a beer and riding the Earie, just in case I could pick up something you'd like to hear about. Who comes in but one of your colleagues, Neal—don't know his last name. Little round-faced guy with fat muscles."
I knew who he meant. A former private detective, who'd lost his license but hadn't lost any of his encyclopedic knowledge of electronics, of bugs and bugging. We'd always been reasonably friendly. I had a hunch the reasonable friendliness was about to end.
Benny went on, “He was with a blond twist about two feet taller than he is. Stacked.” He flashed a quick grin at me. “She had pretty fat muscles herself. They slid into the booth clear in back, near the gents’ can. Both full of sauce to start out with, and they started drinking straight shots."
He opened the toilet door and flipped his cigarette inside. I heard the psst as he made a bull's-eye. “To make a long story short, I stepped into the can and kept the door cracked. Neal is selling himself to this babe, but she's not buying the whole store yet. So finally he tells her he just got through bugging Shell Scott's pad. He says, ‘I got that sonofabitch wired so he can't belch without me taping the echo.’ That impressed the twist."
“Grand. He said, ‘that sonofabitch,’ huh?"
“Yeah. For a start. You want to hear how he finished?"
“Never mind. He bug the phones, or my whole apartment?"
“Just taps on the phones. I heard enough to be pretty sure of that."
“He drop who he did the job for?"
“No."
“Any idea where I could find Neal now?"
“No again."
“How come you didn't call me last night, Benny?"
“I did. He and the blonde came in about eleven, and I called you near midnight. No answer. I was a little leery about calling you over a bugged phone to start with. Slept on it and—hell, you should be glad I called at all."
“I am. I'm more than merely—"
“I spent forty minutes in that damn crapper. Forty minutes, wagging my ear and holding my nose.” He looked around him, at the white-painted walls. “Cans. The story of my life."
“You want a little for overtime, Benny?"
He shook his head. “Two C's I'm after, two C's I got. I'm satisfied. How about you?"
“I think I'm getting the best of it."
“That's good. That's the way I want it.” He flashed me the quick grin again. “Now that I'm honest."
It was nearly noon before I headed out the Freeway toward Hollywood again, headed for Cypress Road and a look at the area where—maybe—Nickie Domano and his gang were now headquartered.
I'd spent the rest of the morning running down a few calls that had come in to my office in the Hamilton Building—Hazel, on the switchboard at the end of the hall, had taken the “no comment” calls and passed them on to me—and trying to find friend Neal. The calls turned out to be unimportant as far as the Alexander-Domano case was concerned, but I had to check them out.
At the Tropics I learned the first name of the blonde Neal had been with last night, but not where I could find her—or Neal. I didn't find either of them. But when I did find Neal, by the time I got through with him he was really going to think of me as “that sonofabitch."
I pulled off the Freeway and swung right around the curve into Sunset. I made the stop at Sunset but, wrapped in thought, didn't check the Boulevard to my left as closely as I should have. A horn blasted with the sound of a diesel locomotive's whistle, and I hit the brakes as an enormous red gasoline truck roared past a foot from my front bumper.
I managed to get into the traffic stream on Sunset without having a collision, or a heart attack, and I was thinking, “Man, a guy doesn't have to get shot to get killed; you can get killed all kinds of ways. Like being a little careless..."<
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Right then it hit me.
Ideas roared through my head like little red gas trucks.
They seemed to zip up my spine and keep on going till they hit my skull, with the click-click-click of castanets, or maybe the sound of slot-machine tumblers stopping on jackpot.
It's said that a man drowning, or maybe a man dying, sometimes sees his whole past life flash before his eyes. Well, that didn't happen to me, but that gas wagon ripping by so close moved those mental tumblers just a little. Everything that had happened since Zazu rang the chimes at my apartment rolled through my mind, from that beginning cling-clong to the right-now click-click-click, and I said aloud, “Why, hell yes. Why not?"
I rolled it around, weighed it, and when I stopped at the next red light I reached under the Cad's dash and grabbed the mobile phone there, gave my name and number, and called the L.A.P.D., Homicide Division. By the time the light turned green, I had Samson on the other end of the line.
“Sam, Shell. I think I know how we can find Matthew Omar's body."
“Body? You sound pretty sure he's dead."
“Hell yes, he's dead."
Sam swore lustily. I hadn't stopped to think that the last thing he wanted right now was another corpse with holes in it.
“I suppose you can prove that,” he said.
“Well, no. But—"
“That's what I figured. Shell, I've got to see the chief again in ten minutes—during his lunch hour. My lunch hour, too, for that matter. And in about two hours there'll be maybe forty hoods gathering for Harry Dyke's funeral, every one of them already griped at Domano and all his hoods. Dyke was bad enough, then Werme was killed, and now if this Omar turns up knocked off—"
His voice petered out. It wasn't that he'd run down, but that my mobile phone was on the blink. I'd been having trouble with it off and on for over a week. I'm not very good with machinery and radio tubes and such, but I'd managed to fix it every time so far. What you do, you kick the little box holding the tubes, and if you kick it just right something happens and it works again. For a while.
“Just a minute, Sam, I can't hear you—” I cut it off. He couldn't hear me either, of course. I felt a little silly, the way you do when you dial and the voice says, “You have dialed a wrong number" and you say “Oops, gee, I'm sorry,” and the voice continues, “This is a recording."
I lifted my leg, aimed my cordovan, and thunk. Got it just right. Either going to have to get the radiophone fixed or buy a new pair of shoes. Worked again, though.
Right after the thunk: “—then they'll listen to the eulogy about what a fine chap their buddy was, and they'll file past the casket and look down at him, getting madder and madder—"
“O.K., Sam, I know you're busy. Forget it."
Sam just didn't go on like that, not once a year. I knew he was under a lot of pressure now. Newspapers had been chewing up the department, and the chief had been chewing out Sam, and I guess he had to let off steam himself once in a while. Besides, I was sure he hadn't slept for at least a day and a half, maybe longer. He was in no mood to listen to an involved explanation.
I was rolling along Sunset, and Vine Street was up ahead, so I swung over into the left lane and said, “Ignore everything I said, Sam. I've got another idea."
“I don't like the sound—"
“Anything new from SID?"
“Blood in the penthouse, both places, was type O, Rh negative. Under the rug there in Omar's house, Rh positive. But that's still not much help. For all we know, Omar's blood type is O or A or AB or what the hell. We won't know till we find Omar himself. Or his body."
“That's great."
“What's so great—"
“I'll find him for you ... I think. Sam, don't worry about it—just do me one favor, will you? Stay by that phone till I call you again, O.K.?"
“I told you, in ten minutes—hell, five now—"
“Sam, I'm in my Cad. Practically home.” I was. I was slowing for the signal at Vine Street. A few blocks down Vine it becomes North Rossmore, and on North Rossmore is the Spartan Apartment Hotel. “I've one more little thing to do, but I'll call you as soon as I get inside my apartment. Shouldn't be more than five minutes. Maybe less. O.K.?"
He swore softly some more. Then he said, “O.K. But I hope to hell you know what you're doing."
“And don't worry about what I say, just play along with me. Deal?"
“Deal.” He paused, then said again, “I hope to hell you know what you're doing."
I hoped so, too. But I didn't tell Sam that. I told him good-bye and stuck the phone back under the dash, made the left turn into Vine, grabbed the phone again.
It was five minutes after noon. It took me three minutes just to get the man I wanted, Jim Nelson of KBTV, local Channel 14. He produced a half-hour national-and-local news program, telecast each week night at seven-thirty. A five-minute feature of the show, when there was suitable footage, consisted of scenes filmed from Channel 14's roving, camera-equipped helicopter, named, perhaps too cutely, “Chopper 14."
The two-man helicopter crew covered fires, disasters like floods and earthquakes, pile-ups on Freeways; and when there was nothing sufficiently gory or catastrophic, they merely poked down from the sky into various portions of the city for light commentary or human-interest narration about the City of the Angels, and Hollywood, by day and by night.
By the time Jim answered his phone, I had parked behind the Spartan and glanced around the area—I always glance around, since I'm less than popular with certain segments of L.A. society at any time, and especially today, I figured.
“Jim,” I said, “this is Shell Scott."
“Well, hi. Shell. What've you been—"
“Jim, I'm in a helluva hurry. Please Just listen to this, and let me ask you a favor, and then say yes."
“Even if it wasn't you, I wouldn't say yes—"
“I want you to send your guys in the helicopter out here to pick me up—"
“Wait a minute. Out where?"
“I'm at the Spartan now, so all they'll have to do is set it down across the street, on the grounds of the Wilshire Country Club, and pick—"
“You're out of your mind—"
“—me up. It's nice and flat, and I'll already be there waiting—"
“You are out of your mind."
“Jim, could be I am, but please don't interrupt till I've finished.” It was ten minutes after twelve. Probably Sam was right now supposed to be sitting, or maybe standing, or maybe even saluting, in front of the imposing desk of the even more imposing Chief of Police of the L.A.P.D.
I went on rapidly, “Look, I know you don't owe me any favors. But do this and I'll owe you a big one. I give you my word, any time you can use a private detective's services, you call me and—so long as I don't have to break my word to somebody else—you've got me. Free. Day or night. For as long as you want, and whatever you want."
I made myself keep quiet while he said, “Uh ... ,” and thought for a few seconds. Then he said, “Funny, I just might want to ... Skip that for now. Why do you want the chopper?"
“I want them to pick me up and go where I tell them—I don't know yet where that'll be. But, if I'm right, they can then get a beautiful shot for your telecast tonight—as a bonus—of some hoods opening up a dead man's grave."
“What hoods?"
“I ... don't really know yet, not for sure. Actually, I am pretty sure, but..."
I was trying to think of too many things at once. And some doubts were creeping in. Maybe that big gasoline wagon zooming past my bumper had merely addled my noodles. It had all seemed so clear, so clearly logical, then—ah, the hell with doubts.
“Whose grave?” Jim asked.
“Matthew Omar's."
That interested him. “Yeah, we got that. He's dead, huh?"
I swallowed. To hell with doubts, I reminded myself.
“Yes."
“And ‘Chopper Fourteen’ will get footage of crooks digging his body up?"
“Yes.” I swallowed again. I couldn't do it. “That is, Jim, unless I am actually out of my mind."
“Which, if I know you, you are."
“If it was just me I'd say there's a ninety-per cent chance. But to you, well, it's fifty-fifty. At least.” I paused. “But—think of it, Jim. If you do get a shot like that, that big old Zoomar lens on Chopper Fourteen's camera zooming in, man, you'll have a real news beat, a scoop, a triumph—"
“Don't go ga-ga—"
“Hoods open grave of murdered man, dig him up, wow, flash, scoop! Why, you might win the Nobel Prize—"
“They don't give No—"
“Or even a Pulitzer Prize—"
“And not a Pu—"
“Hell, an Emmy. An Oscar. Some damn thing. And think of the public service—"
“All right, calm down. Let me think. Well ... I'll do it. That is, I'll try to do it. Just this once."
“Jim, it isn't like this will happen again."
“I'm a member of the club, and I think I can clear this at the top. But how about the members—"
“No time for that."
“Shell, there's a heliport on top of the Lee Tower. Why can't we pick you up there?"
“Jim, there simply won't be enough time. After I call Sam again, there may be only two or three minutes...” I let it trail off, thinking. More to myself than to him I went on, “Yeah, there's Sam waiting for my call. And it may be too late already. If this thing doesn't get moving, those hoods will already have left for the cemetery—"
Jim broke in, “Omar's in the cemetery?"
“No, I was thinking of a funeral. Jim, I've got to go now, no matter what. Will you call the ‘copter and start them out here? So they can be on their way while you're checking with the club? You can always call them back—"
“All right, Shell. But if this is a fizzle—"
His voice stopped. The phone had fizzled. Thunk. Nothing. I kicked it again. Nothing. It seemed a bad omen.
I shoved the phone onto its hook, jumped out of the Cad, and sprinted into the Spartan.
I was dialing from my apartment phone at twelve-fourteen. Sam answered. “Shell, Sam,” I said. “I've—"
“Dammit—"
I was afraid he might, accidentally, say the wrong thing in the heat of the moment, so I rushed on, “Just listen a minute, old buddy. We were talking earlier about Matthew Omar, and that bloodstain under the rug in his house."
The Meandering Corpse (The Shell Scott Mysteries) Page 7
