The Meandering Corpse (The Shell Scott Mysteries)

by Richard S. Prather

  Sam came in, his voice controlled. “Yeah, that's right."

  “You need Omar so that you can check his blood type against the blood in his house. Well, I think I'll soon have my hands on Omar—or, rather, his body."

  Just a short silence, then Sam came in, beautifully, “His body, huh? You think he's dead?"

  “Hell yes, he's dead,” I said, just as I'd said it to Sam a few minutes—too many minutes—ago. But this time I went on, “I've got lines out all over town, and in a few minutes I should know where he's buried, I'm leaving the apartment right now, Sam, to get the info. You got that?"

  “Got it."

  I wanted to be sure it was completely clear, however, that I was not going to get the information over the phone, here in my apartment. So I repeated it. “I'm going to leave here as soon as I hang up, Sam. A few minutes later I'm pretty sure I'll know where Omar is. Now, when you get his body downtown, you'll check the blood type, of course, but I imagine you'll also check the bullets in him against those you've got on file. Right?"

  “Naturally."

  “So start with the slugs you took out of Geezer, huh?"

  “Geezer?” He was surprised—but he recovered fast. “You mean Harry Dyke. Yeah, naturally..."

  His voice trailed off. There were sounds in the ear-piece, as if he was moving. Maybe standing up. Then I heard him say, “Uh, hello, Chief."

  Well, that tore it. I could hear another man speaking, but I couldn't make out anything but a gentle murmur, like a very, very distant tidal wave. The chief was speaking in his low, calm, quiet voice, and that wasn't good. That was lousy.

  But I finished it up. “I'll call you as soon as I've got something solid. Thanks. And, uh, sorry I held you up, Sam."

  Then I put the receiver down, mentally wished Sam well, and took off.

  The chopper was already overhead when I trotted out through the Spartan's entrance and down the steps. I gashed my wrist a bit on a wire, going over the Wilshire Country Club's fence, but when I dropped to the grass inside, the Channel 14 helicopter was hovering only a few feet above the rough—yes, rough; there's a dandy golf course inside the fence.

  Once before I had disturbed some golfers lining up long putts—and short ones, which are the worst kind—and all they had tried to do was kill me, with putters, golf carts, drivers, and those wickedly sharp nine irons. A helicopter coming out of nowhere and settling down a bit off the fairway is enough to ruin even an easy four-wood shot, much less a short putt, so I—so I wasn't going to think about it.

  I ran toward the chopper. It settled down, swaying a little, and the door in its convex side opened. I clambered in fast and said, “Up. Up!"

  Up we went.

  I let out a sigh that seemed to start at my toes. Then I told the pilot where I wanted to go and that I wanted to go fast. The beat of the rotors overhead picked up as he twisted the throttle open. I scrambled into a jump seat behind the two in front and got settled as the pilot lifted the control stick, working both hands, turning the chopper as we rose speedily higher.

  The pilot turned around and looked at me. “Would you kindly tell us what in hell this is all about?” he asked.

  He was a black-haired, craggy-faced man about forty years old. In the seat to his right was the cameraman, a younger guy with bushy brows over small eyes, a tight mouth, and a perplexed expression. I didn't know either of them; we hadn't met before.

  “Well,” I said, “I'm Shell Scott—"

  “We know that much. Jim told us to pick up a Shell Scott at the Wilshire Country Club, just over the fence from Rossmore, and do whatever you told us, but that's all he said. I made him say it twice."

  “And you recognized me from the air, huh?"

  “Recognized you, hell. Who else would be waiting there for a helicopter?"

  “Yeah. You've got a point. Well, in about a minute...” I stopped, peering out and down. From a mile or so in the air you can see a hell of a ways, and I thought I could pick out Cyril Alexander's big pink house already. I said, “You've got some glasses here in the cabin, haven't you? Binoculars?"

  “Sure."

  “Mind if I use them a second?"

  “You're the boss."

  The pilot had been speaking, but now the cameraman leaned down, then passed the heavy binoculars back to me. I got them focused, found the pink house. It was Alexander's, all right. I could see the striped canvas on the lawn and the two cottages inside the ornate metal gate. There was no sign of activity, either inside the grounds or on Oleander Drive, the road running before the house—except for one car poking along at twenty or thirty miles an hour, and that wouldn't be it. So I took a peek at the pool. Empty, worse luck. Probably Zazu only swam there in the morning. And probably these guys in the ‘copter could have told me that.

  Then I raised the glasses and moved them left, hunting. I know the Hollywood area well—from the ground. It looked a lot different from up here. But after a few seconds I found tree-lined Cypress Road. It was three streets up from the road fronting the Alexander estate, and when I'd spotted it I just kept moving the glasses west, toward the ocean.

  The house was five or six miles west of Alexander's, out in what is as close to the sticks as you can get in this part of Southern California. It was alone at the top of a low hill, or slightly rounded elevation in the earth, and I was sure it must be the place Benny Kahn had described. Not only because a dirt road led to it from Cypress, but because there were three ... no, four automobiles parked behind it.

  Half a mile or so this side of it, on Cypress itself, was the nearest other building, undoubtedly the old house Benny had mentioned: some kind of family zoo or farm.

  When I swung the glasses back toward Alexander's, the activity had started.

  Four men were running—and I don't mean loping along, they were running — from one of the cottages to a pale blue sedan parked in the red, crushed-rock driveway. Each of the men carried something that looked, from up here, like a toothpick.

  But I knew what they were. They weren't toothpicks.

  They were shovels.

  8

  It surprised me a little when the carful of crooks barreled out of the driveway and turned left, toward Beverly Hills and Hollywood. Maybe because I'd been thinking of the Domino headquarters—if that's what it was—half a dozen miles farther west, I'd expected them to head thataway.

  But they roared on at about eighty miles an hour or more, east on Oleander Drive. Ten miles from Alexander's house, on Oleander, was the Eternal Peace Funeral Home and Cemetery, and for a perplexed minute I wondered if they were actually going there, an hour or two in advance of their appointment with Geezer.

  But they only traveled about halfway and then skidded left—they were really in a hurry—into a two-lane asphalt road, the blue sedan swaying dangerously as it straightened out. The direction made sense to me now. On their previous trip they would have been coming out this way from Pinehurst Road in Hollywood, coming from civilization to a slightly less populated area.

  My two companions had been pretty quiet. A little while ago I had said, “There they go. Follow that car.” And the tight-mouthed cameraman had sort of sneered and said, “Gee, just like the movies.” So I figured I'd better tell them what was going on.

  “You got a lot of film in that camera?” I asked.

  “More than we'll need."

  “How far away from them can we be and still get a reasonably close shot?"

  “Zoom in from two or three miles. Depends if you want to see their whiskers. If it's people you're after."

  “It's people. Four live ones and a dead one. The four in the car are hoods—"

  “Hoods?” That was the pilot, angling his craggy face around again.

  “Yeah, thugs, crooks, killers. Last night they—or some of them, probably not all four—buried a dead guy. Now they're going to go dig him up. That's the film Jim wants for tonight's show. Probably can't use closeups of the stiff, but the rest of it should be interesting."


  The cameraman's mouth got a little looser. “No kidding?” He seemed pleased, at last. “That's what we're doing?"

  “Right. You might get a shot of the car now, if you want. Sort of a lead-in to the grave digging."

  I cautioned the pilot to stay far enough away so the four men below wouldn't tumble to the aerial tail. But I wasn't really very concerned. They had no reason to expect any kind of tail, certainly not a helicopter overhead. Three or four miles up the asphalt road the driver pulled over and stopped.

  Eucalyptus trees lined the road, and farther away were scattered oak and pepper trees. The land rose gently, then after maybe fifty yards dropped down into a gully or ravine, almost like a dry river bed, beyond which a low hill rose and then fell. Men down in that gully would be out of sight of anyone driving by. Of course, last night it would have been a lot easier; it would have been dark. The job would be a little trickier now, in broad daylight.

  I guess the driver had figured that out, too. He swung off the road and drove slowly over the ground, headed toward that gully. Some of the earth was reasonably level, but in spots it must have been pretty bumpy, because I could see the car rock and sway. I could also hear the whir of the movie camera here in the cabin, as the cameraman busied himself getting a few shots.

  I said, “We can stay pretty well off until we see where those guys end up. But once we know where they're digging I've got to get down there—as suddenly as possible."

  The pilot said, “You think they're going in that gully there?"

  “Looks like it."

  “Well, why don't I drop down low, other side of that hill, and let you off over there?"

  “Fine. Yeah, they won't see us that way. And I sure as hell don't want them to see me."

  “What you have to go down there for?"

  “Well, you let me off and go back up—and keep using that camera; it'll interest the L.A.P.D., and a captain I know, among others—and as soon as you actually see a body, either phone the police direct or call Jim Nelson and have him send the cops out here. I'll hold the men till they arrive."

  I took out my .38, swung the cylinder open, and checked it—a bit nervously, I'll admit.

  The pilot said, “They're crooks? You mean they got—” he was looking at the Colt as I put it back in its holster—"guns?"

  “You bet they've got guns."

  “There won't be any shooting, will there?"

  “I hope to hell not. But it's possible. If this works smoothly, they're going to be more than mildly shocked anyhow, and I doubt—"

  “Make a sweet picture,” said the cameraman.

  I scowled at him. But I suppose maybe you get that way after covering enough disasters.

  The blue sedan had stopped about halfway to the gully. There remained twenty, possibly twenty-five yards of open ground over which they'd have to walk, both going and coming. Coming back, of course, would be the tricky part.

  The hoods piled out. Four hoods, four shovels. I put the glasses on them. They didn't look up, and the helicopter wasn't as close as I'd have liked—at least for this one moment—but I made two of them. Stacey was almost easy, because of that flaming red face; and one of the other men was so big and broad-shouldered and bulky I knew it had to be either Luddy or Dope. He looked back over his shoulder at something. It was Dope.

  “Let's get over on the other side of that hill,” I said. Before the helicopter dropped down low enough so that the hilltop blocked the men from our view, we'd seen them start digging. It was a fine place. Not even under a tree. Just open ground with a few pepper trees nearby, but nothing to obstruct the view of an overhead camera. On the other hand, there wasn't going to be a hell of a lot of cover for me, just those trees and a few bushy shrubs which looked awfully small and spindly from where I was.

  There was no need for the chopper to land. I jumped out through the door when we were still three feet off the ground, and the helicopter's rotors picked up speed as he swung away in the air, then up. I waved, feeling a little lonely.

  Then I turned and ran to the top of the hill.

  Going down was easy, for half the distance. The green fullness of a pepper tree hid the men from me, and vice versa. But then I had to move in the open for a hundred yards, bent low and going like sixty. I kept my eyes on the men, and they didn't even glance toward me.

  “Chopper 14” was on the other side of the blue sedan now, about a mile away as the crow flies, and circling. One of the men did raise his head and look at it, then resumed digging. For the last thirty yards I got down on my belly and gave it the knee, toe, and elbow approach, gun in my right hand. I was ready to use it, but I didn't have to. They were busy, digging and swearing, and beginning to sweat. It was a warm day, and these boys weren't accustomed to physical activity.

  They were active at the moment, however.

  I'd used the trunk of that pepper tree, and its drooping limbs, to conceal me from them as much as possible, and finally I was under the tree itself, up against the trunk. The four men were hardly more than thirty feet away, and I could hear the shovels slice into the earth, the grunts and cuss words

  I peered around the tree trunk. A few thin, green-leafed limbs hung down before me, but it didn't affect the view much. I could see Stacey leaning back with one hand on his kidney and the other on his shovel. “Keerist,” he said, “I think I sprung a disc. You know, like when your back goes out of joint—"

  “Shut up and swing that shovel."

  It was a cold voice. Cold man. Wobble-browed Cork, a scowl on his mean face. He wiped sweat from his broken nose with the back of one hand, looking at Stacey. Stacey started shoveling vigorously, sprung disc and all.

  They were down about four feet already. They'd buried him deep. That was good. If a thing's worth doing, it's worth doing well. Dope was down in the hole, throwing dirt out of it like a machine. At the other end, with not much room for maneuvering, was one of Alexander's men who hadn't been present at the lawn party yesterday morning. He was a mug named Brill, a tall, round-shouldered weed with a face like a vulture.

  So, of those from my meeting with Alexander and Company, only cadaverous Stiff and even-dopier-than-Dope Luddy were missing. But these four would be a very nice haul. If I could haul them. Suddenly I very badly wanted a cigarette.

  Earth flew. Finally Brill climbed out of the hole, leaving only Dope down there, working to the last. The other three stood watching him, breathing heavily. They were really out of shape, those guys.

  “Hey!” That was Dope, in the hole. “Here he is!"

  “Where the hell you expect him to be?” That was Cork, naturally. “Grab him and shove him out here, Dope. We ain't got all day."

  Cork glanced up. That ‘copter was a little too close for comfort. Theirs—and mine.

  Thump.

  Dope had lifted the body and shoved it from the grave like a man doing a two-handed shot-put. The corpse landed and rolled only a little, becoming still with the face turned away from me. The corpse was rigid. If he'd been killed around ten o'clock last night, he'd been dead for nearly fifteen hours. Rigor was complete. He was stiff as a frozen octopus, one leg bent, arms awkwardly angled, hands like claws.

  He didn't look like a man. He had been. He had been a rather pleasant-looking man. Dope climbed from the hole, and he and Cork rolled the body over, and it was what was left of Matthew Omar. He wore dark trousers and a once-white shirt and was covered with dirt, but I could see where the slugs had caught him; he'd taken one in the head and two in the heart.

  “Hey, I don't like that heeleecopter,” Brill was saying. “Maybe we better drag Omar under that tree there."

  There from his point of view was here from mine. He was pointing at my pepper tree.

  Cork glanced up. The chopper was going away from us. “Come on, let's get the hell out of here.” He bent down and grabbed an arm.

  Brill and Cork got the arms. Dope and Stacey the stiff legs. Stacey took time to wipe the shovel handles with a rag, then simply tosse
d all four of them into the hole in the ground. In a few more seconds the grisly parade was moving away from me, back toward the car. Up front, Cork and Brill to left and right; to the rear. Dope on my left and Stacey grunting next to him.

  They carried Omar away.

  It wasn't an easy job, even with four of them—or maybe four was a couple too many. Besides the stiffness of the body, the ground was not at all level, and now they were going up the gully's side.

  But they were all looking ahead, and occupied with what they were doing, so I stepped out from behind my pepper tree.

  Stepped out, and walked up behind them.

  9

  When they reached the top of the gully, i was only six feet behind Dope and Stacey. Nobody had looked around. Nobody had noticed me. They hadn't even heard me yet.

  I was just waltzing along behind them, breathing easily—of course, I wasn't carrying anything—Colt ready in my right hand. I figured the men in “Chopper 14” had surely by now observed the proceedings and called the police, but that was one thing I wanted to be sure of. So I waved my left hand at them, then put the Colt up near my mouth, as if I were talking into a phone.

  The helicopter swerved back and forth a little; so they'd seen me. They were coming straight toward us now, but the four men hadn't noticed, or at least had not yet become alarmed.

  I was thinking this was almost like a stroll in the countryside—and then Brill turned his head and said, “Man, I'm pooped. Wouldn't want to do this every day."

  I ducked low, went into a crouch, and flipped my gun toward him. But apparently he hadn't turned his head around far enough to spot me. I walked up behind the men again, but not breathing quite so easily.

  The land was more level now, and I could see the blue sedan about twenty-five yards ahead. Almost there. Brill said, “Hold it a second. Man, I got to catch up with my breath."