The Meandering Corpse (The Shell Scott Mysteries)

by Richard S. Prather

  “You do look flushed. Shell. And your eyes—"

  “Yeah, glassy. It's probably all the running around I've been doing today. Got overheated. Blood's still cooling, in the moonlight."

  “You're sure you're O.K.?"

  “You bet. Fine and dandy. Feel like a million. A billion."

  I did, too. I was feeling better all the time. Charged up like a nuclear rockpile, or whatever they call them. But that was good. Just made me more alert, my senses more keen, my brain more ... ooh. Had a little shooting pain there. Just like somebody had shot me. Ah, that was a dopey thought. No more of those, I told myself.

  “You sure you got it, now?” Sam said.

  “Got it?"

  “How to use the Vocom. It's important"

  “You bet it's important."

  “Just push the little red button and talk into the hole."

  “Little red button,” I said. “Pine and dandy."

  Sam jerked a thumb. “O.K. I'll be with Bill Rawlins and the others over there. I'm going in with you.” He walked away.

  “Right. I'll see you in there, Sam.” With those dirrty rats, I added under my breath.

  It was nearly zero hour. That's funny, I thought. Zero. It means nothing. It was nearly big-nothing hour. That didn't make sense at all. I'd better alert the men.

  I pushed the little red button, spoke softly into the mesh-covered hole, checked the other positions. All was well.

  “O.K.,” I said. “Just wait for the word, then. We'll go on the count of three. Only a few more minutes now."

  I lowered the Vocom and checked my watch. It surprised me to note, squinting in the faint moonlight, that there was only a minute and a half left. Probably I shouldn't have said a “few” minutes. Few sounds like a little more than a minute and a half.

  Only a minute now. I could feel the tension building in me. But maybe the Domino gang wouldn't put up any resistance after all, would come along quietly. That, of course, is what Sam hoped; he hoped this could be handled without bloodshed. If they didn't come along quietly, this wouldn't be any picnic, that was sure.

  I could feel the familiar tightness in my stomach. But what was I getting nervous about? There'd be maybe twenty-five other men with me—policemen, at that. With teargas, shotguns, lots of things. When you're going to barge in on a gang of armed thugs you can't ask for anything better than twenty-five cops.

  Less than a minute to go. I gazed at the second hand of my watch, sweeping around the dial. In the deep silence I could hear it.

  Tick-tick-tick, it went ...

  ...tick-tick-tick ...

  17

  It reminded me of the ticking of Geezer.

  Tick, tick, tick went my watch, and for a moment it was the tickticktick of a time bomb. I wondered, idly, if my watch was going to blow up. Springs and numbers and valves and such flying up at my chops. I could wind up with quarter past three on my nose.

  That wouldn't do. Bring the old attention back, Scott. Tickticktick.

  I was keyed up, all right. No question about that. Some strange things had happened to me today. Tonight, too, for that matter. A couple of times I'd sort of imagined myself suffocating in my skin and stepping out for a breath of fresh air, as in a dream. It was almost as if I could see myself from three or four feet away, like a big dummy.

  I could control the dummy, awkwardly, with a kind of pasta telepathy. All I had to do was send a big bolt of thought up into my spaghetti like flickering neon sauce, and he'd move—a lot like Frankenstein's monster. There goes an arm up. Criiick. There goes the other arm. Criiick. It was fascinating.

  Tick.

  Ooh. There went another of those little shooting pains. But at least everything was back to normal. “Well, here we are, old buddy,” I mumbled. Twenty seconds to go. Then—charge. No ... we were supposed to sneak up on them, weren't we?

  As I watched those last few seconds jerk over the small dial, like bits of distance instead of time, I could actually feel heat growing in my face as if blood were rising in me like mercury in a thermometer. I knew very well that high emotion sends all kinds of slop into the bloodstream, and I began to wonder if I might be filling up with glandular garbage. I was sure that plenty of adrenalin, for one thing, had earlier been poured inside me from inside me, but I had the queer impression that both whole damn glands were breaking loose from their moorings and putting round and about, two freed adrenals floating like Red Sails in the Sunset, little motors going pah-pah-pah ...

  Ticktick ... And then: pah-tick.

  I didn't like that. Ten seconds to go and then—charge!

  Five seconds.

  Pah-tick ... pah-tick ... pah-tick.

  Two seconds.

  Pah ...

  Something was wrong. It wasn't supposed to do that.

  Pah ...

  Everything was screwed up. No turning back now, though. It was time. Quarter past three on my nose.

  Ah, that wasn't it. What was it? Seven-thirty. Of course. Seven-thirty on the nose.

  I lifted the Vocom to my lips and said, “All right, men. At the count of three—charge. One ... two ... three!"

  Then I dropped the Vocom and was up and away. As I ran I reached beneath my coat and grabbed my Colt Special—loaded, for a change—pulled it out. There was only fifty yards or less to go, but it was a little uphill. I ran fast, then faster, something in me urging me on, heart starting to pound, blood rushing, gushing, racing, squirting, everything going criiick, criiick — pah—tick — pah—tick ... pah ... pppp....

  “Come on, men,” I whispered. Softly, then louder. As the garbage built up in me, I whispered louder and louder until pretty soon I heard the echo booming back from the direction of Pasadena.

  “COME ON, MEN!"

  Nobody else was whispering, though. I couldn't even hear any feet pounding. Except my own feet pounding, jarring my head. Almost there now. Fifteen yards. Ten. Boy, those feet really jarred my head. Or else it was the effect of all those little unmoored adrenals floating around in me, like Red Sails in the —

  Red ...

  Little red button.

  Well, fooey, I thought. As you know by now, it wasn't really fooey, but another word for which fooey isn't even a euphemism.

  I'd forgotten to press that little red button.

  18

  I had made up my mind to stop and turn and run back for police protection, and was glancing over my shoulder, when brilliant light blazed all around me. With a part of my mind I was aware that the brilliance poured from floodlights atop the house, but with most of it—that is, with most of what remained in the wreckage—I was noting that the clearing was indeed empty. Except for me, of course.

  I snapped my head back toward the house—filled with the horrible realization that a dozen or more vicious hoodlums, at least, were in there listening to me yelling, “Come on, men!"

  And at that instant, the previously darkened house also bloomed with light. Light inside the house now, and lights every which way all over outside. That was all I needed: lots of light.

  I had truly intended to spin about and whip back to where I'd come from if not a good half-mile farther back, but when I snapped my head around I noticed not only that lights were flashing on inside the house but that the door toward which I'd been running lickety-split, and had determined to run away from just as lickety-split, was approximately eight inches from my nose.

  It was too late.

  I was going to get killed again.

  Well, so long, old dummy. No turning back now, even if we wanted to. And we sure want to, don't we? Too late.

  But I guess it had been too late when I forgot to press that little red button.

  THUD—CRASH—AAAAHH!

  My big deal was getting my nose out of the way.

  I got it out of the way and hit the door with my head. Actually, I hit it first with my shoulder and then with my head.

  The door cracked and splintered, and my head cracked and splintered, then the door sprang open,
then my head sprang open—at least, that was the vivid impression I got of what was happening, but I was beginning to think maybe my impressions weren't very reliable this evening. One thing I was sure of: It damn near knocked me unconscious.

  It was a moot question whether the door had driven splinters into my head, or vice versa, but that wasn't terribly important. Terribly important was the fact that I was sailing hind end over sprung head into the room. The room full of bloodthirsty hoodlums.

  Blam, BLAM, crash, crack, ouch!

  That was lots of guns blamming and me going ouch.

  But not from getting shot. Not yet. That was only a matter of time, naturally. The ouch was mainly from those splinters in my head. That plus landing, skidding, yelling, and somehow getting my feet under me again.

  Well, I'd made it. By golly, I'd made it. I was here. Alone. Not ... exactly alone. There were thousands of hoods, it seemed, and all of them with thousands of guns. And the other invaders were still outside there, waiting for my signal. What the hell did they think was going on here in the house? This shooting and screaming and clattering around and such. They think the criminals were all knocking themselves off?

  Of course, I was thinking all this like lightning, since I was moving. But not faster than bullets. I'd been nicked a couple times but hadn't been knocked down. What I think helped was that most of the men kept looking toward the splintered door for those other guys they expected to pour through it. All those guys I'd been yelling at. "Come on, men!" Those guys. Besides, I had been squeezing the trigger of my Colt almost from the moment I'd crashed inside.

  Some of it, or all of it together plus developments I might not have been aware of, somehow kept them from killing me. Guns were going off like firecrackers in Hong Kong during the Chinese New Year, but I wasn't dead yet. At least I didn't think I was. It was hard to be certain of anything in this mess.

  I didn't yell any more. But somebody else was yelling. What he yelled was, “Well, fooey! Douse the lights!"

  Why? I wondered. Could it be they didn't know the men weren't coming? But I wondered that only for a split-instant because I had plunged across the room almost to the far wall, and straight before me a man was spinning around as he lifted a submachine gun in his hands, and next to him another man—Chunk—was slapping back the slide of a .45 automatic.

  I was still pulling the Colt's trigger, and my last two slugs went into the chest of the man on my right, into hard-knuckled Chunk's chest, and the gun's hammer fell on a spent cartridge. Then I slammed into the guy with the chopper.

  It wasn't part of any plan or tricky maneuver on my part; I just couldn't stop moving. The air went out of the guy with a huge whoosh, and I lost a lot of air myself, bouncing back a couple of feet as the man started to sag.

  Staggering back, spinning to my left, I saw across the room a high, wide window. I bent over, hand scraping the floor—and suddenly the room was in darkness. Not only the room, but beyond that window, outside, it was dark, too. Somebody had hit the light switches. But when that happened, my legs were already unwinding, and I was jumping forward in blackness split by gun flashes and then leaving my feet and leaping toward that window.

  I hoped.

  I hoped it was toward the window. I hadn't had a lot of time to aim myself. What if I was aimed at the wall instead of the window? But when I thought about that, my feet were airborne. And when you come right down to it, I didn't have the faintest idea where I was aimed. I was just plummeting toward something, through blackness in which jets of flame flashed and nickered.

  When my feet left the floor I seemed to lose all sense of orientation. I seemed to lose all sense. There wasn't even any sense of movement. It was like being an astronaut in free fall, weightless. It was almost like being a rocket .... Well, that was a dopey thought, and not my first, either. A guy couldn't be a rocket. He could be in a rocket, but he couldn't possibly ...

  By golly, I could hear those old rocket engines going, at that. Pow, bang, crack, BLAM. Sounded like they needed a little work. Rat-ta-tat, BLAM, rat-tat, BLAM, pah, pppp. Hell, they needed a complete overhaul. I had a hunch I was in trouble.

  I couldn't even remember where we were going. Some kind of dangerous mission. Yeah. It was those dirrty rats —

  CRASH.

  Hell, we weren't going anywhere. We'd cracked up. We'd just gone up a little way, then back. That had been a great, splintering, and painful crash. Splintering ... glass. It was coming back to me. Yeah, in through the door, out through the window. I knew where I was. I was about twenty-five yards from the house, running like a fiend.

  Yes, running, I wasn't sitting back there like a dummy, outside the window. Maybe the dummy would; not me. I was running into the darkness, away from the noise behind me.

  Noise ... there was still noise back there in the house. Gunshots. And for brief moments the cha-cha-cha of a chopper.

  My destination was all those men I'd been yelling at earlier. They weren't gathered in one spot, of course. They were all over the place—waiting for my signal.

  But I did find a group of half a dozen men, standing together in a kind of huddle, mumbling at each other. In the faint moonlight I could see the heads move, could see the heads shake and wag. And turn toward me, questioningly.

  “All right, men,” I said. “Let's try that again. And this time..."

  19

  The last shot had sounded seconds before, the last echo had died. The night was still.

  I stood panting—and bleeding—before the small group of men. Obviously, they hadn't understood a word I'd said.

  A grizzled old police sergeant was looking up toward the now quiet house. He cocked his head on one side, then the other. Then he looked at me, uncocking his head.

  “What they shooting at?"

  “Me."

  He laughed.

  Footsteps. Heavy footsteps. Captain Phil Samson, head of L.A. Homicide, Central Division, lord and master of all he surveyed, came thumping up and surveyed me.

  I tried to beat him to the punch. “Well,” I said, “where were you?"

  It didn't help. He chewed hell out of me. Finally he said, “And you didn't press—"

  “Sam, please. Let's let bygones be bygones—"

  “That little red—"

  “Sam! I'll pop you. Old buddy. Think how long we've been friends. You aren't going to let a little old—"

  “You—"

  “Ah, Sam, it could happen to anybody. Everybody's entitled to one mistake."

  “Ha!” he roared. “If that was all...” He roared some more, wrapping it up with, “So we're going in. But this time I'll give the signal."

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  Well, that final charge by twenty-five Southern California police officers—and me, limping—will probably be remembered as the great anticlimax in the history of the L.A.P.D.

  We charged.

  I really didn't have my heart in it this time.

  All the way up the hill I was wondering if maybe I was dotted with bullet holes and gashes, and if all my blood and junk was flopping out. I hadn't looked. I hadn't had time to look. But, mainly, I was too big a coward to look. If what I thought had happened to me had really happened, I might faint.

  And after Zazu, and now this tonight, if I topped it off by having a fainting fit while charging, I'd never be able to live it down.

  Up the hill we thundered. Somebody else went inside first—I'd had my turn—and flipped on a light switch.

  Not a shot was fired.

  Man, you wouldn't believe the shot-up guys. The blood. The bleeding. The—ahhck, it was a mess. It was like walking into a wax museum, there were so many waxy-looking guys in there.

  Only four of them were totally dead. But two more were out cold, and half a dozen others were bleeding profusely. With the lights on. Bill Rawlins spotted me. He'd been talking to Samson, and now walked over.

  There was an odd expression on his face, as if he was smiling on one side and frowning on the other.
The thought sang in my head like a popular song. I could almost hear music. “Smiling on the left side ... crying on the right side ... boop-be-boop-be-boo..."

  “Shell,” Rawlins said, “did you do this?"

  “Well, not all by myself,” I said modestly. “They helped."

  I thought about that a moment. “Kind of makes up for the times when they weren't helping me, doesn't it?"

  Boop-be-boo ... By golly, I wasn't nuts. I did hear music. And then I got it. “Hey,” I said happily, “look! I'm on television!"

  It was true. A commercial had just ended—that's where I'd heard the music. And the newscast was picking up in the middle—with the shots filmed today from “Chopper 14."

  Sure, I thought. The hoods would have had the set on for the nightly seven-thirty p.m. telecast. I'd charged smack at seven-thirty. They would have lost interest in the show, yes; but they hadn't turned the set off, either. The only thing I couldn't understand was why it hadn't been shot and killed.

  Everything was under control here by now, and my voice cut through the groans and sounds of dripping blood. Everybody looked at the set. There was a long shot, and then ...

  Yeah. That was me. Oh, boy. Oh ...

  It was horrible.

  How could it happen? I thought. At the time it had seemed so ... Oh. Ughh, ahhck. I was dying.

  There were four guys carrying what looked like a sack of potatoes, and there was I, strolling along behind them. I waved wildly at the camera—at the helicopter, actually; that's when I was hoping to make sure they'd phoned the cops—and then appeared to bite my gun. Then a little more strolling, and suddenly I went into a fierce squat, lips peeled back, teeth almost venomous and certainly very toothy, gun whipping up like lightning—and nobody paying any attention to me.

  It was awful.

  Gee, I thought, I don't look brave. I look like a nut.