Over Her Dear Body

by Richard S. Prather

  The man went on softly, “I got Scott here. No—he's out cold. Yeah, caught him in the office.” A long pause.

  Consciousness started slipping away from me again. It was difficult to know if I were really conscious or dreaming, imagining. Funny pictures floated through my brain. I saw Bunny in the water, nude, spinning around and around; a hawk-faced man leaping at me, great gleaming knives on his feet flashing, gouging and ripping at my flesh. I saw a sea of blood, and the face of a beautiful dark-eyed woman. Elaine.

  Then I remembered Elaine. Remembered where I was. There was a voice near me. I couldn't make out the words. In a moment of comparative clarity I heard the man speaking on the phone. “Yeah, the bastard hit Kupp; he just died. Lime went back.”

  I gathered all my strength, strained every aching muscle, exerted every atom of will. My eyelids cracked about a sixteenth of an inch. I could feel sweat on my forehead. I was lying on my back, arms beneath me. There wasn't much feeling in them yet. A light blazed ahead of me—that wouldn't be ahead, though; the light must be in the ceiling.

  I pulled my gaze downward, getting the lids open a little farther. I could see a wall, wavering and melting, solidifying for a moment and then starting to melt again. A shimmering desk was a few feet away, a man sitting before it holding a phone in his hand, his right side toward me. His outlines, like the outlines of the desk, were insubstantial, indistinct, unreal. Everything looked like that drawing outside.

  For a goofy moment I wondered, as if I had all the time in the world for such conjectures, if this explained how the artist achieved his effects; maybe he hit himself on the head and worked like a fiend, tapping his skull lightly once in a while. I wondered if maybe the walls and desk were really solid and I was melting. I wondered if maybe I was back to normal except that the blow on my own skull had damaged my brain.

  “Yeah, the damn thing's getting out of hand.” It was the guy on the phone. The Beard. I could hear him distinctly, and my vision was becoming clear again.

  He said, “I'll take care of it myself this time. But I can't do it here in the club. We'll haul him ... what?” A pause while he listened. “Okay. We'll dump him there.” He listened a moment, then hung up.

  My thoughts were clear enough now so that I had no doubt as to what those words had meant or to whom the bearded guy had referred when he'd said, “I'll take care of it myself.” I was the It.

  I could feel strength returning to my arms and legs. The pain swelled bigger and hotter, but my mind was reasonably clear. I took a couple of slow, deep breaths, getting ready. The man turned farther away from me and started to get out of his chair.

  In another few seconds I wouldn't have a chance. It was now or never. As he started to get up, I gathered all my strength, gritted my teeth as hard as I could and lunged at him.

  My head moved maybe an inch from the floor and banged down on it again. Both legs twitched feebly. But I kept lunging, banging and twitching. It took about three lunges before it became clear to me that not only was I still too weak and groggy to stand up by myself, but that my hands were bound behind my back.

  The guy stood over me and looked down at me, chuckling throatily. “Your skull must be six inches thick,” he said. Then he pulled back his foot and slammed it into my left side. For a hellish moment I thought maybe his toe was going to come out on my right side, and then I heard him say, “Don't even wiggle, buster. Lay quiet and I won't have to stomp on you.”

  I tried to tell him. I tried to sum it all up in a few choice, meaty words. But the words wouldn't come out.

  He wadded a handkerchief, shoved it brutally into my mouth, then stepped to the door. I didn't hear him say anything, but in a moment somebody else came into the room. They got me onto my feet, one on each side, each hanging onto an arm. They steered me toward the locked door I'd earlier tried to open. The bearded guy stuck a key into the lock, turned it.

  He said to the other man, “This is just a customer what had a couple too many, see? Took a swing at me and I had to stomp on him. Understand?”

  “Sure, Hip.”

  Hip, I guessed was the Beard's name or nickname, a fact completely without value to me at the moment. The last time he'd kicked me had hurt more than anything else so far, but it had swept some wisps of fog from my mind. And I could think clearly about the imminent murder. My murder. Yeah, that was crystal clear—Hip was going to kill me in a very few minutes. My mind was racing, thoughts accelerated by awareness of the spot I was in, and I consequently thought very fast about nothing at all. Nothing of any help, at least.

  I could walk fairly well now, though the aches and ouches went right along with me. This was the first time I'd really been banged around, except for the street burns I'd picked up jumping away from those rifle slugs, but Hip had made up for the previous misses. I wouldn't be much good at running. Especially not with my hands tied and two mugs hanging onto me. The handkerchief gag was uncomfortable in my mouth, its taste ugly against my tongue.

  And right then, oddly enough, my thoughts veered in a new direction. I thought about Elaine. I wondered if she were still in the showroom or had left. There was a chance she had seen Hip come into the office after me. There was even a chance that she'd been spotted, recognized—maybe she was in almost as bad a spot as I was. All that did was complicate my thinking with worry about her, make it more difficult to concentrate on the trouble at hand.

  The two men pushed me through the open door into near-blackness outside. As my eyes adjusted to the dimness I could make out the shapes of automobiles. This was, as I'd guessed earlier, the parking lot; but the lights had been turned off—undoubtedly in preparation for this moment—so that I could be led in darkness to one of the cars.

  They shoved me forward. I stumbled, caught my balance and walked ahead. We stopped next to a dark sedan and Hip reached for the back door. I knew that once I got in there it would all be over. So that door looked quite a bit like the lid of a coffin. As Hip's hand closed on the handle I made my move.

  Hip was momentarily busy, opening the door, and the other man was holding me loosely, so I spun around fast, jerking my arm free of his grip, and jumped at him. Our bodies thudded together and he staggered backward. I leaped at him—and something closed on my neck like a noose.

  Hip had grabbed the back of my coat and shirt before I'd completed one full step forward, and he yanked on it, my shirt and tie digging into my neck. With one hand he hit my shoulder, spinning me around, and he swung the other hand, closed into a hard fist, against my jaw.

  I rolled my head with the punch as much as I could, but the blow still sent me slamming back against the car's fender. He stepped close to me, and I noticed the faint gleam of light on a gun in his hand. He jabbed it into my belly, growling; “One more smart play, Scott, and I'll let you have it right here.”

  He pulled back the gun, a heavy automatic, ready to slap it down on my head again. I got my feet spread apart, started to duck. Finally, for the first time, I felt that I wasn't going to get out of this one. But if that was the way it was going to be, then Hip would have to finish it off right here and now. Because I sure as hell wasn't climbing into that car under my own power.

  I ducked my head, tensed my right leg to drive me forward so I could butt this bastard in the gut—and somebody yelled.

  It wasn't Hip or the other man. The cry came from behind me, from somewhere near that office door we'd just come through. “Hold it up! Hold it, Brandt!”

  At almost the same moment light blazed out in the street. In the glare I saw Hip's shocked face as he jerked his head toward the light, then back toward the spot where the voice had come from. Automatically I had whipped my head around, and from the corner of my eye I saw a car swing into the lot with its tires skidding, a spotlight pointing toward us.

  That first voice called, “Police officers. Drop it, Brandt.”

  Hip's gun was still in his hand. He hesitated, but even as I wondered where the hell cops could have come from, and why, Hip made
his decision. I saw his lips pull back from his teeth, beard wiggling, and he swung his gun around fast toward the officer.

  Hip had his gun leveled and maybe he was even squeezing the trigger when I got him. I got him good, too. Maybe I couldn't have done much damage with my head, and I couldn't swing a hand at him, but my feet weren't tied—and I got him with my right foot.

  There wasn't any thought about it. I'd started my leg swinging up at him when he jerked his gun toward the officer. Maybe I didn't choose the spot; maybe I did, unconsciously. But I got him in an area so vital that he was suddenly out of action for the evening, and maybe for the week.

  As my shoe landed his eyes popped open and he let out a yell, a ghastly yell that sounded as if his throat had closed and the shriek tore through flesh. It was a high, gagging, agonized gasp to match his suddenly contorted features. The gun fell from his hand and he slumped after it, still making that horrible sound in his throat, bending forward.

  Then a plain-clothes officer was alongside me. He picked up the fallen automatic and spoke briskly to the other man. When I turned, Brandt's partner was standing away from the car, leaning forward with his hands spread against the fender. In seconds there were half a dozen officers around us.

  In a minute one of them pulled the gag from my mouth, helped me get my hands free.

  When I could speak I said, “Man ... I'll take a thousand tickets to the Policeman's Ball. What the hell happened? Where'd you come from?”

  “You all right, Shell?”

  I turned toward the new voice. It was a sergeant named Sven Jurgensen, a tough, cheerful Dane. He sure looked good to me. In fact, all these officers around here looked beautiful, like pin-up boys. You just never know how much you really like cops—until you need them.

  “Yeah, I'm okay,” I said. “I think. I wouldn't have been in another minute. How'd you get here?”

  “Some gal phoned in, said you were getting murdered or something. All excited, didn't leave her name. You any idea who she was?”

  I shook my head. “No.” At that moment, I didn't. I was still a little stunned by the suddenness of what had happened, and it took me a few seconds to realize that it must have been Elaine. This was the second time that lovely gal had helped me out of a hole. And this time I'd have been all the way in the deep one, covered with dirt, if it hadn't been for her.

  Jurgensen didn't push it. He merely said, “Well, this time one of those hysterical babes was right, huh?”

  “Yeah. Well, I'll fill you in on this boy,” I said. “And, believe me, I'll be happy to do it.” I pointed to Hip, still conscious and wishing he was unconscious, writhing on the ground and moaning through tight lips.

  Chapter Twelve

  I'd signed the crime report, and “Hip” Brandt was cooling off in a felony tank along with the other man who'd helped him steer me through the showcase parking lot, a guy named Quinn.

  They hadn't spilled anything, sticking to the story I'd heard Brandt tell his helper—that I'd gotten drunk and tried to slug him. Under different circumstances, I might have been in a pickle myself—for breaking into his office—but he couldn't explain why I'd been bound and was being forced into a car. It didn't seem to worry Brandt any. The dead man in his office worried him, all right. But the only thing he would say during interrogation was, “I want to see a lawyer. I got a right to see a lawyer.”

  I had also told the police about the doctor—or the man carrying a medical bag—I'd seen leaving Brandt's office, but I couldn't describe him well enough for identification. In fact, during the more than two hours I'd been in the Police Building, in and out of Homicide and the jail, I had discussed with the police everything I could think of about this case.

  When I had been here the previous morning I'd told the officers about the yacht party which had started all the action. A team had checked my info, talked to Goss and to party guests, but nothing they'd learned was of any help to me. A check with other known guests had failed to turn up a single person who'd seen a man even remotely answering my description of that fourth guy, the shiny white-haired mystery man. Goss had denied his presence, and there wasn't any evidence he'd been aboard—except my own uncorroborated word.

  Navarro, at least, was in the soup. Because of his reaction after seeing me in the Red Rooster, and his immediate departure for the showcase, a call was out on him now. There had as yet been no trace of the “woman in white” who'd fled the house after Belden's murder. As for Belden, the police had no new leads to his killers and had so far uncovered nothing in his background which appeared incriminating.

  The checkup on Goss and the Srinagar had been made before my second visit there, so I filled the police in on what had happened during that ill-fated trip—hitting only the high points—including Goss’ bribe offer. And I had emphasized the fact that the shooting spree in front of my hotel had occurred right after that trip. Officers had investigated the Spartan shooting spree, but the anonymous call which had come in to the complaint board hadn't pinpointed the location, merely said it was “at the Country Club,” which covered a lot of territory. Consequently not only the gunmen but Elaine and I were out of there before the law had arrived.

  But the most important thing I did in those two hours or so was to leave Homicide and put in a couple of calls to the Stuyvesant, into which Elaine had checked the previous afternoon. The first time there'd been no answer, but on my second call the voice I now knew so well spoke over the phone.

  Elaine was all right. She'd seen the Beard go into his office after me, heard sounds which “disturbed” her—I told her they had also disturbed me—and, frightened, put in a speedy call to the law, then had caught a cab and gone back to the Stuyvesant. I couldn't tell her on the phone, especially in the short time I had, how important that call had proved to be for me, or how I felt. Elaine pleasantly suggested that I explain all when I could stop by the Stuyvesant. I told her I would come by as soon as I could. So I was much relieved when, after that second call, I went back up to Homicide and talked some more to Sven Jurgensen and some of the other officers there, and especially to Sam.

  Sam is Phil Samson, Captain of Homicide. He'd been off duty and home when word had reached him about the action at the showcase, but he'd immediately come back to the Police Building, not only because he's a good, honest, hard-working cop who likes to stay on top of things in his division, but also because he's the best friend I've got in L.A.

  Right now he was in the squadroom with us, behind a desk, with the almost ever-present black cigar unlighted in his mouth. He's a big, grizzled guy with iron-gray hair and sharp brown eyes, his pink face always looking as if he'd just finished shaving. He's gruff, hard, with a massive solid jaw like the rear end of a truck, but just a bit softer inside than that tough exterior would indicate—a fact which you could never tell Sam without getting your head bitten off.

  I said to Samson, “I guess I haven't convinced you yet, but the guy who sicked those dogs on me at the Spartan was Robert Goss. I already told you he threatened me, warned me that this would be the day I died—if I refused to take his bribe and clam.”

  Sam bit down hard on his black cigar and growled around it, “Yeah. You told us.” He rolled the cigar a little in his wide mouth. “But, Shell, I've known you so long I'm on to all your tricks.”

  “Tricks? There's no—”

  He went on like a steam roller, as if he hadn't heard me. “You get to talking, you can make a one-punch fight sound like an uprising of the vigilantes, or a riot seem almost like a friendly chat.” He stuck out his big chin and scratched it, adding, “Only sometimes you accidentally leave out the most important parts.” He looked across the room. “Sven, toss me that paper I brought in with me.”

  When I looked around, Sven was grinning from ear to ear. I'd noticed Sven and a couple of the other boys looking at the newspaper, passing it back and forth, snorting and slapping their knees. They were starting to snort again.

  Sven brought the paper over. Samson looked
at it, shaking his head, then handed it to me. “I picked this up on the way downtown. Just hit the streets. I suppose you've got some perfectly sensible explanation.”

  It was the morning edition of a local sheet, opened to the second page, and it didn't take me long to find the source of all the amusement. At the upper left-hand corner of page two was a story headed, “Monster Sighted in Newport Harbor.” Underneath was the byline of Hal Hannahan.

  I knew what to expect then. Hal Hannahan is a reporter, a puckish friend who takes a kind of fiendish delight in pouncing upon any peccadillo of mine and enlarging upon it to the greatest possible extent. His motive goes back to an incident concerning a curvaceous tomato, and we won't go into that. Suffice to say, he pays me back at every opportunity.

  The story was obviously written tongue-in-cheek, but that didn't make it better—it made it worse. The story began:

  “Yesterday afternoon rumors reached this reporter, from usually reliable sources, that a strange creature had been observed wallowing in Newport Harbor. Descriptions varied from ‘a long snakelike thing with wavy tentacles’ to ‘gruesome, almost manlike monster, dripping with muck and goo from the ocean floor.’ Personal investigation by this reporter has proved the latter description to be most nearly correct. After, comparing the testimony of half a hundred witnesses, I have established beyond doubt that this gruesome, almost manlike creature was...”

  I tore my eyes from the next few sentences, which included my name and the fact that I was “a local private detective,” and said, “Sam, this is not at all the way it was. It was entirely, uh ... well, not exactly like that.”

  “Uh-huh. Read it all, Shell.”

  The rest merely stated that Sheldon Scott had come up out of the waters roaring savagely at citizens and advanced upon them wearing shirt and tie, shorts and socks. And, “It has not yet been determined what happened to his trousers.”