Over Her Dear Body

by Richard S. Prather

  “Hindu! I don't care if it was by Hemingway!” Sam dragged on his cigar and said quietly, “Look, Shell. Maybe you've got something, maybe not. I think you're having another fit in that noodle of yours. But I'm just showing you how silly you're going to look if you tell that story to anybody. Anybody but me, that is.”

  I had to admit he was right. And a kind of depression began sinking into my bones. If there was anything at all to my suspicions, then I sure had to go faster and farther in proving them than I had so far. Even the way he'd acted last night, Silverman came out looking like the Queen of the May, and I was the villain. Goss, too, had wound up a charming chap unjustly assaulted by a wild detective.

  Samson rolled the black cigar between thumb and finger, looking at me. “Besides his being on the boat that night, what makes you think he'd have had a job done on Belden?”

  I squirmed a little. “Well, I haven't actually got anything you can pin down. Not the kind of info you'd take to court, anyhow. It's—well, I guess it's mainly a feeling that he—”

  “So you got a feeling.” Sam wasn't being sarcastic now. He just thought I was wrong. “That's not enough, Shell. And you know it. As far as him being on the yacht, Goss is rich, even if we don't know yet all about where he makes his pile. And so is Silverman. Well, rich guys like to chew the fat with rich guys. You know, birds of a feather.”

  “A couple of vultures.”

  Sam bit down on his cigar. “Maybe. But so far, this Silverman hasn't even spit on the sidewalk.” He paused. “Another angle. Just supposing he's everything you say. Until you damn well know it and can prove it, you'll just get in trouble messing around with a guy like him. Especially now. You know I can't even stand behind you in a situation like this. Nobody can. You're on your own.”

  “Yeah. I know. I'll make out.”

  He looked at his cigar ash. “Maybe. It's a little more than usual this time, Shell.” He looked at me, and his face was sober. “All right. I've told you all I could. And I wanted to hear anything you had to say. So now we get down to business. The Emerson woman. We want her. We'll find her. If you can help us, you'd better do it.”

  “I've told you all she knows.”

  “All she says she knows.”

  “What does that mean?” I couldn't recall seeing him this serious before, at least not for a long time. It worried me.

  He said, “A private operator like you—well, you can work on intuition or telepathy or whatever the hell it is. But we're stuck with facts. The facts are that two men beat it from the Belden house. And then Elaine Emerson beat it. But what happened in the house isn't real clear.”

  “What are you getting at, Sam?”

  “She isn't just a material witness. She's a suspect. How do we know she didn't kill him?”

  I hadn't even thought of that angle, and as far as I was concerned it was impossible. I told Sam so, but his expression didn't change, didn't get any happier.

  There was a blue-covered book on his desk, open. I'd noticed it when I'd come in. He picked the book up. “You know what this is?”

  “Looks like the California Penal Code.”

  “That's what it is. You've read the Appendix, haven't you?” His voice was hard.

  “I've read it.” In the Appendix is the Private Investigator and Adjuster Act. I had a good hunch I knew what Sam was going to tell me.

  He bit halfway through his cigar. “Article 5. Disciplinary Proceedings. Section 7551. ‘The director may suspend or revoke a license issued under this chapter if he determines that the licensee’ and so forth ‘has—‘” Samson fixed his sharp brown eyes on me. “Then there's thirteen subdivisions. Let's try the next to the last one on for size.” He looked back at the page. “'Been convicted of a violation of Section 148 of the Penal Code.'”

  “I've never been convicted of any violation.”

  “You know what 148 PC is, don't you?”

  “Yeah. I know what it is.”

  “I'm not so sure you do.” He flipped pages, read again, “'resisting public officers in the discharge of their duties. Every person who willfully resists, delays, or obstructs any public officer, in the discharge or attempt to discharge any duty of his office, when no other punishment is prescribed, is punishable by fine not exceeding five thousand dollars, and imprisonment in the county jail not exceeding five years.'”

  He slammed the book shut and glared at me.

  I'd read that paragraph several times before; but when Samson read it to me, teeth clamped in his cigar and the words coming out of his mouth like rivets, it made a new impression on me. Neither of us spoke for several seconds, but it seemed that his last words echoed and reechoed in the office: “Five years ... five years ... five years...”

  I have previously mentioned that Phil Samson is my best friend in L.A. That's true, and I think it works both ways. But Sam is an honest, hard-working cop who came up from the ranks. He lived his job. And loved it. I knew he'd bend over backward until his head hit the floor for me; but past a point he wouldn't go. And I knew, too, that I was standing square on that point now; another inch, and he'd slap me down. But I just sat there and looked back at him.

  Finally he spoke. “Shell. Don't make me do it the hard way. You got anything to tell me?”

  “I'm sorry, Sam.”

  His jaw muscles bulged. He said slowly, “I don't have any proof you know where the Emerson woman is. You haven't told me one way or the other. But if there is any, I'll find it—fast. So...” He paused, and then pushed the words out slowly, as if they hurt his throat. “So don't let me see you around, Shell. Not till this mess is settled. I'd hate like hell to put the arm on you.”

  That was the way we left it.

  I used a passkey to let myself into Belden's Wilshire Boulevard office on the third floor of the Witter Building. Most of the papers I examined in the next hour meant little to me; I'm no accountant. But I found a few things of interest, though I didn't know if any of it helped.

  There seemed several complicated land deals which it would take a C.P.A. to figure out. Belden bad acted for several companies or corporations, but nowhere did I find any mention of Goss or Silverman. There wasn't anything for me in that angle, so after about half an hour I went back to the idea I'd tossed out to Samson when first discussing Silverman with him.

  Sam had mentioned then, among other things, that Silverman was one of the State Highway Commissioners. Most men in high office are honest, capable, doing a hard and usually thankless job in the best way they can. But once in a while a crook works his way up; and the simple history of crooks in any high office is that they use their office in an illegal manner, for personal profit, if they can. Of that much I had no doubt, the only question was whether I was right or wrong in my opinion of Silverman—specifically, the man himself.

  Craig Belden's business, for the last few years, had been exclusively in the field of real estate, lately including very large land purchases. Belden, Goss, Silverman, and Navarro had all been together a few hours before Belden's murder. All of that combined, plus Silverman's position as one of the members of the Highway Commission, seemed more than suspect; it was like an arrow pointing to some kind of crooked land deal. At least it was to me.

  I found evidence of two or three big purchases, acreage and lots near or on the borders of highways currently in use. As I had said to Samson, it was public knowledge that the state was planning to spend billions of dollars building freeways which would cover California like a concrete web. It had even been proposed that wide freeways should connect every county seat, and every “population center” of more than 5,000 people, even though some of the multi-million-dollar projects would serve only a comparative handful of citizens—almost like building stainless steel roads for horses and buggies. When a government, federal or state or local, spends millions and billions of dollars in tax loot, inevitably a hell of a lot of it is waste, or even crooked profits. Moreover, the largest chunk, well over three billion dollars of the freeway pile, was schedu
led for spending in L. A. County.

  And, let's face it, friends—this isn't Shangri-L.A.

  If I knew Silverman, he'd be on top of the pile. That was the crux—if I knew Silverman.

  In the late Belden's papers were grant deeds to tracts of land which, if crossed by freeways, could be sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars more than they had cost Belden—or rather cost Belden's unnamed client, for whom he had acted. The trouble was that I didn't have the faintest idea where the proposed freeways would eventually be built.

  I almost said the hell with it, wondering what I could accomplish this way. Even if somehow I could show that Belden had illegally possessed such advance knowledge, there was still no connection between him and Silverman.

  Except, of course, that on the night Belden had been murdered I had seen them together aboard the Srinagar.

  It was well after six p.m. when I stood up and stretched, ready to be on my way. A big Webster's Unabridged Dictionary was on a stand against the wall, so I used it. I looked up "Srinagar." The word wasn't in the alphabetical listing, but I found it in the Gazetteer: “city of Kashmir ... on the Jhelum River.” In India.

  Before leaving the office I used the still-connected phone to call the Police Building. The same sergeant I'd spoken to the last time I'd called answered, and when I asked him what was new, he told me.

  “We've got that guy Lime you're so interested in, Scott. But not on the call that went out last night—he can't talk to us, either.”

  “Can't—he's not dead, is he?”

  “No, but you're warmer than he is. He's in Central Receiving with a couple slugs in him.” He swore softly. “This town's getting worse than Chicago in the twenties. Here's what happened.”

  He told me the setup had been about like the attempt to kill me in front of the Spartan. Two men in a car had blasted Lime as he'd left a local bar, Luigi's on Virgil Avenue. They'd then raced away in a sedan, but of the two witnesses to the shooting, one said it was a green Buick and the other called it a brown Chevrolet. And that was all they were sure of.

  I felt like swearing, myself. Lime was the one man still alive, of the two who'd thrown those pills at me—and now he'd gotten the same treatment he and Kupp had tried to give me. It sure seemed like a handy killing—for somebody. And I wondered if he'd been killed by that “somebody” because he'd been identified by the police and me last night, and the local and APB had then gone out on him.

  I said to the sergeant, “Sounds like the guy I'm after is trying to make sure any leads to him are dead ones. How bad off is Lime?”

  “He's alive. Two slugs in the back, but he's getting emergency treatment right now. He's got a fair chance.”

  I thanked him, hung up and took off.

  L.A.'s new Central Receiving Hospital is a two-story brick building at 500 Loma Drive. I trotted up the cement ramp and through wide glass doors into the quiet coolness of the building's interior. At the reception desk I asked the pleasant, white-uniformed nurse on duty at the switchboard what chance I had of talking to, or at least getting a look at, Leonard Lime.

  “Lime?” she said, and turned to a card file on the table next to her.

  “He just came in,” I said. “With two bullets in him.” I quickly explained the importance of the info to me, that I thought the man had tried to kill me last night. She pulled a card from the file. “Oh, yes. He was a stat case. We gave him plavolex and serum albumin—he'd lost a lot of blood.” Looking at the card she continued, “After emergency treatment, he was taken to the County for surgery.”

  “He's already gone?”

  “Yes, a few minutes ago.”

  That had been efficient—too efficient to suit me. Because Lime was a suspect, he would have been removed to the prison ward of the L.A. County Hospital near Mission Road. So that's where I was going.

  Without red lights and siren, I couldn't make it as fast as the Central Receiving ambulance, but I didn't waste any time. I knew the girl on duty at the information center, a gal named Molly, and after some fast words with her went on up to the fifteenth floor. I couldn't go into the operating rooms there, but Molly had told me which one Lime was in and that a Dr. Fischer was operating on him now, so I waited in the corridor outside it.

  Two men came out. One of them still had on his operating pajamas and skull cap. His back was to me, and he was saying to the other man, “I did all I could. But he was too far gone when we started.”

  So that told me what I'd wanted to know—or, rather, what I hadn't wanted to know. There went my last chance to find out who'd hired the bum, who'd set me up for the kill. Which, I felt pretty sure, was why he'd been killed. I started to turn and go back down to the Cad.

  The doctor swung slightly to his left, and I saw the front of his surgical gown. It was a little stained. “I did all I could,” he repeated.

  And then I saw his face. Somehow, maybe the combination of looking from the blood on his gown to that face was a nerve-jarring blow that froze me motionless for a moment.

  Dr. Fischer was the man I'd seen last night. The heavy, bulbous-nosed guy who'd walked out of Hip Brandt's office in the showcase.

  Chapter Sixteen

  So he'd done all he could, huh? I said, “I'll bet you did, doctor, I'll bet you did.”

  Dr. Fischer looked at me through his horn-rimmed glasses, an expression of surprise on his face. “What did you say?”

  “It—never mind. It wasn't important.” I tried to control my racing thoughts. My blood had suddenly started hammering in my temples. But I made an effort to keep my face composed, interested. “Lime didn't make it, huh?”

  “The man who was shot ... no, there wasn't a chance. I did all I—”

  He stopped, frowning. “What are you doing here? Who the devil are you?”

  I told him, watching his face to see if I could detect any more-than-mild reaction there. “I'm Shell Scott.”

  “Oh.” It wasn't a mild, soft comment, but more like a gasp. That was all, that and a sudden widening of his eyes and mouth, quickly controlled.

  He turned away from me, his face puzzled. He couldn't have known that I'd seen him in the showcase last night; but it was possible—even probable, I thought—that he knew I'd been there. He said to the other man, who had been silently watching us, “I'll have to leave now,” and walked away.

  The other man turned and went back into the operating room. I just stood there. I wasn't doing a thing except breathing and thinking, but I felt like a man running a hundred-yard dash, as if somebody had shot a hypo full of adrenalin into my veins. Keyed up, I went downstairs and walked out of the hospital. I'd parked on State Street, which runs through the hospital grounds, and as I walked toward the Cad I dragged on a cigarette, trying to put my thoughts in order. Maybe I was imagining things. I was getting dizzy, wondering what the hell was going on. I hadn't had time yet to put all this together. When I could, I felt certain I'd have something to sink my teeth into. And I sure needed it. As I looked in the direction of my car, a man walked away from it.

  He seemed to appear out of nowhere alongside the Cad, and then he walked down State Street, got into a car and left in a hurry. I dropped my cigarette, stepped on it. As the car raced away I noted that it was a light-colored Mercury—and that rang a warning bell in my mind.

  I had been racing so fast and furiously, first to Central Receiving and then to here, that I'd been less careful than usual. When I'd taken off from the receiving hospital, I'd noticed a car pull into the street after me. I thought I'd seen it behind me on Third, and once again later, but I hadn't thought much about it. I did now. It had been a light-colored Mercury.

  Too many thoughts were cramming my head at the same time. That guy had sure looked as if he were not just near, but at my Cadillac. Only a few seconds had passed since the Mercury left the curb. If I snapped into it, I could still catch the car and tail it—and suddenly I badly wanted to follow that guy. I ran to the Cad, jumped in, fumbling in my pocket for the car keys. I found th
em, pulled them out and stuck the key into the ignition. My eye caught the ornament on the Cad's hood. It seemed higher than usual, as if the hood wasn't completely closed. I started to turn the key.

  But then I stopped—my hand froze. I felt as if my blood had turned into ice water. Gooseflesh leaped out on my skin. My breath stopped in my throat and slowly, carefully, I took my hand from the key. For another few seconds I didn't move, just sat there feeling the cold sweat ooze out on my face, beading my lip, gathering on my forehead.

  Then I let out my breath, carefully took the key from the ignition. Maybe I was wrong. I slid sideways out of the seat, walked to the front of the car and raised the hood.

  I wasn't wrong.

  There was nothing fancy about it. Just four sticks of dynamite, held together with black friction tape. With dynamite you don't have to be fancy. As I looked at it, my heart thudding heavily in my chest, I remembered a man in Las Vegas, a warm, close friend of mine, who'd started my old yellow Cad and been blown into flesh-ripped bloodiness, into ugly death, by just such a simple dynamite bomb as this. If I'd turned the key those few seconds ago, I would have ended the same way he had. And I'd been only a fraction of a second, a breath, from doing it.

  I leaned closer, to the bomb, examined it carefully before touching anything. An electric detonating cap was attached to the end of one of the four dirty, brownish-yellow sticks, the cap's two wires leading up to the two ignition wires behind the switch. Turn the key, the battery's current runs down the wires, the cap explodes and sets off the dynamite, and that's all. You're dead. Shell Scott is dead.

  With great care, almost certainly with more care than Dr. Fischer had used in his recent “operation,” I removed the wires from their connection to the ignition. I carried the bundle to the back of the car, opened the luggage compartment, and placed the lethal package on top of some coils of wire next to the squawk box and the infrared snooperscope. Then I closed the door.

  I sat in the Cad again, behind the wheel, and lit another cigarette. My hands were shaking. My throat was dry and my suit was wet through. That near hopelessness I'd felt earlier was in my bones again, and in them cold and heavy now. Maybe part of it was because I'd come so close to turning that key; and part of it because in front of my eyes again was the face of the young guy in Las Vegas, torn flesh hanging from the skull beneath, the dead, ugly, unreal face of a man who had been my friend, a man who had laughed a lot.