I craned my head around, saw Stone in the open doorway behind me, a big automatic in his hand. Jason was in the hall beyond him. Foster was getting to his feet. "You took your damned time," he said angrily. "I yelled loud enough for you to hear me in the City Hall."
So that was why he'd screamed. He'd been ahead of me all the way, spilling everything to keep my attention. Stone was wearing slippers and trousers, his big chest bare; he must have been lying down here when I'd come in. I swore. I hadn't been able to reach any of them by phone earlier, and it probably should have occurred to me that all of them might be together; but it hadn't and when I'd seen Foster through the window, I hadn't been doing any thinking except about how I'd mangle him.
"I said to drop the gun," Stone said.
His .45 was pointed straight at me. I dropped the .32. From the corner of my eye I saw Foster move, step toward me. "Stop it, Vic!" Stone yelled sharply.
Foster had his fist drawn back, his mashed lips pressed together. "Look what the bastard did to me," he said.
"Don't be a fool. We can't mark him up."
"Then shoot him. Shoot him!"
"Just a minute," Stone said. "I want to know how he found us."
Foster apparently hadn't thought of that yet. His face went blank, then his lips twisted angrily. "Gloria," he said bitterly. "Well, she's asked for whatever —" He cut it off, jaws grinding together.
After a moment he went on, looking at Stone, "Scott's not just a handy out for us now; I've told the bastard everything. So get it over with."
Stone licked his lips. "You got us all into this, Vic. It was your idea. You'd better finish it."
Foster walked to Stone, jerked the gun from his hand and aimed it at me. For a second there I was a dead man. Nothing worked, not my muscles, my brain, nothing. Then I said the words, coming in a burst, "Better think about it, Foster. You've got nobody to frame for this one."
He chuckled. "We don't need anybody. You killed Danny, remember. The three of us here were the men who could place you there as the last man in the game with Danny. So you came here to shut us up."
That second, plus the time Foster had been speaking, was all I needed. If everything had been frozen before, it was racing now. I had always been able to bluff Foster out of any pot I really wanted, whether it was big or small, and this was the biggest pot of all. Maybe, I thought, maybe it would work. So I said. "Kill me, and you're all going to that little gas room at Quentin. The police will know it's cold-blooded murder."
Foster looked as if he were going to pull the trigger, but he relaxed slightly, let the gun drop lower and said, "You're crazy, Scott. This is self-defense. We've even got the gun you brought here — the gun you used on Danny."
I said, "You damn fool, the police know I didn't kill Danny. I've talked to them."
He frowned, then chuckled. "Sure you have. Never say die, huh? Well, it won't do you any —"
"I can prove it, Foster. Sergeant Billings for one. Call him; he's off duty, but I'll give you odds he's at the station now. He'll tell you the same thing. I even told him about the bug Stone planted in Father Shanlon's confessional booth." That jarred him and doubt grew on his face. I kept talking. "No reason for me to lie. You can check it in fifteen seconds. And I wish you would. If you don't, you're cutting your own throats along with mine."
Foster, frowning, reached up with his left hand and tugged gently at his earlobe. It was the moment I'd been waiting for, so I laughed out loud. It sounded pretty genuine and all three men looked at me. "Don't you get it yet?" I grinned at them. "Danny's not dead."
There was complete silence for a second. Then Foster said, "You're lying."
I looked at the other two then, at Stone and Jason. "I was unconscious when it happened, sure. But you two were clear out of the hotel — you, Stone, in the Dormann Hotel waiting to watch me come to so you could call the cops. Another part of your build-up — the frame wouldn't fit if they found me unconscious. When I came to, Danny was still breathing."
"You're lying," Foster said again. "I killed him."
I looked at him then. "Nuts. You shot him with that thirty-two of mine. You called it a little popgun, yourself, when you made sure I had it on me. Men have been shot two or three times with a forty-five and lived. Those little slugs poked holes in Danny, and shook him up, but they didn't kill him."
They just about half believed me. Even Foster. But it wouldn't last forever and I knew it. A bluff has to work only long enough for the man to toss in his hand, but to do me any good, this one had to work longer. I was praying that Foster would actually phone and talk to Billings. But even if that should make Billings wonder plenty after what I'd told him, it would still take ten minutes after the call for him to get out here — even if the police could trace the call.
Foster said, "We talked to the police. They said he was dead."
"I doubt that. I imagine you did most of the talking. Besides, what would you expect them to say? They still don't know who shot Danny. I told Billings who did it, though."
Foster tugged at his ear, then moved to the phone, keeping the gun pointed at me. I looked at Stone, at Jason. "You're the men who should be scared and running. You might make it if you started now."
Foster dialed. I held my breath, but then he said, "Who? Mr. Grant? This is Victor Foster. About Danny Hasting's body . . . I don't believe he has any relatives near here. I'd like to be sure he has a decent funeral . . . Yes."
Foster was grinning while he looked at me. And with good enough reason. The bluff had worked; he'd phoned. But he hadn't called Billings, or even the police. He'd called Grant, at the morgue. And Danny was in the morgue.
He talked for a few more seconds, his grin widening. Then he hung up. And this time he wasn't going to listen to any more conversation. He was going to kill me right now. I bent forward, tensing my leg muscles.
And then we heard it. We all heard it, the still distant, but clear, sound of a siren. Foster didn't take his eyes or the muzzle of the automatic off me, but Judge Jason walked to the window and raised the shade. "It's coming up here," he said. "They are. Several cars. It's police, I can see the red lights. I . . ." He let it trail off.
I heard Stone jump toward the window as the siren got louder, but my eyes were on Foster. If they were police cars, I didn't know how or why they'd come here, but I knew they must be for me. And I waited for Foster to take his eyes off me for one second. He did. He looked toward Jason and Stone at the window, the gun muzzle wavering away from me.
I lunged forward, bent over, and dived at him. The gun roared with a deafening crash almost in my ear; the bullet burned across the skin of my neck, and then I hit him, legs driving, and slammed him back against the wall with a crash that shook the little house. My shoulder ground into his side and cut off the yell that ripped from his throat. His hand clawed across my face and I swung my right fist at him, knuckles bouncing off his arm. The gun dropped, and then Foster had squirmed away from me.
He was scuttling across the floor on all fours. Jason and Stone were piling out the door and I saw them turn, start toward the back of the house. The siren was screaming almost in our ears now, and I could hear cars sliding to a stop in front. Foster got to his feet, as I slapped my hand against the automatic, raised it in my fist.
"Hold it, Foster! One step and I'll kill you," I shouted.
He was almost at the door. He turned his head around, face panic-stricken, then made his mistake. He gave one big leap toward the doorway and I fired. I aimed low and the heavy slug caught him while he was still in the air. It slammed his body around with a sudden wrench, drove him against the door frame. He bounced against it, fell to the floor and lay there with his hands clawing at the carpet.
Then the room was full of policemen. I couldn't remember seeing so many cops in one place at the same time. I took a few minutes, but Foster was still conscious and he talked to Billings just as eagerly as he'd earlier talked to me. I filled in anything he forgot, or otherwise neglected to me
ntion. When things quieted down, Billings took me aside. "That happened pretty fast," he said. "We didn't come out here for them." He pointed at Foster; Jason and Stone had been grabbed as they went out the back door. "We came out for you."
"How'd you find me? It wasn't that phone call?"
"What phone call?" He paused a moment, then went on. "You got me a little hot, you know, when you stole my car."
"I needed transportation, and I'd already used too many cabs."
"Shouldn't have stolen a police car. That baby belongs to the city. Come on, I'll show you something." As we went outside he said, "I usually drive it home. Looks like anybody else's buggy — a plainclothes car we call them. Microphone in the glove compartment, aerial under the frame, everything looks normal." We were at the car then and he opened the right-hand door, pointed a glowing flashlight at the seat. "Take a look."
Something was stuffed down in back of the seat. "Transmission microphone," he said. "When you thought I was plugging in the lighter for my cigarette, I was turning on the radio. When you yanked me back by the collar, that gave me the chance to stuff the mike in there." He pulled the mike free. "Had to stuff it in so the button would stay down. You started transmitting to the police station before we even finished talking, and you drove off. You were transmitting all the time you were driving up here."
I swore, but happily.
He went on, "Didn't hear anything but the engine, since you didn't talk to yourself. Lost you for a while, but we finally got a fix on this transmitter and zeroed you in. Had all the radio cars in town out after you." He grunted heavily. "And we got three other live ones."
"You came close to getting a dead one," I said. "I guess you talked to Father Shanlon."
He shook his head. "No, but we will now. I've been too busy trying to catch up with you. And I didn't believe a word you said, anyway."
The ambulance attendants came out carrying Foster on a stretcher. Before they put him into the ambulance he started swearing at me. I leaned over the stretcher and said, "Foster, I've got a hunch you should have never bugged Shanlon's confessional. I'm not a very religious man myself, but it might be you were fooling around with some laws a little stronger than the city's."
His voice was weak, but he managed to swear filthily. "Don't give me that crap, Scott."
I shrugged. "Crap huh? I dunno myself, but maybe you will."
"What the hell do you mean?"
"You're gonna find out."
It seemed to me his face turned pale green, the color of Quentin's gas chamber, and that he held his breath. One thing was sure. Foster might never find out where he was going after that gas chamber, but he was going to go.
Billings drove me downtown in his police car. He was headed for the station, but I talked him into letting me out on Pepper Street. He said, "Listen, you've got to come down to Homicide, make a statement."
"Look, Billings, I'll come down. Hell, I want my money back. But there's somebody I've got to see first."
"Well, okay. But make it snappy. It's Thursday night; tomorrow's my day off, you know. Like to get everything cleaned up early."
"Don't worry about it."
He drove on toward town and I walked to the Essex. Two seconds after I pressed the buzzer, Gloria swung the door open, and her soft voice said, "Shell, honey!"
"Gloria," I cried. "Where's your towel?"
She pulled me inside and slammed the door. Some women take off their towel and they are merely nude; Gloria looked as if she'd just stepped out of a black-lace negligee. It was wondrous, it was tremendous, it was marvelous. It was Gloria's.
She grabbed me and said, "Oh, I was worried. But it's all right now."
"I can stay only a minute. Got to see Billings."
"Oh, honey, no."
"Got to get downtown . . . to police . . . headquarters . . ."
"Honey, honey, honey . . ."
Poor old Billings. I didn't get downtown until Saturday.
TROUBLE SHOOTER
I looked around the office wondering where to start. It wasn't a pleasant moment. I didn't want to start at all, didn't want to leave. But this was like a lot of Hollywood offices — lavish, expensive, all front, and a broke tenant.
The tenant — that's me, Shell Scott. And it looked as if Shell Scott was Hollywood's latest casualty. It had been great for a year, anyway. This one I'd liked. After the advertising agency, the stint on a newspaper, the odd jobs around Hollywood, I'd wound up a private investigator — I owned the license. Three years of it I'd had now, the last year in my office here on the Sunset Strip. That's right, the Sunset Strip.
A private detective is supposed to be unobstructive, a man who can fade away into the shadows. But this is Hollywood. The clients I want, the men and women of the movie industry, don't feel right hiring somebody who can fade away into the shadows. They don't want a shrinking violet, but a blooming eucalyptus with morning glories springing out all over it. So, after two meager years in downtown L.A. I'd bloomed and sprung out. On the Sunset Strip — the expensive Sunset Strip. Expensive, like Mocambo, Ciro's.
The office, like the address, is front. In Hollywood you have to have a front. A producer working on a two-million-dollar comic-strip-with-people doesn't — if he's in trouble and needs some kind of troubleshooter — get into the right mood, the paying mood, when he leaves his walnut paneled office, his mahogany desk, his pith helmet, his blonde, and enters a one-room office complete with green wooden filing cabinet. So, I've got the place fixed up to sock out the proper impression. Both rooms. Take a look at it. Squint, though, or close one eye.
In front is a wide, shallow office with black carpet, over-stuffed red-and-gray chairs, white desk at which sits — all in black — Yolanda. Yolanda, of whom more later. Then through the connecting door into the next room, my office. Desk made from the stump of a mangrove tree from Florida's Okefenokee Swamp, complete with roots. Zebra-striped chairs. Red chaise lounge. Scattered around, or hanging on the walls are my own pith helmet, blowgun, pictures of some stars and directors and Hollywood people, and many pictures of Shell. Shell — with an elephant gun in Africa, in mountain gear climbing an Alp, skiing at Sun Valley, and so on. When a potential Hollywood client walked into my office, he knew I was good.
Several clients had been satisfied this last year, too, but I hadn't had a real smash case for three months. Three months without a hit. Two months without even a divorce investigation. Just about everybody in the movie industry knew my name, but I was, as actors say, between engagements. Hollywood has a short memory. What counts is now, not then. You've got to keep producing.
Finally I started packing by gathering up the pictures, stacking them on my Okefenokee-Swamp-mangrove-tree-with-roots desk. Not another one in Hollywood like it. Then Yolanda came in. That's not quite right. Yolanda doesn't come in. She walks, she floats, she soars, she dips and dives and gyrates and wiggles and flows — in a word, Yolanda enters. Yolanda entered.
"We should have a wake or something, Shell."
"We should have some money."
"You're really moving it all out today?"
I nodded, looking at her. Yolanda, tall, black-haired, lithe and luscious, white-skinned, full red lips and huge nearly black eyes. In this town, where front is so important, Yolanda had it made. She also had it made behind and sideways, and in any town. I hated to give up the office, true; but most of all I hated to lose Yolanda.
She's my girl Friday, my secretary, phone-answerer, confidante, pal and what-not. She'd come to Hollywood to crash the movies, a dream she still clung to, but she couldn't act. She can't type either, can't take shorthand, but you can't have everything. The chaise lounge in my office is for her; that's where she takes dictation. Yolanda doesn't know Gregg, but she can invent pothooks like crazy, and the faster I talk, the more she squirms on the chaise lounge. I've had directors, writers, even producers, watching open-mouthed as I dictated a hundred and fifty words a minute, not hearing a word I said.
"Seems a shame
," Yolanda said, her voice poured through honey.
"It is a shame."
"Isn't there anything we can do? Can I help any way, Shell?"
"All we need is several thousand dollars for rent and beans. I thought about putting on a turban and becoming a high-priced mystic. Records playing 'Swami River,' and all that."
She made a face. "A very bad idea. Also unfunny. You're just discouraged."
"I'm never discouraged. You don't appreciate me."
"Yes, I do. So much, that as long as you're taking down the pictures I'd like the one of you with the elephant gun. You're magnificent in that one. Did Bruno take it?"
"Nope. It was taken in Africa. Just after I shot an elephant."
"Really? You should have saved the tusks for this museum." She indicated the office. "Or maybe the whole head. Or the whole elephant —"
"I missed him."
"You missed an elephant?"
"I'm a lousy shot."
"It's a lousy day." I knew what she meant. We both looked around us, at the gorgeously ugly office.
Chimes played a soft, minor chord. That meant the door had opened out front. Yolanda and I looked at each other. It was only seven-thirty a.m.; usually we opened the office at ten. Yolanda swung around and entered the front office.
In a minute she returned. "Mr. Scott, I know you're busy, but Mr. Jay Kennedy is in the outer office. Can you see him for a moment?" She winked.
The door was naturally cracked so the words could be heard in the outer office. I'm always busy. "Why yes," I said. "My appointment isn't for a half an hour. Show Mr. Kennedy in, please."
Could I see Jay Kennedy? He was only a couple million dollars on the hoof, an independent producer who'd recently turned out a fine Western called Wagon Wheels.
He came in and shut the door behind him, a tall, erect man with gray hair, horn-rimmed glasses on his sharp nose, wearing a well-tailored gray suit. Even his face looked gray, drawn and worried.
He said, "Mr. Scott, I'll get straight to the point. I've heard a lot about you, and I need a good man to investigate a murder."
Have Gat—Will Travel Page 8
