Bodies in Bedlam (The Shell Scott Mysteries)

by Richard S. Prather

  "So you killed him."

  "So I killed him. I didn't go to that damn party to kill the bastard—I wouldn't have sounded off if I had. It just happened. I met him upstairs and he knew I'd made head cutter and maybe I'd even be leaving the cutting room for sound work. That's what I wanted to do. He wouldn't have it. Said I had to stay where I was, get him more pix. Hell, those things don't show up very often; I'd just been lucky to get what I did and get away with it. But he couldn't see it. We argued. There was a little statue thing there and I hit him with that. Well—it just happened."

  There wasn't the slightest doubt in my mind now that Clark had a gun on me. He wouldn't have been getting all this off his chest unless he figured I was just a corpse that was still kicking. For a while I'd thought I might feel silly standing foolishly in front of Clark if he didn't have a gun, and me with a .38 at my left shoulder. I didn't think like that now.

  He went on in a sad sort of voice, speaking quietly, "Funny, isn't it, Scott, how a guy can just drift into something like murder? It started with that little mess in Kansas City. Not much of anything, really, when you come right down to it. Only damn time I ever stole anything at all. Then a bastard getting me to swipe some pix so he can play with them. And look where it got me. Killed a man and now going to kill another. Now I gotta kill you."

  For a second I thought he was going to blast and I almost dug for my gun. I yelled, "One thing! Tell me one thing. Hallie."

  "What about Hallie?"

  "The girl. The girl in my car. What happened to her?"

  "I don't know. I thought it was you. I knew I missed you in the afternoon so I staked out at your place. I took a couple of shots just before the car parked, then I beat it. What happened after that I don't know. Shouldn't make any difference to you anyway, Scott."

  I'd got him to talk a little again, and I did want to know about Hallie, but mainly I wanted a few seconds more. I had to go for my gun and chance it.

  I knew he had a gun under the sheets. I was morally certain of it, but I hadn't seen the thing. And even if I managed to get my revolver out I knew I couldn't shoot Clark until I was positive beyond all doubt that the guy wasn't just off his trolley, that he actually wasn't unarmed. It was one hell of a mess.

  That was a problem he settled for me. I guess he didn't want to shoot a hole in the blanket, and figured he had me anyway, because he moved, pulling the covers down just a little way from the top part of his body, and raised his arms slightly to clear the covers.

  He had a gun, all right.

  In a split second I noticed the gun in his right hand, and also the fact that he was fully dressed. He'd been dressed when I came and probably jumped into the unmade bed to stall me in case this was a social call—but he'd made the gun part of his outfit in case it wasn't social.

  As his hands cleared the tops of the bed covers, the muzzle of the gun wavered slightly away from my middle and I moved. I leaped to my right, digging for the revolver under my coat. My fingers brushed the butt of the Colt as flame darted from the gun in Clark's hand.

  I hit the floor on my right side, the gun in the palm of my hand, and everything went black. I thought stupidly and incongruously, It's happened again!

  It took me a couple of stunned seconds to realize I wasn't headed for the, moon again, or for hell; then it made sense. The only light in the room had come from the table lamp by the bed and Clark had apparently yanked the cord and dumped the room into darkness while I'd been flopping onto my side. Even as I realized what had happened and knew that his shot had gone wild, I heard his feet pound across the floor toward the back of the house.

  I twisted my right arm up under me and fired awkwardly over the bed, but the bullet smacked into the wall with a lot different sound from the noise it would have made slapping into flesh. I'd missed him a mile and he was through the door and on his way out.

  Right now it looked like Paul Clark was more interested in getting away than killing me—or getting killed himself.

  I threw my weight on my left arm to push myself up, and pain ran through the wrenched shoulder. The arm buckled and my teeth slammed into the carpet. By the time I got to my feet a door slammed shut in back and I knew Clark was somewhere outside. I sprinted out of the front room toward the faint glow in back where moonlight spilled dimly through the screen of the kitchen door, hoping there was nothing in the way to trip me up. I didn't stop at the door and peek outside, but hit the screen with my right shoulder and went through it with my legs still driving as the thin door burst open, swung around, and crashed into the wall on my left, then squeaked back slowly into place and shut with a small bang.

  I hunched over and ran a few more steps, then stopped and dropped to the ground before I batted my brains out on a wall or fence. I stayed low to the ground so I wouldn't be silhouetted in the faint, thready moonlight, and listened. I couldn't hear a sound except a misplaced cricket making a small racket, and the sound of my own breathing.

  I stayed like that for a long minute, turning my head slowly and straining to see through the near darkness, before I admitted it: Yes, I'd let the murdering son get away.

  At least, that's what it looked like, but I was a very quiet and cautious man going back into the house. I've been shot at before, and I've been shot, and it's no fun either way. I got inside with no trouble and struck a match to locate the phone. I didn't turn on the lights and I doused the match in a hurry, then I used the phone and called 116, Los Angeles' emergency number. I gave the quick story to the complaint board, but they'd undoubtedly hotshot the call and the homicide boys would be listening in even as I spilled out the story and gave the details about Clark. I didn't even want to talk to Samson right now.

  I felt pretty goddam lousy.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  HALF AN HOUR LATER I'd done a lot of talking, prowl cars were circulating around the neighborhood, and I was alone in Paul Clark's house with some bitter thoughts. That was the way I wanted it.

  Finally I stopped feeling sorry for myself and beating myself mentally about the head, and wondered what the next move of a lame-brained private detective should be. I stopped standing listlessly with my back against the wall and walked over and flopped down on the pile of covers in the middle of Clark's bed.

  I went, "Ooof!" and my ribs felt like they'd caved in. I jumped to my feet and stared at the middle of the bed. For one wild second visions of rigid bodies under the bedclothes whirled through my mind before the shock wore off and I knew I was being stupid some more. Then I yanked down the covers and stared at the sharp edge of the leather suitcase that had dug into my ribs.

  Brother! There were sure a lot of screwy characters in this cockeyed caper: a blackmailing egomaniac, a guy who cuts throats as well as film, a monster with muscles in his mustache, a gal who stole capes from dead men, another gal who was going to asterisk me, and more.

  And now a guy who sleeps with suitcases.

  I forgot all about looking over my shoulder; this seemed like a case history for Dr. Wilhelm Stekel. I grabbed the bag and tried to open it, but it was locked. I made a trip to the kitchen and five minutes later the suitcase wasn't much good any more, but it was open.

  Inside were neatly folded clothes, a box of .45-caliber cartridges that were undoubtedly for Clark's gun—and the jackpot.

  The jackpot consisted of three things. One of them was a fat bundle of money that I rifled through and guessed amounted to three or four thousand bucks. Not a hell of a lot, but a nice pile of lam money. The cute thing, though, was a passport. A nice, green-covered passport all stamped and legal and ready to go, with Paul Clark's square face staring out at me from the little two-and-a-half-inch-square photo inside. It looked like friend Paul had been thinking of a possible change of clime.

  But the last little parcel was a jackpot all by itself. You guessed it. Sealed in a manila envelope were a handful of short lengths of thirty-five-millimeter film positives, perforated along the edges so they'd run through a movie camera, an equa
l number of negatives made from the positives, and a dozen glossy eight-by-ten enlargements that were, as the saying goes, pretty as a picture. Here was what Clark had busted into Brane's studio bedroom to get after he killed Brane and got out of Feldspen's.

  My throat got a little tight when I looked at the picture of Hallie Wilson again, and I wondered again where she was, how she was now. And there were Constanza Carmocha and Barbara Faun, and shots of several others whose faces I knew but whose features still surprised me. There was even a picture of Tarzan knifing a lion, but that one held little interest for me, being the sort of a guy that I am.

  And how, I asked myself, do you like this mess?

  And I started wondering. There was a lot in that suitcase that was important—important as hell to Paul Clark. Money, a passport to somewhere or anywhere, and a pile of dirty blackmail pix and film that might let a guy with that turn of mind make enough quick dough to live a long time in Buenos Aires or Guadalajara or Algiers, particularly if he was desperate. And I started wondering if maybe Paul Clark might think the stuff was still hidden under the bedclothes, and if it might be important enough to come back for.

  It was important enough for him to take to bed with him, and it looked like he'd been dressed and ready to go when I came to the party—and maybe, just maybe, he'd be back. So it was one chance out of ten, but it was a chance.

  I put the suitcase back about where I'd found it. Except for the blackmail stuff. That I took into the bathroom and burned and flushed down the toilet before I did anything else. If Clark did come back and anything went wrong from my point of view, I could do that much for the gals, and for Hallie with her violet eyes.

  Then I turned out the light, went out and slammed the unlocked door behind me, got in the car I'd taken from Dutch and Flem, and drove away. But I just drove a block away and around the corner on Edmond Street. Then I hotfooted it back to Clark's.

  I went in with my gun in my hand, through the front door again, and walked across the room to the wall by the head of the bed. I couldn't hear any other sounds in or around the house, so I clicked the button on the bed lamp, then bent over and found the electric cord that had been pulled from the wall by Clark when he was in a hurry. I plugged it in again and breathed easier when the light didn't flash on, then got up. I had nothing to do but wait. And maybe nothing to wait for.

  I stood for a long time, tense, with my gun ready in my right hand and the fingers of my left hand pressed against the button switch of the bed lamp. Finally my breathing was slow and easy, my heart slogged along quietly and steadily, and I started feeling inadequate standing in a dark room and darn near falling asleep.

  So I took my fingers away from the lamp and tried to relax against the wall, the gun loose in my hand, and the feeling growing that I might as well crawl into bed and cuddle up to Clark's suitcase. I must have stood for an interminable hour there in the darkness that would soon be dawn, shifting my weight occasionally and almost groaning aloud at the protesting aches in my bruised and stiffening muscles.

  Then I heard a whisper of sound. Just a little scrape from somewhere out in back of the house, and it could have been a stray cat or my imagination, but then I heard it again and I heard the faint squeal of the screen door, and I knew I was through waiting. He'd waited, too, long enough, and Paul Clark had come home.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  HE WAS THERE, close behind me, and I could hear the almost inaudible noises that meant he was easing his body through the door and into the kitchen, getting closer. He took his time; maybe he figured the place was empty, but he was playing it the way he would have if he'd known I was here.

  Maybe he did know; I couldn't be sure. But even that way he couldn't know where I was in the room—and I didn't think he really figured on me, but was just being careful as a man will when he's hunted. I tried to keep relaxed and at the same time hold my body motionless so I wouldn't make the slightest sound to let him know there was somebody waiting for him. I opened my mouth wide and breathed through it, deep, slow breaths so even my breathing wouldn't be audible to his danger-sharpened ears. There wasn't anything I could do about the thudding of my heart. I knew he couldn't hear that, though it pounded in my ears like a drum and worried me even while I knew the worry was foolish.

  For seconds of a longer, hesitant kind of time I heard nothing. He must have stopped and been standing there, his nostrils dilated, ears straining, his own heart pounding, too. I had the better break; I knew he was coming in. He had his imagination to contend with, which was a lot worse than knowing.

  Finally I heard him move again and he was at the door. I could hear the palm of his hand brush against the side of the doorframe, but I couldn't see anything. There wasn't any light at all in the room, even from the faint moon outside the drawn window shades. But I could feel him near me, not four feet away, and now I did hold my breath.

  And as I stopped breathing and my heart pounded faster, the oxygen thinning in my blood, I realized I didn't have my fingers on the switch of the lamp so I could suddenly flood the room with light and startle him and take him. I started moving my hand a part of an inch at a time toward the lamp, wondering how long I could hold my breath before I'd have to let it out with a rush he couldn't help hearing—because I could hear his breathing now.

  I could barely hear the soft rustle of his breath trickling past his lips and I could have jumped him, slugged him. But I'd let this guy get away from me once tonight and I sure as hell wasn't going to take a chance on messing it up again. I knew if he got out of this he'd be gone for sure. He wouldn't have the money or his passport, maybe, but he wouldn't be sucker enough to try again. He probably wouldn't get far; he'd be caught by somebody. But it probably wouldn't be me, and I wanted it to be me. I wanted it bad.

  The guy had killed, and no matter if he'd just sort of drifted into Brane's murder like he'd said, he'd drifted too far when he'd stood at the side of a road and tried to kill me. And maybe Hallie was lying somewhere in the darkness because of him. I wasn't going to mess it up this time.

  I heard the soft, faint brush of his shoe against the carpet somewhere out in front of me as my fingers found the button of the table lamp. I had an idea where he was and I didn't wait any longer.

  I squinted my eyes so the light wouldn't be too blinding when it came on, leveled my gun where I figured Clark would be, and pressed the lamp switch.

  The light blazed on and for a part of a second it was like a movie with no sound track. Just light and movement and not a sound as my eyes saw Clark about four feet away turned more toward the bed than where I was, and the gun in his right hand just starting to swing toward the light and me. Then the quiet was over and I heard Clark let out a strangled cry as I yelled, "Hold it, Clark!" and there was the blast of his gun and flame licking toward me from his hand.

  He couldn't have aimed; he could hardly have known what he was doing in the sudden shock and surprise. But I saw the fire almost in his hand and felt the smash of the heavy slug into my chest. It slammed me back against the wall and the gun in my own hand jiggled crazily in front of my eyes, but I squeezed down on the trigger.

  I tried to point my wavering gun at Clark and I kept pulling the trigger and I felt the gun buck in my hand as everything in the room started swimming. It seemed to take a long time; the light got dimmer and dimmer and there were just hazy outlines in front of me, all of them moving, and I could hear the boom of the gun somewhere far off like the thunder of distant surf. I could hear the faint boom and then my right hand would be lifted sort of lazily as if this were all in slow motion. And at last I couldn't see anything, but I knew I wasn't clear out yet, and I was trying to get off the floor as, finally, there was only a kind of swirling darkness that was never still.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  THERE WAS A COOL hand on my forehead and there were fingers at my wrist and there was a girl in a white uniform who looked like a nurse. I wondered how I'd got in bed and why everything smelled like medicine.


  I started to get up, but the nurse pushed me down gently and said things to me about being quiet, and sharp pain roared through my chest. And I lay back and relaxed and went to sleep.

  Then I woke up and Samson was sitting by the bed, his pink, clean-shaven face looking tired and a little older. He wasn't looking right at me, but everything seemed sharp and clear and I said, "God, I'm starved."

  He swung his head around and his wide lips split in a grin. "You faker," he said. "Playing possum, huh?"

  "Sure. How long I been in this trap?"

  "Four days," Sam said. "You never did go clear out when you got shot, but you went into shock, and there were some complications. You weren't very healthy."

  I grinned at him. "I got something wrong with my chest."

  He said, "You're not supposed to talk much. I just stopped in to see how you were."

  I suddenly realized how tired I was. I didn't feel as if I could lift a finger. But something was bothering me. Something important. I wanted to ask Sam something, but I couldn't remember what it was.

  He said, "Clark's dead. We pieced it together, how it must have happened."

  I raised my eyebrows at him. I felt as if I were going to sleep again. Maybe they had some drugs in me.

  Sam said, "Your gun was empty. Clark only fired one shot. You caught him in the side of the head with one slug. The rest were all over. You shot up some furniture and put two bullets through the floor at your feet. Wonder you didn't shoot your toes off."

  I said weakly, "The suitcase in Clark's room?"

  "Yeah. We found that. Passport and all."