The Sweet Ride (The Shell Scott Mysteries)

by Richard S. Prather

  “Ban, let’s ... stick with the important things, huh? She did know he was going to show, stick with that fact. When he came up the drive she started to say, ‘There’s Hugh,’ but caught herself and made some squeaks and noises. Needless to say, I missed it.”

  Bannister was only half listening. “Shell, the one thing I’m concerned about now is Ev. If he is alive....”

  “If he’s alive, Ban, he’ll probably stay alive—at least until I’m not.”

  “How’s that?”

  “If he’s dead, we can safely assume Grimson killed him. But let’s say he hasn’t been killed. If so, Grimson can hardly knock him off now, not after impersonating the mayor, not with what I know, and what I’ve told you. If Mr. G. can get rid of me, then it won’t matter if a hundred citizens accuse him of strangling Fowler personally, there won’t be anybody around who can tie him in legally. Hell, even what I know isn’t enough by itself, it’s unsupported, uncorroborated, entirely circumstantial. So the mayor’s disappeared, and Grimson was in the mayor’s house? So what? And I’m the only person who could even testify to that.” I paused. “Except Fanny—I mean, Kitty—Wilson. I wonder if she’s got any idea how little time she may have left?”

  Bannister rubbed his lips again, eyes troubled. “You started to say something about Yoogy Dibler a while back?”

  “Yeah, let’s shake out of our heads everything Grimson conned me with and pick up from what the real mayor told me. Whoever phoned him knew plenty about Grimson’s organization. The mayor was impressed with his info. The big thing, this informant is—or was, since we don’t know if he’s still alive, either—an eyewitness to the murder of Joe Ramirez. And Ramirez was shot and killed by Hugh Grimson. So if we can find out who that informant was, and if he’s still alive, there’s still a good chance of wrapping Mr. G. up for delivery to Q.”

  “Q?”

  “San Quentin. Folsom, the Gulf of California, anyplace he can’t get out of would suit me. I’ll call Hank Wainwright, fill him in, get him moving. Since you know the police chief, it might not hurt to buzz in his ear. Incidentally, just how deeply has Grimson poked into the local law? What about the chief himself?”

  “We don’t have to worry about Cantor. And I’m sure ninety percent, or more, of his men are honest. It’s just that, now we realize Grimson’s got to so many more of the officers than we’d guessed, we might be suspecting some of them unjustly, good men we’re still not sure of.”

  “Yeah. Well, while you jaw with Chief Cantor, why don’t I phone Hank? Would he be at the Rigoletto yet?”

  Bannister glanced at his thin gold watch. “He’s probably picking up Martinique about now. Should be there in the next few minutes. I’ll take Cantor aside. Probably should call Delcey, too—yes, no question, he’s got to know about this. But then I think we should leave, Shell. I can’t see sitting among the merrymakers of the Club Rogue when Ev’s....”

  He didn’t finish it, so I did. “We’ll just keep on assuming he’s alive, Ban. But I agree we should get a move on. Because even if Fowler isn’t dead—yet—it can’t be much of an exaggeration to say he’s in a lot of trouble.”

  Bannister nodded, stood up. Then he paused, looked back at me, and said cheerfully:

  “When you stop to think about it, so are we.”

  12

  I found a row of three pay phones opposite the elevator, waited half a minute until the one man there finished what I deduced was an argument with his wife, which he lost, even though he ended the conversation by hooting, “I will not leave this sinkhole of sin—ahk, will you quit calling it—hon, how can a sinkhole be on the twenty-second—ahk, the hell—’bye for now, sweets,” and hung up, and went back into the bubble and conversation and laughter, and sin, of the Club Rogue.

  With nobody else near the phones, I called the Rigoletto. No luck on the first try. Mr. Wainwright and Miss Monet had not yet been observed. But on my second call I got Hank, told him simply to listen for a minute then pop with questions, and filled him in.

  When I stopped there was silence and I said, “No questions?”

  “Too many. What I was really thinking about was Joe Ramirez. Could be we’ll tag Grimson for it yet.”

  “Could be, Hank.”

  “At least there’s a chance now. You really think Grimson set up the play with that truck, huh?”

  “Hell, who else? He must have done everything but drive it. And how do you like the timing?”

  “Yeah ... I was just thinking, if that diesel had got you a little heavier, we’d still be laughing about Yoogy’s self-generated hallucinations. Not to mention a lot of other great jokes.”

  “Sure. That was the idea. I guess I’ve covered it for now, Hank. Any of it not clear?”

  “No, I got it all. I made some notes in my secret shorthand. Just a sec.... It’s so secret, I can’t read it. Ah, O.K. I probably already know what you want me to check, Shell. Anything special you’re after?”

  “That wiretap, first of all. I figure it could have been on Fowler’s phone for quite a while. And if there’s a tap on the mayor’s phone, it isn’t reaching to assume there might be others. If so, who did the work, set it up? Who’s been riding the earie? I know it could be a tough job trying to find out—”

  “Maybe not, Shell. One of the top men at Bell-North, our phone company here, is a guy I went to school with, good friend and a good man, too. If anybody can speed this part up for me, he can do it.” Hank paused. “I expected you’d say to push on the real informant, whoever he is.”

  “Sure, only he’s dead, or knows by now his future is bleak. Either he showed up at Mayor Fowler’s last night—and, recall, the mayor ain’t around—or had good reason for not showing. Take your pick, he’s not going to be on Fifth and Main watching the lights change. As for Yoogy, I don’t need to tell you—”

  “Yeah,” Hank broke in. “Grimson set him up, coached him, in case you did happen to drop in on Dibler—which he hoped you would do, pal. In the confidence game that’s called the convincer, right? Or don’t you remember?”

  “Now I remember. And now I remember why. The hell of it is, even though I didn’t have any idea I wasn’t talking to the real Mayor Fowler, I still got the feeling he wanted me to check out his boozy informant. Which I did, cleverly following the ring in my nose.”

  “Don’t be so tough on yourself, you dumb ape. Sounds like a pretty smooth job to me. Might have convinced anybody.”

  “Any dumb ape, you mean?”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, I sure wasn’t one of the brightest monkeys around. I should have tumbled somewhere along the line—the second time I visited Fowler’s, at least. I don’t know, every goddamn time a good-looking babe gets her pants off, I do some dumb—”

  “Pants off? Babe—who? You didn’t say anything about—”

  “And I’m not going to. Forget I mentioned it. Get cracking, boy! You’ve got work to do.”

  “Uh-huh. But you just reminded me. Here I am, at the Rigoletto, my Martini getting warm. You are at the Club Rogue. Is it true what they said? Of course, I never really believed it—”

  “Neither did I. We should have more faith.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Jesus. You are beginning to comprehend then, Shell, old friend, what a magnificent, and stupid, sacrifice I made for you?”

  “Appreciate it, Hank. Really do. Tell you what, in return, I may some day introduce you to a lovely creature named Anjarene. Like, well, maybe a year and a half from now.”

  “You’re a real friend, old friend. I can hardly wait. In the meantime, I’ll get to my man at Bell-North, put some lines out. Never can tell, one of our informants might have picked up a rumble. I’ll run down what I can on those plainclothes hoods, too. Have I got the names right? Officer Jonah, he’s the skinny mean one with the eyes?”

  “Right.”

  “Too bad you didn’t get a look at the other one. The alleged sergeant. That was Sergeant...”<
br />
  “Samuels.”

  “Wait a minute, I just remembered something, I think. Seems to me a year or two back there was a big muscle-bound hood did odd jobs—like breaking necks, dipping guys in wet cement—for Hugh Grimson. And his name’s Sargent.” Hank spelled it. “They didn’t call him that, though. Called him Sam Jelly. Mean anything to you?”

  “Nope.”

  But it did. There was that wiggle, or wobble, or faint spark up there again. Then, nothing.

  “Well, I’ll get on this stuff, Shell. And we’ll naturally start turning over the county for Mayor Fowler. Not that I expect he’ll be any more prominently displayed than Dibler.”

  “Too bad you can’t haul Grimson in and ask him a few pointed questions.”

  “Too bad about a lot of things. With what we’ve got now, if we brought him in you’d go to the joint. Well, I’ll get back to you when I have something. Where’ll you be, here? The Rigoletto?”

  “Yeah. Half an hour from now, say. Maybe less.”

  “Bannister with you?”

  “Around here somewhere. While I filled you in, he was going to talk with Cantor.”

  “Who?”

  “Cantor—your chief of police. So I’m told.”

  “Yeah, sure. Cantor’s O.K. He’d love to see Grimson get about a dozen consecutive hundred-year jolts. I’ll tell Martinique she’s not being abandoned. You and David will soon join her, and laugh and joke while I work my ass off. By the way, she asked about you.”

  “She did?” I smiled. “What did she say?”

  “She just asked, ‘What happened to the big dumb ape?’ I told her you were eating banan—”

  I hung up on him. Twice in a row now.

  When I turned around I was surprised to see Bannister only three or four feet away. Not unpleasantly surprised, especially since close to him was Canada Southern. Very close. He had his arm around her ridiculously small waist, fingers resting on her smoothly curving bare hip. Resting lightly, I had to admit. He wasn’t clutching, or poking at her, or anything like that. Still....

  “Well, hello, you two,” I said, looking significantly at Bannister’s hand. And, of course, at Canada’s hip. “I didn’t know we were supposed to maul the hostesses.”

  Canada smiled and said, “Only special people are permitted wild attacks like this.”

  “Special? Huh. What’s so special—”

  “People like Mr. Bannister, because he says such nice things to me. And people like you.... Are there any people like you?”

  “There’s me. Isn’t one enough? Just so I’m included. When—”

  “Well, let’s go, Shell,” Bannister said, withdrawing his arm from around Canada’s waist.

  “Mr. Bannister told me you have to leave,” Canada said. “I wish you could stick around a while longer.”

  “You and me both. Well, maybe there’ll be another time, there’s always the gas station—”

  Bannister, having already poked the elevator button, was saying, “Goodnight, Miss Southern. And thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “Just—thank you.” He was beaming at her like an old lecher. Worse, like a young lecher.

  “You’re sweet,” she said, smiling a gooey smile.

  Pshoosh went the elevator doors, then Ban was hauling me by the arm. “What are you trying to do, you creep?” I asked him. “Beat my time?”

  “What else?” he said as the doors shut and the bottom seemed to fall out of the elevator. “The reason you can’t teach an old dog new tricks is because old dogs already know ‘em.”

  The elevator door opened then, twenty-two floors below where he’d started speaking, so I let him have the last word. For now. My head had started banging something fierce again.

  The glacially lovely Martinique Monet seemed warmer, softer, when Ban and I joined her in the dimly lighted Rigoletto on Sixteenth Street. Possibly a bit of liquor had loosened her up, for as we stopped by the corner table where she sat alone Martinique was upending a Martini glass as though determined to get the last drop. Then she let it down, lowered her head, and took a pimientoed olive out of her mouth.

  Holding the olive between two long red-nailed fingers she smiled brilliantly at us. “I need another Martini,” she said happily. “They can leave out the olive this time.”

  I said, “Hi,” and as we sat down Bannister asked her, “Did Henry explain why he had to leave?”

  “Just that he had something to do, and you’d tell me about it when you arrived. And apologized for leaving me alone.” She smiled again. “I didn’t mind. Two men already tried to pick me up. But I told them I was expecting a baby.”

  “You were kidding them, of course?” I said.

  “Well, you never can tell,” she replied lightly, then looked across the table to Bannister. “What was Henry in such a hurry about, anyway?”

  “There have been some astonishing, and disturbing, developments, tonight, my dear,” Bannister said. He wiggled a finger at a swarthy, sinister-looking waiter lurking nearby, gave him our drink orders, then began telling Martinique what had just occurred at the Club Rogue.

  While he explained, and she gasped and softly cried “No!” and “But that’s fantastic!” I glanced around.

  The Rigoletto was a small dinner club, with about twenty tables each covered by a pink tablecloth and with a glass-enclosed candle at its center. The candles were all lighted and provided most of the illumination. On the ceiling above each candle a soft round blob of light moved gently and erratically, pushed by imperceptible currents of air. A small bar was in a separate room adjoining this one. The waiters all looked like pirates.

  Our drinks arrived. While we finished them, the conversation was about Hugh Grimson, his impersonation of the mayor, the question of who the man might be who’d phoned the mayor last night, and if there was any chance the informant was still alive. The big question, naturally, was: What had happened to Mayor Fowler?

  Martinique said, again, “It’s all just fantastic. Wouldn’t we feel funny if Ev walked in the door and said, ‘What? You’re starting without me?’”

  “I wish to hell he would,” Bannister said. “By the way, Shell, in case Ev should show up, or if Chief Cantor finds out anything we’d be interested in, he’ll call me here.”

  On our way to the Rigoletto, Ban had told me about his conversation with the police chief. Cantor had been very interested in what Bannister had to say, but at the same time professionally skeptical. For example, one of Cantor’s remarks had been, “Who in hell is this Shell Scott, and how do we know he’s not some kind of nut?”

  Finally we ordered dinner. I enjoyed my tossed green salad, but before I could start on an enormous platter of ravioli smothered with baked cheese our waiter returned to the table and said there was a phone call for me.

  I took it in the adjoining room at the small bar there. The bartender pointed to the receiver on the bar-top, then walked several feet away to serve a young couple who were chewing each other’s ears. The call was from Hank Wainwright.

  “Things are moving along,” he said. “We start with the assumption the mayor’s phone was tapped, and if so it follows there must be other taps, maybe a lot of them, right?”

  “Right.”

  “I’ve talked to my old school chum. That kind of operation would be a lot easier with help from somebody who works for the phone company, and he gave me the names of three men with the technical know-how. If there was wholesale phone-tapping, any one of those three could have handled it. The third man’s so clean and pure I’m not even going to check him unless I draw blanks on the other two. One of them’s a former convict named Wallace Black, the other’s a man named Jim Wade. If either of them did a job for somebody else, I might be able to turn out enough pressure to squeeze the somebody’s name out of him.”

  “Especially if it’s the ex-con. That’s Wallace Black?”

  “Yeah, but he’s been out three years, no trouble, married and with two kids. Besides, he went up f
or vehicular homicide, did thirteen months—wasn’t convicted for a stickup or anything like that. Wade’s younger, single—divorced—just bought a new car, and paid off the mortgage on his home six weeks ago. Not a fortune, but he gave the finance company a check in the amount of forty-eight hundred bucks. Of course, he makes more than three times that much a year. Doesn’t have to mean anything.”

  “If it does, it’s interesting he came up with the money six weeks back.”

  “Uh-huh. I’ve been worrying a little about that myself. Maybe for nothing. I’m going to check out Black, and if he isn’t even nervous I’ll call on Wade. If I come up with anything I’ll stop by the Rigoletto and fill you in. That’s where you’ll all be?”

  “Far as I know. If not, we’ll leave word here.”

  “O.K. Now, before I get going, here’s a little more I dug up for you. We didn’t have anything here on that registration you gave me. But we got the word from DMV in Sacramento a little while ago, and it’s for a Chrysler Thunderbolt sedan. Registered to one Samuel Whitlow Sargent, residing—a year ago, anyhow—in San Francisco. Ring a bell?”

  “Sam Jelly.”

  “You’ve got a good ear.”

  “Not as good as yours, Hank. Didn’t you say he was around Newton a year or so back?”

  “Right. Definitely linked with Grimson then, for a couple years at least. Local Homicide had him in twice for interrogation. Delcey brought him in. He was a lieutenant then. All they could do was ask Sam Jelly questions he couldn’t answer until his lawyer arrived. Or afterwards, either. Nothing on him for fifteen months—until today, that is.”

  “If we asked, I suppose he’d say he got homesick for Newton. There is something about this burg that gets under a man’s skin, like hydrophobia—”

  “Here’s the rest of it, Shell. Neither the police department nor my office has any record of a Jonah, and the only Samuels is a short fat police sergeant who’s going to retire next year. There’s a ‘Jonah’ in the monicker file, though, and his description fits your skinny shadow to a T, including the prominent wrinkled bags under his beady glimmers.”