The Sweet Ride (The Shell Scott Mysteries)

by Richard S. Prather

  “Very interesting. And damned good work, Hank. Has to be the pair who left me at the airport, then stopped by to see the mayor. Put ‘mayor’ in quotes, of course.”

  “What wraps it, while our muscle-bound Sam Jelly was breaking things up around town, his buddy and partner in mayhem was the just-mentioned Jonah, real name Lou Wykoff.”

  He paused. “Look, it’s after nine now, and I’ve got at least two calls to make before Dick Cavett comes on—I never miss him, you know. You should see him behind twenty toes. Fun-ny. But I do sometimes glance uneasily over my shoulder when the audience laughs—”

  I knew, now that he’d started getting gay again, Hank had finished his formal report. So I hung up on him. That made it three in a row.

  When I returned to the table my raviolis were still hot, though their baked-cheese blanket had cooled a bit much. While I put away several delicious mouthfuls I passed on the info Hank had phoned in and said with luck he’d be joining us in an hour or two.

  Bannister placed another call to Delcey, came back and said the sergeant wouldn’t be able to get here until ten o’clock.

  For half an hour after we’d finished eating, we chatted about the mayor, Grimson, odds and ends. Then the dialogue became mostly small talk, with more lengthy silences than there’d been earlier. It was five after ten, and Delcey still hadn’t arrived, when we heard it.

  Everybody in the room heard it. Heads at all occupied tables jerked toward the front of the restaurant. That’s where the sound had come from, out there in the street. Even the people who’d never heard that sound before must have known those hard flat blasts were gunshots. I’d heard it before. Too many times before. This time it was the deep crack of a heavy handgun, maybe more than one, the fast rattle of half a dozen shots very closely spaced.

  I must have been going through the door before Martinique or Bannister started out of their chairs, if they moved at all. Because I not only knew that sound, but in me was the gut-tightening fear that I knew what it meant. I was on my way before the last shot was fired. A waiter carrying a tray was between the door and me and I didn’t try to go around him. He jumped back but I hit the tray and knocked drinks flying, then slammed into the door and was outside, shoes sliding on the cement walk as I tried to stop.

  On my left there was the quick bright-red flare of a car’s taillights and with it the shrill screech of tires biting into asphalt, skidding. I got a glimpse of the car fishtailing, cutting right from Sixteenth into the cross street half a block away. A glimpse, then it was out of sight.

  Across the street only three or four cars were parked, but one of them—almost directly opposite the Rigoletto’s entrance—was angled oddly, right front tire up over the curb. The door on the driver’s side opened. But only part way. I could see the man inside, hanging onto the door with both hands, faint movement like white shadow as he slumped forward, staring toward me, then the face moved downward slowly, still staring at me, till it rested on one of those hands.

  I knew who it was, I knew, I knew. But I ran across the street, reached past the door, grabbed his arm, held him.

  “Hank,” I said, “don’t worry, old friend—”

  “Listen. I got to tell you while there’s time.”

  His voice was surprisingly strong, the words clear. But when I put a hand against his chest to hold up his slumping body I felt the warm stickiness like thin honey against my palm. And I felt it pulsing from him, felt it flow over the back of my hand.

  He went on. “We had it right, must be a dozen taps, maybe more, Christ knows. Man worked with a little hood named Biggers. G.’s man. Little Biggie they call him. Got ten thousand for helping Biggie....”

  “Chop it, Hank. Don’t use up your—”

  “Screw yourself, I got to tell this.” His voice changed slightly. It wasn’t that it got weaker, exactly, just more jerky. Scratchy. Words left out. “Mayor’s phone, mine, Bannister, Delcey ... bly Martinique’s, cops, others. Some he didn’t know who. This Biggie handles it all, listens and records from the taps. Room someplace, house, room, don’t know. Don’t ... where.”

  “Hank, I’ve got to leave you a minute. I’ll get an ambulance on the way and be right—”

  “Ah, shut up. Just listen.”

  Something caught him then, grabbed him, and for a long second his weight lifted from my hands. There was a barely audible squeak in his throat, then his weight was heavy again. Heavier.

  “Please, Hank—”

  “You dumb sonofabitch. I’m dying. I’m dying, you big white-haired ape. Got to let me say ... what I can.”

  I looked back across the street. Half a dozen people were standing over there, gawking. I yelled for somebody to call an ambulance, saw light spill from inside Rigoletto’s as the door was opened.

  Hank’s body jerked, hit the door, and as it swung farther open his legs flopped out and he rolled toward the street. I tried to hold him up, but I couldn’t. I can press two hundred and thirty pounds, and he weighted no more than one-sixty, but I couldn’t hold him.

  I managed to ease him down to the street and he sat there on one bent leg with the other crazily twisted away from him, and when I told him, “You’re not going to cash in, Hank. Sure, you took a slug, but you can’t—” he managed a smile. I noticed, for the first time, there was blood on his lips.

  And he said, “Don’t tell me what I can do.” His eyes were dull, glazed. “Anyway, I took a couple,” he said, and finally the voice was tired, weak. “Maybe three. From the bastard in ... back seat. Back of the car.”

  I heard the sound of shoes in the street behind me. Scuff of leather, click of high heels. Bannister and Martinique, I supposed. I didn’t look around. And the kind of thick, black, rolling pain I’d been feeling inside me, the chill in my middle went away. All at once. As if a cool wind came by and swept all of that away.

  “Who was it, Hank? You saw them?”

  “Saw’m both.” His head dipped, bobbed, came back up, and the glazed eyes looked from inches away into mine. “It doesn’t hurt. No hurt. It’s just ... oh ... Christ ... oh, it feels ... empty. Like there’s nothing left ... left inside. Oh, Christ, it’s like there’s no...”

  “Who was it, Hank? Who?”

  “Yeah, I saw’m. It was Wykoff ... Lou Wykoff, and—”

  That was all. All there’d ever be.

  But it was enough. Enough, at least, for me.

  13

  I sat there for a little while, holding him. He was dead, and it didn’t make any difference, but I wasn’t going to let him sprawl flat on the street. I looked up once, and it was Bannister and Martinique standing near us, above us. And a little while later I lifted Hank’s body—like lifting feathers now—and eased him back into the car.

  Then I turned to Bannister and said, “I’d like your keys. O.K.?”

  “What? Keys? Is he dead? My God—”

  “I’d like to use your car, Ban. Do you mind? And—I am in a hurry, Ban.”

  He really looked at me then, fished in a pocket, shoved a ring of keys toward me. As I took them he said, “Is he dead? Did—do you know who shot him?”

  “I know who one of the men was. So I probably know both of them. Maybe I know where to find one of the bastards. And one’s all I need.”

  I started off, stopped long enough to say, “And, yes, he’s dead.” I could hear a siren. Then I was running to the Rigoletto’s parking lot.

  I was pulling out of the lot, turning left, when a dark brown sedan pulled to a stop near Hank Wainwright’s car. Bannister and Martinique were standing there, and I saw Bannister wave, heard him yell, “Delcey! For God’s sake, come here quick!”

  Delcey. Fine. You’re a little late, Sergeant. Maybe I’d ask Delcey what had kept him. Maybe. But later. When I finished.

  I had no real reason to believe puffy-eyed Wykoff or his pal would be at the Newtonia Hotel now, but that’s where I’d seen Wykoff go this morning, and it was the only place I knew to start—so that’s where I started. />
  It didn’t take me long to get there; it just seemed long. I had to stop at two red lights; but only because a stream of cars was blocking my way both times. And I got stuck for a block and a half behind a car hauling a mobile home the size of a small apartment. But finally I swung right into Orange Avenue with the Lincoln’s tires screeching, and only seconds later was sliding to a stop before the Newtonia Hotel. Before the Newtonia, and behind another car parked at the curb. Not quite behind. I wasn’t able to stop soon enough and slammed into its rear bumper. I didn’t mind. It was a dark sedan, the blue-black color of a beetle’s wing.

  I ran up the walk, through the double glass doors. The desk was on my left, a big burly round-shouldered man in a dark suit behind it, his back to me.

  When I stopped before the desk he didn’t turn around, kept fiddling with some cards in a file drawer. I slammed a hand on the desk and said, “What’s Wykoff’s room number?”

  He turned, squinting, an astonishingly thick-bodied man with a square red face, red as if sunburned, greasy with sweat. “Yeah? You want what?”

  “Lou Wykoff. What’s his room number?”

  He scowled, shaking his big head. “Well ... I dunno about—”

  I didn’t care if he was two yards thick and filled with cement. I leaned over, grabbed the front of his coat, and yanked him against the desk. It wasn’t easy, but I managed it. “Wykoff, friend. And in a hurry.”

  He ran a pale tongue over rubbery lips. “Fourteen. Hell, mister, you don’t got to—”

  I didn’t hear the rest of it because I was on my way. Ten feet from the desk a hall ran left and right and as I reached it I spotted the number 12 on the first door to my left. Beyond it was number 14. I didn’t knock, didn’t even try the knob, just stopped a yard from the door and kicked it near the knob. I’d forgotten about that banged-up left hip of mine and, when I put all my weight on it, for a few seconds that whole area felt as if something was breaking inside it. But the door sprang open, swung around, and hit the wall inside.

  I went in low, Colt .38 in my right hand, hoping my goddamn hip and the wrenched knee would keep on holding me up. They did, but kicking the door hadn’t done them any good.

  I was well into the room, yanking my head from one side to the other, listening to the wailing. I didn’t see Wykoff, didn’t see any man. The wailing was from a grossly fat woman sitting in a large chair not nearly as overstuffed as she was. That is, she’d been sitting in it. But when I came in she’d lunged backward and the chair didn’t have a chance. Over it went, her with it.

  She hit, rolled, bounced, rolled again, and wound up on her back, yelling and pointing. Pointing at the ceiling. Screeching like a redwood going through the sawmill.

  “For Christ’s sake, can it,” I yelled. “Where’s Wy—”

  I cut it off. And even then, before I did another thing, I started to swear aloud.

  There was only one other door in the room. I moved to it, threw the door open. Small bathroom, tub-shower, washbasin, toilet. Plastic drapes hanging by the tub were drawn aside, nobody was in there. And Wykoff, needless to say, was not sitting on the can.

  I banged the heel of my left hand against my forehead, swore a little louder—while running back toward the lobby.

  The hulking, square-headed, red-faced guy was no longer behind the desk. I was not surprised. I wasn’t happy about it, but I was not surprised. I moved around behind the desk and almost stepped on a thin man about sixty years old lying prone on the floor. He was entirely bald, and the mottled flesh of his scalp was split. He’d been hit solidly on the bulge at the back of his head. But he wasn’t dead.

  He was making odd whining noises, “Yeeuh, yeeuh,” over and over, and moving a little, starting to press with his hands against the floor, but without enough strength yet to get any real push into it. I ignored him, yanked open a couple drawers, finally found a stack of registration cards. They were in alphabetical order, and “Wykoff, Louis” was the next-to-last card in the stack: “Room: 22.”

  I didn’t run around trying to find Sam Jelly—who else would the half-ton sonofabitch have been?—because if he was smart enough to decide on the spur of the instant to wild-goose me to the wrong room, he was smart enough to know if I saw him again I’d kill him.

  He’d be long gone, but maybe—not probably, but maybe—Lou Wykoff wouldn’t. I trotted up the stairs. Room 22 was the fourth room down another hallway to my left.

  I didn’t kick the door in this time. I didn’t have to. It wasn’t locked. I had the Colt in my hand, again, when I went inside. But not for long.

  I’d found the right room, finally. Lou Wykoff’s room. It even had Lou Wykoff in it.

  Only he wasn’t in Lou Wykoff.

  After I phoned the police, informed Homicide that there was a fresh corpse in room 22, Newtonia Hotel—and was sternly advised to remain where I was and touch nothing in the room—I went back to the room and touched Lou anyway.

  The puffy eyes were open and staring, gunning me again. But not seeing me this time. He lay in the corner of the room, more on his side than back, as if crammed there by the force of the slugs that had killed him. His coat had flipped open, and a red stain—a very large red stain—smeared his white shirt. That was the one that had done it: that one would have killed a small elephant. But there was another hole, powder marks around it, above his left eye. I didn’t have to look to know the whole back of his head would be blown off.

  Two or three little slivers of bone from part of his skull, and some of the jelly from inside it, were clinging to the wall, glistening there in the overhead light. A piece of it moved slightly, then dropped, as I watched.

  A gun was a few feet away on the room’s faded gray carpet. It was a Smith & Wesson automatic pistol, .44 caliber. I didn’t touch it. But I did touch Wykoff, felt his face and neck, then took out his wallet—carefully—and opened it with a fingernail. All I learned was that his driver’s license had been issued in San Francisco; he was a male Caucasian, forty-two years old; he was six feet, one inch tall, weighed a hundred and forty-eight pounds; eyes were brown, and other unimportant items. Unimportant now.

  A team of officers from the first patrol car to arrive at the scene came in. One of them moved to the body while his partner started asking me the usual questions. I’d been through it all before, and perhaps the young patrolman interpreted my matter-of-fact recital as callousness, or lack of interest in his important function here.

  He’d asked for my identification, but hadn’t examined it very carefully yet, and gave me a stony look when I said quietly, in response to his last question, “Officer, in my initial statement I told you all there is to tell about everything that happened since I got here. I told it in full, in chronological order, I didn’t leave anything out. That’s all there is.”

  He wasn’t supposed to do it, but he made a crack anyway. “You bored by this, fella? Or maybe you like finding men shot to death?”

  “No. Officer, I don’t like it. But I was disappointed to find this creep already dead. Because I came here hoping I could kill the sonofabitch myself—”

  “Scott!”

  I don’t usually jump when I hear loud noises. I jumped. It was a sound like a steel hammer ringing on an anvil, and before I could adjust to how my name sounded exploding there was more: “You puking the usual crap out of that big mouth of yours? Max—”

  By then I’d pulled my head around to examine the source of that Apollonian voice. I expected at least an ersatz Hercules, a man eleven feet tall, bent over and stuck in the doorway. But it was just an ordinary man, and a little guy at that.

  Well, not little. Just not what my ears had led me to expect. He was a well-built man, wide in the shoulders and narrow in the hips, less than six feet tall, say five-ten or five-eleven. He stood inside the room with his hands balled into fists on his hips, legs spread. He was about forty years old, I guessed, and he looked more like an adult choirboy than a tough cop.

  Because he had to be a cop.


  After that “Max—” he went on crisply, “—call this in, that’s Lou Wykoff in case you don’t recognize him without the usual sweet smile on his kisser. And tell Watts in R. and I. to pull his package on Wykoff—his package, the one I talked to him about. I’ll take charge of this wise guy.”

  That was me. I was the wise guy. And I’d never seen this bigmouth before.

  “Who the hell are you?” I asked him.

  “Delcey. Sergeant Delcey to you, Scott. Follow me!”

  I followed him. I had nothing better to do. But mainly, when a police sergeant, or even police rookie, says “Follow me!”—you don’t loll around. Not if you’re smart, you don’t. And I like to think—I used to like to think—I go pretty good when I get that old gray matter bubbling up there.

  Anyhow, I followed Sergeant Delcey with alacrity.

  We went into the lobby, sat on a lumpy hotel-beige couch, Delcey with notebook in one hand, pencil in the other. A team of men from the crime laboratory filed in as we got seated, but after they went up the stairs we were alone. Only then did Delcey speak, and when he did it was in such a normal voice that I unconsciously leaned toward him, as though straining to make out the words.

  “About time we met, Scott,” he said. “Sorry it’s like this. I just”—his tone changed for a second or two—”left Hank Wainwright. Got what I could from Bannister, but he tells me you were the only one with Hank except for the last few seconds.”

  “That’s right. That’s why I came here, Sergeant—”

  “I know that, but do you have to puke it around to every goddamn patrolman you get in the same room with? That Max is—”

  He cut it off abruptly, but then sighed and said, “I guess I have to take a chance on you, even if I never saw you before. If Bannister—and especially Hank Wainwright—say you’re O.K., I’ll buy it. You were popping wise to Max Korcell, who happens to be so deep in Hugh Grimson’s pocket he’s got lint in his ass. So you tell him you were dying to blow Wykoff’s head off. He passes that niceness on to Grimson—”