The Sweet Ride (The Shell Scott Mysteries)

by Richard S. Prather

  “I appreciate you telling me, Sergeant. But what difference does it make? Our busy Mr. G.’s been trying to kill me for ... well, what time is it?” I checked my watch. Ten-fifty p.m. “For more than eight hours already.”

  “The difference is, you try not to make it any easier for him. For example, would you know Max is on the pad if I hadn’t told you?”

  “O.K. Sorry ... I’m still kind of racked up.”

  “Hank a good friend of yours?”

  “Not exactly. We prowled the town a few times when he was with the L.A.P.D. But I liked him. He had a...”

  “He had a way. Style.” Delcey was silent, rubbing knuckles under his chin for a few seconds. “Let’s say Hank was a good friend of mine and leave it at that. Now, tell me what happened. And just in case you did leave something out when you gave it to Max, put it in now. I want all of it.”

  I hesitated. But not for long. Up here in this area of what appeared to be Grimson’s jungle, I badly needed the help of somebody on the inside, especially a police officer who couldn’t be, or at least hadn’t been, bought and paid for. And, to turn Delcey’s phrase around, if Hank gave the sergeant high marks that was good enough for me, too.

  So I merely said, “O.K., Sergeant, you’ll get it all. Just give me a flash of your I.D., will you?”

  He grinned. “I thought you’d never ask.”

  He was Sergeant Oren Delcey, all right. He even had one of the cards he’d used in the days, more than a year ago, when it had read “Detective Lieutenant.”

  So I told him the tale. When I’d filled him in on what had happened from the time of those shots outside the Rigoletto until now, he said, “Tell me about the phone call from our old mayor, and your two visits with our new one. Bannister gave me some, but I want the details.” So I gave him the rest. All of it. When I finished he knew nearly as much about my day in Newton as I did.

  Then he reached into his coat pocket, pulled out a pipe and tobacco pouch, deliberately filled the dark, stained bowl, taking his time. Only when he’d got the tobacco lit and drawn on the pipe a couple times did he say anything. “Well, either Grimson knows Fowler’s dead—whether he killed him or not—or else he snatched him. And that would be nearly as dumb a play as murder.” He sucked on his pipe, shaking his head. “I don’t get it. Grimson’s nobody’s fool. He’s willing to take chances, but he covers himself.”

  “He’s sure covered for everything that’s happened tonight. Probably on the dais at the Club Rogue taking bows when Wykoff and Sam Jelly killed Hank.”

  Delcey pulled the pipe from his mouth and jabbed the stem at me. “Now there you go again. Just like you popped off to Max Korcell. You know it was Wykoff, sure. You don’t know it was Samuel Whitlow Sargent.”

  “The hell I don’t. Hank named Wykoff half a second before he died. He just didn’t have time for more. When I got here, I banged into Sam Jelly’s car. You know who I found with his head blown open, Sam’s buddy. And maybe I’ve never seen Sam Jelly, but the guy behind the desk was practically standing on the clerk, whose head had been conked maybe five seconds earlier, and I’d make him six feet or six-one and close to two hundred and fifty pounds, forty years old, square red face, probably has high blood pressure, sweats like a pig, and he has now split. Maybe I couldn’t argue it before the Supreme Court, but it’s enough for me, because if I wait for affidavits I may not be interested by the time they get here. So even if the real Sam Jelly’s an albino midget, it’s going to take an angel singing it in my ear before I believe that ox wasn’t him.”

  Delcey shrugged. “You got him pretty close. Six-one and a half, two hundred and sixty pounds. Forty-one years old. He does have high blood pressure, that’s a fact. And flat feet.” He got up. “You stay here, Scott.”

  As he turned to walk away I said, “Could you make it sound less like a goddamn royal command, Sergeant?”

  He stopped suddenly, but when he turned around he was laughing silently, eyes squinted. Then he smoothed out the choirboy’s face and said, “It’s a habit. Can’t help it, always mingling with hoods and ex-cons and private detectives with low boiling points. Would you please sit there, sir, on your bleeding piles, until I return? I shall try not to make it long. Would you do that for me?”

  I shook my head. “Jesus. Talk about police brutality. Go. Just go, will you?”

  He grinned and walked off, rolling a little like a first-trip sailor home from the sea. He bugged me, but I liked him. And I had a hunch, if I was in a tight spot, it would be hard to find a better man to have alongside me than Delcey.

  He spoke briefly to an officer at the hotel’s desk, then went upstairs. In less than five minutes he was back. “Come on, Scott,” he said, jerking a thumb toward the double glass doors as he strode past.

  Then he glanced back over his shoulder—but without slowing his stride—and added, “If you don’t mind.”

  Outside, we sat in Delcey’s plainclothes car while he used the police radio to call in, ask some questions, and get a few answers. Then we sat for a few minutes longer, talking.

  Delcey said, “Well, we’ve got Sargent’s Chrysler. Abandoned on Ficus Street. APB out on him, but I don’t know what the hell for. Sure, you can tag him as the phony desk clerk—and so what? The clerk says somebody hit him from behind, he doesn’t know who. If we get a chance to ask Jelly about that, you can guess what he’ll lay on us, can’t you? He’ll say, ‘Why, officers sirs, I heard dis horrible groanin’ and I looked to see could I lend a aid to duh poor man. Which is how come I never did get to room 22, to where I was goin’ to visit with my dear pal, Lou. Ain’t it tumble what hoppen to’m, must be somebody sick done it.’ And out he goes.”

  Delcey was almost as good as Grimson. But I was more amused by his act than by the words. Or rather, what was behind the words. Because despite the exaggeration it was all too true.

  Delcey looked at me. “Let’s get back to those phone taps. I know you already told me what Hank said. Do it again.”

  I did it again. When I finished, I said, “Delcey, I’ve been wondering how come those two hoods caught Hank right there, at the Rigoletto. The obvious answer was that somebody tipped them that Hank was going to meet friends there, but just because a thing seems obvious doesn’t mean it’s the right answer. As, by now—”

  “Who should know better than you, right?”

  “—I should.... You couldn’t let me say it, could you? You just had to—”

  “Go on, I think I know what you’re getting at.”

  “O.K., if you’ll just keep your—” I clamped my jaws shut, snorted, shook my head. “O.K., Hank told me he was going to check two men, a Wallace Black and a Jim Wade. Considering the elapsed time, he must have got his info about the several taps from one of those two. Now, if one of them did that kind of sizable job for Grimson, or rather for this guy Biggie—about whom I’d like all the info you can give me, by the way—then it’s not unlikely Grimson would have been watching the guy. Maybe not under normal circumstances, but I don’t feel I exaggerate when I say this has not been a normal day. So maybe we should—”

  “Check up on Black and Wade, right?” he interrupted. “Well, as it happens, the idea had occurred—”

  His speaker started squawking and Delcey reached for the mike, smiling slightly as he said, “This could be a case of marvelous timing.”

  It was. From listening to the conversation, plus a little extra fill-in from the sergeant himself, it was clear Delcey had earlier called in and asked that both Black and Wade be visited by teams of officers. They’d talked to Wallace Black. They had not been able to converse with Jim Wade.

  “Not just because he was dead when they got there,” Delcey said, “but because he was a godawful mess, hell beaten out of him and his neck broken; it had to be Sam Jelly.”

  I smiled. But I didn’t say anything.

  Delcey noted my smile, possibly because I made no attempt to hide it, and added, “That’s a reasonable working hypothesis, at least—oh, h
ell. Sure. Christ, yes, it was Sam Jelly. Who else?”

  “I agree with you, Sergeant. Who else?”

  “There won’t be any evidence, not even skinned knuckles on Sargent’s big hams. He wears special gloves for that kind of job.”

  “So his hands don’t get marked up, huh?”

  “Partly. Padded against his knuckles, but with a layer of heavy buckshot next to the padding and just under the leather. He’s a wonder.”

  Delcey was still holding his pipe, but he knocked ashes out the car window and then turned to me. “At least we’re getting more pieces of the picture. And don’t forget the most important thing in the picture. I don’t mean Hank—I mean Fowler. The mayor’s number one, if he’s alive. And that’s what we aim at. That’s what this is all about. He never did show up at the Club Rogue, you know.”

  “I hadn’t heard anything lately, but I didn’t expect him to. And I already told you, if he’s alive I figure there’s a good chance he’ll stay that way.”

  “Yeah, but if he’s alive, there’s another guy doing more than you to keep Fowler healthy. That is, if he’s still alive.” Delcey shook his head. “We sure got a lot of ‘ifs’ around here, don’t we? I suppose you know who I mean?”

  “I think so.”

  “I’ll give you a hint. I don’t mean Yoogy Dibler.”

  “Thanks for letting me peek at the answers, Sergeant. The trouble is, all we’ve got to go on is what Fowler himself told me on the phone last night. From that we know, whoever the informant was, he knew plenty about Mr. G.’s business. Plenty, I mean, besides his claim he saw Grimson poop Ramirez. But hell, we don’t even know if he got to the mayor’s house, and we can’t ask him—or the mayor.”

  I lit a cigarette, took a puff, trying to pull some scattered ideas together. “Delcey, there should be some way to tag the guy, find out who he is. Or was. Look, we know the guy called Fowler last night. We know Fowler’s phone was—is—tapped. It requires no brilliance to deduce that’s what set Grimson off in all directions, doing ... whatever he’s doing. Because, from my own knowledge of Grimson’s act this morning, there’s no doubt he got an earful of the mayor’s call to me.”

  “Are you sure it was Mayor Fowler who phoned you last night?”

  “Frankly, Sergeant”—I’d only had two puffs of my cigarette, but I jammed it out in the tray—”the only thing I’m sure of now in this goddamn case is that my name is ... I forget. Except that—”

  “Don’t be so twitchy, Scott. I wasn’t trying to bug you—”

  “I’m not sure you have to try, Serg—”

  Delcey interrupted. “What I’m getting at is, some other things that’ve happened tonight make a little more sense—the way my head works, anyhow—if Grimson hasn’t yet found, which means killed, the informant. It’s a long-shot. I really think he’s buried someplace in the county, where we might find him in a hundred years. But I’ve been a busy cop tonight, and there’s no noise about anything happening to one, or more, of Grimson’s men. Could be there hasn’t been time, but if there is any word I’ll hear about it. And I haven’t heard a damn thing yet.” He stopped speaking, a queer expression on his face.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked him.

  “I was just thinking. I haven’t heard a word about anything happening to one of Grimson’s men. Except—”

  “Hell, yes, Lou—”

  “—Wykoff, yeah. But that doesn’t make sense. If it was Wykoff, he’d have been chilled a couple minutes after Grimson got his hands on him.”

  Delcey stared at nothing for a few seconds, then shook his head and said, “I have to get back to the Rigoletto. Told Miss Monet and Bannister to wait there for me.”

  “How are they taking it?”

  “Well, Bannister’s sort of stiff-upper-lip, but he was pretty thick with Hank. Martinique got pretty shook. When Bannister and I went into the restaurant, she was finishing a Martini and ordering another one. She may be under the table by now.” He looked at his watch. “You’ll have to come in and give us a statement.”

  “I know.”

  “Think of anything you left out?”

  I shook my head. “No, but I would like whatever you can tell me about this guy Biggers.”

  “Ernie Biggers. Been working for Grimson about three and a half, maybe the whole four years Grimson’s been here. Little guy, five-five, maybe a hundred and twenty pounds, skinny. So they call him Little Biggie, or just Biggie. Fact is, I don’t know what he’s been doing for Grimson the last year or so. I can look in the files if you want more.”

  “I probably will. Incidentally, Hank said Biggie got this Jim Wade to do the real work, setting up the taps, but he only had time to name a few of the people involved, and I gave you the little there was. Have you got anything else on it?”

  He shook his head. “No. We’ll get more. May take a little time. Be easy if we could ask Wade.”

  Delcey swore softly. “You think about it yet? The way it figures, it was Wade, Hank, and then Wykoff. Three murders in less than an hour. Maybe less than half an hour. It’s a bloody epidemic.”

  “Yeah, I thought about it,” I said. “And I couldn’t help thinking, maybe it’s not over.”

  Delcey’s voice was tired when he answered. “I wish you hadn’t said that. Well, back to the wars.” He shook his head. “I do wish you hadn’t said that, Scott.”

  14

  I drove Bannister’s Lincoln Continental limousine back to the Rigoletto, beginning to be thankful I hadn’t totally despoiled it on my wild ride to the Newtonia Hotel.

  Delcey was at the table with Bannister and Martinique by the time I got there. An empty highball glass sat on the table before Bannister, while Martinique held in her hand a half-full, or half-empty, Martini glass.

  “Well, ‘lo,” she said to me, smiling with her mouth open, as I joined them.

  After that, the conversation was nothing to write home about, unless you’d been trapped in a cave for a large number of years. In a few minutes Bannister, having decided to leave, told me to keep the Lincoln so I’d have some transportation, and asked Delcey if he’d drive him home.

  “Sure,” Delcey said. “Couple things I’d like to go over with you, anyhow.”

  “What abou’ me?” Martinique asked. “Dozzen anybah care ‘bou” me? Shell? Shell?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You care ‘bou’ me. I c’n tell. You dri’ me ho-um.”

  “Oh, boy, this and eczema is all I need,” I said.

  I thought I was thinking it, but I said it aloud. Sometimes that happens. At certain moments of stress. I occasionally think I’m merely thinking when in fact I am mumbling audibly.

  “Tha’s good,” Martinique said. “I knew you’d.”

  “Would you see that she gets home all right?” Bannister asked me. “I’d appreciate it.”

  “Sure. O.K. I can handle it.”

  “Shell, I—it’s terrible about Hank. What’s there to say?”

  “Nothing. I guess you know one of the men is dead. There’s a strong possibility the other may join him in spook land even before spring, if I get—”

  Delcey was giving me a scowl that looked almost official, so I left the rest unsaid. Delcey got to his feet, then Bannister stood up and they left.

  “Shell,” Martinique said, pretty close to my ear, “how ‘bou’ ‘nother Marti—”

  “For-get it.” I signaled the waiter, ordered a pot of coffee.

  Martinique must have had a marvelously vigorous metabolism—a thought which had at other moments occurred to me—because she was almost sober after thirty minutes and four cups of black coffee.

  Handled that pretty well, I was thinking, as we got up to leave. Then our pirate came over and gave me a little rectangle of cardboard.

  “What’s this?” I asked—though I knew, I knew.

  “That is the check, sir,” he said in a hushed, sad voice, as though at a funeral.

  I glanced at the numbers, the total, the obvious mistake.
No wonder he talked like that.

  “Who,” I asked wonderingly, “could drink so much....”

  “Shell?”

  “Never mind.” I paid the check.

  And as we walked out of the Rigoletto, Martinique clinging to my arm as shipwrecked sailors cling to bits of flotsam, I was thinking again. I was thinking, maybe things were getting a little bit better, but I still wasn’t doing everything right.

  Martinique had a three-room suite on the fifth floor of the Lasker Towers on Sixteenth Street. It was only two blocks north of the Rigoletto, but we decided not to walk. She left me in the spacious living room—white carpet, dark-red chairs and long low divan, half a dozen wildly colorful paintings, apparently depicting colorful paint, hung on two of the pale gray walls—saying, “I’ll go wash my face and put some ammonia in my eyes to wake me up.”

  “Ammonia?”

  “Joke. Ammonia kidding, Shell—I’m sorry. I meant drops. Something white to bring my irises back into focus.... I’m sorry again. I rattle on when I’m getting sober.”

  “Don’t be sorry. You rattle pretty good. Imagine, after all the time we’ve known each other, I’m finally seeing another side of you. I think I like it.”

  She smiled a peculiar smile, turning to face me, sliding both hands up over her hips to her waist. “Is that what you like, Shell? Seeing another side of me?”

  “Well, I....” It was a difficult question to answer just right. So I started over, “Well....”

  “I’ve got some sides you haven’t guessed about yet. Tell you what, after I wake up my face I’ll slip into something more comforting.”

  I wondered if she’d said what she meant to say. I didn’t ask.

  “Then,” she went on, “we’ll have a little drink. If you’ll promise not to take advantage of me. Unless I insist.”

  “Ah. You—you’ve been drinking, Martinique. I’d hate to think you don’t know what you’re doing.”

  “If you hate it, quit it. And mix us something. Not a Martini for me—a light gin and tonic. Over there.” She pointed across the room to a built-in bar with a painting behind it of what I guessed might be the Crab Nebula.