The Sweet Ride (The Shell Scott Mysteries)

by Richard S. Prather

  “And what for you, Shell? Bourbon? Brandy, maybe. You’ll find a bottle of cognac over there that tastes like smoky ambrosia, goes down like soft lips flambé, puts cold fire and hot ice in your tummy, a real wild drink. Why don’t you try that?”

  “O.K., if you think I can handle it. I usually just drink booze—”

  “Be right back, Love.”

  It looked as if she were going to crash into a bunch of glass, because the wall toward which she moved was composed of rose-tinted mirrors, perhaps two dozen of them, each about two feet wide and three feet high, covering the entire wall.

  I didn’t even see the small knob of pink glass until she reached for it and opened the door and started through it, then stopped to glance back over her shoulder and say, “Isn’t this witchy?”

  Without waiting for an answer, she went on into the adjoining room. It was a bedroom. I could tell because, although she closed the door, it slowly swung halfway open on its hinges and I could see past it, and what I saw was an enormous bed with what appeared to be a quilted pink satin spread upon it. Maybe I wouldn’t have noticed except that the door squeaked a little as it opened. I looked a little longer—that was some bed—then stepped to the bar.

  I fixed a light gin and tonic, found the cognac, poured a dollop into a bell-shaped brandy glass, lifted it up to take a sip. And, thus, lifted my eyes. And kept them lifted. And forgot about the psychedelic cognac.

  It happened that from where I stood behind the bar, by turning my head just a little, my eyes fell on that mirrored door of Martinique’s bedroom. Which was open about halfway. And in which there was, naturally, a reflection of something inside the bedroom. What was there reflected, however, was not the bed, but that which undoubtedly had made many men think of many beds, which is to say Martinique Monet.

  She was standing, wearing a bulbous brassiere and brief bikini-type pants, each the same shade of pale frosty blue, before the open sliding doors of a clothes closet. As I looked, blinking in surprise, she reached inside the closet, took some kind of gauzy garment from a hanger, and draped it over a padded bench next to her.

  Then she turned toward the bench—or, in the door-sized mirror, turned her full-length profile toward me—and reached behind her back. Her fingers found the brassiere’s clasp, moved, and the brassiere’s bulbous cups slackened upon her breasts, slid downward, then fell as she arched her shoulders slightly and let the cloth glide down her arms to be caught in one hand, and I knew why the brassiere’s cups were so beauteously bulbous, and I was blinking again, and again in surprise.

  Martinique placed her hands at her hips, slid the frosty bit of blueness down, stepped from the cloth and, holding it, picked up the bra. Then she turned, walked four or five feet to a pink-painted wicker basket, lifted its top, and dropped the underthings into it.

  She turned, then, completely nude, walked back to the small bench again.

  It occurred to me that perhaps this that I was doing was not the absolutely totally correct thing for me to do, that perhaps I should not boldly stare at Martinique’s nakedness, her pale loveliness, her marvelous breasts and hips and thighs, when she was so unconsciously and freely and nudely moving about in what should have been the privacy of her bedroom.

  It really did occur to me.

  She slipped a filmy floating thing over her head, pulled it down past her thrusting breasts and slightly rounded stomach and the full woman’s hips, smoothed it with her hands. Then she pushed one arm at a time into the sleeves of another gauzy thing, some kind of robe of a cobwebby opaqueness.

  She was tying a little string at her throat in a bowknot when I made a little sudden hop—then grabbed both drinks and scooted out from behind the bar. I was seated upon the long low red divan, humming a gay little tune, when Martinique appeared in the doorway.

  She looked toward me, silently, then stepped into the room, turned, and pulled the door shut. For a moment she stood there, with her back to me, and gave the small pink knob another pull, a pretty good one, more of a yank, before turning and moving toward me.

  At least she was smiling. That helped, I thought. Maybe she’d even known all along that the door was halfway open. That would help a lot, I thought. But, then, if she’d known, why had she given the little knob such a terrible yank? That didn’t help.

  I thought a lot of things, but I wound up telling myself the smart thing to do would be play it mum, play it cagey—and let her carry the ball. Just keep the old mouth shut, thus preventing my foot from getting into it, and find out what she had to say. If anything.

  Yes, I decided with finality—for Martinique was now only inches away, sinking onto the divan near me, and I could see everything I had seen in the rose-tinted door and it was all even now only veiled, caressed more than concealed, not even half-hidden by filmy sheerness of gown and robe that more than anything else accented and revealed thrust of pointed breast, curve of waist, roundness and smoothness and dull gleam of thigh—that would be the smart thing to do.

  And this time, without question. I was right.

  She moistened her lips, let her heavy-lidded green eyes rest on my mouth. “Taste your brandy, Love.” Her voice was soft, as if she were saying something else entirely.

  I sipped the amber liquor. Its taste was odd, unique, half-remembered, half-forgotten, with a kind of heaviness that became light on the tongue, cool and then burning—and good, very, very good.

  “Marvelous,” I said quietly. “It’s everything you said it was. And more.”

  “You watched me, didn’t you?” Voice even softer, hushed and warm.

  “Yes.”

  “In the door, the mirrors. You saw me ... all the time.”

  “Almost. Almost all the time.”

  “Drink your brandy. More, more. I want to taste it on your lips, Love.”

  And then it was her lips, the taste of them and the cognac and a bruising sweetness ... and soon, very soon, we walked together through the mirrored wall ... and everything that was in the brandy was in her mouth and lips and tongue, her breasts, her arms, her thighs ... everything ... and more.

  * * * *

  I had lighted a cigarette and was pulling a drag deep into my lungs when Martinique came padding back into the bedroom. I didn’t ask where she’d gone. I was learning the value of keeping my mouth shut.

  But when she said, as I pulled deeply on my cigarette, “Is that you, Love, glowing in the dark?” I didn’t answer her.

  She’d been gone quite a while—or, at least, with my mind fully occupied it had seemed quite a while—for I had been letting my mind roam over odds and ends of the day. Trying to grab the tail ends of thoughts that, earlier, had escaped me—trying, and in some cases succeeding.

  Maybe it was because I was unwound, loose with the lovely relaxation of love, not really trying very hard to think but just letting the thoughts move along, swirl, flow, that the idea came.

  It wasn’t the whole of it, but it was a way—or part of a way. And I held the thought, the several thoughts, put them together before I spoke. Then, once it was in my mind, I knew I had to get started right now, make the thing move and, hopefully, work.

  “Well!” Martinique said, with a bit less coo in her voice. “I hope you’re not sulking.”

  “Ho-ho, sulking? Me? I’m not even brooding. It’s just.... Dear, I—well, I’ve got to go.”

  “Go? You mean ... where I went?”

  “No, I mean—go. Go home. Not home, but out yonder into the cold cruel—”

  “You’ve got to—got to go? Leave?”

  I heard her thumping around, then a blinding light flashed on, blinding me. Martinique had done it. Like Delilah did it to Samson. She was standing there with her hands on the switch. And nothing else on anyplace. I hadn’t forgotten, but it was nice anyway.

  “Boy,” I said, “you really are the—”

  “You aren’t trying to tell me you’re going to leave me, are you?”

  “Sure, I am.”

  “But—n
ow? Now?”

  She probably figured that out because I was standing by the bed putting my pants on.

  “My shoes,” I said. “You didn’t hide my shoes, did—”

  “Quit mumbling and listen to me, Mr. Scott!”

  “What happened to ‘Love’—”

  “You can’t just go off and ... go off like this.”

  “Well—”

  “I won’t let you. I’ll kill you.”

  “You wouldn’t have much more to do, dear. But—”

  “You really are leaving. Take those pants off!”

  “Martinique, how can I make you understand?—hey, let go of me. Let—I’ll sock you. I will. Martinique, I know you’re a woman, boy—”

  “Why?”

  “Why, what?”

  “Why do you want to go? I thought you ... liked me.”

  “I don’t want to go. I have to go. I’ve got half a dozen things to do, things that would have—and should have—been done already if I’d thought of them sooner. Actually, Martinique, I probably wouldn’t have thought this thing out at all if it hadn’t been for you. You’ve been more help than you know—”

  “I don’t want to hear your dumb voice anymore. That’s it—put your dumb shirt on. Go ahead, put your dumb tie on. You’re something, you are. I’ve heard about people who eat and run, but they can’t hold a candle—”

  “Martinique, you’re not being fair.” I sighed. “Not that life has led me to expect such a phenomenon.”

  “Quit mumbling!”

  “Was I doing that again? Just ignore anything I mumbled, O.K.? And if you’ll listen, like the dear sweet girl you are, I’ll try to exp—”

  “Men! Dirty dumb men! You’re all like bees with poison stingers—go around killing flowers—buzzing and flapping—”

  “Martinique, if you don’t listen, you’ll never—”

  “Well! All dressed, I see. Wonderful—so fast! Shall I call you a cab?”

  “You’re gonna make me mad—”

  “Or is your mommy picking you up?”

  That did it. She should talk about poison stingers. Well, I was ready to go. And I was going. But as I stalked past her I had the grace to speak to Martinique one last time.

  “Who could have guessed,” I asked her, “that it would end like this?”

  15

  I phoned Sergeant Delcey and caught him at home. Where he was soundly sleeping. Which didn’t put any bubble into his enthusiasm right away.

  When, only minutes earlier in Martinique’s bed, the idea had started forming, I immediately thought of calling Delcey. Just as immediately, I remembered Hank’s mentioning Delcey’s phone as among those that were tapped—in fact, it was at that very moment the idea took form and finally made sense.

  Since unfriendly ears, or at least one ear, might be privy to whatever I said, the info I could openly convey to the sergeant was limited, and I thus had a little difficulty in persuading him to meet me. Actually, more than a little. At last, however, he grudgingly agreed.

  Now we were both in his car again, parked on a dimly lighted street near his home. I hadn’t yet explained my real reason for calling him, and the conversation had been pretty general so far.

  Because of the sketchy but helpful info Hank Wainwright had given me and that I’d passed on to Delcey, police were looking for Sam Jelly, for obvious reasons, and also for Ernie Biggers. But only a handful of officers were looking for Little Biggie. Delcey explained why.

  “I took your information about the wiretaps, and Biggers, straight to Chief Cantor,” Delcey said. “He agreed with me we should—for now, anyway—give that info only to some of the best men we’ve got, officers we’re absolutely sure of. If the whole department knew we’d learned about the taps, that we know Biggers is the man who helped get it all set up, Grimson would be tipped in ten minutes. Cantor knows we’ve got some foul balls in the department as well as I do.”

  “So there’s a chance Grimson doesn’t know we’re aware he’s bugged half the phones in town.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t exaggerate so damn much, Scott, it’s just not professional—but, yes. And ‘a chance’ is the right phrase. He may have guessed, but he can’t be certain. We can only guess ourselves what Jim Wade spilled before he died. Maybe everything, maybe nothing. But Grimson can’t know what Hank said to you.” He paused. “If you told it to me exactly the way it was, not even Bannister and Martinique heard what Hank said about the taps and Biggers.”

  “That’s right. They didn’t come across the street until just before Hank said he saw the two men, and tried to name them.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I got from Bannister, too. Without letting him know what Hank said before then.”

  “What’s the matter, don’t you trust Ban?”

  “Sure, I trust him. But as long as he and Martinique didn’t hear it, and we don’t tell them, they can’t let it leak even by accident.”

  “Makes sense.”

  “It’s important to us that we find out what other phones are being monitored, the ones Hank didn’t learn of or have time to mention. It’s important we know what information Grimson’s been picking up for these last six weeks, or more. Once he’s sure we’re onto him he’ll pull all those taps out and we may never get what we’re after. He might even hit Biggers, if he’s the man who’s been monitoring all the calls, to make sure we’d learn nothing from him if we should find Biggie and bring him in—during the half hour, that is, before he’d be sprung. So we’re trying to go along as if we’re still in the dark. If he buys that, he’ll leave the taps on, give us time we need. And I think there’s a damn good chance he’ll buy it. Especially right now, with all the heat, he’ll want every bit of information he can possibly get.”

  “Of course, if you could get your hands on Ernie Biggers, he could simply give you a list—phones tapped, names, how long, maybe the info Grimson got from them. There’s even a chance he knows a good deal more than that, right?”

  “Sure. But, first, we haven’t been able to find him yet. Second, as I indicated, Scott, we’d be lucky to hold him half an hour. If we did find him and hauled him downtown, that’d probably blow our chances anyhow.”

  “Well, what if Biggers wanted to cooperate?”

  “What if the sun went out?”

  “Delcey, I have a little plan. Want to hear it?”

  “Not ... especially.”

  I plunged ahead. “If Biggers wanted to cooperate, I mean really wanted to, you’d find out, bingo, about all the taps and that jazz. Wrap it up quick, save a lot of man-hours—”

  “Quit trying to convince me before I know what you’re getting at.”

  “Sure, but—there’s this to consider, too, Delcey. If Biggers has been monitoring all these wiretaps, then he’s got to be the boy who listened in when Mayor Fowler called me last night. Right? More important—and get this, Delcey—he would have overheard the informant’s earlier call to Fowler.”

  There was silence again for a while, but it seemed a different kind of silence this time. When the sergeant spoke he said, very quietly for him, “Well, sure. Of course he ... That’s so goddamned obvious....” He paused. “Of course, I didn’t even hear about the possibility Fowler’s phone was bugged until nearly eight o’clock. And it was after ten before—”

  I broke in, “Hell, it didn’t occur to me, along with some other interesting angles, until I was having a smoke in be—until a little while ago. The thing is, if he heard that call he may know who the caller was. Maybe he recognized the informant’s voice, and at the very least he’d know what was said, possibly some things Fowler didn’t pass on to me.”

  “Uh-huh. If we could get our hands on him for just a little while—”

  “I think I can get him for you. For as long as you want. And in a most helpful mood. Eager to tell you everything he knows. Maybe even some things he doesn’t know.”

  “Sure you can.”

  “Well ... there is a little problem.”

  �
�I thought so.”

  “Rather, the possibility of a problem. There may not be any trouble at all. If Grimson has already found the informant—grabbed him at the mayor’s home around midnight Friday, for example, which has got to be considered very likely now—then we’ll naturally be wasting our time. But if the informant is still alive, if Grimson still does not know his identity, there’s a fifty-fifty chance we can pick up all the marbles. Fifty-fifty, good enough odds, wouldn’t you say?”

  “We’re up to our butts in ‘ifs’ again. But go on. You’ve got me interested.”

  I told him what I had in mind. We argued about it.

  Finally he said, “Scott, you’re in the wrong business. You should be selling igloos in Arabia. You make it sound like you’ve already hooked a whale, and I’ll give odds you don’t even catch a sardine.”

  “Well? It’s at least fifty-fifty, Delcey.”

  “All right. I’ll be your straight man.” He sighed a long, long sigh. “I’ll go along, Scott.”

  So, then, I was stuck with it.

  I was on Mulberry Drive again, but not in Bannister’s too-easily-spotted Lincoln Continental limousine. After phoning Delcey I’d rented another car, this one a nondescript four-year-old Ford sedan, and had been driving it when I met the sergeant. So far, I was sure nobody was on my tail, which suited me fine—even though in a few minutes I might be telling Grimson’s heavies where to find me, myself.

  At the private road I turned right, drove ahead under the darkly overarching branches. I cut my lights, slowed, turned left at the end of the drive, and parked. On my right, the house was dark. It looked empty, dead.

  In three minutes I’d picked the lock, let myself into Mayor Fowler’s home. There wasn’t a sound. Even so, carrying a pencil flashlight in my left hand, Colt .38 in my right, I gave the house a quick prowl. Nothing, the place was deserted.

  Back in the living room—where I’d been so expertly conned by Hugh Grimson—I walked to the small desk in the far corner upon which was the phone Mr. G. had used the last time I was here. I sat in the chair behind it, went through the drawers quickly to get an idea of what was actually in them—in case somebody else already knew what was there.