The Sure Thing (The Shell Scott Mysteries)

by Richard S. Prather

  “Not really. But, ‘doodlebug’—well, that tells me what you think Dev Morraigne is. Actually, he's a lot like you, damn you both. But you think he's some kind of weirdo, or kook, and maybe even a sly criminal ... true?"

  “Well, we haven't even met—how would I know what he is? All I know, Cynara, is that every doodlebug I ever heard of—"

  “It's not a doodlebug, and I'm familiar with the term. I should be, since on at least a dozen occasions in my presence Dev's raged about his Holaselector being called by that name."

  “You don't think the thing actually works, do you?"

  “Sure, it works,” she said casually.

  “So why hasn't some big oil company paid him a jillion dollars for it?"

  She lifted her shoulders in a small shrug. “Ask him,” she said.

  “I intend to, when I locate the man. I understand he's out of town—would you happen to know where?"

  “I don't have any idea."

  “And what did you mean, he's a lot like me? You mean he's got two arms and two legs and two heads—"

  “For one thing, he also has a Mars-Venus conjunction, like you, but in a different sign. Actually, he's probably worse than you ... oh, leave me alone and let me work."

  “Tell me some more about this Mars and Venus stuff and all. I might be fascinated, eventually."

  “No.” She glared at me, then at her charts, but chewed her lower lip for a while, as if her thoughts were elsewhere. Then she said, “Shell, I told you I haven't had any contact with Gippy since he came to see me over a year ago. I knew he was interested in the possibility of making some kind of investment, but I didn't know what it was even then, and I haven't heard from him since.” She paused. “I'd like to know more about what happened, if you can tell me. All you can tell me, Shell, even things that might not seem important to you could be significant to an astrologer."

  I saw no reason not to, so I filled her in on what I'd got from Audrey and Gippy, and Arnold Trappman as well. I even mentioned Gippy's leaving his home last night, with a gun, and the wild idea of taking a shot at that “crook, Trappman,” but winding up shooting a tree and then staying out all night.

  “Which is a fair example of the usual Willifer follow-through, I suppose,” I finished. “Fortunately, in this case."

  Cynara listened silently, looking at Gippy's chart most of the time, making a little check or two on it as I spoke. When I finished she merely nodded, then said quietly, “I don't suppose you'd know this Mr. Trappman's birth data?"

  “That's one of the things I never thought to ask him."

  “He might be listed in one of the biographical reference volumes here in our library. But....” She looked at me again, smiling slightly. “If you could find out what time of day he was born, it would help a lot."

  “Help how?"

  “Without knowing the time of his birth, I can't determine his Ascendant or rising sign, the signs and degrees on his other house cusps, or even the exact placement of his faster-moving planets, particularly the Moon. To put it simply, with all his birth data, including the correct time, I can tell if Mr. Trappman has had a tendency to get involved in anything underhanded, crooked, illegal—or if he's had that kind of opportunity—during the last year or so. When Gippy invested in this Roman well, for example. Or even right now."

  I shook my head, blinking slightly. “You really claim you can see that sort of thing in a man's horoscope?"

  “Yes. Primarily from his natal chart, of course, which shows what he's born with—his weaknesses, strengths, inborn tendencies. To me, an individual's basic character stands out more clearly than anything else. But also from a consideration of how current progressions and transits stimulate or trigger his natal positions and aspects. It's quite simple, really."

  “Well,” I said, “I honestly can't imagine at the moment a situation in which I'd feel comfortable asking Trappman at what hour and minute of what day he was born, but if I should accidentally come up with that info I'll give you a ring."

  “I'd appreciate it. Shell. Now, I do have to get busy. Lord, I'll be working on charts at home until midnight as it is."

  She reached for a large book with “Tables of Houses” printed on its paper dust jacket, along with a number of other things I didn't have time to read before she opened it and flipped several pages. She made some speedy calculations on a notepad, glanced at an open Ephemeris on her desk, scribbled some more.

  I smiled. “I know I've delayed you a little, but hasn't it been worth it, Cynara? Haven't we had fun?"

  She took three felt-tipped pens and one of those blank three-circle charts from a drawer, started entering dark-blue symbols on its inner ring, making quick additions from a table of proportional logarithms before entering each symbol.

  “Hmm?” I asked. Then, “Well, even if we haven't had lots of fun, I wouldn't say it's been unbearably painful, would you? Hmm?” I stood up, to leave. “Hmm?"

  She had already turned a page in the little Ephemeris and was busy entering light-blue symbols in the chart's second circle.

  So I smiled down at her, and waved my fingers in a friendly wiggle—neither of which gestures did she appear aware of—and left. Left her office smiling, walked down the hallway somewhat more sober, and went outside scowling fiercely.

  Because even before I wiggled my fingers at Cynara, I had noticed that the Ephemeris she was using was the one already open to the month and day of my birth. So it was my chart she was still working on. And at first I felt hugely flattered, pleased, that the lovely Cynara was so interested in me ... and then only slightly flattered, pleased ... and very quickly not so flattered, only minimally pleased, if that much.

  When was it she'd stopped speaking to me? I wondered.

  And why?

  What had she seen in those dumb squiggles she'd been so busy squiggling? Nothing really bad, certainly, but...

  And, of course, she couldn't really see anything much, but what might she be thinking she saw?

  And what if, in some ridiculously witchy way, she really could peer into the perhaps-best-not-closely-peered-at insides of me, into the secret places ...?

  Such curious questions flocked in my head as I tooled the Cad back through Hollywood, over to Beverly, down to Maryon Street, and rolled along toward the Willifers’ home. When three blocks away I noted it was three minutes till six p.m. so I'd make it on time, even a minute or two early. While I slowed down during the next couple of blocks I was already figuring that, after about ten minutes of jawing with Audrey and Gippy while “saving my life” with a cold beer, I could be home and on the phone in perhaps ten minutes more. On the phone, calling....

  Calling whom? Oddly, I kept thinking of Cynara, that's whom.

  But then I stopped thinking of Cynara, of other lovelies, of phones, and cold beers, and anything except the chilling sound I suddenly heard.

  Muscles tightened all through my body and I could feel knots like bunched gristle in my calves and a quick taut ridging of my spine when that sound raked my ears, for I knew not only what it was, but who it was.

  Maybe it was because I was then only half a block from the Willifers’ home, maybe it was some other awareness tickling a deeper edge of thought, brushing a dark sharp edge not often touched in my mind. But I knew.

  What I heard was a woman screaming.

  Chapter Ten

  That high shrieking cry was unquestionably a woman screaming, and I knew the woman was Audrey, had to be Audrey.

  I'd almost involuntarily tapped the brake when that anguished shriek scraped my ears, but in another second I slapped my foot onto the gas pedal, felt the Cad jump forward as I swung the steering wheel right to edge near the curb, then hit the brakes again, hard, skidded to a stop behind an old blue sedan parked before the small white house with fiat white stones set in the lawn and leading to the front door.

  Leading to the door and, now, Audrey, tall, angular—and screaming—Audrey, at the lawn's edge, looking down, both hands pressed aga
inst the top of her head.

  It was still bright, sun not yet touching the horizon, And I could see Gippy, too—or whoever it was—on the ground, on the grass, body bent and turned, half on his side. The Cad was stopped but still swaying a little as I scrambled through the right-hand door, sprinted over the lawn.

  Audrey heard me running, turned, saw me—and stopped screaming. Suddenly, just like that, stopped, but with her mouth still open wide and her eyes like dark empty hollows.

  I stopped near her, started to kneel next to the body—it was Gippy—and she said in a high flat voice with almost no inflection, “He's dead. Somebody shot him, only a minute ago, only a minute. Shot him and killed him, he's dead, he's—"

  “No, he's not dead,” I said. “He's unconscious, but he's not dead.” That was all I said aloud, but mentally I added, “Not yet, he isn't."

  I'd spoken softly, and I was looking away from her, at Gippy a foot from me. Audrey heard me, though, and stopped speaking. I could feel a pulse in Gippy's throat, weak and thready, much too fast.

  I didn't move him, but I looked him over as well as I could. He'd changed clothes since I dropped him here earlier, and was wearing brown slacks and a beige sports shirt that hung outside his trousers. He was clean-shaven now, too.

  Low on the left side of the beige shirt, a large wet stain had spread, where Gippy's blood had spilled, or maybe gushed, in the first moments after the slug hit him. I ripped off the two lowest buttons, spreading the shirt open, making sure my own body hid what I was doing from Audrey.

  He'd been hit low on the left side of his midsection, just beneath the rib cage, and there was blood all over his stomach and side, red wetness soaking into the top of his trousers. But he wasn't bleeding much now, a little, not much, just a slow ooze from the small dark hole in him.

  I draped the stained beige cloth over his wound again, stood up. “Get a blanket from the house, Audrey,” I said. “Just to put over him, to keep him warm."

  “All right,” she said. “To keep him warm.” But she didn't turn, didn't move.

  I ran to my car and used the Cad's mobile phone to call for an ambulance, and the police. I gave the officer on the complaint board my name, the address here, and said that a man had been gut-shot, was seriously injured, maybe dying, probably dying.

  Then I got an old woolen blanket from the Cad's trunk, and walked—without haste now, slowly, as casually as I could—back over the lawn toward the house. I put the blanket over Gippy's body, pressed it down onto the grass around him, then straightened up and stood next to Audrey.

  She was silent, the tall bony body rigid, both hands still pressed atop her head. I reached for her wrists, pulled her arms out, turned her toward me. She moved without resistance, but her eyes stayed on Gippy, there on the grass below us.

  “Look at me,” I said. “Audrey, look at me."

  Finally she let her head turn, the hollow eyes rested on my face, but it didn't seem likely she was really seeing me. I wasn't even sure she knew who I was.

  “Audrey,” I said quietly, “Gippy's going to be OK, he'll make it. He's unconscious, and in shock, but he's alive and breathing and there's an ambulance already on its way here. Believe me, Audrey, he's going to be all right."

  She sucked in her breath, let it out in a long quivering sigh, saying, “All right.” Breathing out as she spoke, it sounded like, “Ahh-hh-ahhll right."

  “What happened. Did you see who shot him? Man on foot, in a car, what?"

  “I don't know.” She shook her head in one little jerk left, another right. “I was late getting home. The car died on me, stopped, and I couldn't ... couldn't make it go."

  She started crying. But she cried quietly, without any sound, with just the flow and shining track and chin-drip of tears, as she continued in the flat and almost expressionless voice.

  “I ran in the house when I got home, left the car out there, and Gippy saw me coming, ran out, too, and he hugged me so good.... We went inside, and after, oh, half an hour or so, I don't know, he went out to put the car in our garage, it's behind the house, and that's when it happened, just now, just a minute ago. I heard the noise—it's when he was shot, but then I didn't know ... and I ran out here, and he was down on his side, down on the lawn there, and I knew my darling was dead, my darling, my darling, was dead—"

  I shook her. “He's not dead, so knock it off, just shut up, OK? He'll be all right, I guarantee it. OK? Believe me, I know about these things, who'd know better? He'll make it, I swear it.” To myself I swore otherwise, put a great many foul and even nauseous words together, swore with marvelous fluency, but to Audrey I went on, “So stop worrying, everything's going to be OK. Will you for Christ's sake listen to me?"

  She nodded, a little light, or life, coming into her eyes. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I hope so."

  “Look, you ran out of the house, and—did you see anyone? Anything? Man, car—?"

  “Nothing. I didn't see anything except him, except Gippy, Mr. Scott."

  At least she knew who I was. And, already, I could hear a siren, probably the ambulance getting closer.

  * * * *

  An hour later I climbed into my Cad again, and headed for the Morris Memorial Hospital on Western in L.A.

  That siren I heard had, fortunately, been an ambulance nearing the Willifers’ address. Attendants checked Gippy quickly, wheeled him on a stretcher to and gently through the ambulance's open rear doors, plasma already being dripped into his arm. Audrey went with him. Since then I hadn't heard how he was, or if he was still alive.

  I'd spent the time since then partly in the company of police detectives who were asking questions of the neighbors, partly doing a little checking of my own—none of which turned up much. Three people remembered seeing a car parked near the Willifers’ home, on the same side of Maryon and only fifty feet or so ahead of where their old Whippet was parked. It had left in a hurry, immediately after the shot, they all said, but none of them could describe the car except to say it was a dark sedan—one man thought it was new, a large dark sedan—or who might have been driving it. Almost everyone in nearby houses had heard the shot, and every single one of those individuals claimed he'd thought the noise was a firecracker. Half a dozen people, for some reason, had been impelled to check the exact time when they heard the firecracker. So we knew Gippy had been shot at 5:55 p.m. For a moment I wondered what might have happened if I'd arrived at 5:54 instead of three minutes or so later; but only for a moment.

  * * * *

  When I arrived at Morris Memorial, Gippy had already been in surgery for nearly an hour.

  I sat out front in the waiting room for twenty minutes, with Audrey. It was odd, but neither of us said a word, not in all that time. Maybe it was one of those stretched-out moments when silence says more, or at least enough, and twice Audrey looked at me and smiled, not very big, but very sweetly. She'd stopped crying, and didn't drip any more.

  When the surgeon, a lean man with a wide face and thin lips, came out and walked toward us, still wearing the rumpled green gown and cloth cap over his hair, I knew from his expression—relaxed, reassuring, you know what I mean if you've ever waited like that, and the news was good—Gippy was OK. Well, maybe not OK, but alive. He hadn't checked out on the table.

  Audrey spoke for the first time. She turned her head toward me, looking down, with one hand palm out toward the doctor. “Please,” she said to me, almost in a whisper.

  I knew what she was afraid of. What she was always, I suppose, afraid of. So I said, “Look, relax, it's good news, Gippy's OK."

  But I got up and walked forward a few steps, met the doctor. “I guess Mr. Willifer made it?"

  He nodded. “Yes, he came through the operation very well indeed. He's in Recovery now and, barring complications, I think he'll be fine soon. He paused. “You are ...?"

  I just said, “Friend of the family.” Then, indicating Audrey—after smiling widely, and giving her the big “OK” sign with thumb and index finger—I s
aid, “That's his wife. She's pretty well jangled, and it would be a blessing if you assured her Gippy's alive and well, and living in Los Angeles."

  The doctor gave me an odd look. “Of course."

  He started to step past me and I added, “It might help if you'd tell her at least twice, to make sure it gets through. And then I'd like a word with you myself, if I may."

  He gave me another odd look, but nodded, walked to Audrey and spoke to her briefly. Half a minute later I heard him say in a querulous tone, “Of course I'm serious.” And a bit later, “I did it, I'm the surgeon, I operated on Mr. Willifer. I must insist that he is recovering nicely, very nicely."

  A minute later he walked back alongside me, plucking at his lower lip with thumb and two fingers. “Twice wasn't enough,” he said.

  “I know Mr. Willifer's OK,” I said, “but was there any really rough damage inside him? Vital organs chewed up, anything like that?"

  “Surprisingly no. He's a very lucky man. Bullet entered the left lower quadrant of his abdomen, pierced the colon, missed the kidney, and lodged in fatty tissue near the fourth lumbar vertebra. No spinal or nerve damage, though."

  “The bullet was still in him, then? Must not have been a large-caliber slug, at least not from anything like a forty-five."

  “Ye-es, it....” He hesitated.

  I showed him my wallet card, saying, “I'm also a private detective—employed by the Willifers. Almost any cop around should know me, or at least who I am. Or you could call Phil Samson, Homicide Captain downtown, if you want to check."

  He hesitated a moment longer, then said, “The bullet was thirty-two caliber, made a clean entrance wound, did not strike bone, and came to rest unfragmented. The intact bullet has already been turned over to police officers."

  “Thank you, doctor. I don't suppose Gippy, Mr. Willifer, was conscious enough at any time to speak, or—"

  “No.” He shook his head, pulling the thin lips together. “He'll be conscious soon. Mrs. Willifer may see him in another hour or so, if she desires to wait."