The Sure Thing (The Shell Scott Mysteries)

by Richard S. Prather

  “Beautiful."

  “However, that first time, knowing you did indeed at that moment have forty-seven wives at home, but were also supposed to have six more traveling with you, you raised the total to fifty-three. And, after some futzing around, managed to make them all add up to the right number, how I'll never know. It wasn't really necessary, but once started you were stuck with it. And you had a little trouble juggling them around yourself, I recall. You don't add as speedily as ... I'd better not say his name out loud again."

  “Ah...."

  “Uh-huh. Ah is even more significant this time. You commence to comprehend my final, or, rather, next-to-final, clue? The final one, of course, was your sextuplet divorce in English, which they could not understand, but I could."

  Sheikh Faisuli nodded. He'd probably picked up on that next-to-final dandy before I hinted at what it was, but he went on to say, “For, some or otherhow, you mentioned aloud to them the name of Devin Morraigne, is it not so?"

  Shrillings and trillings and sweetly excited feminine flutings, but only about a half-second of birdcalls this time, for Faisuli flicked them with his eyes and said, "Shapatapa!" or something that sounded like that and meant “Shut up!” no matter what it sounded like, because they sure did.

  Then Faisuli looked at me, and there was no doubt about the merriness, perhaps combined with a soupcon of deviltry, dancing in his eyes. “Thinking with unmistakableness that you were he, they proceeded with vigor to whelm you over."

  “That sums it up well enough, I'd say."

  “It is fortunate I was informed speedily by those of the lobby desk that you and six beauteousnesses had consummated an arrival and were asking for me."

  “Well, actually, I didn't exactly get around to, ah, asking for you, Sheikh."

  “It is the same thing in the end."

  “Yeah. And I suppose it is fortunate that you speedily got here. Who can say what might have happened?” I paused, added glumly, “I guess I'll never know now, will I?"

  Perhaps Sheikh Faisuli smiled a flashingly satanic smile at that, I'm not sure. I was carefully turning my head to look at those six marvels, all sitting quietly around the edges of the water bed, their wondrously vivacious fannies only gently rising and falling now as something like a small tide, in the really very large bed, came in and went out.

  That was the cruelest blow of all. They had watched me at my best—well, maybe not my best, but I'd been pretty good—and then....

  Sheikh Faisuli's words interrupted my brooding. “...Thus one never knows,” he was saying about something, “for Allah in his merciful wisdom is mercifully wise."

  “Would that maybe be wisely merciful?” I asked him abstractedly. “Not that I'm trying to tell you—"

  “We shall discuss such considerations when others of more pressing nature are not developing upon us. At least, Mr. Scott, you have, true to your determined avowal, done as you said you would attempt to, and crowned your success has been with."

  “Crowned, I have been with."

  “Some might say that you, as the phrase about is bandied, have even gone the extra mile."

  “A mile is a bit much, Sheikh. Several thousand feet much. But that reminds me, I've work to do before I sleep—sleep anymore, that is—miles and miles to go before—"

  “Is it not so, as I stated in the beginning with you, that your pursuance of my difficulty would in probability converge upon your own pursuances? That each endeavor might well bear upon the other?"

  “I've got to hand it to you, Sheikh. You were leveling with me, all right, because it sure has worked out that way. In fact, if you hadn't come along I might not be about to wrap up the rest of it right now."

  “Then the pursuit of my hareem has furthered you closer to your own desires?"

  “Some of them, yeah. There are a couple of things I still don't understand, but I think in this case I can cut through the knot even without full understanding. And I'd better get cutting. May I use your phone, Sheikh? If there is one, in this vast expansion of magnificences here?"

  I shook my head, then groaned, carefully stopped shaking it. If I was around Sheikh Faisuli much more, I decided, I well could wind up total incomprehensibilities alone with myself having.

  “Babu,” he called, which I supposed was familiar for Babullah, unlikely as that seemed to me.

  The biggish fellow was standing not far away, and after Faisuli spoke softly and briefly he walked around, obviously looking sincerely for something.

  “Sheikh,” I said, “if you sent Babullah off to find a phone, he'll pull it out and bring it and some wall back here to me, and I want to make a call on it, not eat it."

  “Have no fear,” he told me.

  “Uh-huh."

  When Babullah returned, for a moment I thought he really had yanked the thing from a wall, because the white Princess-type phone was almost hidden in one of his big hands. But then I noted a long white cord trailing behind it, hardly visible on the fluffy white carpeting.

  He stopped before me, extended the phone. I took it, but Babullah continued to stand there, then slowly lifted his right arm, extended his hand toward me.

  “Sheikh,” I said, “please tell him if he'd like it back, he can have it. I'm not sure I wanted it in the first—"

  “No, he is extending, for a shake as you say, his hand. He hopes with him your hands you will embrace, in friendship."

  I started to tell him what he could do with that jazz, but then became aware of Harim Babullah's expression as he looked at me—looked down at me, from way up there.

  The great brown face was impassive, stolid, unsmiling. But the eyes, like coffee grounds I'd first thought, did not seem like that to me now. They were soft, very large and very soft, like a liquid brownness, a melting duskiness. I had never really looked at him before, I guess—hell, I hadn't had much of a chance to—but it seemed to me there was in those large shining eyes a gentleness almost feminine, and also something that was very much like pain, like a bruise there, almost hidden, deep within the darkness of his eyes.

  Of course, it's easy to imagine you see all kinds of things even in earlobes, if you try hard enough; and the eyes have no expression anyhow, so we are told.

  But I stuck out my hand, said, “OK, fine, shake. Anything you say, pal."

  It wasn't a smile, exactly. He didn't show any teeth, or do much at all, actually. But the lips moved a very little, curled up slightly at the corners, and he nodded the great head as he clasped my hand and shook it.

  I had never known any man, not even those wispy limp-fish guys, to grip my hand so gently when he shook it. It was as though he realized it was delicate, a perishable thing, and he would perform this ritual with proper care. Oddly, the palm of his hand was very soft, much softer for sure than mine.

  I nodded back at him. “Fine, OK, we're friends now, I guess. I hope. Fine, Babu."

  He let go of my hand, looked at the Sheikh, still nodding. “Babu,” he said, and nodded some more. Then he moved away from us.

  Sheikh Faisuli smiled at me. Everybody was smiling at me—I glanced back toward the water bed. No, not everybody.

  “He feels much better now, of his grave error in damaging you. He is pleased, Mr. Scott—and this in consequence means I am pleased."

  I fingered my head gently. “That's nice,” I said.

  Then, holding the phone's base in one hand and receiver in the other, I dialed the Morris Memorial Hospital, got put through to Mr. Willifer's room.

  When Gippy answered I told him it was Shell Scott, and I'd heard he was trying to get in touch with me.

  “Yeah,” he said quickly, “for the last couple hours or so. I was afraid you were dead or something, maybe went and got yourself killed—"

  “Gippy—"

  “But what I wanted to tell you is, you know about Mr. Riddle being found killed, too? I mean, killed period?"

  “Yeah, I already took a look at his body in the morgue."

  “How could you do that?" he as
ked. Then, after a moment, “It's in the night's paper, with a picture of him. I told you I'd never met him, never seen Riddle, you remember?"

  “I remember."

  “Well, once I looked at his picture in the paper, I found out I did see him once."

  “When was that, Gippy?"

  “Night before, last, when I went—you know, with my gun, and crazies in my brains—over to Trappman's house. Well, there was a guy with him then, I told you, and this guy in the paper, the picture of Mr. Riddle, that's who it was."

  I grinned. “And that wraps it up, Gippy. See you in ten minutes—I'm on my way now."

  And I was.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Gippy was nervous enough to stammer.

  Sitting in a wooden chair near his bed, I said, “Relax, Gippy, what can go wrong? The only thing you're going to do is phone Trappman and con him, give him back a little of what he's been giving you and everybody else around here. Hell, it's a small serving of poetic justice, that's all, not more than a couplet or two."

  “All I m-mean is, I'm so nervous he'll know I'm bullsh-sh-sh—crapping him."

  “No, he won't. And what difference will it make if he does tumble? Simply means I'll have to figure another way to get to him. But this is so right, and the timing's perfect—looking at it from his point of view, I mean. He's got to be about half-split out of his skin already."

  Gippy scratched his neck, scratched under his chin, rubbed his large nose vigorously. Part of it, in fairness to him, was that Gippy would indeed have to con Trappman, baldly and even convincingly; but, mainly, Gippy just wasn't used to causing static about anything, wasn't accustomed to hitting back, returning even a slap for a sapping. He had always preferred to just “get along” and “go along,” and it would be hard for Gippy to break the habit.

  “I can't,” he said, not for the first time. “I just c-can't do it."

  It was eight-fifteen p.m., and I'd been talking with Gippy for five minutes. When I first came in, he showed me the newspaper story, with photograph of Ben Riddle, the same man I'd seen in the morgue when I'd examined the small hole bored into his chest over the heart, and also the hole rather low in the loose-fitting “Hawaiian"-type sports shirt he'd been wearing at the time of his death. No coat had been found near him, but his wallet and the usual papers had been on his body.

  Gippy and I were alone in the hospital room—Audrey had, finally, gone home for a few hours of sleep in her own bed—and he was sitting up, with a couple of pillows behind him, looking quite vigorous for a man who'd been gut-shot last night and out of surgery for only twenty-four hours. His color was good—for him—and his voice was strong even when he stammered.

  I said, “You may not be able to reach him by phone tonight, but there's a fifty-fifty chance you will, and that's good enough odds for me. The thing is, Gippy, he wouldn't believe me, but if you call him and say you're ready to sell out your Roman interest—or anything else, that part doesn't matter—he'll buy the rest of it from you. After all, I'm the guy who's planning to see the son of a bitch."

  “Y-y-ye-yahh, dammit. Yeah, I kn-kn-know—hell with it."

  What I'd told Gippy about me was true enough. If all went well, Trappman and I would be face-to-face, very likely over a gun—his gun—before another half-hour was gone; and whatever happened then, I was kind of anxious to get it over with. I was also, therefore, a mite impatient with Gippy's stalling.

  “Will you quit playing with your nose?” I asked him. “And do something useful?"

  He let go of his substantial beak, but swung his head around and glared at me. I mean, really glared. Like he'd just as soon have socked me on my own beak if he could get out of bed. A little more fire in Gippy tonight, I thought; not much, but some.

  So I said, perhaps a bit nastily, “Gippy, our resident lady expert on starshine and similar goodies you profess to believe in, Cynara Lane, tells me that for several years you've had Saturn mugging your Moon or some such thing, among other such things, but the drag is about over and the good stuff's just now showing up, and you've got a chance to start coming out on top for a change—if you're ever going to."

  “Y-yeah, she told me,” he said, starting to quote some of the trines or parallelograms she'd mentioned, but I went right on.

  “If all this good star stuff is supposed to be coming along, maybe you ought to climb up where it can do you some good—or you can do some good for yourself—instead of hoping it climbs up in your lap, and griping if it doesn't."

  “Hey, that's not a very—"

  “Gippy, if you're ever going to start coming out on top isn't it time you grabbed the bull by the horns instead of hanging onto his tail while he poops manure on you and the rest of the losers?"

  “Why, you got a godda-da-da-DAMN big mouth—"

  “Beautiful. Listen, maybe you haven't got eight pounds of proof yet, but you're convinced, you practically know Trappman's been screwing you every time your back's turned, and the exciting action you've taken so far is to cry about it, approximately hourly."

  “Why, you big white-headed slob bastard—"

  “Attaboy, baby. All you have to do is help set Trappman up, and as far as taking his lousy head off, I'll handle that detail. But if you haven't even got enough backbone to pick up that phone and give him a social call, the hell with it."

  He was glaring now, all right, not speaking or swearing, but giving me a look—a really dirty look, I guess you could say, a gaze almost with a trace of healthy malevolence in it.

  I appeared to have one hundred percent of his attention, so I went on, “And this even though I'm willing to bet fifty bucks to four bits from your last marvelous royalty check that Trappman himself either put that hole in your gut last night or told someone else when, and how, to do it."

  That intense and kind of hot look didn't change but it wasn't directed straight at me anymore. He was looking past me as I finished. “And don't tell me you haven't been lying there sucking Pablum soup through a needle without thinking the same thing yourself."

  After five long seconds, I stood up. “So the hell with it. See you around, Gippy. I'll do it myself."

  “Sit down, goddammit. I'll call the son of a bitch."

  He didn't really sound like the bodyguard for a professional assassin. The words were there, but not the tone, or delivery. In fact, he spoke softly, almost apologetically. But he got it said. Without stammering. And he got it done.

  * * * *

  Devin Morraigne's big new GMC motor home was parked on a side street near the hospital, as arranged. But Dev himself was sitting up front, in the passenger's seat, which was not as arranged.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” I asked him, sliding behind the steering wheel.

  “Just going along for the ride, detective,” he said cheerfully.

  “The hell you are."

  “Come on. It's my crate. Not to mention the face that it's my only-one-of-its-kind Magnesonant Holaselector."

  “With its insides out. I hope with them out."

  “You better believe it. You don't think I'd let a clumsy ox like you run around with anything but the outsides of my darling, do you?"

  “Fine. Well, OK, then. Get the hell lost, Dev."

  “Will you please proceed, driver? I'm already late for an appointment with this chap who wants to kill me."

  I got Dev to agree only that he would remain in the rear of the camper, out of sight, and would not take any action whatever unless I got killed. When he agreed cheerfully to that, saying he could hardly wait to get cracking when his turn came, I headed for Morraigne's home in the Hollywood Hills.

  After a few blocks, he asked me, “How did Gippy do?"

  “He was gorgeous. Indeed, quite pleased with himself when he hung up. Took him a while to get started, but he came on like Walter Cronkite—‘Mr. Trappman, ah, glad I happen to catch you at your home where you reside, sir, this is Gip, this is Mr. Willifer, the major investor in our Roman Number One, and how are you
tonight, sir?’—quite a bit like that. And very good, really. He didn't have to worry about bringing your name up, because Trappman did not waste any time asking about his friend, the likable Mr. Morraigne, which I had bet Gippy one bean he would at the first opportunity, or sooner."

  “So Gippy told him I'd just been in to visit him, was going back to my house—for what? Even Trappman wouldn't buy if it Gippy said I was lugging my Magnesonant—"

  “No, you'd have been proud of him. Said you had to take something, cut that off, mentioned the vault in your home, wound up saying you wanted to get something out of the vault, then neatly dropped the whole thing—don't worry, Trappman bought it. I was listening at the same time, I made most of it up for him, and Gippy still almost had me convinced."

  “Well, good for him,” Dev said. “So his success means friend Trappman will have had—by the time we get there, anyhow—plenty of time to arrive before us, and cock his little gun, and all that?"

  “It's my guess he's already there."

  We had only another three or four miles to go, so I pulled over to the curb and stopped. “I'd better get changed. You did bring along those clothes you had on this afternoon, didn't you?"

  “In the back."

  While I was getting into Dev's white pullover T-shirt and trousers, arranging to keep the pants on with his rope belt, Dev asked, “What's all that groaning?"

  “I've got plenty to groan about, but you would neither understand nor sympathize, so—"

  “What was that? Did you make that noise?"

  “No, your bitty pants just split up the ass. And don't give me any noise about these being your favorite strolling slacks. I've contributed three entire outfits to the cause, just today."

  “One of which you're still wearing, right?"

  “Well, sure, I was, that's true—it's still ruined, isn't it?"

  I climbed back behind the wheel, started driving, as Dev said, “You made that noise again,” and I replied, “Yeah, I may be wearing shorts by the time we get there. But if he doesn't try to shoot me in the, well, in the back, he may never know I'm not you.” “And if he does try?"