Kill Him Twice (The Shell Scott Mysteries)

by Richard S. Prather

  As soon as I'd seen him and planted my feet I squeezed the trigger of my gun. The slug caught him high in the chest but didn't turn him. He jerked off one shot. The bullet hit the sidewalk yards past me and spun, whining, up off the cement. We were two feet apart when I squeezed off my second shot and then we collided, not gently. The bore of my Colt was against his belly, and I rammed it deeper into his gut and poured the third and last slug into him.

  It was the impact of our bodies more than the bullets in him that sent him down. He fell on his side, gun clattering on the cement and bouncing away from him. He rolled, then struggled to a sitting position with both arms out, hands pressed against the sidewalk. For a second or two he sat there, blood beginning to well from the three holes in him, an expression of shock and bewilderment on his face.

  Then he grunted, slumped forward, put his hands beneath him and pushed, got swaying to his feet. He was a big sonofabitch, a tough one — he had been a tough one. He lifted his arms, fingers opening and closing slowly. He wasn't reaching for me. He was just reaching — for something. His throat moved spasmodically. His mouth opened. He made a liquid choking sound, and thick blood gushed over his lips, smearing his chin.

  He leaned forward and spat noisily — and then just flopped. As if he'd been hanging from a cord and the cord had been cut. He went down like a sack of meal, all his muscles emptied of life and strength in the same instant. His head thudded against the sidewalk. All his muscles relaxed; his bowels and bladder emptied; blood oozed from his mouth and formed an almost doughy puddle on the cement. It looked as if part of his lunch was mixed in with it. He lay there with his face on the cement, in his own blood and wastes.

  Lesson for would-be killers: Either don't miss with your first shot, or else eat light, go to the john, take an enema, and be ready to die neat.

  Ugly? Sure it was ugly. Violent death is always ugly. It isn't sugar and spice and turn to another channel. There are punks who think it's tough, manly, smart, to carry a gun or keep a switchblade on their hip. They should have seen the big boy go.

  He was big, all right. Big, and bald in front. His collar wasn't just dirty, it was grimy. His feet were the tag. I wear a sizable shoe myself, but two of his would have made three of mine.

  Daddy, those were feet.

  FOURTEEN

  I didn't just stand there staring at the dead man. I looked around for another live one. But apparently the big boy, the Collector, hadn't had a partner. I wondered at how many other places lone hoods might be sitting, waiting to see if I'd show up.

  If I'd had time I would have gone visiting, to see if I could find any of them. But I didn't have time.

  It had been perhaps half a minute since that first shot. The blast of a .45 carries a long way, and he'd triggered off five shots at me. Then there'd been four more from my Colt. Almost like a small war here, just off Palm Drive in Beverly Hills. And in Beverly Hills you're not even supposed to laugh loud enough to disturb the neighbors.

  So, phones would have been ringing. I guessed that by now several dozen citizens had called, or tried to call, the law, and possibly even the fire department and the air force. Anyhow, already I could hear a siren.

  The first movement I noticed was a little kid, a boy about six years old standing ten feet from me — me and the one on the sidewalk. He was in blue jeans, a torn white T shirt, and tennis shoes.

  "Geez," he said.

  "Go on, kid," I said. "You shouldn't be out here."

  He swallowed and looked at me, then at the dead man. "Boy," he said. "Is he dead?"

  "He's dead. Now beat it. Go on home to your mother."

  Kids, at least till they're six or eight years old, have a different attitude toward life — and death — a view uniquely their own. We lose it as we get older. Maybe we get wiser; maybe we just lose our innocence. But at five or six or eight, there's a naturalness that's too soon gone.

  This one looked up from the dead man. "Did he get sick?" he asked soberly.

  "Yes, a little. But he'd been sick a long time. Go on home, son."

  He turned, looked back. "Boy," he said, and ran.

  But by that time I was under the eyes of several adults. Their eyes held no innocence. But they held a lot of consternation — and condemnation. They didn't know who'd fired the first shot, or why. But they knew I'd killed a man. And that was bad. More, this was Beverly Hills, and I had littered the streets. I had brought an obscenity into their lives.

  I ignored two or three comments. But then a woman about thirty, in tight slacks and gold shoes with four-inch heels somewhat thicker than twopenny nails, gasped, "How ghahstly, how harrible!" Some playing cards, probably a bridge hand, were still clutched in her fingers. Then she said to me, "You — you killed him. You killed him."

  I almost mentioned a word which is generally unmentionable. Here I had been shot at five times and — don't ask me how — had been missed five times. Except for that one; except for the furrow on my back, still burning. I wasn't any happier than these people were; I hadn't enjoyed it, either. It was just possible I had enjoyed it less.

  I should have kept my mouth shut. I didn't. I said truthfully, "Yeah. He spat on the sidewalk."

  She started to bark something else at me. Then she stopped. Then she got sort of pale green. Then she left. One down, and a million to go. But the siren was now a low crooning sound nearby, and in a moment the radio car stopped near me at the curb.

  There were the police, then home to the Spartan to shower — easy on the back — and change clothes again, so it was seven o'clock before I got back to Vivyan's.

  I was not in the best mood of my life, not even the best of my day. It is, therefore, quite a tribute to Vivyan Virgin that, approximately four and one half seconds after she opened her front door, I was feeling pretty jazzy. She delicately patted a real, or feigned, yawn. She stretched like a cat half asleep in the sun. She moved her shoulders slowly, deliciously back and forth, just a bit, the way bears scratch their backs on trees, only not nearly so ferociously.

  "Oh-hh-hhh-hh," she said. "Hmmmmm-mm," she said. "Oh, mmm, hello. I was taking a nap." She smiled sleepily. "When the chimes rang. So I jumped out of bed and just threw on this old peignoir."

  Didn't look so old to me.

  "Well, you're Mr. Scott, aren't you? Shell Scott?"

  With my tongue behind my front teeth I whistled one of those thin little whistles. "Tweee-wee-ooo." I didn't mean anything by it. Frankly, I didn't know I was whistling. In fact, I didn't know I could whistle like that.

  "You are Mr. Scott, aren't you?"

  "Twee-wee-ooo."

  Boy, Jeremy Slade and I should get together, I thought. He could tweet to me, and I could answer. We might wind up building a nest. Finally, though, I found my tongue. It was right there behind my front teeth.

  "Yessss," I said.

  "Would you like to come inside?"

  "I'm sure not going to stand out here."

  She turned and walked away from me, leaving the door open, and I followed, bumping into the door jamb and cracking my elbow rather severely.

  Kids, hold on. Don't jump to the conclusion that old Scott is over the hill, or under it, or anywhere near it. But you should have seen that big, busty, flamboyant blast of a babe, Vivyan Virgin, standing there in the doorway going "Ohh-hh-hhh, hmm, mmmm," and all the other things she said. In that peignoir she mentioned. Which was hardly worth mentioning. Besides, it was the same color as her skin. I know, because you could see her skin through it, and it was exactly the same color. She said she'd jumped out of bed and put on the peignoir, and it was apparent she slept in the raw. Though I don't know why anybody would call it "raw." Sure didn't look very raw to me.

  So my thoughts went. All the way into the living room. She patted a chair, indicating I could sit in it, then she walked about ten feet past it to a long, low divan on which were piled at least a dozen satin-covered pillows in every color of the spectrum.

  She didn't sit, she reclined on it. Like C
leopatra on Antony. Then she drew up her legs a mite, arranged them on the divan and pillows, fluffed her skin — that is, her skin-colored peignoir — leaned back, got comfy, and then said, "I really should change into something more hostessy, if you've got time."

  "Baby, I don't have that much time."

  "Well, now. Hello."

  "Hi."

  "What did you want to see me about, Mr. Scott?"

  "Shell."

  "You wanted to see me about Shell?"

  "Shell — that's me."

  "You wanted to see me about — you?"

  "Uh. Not before I came in. I wanted to see you about something else then."

  "Something else? What was it, Mr. Scott?"

  "Shell."

  "Shell?"

  "Yeah. That's my name. Call me Shell."

  "All right. Shell."

  We sat there. Seconds ticked away. Time — valuable time — passed. Sometimes it's hard to get right down to work. You can understand that, can't you? I hitched my chair a couple feet closer to that Antony-type barge she was sailing on. I could imagine wind ruffling her hair. Brawny oarsmen pulling at brawny oars. Maidens dancing and throwing rose petals all over. You'd be surprised what I could imagine. Seconds ticked away.

  "Oh, I remember," she said.

  "How in hell could you remember? I just now thought of it."

  "What you were saying. You said you wanted to see me about something else."

  "Yes. Yes. I remember that, myself."

  "What was it?"

  "It was . . . something else."

  "Don't you remember?"

  "It'll come back to me."

  "Well, let's talk about something else, then."

  "That makes sense."

  "The reason I was taking a nap — usually I don't — was because of all the excitement here this afternoon. Guns, and bullets, and a man killed right outside my door practically. Did you hear about it?"

  "I was . . . one of the first to know."

  "Wasn't it awful?"

  "Terrible."

  "Especially in Beverly Hills."

  "It's against the law in Beverly Hills."

  "Oh, it must be."

  "I gather you didn't go out and look at all the excitement, and people, and blood, and . . . ugh."

  "Goodness, no! I don't like to look at things like that."

  "You darling, you."

  "But I heard all about it from my neighbor. One horrible man shot another horrible man."

  "Yeah."

  "Then he stood over him shooting him, and looking wild."

  "And snorting and panting and pulling gobs of hair out of his ears."

  "I didn't hear about that."

  "Give your neighbor a little more time."

  "She was playing bridge — "

  "Not that one!"

  "And this horrible man — "

  "Don't tell me. If I were you, I'd move."

  "But I'm so comfortable. Why don't you come over here instead?"

  I damn near did. I sprang to my feet with a gay "Why not?" on my lips, but a little voice inside me kept saying over and over, Are you out of your mind?

  "Just a minute," I said.

  I walked across the room, found a window, and opened it. I stuck my head out in the air and breathed a lot of it. I think she had ether piped into that room, or the scent of Midsummer Night's Madness, or something equally heady, but probably ether. It was one of those ether-or rooms. When that thought bloomed in my head like a rare weed, I figured it must be pretty clear again, so I pulled it back into the living room, walked back to my chair, pushed the chair a couple of feet over the carpet to where it had been originally, and sat down, while that little voice said, Yes, you are out of your mind.

  "Miss Virgin," I said, and stopped. "Do I have to call you Miss Virgin?"

  "Don't you dare."

  "Don't I dare what?"

  "Call me Miss Virgin."

  "O.K. Vivyan."

  "Shell."

  It was starting again. I shook my head till my teeth rattled. Either it was my teeth, or else something new was loose. Besides Vivyan. This had to stop. We had to get on the ball here, on the track, get this show on the road. Life is real, life is earnest, we couldn't fritter it away like this.

  "We're frittering it away," I said.

  "Frittering what? And what's frittering, anyway? If it's what it sounds like, we haven't frittered it at all yet."

  "Sure we — hold it. Hold everything."

  "Shell."

  "This has got to stop, Vivyan. We could go crazy like this. Mad. We could lose our marbles. Now listen closely. I am Shell Scott and — "

  "I know that. And you told me."

  "Will you shut — ah, Vivyan. Just listen to me for a minute, huh? I'm a private detective. I'm working on a case. I was. I am. Now, here's the way it is. . . ."

  Well, things didn't really get on the track for a little while, but finally the conversation was almost lucid. And we were making some headway.

  When I started to talk about my presence on location this morning, the memory of Natasha's death sobered Vivyan, and I was able to discuss the case with her. Only, she didn't have any idea who might have killed Natasha, or why, and said she even found it difficult to realize she was really dead.

  "Well, she is, that's for sure," I said finally. "And it was cold-blooded murder." I hesitated. I didn't want to spill any of the beans about Finley Pike's possible blackmail operation — which, naturally, Waverly wanted me to keep under wraps as long as possible — but if Vivyan knew anything about the pressure on Natasha, I wanted to dig it out of her before she started sailing on that barge of hers again.

  So I said, "You talked to Natasha on location this morning, didn't you?" She nodded.

  "Did she mention being in any trouble?"

  "What kind of trouble?"

  "Well . . ." I hesitated again, then went on, "Did she say anything to you about somebody trying to blackmail her?"

  She leaned back against the cushions behind her — she'd been sitting up for a while, which had probably helped keep the conversation in conversational channels — and said, "Goodness, no. Was somebody?"

  "Actually, I'm not certain. Put it this way: did she tell you anything about a big, grimy character, half bald, heavy, giving her a hard time?"

  She looked left, over my shoulder, and blinked, "What did he look like?"

  I repeated the description Waverly had given me, plus details I'd gathered from personal observation. She said, "It doesn't ring any bells in me, Shell. Natasha didn't mention anybody, much less someone like that. Oh, she seemed under a strain, and nervous, but I thought that was because she was getting ready for the death dance, and — "

  She kept rattling on, but I let my mind wander. This was the longest consecutive string of words to come from Vivyan yet, and some of it was near-babbling. Something had happened when I'd described the Collector. There'd been a reaction I hadn't expected — and didn't understand. "It doesn't ring any bells in me," she said. Maybe; but there'd been some kind of tinkle. She was still talking. ". . . Of course, it's going to stop shooting for a while, too — poor Jerry, he lost all that money when I was out sick, and now there's this terrible thing. Of course, Natasha had finished her last scene, except for the execution when they cut off her head, but they can use a double for that, but Jerry must be broken up a lot anyway. Not the money, but because of Nat. They were pretty thick the last few weeks, you know — of course, he's married, but it's not one of those 'till death do us — '"

  "Hold it," I said.

  She stopped. She'd been staring past my shoulder again and she jumped a little, then brought her gaze back to me. I even looked around myself, to make sure there was nothing extraordinarily interesting back there, but there wasn't. Merely the wall and, closer to me of course, my shoulder. Vivyan simply hadn't been looking at my face.

  The artificial flow of words, more like a nervous reaction than a conversational response, had begun when I'd asked a
bout, and described, the Collector, the guy I'd shot here a couple of hours or so ago — but Vivyan had told me she didn't know anything about that except what her neighbor had passed along, didn't know who'd been involved in the shooting. Funny. If she had known, I wondered why she'd pretended not to.

  But I let it ride for the moment, and said instead, "Vivyan, you have finally said not merely one but about six things that interest me immensely. Maybe if we take them one at a time, instead of lickety-split all at once — "

  "I'm sorry," she interrupted. "I guess I was kind of rattling on."

  "What's this about Slade and Nat being pretty thick?"

  "They'd been seeing each other some for the last few weeks; didn't you know?"

  "Nope."

  "I don't guess it was any secret. Nat talked to me about it. She liked Jerry a lot."

  "Yeah? And Jerry?"

  "Well, it was a pretty big thing — I guess it went both ways. It usually does, doesn't it?"

  "I thought Nat and Ed Howell were a big item."

  "Oh, they were. Still are, I guess — I mean, would be if she hadn't been . . . if it hadn't happened this morning." She paused and shrugged prettily. "No reason a girl has to have just one man, is there? A single girl, anyway. Like me."

  That was right, she was single again. Husband number four, I recalled, was in Acapulco, drowning his sorrows and lying in the sun, getting his tan back. I pressed Vivyan for details about the "thing" between Slade and Natasha, but there wasn't anything she could add.

  "That was Natasha's last important scene? The death dance?"

  "Yes, except for the one where Gruzakk cuts off her head with his sword. But they wouldn't really show that, anyway."

  I knew. They wouldn't actually show it, not quite. And you wouldn't actually see the head pop off and roll about like a cabbage, but you'd think you were going to see it. That was the technique Slade usually employed, and it had proved effective. And profitable. And, of course, tremendously nauseating.