Kill Him Twice (The Shell Scott Mysteries)

by Richard S. Prather

  Judge Croffer took two quick steps into the courtroom — his courtroom. He stood with his feet apart and hands on his hips and he roared in a voice like thunder rolling down from Olympus:

  "Silence! I will have silence in this courtroom!"

  He got it.

  There's something about a real judge. . . .

  TWENTY-THREE

  I had a hunch this was going to cost me some money.

  I had a hunch it might cost me a few years of my life.

  I had a lot of hunches. I didn't like any of them.

  But — and this was the important thing — no matter what happened to me it would be worth it. A new approach to an old problem, that of softening up a hardboiled hood, had worked out better than even I had hoped it would. Of course, I could thank Ed Howell for a lot of it — Ed, and the rest of the people here. All of whom were, perhaps, not exactly happy about being here at the moment.

  And that — in this second of frozen silence following the Olympian thunder — reminded me that the whole kit and caboodle was my responsibility. It wasn't just a matter of what happened to me now, but of what might happen to them. This was no time to panic.

  So, very calmly, I started walking toward Judge Croffer, then stopped and turned around, and then turned around again, and said, "Bailiff, officers, everybody — watch that man, the convicted . . . the defendant. Don't let him — keep your eyes . . . The hell with it."

  Pull yourself together, Scott, I told myself.

  Seize the bull by the horns.

  Hell, you can talk to him, can't you?

  I cased the courtroom, got squared away, found a landmark. That was north. There was the judge's bench. Ah, there was Judge Croffer. This time I walked directly to him.

  "Judge," I said, "in the memorable words of Mooneyes, I trow myself on a mercy of the court."

  Last time, he'd yanked off his glasses and looked at them. This time I got the impression he wanted to pull off his ears. His mouth moving, and his eyes darting about, and his head swiveling on his neck, all at once, presented a picture I would not soon forget.

  "I think," he said slowly, "you didn't say what I thought I heard."

  "What I mean, Your Honor, I'm guilty, I did it. I accept full responsibility. What I mean, we've just cracked a case here. A big one. That is, if you don't uncrack it — "

  "Please be quiet."

  I shut up.

  He was silent for a moment. Then he asked, "Can you explain this?"

  "Yes."

  "Are you responsible for the presence of these people in my courtroom?"

  "Yes."

  "Can you justify this unprecedented breach of propriety, legality, and sanity?"

  "Ye — well, I think so. I can come pretty close."

  "Who are these people?"

  Mooneyes was too far away to overhear us, so I said, "They — they're . . . actors."

  "Actors? All of them?"

  "Except for the actresses. And one hoodlum. And — "

  "Hoodlum? A criminal?"

  "And how."

  "You're sure of that?"

  "Man — Your Honor — I'm positive. We tried him and convicted him — and he confessed to everything but nymphomania."

  "Indeed." Silence. "Interesting." Silence. "Who is this hoodlum?"

  "Name is Mooneyes. Joe Garella. One of Al Gant's musclemen."

  "I am familiar with the records of Mr. Gant and Mr. Garella. And what is your name?"

  "Shell Scott. I'm a private — "

  "Yes. I am familiar, also, with your record."

  He made it sound criminal.

  He said, "I think you had better join me in my chambers."

  Then he looked past me to the tableau in the courtroom and called, "All of you, return to your seats. Stay in this courtroom. I will speak to you later."

  He spoke as if certain that they, each and every one, would do exactly what he said. And I felt pretty sure they would.

  Five minutes later I began thinking maybe I wouldn't get ten years. After ten minutes I wondered if maybe I'd get off with six months in the County. But after twenty minutes I was blowing silent kisses to my good fairy.

  Judge Croffer turned out to be a very fine fellow indeed. He'd done a few crazy things, too — in his youth, he said. And results — at least, in this case — were what counted. After all, no real harm had been done; the courtroom had been empty; he believed in maximum utilization of public buildings — though not precisely in this manner, no, not precisely.

  But if we really did have the goods on Garella, and more important, on Aldo Gianetti . . .

  It wasn't quite that simple, of course.

  First, when we walked into his chambers, he used his phone to call somebody, and cops appeared from all over the place. Everywhere you looked, cops.

  Then he called the chief of police.

  Then he called the mayor.

  During this time he was getting bits of my story; after talking to the mayor he listened to the rest of it, asked a few questions, then sent for Ron Smith's stenotype record of the "trial." The judge could read the hieroglyphics and ran over the tape rapidly, saying, "Hum," and "Indeed!" and once even "Splendid! Splendid!"

  Then he handed the tape back to Smith and said briskly, "Get this typed as rapidly as possible. See Wilkins and have Mr. Garella sign all copies, attesting to its truth and the usual. Get Treacher on the phone and send Borden in here. I'll talk to you later."

  Then he turned to me. "You realize this isn't enough that we may legally arrest and hold Mr. Gant, do you not?"

  "Yes. But I think there'll be more. I'm not through yet."

  "You're not?" He seemed mildly surprised.

  "No — that is, I'm not if you don't toss me in jail."

  He smiled. "We can, perhaps, avoid that extreme measure." He sighed. "This may be sufficient to assure detention of Mr. Garella. Do you think he will repeat his confession?"

  "I think so. He's under arrest, anyway. I arrested him — legally. He tried to commit a felony on me."

  "Splendid. Then we needn't worry about that." He paused. "You said you're not through. What did you have in mind?"

  I told him. Then he let me call Ed Howell in from the courtroom, and I told Ed. I gave Ed the keys to my Cad and said, "All my machinery and electronic equipment and such is in the trunk. The shotgun mike's the longest thing in there; you can't miss it."

  "O.K."

  "Be sure Slade's nowhere around when you tip Dale Bannon. He'll go along, won't he?"

  "Sure, no worry about that, Shell."

  "I'll be out there in an hour. Time enough?"

  "More than enough."

  I stood up and shook his hand and grinned. "Thanks again, Ed. And — you were great out there, you big black nigger."

  He laughed. "You weren't so bad yourself, you white-haired sonofabitch."

  He went out.

  The judge was frowning. "Did I hear you — "

  I interrupted, smiling. "It's a private joke, Your Honor."

  Twenty minutes after that I was on my way. To wrap it up — or to get killed. It seemed to me I'd thought that thought before. . . .

  I made one stop on the way, to check back copies of the L.A. Herald-Standard. From Gordon Waverly's report to me about Natasha's talk with him on Wednesday night, I knew the hit-run accident she'd been involved in had occurred "early this month" of April. I found the story in the Herald-Standard for Sunday, April fifth. On the previous night a young man named Theodore Harris had been injured in an accident on Mulholland Drive. He hadn't seen the driver, or the car, which hit him; he hadn't seen anything. He'd just been driving along, then he woke up in the hospital with a broken leg, a fractured pelvis, internal injuries, and a concussion. He was still in the hospital, but recovering.

  The information wasn't essential, but I was glad to have it. It helped a little. So, with that final bit of ammunition, I headed for Venus once again.

  It was the same old scene, only without the monsters. They we
ren't working today, of course, and apparently the Venusian queen's head had already been cut off, practically before your eyes.

  Cameras and other equipment were being moved several yards to a new location. I saw Dale Bannon, seated behind one of his big cameras, talking to Ed Howell. I gathered this was to be a scene in which Cherry Dayne had a leading part. Cherry and Gruzakk. Having lopped off the queen's head, presumably he was going to start charming Cherry. Not if I could help it.

  I caught Cherry's eye and waved, but there wasn't time for more than that. I spotted Slade talking to Walter Phrye, walked up near the producer, and waited till he looked at me.

  Then I crooked a finger at him.

  He scowled — and you know how he scowled when he really wanted to — but came over.

  "You again," he said in his most menacing tweet. "What in hell are you doing here?"

  "I came out to tell you when, and how, and why you murdered Finley Pike."

  TWENTY-FOUR

  It was a long silence.

  He put his upper lip down over his lower lip. Then he put his lower lip up over his upper lip. Then he appeared to be attempting to put them both over his upper lip. He could do more marvelous things with his chops than anybody I'd ever seen before.

  Finally he got his mouth untangled and used it to say, "You're a very funny fellow."

  "I'm going to get funnier. You want to laugh here? Or do you think maybe we ought to stroll away from the nearby ears?"

  He didn't answer the question. Instead he said, "You came out to tell me this fairy story?"

  "That's right. I'd prefer for you to tell me, of course. Save me a lot of work, and breath. But I guessed it was highly unlikely you'd tell me — unless I told you all about it first. So, that's why I'm here."

  He pulled his eyebrow down and rolled his eyes up toward it and then suddenly away, as if he didn't enjoy looking at himself. I guess he was thinking, because then he said, "You're right, Scott, I think we ought to take that stroll."

  He led the way. If it had been up to me, I'd have walked just far enough to be sure there was no possibility of our being overheard. But he kept going.

  "This is far enough," I said.

  He kept going.

  It didn't make a lot of difference to me, but I wondered why he wanted to be so far from the other people. I had a hunch it might be important, but there were other things to think about.

  When Slade finally stopped, I walked on past, then turned to face him. Beyond him I could see the cast and crew moving around. "Think this is far enough?" I asked him. "You don't want to go on to Nevada, do you?"

  "Knock off the chatter. What's this about my killing Pike?"

  "Yeah, you killed Finley Pike, all right," I said slowly and distinctly, looking straight at him. "You bashed in his head after coming back from his garage — where you found his file of letters to Amanda Dubonnet — when you caught him making a phone call. You dropped the attaché case and crushed Pike's head with an ivory idol. Right then or very soon after that time, Gordon Waverly arrived and, finding the door open, entered the house — only to be clobbered, also by you. You pounded on Waverly's hands to make it appear he'd been in a fight. Then you put the phone back on the hook and called the police — "

  "This is damned silly, Scott I'm supposed to be the guy who did all this?"

  "You're the guy. You then left in a great hurry, not only because you called the police but — I'll give odds because you'd heard enough of Pike's conversation with Gant to know some of his hoods would be on their way, too. And if they caught you there they'd kill you. Anyhow, you left in such a hurry you dropped one small piece of paper from the Amanda file across the street. Probably before getting into your car. It was part of a letter from a girl named Jerrilee in which she told of an unfortunate affair with a Dr. Willim Macey."

  He reacted at that, but I wasn't quite sure what the reaction meant. He chewed on his upper lip and then seemed trying to take a bite out of the lower one, and he shoved his right hand into his coat pocket. I'd noted a bulge there and for a moment thought maybe he was about to shoot me. But he pulled out a lighter and pack of cigarettes and lit a smoke. It seemed there was still a bulge in that pocket, though, even with the cigarettes and lighter out of it, and I wondered if that was a clue to why he'd wanted us so far away from the other people.

  He puffed smoke but didn't speak, so I continued. "Around ten-thirty p.m. you called Al Gant at the Apache and told him you had the file of letters — which to me means that you had heard enough of Pike's conversation to know he'd phoned Gant."

  Slade had started lifting the cigarette to his mouth, but his arm stopped halfway there. Either he really thought I was out of my mind — that is, if I was wrong about him — or else he'd been stuck by that bit and was wondering where I'd gotten my information. It wasn't quite time to tell him about Mooneyes Garella's singing in court. Not quite.

  "Now, about Natasha Antoinette," I said. "You were with her very near the time Pike's collector put the bite on her. And that, or its immediate consequences, not only sent you to see Finley Pike but sent her raging to the Inside offices, where she took a shot at Gordon Waverly — a fact which you weren't then aware of. But you both took off in different directions at about the same time, moved by the same stimulus but for different reasons — "

  "You're psycho, Scott. Even if any of this made sense, which it doesn't, you'd just be guessing. You can make up any baloney you want about me and Nat, and she can't deny any of it. She's dead."

  "Sure. Because you and Al Gant arranged that, too. She can't deny any of it — and she can't corroborate it, either. Which is the reason — or, rather, one reason — she is dead. Gant had good reasons of his own, as did you. Besides all the rest, her death also removed the chance your wife would find out about you and Natasha — "

  "I'm not going to listen to any more of this, Scott. In the first place, I don't even know this Gant. In the second, there was nothing between me and Nat but just the business relation — "

  "Oh, knock it off, Slade." I'd decided it was time to pour it on a little. "We both know you're lying every time you open your mouth."

  "You son — "

  He'd taken half a step toward me, but I went right on, "Keep your ears open, Slade. Let me lay a few things out for you. One. Nine months ago Vivyan Virgin's absence from the set cost you plenty, when you were on thin financial ice to begin with. Your banker turned down your request for more money — so you went to Al Gant. That sonofabitch gave you a hundred and sixty thousand bucks, which you've been paying back a chunk at a time — through Finley Pike.

  "Two. Nat was being blackmailed because she was out with a married man, when the man, drunk, hit another car and left the scene without stopping. Who was the man, Slade? Well, we know she'd been going out with you. And we know that accident occurred twenty days ago, on Saturday, April fourth. But we also know something else: On Saturday, April fourth, you had an accident that totally wrecked your Cad but — surprise! — didn't hurt you much. How come? Easy. It wasn't an accident You deliberately wrecked your Cad to hide the evidence that you'd banged into something before wrecking it. What you banged into was the rear end of a car driven by a young guy named Theodore Harris, now in the hospital — and SID can prove it, now there's reason to check both those wrecked cars. So, who was the married man with Natasha at the time of the hit-and-run? Who else? He was Jeremy Slade."

  His chops were starting to reflect interesting activity, and he opened his mouth to speak but decided not to. I didn't even slow down. "Three. By late Wednesday night Natasha had already told Waverly of writing to Amanda about her troubles. If she kept talking — to me, or the police, say — it would mean big trouble for a lot of people. You see, Slade, blackmail victims are supposed to keep their mouths shut and simply pay. Once they talk they can't be blackmailed. Maybe Natasha had already been hurt too many times, maybe she just didn't give a damn. But obviously she was ready, willing, and able to spill all the beans. And that
wouldn't do.

  "As far as you were concerned, the whole town, including incidentally your wife and family, would learn of your affair with Natasha, of your cowardly flight after that accident, of the link between you and Pike. And that was the most important thing by then, Slade; by then you'd killed Pike, you were a murderer.

  "From Gant's point of view, her story could blow up his lovely 'Lifelines for the Lifelorn' blackmail setup, implicate him, maybe start others of the victims spilling. Maybe you didn't know how much she'd told Waverly, but you and Gant both knew she'd written that letter to Amanda and had built up enough steam to blow the whistle — "

  "I never heard so much hot air. Even if any of it was true, it's just guesses — "

  "Four. You and Gant agreed Nat had to be killed. Gant brought in an out-of-town hood named Pete Dillerson. The next morning Dillerson shot and killed her. He smoked five cigarettes before he pulled the trigger. Yet she was in plain sight all the time, most of that time sitting in a chair, a perfect target. Still, he waited. Why? Also easy. He waited until the exact moment when she'd finished her final important scene in the picture. Your picture, Slade. Who knew when that exact moment would come? Not Pete Dillerson. Not even Gant, unless you told him. The man who knew was you, you sonofabitch."

  His features were slack. He realized by now that someone must have talked. So I grinned at him and said, "Sure, Slade. As you've guessed, somebody's been filling my ear with the truth, what really happened. And you're going to the gas chamber. Not only for killing Pike, but for helping to plan Natasha's murder."

  I walked past him toward the set, wondering if he'd come along. He didn't. I was about two steps past him — where I wanted to be — when he said, "You're not going anywhere, Scott. If somebody's been filling your ear with what really happened, I guess I'll have to kill your ear."

  It was an odd way to put it. But I understood what he meant. Especially when I turned and realized there was no longer a bulge in his coat pocket. The bulge was now in his right hand, and I guessed it was a .32 caliber. Big enough.