Joker in the Deck (The Shell Scott Mysteries)

by Richard S. Prather

  I waited until Eve stirred, moaned, and slowly sat up.

  Then I said quietly, "It's over. I just killed your husband, Gerda."

  Chapter Nineteen

  Eve's green eyes strayed from me to the body of Horace Lorimer, prone on the lavender carpet. Then she looked at my face again and said, "Is he . . . dead?"

  "You bet he's dead. As dead as Aaron Paradise."

  "You killed him," she said, looking once more at Lorimer's body. "Why? Why, Shell — "

  "Oh, knock it off, Eve. Or Gerda — keep it Eve between us old friends, O.K.?"

  "You must be out of your — "

  "I told you to knock it off," I said mildly. "I know what you did and why you did it, Eve. I know you killed Aaron Paradise. Yourself, I mean, with your hand wrapped around the gun, your finger on the trigger. I know why you came to our little party Saturday night. I know you shot Jim — in fact he told me you did. In a way. I know about the narcotics racket, the oil on Brea Island — the Christmas tree — hell, all of it, sweetheart. So just sit there and think about that for a minute. And when it sinks in, we'll have a little chat."

  With every sentence I spoke, her face grew more drawn and pale, grew older. Even with the lines more prominent, though, and strain pulling at her face, she was beautiful — on the outside, anyway. Inside, she was a hell of a mess.

  I hadn't paid much attention before to how Eve was dressed, but it was as if a body like those pictures you see in Cavalier were to be dressed in something from Vogue. Her form-fitting pale-chartreuse sheath had an extremely low square neckline, exposing rounded whiteness and soft deep cleft, but somehow the sight failed to drive me wild.

  At the divan's left, next to the table on which sat the sculpture of the nude guy holding a baby and some grapes, two tan suitcases rested on the lavender carpet. They were open now, because I'd already gone through them, finding items of Eve's clothing, zippy underthings, two pairs of shoes. That was all — but she'd been packed for travel.

  Eve looked at the open suitcases, at dead Horace, then at me. But she tried again. "I didn't . . . kill Aaron," she said. Her eyes shifted. "It was Horace."

  "Eve, quit trying. When the police get here a quick check will prove you're Horace Lorimer's wife, from San Francisco, that there isn't anybody called Eve Angers." I took the revolver which had been in her handbag from my coat pocket and held it toward her. "This gun — which you tried to shoot me in the back with — is probably the gun you used on Jim this afternoon. If so, ballistics tests can prove it." I dropped the revolver into my pocket again and said, "More important, Jim Paradise is still alive."

  She was quiet for a long time. Finally she sighed. "Jim isn't dead?"

  I shook my head — hoping he wasn't.

  That seemed to do it. Eve slumped; the flesh of her face appeared to sag. She sighed again. "How much time do I have before the police get here?"

  "I haven't called them yet. But I'm going to right now."

  Before Eve had come to I had picked up Lorimer's little chrome-plated .32 automatic and dropped it, also, into a coat pocket, then checked the suite to make sure nobody else was in it. After that I'd phoned the Loma Drive Receiving Hospital. Jim had still been in surgery, with a fifty-fifty chance to come out alive. A second call had been to the Narcotics Division. Captain Feeney and some of his men had left for San Pedro more than two hours earlier to check on that can of Da Da bananas; if narcotics were found, they would go straight to Brea Island — but there'd been no word from Feeney yet. I had just started to call Homicide and ask that a team be sent up here when Eve had moaned and stirred, so I'd hung up the phone and walked over to her.

  Eve slowly straightened up, and for long seconds her eyes were cold and hard and bright. But then the dullness filled her green eyes again and her shoulders slumped. "I guess the party's really ended," she said.

  "It's ended."

  She slowly got to her feet, looked at me. "Well, let's get it over with," she said. She turned and walked quickly to the phone on a stand against the wall. I started after her. She dialed, but I wasn't close enough to see whether she'd dialed the "0" or the "9" next to it. If she'd dialed "9", of course, nobody would be on the other end of the line. I let her go ahead, wondering what she was trying to pull, if anything.

  But I heard noises in the receiver, then she spoke, and merely said, "Operator, get me the police." After a pause she said, "Please send the police to the Standish Hotel on Wilshire." She listened, then said, "Just send some officers to Horace Lorimer's suite," and hung up, turned to face me and with an odd smile on her face said, flatly, "That's it. Like springing the trap while you stand on it, isn't it? Or dropping your own cyanide into the acid?" She took a deep breath. "Well, we — I — haven't much time. I'll make you a trade, Shell."

  "What kind of trade?"

  "Tell me how you guessed the truth, and I'll tell you what I did and how I did it. Anything you want."

  She walked briskly back to the couch and sat down at its end, next to the statuette of the nude man, put out her left hand and idly caressed the gleaming bronze. I sat next to her and said, "Including Aaron?"

  "Including Aaron."

  "O.K.," I said. "But it was more than a guess. I wasn't really onto you, personally, until I saw you in the Purple Room a little while ago." Her eyes widened. "Yeah, I was there," I said. "While you were talking to Frankenstein's monster's mother, or whoever she was. A bartender pointed out Gerda, Lorimer's wife, and I thought he was pointing at the Bat-Woman, not at you. I didn't get it until everything hit me all at once, bang, just a little while ago. But I guess the key was realizing you hung around places like the Purple Room — and Lupo's. Well, if that was your meat, why ask for poison? Why would you agree to come to a party with Jim and me Saturday night? A party at which there was, perish the thought, the possibility of strip poker — if, of course, Jim happened to be still alive — strip poker with men."

  Hate flickered in her cat-green eyes, bare and obvious. She could hate me openly now. Slowly and deliberately she said, "You rotten bastard." Without even an "oops" this time.

  "That's the stuff," I said. "Be yourself for a change. Well, let's look at the murder of Aaron. He'd been in bed with a woman before he was killed. The police — and I — assumed the killer waited outside till she left, then came in and shot Aaron in bed. But after a while that didn't fit. For one thing, it was a contact wound. You know what a contact wound is, don't you, Eve?"

  She didn't say anything.

  "It means the gun was touching his flesh. A killer walking in from outside wouldn't have got that close to the man. And a professional wouldn't stop with one shot, by the way."

  She stared at me, not speaking.

  I went on. "The glasses were wiped clean. The unknown killer wouldn't have done that — but the woman who drank from one of those glasses and then shot Aaron would have. You would have, Eve. Sure, you had sense enough to wipe both glasses, not merely your own, but it was still a mistake."

  "Anything else you can impress me with? — I'm not being sarcastic, Shell. I am impressed."

  Flattery, I thought; who needs it? "That's enough for a start," I said.

  "All right. What do you want to know? For a start."

  "How did Lorimer find out about the oil on Brea Island? I know Aaron's reason for refusing to transfer title back to Horace was because he'd found oil on Brea, and I can even understand why Horace wanted both Aaron and Jim killed once Aaron refused to sell."

  Surprisingly, her lips had curved into a smile. She really seemed amused, though I couldn't think of anything I'd said that was even mildly amusing. I went on, "But the murders don't make sense unless Lorimer knew about the oil." I paused. "Lorimer — or Lou Grecian." Maybe that's what had struck her as so funny. Maybe the top man hadn't been Lorimer, as I'd assumed, but Lou the Greek all along, even while he'd been in prison.

  Eve was still smiling. But then she sobered and said, "Horace wanted to lease the rest of the island for an additional $40,
000 and Aaron refused. He'd been paid $50,000 to guarantee his cooperation, but even after threats he refused. It was obvious his reason must have had something to do with the island. So Lou had his men go all over it and they found oil everywhere under that loose earth Aaron had covered it with — when the well came in, it must have gushed all over the place. Then Lou's men found the Christmas tree. It's in that shack out there."

  "I know."

  She was silent for a while. "You can't see that area from the factory, but we wondered how he managed to drill a well and bring it in without anybody else knowing about it. When we asked him, he said he worked mostly on weekends when there were only a few men at the factory, at night, and a few times when nobody else was on the island at all."

  "When you asked him?" I said. "You talked to him about the oil?"

  She nodded. "Horace did. Lou, too."

  "Aaron admitted it?"

  "Yes. We already knew about it, so there wouldn't have been any point in his denying it. Well, Horace and Lou both told Aaron he had to sell the island back. Or else."

  "Or else get killed. And Aaron refused, huh?"

  "No, he agreed to sell. For $4,000,000. Not just on paper like before, but in cash. Half a million in the escrow, the rest under the table. Somehow Aaron knew Horace could get that much cash, or more."

  "Probably more," I said. "Handi-Foods is a front for distributing narcotics, isn't it?"

  "I haven't the slightest idea what you're talking about."

  "Back to Aaron," I said. "He must have known some hoodlum, probably one of Lou Grecian's gunmen, might try to knock him off." I paused. "Only he never suspected a shapely, hot-looking woman might do the job, did he?"

  As if she were talking about putting the cat out. Eve said, "It never even entered his mind. Give me a cigarette."

  It jarred hell out of me. I hadn't been able to shake the conviction that Eve was somehow trying to cross me up — perhaps by getting me to talk, tell what I knew, while not admitting anything really damaging to herself.

  I lit cigarettes, handed her one. "And you shot Aaron."

  "Sure, I shot him." Eve was sitting on my left, at the end of the couch; she leaned a little closer to me, looking into my face. "I shot him at about eleven-forty p.m. Saturday night. It might have been two or three minutes later, because I drove damned fast to Jim's and got there at ten of twelve." She moistened her lips, her tongue flicking. "I put my handbag on the floor by his bed. The gun was in it. When it was the right time, I just reached down in the dark and took it out. I put the gun against his side so it would muffle the noise. I'll admit I didn't think of what you said about the gun touching him. And I was . . . excited."

  She stopped, her eyes slightly narrowed, staring at me.

  And I started getting a very queer feeling, an odd nervousness. Something was wrong. I knew it, but I didn't know what it was. But she seemed much too, well — unafraid. Even exhilarated.

  After a pause she went on, still speaking of Aaron, and this time she was even more specific than I would have wanted her to be, with blunt obscenities in her speech, a small odd smile on her lips. She told me everything, including the exact moment when she'd pulled the trigger.

  I was quiet for a while. Then I said, "You didn't really know Aaron before, did you?"

  "Of course not. We'd never met — that was just one of the stories Horace and I agreed to tell you. I came down from San Francisco and arranged for the job with Alexandria's so I could get next to him, even chose the name Eve so it would be easy to start a conversation about Adam and Eve. I knew if I started it, he'd do the rest. He was a pushover." Her lips curled. "Like any of you rotten men."

  I heard a siren. It was faint from here, but growled to a stop below, in front of or near the hotel. She had called the police, then, after all. So we were coming to the end of it. It seemed a quiet ending for all the hell that had started there by the pool at Laguna Paradise.

  I said, "I guessed I saw you making the date with Aaron near the pool Saturday night. Or was the date already made?"

  She gave me a thin smile. "It was made eight days ago, Sunday, the day we met. Just like that." She snapped her fingers. "For the first night I was available. When Aaron refused to change his terms, I decided to be available Saturday night."

  This gal gave me a chill. I said, "I saw you talking to Horace, too, that night. Right after Jim invited you to the party — and you said you'd have to check something first, remember? I thought fat old Horace was a customer." I shook my head. "But right then, while I actually watched, he was telling you when the police might be expected to phone Jim — in case Mickey M. failed to kill him. Telling you to go ahead, kill Aaron, and then go to Jim's — and he'd phone the police after midnight. Right, Eve?"

  She smiled again, as she had before, as if I'd said something amusing. And when she answered the last little piece clicked into place. Because one thing, still, had puzzled me.

  I knew Horace Lorimer and the gal I'd known as "Eve Angers" were man and wife, and that obviously it was not a normal marriage but a marriage of convenience. I could guess Horace might have thought it wise for the apparently honest and respectable manufacturer of Da Da Baby Foods to be a happily married — though childless — man. But for the life of me I couldn't figure out why, whether for that or other reasons, Lorimer would have chosen Gerda to marry.

  But just before the law banged on the door, Gerda — Eve — smiling, icy contempt in her eyes, said, "You fool. He didn't tell me. I told him."

  And then it made sense.

  Chapter Twenty

  Slowly, feeling a kind of warped admiration for Eve, I said, "So that's it. The top man, the brains, never was Horace, or even Lou Grecian. Horace set up the Handi-Foods front, bought the island, built his factory and all the rest of it. But he didn't dream all that up and pick you as his bride. You picked him. You dreamed up the operation and chose Horace as the man to front for you."

  "Of course," she said simply.

  And I mentally echoed: Of course. The marriage angle had bothered me as long as I'd thought it was Lorimer's idea. But from Eve's point of view it made a lot of sense. Married, Horace couldn't skip out, couldn't double-cross her, even if he'd wanted to. Legally, at least half of everything in his name — where she wanted it — was hers under California law. If he died, she would inherit it all. In case of trouble, neither under the law would be a competent witness against the other, except with the consent of both. Everything considered, it was a lovely setup — from Eve's point of view.

  I said, "Then it must have been you, not your husband, who brought in Lou Grecian."

  "Of course," she said again, "I knew him way back when the kids called him Greasy Louey. Even before I did my first bit in a — a correctional institution. They sent me to a school for . . ." She smiled oddly again. "For bad girls. Imagine. They said I was a bad girl, Shell."

  "The hell. Why would they say a thing like that?"

  She didn't have time to answer, if she was going to. The knock on the door was loud and authoritative.

  And suddenly, with the first sound of that staccato rapping, Eve's face crumpled, twisted, and she burst into tears. It surprised hell out of me because it was so sudden. Her left arm lay over the arm of the divan, but she pressed her right hand over her eyes, head bent, body racked by sobs.

  I guess that knock had sounded like the clang of a steel door to her. And to a gal like Eve — even a gal like Eve — the thought of growing old and lined and gray in prison was enough to turn on the tears.

  I turned away from her and got up, started to step toward the door. Started to.

  I don't know what warned me. I'm sure I didn't hear the sound of movement. Maybe it was the reverse — that her sobs stopped as suddenly as they had begun.

  I had time to turn my head around toward her again, mildly curious, but by then she already had the bronze miniature in her hands and was straightening up. I didn't see her face. I saw the foot-high Greek god slamming through the air, t
he stupid baby on one side and bunch of fool grapes on the other. I even had a fractional second in which to wonder which part of the thing would clobber me — the damned baby or the damned grapes or the damned Greek. Then my head split wide open and my brain fell out. Or so, for one catastrophic moment, it seemed.

  I didn't go completely out. I felt the feathery floor brush my side gently, gently, in a blend of blackness and grayness like alternating twilight and dark. And thought still functioned limply, because I heard pounding and knew it was the officers knocking at the door again only seconds after that first authoritative hammering. But I couldn't move. I didn't really much care to move. I heard Eve cry something in a shrill voice — then felt her hands upon me.

  I thought: She's after the gun in my pocket, the little chrome-plated gun. She's going to kill hell out of me. But dizzy logic still remained somewhere in me and I thought — or felt: She can't kill me. Not now. And not while Jim may still be alive. I felt her hands tug at my shirt, my necktie. The grayness brightened and I could see her face close to mine.

  Her voice was half hiss, half whisper. "If Jim is dead — or dies — I'll make it. You won't have a thing on me, not a thing! The only man, the only man, who knew I killed Aaron and shot Jim was Horace. And you killed him. Not even Lou knows about that. Aaron and Horace are dead, and if Jim dies, I'll make a chump out of you. Watch me, you bastard! Watch me!"

  Then — incredibly — she mashed her mouth to mine, kissed me roughly, savagely, and raced toward the door.

  Shock and pained astonishment made my heart pump faster, poured more strength through my body. I rolled over, got my hands beneath me and pushed against the floor. My sight cleared and I got to my hands and knees as Eve threw the door open. "Quick! Quick!" she cried.

  In these past few moments she had been transformed. She was like a gal gone nuts, suddenly hysterical, wailing and shrieking, weeping — with tears on her cheeks and mascara smeared around her eyes. She had turned and was pointing at me. Beyond her, two uniformed officers, one tall and the other short and bald, stood in the doorway.