The four male wisps in business suits were all on our left and all of them had noted our entrance. Their faces reflected a growing pique, then astonishment and then horrified disbelief. The sanctum sanctorum had been invaded. The small man in the yellow robe appeared unaware of my entrance. He quite obviously was Horatio Adair, and he seemed to be in a trance. His left hand was bent at the wrist, the wrist resting against his hip. He seemed to be staring at the floor, quite motionless. He was short, thin, and very pale. He had the look of a man who kept going on transfusions. Of milk. All five of the men, in fact, looked as if they lived largely on alfalfa.
I could smell incense burning. The scent was too sweet, cloying, like sugar and spice and everything nice. From Horatio's right hand dangled a long hunk of pale green cloth. He raised his head slowly and eyed the model. He gently waved the cloth, like a pint-size torerito trying to catch the eye of a bored bull.
The model seemed to sum up most of the things I had thought about Horatio.
It had been said that Horatio Adair hired starving women for his models, and then made them diet for a week. Two years earlier, while other designers were exalting the beauty of the bust, or the behind, or the high or low waist, Horatio had gushed forth in print with panegyrics about the “beauty of bone.” The way he went on, you would think he felt women's skeletons should be worn on the outside. And here was a gal who seemed to be trying to do it.
She was one of those gaunt, straggle-haired and straggle-boned babes who appeared never to have tried building herself up anywhere, but had merely let nature take its curse. Anyway, she was pretty far gaunt, a tomato who had not ripened on the Hollywood-and-Vine, a sad-looking artists’ model, cold and bored. She stood in the middle of the room, with her lank arms dangling at her sides, not even trying to cover anything up, as if to say, “What've I got to lose?” This was September Mourn at about three a.m. the night the bars stayed open.
Somewhere in the house behind me a bell was ringing. Willis tapped me on the shoulder and whispered softly, “Please don't say anything. Or ... do anything. Until I return.” You'd have thought from his tone that we were all gathered around a casket.
I whispered back, “I won't move a muscle.”
He moved silently out of the room. I kept watching Horatio and the four Horatio-watchers for a full minute. There wasn't any movement. Then Willis was back. “The phone call is for you, Mr. Scott.” he whispered.
I whispered back. “Me? Nobody knows I'm here.”
“It's somebody named Gedder.”
I nodded and followed him out of the room, remembering that I'd told Gedder Adair's place would be my next stop, and wondering what he could want with me. We went through double doors at the left of the entrance. There a wide stairway led up to the second floor. Beneath the stairway, on a small stand, a pink French phone stood. Willis retreated a few feet as I picked up the phone.
“Hello,” I said. “Mr. Gedder?”
“Yes. Is this Shell Scott?”
“Right. What's up?”
“I don't know. But right after you left here, a great big ugly guy came in. Asked about you.”
“I know lots of big ugly guys. That could even have been me. Can you describe him a little more accurately?”
“He must have been six-four or -five anyway. Probably more. Bigger than you. He was heavy, too, almost fat, but it looked like fat over muscle. Let's see ... he was nearly bald, and he had a deep, scratchy voice. Probably I should have noticed more about him, but I'll tell you the truth, Scott, he scared hell out of me.”
“Natural enough, Gedder. That's his job.”
The description had been enough for me to be pretty sure who the man was. Ark, he was called. His real name was Hyath Arkajanian, and he was Armenian or Lithuanian or something, I couldn't remember for sure, but I did remember for sure that he worked for Roy Toby and that he was a killer. Ark was a big, apelike man, every inch a Kong, and he looked almost as human as a gorilla. How Gedder had failed to mention the simian resemblance I couldn't understand—if it really had been Ark.
“Gedder,” I said, “this big guy—did he look like an orangutan or chimpanzee or —”
“Yeah!” Gedder broke in suddenly, “an ape. He really looked like an ape.”
“Like the one that killed Tarzan, if it's the boy I'm thinking of.”
“You got it. Little eyes, coarse features, big lips, big muscles, talked sort of in grunts. Who is he?”
“A hoodlum named Ark. Muscle man. What did he want to know about me?”
“Well, he asked me what you were doing in my shop, what you wanted, why you were there, everything. I—uh—I didn't want to tell him, but...”
“Don't worry about it, Gedder. Nobody would hold it against you for spilling everything you know to Ark. If he doesn't get the cooperation he wants he pouts and kills you. What did he want?”
“Well, like I said, he asked me what you'd wanted with me. I told him you were investigating a murder. He asked me whose murder, and then the way he acted it was sort of funny.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, I said it was Zoe Avilla's murder. And he looked at me sort of squinting and said, ‘Zoe? Zoe's dead?’ I told him yes, and he shook his head and said ‘So Zoe's dead, huh?’ or something like that. Mean anything to you?”
“Yeah, quite a bit. I'm very glad you called, Gedder.”
“Uh—there's one other thing.” He sounded apologetic.
“Go ahead.” I told him.
“Well, he asked me where you were heading from here. So I told him—I got the impression if I didn't tell him he'd eat me or something.”
“He probably would have bitten you, at least.” I said. “No real harm's done—they've been on my tail for quite a while.”
“They?”
“Have to be more than one of them—Ark couldn't tail Marilyn Monroe through a nudist camp. Somebody else must have been handling the tail job, and Ark the scary part.”
“It was scary enough.”
I thanked Gedder and we hung up.
We had met, Ark and I, but only briefly and in passing, never in anger. Fortunately for one or the other of us. For me, maybe. I could still see that flat ugly face clearly in my memory, and feel a little of the same queer revulsion I had felt on first looking at him.
There was something wrong with the man. He didn't seem to be all there, or at least not completely operative, as if he hadn't been wound tight enough, or maybe wasn't plugged all the way in. His movements were too slow, his words not crisp enough. And I remembered that when he looked at you, you got the funny feeling that his eyes were focusing somewhere inside your head. He was stupid, and maybe a little deranged, and deadly as cyanide.
That was the guy who was looking for me, and now had found me.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Willis and I went back to the big room. Believe it or not, nobody in there appeared to have moved. The four men stood on my left, yellow-robed Horatio on my right, and the gal in the middle. She had not improved any in our absence.
We got a little closer to the tableau this time, and I could see her features clearly. Her hair was close-cropped over her head in the latest foreign style, and it looked like brownish fungus. Her nose was a button, her mouth a zipper of disapproval, and her eyes were blue, like the blue in black-and-blue.
Here, I thought, was one of the world-famous Horatio Adair models. Here was high fashion. Here was the idol of American womanhood. Here was a gal with sex appall. Here was a mess.
Horatio Adair waggled the green cloth gently in his hand. He seemed to stiffen ever so slightly. I had been standing inside the room again for maybe two minutes, and Horatio moved with some vigor for the first time.
“Ah! I have it!” he cried. “Vee vill emphasize zee fah-nee!”
Then he went into a veritable whirlwind of activity. He sort of loped or bounded across the space between him and Dracula and heaved the mass of cloth in his hand at her. He threw it at her and yanked it
back and twisted it and went hippety-hop around her. The four male lookers-on seemed to have forgotten about me; their attention was riveted to Horatio. He whipped the cloth about, jerked it, wound some more. His frenzy mounted. Finally he stepped back three paces and clapped his hands together.
“Ooh!” he piped. “I loff myself.”
The model looked as if a camouflaged army tent had fallen on her and she'd been clapped on the head by the pole. Well, I'm such a slob about fashion, I thought he was all finished. But it turned out that he'd only begun. He went back to the attack with a little cry, smoothed cloth here and wrinkled it there. “Dot's it,” he yelped again. “Vee emphasize zee fah-nee.”
And that's what he was doing, I guess. He gathered a great gob of the material around the model's lower back and sort of let it dangle there droopily, like a melting bustle. I could tell he was excited. The hot milk was really pulsing in his veins this time.
When he stepped back again even I could tell he'd finished creating. He staggered away from her with a sort of tragic air, and threw his hands over his head, letting them fall with utter finality.
“Vee vill call it Savoir Flair!”
The model still looked as if a camouflaged tent had fallen on her and she'd been clapped on the head by the pole—only now she was wearing a bustle. All four of those other eggs raced about, clapping their hands with the frenzied delicacy of moths mating, and squealing. They were squealing in French. Good old U.S.A. squeals weren't enough for them, I guess. And it was obvious that they approved of Horatio Adair's latest creation.
But not I. When I thought of women all over this fair land wearing that monstrosity I almost assumed a tragic air myself.
Next to me Willis whispered, “You are fortunate, Mr. Scott, to have witnessed the great Horatio Adair in the throes of creation.”
“Yeah, he sort of throes up, doesn't he?”
Willis stared at me, his thin lips curling. I'd said the wrong thing. Those people were still racing around. The model, however, was suppressing a yawn. Horatio clapped his hands together, then unclasped them, looking around. He spotted us and advanced beaming.
“Villis,” he said, “it iss done. You love?”
“It's adorable, Horatio,” Willis said. “Sheerly adorable.”
Horatio nodded, beaming, and looked up at me. “Good, no?”
“No.”
He stopped beaming. “Vot?” he moaned. “You don't loff?”
“No. Not a bit.”
“But vhy? Vhy don't you?”
“It makes her look pregnant in back.”
“Vot? You horrible —”
“Among other things. It might have been designed for a man. It looks like a long blouse made of bloomers —”
“Stop! I can't stand it. Who let him in? Who are you? Oh, I'm dying, dying...”
He turned and started to stalk off. Willis hesitated, then stepped forward and spoke in a low tone to Horatio. It took him a minute or two, but finally Horatio came back and faced me again.
“So,” he said, in that accent which was, I felt sure, as phony as his styles, “vee vill not discuss the Adair designs. Vot's it about somebody murdering somebody?”
I explained that a woman named Zoe Avilla had been found murdered, and that among her belongings had been a list of names, including his own.
He shook his head, “Never did I heard of her. Must be many women who puts down my name. It means nothing.”
“Most of the people worked for Mamzels. I understand you're doing the clothing designs.”
“Yess. So?”
“Since I'm working for Mamzel's too —”
His eyes widened, seemed to get brighter. “Ah! You vork for Mamzel's? For Lita?”
“For Lita Korrel, yes. And others.”
He seemed friendlier all of a sudden. “For Lita Korrel,” he said. “Vhy didn't you said so? Vot's it you vant to know?”
I told him again. He shook his head, saying he couldn't understand why his name was on the list. He didn't know any woman named Zoe Avilla.
“How about Susan Roeder?”
“No.” He kept shaking his head.
Finally I showed him the pictures I had of Zoe Avilla but he still disclaimed any acquaintance with the woman. It was two-thirty p.m. I thanked Horatio for his time and prepared to leave.
He said, “My gown, still you do not like it?”
“Still I do not.”
“No matter. The women of many nations, dey will like it.”
“Maybe.”
He sounded mildly contemptuous. “And if dey do not like it, still dey will wear it.”
“I just figured you out,” I grinned at him. “You're a bigger sadist than the Marquis de Sade.”
He grinned back at me, and it was a little like a grin in the skull of a dead sparrow. “The Marquis was a masochist, my perceptive Mr. Scott.”
And he said it without a trace of accent, without the usual half simper, looking almost gleeful. Willis blinked at him in surprise, as if doubting his ears. I left.
I drove back past the beds of lobelia, past the hibiscus and cannas and rhododendron, and the deep green of the bananas and Birds of Paradise, down the winding road to the open gate I'd come through earlier.
Only it wasn't open.
I stopped the car but left the engine idling. Uneasiness swelled up in me. I knew that I had left the gate open on my way in, planning to shut it on the trip out. There might, of course, be a gardener or attendant who had closed it—but I knew that Ark, and at least one more man, were almost surely somewhere near here.
I opened the Cad's door and got out, took a step toward the gate. Hair along the back of my neck was trying to rise, and involuntarily I pulled my shoulders forward and up a little, tightening the muscles. I looked around rapidly, scanning the area beyond the gate. Then I caught a flash of color on my right—inside the gate. I jerked my head around, saw the color again in the man's shirt, his face above it, the gleam of metal in his extended hand.
As my foot hit the ground I slammed it against the dirt and jumped sideways to my left, turning, and when I hit the ground again I was sprinting, bent over, toward the undergrowth and trees at the side of the road. The movement was barely in time. The whistle of the slug past my head and the heavy bark of the gun came at almost the same instant. I dived forward, hit the ground rolling as that gun coughed again. The slug dug up dirt near me, splashed specks of earth against my face as I hit hard and rolled over and over, reaching under my coat and grabbing for the .38.
Then the Colt was in my hand and I pulled the trigger. I didn't aim at anything, but I fired one shot anyway, just for the sound it would make. I wanted whoever was shooting at me to know I had a gun and was using it, and that knowledge alone could make his aim waver a little. And right now a little could be the difference between living and dying.
Then I was in the green, speckled shadows of the growth off the road. I ran a few steps farther, stopped, crouched over and moved slowly, and as silently as I could, deeper into its protection. I listened, but at first there was nothing. Then I heard a sound.
It was behind me and I turned slowly.
Nobody was in sight, but I could still hear the soft brushing movement. A heavy clump of some thick-leaved bush was right in front of me. I took one quick step toward it, then lay down on my back, feet pulled up so that my calves touched the backs of my thighs, gun held above my waist. From this position everything looked a little crazy, but I could see—and quickly—anything near me that moved, and in any direction, merely by rolling my eyes, or at worst moving my head a little. I pulled the hammer of my .38 back on full cock, wincing at the double click it made.
I could still hear the soft whispery sound of somebody moving near me. Then it stopped. After several seconds it started again. Farther off I heard a sudden sharp noise, as if a man had stepped on a twig. That meant there were at least two of them. The soft sound nearby stopped again. Sweat was beaded all over my face; a drop rolled past my eye
brow and into my left eye, stinging slightly, blurring my sight. I didn't move. I blinked my eyes rapidly, rolling them from side to side, trying to watch all directions at once. Sweat bathed my body.
Then that sound came again—very near this time. I could hear a man's breathing. I had him placed now; beyond the bush at my left, I rolled my eyes left and aimed the gun at the spot where I thought the man's form would appear. My vision cleared. Everything seemed abnormally sharp and bright. The green leaves, patches of sky, limbs and twigs above me. And then I saw him.
He must have seen me at almost the same instant. The air hissed from his mouth and he let out a soft yell. He was bent far forward toward me and his eyes suddenly opened so wide that the whites loomed startlingly around the irises. A big shiny .45 automatic gleamed in his hand. Light bounced from it as he swung the gun toward me. It was a stretched, distorted moment, the gun occupying nearly all of my awareness, but I saw the face behind the gun and recognized the man as one of Toby's men, and moments later I realized I was saying his name over and over as I killed him.
And I did kill him.
Before that ugly .45 could bear on me I pulled the trigger of my Colt. I didn't have to aim. The revolver had been pointed at him already. I just pulled the trigger and then pulled it again a split second later. But, still, in that split second, there was time enough for me to note, almost coolly, that my first slug had caught him high in the chest and he had started to straighten up, bringing both his hands toward the hole in his chest, when my second slug caught him in the face.
But that was all I saw. Because when I pulled the trigger for the second time I rolled over and ran as fast and hard as I could straight ahead, parallel to the road.
I ran right into Ark.
Take a Murder, Darling (The Shell Scott Mysteries) Page 5