Take a Murder, Darling (The Shell Scott Mysteries)

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Take a Murder, Darling (The Shell Scott Mysteries) Page 9

by Richard S. Prather


  A car went by on the road out front and slowed momentarily as it passed. It went on, but my heart beat speeded up about twenty clunks per minute. A phone sat on a table next to one of the deep leather chairs. I called Homicide, got Samson on the line. “Shell here, Sam. I'm at Dan Bryce's house in Beverly Hills.”

  He had already been informed of my activity at Zoe Avilla's house, and my checking on the Imperial's license plate. He said, “I'm just sending a team of men out there. If Bryce was messing around the Avilla woman's place, that brings us into it.”

  “The L.A. department is brought into it more than you know, Sam. The mate to that cuff link you showed me is out here.”

  “What?” His voice went up a few decibels.

  “Yeah. In a dirty shirt. So it's ten to one that Bryce killed the woman and buried her out there on Emeraud. All we need to know now is why. Shirt cuffs are dirty—your lab men can probably prove the dirt came from out there at the grave.”

  Sam spoke to somebody in Homicide, then said to me, “Crime Lab already has the envelope Bryce left there in the box at Zoe Avilla's house. Just a blank sheet of paper in it.”

  “That figures.”

  “Any sign of Bryce?”

  “No. Give me a rundown on him, if you've got his record there, will you?”

  “He's been charged with half the book but they only stuck him a couple of times, Shell. The two convictions were on a five-eighteen eight years ago, and a two-forty-five just two years back. He did a year on the last one, and four years on the five-eighteen.”

  Section 245 of the Penal Code refers to assault with a deadly weapon, and 518 is the paragraph defining extortion. I said, “How about that five-eighteen?”

  “Badger game. He fell with a babe named Ann Corona. She did two at Tehachapi, and he did his four at Q.”

  Behind me there was the sound of a revolver being cocked.

  There is no mistaking that sound, not if you've heard it before. My own Colt is a double-action revolver, and it makes the same sound as that which I'd just heard, the metallic double click, a deadly sound indeed. Even as I heard it, the thought flickered through my mind that the phrase “two at Tehachapi” sounded familiar. But there wasn't time even to think about it.

  I was holding the french phone in my left hand. I tried to move my right hand quickly but unobtrusively up under my coat to the Colt Special there. I didn't have a chance.

  The voice was soft behind me, but it was a man's voice, a hard, vibrant, no-monkey-business voice, and it said, “Don't do it, Scott. Put the phone down. And don't even touch that gun.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  I put the phone on the table but not on the hook stretched my hands over my head and turned around. It was Dan Bryce, all right. The gun in his right hand was pointed at my solar plexus. He glanced past me and anger swept over his face. “Put that phone on the hook,” he barked. Then he changed his mind. “No, I'll do it. Back up.”

  I stayed where I was. Bryce was already rattled, and if I played my cards right there was a chance I could rattle him enough more so I'd be home free. Probably he had been close to the house, figuring under the circumstances it wouldn't be wise to park in front, and had returned for something else he wanted to take with him. He would, of course, have seen my car in his driveway.

  He said, “Back up, Scott. You can have it right now if you want it that way.”

  For a second, from the expression on his hard, darkly handsome face, I thought he was going to shoot me. I said quickly, “You're talking to Homicide.”

  “What?” It puzzled him.

  “You know who Captain Samson is, don't you?”

  He didn't say anything. But he knew Samson, all right. His eyes flicked to the phone.

  “That's right,” I said. “Captain of Homicide. The Police Building in downtown L.A. Pick up the phone, Bryce. Say hello to Sam.” He just couldn't believe it. Not at first. “Bryce,” I went on, “wouldn't it kill you? If you were to shoot me, you would probably be the first man in history to plug a guy right in the presence of the Captain of Homicide. It would get headlines all across the county, make the wire services —”

  “Shut up.”

  “You getting all this, Sam?” I shouted.

  There were squawks from the phone. Bryce was tanned, but he actually got pale. He was as confused as I wanted him to be.

  I said, “I just told Samson about finding your cuff link.”

  “Cuff link?” He jerked his head toward me. From the expression on his face I felt sure he had earlier discovered that one was missing.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Not the one in your dirty shirt. The one you lost on the grave you dug for Zoe—or Ann or Fern or Gail or Susan—out there on Dumont Street.”

  “Dumont? It wasn't —”

  He caught himself then. But it was enough. I knew that he had started to say that the grave wasn't out on Dumont, but on Emeraud. He stayed pale, and he swallowed. I think he damn near shot me then. Instead he said, “Turn around.”

  There wasn't much I could do about it. The mood he was in, any hesitation on my part might have caused him to squeeze down on the trigger. I turned—and heard him jump toward me.

  I started to swing back toward him, but too late. Far too late. I heard him grunt slightly and then what must have been the heavy butt of his gun landed on the back of my head. Pain tried to rip my skull open. I was still conscious, but I could feel my knees turning to emptiness that I fell through. Pain roared and flamed in my head and lanced down my neck, but I felt only a soft thump as I hit the floor.

  I tried to turn, reaching for my gun. I could see his trousers-covered legs alongside me. I got my head back far enough to see his contorted face just as he swung the gun down at my head again. It didn't even hurt.

  Samson himself was bending over me when I opened my eyes. Lines of worry furrowed his pink face.

  I started to sit up, but the sudden movement made my head feel as if somebody had sapped me again. I let out a groan and lay back down. I was on a bed, but still in Bryce's house.

  Sam said, “You all right. Shell?”

  “Why, of course,” I told him. My voice was a little ragged. “All he did was beat me, kick me, shoot me, cut me in half —”

  “Yeah, you're all right. What happened?”

  I told him. Then I asked, “How about Bryce?”

  “He got away. I heard him sap you. Then I heard him thump across the floor and even heard the door slam as he went out. It was the damnedest situation I've ever been in and —”

  “You heard him sap me? You heard him sap me?”

  Sam grinned. “Yeah. It made a sound like an ax smacking a tree. I thought he'd split your head open with a cleaver or something.”

  “And while I lay there dying, you listened to him pound on me; and run about the room —”

  Sam laughed. “You're not dying. In fact, the doc already patched up the two slight scratches in your scalp. You're almost ready to go out and do it again,”

  “Well, one thing that makes a wounded man feel good is to get a lot of sympathy. No wonder I'm getting well so quickly. Everyone is so kind, so helpful, so sadistic.” I paused. “He got away, huh?”

  Sam nodded. “We got a local and an All-Points Bulletin out. And we know who he is now. But we still don't know what it's all about.” He paused. “You handled that bit about the cuff link very well, I thought.”

  I grinned at him. “Yeah, I thought I did, too.” I reached into my coat pocket where I'd put the link. “Here it —”

  “What's the matter?” Sam asked me.

  I felt through my pockets. “He rolled me for it.”

  Sam rubbed his big chin. After a while he said slowly, “Well, we know it was his, anyhow. We know that much. As for proving it, we've got only your word. And if you get killed, the evidence is hearsay and not admissible in evidence.”

  “I'm not planning to get killed.”

  “Who plans it?”

  What Samson had said about hears
ay evidence was true enough—and it also applied to Bryce's theft of that letter, as well as his possession of the cuff link. I was the only man alive who had first-hand evidence about those two items; everybody else had only my word for them. Consequently, if I died suddenly, Bryce would be in a much improved position. That meant the first chance Bryce got—when I didn't have the Captain of Homicide on the phone—he would arrange for me to die suddenly.

  So I could mentally chalk Dan Bryce's name alongside Roy Toby's—and that thought made me ask Sam, “Did your boys pick up Toby and his goons?”

  “No. By the time they got out to Fleece's gym, Toby and his hoods had all taken a powder. No corpse, either. Looks like Toby's going to lay low for a while.” He paused. “Well, I've got to get back to work.”

  “Back to the salt mines, hey?”

  Sam shook his head some more. “Bryce didn't hit you hard enough.”

  In a few more minutes I felt almost normal. My head ached, but that wouldn't bother me much as long as I didn't get hit on it again. Samson went back downtown, and when I left the house the Crime Lab boys were just finishing their work. Soon the house would be empty again; I doubted that the police would even stake out the place, since there wasn't a chance that a professional hood like Bryce would return to it now.

  I climbed into the Cad and headed back toward Los Angeles.

  Auguste Felicca was medium height and stocky and he needed a shave. He wore a faded blue shirt, unbuttoned, pulled around his waist and tied in front West-Indies style. His blue dungarees were rolled up to the knee, exposing muscular calves covered with a black jungle of hair. Muscles on his corded forearms made his arms look almost misshapen.

  I had rung the bell of his home at 1855 Westland Avenue, on the North side of Los Angeles, and he'd opened the door and stared at me without saying a word.

  “I'm Shell Scott. I just phoned you, Mr. Felicca.”

  “Yeah. C'mon in.”

  I went in past him and waited in what seemed to be the living room of his home. It was hard to tell; mixed with contemporary furniture was a packing crate and an ironing board. But at least it wasn't the workroom because Felicca said, “C'mon, we'll go out to the workroom.”

  He led the way down a hall, out through a back door and across a shaggy lawn toward a wide low building separate from the house. As we walked he said, “What's it about, this dead dame?”

  “Yeah. Zoe Avilla.”

  “Uh-huh. Cops were here, asked me about her. She never came here and as far as I know I never met the woman.” He glanced over his shoulder at me and white teeth showed in a quick grin. “I'm clean.”

  He unlocked the door of the low building, opened it, and we went inside. As he shut the door I turned toward him and said, “You know about the list of names found in her room?”

  “Yeah. And I was on it. But I don't know how she knew me.”

  I showed him the photographs I had of Zoe Avilla. He shook his head. “Cops showed me a picture of her, too, but I never saw her before.” He paused. “But, like I told them. She might have been the woman who called up and wanted to know how much I got for doing a statue like the one of Mamzel—I mean Lita Korrel.”

  “Statue?”

  “Yeah, the big stone job I did for the advertising campaign. This dame said she had a sensational body she'd like me to preserve in stone for her. Wanted to know how much it would cost. I told her, and she said that was too much, she'd wait a while.”

  “If it isn't a secret, how much did you tell her?”

  “The truth. Two thousand dollars.”

  “She give her name?”

  “Might've, but I don't remember what it was.”

  “Well, thanks, Mr. Felicca. By the way, where's the statue now?”

  He pointed past me, over my shoulder. “Right there behind you. They've already made duplicates from it, identical except that they're in plastic.”

  I turned around and looked. And kept on looking.

  It was a gargantuan Mamzel, naked, magnificent and overpowering, looming over us like a feminine mountain. Not quite like a flesh mountain, because the sculpture had been done in gray stone that lacked the color and tone of flesh, but it was smooth, wonderfully executed, almost real. It looked alive, like a massive Lita Korrel frozen in a moment of movement.

  It was unmistakably Lita, standing straight, her head tilted slightly back, arms at the sides of her rounded hips, palms forward with fingers curling slightly. She looked as if she were just going to step forward. And that incredible body of Lita's was paralleled by every line and curve of the statue.

  Felicca was saying, “They wanted it exactly twice life size. So that's what they got. I had to take about a hundred measurements on her.”

  I couldn't help asking. “You did this from life?”

  “Partly. But she's too busy a woman to pose much, so I did the major part of the work from photographs, sketches, and the measurements. But she posed for several hours.” He paused, “She didn't, by the way, pose like that. She wore a bikini.”

  I looked back at the statue. “You'd never know it.”

  “That's the way she looks to me in a bikini. Isn't that the way she looks to everybody?” He grinned at me. “Besides, this is how they wanted it. The plastic jobs were cast from this —” he pointed at the massive stone woman—“and done in pink plastic. Almost as smooth as she is. Of course, when they plant them on top of all the Mamzel's offices they'll be wearing cloth bikinis.” He paused. “Can you imagine how these things, even in bikinis, are going to look sticking up in the air over buildings?”

  I could imagine it. I thanked Felicca for his help and got ready to leave, remembering that soon I was to call on the original of that statue. I took one last look at it before I left.

  And looking at it, I thought that every woman who saw one of the plastic copies would hunger to look like it, even just a little like it. And the men, too, would hunger—but for a different reason. The same old reason. The statue was called Mamzel, but I knew what it should have been called. I looked up at her, at the broad thighs, the slightly rounded taut stomach, the thrusting jut-nippled breasts swelling from her flesh, the half-parted, full lips and the heavy-lidded eyes ... and the name was Eve.

  My apartment is on the second floor of the Spartan Apartment Hotel in Hollywood. I went inside, flicking on the small lamp inside the door, and said hello to Amelia, the bright and bawdy yard-square nude over my imitation fireplace. Then I walked over and peered into one of the fish tanks to the left of the door. I keep two tanks of tropicals there, in addition to the ten-gallon aquarium in my office. Watching the striking, brightly colored little fish cavort in their miniature seas is one of the best ways I've found for relaxing, unwinding. And you would be surprised how many gals are delighted by the prospect of coming up to my apartment for a look at the little fishes.

  I sprinkled some dried daphnia on the surface of the water in both tanks and as the fish gobbled it up I took a shower, shaved, and got dressed in a new light-blue silk-gabardine suit. As I knotted my red, yellow, and blue tie which looks like a cloth volcano erupting—I like a little color in man's dress—I thought about what had happened to me during this busy day, about Mamzel's, Lawrance, the dead woman, Dan Bryce, Roy Toby, about Gedder, Felicca, the Ad Agency and Horatio Adair. Boy, there was a pair—Horatio and Ad. It was really amazing, I thought, the way women slavishly followed the dictates of the fashion arbiters, year after year, sheeplike, doing things the hard way, dressing only in the fashions “allowed” by the Horatio Adairs.

  Then I was ready to go. I settled the .38 comfortably in its holster and took a last look at myself. Not bad, if I did say so. Actually, I wasn't crazy about this season's lapels, but probably I would get used to them. I did like the new sheen fabric and the thinner neckties, though. Gave a man a rather dashing look.

  Lita lived in a fourth-floor suite in the fashionable Edgeway Arms. She'd given me her suite number, and was expecting me, so I didn't phone up, just took the el
evator to the fourth floor and walked down to the door of her rooms. I started to knock—and stopped.

  There was a note on the door: “Shell: Go in and make yourself at home—I'll be right back. Mix us a drink. Lita.”

  I smiled at the note, and took it off the door. Mix us a drink, she'd said. That was promising. I went inside, shutting the door behind me. I went down two carpeted steps into the living room. A low coral-colored divan was on the right of the room, opposite it two hassocks and a deep upholstered chair. The dull ugliness of a television set stared from one corner like a dead eye. A hi-fi set was at the opposite end of the wall from it. Near the coral divan was a small portable bar, loaded with bottles.

  I mixed a stiff bourbon and water, had a gulp of it, and lit a cigarette. Might as well start dissipating now, I thought cheerily. Make yourself at home, Lita had said. While I finished the drink I looked around a little. Beyond a half-wall was a clean, gleaming kitchen. On beyond the dining room was a room I merely glanced into, but which was pretty intriguing, with a low, oversized Hollywood bed covered with a black satin spread on top of which were two coral-colored pillows and a white one. I liked it. I liked the whole place, in fact. The only thing needed to make it perfect was Lita.

  I finished my cigarette and drink, sitting on the living-room divan. I got up and walked back and forth for a couple minutes, then sat down again. I was getting a little twitchy.

  By eight o'clock I'd finished my second highball. Where was Lita? I was getting worried about her. Eight o'clock Saturday night; it was time for John Randolph's weekly telecast. That would kill some time while I waited, and he might make further references to Roy Toby—maybe even to me.

 

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