Lita had already gone through one of the books, and now was almost at the halfway mark in the second one. It gets rather boring after a while, looking at pages and pages of men's pictures, and Lita's right hand rested flat on the table alongside the book, while with her other hand she casually turned the sheets over and glanced at the faces. She was past the midway point now; a few more pages and she would reach Ark's photo.
I knew that she'd spotted the man she had described for us even before she said a word. As she turned the page I saw Ark's ugly, simian features and in the same instant her right hand convulsively closed. I couldn't see her face, but I could see her squeeze that hand so tightly together into a small fist that it got white around the knuckles.
Then in a queer, soft voice she said, “That's him. That's the man.” The tone of her voice was enough to send a shiver down your spine. She opened her right hand and pointed to Ark's picture.
The rest of it was routine. She convinced Hank that there was no point in her looking through the books for the other man, the driver of the car. She felt sure she would be unable to identify him. And she was very tired.
It still took a long time to get out. There were statements to be typed and signed, more questions to be answered. Four more hours passed before we were allowed to leave. Some time after midnight I suddenly remembered the guy who had hired me, Fabulous Lawrance, and I put in a call to him from the jail.
He answered with sleep in his voice, having just turned in half an hour before, he said. But he didn't sound sleepy after I told him what had happened.
“Lita,” he said. “Is she all right?”
“Yeah. Just shocked a bit, still, and tired. But nothing that won't take care of itself in a little time.”
“What a hell of a mess! I'll come right down, Scott.”
“That won't be necessary. We'll be out of here before much longer. I just thought you should know.”
“Yes, thanks, Scott. Well ... tell her that I'm available, if she needs anything.”
“That I will.”
“Good Lord ... Randolph. John Randolph.” He paused. “Well, I'll see you tomorrow at Adair's.”
“That's right. I'd forgotten. See you tomorrow, Lawrance.”
We hung up. And finally Lita and I were ready to leave. Both the police and I had tried to impress her with the fact that she would be much safer in jail, but she absolutely refused to stay in “protective custody.”
Shortly before three a.m. we walked out of the Hollywood jail and got into my car. As I started the engine Lita let her head fall back on the cushion and said, “This isn't quite what I had planned for tonight, Shell.”
“You don't know the half of it, honey.” I told her. “I had planned something entirely different, myself.”
She turned her head and gave me a slow smile as I pulled out onto the street. After a couple of blocks she said, “I'm starved.”
“O.K. Hamburger, or would you like something less dangerous?”
“Hamburger.” She paused and added slowly, “Without onions.”
I let out a soft, wild cry. “I'm with you!”
She chuckled and we yakked foolishly on the way to a nearby drive-in, both of us, I think, doing our best to forget the past gruesome hours. It was enjoyable, too, not only the conversation and company, but the hamburgers—without onions—and hot coffee. With a few calories in us, and after relaxing and talking together for nearly an hour, we were in pretty good spirits as I drove toward the Edgeway Arms again.
In a conversation lull, without saying anything, Lita slid closer on the seat, leaned against me and rested her head on my shoulder. We drove to her hotel that way, and it was nice. It was very nice.
When I parked at the curb before the hotel, I said, “I'll escort you to your door, and peek under the bed, and —”
“To the door?” she interrupted me. “The bed is inside.”
“How well I know. Covered with a black-satin spread that looks as if it could be very comforting, redolent with the sweet scent of jasmine —”
“What are you talking about? I don't have any jasmine.”
“I just made that up because it sounded so exciting. I'm not even sure I know what redolent means.”
“Dear boy,” she said gently, “I shall leave you at the door. You're far too enthusiastic.”
“But enthusiasm is the spice of life.”
“I shall leave you at the door.”
I said seriously, “Honey, you may leave me at the door, but if you have no strenuous objections, I shall stay outside it. Ark is one of Toby's men, and none of those guys play nice.”
She said seriously, “I was there, Shell. I saw what happened.”
Which was true. That was more of a warning than anything I might say to her. But I added, “You're sure to be called before the grand jury, which will hand down indictments for Arkajanian and a John Doe. As a potential witness you're extremely dangerous to the whole Toby family. And that family discourages witnesses by killing them.” I paused. “It might be a good idea for you to change hotels temporarily.”
“Don't be silly, Shell. We've already discussed this. And I'm staying right here—in nine or ten hours the party starts at Mr. Adair's, and I've got to be ready for that. Besides, I don't really think there's any danger. That man probably didn't get a good look at me.” She patted my cheek. “Now, are you going to help me out of the car like a gentleman, or must I —”
Before she finished speaking, I was out of the car and heading around to her side. I held the door open for her and when she got out the serious mood of those few moments was forgotten. She took my arm as we walked into the hotel, and whispered, “Won't the desk clerk be shocked to see you go up with me?”
“He'll be more shocked when I don't come down.”
“Oh, Shell!” She squeezed my arm, and didn't seem at all panicked.
We took the elevator up to four. Her suite was just past the bend of the corridor, and as we went around the turn, I stopped her suddenly. The door to her suite was ajar, and I put my hand under my coat, grabbed the butt of the .38.
Lita said, “What's the matter?”
I was straining my ears, but then I relaxed. “Nothing. The door's unlocked—I left it that way, but for a minute there I thought somebody might have forced the lock.”
“Oh. You ... frightened me a little. I'm still jumpy.”
“You should be.”
We were at her door. She turned with her back to it and looked up at me. Then she took both my hands in hers and said, “I won't ask you in, Shell. Next time. When it isn't so late, and when...”
“I understand, honey.”
We were both a little jangled from the mild shock we'd just had, and the fact that she was looking up at me from only inches away did not act on me like tranquilizing drugs.
“I'll be around. Yell if you need me.” I grinned at her.
She smiled up at me, white teeth flashing behind her softly curving lips. Her liquid, luminous eyes moved over my face, heavy lids half lowered over them. We stood like that for seconds, then I slid my hands up her arms, put them around her waist and pulled her closer to me. Her arms slowly went around my neck, her eyes not leaving mine.
It was an odd, tense moment. I knew I was going to kiss her. She knew I was going to kiss her. But we were quite still for I don't know how long, just looking at each other, with the tenseness and warmth and intimacy growing between us, and then I pulled her tight against me and her lips parted as I bent my mouth to hers. Her lips were soft, curling and moving beneath mine, sliding and clinging hotly. Her arms tightened behind my neck and I spread my hands open behind and around her small waist, slid them up her back, let my right hand glide on the smooth cloth of her dress until it touched the swelling mound of her breast.
As I pulled her to me she pressed even more tightly against me, her lips writhing more violently, tongue moving and one hand curling against the back of my head. The rest of what happened was simply indescribable.
We just sort of fused together, like people melting. It was as if she and I were two flesh magnets, and she laid her North pole up against my South pole and then turned on the juice. About 110 volts, at least, went honking along my spine and out through my ears and hair and everywhere. It was as if I lit up like a Mazda lamp, and if I could have seen myself right then I'll bet I'd have been shocked. That kiss was a trip to a land of new experiences. It was like entering the fourth dimension, or something very close to it. Wherever this was, it wasn't the same old world I'd been used to. I liked it here. This was where I wanted to live. And, friend, it was living.
Finally we both came up for ether. Lita's eyes were even more heavy-lidded then they'd been a little while before, and it wouldn't have surprised me a bit to find that my eyes had glazed over; like fused quartz. She said, “Well, that was a kiss —”
She didn't finish it.
She looked beyond me, a little to one side, at something or someone behind my back. Her eyes slowly widened and her mouth opened, lips curling. She screamed.
It happened in about a second, but it seemed a much longer time as I watched her face. She just kept on screaming. The piercing sound burst from her throat and raked at my ears, slammed jarringly against my nerves. I could still feel the pressure of her lips that moments before had been moving against my own.
The scream shrilled in the hallway. As I started to turn she continued to stare past me, real, honest terror in her eyes.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
It was Ark. He loomed in the corridor no more than six feet from us. His big, ugly, apelike face showed shock and surprise, but even as I spun around and saw him his hand was coming out from under his coat. Light bounced on the heavy .45 automatic in his big fist.
He must have stepped around that right-angled turn in the corridor at almost the same instant when Lita opened her eyes and saw him. Her scream was a piercing, shrill, nerve-stretching sound, which had undoubtedly startled Ark as much as it had me—and it must have thrown his coordination off a little.
As I whirled to my right, Lita was still close to me, her arms just coming down from my neck. I thrust my left hand forward, catching her hard at the base of her throat and slamming her back against the door. That got her into a safer, less-exposed position, but it also got her the hell out of my way. Her arms flew past my face and I heard her thump against the door, but I kept on spinning toward Ark, turning fast and throwing my right foot out and slamming it against the floor, bending my knees to take me into a low squat as my right hand slapped against the butt of my .38.
Ark's gun was already out and in his hand, but you don't carry bolstered automatics cocked and ready to fire unless you're suicidal, and with his left hand he slapped back the slide, cocking the gun, then flipped it up toward me and simultaneously jerked the trigger. Flame spat out of the gun's barrel almost in my face.
How he missed me I'll never know. If the automatic had been cocked he couldn't have missed, not at that range, but the slug burned hotly along the side of my neck. I was down as close to the floor as I could get and still stay on both feet, leaning to my right, the gun in my hand now.
I got off the second shot. And all the rest of the shots that counted. I didn't take time to aim that first shot, but to fire a double-action revolver all you have to do is to pull the trigger. And that's what I did. I pulled it and kept on pulling. When you're facing a guy like Ark, a mugg who's trying to blast holes in you, you just keep pulling the trigger until you hear a click.
The first bullet from my gun caught him somewhere in the body and jerked him a little. My third shot caught him in the jaw. His gun boomed again then, but the slug tore into the wall, not into me.
He was a hard man to kill.
I emptied my gun into him and all six bullets slammed into his face or body. As the hammer clicked on an empty cartridge Ark's automatic fell from his fingers and he swayed like a tall tree in a heavy wind. He rocked to one side and then the other, still on his feet and still alive with six .38-caliber bullets in him, still alive but dying. Blood, bright and thick, coursed from two holes in his face, smeared his nose and cheek and mouth. A red stain appeared on the front of his shirt under the dark coat.
Turning slowly, he raised his right hand halfway up his chest, then it dropped limply as he fell. He landed on his left side, rolled onto his stomach, one side of his face pressed against the carpet. Death isn't often instantaneous, even when a man has been shot several times, and I hadn't caught his heart or brain with one of my slugs. He lay there on the carpeted floor of the hallway and twitched delicately.
For such a big man, a huge man really, those tiny meaningless movements seemed unreal, false. Two fingers on his right hand moved spasmodically.
His gun lay near him. I stepped to it, kicked it down the hallway, then stepped back. I looked at Lita. It was horribly quiet. The smell of smoke was sharp around us, and the crash of shots had barely stopped echoing against the walls and ceiling. Lita was down on one knee. One hand was pressed against the spot under her throat where my open hand had struck her. But her eyes were fixed on Ark.
I could hear noise now—the sound of other people on this floor, voices, a door slamming. The sounds seemed late in coming, as if a great deal of time had elapsed since Ark had fallen.
Lita made a soft sound in her throat. She looked at me and her face was white, waxen. Then her eyes rolled up in her head and she fainted, fell easily forward. She lay quietly.
Ark was still moving a little, with those oddly delicate twitches. One leg kicked gently and made a soft hushed sound on the floor. It was ugly. It is always ugly....
We were still in Lita's suite. The police had arrived and seemed to be everywhere I looked. Both Lita and I had told the story half a dozen times. It was five o'clock in the morning.
Now Lita and I sat together on the divan. It was the first chance we'd really had to talk since the shooting. A uniformed patrolman stood a few feet from us.
She said, “That's the second time in my life that I've fainted. And both times were tonight.” She paused. “How could he have known where I live?”
“Look, honey, you are not a complete unknown. The address would have been easy. Let's just be thankful that Ark was one of the more stupid killers out of captivity.”
“I don't understand.”
“The fact that he came here tonight is proof that he not only shot Randolph but got a good enough look at you out there so he recognized you. Anyone with fairly good sense would have figured you'd be on guard, so to speak. That there'd be somebody around besides you. But he came up here to kill you anyway—I told you those guys intimidate witnesses by killing them.” I lit a cigarette. “Maybe he figured you wouldn't be alone but still took his chances. His goose was cooked if you lived, so he didn't have too much to lose, I guess.”
“Shell, I've tried to thank you, but it's just —”
“Knock it off, honey. In the first place, if I hadn't been here, he would have killed you, and the fact that you're alive is plenty of reward for me.”
She smiled and gently touched the raw spot on my neck where Ark's first shot had broken the skin. I grinned at her. “That's the second item—when that activity was going on, I wasn't doing it all for you, my love. Ark was shooting at me.”
She smiled again and seemed to relax a little more. Then a uniformed officer was standing in front of us. “That's all we can do here,” he said. “Come on, Scott. Miss Korrel.”
I knew what he meant. It was time for Lita and me to make our second trip to the jail. We'd both been up for nearly twenty-four hours, but that fact didn't impress the officer. We journeyed to the clink. It took three hours this time, complete with telling and retelling the story, explaining, dictating the reports. I found out that there had as yet been no trace of Bryce, and officers were still trying to locate Roy Toby, who was in none of his usual haunts. Which didn't seem surprising, under the circumstances.
Finally Lita and I left the police behind
for the second time. I took her back to her suite. This time Lita made no objection to my accompanying her inside. Newspapers were on the streets carrying stories of Randolph's brutal murder—and Lita Korrel's name was prominent in all of them. Radio and TV news broadcasts already had the story of the second shooting in which she'd been involved, and she was afraid that it would all have a very damaging effect on the Mamzel's publicity campaign due to start in a few hours. That publicity party at Horatio Adair's was scheduled to start at one p.m., with a telecast from one-thirty until two. And it was already eight in the morning. We were both tired, and Lita looked drawn, stretched tight.
I asked her, “Is everything set for the party?”
She nodded wearily. “Yes. Lawrance is taking care of that anyway—preparations, food, catering, guests and all. Horatio's just letting us use his estate. Of course, he's getting a lot of publicity out of it himself.” She shook her head. “I sure feel like a party.”
“Yeah. Next week.”
“We'd better get to bed.”
I brightened considerably. “That's a good idea!”
But there were no more of those incandescent kisses. And I suppose it was just as well, considering the weakened state I was in. Lita offered no objections to my taking a nap on the living-room divan. She even got blankets for me and a pillow, and patted my head as she undulated into the bedroom for her “twenty winks.” I watched her undulate. Into the bedroom. In there with the black-satin coverlet, and the scent of jasmine, and the rustle of sheets, and ... I refused to go on.
I did drop off into slumber, though. And my final thought was that at last Lita Korrel and I were sleeping together. Unfortunately—in different rooms....
It seemed about three minutes later that Lita was shaking me saying softly, “Wake up. Shell, wake up.”
“I cracked my lids and peered blurrily around. My eyes seemed sprained. But soon they focused and so lovely a sight did I see that for a while I felt sure I was still dreaming.
Take a Murder, Darling (The Shell Scott Mysteries) Page 11