Take a Murder, Darling (The Shell Scott Mysteries)

by Richard S. Prather

  “Afternoon.” he said. “Tell Miss Korrel that the attorney is here, please.” He paused. “I'm Walter Edwards, of Edwards, Lane and Briston.”

  He stepped forward and I automatically stepped back, opening the door a little wider. I was wondering what the hell Lita had said on the-phone earlier.

  The man walked to the chair where I'd been sitting, and plunked down in it. Not until then did he notice the gun in my hand. And suddenly his cheeks were no longer pink. His whole face got a shade that was near gray, and I thought for a moment he was going to fall out of the chair. He slowly and carefully put the briefcase down alongside the chair and raised his hands over his head. “Don't...” he said. “Don't...”

  I eased the Colt's hammer back down with my thumb, but didn't put the gun away. “What makes you think Miss Korrel is here? And who asked for an attorney, anyway?”

  He still looked gray, but he recovered most of his composure and said, “Why, Mr. Lawrance sent me over here. I hope I—am I in the wrong room?”

  “What about Lawrance?”

  “I understand that Miss Korrel is to be out of town for a few days, and Mr. Lawrance will have to act in her behalf. I'm to gather her power of attorney, and she'll have to sign a few papers.” He paused. “Who are you?”

  “What made Lawrance think Miss Korrel would be here?”

  He frowned. “I'm sure I don't know. He phoned me at my office only a few minutes ago and told me to hurry over here, to this hotel, this room. Why? What's the matter?”

  Something seemed extremely phony about this guy and his power of attorney dialogue. But I didn't know what it was. He could very well have been telling the truth. I knew Lita had phoned Mamzel's and left the hotel's phone number with Didi. Lawrance could easily have found out what the name of the hotel was. There was always the possibility, too, that somebody other than Lawrance had got the number from Didi. I just didn't know, and there were too many maybes to suit me. I made up my mind.

  “Let's just say you got the wrong room.”

  He looked as if he were going to protest, but then got to his feet. “I see ... yes.” He hesitated. “Well ... good day.” He walked to the door, opened it and went out.

  I was still puzzled. I walked to the door and looked out, but he wasn't in sight. But when I stepped into the hall I spotted him. He was clear down at the elevator, and as I watched him he rang the buzzer. That had been fast. Either something had happened to my sense of time, or the guy had actually run down the hall.

  I turned to go back into the room, and spotted his briefcase. It was resting alongside the chair that the guy had so briefly sat in. Edwards was still at the elevator doors and the car was just coming up into view. I jumped into the room, grabbed the briefcase and hustled down the hallway with it just as the elevator doors slid open and he stepped inside.

  “Hey, Edwards,” I called to him. “Hold it a second.”

  It was almost goofy, the way he reacted. I think he had already pressed the button to take the car down, but as he looked up and spotted me he jabbed at the control panel, jabbed at it again, then stepped to the back of the elevator with his eyes wide and fixed on me.

  I held up the briefcase. “You forgot this.”

  I was still about fifteen feet from the elevator, and the doors were closing. He pushed himself back against the far wall, arms out at his sides and palms pressed against the wall behind him. His mouth was open, lips stretched tight in a twisted grimace. The doors were almost closed, so I tossed the briefcase past them into the elevator cage. It barely got through, brushing against one of the doors. Then they closed and the elevator started down.

  I couldn't see what Edwards did. But I heard him scream.

  It was muffled by the walls and distance between us, faint, thin and thready. But it was the man screaming. The sound was a high, agonized wail, a piercing, nerve-jarring, almost unreal sound. You don't often hear a man scream, but I was hearing it now, and that told me why he was screaming, too.

  I knew perhaps two seconds before it happened. The elevator cage had moved down one floor when it went off. It was a hell of an explosion. Even muffled by the walls it banged against my ears. The floor shook under my feet and plaster cracked in the wall at the right of the elevator doors, and glass flew in a sharp jagged hail from the doors themselves.

  I started forward, but then stopped, whirled around and ran back to Lita's suite. I got into the bathroom just as she was stepping out of the tub. She was dripping, her flesh gleaming wetly, her chestnut hair wet through and hanging in thick ropes against her bare shoulders.

  She looked at me with her eyes wide and staring. “What...” She stopped and started over. “What happened? What was that?”

  “Some guy just tried to blow you up—or maybe me. Or more probably both of us, I don't know. But the deal backfired. Get some clothes on—we're pulling out of here.” I glared at her. “And I'll pound some sense into you later.” She looked dazed. “Snap into it,” I said. “I'll be back here as soon as I can make it—you be ready to go.”

  She nodded, swallowing, her eyes still staring.

  I swung around and ran into the hall, then down the stairs to the next floor. There were only two people, both men, in front of the elevator, but I could hear footsteps pounding up the stairs. One of the two men turned away as I ran up, his face contorted as if he'd bitten into something rotten.

  The bomb in the man's briefcase had gone off just before the elevator reached the level of this floor, and the elevator cage had stopped about two inches above the level of the hallway. The doors themselves had been blown open and hung twisted from metal strips. Inside, most of the floor had been blasted out, but enough of it remained to support the man's body.

  He lay in the very corner at the intersection of the walls, as if he had been trying to claw his way out of that point when the bomb went off. His back was wet, a lacerated mass of red, and pulpy pink flaps, and whitish threads. But his face was turned this way, probably having turned as he slumped down the walls, already dead, and his face was quiet and calm and peaceful, as the faces of the dead always are. It was really a ghastly, incongruous sight, to see that calm face almost touching the bloody back.

  For just a moment I felt sorry for him, thought of his horror at the sight of that briefcase flying through the air into the elevator with him, thought of how he must have turned and tried frantically to hide in the corner, hopelessly, with panic blooming inside him, thought of how ugly and nearly unbearable those last three or four seconds must have been for him.

  But then I remembered that the explosion was supposed to have done that to Lita Korrel, or maybe to Shell Scott, and I decided the only thing wrong with Edwards’ being dead was that he'd died too fast. His name, undoubtedly, was something other than Edwards. And there almost surely was no law firm of Edwards, Lane, and Briston. But those were things I intended to find out, among a lot of other items, before much more time passed.

  I went down to the Cad. In the trunk, along with a large number of strange items, I kept a Polaroid Land Camera and a pack of flashbulbs. When I got back to the third floor there were about a dozen people staring in at the gruesome sight. One of them, a tall gray-haired man appeared to be in a position of authority, but he didn't seem to be doing anything except fluttering his hands about.

  “Stand back,” I said. I had the camera ready, the flashbulb in, and the focus set at six feet. People stepped away and let me waltz right up to the edge of the elevator. Nobody would think of molesting any man who might remotely resemble a newspaper photographer. I snapped the picture, pulled the tape out and ripped it off then started back down the hall.

  The gray-haired guy said, “What are you doing...” He stopped and peered at my face. “Aren't you Shell Scott?”

  I didn't answer him, but I swore under my breath. A lot of people know what I look like, and right now there was one too many. This meant that my name would surely be given to the police, who would soon be arriving, and I would be in for
hours of questioning again. Or maybe even a night in a cell, under the circumstances. But there was too much that I had to do, and I didn't intend to spend any more time jawing with police.

  I hurried down the hall and into Lita's suite. She was dressed. It wasn't a smooth, careful job, and her hair was really a mess, as the gals like to say, but she was covered up in the right places and ready to go. About a minute had passed since I'd snapped the picture, so I opened the back of the camera, stuck a fingernail under the edge of the print and lifted it out.

  The image was sharp, perfectly exposed. The bloody mess that was the man's back seemed less ugly in the photograph than it had actually been, but the important thing was that his face was clear, easily recognizable by anyone who had known him.

  “Shell,” Lita said, “what's happened?”

  I stuck the photograph up before her face. “Ever see this guy before? You know who he is?”

  Her left hand went to her throat and her face twisted. “Oh,” she said. “Oh.” She looked ill.

  “Sorry.” I said. “But quick, do you know him?”

  She shook her head. “No. I've never seen him. Oh, how awful...”

  “Come on, we're getting out of here. I'll explain later. Right now we've got to move.”

  Twenty minutes later I parked in front of the Spartan Apartment Hotel. I had told Lita what had happened at the Lassiter, brought her up to date. Now I said, “I live here, and you're going to stay in my apartment while I'm out. I honestly think you'll be as safe here as anyplace else, and probably safer.”

  Lita had been silent during most of the drive. She looked almost asleep, worn out. She didn't offer any objections, and a few minutes later we were in my apartment and I was telling her, “Don't use the phone at all. Don't call anybody, understand?”

  She nodded. I used the phone myself to call Mamzel's, but the office was long closed. There was no answer at either of the two numbers Lita had for Lawrance. I checked the phone book but there was only one number listed for him there, his home phone, which Lita had already given me.

  “How about Didi?” I asked her. “Where does she live?”

  “Somewhere on Denton Place.”

  I drew a blank there, too. Neither the phone book or the city directory I keep in the apartment had any listing for Didi. And Lawrance and Didi were the only two people connected with Mamzel's that I wanted to talk to now.

  I put the phone back in its cradle and turned to Lita. She was slumped against thick pillows at the end of the divan, eyes closed, lips parted. While I'd been using the phone, she had fallen asleep. I picked her up and carried her into the bedroom, lowered her to the bed, slipped off her shoes and pulled a blanket over her. I left Lita sleeping and went out.

  In the Cadillac, I headed for Beverly Hills. I had been wanting to visit Bryce's modernistic home again, and especially his den, and that's where I was going. Several little bits of pieces were starting to fall into place now, and I needed only a couple more to have the whole puzzle put together. As I drove, I forced myself to relax, but weariness was starting to tug at my eyes and tie knots in the muscles between my shoulder blades.

  Bryce's house was dark. I parked a block away and walked back, went up to the front door like a friendly caller, and rang the bell. When there was no answer I got busy on the rear door with my picks. This time I was inside the house in about a minute.

  I'd brought along a small flashlight and it lighted my way to the den. The house was undoubtedly empty, but there was still a crawling sensation all over my back. In the den, I flashed the light over the wall of guns. It took me only a few seconds to be certain: One of the guns was missing.

  At the left of the wall there had been two rows of rifles and shotguns. In the left-hand column, a row of shotguns, with a rifle at the very top, the second space up from the floor was empty. I couldn't remember, positively, what gun had been there yesterday, but logic said it must have been a shotgun.

  And I felt more than a little sure that it was the one which had been used to pump that fat, deadly slug into John Randolph.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The next hours were busy ones. I made a tour of the dimmer, dingier, more rotten dives and beer joints in Los Angeles and even some in Hollywood. Mainly, though, I prowled Los Angeles Street, lower Spring and Main, Third Street's skidrow. I talked to crooks, winos, prostitutes, bellboys, and bums. I asked what seemed like a thousand questions about Roy Toby and Dan Bryce. And I showed my Polaroid snapshot of that bloody back and peaceful face to everybody I questioned. But for three hours I got nothing; nobody knew where Bryce or Toby were, and nobody recognized the dead man in the picture.

  The word about what I was doing was sure to reach both Bryce and Toby, because half the people I talked to would sell me out for a quarter, or half a bottle of cheap wine. While I was hunting, there was an excellent chance that I was being hunted. But finally I hit the jackpot, got two of the answers I wanted from one man.

  He was a redheaded Italian hoodlum named, appropriately enough, Dago Red. Ten years before, he had been a dangerous, much-in-demand gunman for the Rice mob in San Francisco, but now he was just a short, fat booze-hound with eyes that could have served as test patterns for color TV. Through those eyes the world would always appear bloodshot, and his hands never stopped shaking.

  I saw him about once a month the year round, and every time we met I slipped him a ten spot. He knew it wasn't because I liked him; I didn't. But it put him on my side, as much as a man like that can be on anybody's side. I found him almost by accident in one of the crumby “delicatessens” where people go to eat when they just don't care any more. Outside was a sign, “Soup—5 cents” and inside, at one of the round, linoleum-topped tables was Dago Red. He was wearing a pin-striped suit, a khaki Army shirt and a stringy black tie knotted about two inches off his Adam's apple. He was only forty-seven years old, but he looked dead and temporarily resurrected.

  Red was sitting at a corner table, his back to the intersection of the walls. That was a hangover from the days when he'd been a terror with a gun, was known to have killed three men by shooting them in the back, and always sat facing entrances with his own back to a wall. Nobody wanted to kill him now, but he still sat that way, maybe out of habit, maybe because it made him feel good, remembering the bad old days. Few things these days made him feel good.

  I went in and sat down at the table with him, put the usual ten-dollar bill alongside his soup plate. He grabbed the bill, stuffed it away and looked up at me. “Scott,” he said. “Good to see you. Especially this time.”

  That meant he was even more broke than usual. His voice was raspy from the raw whisky and wine and beer that had poured down it in the last years, but it was still strong. He needed a shave. Black stubble overpowered the occasional white or gray whiskers that salt-and-peppered his face.

  I said, “It's good to see you getting a square meal, Red.”

  He grinned. One of his front teeth was missing. “Yeah. All eight courses are split-pea soup today.” It was a dish-watery muck, thin, an off-gray in color. “That means they split one pea in it,” he said. “Usually they don't put nothin’ in it. Just spit in the water.”

  I said, “Maybe you can help me this time, Red.”

  “That'll be a twist.”

  “Roy Toby's taken a powder. I want to find him. Same goes for Dan Bryce.”

  He kept spooning in the soup, but he nodded between slurps. “Yeah.” Slurp. “I can help you —” slurp—“there, Scott. Not with Bryce, though. Don't have no idea where he'd be. Vegas, probably.”

  He scraped the last spoonful out of the bowl, then lifted it and drank the dregs. He put the bowl down on the table and said, “Lousy to the last drop.” He belched. “Toby huh?”

  He was so casual about it that I found it hard to believe at first that he actually knew where Toby was. But he did. He rubbed the back of his hand over his lips and went on, “He's out at the Ralph Gould place with a couple of his boys. Maybe more, but
I figure two of his boys is there anyways.”

  Ralph Gould was one of those “respectable” crooks chummy on the one hand with the local criminal gentry and on the other hand with the politicians and officials who could be had. Red told me that his house was now for sale, supposedly empty, and that Gould was vacationing in Miami.

  “I was in the john at the Wagner Hotel—I like a touch of class now and then, Scott—when some guy stuck his head in the door and says, ‘C'mon, Dandy, Roy just called me. We got to go keep him company.’ Or somethin’ like that. Don't remember exactly, but that's close enough.”

  “Uh-huh. That all of it. Red?”

  “Dandy says—incidentally, that's Dandy the Bibber, who works for Toby, which is how come I knew the Roy that other dude mentioned must be Roy Toby. And I recognized Dandy's voice. As who wouldn't? Anyways, Dandy says, ‘Where's he at?’ and the other dude tells him out at Gould's pile of rocks. Something like that.”

  That's the way it goes. For hours I had been talking to people, putting on the pressure, making threats and promises, and then I had hit the jackpot with a casual hello to a washed-up mobster. The rest of that jackpot was just coming up.

  I was ready to leave, but I slid the Polaroid photograph across the table to Red. “One other thing,” I said. “You ever see this guy?”

  Red looked at the picture of the dead man and said, “What in hell happened to him?”

  “Bomb caught him. His own.”

  “It figures.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The face belongs to Joe Couch. I never saw that back before.”

  “Who's Joe Couch?”

  “A wiper.” In Red's language, a wiper was a professional killer. “Uses a lot of dynamite, and sometimes a gun. Likes a silenced twenty-two target pistol when he's working. Either a big bang or no noise at all. Crack shot.” He grinned. “I knew him in the old days, up in Frisco.”

  I grinned back at him. I had almost the whole thing figured out now, I thought. It got a bit complicated, but it was built on knowledge that Toby's man Ark had killed Randolph, and that Toby was trying to muscle in on the profits of Mamzel's and had been shacked up with Zoe Avilla, and that somebody at Mamzel's had known Lawrance was to call the number Lita had left with Didi, among other things. Just to make sure, though, I said, “Who does Couch work for now, Red? Roy Toby?”