Dagger of Flesh

by Richard S. Prather

  "Yeah." I was wondering if I did have till seven tomorrow night. I was wondering if there were any other suggestions floating around in my brain, suggestions I didn't yet know anything about.

  We were both sitting quietly, thinking, when noises started coming from the recorder again. They were sharper and clearer this time. I heard the sound of scraping, as of a key in a lock, then the click of a door opening.

  "I remember this part," I told Bruce. "This must be when I went back and picked up the recorder."

  From the speaker came Red's clear voice saying loudly, "What's the matter, mister?" Then sounds of footsteps, a grating and banging as I'd picked up the microphone in the closet, and finally complete silence.

  "That's it," I said. "All of it. Right after that I left the hotel and called you." I got up. "Well anyway, I feel a lot better, Bruce. Thanks for everything. Guess there's not much else tonight, huh?"

  "Guess not. Come down to the office tomorrow, some time in the afternoon. In the meantime I'll try to figure something out."

  "Figure hard. I'll leave this damn recording here. Maybe you can get something else out of it."

  He nodded, got up and saw me to the door. I went out into the darkness of a warm Southern California night, and I was so cold I was almost shivering.

  Back at my apartment, I lay quietly in bed trying to think back over the last two days and pick through my memories and say, "This is real, this happened to me, this I know for sure." It only confused me more. I thought of how little men know about the secrets of the mind, how ignorant we are of what makes us laugh or feel afraid or make love or kill. Year after year men had stripped away more of the mind's defenses, learned more of the secret places and the hidden motives, the results of conditioning, but there was so little we could say we really understood. The mind was still a strange and sometimes frightening place filled with darkness.

  I lay awake for a long time before I fell asleep.

  Chapter Sixteen

  THE TWO ALARMS went off almost simultaneously and I was wrenched violently awake. Sunlight streamed in through the open windows. I lay still, letting memory creep back into me as the alarms shrilled, then grew fainter, "pinged" hesitantly a last few times, then stopped completely.

  It was eight o'clock. That was right. I remembered setting the alarms last night for eight. I looked at my arms. No more punctures. Everything normal. My clothes were in the closet, not draped over the chair. Everything was just as it should be. I remembered my thoughts and doubts of the night before and shrugged them off. The hell with them.

  This was a brand new morning. I'd had a sound sleep and I felt as good as I ever did this early. After a cold shower and breakfast I sat in the kitchen over a cup of black coffee and looked at the day ahead of me.

  This is the day, Scott, I thought. Today you get even, maybe. Today you find out what the hell's been going on and fix some bastard's wagon, if you're lucky.

  I wanted to get on with it, get moving, do something. I wished it were already seven p.m., even though part of me dreaded that hour, but I was anxious to get it started and over with. My brain seemed clear enough. I remembered everything that had happened yesterday, and some ideas were rumbling around inside me.

  I carried another cup of coffee into the living room and set it on the table alongside the couch, then picked up the phone, dialed Homicide and asked for Captain Arthur Grant.

  After the usual chitchat I asked him, "You pick up Lucian or Potter yet?"

  "Not yet. We will."

  That was a funny deal. Where the hell were these two? I said, "Well, brace yourself, Art. I've got a lousy story to tell you. Have you talked to Bruce Wilson this morning?"

  "No. What about Wilson?"

  "This is about me. Hang onto your seat and your temper. And listen, let me go all through this thing before you bust my ear. Agreed?"

  "What the hell you talking about?"

  "I'll tell you. Only for God's sake don't send any squad cars out here till I'm finished."

  "You nuts or something?"

  I interrupted, "Okay, Art?"

  "Yeah, yeah, get on with it."

  I got on with it. I gave him everything I could remember, and twice while I was speaking strangled sounds came out of the receiver. But I kept going, through the whole story.

  "So there it is, Art," I finished. "Bruce has it all. He'll back it up and square away anything I missed. How about tonight? Can you set it up? You know, bug the place, have some of the boys around?"

  He didn't say anything.

  "Art? Art, you there?"

  "Yeah. Damn you."

  "And, Art. I'm sorry about that—those prints. That business. I've been—mixed up."

  "Yeah, you have been, you bastard. I oughta pull you back in here."

  "I suppose I've got it coming. But, listen, Art, how about the deal for tonight? I sure as hell don't want to be in the can."

  "I'll talk to Wilson and call you back."

  He hung up and I put the French phone back on the hook and got out pen and paper. Then I sprawled on the divan and started jotting down the little disconnected things I'd picked up in the last couple of days. I listed the names of all the people I'd run up against, what I knew about them and their relationships, and I was still playing with that when the phone rang. It was ten-thirty.

  Art was calling. "Shell? I talked with Wilson."

  "Yeah. You convinced?"

  He grunted. "I suppose so. Against my better judgement. You still want to go through with that crazy scheme tonight?"

  "You're damn right I do. Any objections?"

  "I don't like it a hell of a lot. We could grab this character at the room."

  "Not good, Art. What then? Beat him with a hose? I've got another angle. Look. I'll be down later and talk to you about it. Hell, we've worked together before and we've always come out all right."

  "Yeah. No screwup like this before."

  "How well I know. It's my neck."

  "Okay, Shell. Incidentally, we started it already. The place is bugged. The whole deal's almost set. Two plainclothes men are in the hotel now. And nobody has any idea who the hell this J. Smith is. Like a ghost."

  "That would fit. Maybe it is a ghost. That's all I need."

  He laughed hollowly. "Keep your pants on, Shell. See me down here. When?"

  "Say two."

  "Right." He hung up.

  I sat around the apartment scribbling some more, had lunch, and at one-thirty I called Bruce Wilson. "You got any ideas?" I asked him.

  "Yeah, Shell. I think I've got something that'll work. Come down as soon as you can."

  "I'm on my way."

  By two-fifteen I'd finished listening to Art Grant bawling me out, and we'd at least cleared the air. Everything was set for seven p.m. Detectives would occupy both rooms adjacent to Room 524, with equipment set up so they could hear and record every word and sound. The place would be swarming with plainclothes officers and it didn't seem as if anything very horrible could happen to me when I stepped inside that room—I kept telling myself.

  I shook Art's hand when I left and said, "Oh, yeah. One other thing, Art. Tell Hill I take it back—he's not a bastard."

  He grinned. "Get on with you," he said.

  Bruce Wilson had his feet propped on his desk when I went in. "Hello, Trilby," he said.

  "I'm a hell of a Trilby. I've just been singing to Grant, though."

  He grinned. "He came in to see me. Damn near exploded, but eventually he calmed down."

  I nodded. "Looks like everything's set for tonight. Except me. You're the psychiatrist, Bruce. You said on the phone you had some ideas. Well?"

  He pulled his feet off the desk and gestured toward the tape recorder in a corner of the room. "I ran through that again this morning," he said. "Here's how it looks. You want to go back to Room Five-twenty-four tonight, but you don't want to go into a hypnotic trance again at the command, 'Sleep! Fast asleep,' and so forth. Right?"

  "Right."

>   Bruce went on, "Our problem is how to make you resist that suggestion. First of all, you'll be ready for it and determined not to be influenced by it this time. But we have to do better than that, and it's better if you don't hear the suggestion at all! I'll try hypnosis, for negative auditory hallucination, but if that fails the only thing left that I can think of is plug up your ears."

  "Plug—you mean so I don't hear anything?"

  "That's right." He grinned. "You got a better idea?"

  I told him I hadn't and he said, "I imagine when you go inside that room the first thing he'll do will be to say the same words on the recording, the same ones used last night. Possibly he'll point at you, snap his fingers, make some sign. We don't know because we can't tell from the record. But if you can't hear him, and if you look someplace else rather than at him when he speaks, you should be able to avoid any effects."

  I thought that over. "Sounds all right, but how the hell will I know what I'm being asked if I can't hear?"

  "Might be able to fix that. Maybe plugs that you can take out of your ears. If you get a chance."

  I swallowed. "If—Okay. So then I can hear this character. What if he catches on?"

  "That's your problem. You've got to convince him."

  "Swell." I knocked it around. "That's what I asked for, though. But—what if this character starts carving up my arm, or sticking needles in me? You figure that?"

  "Novocain."

  I stared at him. "Novocain. Will it work? You can't fill me full of the stuff, can you?"

  "Nope. And maybe it won't work. I'll squirt a little into the vein in your arm and hope that takes care of it. I can't deaden both your arms and legs and all the rest of you, but it might help. And you'll just have to hope the guy's careless now, after things went so smoothly last night. If he isn't—well, that's your problem again."

  "I'm laughing. And if he sticks a nail in my leg and I jump, then I kick his teeth in, huh?"

  "Something like that." He frowned. "Let's just hope he's careless and doesn't pull one of the standard tests like telling you you're going to smell some sweet perfume, then sticking a bottle of ammonia under your nose. You couldn't fake that. Let's hope he uses the same test—if any—that he used yesterday."

  "Yeah. He should be pretty confident. There's no way he could know we're on to him—at least I hope there isn't."

  "There's one difficulty."

  "One? There's about a million."

  "One big one. You'll remember that when he woke you up before—at the end of the recording—he told you to open your eyes and appear normal. That was right at the end, so it must mean your eyes were closed all the rest of the time. Which means he'll expect your eyes to close when he gives you the order to sleep."

  "Yeah, I see."

  It was getting complicated. We spent almost an hour going over the recording again and figuring out how I should act in order to appear like a hypnotized person. There was a hell of a lot I didn't know, little things like the way I'd walk and talk and look, and Bruce patiently coached me till he thought I was ready.

  What it boiled down to was this: I'd go into the room and as soon as the person inside started to wave his arms or whatever he was going to do and ordered me to go to sleep—assuming things would go as they had before—I was to avert my eyes, then close them and hope it worked. From there on in I was on my own. My arms would be slightly anesthetized, but I hadn't yet figured out how I was going to carry this thing off when I had my eyes shut and couldn't see, and my ears plugged up so I couldn't hear. I was going to be deaf and blind in the hope that I wouldn't be struck dumb.

  If all went smoothly, which seemed more doubtful the longer I thought about it, every word that was spoken would be heard and recorded by police officers in the rooms on either side of us—and that was my big play. That was what I was after—words that couldn't be taken back. My words, but also some other words I was after. And that was also why I wanted to do it this way, just the way it was set up. There was a good chance I'd get enough to hang somebody.

  And if things got rough, well, at least there'd be cops all over the place. Not much could happen. Of course, I might get myself killed.

  Bruce spent over an hour trying unsuccessfully to hypnotize me, varying his technique, without success. Then we sat down at his desk and he said, "That's about it for now, Shell. Nothing else I can do. It's not much, but ... this was your idea."

  "I know. You've helped plenty. One more thing, Bruce. Suppose I get away with this? I mean, fool the guy, manage to get the damn gook out of my ears and so on. What if he catches on all of a sudden and, bang, tells me to go to sleep. Will I?"

  "It's hard to say, but I'm afraid you'd go right to sleep. It's not really sleep, you know, but you'd still be under his control."

  "That's what I was afraid of. Then I've got to fool him. The whole point of this thing is for me to keep my wits about me. If I do, maybe I can cross the guy into some damaging stuff. I want to sew this character up tight."

  Bruce nodded. We sat quietly for a while. There really wasn't much else to do. From here till nearly seven there was little to do except think about it.

  At six-thirty I used the phone on Bruce's desk and called the Weather home. Gladys answered.

  "Hello, Mrs. Weather," I said. "This is Shell Scott."

  Her voice got cooler. "What is it?"

  "I want to ask you a question or two, if it's all right."

  "It's not, but go ahead."

  "On Saturday night, a week ago, who was the last person to leave the party?"

  "Why, it's hard to say. Either Mr. Hannibal or Arthur."

  "Ann's boyfriend?"

  "Yes."

  "How about Hannibal? Wasn't he with Miss Stewart?"

  "Yes. He came back after he took her home."

  "Could you tell me what for?"

  She hesitated only momentarily, then said, "Jay asked him to. He talked to us for quite a while."

  "And Arthur? Did he leave before or after Hannibal?"

  "I'm not sure. You know how it is with young people."

  "Yeah. Thanks. Is Ann around?"

  "Yes. Do you want her?"

  "Please."

  In a minute or two Ann was speaking. "Yes?"

  "This is Shell, Ann. About the party Saturday. After Hannibal came back, who left first? Arthur or Hannibal?"

  "Mr. Hannibal? Who says he came back?"

  "I—thought he did. Didn't he?"

  "I'm sure I don't know. Why?"

  "Just wondered. Thanks."

  She hung up gently and so did I.

  Bruce said, "It's about time we took off. You ready?"

  "As ready as I'll ever be," I said. "Let's go."

  Chapter Seventeen

  WE PARKED a block away from the Phoenix Hotel, on the opposite side of the street, in a plain black sedan with no official Shellings. With me were Bruce Wilson and Lieutenant Hill, who sat behind the wheel.

  I looked at my watch again. Just a minute or two till seven. It was well after sundown now and the street lights pushed at the darkness. I looked across the street wondering if I'd just get out and go, or if I'd experience again that welling urge inside me, foaming and growing stronger, pushing me to get on with it, get going.

  I leaned against the back seat of the car and closed my eyes. It was like being at the bottom of a deep pit, far away from surface sounds. In both my ears were the plugs Bruce had made, feeling as if they'd been jammed in brutally right up to my eardrums. They were a little painful, but they worked. I could hear a shout, but ordinary conversation was inaudible. Bruce had attached a thin, almost invisible wire to the plug in my left ear, the thread running back under the neck of my coat and down to the bottom of my coat where my left hand could grasp it. It was a little like a hearing aid in reverse—sort of a lack-of-hearing aid. I felt as if I were wired for sound, but I couldn't hear a thing.

  My left ear ached and throbbed. Back at headquarters I'd tried the gimmick twice, testing it to see if I
could yank at the wire and pull the plug out. The first time we'd used a thread and it had broken. The second time, with the wire, the plug scraped out and I thought I'd lost an ear, but the plug slithered down out of sight under my coat.

  Bruce tapped me on the shoulder and I opened my eyes. He was looking at me, holding a big, ugly, gleaming hypodermic syringe in his hand.

  The skin crawled up my back, but I took off my coat and pulled up my shirt sleeves. It took only a few seconds: the deft plunging of the sharp needle into the vein in my forearm—up high where there'd be little chance it would be noticed later—first one arm and then the other, the dull pain as the Novocain was squeezed from the barrel of the syringe and pressed through the hollow needle into my arm. I watched with a fixed fascination as Bruce's thumb moved slowly downward, forcing the fluid out.

  He'd already warned me that there was such a network of veins in the arm that this was just a gamble, that chances were it wouldn't numb enough of my arm to guarantee anything. Even so, I felt better. I wanted all I could get in my favor. Then he was finished and shook his head, saying something I couldn't distinguish, and clapped me gently on the back before he put the hypodermic kit into his little black case. I leaned back and closed my eyes again, my arms tingling slightly. I waited.

  Then it came.

  Just the breath of a thought: let's go, Scott. Let's get going, get to the Phoenix. I tested the impulse, waited, that slight, dim fear of the strangeness starting through me again. I waited till I was sure, while the force of the urge grew stronger and more demanding even though I knew what was happening and why it was happening, and the fear grew a little stronger, too. I sat quietly for another few minutes before I nodded to Bruce and Hill and got out of the car.

  I slammed the car door behind me, then turned to see if it had actually closed. I hadn't heard it. I looked carefully up and down the street, watching for the cars I couldn't hear. The blaring of a car horn penetrated my consciousness dimly, and I waited for a moment before starting across the street.

  They planned to follow me later. I didn't want anything to spoil the play now. I'd had plenty of time to think, and sitting in the car with the sound blotted from my mind I'd once again gone over all the little things I'd put together for an answer.