“You may not want to answer this one, but I think you'd better if you want me to move fast, without—without dilly-dallying and dawdling, as you so sweetly phrased it."
He laughed softly, a rumble deep in his throat. “Just trying to get a line on you, Scott. Not so easy to size a man up on the phone. Be easier if I could look you over."
“Why do you have to size me up?"
“Man, you got to size everybody up. There's little old ladies who carry knives in their bustles, guys named Percy who—"
“Let me finish the original question, OK? Why all this secrecy, all this cloak and dagger, don't use the name Romanelle and so on?"
“Well...” He fell silent for a few seconds, then said, “Some of my associates—former associates—if they knew a guy named Sheldon Scott was doing a snoop for me, might try to throw some little roadblocks, shall we say, into your path."
“Why would they do that, Mr. Romanelle?"
“We'll set that question aside. It truly has nothing to do with you."
“OK, I'll let that simmer for now. But these little roadblocks you mentioned. Shall we say, like a tank armed with heat-seeking missiles, maybe?"
“If they happened to have one handy, no doubt."
“Great. So name the associates."
“You don't need that. All I'm asking you to do is find my daughter—"
“Mister, I need it. If you think I'm going to throw rocks at a tank or try to de-fang the snakes in Medusa's shimmering tresses without knowing who's driving or what's hissing, think again. And the longer you think about it, the more time you—you, not me—waste."
“You're starting to talk like me, Scott. Maybe you'll do after all. The only name I'm sure of—sure you ought to know, I mean—is a man I worked with in various enterprises until very recently. As recently as this past Monday, about four p.m. His name is Alda Cimarron, and it's ten to one he's the sonofabitch who had me shot."
“OK. That should help."
“Didn't help me much."
“That's not what I meant."
“I know. Couldn't resist it."
“You say various enterprises. What kind?"
“Just various."
“Can you clarify that a little?"
“I won't."
“How about the two guys who plugged you? You make either of them?"
“No. I've got no idea who they were. Well, an idea—I'll give any odds it was Alda hired and paid ‘em. But I didn't even see the fleepers. Just blam-blam, and there I was flopping around on the asphalt like a hooked mackerel. Thought I was a goner."
“Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'd guess their aim was pretty lousy, since you're being released from the hospital fairly soon for a gunshot victim. And, too, I got the impression from the newspaper story that maybe you weren't hit too bad."
“Not too bad, no, not from your point of view, Scott. In fact, didn't bother you at all, did it? The truth is, it was a lot of fun. I can hardly wait to do it again. Certainly added spice to my day—"
“I didn't mean to imply—"
“Those goddamn Charlies drilled me clean, no bone-hit, through the muscle of my right shoulder, which wasn't all that bad except I won't be shaking hands with the doctors here, when I thank them for poisoning me with half the pharmacopoeia, for another week or so. And one slug kind of chewed on my side, hardly enough to bleed. But the last one—last, first, second, who counts?—hit me in the gut. That's the one that knocked me down and spoiled my appetite for dinner at La Champagne."
“What I meant was, I gathered from the story in the Republic that you were able to talk with the inquiring reporter for a minute or two, and mentioned hoping to see your daughter again, so at least you weren't killed instantly."
“Nicely put. But yeah, that goddamn reporter. Here I am, halfway into the next world, I can feel myself getting charbroiled, and this kid, looked to be about twelve years old, is hunkered down on his heels eyeing me like I'm a specimen. Would you believe?"
“Yeah. In fact, I'd wondered if—"
“This misbegotten child of a high school black mass hunkered there and asked me at least eleven hundred wonderful questions, of which I answered maybe two or three, and I've been kicking myself for not buttoning my yapper ever since. Stupid of me to tell that jerk I was hoping I could see my little girl again. But, like I said, I thought I was a goner. And I'd been thinking about little Spree, anyway, a lot lately, running things over in my mind, and ... Well, at least I didn't mention her name."
“Something else puzzles me. You were shot in the parking lot of the Medigenic Hospital, but the ambulance took you to Scottsdale Memorial. Why not into Medigenic, since you were already there?"
“Because I told everybody in the general area if they didn't take me to Memorial I'd make sure they got their arms and heads fractured by personal friends of mine, and I'd sue them for ten million dollars, plus I would personally pry off their kneecaps. No way I was going to let them roll me into Medigenic."
“Why not? Something wrong with the hospital, they only treat vegetarians or—"
“No, it's a nice place. Professional, color TV, at least a couple nurses that don't look like male wrestlers or morgue attendants. I just wasn't about to be stuck in there."
“Don't you think I ought to know why?"
There was silence for a while. Then he said, “You're probably right. The joint is owned by Alda Cimarron. You recall his name, don't you? By him and the president of the Board there, doctor named Bliss, Phillip Bliss. Hell, I've got a little piece of it myself. Does that answer your question?"
“Sure does. OK, not much more. The info Worthington sent me, he had to get from you. What you could remember, I mean, not from documents, records, birth certificates, that sort of thing."
“That's right."
“OK, if you remember, I need to know the full maiden name of your wife, place and date of your marriage, name of the man she married after you two split—the first man she married after that, since I gather there's been more than one."
“There's been more than a couple, and still counting. I think she was getting ready to absorb number five—"
“Mainly I need the first one after Claude Romanelle. And where Michelle—Spree—was born.” Something wiggled up in my head.
Romanelle told me his wife was Nicole Elaine Montapert when he met her, and maybe he should have left it that way. He remembered the date when they'd been married in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, which was also where Michelle Esprit Romanelle had been born, in the Lauderdale-East Hospital. But he couldn't remember any of Nicole's names that he'd sent cash or cashier's checks to a number of years ago—the surnames, that is, of his ex-wife's subsequent husbands—except the most recently divorced one, Vetch, whom she had met, married, and lived with in Reno, Nevada. And I didn't think that would be much help to me. If Michelle had adopted a different surname after her parents separated, most likely she would have assumed the next husband's name rather than the name of number three or four.
I said, “The info I got was merely that Michelle does not go by the name Romanelle anymore. But is that for sure? Is it just an assumption, or do you know she dropped the name she was born with?"
“It's a fact. She hasn't used the name since maybe a year or two after I walked out on them. Nicole made sure of that.” He paused, then continued, “I see where you're going, Scott. Maybe I should give you a little background. Never mind why I split, I just got fed up and left. Abandoned wife and child, walked out free as an eagle. Not very noble and long-suffering; but no excuses. I've told you, I send them some cash every six months or so, at least every year. So I've been talking once or twice a year to my ex for twenty years now, and each call ages me about a year or two extra. Say, that would make me about ... ninety-nine now. You wouldn't know it, would you?"
“You could have fooled me."
“Well, I build myself up with vegetables and raw meat and push-ups, and about three shots of Jack Daniel's, before each time I call her,
or figure she's due to call me from some new place, because I know it'll give that nonstop mouth of my pre-eagle days a chance to tell me, one more time, everything I did wrong since the first time I crapped a diaper. The first couple of years, way back, I asked to say hello to Spree, but you can guess how that went over. So I never again said hello to little Spree, or asked how she was, or got to tell her ... tell her I was sorry."
He coughed a time or two, then said, “Nicole, dear, sweet Nicole, who in another incarnation gave tips on technique to Lucrezia Borgia, took pains to let me know she'd confessed to her daughter, which presumably she gave birth to by dividing in half like an amoeba, exactly what kind of a cruel, heartless, Jack the Ripper rake and libertine the virtual stranger, once known to them by the alias of Claude Romanelle, really was.” He paused one more time. “I don't know what Michelle's name might be now. But I know it isn't Romanelle."
I said slowly, “Just a thought, Mr. Romanelle. When I was talking with Bentley Worthington, more out of frustration than anything else, I mentioned something about running an ad for anybody named Michelle who happened to be alive in the universe, just a facetious comment. But there might be something wiggling here. I've never heard the name Spree before. There wouldn't be many more of those, if any. Now, I know you don't want me to use the name Romanelle, but is there any reason why I couldn't use the name Spree? And also Michelle, for that matter."
“You mean in an ad? In a newspaper?"
“Right. Maybe in the Personal Message column. I haven't given it a serious thought until this minute. But the name—strike that, I won't use it as a name, just a word, the only name will be Michelle. And the word spree wouldn't mean a thing to anybody except your daughter, except to somebody named, or once called, Spree. It's one way to go. And there aren't many other ways."
“Well ... Maybe.” Silence for ten seconds. Then, softly, as if more to himself than to me, “None of those sonsofbitches would know what we called Michelle back then. No hassle.” Then, with his normal loudness, “No problem, Scott. Can't think of any."
“OK. Last question. It's been twenty years, so you probably wouldn't know your daughter if you saw her. And I don't know beans about her. As a kid, did she have any identifying marks that she'd still have today?"
“Marks?"
“Marks, scars, a wart on her nose, anything."
“Just the birthmark. On her chest there."
“On her chest where?"
“Little brownish or tan splotch—it's in the photograph I gave to Worthington for you. You got it, didn't you?"
“Yeah. Just a minute."
I picked up that faded old photo, grimaced one more time at the little kid's tortured expression, then looked over the rest of it. Sure enough, there was something, a little blotch on the skin over the ribs, on the left side. Not large. At first I thought it was from a hole in the negative, or a fly speck, though it was too big a speck for any but a monster fly. I held the picture near my face and squinted, and could make out a small blotch of darker pigment. On little Michelle, it would then have been only about half an inch wide and maybe an inch or so from top to bottom, but irregularly shaped, with what looked almost like a little wheel at the bottom and another arched line on top.
I said to Romanelle, “Right, got it. That's good enough. You understand, it's at least possible another lady, not Michelle, might try to claim she is Michelle. So it could be important to have something as proof of identity other than the right answer to the question ‘What was your mother's maiden name?’ and so forth."
“Humh,” Romanelle said. Then, “Scott, I've been thinking. As you spoke, my mind was wandering. Back to the days when Michelle's mother-to-be and I met."
I wondered what he was getting at. He was speaking almost dreamily, in a kind of singsong. “I may not have been completely fair in my comments about old Garbage Mouth—I mean, Nicole,” he went on. “Actually, the first couple of years weren't all that bad. And a lot of the troubles were my fault. Like, oh, when she caught me bare-assed in the kitchen with the cook. While Cookie was fixing dinner. Ruined the dinner—little things like that."
“While ... ? How—?"
“But what I want to say is, when we got married, Nicole was a fine-looking woman all around. Very pretty face, good legs, damned bright head on her shoulders. But the thing was, the memorable thing about Nicole was, she had the biggest, most astonishing, most perfect, most gorgeous pair of tits west of Zanzibar."
“She did, huh?"
“She sure did. Why, it was nearly a month after we met before I realized she had a little mole at the corner of her mouth. Now, some men might not understand my fascination with what others—even you, perhaps—might consider mere anatomical protuberances. Right, Mr. Scott?"
“Me? Oh, no, I wouldn't ... call ‘em mere—that."
“I didn't think you would, Mr. Scott."
Something cuckoo was going on here. And twice in a jiffy he'd called me “Mr.” Always before it was just Scott.
“How would you know?” I said suspiciously.
“I have had—reports."
“Reports?"
“Reports. It would, therefore, be best for all concerned—assuming you are indeed swiftly successful in finding little Spree—"
“Little Spree? Yeah."
“—if you satisfied yourself about her identity merely by asking such questions as, ‘What was your mother's maiden name?’”
“You got that from me. Just a minute ago."
“You see, Mr. Scott—"
“Incidentally, what happened to plain old Scott?"
“—it is, perhaps, a bit late for me to start becoming protective—overly protective, even vengeful and maniacal—about my innocent little girl."
“Vengeful? Maniacal? Romanelle, are you out of your cotton-picking tree? Man, she's a grown woman. She's got to be twenty-six years old by now. That's pretty old."
“Precisely. Consider what that means. Perhaps to some she is a grown woman. But, to me, to me she is still my tiny sheltered child."
“Ah, come on. If this is what it sounds like—and I think it really sounds like what it sounds like—then you have popped your cork for sure."
“It is my cork. And if I wish to pop it, who is to say nay? I am attempting to convey to you my intent, my concern, that no harm, of any nature, be visited upon my little Spree until I see her once more."
“Do you think you could stop calling this old woman your little—"
“Let me make my request clear—let's call it a request, shall we, Mr. Scott?” And he went on from there for a minute or so, all in that gentle singsong, about how, should any discomfort not desired by his—yeah, his little—Spree be visited upon her, specifically by me, what he had promised those people in the parking lot, who suggested taking him into Medigenic, would be merely openers for Sheldon Scott. I gathered that his “personal friends” might leave parts of me in Glendale, and parts of me in Pasadena, and bits and pieces in other places not polite to mention.
When he finished, or ran down, I said, “Who am I talking to here? Is this the ninety-nine-year-old invalid who cuddled Cookie in the kitchen?"
He chuckled. “It isn't easy to scare the hell out of you, is it?"
“Not too easy. And not lately, Romanelle."
“Well, I think you'll do,” he said. “So find her quickly, will you?"
“That's another damn thing, Romanelle. What's all this baloney about speed, quick, hurry? What's the difference if it takes an extra day or two?"
“Just a day or two might not matter. But much longer...” He stopped. “I did not intend to mention this, but perhaps it will accelerate your efforts somewhat. Perhaps not. I suppose I've been ... clinging to a curious kind of pride. The doctors did an excellent job on my wounds. But when they went—went inside, as they say, to repair the gut-shot, the surgeon discovered a previously unsuspected gastric carcinoma in there."
“Cancer?"
“That is the layman's term, yes—physi
cians live in fear that we may understand what they tell us, don't they? Well, they cut out what they could, but were unable to get it all and fear it has metastasized. So the doctors are impatient to cook me with cobalt and then administer sufficient chemotherapy that I will be able to kill cockroaches merely by breathing upon them. Oh, I'm not going to expire in a week or even a month. But such news does lend a certain sense of urgency to one's days."
I didn't say anything.
He added, “Do you have the information you need, Scott?"
Back to Scott now. What had I done right? “I think so."
“Then good luck. Get busy, get to work, get out amongst ‘em—"
“If you say ‘Get cracking,’ I'll quit."
“Find Spree for me."
“I will,” I said.
* * * *
By 10 a.m. I had called two detective agencies, one in Reno, Nevada, and the other in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The first would try to run down anybody named Vetch who had been married in Reno to a woman named Nicole, and if he was found simply ask him what his stepdaughter's name was and where she and/or his ex-wife was living now. I hoped it would be that easy. Fort Lauderdale would start with the marriage of Claude and Nicole Romanelle, and the birth of their child, Michelle Esprit, and try to trace them forward from that point toward today, hopefully discovering Michelle's full name and whereabouts long before reaching here and now.
I had also—in fact, it was the first thing I did—called in an ad for the Personal Message and Missing Persons columns of the Los Angeles Times. I was lucky to get the call in early enough—in addition to pulling the string of an acquaintance who worked for the advertising department of the paper—so that the ad would appear in tomorrow's morning edition.
The ad copy I'd scribbled on my pad was atop the desk, and I read it one more time, to see if I'd broken any of Romanelle's rules. Even though the ad itself might have been more fetching, the rules appeared to be intact. The copy read:
Shellshock (The Shell Scott Mysteries) Page 3