Shellshock (The Shell Scott Mysteries)

by Richard S. Prather

  “Two more, yes, indeed. But buying, you are not."

  She raised an eyebrow. “I don't believe this. I don't have a keep-the-lady-in-her-place act here, do I? A male supremacist kick?"

  “Just male, kid. You want to buy the booze it's OK by me. Just invite me to the pool hall. But I invited you out for this mad, unforgettable evening, remember?"

  “Mad?” she said. “Unforgettable?"

  “That's discouraging. We've barely started, and you've forgotten already."

  She smiled. “Must have had too much to drink."

  “OK, OK.” I wiggled two fingers at Pete.

  He brought the drinks. Halfway through those second martinis I realized that Kay got a lot more out of her onions than I did from my olive. I just popped it in, crunched it severely, and boom, down the hatch into the hooch. But she sort of sneaked up on those pearly little vegetables, nuzzled them, seduced them, probably drove them half crazy, then apparently let them dissolve somewhere near her molars. It was fascinating. I could hardly wait to see what she'd do with a steak or lobster. Probably get us both arrested.

  “That reminds me,” I said, “after this one, let's head for Hollywood, all right?"

  She nodded, and I went on, “I have selected, with the help of a computer data base and several knowledgeable maître d's who don't eat where they work, a flamboyantly seductive and sinfully romantic restaurant on the outskirts of Hollywood. The food ain't too bad, either. On the way we will be passing within a furlong of the Spartan Apartment Hotel, wherein your host resides. There, if we can stop for not more than two minutes, I will change swiftly into my pallbearer suit."

  “Do you have to talk like that?"

  “Well, it's black. What's wrong with pall—"

  “No, that junk about sinfully romantic, and all."

  “Junk. Well, I usually drink bourbon, but this perfume must have gone to my jaws. Three of them and I'd probably recite poetry to you. ‘Shoot if you must this old gray head, but spare—‘"

  “To Hollywood. But we stop at your apartment on the way?"

  “Right. OK? Of course, I could go like this, but I don't think you'd like McDonald's—"

  “You wouldn't be thinking about getting me to your apartment and trying to seduce me, would you?"

  “Wouldn't I? My dear Miss Denver, you do me a great wrong—"

  “Not yet, I haven't,” she said, smiling.

  “That's not so great. Really, all I intend to do—at least before dinner at this sinfully romantic joint—is get out of these duds and into something more depressing. That would please you, wouldn't it?"

  “I think it would."

  We went. As I passed the end of the bar, Pete leaned forward and said to me, “How's Hazel?"

  That was Pete's wonderfully subtle way of telling me he liked Hazel better than Miss Denver. But he liked Hazel better than any of the ladies I might happen to be with. So I merely said, “Haven't seen her since she ran off with the plumber, Pete. But I got the license number of his Porsche."

  Then, shoosh, and we were outside. But Pete's comment reminded me of something I wanted to do. A couple of doors down Broadway from Pete's was a little flower shop called Jeannie's, which wasn't presided over by a Jeannie but by a nice gray-haired old lady named Mrs. Nestle, from whom I had purchased a ton of posies in the past. We exchanged our usual small hugs and I told her I wanted some roses sent to the Hamilton, to be delivered by 8 a.m. tomorrow morning.

  “How many, Sheldon?” She was one of the few people who always addressed me formally.

  “Nine dozen, all of them long-stemmed red roses. Yeah, red's OK. Plus one white rose."

  “Nine dozen? Why nine dozen?"

  “Plus one. I have sinned, Mrs. Nestle. This is so maybe I won't live in hell for a week. And because nine dozen plus one add up to a hundred and nine. Which—skip it. Tied or glued onto the single white rose, include this note, please."

  I scribbled a message on one of the little “Jeannie's” cards, but didn't sign it. Just “Hazel—Wanna go to the fights?"

  “The white rose symbolizes purity, doesn't it, Mrs. Nestle? Goodness and truth and niceness, all that jazz?"

  “Well ... purity. Virginity—"

  “That's close enough."

  “Red roses usually express love. Devotion."

  “Hell, I don't want this gal to get the wrong idea. She's just a—friend. They're for Hazel."

  “The wrong idea? Nine dozen?” She looked at me intently through gold-rimmed eyeglasses. Then she sighed, “Where do you want all these flowers put up there?"

  Mrs. Nestle knew where Hazel worked, at the end of the second-floor hallway. So I said, “Just scatter them around. Have the boy put some on the computer, the PBX, on the counter, wherever."

  She sighed. “I'll deliver them myself, Sheldon. I don't know why men are so dumb."

  “Dumb? Mrs. Nestle, I have had just about enough today from the entire female sex—"

  “Dumb, dumb, dumb!” she said, smiling.

  “Well,” I replied stuffily, “we can't all be women, can we?"

  She said that was smart.

  * * * *

  We were rolling up Beverly Boulevard, two or three miles from North Rossmore, when I realized what had been bugging me about Hazel's earlier comments. It was her saying that three of those ladies had descended upon, or rather ascended to, her cubicle on the Hamilton's second floor. Her words, I recalled, had been “...plus three who actually came up here."

  It's funny how the great sprawling vastness of a man's subconscious mind will gather into itself all the information about nine billion different things, and select only one or two of them to bug him about, and often select what appear to be relatively unimportant items at that.

  What belated realization told me now was something I should have deduced immediately, the instant Hazel told me of those three enterprising females who, instead of simply phoning the number the lucky lady was supposed to call, had instead taken the trouble to discover the office address of “Shell Scott.” And slyly hastened to that address, in the hope of thus outmaneuvering all the other impostors.

  Moreover, with my powers of deduction thus sharpened to a shining point, the next conclusion was almost beautiful in the purity of its logic: If three females were smart enough to discover the location of my office, it was at least conceivable that three other even smarter females had similarly discovered the location of my dwelling, my apartment, my home.

  Thus there might, at this very moment, be one or two—even three—females waiting, waiting nervously, waiting impatiently, waiting greedily, to pounce upon me in the lobby of the Spartan Apartment Hotel.

  Wrong.

  Not three.

  Thirteen.

  Chapter Five

  It had been a pleasant drive.

  Kay and I chatted easily, laughed a little, learned some more about each other. Not a whole lot. Just that she was single, a writer of nonfiction, she'd grown up in Wisconsin and never wanted to see snow again; and that I had always wanted to go to Hong Kong and hoped someday a client from thereabouts, say Singapore, would hire me to investigate the true origin of chop suey. Negligible miscellany, light but pleasant chatter.

  However, when Kay and I walked up the steps and into the Spartan's lobby, I became immediately aware of a flutter of movement and an unusual but rather pleasant hum of well-modulated sounds, as of little animals cheeping and rustling in a bosky jungle.

  Then Jimmy, the night man on the desk, called out to me, “Shell! Boy, am I glad to see you! Eddy said some of these ladies have been here for hours, and—"

  He probably went on, but I would never know what he might have said, because his much-too-loud “Shell!” was a trigger transforming those nice little animal sounds that brushed almost delicately against the ear into the howling and shrieking of cannibal headhunters pursuing their fleeing dinners. Simultaneously, the flutter of movement became what was unquestionably some kind of female catastrophe with twenty-six arms
and twenty-six legs and at least thirteen mouths—all of which were wide open—its dismaying entirety converging upon me from every direction except straight down and obviously impelled by the desire to burst eardrums.

  I say obviously because, although somewhere in the shrill cacophony that had suddenly erupted I thought I picked up a couple of Shells or maybe Michelles and a me and a you and some I-I-I, most of what hurt my ears, and even hurt my whole damned head, was simply NOISE, absolutely impossible to describe but much like the disembodied lungs of the entire Metropolitan and Italian operas all squashed together and being jumped up and down on in the lobby of the Spartan Apartment Hotel.

  After a while I'd had quite enough. Clearly it was up to me to bring order into this bedlam, time to silence these women and make them listen to me. Before we were all deafened. Time to find out what had brought them all here—as if I didn't know—and cleverly get rid of the twelve impostors. Or thirteen. And then take Kay out to dinner. If, of course, any of that was remotely possible.

  I pushed that negative thought out of my mind right after it discouraged me, and quickly replaced it with: Piece of cake ... No problem.

  To think—finally—was to act. I faced that gang of women squarely, raised both arms, and shouted in a commanding bellow, “All you yammering babes, knock off the yammering and listen to me!"

  Nothing.

  “Hey! Listen to me, you hear?"

  It was disheartening.

  There was still a whole bunch of howling and yammering. Actually, unless my ears deceived me, which was entirely possible after what they'd been through, it was getting louder. I began seriously to wonder: What if this piece of cake couldn't be stopped? What if it was a self-perpetuating cataclysm that would just go on and on, shrieking throughout eternity?

  But, no, I wouldn't give up. I was an ex-marine! So I hoisted myself up onto the lobby desk behind me, got to my feet, and looked down at the women. “Now hear this!” I barked. “Shut the hell up or I'll knock you on your thirteen asses."

  They heard me at last. You wouldn't believe how quiet it got. The only sound was from somebody in the back row, saying, “How many?"

  “That's better!” I yelled. “I mean, that's much better, ladies. Now, pay attention, and I'll straighten everything out in a jiffy."

  I leaped lightly from the desk, started descending toward the floor.

  It's fascinating how speedily the mind can work when it wants to. When it is, so to speak, given free rein. Though I was swiftly descending, my mind was going even faster. It was zapping along like lightning. I was thinking: That's the secret, I have to stop treating these people like women. I have to stop being afraid of them. The key was to act with authority, domination, command, and treat them like men.

  That's when I knew everything was going to be all right.

  And that's when my feet landed lightly on the carpet, and my legs buckled, and I banged one kneecap with quite a crunch. I tried not to grunt as I straightened up, grunting. “All right, you miserable dogfaces,” I groaned. “Line up there.” I pointed. “Elbow to elbow, that's it. There's a fortune at stake here, right? Right! Shape up that line! Suck those guts in! Stick those chests ... ah."

  Well, they did get into a line, if a line is a figure S with a couple of hyphens in it. They hadn't moved with military snap and polish, but at least I'd gotten them away from me, and all thirteen were facing in my direction. Sort of.

  So I told them that I was indeed the Shell Scott who'd run the Personal Message in today's Times, that the fortune was real and available, and each and every one of them probably deserved it, right?

  No question about it. They all nodded and wiggled and even started making a little noise again, but I cut that off quickly, merely with a wave of my fist.

  “Now hear this,” I said slowly and deliberately, but loud. “There are thirteen of you here to claim the fortune. But only one of you can be the real Michelle. Therefore, twelve of you are out of luck. Hold that thought in your minds. All right, I want you twelve impostors to leave”—I swept an arm around dramatically and pointed a rigid finger at the Spartan's exit—“RIGHT NOW!"

  Believe it or not, three of the gals broke ranks and started ankling across the carpet, heading for the exit from the lobby. The first one kept on going speedily and disappeared into the night. But both of the others stopped after only two or three steps. One of them banged her fists together and shook her head rapidly. The other simply paused, in an attitude of dejection, shoulders slumping. But then both of them went out, not once looking back.

  I glanced over at Kay Denver, who was leaning against the lobby desk. She was either smiling aloud or laughing. It ticked me off. But then she moved away from the desk, walked toward me with that hot-honey fluidity of hips and lips and just about everything else, and I became instantly unticked.

  She stopped next to me and said, “Not too bad, Shell. Three down. How are you going to get rid of the other ten?"

  “Beats me,” I said. “You got any ideas?"

  “It's your problem,” she said. Then after a pause, “You were in the Army?"

  “Army? Ah, you refer to the authority I laid on ‘em. The domination, power, command. It should be obvious I was in the Marines. The You-nited States Marines—"

  “Please. Don't sing the ‘Halls of Montezuma’ to me. Shell, you must know how to determine the right one of these women, if there is a right one. Or at least how to eliminate the wrong ones."

  “Well, yeah. Matter of fact, I do. But ... I can't quiz them all at once, with all ten hearing the questions at the same time.” I glanced at the ladies, still standing in an S. “Not this bunch. A couple of them might split and come back later with the answers. I may not know much about women, not today anyhow, but I know my crooks."

  “So ask them one at a time. Like ... in your apartment?"

  “I was going to think of that myself, Kay. But there is a small problem. If word should get around that I—well, some narrow-minded people have foisted ridiculous rumors upon the public ear, that is they've made almost entirely baseless charges that...” I stopped, started over. “If it became advertised, or even hinted, that I took ten women into my apartment, one at a time and one after another, even if only for the briefest—actually much too brief—"

  “I understand,” she said.

  “You do? That was quick."

  “Why don't you let me be your chaperone? I'll be your unimpeachable witness that you were a perfect gentleman with all ten sex-starved ladies."

  “Who said sex-starved? They're after money ... Ah. Your little joke, hey? I'm glad you're having such a great time, Kay, dear. Yes, I'm glad one of us is. Now, if you'll stop snorting, I'll congratulate you on a peachy idea. Thanks."

  “You're welcome,” she snorted.

  “OK, let's do it."

  A couple of minutes later, after I had explained to the ladies that I would talk to them one at a time in my apartment and we had all trooped upstairs, Kay and I were in my living room with a young and attractive lady named—what else?—Michelle, and the other nine crooks were outside in the hallway.

  Kay sat at one end of my chocolate-brown divan, and I sat at the other. Michelle stood before the divan, on the far side of the black-lacquered coffee table.

  “All right, Michelle,” I said. “What is your birthday?"

  She had the year right, and the month and day. I said, “So this past April twenty-third you were twenty-eight years old, right?"

  “No, twenty-seven ... Twenty-six.” She paused, a pretty picture of confusion. “The ad in the paper said twenty-six, didn't it? That's what I am."

  “Sure, you are, you darling.” I smiled at her. “What the hell made you think you could get away with it?"

  “Screw you,” she said.

  That left nine.

  The next six were almost as easy, but I had to ask five of them to tell me their mother's maiden name. That, of course, was as far as they got. The next one, number eight of the ten, came close
st of the bunch. She was a short brunet, about five-two, and heavyset, probably twenty pounds overweight. She claimed to be Miss Michelle Mort, twenty-six years old. But I guessed she had to be at least ten years past twenty-six, if not more, with a sour and rather grimly fixed expression as if she were biting down on a piece of human gristle. She was “dressed young,” though, and perhaps even overdid it with a knee-length pink skirt, fuzzy pink sweater, low-heeled white walking shoes, and a little red ribbon in her dark brown hair. Still, of the ten, she gave me the biggest shock of all.

  “All right, Miss Mort,” I began. “Michelle. Birth date?"

  No problem. Also no problem with her age, which for sure was twenty-six. But when I asked casually, “Ever called anything else, Michelle? Nickname?"

  “Mickey sometimes,” she said. “And sometimes Spree."

  I'd been getting bored, going through the same routine so many times. But that answer shook me, not only because it was “Spree” but because the word came from this grim and sour babe who, to my eye, was only a hop from her forties.

  I took my first really close look at her, and noticed her dark eyes burning into mine, undoubtedly now—and during the questioning before now—looking intently for any twitch of eyelid or curve of lip, any sudden or involuntary change of expression.

  This was a smart one. Best of the ten, by far. Of course, she was a hell of a lot older; more time to get smart. But she'd reached for, and grabbed, the connection with the “Money for Spree” in my ad. I stood up, looked across the width of the coffee table at her.

  “That's odd,” I said mildly. “Doesn't sound like short for Michelle. Like the ‘Mickey’ you first mentioned. Which I'll bet didn't get a twitch out of me."

  Those dark eyes didn't waver. But there was no doubt she was well aware of what I meant by that. “No, it isn't,” she said evenly. “And only my oldest and closest friends call me Spree."

  “No kidding. Oldest and closest. Well, then, some of them must be pretty ... close."

  Just a little bit of a change at that. Not much. Slight tightening of the thin lips. Maybe the eyes burned more hotly.