Shellshock (The Shell Scott Mysteries)

by Richard S. Prather

  “When can I see her?"

  “When you won't get us all killed doing it.” I leaned toward him. “A little while ago, when you said ‘first things first,’ I thought maybe you couldn't wait to tell me how pleased and relieved and happy you are that I got you away from Cimarron and Bliss and the Cowboy. Before they put your brain in a bottle and stuck it on a shelf with the other pathological specimens. Where did I go wrong?"

  He grinned. He really seemed amused, almost pleased. “Goddammit, Scott, I like your style. You must be as cantankerous as I am. Well ... for some reason, I always had trouble thanking anybody, for anything. Little speck on my beautiful character. But, well. ah ... thanks. Yes. Thanks for springing me from Alda and Bliss and Groder, even if you goddamn near killed me doing it.” He paused. “You know who all three of ‘em are, huh?"

  “I know a good deal more than their names, Romanelle. And I expect to know a lot more than I do now when you finish filling in the cracks. So start anyplace you want, whatever's comfortable. Just get started."

  He nodded. “Fair enough. Well, when I talked to you on the phone Monday, I was in the hospital. Got released the next day, went home that night, and they were waiting there for me, already in the house.” He cocked his head on one side. “That was Tuesday night. What day is it now?"

  “Thursday. Who was there?"

  “Jay Groder and Fred Keats. Fred laid a sap over my head. No need for it, I'd set everything up the way I wanted it, and I wasn't going to run. No need for the damned sap. Somebody ought to kill that crazy sonofabitch."

  “I already did,” I said.

  “What? You what?"

  When I had talked to Andy Foster, by pretending I knew more than I did I'd gotten info from him that he might not have spilled otherwise. This Claude Romanelle was a different breed of cat, but it was probably even more important that he be informed, right here at the start, that I knew much more than he might suspect. Sure, he was my client; but I had a hunch he might leave a few facts out of his tale if he believed I wouldn't catch the omissions. And I didn't want anything left out, so I decided to hit him with a lot all at once.

  So I said, “I shot and killed Fred Keats last night in your home. He was there—with Dr. Bliss, by the way—pretending to be you, had your driver's license in his wallet. Which I checked after I killed him."

  Romanelle's interest was complete. His large dark eyes, large like Spree's but brown, were fixed unmoving on my face as I continued, “You might also want to know that it was the Cowboy—Jay Groder—who shot you last week. Andy Foster was with him but Andy didn't hit you, he didn't even try to. You might want to thank him one of these days."

  “How the hell—"

  “Toker's dead, incidentally. I don't know—"

  “He's dead? Jesus H.—"

  “—if that fake assay on Golden Phoenix is public knowledge, haven't seen it on the news, but that part of the con's sure to pop pretty soon. I haven't checked the price of the stock today, so I don't know if it's in the toilet yet. Today, tomorrow, next week, gotta be soon. Want me to call Paine Webber for a quote on GPXM?"

  Romanelle took a deep breath, let it out. “You're something else,” he said, “Where'd you get all this?"

  “It's my business."

  “And it's all true? Keats, Groder, and ... Toker?"

  “It's all true."

  He was silent for at least fifteen or twenty seconds, eyes rolled left toward a corner of the room. Then he looked back at me. “A ton of shit,” he said slowly, “is going to hit the fan."

  “So why don't you get busy filling me in, Romanelle? Fill in the parts I may not know, and maybe we can avoid some of the spray."

  He nodded. “I guess you must already understand the basic scam was to run Phoenix way up from two bits or so and bail out around thirty. Only using a real mine, with some real gold ore in it, instead of just a paper play, and building it all up for three, four years, a heavy but careful operation. It was going to be over in another month or so. After one more sensational assay report from Toker—which isn't likely to happen now, is it?"

  “Not unless it comes through in a séance,"

  “I have little faith that it will. Well, Alda and the doc each had a million shares going in, there's three million back East with the money guys, some very hard guys indeed. And I pulled a million for my part in the play. I've got a little more leeway with my piece than they do, because I'm not legally an officer of the company, just a ... consultant."

  He shifted in the chair, crossed one leg over the other, still wearing that green hospital robe he'd had on when I found him. I'd have to dig up some suitable clothing for him; but that small problem didn't concern me much at the moment.

  Romanelle went on, “About my part, maybe it doesn't look sweeter than sarsaparilla, but I came into this thing kicking and scratching. None of it was my idea."

  “Sure."

  “It's the truth, Scott. You don't need to believe it. But, well, it goes back a long way. Back to Chicago, the old days, when I was hooked up with Derabian and his bunch. Alda Cimarron was just a kid then, tough, smart, nearly as big as he is now. He was muscle then. Me, I worked a little con, did a scam or two, nothing fancy, and no violence. But then ... well, I killed a guy. Self-defense, the mark didn't cool out, blew his top, jumped me. I never carried a gun, but I ducked, picked up one of those big vases with sand in it, the kind you put out cigarettes in, and hit him on the back of his head with it. Broke his neck."

  Romanelle took another deep breath, let it out with a soft sighing sound. “Cimarron, young Derabian, couple of other boys, they all saw it. And this mark was a political guy, close to the mayor at that time. Nobody got prosecuted, still an open case, you could check it. And Alda, Sylvan, they could still testify about it—no statute of limitations on hitting a guy with an ashtray. Even ... umm.” He paused, brows knitted, went on, “My poison-fanged ex-sweetness was there, too, saw it happen."

  “Nicole? She was there when you killed this guy?"

  “Is that her name? I've called her so many other things, sometimes I forget. But, yeah, Nicole—hell, we were already having enough trouble to fill a psycho ward, so I just split. Came out to the West Coast, later wound up here, in Arizona. So ... When Cimarron started up out here, along with Derabian and Bliss and some peasants, they asked me in. Or told me I was in. Take your pick, the whole thing was one of those unspoken agreements that can deafen you. I'd play along, they wouldn't dig up that old corpse in Chicago, and I'd make a few mill along the way. They wanted my smarts, they said, my brain—which they just got through damn near ruining—and there wasn't much I could do about it. The alternative was too depressing. I know those guys."

  “OK, for now let's say you couldn't help yourself. But let's also get back to here, Romanelle. Back to Arizona and the Golden Phoenix, and Toker. And where I came in. You mentioned this whole operation would have been wrapped up in another month?"

  “Or less. After one more report from Toker to bump the price over the last hurdle. Maybe you better tell me about Toker. Who killed him?"

  “We'll get to that. I already know that you personally arranged with Toker for the fake reports, so you don't have to hold back anything on that account."

  He blinked. “How in hell did you—never mind. He wasn't a problem. He was eager. Part of it was that Alda had me set it up with three hundred thousand shares in a fake-name account that was really Toker's. Only he could dispose of those shares, and if Phoenix did get to thirty it adds up to nine million. The man was not reluctant."

  “Only Toker could dispose of that stock?"

  “Well ... yeah. Just him. Or me if something happened to him. Which, I guess, it has."

  “How'd it get set up in such a sweet way for you? How come no mention of Cimarron, or Derabian, or whoever?"

  He looked straight into my eyes. “Because I set it up that way, Scott, that's how. You think I'm an idiot?"

  “Basically, then, you and Cimarron were going to pa
y Toker several million bucks, depending on the price he could get for those shares, just for doing a couple of phony reports. Is that the large economy size of it?"

  “You're a suspicious sonofabitch, Scott. Glad you're working for me.” He paused. “You still are, aren't you?"

  “I still am."

  “You better be, or my ass remains stuck in the fan. OK, Alda—not me, it was Alda's program, I just helped him with some ins and outs—was planning, after it all crashed, to let those three hundred thousand shares surface, along with a trail showing they were Toker's, so it could look like he'd maybe faked the assays on his own, his idea, by his lonesome. Profit on three hundred thousand GPXM at any price could make most people believe it. We might not even have to skip the state."

  I nodded slowly. “And Toker wasn't going to deny it, right? Or wouldn't be able to maybe?"

  “I knew you'd ask something like that. Alda never said it, but the impression managed to grow in me that Toker wouldn't be around to deny anything. Does that satisfy you, Scott? You sure as hell don't talk like a man working for yours truly."

  “I am, though, Romanelle. I just don't want to get assassinated doing it. Speaking of which, I need to know more about why you set up that deal with Worthington, apparently making your daughter a rich young lady overnight—please note the stress on ‘apparently.’ Spree and I have both read that document, and on the surface it looks ... generous. Kindly old daddyo turning over—"

  “Daddyo? Please—"

  “—a new leaf. But, Romanelle, if it turns out you were using her, using Spree and even putting her in danger just so you could work some kind of self-serving con, client or no client, I will break your neck slowly, so you can hear the crunching—"

  “No way, Scott. Relax. I wanted—still do—Spree to get half of whatever I've managed to pull together in fifty-eight years, and maybe all of it. Once she signed the papers I had Worthington fix for me, that did it. No way I'm going to take anything from little Spree, not from my own daughter. You damn fool, maybe I haven't really been any kind of father to her, but she's part of me, blood of my blood. Nobody else on the planet I can say that about."

  “Sounds good. You almost convince me. But, as you know, she did sign that document Wednesday night, and therefore...” I stopped. “Wait a minute. Keats and the Cowboy grabbed you Tuesday pm., the day before Spree and I got here. So how would you know? Unless somebody told you."

  “Nobody told me. But I know she must have signed it. If she hadn't, I'd be dead."

  “Try that again."

  “If Spree hadn't signed the document—which is also to say if you hadn't somehow got her to Worthington's office to do it, so thanks for that, my flowery thank-yous to you, all right?—then I would be stiff as a petrified log in Siberia, planted under a cactus and breaking down into fertilizer to make the desert bloom again."

  “Will you try to say it simply, Romanelle?"

  “I think I'd better start with when I got the idea, and lead you along by the hand from there."

  “Splendid. So when did you get the idea?"

  “I think it hit me about the same time those three slugs from Groder and Foster did, maybe a little after that. Or when Groder plugged me—you say Andy didn't do any shooting?"

  “He did some, just not at you."

  “That's nice. I always have liked that slick young black bastard. Nice lad ... Well, the thing is, I'd bought up some extra GPXM here and there till it came to about seven hundred thousand shares. I told you, I was roped into this deal. Maybe you didn't buy that, but it's true. And when I get screwed, I look for ways to get unscrewed. Seemed to me like there was a chance here for me to get fat and at the same time take a little bite—which they weren't supposed to notice, at least not this soon—out of Alda and his unindicted coconspirators, not including me, of course. So now I've got me two mill GPXM shares..."

  He let it sag there, briefly. I guessed he'd goofed slightly, by adding Toker's three hundred thousand shares—already, even while the man was still warm if undeniably cooling—to his million-seven mentioned in the Worthington-Romanelle document. Idly, I thought that the numbers were getting up into the financial stratosphere; but I didn't say anything, and after only a half second of hesitation Romanelle continued.

  “After I was shot, and after flashing my life before my eyes when I got out of surgery in Scottsdale Memorial, I found myself contemplating the almost unavoidable conclusion that Cimarron had sent the lads to blow me away so he could get my shares back into his own hip pocket.” He paused. “Since that was how the deal on those shares was set up in the beginning. Or, actually, about a month after they were initially transferred to me, more than three years ago."

  “Come again? Set up how?"

  He sighed. “For various reasons, but primarily so my original million-share chunk of stock wouldn't go to relatives or friends of mine in case something happened to me—and get dumped before the time was right for dumping—Alda drew up a little agreement for me to sign, specifying that I would execute a will leaving those shares to him—but the language used was ‘all my interest in all my shares owned at the time of my death.’ He wrote it out, and I signed it."

  “You didn't assume Cimarron might chop off your head a week or two after the ink was dry on that dandy?"

  “I considered anything like that a remote possibility, Scott. Very remote, particularly at that time. The shares were worth peanuts, for one thing. And Alda and I had a good relationship back then. Which relationship, of course, has since deteriorated."

  “I'd say so."

  “The fact is, signing that—that dandy was the only way I'd get the million shares and my crack at what they'd be worth down the road. There was some risk, yes, but I considered it minimal. Hell, Scott, everything in life's a risk. The important thing's the payoff."

  “Cimarron drew up the paper, decided on the language?"

  “Yeah, he didn't want an attorney involved in something like that. Which, although he wasn't aware of it at the time—neither was I—turned out to be a mistake. Because he didn't pay me to sign the thing. Not even a flat dollar."

  “So?” I said. “I mean, so what?"

  Romanelle didn't answer, gazing past me as if lost in thought, or looking at something distant in space, or time. “I know now,” he said slowly, “that Alda learned about my picking up an extra chunk of Golden Phoenix from time to time, because he asked me about it when they were ruining my head there in the Medigenic. But I still don't know for sure how he tumbled to it."

  “I can tell you that,” I said. “He found out when the boiler-room boys started trying to unload more to the marks who, thanks to you, were no longer ripe for the send."

  “Be damned. So that's it. Scott, would you be interested in helping me sell some guaranteed plastic igloos to Eskimos?"

  “No, thanks."

  “Too bad. You might have a future. Well, the main thing is, Alda did find out what I'd been doing. I needed a little more time to cover my tail, but things moved faster than I expected them to. Naturally, none of us were supposed to load up on the stock, but there's no legally unavoidable prohibition against it—except the one about they kill you if you screw up—and, given time, I'd have gotten my end unscrewed. Which, however, I obviously didn't. So..."

  He uncrossed his legs, crossed them the other way, looked up toward the ceiling. “It was obvious as the tits on Paul Bunyan's cow that I was deader than whoever's buried in Grant's tomb. Alda's errand boys missed, but somebody'd get me for him the next time, or the time after. It depressed the hell out of me to think that sadistic sonofabitch would have the pleasure of wasting me and at the same time get his hands on my GPXM. Consider the numbers, Scott. Just the million-seven, and even if he only moved it at fifteen, that's a before-cap-gain net of twenty-five million. At a lucky twenty-seven or twenty-eight bid he'd stash away forty-six or -seven million of my gain. A little better than egg money, right? Considering that Alda would kill two guys for twenty bucks each if he
needed forty for a tip, I was a goner. Unless..."

  “I think I'm beginning to follow your tortured—and, may I say, criminal?—reasoning."

  “Sure. And sure you are. What else was there to do? Alda might still kill me just to keep his hand in, but no way I was going to let that musclehead get his hooks on my GPXM even if I was dead at the time."

  “So that's when you got in touch with Worthington."

  “That's when. I did a lot of thinking about it first—plenty of time when you're flat on your back. I wanted to set things up to protect me—I mean, keep me from getting killed in the springtime of my life—but also to protect Spree, while at the same time making sure she'd benefit no matter what happened to me. And also, for damn sure, so there was no way Alda could benefit no matter what the hell happened. Quite a bunch of angles I had up in the air there, and I didn't know if they'd all fly. Well, the first thing that smart silver-haired counselor of ours told me was a surprise, but good news—good, at least, if I could manage to convey that same surprise to Alda without getting shot again or totally dismembered. Worthington said Alda's little agreement, the one I signed so he'd get that million GPXM upon my demise, wasn't worth a bird's turds. Not his expression, by the way."

  “I had a hunch. I've also got a hunch you're about to answer the question I asked a while ago, which you apparently didn't hear me asking."

  “I heard you. But you're right, I am. According to Worthington, the fact that a person signs a piece of paper doesn't make what he's agreed to enforceable—it's only enforceable if there was consideration. Like some kind of payment, something of value—that fiat buck I mentioned, for example. Keep in mind, I didn't know that until Worthington told me, last Sunday. And Alda, naturally, didn't know it either when he sent his shooters out to accelerate my obituary. You get it? That muscle-bound meatball might have wanted me dead anyway, but he wouldn't have expected my GPXM as a reward. Considerably diminished motive for wasting me, right?"