Dead Heat (The Shell Scott Mysteries)

by Richard S. Prather

  Boom, the familiar voice banged my ear. “Hello.”

  “Shell Scott, Mr. Rothstein. Listen close. I’ve got to know the name — and especially the address — of whoever has phone number 988-4584. It’s probably unlisted. And I’ve got to find out fast.”

  “Where are you?”

  “There’s no time for that. Can you get me the information?”

  “Just a moment.” He put down the phone and was gone a minute or so. “I used another phone here. I’ll be called back with the information. I stressed urgency. Now, where are you? I thought you’d be in jail by now.”

  “Jail? Hell, no. Not yet, anyway.”

  “Do you know the police are looking for you?”

  “I guessed they might be. And it was an educated guess. How did you find out?”

  “How did I find out? The story has been on every television newscast and radio broadcast. It is even in the newspapers now. Someone killed a man at Hollywood Park. In front of thousands of people. Was it actually you? If it truly was, this is catastrophic.”

  “Why catastrophic? What’s so terrible . . .”

  I was starting to understand. I’d been too busy worrying, about Doody, thinking, racing around, to consider fully what might by now have developed from this afternoon’s episode at the track.

  “Um,” I said. “Yeah, it was me. Well, go on.”

  I heard him sigh. “Oh, there is more,” he said. “Much more. Don’t you understand? Only last Thursday, and also at Hollywood Park, a man was brutally murdered — but quietly, surreptitiously, by an unknown person or persons. Then two days later, today, on Saturday of all days, you run amuck and murder a man.”

  “I didn’t run amuck, dammit. And I didn’t murder anybody. I killed the sonofabitch, yes, but he had it coming — and if I’d been approximately one-fourth of a second slower, my brains would have been scattered over several square yards of Hollywood Park.”

  “I see.” Silence for a few seconds. “There were some reports to that effect, reports alleging that the dead man did have a gun. But I fear few will believe them now. Frankly, Mr. Scott, I cannot understand how it is possible that you are still at liberty. The events at Hollywood Park have had an enormous impact locally. And certainly this will spread, be carried by the wire services nationally. You are wanted for questioning by the police on a charge of suspicion of murder. You are accused in addition of assault and battery. . . .” He paused again.

  And during that pause it began filtering in that under the circumstances I probably should not be standing here in a glassed-in phone booth. And my sky-blue Cad, not unfamiliar to the police of seven counties, perhaps should not be parked out in the open a few feet away.

  Rothstein continued, his voice vibrating like a high-pitched foghorn. “I am not yet aware of the source, but it has been divulged that you, Sheldon Scott, private investigator, were in my employ — even when you killed Mr. Deacon at Hollywood Park. That you were employed yesterday by Gabriel Rothstein to investigate Universal Electronics. That — Enough. My point is that I am being tarred with your brush. My previously cherished privacy has exploded into ghastly notoriety. You were lucky to reach me. This phone has been ringing constantly. At this moment reporters are outside my home clamoring — demanding — to see me. I have been reviled, slandered, libeled.”

  “Look,” I said, “I’m not exactly in the rosiest situation of my life at the moment — ”

  He broke in thunderously, “Whatever has occurred is of your doing — and you must undo it. The situation is extremely ugly now, but it can and will become uglier if allowed to continue. There is only one solution. You must without delay, before the rumors and half-truths and lies spread, confound them and bring this entire affair to a successful conclusion. You must prove your innocence of wrongdoing — if possible — and by so doing prove my innocence of wrongdoing. And by Heaven you must do it now, tonight.”

  Silence. Then he said, and his voice had as much vigor as had ever been in it, which was quite a lot: “Can you do it?”

  “Well,” I said. “Uh . . .”

  “Can you do it?”

  “Uh . . . Yes. Sure.”

  “How?”

  “Beats me.”

  Silence again. “If you cannot do it, Mr. Scott, if you cannot deliver me from this appalling situation into which you have precipitated me, I swear to God I will ruin you. I can and if necessary will spend a million dollars to pursue and harass you. I will condemn you to a hell of my devising. Is that clear?”

  “Yeah, it’s clear,” I said. “And quit threatening me. That’s all I’ve had for most of this goddamn afternoon.”

  Just before he started to roar I heard the ring of a phone come over the wire. Clatter in the earpiece, silence for half a minute, then he was back. “That number is in the name of George M. Williams, of 1015½ Laurel Way in Beverly Hills.”

  I grinned. Williams. Same address. The box next to Scalzo’s at Hollywood Park. It made sense.

  “Is that what you wanted?” Rothstein asked.

  “That’s what I wanted.”

  “Will it be of help?”

  “Maybe, if I can get there — ” I broke it off, glancing at my watch. “Oh, God. I have exactly seventeen minutes left. It’s not enough.”

  It was 6:53 p.m. There wasn’t nearly enough time to make it — even assuming, miraculously, that I wasn’t collared by forty or fifty cops on the way.

  Rothstein’s voice broke in on my thoughts. “What do you mean, seventeen minutes?”

  I hung up on him.

  A block away a black-and-white police car flashed by on Wilshire. No, I damn well couldn’t let the cops grab me. At least, not until long after those final minutes were used up.

  I tried to calm myself down, get a grip on my thoughts. If George M. Williams was just a guy who went occasionally to the races, then there wasn’t any hope. But if 1015½ Laurel Way was Scalzo’s hideout, then there was a little hope. Just a little.

  Except that I had only seventeen minutes left and under ordinary circumstances it would take at least half an hour to get from here to Laurel Way in Beverly Hills — even breaking all the speed laws and running through stop lights, even risking a ticket, not to mention my neck.

  Well, when you’ve eliminated the impossible, what remains is the possible. It was impossible for me to race through the city in my Cadillac. It was impossible, under ordinary circumstances, for me even to reach Beverly Hills in under half an hour.

  But there was one way, just maybe, that made it possible.

  So I took that way.

  I drove three blocks and stole a police car.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  It took me two more minutes. Two vital minutes. But I got it. There was some luck, of course. It’s said, though, that luck comes to those who are prepared for it. Maybe yes, maybe no — but I was sure as hell prepared to steal a locomotive if I had to.

  The black-and-white L.A.P.D. buggy was parked outside a bar on Wilshire. It was empty, the engine running, calls coming over the police radio. One officer stood on the sidewalk just outside the door of the bar, looking in; his partner was probably inside checking on some kind of trouble.

  Well, it was a certainty that soon they would both say the hell with that trouble and begin checking on trouble of their own. I was really charged up, the blood banging so hard through my body that it seemed ready to squirt out my pores. There must have been every kind of hormone and sauce and juice anywhere internally available steaming around among my corpuscles.

  I left the Cad parked a yard behind the prowl car, ran to the police buggy and climbed in. I slapped the car in gear and dragged out, tires skidding and then biting. Maybe the officer yelled, I don’t know. But I did. I yelled out of sheer excess of hormones, or pure nausea. God knows, but I yelled.

  Then with the accelerator pedal jammed to the floor boards, I hit the red light and siren. No sense trying to sneak away now.

  Fifteen minutes left. For a normal half-hour drive.
And maybe nothing when — and if — I got there. But at least I had a chance with the accelerator down and siren clearing the way.

  Six-fifty-six. Then six-fifty-seven. Two minutes gone; soon the call should be on the air. Here it came. I translated it between my ears as the dry facts and code crackled from my police radio: Police car stolen, proceeding west on Wilshire Boulevard, excessive speed, red light and siren. And — yeah, I guess that policeman had not only yelled but had been taking a pretty good look at me while yelling — “believed to be Sheldon Scott.” Everything, even the license number — and, of course, it was a not invisible black-and-white car to begin with.

  The voice was calm and controlled, but I could sense the flips between the lines. I could almost see the big, burly cops all over town straightening to snarling attention, hear the chorus of curses. All over town jaws bulging, arteries writhing like little boa constrictors. And Rothstein, I thought; wait’ll he hears about this. Then I forced myself not to think about any of it.

  Ahead of me, on both sides of the street, cars pulled to the side, clearing the way. A spot of red danced in the rearview mirror. Two or three blocks back, a police car was after me, red light flashing on its top. As I looked into the mirror, another radio car skidded around the corner only a block back, swerved, straightened out on Wilshire and came after me.

  I swung right off Wilshire, over to Third, then over to Beverly and back toward Third again. A panel truck loomed ahead at an intersection and I hit the brakes, felt sudden strain in my arms. I yanked the wheel left and felt the car sway crazily as the tires slipped on the street. I missed the truck’s rear bumper by inches, eased the steering wheel right and jammed the gas pedal down again, heart racing and the tight ball of sudden alarm still sticking in my throat.

  Three minutes after seven. Seven minutes till Doody’s call. Eight minutes, so far, of speeding down one street then another, sliding around corners and sometimes going north or even south but always moving west toward Beverly Hills. Sweat all over my body. Hands starting to cramp from the too-tight grip I had on the steering wheel. Mouth dry, stomach muscles tense almost to the point of pain.

  Three red dots flickered in the rear-view mirror now; some I’d shaken, but others had taken their places. Suddenly there was one looming black-and-white, pulsing red, only yards away on my right. That’s the danger in passing intersections with siren blaring — you can’t hear the other siren if another police car or ambulance is careening toward you. It was a black-and-white prowl car, mate to mine, entering the intersection from my right at almost the same moment I did.

  I don’t think I did a thing. There wasn’t time. I can’t remember turning the steering wheel, but if the gas pedal wasn’t on the floor boards before, it was as soon as I saw the other car. We came so close I thought a crash was inevitable, but before I knew it I was fifty yards past the intersection, still plummeting ahead. One quick glance at the rear-view mirror showed me the other car skidding sideways, slamming into the curb and rocking. But it stayed erect, didn’t turn over.

  On Third again I headed for Beverly Hills and just kept going. It was difficult to believe I hadn’t been caught yet, hadn’t been stopped. But then out of the muddle of my thoughts came an odd memory. I remembered reading about a man during the war who was hunted by twelve of the enemy on a deserted beach at night. In the darkness he joined them in their hunt — and got away with it too, until the leader of the enemy, having eliminated all possibilities but one, counted up to thirteen.

  I started thinking I might make it, might really make it.

  Unless a speeding prowl car was close enough so the pursuing officers could read my license number, it would be difficult for them to know whether my car was the fugitive’s, or one of the police cars in hot pursuit of the fugitive. They might think I was chasing me. Maybe I’d make it; maybe . . .

  The rest of that ride was a blur, sensation without thought. I hit Beverly Drive; I was in Beverly Hills. Skidded into it, raced across Sunset and past the Beverly Hills Hotel.

  It was seven-eleven. I wasn’t going to make it. I was a minute or two late — but still there had to be time for paging me at L.A. International, preparing to leave the house once they knew I wasn’t going to answer the airport phone.

  Then the sign: laurel way.

  I braked, skidded through the left turn and hit the gas again. As I straightened out on Laurel Way I thought of something else. Scalzo, Doody, and whoever was with them might well be miles from here, not at 1015½ Laurel Way at all. George M. Williams might be a ninety-year-old citizen who only went to the races twice a month. . . . But it was too late to worry about that now.

  Seven-twelve; I was in the 1000 block. And, this close, after all the excitement and fear and shock of these past hours, all the soup floating around in my bloodstream had turned me on and off and very nearly inside out. There was a change in me, a literal change. There were probably chemicals lathering in my brain that had never before been farther up than my navel, and mentally I had traveled into a world of warped time and space, a kind of sugarplum Disneyland.

  I felt light as a feather, almost floating, as if disembodied, able to walk through walls. There was a slight dizziness, a not unpleasant ringing in my ears, a kind of quivering alternation of heat and chill over my skin. I felt big as a house, strong as Gargantua, invincible — I was out of my mind.

  Floating, I zoomed down the street. I thought of cutting the siren, decided not to. There was the house. A big white monster set back from the street on my left. A driveway alongside the house passed between two stone pillars, on the left one the number 1015½. Between the pillars was a wrought-iron gate, closed, looped with chain.

  I hugged the curb on the right of the street, slowing, tires screaming, swung left and headed for the iron gate. It flew at me like the skeleton of a great black bird. Clang, crunch. Then I was through, with an enormously musical scraping. Nothing to it; I didn’t feel a thing.

  I scrambled from the car, gun in my hand, bounced over spongy lawn toward the house. I sprinted forward, mind clicking like an abacus, eyes photographing every detail: Steps to a wide deck, a door — big door — beyond the steps, right of the door a huge plate-glass picture window beyond which I could see the interior of a dimly lighted room.

  I clattered up the steps heading for the door, then my keen abacus-mind told me something: That door was an enormous thing made of something like foot-thick mangrove roots, with double doorknobs weighing approximately eighteen pounds apiece. If I ran into the thing it would knock me silly.

  So, without any hesitation whatever, I veered and sprinted over the deck toward the picture window. That was it. That’s the ticket, I thought dreamily: I’ll leap through the window, just like they do in the movies. I plunged ahead, flipped my coat over my face, and leaped. I floated through the air. Floating, floating —

  Blam!

  It damn near knocked me unconscious. Like in the movies, huh? Well, I learned something; in movies they must use air and sound effects; they sure as hell don’t use picture windows.

  But I was going through — I was on my way — no turning back now. Soon I’d be in there with them and . . .

  Oh, God, I thought. What if a little old lady is in there tatting doilies? If that’s what was inside, there’d be screeches from every direction. The old gal would undoubtedly let out one horrendous squawk and die. And I’d get very ill indeed.

  Glass was flying every which way. Shards and chunks and splinters of glass. I felt eleven million sharp shooting pains in my arms and hands and chest and — oh, hell, everywhere. It was like the moment at eighty thousand feet when you pull the ripcord and hang there expectantly, hopefully, which is to say horrified, the moment just before the chute opens — or doesn’t.

  What if my chute doesn’t open? I thought.

  What if those gangsters are in there, with ready submachine guns?

  What if I don’t ever get through this window?

  Glass was flying, crashing, s
plintering. And sticking, plenty of that, all right.

  Boy, this is hell, I thought.

  A guy could get killed in all this glass. He could bleed to death in midair. Then: slap-slap, clunk. That was first one foot and then the other foot hitting the floor, and then my wounded rear end hitting the floor. My shoes had skidded on the carpet, or something on the carpet. Something? Glass!

  Now I was skidding forward on my wounded rear end, but from suspense, wondering about all that glass on the floor. But I dug my heels into the carpet and, with a vigorous hop, was on my feet again.

  And charging ahead.

  Across the dimly lighted room. Another door, closed. They’d be in there. That’s where they were. I steamed ahead, swung a shoulder around and thudded into the door. It splintered, crashed inward, and I flew through it, planted my feet and skidded.

  In a blur I saw the faces floating. Scalzo, Hale, Scarlip — and Doody.

  They were in here.

  And right then I came back from my sugarplum Disneyland.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  I came back all right. All the way.

  The thread of euphoria snapped like a rubber band. The light, floating feeling disappeared and I felt unusual heaviness in my body. Even the ringing in my ears stopped and it was suddenly deathly quiet.

  Doody was standing on the right of the room next to a table on which was a white phone. A yard from her was Hale, his mouth a hole of astonishment in his flat, fist-marked face. Near me on my left was the black-browed, black-eyed, black-hearted sonofabitch — Luke I’d heard him called — the scar on his upper lip like a flame against his pale face. And Scalzo, on my far left, stood across the room before an over-stuffed chair from which he must just have risen.

  But none of them had guns in their hands.

  And, automatically, I knew why. The siren. My deciding not to cut that siren was the reason they weren’t ready to shoot whoever was crashing into the house. They’d probably expected a gang of policemen, not one man. Not me. Besides which, I’d been moving pretty fast.