She smiled and said, “Oh, shut up,” but her tone and her smile made the words caress.
Ten minutes later I had paid for two of the Oasis’ cabins and Coral and I were alone in number 18.
“My cabin's number thirteen—worse luck,” I said.
“You're not superstitious.”
“No, I just wanted eighteen.”
She laughed softly. “Well, you can't have it. This one's mine, and I'm greedy.”
“So is the owner. These cabins rent for no more than the cost of a small house. I asked the chap if at that price he could give me a pair labeled ‘His’ and ‘Hers’ but he only scowled at all my money.”
“You are paying for these, aren't you? I feel kept. Are you going to keep me?”
“As long as I can.”
She smiled. “Really?”
“Really.” I looked around. “Not bad, what? Curtains on the windows and everything.” I noticed that Coral had suppressed a yawn. “You're tired,” I said.
She smiled. “I didn't get much sleep last night. And I could use a shower and a nap.”
“I've some phoning to do. And thinking. So—off I go. Au revoir, adieu, pip-pip.”
“All that? How far off do you go?”
“Just to thirteen. Call me if you see any flying saucers, or for any other reason that seems urgent.”
“Why don't you call me instead, Shell? Say in a couple of hours. We can have dinner together.”
“Dandy. Anything but mush, hey?”
“Anything but mush.”
And with a last pip-pip I went out. This one, this Coral James, got right inside a man and stayed there, sweet and warm and comfortable. She'd started right out like a gal who'd been growing on me for quite a while, and then she'd just kept on growing. Two hours it would be; I looked forward to the dinner. Unless something new occurred, I wasn't going to be doing much else until quite a bit later this evening.
And I had a lot of thinking to do about what had happened today. I had to figure exactly how I'd gotten into this mess—and, more important, how I was going to get out.
An hour later I crushed the empty cigarette pack in my hand and lit the last smoke, lying on the double bed in the darkness of my cabin. I still didn't see a way out; in fact, the hole seemed to be getting deeper. The only possible way out seemed to be through Nick Colossus. And Nick, I knew, wouldn't cooperate at all.
But it was increasingly clear that my only hope now lay in getting to Nick. I was in so deep that unless I broke loose with a real splash, a complete unmasking of Nick and absolution of me, I wouldn't last long among the living. All of Lou's hoods now wanted to kill me; and all of Nick's hoods would have been ordered to kill me; and when the police got through checking the slugs in Lou Rio and Snails Sullivan, they might want to kill me. At least they would for sure greatly desire my presence for a chat. Not now, and not for a while to come, did I want my presence known to anybody—except Coral, of course.
For the most of the hour I'd been worrying the angle of how I might get to Nick, get him to hang himself with his own words and actions. I had just about decided it was hopeless. The only possible way for me to get Lou's hoods off my neck, I figured, was to have Nick personally tell them that he had killed Lou and that I was innocent as a babe. That would clear me not only with them but would explain to the police how my bullets got into the two corpses. And there was just about as much chance Nick would kindly do that for me as that he would turn into refined sugar.
There was perhaps one chance in ten that I could get into Nick's top-of-the-hotel hideaway where he spent most of his time. That was the one place where Nick would talk freely, spill anything and everything—to me, and to me alone. But there was absolutely no chance at all that I could get in there with a recorder, say, or microphone, draw Nick cleverly into confessing everything, and then get out. Not alive. And even if I could catch Nick somewhere else—he would never talk willingly in any place but that hideaway of his—and beat the truth out of him with a club, that wouldn't accomplish what I wanted. For my purpose, Nick would have to, freely and willingly, of his own accord, confess to or brag about his crimes—including the frame of Shell Scott and murder of Lou Rio.
That might do it. And if I flapped my arms, I might fly away up into the air. I gave up. There just wasn't any way to manage it.
The phone rang, but it was only the operator reporting there was still no answer at Suez’ number. I thanked her and hung up. And right then it happened.
I don't know why it was then instead of another moment, but instantly, out of the blue, I knew I had it. There was a way to ruin Nick, to clear myself, get out from under. It was a staggering, complex, crazy idea, but at first it seemed more crazy than anything else. I got excited, rolled off the bed and stood up in the darkness, thinking. I smacked a fist into my palm. I actually thought it would work.
It was wild and complicated and dangerous—the odds were at least four or five to one that I would be killed in the first two minutes—but if it worked it would be a thing of beauty. It would be a classic, a wonderful, a near-perfect triumph of the law over the lawless, of good over evil, of me over Nick. At least that's what I told myself, and I was grinning in the darkness.
I turned on the lights, found pen and paper in a drawer, and spent five minutes playing with it. Then I used the phone and called Harry Feldspen at his home. I made him leave the house and go to a pay phone—just on the off chance his phone was tapped—then I gave it to him. He interrupted me seven times in my first run through the thing. But then he listened to it once again and when I said, “Well?” he said, “It's ... impossible.”
“You don't sound so sure this time, Harry. And what the hell do you mean, impossible? Is this the man responsible for the destruction of Atlantis, the discovery of America, and Sins of Messalina? Tell me again it's impossible.”
He was quiet for a full minute, maybe more. And when he spoke again it sounded to me as if the president of Magna Studios was grinning. And he swore—mildly—for the first time in my hearing. “Hell no,” he said, “it's not impossible.”
I sat down on the edge of the bed, feeling good again. Feeling optimistic, hopeful, very much alive again. We settled all the details which we could settle now, and I told Harry how he might handle the rest of it. I described Nick's rooftop hideaway and added, “I'll need a helicopter so I can drop into Desert Trails and surprise dear old Nick. Do you want to charter one for me?”
“All right ... ah, Shell. This is going to be fabulously expensive.”
“Yeah. Well, you know that fabulous fee you said you'd pay me if I saved you five million or so—or even the one million?”
“Yes ... ah, yes.”
“O.K. I'll match you. Double or nothing. You pay for setting this up, which would just about double my fee. If it works, you save a million minus my fee and expenses. If it doesn't, well, Harry, you won't have to pay me.”
“Well, of course I won't.” He sounded indignant. “You'll be dead.”
“Yeah. That's the nothing.”
A little thought about that overcame his objections. While he was agreeable, I said, “And, Harry, I'll need something noisy ... how about one of the sound tracks in your files down there. What I'm after is something which will attract plenty of attention.”
“I'll take care of it. What else do you want?”
“Let's see. A collapsible ladder. You might tape the sound track and fix me up with a good powerful recorder. Have to be battery operated.”
“And portable, of course. All right.”
Harry was brisk now that he'd made up his mind; he would do everything possible, I knew, and do it well. I thought a minute, then gave him the names of ten or twelve people I wanted to include in the payoff of the plan, if there were any, and he didn't even protest at the names of hoodlums and policemen.
When we'd settled everything there was little for me to do but wait. I hung up and looked at my watch, and I grinned again. It had been exactly two ho
urs since I'd left Coral. Talk about timing—Nick Colossus had nothing on me. I phoned Coral, then went to cabin 18. She wasn't hungry; neither was I. And I understand people can go without food for days.
No wonder I was doing all that grinning. I had plenty to grin about.
Chapter Thirteen
I overslept in the morning. But, then, I'd had very little sleep for the last two nights, and I'd been even busier in the daytime. Besides which I had been beaten up, and shot, and generally ruined. I probably wouldn't even have awakened at ten a.m. except that Coral phoned me.
“Hi, Tiger,” she said.
“That's me. But my meow is worse than my bite today.”
“Could you bite some breakfast?”
“Sure. How about some mush in bed—ah, that would be pretty mushy, wouldn't it? Well then, why not prime ribs? You have the primest ribs —”
“Shell! Go back to sleep.”
“I'll be normal. Just don't send me back —”
“You'll never be normal. I'm dressed and hungry. If you're here in ten minutes you can take me to brunch at the coffee shop.”
Despite my aches and stiff muscles and much groaning, I made it in nine.
During the morning I spent some time on the phone. I was unable to locate Suez, who, Feldspen informed me, hadn't shown up at Magna today, either. The three witnesses to Ted Valentine's “suicide” were still unavailable—quite possibly several states away by this time. After noon I called Homicide's Lieutenant Rawlins, to whom I could talk without his sending two or three squad cars after me. He took my number, and a few minutes later called back.
“Chum,” he said, “I couldn't talk in the office, and I won't be able to chat with you after this—in fact, if I see you I'll have to bring you in. It could mean my job if I aided and abetted a fugitive, you fugitive. So this is more than fair warning.”
“Yeah. Thanks. What's up?” I had a good idea, but asked him anyway.
“There's a call out on you because of those slugs in the two stiffs on Partridge Street. There's a lot of pressure to get you in here.”
“I'll be in. Only not immediately.”
“Sure. I guess you know the slugs we took out of Rio, and out of Snails Sullivan, were identical .38's.”
“I had a hunch.”
“I thought you would. We've released the information to the press that both Snails and Rio were killed by bullets from the same gun. We did not say it was Shell Scott's heater, but you know we've got a couple of slugs from that .38 of yours here in Ballistics, don't you? Dug out of other bodies long ago.”
“Uh-huh, I know, Rawlins. Look, I put the pills in Snails to discourage him from killing me. I did not put the slugs into Lou. Somebody else did that with my gun. And that somebody was either Nick Colossus himself or one of his boys.”
And right then it hit me. Lou's boys would have been reasonably sure all along that I had killed their boss, but the presence of Jabber's body there with him might well have confused the issue. Now, however, they would know that whoever had killed Snails must also have killed Rio—since the police themselves admitted the same gun had been used on both men. And Lou's boys, including Gangrene, had seen me use that gun to toss those bullets into Snails. There could now be no possible doubt in their weak minds that I had positively and absolutely killed Rio. I had been feeling like a man in deep water with busted water wings, but now I felt as if I were going down for the third time.
Rawlins was saying, “Nick did it, huh? We'll go right out and put the arm on him.”
“Funny. But maybe I can pin it on him for you.”
“Yak, yak,” he said in what I considered a nasty tone. “More than four thousand of us haven't managed that in ten years. But you'll kindly do it for us.”
“Stranger things have happened.”
“Not this year.”
“Well, you see, Rawlins, I am a man with stupendous confidence. I believe in the Magic of Believing, the Science of Mind, the Power of Positive —”
“Nuts. You do it, chum, and I'll do a coochie dance in the Police Building cafeteria at high noon wearing pink tights.”
“Is that a promise?”
“It's a promise.” He paused. “You might be interested to know that Lou Rio's funeral is already scheduled. Three p.m. this afternoon. They're putting him away in a hurry—and it's cremation for Lou.”
“Cremation, huh? Merely anticipating the devil, I'd say.”
“Yeah.” He told me that the police had also been trying to find those three witnesses to Valentine's death, but without any luck. Then he added, “One other thing might interest you. There's a little hood named Arthur M. Worthington, does odd jobs for Colossus. Radio car spotted him down at McGannon's this morning, and he ran from them.”
“McGannon's? What would one of Nick's men have been doing at the mortuary where Lou is? There's no love lost between those two gangs.”
“I know. It's funny. Ordinarily Nick's boys would stay twenty miles from McGannon's. Anyhow, this Worthington ran away from the radio car, into McGannon's, then out a side door and smack into a car—new Buick driven by a young gal who got hysterical. Said her husband would never believe a pedestrian ran into her.”
“Where was she driving? Up on the lawn?”
“No, where she should have been. Viper just blasted out of the building and clear into the street —”
"Who?"
“Viper. Arthur M. Worthington to you.”
“No, Viper to me.” I described the guy I'd seen at the Desert Trails and Rawlins said that was the man. It was also the man, though I didn't mention it to the Lieutenant, who had tried to collect the blackmail payoff from Coral James. I started getting a little excited. This could be the big crack in the case, the break that would save my neck.
“Rawlins, take my word for it, I've got to talk to that little mugg. Where is he now? He's not unconscious or in the can, is he?”
“No, but you won't be able to talk to him, I'm afraid.”
“He's in custody?”
“No, it's not that. And he's conscious, too, but he's not talking. He can't. Hasn't moved or said a word since he banged into that Buick.”
“Could he be faking?”
“I don't know. But the doc doesn't either. Paralyzed and dumb, that's the ticket. Can't move and can't talk.”
I swore. Viper just might be the man who could tell me, if not all, then at least much about the frame I was in. And, of course, about the blackmail attempts against Coral—and maybe against Suez and Palomino, possibly others. If nothing else, he could tell me plenty more about Nick and Nick's habits, as well as the setup of those rooms above the Desert Trails—info of great importance to me if I went to the Desert Trails tonight. Because, unless I found out a great deal more than I'd found out so far, I meant to walk in on Nick in his own rooms this evening. Anything Viper could tell me would be as welcome as a stay of execution to a condemned man.
“I've got to see that guy, Rawlins. Where is he? And can I get to him without being picked up?”
“You can probably manage that part—he's at the Cowley Memorial Hospital on Western. But it won't do you much good if he can't talk.”
“No, but if he's faking ... well, I'm a pretty good doctor myself in treating that syndrome.”
“Yeah. Watch yourself.”
I told him I would, thanked him, and we hung up.
I phoned McGannon's. The services for Lou Rio were, as Rawlins had said, scheduled for three p.m. in the Chapel, after which there would be a procession to the Woodstream Cemetery for another short service, followed by cremation and inurnment. I was talking to a man named Weston, and I asked him, “Isn't that a little unusual? Procession and the second service, I mean?”
“Yes, indeed,” he replied softly. “Extremely so, when there is a cremation. But the gentleman insisted. He wanted all the trimmings, he said.”
“This gentleman, Mr. Weston. Did he look as if the vampires had just rolled him?”
“What? Vam
... what?”
“Skip that. What was the man's name?”
“Trumbull J. Bidewell.” He described Trumbull in his own way, and it was the late Lou Rio's right-hand man. Arthur M. Worthington and Trumbull J. Bidewell. I think I preferred Viper and Gangrene. I thanked Mr. Weston and hung up.
It looked as if I would have relative freedom of movement until about four p.m. That was the one thing in my favor today. Every hood who could be presumed to be or have been a friend or employee of Lou Rio's would be present at the upcoming services. That meant, at least, that they wouldn't be out hunting for me, or even roaming around town where they might lamp me.
Then I called the Cowley Memorial Hospital. I have in the past made it my business to have at least one good contact at every hospital and sanitarium in and around LA., as well as in most offices where public records are kept and numerous other places. At Cowley I had two, a nurse and a staff doctor named Fraley. I managed to get in touch with Fraley and through him arranged to see the patient, Arthur M. Worthington in half an hour.
I got ready to go, then dropped by cabin 18. Coral opened the door. “Hi, honey,” I said. “I'm taking off, and I'm probably going to be plenty busy all afternoon, and maybe into the night. Just thought I'd better let you know.”
She smiled. “Don't forget where I am.”
“I'll more likely forget my name.” I paused and hunted for the right words. “One thing, Coral. If I don't bang on your door by tomorrow morning sometime, well, you're on your own. Call the cops and bring them up to date.”
Her smile went away. “Why wouldn't you be here tomorrow? Do ... you mean something might happen to you?”
“Dear girl, I am going to be driving in freeway traffic. Anything may happen.”
“You're going to do something dangerous, aren't you?”
I grinned at her. “Not if I can help it.”
“You are. I can tell.” She was quiet for a sober moment, looking at me. “But I don't suppose you'd talk about it.” She reached out and took my hand. “Come here.”
She gently pulled me through the doorway and inside, then pushed the door shut, put her arms around my neck, pressed her wonderful body against me, and pressed her sweet lips to mine. She kissed me the way women kiss their men when they're going off to war, the way lovers have always kissed at final partings, the way we had not kissed before. It was a kiss with warmth but without passion, with a lingering and clinging tenderness.
Slab Happy (The Shell Scott Mysteries) Page 14