“O.K., friend. How about Suez?” I was surprised to learn she was working with Nick. And that she'd go along with murder and a frame.
He frowned, and that lower lip nudged the upper even higher than usual. “I don't think she knew what she was doin'. The way Shortcake told it to me, she just read you something that wasn't so bad at all. Only Nick cut her off before she got to finish.”
I said to Viper, “Why did she go along with Nick in the first place?”
“He had something pretty bad on her. She's been paying him off, a thousand bucks each month. I don't know what he had on her. I was just the bagman, to pick it up and take it to Nick.”
“Who else did you pick up from?”
“Johnny Palomino—and just lately, June Benton, Salley Courtland. That's all. Like I said, I don't know what he had on any of ‘em.”
If I remembered correctly, the two names besides Palomino's were of bit players at Magna, girls who might one day reach stardom but who now were on the lower rungs of the Hollywood ladder.
“Then Nick pulled the blackmail play on Feldspen? The million-dollar bite?”
He shook his head. “I don't know about it if he did.”
“You did try to put the bite on Coral James, too, didn't you?”
“Yeah. She didn't go for it.”
“The way I get it, she slapped your face.”
“Yeah. And how.”
“Viper, listen close.” He fixed his tilted eyes on me. I went on, “I'm very interested in how Suez got mixed up in that frame of me.”
“I already told you all I know on what happened yesterday. Then today she called Nick herself.”
“Called Nick? What for?”
“Well, Nick sort of double-crossed her yesterday, see? And somehow she'd got her hands on a letter writ by this Valentine guy. Four pages of it. The way Nick acted about it, I guess it would practically have ruined him. So she had that on Nick, and Nick had some stuff on her; what she wanted to do was make a trade.”
“What was in the letter?”
“I didn't read it. Had it in my hands, but I didn't get a chance to read it—them lousy cops showed up.”
“You mean at McGannon's?” He nodded and I said, “What were you doing there of all places? I'd have thought you would stay far away from Nick's boys.”
“Yeah, I would have, but it was her idea—that Suez. See, she phoned Nick today and demanded that he send me to the pay phone booth at the corner of Twelfth and Fig.”
“Demanded?”
“Yeah.”
It seemed obvious that if Suez was demanding anything of Nick Colossus, that letter had to be dynamite.
Viper went on, “Nick really wanted to get his hands on that letter. The girl said she'd trade, but on her terms—so he couldn't foul her up like he done yesterday, I suppose. Anyway, Nick called me in, told me what had happened, and give me the papers Suez wanted to trade him for.”
“What were they, Viper?”
“I dunno. It was in a big Manila envelope, sealed. I was just to do what she said, but get the letter from her no matter what. I never seen him so hot. Anyways, he told me to go to that phone booth, that she'd call me there and tell me what to do then, and for me to do it. She was being real careful that Nick nor nobody knew where she was. I guess she knew then that Nick would kill her sure when he got the chance—once she give up the letter. She should have hung onto it.”
I heard him say it, but it didn't penetrate all the way. I said, “I still don't know what you were doing at McGannon's.”
“Yeah. Well, I went to that phone booth and she called. I told her I had the stuff. She told me to bring it to McGannon's. I says, where Lou is? And she says that's it.” He shook his head. “I guess she picked there because she knew me and a bunch of the boys couldn't hang around there close. On account of Lou's guys would take it unkindly and maybe blast us. But they knew he'd been hot for her, so she could trot in with no strain. Anyways, I go there. We make the trade right in the chapel—pretty smart of her, at that. If I'd tried to double-cross her even then all she had to do was yelp and some of Lou's boys would come running—and they'd of got their mitts on me and that letter. Which would of made Nick pretty sick. Sick enough to kill me, if I wasn't already dead. Well, she takes off, and I use a phone there in McGannon's to call the boss—he'd said for me to ring him the minute I got the letter, so he could handle the rest of it.”
The last phrase sounded odd, but Viper was continuing. “Then I strolled outside and of all the lousy luck them lousy bulls in the lousy car spotted me.”
“Why'd you run from them? They didn't have a want on you.”
“So what? All they had to do was give me a shake and they'd have come up with that letter—like I said, Nick would've flipped and murdered me. Besides which, them bulls stopped their heap and lit out after me. Why'd I run? With them big flat feet pounding the street behind me?”
“O.K., Viper. So what then?”
“I just spun around and took off. The idea hit me while I was runnin’ back into McGannon's. I had to get rid of them papers, so I put them in the only place I could think of where they might be safe. Under Lou.”
“What? Where?”
“Under Lou. Lou Rio. You know, the guy they're throwin’ the funeral for.”
“You mean under his body? In the casket?”
“Yeah. When I run back into McGannon's I run right into the room where he was on view. You know, with all the flowers and all. There he was, and inspiration hit me.”
“That's what it was, all right.”
He grinned. “Lou looked so peaceful. Just like he was dead. Which he was, of course. Anyways, I jammed the letter in there and flashed through the side door and out to the street. I looked back to see if them lousy cops was on my tail—and blooie. Something run over me. I think it was a B-52. Next thing I know I'm here. And then in come that.... oooohh-hh!”
Viper was remembering Oscar, and he started getting sort of green again. I said, “Did anybody see you put the letter under Lou's body?”
“Nope. I made sure of that. But I'm not sure I got it tucked away real good. Could be some of it's stickin’ out. I didn't have time for an artistic job.”
I looked at my watch. Two-twenty-five p.m. If I left now I might reach McGannon's before the services started. If so, there was a small chance that I could get to the casket and latch onto that letter without being spotted and killed. In the first place, it was so unlikely that I would show up at Lou's funeral, those present might find it difficult to believe I was Shell Scott even if they stared smack at me.
But there was no question about it, I had to try getting that letter. If it was half what it seemed, it might not only ruin Nick but save my own neck.
The whole thing now depended on my getting to McGannon's before three p.m., and the sooner the better. I would have to spend at least three or four minutes doing something to change my appearance, at least my white hair and eyebrows. Along with the rest of the stuff in the back of my Cadillac is a makeup kit, containing among other things some water-soluble hair dye. That would help; the major factor now was time. I stood up.
Viper was still talking, and then I heard the name of Suez again. I looked down at Viper. “What was that about Suez?”
“Huh? Oh, I was sayin’ that I didn't get to fill Nick in on anything that happened after I called him from McGannon's so he don't know about me getting rid of the letter. I didn't have time to read it, just checked to make sure it was the goods, but I imagine it'll suit Nick if it's burned. Don't really make no difference to me; he'll kill me anyhow.”
“Burned?”
“Yeah. Pretty quick now it'll be cremated. With Lou. Anyways, I was sayin’ that the main thing Nick wanted, probably, was for me to get the letter from that Suez so he could take care of her. Most likely he'd of burned the letter himself.”
“What do you mean, take care of her?”
“Kill her. What else?”
“Kill her? But why kil
l her? She went through with the trade, didn't she?”
“Sure. But she'd read the letter. I know it had a lot of stuff in it that was pure poison to Nick—might even put him in the can, I gathered. If she read the letter, then she knows all about it.” He paused, pursing his lips.
“When was he going to kill her? How?”
“Don't know when for sure. Depends on her. But Nick's got two sets of torpedoes waiting for her. That's why I had to phone him.”
“Waiting where?”
“Two droppers outside the place she works at—Magna. Couple more where she lives. She's got to go to one or the other, sooner or later. And that's it.”
I swore at him, balled up my fist and leaned over the bed, almost ready to swat him in the teeth while he lay on his back. “Why in hell didn't you tell me about this sooner?”
He cringed back, pressing down against the bed, but he said, “What's all the excitement? Man, I phoned Nick from McGannon's at ten o'clock this morning. She's probably been dead for a coupla hours.”
Chapter Fifteen
I just stared at him for a moment. I didn't know for sure whether Suez had knowingly set me up for that frame yesterday or not. I didn't even know how deep she'd been in the dirty business with Nick and Valentine and maybe even Lou Rio—or even what it was that Nick had held over her. But there was, it now seemed, a chance she'd been pretty much on the up and up all along.
I had a choice. I could go right now to McGannon's, now while I had at least a slim chance of getting in there and out without being stopped by a dozen gunmen; or I could try to find Suez, get to her before those killers did. But I knew that as long as there was a chance Suez was still alive I didn't really have a choice. There wasn't any alternative; I had to at least try to stop her—or stop those torpedoes who were after her.
I turned and jumped to the door, went out past the assembled doctors and sprinted down the polished hallway.
As I passed the desk inside the front door I had an idea and stopped, got the nurse behind the desk to hand me her phone. I called Magna, got Feldspen.
“Harry, Shell. If it hasn't happened already, two hoods are outside Magna waiting to kill Suez if she shows up. Take my word —”
He interrupted anyway. “Kill ... but she just spoke to me on the phone.”
“When?”
“Twenty or thirty minutes ago. No longer. She said she'd been unable to report to work yesterday or today, but that everything was all right now —”
“Yeah, I know about that. But where did she call from? Where is she? Was she coming to work?”
“I don't know where she called from, but she indicated that she was tired, and wanted to go home and rest. I told her to go ahead and report for work tomorrow.”
Home. There was an even chance, then, that she hadn't reached her apartment on Pepper Street yet. It depended on where she'd phoned from, but I felt the first real surge of hope that I could reach her in time. But even if I did, it would be close. At least I knew where to go.
Harry was saying, “I never got to finish talking to you on the phone, Shell. What's happening? What on earth —”
But that was all I heard because I hung up and sprinted out of the hospital.
I made it from the hospital to Pepper Street in not more than six minutes, and at least five drivers of other cars were probably still shaking their fists at me, or maybe just shaking.
The small light-brown apartment house Suez lived in was three blocks ahead. I kept the accelerator down and roared up the street—and I saw her. At least I saw that white Thunderbird parked at the curb before the stucco apartment building and a woman getting out of the T-bird—I couldn't make sure that it was Suez partly because she was too far from me, partly because another movement had caught my eye.
I was still a block away, but I saw another car pull out from the curb, maybe fifty feet from the Thunderbird. It picked up speed as it neared Suez. The woman was Suez; I could recognize that body now even from behind as she walked away from me, toward the apartments. A man's arms came out of the car's right rear window. And in his hands was a gun. It wasn't a pistol that came out of the window, not even a rifle; it was the fat, ugly barrels of a double-barreled shotgun.
The blast, when it came, would rip Suez's fine body like a bird caught in a hunter's load of buckshot. The heavy pellets would rip and tear the flesh, crack the bones. It would lift her off her feet and throw her torn and bleeding on the grass, dead before she fell. And I was still too far away to stop them. I didn't even have my gun yet in my hand. In the next moment I saw Suez take two steps more toward the building, walking swiftly, jauntily, and I saw that shotgun move toward her, center on her back.
I hit the horn with my right hand and kept it down, the hard blast blaring loud in the residential quiet. I kept the horn down, and pressed my foot against the already mashed-down accelerator. The car ahead was only fifty feet away when I hit the brakes hard, the car looming closer, twenty feet, ten ... he Cad's tires screamed on the asphalt, the car swerved slightly, slowing. I could still see that shotgun projecting from the window—but the man holding it had turned his head toward me.
Then we hit. It was a hell of a crash, even though both cars were moving in the same direction and the driver of the Plymouth must have jammed his foot down on the gas, lessening the impact. But when we hit I was thrown forward against the steering wheel and I saw the other driver's head jerked sharply back. Whiplash—that terribly painful injury. The head thrown back hard, tearing the muscles and tendons and nerves in the neck. Automatically my mind counted him out, chalked up one of the two men as out of commission for now. But the other man wasn't hurt.
He spilled out of the car's door as the Plymouth came to rest against the curb on the left of the street, and my Cad swerved and nearly stopped, the sound of the crash still echoing in the air. The man clutched his shotgun and I saw him fall to his knees but swing those big barrels around toward me. My Cad stopped completely. Falling glass tinkled on the asphalt. Just as those twin barrels were pointed at my head I ducked, dived for the right-hand door of the car, grabbed for the handle.
The deep, throaty boom of the shotgun and the ripping blast of buckshot through the Cad's windshield seemed to blend into one crashing sound in my ears. The door came open and I leaped through, my hand finding the Colt and yanked it out of its holster. As I hit the street hard, pain ripped into my knees and flared up my hand and wrist, but I kept a tight grip on my gun. I hit the street and rolled, came up on one knee and one foot facing the man.
As I stopped moving and nipped my .38 toward him, I saw those gaping barrels swing around to aim at my middle. All his movements and my own seemed agonizingly, fearfully slow. I yanked the trigger of my .38, yanked it again, not worrying about squeezing off the shot, hardly aiming, but I saw the holes appear in his chest, saw the little puffs of dust spurt from his clothing.
My slugs jerked him, moved him, but didn't pull the shotgun barrels away from me. I kept pulling the trigger until the gun was empty. Those ugly barrels were still on me—but slowly moving away now. I couldn't move, my eyes glued to those barrels as they slowly slid aside and then hit the asphalt. The gun fell with a clatter to the street. The man fell silently, in a way the living never can fall, oddly, twisted, contorted.
Things started coming back to me. For moments there had been the blanking-out of everything except the other man and me. But now I heard Suez screaming. There was movement at the driver's side of the Plymouth, but I glanced at Suez.
She stood on the grass just off the white sidewalk leading to her apartment house. She stood crouched down, knees bent, fists pressed against her cheeks, mouth wide, screams shrieking from her stretched-open mouth.
The driver was getting out of the car. I dropped my empty gun, got to my feet, ran toward him. He turned to face me, eyes pained, mouth half open and tight gagging sounds coming from it, face contorted. I spun him around with my left hand, brought my right fist up in a hard tight arc that ended u
nder his chin. His head whipped back, far back—and only then did I remember the whiplash injury, the muscles and tendons and nerves that must already have been torn in his neck.
He slammed into the car door, fell at my feet.
I went back and picked up my gun, put it in the holster, then walked toward Suez. I walked past the still bleeding, crumpled body in the street and toward Suez. She kept screaming as she looked at me. I didn't blame her.
I stopped in front of her.
“Easy, Suez,” I said softly. “Easy.”
She stopped screaming, and stood up straight again, her fists slowly opening. She pressed her open hands against her cheeks, dark eyes wide and still reflecting horror. She licked her red lips but didn't say anything. Beyond her I saw the movement of a window curtain, a white face peering at us.
That brought me back closer to normality, too. I looked at my watch. It seemed that it must have been at least an hour since I'd left the Cowley hospital, but it had taken me six minutes to drive here, and only a minute or two had gone into the crash and gunfight. It was now exactly twenty-three minutes until three p.m.
Twenty-three minutes until the services for Lou Rio began. Maybe I could still make it. But the thought moved dully through my brain. I said to Suez, “Those two men were sent here by Nick. Do you know what that means?”
Slowly she nodded, running her tongue over her lips again. “He—they must have been going to ... kill me.”
“That's right.”
“I ... Shell, I —” She broke off closing her eyes and pressing one hand to her smooth forehead, then running it back hard over her long black hair.
Slab Happy (The Shell Scott Mysteries) Page 16