Slab Happy (The Shell Scott Mysteries)

by Richard S. Prather

  “You shouldn't have paid the bum a nickel, Suez.”

  “But that's not all. And remember, I'm very serious about my career. I'm started now and I want to keep going—this would ruin me. My career for sure.” She tapped the envelope again.

  We were close to McGannon's. I said, “Pull over and park.”

  “But we're still two blocks away.”

  “Two blocks is close enough for you. I'll do the rest on foot.”

  She pulled to the curb and parked, then said, “I told you there was more. The rest of it —” she looked squarely at me—“is about my parents themselves. My father was somebody from Georgia; I never knew him. My mother was a Negro.” She paused, then added, “I'm half white, half Negro. What do you say to that, Mr. Scott?”

  Her sudden statement had jarred me. But without even thinking I said, “Well ... looking at you, Suez, I'd say it's a combination that should be tried more often.” I had just said, automatically, what came into my head, but Suez didn't seem to mind.

  She smiled at me and said, “Maybe we're not even yet, but I wanted to tell you.”

  “We're even.” I grinned at her. “By the way, I'm English and Irish and Scotch and French—and I don't know what all. But I've no time for chitchat now. I'm off. How do I look?” This was taking time, but I did want one opinion besides my own before I walked into McGannon's. Just to pluck up my failing courage. If I looked like Dracula's father, it would help me to mingle unnoticed with Lou's boys.

  Suez blinked at me. “I would hardly know it was you.”

  “Hardly is hardly good enough. You mean I'm still me?”

  “Well, sort of. You do look a lot different.”

  “That will have to do, I guess.” I said it sadly. Then I told Suez to go straight to the Police Building, where she'd be safe, and I got out of the car.

  Suez leaned onto the doorframe. “If you live,” she said lightly, “maybe you can tell me how you managed it.”

  I think she wanted two answers. I said, “I'll live —” I grinned at her—“to knock again on your dressing-room door.”

  And then I turned and walked, double-time, toward McGannon's. And though I know I had sounded very confident telling Suez I would live, I now decided I must have been kidding.

  There was still six minutes to go when I walked up the steps and into McGannon's mortuary. I knew it was too late to find Lou's body on view in the adjoining room where Viper had seen it and done his work, but I'd had hope that I might be able to reach the casket before the chapel filled, while there would be at least a chance of getting a peek—and maybe a hand—into the coffin without running the gauntlet of eighty or a hundred eyes.

  That wild dream vanished the moment I stepped inside the chapel door, however. The forty or fifty people present were almost all seated on long benches facing the front of the chapel. Some of them glanced casually at me, but no hoarse shouts shattered the subdued murmur of lingo. Several hoods here were undoubtedly strangers to most of the group, and probably nobody present knew all of the other names or faces. So one more oddball wouldn't cause much excitement—unless somebody who knew me took a close look.

  And to avoid close looks, I had to do nothing which would call undue attention to me. Somebody stepped up beside me and tried to show me to a seat at the end of one of the benches. I felt like removing myself, but then the tones of an organ wobbled suddenly in the air. I turned, to go, thinking there might still be time to get out—and turned almost into a particularly ugly hoodlum blocking the door two yards from me. It was Gangrene.

  I swung back into the room, and suddenly realized that Gangrene and I were the only people still standing. With the sound of the organ music, the others who had been on their feet had taken their places. I ducked my head, stepped forward and took the seat previously pointed out to me.

  Gangrene walked up the aisle and took a seat too close to me. Any seat would have been too close. Well, I couldn't get up now. That would, for sure, draw all eyes to me. I was here; this was the place where I'd wanted to be; and now I was stuck with it.

  I don't remember any of the service. But the moment when the assembled hoods began filing past the casket for a last look at Lou was burned deep into my brain.

  All of a sudden it was my turn and I was on my feet in the aisle. I stepped forward toward that coffin, and it seemed by far the craziest thing I'd done in my life.

  Then I could see his face and at first my only thought was that Lou Rio looked very waxy....

  Chapter Sixteen

  the sound of another gunshot snapped me back from wherever I'd been.

  When I had looked in the rear view mirror at the long line of cars barreling along behind me, I had sort of blanked out for a moment after deciding that, yes, I would be glad to do it all over again. And now I decided that I wished I were doing it over.

  When I had emptied my gun at the car behind me, I had been able to note that it was a blue Lincoln and, more important, that the man sitting next to the driver and shooting at me, was Gangrene. He would naturally be in the number-one car behind the hearse transporting Lou.

  The hearse seemed to be crawling, and the blue Lincoln had gained on me again with appalling speed. It was pulling up on my left again. And right then an awful thought struck me.

  I had gone through all this misery and hell and sweat to get four sheets of paper, and I didn't even have them in my hands yet. They were still in the casket behind me, next to Lou. If nothing else, I was at least going to grab them. I held the steering wheel with the fingers of my left hand and leaned far back, stretching, running my hand along the side of the casket.

  My fingers hit the papers I'd seen during the procession past the casket and I grabbed them. The hearse was weaving, and Lou's body rolled and rocked, momentarily freeing the papers. I yanked them out, jammed them into my coat pocket. I heard the gun crack again, but this time Gangrene didn't even hit the hearse.

  But when I turned around and got both hands on the steering wheel again the Lincoln pulled up almost level with me, and on my left I could see Gangrene in the car's window with his gun raised. On my right was the green of the cemetery. We were there; it was a dead heat.

  Fifty feet ahead was the blacktop turnoff into the cemetery. I didn't even think; I just acted. I slammed on the brakes and as Gangrene's car shot ahead of me I swung the steering wheel left, slamming hard into the Lincoln's right rear fender. My foot was all the way down on the brake pedal, but at the moment of impact I slammed it onto the gas and jerked the wheel right again. The hearse skidded all the way to the turnoff, tires shrieking in protest.

  The impact sent the rear end of the blue Lincoln sliding, first one way and then the other. But that was the last chance I had to look at it because I was fighting the steering wheel and straightening out the hearse on the blacktop road into the cemetery. At least Gangrene and his driver were behind me now; and it would take them a minute or so to stop, turn around, and get after me again. But as I glanced into the rear view mirror I saw the first of those other cars following me swing onto the blacktop. I had a good head start again, but that car was only the first of many; and now the hearse's left front fender was bent inward, rubbing against the tire.

  Afternoon sunlight fell through closely planted eucalyptus trees bordering the road on my left. Two hundred yards ahead were the Woodstream Cemetery buildings, the mausoleum and crematorium. Headstones and monuments dotted the area all around them. Another hundred yards on past those buildings the road made its last turn to the right, continuing on around in a rough oval which marked the cemetery's limits. But straight ahead at the end of the cemetery property was part of the Dimondsen orange grove which bordered Woodstream on three sides. And where the road turned right, it was hidden for a hundred feet or more by massed banks of oleander and mock orange.

  I was passing the cemetery buildings, but already I knew what I was going to do—or try to do. If the road was clear when I turned right at that last-chance turn ahead, so that the hea
rse wouldn't run anybody down—and even in my present jangled state, getting run over by a hearse in a cemetery seemed like perhaps the unhappiest way to get it that I could think of—then I was going to part company with the hearse and just let it roll. And hope.

  I reached the last turn and skidded around it to the right. There wasn't another person in sight up here at the cemetery's end; the road ahead was clear for a hundred or more yards, all the way to the point where it swung right again—and I couldn't even see the pursuing cars now, blocked out as they were by that massed mock orange and oleander. Which meant, too, that they couldn't see me.

  I slowed down enough so that I wouldn't kill myself, but the heavy hearse was still traveling fast enough to roll a long way if it didn't hit anything. Then I slipped the gears into neutral and opened the car door, got ready to jump. Green rows of orange trees flashed past thirty feet away beyond an open wooden fence. The hearse held steady in the middle of the road after I released the wheel, and I didn't wait any longer. I jumped.

  I hit the dirt on my feet and tried to run, but the impact was too great. My knees buckled and I fell sprawling, the breath whooshing out of my mouth, but I rolled over twice and came back up on my feet. The fence danced in front of my eyes, blurred. I hadn't sprained or broken anything, and I jumped toward the fence, grabbed the top board and vaulted over it. When my feet hit the earth on the other side of the fence I took two long strides and then dived into the air and forward, like a fullback going over the line, and landed nearly at the base of one of the orange trees.

  I rolled another yard or two, then squirmed around on my knees and looked back. On my left the hearse was still rolling. The door had slammed shut of its own weight. The car wasn't moving very fast, but at least it was moving down the road, veering slightly to its left. On my right the first of the pursuing cars was just skidding around the curve I'd maneuvered seconds before. I held myself motionless as the car swerved, straightened out and picked up speed. It roared past me, thirty feet away, and I could see five men in it. And I saw two guns held at the ready. Undoubtedly there were more guns; I only saw two and that was more than enough.

  I spun around and ran like a fiend. After twenty strides or so I cut over a couple of rows and then just picked them up and laid them down, running as fast as I could through the cultivated soil. It was soft earth, difficult to make time through; but I made time.

  There were no shots, not even sounds of pursuit. By now either the hearse had run into something, or that first car had caught up with it. But it would take those boys at least a minute to make sure I wasn't in the coffin, maybe hiding under Lou, or possibly under the hood somewhere. And with the wildest exhilaration I had known in a long time, I knew that if my lungs held out I was going to make it.

  My lungs held out.

  I guess it was half a mile or more of slogging through that beautiful orange grove—there would never be one more beautiful—before I reached the next road. It was a two-lane cement highway and the second car, an old Ford, stopped for me. It was either stop or run over me because after the first driver gawked at me and ripped past, I stood squarely in the middle of the street moving my arms.

  The driver who stopped had the appearance of a farmer, a man close to the soil. I figured he was close to the soil because about three pounds of it appeared still to be on him. I yanked open the door, not even waiting for an invitation under the circumstances, and jumped in. And I wanted soon to be going at least a hundred miles an hour—away from here.

  “Yeah,” the farmer said, “C'mon in. Where you headed?”

  “Just go, man, go!” I said frantically. “Never mind where. Go, man, go!”

  He looked at me disdainfully, at my hair and smeared black eyebrows, and the rest of me. “Hah,” he said contemptuously, “one of them rock-and-rollers.”

  I didn't argue with him. I knew that nothing was going to stop me now, so I just sat there soaking in my sweat while he slowly put the old Ford into gear and we chugged away.

  From a pay phone booth in the service station where I had filled the farmer's gas tank and washed up—including washing the water-soluble dye out of my hair and eyebrows—I called Magna and got Feldspen. He sounded as if he'd been tearing his hair out, and he didn't calm down a bit when I started filling him in on what had been happening to me. That was understandable—it dawned on me that the last real talk I'd had with him had been last night when I'd phoned his home from the Oasis Motel. Consequently it took a while to bring him up to date.

  After that I asked him, “How's the project going?”

  “All right. I need some more information from you.”

  “I'll get what I can. There's a little crook named Arthur H. Worthington at the Cowley Memorial Hospital who can give you plenty. I found out from him that Nick takes a nap after dinner each night for an hour, with his clothes on and his gun on a night stand by the bed. That might help me if I get in there.”

  “Shell.” He sounded weary. “Are you sure you want to go back to Desert Trails after what happened to you there?”

  “I don't want to go back. But how else can I get to the man and do what I want to do? I've got enough to hurt him, maybe—but not enough to ruin him. And either I ruin him for sure or he'll ruin me.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “It is so. That confession Ted Valentine wrote would involve Nick, and might even get him a slap on the wrist, but if I know Nick Colossus—and I do—he'd wriggle out even from under this confession. But with what I hope to get from him, this suite note will be the knot in the noose.” I paused. “Speaking of getting info from Nick, did you charter that helicopter?” “Yes. It's fueled and ready for takeoff at any time now, at the Curl Airport.”

  I glanced at my watch. It was after five p.m. “I'm on my way. About that little crook, Viper; if he tries to clam, tell him he has to either spill all or share his bed with a python.” “What? I don't understand.”

  “Just tell him that, and he'll cooperate. Even over the phone probably. Well, keep your fingers crossed.” We hung up.

  On the way out to the Curl airport in a taxi I read Ted Valentine's four-page letter again. It was written on Desert Trails stationery and the style seemed rather florid and stilted, but Valentine had, after all, worked himself into a mental state in which he could take his own life.

  The message was there though, and clear enough: “In a few minutes, I, Theodore Valentine, am going to swallow enough sleeping pills so that very soon I will have no further problems or regrets. This, then, is in the nature of a confession, and—because I know that in a few minutes I will be dead—a deathbed statement. I am a blackmailer. I have been instrumental in the blackmailing of: Johnny Palomino, Suez, Coral James, Salley Courtland, and June Benton, all of Magna Studios. It is easy enough now to say that I was forced to do this by a man who knew of damning information in my background which I could not afford to have divulged; but the fact remains that I did learn, in confidence, secrets from those five people and then betrayed their confidence by divulging that information to the man blackmailing me. That man was, and is, Nick Colossus. It is ironic that I am being blackmailed by him, and as my payment must provide him, not with money, but with information he can then use for blackmailing those others.”

  That was the end of the first page. Valentine had then gone on to explain the mechanism by which he had discovered the “damning information” about the five whom he helped Nick to blackmail—the “publicity” angle that both Coral and Suez had told me about. He explained the mechanics of the blackmail setup, as he knew them, told of how he had originally been approached by Nick Colossus, and wrote of his growing remorse and shame which had culminated in physical illness. The last page ended, “I am unable longer to live with this burden. May God forgive me....” It was signed Theodore Valentine.

  The letter was a good club to have over Nick's head, and all by itself it might help to get Nick into a trial court—on an extortion charge. But that was about all it guaranteed.
>
  And merely sticking Nick with a mild extortion rap wouldn't do me much good; I had to send him up for murder.

  I reached Curl Airport, a privately owned field, before six p.m. The helicopter pilot was a stocky, pleasant-faced man of about thirty-five, named Malcolm Waters. I told him I was ready to go, and he said he'd be all set in five minutes. I decided to phone Coral before we took off. I wanted to hear her voice one more time.

  There was no point in kidding myself. Even if I got into Nick's suite without being shot, there was a very good chance I wouldn't get out under my own power. I called the Oasis Motel, cabin 18. There wasn't any answer. I let the phone ring a long time, then hung up.

  I didn't like it. She could very well be getting a breath of fresh air, or having a sandwich. She could be. But I still didn't like it. I phoned Magna again and got Harry Feldspen.

  “Harry, Shell again.”

  “Are you at the airport?”

  “Yes, about ready to leave. Look, Harry, Coral James is in Cabin 18 at the Oasis Motel. I just phoned but there's no answer. Would you —”

  “Coral?” he interrupted. “What in the world is she doing out there?”

  “Harry, I haven't time to explain. But I'd appreciate it if you'd call her again in five or ten minutes. When you get her, have her come in to Magna, O.K.?”

  “Why here?”

  “I'd like her there if—when I get back tonight.” I thought a minute. “It might not be a bad idea to send somebody out to bring her in.”

  “All right.”

  “In fact, if you don't get her on the phone, I'd appreciate your sending somebody to check and see why she doesn't answer.”

  He said he would, then asked me if everything was set at the airport. “Just getting ready to fly away,” I told him. I checked the stuff. “Thanks for having the recorder and ladder here. What's the sound track, by the way?”