At any rate, none of the boys was in sight. Just numerous rather subdued guests, most of them clutching highballs and staring glassily at me as I trotted to the entrance. I ran into the lobby—and there she was. She looked tired, mussed a little, but still warm and electric and wonderful. She was standing, looking toward the front doors, and when I burst through them she broke into a run toward me, arms going out and reaching for me while she was yards away.
I didn't let her run that whole distance by herself; I met her halfway. I would always meet this one halfway. She said, “Oh, Shell, I thought I was ... gone. I thought—I didn't think you'd find me, or...”
“Hey, hold it. Relax. Are you all right, honey?”
“Yes. Yes. Scared—oh, I was scared. But they didn't hurt me.” “There was blood on a towel in the motel room —”
“Oh, that. I fought them.” She smiled slightly. “They scared me, and I fought them. I gave the one called Flint a bloody nose. It really bled a lot.”
I laughed, feeling good, feeling almost as if I could float up into the air at least a little way even without a helicopter. I owed Flint a bust in the snoot myself, but it could wait; I'd had quite enough violence and nerve-unraveling and snoot-busting for one evening—and, anyway, Coral had apparently taken care of that item well enough for now, all by herself.
Then I noticed that the lobby was empty. Not another soul was in sight. “Where is everybody?” I asked Coral.
“Most of the men, including that horrible one called Flint, left right after he got a phone call here. An hour or more ago. There are still a few of them around somewhere, I think, but a lot of them left in a big hurry.”
After my previous visit here, Flint would have known Nick wasn't calling of his own free will. So the ones left, I thought, were probably the few with no records or worries. Well, the others—the ones we wanted, including Flint and Shortcake—would be rounded up soon enough.
I said to Coral, “You're sure you're all right?”
“Absolutely.” She looked up at me, and I knew she wasn't intentionally turning on the heat, but those hot brown eyes lit my fuse anyway. This gal didn't have to turn it on; she just couldn't turn it off.
I said to her, “Come on, we can finish this conversation in the helicopter.”
“Is that what all the noise was out front?”
“Yeah.” I grinned at her. “It's my version of a white charger. Come. Join me in a mad race over the desert sands to my secret tent. I have dates and camel milk and Zaffir wine.”
She smiled. Hotly. She couldn't help it. She always smiled hotly. “All right. What's Zaffir wine?”
“Why, it's bee-stung honey fermented with lotus blossoms. It puts moonbeams on a woman's lips, and night winds in her eyes. Whatever that means. Sounds good, what?”
“I'll have a pint of it.”
“A pint? This is madness.”
“Good. I feel like some madness.” She laughed, then put her hand up slowly and touched my cheek. “Shell, I wouldn't have believed it.”
“Believed what?”
“Not more than ten minutes ago I was—Oh, everything was awful. But now, well, it's as if it didn't really happen at all.
Those terrible men bursting into the room, and grabbing me, and bringing me here—but it didn't really happen, did it?”
“Of course not. Well, here we are at Happy Ranch, kiddies. It's Game Time. Come on.” I grabbed her hand and pulled her outside. Some of the people stared at us, others were still at the bar. A dignified-looking fellow in a dark suit was mixing drinks. Not a hood was yet in sight.
I pulled Coral after me to the helicopter, helped her in and then climbed in myself. When we got settled, I was in the seat and she was on my lap, and the helicopter seemed much nicer than it had ever seemed before. I saluted Malcolm, who was eyeballing Coral as if he were seeing his first woman, and then I introduced them—briefly—and said to Malcolm, “Shall we go?”
“Go?” He was dazed. “Go ... where?”
“Well, you might try up.”
He blinked, sighed, and we went up.
Desert Trails dwindled and soon was just a bright dot in the blackness below us. It seemed almost like a symbolic dot, though, because I was sure there was soon going to be a lot more brightness. Nick's men were scattered, the hoodlum monster was headless. Lou's men knew now that I hadn't chilled their boss, and with that knowledge—and the fact that I'd turned up the real killer—they would cease thirsting for my blood. Feldspen was happy, his big problems solved. I was rich, until tax time. The police had in a cell the man they'd wanted most, and the other big local mobster was no longer among the living.
And on my lap was Coral James.
With her sweet, warm mouth close to my shot-up ear—the one I occasionally refer to as my “Shell-like” ear, Coral said, “Where are we going. Besides up.”
“Why, to my tent. And the Zaffir —”
“Be serious for a minute. Really, Shell, where are we going? And what are we going to do?”
I looked around. The rotors spun above us, and now they had a pleasant sound; it seemed almost a happy sound. We raced through the night, through blackness, but all the hell and pain and trouble was for sure behind us. There were still several things to do, threads to wind up—I had to talk some more to Suez, with Palomino and some Magna bit players, and to the police and a few other people—but the big things, the urgent things were done, and the view really did look very good ahead now.
I looked back at Coral, at the wonderful face so close to mine, the brown eyes and blinding hair and sweet lips, and I tightened my arms around her waist, just a little.
“I honestly don't know yet, Coral, not for sure.” I grinned at her, “But ... I'll think of something.”
The End
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1958 by Richard S. Prather
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ISBN 978-1-4804-9847-1
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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Slab Happy (The Shell Scott Mysteries) Page 23