Shell Scott's Seven Slaughters (The Shell Scott Mysteries)

by Richard S. Prather

  Those were the only sounds that had been made in these few seconds—but the silence ended suddenly then. The man who'd swung at me gasped air and let out a hoarse unintelligible shout, then crashed into a waste can, toppling it over with a grating clatter as he fell. I bent forward and grabbed the thing he'd dropped—a heavy length of chain, more than a foot long, with lethal inch-thick links. It weighted my hand as I started up again, hearing the slap of shoe leather on the cement behind me.

  One of the men landed on my back. Something hard bounced off the side of my head, a jarring, glancing blow. I jerked my body aside, the man still hanging onto me, then the other man landed on me and I went down.

  I swung both my arms, rolled onto my back, whipped the length of chain through the air and felt it thud against flesh, then got one leg bent and drove my foot forward against the side of the other man's neck. He spun away, sprawled on the cement a yard from me. I grabbed his foot in my free hand and wrenched and twisted with all my strength until I heard a dull cracking sound: he cried out in sudden pain.

  The third man was getting up from alongside the waste can he'd knocked over and as he ran at me I was, for about one second, free of clinging arms or hands. I was able to get on my feet and take a step forward, and I swung my left arm around, chain clenched in my fingers. Those heavy links whipped through the air and smashed violently against the side of the man's skull. It made a horrible noise, a surprisingly loud sound, and he toppled heavily to the cement.

  I reached under my coat for the .38 but something jarred me and the gun slipped from my fingers, fell at my feet. One of the other men loomed on my left, and I swung toward him, and as I moved I slashed the chain at him, heard him yell in pain as the heavy metal thudded against his side. I stepped toward him balling up my right hand, twisted my body and drove my fist hard at him, cracking it against his face. The blow sent the man reeling backwards, arms flipping up into the air and then falling loosely. I started toward him. But only started. I didn't make it.

  It felt as if the building had crashed on the back of my skull. Pain roared audibly inside my head, ricocheting against brain and bone, reverberating and echoing like a sound deep inside me. My legs gave way. I felt myself falling through grayness, falling and spinning. My knees hit the hard cement floor and surprising pain sliced through the fog in my brain. I heard the man grunt behind me and I threw my body aside as fast as I could. But not quite fast enough.

  The pain was less this time, the blow glancing, not solid. But it slowed me down still more. The sounds ricocheted inside my head and lights flashed before my eyes. But it almost seemed that with the sound this time was the high wail of a siren. A man swore harshly. I heard his shoes scrape on the cement. I crawled a few feet forward, trying to get to my feet. A man grunted. I could hear the wailing clearly now, a siren for sure. It seemed to be closer, louder.

  I got to my feet, hands empty but balled into fists. Shoe leather slapped on cement. I turned in time to see two men going through the door into the alley outside, one of them supported by the other. I yelled something at them, then hunted over the floor for my gun, saw it a yard away.

  As I bent to pick it up dizziness blurred my sight and a line of warm blood coursed down the side of my face, bathed my neck. A car engine caught nearby, roared and drowned out the sound of the now obviously close siren. I ran, weaving a little, toward the door, as the car sped away from the garage. It was still in view. I steadied my gun, squeezed off two shots. The sedan skidded left into the street and out of sight.

  The siren shrieked in my ears. A police prowl car slid to a stop in the alley near me. I shouted at them and they took off in a hurry after the other car. It was too late, though. Two of the men had gotten away—but I wasn't kicking.

  Ten minutes later I knew that the sedan with the two men in it was long gone. I'd been told, too, that the police had arrived in response to a phone call from Tay, the garage attendant. All he knew was that he'd been hit over the head, and had come to resting under some bushes against the back wall of the Spartan, clumsily tied. He didn't know how long he'd been unconscious, but it couldn't have been very long; and after getting free of the ropes the first thing he'd done was to find a phone.

  Four of us were inside the garage now. Tay sat on a wooden chair, holding a wet cloth against his head. Two policemen from one of the radio cars were getting my story. I wound it up, “That's all there was to it. It's ten to one that they recognized me out there where Hamilton got it, either knew me and where I lived or else traced me down, then came here and sapped Tay and waited for me. It's my guess that the only reason they didn't shoot me is that they wanted to kill me quietly and then haul my body out in the sticks."

  “Three of them, huh?” one of the policemen asked.

  “Yeah. I'd never seen them before, but when the third boy comes to he can tell us who they are."

  The other officer said, “Guess again, Scott.” He pointed to the prone body of the man I'd sapped with his own heavy chain. “He's not coming to."

  I hadn't looked carefully at the man since the ruckus started. Now I walked over and squatted by him. His skull was split open, ugliness oozing from the split. His eyes stared without seeing. No breath flowed between his lax, parted lips.

  I walked back to the officers. “He came at me from behind, swinging that chain I showed you. When I got my hands on it, I tapped him with it. It was self-defense, but I didn't think I was going to tap him clear out of his skull!"

  One of the officers sighed. “You sure did, though,” he said. “At least, he don't seem to be in there."

  At the Police Building in downtown L.A. I found pictures of the two other men in the mugg books. It took me two hours, and by the time I'd identified the hoodlums as Frank “The Mouse” Washer and “Noodles” Costain, the police had checked out the dead man. His name was—had been—James J. French, and he'd been called Preachy by the law and the lawless.

  Lieutenant Rawlins, a friend of mine, sat with me in Homicide and gave me the info while we had coffee. “Funny thing about Frenchy, Shell,” he said. “We picked up his prints at the scene of two burglaries here within the last month. From the M.O., we figure these were two out of maybe twenty or more jobs that've been pulled by the same bunch in the last year or so."

  “What kind of jobs?"

  “Warehouse burglaries mostly. Also some truck hijackings. We list seven hundred cases of Coca Cola as one, a refrigerator car of meat for another—those are the two where we lifted Frenchy's prints. And we think some of the others were half a garage full of cigarette cases and cigars, another of foodstuffs, one job where they heisted furs—mink mostly."

  “Anything to tie Frank the Mouse and Noodles in with Frenchy?"

  “Not till tonight. They're killers, not thieves. At least we don't have any record of them pulling stickups."

  Noodles was the taller man, the Death's Head with skin on it. Dough-face was Frank the Mouse. At least I knew the names of the men I was after, and what they looked like, and now had copies of their mugg-book pictures.

  I talked to Rawlins a few minutes longer, finished my coffee and went home. Before turning in I phoned half a dozen friendly hoodlums, and informants, and put out the word that I was extremely interested in locating two muggs named Noodles Costain and Frank the Mouse Washer. And I let it be known that it would be worth $500 to whoever turned the men up, if it was done fast. It had to be done fast; unless I got to those killers soon, they would get to me first.

  Over my usual meager breakfast of mush and toast—I think of it, dismally, as lukewarm porridge—I thought about the case. So far this A. M., nobody had shot at me, which after the activity of last night almost made it seem like a slow morning. I had no doubt, though, that Hamilton's killers would be trying again very soon to rub out the only live witness—me. The way I felt, what with aches and sorenesses and pains they wouldn't have to rub very hard.

  The only lead I had to any reason for Hamilton's murder was the fact that he'd go
tten the creeps after reading a morning paper. And the only suspect item on that front page he'd ogled seemed to be the headlined “murder—or suicide”—of Erik Douglas. Douglas was a member of the local Four Hundred, a Social Registerite who had hit it big in the manufacture of glass-wool and glass-fiber rugs and carpets. Through selling the colorfast and long-wearing items he'd made well over a million dollars, it was said, in the last three years. But that was all I knew about him.

  I ordered a cup of coffee and phoned Mrs. Hamilton, bringing her up to date, then called the Police Building. None of my friends there knew of any connection between Douglas and Hamilton. The only similarity between them, in fact, seemed to be that they were both dead.

  Alvin Hamilton's office had been on the third floor of the Curl Building on Fourth and Grand in downtown Los Angeles. I phoned and talked to his secretary, a gal named May Sullivan, then headed for the Curl Building. I found a parking slot on Fourth, took the elevator to the third floor and walked down the hall to room 36. The door was slightly ajar, and I started through. But only started.

  I got the door open and took a step forward, but somebody was trying to do exactly the same thing from the opposite side and we collided. It was nothing to be annoyed about, though, because there are collisions and collisions. The other half of the bump was about 5 feet 6 inches tall, blonde and pale-green-eyed, and so amply equipped with shock absorbers that neither of us could have felt any pain at all even though we bounced about a yard in opposite directions. She was so delightfully fashioned that if we bumped again in the dark I would be almost sure to recognize her, which seemed like a marvelous idea.

  She squealed and I said, “Woops!” and we got settled down a bit and I said, “I'm sorry. I didn't—"

  “It's all right.” Beyond her was another woman, a pleasant-looking gal of about 30, with glamour glasses that had little stones set along their sharply angled edges, a rather plump face, and fine brown hair. But I merely glanced at her and returned my attention to the blonde.

  The blonde's upper half, which almost seemed like three-fourths, was encased in a pink sweater and it didn't hurt a bit. I even examined the dark skirt and high-heeled shoes; everywhere was dandy. She was saying, “It was my fault—I was looking the other way."

  “I wasn't, I'm happy to say. But you sort of stalled my motor reflexes."

  She smiled, as if glad we had bumped. Luscious was the word for this one, and soft, and tender, but also full of hell—as if kisses would bruise her and she'd love to be black and blue all over. She looked as if she had been sprinkled with a tenderizer invented by cannibals, and there is no doubt she was the kind of gal who made men want to join nudist camps. With her, of course.

  The other gal, the regular woman, walked up to us and said, “Mr. Scott?"

  “Yes. Are you the one I just talked to on the phone?"

  She nodded, light glancing from the stones set in the frame of her glasses. Then to the blonde she said, “This is Mr. Scott, dear. The detective fellow.” She smiled at me and added, “This is Miss Wexler, Mr. Scott."

  “How do you do?” I said.

  The blonde said, “Well, at least we met in an unusual fashion."

  “Uh-huh. Shaking hands won't be much fun after this."

  She gave me a slow smile, then turned toward the door. “Bye,” she said to me, and then to May Sullivan, “You're sure there's nothing I can do?"

  “No, thanks, Barbara. I can manage."

  The blonde went out. I sighed, thinking that this was not the day when I wanted to work on a murder case; this was the day I wanted to join a nudist camp. But I pulled my thoughts together and asked May Sullivan the appropriate questions. She knew of no reason why anybody would have killed her late employer, she said, adding without a great deal of logic that “everybody” had liked him. I asked her if he had ever said anything to her about being afraid of anybody or anything, if he'd been the same as usual lately.

  She shook her head. “He never said anything to me, Mr. Scott. He was always in good spirits, jolly, like he didn't have a care in the world. But he had seemed upset the last few days. As if he might have been worried about something. I didn't ask him what was the matter."

  “Do you know if Mr. Hamilton knew Erik Douglas?"

  She blinked in surprise. “It's odd you should ask about him—you mean the man that just committed suicide, don't you?"

  “Yeah. Or was killed. Why is it odd?"

  “Well, so far as I know Mr. Hamilton never represented him in any way. But last week Mr. Douglas was in the office. Mr. Hamilton met here with him and a man named Lou Finney."

  She was smiling when she said that, so obviously she didn't realize what her words meant. Not only had she linked Hamilton with Erik Douglas, but had tied both of them to bad news. Because no matter how it was pronounced, “Lou Finney” spelled Trouble.

  Finney was a heavy-handed heavy, a local hoodlum with national ideas, a crumb from the lower crust who now ran a “high-class” nightclub called the White Crow. He was not the suave, glad-handing type who might be expected to oversee the activities of a lush den for lushes, but more the kind of rotten egg who might be mixed up in a murder omelette. Finney fitted right in with such lobs as Frank the Mouse and Noodles Costain and the late Frenchy French.

  I said, “What was the meeting about?"

  “I don't know. Mr. Hamilton didn't ask me to stay in his office."

  “The three of them never met here before?"

  “Not to my knowledge."

  “Either Douglas or Finney here any other time that you know about?"

  “Mr. Douglas never was, not so far as I remember. But Mr. Finney had been in the office once or twice. I don't know what about, though."

  That was all she could tell me. I left and went down to the Cad, and sat in it smoking a cigarette and thinking about the case. My job, of course, was to find out why Hamilton had been killed and pin it on the people responsible. But even more important was the job of staying alive myself. I knew three things: first, that Hamilton had been murdered shortly after he'd been scared half out of his pants by something on the front page of the newspaper, almost surely the item about Douglas’ death; second, that the men who had murdered Hamilton were, if logic was still logical, the same men who had tried to kill me; and third, that Lou Finney had recently met with both Hamilton and Douglas—both of whom were now corpses.

  It was time to ask Lou Finney about that meeting in Hamilton's office. If he had nothing to hide, he'd probably tell me what it had been about, if for no other reason than to keep me off his neck. But if there was anything he wanted to keep under cover, he would undoubtedly clam. Either way, his reaction would tell me something. I started the car and headed for the White Crow.

  Not until I turned into Cordon Road did it hit me that I was retracing much of the route I'd covered last night when I'd followed Alvin Hamilton to his violent death. I passed the place off the road where Hamilton had run, panicked, through the beam of headlights, but this time I continued on to Fennel Street and turned right. Another mile up Fennel and I came to the White Crow.

  It sat 50 yards back from the road, alone, at least a mile from any other building larger than a small house, looking rather shabby in the afternoon sunlight, though it was glamorous enough at night. I'd been here once and remembered only that the floor-show had been as good as the liquor had been bad. I remembered Finney well, though.

  Until a little more than four years ago, Lou Finney had been just another failure, a medium-time hoodlum who did odd jobs for odd people, jobs usually involving muscle or gunplay. Then he'd suddenly built the White Crow. It was rumored that Syndicate money was financing him and he was just the front, but he could have robbed a bank, or people. Anyway, the club had prospered from the start, and he was a Big Man now. I didn't like him a bit more than I liked blood poisoning. And that was the way Finney wanted it.

  He had no use for me. I represented law, and Finney hated anything connected with law and order and ju
stice. We'd met occasionally over recent years, mainly when I was trying to trace hoodlums and following up leads that pointed to, or near, Finney. He'd never given me anything but a hard time. Always he was rude, big-mouthed, even insulting. I hadn't knocked him on his ear, though—not yet.

  The White Crow wouldn't be open to the public until six P. M. and it was only two now, but there were a few cars in the lot. I parked the Cad, walked to the club's entrance and inside. It was one large room filled with tables. A big papier-mâché crow, painted white, stood against the rear wall, so that it faced the customers when they came in. The dominating colors of the room were black and white. The bar lined the left wall. Near the right wall—far from the bar so that you couldn't see the show well while nursing a six-bit beer—was the dance floor. At the moment, six gals were stomping about on it, apparently rehearsing some kind of dance, or killing cockroaches.

  Three other people, besides the dancers, were in sight. At the edge of the floor a man leaned forward with his arms on the back of a wooden chair. A long cigar stuck out of the side of his mouth, and it wiggled vigorously as he called in muffled tones, “All right, all right. Let's take it again from the beginning."

  Beyond him and farther to my left a thin blond man sat before a piano. The third person was the cigarette girl. At least she was dressed in a highly abbreviated outfit and carried the usual tray of cigarettes, matches and cigars suspended from red velvet ropes around her smooth white shoulders. She seemed a little out of place, because without customers at the tables there didn't seem much chance she could do a booming business in smokes.

  She glanced my way, then smiled at me, just for fun. I smiled back, widely, also just for fun. Then she walked toward me, and even though those six well-developed gals on the floor were flopping about wildly inside loose sweaters, and were throwing everything every which way, it was the cigarette girl that I watched. And with reason. Just her long, lovely, firmly curving legs were almost enough, all by themselves. Visible for their full length beneath the extremely short skirt, encased in dark net nylons, the curves accentuated by four-inch heels on her shoes, gliding smoothly and with the dim light gleaming dully from rounded calf and columnar thigh, they were works of modern art designed to burst blood vessels in bulging eyeballs.