Strip for Murder

by Richard S. Prather

  The sidewalks were crowded; people below were even thronging in the middle of the streets. Somehow I was much lower now, sinking, and the sinking sensation I had now made the last one seem like a rising sensation. I could see the people very clearly, but that wasn't the worst of it. Traffic had stopped. Way up here on my perch I could hear horns blowing. The distant sound of a crash reached my ears. No, not all the traffic had stopped. Directly below me there was a police car, keeping pace with my progress. Its siren was wailing continually. I, too, was wailing continually.

  I had dropped much lower, even lower than the top of City Hall, which was pretty close at this point. Awfully close. It seemed appropriate that I was on about the same level with its twenty-fifth floor. The observation tower is on the twenty-fifth floor.

  And then my mind tottered. I told myself over and over that this was impossible. That nothing could make it happen. Not even freak winds could make it truly happen.

  But I had to accept it. The winds were right, the height was perfect. Years from now, when this tale was told, few of the coming generation would believe it. But it was true. I was going to float through space like a Zeppelin and moor at City Hall.

  I had the feeling that Civil Defense was watching me, marking my progress on a chart. In panic I tried to figure a way out. Maybe I could make people think I was a visitor from another planet. A less thickly inhibited planet. Maybe I could float in through a window and babble gibberish as I had done with Laurel and they'd all bow down. I imagined the Examiner putting out an extra: “Saucer Man Arrives in Strange Craft!”

  Then I thought: My God, what if Civil Defense reports me and the Air Force shoots me down? At that very instant a jet plane swooped past me and on toward the horizon. I almost lost my grip on the ladder. Those balloons above me probably looked like a squadron of flying discs—and they'd captured a human!

  I heard noises, shouts. Slowly I came back from wherever I'd been. Smack in front of me was the wall of City Hall, dotted with people yelping from windows. One ass was leaning out and laughing so hard I thought he was going to fall fifteen stories. I looked down. Nothing but people.

  You couldn't even see the goddamned grass around City Hall. Just a mass of upturned faces. And open mouths. And pointing fingers.

  Ten feet away from me now, in an open window, was a man with a cigarette dangling from his lips and lighter in his hand. Suddenly I thought of all that gas up there above me.

  “Don't!” I shouted. “Don't light it! I'm a bomb, a human bomb. I'll blow up City Hall, blow it down!”

  If that happened, people would be sure I was a Russian secret weapon. Or a weapon from the Moon. Even a Martian. If I blew up, space travel would be set back a hundred years. People would cry: “The Martians are bombs!”

  A lot of secretaries had their heads stuck out of windows. Most of them were screaming, but the little hypocrites were still looking. I recognized some of them, but by now I hardly cared. One big-eyed blonde, even bigger-eyed now than usual, recognized me in turn.

  She pointed. “It is!” she screeched. “No, it isn't. My God, it is! It's Shell Scott!”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  I nearly died of embarrassment. She didn't have to make it so obvious. But then I was banged into the building's side, and hands reached for me and pulled me into an office. Three secretaries ran out the door. Pushing through the crowd came some uniformed officers, some in plain clothes. I saw Captain Samson, his usually pink face a brighter hue. Alongside him was Lieutenant Rawlins, a good friend of mine. Once he had been a good friend of mine. He was laughing like hell.

  I stuck my face close to his. “Well, what's so funny?”

  That did it. The bastard choked and gurgled and finally sank to the floor on his fanny, roaring like an idiot, hands wrapped around his sides.

  Sam stopped squarely in front of me, a cigar in his mouth. Slowly his teeth ground together. The cigar bent, then fell to the floor. “Shell,” he said in a voice taut with emotion. “Shell, you've done some crazy things before, but really, this is too much.”

  “I've got to get back to the nudist camp,” I burbled. Well, what would you have said? Sam kept biting his cigar stub. More hilarious cops were in the room now. Guys slapped their thighs. Somehow we got out of there and I wound up in a police uniform that Rawlins found somewhere for me.

  Then we were down in Room 42 and Sam was saying, “Well, let's go over to the jail.”

  “Sam, I've been trying to tell you. We've got the whole thing. I've got to get out of here and—”

  “We have to throw you in jail. All those people...” He shrugged helplessly.

  Five minutes later I was still arguing, still explaining. Sam had told me that they'd picked up Brad Bender in Las Vegas and he'd been brought to City Hall half an hour before. The crime lab had reported that the stain in the nap of Norman's carpet was blood, all right; but not human blood.

  “I tried to call you,” Samson said. “Couldn't even get an answer at that number. Something happened to the phone. I didn't know you were ... I didn't know you were...” He threw his hands in the air.

  “Sam, listen. Throw me in jail later if you've got to, but right now let me talk to Bender. We know the slug tossed at me was from the gun that killed Yates. We know Mrs. Redstone didn't kill herself. We know almost all of it. Let me have two minutes with Bender, and we'll pick up the killer. Then I'll go to a monastery. Join the Foreign Legion.”

  I won. Bender was brought into Room 42. I handed Rawlins the gun in my uniform holster, winked at Sam, and said, “I've got five minutes in your office alone with this bastard before you come in, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Pay no attention to any odd noises.”

  “Naturally not,” he said.

  Bender looked pale. He was about six feet tall, broad-shouldered and handsome, as are a lot of con men. He had plenty of wavy black hair, graying at the temples. His hands were manacled in front of him, the cuffs slipped under his belt so that he couldn't raise his arms.

  He shifted his feet nervously. “What's coming off?”

  “Can't you guess, Bender?”

  He swallowed. “Look, I don't get this. I haven't done anything. All of a damn sudden you haul me back to L.A.” He paused. “You can't get away with working me over in there.” He jerked his head toward the inner office, and his voice was firm and confident. His face wasn't so confident, though.

  He was right, of course. I couldn't work him over. Sam wouldn't have allowed it in the first place. But the important thing was to make him think I could get away with it. I said, “Maybe not, Bender. But I can give it a good try. Unless you want to spill the story of your phony murder. We know you're a cackle-bladder expert. And we know Andon Poupelle's supposed to have knocked you off. He still thinks you're dead, doesn't he?” I paused. “Take your pick, Bender. We know it all anyway.”

  He looked at me, then at Samson.

  “The way I see it, Bender, it was just a gag. Wasn't that it?” I looked at Sam. “He won't do time, will he? If that's all the deal turns out to be?”

  Sam said to me, not looking at Bender, “I can't promise anything. It would look good, though, if he cooperated with the police. He knows that.”

  Bender said, “You talk to Poupelle?”

  I hesitated, then said, “I'll give it to you straight. We can't even find the guy. Maybe he's dead for all I know.”

  He chewed his lip, seemed to make up his mind. “He's in Vegas. Some friends told me, but he didn't see me there.”

  “Was Ed Norman the friend who told you?”

  “Naturally.” He squinted at me. “It was a gag, remember. Here's how it went: Norman said we'd play a joke on Poupelle. Night of June 2 we all three were in Norman's office at the castle. Norman made sure there was a gun on his desk, loaded with blanks. I slipped the cackle bladder in my mouth. We rigged a fight, made it look good. I was choking Norman. He managed to yell at Poupelle to grab the gun. Poupelle plugged me and I staggered
toward him, squirted blood all over him. You know the rest.”

  “Yeah.” In Bender's language all the niceties and high points of the confidence man's technique were left out. Andon would have been played like a fish, ready for the psychological moment. He'd have grabbed the gun, fired at Bender—fired a blank—and Bender then would have bit on the cackle bladder. I could see the rest: blood spurting through his lips over Poupelle, over Bender's chin, blood all over, messy as hell. He'd have groaned a little, kicked a couple of times, and expired artistically. Bender had died that way about fifty times in his career, and nobody had ever thought he wasn't as dead as King Tut.

  While Bender talked, Sam was on the phone, making sure that a couple of police cars would be in readiness down front. Bender said, “That's about all. What happened after that I wouldn't know. Norman sent me to Vegas, told me to stay there till he got in touch. It was a gag, remember.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Only Poupelle didn't know it, and Norman held that fake murder over his head, made him do exactly what he wanted him to do.”

  Rawlins handed me back my gun and I slid it into the holster, pulled the uniform coat I was wearing down tighter onto my shoulders.

  Samson hung up and said to me, “The boys picked Bender up in a car, you know, on his way out of Vegas. He almost made it.”

  I swung toward Bender and said, “I thought you told me you were to stay there until Norman gave you the word. He call you?”

  “No.” Bender swallowed. “I heard the noise that cops were on my tail. Before I took off, I called Norman here, told him I was blowing, and why.”

  “Let's go,” Sam said.

  “Just a second.” I looked at Bender. “What time did you call, friend?”

  “Just before they picked me up. Maybe nine-thirty this morning.”

  We left Bender with one of the officers and ran out the door. Two police cars were parked at the Main Street entrance. Samson slid behind the wheel of one and I sat up front with him, other officers piling into the second car. Sam jerked the wheel and gunned out from the curb in a U-turn, hit the siren, and swung left into Sunset, headed for Figueroa.

  “At first I thought Poupelle blasted Yates to keep him from messing up Andon's play for the Redstone dough,” I said. “Figured Norman learned about it and was bleeding the guy. Like that loan from Offenbrand. Poupelle got a hundred and fifty Gs—but Norman deposited it. Finally there was so much pointing at Norman a blind man could see it.”

  Sam braked, let up on the pedal, and skidded into Figueroa. I opened my eyes, relaxed my legs, and said “When I learned about Poupelle's dropping fifty Gs at the castle, I went out to see Norman about it. Yates also learned that item of info from Three Eyes—so Three Eyes told me—and Yates obviously would have done the same thing I did: call on Norman. Norman got to Yates, maybe with money, or the promise of big money, and Yates sold out, started working for Norman. If Norman had managed to kill me he might have got away with his caper. He made his big try at me today, but it missed, too, because ... We won't go into that.”

  Sam swung onto Forrest Street, leading toward the castle. He said, “Think he's got any idea we're on our way?”

  “Well, Bender phoned him from Vegas, so he'll be jerky as hell. Not for fear Poupelle might see or talk to him—Andon's in so deep now it wouldn't make any difference—but because Norman will know the whole story's about to pop. Especially with me still alive. Right after Bender's call he sent four of his boys out to polish me off, remember.” I stopped.

  In a second I went on, “Hell, yes, he knows, Sam. Even if his boys didn't get back to the castle he knows by now that I've talked to Bender, talked again to the police.”

  “How you figure ... Oh. Yeah.”

  Yeah, indeed. By this time probably half the United States knew that Shell Scott had visited City Hall from heaven.

  The car went over the hill and started down. We could see the castle from here. Sam said, “There's a chance he's already flown. But once he runs he's got to keep on running, and he knows it. So he'll take as much of his stuff, including money, with him as he can.”

  I said, “There's the little matter of a guy called Offie, too, and—”

  We both saw it at the same time, a car racing out over the drawbridge, careening right, heading toward us. Sam had cut the siren once we were out of traffic and now he said, “Must be him.” I looked at his face and saw his shaggy brows pull down, that cast-iron chin jut out farther. He didn't slow down.

  “Eight to five,” I said. “But I can't figure why he's coming this way.”

  “Highway Patrol's alerted, roadblocks; that way we'd have him in minutes. Must be figuring he might make it into town, drop out of sight there.”

  Norman, if it was Norman, would have seen us by now, and the other car behind us. He was damned close. I swallowed. “Sam. Can't we stop, swing sideways? Block the road?”

  He kept his foot clear down on the accelerator. “He'll stop.”

  “Yeah, all over us.”

  “We stop, and he just turns around, hightails it off. Maybe some good cop gets hurt.”

  “Sam, you're a good cop.” My voice was wiggling. “And I'm not such a bad guy, even after...”

  I couldn't finish it. That long black car looked like a locomotive on our track. We were in the middle of the road, no more than forty or fifty yards separating the two cars, when Sam hit the siren and it burst into sound like a thousand banshees. I saw Norman's car veer, heard his tires screech. He swung clear off the road and went by us on our left. Only inches away I could see his face bent over the steering wheel.

  I thought he was going to make it, but the car skidded, kicked up dirt at the right of the road. Then the brakes of our car were squealing and I was thrown against the door as Sam did something incredible, at least something that I'd never have tried.

  Then we were skidding sideways, our collective rear end swinging around so that for a full second we were pointing back the way we'd come but the car went on sliding. Sam didn't even kill the engine, only jerked gears and jazzed the motor, and then we were heading after Norman, gaining speed in a hurry.

  I didn't try to say anything; there was no talking to Samson when he was driving like this. But now I saw Norman's car far off the road, right wheels in a ditch. The car door stood open. I spotted him, running up the weed-covered hillside toward a clump of trees and thick brush, a gun in his hand. Sam slammed on the brakes and I was out the door and running before the car stopped.

  Norman got into the trees long before I did, but I pounded ahead at full speed. I meant to kill that boy if I got half a chance. At this moment I blamed him for all my troubles, which at least was enough to keep me running. Then I was in the shadows of the trees. I stopped.

  There wasn't any sound. I cocked the police revolver, wishing I had my own .38. Then slowly I walked forward, trying to look everywhere at once. The next time I stopped I heard something rustle on my left and spun in that direction, crouching, the gun held before me, my elbow pressed against my side.

  There wasn't anything there. Just a fist-sized rock still rolling over the ground. For a split second it didn't register; I didn't realize I'd been caught by one of the oldest tricks in the world, a tossed pebble to make a man look the wrong way. But it was for only a split second. I was still turning when I saw the pebble, and I stopped, but the next instant I dived forward flat on the ground, the dirt slapping my face and scraping my skin. It sounded as if the gun blasted almost in my ear; dirt geysered inches to the right of my head.

  I rolled that way, hoping he'd have jerked the gun toward me and that he'd have expected me to move in the opposite direction. Because he had me cold if I didn't cross him up that little bit. As I rolled I squirmed onto my back, and before I even caught sight of him I squeezed the trigger on the police revolver twice, not aiming at anything but praying that just the sudden violent sound might jar him.

  Maybe that was what did it. His gun cracked again and he missed me, though I felt t
he hot wind hiss past my cheek. Then I saw him, and I was firing again even before my gun was pointed at him. But it was pointed at Norman's body before the gun clicked empty. I hit him twice.

  He jackknifed forward but didn't go down. The gun dropped from his fingers and he slapped both hands against his middle and staggered backward one step. Then he tried to straighten up, blood oozing thickly through his fingers. He couldn't make it.

  He stood facing me, bent over, his head raised so he could see me. His mouth moved and a stream of obscenity poured out. Then his knees buckled and he crumpled, still holding his hands over his belly. My throat was dry and rougher than sandpaper as I walked to him and squatted before him. Samson had plowed up just as Norman fell; right behind him were four other officers.

  I doubt that Norman even knew they were there. He was half on his side, one elbow partly supporting him. I said, “You've had it, Norman. Go out clammed, or tell it. It's too late for anything else now.”

  He told me what to do. Then he coughed. Coughed blood, and he knew there was a hole in his lung. “It doesn't hurt,” he said slowly, a note of surprise in his voice. “I'll make it. I'll—”

  “You're dead, Norman. You're in shock, that's all. I give you a minute, maybe two.”

  His face was pale, a film of perspiration making it shiny. He tried to shake his head. “You're lying. I'll...” Then a soft sigh came from his throat and his eyes widened a little. He got a blank, staring look and I saw his Adam's apple move convulsively.

  I'd seen that look a dozen times. There's nothing else like it—the expression on a man's face when he knows he's on the way out. Norman knew; somewhere in his brain something cold had burst and spread. He knew he was dying.

  Then he started talking. I'd seen that before, too, the words coming all in a rush, piling up on each other, some of them just sounds, not words at all. Maybe when there's so little time, they suddenly have to say more than anyone really says in a lifetime. They never make it; Norman didn't.