The Trojan Hearse (The Shell Scott Mysteries)

by Richard S. Prather

  He'd found me about the same way I'd found Bill Bonchak last night. The police would, too, and before much longer, I was certain. But at least the five other hoods, whoever they were, wouldn't be looking here. Unless...

  “You tell anybody you'd found me? Phone anybody?"

  “Hell, no. I wanted that twenty-five G's."

  “Where's Rice now?"

  “I don't know. I know where hell be about four p.m. There's a big meeting then, hush-hush meet of some kind, up in Sebastian's. His office. Joe said call him there if..."

  His voice suddenly got weaker. From one second to the next its volume dropped until he was almost, whispering. “Any of us spotted you, or knocked you down. Had to know right away, he told us. Important he know, made a difference."

  I was beginning to understand more and more clearly why it made a difference. “At Sebastian's agency, huh? Who's going to be there?"

  “All I know is Joe. But it's important. There's others. It's about the election, part about that—but you, too. Guys are going nuts. You got no idea the heat on you.” His voice was almost gone, hanging by a thread now.

  I said, “Tony, what about Charley White? And Johnny Troy?"

  He looked up at me, lifting his head with an effort. “Don't know about White. But I done for Troy. Joe said he'd be alone, that had been took care of. Just make it. look like suicide. He was pretty drunk and I poured some straight vodka in him. Practically out when I shot him. Made it look good, didn't I? I know my business ... even fooled the fuzz...."

  “Tony, what's this meeting? It doesn't make sense Sebastian and Rice would want to be seen together, especially not this close to the election."

  “They ain't gonna be seen. He can go in clear at the other end of the block, up through them other offices. Trojan Enterprises. Whoever's at the meet, they'll be there an hour or so, then they'll slip out one at a time, same way. Nobody'll even know they been there. They all got to figure out what to do; you got their bowels in a uproar. Best place to meet without being seen, Joe says.” Between every sentence the pauses were longer. His head was drooping, chin almost touching his chest.

  After a long pause he went on. “They got to figure the angles. Both ways. If you get killed, and if you don't. Makes a difference, Joe says. Says you know about some guy named Boyle. Whatever that means."

  “I know what it means. He was killed because he couldn't sing any more. Except to cops, or newspapermen.” I thought a moment. “Did you take that record he'd been playing?"

  “That little one off of the player—yeah. After I done the job. Joe told me he had to have it. Big deal.” He paused. “Scott. Scott, what do you think—” He stopped suddenly. I felt his body shudder beneath my fingers. “Jesus,” he said. “Oh, Jesus, God..."

  I waited till the spasm passed. “What about Charley White, Tony? You hear anything about whether he was killed, or just—Tony?” The only reason he was upright was because my hand still held him. I let him go. He fell forward, slumping. His face thudded against the carpet.

  Just because a man stops talking and falls doesn't mean he's dead; but Tony Anguish was dead. Perhaps appropriately, he'd gone out swearing. I guess he was swearing.

  I stood up, went to the door and made sure it was locked this time. Then I walked back and forth in the small room, trying to decide what to do. Somehow I had to tell what I knew, get the story spread all over town—before I got killed. If I got killed—which was a likely possibility right now—not only would I be dead, but so would what I knew. And I had a fat chance of waltzing into a newspaper or TV station. Assuming I didn't get my head shot off; assuming I didn't accidentally wind up telling my story to a guy like Gary Baron, or some other duerf; at the very least I'd be slammed into a cell before I could open my yap.

  Maybe just as important, not many people were going to believe anything I said right now.

  I had to get the story told, though. Somehow. Not only to save my neck, but because it was a story that should be told. The people should know about Troy, Sebastian.... Yeah. Maybe it was a story the people—the voters—ought to know before they went to the polls tomorrow.

  I went to the television set and turned the dial. David Emerson's face filled the screen.

  It was a good face. Not handsome, but strong, almost stern. A face with character, deep lines between the eyes, a rather straight mouth. There was a sort of pleasant plainness about him, but with—I guess the word was individuality. It was a kind of craggy face; he didn't look like a glamour boy chosen to head his party because he was photogenic, a polished speaker with oodles of TV-appeal. I guess all you could say was, he looked like a man.

  I paced the floor, restless, an idea taking shape, or trying to. Then I sat down and listened to Emerson. And as he spoke I felt that idea taking form, the decision being made; slowly it locked itself in my mind.

  Emerson was well into his speech by now, and was saying, “We hear socialists calling themselves and their kin liberal, progressive, compassionate, humanitarian, concerned with human welfare—anything but socialist. The reason may be that socialism has always failed. The reason it has always failed is that it must. It enslaves the flesh and withers the spirit, because all things have their price and the payment of every just debt is inescapable. Men cannot ask that government satisfy their every need and at the same time demand freedom; the scales must balance, measure for measure. Men do not willingly relinquish that which they have earned by the sweat of their brain or brow; thus socialists must in the end rely on force in order to take the substance from some and give part of that substance to others. Inevitably, this means the end of freedom. I know this to be true; my opponent does not.

  “Under the free-enterprise capitalist system, men here, on this land, built from wilderness a nation with the most freedom for the greatest number of people enjoying the highest standard of living the world has ever known. The fact of this magnificent achievement is inescapable; it surrounds us; it is part of our blood and bone. Yet there are men today who—with a blindness or perversion stunning to the rational mind—would abandon or even destroy the system which produced it."

  I stared at the set in open-mouthed disbelief. I stuck my fingers in my ears and waggled them about. No, it wasn't my ears. I'd heard him correctly. The damn fool was telling the truth, he was throwing the election away!

  Emerson was going on, quietly, hands clasped in front of him, looking directly into the camera. “The socialists, who do not call themselves socialists, believe that some men are entitled to property earned by others. They are wrong. The inescapable moral law is that men are entitled to everything earned by themselves, but not to any part of that which has been earned by others. But in large measure because of this government policy, men have come to speak of their desires as needs, and then their needs as something they deserve; the result is that men have come to believe the satisfaction of their desires is something they are entitled to.

  “Men in government, in response to the demand they have created, in return for the kind of love that beggars give to their benefactors—and for votes—have attempted to satisfy these real and fraudulent needs. But not with their own money. No, with yours. The instrument is the graduated income tax, progressive and confiscatory taxation—which lessens or eliminates entirely the opportunity for individuals to amass sufficient wealth to allow them the luxury of Christian charity. Thus government becomes the great dispenser of charity, and claims to be motivated by compassion for the needy."

  Emerson unfolded his hands, folded them again. His voice rose slightly, seemed to acquire a greater vibrancy. “But there is no such thing as compulsory compassion. Charity must be spontaneous or it injures both those who give and those who receive. To steal from one man and make another the receiver of that stolen property is a criminal action whether it is committed by a gangster or a government, by a felon with a gun or an elected official with a law. To call this process compassion, welfare, or concern for the underprivileged is to prostitute both our la
nguage and our people. This process has given us a climate in which men covet and steal, and feel that their acts are not crimes but virtues. Is it any wonder that in such a climate we see, on every hand, other and endless examples of inverted morality, of truth turned inside out?"

  Man, I was on my feet again. I smacked a fist into my palm. I lacked an imaginary duerf in the head. Knocked his Supideo clear out of him.

  I knew what I was going to do. I didn't have the faintest idea how, but I knew what. And I sure as hell knew why. If Emerson had been a girl, I would have kissed him.

  I grabbed some paper from a drawer, got out my pen and started scribbling. Emerson had been silent for a long time. Now he said, “Let it be entirely clear what my administration will at least attempt to do if I am elected. Those unable to help themselves will not be abandoned. But the parasites will have to stop feasting on the bodies of their involuntary hosts. No one is starving in the United States, and no one is going to starve. But, in the rude old-fashioned phrase we have all heard, some will have to accustom themselves to living less high on the hog—unless they buy their own hog. Hog stealing has become entirely too common lately. And I have not yet met a hog stealer who had much self-respect.

  “That is what I am concerned with—and about. Your self-respect, self-reliance, self-help. Not government ‘aid,’ which weakens both those from whom it is taken and those on whom it is bestowed—and it is bestowed on more and more citizens of late, and thus further weakens us all. But I do not believe that the descendants of those men who transformed a wilderness into this, the greatest nation the world has ever known, have forgotten how to do for themselves. I do not think the American people are children to be suckled forever at a government nipple. I do think it is time for weaning, not more welfare."

  He was silent for so long I thought he'd come down with paralysis of the throat. But, no, he was thinking. It had been so long since a high official had actually thought in public that I'd forgotten what it looked like.

  Emerson gazed directly at the camera again. “Perhaps my language is too blunt and specific for ears accustomed to the limp generalities of socialist semantics. If so, so be it. I have no desire to be President of a nation of men without self-respect, women without pride, children without hope.” His voice softened. “But I believe in you, the American people. I believe in your innate wisdom, your ability to decide for yourselves, not in a necessity that government make your decisions for you. And I have faith that—despite an apparently general impression to the contrary—the majority of you agree with me, that you in fact believe in these things that I have said. And I think that others of you, who are not sure, also agree with me in your hearts.

  “That is why, in concluding these remarks, I intend to quote a wise and truly compassionate man. It is fitting, I think, that at a time when the fate of the world hangs in the balance because of the struggle between the forces of Communism and the forces of freedom, that I, an American aspiring to be President of the United States, should quote a great Russian. For we have no quarrel with the Russian people—only with their leaders, and the evil of materialistic and atheistic Communism itself—and truth is the same whether spoken by a Soviet citizen or a citizen of the United States. The man to whom I refer spoke of truth, in his essay ‘The Power of Truth.’ His name was Leo Tolstoy.

  “He spoke of the necessity that men should not succumb to public opinion of the past, artificially induced by government, and stated, ‘It is only needful that each individual should say what he really feels or thinks, or at least that he should not say what he does not think.’ He remarks essentially that if even a few people would do this, the false opinion would fall away and the true opinion of the people be revealed.

  “Then Tolstoy goes on, ‘The governments know this, and tremble before this force, and strive in every way they can to counteract or become possessed of it. They know that strength is not in force, but in thought and in clear expression of it, and, therefore, they are more afraid of the expression of independent thought than of armies; hence, they institute censorships, bribe the press, and monopolize the control of religion and of the schools. But the spiritual force which moves the world eludes them....

  “'One free man will say with truth what he thinks and feels amongst thousands of men who by their acts and words attest exactly the opposite. It would seem that he who sincerely expressed his thought must remain alone, whereas it generally happens that everyone else, or the majority at least, have been thinking and feeling the same things but without expressing them. And that which yesterday was the novel opinion of one man, today becomes the general opinion of the majority. And as soon as this opinion is established, immediately by imperceptible degrees, but beyond power of frustration, the conduct of mankind begins to alter.’”

  Emerson was quiet for several seconds, looking into the camera, then he said, “This nation is now so deeply enmeshed in the welfare-state snare of socialism that many say the cause of true liberty and freedom, which we once knew well, is lost. But I am not one of them. I know that I, and those who believe as I do, face a great and powerful organization, men opposed to everything I believe and have said here. If, when you vote, you vote for my opponent, you are sympathetic to and in a sense part of that organization.

  “But if you vote for me, perhaps—to conclude with Tolstoy's words again—‘... like wax in the face of fire, this organization, which seems so powerful, will melt, and be consumed.’”

  The camera pulled back from David Emerson's sober face.

  I turned the set off.

  In my mind at the moment, more than any specific thing Emerson had said, was the startling—even appalling—contrast between his words and Humble's. The total difference in their attitudes toward collectivism. Communism, the Soviet Union.

  If we had to elect an American and a Russian, I sure figured it ought to be Emerson and Tolstoy—not Humble and Khruschchev. That was the choice, it appeared.

  There was no question which of the two speakers had made more sense, which had spoken the truth. It was as if they spoke different languages. And, I think, they literally did. More different than Russian and English, for example. Tolstoy had written in Russian and Emerson had spoken his words in English; it didn't matter. Truth remains the same no matter how it's phrased or what the source is. It's like a gal changing from a mink suit to a pink Bikini: the body remains the same; it's just wearing a different dress.

  But when Humble spoke—well, words of truth have vitality, weight, juice, power. They have substance; you can almost reach out and feel them. But you can't grab the phrases of a Humble; the words pop in your fingers.

  Men like Humble may win votes, I was thinking, but never real belief. No matter how warm the voice or bright the smile, their words are cold. Their words may charm the ear, but not the mind or heart. The difference is, perhaps, that men like Emerson and Tolstoy speak to the spirit. It's as if we'd heard it all before, knew it all before. It seems to “awaken a memory of an almost forgotten truth,” to quote Emerson—Ralph Waldo. And men recognize the truth, if only in that same subconscious from which my dream had come.

  But men like Humble do win votes—and it's votes that give them power. Power to warp the mind, wither the spirit....

  A chill rushed over my skin.

  I knew what I was going to do. And why. More, I knew I was going to do it.

  And now I knew how.

  Friends, it scared hell out of me. And that's the truth.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  It was sure a dinky airport.

  Actually, it wasn't an airport. It was just a private airstrip several miles outside of L.A. at the farm of one Victor Vanada.

  I didn't know him. I'd found his name in the yellow pages, in the section headed “Aircraft.” He'd had a small advertisement on one page which said, “Stunt Pilot,” plus a few lines to the effect that he was available for county fairs, crop dusting, movie work, television, private parties—oh, lots of things. Also there was one bi
g word in black capitals: cheap.

  I figured a guy who was available for so many things, and cheap at that, wouldn't be choosy. In my eagerness to make arrangements—which I'd already done by phone—it hadn't occurred to me that maybe cheap also meant lousy.

  But I figured under the circumstances I was lucky to get anybody. I also figured my luck must be about used up. I'd left Tony Anguish in Brown's Motel, taken the few items I'd brought into the room last night, and found Tony's car, parked at the curb half a block away. It was the black sedan I'd seen before on Benedict Canyon Drive.

  I was wearing my hat, and had used some gunk from the makeup kit to darken my eyebrows a peculiar reddish shade of brown. Not because I especially liked the color, but because that was the approximate shade of my beard. It was a fun beard—for parties, not disguise—and was bushy and curly, quite abundant, and hung down onto my chest half a foot. Consequently I looked like Shell Scott with gunk on his eyebrows, wearing a reddish-brown fun beard.

  But I'd gotten through traffic without being arrested or shot at or causing a panic, made one stop on the way, then come straight here. It was 4:20 p.m. now. That other stop had taken up nearly three hours.

  I'd told Vanada to be ready at four o'clock, though I might be a little late. He wasn't ready, and that wasn't encouraging. Neither was he.

  The farm looked as if it just might be used for raising dirt. It was a flat, bare expanse of brown earth with a one-story frame house, vintage about 1929—not one of the good years—and a small garage near it. The airstrip was simply a smoother path in the ground, extending away from the house and garage for a few hundred yards. Victor Vanada wasn't in sight when I drove in past the sign, vanada aviation, but as I parked and hauled my heavy, bulging gunnysack from the Cad, he came staggering out the door.

  I began to have serious misgivings. I'd had little misgivings before that moment, but they grew bigger when I saw him. This was my pilot? He didn't look like a Victor. He looked like a Loser. He was about eighty years old if he was a day, and he looked more freakish than I did. He was wearing whipcord pants with patches on the knees, the trouser legs tucked into the tops of laced hunting boots, a red deer hunter's shirt, and a faded bandanna around his neck. And he was wearing goggles, the kind that go with leather jackets and motorcycles. He was carrying a couple of bulky packages.