The Trojan Hearse (The Shell Scott Mysteries)

by Richard S. Prather

  I tried to put on a bit of a grin, and couldn't do it.

  That was it! Oh, God, that was it!

  I remembered the poem. No—I'd been trying to remember a parody on a poem. Now I remembered what I'd been trying to remember and would have forgotten if I'd known what was good for me, which apparently I don't. It went:

  “They showed him the thing that couldn't be done; with a grin, he went right to it; he tackled the thing that couldn't be done—and couldn't do it!"

  The ball was swooping up now, up, up, up. Rushing at me was a wall of—of wall.

  “Stop!” I yelled.

  Nausea swept over me. In a strange and sickening way it was as though I was not on a ball swooping toward the huge building, but as though the huge building was swooping toward me on my ball. It was worse that way. As if the whole six stories of the Sebastian Building had picked me out from all the humans on earth as the one it meant first to mangle. It was alive—and mean! Filled with hate! Hate for all the people who'd been stamping up and down on it for years and years. Now it was going to stamp back.

  But something was happening. Either my mind was playing tricks on me or the building was receding. It was, it was going away. Jackson had been far short. The ball had slowed, stopped, started back. I was saved. Boy, I'd never do anything this crazy again. Once this thing stopped swinging I was going to climb down and never ride a ball again. I wasn't even going to play golf, or catch, or have a thing to do with anything round. Wow, what a relief!

  As the ball swung back past the cab I saw Jackson fiddling with things. There was what looked like a manic expression on his face. He held up his thumb and index finger in a circle. The sign that everything's OK. Then he seized some levers, yanked them. The nut was out of his mind.

  “Jackson, stop!” I yelled. “Forget it."

  The ball went way back, to-hell-and-gone back, then swoop, started forward. “No!” I yelled. “Jackson, I've changed my miaaaaahhh!"

  Swoo-ooop. Really moving. Down to the bottom of the arc, then onward and upward. Hah—onward and upward. The hell with that noise. Give me downward and backward.

  This time we were really moving. We were going to crash! No doubt about it. The bastard was overdoing it. He might knock the whole top of the building off. Going to crush hell out of the wall. And me. In a flash I knew what had happened. Jackson—and I probably should have thought of it before—wasn't used to swinging his ball up to a wall and stopping. Hell, no; he was used to crashing like crazy smack into it and sending it flying. Wham, down she goes! It was just muscle memory, conditioned reflex, habit in operation. Being drunk probably didn't help, either.

  That old wall ahead was getting closer. A lot closer. Wouldn't be long now.

  So this was the end. Maybe they'd put up a plaque: Shell Scott squashed here. It would live—for a week, until the urban-renewal project reached the Sebastian Building. Then I'd be only a memory, a stain on a few old bricks. But that's life. No use crying over spilt blood. That's the way the ball bounces.

  That old wall was practically on me.

  Swoop, swish. Air whistled past my head. And it was very bright here now. The first swing toward the Sebastian suite had attracted some attention. If you want accuracy, it had attracted a perfectly astonishing amount of attention. There were all kinds of lights aimed at me—spot-lights, red lights, flashlights, lots of lights. I was zeroed in, the way ack-ack gunners get planes in their sights. The reason I hadn't been shot down like a duck was probably because they weren't quite sure exactly what I was. My beard was flying, whipping, and air was zooming into my open mouth as into a cave. And a lot of blood-curdling noise was zooming out.

  And then the wall was right before me. Couldn't put it off any longer. At least Jackson had aimed right, directly between the two windows. In that last miserable moment I could see through both windows, see people in there—all unaware. Unsuspecting. Relaxed.

  There wasn't even a chance to jump. All I could do was hang on.

  The ball hit. wham, crash! There was time—a millionth of a second—for me to realize the racket sounded like the banging of Judge Sebastian's gavel m my dream. Man, that had been some dream. I'd even dreamed into the future. Lots in it, all right; I even remembered getting killed.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Wham! Crash! Blam! Smash!

  So this was death.

  It sure wasn't living.

  I felt something giving. I figured it was me giving. My bones and head, etc. Felt as if it were tearing all my etc. to shreds. Talk about excruciating pain! But I wouldn't be feeling pain if I was dead.

  I wasn't dead. I was getting gouged by a hunk of steel, hit by bricks, things were going bonk on my head, and suddenly I was flying through air filled with hunks of brick and plaster and colorful splinters. That demolition ball had smacked directly opposite Dalton's “Life and Death.” I saw faces, bodies, a desk, everything in a blur. Then I smacked, still in midair, into two guys just spinning startled faces toward me, and we all three went down in a heap.

  I think from then on, if not for several hours before, I was literally in a state of shock. Everything seemed to happen in slow motion—though at first I was moving in real slow motion myself. I didn't go out. But my head felt broken and my vision was blurred for several seconds.

  I managed to get up, and it took quite a while. Not merely apparent time but actual time. I got to my feet, though, aching, bleeding, dazed, but I came up with my gun in my hand; it had still been clamped into the clamshell holster when I reached for it. I was slow, but the others here were in a state of stupefaction. And nobody else was holding a gun—though there was at least one other man with a gun here.

  Because as I backed up, left leg almost buckling under me, moving back so I could see all the men present here in Sebastian's office, I saw the face of Bill Bonchak. The wiry black mustache, gleaming bald head—and still dressed in black. Probably the same black suit he'd worn yesterday. When I'd seen him. When he'd seen Sylvia.

  There were several others. Joe Rice, fat, oily-eyed, and paunchy, his jowly face like a pale death mask. Midas Kapper, Communist—no, not a Communist; he'd only been identified twice in sworn testimony, and everybody knows that's not enough. He sat next to Sebastian, and on the other side of Sebastian was short, pink-faced Mordecai Withers, his pale and wide-set eyes staring at me from behind his big horn-rimmed glasses. In the corner on my left stood Gary Baron, his face almost as white as that streak in his hair.

  Three or four other men were in the room, including a big-union boss, but with Baron was the prize of the pack:

  Horatio M. Humble.

  It didn't surprise me. Maybe I was past surprise. Or maybe it was simply that he belonged here. He not only belonged, it was almost inevitable that he—or someone like him—would be here. The natural result to be expected from these men, and what they believed, was a Horatio M. Humble. It was fitting that he be here—with Sebastian, and Kapper, and Baron, and Withers, and Rice. And Bill Bonchak.

  Bonchak of all those here was the only man who'd even attempted to reach for a gun. Maybe he was the only man wearing a gun. The others, most of them, killed with words, with semantic weapons honed to needle sharpness. Of course, some would say that Horatio Humble's being here with these men on the eve of the national elections didn't really mean anything; to find him here was only like finding an ex-convict sitting in the bank robbers’ getaway car: “Guilt by association.” He wasn't committing any crime, certainly. Maybe the thieves were inside; but, hell, the bank hadn't been robbed yet, had it?

  Seeing him here—him and these others—pleased me, however. It figured. And it made all I'd done worthwhile. All I'd done, and all that was going to happen. And it was sure going to happen.

  I said as clearly and distinctly as possible, to make sure they all heard it, “As a private citizen, I am placing William Bonchak under arrest for the crime of murder, the murder of Sylvia White.” I got it said. I could hear the elevator coming up, feet pounding on the
stairs; somebody was already banging on the locked door. There had been no officer inside the room; Sebastian wouldn't have permitted that—and no wonder. No wonder, either, that these men hadn't tried to pass out through that police cordon.

  Bonchak, well over on my right, had his hand under his coat. Not quite on the gun he must have carried there, but close. That's the way he'd been when I'd first looked at him. He hadn't moved since. Well, I'd give him his chance to move. Every man deserves a chance.

  I looked to my left, turned my back to Bonchak. He'd like that. A back would be irresistible to a sonofabitch like Billy Bounce. I showed him my back as long as I could, as long as I dared.

  Not one word other than my own had yet been spoken. Something slammed into the door and it gave a little. The next one would do it. I could hear sirens. A lot of sirens.

  It seemed a long time, but I gave him maybe a second. His gun was an automatic, uncocked, and he had to work the slide to throw a bullet into the chamber. I heard the click-click as I thumbed back the hammer of my Colt and turned. He was swinging the gun up toward me fast.

  Not fast enough, though. I pumped four bullets into his belly. One slug left. It didn't make any difference; I wouldn't be using it. The door smashed inward and, before Billy Bounce hit the floor, the cops were all over me.

  It was a little rough. No rougher than it should have been. My gun was grabbed and my arms twisted behind me, the cuffs bit into my wrists. I saw one familiar face, Lieutenant Rawlins.

  I licked blood off my mouth. “Rawlins!"

  He'd been staring at Humble and the others. He swung his head toward me.

  “Bonchak,” I said. “Ask him about Sylvia White. While he's alive."

  He turned toward Bonchak, but I didn't see what happened then. Two husky officers were hauling me toward the door. But just before we went through it, I passed within a yard of Horatio Humble.

  His face was contorted, covered with perspiration and a flush of pink. “You bastard,” he said. “You utter bastard. This could cost me the election."

  I managed a bit of a grin. “Well,” I said, “that's showbiz."

  * * * *

  It was a long night in jail.

  And a long day. Election day.

  During the morning Captain Samson—clean-shaven and chewing a black cigar, of course—brought me a copy of the Herald-Standard. The headline was one word: vote. But printed on the front page was the full text of David Emerson's speech; a photographic reproduction, reduced in size but still legible, of my “Read All About Politics” paper; and a large-enough, and clear, picture taken in Ulysses Sebastian's office—the well-known smog-filled room—apparently moments after I'd left. The faces were prominent—all the important ones. Horatio Humble, Sebastian, Withers, Kapper, Baron. And even Bill Bonchak's foot.

  All hell was breaking loose outside, I gathered, but I could only get second-hand reports in my cell. It was clear, though, that the story wasn't merely local or national; it was international. There were feature stories ranging from calm to hysterical, factual to smearing, in everything from The New York Times to the London Observer to the Soviet Union's Pravda and Trud, or Crud—or whatever they call it. Crud, of course, said my actions were typical of the right wing; imagine that—for all they really knew I might have been a liberal Democrat.

  There isn't an awful lot to do in a jail cell, so I looked over the rest of the paper, picking out headlines, glancing at the leads of several stories.

  “officials perplexed by steep rise in rate of adult crime and juvenile delinquency."

  “officials perplexed by steep rise in rate of adult delinquency and juvenile crime."

  “officials perplexed."

  A man who had performed “unnatural acts” on six little girls ranging from four to ten years old had been sentenced to twenty days in jail, the sentence to be served on ten consecutive weekends so that his wife and little girls wouldn't be deprived of his services during the week.

  Two teen-age pranksters who had rifled a TV star's home and borrowed eight thousand dollars’ worth of Jewels and six thousand dollars’ worth of dollars had been given a severe tongue-lashing and three years’ probation by a local judge.

  An industrialist who had either cheated or made a mistake on his income-tax returns had been sentenced to federal prison for twenty years, including weekends; he'd paid only 44 per cent of his earned income in taxes instead of the 62 per cent the IRS said he owed.

  A prominent attorney had urged in a speech that all felonies be prosecuted as misdemeanors.

  A U.S. Senator had introduced a bill which would require all universities receiving federal funds to employ at least one Communist professor “to assure freedom of speech for all"; in the same speech on the Senate floor he castigated opponents of forced fluoridation as “Crackpots undermining our great democracy."

  Two more Soviet delegates to the United Nations had been apprehended by the FBI for concluding a purchase of classified information from federal employees; since they were diplomats immune from prosecution, they had been requested to leave the country.

  Our Ambassador to the United Nations had made a speech in which he called the UN “...at best our one real opportunity to assure a lasting peace, and at worst an international forum where men of good will may engage in calm and reasonable discussion...."

  The UN delegate from Bongowa had been severely reprimanded for cooking and eating the delegate from Waboongo.

  The U.S. had been outvoted in the UN again.

  A Presidential adviser, not elected but appointed by the President, urged again that all armaments be placed under the control of the United Nations “to assure a lasting peace."

  The president of the Committee for a Sane Compromise had joined with the president of the Committee to Assure a Lasting Peace to call for an end to the arms race, because our defensive policy was offensive to the Soviet Union and thus “escalates tensions, damaging our efforts to assure a lasting peace."

  A college professor circulating a petition for the release of a Communist official from federal prison, and a college professor circulating a petition for the abolition of capital punishment, and the local head of the SPCA, had all signed a petition urging that Shell Scott be executed.

  The head of a Communist government had been welcomed with a parade and official reception in Washington, D.C.

  The head of an anti-Communist government had been denied permission to enter the United States, the land of the free and the home of the brave.

  And so on. I didn't read all of the stories, of course. I only read in its entirety the one about “Officials Perplexed.” They just couldn't figure out why there was so much immorality.

  * * * *

  My first real iota of hope came late Tuesday afternoon, when both Samson and Rawlins came to my cell. Samson told me the police had total proof now that Charley White had made the “Annabel Lee” record and, of course, all the “Johnny Troy” records and albums since then. They'd run down some of the people who had helped in the recording process, the sessions when White and Boyle—alone in a room with a mike—had taped and retaped the selections, including one man who'd been in on the entire operation, knew the whole story of the fraud.

  “That information's been released to the press,” Sam said. “Should help."

  “Yeah. There's bound to be more info, too. But I hope it's soon."

  “People are pretty well stirred up. There was some trouble when they were burying Francis Boyle.” He told me about reports, just coming in, that there'd been a riot or something. Seems they actually hauled Boyle out of his casket.

  Then Rawlins said, “I've been sticking with Bonchak, Shell.” He looked tired. “Tough one. He didn't spill—until just before he died.” He grinned. “We all knew it wasn't you. Shell, but we had to play it straight."

  “I know. I wasn't so sure it wasn't me, myself. Not after listening to Baron and some of those other sweeties."

  It helped. But I needed a lot of help. The story w
as snowballing, not melting away. And, I realized, right now, during this afternoon, the citizens were voting. Of course, that picture taken in Sebastian's office last night was all over the country, all over the world. It was sure to have an effect. No telling how much.

  I was getting a lot of hell, naturally. The Worker claimed I was some diabolical plot. And the duerfs said the same thing, of course; they always do. But the evidence—the truth—was beginning to be overwhelming. Sebastian was thoroughly discredited, no changing that. And a number of his clients were discredited, too, deflated like balloons stuck with pins. But whether Humble had been stuck enough, I didn't know. Nobody would know until long after the polls closed.

  And that gave me a chilling thought. There were plenty of charges against me now; there would be more. And I would really be cooked—if Horatio M. Humble was elected President of the U.S.A.

  I groaned aloud. What if Humble was elected President?

  The shock shook me so much that it gave rise to what was almost another dream, a waking nightmare. In a kind of pink haze before my eyes I saw what would happen—as if it had already happened. Ulysses Sebastian, Midas Kapper, and the tight-pants ninny-poet had gone straight to the State Department. Ronald Langor was our Ambassador to the United Nations. Mordecai Withers had been installed as the new chief of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Gary Baron was heading the United States Information Agency and the Voice of America, telling the story of the real U.S.A.—not the Ulysses Sebastian Agency—to a wide-eared world. Joe Rice had replaced J. Edgar Hoover as head of the FBI. The U.S. had disarmed unilaterally and turned its weapons over to the UN, which would protect us from Communist aggression; the police forces had disarmed and turned their guns over to the Mafia, which would protect us from the Mafia. The Supreme Court had found Shell Scott to be a danger to the nation; a paranoid right-wing extremist, he, and—antiadministration! So he and all his fellow nuts were tarred and feathered and ... sent without ifs, ands, or buts—off to Cuckooland!