The Amber Effect (The Shell Scott Mysteries)

by Richard S. Prather

  I sucked air into my throat, filled my lungs, oily dirt-and-tar smell of the street sticking in my nostrils. Then I inched sideways, out from under the Cad again. Taking my time. It seemed, then, as if I had all the time in the world, that there was no reason for hurry, that there could never be a reason for hurry.

  I heard nearby windows sliding up — or maybe down, now that the excitement appeared to be over — and a voice calling something, another more distant voice answering, and the sound of running feet. Soft, not the slap of leather, like someone running barefoot.

  That’s what it was.

  She came tearing down the Spartan’s steps and over the walk and into the street, then slowed, stopped a couple of yards away as I straightened up and stuck the Colt back into its holster.

  Shell?Her voice wavered. Are you all right?

  Yeah. So get back in the Spartan, will you? I’ve got enough to worry about.

  God, I thought — I thought you were dead.

  I’d noticed she was not in the same condition as when I’d left the apartment, but only now did I recognize her outfit as an old trench coat of mine.

  Aralia looked past me, at the black holes in the sky-blue paint job of my Cadillac, then she stepped closer, lifted one hand, and let it fall against my chest.

  I thought . . . I thought you were dead,she said. I thought you were dead.

  Will you quit saying that?

  What happened?

  What the hell do you think happened? Two, three, I don’t know, bastards tried to saw me in half with a shotgun. You crazy broad, what the hell are you doing out here on — ah, I’m sorry.I stopped. I’m sorry, Aralia. I’m not mad at you. Mad, yes, but not at you.

  I know.Her voice was soft. I understand.

  Maybe she did.

  She went on. Mad. And still scared, a little.

  Me? Scared? Me? Yeah, you better believe it. Well, I have to run, downtown to see . . . Oh, boy.I shook my head, forcing my thoughts into another channel. Looking at Aralia, I said, I’m pleased that you got dressed instead of running out here naked as a jaybird. Surprised, but pleased. You just keep on taking old Shell’s advice. Aren’t you glad I told you to put on your pants, and things? Why, you might —

  But I didn’t,she said.

  Didn’t what?

  She made no verbal comment, just tugged at the belt and then pulled the trench coat open wide, held it open for a few seconds.

  Will you put that away?I barked. I mean, goddammit, are you trying to get me murdered? It was that gorgeous goddamned ass of yours that almost got me killed this time. It was hanging in the air out there— I pointed — and I just ambled along, asking for it. That was bad enough, but now . . . Well . . . give me another peek. Who wants to live forever?

  She looked at me soberly for a few seconds, then smiled.

  Flirt,she said.

  We grinned sappily at each other, and after a while she said, You’re so poetic, Shell,and I said, Yeah, ain’t I? Me and Iron-Guts Goober — I’m on to you now,and she said, Not yet, you ain’t,and I opened the Cad’s door — with some difficulty, since it was slightly sprung — saying, You get your sweet, uh, tootsies up to the apartment, O.K.?

  She nodded. Tootsies to apartment. Message understood.

  My apartment, that is.

  Of course.

  I climbed in, got behind the wheel, slammed the door. In case you’re asleep if — when — I get back,I said, why don’t I wake you up?

  She smiled again. Why don’t you?

  Why don’t you?Sam said.

  No matter how hard he tried, Captain Phil Samson would never get out of those words what Aralia put into them.

  Needless to say, he was not trying to.

  CHAPTER NINE

  I’D made it to the Police Building in downtown L.A. in not more than fifteen minutes after leaving Aralia.

  I had taken the elevator to the third floor, walked down the hall to 314, strolled through the Homicide squad room into Sam’s office, grabbed my wooden chair, and straddled it, saying, Hi there, Sam. Working late again, I see. Got lots of things to tell you, Sam. You wouldn’t believe . . . Cat got your tongue, Sam?

  Me saying, Job must be getting to you, huh? I do dislike adding to your woes, Captain, but . . .

  Me saying, finally, Maybe it would get a rise out of you if I cut my throat and dripped black blood all over your desk.

  That’s when he said, Why don’t you?

  That is not all the captain said.

  Three nonstop minutes later the flow of extraordinary monologue slowed. Then stopped, temporarily, with Sam’s comment, What have you got to say for yourself? Don’t answer that.

  I answered it anyway.

  I covered the episode in Collett’s apartment and the shotgun shooting on Rossmore, even mentioned my visit with Vincent Ragan and explained the logic of Aralia Fields’s presence in my apartment. Through it all I stressed the point that because of a perverse streak in my nature, it went against the grain for me to cooperate with numerous assassins attempting to massacre me, which was why I had not done so.

  Then there was quiet for about half a minute.

  I lit a cigarette. Samson dropped a mangled and soggy-ended black cigar into his wastebasket, dug a fresh one from a drawer and clamped it between his teeth.

  Finally, he looked at me, shifting the cigar from one side of his wide mouth to the other. And I really looked at him, too, during those moments, noticed the comparative pallor of his usually pink face, puffiness beneath the sharp brown eyes, deeper than usual lines around his mouth. There was even a rarely seen stubble of beard on his cheeks and chin, faint, but noticeable.

  He took the cigar from his mouth and said — quietly, even wearily, Well, Shell, we’ve chased our tails around before. Plenty of times. But this time it’s different.

  He examined his cigar as if considering lighting it, something he seldom did. When lit, they exuded an overwhelming odor, like burning manure from constipated giraffes, and I don’t believe he enjoyed the scent himself. Sometimes he lit one as a weapon, and puffed on it, knowing this would put me to flight, get me out of his office. But I was pretty sure he didn’t want me out, not yet.

  Within the hour,he said, I have been privileged to appear in the chief’s office. From hints dropped here and there, I apprehend that the captain of Central Homicide, our mutual friend, may just possibly have overlooked certain felonious actions of one local private investigator —

  One local private — ?

  — often in the past. Too often. Actions which, had they been committed by anyone else would, and should, properly have stirred said captain to decisive action.

  I get it.

  Not yet, you don’t.

  Then quit stringing it out and lay it on me.

  O.K. When I was in the chief’s office, we hadn’t yet heard about the shooting on Rossmore —

  Sam, I didn’t exactly plan on that myself —

  He didn’t say anything. He just paused briefly, hit me with eyes like brown ball bearings, and went on. But even before then I’d made up my mind. You can have it one of two ways. You can turn over to me your gun, and your license — I’ll accept your pocket card, and your word that you’ll cease representing yourself as a licensed investigator until I hand the card back to you — or —

  Godalmighty, Sam, why don’t you just put me —

  — I’ll lock you up myself.

  — in a . . . cell?

  Where else?

  You’ve got to be kidding.

  I’m not.

  That’s not — not reasonable.

  Who said anything about reasonable?

  Look, without my gun I’m a dead duck, how can I defend myself from —

  You can’t. So maybe you’ll quit asking to get killed. Maybe it’ll get you out of circulation, instead of the circulation out of you.

  Look, my license can’t be officially jerked without action by the director of the Bureau —

  I didn’t say offic
ially. I do mean effectively.

  — and you can’t just grab my gun. It’s not . . . legal.

  I can’t?

  Yeah, he could.

  I realized, too — even though I was more than a bit hot — that Sam wouldn’t be leaning on me like this unless he had heavy reasons. It was also probable that without plenty of behind-the-scenes arguing by Samson, I wouldn’t have even the limited choices he was offering me.

  I said, Give me those two ways to go again.

  He did. Slowly, with an edge in his voice. But I listened carefully and did not hear him say I couldn’t roam unarmed around the city if I cared thus to expose myself, or ask a question here or there, or conduct myself as might any curious private citizen lollygagging about.

  So when he finished I mumbled, Yeah, great. Just great. I might continue to do a little, uh, research —

  Don’t press your luck, Shell. I might add to what I’ve already said, that if you do hand over your gun, with it goes your guarantee that you won’t replace it with another one. If you so much as point a loaded gun at an escaping felon, that’s it.

  It would be wise, I decided, not to give him a chance to get more specific, or lay any additional particulars of my probation on me. Particulars I would then be morally bound to observe. So I sighed, stood up, snapped my .38 from its clamshell holster, looked at it, and placed the gun before Samson on the desk.

  While I pulled from its plastic window in my wallet the pocket card issued to me by the Bureau of Private Investigators and Adjusters, Sam broke open the Colt, ejected the shells.

  When I handed him the card he looked at me, holding five spent shell cases in the palm of his hand, one unfired hollow-point Super Vel between thumb and forefinger.

  What happened?he asked innocently.

  I got a cramp in my trigger finger. And right now I’ve got a severe cramp in my —

  I would remind you, my boy, if you get into any difficulties during the next couple of weeks, old dad won’t be around to make everything nice.

  I took a last look at my gun, turned, walked to the door.

  Then I went back to Sam’s office, opened the top drawer, took out one of his black cigars, bit off the end, spit it into the wastebasket, lit the thing, blew foul smoke at him, pretended delicately to throw up, and handed him the cigar.

  Have a fun vacation,I said, and left.

  Just walking from the Police Building to my car was a queer experience. Queer, because of the empty holster at my left armpit. I felt undressed, vulnerable, not complete. So I drove quite speedily toward home. Not straight home, however.

  Before leaving the Police Building I’d spent some time doing a couple bits of the research I’d told Sam I might do. Specifically, I had done a little checking on One-Shot,and put together all the info I could get from the LAPD on Norman Amber.

  Nobody I talked to had any information that One-Shot was in the L.A. area, but men in the Intelligence Division knew who he, almost surely, was. The only man in their files with that monicker was, as my informant had told me, from New Jersey. His real name was Melvin Voister, and he’d been a criminal specialist — his specialty, shooting people — for the almost incredible period of three decades, interrupted only by one five-year jolt at an eastern prison.

  He was now fifty-nine years old, ancient for a man in his occupation, and apparently still not only in business but in demand among those willing and able to pay for his services. An expert marksman with everything from .22 target pistols on up, Voister almost invariably used a high-powered scope-equipped hunting rifle for his jobs, preferring to be as far as possible from the victim, thus facilitating his getaway from the murder scene. The hoodlum nickname, One-Shot, was a natural for the man, since according to the rawI.D. files Voister never, or almost never, required more than that first shot to dispose of his human target, after which he split for Jersey. And was generally there, with a carefully prepared alibi complete with shifty-eyed witnesses, before anybody, at least any official body, knew he’d left town.

  Consequently, among the boys on the turf, One-Shot Voister was something of a living legend, and in the hoods’ back rooms and bars there were innumerable stories told about him, most of them obviously ninety-nine percent exaggeration. Still, what boozy Bernie Hooten had told me now carried more weight, and had to be considered a bargain at the price of three shots of Early Times.

  As for Amber, there were gaps I hoped soon to fill — hopefully from Amber himself, since I now knew he lived at 4811 Wisteria Lane, which was where I was planning to stop on my way home — but the picture wasn’t quite so fuzzy as before.

  Norman Amber was now fifty-four years old. He’d been born in San Francisco, graduated with honors from Stanford University, with a B.S. in electrical engineering, and after that spent four years at the prestigious California Institute of Technology, where he earned his Ph.D. in physics, ending his formal education at the age of twenty-five. Police records didn’t show what subjects he’d studied or degrees he’d earned, but listed him as a physicist, and engineer; inventor.Nor did those records indicate what kind of patents he owned, only that he did hold a couple of dozen patents in his name.

  There hadn’t been anything available — not tonight, anyway — about Amber’s former wife or wives, or children; just three rather cold words, Divorced, no dependents.What lay behind those words could be discovered easily enough tomorrow, and perhaps even tonight from Amber himself.

  I did know, finally, what the crime was for which he’d done just over a year in San Quentin. At the time of his arrest nearly three years ago, Amber had been employed by Horizons, Inc., a company engaged in the development and manufacture of solid-state components and circuitry, elements for closed-circuit television systems, photographic equipment, and a dozen varieties of lasers, among other things. It wasn’t clear just what Amber’s function there had been, but he’d been accused of appropriating for his personal use — stealing — half a dozen small, but complex and staggeringly expensive, items of equipment belonging to Horizons, Inc. They’d been found in his home, in one of two rooms filled with much other paraphernalia Amber used for his personal investigations and experiments.

  Accused, arrested, booked, jugged, tried, and convicted — though his formal plea was not guilty and he was quoted in a newspaper clip I’d read in his package as declaring, moments after being sentenced to San Quentin, that he was . . . the victim not only of a gross miscarriage of justice but of a deliberate frame-up. The innocent man knows of but cannot always prove his innocence. I will. In time, I will.

  It had a sort of stentorian blast to it, even in newspaper print; but I’d read or heard the same thing a hundred times before. Essentially the same thing, anyway. Usually simpler and shorter, like, I was framed,or, Charlie, I wasn’t even there, how could I of done it?

  I found the house in the 4800 block on Wisteria Lane, one of only two in the block — not many people lived out here on Wisteria — and there was little traffic, little noise. The house was dark. I rang, hammered for a while on the door. No response. I did not remove the door from its hinges, or try to pry open a window. Instead, I went back to the Cad and headed for home again.

  I didn’t try to be quiet letting myself into the apartment, and made no attempt to tiptoe into the bedroom. But Aralia did not rise up with a glad cry to greet me.

  The small shaded light I sometimes turn on in the bedroom, not for reading, was filling the room with a very soft lovely glow. Aralia lay on her back in my bed, eyes closed, sheet pulled halfway up — or down — her body.

  Yoo-hoo,I half whispered. Which, translated, means guess who’s back?

  Nothing. No glad cry. Not even Yoo-hoo yourself.

  At least, she wasn’t dead. She was breathing. Above the crumpled edge of the sheet, gentle movement of her rib cage was evidence of the rise and fall of her breath, on which rise and fall rose and fell those bare and super-beauteous bazooms. She wasn’t dead by a long shot. She was merely asleep.

  I
didn’t awaken her. Not immediately. But soon I commenced to slither between the sheets, on the opposite side of the bed from Aralia, moving very gingerly. Which, of course, is the moment when she chose to open, or just happened to open, one eye.

  What in God’s name is that?she said in a muffled voice. Or maybe it was something else she said. It was pretty muffled. But both of Aralia’s eyes were now open.

  What?I said.

  Shell? Is that you?

  Of course it’s me. Who else do you think would be in this dumb position? Were you expecting someone else?

  Shell, you weren’t going to sneak into bed, all naked like that, without even waking me up first, were you?

  Well . . .

  Were you?

  Well — look — it’s . . . see, I thought it would be fun to — you looked so lovely and, ah, alone . . . tying there alone. Like — ah! — like Sleeping Beauty. That’s it. You remember her, don’t you?

  Sleeping Beauty. I’m — did you just make this up?

  How can you say that? It just swept over me, there she is, Sleeping Beauty, waiting for her prince to come.

  Don’t let that mistake I made about your being poetic go to your . . . wherever it’s gone to.

  O.K., so I made a mistake. You can be snoring Dracula if you want —

  You’re my prince, right?

  Well, not if it turns you off. Of course, I guess you haven’t been turned —

  Shell, you can get into bed. It bothers me, the way you are. It’s yours, you know —

  It is? I was hoping —

  It’s your bed. Listen carefully. I am Sleeping Beauty. All right? And you are Prince Charm — you’re the prince.

  Whatever you say.

  I’ve been sleeping for a thousand years. Well, you’re here, finally. Awaken me, Prince.

  I could understand her reaction better now; it really sounded horrible when someone else was saying it. However, I got more comfortable, and leaned forward to give Aralia — who at last was smiling, I noted, not a whole lot but quite sweetly — a kiss that would wake her up even if she’d been snoozing for two thousand years.