The Shell Scott Sampler

by Richard S. Prather

  “How’d you get the impression?”

  “Actually, that’s what he said. He told me.”

  “Thinking, of course, I wouldn’t find out. Not in this life. Or maybe if something went wrong and his hired gun missed me, I wouldn’t be able to find him. Right?”

  “Scott, I swear, I didn’t have any idea —”

  “Yeah, skip it. Where in Laguna Beach? And how come he spilled his whole itinerary to you?”

  “The Seawinds. And, well, I didn’t want to lose track of him. He’s supposed to —” Lupo stopped, swallowed, but continued gamely. “Supposed to pay me for the information.”

  “With what? I thought he was flat.”

  “That’s the point. I didn’t think he’d have much cash handy. But he said by tomorrow or the next day he’d have plenty, and he’d take care of me. So I wanted to know how I could keep in touch with him, and he said he’d be at the Seawinds for a day or two.”

  “Why Laguna? Any special reason?”

  Lupo shook his head. “None he told me. I figured he just wanted to be out of the city.”

  “How was he going to get all this loot—and from whom?”

  “I don’t know anything about that. It’s not what we talked about.”

  “He didn’t tell you what the score was?”

  “No.”

  “You still don’t have any idea what Spaniel heisted, huh?”

  Lupo shook his head. “Just what you said yourself. I mean a big heist in Bel Air. An art job. I mentioned that to him, and said you were looking for him. But he didn’t spill anything to me.”

  “Uh-huh. You just spilled your guts to him. Lupo, I really should plug you right between the eyes.”

  He shuddered delicately, pressed a few drops of highball from his left eyebrow with the tip of a well-manicured index finger. I asked him if Spaniel had pulled the job alone or with somebody else’s help, but he said he’d told me everything he knew. I hoped he had.

  So I said, “You think you can manage not to shoot your mouth off for a while? Or will I have to shoot it off for you?”

  “I won’t make the same mistake twice.”

  “Let’s both hope it’s the truth, Lupo. Because if Spaniel finds out you’ve filled me in, I’m not even going to worry about him. At least not until I find you again, friend.”

  “You don’t have to worry. I swear —”

  I left him in the booth, still swearing fidelity to me. Undying fidelity.

  Laguna Beach is a small, lovely town on the coast, about an hour’s drive from Los Angeles if you hurry. I’d hurried, but there hadn’t been much point in it because I didn’t get started until well after the sun was up.

  When I’d got back to the Spartan after talking to Lupo, two police officers were waiting for me in my apartment. The dead guy was gone, but traces of him remained. And traces of dudgeon remained in the two officers. For another tenant at the Spartan had phoned the law, and policemen feel that when any citizen, even one so well known to them as I, shoots a guy he should stick around to explain why he found it convenient to shoot him.

  Consequently I had to spend more time than would ordinarily have been the case telling my story, and sitting on a hard chair in an interrogation room downtown. The whole thing was made somewhat more difficult because I couldn’t mention the fact that I was working for G. Raney Madison, or explain why I felt the hood had been waiting for me.

  But it was finally over—about seven in the morning—and by the time I’d cleaned up and driven to the coast the day was well along.

  It was a lovely day. Sun sparks flashed from the blue sea, and only a faint haze of distant smog blurred the horizon. At three p.m., parked on South Coast Boulevard, across the street and about half a block from the Seawinds, I got my first look—recent look, that is—at Alston Spaniel.

  The Seawinds sprawled along fifty yards of choice property on the west or ocean-front side of Coast Boulevard. I’d already been over there. From a desk clerk I’d learned that a man answering Alston Spaniel’s description had checked in last night, and was in Suite B on the top tier of the hotel. He answered the description, but was registered as William Simms, which I thought was sly of him. The suite was forty bucks a day, so Alston wasn’t living like a man without money—or at least without prospects. Not if he could afford to pay eighty bucks a day for rooms.

  Eighty, since twice forty is eighty, and Suite C last night had become occupied by what the clerk described as “a helluva good-looking redhead.” She’d registered as Miss Ardith Mellow. No, she hadn’t been with Mr. Simms, at least not so far as the clerk knew.

  I almost missed Alston when he came into view and climbed into a three-year-old Lincoln. I had the top up on the Cad, but it was a warm day and the sun pounded the canvas over my head. More, I’d done no sleeping last night, and my eyes were starting to feel like toasted marshmallows.

  Alston waved to somebody near steps leading down toward the beach, then started to pull out of the curving driveway and into the Boulevard. I got a glimpse of a girl waving back—some red hair and what appeared to be a very wavy figure—but I ducked down as the Lincoln went by me. I let it get a block away, then pulled into the light traffic myself.

  It was possible that I was wasting my time. Assuming, of course, that Alston had indeed lifted the Da Vinci, he might be in Laguna not to dispose of it, nor merely to lie low, but for the fun of spending some of his already ill-gotten gains. But I had to go ahead under the assumption that he’d not yet gotten rid of the drawing, and that completion of the score still lay somewhere in the future. Besides, Lupo had told me Spaniel expected sizable loot “by tomorrow or the next day.”

  So, though I would much have preferred to grab him and hit him for a while, the way housewives used to pound on tough steaks to tenderize them, I merely followed him.

  He didn’t go far. We were headed north, back toward the small business district, and before reaching the stoplight at the corner of Coast Boulevard and Laguna Avenue he swung left into the parking lot next to the Laguna Hotel. I was lucky enough to find a slot at the curb around the corner on Laguna Avenue, and was out of the car in time to spot Spaniel striding toward the double glass doors at the hotel’s front.

  Striding was the word. He was a tall, broad-shouldered and lean-hipped cat, and he moved with a long easy swing of leg, cleft chin thrust forward and splitting the air like the prow of a boat. He was undeniably a vital, handsome slob, and always looked like a guy bursting with vitamins and on his way to a wild party, which he usually was.

  I caught the green light and trotted across the street, entered the hotel lobby just as Spaniel stepped into the elevator. It was next to the desk, just beyond stairs on my right, and when the indicator stopped at “3” I started up the stairs.

  I almost trotted up them too fast. Spaniel was still in the hallway when I reached the third floor, and I clumped to a stop, waited, then peered around the edge of the wall. I saw him knock softly, glance down the hall, then look back at the door as it opened.

  “Al, darling!”

  Yeah. Everywhere the sonofabitch went, it was “Al, darling!” This one wasn’t a redhead. She came out in the hall far enough so I got a good look—and Al got a good squeeze and an enormously healthy smooch on the chops.

  The woman was between twenty-five and thirty years old, with a sensual face and an exceedingly feminine figure, including what Lupo might have called a great deal of too-much-fat displayed at the convex V of the kind of cocktail dress gals wear when they know they’ll be drinking double martinis with dear friends. Or with Alston Spaniel.

  Her hair was piled high on top of her head and was black—so either she wore a wig, or wasn’t a redhead, I told myself. So what the hell was Alston doing? More important, what the hell was I doing? The latter question was more important not only because I had a hunch I knew what he was doing, but because I couldn’t simply tail Spaniel around, peeking to see what he might be up to.

  If he had the Da Vinci
stashed somewhere he’d hardly lug it around and make a meet in broad daylight. And even if he should, I wasn’t supposed to shake him up and possibly queer the deal. The deal was supposed to be consummated, the transfer actually made.

  For a moment I swore under my breath. Maybe part of it was directed at Alston Spaniel, but part was for G. Raney Madison and his goofy conditions. It seemed the only way I could handle this in a fashion to please Madison was to be miles away when the switch was accomplished, but still know who it was that Spaniel met. And that was impos … Something flickered in my mind, flickered and vanished.

  I carry a lot of junk in the trunk of my Cad—electronic equipment, bugs, infrared gear, a squawk box, dozens of other items occasionally of value in my work. But running over the stuff in my thoughts didn’t help. There was always a chance, I supposed, that I could stick a squawk box under the frame of Spaniel’s Lincoln, then using a small receiver tail him, following the signal from a distance. But the switch, if made, would probably be accomplished in a hell of a hurry, in which case I could wind up with a tail on Spaniel and no idea of whom he’d met. I didn’t much like it—and I was sure that wasn’t what had flickered in my mind anyway.

  I let it simmer, checked the number of the room into which Spaniel had gone, then in the lobby again stopped at the desk. A Mrs. Ingrid Otterman was in the room, I was told.

  “Mrs. Otterman? Did she just check in?”

  “No, she’s been with us for several months now.”

  “Is her husband with her?”

  “No, she’s alone. She is, I believe, a widow.”

  I’ll bet I know what killed him, I thought, but merely thanked the clerk and left—to see the clerk at the Seawinds. A different man was on, not the one I’d talked to, this morning. This one didn’t know what Ardith Mellow looked like. So I went to Suite C and knocked. No answer.

  I tried the doorknob, and it turned. Well, if the joint was unlocked it was at least even money I’d find no quarter-of-a-million-buck Da Vinci inside. But I looked anyhow. I was right, no Da Vinci.

  I did find a connecting door between Suites B and C, but that failed to surprise me much, either. Fifteen minutes later I’d tossed both Spaniel’s suite and Ardith Mellow’s without learning anything. Except such things as that Alston had with him only two suits and a sports outfit, all of it from a good custom tailor’s on Sunset Boulevard. And Ardith Mellow had lots of frilly things along, including several lacy brassieres, all of them labeled 38-C, which to those who have never read a brassiere from the inside may not mean much, but in truth does mean much.

  Each suite had a separate sitting room and splendid view of the blue sea and white combers breaking fifty yards away, a bedroom, and adjacent to the bedroom, a sparkling tiled bathroom including a tiled tub. Ardith’s—I was by now thinking of her as Ardith—bedroom and bath were much more interesting. On the bedroom dresser were several kinds of makeup, creams and sprays, combs and brushes and such, and a huge box of powder named—excitingly, I thought—Caress! which had a maddeningly fetching scent, and a great big purple powder puff. It was time, I decided, to meet Ardith Mellow, if for no other reason than to smell her.

  At the base of the Seawinds, just above the sand, was the dining room, and before the dining room’s glass wall, facing the beach and sea, was a long bar. At four p.m. only half a dozen people were at the bar, but one of them was a redhead. Maybe not the redhead, but certainly fashioned like all I’d been led to expect of Ardith. Besides, I figured she was either 38-C or 39-B-plus, which was a fat clue.

  She was at the end of the bar on my left, with several empty places next to her, so I strolled down and climbed onto a stool, leaving one empty between us. She was drinking something green in a martini glass. Green like her eyes, I noticed when she glanced my way.

  Maybe she was one of those gals who won’t speak to strangers, but you never find out if you don’t try. So when the bartender asked what I wanted to drink I said, “I don’t know. Something different—it’s a little early for…” I glanced at the redhead. “Miss?”

  She turned slowly. Not just her head. All of her, swinging tantalizingly toward me as the bar stool swiveled. Maybe she didn’t talk to strangers, but she sure communicated.

  I said, “May I ask you what it is you’re drinking?”

  “Sure,” she said. “Ask me.”

  Whatever it was, I decided it must not be her first one. But I grinned and said, “OK, what is that you’re drinking?”

  “It’s a martini.”

  “A green martini?”

  “Well, it’s like a martini, only it’s green. Crème de menthe instead of vermouth.”

  “Is it any good?”

  “’Licious.”

  I said to the bartender, “Just what I wanted.”

  He looked at me as if I’d ordered a Horse’s Neck. “You’re kidding.”

  I smiled. “I’ll let you know when I’m kidding.”

  Surprisingly, the concoction wasn’t half bad. I timed the drink so that I finished it just as the redhead pushed her empty glass across the bar. When I suggested that, since she had introduced me to whatever it was, perhaps it would be clever of me to buy us both another, she said, “Clev-er,” which I took to mean agreement.

  We finished those drinks without an empty stool between us, but she hadn’t told me anything important. Not even her name, or if she was staying at the Seawinds.

  Finally I said, as we began our third green martini, “Why don’t we do something exciting tonight? I mean, like go out for dinner, or even stay in for din —”

  “Can’t.” She lifted her left wrist and looked at a glittery watch with a face the size of a sliced pea, and apparently invisible numbers on it. “In another … while,” she said, “I’ve got to meet Al —” She chopped it off quick. “Oo.” Her eyes widened, then narrowed slyly. “Il.”

  “He’s sick?”

  “Bill, I mean.”

  “Dear, I refuse to believe you’re waiting for a guy named Al Ooilbill. Unless he’s a prince from —”

  “Bill, that’s his name.”

  “Who were those other guys?”

  “They’re nobody. I just said them because … Well, if you want the truth I don’t know why. I say funny things when I drink martinis.”

  “Don’t we all.”

  “What time is it?” she asked me.

  I looked at the clock behind the bar. “Five.”

  “Oh, dear. In only another hour I have to meet…” She stopped, looking puzzled.

  “Bill?”

  “Yes,” she smiled her thanks at me. “Bill. I’d better go. It’ll take me that long just to soak and powder.”

  “To what?”

  “Soak and pow—why am I telling you?”

  “Beats me. But, I’m interested.”

  It seemed to make her glad. “I soak,” she said. “In a warm tub. Before I get dressed to go out, I always soak and soak. And then powder all over. I think it’s nice if women powder all over, don’t you?”

  “If you say so.”

  “I think if you know you smell good, you feel good, don’t you?”

  “If you say —”

  “And the powder I use smells so … I don’t know. You tell me.”

  “Hmm?”

  “I can’t describe it. You tell me.”

  She was wearing a pale-gray dress with a square-cut neckline and inch-wide straps over her shoulders. She slid the strap off her right shoulder and kind of nudged the shoulder—actually the whole general area—at me.

  She smiled. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to say anything. Well, I thought, nothing beats determination. I’d set out to get a smell of her—and here I was: smelling. In no more than five seconds, or ten, or so, I was sure: Caress!

  “Doesn’t it smell good?” she said finally. “What does it smell like to you?”

  “Who cares.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Well, like wild flowers, the carnivorous kind that eat lit
tle animals —”

  “I’ve got to go.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I almost wish I didn’t have to go,” she said brightly. “Were you serious about doing something later?”

  “You bet I was serious.”

  “Well, like I said I have to meet —” She stopped, her green eyes getting a slightly glazed look again.

  “Bill?”

  “Yes. If it wasn’t for him, Bill, we could do something.” She paused, then put the strap back up over her shoulder.

  “Actually,” she went on, “he can only see me for an hour or two tonight. Just long enough for maybe a drink, and some talk. So if you’re still around, like maybe eight o’clock, we could do something.”

  “I’ll be around. Bill can’t stay, huh?”

  “No. He’s got something important to do tonight.”

  “He must be nuts,” I said. “Important like what?”

  But that she wouldn’t tell me. Maybe she didn’t know.

  “Well, I’ve got to go soak,” she said. “And powder.” She smiled meaningfully, and left.

  I sat there, smiling meaningfully. And slowly came back to normal. There’s something about green martinis. By the time I’d finished that third one I knew all I needed to know. I knew, of course, that she was Ardith Mellow, and powdered “all over” with Caress! and that Al Ooilbill was William Simms, born Alston Spaniel, and that he had something important—damned important, if he preferred it to being with Ardith—to do tonight.

  But those weren’t the most important things. The important thing was that I knew, now, what I was going to do about it.

  It struck me as a little goofy even after three green martinis, but I probably wouldn’t have thought of it except for them. And Madison’s goofy conditions. And if I hadn’t met Ardith.

  It was a quarter to six p.m. Not much time. In fifteen minutes, or less, Alston was supposed to show up, apparently. But I thought there was time—at least, if Ardith was still soaking, and soaking, in her tub.

  She was. I couldn’t see her, but the door was cracked and I could hear her in there, humming and splashing. I’d run all the way to my Cad, spent a minute digging through the junk in my trunk, found what I was after, and had then run back to the Seawind.