Double in Trouble (The Shell Scott Mysteries)

by Richard S. Prather

  “Mister, I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about.” Hope Derleth said, building up slowly through confusion to anger. “You came in here under the pretense of wanting to talk about Mrs. Sand, though why I don’t know. Then you fed me a line that was supposed to make me believe you work for Abacus Abbamonte. But you don’t because I think I know—as you put it—all of Mr. Abbamonte’s goons. So who are you and what do you want?”

  She wasn’t finished. I waited. “Is Charlie in trouble with the police? Are you a cop?”

  Three strikes and out. I said, “I’m a special investigator with the Hartsell Committee.”

  Her dark eyes were furious. “You—you sneak! Coming in here and getting me all worked up about my brother.”

  “I didn’t get you worked up about your brother. You got yourself worked up.”

  “Please get out. I don’t have anything to say to you. You’ll have to see Mr. Holt.”

  “Where?”

  “He’s gone for the day.”

  “Gone where?”

  “I don’t have to tell you that. I don’t have to tell you anything.” She raised her voice. “Morty!”

  The tough kid came in. He looked at me and Hope Derleth. “I told you, dads.”

  Just as I left the office with Morty, a woman ran toward us from the other end of the long hall. She was dark, pretty, slightly overweight. She wore a bright blue imitation-leather suburban coat, her cheeks were flushed and she was panting. Two men sprinted down the hall after her. She was Marie Cambria. She had a big Colt .45 automatic in her hand. If her wild eyes meant anything, she was ready to use it.

  “Where is he, that Abacus Abbamonte?” she screamed. “Where is he, he killed my Hank, Hank was gonna pay, I’ll kill him, I swear I’ll kill him!”

  “Hey, lady!” one of the men behind her called.

  The door to Townsend Holt’s office opened. Hope Derleth came out. The adjacent door also opened, disgorging an enormously fat man who did a lumbering roll and shuffle out into the hall. He looked like an overfed Neanderthal dressed in a sharkskin suit. “What the hell’s the commotion out here?” he rasped. I recognized him from pictures I had seen in the papers. He was Abacus Abbamonte, the Brotherhood’s secretary-treasurer and chief loan-shark.

  “Look out, Mr. Abbamonte, she’s nuts!” one of the men behind Marie Cambria shouted.

  She fired once on the run. The slug tore a hole in the mahogany paneling alongside Abbamonte’s head. The tremendous recoil of the .45 bounced Marie Cambria off the wall and right into the tough kid Morty’s arms. He reached around her large body from behind and grabbed the gun away from her. Snickering, he began to nuzzle her from behind, head against her hair, front of his body in hard contact with the back of hers, both arms circling her, one hand holding the automatic. “Got a little fight left in you, huh baby?” he said.

  “Kee-rist,” Abbamonte said. “She took a shot at me.”

  “That’s enough, Morty,” Hope Derleth told the kid. “’You have her gun.”

  I got hold of Morty’s shoulder, wrenched him away from Marie and spun him around. “The lady says that’s enough.”

  He took a swing at me with the automatic, missing. He glared at me. “Keep the crap out of this, dads. All I did was save Mr. A.’s life.” He swung again, this time with his bare left fist, missing again. I drove my own right into his belly and doubled him over.

  Then a voice said, “Lookit who’s here.”

  “Him all right,” another voice said. The second voice was followed by familiar phlegmy laughter.

  I turned around. The two men who had followed Marie down the hall were Glasses and his big sidekick. The big guy let out a bellow of rage and joined the act, swinging on me. His right fist thudded under my heart and I went back hard against the wall and came away from it with my fists up.

  “You’re gonna choke on that distributor cap, Jack,” the big guy said. Glasses was busy doing something with his hands. I didn’t know what it was at first, then I saw the gleam of brass knucks. I hit the big guy and he went back but not down. Hope Derleth cried out something.

  “Hey, you jerks, what’s going on?” Abbamonte shouted.

  Glasses used the brass knucks on me, low enough for me to turn my thigh into the blow. My leg went numb. I opened my hand on Glasses’ face, shoving. He stumbled back, his glasses flying off.

  “Where is he, where’s the bastard?” Glasses went groping on all fours for his glasses. Hope Derleth stepped on them. Glasses lunged to his feet, swung wildly and splintered the mahogany paneling with his brass knucks.

  Then an arm throttled me from behind. That was Morty. I stamped down on his instep with my heel and he howled and the arm left my neck. But before it did, the big guy pivoted two hundred pounds behind a left hook that caught me in the breadbasket.

  I counter-punched with my right, once, hard, before I couldn’t draw any more air into my lungs. It hit the big guy’s jaw and he went down. But Glasses had found what he was looking for, and one lens was still whole. With the glasses askew on his face he swung a roundhouse right that drove the brass knucks against the side of my neck. I slammed against the wall in the angle formed by it and the recessed doorway of Townsend Holt’s office. I started to go down, but Glasses didn’t let me. He hacked a shoulder under my arm, holding me up, and went to work on my middle with his knucks.

  For a few moments I heard Hope Derleth yelling, saw her face behind Glasses’ shoulder as she tried impotently to pull him away, felt the thud-thud-thud as the brass knucks landed but no pain because my middle was already numb, thought and tried to say but couldn’t get the words out, “Stop it, you damn fool, this is the way you killed Hank Cambria last night, you can kill people with brass knucks without even half trying,” started to slip down despite Glasses’ efforts to hold me up and even managed to knee him in the groin before the big guy got up off the floor, took one looping, measured swing that could have substituted for the chain and ball of a building wrecker and that shut off the world the way you switch off a light.

  SHELL SCOTT SHOOTS OFF HIS MOUTH

  Los Angeles, 8:00 P.M., Monday, December 14

  I swung the Cad from Adams Boulevard into Raymond Avenue, kept the accelerator down for a block and a half, then hit the brakes hard. The car was still skidding when I saw them. The Lincoln wasn’t in sight, but lights burned inside Kelly’s house and in the glow I spotted three figures stepping from the small porch. Before the Cad stopped moving I had the door open, leaped through it onto the grass parking strip. My feet skidded and I stumbled as a gunshot cracked and a slug whipped past me.

  I came up with the Colt in my hand. They were no more than twenty feet away. But Candy, looking monstrous next to Kelly, held her tight against him on the walk leading from the house to the street. Beyond them was the shape of another man. It had to be Mink. I flipped the .38 toward him and squeezed the trigger. He spun around and for a moment I thought I’d hit him; but he was running. His feet slapped on the sidewalk as he raced to the corner.

  Fire shot from Candy’s gun and a slug tore into the grass at my feet. I jumped aside, hit the lawn rolling and came up onto my knees. There was enough light so I could see one of Candy’s arms around Kelly’s body, mashing her breasts as she struggled in his grip. He pulled the revolver around, steadied it on me.

  I started to jerk aside as Kelly squirmed in his arms, one of her hands slapping the gun. It cracked again, a bullet flying up into the air. I got a foot under me, jumped forward as Kelly stamped downward toward Candy’s feet with one highheeled shoe. He yelled and she broke free of his arm. But she was still too close to Candy, and I fired near him, not at him. My feet were driving and I saw Kelly drop down as Candy jerked his gun back toward me. But then I hit him. I smacked into him like a fullback going through the line, feet driving as I hit.

  It was like running into a house, but he staggered backward, got one leg stretched behind him and steadied himself as I bounced to the side. He came back fast, gun hand
swinging. The gun clipped the top of my head and I slammed my arm up against his, saw light gleam on the revolver as it flipped through the air. His other hand came out of nowhere, hit the side of my head like a club. His face went a little out of focus, but I could see clearly enough to find his chin. I found it with a hard left jab and he went backwards, down on his fanny.

  I moved in to finish him off, leaning over him, and he lifted one leg. I saw the foot coming, but I saw it come all the way. It thudded into my chin. It felt as if it was going to tear my head off. My head snapped back, then forward again when I landed on my hands and knees. I could see Candy scrambling to his feet, but he scrambled away from me. When I got up he was jumping through the front door of Kelly’s house. It slammed behind him and I heard his big feet thump across the floor inside.

  I took a step after him, then stopped, whirled toward Kelly. She was still on the grass, but as I turned she started to get up. I grabbed her hands, pulled her to me.

  “They hurt you, Kelly?”

  She shook her head. “No. They—”

  A door behind the house banged. “Here.” I shoved my Colt into her hand, spun around, caught the reflection of Candy’s gun on the grass. I jumped forward and reached for it as a car engine caught and roared nearby. It came from the direction in which Mink had been running.

  I scooped up the gun and sprinted to the corner—but that engine roared, whined, and then the sound grew fainter. I caught a flash of blue two blocks away, and the flare of a red taillight as the car whipped around the corner.

  I couldn’t catch them now. And I had to be sure Kelly was all right, really all right. I walked back to her. When I got near her, automatically she ran toward me, threw her arms around me. I held her tight. She was shaking. I guess I was shaking a little, too.

  Lights came on in nearby houses. Somebody called to us, shouted something. I didn’t pay any attention to them. I held onto Kelly.

  I let my Cad roll up the Freeway toward Hollywood, heading nowhere in particular, filled with a big burn for Mink and Candy—and Ragen. Kelly sat close to me on the front seat.

  It hadn’t been long before a police radio car arrived in response to the shooting. I’d told the story, and Kelly had told hers. If Mink and Candy were picked up, I would be notified. Kelly and I were still talking about it.

  I said, “Those bums didn’t say a thing, huh?”

  “Not to me. When I opened the door they just forced their way in. Candy held me while that greasy Mink searched the house in a hurry. We heard the phone ringing, but naturally they wouldn’t let me answer it. They must have been looking for whatever Braun took.”

  “No question about it now. I still don’t know what it was, but I knew it was not what Ragen told me it was.”

  “That’s where they were taking me, I guess, to him. Candy told Mink they couldn’t leave me now, and that Ragen would want to—pump me, he said.” She rubbed her arm absently. In the light from the dash I could see faint bruises on the inside of her arm. Where Candy’s big fingers had grabbed her. Mentally I transferred them to Candy, much larger ones, not nearly so faint, and all over.

  Kelly said, “Where are we going?”

  “Just going. The main thing was to get you away from there.” The Sunset Boulevard tumoff was close on our right now. I said, “We could go to my apartment, Kelly. Unless you’d rather check into a hotel. Main thing is a change of address.”

  “I’ve never seen your apartment.”

  “Here’s your chance.”

  “I’ll take it.”

  Ten minutes later I parked on North Rossmore in front of the Spartan Apartment Hotel. We got out and went in. At the desk I learned there’d been no calls for me. No call from Alexis Frost. We went up to the second floor, down the hall to my apartment, and in. Kelly spotted the two tropical fish tanks on the door’s left the first thing. I turned on the small aquarium lights, and the colors of the fish almost leaped out into the room.

  Kelly said, “He’s the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen.”

  Kelly was pointing at the single gorgeously blue Betta splendens in the community tank, his long ventral and caudal fins rippling and the bright pectorals and pointed dorsal shimmering in the overhead light.

  “Magnificent, isn’t he?” I said. “Bred that little devil myself. Raised him from an egg you could barely see with your eye.”

  “From an egg? You mean you hatched it?”

  I grinned at her. “In a manner of speaking. I don’t mean I sat on it for two weeks, but I fed him infusoria, brine shrimp and egg yolk, all that jazz. Chose my best male and female adult bettas, Cornflower Blues, they were. Gave them the best of everything including a fifteen-gallon tank, and acid water.” I glanced at her again. “Actually, I don’t mean to take all the credit. The fish had quite a bit to do with it.”

  She smiled up at me, misty green eyes twinkling. “My,” she said in her cool, soft voice, “and I didn’t think you had any talents. I should have come up here before.”

  “You should have, indeed, Kelly. Why, once I tried to cross a big black mollie with a small Belonesox belizanus, but all it did was make them very cross. Ah, but if it had worked—”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  She still wore the outfit she’d had on when I’d visited her during the afternoon, since Mink and Candy had certainly not given her time to change. The green-jersey dress fit her rounded body snugly, not so much as if it was too tight on her, but more as though she just flowed abundantly, joyously, out against the smooth cloth.

  “Why,” I said, “are we talking about fish, anyway?”

  “I couldn’t stop you.”

  “Drink?”

  “Sounds exciting. Do you have Scotch?”

  “Scotch it shall be.”

  I made her a Scotch-high, a bourbon and water for me. When I stepped back into the living room Kelly was seated on the oversized couch, looking askance at the nude over my fireplace. It is an odd thing but women almost always look at Amelia askance. They rarely look at her head on—though that is not a strictly accurate description of the look one gets at Amelia. And I could tell from the expression on Kelly’s perky face that I had now lost the ground I’d gained with the fish. Maybe she didn’t know it, but it is a hell of a lot more difficult to breed Bettas than Amelias. Kelly, however, made no comment.

  I gave her the drink, had a slug of my own, and used the phone. Calls to informants developed no rumbles, either about Braun’s murder or about Dr. Gideon Frost. I made several calls to Truckers Headquarters, Ragen’s home, tried to find Mink and Candy. But, not surprisingly, I had no luck in that direction. It was a pretty sure thing that, for this night at least, they wouldn’t be where I could reach them.

  I sat quietly for a while, thinking.

  “Shell.” Kelly was looking at me.

  “Yeah?”

  “I think you forgot I was here.”

  “I’d never forget you were here. I was just ... trying to figure some things out. But I can’t do it until I learn more. And I can’t do it in the Spartan.”

  “Are you leaving?”

  “I guess. You stay here, Kelly. It’s as safe as any other place. And I’ll leave you Candy’s gun for good measure.”

  “Do you have to go? This couch looks big enough for you to sleep on.”

  Actually, it is darned near big enough for four people to sleep on, except that one keeps falling off. I said, “A lot of hoodlum town is just waking up now.”

  Kelly curled her wonderful legs beneath her on the couch, and I looked at her, let her flow in through my eyes and warm my insides. Some of the make-up on her face had worn thin, and a few freckles peeked through. Her green eyes were soft on my face. It was a pleasant moment, relaxed. The troubles and worries faded away.

  “How long have I known you, Kelly?” I asked her.

  “Oh, maybe a hundred years. I remember you were an old man when we met.”

  “Yeah. Fortunately I’ve been getting younger since then
. It’s been...” I thought back. “Six years now, isn’t it? Sure, you were seventeen then. And I was twenty-four. It seems longer than that, somehow.”

  “Uh-huh. Like last lifetime or something. Maybe it was, and we met in a cave.”

  “That figures. I’m a caveman at heart.”

  “No, you’re not. Shell.” She smiled sweetly and leaned forward, face close to mine. “I know what you are at heart.”

  Her eyes were misty, melting. Her lips were near, half-smiling, and I thought I could smell their perfume. I leaned slowly toward her and she tilted her head, red hair catching gleams of light.

  It started out as just a kiss, a simple, casual kiss—casual as the peck I’d given her earlier at her door. But Kelly’s lips were like blossoms, soft, scented, sweet. Soft and warm, warm then hot, hot as my rushing blood.

  I don’t know how it happened. I didn’t mean for it to happen, and I know she didn’t either. It was as if we didn’t have anything to do with it, just got caught and swept along with it. Our lips parted, but then her hands tightened around my neck. She pulled herself closer to me, soft against me. Her breath warmed my lips, and then her mouth was on mine again. Her arms tugged at the back of my neck, pulled almost convulsively, time after time in a kind of pulsing rhythm, unconscious, unheeded.

  I don’t know how it happened. But it happened.

  In the morning I showered and shaved, humming. And it is a rare day indeed, when I hum in the morning. I hummed several songs—and they were lilting Irish songs. Shaved, showered, dabbed with a manly lotion, and gaudily robed, I peeked into the bedroom. Kelly was still asleep, thick lustrous hair like fire on the pillow. Yes, there was fire in Kelly. And a warm glow in Shell Scott.

  While she slept I got on the phone again and talked to police, muggs, friends. Nothing. Ragen was avoiding Truckers Headquarters; he wasn’t at his home. Mink and Candy, understandably, were not in their usual haunts. There wasn’t a trace of Frost—either Gideon or Alexis.

  I chopped up some fresh clam for the fish and said good morning to them. To my blue betta I said, “Hello, you little devil. Raised you from an egg.”