Double in Trouble (The Shell Scott Mysteries)

by Richard S. Prather

  Shell Scott

  When Drum got up again, I hit him with a right and a left. His head rocked a little, and then he slugged me on the nose. Water poured from my eyes and I didn’t see his other fist coming. It landed alongside my chin and wrapped my head around about forty degrees. There was a little more of that and finally I realized no more blows were coming. Or going.

  When I could see half clearly again. Drum was sitting on his hind end, arms resting on his bent knees. His mouth was open and he was breathing gustily through it. I was on my knees, leaning forward, hands pressed against the concrete, also breathing through my mouth.

  Something dripped from my lip and splatted against the concrete. For a moment I thought it was my lip dripping from my lip, but it was only blood. In a way it made me feel good to know there was still blood in me to drip with.

  That sleet was slanting down once more, and the wind was almost enough to knock me out, especially in my condition. When I got my head raised up again, Drum was looking dully at me. I ran a tongue over my teeth. They were still there. I apparently have extremely strong teeth.

  “Drum,” I said. “You old bastard. You old bastard, Drum.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “You sonofabitch. You look like you’re dying, you beat-up sonofabitch.”

  “Don’t get your hopes up. I’m going to live. I think.”

  “Not a chance.”

  “I may be bleeding internally, but I know you’re bleeding externally.” I paused. “Listen, Drum.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I don’t think this is going to work.”

  He nodded his head in agreement, winced slightly, but didn’t speak for a while. Finally he said, “I could have told you that. It occurred to me.”

  “It occurred to me first.”

  He grinned. Before all this happened, I thought, he must have been an almost nice-looking man. Not like me, of course. I reached up and felt my strong, firm features. Hell, I wasn’t like me. Those bells were ringing very softly now, barely tinkling.

  I said sagely, “Drum, you old bastard, we’ll have to figure out another way. But listen. The main thing that got me onto you was when Eric Torgesen sprang you from the Front Royal can. After you bashed Townsend Holt’s head in. So now that I’ve beaten you into virtual unconsciousness, tell me: Why did you kill Holt? What was your angle?”

  He closed his eyes, opened them slowly. As far as they would open. Then he said wearily, “You fathead. I’ve been trying to tell you for—for hours now. You’re the guy in the soup. I didn’t kill anybody. I’ve been working for Mrs. Sand—”

  “Hah! I’ve been working for Mrs. Sand. She hired me Monday morning to find her father. Caught you there, Drum!”

  “—and the Hartsell Committee.”

  Of course, he was lying. I could feel the anger swelling up in me again. Unfortunately, that was all that swelled up in me. He sat there and lied to me. While he raved on, I got into a more comfortable position, lying down.

  I don’t know just when it happened. Maybe lying there on the cold concrete with the sleet freezing my face cleared my brain. But at some point he started making a little sense. It swept over me nauseously, sweatily, stickily, like hot sherbet. Some of his phrases settled in my mind like heavy dandruff: “...that phone call from Holt to Ragen must have been to tell him I’d fouled it up, all right. A phony snatch with Holt set to play the Lone Ranger and get Alexis to fly into his arms with her father’s papers. Only Holt didn’t show up. I did. I ran his two hoods off the road...” I remembered Alexis telling me about Prince-Flash Chet coming down on them in his rocketship, something like that. It was fitting together.

  Feeling sick, I raised up on one aching elbow, then pushed myself to my feet. “Drum,” I said in a hollow voice.

  “Yeah?”

  “Who put the cops after me and Ragen? I thought it was you.”

  “It was me. It figured that you were in on the snatch with Ragen. Hell, I saw you there with him.”

  I felt sicker. “No, I saw you there with him. Drum ... I think in a moment ... we’re both going to faint.”

  Chester Drum

  Maybe Scott had a point there. Maybe we both were going to faint. Ever see a couple of well-matched heavies square off against each other in the Golden Gloves? They use sixteen-ounce gloves, and after a couple of rounds—if they’ve really been mixing it—the pound of weight on each fist begins to drag their arms down. Scott and I were like that now. He didn’t look so good, what I could see of him in the rain and the darkness. I must have looked as bad, if not worse.

  I could hardly lift my arms. And whatever I thought of Scott, I had to admire him. That guy could fight with the best of them. Too, there were a couple of times when he might have stomped me, and he hadn’t. He could fight with the best of them, and he fought cleanly.

  We were both still on our feet, but only that. And for a man who had sold himself out to Ragen, Scott had been saying some mighty strange things—when he wasn’t using his tongue to lick a pair of fat lips. He looked ghastly. I felt ghastly. It occurred to me after a while that he might have been trying to smile. “But what the hell were you doing out at Blue Jay?” he said.

  My lips were puffy too, and the words came out thick and vague as I said, “I told you. Trying to get to Frost before Ragen’s muggs. I got slugged.”

  “I didn’t slug you. If I had, you probably would have eaten the gun for vitamins.” He lifted a hand slowly and poked a swollen finger in my direction. “But why the hell did you go out there anyway?”

  “Marker was ready to talk. A Hartsell op named Moody said so. I went out to help, but I was too late. A couple of hoods beat the Blue Jay hideout out of Moody.”

  His left eye went wide. His right couldn’t. It was swollen half shut. “Mink and Candy?” he said.

  “That was their names, yeah. But Moody also told the Senator you were poking around into Braun Thorn’s death, so I—”

  “You bet your sweet life I was poking around. Braun was one of the best friends I ever had. You say you’re a Hartsell op?”

  “On special assignment, yeah. Damn it, I told you.”

  We looked at each other. He was Braun Thorn’s friend. I was working for Hartsell. I blinked one eye. I had some trouble with the other one.

  “You had a pretty good rep,” I said, only a little grudgingly. “The Chet Drum of L.A., they called you.”

  “Ten minutes ago I would have made them eat those words. Now I don’t know.” And he added, “You were pretty good out here tonight.”

  “You can use your dukes,” I said.

  “Circumstantial evidence,” he said. “It got so I saw red every time I heard your name, on circumstantial evidence.”

  “The same in reverse, Scott. We had to, the way the case was breaking.”

  “You heeled?”

  “Yeah. I didn’t use my gun on you because I thought they’d hear it inside. That’s why you put your own gun away, isn’t it?”

  “Uh-huh. That’s what I was getting at.”

  We both stared a moment longer, then we smiled. He stuck his hand out, giving me a sheepish look. His face must have been mirroring mine. I shook his hand. He didn’t have much of a grip left. Neither did I.

  I said, “Now that we’ve beaten each other to a pulp, what are we going to do about those hoods in there?”

  Before he could answer, if he was going to answer, lights went on. Not inside our heads, as they had just done, but all over the landing field.

  Runway lights.

  THE WHITES OF THEIR EYES

  Tidewater, Maryland, 10:40 P.M., Sunday, December 20

  Shell Scott

  We both jerked our heads around at the same moment.

  Drum had told me during our battle and since then the highpoints of what he’d done during this case; I had filled him in on the action from my end. So we both knew what that sudden flare of light meant.

  Runway lights are turned on so a plane can land. And who would be bringing a p
lane down here—at an abandoned airport—in the wind and sleet? To meet Sand and Abbamonte?

  John Ragen.

  Ragen—and another gang of armed hoodlums. I suddenly felt as if I were tied to a large bomb with a short, sputtering fuse. I said to Drum, “This ... kind of complicates my answer to your question. About what to do with those hoods inside. There are soon going to be hoods outside, in the air, and perhaps even popping up out of the ground.”

  He swung his face back toward me. “Ragen and who else?”

  “Candy and three or four gunmen, maybe more.”

  He looked horrible. Now that the runway lights were on we could see each other clearly, and it had been better before. I guess I must not have looked amusing myself. In addition to all the rest, there was an expression almost of revolted shock on Drum’s face. He looked me up and down, then all over my head as if trying to locate my nose, and said slowly, “Maybe we could scare them to death.”

  At the same moment we both realized we were standing out in the open, with plenty of reflected light on us. We sprinted for the building, which was perhaps forty yards away, and made it to the protection of a wall after staggering over no more than eighty or ninety yards a piece. Drum got there before I did, but only because he happened to stumble toward the building at the last moment. He sank to his knees, snorting enormously, and I ran right over him and fell on my head. There just wasn’t any stop in my legs once I’d gotten them going, and by the time I’d climbed up onto them again I knew there was no more go in them, either. And when you’re out of both stop and go, there isn’t much left to be out of.

  Drum was still snorting. I said, “It’s no good. We couldn’t take one female pickpocket now. There must be at least half a dozen or dozen uglies inside. And now Ragen and all his uglies. Oh, it’s ... ugly.”

  Drum said, “I cased the—” snort—"hangar and administration building. We can—” snort—"get inside and maybe ... maybe ... uh.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Maybe ... uh—” snort. He paused. “Well, have you got a better idea?”

  I had to confess that I didn’t. Which is an indication of how low it is possible for man’s mental processes to sink. And, actually, it wasn’t just Drum that was snorting. I was doing quite well there myself. In fact, we were practically carrying on the conversation in snorts, which seemed the right language for that conversation.

  We could hear the droning of the plane’s engines now, faintly through the wind and rain. “That’ll be Ragen, all right,” I said. And then another thought struck me. “Maybe even Dr. Frost and Alexis.”

  Drum nodded. “If they’re alive. What kind of plane does Ragen have?”

  “A DC-3.”

  “DC-3 ... that’s a Dakota, old twin-engined executive plane. Carry about twenty passengers.”

  “That’s great. Twenty. Probably it’s also a bomber, and they’ll drop things on us.”

  Drum pointed. “There it is.”

  I followed his finger. All over the sky. Finally it steadied enough so I could get the general area. And I saw something weird, frightening even. It looked like part of a huge, puffy eyelid, a hideous flesh saucer floating ... I closed my eyes and it went away. But of course; it was part of my huge puffy eyelid. I tried again, straining my lids up and using my merely bad eye, and this time caught the blinking red light on a plane’s port wing. In moments the other light was visible as the plane banked, turned toward us, aimed for the runway.

  We couldn’t even get out of here now.

  Drum was still worrying his idea, as if what was left of his mind at this point was all one-track. “If we could both get inside there in a hurry ... and somehow take care of them, we’d be ready for Ragen and his men.”

  “It’s that ’somehow’ that bothers me. Drum.” I shook my head and groaned and said “Ow!” and stopped shaking my head and said, “I’m afraid the only way we could take these gangs of hoodlums would be if they all cooperated by shooting themselves. As for overpowering them ... I am out of power.”

  He nodded glumly. “I know what you mean, Scott. That was some battle we had. You took more out of me than was in me.”

  “Yeah. I won the fight, of course. But I feel like a loser.”

  That was, for each of us perhaps, our moment of most monumental indecision. The low point. The blank hiatus. As though time had ruptured right there and smacked us. We gawked at the incoming plane, our expressions probably like that of un-blindfolded men eyeballing the firing squad. Soon the Dakota’s wheels would touch down on the runway. We gawked. But then Drum swung his head toward me again.

  He looked at me strangely. That was about the only way he could look at anybody now, but I thought I detected a different strangeness. He said, “Scott, didn’t you say we could take them if they’d shoot themselves?”

  “Yeah, but I’m likely to say anything...”

  Then it hit me. And the indecision was suddenly over—for both of us. It was funny how we clicked then, as though the process of trying to murder each other had somehow welded us closer together than we could ever have been without it, as if during the blows and blood-spilling there had come about a kind of mental alchemy which let us think almost as one.

  We spoke rapidly and softly then, and I could feel the excitement pulsing in me, starting to send more strength through my body. He said, “Abbamonte’s already pushed Sand halfway out. I was here at the airport when his goon slugged Sand on the jaw with a .45.”

  “I saw the lump. And I know Ragen would kill Sand in a minute—if he thought he could get away with it.”

  “Sand’s in a sweat to lower the boom on Abbamonte. And they’re both in there. Sand’s just hanging on by his teeth now. He might think Ragen’s in with Abba.”

  “Hell,” I said, “we might really get them shooting at each other. None of these bums know you and I are here. If you can let go some shots at Ragen and his boys—from inside the hangar—Ragen’s gang will probably think the Sand-Abbamonte hoodlums are blazing away at them. And if I return your fire—from outside the hangar—vice versa. Sand and Abba will think they’re getting slaughtered by Ragen and his goons.”

  Drum grinned. “It might work. All I have to do is somehow join Abba and Sand’s gang. All you have to do is get in the middle of Ragen’s bunch. That’s all. But it’s worth a try.”

  “They’re ready for an explosion.”

  “Let’s set it off.”

  We were both on our feet by then. I could see the light of battle in Drum’s eyes, feel it in mine. The DC-3 was coming in for a landing, almost down. Drum said, “I’ll get inside somehow. Hope’s in there.”

  “It works out right. I’d rather be close to Ragen.”

  Those lights, I thought. I could never get close to the men from the plane—not without being recognized—while those runway lights were on. “Drum,” I said, and my voice was a little tight, “when you see the runway lights go out, you’ll know I got that far. There’s not time for us both to do that job. And you’ll have your hands full inside the hangar. What’s in there, anyway?”

  In fast sentences Drum explained what he knew of the building’s layout from his trip around it and his one visit inside it. The hangar was at this end, nearest the landing strips; another section, probably the garage area, was in the middle; and there was a wing at the far end, apparently the administration building. That was the only section with windows in its walls—and all or most of the gathered gang was probably inside there.

  “That’s good enough,” I said. “I’ve got the picture.”

  He nodded. “We’ll take it as it comes. However it happens, I’ll let go the first shot, over your heads.”

  “Make it three or four shots if you can. These guys are all trigger-happy—except maybe Ragen—but they have to think they’re really getting assassinated. Right after you blast at us, I’ll blaze away at the administration building.”

  He was grinning. “It’s crazy.”

  “Sure it’s crazy.”


  It was. So were we. But there was a chance it might work. A chance. That was all I asked. I knew it was all Drum asked, too. He said, and his voice was almost cheerful, “Whichever way it goes. I’ll let you get close. I’ll wait till I see the whites of your eyes.”

  “The way I feel about all this. Drum, you’ll see them with no difficulty.”

  He stuck out his hand. “Luck, Shell.” Two words, but his voice and the firm pressure of his grip said the rest of it.

  I grabbed his hand. “Luck, Chet.”

  In the last moment before we went in our separate directions we looked at that plane again. The DC-3 had touched down on the runway now, was taxiing toward us. It was a little like that un-blindfolded look at the firing squad before, but there was a difference. Ragen’s trigger-happy hoodlums were still the firing squad.

  But maybe we weren’t the target.

  Chester Drum

  After I smashed the rusted padlock of the hangar personnel door with the butt of my Magnum, I stood there in the rain, waiting. I could still hear the big motors of the taxiing plane, droning in the night. Making another careful circuit of the building, I’d taken a chance and used my flashlight on the hangar’s outside walls. Up near the roof the wood seemed weathered and rotten. If I could climb up there somehow on the inside I might find a vantage point to start our war from—if Scott took care of the runway lights. But even if he did and if I started shooting, what then? We still had to convince Sand and Abbamonte on the inside and Ragen on the outside that they were gunning for each other. If we didn’t, we were dead.

  Suddenly, across the tarmac, they cut the DC-3’s engines. The wind moaned, the rain lashed concrete. I took a look back at the bright runway lights. From where I stood, the corner of the building cut off the DC-3. With the flash in my left hand and the .44 Magnum in my right, I went inside the hangar.

  I expected complete darkness, but a lantern glowed dully orange on the floor at the far end of the place. That was just great. They’d been in here. They might decide to come back. With just enough light to see me by.

  What I saw by the light of the lantern was the detritus of any abandoned airport—empty fuel drums, a propellerless motor up on blocks, the stripped skeleton of an ancient high-winged monoplane. I could hear the wind moaning above me and to my left, and when I homed in on the sound, I felt a spray of water. The inside walls of the hangar were raw wood. Constant buffeting by the salt and moisture-laden tidewater winds had done its job. But the feeble light of the lantern didn’t show me what I was looking for, and I had to use the flash.