Double in Trouble (The Shell Scott Mysteries)

by Richard S. Prather

  Then I saw it.

  High up under the sloping hangar roof, the wood had rotted away entirely. Windblown rain flecked golden there in the beam of my flash. It was the vantage point I needed.

  But how to reach it?

  I tried one of the fuel drums, standing it on end close to the wall and climbing on top of it. All I did was get myself drenched. My shoulders were still about three feet short of the rotted wood. I lugged another drum next to the first and up-ended a third on top of them. That was harder than it sounds, for the drums were stacked together like canned food in a supermarket display. If I moved the wrong one I could start a clatter they’d hear from here to the Anacostia River and back.

  I climbed again and got a grip on the rotted wood. A piece broke off in my hand, and I almost fell. When I righted myself, I was staring through a hole about three feet long and one foot high. I could see the runway lights and the DC-3. It had no flight-stairs. The hatch was open.

  Where was Scott? What about those lights?

  I shifted my weight, because more wood was breaking off under my grip. Just then I heard a rolling sound, then a scraping, then a clanging clatter as the stacked fuel drums began to come apart. One of them rolled across the floor toward the skeleton of the monoplane. The others banged together like ten-pins falling before a strike. The sound echoed in the almost-empty hangar.

  It was a sound to get me killed.

  I just had time to get down off my perch and crouch behind the three drums when the connecting door between the hangar and garage sections of the building opened.

  Shell Scott

  I paused outside the door of the control tower. Overhead the tattered windsock popped in the wind. The runway lights were still on, and through a window I had seen two men inside the small room.

  Running here, bent low to the ground, I had spotted a piece of timber, scooped it up. It was a little bigger than a baseball bat, not quite so heavy. As I balanced the timber on my right shoulder, reached for the door with my other, hand, I thought for a moment about Drum. I had to hand it to the guy. My end of this goofiness wasn’t easy, but he had to go inside where the boys were already assembled, where it was light and probably quiet enough so they could hear his movements. And where, if they spotted him, there was no place to run. But with the help of darkness and with the sound of my movement covered by the pounding rain and sleet, I would ... get killed much later than Drum.

  Down on the runway they had cut the DC-3’s engines. Men were dropping out of the hatch. I could see half a dozen already assembled near the plane. The plane squirted out another, like a big chicken laying rotten eggs. The wind howled in my ears. More rotten eggs could be shooting holes in Drum’s corpse inside the hangar, and with this wind I wouldn’t even hear them. But, then, neither would Drum.

  I shoved the control shack’s door open and stepped inside.

  Both men jerked their heads around, eyes widening.

  I stepped toward them, “Douse those lights, you damn fools!” I yelled. “You want the whole countryside down on us?”

  One of the men turned automatically, reached for a switch. The other guy kept staring at me. So I hit him first. I took another step toward him, unlimbered my timber, and smacked him hugely square between his startled eyes. He got his right hand up to his chest, reaching for a gun, just as the club landed.

  The lights went out for him and on the runway at the same moment. The second man, at the control panel, let out a great noise as I swung at him. I don’t know where I got him, but it did the job. They both had guns strapped against their chests. I grabbed them, two heavy Colt .45 automatics, used one to tap the second man again, then spun around and took off.

  I ran in darkness over the tarmac. Ragen and his men must be almost at the hangar by now. Once I caught my foot on a clump of wiry weeds splitting the concrete, fell rolling and came up staggering but still running.

  Then I heard Ragen’s hard, battering-ram voice. “What in hell’s going on there? Who in hell’s that?”

  They had heard me, stopped alongside the building about ten yards past the hangar door. I ran right up to them, feeling my heart swell in my chest as if it were going to pop open. I lifted my voice half an octave and said from the side of my mouth, “What’s the beef? I just doused the lights out. We didn’t tink you was ever comin’.”

  I thought it was weak. But it wasn’t. It worked, and if it works it isn’t weak. But I was weak. It was dark here, but not so dark they couldn’t make out my size, outline, a dim blur of my features. Even in bright light, though, my features would probably be a dim blur—and, finally, I could actually thank Drum for that.

  “Well—” Ragen said his favorite cuss word again. The mob turned and moved forward once more, parallel to the long wall of the building. In my mind I ran over the layout Drum and I had so quickly discussed. First the hangar, then garage area. We were passing the garage now. Up ahead were rows of windows, light showing dimly behind the glass—the administration building. Sand, Abbamonte, their gunmen, would be inside there. Men were talking softly near me, but it was just a mumble. I wasn’t listening for words, I was listening for shots, praying they’d be from Drum’s gun. Not from somebody behind me. My heart was shaking like a hula dancer’s fanny.

  We reached the door to the administration building. Close on our right were the windows. Faintly behind the fogged and rain-streaked panes I could see movement. And there was movement around me, too, shadows shifting in the dim light. I made out the shapes of eight or nine men around me. One of them reached the door, paused, pushed it open.

  Drum! I mentally yelled. Where are you? Where in hell are you? Where in hell are you?

  He didn’t answer. The guy was probably dead in there. My knees actually waggled. Not from fright—there hadn’t been time to get scared yet—but because I was crammed with tension, wound up like an amateur’s doily.

  The first of Ragen’s men was stepping inside the building now. There was movement all around me. I let out my breath in a long sigh. It swept over me then. It wouldn’t work. It was crazy. There hadn’t been a chance it would work in the first place. We had been out of our minds. We were still out of our minds.

  I reached into my pockets, stepped back, came up with the two .45’s in my hands. And my lungs in my mouth. More light spilled out that open door. If Drum wasn’t there...

  I refused to think about it.

  SCOTT AND DRUM KILL AN EVENING

  Tidewater, Maryland, 10:46 PM., Sunday, December 20

  Chester Drum

  A man came running through the connecting door between the hangar and the garage. He held an automatic in his fist. He was a small guy and he wore metal-rimmed glasses. If you didn’t know him you wouldn’t have thought him very deadly. I knew him. A small guy, sure. But a tarantula isn’t very big either.

  It was Glasses.

  He prowled among the fallen drums, poking at them, then across the hangar to its outside door. For a moment he stood there. If he didn’t try the door I was all right. If he tried it he’d find the broken lock and give the alarm. I waited while he waited. As to brains he wasn’t particularly endowed, but trying the door seemed pretty elementary stuff.

  When he got one hand on the doorknob, I started running.

  He opened the door and had to hold it with both hands, the automatic pointing for the moment uselessly outside, to keep the wind from pulling it away from him. He heard the wind and the rain. He didn’t hear me.

  I swung the Magnum up, then down. At the last possible instant he moved his head. No reason to he just moved it. The barrel of the Magnum struck his shoulder and in the same split-second I got my left arm around his neck in a mugger’s grip. He made a sound like, “Nya, nyah,” not very loud, and then he was silent because I had cut off his air. His shoes pounded the concrete floor. I lifted him. His toes scraped the concrete, then he was dangling. With his left hand he got a hold on my left ear. I didn’t let go. His fingers began to loosen. The wind was banging the
door against the outside of the building. Just as Glasses went limp, the runway lights outside blinked off. He dropped the automatic. I dropped him and picked the gun up.

  Whirled to face a big man I had never seen before silhouetted in the connecting doorway across the hangar. He had a gun in his hand and he used it. Behind him I heard shouting. The slug hit the doorframe next to my head. Splinters stung my face.

  I fired twice with the Magnum. Once for the man in the doorway, once for the lantern. The lantern flew apart. The man, hit by a slug with the highest muzzle velocity a handgun is capable of, jerked back three feet and fell in the doorway, blocking it. The Magnum made a hell of a noise, but with the wind and the rain and the hangar walls interfering, Scott and Ragen wouldn’t have heard it.

  I climbed the pyramid of drums again. This put me outside the direct swath of light from the open doorway, but if Abbamonte or his goons came through it, they’d find me.

  I leaned on the rotted wood and poked my right hand through the hole. When I saw some of Ragen’s men coming toward the hangar I fired twice along the length of the building, waited, heard Scott’s answering shots—Scott’s, I hoped—fired once more and jumped down.

  Three men rushed in through the connecting doorway just as I crouched behind the fuel drums again.

  “Glasses?” someone shouted. “Where the hell are you?”

  I shouted back, “It’s Ragen! Taking pot shots at us.”

  “Jesus,” someone cried.

  “That ain’t Glasses,” shouted another voice.

  Outside, the fusillade continued.

  Shell Scott

  Drum was there. And how Drum was there.

  Two men were stepping through that open doorway before me and I was squeezing the butts of my .45’s tighter and tighter in my fists, when the shots came.

  The muzzle blast flared somewhere high on my left and the sound was like a cannon, Drum’s big .44 Magnum booming like a mutant bazooka, a tremendous, a marvelous blast. If you want a bigger gun than a .44 Magnum, you buy a rifle; its slug whistling past your ears can almost take them off. And the slug whistled past our ears.

  Drum’s first shot was followed by a short pause—then another cracking boom. I squeezed the triggers of both .45’s and reeled around. I yelled, "They’re killin’ us!" and flopped to the ground, letting a couple more slugs fly.

  As I went down I could see those two men in the doorway whirling around, heads jerking. A man near me jumped a foot straight up into the air. I raised my right hand, aimed high, fired two shots through the glass windows of the administration wing. Near me a man yanked a gun from under his coat.

  And then there was silence.

  It couldn’t have lasted for more than a second or two, but to me it seemed about a month and a half. Silence. And then, again, the boom of Drum’s Magnum. Just one more shot—but it did the trick.

  That stunned silence ended, erupted, exploded and turned into pandemonium. I triggered the .45’s, yelling—and there were more yells, more .45’s went off, joined by .38’s and even the smack of a slug into flesh. On my right, only feet away, glass shattered as somebody inside the administration building slapped a gun muzzle through one of the window panes. The muzzle blast as the man fired seemed almost in my face.

  Everything happened at once. Men were running, some toward that open door, some just getting out of the way. One man dived flat out in the air, landed on his belly with a smack I heard even over the sounds of rain and wind and shooting and shouting—and the splintering crash of other panes of glass as they were broken, either by guns or bullets.

  It was bedlam. Astounding, amazing, unbelievable bedlam. But I believed it. Next to me a man jerked suddenly and blood splashed from his body onto my hand. He let out a high, soft sound and fell. Somebody screamed inside, really screamed, a man’s voice but high and shrill. He didn’t stop screaming; the voice just got weaker, softer.

  Then, close to me, I heard a yell. “It’s Scott! It’s that lousy bastard—”

  I jerked my head around, on my knees now. It was a man I’d seen before with Ragen, a fat red-faced muscleman and killer. I didn’t know his name. I knew his gun. It was a .38 caliber revolver, and it was pointed at me. I triggered the .45 in my right hand and nothing happened. The gun was empty. He fired at me, the bullet nicking my arm, splatting against the tarmac behind me.

  I didn’t consciously squeeze the trigger of that other .45, but it bucked in my hand. It jumped again, then the hammer fell with a click. But both slugs hit the man, the first one slamming him backward as though a horse had kicked him, the second actually hurling him off his feet. He spun in the air, smacked into the building’s wall.

  I rolled fast to the side. Suddenly it was light around us. I could clearly see the shapes of moving men. The runway was bright once more—one of those guys in the control tower must have come to, put the lights back on. I should have clubbed both of them a second time. I started to get to my feet as a gun cracked near me. I wasn’t hit, but jerked my head up to see the man behind the gun. Six feet away. Features contorted. Looking huge, enormous, looking like handsome death.

  Candy.

  Cold grabbed me, dived into every cell of my body. I threw the .45 in my right hand at him, jumped toward him as he fired again. The automatic bounced off his shoulder. Harmlessly, but enough to jar him, spoil his aim.

  Then I hit him, dropping the other gun as we crashed together and fell. He bounced his gun-filled hand off my skull before I could grab his wrist. We rolled, came up onto our feet, clutching each other. He forced my arms back. He was strong, powerful, and I could feel my strength washing out of me.

  Candy knew he had me. His features were still contorted, but a tight grin was splitting his face, inches from mine. He forced me back, brought a knee up between my legs.

  I heard the gasp forced from my mouth. My legs buckled. Bile squirted into my throat.

  I felt myself going down.

  Chester Drum

  “Where the hell is he?” one of the three men who’d just rushed in through the connecting doorway asked. “I can’t see him.”

  “Over there. Back of those fuel drums.”

  “Listen,” I told them urgently. “Ragen can trap us in the garage if we don’t hop to it. You three guys watch the hangar door. Use your rods. Let them know we’re in here. The rest of us will have to shoot it out from the admin—”

  “Yeah?” one of them cut me off. “Who the hell do you think you are?”

  I got up. I had to do it then. I couldn’t seem to be hiding from them. I had the Magnum in my right fist and Glasses’ automatic in my left.

  “I ain’t never seen him before in my life,” the second man said, and raised his gun.

  “Hold it,” the first man told him. “What’s the scoop, Jack? Who are you?”

  “Me?” I said disdainfully. “I’m just the guy who got Glasses and Rover out of the worst spot in their lives Monday night, that’s all. I’m the guy who picked their car up in the wrecker after Charlie Derleth put the call through.”

  I couldn’t see their faces in the dim light coming through the doorway. “What’s your name?” one of them asked suspiciously.

  “Chester. Now will you for crying out loud get over to that door and keep it covered? If they come in here, we’re all washed up. Come on, move.”

  The second man still had his gun pointed at me. The first one said, “Don’t be a fool, Perry. Okay, you never seen him before. So what? So how does he know Glasses and Rover beat that cabbie to death on account of the snatch got fouled up?”

  “Who shot Harry?” the second man said, still suspicious.

  Harry must have been the big guy I had hit in the doorway.

  “Ragen’s boys,” I said. “Two of them broke in here. Winged Glasses, got Harry and the lantern.”

  “That so? Where are they now? What you doing in the hangar?”

  “Damn it,” I said, “do I have to write it all down for you? They busted the lock. They cam
e in here. I was hiding from them behind the drums when you came in. They took off.”

  “What you doing in the hangar?” he said again.

  “I went outside the admin building a few minutes ago. Heard a commotion, saw the busted lock and came in.” I heard Glasses moaning behind me. If I didn’t get out of the hangar in a minute, I’d be carried out feet first.

  Glasses moaned again. I advanced toward the three men. I didn’t go around them. They were my buddies, weren’t they? I had nothing to worry about from them. I headed straight for the connecting door. I went right through them. At the last minute they parted to let me by. They ran for the outside door, one of them shouting, “You take the left side, Perry!”

  And Perry cried, fear finally overcoming his suspicion of me, “Jesus, they got us trapped in here.”

  “Drum...” Glasses moaned.

  That was all I heard, because by then I’d passed through the connecting doorway into the garage. The metal door had a sturdy bolt. I shot it home. The Haycox Airport garage, as an adjunct to the hangar, had probably been built later. The walls were solid cinder-block, not wood. Light bulbs dangled on chains from the ceiling, and about a hundred of those folding chairs you can rent from the local woman’s club or the local undertaker for that matter had been set up in neat geometric rows of ten each facing a desk and another metal door, shut, at the far end of the large room. The sound of gunfire was muffled, and the two men at the desk seemed to pay no attention to it, just as they paid no attention to me. One of them was seated on a corner of the desk, his shoulders slumped, his head lolling forward. The other one, a very big man, hovered aggressively over him.