“You must have spent an illuminating afternoon.”
Mark cocked his hat back and smiled. “I felt like a medical examiner in a French brothel.”
“What’d they say about Angela Scali?”
“They all admitted she spent the last five or six months here. She was considered a holy princess. They didn’t see much of her, except in the temple during worship. She was the symbol of peace and prosperity.”
“I can believe that,” I said. “She must have made a lot of money off her last picture. Tunny probably got a generous slice.”
“We checked every available book, bank statement, even his safe. There’s no indication of a theft or fraud perpetrated on Angela Scali. As far as we can tell she came here of her own free will.”
“So where do you go from here?” I asked, thinking about Fred Sims and the incident on the mountain. I wanted to tell Mark about the man with the cane, but I couldn’t. I wasn’t sure about Fred. A hunch told me my assailant had been the crippled newsman. But I had to check it out myself.
“I’m going home,” the deputy said, stubbing out his cigarette. “The San Berdoo men left hours ago. I hung around wondering what happened to you. I should have known you’d turn up in somebody’s arms. Don’t tell me there’s a four-poster up in that cabin Spensor was talking about.”
“Believe me, Lieutenant, there are four of everything. And I’ve got the welts to prove it. What are you going to do with Spensor?”
“Nothing—yet.” Mark shoved his hat back on his head grimly. “I’ll check out his story. I wish I could check yours out first. Want a ride back to town?” He turned toward the door.
“I have my own car,” I said. “And speaking of firsts, I’ve got to dig up some clothes before leaving these hallowed grounds. Some county patrol officer might book me for speeding—without a license.”
He shrugged dismally. “I fully expect a phone call before midnight.”
After Mark had driven away in his Sheriff’s car, I found Ray Spensor waiting for me in a room at the end of the medical building. His eyes lighted as I opened the door.
“Honey, you’re positively magnificent,” he said, moving toward me.
“I don’t know how magnificent,” I returned. “But I feel positively indecent wearing nothing but your sweater.”
He snapped his fingers. “I’ve got an idea. Toy stole your clothes, so why not return the favor.”
“What do you mean?”
“She has a separate apartment here on the grounds. And I have a key.”
“Her things wouldn’t fit me.”
He nodded. “How about Angela Scali?”
“Sure,” I said, studying the key ring he removed from his pants pocket. “But where does she keep her clothes?”
There must have been fifty keys on his ring. He shot a knowing look at me and rattled them in his hand. “Leave that to me,” he said. “Don’t forget I brought her home this morning.”
We walked outside. The rain had stopped and night was swiftly closing in over the mountains, dragging huge shadows along the ridges and valleys below Meadow Falls. Behind the medical building was a quadrangle with numerous individual apartments spaced intermittently about the grounds. Lights gleamed from most of the windows. Ray led me to one darkened apartment on the far edge. He inserted a key in the lock and opened the door.
“Here we are,” he said. “Shrine of the Italian Angel.”
Angela’s small apartment was just that. A shrine. The walls were painted bright gold. A bronze, red-tongued dragon coiled from the ceiling. Candelabras gleamed. In one corner was a weird bust of Angela, head thrown back, mouth wide.
“Some layout,” I said, entering slowly. “When’s the floor show begin?”
“I thought you’d appreciate this,” Ray said, following me inside. “When Angela was alive only directors were admitted.”
“Did that include you?”
His square-jawed face reddened. “I worked at Meadow Falls this past summer with Rip. I was nothing more than an assistant. Rip made the grade though.”
“With the Angel?”
“Sure.” He closed the door and peeked through a window at the darkened quadrangle. “How long did you know Rip, Honey?”
“A few months, why?”
He turned, examining my legs that jutted beneath his letterman’s sweater. “Did he ever mention Meadow Falls to you?”
“No.”
“Did he ever talk about Angela Scali?”
“No, why do you ask?”
He slumped down on a bed in the corner, cocking one arm under his head. “There was something funny going on between Rip and Angela.”
“What do you mean, funny?”
He had piercing brown eyes and they followed me as I moved toward a clothes closet.
“I don’t know exactly,” he said. “Something to do with this cult. I never got the details.”
I opened the closet and picked through a row of dresses and sports clothes, finally settling on a black sweater and skirt. “What’s going on between you and Toy Tunny?”
“Nothing.” He said it rather flatly.
“She calls you baby.”
“She calls everybody baby. She’s a real mixed-up kid.” As I crossed toward the bathroom, he reached up and pulled me down beside him on the bed.
“Hey!” I yelped.
“Honey,” he said, leaning over me. “When I first saw you I nearly flipped.”
“Careful or you’re going to have me doing the same thing,” I said uncomfortably.
His hands touched the sweater, fingers taut.
“You’re beautiful, Honey.”
“Ray.” I pushed his hands away. “I’m a big girl and big girls have a lot more to get excited about than little girls. So please cut it out before I forget I’m a private detective.”
He rolled over on the bed, forcing my arms up around his shoulders, his mouth lowering on mine.
“There’s a button missing—here,” he whispered.
“Ray—”
My lips felt his and they were restless and hard. There was a dimple in his chin and a small scar on his cheek.
“I’m going to give you ten minutes to stop that,” I said.
“That’s a tough sentence, Your Honor. I’m going to appeal.”
“Twenty minutes,” I breathed softly, then caught my self. “No, Ray, please—”
He opened another button. “Why is it a woman always says no when she means yes?”
“I’m serious, Ray, please.”
He kissed me again, mouth brushing my cheek and ear and neck. Fire seared my legs. I jerked.
“Please, Ray!”
“I’m sorry about what happened in your apartment,” he said “It was Toy’s idea.” His hands kept moving down my body. My arms stiffened around his shoulders.
“You don’t have to explain,” I said.
“I want to,” he said. “She told me to kick in your kitchen door.”
“Why?”
“She swore Rip’s murderer was inside.”
“Did you believe her?”
“I did until I found you lying on the floor.” His huge shadow curved across the ceiling, blotting out the red-tongued dragon. I gritted my teeth, staring at the shadow, arms tight around his shoulders. Suddenly another shadow loomed into view.
Then a voice boomed, “Get up, Spensor!”
Ray’s head snapped around. Thor Tunny stood next to the bed, red-rimmed eyes glowering down at us. Two other naked men stood behind the huge cult leader.
Tunny spat, “You’re under arrest!”
Ray straightened. “What?”
“We just held a special election,” the flame-haired leader said tautly. “Miss West has been chosen our new princess. You’ve just violated a serious code. Up!”
“You can’t do this,” Ray protested, fists doubling.
Before I could issue a warning, one of Tunny’s musclemen knotted his fingers together and brought them down on the back of
Ray Spensor’s neck. The Rams player toppled to the floor soundlessly.
I leaped to my feet, gathering Ray’s sweater around me, and headed for the door. But Tunny knocked me against the wall with his fist.
“You play rough, don’t you,” I stammered, holding my jaw. “Don’t try to hold me here unless you want to wind up having your next meal in a county jail.”
“You don’t frighten me, Miss West,” Tunny said, rubbing his knuckles against his hairy chest, eyes hot on the front of my sweater. “In these mountains I’m God. There is no law, but my own. Now, on your knees!”
“If you’re rolling dice, okay. Otherwise you can take a flying leap at a Sputnik.”
His biceps rippled. “Your humor fails to arouse me, Miss West. Fortunately you have a magnificent body which makes up for your lack of humility. This does arouse me. Greatly. Perhaps an hour in the Playground will change your tune.”
“I quit playgrounds when I was in short skirts,” I said. “Now get out of my way!”
Tunny didn’t move. Neither did his two ape men who guarded the door.
“You are a princess now,” Tunny said. “You must be indoctrinated into the cult. Come, my dear.”
He extended his hand toward me. I grasped it firmly, twisted the arm around my back, and lunged forward. The huge cult leader flew up into the air, screaming angrily. Then suddenly his head crashed into the wall and he dropped, unconscious, onto the bed. Tunny’s two apes moved toward him instinctively, mouths open. That gave me just enough room to make the door.
The quadrangle was pitch black now and a cool wind blew down from the mountaintop. I raced as fast as I could toward the temple, legs pounding. I hated to leave Ray Spensor behind, but I knew it was either him or me. They’d chosen Angela Scali as their princess and she’d wound up with a seven-month blackout. Mine might last a year. Or longer. There was no doubt in my mind that the Playground was some sort of female torture chamber, designed to titillate some, and, as in the case of my former young client, terrorize others.
Chances of escaping the camp seemed slim. Even if my car was still parked by the temple, there seemed little chance the keys would be in the ignition. Then there was the thick-chested gatekeeper. He’d remember me and my bottle of suntan lotion.
All the way to the temple I kept wondering why Tunny wanted to keep me around. This afternoon I’d been ordered off the grounds. Now he wanted to erect a shrine in my honor. That’s partially what he had in mind. The remainder came under the heading of intramural sports. I turned the corner of the temple at a dead run, the clatter of footsteps behind me in the quadrangle. An angry voice shouted. My car glistened in the darkness, parked near the temple’s front steps. I flipped open the door and fumbled frantically at the dashboard. The keys were not in the ignition!
Another voice sounded in the night. I dropped to the ground and crawled under my convertible. From my vantage point, I saw a pair of shoes and naked legs bound into view. Then another. A door swung open and slammed closed.
“She’s not here,” a voice cried. It sounded like Adam Jason. “Spread out. Two of you take the road. Alert Drummond at the gate.”
They began to scatter, moving away from the temple. A flashlight gleamed distantly, then faded. I waited for fully five minutes, until the sounds were all gone. The ground was icy cold on my bare legs as I crawled out and stood up. I listened. The falls crashed faintly up the valley, reminding me of Angela Scali and of the tree and the bloody bank.
I circled the car slowly, clutching Ray’s sweater, listening intently for footsteps. At the corner of the temple a man moved out of the shadows passing only a few yards away from me. Apparently blinded by the darkness, he continued around the quadrangle without sounding an alarm.
Stealthily I crept around the individual apartments, keeping out of the quadrangle as much as possible. Finally I reached Angela Scali’s place again. The door stood open. I peeked inside. Ray Spensor still lay sprawled face down on the floor. Tunny and his henchmen were gone.
I went inside and leaned over Spensor. Blood oozed from a cut on the back of his neck. In the bathroom I found a cloth and ran cold water over it. The pressure was low, so I peeled open the shower curtain and reached in to turn the handles.
That’s when I noticed spots of red on the tile floor. But that wasn’t all I noticed. A tiny piece of metal with five white stars on a bright blue field caught my eye.
I picked it up. There was a safety clasp on the back. It was a soldier’s ribbon. And it was spattered with blood. I blinked. The ribbon represented the highest honor ever awarded an American military man. The Congressional Medal of Honor. I’d only seen one of these before in my life.
Newsman Fred Sims carried his as a good luck charm in the breast pocket of his coat.
EIGHT
The wet cloth brought Ray Spensor to his knees slowly, clutching the back of his neck, groaning.
“I’ll take the penalty,” he mumbled.
“What?”
“Fifteen yards. I was clipped.”
I brushed hair from his eyes and helped him to his feet.
“You’ll need more yardage than that,” I said, glancing through the window. “We’re surrounded.”
He staggered to the door and snapped out the lights. “Where’s Tunny?”
“I don’t know. The last time I saw him he was breaking his head on the wall. They must have taken him to the dispensary.”
Footsteps rattled outside in the quadrangle and we flattened against the wall.
“Did they hurt you, Honey?” he whispered.
“They had ideas. One was the Playground.”
Ray exhaled audibly. “Dirty bastards.”
“I got away, but they’d taken the keys to my car, so I circled back here to get you.”
“Good girl. I know a way out.”
“How, Ray?”
“Underground. There’s a tunnel that leads beyond the main gate. Tunny had it built in case of an emergency. Come on!”
He took my hand. We dodged shadows in the quad, finally reaching the temple. The front doors were open. Ray guided me inside, staying close to an inside wall.
“I’ve got a telephone in my car,” I whispered. “Maybe I could reach the San Berdoo Sheriff’s office.”
“Too risky.”
We moved down a narrow staircase into a pitch-black space that smelled of orange blossoms and sweat.
“I don’t like this,” I confessed, holding his arm.
Ray snapped on a light. In front of us was a room built underground. There were metal slides and miniature merry-go-rounds and teeter-totters and swings.
“The Playground,” I said. “But I don’t understand—”
Ray gestured. “At first glance they look like they were made for kids, don’t they? Take another look, Honey.”
I did. And winced. Those machines weren’t made for kids. … For adults, and real sick ones, at that.
“I—I don’t believe it,” I said.
“If they got you on one of those contraptions you would,” Ray countered.
I shook my head dismally. “Are these Tunny’s inventions?”
“No. Toy thought them up.”
“What?”
“I told you she was a peculiar girl. She’s completely warped.”
“But she doesn’t look—”
“I know,” Ray said, shrugging his huge shoulders. “You can’t explain something like this. It’s just too crazy.”
I studied his face carefully. “Toy said you spent some time down here, Ray. Can you explain that?”
“I had to, Honey. It was all part of my job. A great number of Tunny’s disciples are maladjusted women with money. They come here seeking a new thrill. And they get it. From every which way. Including the pocket book.”
“You mean they actually—”
“Of course,” he said. “You know the type. In big cities they hire gigolos, male companions, male prostitutes. Here they get room service, access to the Playground, a
chance to flaunt their bodies, and a religion to salve their twisted consciences. The nudist camp with a gimmick, that’s Tunny’s operation.”
I glanced around at the weird machines. “I’ve heard of bizarre organizations, but this tops them all.”
“Yeah,” Ray answered, flicking off the light. “Don’t think this murder of Angela Scali hasn’t scared the daylights out of Tunny. He knows a thorough investigation could close him up. I’m surprised those deputies didn’t run onto this room today.”
“Maybe they did,” I said, feeling his hand in the darkness again. “But they would have noticed—”
“They wouldn’t necessarily. Those things are all detachable anyway. No doubt Tunny had them removed as soon as the Sheriff’s men arrived.”
Suddenly Ray bumped into something. He fumbled around for a moment, then swore. “Tunny’s thought of everything. He’s locked the tunnel door.”
“What are we going to do, Ray?”
“I suppose we could try and climb the mountain.”
“In the dark?”
He groaned. “No, that would be too dangerous. How about crossing the ignition wires on your car?”
“I’m game.”
“Okay, let’s go.”
He led us back up the narrow staircase and into the temple. Candles flickered on the altar. My left hand still held the blood-spattered ribbon I’d found inside Angela Scali’s shower. I kept wondering about Fred Sims. Had he been the man with the cane? Was this his war ribbon?
“It’s raining again,” Ray said, staring out the temple doors. “That’s a break.”
Drops sprayed down on us as we moved onto the stone steps. Lightning crackled in the distance. We reached my car safely. I began to feel uneasy. It didn’t make sense that they wouldn’t leave someone to watch my car or the temple.
Ray crawled under the dashboard and tore some wires loose.
“I’ve got a flashlight in the glove compartment,” I whispered.
“No,” he said. “They’d see us from a mile away.”
I climbed in beside him and removed my auto phone.
I had difficulty reaching the mobile operator because of the mountains, but finally she came on the line. Before I could request the San Bernardino Sheriff’s office something cracked under the dashboard. My phone went dead.
Honey West: A Kiss for a Killer Page 7