I turned and started off the porch, but she grabbed my arm. "What's the matter with you?" she asked. "Be sensible."
"I'm not going to be sensible. It just wouldn't be . . . sensible. Here the town is swarming with hoods and crooked cops, most of them out for my blood, and I'm not doing a thing to solidify my position . . . ah, protect myself, you know, finish the job I started."
"I'm beginning to think you never finish anything you start."
"Yes, I do, I always— Look, this is silly."
While I talked, I had moved away from her till I stood on the graveled driveway beneath the porch. She stood above me with her hands on her hips, looking unhappy.
"Good-by," I said.
"The hell with you."
I blew her a kiss, got into the Cad, and started the motor before I weakened. I drove in low to the edge of the driveway at Vincent Street. There I eased on the brakes, looking left and right, started to pull into the road, and then slammed the brakes on hard when I saw a black car two blocks away coming like a bat out of hell, at least seventy miles an hour.
It was coming from the direction of town, and speeding so fast that I took no chance of tangling with it even though it was still a good block from me. I left the car in gear, the clutch in and motor idling. It seemed that the driver must have thought I was pulling into the street, because I heard the tires shriek as he slammed on the brakes and the car swerved in the road and then straightened out. But instead of speeding up again, the car kept slowing, and when it was ten yards from me its speed must have dropped to near thirty.
There was barely time for alarm to jump through my nerves. Then I saw the man staring at me through the open window on the passenger's side, saw sunlight glance off the gun his hand held toward me. I jumped, letting everything go, hands leaving the wheel and foot slipping off the clutch pedal as I dived sideways toward the right-hand door, and as my fingers slipped over the door handle I heard the gun crack, and then crack again. At the same moment, the car jumped forward as the gears engaged, and that plus my sudden movement probably saved me. I heard the slugs crash into the rear of the car, and then I shoved the door open and sprawled through it.
My Cad had leaped forward into the street before it stalled. I got a flashing glimpse of the other car swerving to the far side of the road, probably forced there by the sudden lunge of my Cad. I rolled over and felt my knees crack against the street as I got them under me, my right hand closing over the butt of my .38.
I flipped the gun toward the other car as its wheels hit the dirt off the paving. It swerved as a gun cracked again and I heard the slug hit near me and ricochet away. I snapped a shot at the car, aimed at the man visible in its window. His gun fired again, then I squeezed my trigger, pulled the Colt's barrel back, and squeezed.
The other car swerved and stopped in loose dirt off the road and I whirled around, sprinted toward my Cad as another gun boomed. I wasn't hit, but I heard the tinkle of glass breaking somewhere nearby. Hidden behind the Cadillac, I bent over and moved to the hood, fumbling in my coat pocket for the cartridges I'd dropped into it last night. I found them, pulled out a handful, and rested my right arm on the Cad's hood as I peered over its top.
Standing at the side of the other car, only thirty or forty feet away now, was the bulky figure of a man, a gun in his hand. For a brief moment, he wasn't looking at me, but at the house behind me. Then he jerked his head toward me, flipping up his gun and firing. I slammed the last shots in my .38 at him and missed as he dropped to the ground, then I ducked down out of sight. It took only a few seconds to reload my gun, but when I looked over the hood again I saw the bulky, vaguely familiar form of the man sprinting, hunched over, away from his car toward the protection of the trees nearby.
I snapped a shot at him as he reached the trees' cover, but I must have missed, because I could hear him still running. With the gun ready in front of me, I sprinted the few yards to the car, heart pounding in my chest and my throat dry. There were no more shots. I reached the car but couldn't see anybody inside. I grabbed the door handle and twisted, jerked the door open.
I almost fired as I saw movement, but I held my finger off the trigger as a man's body moved toward me. He had been slumped against the door and now he swayed slowly, then fell through the open door to the dirt, turning onto his back with one arm flopping across his chest as if he were still alive.
Much of his chin was missing and there was a jagged red hole in his throat from which blood still oozed onto his white shirt. But even with part of his lean face gone I recognized Blake. Now I knew why that other bulky form had been familiar; it had been his buddy, Carver.
So I hadn't fooled them; there in the chief's office they'd merely let me think I had. That was why they'd let me go—so I could be killed out here far from town. And Thurmond had heard me and Baron.
I was still keyed up and shocked, not thinking clearly enough. As I stared inside the car and saw the blood on the seat, I also saw the radiophone off its hook and dangling at the end of its cord. At first I didn't get it, couldn't understand why two murderous cops would put out a call when they'd actually been trying to kill me.
And then I understood for I heard sirens. The shrill, high whine was faint still, but cars were on their way. I was the only man who knew Blake and Carver had fired first, were attempting to kill me in cold blood. My word alone would never prove I'd fired in self-defense. The important thing was that I was now fair game for any police officer, for any policeman in the world, for any man with a gun.
I had killed a cop.
Chapter Eleven
Even with the whine of approaching sirens in my ears, that was the only thing I could think of for seconds: I was that lowest of criminals, a cop-killer. And there wasn't the slightest question now about what I had to do. I had to run.
I turned and sprinted to the Cad. When I got the car straightened on the highway I stepped on the gas. I don't know why I looked toward the big white house; I'd completely forgotten about Lilith. Suddenly I realized that she was what Carver must have been staring at in that moment when I'd first seen him beside the car. Lilith was still standing on the porch, both hands at her throat. For a moment, I kept going, then I slammed on the brakes, backed up, and ripped into the curving drive and skidded to a stop before her. I couldn't leave her here. She'd seen what had happened; she was the only person in the world who could testify that I'd killed in self-defense. And I knew if any of the crooks lined up against me got to her, she wouldn't live five seconds. She was in it as deeply now as I was. There wasn't a chance that Carver hadn't seen her.
Gravel from the driveway spun from under the wheels and hit her legs as I stopped, but she didn't move. An expression of shock and horror was on her blood-drained face. Behind her and a few yards to her right, one of the windows was broken, undoubtedly smashed by a slug fired at me—or perhaps it had even been fired at Lilith herself.
"Get in," I yelled. "We've got to get out of here."
She seemed to snap out of it suddenly. "But the sirens—the police. They'll be here in a minute."
"For God's sake, those guys shooting at me were policemen. Get in."
She shook her head dazedly. Those sirens were louder now; they couldn't be much more than half a minute away.
"Get in!"
"I'm afraid."
It took me no more than two seconds to make up my mind. If Lilith got in the car, she might get hit if the cops started shooting, as she obviously realized. And they'd sure as hell be shooting. In about twenty seconds now, I figured.
"Then run," I said. "Run like hell. Carver must know you saw what happened. He'll kill you, baby."
"Stables," she said. "The horses. They can't follow me if I ride." She looked as if she were going to faint. Then she shook her head and said, "Shell, I know they tried to kill you, I saw what happened. I'll stay in town. If you need me."
I wasn't going to argue. "Where. Where can you go?"
She bit deeply into her lip. Suddenly she spoke in a rush. "
Craig—Dorothy Craig. She'll help me. I'll be there if you need me."
She ran toward the back of the house as I jerked the gears into low and the car leaped forward on the curving drive. The sirens' scream was almost upon me. They couldn't be more than a block away and I knew if I turned to my right and tried to outrun them they'd be on me in seconds. The only chance I had was to turn left, straight at them, and hope I made it past, got far enough away to outrun them before they could turn around to give chase.
Trees blocked my view of the road on my left where their cars would be, rushing toward me, but I had to chance it, pray that they wouldn't be dead ahead in the street when I swung into it. I shoved the gearshift into second as I hit the end of the drive, twisted the wheel hard to the left, and felt the tires skid as I saw the car on my left roaring down upon me. I jerked the steering wheel to swing the Cad away, my foot jamming the gas pedal hard against the floor.
I saw the police car lurch as the driver instinctively jerked the wheel, then my Cad shuddered as the rear fender of their swerving car glanced against the Cad's fender, the Cad lurching and the jar traveling up into my clenched hands. But the Cad stayed on the road and I straightened it out, kept the gas pedal down.
A block away another black police car was speeding toward me. They couldn't have missed seeing what had happened, and the car's front dipped suddenly as the officer driving slammed on the brakes. As the distance between us lessened, the other car slued left and stopped crosswise in the road ahead of me.
I held my breath and squeezed the steering wheel, eyes staring at the police car as it skidded a little too far, completely blocking my half of the road but leaving space behind it. Enough. Maybe it was enough. I pulled on the wheel, trying to miss the back of that car without hitting the soft dirt on the road's edge, and the car was a blur on my right as I flashed past it. At the same moment, I heard a gun crack and felt splinters of glass sting my face.
The left wheels hit dirt off the road and the Cad fishtailed crazily. I fought the wheel, letting up on the gas until I felt the tires bite solid asphalt again, then I jammed the accelerator down once more. The speedometer needle swung up to eighty, hung, then hit eighty-five, ninety. Reflections in the rearview mirror were too blurred and distorted from this high speed on a rough road for me to recognize anything but I knew the two police cars must be a good mile behind.
I was heading for a road just this side of Seacliff, a two-lane highway that stretched inland toward the hills there, and the thickly brush-covered country. Half a dozen or more roads branched off the highway, and though I didn't know which one I'd take if I reached them, I was going down one of them. At the highway I slowed barely enough to make the turn, glancing behind me as I pulled left. There was a glimpse of one car, far down the road, then I concentrated on the highway ahead. With any luck, I'd get away, but it would be only a momentary respite. Police radios would be busy now, putting out the word on Shell Scott. A dangerous character, Scott, armed, approach with caution—to be interpreted in my case as "Shoot on sight." I could imagine the cops standing over Blake's body and swearing to get me.
The first turnoff was half a mile from the intersection behind me, the second was half a mile farther on. I kept going to the second one, looked as I slowed and turned. The road was still clear. The boys behind me would have at least two roads to check; with luck they'd take the wrong one.
Thirty minutes later and approximately forty miles from Seacliff, I was driving twenty miles an hour on a narrow road, looking for a spot where I could turn off. No other cars were in sight and the sun was halfway down the western sky. Some trees and scrubby growth lined both sides of the road, and finally I found a spot that suited me. Fifty yards on my right was a small grove of trees, thick enough to hide my car and me. I pulled off the road and drove over the hard-baked ground pitted with holes and small gullies, staring intently ahead to keep the car wheels from dropping into the bigger holes. I made it, parked out of sight from the road in the trees' shade, and turned off the motor. I lit a cigarette and leaned back against the seat, closing my eyes. I'd had it now: I'd had it good. By this time there'd be all-points bulletins out on me, the teletypes would be clicking all up and down the West Coast.
I couldn't run any farther, either. Because as more time passed without their getting me, the word would spread along the wires till it covered the whole country. If I ran, it would just get worse, bigger, uglier. And running wouldn't help me, anyway. I had to stay here and prove, somehow, that even though I'd killed a cop, it hadn't been murder but justifiable homicide. And I didn't have any idea how I was going to do it.
With just Norris and his gang against me, it had been bad enough. Then it had turned out that Carver and Blake and the chief himself were on the other side, out for my blood. And now all the other cops, not only in Seacliff but all over the state, would be looking for me. All the good cops, the 999 out of 1,000, good ones, brave ones, decent and honest ones, would be after me, not knowing they were on the same side as the crooks and thugs and murderers.
Yeah, I'd had it. I'd had it good.
It was dark when I awakened. I sat up in the front seat, stretched the kinks out of my bones, then turned the dash lights on while I checked my wrist watch. Nine-thirty p.m.
My stomach rumbled emptily and I remembered I hadn't eaten since an early breakfast. Before napping I'd gone back and rubbed out any traces of tire marks where I'd driven off the road, and with a supply of food I could probably stay here indefinitely; the cops couldn't search every clump of trees in Southern California. But sitting here wouldn't help me out of the hole I was in, and the hole was probably getting deeper.
I smoked my last cigarette and turned on the radio. At ten o'clock I dialed KNX and listened to the news. I'd made the news broadcast. There wasn't much, just "A well-known Los Angeles private investigator, Sheldon Scott, is being sought in connection with the slaying of a Seacliff police officer. The policeman, Franklin Blake, was shot and killed by Scott during a gun battle this afternoon in Seacliff. Scott escaped driving a Cadillac convertible." The rest was more description of me and the Cad.
I turned the radio off. There'd been nothing about Carver, nor why there'd been a gun battle, naturally. No mention of Lilith Manning, either. I hoped she'd got away. Without her testimony—if there ever came a time when I could use testimony—I was sunk.
I sat for a few more minutes, then got out of the car and drained some water from the radiator, mixed it with dirt, and smeared the thin mud over my license plates. No headlights were in sight on the highway, so I drove to it and turned left, headed back the way I'd come. Four miles from my hideout there was a small one-pump gas station combined with a kind of country store and living quarters for the owner, which I'd noticed this afternoon. It was my main reason for stopping where I had. There was a phone booth outside the small building, too. The lights were still on when I reached the gas station, but before I pulled into it I opened the glove compartment and took out a beat-up hat I keep there, smoothed it out, and stuck it on my head. Then I turned in and parked alongside the pump.
In a moment, an elderly man came out and I told him to fill the tank. "Check everything, will you? Battery, tires, the works."
He nodded, and I slid out on the far side and walked to the weather-beaten phone booth. I got the Seacliff operator and had her ring Dorothy Craig's number. The phone buzzed a dozen times and finally the operator said, "Your party does not answer."
I swallowed. "Miss, I'd appreciate it if you'd give me Miss Craig's address. I'm coming into town and it's quite important that I see her. I'm afraid something may be . . . wrong."
In a moment she gave me the address, 4872 Carwell Street. I knew the general area, and at least it was on the outskirts of town. That was a help—if Lilith could get there. Or had been there. And if she was still alive, and this Dorothy Craig was really a friend of hers.
"Operator," I said, "if you have a phone listed there for Elizabeth Lane, will you ring it, please?
"
She rang, the phone was answered, and I stuck two quarters into the slot. Then I recognized Betty's voice saying, "Hello."
"Hello, Betty." I stopped for a moment. If the police knew I'd become fairly well acquainted with Betty, there might be a tap on her phone. It wasn't very likely, but I couldn't take the chance that this conversation would be overheard by them. So I said, "Sorry I couldn't make it. I meant to bay at the moon outside your window, but I—"
I heard her gasp. "Shell!" she said. "Oh, Shell, Shell—"
Well, that tied it, if anybody was listening. Of course, I could be any of thousands of other Shells.
I said sadly, "Yeah. This is, uh, Shelley Winters."
"Shell, are you all right? Where—"
"Listen, baby. This is all real cute if your phone's tapped. Get out of there fast, go to a pay phone, and call me back." I gave her my number.
She understood quickly enough, and hung up.
While I waited for the phone to ring, I stuck my head out of the booth and called to the man gassing the car, "Got anything to eat here?"
It was too dark here for him to see me, but he glanced in my direction. "Too late for the grill. Got some factory-packed sandwiches."
I had him throw a dozen into the front seat with some Cokes, and then the phone rang. It was Betty.
"Shell, are you all right? Did you really—"
"If you mean did I shoot Blake, I really did. But not till he took a few shots at me. Blake and Sergeant Carver and Chief Thurmond are all in with Norris and his gang. They're the biggest crooks in town. I tumbled, so the chief sent his two boys to kill me. And I mean murder me. They tried, and they missed. I didn't. That's the whole story—and who'll believe me?"
There was no answer for several seconds, then she said softly, "I will, Shell. What are you going to do?"
"Baby, you've got me. I called hoping you might have found out something new, something that might help."
"I'm sorry. Nothing else since I saw you. I wish there were." She paused a moment. "I just knew you were all right, Shell. But how did it all happen?"
Too Many Crooks Page 9