Bodies in Bedlam (The Shell Scott Mysteries)

by Richard S. Prather

  "Oh? There's more that don't like him?"

  "A club. Composed of a large part of the Los Angeles City Directory. You're the latest member. We don't like him either."

  "But not like I don't like him."

  "Wrong, Shell."

  "Sure?"

  "You are Shell Scott, aren't you? The private detective?"

  "Yeah. How'd you know?" Foolish question, but I asked it.

  "Because you're big—and this stuff." She ran cool fingers over my brows and mussed my hair. Or tried to muss it.

  "Honey," I said, "there's nothing I'd like better than to stand here and chat with you about my gray eyes and how did I get so tanned and what keeps your blouse up, but right now I gotta see a man."

  "What was that?" she asked me, indicating the broken glass and wet pool on the floor.

  "Bourbon and water."

  She turned and went to the bar and came back with two filled glasses. She handed one to me.

  "For luck," she said. "You can have one with me, can't you?"

  I hadn't forgotten anything, but my temperature was down almost to normal by now, so I said, "O.K. I guess my party can keep." And it seemed like a good idea to cool down a little more before I chased after Brane. I was still too mad at the guy to think straight, and I like to know what I'm doing. Besides, I figured I could grab Brane any time, and I didn't want this dish to get away from me.

  I took a good look at her now that she was up close, and she was really something. Her legs were hidden by the billowy hoop skirt, but from the rest of her I knew they'd be front and center in any musical. She was about five-five, and the top of her skirt squeezed what looked like a twenty-two-inch waist. Her lips I've mentioned, and even through the mask I could see she had violent violet eyes. They were that kind of mist-flecked indescribable color that violet covers better than anything else. Her teeth were white and perfect, and when she smiled a slow, easy smile my spine turned to liquid latex and started gurgling somewhere down around my Mountie boots.

  She had thirty-six inches that wasn't muscle under the opaque blouse and I couldn't understand why the blouse didn't fall the rest of the way down and gather around her waist, which was a nice place to gather. I took a good look and decided there were two reasons why it didn't fall down. Two excellent reasons.

  One of the longest trips in my life was getting back up to her face, but what was there was worth it. Even if all I could see was a pair of wonderful lips and a vague promise of the rest.

  "What's under the mask?" I asked her. "Who are you?"

  She shook her head. Her hair just missed being blonde, but it couldn't be called brunette either. Light and fluffy and shoulder-length, it swayed a little across her bare skin as she said, "Nope. Not till midnight. I'd rather keep you guessing."

  "Well, O.K. Dance?"

  She smiled and my spine slid around some more. "All right," she said. "But you'll have to be careful."

  I leered at her like Vincent Price. "I'll be careful."

  She batted her eyes at me. She batted a home run. My home.

  "Of my dress," she said. "The skirt. If you get too close and push against it, it goes up in back. The harder you push, the higher it goes. Hoops."

  "Hoops?"

  "Hoops. They're stiff."

  "My minuet's a little rusty."

  "Well, try. Try hard."

  I took her left hand in mine and put my right hand on her waist and shuffled my feet. We didn't cover much ground, just shuffled a little and looked at each other.

  She said, "Hope you didn't mind my butting in."

  "Mind? You crazy?"

  "I noticed you were looking at me. I thought you started walking toward me just before—before the first round."

  "First round's right. It won't go fifteen. But I did start over to see you."

  "Anyway, I wanted to thank you. Besides, I was curious."

  "About what?"

  "Well, the party's for the cast and company and so forth from Magna. What's a private detective doing at a movie ball? You making a movie?"

  "Uh-uh. I'm laughing." I laughed.

  "Well," she said, eyeing me, "you could play mean-looking villains."

  I shook my head. "I did a favor for Feldspen about a year back. He barely knows my name, but he told me I could bust in here if I wanted—might get some kicks."

  "Are you? Getting some kicks, I mean?"

  "I am now."

  We shuffled our feet around a little more and I said, "I see I'm not the only outsider. There's Sweetness."

  "You mean Brane. He's usually around things like this," she said. "Acts like a frustrated extra." She smiled beautifully. "I hear he took a screen test when he first came out here. But he stank. Maybe he likes to come to parties and dream. And he knows lots of wheels, I guess."

  "How long's the guy been around?"

  "Close to three years, I suppose. Maybe not that long."

  "Enough," I said. "Let's talk about you." I pulled her in closer.

  "Hoops!" she squealed. "Careful!"

  I chuckled, then glared at a guy behind her with his eyes twirling. "Sorry," I said to her. "Why'd you wear that damn thing?"

  She smiled up at me, then said seriously, "Because I didn't think anyone else would. The costumes are a big secret, you know. Nobody knows who I am. Maybe I'll win a prize."

  "You'd win them all if I passed them out," I told her. But I knew what she meant. In Hollywood, even more than most places, the gals like "originals." Costume parties included. Antoinette Aphrodisia might pull off her wig if she showed up on the street or at a party in the same getup as Betty Bedpan. So the outfits here were top secret. The masks helped ensure that there'd be less favoritism shown in the awarding of prizes, which focused a little more attention on the winners.

  In Hollywood, any kind of attention is good.

  I wondered who the devil I was dancing with. Star? Extra? Script girl? Not that it made any difference, but this luscious doll was building a powerful curiosity in me.

  I said, "How about meeting me at midnight when the masks come off? I'm at a disadvantage; you already know who I am."

  The music stopped just as she said, "All right, Shell. How about at the foot of the stairs?"

  We were in a big ballroom that would hold all of the three hundred guests and more, but a few of them were wandering around the landscaped grounds or upstairs. The stairs she mentioned were a wide, curving flight that started at the side of the ballroom and curved up to the second floor like a De Mille movie set. I hadn't been up them, but I knew there were bedrooms and baths and maybe even a museum at the top. The place was big enough.

  "Foot of the stairs," I agreed. "Midnight sharp."

  We stopped shuffling our feet and she said, "See you," and walked away, the powder-blue hoop skirt swaying gently.

  I sighed and picked up another drink at the bar, then started wandering around. Fun's fun, but I had me a score to settle with Roger Brane. I moseyed around but couldn't get a sight of Brane's curly head or flowing black and gray cape.

  It was some place to wander around in. Magna's one of the top studios in Hollywood, and some of the highest-bracket stars in town were trotting around the floor in masks and capes and skirts and sarongs and what not. And there was sure a lot of skin showing—even male. One guy was decked out in a leopard skin and nothing else, like Tarzan. Hell, maybe it was Tarzan.

  There were also several apes, but not in hairy costumes. There were going to be a lot of squeals at midnight when everybody found out who everybody else was. Some of them you could recognize from distinguishing characteristics like pinheads, but not many of the total crowd. Guessing was supposed to be part of the fun.

  A straight-up-and-down gal who probably played character parts but who was dressed like Cleopatra glommed onto my arm just as I noticed that a guy at a mike across the room was starting the awarding of prizes for the various classes of costumes.

  I watched the proceedings from across the room while Cleopatra babble
d at me. She was pretty drunk. Finally I got what she was burbling: "Wild Party." You know, the thing in verse about a party that's quite a ball itself. She must have spent a lot of lonely nights memorizing that one.

  I didn't pay too much attention to the awarding of prizes because I didn't win anything—and I'm not pouting. I perked up, though, when sweet little Silver Mask walked up and accepted something from the M.C. So she had won a prize. I bet I knew what it was for.

  I didn't hear much of what was said, because the damn gal on my arm was going into the stretch on "Wild Party." It was getting pretty good, but Cleo never said a word of conversation, just babbled on in a slipshod singsong, with gestures. Maybe she thought I was a producer.

  By the time I shook Cleopatra off, Silver Mask was lost again. I wandered around for half an hour or so without seeing anybody that interested me, then looked at my watch. Eleven p.m. and I was a little tired of the whole business. The only reason I stuck around was for midnight and the foot of the stairs. And Brane, of course.

  I'd just turned and started back toward the bar when I heard it. Everybody heard it.

  Just a little high-pitched yelp at first, coming from somewhere at the top of the wide flight of stairs. But then it got strength from somewhere and let go about C above high C in a blood-curdling scream like Dracula meeting Frankenstein in the House of Mirrors.

  A quick shiver flashed along my spine, then I took off in a run toward the stairs and sprinted up them. A woman, mouth stretched wide and still screaming, came hurtling out of the dimness above me and tried to go down the stairs eight at a time. It can't be done.

  She got to the edge of the steps and took off like one of those comic divers you see at swim shows, with her legs still churning the air and landing on nothing. She did land, though, a few steps above me, and I tried to slow down and grab at her as her ankle twisted. But either I was too slow or she was too fast. She spilled out, sprawling like a busted marionette, and rolled with her arms, legs, and clothes flying clear down to the bottom of the stairs, where a couple of guys grabbed her.

  From the first bounce to the last jiggle her mouth was pulled wide open. She never stopped screaming till she hit bottom.

  I ran the rest of the way up and stopped at the landing.

  A couple of people were there ahead of me. Three, really, but even from ten feet away I could tell. It looked like I'd come to the party as a civilian, but now I was back in the wars. The guy on the floor was dead.

  Chapter Three

  HE LAY ON HIS BACK. The two men leaned over him making small futile sounds with their mouths. Kind of gagging sounds.

  He had on the blue jacket and wine-colored tights, but his black and gray cape was gone and it was Roger Brane, all right. It had been Roger Brane. It looked like the first round was all I'd get with him now. He wouldn't be out for the second; he wouldn't even hear the bell.

  A few feet from his head was a small but heavy-looking statuette of Mercury that somebody might have used to hit him with, but now that was incidental. It was easy to understand why the screaming gal had been screaming. I didn't blame her. Roger Brane's jeweled knife wasn't in its sheath any more; it rested on the carpeted floor at his side. But sometime between the sheath and the floor it had detoured long enough to raise red hell with Brane's throat.

  The flesh was laid open in the kind of great gaping slash that you never believe till you see it. I believed it. His heart had kept pumping for a little while, and there was blood, blood, blood all over him, and on the little camera still around his neck, and on the soft carpet.

  I'd seen men dead, and I'd even had to put a few away myself, but I'd never seen them this kind of dead before. I hope to God I never see it again.

  I didn't feel for his pulse or even touch him. That would have been like folding a dead man's hands: just a movement, a ritual. There wouldn't have been any point to it, and it wouldn't have done him any good. He was just another dead man now, and his personality was the universal one common to corpses.

  I'd been bent over peering down at him; now I straightened up. Somebody had kissed him off but good. And I couldn't help wondering who. In a way, it was already my business.

  I was still wondering while more people started gathering around. Then somebody said, "Hey! What the hell's this?"

  I walked over to where the guy was standing. He bent over and picked something up: a wide, billowing skirt in powder blue. With hoops.

  My stomach kicked up a little, but I told him, "Hang onto that. Help me get these people away from here."

  We spent a busy five minutes keeping the crowd from storming up the stairs and I managed to get in touch with Bill Parker, Feldspen's right-hand man, and had him get somebody to check all the doors. It was probably too late now, but nobody else was going in or out till the Homicide boys got here.

  Then I found an upstairs phone and called police headquarters. I got Captain Samson, working late at Homicide.

  "Sam," I said. "Shell."

  "I thought you were in high society tonight," he growled. His voice was a little muffled and I knew he'd be chewing a long black cigar. He might bite the end off in a minute.

  "Yeah, Sam," I said. "Dead society."

  "Huh? What you pulling?"

  "Nothing." I gave it to him in a couple of sentences and waited.

  He said, "Jesus Christ. Well, Jesus H. Christ." Then he was quiet for a few seconds. "O.K., ten minutes."

  "Sam," I said. "Any chance you'll be out yourself?"

  "What for?"

  "I just happened to think. A little while ago I—I took a poke at the guy."

  Samson chewed on his unlighted cigar and growled at me, "Why the hell don't you just cut your own throat?"

  I frowned at him. "You don't think. . ."

  He squinted brown eyes at me. "No, stupid. But you're sure a mess of trouble. And what I think might not be too important."

  Samson. Detective Captain Phil Samson of the Los Angeles Homicide Division. A big, nice guy with gray hair that got that way during his eighteen years on the force. Especially the last thirteen—the Homicide thirteen. And the last thirteen years probably helped make his cast-iron jaw a little firmer, a little tougher.

  "Well," I said, "that's all of it. All I know, anyway."

  He rubbed one hand along the side of his pink, clean-shaven face. "Messy. Good thing you got somebody on the doors. Probably a lot took off anyway." He pulled the cigar out of his wide mouth and looked at me. "This skirt," he asked. "What's with this skirt?"

  I shook my head. "Dunno, Sam. I told you, I don't know who she was. Nobody else here seems to, either."

  Samson stuck the cigar back in his mouth and clamped down on it as Lieutenant Rawlins, a young, good-looking cop in his late twenties, came up.

  "Found this at the door, Sam," he said. "Door leads to stairs outside. Stairs go down and bye-bye."

  He held out a long, limp mask with eye slits and a bump for a nose. It was painted silver.

  Sam grunted and looked at me.

  I nodded. "The same. Goes with the skirt."

  "You sure? Could there have been a couple like her?"

  I grinned, but not very happily. I didn't feel a bit like grinning, but I gave it the light treatment. "No soap, Sam. It was Hot Lips. She won a prize." Then I added, thinking, "Besides, she was in a class all by herself."

  I couldn't help wondering what this gimmick meant, or being puzzled by it. Whether I liked it or not, I had got interested in the girl in the silver mask, and here were her mask and skirt. There was no doubt that they were the same ones, and the girl wasn't around. It didn't look good, and the idea that such a luscious tomato might be mixed up in murder went square against the grain.

  L.A. and Hollywood are full of beautiful women and I've known a lot of them. Casual things, usually, but every once in a while one would start getting under my bachelor's skin, and I knew the symptoms. Right now I had the symptoms. Hell, maybe it was just the mystery of the mask and the wondering who she was
. And the meet-me-at-midnight-by-the-old-wishing-well business. Maybe, but I couldn't quite make myself believe it.

  Sam looked at me, but didn't say anything. I knew him well; he was a good friend of mine and he knew when to open his yap and when to button it. Smart. One of the reasons he wasn't pounding a beat. Only sometimes, to keep from busting, he opened his yap when he knew he should keep it shut. One reason why there was always a chance he'd get a beat back. Anyway, he didn't say anything now.

  I asked him, "O.K. if I blow, Sam?"

  He dug around in his pants and hauled out a big kitchen match. "Yeah. Beat it," he said. He fired up the cigar and blew a cloud of choking smoke at me. "Get out of my hair. The boys are getting a list. Christ! Three hundred and some suspects. Plus the ones that got away. Plus you, damn it."

  "Yeah. Thanks, Sam. See you tomorrow."

  He rolled the cigar from one side of his wide mouth to the other, then he said gruffly, "Look, Shell. I know you got nothing to do with this, but there's lots more on the force besides me. You better come in for a talk with the boys. You did threaten the guy."

  "Uh-huh. I'll be in first thing."

  "Say ten o'clock, Shell."

  "Ten it is. See you in the morning, Sam."

  Downstairs I looked around at the line of people giving names, addresses, and so on to the uniformed gentlemen of the police department. Hardly anybody had a mask on now; the party was a bust.

  Now that the masks were off I could recognize a lot of faces that, up till now, I'd seen only in movies. The place looked like a Who's Who of Hollywood. I spotted Peter Storey, the Magna comic who is also one of the top radio names, and right next to him was one of the hottest and brightest of the Magna stars, Constanza Carmocha, a Mexican emoter who singes you from twelve feet away. I walked down the line toward the door, past a few other faces I recognized, till I came to Irv Seeley and Paul Clark together.

  I stopped and said, "Cheers, boys. Now you happy?"

  Clark turned his head, and it looked like his whole square-shaped face was frowning. He snapped at me violently, "You nuts?"