The Sweet Ride (The Shell Scott Mysteries)

by Richard S. Prather

  I’d heard him say it, but I had to run over it in my mind a couple of times before it settled into place. But when it did, all of a sudden several things that had puzzled me before puzzled me no longer.

  I managed to keep my voice normal. “Yes, I’m beginning to understand. When Delcey and I talked, we had no way of knowing the line was tapped. Both the sergeant and I are aware, of course—you heard our conversation—that you’re the man Mayor Fowler spoke to me about when he phoned me Friday night. The mayor’s unnamed informant, his midnight caller, the eyewitness to the Ramirez shooting. Isn’t that right?”

  “Of course it’s right, why you askin’ me? I heard you tell the sergeant about it.” He shook his thin balding head rapidly. “How you could tell so much from a piece of paper with scribbles on it is a unfathomable misery to me.”

  “Well, you don’t think that’s all we had to go on, do you?”

  “Don’t make no difference. Just the paper with my name on it’d be enough for Hugh. Even if it just said ‘Ernie.’ He’s up so tight I’ll bet he don’t crap for the next month. He’s already full of suspect about me. You know why?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Because he suspicions everybody. He knows all about what the mayor said to you—man, I was the guy taped it, I was right there when he listened and his face got purple and bloodshots popped into his eyes—and since then he suspicions everybody he met since World War Two. He don’t need no more’n that paper, or just a word from you. Just a hint and he’ll kill me. Six hints, he kills six guys. That’s how uptight he is.”

  “Did he kill Mayor Fowler?”

  “I don’t know nothin’ about Fowler. Except I heard he’s missing, of course. I would presume Hugh done something unpleasant to him, it’s only a guess.”

  “Don’t hold out on me, Biggers.”

  “You’re full of suspect yourself, ain’t you? It’s the truth, I don’t know what the hell happened to Fowler. I ain’t exactly in Hugh’s confidants these days. Nobody ain’t.”

  “Incidentally, while Sergeant Delcey and I realize you phoned the mayor Friday, we haven’t been able to learn if you actually went to see him later that night. You could prove your good faith right now by clearing that up for me.”

  “Did I go see him? Hell, no, I didn’t. When Hugh was gonna be there to murder me in cold blood—like I heard the sergeant say—if I went?” He gave his head that rapid shaking again. “Maybe I’d better start at the beginnin’.”

  “I think that would be wise. By the way, Biggie, how did you get in here?”

  He looked disgusted. “I thought you knowed I was a burglar.”

  “Ah, yes. Of course.” And then I asked him to sit down, relax, even have a drink if he wanted one. He wanted several. I had a couple myself.

  When I handed Biggers his first—stiff—drink, he said, “Here’s how it is. You know there’s a tap on the mayor’s phone. But maybe you don’t know there’s others.”

  Because, now, I no longer needed that “piece of paper,” I didn’t have to play the game anymore. So said, “We know there are several, and we know some of the people being bugged. We just don’t know how many, or all the people.”

  “There’s fourteen,” he said, taking a large gulp of his bourbon and water. “You want the names?”

  “Yeah, but later.”

  The shock—and pleasure—I’d felt on hearing Biggers casually admit that he was the informant who’d phoned Mayor Fowler was beginning to wear off. In its place was building a definite apprehension. Because I wanted to be very sure only Biggers had overheard me giving the name of my motel to the sergeant.

  But he was going on, and I did nothing for a while to interrupt the flow of words. “Hugh decided several months back he wanted to know more what was goin’ on—the mayor and the D.A. investigator, all that bunch, was hot after him along with others. And this Ramirez was getting his nose in too close. Anyway, he trusted it to me to get the thing set up the way he wanted it. I got some know-how about different kinds of bugging, but for what he was after I needed a real expert, and I got a guy named Jim Wade, works for the phone company, to do the real hard stuff. Which he did.”

  I hesitated a moment, then told him, “Yeah, I heard about Wade.”

  “You knew that, too, huh?”

  “Right. Do you know what happened to him tonight?”

  “Something happened to Jim?”

  “He got killed. Not an accident, he was beaten to death. Neck was broken. Somebody really beat hell out of him.”

  Biggers was pretty pale to begin with, and I hadn’t thought he could get much paler, but he could. And did.

  “Man. Oh, man. He was such a nice guy, he really was.”

  “I figure Sam Jelly worked him over. Way he was beaten.”

  Biggers nodded his head slowly. “Yeah. I dunno, but it sounds like Jelly. Prob’ly was him. Man. And Jim did such a sweet job for Hugh, too. Just the way he wanted it.”

  “What about that job, Biggie?”

  “Well, it’s set up so all the calls come into one room. You can listen, or just let ‘em go down on tapes from the recorders, or both. And it’s all automo ... automized....”

  “Automated?”

  “Yeah, that’s how Jim said it. Nobody has to do nothing, the machines do it. I’m there most of the time, but I don’t have to be, until lately. Now I’m supposed to be there. Usually, four times a day I check all the tapes—you can tell just by lookin’ if there’s been any calls from or to that particular phone or not—and run the ones that been recorded. Anything Hugh would want to know about I tell him right then, otherwise I just let it go.”

  “Grimson must put a lot of trust in you, Biggie. That’s a pretty important job.”

  “Well, maybe he did once upon a time. But not lately. Like I used to just erase the junk, but this last week or so—since he gunned Ramirez—he don’t let me erase nothin’. So I don’t ... well, two I did.”

  “You erased two?” He nodded and I said, “Did you—I hope—erase the call you just listened to between me and Sergeant Delcey?”

  “That was number two. I sure didn’t want nobody hearin’ what you said about me. I was in a hurry so I just run it back and started it going through the erasers, them magnets. I sure didn’t set there and look at it.”

  “You couldn’t have,” I said. “You must move like lightning. Or maybe not. How far—where did you have to come from?”

  “The Garage. Silvano’s Garage.”

  “That’s where you monitor the tapes?”

  He nodded. “It’s a little room upstairs, you wouldn’t know it was there didn’t somebody show it to you.” He paused. “I got to get back there pretty quick.”

  “Sure. But first let’s get to Friday night, Biggie. I didn’t quite follow what you said earlier about not keeping that midnight appointment with the mayor. Because Grimson was going to be there?”

  “Yeah. Oh, man, what a close one that was. Like you said, I seen Hugh gun down Ramirez, and needless to point it out, Hugh don’t know it yet. But that’s when he stops me erasin’ any tapes, and it worries me.”

  I interrupted him again. “How did Ramirez get it, Biggie? What exactly was it you saw?”

  “Well, that was in the Garage, too. Over a week ago, on Thursday night it was. I was in the room where the taping is done, just awoke up from a nap—I sleep there sometimes, on a cot. Hugh drove in through the main entrance, off of Third, with Sam and Lou. Come in unexpected, and caught Ramirez inside.”

  “That’s Sam Jelly and Lou Wykoff?”

  Biggie nodded. “I ain’t all the ways sure what Ramirez was after, but what I get is he counted up tires and equipment they got in the Garage, and also he has in his hands some papers showing buys and that—invoice and bills, whatever. See, Silvano’s handles a bunch of the work and supplies most of the supplies for a lot of what the city does. For cars and garbage collecting vehicles and city trucks and that kind of thing. And, for but one example, Ramirez had it
down that they sold to the city—mostly on paper, you understand—like six hundred tires and a hundred wheels and eighty transmissions for forty police cars, which isn’t a likely happening.”

  “Not very.”

  “Especially in five months, it ain’t. Well, it’s undoubted there was more, so they shoot him. That is, Hugh does it himself. Me, I was in the hall outside of the room where I’d been, heading for some coffee, when I hear the car come in down below. So I walked to the top of the ramp which leads up from inside the entrance off Third, and started down it, when I hear Hugh yelling at Ramirez like he’s a sonofabitch and so forth, then blam. I’d just got to where I could see them all standing. It was very healthy they didn’t see me. Ramirez goes down, Hugh pumps another into him, then stands over him and gives him a shot in the head, and that’s it. Within two seconds from then, I have disappeared.”

  “You mean you went back up to your room?”

  “God Almighty, no. I don’t want Hugh to even suspicion I was within several miles of there when it all happened. I ran like a wild orangdang to my heap and drove it to my rooms, very close to faster than it’s possible for you to get there, and before I have my door open the phone rings. I grab it and like I feared he might do just in case, it is Hugh saying, ‘Biggie, how long since you was at the Garage, old buddy?’ and I reply with the innocents of a infant child, I hoped, ‘Why, several hours if not more, Boss,’ and it’s only because I moved faster than anyone would believe it that Hugh bought what I told him as a huge lie, and which explains why I am still alive as of this date.”

  “That was a close shave.”

  “I ain’t had no other kind lately. Like I just told you, it was then Hugh stops me erasing anything off of the tapes, and this makes me nervous by itself. But besides, even before then he’d stopped some of the confidants he had with me once, and I catch him lookin’ cold and sorry at me, like you do at funerals when you look down in the casket at the guy there. I catch him doing this several times lately and it scares hell out of me, since even one of them would be too much.”

  “What caused his sudden change of heart?”

  “He ain’t got no heart to change. And it wasn’t so sudden, it just come along, and I think it’s because I know so much about guys he’s had killed and like that. Then there’s also me listening to so much stuff since the taps been put in, which all of what I hear Hugh knows about, since he hears the good stuff after I do. And, once in a goddamn while, at the same time.” He paused. “Like Friday.”

  He paused again, but I just waited for him.

  He gave his head one of those rapid wagging shakes and said, “That was close. For reasons you may be understanding, I figure it’s a matter of time till Hugh kills me, and the sooner he does it the quicker he don’t worry no more about all the stuff I know. I figure it’s a matter of time, but whether it’s weeks or days or ten o’clock is the question, and that’s what worries me considerable. So I guess you can figure it out why I decided to spill some of it and protect myself from Hugh, and maybe get enough loot so I can move to Siberia.”

  “It makes sense to me, Biggie. Probably you made your play just in time. Obviously something went wrong.”

  “Yeah, a little something. Just everything you can think of. Look, I was the only guy could call the mayor without it being taped by them machines, right?”

  I nodded, slowly. It was right, indeed.

  “I know all the calls to him is recorded, and kept on tapes there in the Garage. Anybody else done what I done, call him Pete, Hugh just listens to it and gives that cold sorry look and blam, down Pete goes. See?”

  “I see it. Blam, and one in the conk.”

  “Just like he done Ramirez, only sooner. Well, I figure I can call the mayor—who strikes me as the man best able to do most for me, once I convince him I can help him out—and myself make sure it don’t go on the tape. I figure it’s pretty smart. But here’s what happens. I make the call—and as you might figure I take some care it ain’t recorded. How I do this, I call from there, in the room at the Garage. Is that good?”

  “Beautiful.”

  “Everything is beautiful. I’m set to make a deal with Fowler around midnight. I’m feeling like I’ll get out from under, keep from getting myself murdered, maybe even wind up with a few big ones for lam money. I’m sitting there telling myself what a smart boy am I—like that who it was stuck in his thumb, what a smart boy am I, and you can take it from me, I’m just as goddamn dumb as him—and all of a sudden someone’s using the mayor’s phone. You can guess who, right?”

  I shook my head. “Can’t guess.” I couldn’t. Probably should have, but I was all wrapped up in Biggie’s story.

  “Who you suppose? It’s Fowler, calling you in L.A.”

  “Ah.”

  “Now, this is being taped, through the automazing thing, while at the same time I’m listening. I hear him talk about me, and even without my name I know it’s getting recorded simul ... simul ... at the same time I’m listening. Man, I am dumbfounded. I figure even while I listen I better start getting them erasers goin’ and I reach out my hand and the door opens and, you can guess—”

  “Yeah—this time I’ll bet I can—”

  “Hugh, that’s who. I swear, this was late at night and he hasn’t come in like that only maybe three, four times in a year. But there he is. Now, when you listen it’s like a speaker, it comes out of a box, all over the room. See? He not only hears it, he can’t miss it unless his ears get petrilized like them million-years-old logs, which is how I’m feeling right then. He stands there and he hears Fowler jawing something about a guy calling him and telling about blam and blam and ... Jesus, I liked to crapped—”

  “Blue, yeah.”

  “—blue. I yank my hand back from them erasers so fast I bet Hugh didn’t even see me movin’, but it don’t make no difference, it’s too late. So I says, serious as I can get, ‘Hugh, I think you’ll be interested in this one.’ Like I just missed runnin’ out to go bring him in. What else could I do?”

  “I can’t think of a thing.”

  “Well, I don’t like even mentioning about the next half hour or so. Only thing that wasn’t bad luck is Fowler didn’t know for sure who I was or he’d of named my name, and I don’t need to say what Hugh would of done to me before any more time passed at all. When it was finished, Fowler and you talking, Hugh had me run it over. And he sat there, not saying nothin’, very cold he was. Like he’d froze. Only spoke once during it, looked at me like his eyes was hollow and says to me, ‘Who do you think the fink sonofabitch is, Biggie?’”

  “Man, what did you say?”

  “I looked him right close to the eyes, maybe a couple inches outside from them, and said like I was really worried about it—ha, ha—’Beats the hell out of me, boss.’ And he says, “Whoever the fink sonofabitch is, he’s gonna be goddamn surprise when the horn blows at midnight,’ or something in that area. I was not feeling well at all then.” He shook his head. “No, I was not feeling well. To the opposite, I thought sure I was going to puke, and that would have blowed it. So all I remember is, it was no trouble figuring Hugh was going to catch whoever went out to the mayor’s place anywhere around midnight, give or take a couple hours. I decided not to go.”

  I took a deep breath, let it sigh between my lips. “That was a close one.”

  “Didn’t I tell you? But that ain’t all. When it’s done playing, Hugh asks me in that scary way he’s got how could it be if the fink sonofabitch phoned Fowler at his home—it’s fortunate he asked it that way and put the words in my brains—there wasn’t no recording of it? How come everything else was down on the tape from our wire on Fowler’s phone but not the fink sonofabitch?”

  “Wow,” I said. “How the hell did you get around that one?”

  “I just got inspirated, is the only way I can explain about it. I put Hugh’s words straight back at him without even thinking once. ‘Hugh,’ I say, pure and sincere, like I am a angel with wings that fall
off if it even thinks of a lie, ‘he couldn’t of called Fowler at his home, else otherwise I would of heard it and the words would be on the tape. Boss,’ I said, ‘the lousy fink must of got in touch with the mayor at somewheres else besides his own house, for he sure did not say nothing to him there while I been here and I been here all the time.’”

  “Grimson bought it, huh?”

  “To some degree. Fowler never come right out and said he got the call at his house, which is fortunate for me. Just as helpful, Hugh figures I can’t be the one told of seeing him hit Ramirez, since he knows I was home when he called me up right after he done it, though he may be wondering considerable about that by then. I figure he mostly suspicions Sam or Lou but can’t prove it, and thinks it could even of been somebody else. Besides, I no sooner finish lying so sincere to him, my mind already convinced Hugh is going to go out and kill this fink, whoever he is, when the mayor’s phone starts goin’ again. It’s you, calling him from L.A.”

  “Yeah,” I nodded. “Mainly I wanted to tell him when I’d get here. I don’t remember if I said anything else important—”

  “Ask me. I can tell you. So can Hugh—later, couple hours or more after midnight, he come back here, having told me not to move my butt a inch, and played over the tape maybe a dozen times more.”

  I nodded again. That explained Grimson’s wonderful familiarity with what Fowler had said to me. And the way Fowler had said it. And why “Mayor” Grimson had looked so sleepy.

  Biggie went on. “After this, Hugh calls you up in L.A. himself, from the room where he was. He gets your number from the Information, but even without that I could of figured it was you from him cussing your name out—when he didn’t get no answer.”

  “What time was that, Biggie?”

  “I wasn’t concentrating about when it was at that instance, but it must of been past 4 a.m. anyhow, or later. Hugh didn’t come back to the Garage until it was two-thirty, maybe three in the a.m. And it took a long time—month and a half, seemed to me—for playin’ that tape over and over.”