The Sweet Ride (The Shell Scott Mysteries)

by Richard S. Prather

  “Uh-huh. Probably wanted to tell me the mayor had changed his mind and didn’t want me to fly up here after all.” I couldn’t help thinking, if Grimson had caught me before I left the Spartan, it would have saved him—not to mention me—a lot of trouble.

  Biggie and I talked another five minutes or so, and I started playing with an idea. “Biggie, you know more about those tapes and the setup there in Silvano’s Garage than anyone else. Are the tapes kept there at Silvano’s?”

  “In a big safe. Only Hugh and me can get into it.”

  “You don’t just automatically erase the recordings once Grimson hears what’s on them, then?”

  “Some. But the ones with good stuff he keeps. Part of it’s only like broads cheating on their husband with nine milkmen, things of that nature. Others it’s talk about Hugh himself, what the cops are doing and such. Them he keeps. And, like I said, he told me as of maybe ten days ago, I don’t erase nothin’ till further notice, I keep everything and stick it all in the safe.” He waggled his head. “Look, I got to get back.”

  “O.K. But we’ll have to meet later. Because you’ve got to get those tapes for me, Biggie.”

  After some time he said, “I’d appreciate it if you’d say that again.”

  “For a great many reasons, none of which we need to go into at the moment, I’ve got to get my hands on those recordings. While they’re still available, before they’re erased or carted off someplace else. Since it looks like you’re the only man who can do the job, you’ll have to get them for me.”

  “I thought I didn’t understand at first. But it’s the same this time, only longer. Why don’t I just kill myself?”

  “Now that’s a very negative attitude, Biggie—”

  “Look, already when Hugh thinks about me he puts his hat over his chest and bows his head, as you do for the departed. He’s just percastinated bumpin’ me off. That’s why I buzzed the mayor. I thought maybe he could help me. For a minute I even thought you could help me. Man, you’re a lotta help, you are—”

  “Biggie, I hate to put it this way, but we must face the facts. You’re already in deep trouble. We don’t know if the mayor’s alive or dead, but either way—if Grimson snatched Fowler Friday night, which seems even more likely after what you’ve told me—uppermost in Mr. G.’s mind is getting the man who tried to fink to the mayor. Which is to say, you. It’s just a matter of time. He knows it’s got to be somebody pretty close to him. And if Fowler’s alive, Grimson might find out from him that he was at home when the informant phoned.”

  “Yeah, I know all that. I’m the one told you.” He sighed. “Ah, hell, what’s the use? Ain’t no way to get out from this. Siberia was just a dream. I been kiddin’ myself.”

  “Biggie, all we have to do is put Grimson away for good. You can testify to his killing Ramirez. And once I get those taped recordings, you can take my word for it we’ll have Mr. G. tied up so tight—”

  “Maybe you don’t remember it, but I mentioned only Hugh and me can get into the safe where the tapes is at. Say I open the box up and grab them tapes and give them to you, what happens then? Hugh says, The tapes is gone! Then he says, I didn’t do it. Who could of done it? Maybe he is no Einstein, but he don’t even have to add up two and two. He just subtracts one from two, and you can guess who is the one subtracted.”

  “Well, there’s got to be a way.”

  I’d had the beginnings of an idea a few minutes earlier, and I sat quietly, pushing it around for half a minute. I asked Biggie to describe the Garage, how it was set up inside, where the tape-monitoring room was, everything that would help me get a mental picture of the place.

  Then I said, “O.K. I see the whole thing clearly enough. One, I want those recordings and you’ve got to get them for me. Two, if you open the safe and grab them it takes Grimson maybe a whole minute to figure out who heisted them. Three, therefore he kills you. Four—”

  “I hope you ain’t plannin’ to count up to ten.”

  “Well.... Even if you don’t heist them, he’s going to kill you. And you’ve got to testify that you saw Grimson blast Ramirez, which won’t help your position a whole lot. Biggie, you’re just never going to be safe until you’re dead.”

  “Well, that makes me feel better already—”

  “Let me finish, Biggie.”

  I ran over it quickly in my mind. I had my own selfish motives for what I hoped Biggie and I, together, could accomplish, sure. But in a way, I also wanted to help Biggie. He was such a forlorn, elfish sort of guy, but there was something almost appealing about him, too. And there really was a chance. Biggie would have to stick his neck way out—and so would I—and I’d need a good deal of help, Delcey would have to cooperate enthusiastically and even bend a rule or two. But maybe....

  “Biggie,” I said decisively, my mind made up, “there’s one way to get this job done, all of it, get those tapes, wrap Grimson up tight and put him away, and at the same time make sure Grimson, or his guns, don’t murder you. And I think I can pull it off.”

  The big, sorrowful eyes opened wider than they had yet been. For the first time I saw on his lips the trace of what, given time, might become a smile.

  “No kiddin’?” he asked wonderingly. “How’ll you do that?”

  “Later today, right there in Silvano’s Garage—”

  “Yeah?” His eyes were getting brighter.

  “—with one or two of Grimson’s men close enough to see it, so they know it happened—”

  “Yeah?” The big round eyes were almost glowing, his lips were twitching at the corners.

  “—I’ll kill you myself.”

  The lips stopped twitching, the glow went from his eyes, and he stared dully at me for a while. Then he smiled. He really did smile.

  “Man,” he said, “that’s what I call good thinkin’.”

  17

  I was wearing a teal-blue suit, slightly wrinkled—the only other one I’d brought along from L.A.—and it was three o’clock in the afternoon. Sunday afternoon. I felt slightly wrinkled myself.

  There had been other times in my life—plenty of them—when I’d crossed my bridge but hadn’t burned it and there was still a chance to retreat, and tension built up until it pulled me in several directions at once. But my nerves had seldom felt stretched more close to the snapping point. And the burning of this particular bridge was still almost an hour away.

  Biggie had been back at his post in Silvano’s Garage for hours now. It wasn’t any comfort for me to know that, no matter how nervous or apprehensive I might be about what lay ahead, he was sure to be experiencing my own emotions doubled and redoubled, assuming he had not yet unraveled entirely.

  Everything was in readiness—as ready as we could get it. Which, now that it was done, struck me as not ready enough. My first job had been to convince Biggers himself. It took a little doing. But when I’d explained in detail what I had in mind he said, “I dunno...” and to my reply, “Have you got a choice?” Biggie had sadly concluded our discussion with the closest he could get to agreement. “No. But, man, I sure wish I did.”

  Sergeant Delcey had proved more difficult, but finally agreed to cooperate, not without huge misgivings.

  After Biggers left my motel room, I phoned Delcey, said only, “You mentioned something about a sardine, Sergeant? It turns out we’ve beached Moby Dick,” and asked him to meet me. He was, naturally, interested enough to agree, and we got together in a small cocktail lounge.

  I refused to tell him more than a minimum of what I’d learned from Biggers until I had, first, laid before him my plan for Silvano’s Garage in the afternoon.

  Then I just shut up, and hoped. The only other customers there at that time of morning were at the bar and we sat in a booth, each with a beer on the table before us. Since I’d finished my explanation, Delcey hadn’t said a word. But on that smooth youngish face of his, which in repose usually looked sort of agingly angelic, was the expression you’d expect if he really was a choirboy w
hose voice had just cracked on the ia in Ave Maria.

  “You’re crazy, you know,” he said at last. “It won’t work.”

  “Why not?”

  “It can’t. It’s too—crazy.”

  “You’ve got a better plan?”

  “I could make one up in a couple minutes. Like, why don’t I take some men and a warrant and move into Silvano’s? And, first, put Biggers in protective custody, second, open up that safe.” He paused. “Why’re you so hot to get those tapes, anyhow?”

  I had an important—and personal—reason for wanting those recordings. So I explained it to Delcey, and he bought that much, at least.

  Then I said, “I told you Biggie spilled a good deal more than I’ve yet passed on. And you don’t grab Biggie, for one reason, because I’ve got him convinced I’m his only hope, and my way’s the only chance he’s got of coming out of this not only alive but with a good chance of staying that way, if he doesn’t get killed during the operation, which he confidently expects.”

  “His confidence is not misplaced.”

  “Keep up the positive thinking, and we can’t miss. The point is, Biggers simply won’t be in a cooperative mood if you grab him; I’ve a hunch he’ll clam. This, at least, will interest you, Delcey. You don’t move in and blow the safe because if you do you’ll really blow it. What you’ll find inside the box is about a pound of ashes.”

  “It’s rigged? All this just for recordings from those wiretaps?”

  “Yes—and no. It’s rigged, yes. Only Grimson and Biggers know the safe’s combination, and as I recall Biggie’s words, ‘If you don’t do it just right, it sets off magnesia or something and the heat evaporizes everything.” I interpret that to mean the wrong combination, or maybe even wrong timing, sets off something like a magnesium flare inside the box—anyhow, the evidence disappears. But just for recordings, no. There are other items you’ll want in the safe, including as merely one example a second set of books for various Grimson operations.”

  “Biggers told you this?”

  “Yeah. And he should know. Anyway, that’s why you don’t force the safe or blow it, and why you don’t ask Grimson to open it for you, either, since you can guess how surprised he’d be to discover all those ashes in there. Face it, Ernie Biggers—a willingly cooperative Ernie Biggers—is the only man you want opening Grimson’s safe for you.”

  He squinted at me, head turned slightly to one side. “You not only spent some time thinking up this idiotic plan of yours, but used a little more deciding how you were going to lay it on me. Am I right?”

  “Well, I felt it was important that you hear everything in the proper sequence. Hell, it’s screwed up enough as it is.”

  “You can say that again.”

  “All I want is the tapes of every call made from or to Mayor Fowler’s phone, and those only temporarily, the rest is yours—and I imagine there’s more of value to the cops than even Biggie suspects.”

  He nodded. “That I’ll go along with. Well....”

  He seemed to be weakening, so I pressed a little. “Can you get all of your end set up, and the stuff I want? There isn’t a hell of a lot of time.”

  He was silent briefly, scowling. “The transmitter’s no problem. But I don’t know about the bullets.”

  “They’d be available in Hollywood, of course. Maybe even San Francisco, and if so that’s not too far from here.”

  “I can find out. The rest of it, the officers and police equipment, that’s easy enough—if I sell Chief Cantor, which most likely will be impossible.”

  “Well ... do you have to mention this to the chief? Can’t we just keep this our little—”

  “Come off it, Scott. You know I’ve got to fill Cantor in, and even if I didn’t have to I would. I think he’ll go through the roof, and not come down again till next Wednesday. But there’s just a chance, especially with us still not knowing what the hell’s happened to the mayor, and maybe a shot at busting Grimson for good ... we’ll see. If he does go along, you know where that puts you, don’t you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, if he agrees to this cockeyed plan of yours, which he won’t, he’ll be sticking his own neck out, he’ll be hating himself every minute for doing it, if he does, which he won’t—”

  “Will you quit—”

  “It means our chief of police will practically be putting his head on the chopping block, and you’ll be the boy in charge of the axe. You screw up and you let the chief down, not to mention me, maybe Fowler himself if he’s still breathing, plus Ernie Biggers, and a dozen men I’ll have to haul off other jobs.”

  “You left one out.”

  “I did what?”

  “You left one out. Me.”

  “Oh....”

  “Don’t say it like that, Delcey. If I screw up, I’ll be dead, won’t I?”

  He nodded. “You’ve got a point there.”

  All that had been several hours ago. Delcey’s last comment was, “Well, if you’re willing to commit suicide, I guess I can find out how far the department will go. You’ll hear from me after I talk to the chief.”

  I don’t know quite how the sergeant managed it, but he later phoned with wonder in his voice to let me know all signals were Go. If the truth be told, it made me a little sick.

  So now it was 3 p.m., by the clock on my bedside table. Then 3:06.

  I got up off the side of my bed and paced back and forth in the small motel room. I went over the plan again. It’s funny about plans. Sometimes when they burst into your brain like rockets exploding they seem very pretty, delicate, things of beauty and wonder. But as time goes by—now it was three-oh-seven—it occasionally happens that you peek again only to find that what you’ve got are dead rockets falling, and the pretty fires have all fizzled out.

  Actually, when I stopped thinking about all the things that could go wrong, I was able to convince myself the operation at Silvano’s might be a breeze. The plan was quite simple. And judging from what Biggers had told me, we probably couldn’t have chosen a better time, since usually only two or three of Grimson’s men were in the Garage on Sunday afternoons, compared to the three dozen or more working there or hanging around on weekdays. That was one of the big factors in our favor; the other was the timing, and with a little luck the tricky or dangerous part would consume no more than a half-minute or so and then, zowie, the cavalry would arrive.

  I knew that Silvano’s Garage, plus the parking and work areas behind it where several vehicles in various stages of repair were kept, occupied a full city block near the city limits north of downtown Newton. The main garage building, which I’d seen Saturday morning, faced Third Street, with the yard area extending back to Fourth, and the property was bordered on its right, or north side, by Maple Street, and on the south by Birch Street.

  At exactly 3:30 p.m. I would park somewhere on Fourth Street, and by four o’clock, if all went well, everything would be over. The key bit was killing Biggie. Or, rather, shooting him. And making sure one of Grimson’s men—that, really, was the undeniably difficult part—was present to see it happen, and spread the sad word that Biggie was no more.

  I would not, of course, pump three or four Super Vel slugs into Little Biggie. What I intended to do was kill him the way they kill bad guys in movies or television. Many years ago, for added realism, technicians in the industry developed “blood”-filled paper or wax bullets that could actually be fired from a handgun, and which would burst upon impact, thus providing for later viewers of the film or videotape a realistic “kill” complete with great gobs of exciting blood for those who prefer that to sexy things on the screen.

  Those first “movie bullets” were fashioned merely to satisfy the many TV and movie watchers who, like me, were instantly dispossessed of the so-called “suspension of disbelief” upon seeing the villain shot five times in the chest without even getting a wrinkle in his cowboy shirt. After being improved over the years, today’s nonlethal slugs were a far cry fro
m the crude originals, and could produce a wound gory enough to convince almost anybody that not only blood but—if desired for an impressive gut shot—bits of various internal organs were leaking out of the victim.

  I needed nothing so complicated, no pills containing bits of livers and spleens and yesterday’s lunch; plain old blood would do nicely. So that was what Sergeant Delcey was—I hoped—arranging to get for me.

  There were a few other odds and ends. The sergeant would also provide me with a wireless transmitter, small enough to fit into my pocket, over which I could at any time communicate with him. Him, and some carloads of cops. Which I intended instantly to do when I wanted the cavalry. As insurance, if for any reason I failed to broadcast a message, such as “HELP!” sooner, Delcey and his men—and a city ambulance complete with attendants, to remove Biggie’s corpse as quickly as possible—would all pour into Silvano’s Garage at 4 p.m. on the dot.

  I paced back and forth a couple more times, nodding my head encouragingly. A breeze. A pipe. A piece of cake. Nothing to it. The timing was the big thing, really.

  I glanced at the clock by my bed. It was 3:07 p.m. I thought back. Back about five minutes to ... 3:07 p.m.

  That was a pretty sickening moment, I’ll tell you. I went over to the clock, grabbed it, shook it. It started ticking. The dumb thing had stopped.

  That was all. Dumb clocks stop every day, all over the place. It didn’t mean anything. Just a coincidence. Fortunately, I’m not superstitious. So I told myself I’d look at my watch. And if it had stopped ... well, I’d cross that bridge when I came to it.

  According to my watch, the time was twelve minutes after three. I put it up to my ear. There was always a chance it had ticked along until just a moment ago ... but, no, it was still running. That made everything wonderful.

  The phone rang.