The Wailing Frail (The Shell Scott Mysteries) Page 3

  She went on, “Has he really inspired?”

  “Has he what?”

  “Inspired. Died. Is he dead?”

  “Oh. Yeah, he's dead.” I'd just got my first clue that Satin was perhaps not quite as well developed of brain as she was of body.

  “He looked like it. But I guess that's natural.”

  “Yes. You knew Mr. Stone pretty well, I take it.”

  “Why d'you say that?” she asked.

  “Well, you winked at him, for one thing. And you seemed quite shocked when you saw him on the floor.”

  “I'd be pretty shocked to see anybody on the floor. I'd be shocked to see you on the floor. Wouldn't I?”

  “Why, sure, but—”

  “Besides, I was just getting warmed up in my act. And then zowie, all of a sudden, lights are all over the place.”

  I thought, Just getting warmed up, huh? If I did nothing else this month, I was going to manage to see the rest of that act. The next few questions elicited the information that her name was really Virginia Waring, but she preferred to be called Satin.

  “It sounds so soft and sinful,” she said. “Doesn't it?”

  “Yes, it does.” I grinned at her. “Are you—I mean, it's certainly very pretty.”

  “Not that I'm soft and sinful. I'm soft, yes, but not really sinful.” She laughed. “But I guess we all have depressed desires.”

  “I guess we...”

  She had been dabbing at the orange make-up and painted eyebrows with the rag in her hand, and had almost completed removal of the paint. Consequently she turned to face the dressing-table mirror and remained standing, but bent forward to dab at her cheeks. This changed the view into something only slightly less appealing than before, but still so fetching that it almost fetched me over there to her. I barely heard the sirens. But they penetrated, and I knew the police would soon be here.

  “Satin,” I said, “you did know George Stone, didn't you?”

  She turned partly sideways and looked at me quietly, then she said, “You must be a good detective.”

  “Why's that?”

  “You're so persistent.” Then she turned and looked into the mirror again and said, “Yes, we were friendly. Good friends.” Her eyes met mine in the mirror. “Now I have to change.”

  She reached under her arm and pulled gently. I could see now that a well-concealed zipper was there. So that was how she got into and out of the thing. She pulled the zipper down about a foot, then stopped. The darker, rosier tone of her flesh showed in the small gap. Satin glanced at me and I went out. There wasn't really a lot more to see anyway.

  A couple of uniformed policemen and two plain-clothes officers were approaching Stone's body as I stepped out onto the dance floor. One of the plain-clothes men was Rawlins, a detective working out of Central Homicide. I knew him well.

  “Hi, Lieutenant,” I said. “That was fast.”

  He glanced around and smiled slightly. “Shell. What're you doing here?”

  I pointed to the corpse. “I was sitting at his table when he flopped over.”

  In the next couple of minutes I told him all I knew. He said, “No idea why it happened, huh?”

  “He just keeled over. I didn't touch him except to check his pulse.”

  Other officers arrived. The customers were questioned, a crew from the crime lab arrived and photographic bulbs flashed as pictures were taken. A little later Rawlins was kneeling by the body. He waved me over and said, “You can stop guessing about heart attacks. His heart stopped, all right, but that's because his brain wasn't working.” He pointed at the side of Stone's head.

  I got down on one knee and looked, without touching the body. There was a small dark hole in the right side of Stone's head. It was an inch or so above the temple, and hardly visible in his thick black hair. There'd been almost no bleeding.

  By the time the deputy coroner arrived and looked over the corpse, we were sure. Stone had been shot. The bullet was still inside his skull, and from the looks of the entrance hole, the weapon had been no larger than a .32 caliber, and quite possibly the slug had been from a .22 pistol.

  “You didn't hear anything at all, huh?” Rawlins asked me.

  “No. Orchestra was playing, but if a gun was fired, even a little gun, somebody here should have heard it.”

  I sat down in the chair Stone had been in. I assumed the same position he'd been in when shot, as nearly as I could remember it. Then I pointed at the side of my head, above the temple, and said to Rawlins, “Where'd it come from?”

  “Take a look.”

  I turned my head to the right. My gaze went straight out past the chair in which I'd been sitting, on by the velvet rope into the lobby, and ended at the painted red devil on the door of the men's room. “Uh-huh,” I said. “Head waiter told me the short guy spotted Stone, then went in the men's room. Place would be empty during the act. Stone lit a cigarette with his lighter—in the darkness, his face would have stood out like a house. Bang.”

  Only the police couldn't locate anybody who'd heard a bang, or any sound other than the usual ones. Rawlins said to me, “Well, a twenty-two doesn't make much noise to begin with. And it could've been a dumb gat. Come to think of it, if a kill were planned for inside the club here, the murderer would be almost sure to use a silenced gun if he could.”

  That made sense. I knew that silenced .22s, which couldn't be heard ten feet away when fired, had been used as far back as World War II. Even a homemade silencer, good for only one or two shots, could effectively silence a gun as small as a .22 pistol.

  But whatever it had been, it had done the job.

  I put in a call to the Civic Building and talked to Paula. I gave her the story and she said she'd pass it on to Beasley and Carter, who were still waiting in the conference room. She also said that she would go on home alone, since I'd be tied up a while longer. I phoned Wise at his home and told him what had happened. He was as startled as Paula had been.

  “Shot? Right there in the club?”

  “Yeah. By an expert, I'd guess.”

  “Didn't he have time to tell you anything that would help us?”

  “Nope. Just that he could spill all the beans about Mr. Big and give us a lot of dirt. He wanted immunity.”

  Wise was silent for a moment. Then he said, “Immunity. Well, he got it.”

  “Yeah. That's about it. Police are still here.”

  “Yes. Well, do what you have to do. I'll see you in the morning, Shell.”

  I told him good night and hung up. It was late when I drove home, to the Spartan Apartment Hotel on North Rossmore in Hollywood. It had been a busy evening, and until now I hadn't been able to slow down and think much about what had happened. So it wasn't until I was walking up the stairs to the second floor that I really considered it carefully.

  When I'd sat in Stone's chair at the Melody Club, and tried to imagine the path the lethal bullet must have taken, my gaze had ended up at the painted red devil on the men's room door. But, I remembered, my gaze had also gone right by the chair in which I had been sitting at the time Stone was shot in the head.

  It hadn't even occurred to me until this minute. I'd assumed that because Stone had been killed, the killer had been an excellent shot, and had hit smack where he'd aimed. But maybe he wasn't that good after all.

  Maybe he'd been aiming at me.

  Chapter Three

  The next morning I checked in at my office, and said hello to Hazel at the switchboard down the hall. Nothing of importance had come up so I drove to the Civic Building.

  I had a small office in the building, but I went into the big conference room where I'd been last night. Here in these severely elegant surroundings, where so many polished phrases had bounced off the polished mahogany and paneled walls, here where serious business was conducted, the members of the lobbying committee kept the coffee pot boiling almost continuously.

  Beasley and Wise were already present, having a cup, but Carter hadn't shown up yet. Wise tosse
d his handsome head as I came in. “Shell. We've been anxiously awaiting you.”

  “Yes,” Beasley said. “What can you add to the little you told us last night?”

  “Not a lot,” I said. “But I'll give the whole thing to you the way it happened.”

  Wise smoothed his wavy gray hair. “Have some coffee. It's not good to discuss murder without coffee to wash it down.” He grinned. “Besides, the coffee's good this morning. I made it.”

  I groaned. “This may be worse than the gory details.” You could talk to Wise the way you would to any ordinary human being.

  But Beasley's brows were trying to merge. We were being frivolous.

  So I got my coffee in a hurry. As I sat down at the long mahogany table, Paula came in. Paula, however, came in with Joe Rule. And Joe is a very handsome guy. I glared at them both, telling myself that they must have met just outside the door. They got coffee and joined us.

  I spent about twenty minutes filling everyone in on details of what had occurred last night. When I finished, Beasley said slowly, “It would seem that he really might have helped us.”

  “Sure looks that way. I think he would even have tagged Mr. Big.”

  That name “Mr. Big” was one that we had begun using half in jest during the tune that the papers had leaned on it so hard. But we did know that somewhere in the maze of bribery and blackmailing, both the legal and illegal pressures, the lobbyists and “business representatives” and the bought men we were investigating, there was actually a Mr. Big. One man, that is, among the many lesser ones, who had enormous power, who peddled influence like shares of stock, who bought men and sold them out.

  There was enough evidence to show that the man existed, but we didn't know anything else about him, not his name or what he looked like or who his associates were. It was like knowing of the existence of a huge narcotics ring, and the names of some of the pushers, but not being able to get close to the man at the top. And, of course, our Mr. Big was the one individual the committee was most interested in. We weren't concerned, naturally, with legal lobbying or lobbyists; just the ones who got on the wrong side of the law—and especially the big one.

  Beasley went on, “Unfortunate that he didn't have time to name names. Even if he could have given you the leads before he was killed. Said he worked for the man, right? Wiretapping?”

  “Uh-huh. All sorts of electronic eavesdropping, I gathered. Seven years of it. It seems he got plenty of dirt on plenty of people and turned it all over to his boss. Which would indicate a very nice blackmail factory. But—no names, nothin'. He seemed pretty scared, as if he thought somebody might be on his tail.”

  Wise said, “What about his girl? This Satin?”

  “Not the type that reads the dictionary for enjoyment. Just told me that she'd been friendly with Stone. Doesn't sound like much—but it depends on what she meant by friendly. I'll try to see her again today.”

  I heard somebody come in and looked around to see Senator Andrew Carter approaching us. I glanced at my watch. It was nine a.m. precisely. Carter loked even paler than usual, as if he had quietly bled a little. He sat down and nodded hello. The chairman told him, briefly, what we had been discussing, and Senator Carter rolled that around in his admittedly gigantic brain.

  Then he said to Beasley, “Lester, I'm sure you'll agree that this should take precedence over all other investigative work right now?” It was a statement, but put as a question.

  Beasley nodded, then looked at me. “You and Mr. Rule seem to work well together, Mr. Scott. It might be best if you both concentrated your efforts on this for a while. Without, of course, neglecting any of your work.”

  I thought that had been very well put. Like: “Get to the top of the City Hall immediately, only don't go any higher up.” But I said, “Right,” and looked at Rule.

  He grinned and nodded.

  We did work well together. Joe Rule was a young guy of twenty-six, but he looked barely old enough to vote. He was plenty smart, though, and good at his job. He was medium size, slim but strong, with hair so black it looked dyed, and laugh wrinkles around his light blue eyes. Joe raised merry hell among the feminine population, and I meant to ask him, casually, where he'd met Paula this morning.

  After a few minutes of discussion, Joe and I left the conference room and went to my office. We discussed the case, and decided that Joe would check with the police today and try to run down the man answering the description of that guy who'd asked about Stone last night. Asked about Stone, and almost surely had a hand in killing him—the short man with the protruding teeth and a black mole at the side of his mouth. I would run down all I could on Stone himself.

  Rule said, “Well, this is better than checking those letters.” I had given Rule three that had come in to the committee. There had been at least a possibility that mine would lead to some helpful information, no matter how remote the possibility, but Joe's had been impossible. He said, “I don't know how some of those characters get through the day. They must be good at dodging nets.” He paused. “If it goes slow today, I might use a couple of hours finishing up on the Britton thing. All I need is about that much time in the Recorder's office.”

  He meant Sam Britton, one of a dozen men we'd been checking on as possible witnesses to be subpoenaed for appearance before the committee. We knew Britton had spent several thousand dollars in Sacramento in an attempt to influence legislation affecting a company he owned. And we knew most of the men who'd taken the money.

  I said, “Swell. Once we cross him off, there's plenty more to check.” I paused. “What'd Paula have to say this morning?”

  Deadpan it came back. “What do you want for breakfast?” Then he peered at my face and laughed like a fiend. “Actually, you freak, I met her about six feet from the conference room door. She said, ‘Hi, Joe.'”

  “That's better,” I said. “And what did you have for breakfast?”

  He grinned, waved a hand, and went out.

  I had to clear up some accumulated paperwork, and Joe phoned in before I left the Civic Building. He was calling from the Police Building, and told me that the police hadn't come up with anything helpful yet. They had taken a .22-caliber bullet from Stone's brain, but that was about it so far.

  Right after lunch I drove to the Brandwell Hotel, where I knew George Stone had lived in a top-floor suite. I'd got an okay to check the place, so the officer on the door told me to go on in when I identified myself. It sounded as if somebody were already inside, moving around, but he didn't mention anything about it. I went on in.

  Somebody was inside. I walked through the sitting room into one of the bedrooms and there she was. She was facing away from me and bent forward at quite an angle, yanking frilly feminine things out of a bottom bureau drawer, but I recognized her immediately: Virginia Waring—Satin.

  She straightened up and turned around. “Well,” she said. “Hello, Mr. Scott. What are you doing here?”

  “It's Shell. And I was about to ask you the same question.”

  “Oh.” She shrugged in answer. “Just picking up my things.” She waved a hand toward the bed. Piled on it near a small suitcase were a filmy negligee, striped red and white pajamas, a beautifully formed brassiere, and a little make-up kit.

  Satin walked into the bathroom, came back with a tooth-brush, put it and the clothes into the small suitcase and snapped it shut. Then she straightened up and looked at me. “There,” she said, “that's it.”

  She really looked good. Not better than she had last night in that marvelous act—which would, of course, have been almost impossible—completely different, but smart, vital, sexy, smoothly attractive. She was wearing a turtle-neck sweater in white and two shades of brown, with a beige skirt, and no belt, so that the fine curving line of the cloth was also the fine curving line of Satin. Her long, nearly straight hair was pulled behind her head in a pony tail. The word for Satin today was sleek; probably that would be the word for her any day.

  “Satin,” I said. �
�Would you mind a question or two?”

  She sighed. “I know what they'll be.” She walked over to me and looked up into my face. Wearing high heels, she seemed quite a bit taller than she'd been last night, but she still wasn't very big. Or, rather, not very tall. She said, “Let's see, you're about twenty-eight ... thirty?”

  “Thirty.”

  “Adult, anyway.”

  “Yeah.”

  “All right. I've got an apartment of my own, in the Gentry. But once in a while—when George was out of town—I stayed here. Now that he's—not renting this spot any more, I won't be coming here. So I'm picking up my things. I spent an hour or so last night talking to the police, and I've just come from all morning at the Police Building talking forever to two nice policemen. And I finally convinced them I didn't shoot George—I didn't have any place to hide a gun, remember?”

  “Yes, I remember. Every square inch. Though you don't have any square inches, do you? Ha, ha ... Ah, well. If he'd had a heart attack, though, you would have been the lethal weapon.”

  She smiled and sort of threw her eyes up and down. “And I told them I didn't know anything about George's business, which I don't. He was just—just George.” She frowned. “What would your other question be? Did I answer it?”

  “No, and it's more of a statement You don't seem about to fling yourself under the wheels of the first passing truck.”

  “What?”

  “Well, you don't seem to be all broken up with grief.”

  “Oh. You mean I'm not putting on one of those heart-rendering acts like I can't go on living?”

  I grinned. “That's close enough.”

  “I wasn't in love with him. I liked George; he was for kicks. And he spent money like it was before taxes. So now he's gone. Well, we all got to go, don't we? I never heard of anybody saying, ‘No, I think I'll stay.’ Seriously, Mr. Scott—”

  “Shell—”

  “Shell, I can't sleep in his coffin, can I? Would it do George any good if I cried for a couple of hours?”

  I shook my head.

  “So all right,” she said.