Kill Him Twice (The Shell Scott Mysteries) Read online

  Tonight I'd reached him by phone, and he was the only one of my informants to come up with anything even approaching helpful comment.

  "Gordon Waverly?" he said. "Who's he?"

  "Very big citizen," I told him. "Publisher of Inside."

  "Hum. Yeah. I heard of it. Paper for the Hollywood wackos, ain't it?"

  "Something like that. Trade paper, comes out weekly. This Finley Pike's one of the vice presidents. He got himself killed tonight."

  "No kidding. Who done it?"

  "Fuzz thinks it was Waverly. But maybe it wasn't. And I need to be sure."

  "Yeah. Hum. Gant . . . Seems like I heard something about old Al, and . . ." He was silent for a while. "Something's rattling up there, but it's only another rattle, Scott. I'll nose around and get back to you. Tomorrow, maybe."

  "Sooner the better."

  "Well, tomorrow then, if I got something or don't. Say, I seen the cutest little TV and radio. It was in one box, dials on both sides, you could carry it around."

  "Where'd you see it, Jim?"

  He remembered where. He remembered the make, price, color, and amount of sales tax. I said, "Sounds like something you ought to have."

  "It do, don't it? Talk to you tomorrow, Scott."

  We hung up, and I made a mental note not to forget to send him the cutest little TV and radio, in one box.

  In my apartment at the Spartan, with my shoes off and a mild bourbon-and-water handy on the cigarette-scarred coffee table, I called Homicide downtown. Rawlins was still in the squadroom and came to the phone.

  "Hi," he said. "I suppose you've heard about the fuss out at Pikes?"

  "Hear? I was there, remember?"

  "No, I mean since then. About an hour ago."

  "News to me. Fill me in."

  "Ken and his partner were still there. Spotted a guy in the garage — right next to the house, you know?"

  "Yeah. So?"

  "He tried to lam out, made the mistake of trying to shoot his way out."

  "Ken O.K.?"

  "Flesh wound, nothing to worry about. But Kester's dead."

  "Kester? J. B. Kester?"

  "Uh-huh. I thought that would interest you."

  "It sure as hell does. That sort of ties it together, doesn't it?"

  "Ties something, not sure what."

  "Kester was right alongside Mooneyes when they nearly thumped me. This makes it ten to one they must have been headed for Pike's house."

  "Likely. But if so, Kester didn't have time to tell us why."

  "Funny. His going there while police were still on the scene, I mean. What was he doing in the garage?"

  "Don't know. Ken says they went all over the place, but it wasn't any help."

  I told Rawlins about my brief dialogue with Al Gant and added, "Mooneyes was with him. But Kester wasn't, naturally." I thought a moment. "Just when did this happen? How long ago?"

  "About an hour on the nose now."

  That made it approximately the time I'd been talking to Gant at his table in the Apache. About the time he'd received that phone call, which seemed to have considerably brightened his day. It could, however, hardly have been news that one of his hired hands had been shot to death. At least, it didn't seem likely.

  I told Rawlins about the call and Gant's reaction, but it didn't mean any more to him than it did to me. He told me there was nothing in the Records and Identification Division on either Waverly or Pike, and that they were waiting for the kickbacks from Sacramento and the FBI on both sets of prints. Waverly, after being booked, had apparently gone peacefully to sleep in his cell, without complaint or fuss — or further comment. My client was beginning to puzzle hell out of me.

  We hung up; I finished my bourbon and went to bed. It was just midnight. Only three hours ago I'd been preparing to light the charcoal, have a Martini, and embark upon an evening which could — even though I now realized the chances had been about one in a thousand — have been glorious.

  Instead I'd looked at a guy's spilled brains, and taken on a client who was now in the house of many slammers, and kind of halfway hinted to Al Gant that he ought to kill me.

  I couldn't escape the feeling that, somewhere along the line, I might have made a little mistake.

  EIGHT

  The morning came up like mush, as usual, but black coffee opened my eyes and cleared my brain a bit. I called Natasha; no answer. But hell, the sun was up; she was a star; probably she'd left for work hours ago.

  Over breakfast oatmeal I read the morning's Herald-Standard. Waverly was in the headlines, by occupation if not by name: publisher held in murder case. Mild enough. His name was in the subhead: Gordon Waverly, Publisher of Inside, Charged With Murder of Finley Pike.

  The story gave the facts clearly — and without undue emotion. But it was all covered quite thoroughly. It didn't look so good for Waverly. The shooting and death of J. B. Kester was given quite a bit of space since it was somewhat of a puzzler, and he'd had a long criminal record, which was included in the story. My name was mentioned as an investigator employed by the suspect. No mention was made of Al Gant, Mooneyes, or the other men who'd been in that speeding Imperial.

  Toward the bottom of the front-page story some of Finley Pike's personal history was given, none of it scandalous. He'd been a newspaperman, had worked as a press agent for a few years, then edited a TV trade journal before going to work for Waverly.

  After that there was a small shocker. "Mr. Pike, in addition to his other duties and his authorship of Inside's popular feature 'Goulash,' personally wrote the column 'Lifelines For the Lifelorn' under the nom de plume of — Please turn to Col. 4, Sec. A."

  I turned to Col. 4, Section A. "Amanda Dubonnet."

  There was more, but I paused to think, "Why, the little monster." So he was the character who'd written, with too much gush and ick, such un-deathless advice as that to a jilted orphan: ". . . So, dear child, see him no more — he's not for you! Cut him out of your bruised heart! And if ever you need sympathy or comfort again, write me. Ill always be here. Think of me, dear, as your mother. Sincerely, Amanda."

  Some sincere mother, Finley. He wasn't here, either; he'd been wrong about that, too.

  Oh, boy, I thought. I'll tell you the truth. I have never been able to understand the weird mental processes of people who write to the Amanda Dubonnets for advice on their physical, mental, spiritual, psychological, pathological, ontological, astrological, and hugely improbable problems. But, surely, even if they should perhaps better have written to an encyclopedia, they deserved something a bit more than a Finley Pike.

  I read on to the end of the story, but there was nothing else of equal fascination. Yes, fascination — in the Amanda bit there'd been a clue. Maybe that jilted orphan — or one of her brothers or sisters — had killed Finley-Amanda. If so, in a different world, it might have been adjudged justifiable homicide. And maybe I was reaching, too; maybe Gordon Waverly had in truth, and unjustifiably, committed homicide upon Finley's head.

  With that slightly sour thought fermenting inside my own head, I went to work.

  I didn't go straight down to see Waverly. Under the circumstances I wanted to know a bit more about what was going on before I talked to my client again. I wanted to be a bit more sure, that is, that he was going to remain my client.

  Natasha Antoinette was emoting in Jeremy Slade's latest doozy, Return of the Ghost of the Creeping Goo, and I finagled the location where shooting was going on this day. It was little more than ten miles out in the boondocks, so I aimed the Cad that way and went.

  A dirt road led off the highway, and when I was a mile down it I could see the activity on my right, where morning sunlight glanced from the chrome and metal of parked cars, and beyond them cameras and booms and lights and reflectors. People moved about in colorful costumes, many of the garments flesh-colored.

  The plume of dust behind the Cad would have signaled my arrival even if I'd been trying to sneak up on the moviemakers, which I wasn't. Consequently
, when I parked among the other cars a short and rotund fellow with a look of mild exasperation on his round face was waiting for me.

  "We're shooting a picture here, you know," he said a bit stiffly.

  "I do know," I replied pleasantly. "That's why I'm here. I'd like to talk to — "

  "You can't talk to anybody, mac. These people are in the middle of a scene right — "

  "I know," I said less pleasantly. "But not every little instant. I'd merely like a word or two with Natasha Antoinette, in a moment of relative idleness." I climbed out of the Cad and looked down at him. "All right?"

  "Well, it's not up to me, mac. But — "

  "I promise not to wave at the camera."

  "Look, mac — "

  "Quit calling me mac! Please?"

  He went back a step. "Maybe . . . we better ask somebody. Slade or somebody."

  "A fine idea."

  He turned and walked toward the people and equipment. I followed him. Actually, the performers weren't in the middle of a scene at the moment. I recognized Jeremy Slade, his back to me, talking to the picture's director, who was seated in a canvas chair. Several yards to their right were forty or fifty people, some of them quite misshapen — half in and half out of monster costumes — but some of them very nicely shapen indeed. They were the toothsome starlets found in all Jeremy Slade productions, and they, too, appeared to be half out of their costumes. What I'd thought flesh-colored outfits were in many cases expanses of flesh-colored starlet.

  One of the most outstanding expanses was a big Amazonian blast of a babe, busty, butty, ungirdled, and uninhibited, who had appeared in both of the first two Goo movies and who possessed the improbable name of Vivyan Virgin. Hell, let's be honest; it wasn't merely improbable, it was a downright lie. Vivyan was the gal responsible for the expensive delay in Slade's last picture. I wasn't sure just what had been wrong with her. All I'd heard was that she'd been "ill," and in Hollywood that can mean anything from terminal laryngitis to a hangover.

  The guy who'd met me at the parking lot had walked over toward Slade, and I didn't have a keeper at the moment. So when I spotted Natasha Antoinette sitting a couple yards from Vivyan Virgin I waved and started walking toward her. There wasn't any filming going on, and I didn't think anybody would have a fit if I moved around just a little. Natasha waggled her hand in reply and smiled.

  She and another girl were seated in canvas-backed chairs under a beach umbrella. Nat was a tall, black-haired, sensationally-shaped tomato wearing a kind of Grecian-Venusian white gown cut in a low loop that exposed just enough of her famous chest to get by the censors if she didn't lean over at all. The gown was ankle-length, but was pulled up now over her knees, exposing the slim but shapely brown legs.

  I stopped next to her and said, "Hi, Nat."

  "Hello, Shell." The voice was deep, smooth, velvety. "I didn't expect to see you out here."

  "Didn't expect to be here."

  "Welcome. Stick around for my dance." She smiled and blinked the big black eyes at me.

  Those eyes — they were fantastic, compelling, almost hypnotic — like black diamonds on fire, satanic, slanted, smoldering. They were eyes that could cut ten feet through a London fog, eyes to cook a man's gizzard, eyes to boil blood with.

  My blood was getting ready to sizzle my gizzard when Natasha slanted her glance away from me to the girl sitting with her under the umbrella. "This big lump is Shell Scott, Cherry," she said. "Shell, Cherry Dayne."

  "How do you do?" I said.

  "Hello, Mr. Scott."

  "Shell, please. Pretend we're old friends."

  "I'd love to."

  And I'd love for her to love to, I thought. This one had everything Natasha had, and in approximately the same percentages, since she was two or three inches shorter. And, of course, lighter in color, since in the film she apparently played the part of one of the lesser Venusians. She was wearing a gown like Natasha's, but instead of being ankle length it extended down only to her knees. When she was standing up, that is. Sitting down, it didn't extend nearly that far. Just far enough, I thought.

  And if Natasha's eyes seemed filled with something like light from outside space, this Cherry's sparkled with the electricity that makes the world go around. They were bright and clear and a vivid blue, the kind of eyes you'd expect on the devil if the devil were incandescently female, and friendly.

  But I couldn't just stand there looking from eyeball to eyeball, no matter how exciting it was. I'd come here for a purpose. It had occurred to me, however, that Natasha might not want to discuss last night in front of a third party, so I said, "Nat, as long as you're not busy at the moment, could I have a word with you alo — "

  That was as far as I got.

  A hand squeezed my left bicep like a steel octopus, and I was yanked around much more vigorously than I like to be yanked around. In fact, I do not like guys laying large hands on me even in gay good fellowship.

  So I wasn't smiling when I got my feet planted again and stared at the guy facing me. It was Jeremy Slade.

  I said, "Don't do that again."

  Before the words were out of my mouth he growled, "What the hell do you think you're doing here?"

  I chewed on my teeth for a few seconds, took a deep breath, and calmed down. After all, it was his picture. If he wanted to kick me the hell off the premises, or chew me out, I couldn't very well complain.

  So I said, "Just saying hello to an old friend." I glanced at Cherry and added, "And a new one." She smiled dazzlingly.

  Slade reached for my arm again and said, "Come on over here."

  I raised a hand and blocked his clutching fingers. "Uh-uh. Don't grab." I tried to smile. "Just lead the way."

  He grunted, then turned and walked off to a cleared area where nobody else was standing, then turned to face me.

  Slade was about five-ten and two hundred pounds, solid and blocky, his shoulders broad and his midsection lean. He looked fit and healthy, but his face was a sculptured scowl. He usually wore the expression of an astronaut going up in a space capsule against his will, sort of squashed and belligerently angular, and a bit tortured. One guess was that he was a size forty man wearing size thirty shorts; at least, his features seemed stamped with the marks of pinching, strangulation, and a dull ache.

  That, if true, might have explained his voice, as well, for it came out of a thick chest and muscled neck in an incongruously high-pitched toot or tweet. Even from a tall, pale, weedy cat the voice would have seemed too thin, but fluting from Slade's thick lips it was the sound of a dedicated birder trying to communicate with his feathered friends.

  I told him who I was, and that I wanted a word with Natasha; and now he tweeted, "What do you want to talk to her about?"

  "Nothing important, probably, Mr. Slade. Just trying to corroborate some information given me by a client."

  "Who's the client?"

  "I'd rather not say."

  "You'd rather not say."

  He scowled at me as if suddenly suffering about two more G's of boost. And when Slade scowled on purpose he did an extremely good job of it. He had eyebrows bigger and bushier and more tangled than some toupees. A flea could have lived and died in there without ever seeing daylight. Actually, they were more like one wide brow, since the two of them grew together in the middle, as if his nose had started out as hair and then grown longer and harder, like the horn of a rhinoceros.

  Finally he lifted the brow up, peeled his lips apart, squeezed them back down over his teeth. "You'd rather not say. Well, I guess that's your business."

  "Yes, sir."

  He was silent for a few moments. "Can't it wait?"

  "Not very long."

  "Well, O.K., you can talk to her — but not till we've shot the dance scene."

  "When will that be?"

  "Some time this morning. Depends on whether these idiots remember their lines or not. Once in a while they do. Might be an hour. If we're all lucky."

  He didn't strike me as a man w
ho felt lucky; and bad luck did seem to pursue him. I've mentioned the delay on his previous film, when the second female lead was out of circulation for several days. And then, shortly after shooting had started on this picture, it was very nearly delayed by Slade's being out of circulation himself. This time shooting had begun on Wednesday, April first — appropriately, I thought, on April Fool's Day — and on the following Saturday night, with only three days of the shooting schedule marked off, Slade had missed a curve on his way home and gone down a hundred feet or so into a rocky canyon. At least, his brand-new black Cadillac had gone down; Slade himself had jumped from the car — according to the newspaper story I had read — and wound up with a bruised head, plus miscellaneous bangs and scrapes. I understood he'd had an arm in a sling for a few days, but he was still lucky to be shooting his third Goo epic, now — if you call that lucky.

  I said, "All right if I wait?"

  He shrugged. "Stick around if you want to. Just stay the hell away from Natasha till she's done her scene." He paused. "She's temperamental as hell, and I don't want you — or anybody else — stirring her up till she's done. If that happened, I could get kind of temperamental myself."

  He made it sound as if there'd be eclipses of the sun and moon if Natasha got stirred up. Hell, she was maybe a little wild — and wild-eyed — but she was not the fuse of total destruction.

  However, I said, "Fair enough. Thanks, Mr. Slade."

  He grunted. I strolled away, letting an eye rove over the activity. It was an interesting rove. An hour later I'd watched one scene shot twice, talked to an old friend named Ed Howell, and spent a few more minutes with lovely Cherry Dayne. She told me she had to run away from some oysters and get rescued by Ed, then she'd be finished for the day.