The Sweet Ride (The Shell Scott Mysteries) Read online

  All in all, I was in surprisingly good shape. Some aching bruises and a bit of a limp, but nothing of overwhelming importance—except for the head, which pounded wildly from time to time. Fortunately, the painful pounding wasn’t constant, and the really fierce jangles inside my skull usually lasted only a few seconds before subsiding to no more of a problem than I’ve become accustomed to from hangovers.

  It was 7 p.m., and I’d spent the last three hours with Bannister. While at the Standard station, I had first called Hank Wainwright and brought him up to date, becoming a mite vexed with him when he kept saying things like, “The hell with your head, pal. Tell me more about Canada.”

  After hanging up on him, I phoned Bannister, who drove into town and picked me up, clucked appropriately at my marks and lumps, then suggested that we both return to his home.

  It was some home. He told me without boastfulness or apology that it had cost him a quarter of a million four years ago, and he’d put another hundred and fifty thousand into improvements, gadgets, and landscaping. There were twenty-eight rooms in the place, actually two separate houses connected by a covered walkway walled with frosted glass.

  The larger building was a low steel-and-concrete building with sweeping curves and clean lines, twenty-two rooms “to flop around in,” as Bannister put it. The adjoining six rooms were where Bannister worked, exercised, rested when he felt like it, or just “goofed off,” and I spent most of my time there.

  What he called his exercise room was six hundred square feet filled with everything from barbells and weights, and combined steam bath and/or sauna, to machines that stopped just short of rolling you flat as a pancake and pouring syrup on you.

  That’s where I spent more than an hour getting rolled and rubbed and cooking in the sauna, then lolling in an alternating hot and cold whirlpool bath. After all that I felt lively enough to tell Bannister he should be arrested for practicing rejuvenation without a license, whereupon we’d simply talked for another good hour. And it was a good hour.

  It was only by sitting with him, having a beer and chewing the fat, that I was able to appreciate the quickness of his mind and breadth of his knowledge, combined with a kind of relaxed take-me-or-leave-me attitude that I liked but hadn’t been aware of during our brief discussion earlier in the day. By the time we left for the Sherwood, Bannister—who soon was “Ban”—and I were getting along like longtime friends who wore the same old kicked-out-of-school tie. He had polish and a smooth slick surface, but he was a rough cob underneath and didn’t give a damn if it showed.

  Also by the time we left his home Bannister had made a dozen phone calls, to Hank Wainwright among others. Later tonight we were to meet Hank and Martinique Monet at the Rigoletto, where the police sergeant, Delcey, would join us. Hopefully, by then there’d be something to celebrate.

  But not at the moment. As the result of his various calls, Bannister reported to me that: Mayor Fowler had not arrived in his City Hall office at 2:30 p.m., or at any time since then; Yoogy Dibler was nowhere to be found; nor had Hugh Grimson shown up at any of his usual apartments, hotel rooms, businesses, bars, or Silvano’s Garage; and Melinda Fowler—I’d suggested that she might know where Daddy was—hadn’t been located yet, either. I refrained from suggesting they drag for her in Fowler’s swimming pool, since I felt no uncontrollable urge to blab everything that had happened to me this day. Finally, nobody had reported hitting a sky-blue Cadillac sedan with a big white-haired guy in it, not on Mulberry Drive or anywhere else, which was no great surprise to me.

  I made some calls myself, one to Coastal Airlines, and another to the people from whom I had rented two Cadillacs and to whom I had returned one Cadillac. They—and the local law, too, for that matter—were reasonably nice about it.

  Shortly before 7 p.m., Bannister put his nearly full half-quart glass down on a black-marble table and said, “I am sick unto suicide of beer. Let’s go get a man’s drink, Shell,” and I said, honestly, “You took those blessed words right out of my mouth.”

  As he walked around in front of his Lincoln and joined me, Bannister looked up and I followed his gaze, squinting to cut the glare from colored gobs of brightness illuminating the hotel’s front, and fallout from the half-dozen arc lights sweeping the sky. I could make out a soft glow from behind the windows, alternating with equal-sized dark spaces where the wall was solid, encircling the twenty-second floor.

  “You’d think they were opening the entire hotel, Ban,” I said, “instead of just the top of the thing.”

  “When our estimable Mr. Grimson does a job, he likes to make a splash—if it’s legal. Otherwise, of course, not a ripple.”

  Bannister’s reference to Grimson was based on his educated belief that at least a million bucks of Mr. G.’s own loot was in the Club Rogue, the remainder of the required capital having been supplied by a few large and several small local investors.

  “How legal are the waitresses up there?” I glanced again toward the top floor as we walked to the hotel entrance.

  He smiled. “Hundred percent. Tonight. Maybe all year. It’s a private club, and just about everybody in town who might say no-no is a member. Unless we get pressure from outside the county or from Comstock’s ghost, there won’t be any trouble.” As we entered the express elevator he added, “The ladies should add a touch of class, don’t you think?”

  “Ban, you know what I think.” That was all I had time to say before the apparently rocket-launched elevator stopped with a pshoosh. The doors opened, and we stepped out for our first look at the brand-new Club Rogue.

  We were early. Only about a fifth of the expected five hundred members and guests—all male—were present. A few were moving around or standing in small groups, but most sat in the man-sized mahogany-and-black-leather chairs around low tables that looked like black flat-topped mushrooms.

  “I am impelled to go to the can,” Bannister said indelicately. “Stand here by the elevator and think elevating thoughts until I return.”

  “Yeah, sure. It’ll probably take you an hour and a half. Or more. I’ll miss all the fun.”

  “Fun is a temptation, Shell. And abstinence is good for nothing. Remember that when you are tempted.”

  “At least get started, will you?”

  “I intend to. First, however, I feel it would be wise to determine whereat is the toilet.”

  I shook my head. “Here, where the members have so much class, it’s probably the door that says ‘Can’ on it.”

  “Ah.” He walked off.

  I moved to my right, farther into the huge room, and glanced around. The walls were composed of huge smoky-gray mirrors alternating with clear plate-glass windows, through which could be seen the lights and color of the bustling and new-rich young city sparkling below. Seen, that is, if any of the lively lads here tonight cared to look.

  I was no longer wearing my swell suit, not only because it was damaged beyond repair, but because black tie was de rigueur for tonight’s opening. Bannister had arranged for several stylish outfits to be delivered to his home, each a slightly different size, so I was now inside a tux that fit nearly as well as if it had been built on me.

  I was gazing, somewhat askance, at my rather dashing, I kept telling myself, reflection in one of the huge mirrors when the first of the dozen long-promised and highly touted Club Rogue “Cocktail Hostesses,” each guaranteed to be exquisitely good-looking and gorgeously contoured, strolled past behind me. In the gray-tinted mirror, I wasn’t able to get a really good look, but this first one lived up to every adverb and adjective of the advance billing, plus several extra superlatives. Including the fact that she was naked. Yes, she really was quite nude. Strolling, thus, not more than two yards behind me.

  Until that memorable moment, I guess I hadn’t believed. Not honest-and-truly. Not really. Not in my heart of hearts. Until that moment, too, I had been reasonably content to examine my not entirely unpleasant reflection, which occupation palled instantly.

  By the ti
me I turned around, which was pretty quick, I realized that the astonishingly proportioned and wondrously wavy lady was not entirely nude. She wore high-heeled shoes the shade of rich burgundy, hardly noticeable against the thick carpet of the same deep red—very similar to the wine-colored carpet I’d admired in Mayor Fowler’s home—and a similarly tinted puff of what could have been dyed goosefeathers in her blonde hair.

  And then I became aware of something else about her, something familiar. This lovely was certainly gorgeously contoured, well in excess even of the guarantee, but the thing triggering near-recognition wasn’t that one-of-a-kind body—smooth white back, incredibly in-swooping waist accenting lyrelike hips, long smooth pale thighs, and firm rounded calves—at least not entirely. It was her almost-visible profile.

  Then she turned her head farther toward me, and—Hell and Hot Dog, it was Canada. Luscious Canada Southern.

  “Hey—hi!” I yelled.

  She had turned her head away from me again and was still strolling ahead, also away from me—and at last I noted she was carrying a small tray on which were some drinks. There was quite a hum and bubble of voices, and possibly she hadn’t heard me.

  I opened my mouth, but Canada was pretty far off, and I wasn’t sure she’d appreciate my bellowing her name. So I let her go, but watched with more than idle interest until she served her drinks to some vulgarly staring men at a table near the far wall.

  By the time Bannister rejoined me, I’d spotted several other girls floating to and fro in the dimness of the Club Rogue. They weren’t difficult to spot, since they were the only girls here, and also the only people without clothes on, and it was thus not difficult to determine that they were girls.

  Bannister clapped me on the shoulder, saying, “It was easy to find. Would you like to know why?”

  “Not really—”

  “Because there is no girls’ room. Impossible to make a mistake here.”

  “Don’t kid yourself. Wait till you get a look at the waitresses.”

  “I have already surveyed the scene with rising attention. My judgment is that we should sit down. Where would you like to settle?”

  I pointed to the area where I’d seen Canada serving drinks, and we wound our way between tables, took seats before a mirrored section of the wall. After about a minute I caught sight of Canada again, and this time she saw me and smiled, then lifted the tray she was carrying, presumably so I could see that it was loaded with highballs. I raised a hand over my head and waggled it, pointing down at the top of our table, and she nodded.

  “I have ordered drinks,” I said to Bannister. “At least, I hope that’s what I did.”

  “Do I know the charming girl who will serve us?”

  “Do you know Canada Southern?”

  “Indeed I do. Ah, wonder of wonders. You have a keen eye, Shell, and faultless judgment. Where is the impossible Miss Southern?”

  She had just finished serving some men four tables away, and was turning to go back to wherever the bar was. I pointed and Bannister craned his head around. “Saints preserve me,” he said. “I could become an alcoholic here.” He paused. “I fear that self-made sonofabitch, Grimson, will somehow make a billion dollars from this enterprise.”

  “Have you seen the guy?”

  He shook his head, though his eyes did not stray from Canada’s whitely gleaming form as she moved away from us. “In my survey, I made a quick tour of the room, and Mr. G. had not yet arrived. Even though it is still early, I did find already present our congressman, three state senators, two judges, and the man who does my dry cleaning.”

  He pointed them out to me, adding more soberly, “Ev isn’t here yet, Shell. I can’t help being seriously concerned now. Just before I joined you I called his home again. And, again, no answer.”

  “This has been a damned peculiar day. The last time I talked to Fowler he mentioned being called out on some kind of emergency. But he never got around to explaining what it was.”

  Bannister frowned, then nodded toward the wall on our right. A long dais had been set up there, on it a cloth-covered table with thirteen chairs behind it. “There’s still an hour before the formal greetings, speeches of welcome, and Roguish remarks. Probably the mayor and guests of honor won’t arrive till shortly before they’re to take their seats on the dais.” He paused. “Just in case Ev isn’t here by then, I’ll speak to Cantor about it.”

  “Cantor’s the chief of police, isn’t he?”

  Bannister nodded, indicating a large red-faced guy at a nearby table with three other men. “The bald fellow talking to him now is the district attorney. Hank Wainwright’s boss.”

  While I had been wasting time looking at all those law-enforcement officers, Canada Southern had been approaching, and by the time I glimpsed her from the corner of my eye she was only a few feet away.

  I pulled my head around, feeling a smile growing. She undulated the last few feet to our table and stopped, not exactly all at once, but in wondrously impressive stages. This gal had a body that was practically articulate. And I’d thought of a couple questions to ask it.

  When all was still, she nodded at Ban and said, “Good evening, Mr. Bannister.” Then, “And hello again, Shell. What would you like?”

  “Don’t ask.”

  “Scotch, bourbon, brandy, Martini? Rum and—”

  “Couldn’t we just talk?”

  Her lips curved in a smile but she said sternly, “If you don’t hurry up and order, I’ll have to go to another table. The room’s beginning to fill.”

  She was right, the size of the crowd had doubled in the last fifteen minutes. “O.K.,” I said, “bourbon and water, then. Ban?”

  “Scotch and Calso water, Canada.” She looked at him, still half-smiling. “I am fifty-seven years old. In all those years I have never seen a more beautiful woman.”

  He wasn’t laying a flip line of flattery on her but clearly making a quiet statement of fact, and I think Canada was startled. Startled, but pleased.

  “Well ... thank you,” she said, just a bit flustered. “I’ll get your drinks.”

  “Yeah, hurry,” I said.

  “You get the cheap bourbon,” she said coolly, then turned and undulated away.

  After a minute or two I glanced around the rapidly filling room, and something near the dais caught my eye. I got a very queer feeling, and stood up, to get a better view. I hadn’t been mistaken after all, and I was relieved but at the same moment strangely puzzled.

  Because seated alone at a table just below the dais, with his back to the dais, and thus facing me, was Mayor Everson Fowler.

  The puzzling thing was that one of the nude waitresses was bending toward him, and therefore had what might loosely be described as her back to me, and the mayor’s hand was gliding over one of her rounded and gleaming buttocks.

  Even more puzzling, I would have sworn I had seen that marvelous fanny before. It is not true, at least in speaking of fannies, that if you’ve seen one you’ve seen ‘em all, and if I had not known such a thing was next to impossible, I would have believed I was once again gazing upon the delectable derriere I had first seen water-besprinkled and glistening beauteously in the afternoon sunlight.

  Then the girl laughed, turning her head and glancing briefly around the room, and I was forced to believe the well-nigh unbelievable. It was indeed the same derriere, the same merry face, the same girl.

  “Well, I’ll be goddamned,” I said aloud.

  Bannister had been looking at me curiously. “Goddamned about what?”

  “I am happy to be able to report, Ban, that His Honor has put in an appearance at last. But either looking at Canada up close has completely ruined my eyes, or what I really do see is the mayor patting his daughter’s rear end.”

  “What? Ev’s here.... He’s what? Melinda?”

  Bannister got to his feet, located the table I described for him, and stared. “Yes, I—wait a minute. You’re talking about the mayor’s daughter? Melinda Fowler?”

>   “Yeah. And only seconds ago His Honor was—there he goes again.”

  There he went, indeed. The big paw reached around to brush that same rounded hemisphere.

  “The mayor wouldn’t think of allowing his own daughter...” Bannister let it trail off. Then he said in an odd voice, “That’s not Melinda Fowler, Shell.”

  “What do you mean? I tell you, I saw her in the pool....”

  Bannister went on. “I know her, though. Went to a three-day party in Phoenix a couple of years ago, and she was part of the entertainment. Name’s Kitty Wilson—at least that’s what she called herself.”

  “Kitty? But—”

  “I don’t know what she’s doing now, but then she was the highest-priced whore in Arizona.”

  I opened my mouth, closed it, then went through the same motions again. Something was trying to get said, but it wasn’t ready to come out.

  “And unless I heard one thing and you said another,” Ban continued, still with that odd note in his voice, “I get the impression you did say His Honor. Shell, just in case you really don’t know it, the man over there playing with Kitty’s ass isn’t the mayor.”

  His voice seemed to become fainter. I was starting to get it. The jumble of thought was rising inside me, bouncing around inside my skull, and my head started thumping and aching as if a rock-and-roll band was tuning up inside my brain.

  Bannister’s voice really did sound fainter to me as he continued speaking, but I heard every word quite clearly.

  “That sonofabitch,” he said, “is Hugh Grimson.”

  11

  For about three seconds I felt as if I’d had an overdose of novocaine. I got half numb all over, but when the sensation of chill and shock passed I automatically moved around the table and took a couple of quick steps forward.

  But then I stopped, shook my head, went back to my seat.

  This was no time to charge over there. Not just yet, not until I made a lot more sense of whatever the hell was going on.

  Bannister had continued to look across the room, but then he also sat down and said to me, “Maybe I got the wrong impression, Shell. When you said His Honor, I thought you meant—”