The Shell Scott Sampler (18 page)

She could speak clearly enough now, though she was still somewhat rocky. “I want to go,” she said. “But I don't think I could bear it tonight. I'm just drained. Oh, poor Leslie. He never could drink worth a damn!” She tried to smile, and almost made it. “I've seen him pass out sober,” she said.

In a little while, after she assured me she was truly all right, I left.

It was a unique situation, I was thinking. Shortly after I'd gone inside Mrs. Moulder's home she had become my client, but she was no longer my client when I left. Quickest case of my entire career.

Or so I thought then.

I stood on the spongy green grass of the fairway, looking up at the stars. Then I lowered my gaze to the darkened clubhouse on my left, and the pale gleam of lights lining its second story. Behind each of a dozen windows, twice as tall as they were wide, was a blue glow, soft as the dust from a butterfly's wing, the pale blue lights of the Skylight Lounge.

I walked toward it.

It wasn't merely that I felt like having a cool drink—though I did. But even though Moulder was in the jug and the real work of the case was done, still there were questions, little questions, in my mind.

Or maybe it was that something which had begun wiggling in my head shortly after seven forty-five P.M. had not yet completely stopped wiggling.

The Skylight Lounge was a membership club—the whole of Hollywood Hills Estates was exclusively for the membership, for that matter. But by producing my private investigator's wallet card and holding it casually before me as I walked in, I was admitted without difficulty by an exceptionally strong-looking but not very bright-looking individual clothed in black satin shirt with high collar buttoned around the neck, Russian style, black satin trousers, and black shoes curving up and to a point in front, as if he had two small gondolas on his feet.

He was something, all right; but the hat-chick in the small booth beyond him was something else. She looked like a taller, slightly plumper edition of Jazz. Yeah, Jazz. Saucy little Jazz. Where, I wondered, was she? Did she miss me? Was she eating her heart out? Probably she was home, eating a hamburger.

The hat-check girl wore a rather stimulating costume which, I quickly noted, was repeated on the three other girl employees in view. The costumes, of black satin, were: bra, with bulge of cloth at bottom and bulge of girl at top, bare midriff of girl at midriff, huggy short-shorts, net stockings, and black high-heeled slippers.

I noted all this on my way to the bar, which was around the corner of the wall and to my left. It was ten stools long, facing the windows I'd been eyeing from the fairway a minute ago. Two couples and a lone man occupied the seats at this end of the bar, so I walked past them and slid onto an empty stool near the other end.

As I sat down, a tall, broad-shouldered bartender in a white jacket with gold piping hanging all over it was saying into the bar phone, “What do you mean, he's in jail?” A pause. Then, “Who?”

His back was to me, but I could see his reflection in the long mirror behind the bar. He was a good-looking sonofagun, dark, with black sultan-in-the-harem eyes. One of those horny Latins, I figured. But at the moment he appeared to be about half as cracked up as Georgina had been not long ago.

He listened a moment silently, then hung up and turned around. He glanced at me, let his eyes hang on my face for a second, then stepped to the bar and looked past me as if searching for somebody in the crowded room.

“Bourbon and water,” I said. “If you're up to it.”

He turned his head toward me. “Up to it?”

“You look a little rocky. You all right?”

He glanced past me again. “Yeah. I —” He stopped, then went on, “I just had some bad news, that's all. About a friend of mine.”

“Leslie Moulder?”

“Yeah —” He stopped again, and looked at me more intently this time. After a couple of seconds he said, “Yes, it was about Mr. Moulder. What's it to you?”

“I think I know what the bad news was.”

He scowled. “I guess it isn't a secret. If it is, it won't be for long. I don't remember seeing you here before. Are you a member?”

“No.” I nodded toward the phone. “That call from the cops?”

He didn't answer for a while. Then he said, with just a bit more heat than before, “I'm not sure it's your business—sir—but it was from Mr. Moulder's wife. I have to inform Mrs. Gordon, and others, that we may be in for some … mild difficulty.” He paused. “What makes you so interested?”

“It's my business. I'm a private detective. I already knew Moulder was jugged. Fact is, Mrs. Moulder was about to hire me to try locating him when we learned he'd been picked up.”

He nodded slowly, then smiled kind of halfheartedly and stuck out his hand. “That's different. Sorry if I wasn't very—pleasant. That call shook me up a little. I'm Falcon.” He pronounced it Fahlcone. “Rafael Falcon.”

“Shell Scott.” I shook his hand. “I no more than got hired than Mrs. Moulder fired me. Well, not actually fired—there just wasn't anything left for me to do.” I grinned. “So I decided to crash the Lounge for a drink. If there's no objection.”

“No objection.” He flashed me a grin. “Now.”

He'd been good-looking even when resembling a guy having a severe attack of gallstones, but more relaxed and smiling he was handsome enough to make normal men feel that life had been not merely unfair to them, but positively cruel. Despite the dimness here in the lounge, his even white teeth looked like several pairs of dice with no spots on them, and his thick black hair had more waves in it than really seemed necessary.

He was well beyond adolescence, maybe five or six years past my thirty, but he possessed the almost-boyish look of some cats who seem not truly to begin aging until they get one foot and three toes in the grave. It was my guess he had a long lusty life ahead of him, if he didn't kill himself in the most probable fashion. Most probable, and enjoyable. So who wants to live forever?

“Bourbon and water, was it?” he asked.

“Right.”

He mixed the drink quickly and placed it before me. “Excuse me a minute, Mr. Scott.”

He ducked under the bar's end and walked to a table against the far wall, leaned over and spoke to a woman with blond hair intricately piled atop her head, then pulled out a chair and sat down.

I carried my drink to the hat-check booth and talked to the girl there for a couple minutes.

She was a cute young creature about old enough to vote, with poochy raspberry-colored lips, and a happy disposition, and big crinkly-cornered eyes very bright and shiny, as if she'd just finished laughing till she cried. But she seemed not totally aware of every little thing that went on around her.

Leslie Moulder? Who was he? Any relation to Mrs. Moulder?

Sort of, I said. They were married. Didn't Mrs. Moulder act married?

She was a boss, so she acted—well, like a boss. How do you
act
married, anyway? She knew some married people, and they didn't act married.

She was Ruthie Barrows, but everyone called her Sweetie, I discovered. I could call her Sweetie, too, if I liked.

So, who were some of the other people who worked here, Sweetie?

Well, there was one of the other bosses, Mrs. Gordon. It was the blonde with hair piled atop her head, to whom Falcon was still talking. Then there was Rafe, of course. Mr. Falcon. Rafael.

Tell me about Rafe.

He was
too
good-looking. Dreamy. And dance? He could dance all the new steps, and even some of the old steps. He'd taught her some of the old steps. They were almost more fun than the new steps. Especially with Rafe. She'd been out with him a couple of times—but it didn't mean anything, darn it. Not to him. He went out with all the girls.

All the girls? How about Georgina Moulder?

She wasn't a girl, she was an old woman. Besides, she was a boss.

Maybe Mrs. Gordon?

She was a boss, too. Besides, she was married to
Mr.
Gordon. What was the matter with me, was I some kind of nut?

I ignored that question. “How about Lynn Duncan?” I asked Sweetie. “Her, too?”

She hadn't heard the news.

“Oh, sure,” she said with a sigh. “Her more than most, I guess. Especially lately. But Lynn's really a dove.”

“Is that good?”

“She's beautiful, simply gorgeous! Haven't you seen her?”

“Yeah, once. For a little while. Big thing between her and Rafe?”

She pooched her lips out a little more. “Right now, I guess. Real big. But Rafe—he turns you on, and then he turns you off.”

“Is that good?”

She rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. “It is for a little while.”

“What's Mr. Gordon like?”

“He's a —”

“I know, he's a boss. Besides that what's he like?”

“He's gone a lot of the time, so I don't know him too well. But he's nice. Handsome, and tall, and with awfully pretty white hair —” She glanced at my head. “Not like yours. But white from, well, he's about fifty or sixty. You know, a hundred years old.”

“Ah, then I presume he remains aloof from all the girls, the cocktail waitresses and such.”

“A loof?”

“He doesn't creep up behind you, and give you a quick pinch or anything sly like that.”

She laughed, delighted. “No, but he's got something in him. Memories, maybe.” She laughed some more. “I mean, he gives you that all-hung-up look. Like —” She paused, chewed the side of her lip. “The way you're looking at me right now.”

I wondered if we should carry this conversation any further. Surely I had learned about all there was to learn from Sweetie. So I carried my drink away. The ice cubes had melted in it. I imagined Sweetie melted a lot of ice cubes.

I finished my drink and left it on the bar, noting that Rafe was no longer seated with Mrs. Gordon, who was alone at the moment. So I walked over, introduced myself, and asked if I could join her briefly.

She was quite charming. “Of course, Mr. Scott,” she said smiling. “Rafe just finished telling me who you are. I have, of course, heard of you.”

“Did Rafe tell you about Leslie Moulder?”

“Yes, isn't it terrible? In jail again.” She shook her head. “I don't know what to think.”

Mrs. Gordon was in her late thirties, I guessed. Aimed toward forty, anyhow, but still going uphill and not down. She had the look of a high-fashion model who had quit the racket, stopped crash-dieting, and put some healthy meat on her skeleton. The cheekbones were high and prominent, giving her cool blue eyes a slightly Eurasian cast. And it was a sweet, soft mouth, which must have worn a lot more smiles than frowns.

We talked casually for a minute or two. She told me that Rafe was bar manager of Hollywood Hills Estates, and worked the Skylight bar during the week.

I took the opportunity to say, “Rafe's quite a hit with the girls, I gather. I can understand why.”

“He is devilishly handsome, isn't he? But he, like nearly all bachelors—you are a bachelor, aren't you, Mr. Scott?—plays the field, as men say. He even made a play for me at one time,” she continued. “Can you imagine that?”

“I can imagine it. You mean since you married Mr. Gordon?”

She smiled. “It could hardly have been before. We've been married for nineteen years, Mr. Scott, and it's a good marriage.” She paused. “I told Rafe I was marvelously complimented, but he really should play in his own back yard. He's wonderfully amusing when he wants to be.”

“There must be some husbands who miss the joke. I wonder if he ever tried making a play, as you put it, for Mrs. Moulder.”

She had been unusually frank until that point, but I guess I started overstaying my welcome right then.

“I'm sure I wouldn't know about that,” Mrs. Gordon said coolly. “And even if I did, I'm equally sure it would be none of my business.”

She didn't exactly tell me to leave, but the conversation from then on was brisk and without any more of her sweet, soft smiles. I did determine that her husband was once more out of town, as he often was. In San Francisco—he owned the Southbay Apartment complex there. He'd been gone for three days and wouldn't be back until tomorrow. Mrs. Gordon didn't know the slightest thing about Vincent Blaik, except, of course, that he had defended Leslie Moulder.

We talked a bit about Leslie, but I learned nothing new. Except that, clearly, Mrs. Gordon felt Leslie had been justly convicted and sentenced. But she felt no real animus toward him, and if her husband was willing to have Leslie return to Hollywood Hills she was willing to welcome him back.

At least she had been—but Leslie might be a murderer now, mightn't he? And one doesn't welcome back murderers, does one?

She had a point, even though Moulder's guilt hadn't yet been proved in court. But at that point I excused myself.

The thought had been creeping up on me that I was engaged in an exceptionally fruitless operation. Moulder was safely in the can, I no longer had a client, yet here I was still roaming around merely because of a mental wiggle. It was becoming pointless. And there are other wiggles.

I was, of course, again thinking of Miss Jasmine Porter.

Not that she had been far from my thoughts at any time during the evening. It was still early—not yet eleven p.m.—and with luck Jazz would still be up and about. She might even be willing to take up, belatedly, where we'd left off.

It was settled. I'd phone Samson and get up-to-date, then, the last of duty done—I smiled, just thinking about it.

So I called Sam.

And that is when things began getting gummy.

“Shell,” he said, “I tried to reach you, but you'd left Mrs. Moulder's.”

“I came to the Skylight Lounge out here, Sam. For a look, and—well, just to nose around a little. How'd the boys do with Georgina?”