The Shell Scott Sampler (22 page)

The word she said wasn't a very thrilling one. Maybe Leslie had picked up some of his lingo at home, before going off to college.

“Well, you don't have to bite my head off,” I said. “You were much nicer this afternoon. But this afternoon, of course, you wanted to know if I'd gotten a look, any kind of look, at—Lover. That was vital. I wasn't even supposed to be —”

“Quit calling him Lover!”

“Not quite yet. I will, at the right time.” I smiled. “I'm funny, I suppose. I have a certain delicacy of feeling about how things should be —”

“You jerk. What's the rest of it?”

“OK.” I dropped the light tone. “It's murder, and it's murder one. Here's the rest of it: conspiracy to commit murder, murder in fact accomplished, murder attempted and missed, and murder attempted and missed—again. How's that for openers?”

She didn't say anything. Except with her eyes.

“Back to Leslie. Oddly, he asked me the very same question you did—if I'd seen the gunman—but for an exactly opposite reason. He hoped I
had
got a look at the man because then I might know it hadn't been him. When I finally started thinking maybe his drunken story was true, something else puzzled me. I couldn't understand why you and your co-killer would have taken a chance somebody might believe Leslie's story, even as crazy as it sounded and as drunk as he was—plus the fact that he had a fat motive and no alibi, his public threat to kill Blaik and the rest of it. That puzzled me, however, only until I realized you
wouldn't
have taken that chance. Not the careful way you'd planned everything else. When the cops found poor Leslie he was supposed to be dead.”

“You're a liar!”

“Not any more. That was only on the phone. I very rarely —”

She called me a couple unflattering names.

I said flatly, “Leslie was supposed to be quite dead when the police found him. I'm not guessing, Georgina. I don't yet know whether you fed him some kind of poison or sleeping pills in his drinks, or just poured more booze down him after he passed out—SID can check that—but I
know
you thought Leslie was dead. He would have been, too, except that he probably roused somewhat from his stupor when you and your helper moved him from the motel and dumped him into the car, and that plus his throwing up, and the police feeding him coffee and keeping him awake, undoubtedly saved his life.” I smiled. “Fortunately the police did find him—because you went to such pains to be certain they, and I, were looking for him. Ironic, isn't it?”

“That's ridiculous. All of it. Even if it were true, you'd just be guessing —”

“I told you, I'm not guessing. Georgina, you're going to hate yourself, but I knew, knew for sure, that Leslie was set up for the second murder—the third if Lynn hadn't been missed—and that you were part of it, you were in on the planning of it, you in fact thought Leslie
was
dead—the very moment I remembered something that you, yourself, told me.”

She was interested enough now. But all she said was, “Go on.”

“Well, you keeled over in a faint earlier this evening, you'll recall. More recently another lady pulled a fake faint on me, but yours was the real thing. You
really
fainted. And the interesting thing, Georgina, is that it was something you not only hadn't planned, but that you couldn't have prevented. And that gave you away.”

I pulled the last drag from my cigarette and stubbed it out in an ashtray.

“You aren't making any sense with this yet.”

“I will. Let me set the stage, Georgina. Me on the phone, you twirling a prop champagne bottle, listening, oh how attentively, listening. Waiting for Leslie to be found, hoping, hoping he'd been found. And on the phone to Samson I said, ‘You've already found him?' or something like that. Even in the middle of your act—‘What
is
it?'—you must have been dancing inside. It was working beautifully, exactly according to plan. Even better, dumb old Shell Scott was right by your side to help out, proof of the widow's devotion.”

I grinned at Georgina. “You knew I was talking to the law, you heard my end of the conversation. Then you let me tell you the police had found Leslie. In a stolen car. That he'd been drinking. The case was open-and-shut, the police were convinced your husband had killed Blaik.”

I looked at her appraisingly. She was interested, intensely interested, but that was all. No real reaction.

“You don't get it yet, do you? Up till then, Georgina, you'd been a woman of steel, but still a woman. Facing tragedy bravely and unafraid. There was still a glow of color in your cheeks—eight to five you
did
slap your face in the bedroom. You wanted me to tell you everything, not spare your feelings. So I told you what I knew, explained that the police had Leslie in an interrogation room, that he hadn't confessed yet, but that it was almost certain Leslie Moulder had murdered Vincent Blaik—at least I started to say that last part. But by then you were on your way, you were gone.”

Comprehension was beginning to dawn, slowly, in her eyes.

“Uh-huh,” I said. “Here your world was crashing about your head. Beloved husband was indeed a killer, he'd been found, only a day out of prison and his crime was murder this time. Still, you stood up to all that. Because everything, every word, up till then fit the picture in your mind of a dead man found in a parked car. You didn't come apart at the seams, didn't feel the shock that pulled the blood from your face and sent you into that faint until the moment when you realized the sickening truth: your husband wasn't dead.”

Georgina looked a bit fishy around the gills.

But she was silent for only a second or two. Then she cried out, in quite a loud
voice,
“All right!”

It was pretty loud if she was talking to me. But I didn't think she was. She wasn't.

He came out of the bedroom. So I'd had that figured, too. Fortunately. The room he would probably be in, I mean. It's a good thing I feel there's a time and place for everything, and despite Georgina's implicit, and even explicit, invitations, had not felt that this was either the place or the time.

Handsome, horny, pretty-toothed, he came out of the bedroom with a .45 caliber Colt automatic pistol in one brown hand; the pistol was pointed at my head; and at last I felt, for this at least, it was the time.

I glanced at Georgina. “Now I'll stop calling him Lover.”

Then I turned to Rafe. “Hi, there —”

“Up,” he said, very nasty. “Get ‘em up.”

“Oh, come on. You can't go around knocking off everybody who peeves you, Rafe.”

He got a certain look on his face, and without examining it closely I decided to do what he'd said. I climbed to my feet and raised my hands over my head.

“Take it easy,” I told him. “A bottle of booze—or pills, or whatever you stuffed into Leslie so he wouldn't wake up again—that's one thing. It doesn't make any noise. But if you set off that banger there'll be eighteen people charging in here from all over the fairways, not to mention cops —”

“Shut up.”

“Look, you've had it. Lynn's still alive and sure to spill soon —”

“If I have to, I'll kill you right now, Scott. Noise or no noise.”

“I suppose you would, at that.”

“Move.”

“Rafe, I was about to tell you that
cops
would also bust in here. Cops, fuzz, police officers —”

Everybody I'd run into lately was foul-mouthed as could be. What was happening to civilization? Or maybe it was just the low-type people I'd been running into. At any rate, Rafael Falcon was the most accomplished curser of them all.

“Rafe—Mr. Falcon,” I said. “Easy. You probably won't believe this—and I guess I wouldn't blame you—but the captain of the L.A.P.D. Homicide Division is somewhere behind you, in that bedroom. The one you just came out of. You don't believe it, huh? Well … He's supposed to be there. And any second he's apt to shoot you—any minute now, anyway —”

A new vein had appeared on Rafe's forehead and was throbbing down toward his left eye. I looked at Georgina, and I said it as fast as I could. “Will you calm this creep of yours down? You didn't realize it until I got here, but on the phone I was feeding you a lot of baloney. I knew
then
what I was going to do and going to say to you, and you should sure as hell understand that yourself now. Do you think I'd have come here alone, knowing everything I've just told you? And knowing you'd call your lover over here as soon as I hung up?”

Rafe was listening, too, but it was obvious he didn't believe a word of my fantasy.

Georgina, though, wasn't so sure. “You couldn't have known it was Rafe,” she said.

“The hell I couldn't. Ignoring such items as his play for Lynn Duncan, you called him,
bing,
the last time I left here. He was still on the phone when I went into the Skylight Lounge. I could see him in the bar mirror, which means he could also see me if he looked. And I imagine he looked, since by then I'm sure you'd done a good job of describing me. I'll admit you're both pretty good actors, and Rafe didn't do badly ad-lib when we had our little chat at the bar. But he still told me too much, more than he should have spilled to a stranger—even though he must have been a little panicked and knew I'd heard part of his conversation with you.”

“That's enough,” Rafe said in a strangled voice. “Out the front door. Georgina, kill some of the lights.”

“Hold it.” I faced Falcon, and looking at the big gun in his hand I really wanted to move; but I didn't. If I moved, Rafe would follow me, and I wanted him where he was, with those wide shoulders almost filling the doorway of the bedroom behind him.

“Sam,” I said, not softly. “SAM. What the hell? Get with it, will you?
Do
something.”

Rafe leaned forward in a kind of twitch, peeling his lips back and sticking the gun out a little farther. I wasn't sure, but he acted like he was going to shoot me.

“Rafe,” I said rapidly, “there's something you've simply got to believe. For both our sakes, I swear, Sam's somewhere in there behind you. Phil Samson himself, the old fuddy-duddy of Homicide. He's there. He may be unconscious—he
must
be unconscious—and there are three
other
cops either in or around this house. They got here before you did. I wanted … a lot of protection.”

I wasn't certain that Rafe was quite sane. His lips were going in and out and waggling at the sides and he was getting an expression in his eyes that I didn't like at all.

“Rafe,” I said soothingly. “Old buddy. Mr. Falcon. Your Highness. OK—the hell with that damned fuddy-duddy in there. Why didn't I think of this before? I'll go outside with you. Sure. I'll go outside and watch you get your ass shot off. Rafe—watch it! Look, I didn't mean it … well, yes I did, but—ah, why do I have to be so
honest?
Especially at a time like this. And I guess this is it, huh? Well, Rafael Falcon, let my, perhaps, last words be: ‘You're like every killer I ever met, you dumb sonofabitch, namely a dumb sonofabitch —'”

Presumably I was never closer to that Shell Scott Heaven—in which gorgeous, and tempting, and willing tomatoes ripen on celestial vines—but it is at least true that I would not care to be that close very often.

When Sam did move, it was a beautiful movement.

Of course, he was an old pro. He knew it all. I'd seen him in action before, but never with such smooth ease and grace. One moment the bedroom doorway was empty, Sam was in there having a coronary or something, I was going to get shot, going to get to go to Heaven, and then Sam was in the doorway.

Two seconds after that, maybe a second and a half, and it was over.

Sam moved Falcon's body and arm at the same time—so if the gun went off I wouldn't get hit in the head—but he didn't move him more than four inches, and the gun did not go off. I knew Samson was strong, but I'd forgotten how strong.

When he slapped Rafe's wrist with his right hand—left hand still guiding the movement of Falcon's body—and twisted, cranking the arm around and up behind Falcon's back, he broke that arm at the elbow.

I heard the pop, and Falcon's agonized scream. Sam hadn't intended to break it, I'm sure. That would have been brutal. Of course, he
could
have shot Rafe in the back of the head, from the bedroom. The thing most certainly broke, however, and seemed to keep on breaking for a while; and that was all, end of the line for Rafael Falcon.

Then there were lots of cops.

I said, “I hope I didn't disturb your sleep, gentlemen.” A bit icy, I was.

Sweat was pouring off Sam as if he'd been rained on. But did he tell me he was sorry for the delay? In a pig's eye he told me.

I stalked over to him and said, “What were you doing, out on the golf course taking a leak?”

It took him a while to smile, and he looked around a bit, making sure everything was under control. Then he smiled.

“I wanted to see if you could talk your way out of it,” he said.

“Yeah. And on my headstone you'd engrave, ‘He couldn't.'”

“That will teach you,” he said, “to call me a fuddy-duddy.”

I laughed.

And Captain Phil Samson hauled off and socked me a tremendous one in the belly. He was actually glad I was still alive.

* * *

It took no time at all to get the story out of them. Most of it was spilled before we left the house and headed downtown.

Some of it—the complex motivations, the sex, the lust not only for flesh but for money, the desire twisted into greed, and the lies on lies compounded—might never be fully told. But we got all we needed. Most of it was contained in what I'd told Lynn and Georgina. Especially Georgina.