The Shell Scott Sampler (6 page)

“The people who installed it? Unless it was a do-it-yourself job —”

“Damn,” he said abruptly. “Yes, Ladd Electronics. Mr. Ladd himself supplied the equipment and did the work. The field is hardly narrowing, is it?”

“It usually doesn't.”

We talked a few minutes longer. Finally I said, “Well, I'll have at it your way, Mr. Madison. It still bothers me, the chance you're taking with all that money.”

“I'm not really concerned about the money,” he said casually. “I'm naturally anxious to get the Da Vinci back. But I've never been much interested in money.”

Ha, I thought. He can afford it. Who's interested in turkey after Thanksgiving? But then I thought, why not? Could be. Some guys don't even like money. Some guys don't like women. Some guys are nuts.

Madison was going on, “It's Jim Chance I want to know about.”

“I hope it's the butler,” I said. When he smiled I added, “I can't help saying, if this James Chance did break it off in you, or put somebody else up to it, he must be lower than a snake in Death Valley.”

He blinked. “How odd you should use that expression.” He reached to the table on his left and picked up a small brown book, half hidden behind a heavy marble ashtray. “Before I phoned you I was reading…” He flipped the pages. “This is a translation of an old, old manuscript, Mr. Scott. From Tibet, I believe. Ah, here it is. ‘The serpent loseth not his sting though benumbed with the frost; the tooth of the viper is not broken though the cold closeth his mouth; take pity on his state and he will show thee his spirit; warm him in thy bosom, and he will requite thee with death.'”

At that moment G. Raney Madison looked all of his fifty-four years, and then some. He said slowly, “I need not, I suppose, tell you that I have been disturbed for some time, and am greatly disturbed now, wondering if I did the right thing those many years ago. It's a long time not to be sure.”

We were quiet for a few moments, then I said, “Well, aside from James Chance, there's jolly Sterling, the butler, whom I've already met. I guess. And Ladd. Your wife and son at home?”

“Yes, would you like to meet them?”

“Sure.”

“I think it wise. You may have to call here numerous times.”

“Do they know what I'm supposed to be doing, why I'm here?”

“No, and I would prefer, Mr. Scott, that you say nothing to them about it.”

I smiled sadly. Pretty quick he was going to tell me to conduct a dynamic investigation, only not to do anything. I'd be like the guy who invented a perpetual-motion machine and couldn't get it started.

“They're in the library. We can tell them you dropped in for a glass of sherry.”

“For a what?”

But he was leading the way out of his den. Into the hallway, past about five doors, around the foot of that staircase, by a half-dozen more rooms—did I say it was not a small house?—and finally through a pair of ten-foot-high carved-oak doors into an octagonal room lined on six sides with about a billion books.

Mrs. Madison and George, Jr., were no more than fifty feet away, seated on a long, burnt-orange divan. We started toward them. I had lots of time to think of what I'd say. Man, I thought, if a guy forgot where he left his book, he'd be too pooped to read it when he found it. Then G. Raney Madison was performing the introductions, and I shook hands with Mrs. Madison and their son.

He was younger than I'd expected, possibly not even twenty-one yet, with a look of a lad just recovering from tuberculosis. He was thin-faced, pale, soft, as if made of milk on the verge of clabbering. His hair was very long, fluffy, over his ears and on his neck.

About that hair: we've apparently entered an era in which a good chunk of the young and not-so-young male population is doing its damndest to look girlish—and succeeding—while the girls are cutting their hair short, wearing unfeminine garb, and egging the girlish boys on. There are male trios whose voiceless singers mouth the top teenage hits, all of which sound like the same song played in different keys, while wearing dirty sports shirts and velvet stretch pants and doing little bumps on the high notes and grinds the rest of the tune. Any day now they'll appear wearing topless bikinis and pasties.

Well, you can take it or leave it—I'll leave it—but it's happening, and a lot of otherwise sensible people are joining the movement. George Raney Madison, Jr., appeared to have joined up. It's important, I suppose, to belong; but I figure it's even more important what you belong to. Not that George Junior looked like a girl; he didn't. But he didn't look a hell of a lot like a dashing young man, either.

Mrs. Madison looked like a girl, all right; or, rather, a woman. An exceptionally good-looking woman. She was no spring chicken—I guessed she was five years younger than her husband—but she still had a good figure, and a very lovely face.

The three of us mumbled the usual inanities while Mr. Madison poured sherry from a cut-glass decanter. Ordinarily I would no more have drunk sherry at that hour than I would have stood on my head in the middle of Hollywood Boulevard during the rush hour, but this, I suppose, was to be my excuse for being here at all. According to G. Raney, at least.

There was a rather thick silence.

Then Mrs. Madison smiled sweetly and said, “You haven't been here before, have you, Mr. Scott?”

“No, ma'am. I just dropped in for a glass…”

I couldn't say it.

“Fact is,” I said smoothly, “I just dropped in to chew the fat with old G.”

Gee, it sounded good. It even felt good. Maybe it would never happen again, but here I was trading gay repartee with fifty, or maybe even a hundred, million dollars.

Well, you could have heard a gnat's wing drop off and thud on the floor. The silence lasted a while.

Gulp, down went my sherry.

The silence lasted until G. Raney Madison, Jr., said something. Just one word. But it was not a lovely word. No, not at all lovely. Actually, it was a word I never use, even when talking to myself. It's OK for school kids, for collegiate post-adolescents, say, and boy singers who wear their hair long and do little bumps and grinds. But not for me.

“Ha-ha,” I said, laughing mirthlessly. “Young man, you should wash out your mouth with a strong detergent.”

Mrs. Madison mumbled something nice, then took her son's pale hand and led him from the room. Not to paddle him, I'll bet. There was a little more silence.

Then I sighed, squared my shoulders, turned to Mr. Madison and said, “Well, it looks like we started out miserable, then lost our rapport. Am I fired?”

His eyes were squeezed shut and for a second I thought it was a symptom of the furious-Dad bit. But he was laughing, trying to keep the sound muffled. In a few moments he said, “By God, he should wash out his mouth with hydrochloric acid, if the truth be told.”

He sighed. “I'm afraid we've been a bit lenient with George, in some ways. But—well, I didn't want him to turn into a spoiled rich-man's son, ruined by money before he understood its value, that it represents work and brains and sweat. I've kept him on a rigid allowance, tried to teach him the value of a dollar, but I think we've both been too lenient with him in—other ways. I don't know. Young people these days…” He let it drop, then went on, “Ah, Mr. Scott, that was refreshing. You've given me my first moment of jollity for a long time.”

“You mean I'm not fired?”

“Certainly not. On the contrary, would you care to have a talk with George in regard —”

“Sir, I realize he's your son, but I would nonetheless prefer to stay fifty miles —”

Madison interrupted, “George is like my own son. He
is
my son. But he's adopted, you know. When he was a year old—but you wouldn't know that, would you?”

“No, sir. I did think he seemed, ah, cast from a different mold, so to speak.” He had looked very moldy, I thought.

“We've much in common, to be sure. But in some ways I've never been able to understand him.”

We chatted a while longer, and he chuckled a little more; then Mr. Madison grinned at me and said, “Would you like some more sherry?”

I grinned back at him. “I guess you know what you can do with your sherry.”

He laughed again, and I left. At least the case was starting out fun.

But as I walked through darkness toward my Cad, one phrase still lingered in my mind, from the bit G. Raney Madison had read. It was: “…requite thee with death.”

That and, mingling with it, the memory of Mr. Madison's long-suppressed laughter.

Next to my gun, the most valuable part of my investigator's equipment is a list of names, some in a little book, and some in my head. Informants, tipsters, men and women both inside and outside the rackets, all of whom have given me—or some day may give me—the “information” which breaks ninety percent of the cases investigated by anybody, whether policeman or private citizen.

On most burglaries, stickups or crimes of violence, I would have gotten in touch with anywhere from half a dozen to a dozen of those on my list. But for a caper like this one there were only two men I wanted to see. If any word at all was floating around, word about an art heist, a big score last night, they were the two most likely to have heard about it.

I found Lupo first. He was where I expected to find him, in Dolly's, a small bar well out the Sunset Strip. Dolly's was not the kind of club I usually frequented, because one rarely saw lovely tomatoes in low-cut gowns in the place. There were generally lots of handsome fellows, but I don't give a hang about looking at lots of handsome fellows.

Not many customers were present this early in the evening, and I spotted Lupo right away. He and a heavy-set, soft-looking old duck were seated alone at the end of the bar, jawing and having a drink. I glanced around, to pick out an empty booth, and when I looked back at Lupo he'd spotted me and was walking my way.

He was a tall, slim, good-looking man, about my age, thirty, with a brilliant smile and exceptionally long black lashes over dark eyes. He himself had been in the art-heisting dodge several years back, which was why I'd hunted him down. He'd found the racket too rich for his blood, however—especially after one jolt on the county—and now put his knowledge of the old and new masters to use from the other side of the law, and the other side of the counter, in Fancinni's, Fine Arts, on Wilshire Boulevard. But he still knew most of his old cronies, kept his ears open, and didn't object to a sawbuck or even a C-note from me on occasion.

“Hello, Scott,” he said—a bit nervously, I thought. A lot of guys get nervous around an investigator, public or private; but it could have been that we were both aware I wasn't exactly in my element, not in Dolly's.

“I need a little help, Lupo. OK if we grab a booth while I tell you about it?”

“Sure.”

He weaved through tables to an empty booth against the wall as I said, “Didn't mean to break up a conversation, but this won't take long.”

I glanced around, but the guy Lupo had been talking to wasn't at the bar now. Maybe he'd recognized me and thought I was here to put the arm on the joint.

But Lupo said, “Conversation? Oh, that was just some chap … don't even know his name. Just in for a drink.” He grinned. “Wanted to know if there was a topless act.”

That was a laugh. I wondered what Lupo had told him. We ordered drinks, and after making sure nobody was bending an ear nearby I said, “You hear anything about an art heist last night?”

He didn't answer right away. Then he said, “Like what?”

“A big one. Must've run to two hundred and fifty G's. Place they hit was in Bel Air.”

That was all I told him, and all I meant to tell him, at least for the moment. When you're looking for a specific item and describe it to informants, occasionally one of them will come back with a fascinating tale about that item, making it sound very authentic—by including the identical details you earlier told him. Besides, I wasn't quite sure about Lupo yet.

We'd been acquainted for over a year, and he'd passed on a few tips to me in that time. But none of them had panned out; something was always missing. That's not particularly unusual in my business—the unusual tips are the ones right on the button. Once in a while you nurse an informant along for months, even years, and then one short sentence from him saves you a week of legwork, or breaks a case, or maybe even keeps you from getting sapped—or shot—in the head.

Besides, I liked Lupo, enjoyed talking to him. He was a kick, quick-spoken and witty, undeniably brilliant, an upbeat kind of guy.

He shook his head. “Have you got a lead to anybody, Scott?”

“Not yet. My guess is it was one of four guys. Luigi, Bonicef, Spaniel … make it three.”

I'd just remembered the fourth man I'd had in mind could be eliminated. He was doing five to life at Folsom. So, unless somebody new was operating locally, those were the three who fitted the job in my book: Alston Spaniel, a tall, slim satyr with an insatiable appetite for other people's art objects, including women; goateed Guy Bonicef, ex-artist, ex-art teacher, and ex-inmate of San Quentin; and an old, but still slick, three-time loser named Luigi.

While not averse to picking up a poke of cash or the family jewels if opportunity knocked, each of them specialized in works of or objets d'art: valuable paintings, ancient Chinese jade, Ming dynasty vases and such.

Lupo ran the tip of an index finger over his right eyebrow. “I haven't heard anything,” he said slowly. “At least not anything definite.” He was silent for a while. “Not about a job, I mean. Nothing about Bel Air.”

“You sound like you've got something.”

“I'm not sure. Maybe it's nothing. It's just I know Al Spaniel's down on his uppers. No score for a long, long time for Al.”