Kill the Clown (The Shell Scott Mysteries), page 16
I was just beginning to wonder how I could ever have been even a little bit piqued with Doris, but her face was only about six inches from mine, and she had stopped talking, and I stopped wondering about anything and leaned a little forward myself. This was no time for wondering; this was a time for action. She met me half way — and when Doris met you half way, you were meeting the half that counted. Everything in the next minute was a blur of murmured words and caressing hands, slitted blue eyes and flaming hair and booby hatches and lips that seemed to be mating independently, but it was for no more than a minute. It certainly couldn’t have been two minutes, even though I was not paying any attention to the time at all. But then she was pushing her hands against my chest again, squirming away.
“What are you doing?” I said.
“You must go, Shell. I can’t . . . we mustn’t . . . it’s — you must go, Shell.”
Well, it was almost exactly the same sensation as getting smacked in the face with a bowl of cold clams. Man, I thought, it can’t be happening again. I must live wrong. No, that’s not it — I don’t live wrong enough.
“Doris,” I said. “Doris!”
“You must go, Shell.”
I sprang to my feet. O.K., so I’d go. Who am I to sock a lady? I stood there, teeth clamped together, then stalked toward the door like Frankenstein’s monster in those moments after the lightning hit him. But Doris stopped me.
“Shell,” she said. “Darling . . .”
She hadn’t called me darling before. She had merely called me “Shell” and “You” — as in “You must go” — but never darling. Things were looking up. I stopped, turned to face her.
“Shell, darling,” she said — there it was again — “you must think I’m awful.”
“No, no — ”
“But surely you understand. It, Ross . . . well, it’s only hours away. I’ll be different, Shell, if you’re . . . successful tonight. Really I will. But right now I’m — well, I just can’t let go. You do understand, don’t you?”
“Sure, Doris.” I shook my head rapidly for a moment. “Yes, sure.” I really did understand, of course; it was just that it would have been much easier if she’d been an old hag, or her brother or something.
But I told her good night and added, “Just as soon as I can, I’ll let you know, Doris. One way or another.”
She nodded, and I went outside. I stood there on the porch, staring at a potted geranium, and it occurred to me that there was a weird sameness to these meetings of ours, a kind of pattern, almost as if they’d been planned — yeah, as if I’d planned them. Except for the endings, of course. Somehow, despite all the Saharan heat of what went before, I always seemed to be standing out here on this Siberian porch. Bah, I thought, some Halloween — all trick and no treat.
Well, I’d told Doris I would let her know, one way or another. But there was, I thought glumly, a third way she could find out what might happen tonight; that would be for somebody else to bring her the news.
Sixteen
On a little-traveled road, I stopped, opened my packages and looked at my clown suit, and the makeup kit. Then I started on my face. Fifteen minutes later I looked even worse than usual. My face was smeared with white paint, exaggerated red lips curved in a perpetual smile, and a bulbous blue nose sat in the center of all that. My normally white eyebrows were also blue, and the tasseled clown cap covered my short white hair. At least nobody could recognize me.
I climbed into the white clown suit with its three six-inch red buttons down the front. My .38 Colt Special, fully loaded, was in its holster at my left armpit, and beneath the regular clothes I wore under my costume. In one of my pockets was a leather-covered sap. I was ready to go.
Then, with my engraved invitation on the seat beside me, I drove slowly toward Frank Quinn’s home. For just a moment I let myself wonder if Mrs. Quinn had perhaps been pulling my leg, despite her carryings-on with Jay, but then I pushed that thought out of my mind for the night. If she had been, it was too late for me to start checking on her now.
I pulled up before the closed gate barring the way to Quinn’s house at a little after eight p.m. One of Quinn’s hired hands strolled over to my Lincoln and said, “Yeah?”
I handed him the invitation. He looked it over, glanced at me, nodded, then handed the card back and yelled, “Okay, Nevada.”
The gate slid aside and I drove in.
And I had crashed Frank Quinn’s exclusive hoodlum ball. As simple as that. In the rearview mirror I caught a glimpse of the metal gate closing behind me. The sight sent a small ripple, like a faint cool breeze, over my skin. It’s usually not a good idea to look back. I pulled my eyes from the rearview mirror, looked ahead down the drive, and went on up it to park in front of the big two-story house.
About twenty cars were already here ahead of me. As I got out of the Lincoln and walked toward the front door, I could hears sounds of the festivities under way inside. Music mixed with occasional shouts and laughter. Or maybe it was shots and laughter; this was a pretty rough party. Ah, well. I squared my shoulders and walked up the steps to the front door, and rang the bell.
The last time I’d been here a thin-hipped, narrow-chested ectomorph had let me in. The same guy opened the door this time. He was dressed as a court jester and had a black mask over his eyes and nose; but I recognized the shape. He checked my invitation, then handed it back to me, nodding silently.
Then he led me down the hall to our left. At its end, two doors were opened into the room that had looked to me like a hotel ballroom. I could hear bouncy music, and there was a lot of movement and color visible as I stepped into the room, then it resolved itself into the shapes of men and women drinking, standing in small groups, dancing, all of them costumed.
It was a huge room to begin with, and from the center of the high ceiling to all four walls were stretched hundreds of crepe-paper strips which formed an alternately orange and black canopy overhead. Suspended from the ceiling, dangling in the middle of the room, was an ivory-white skeleton at least twenty-five feet long, from bald skull down to bony toes. It looked as if it was made of shiny plastic, and obviously had a motor hidden somewhere in it, because the arms and legs were never still, moving in a macabre rhythm entirely unrelated to the beat of the music. The skull sockets glowed with a blue light, and the huge jaw moved, teeth clicking audibly.
Placed at random upon the walls were dozens of small three-dimensional figures — black witches on broomsticks, black cats with arched backs, Death’s heads, little goblins and ghouls, and queer little creeps. Must have cost Quinn somebody’s fortune, I thought. Spaced around the room were several miniature headstones and caskets, which added to the fun.
For this early, the place was pretty well filled. Approximately a hundred guests were present, speaking roughly, and that was the way to speak of them. About half wore masks over their faces, or at least over the eyes, but among those with bare chops I saw some features I recognized.
As I left the doorway and walked toward a long bar I’d spotted across the room, I brushed past bullet-headed Jim Lester, three times arrested on murder charges, twice aquitted, and now out on the streets after serving nearly two years of the manslaughter rap. He had, however, murdered the three people. Also recognizable were two safe men, a well-known fence, and a thin guy named Finney who was, I knew, wanted by the L.A. police right now on a burglary charge.
Halfway to the bar I walked within three feet of a small, thin guy dressed as a hospital case, on crutches, leg in a cast, hospital gown on, jaw wrapped up. It was Shadow, making his broken ankle and unhinged jaw the inspiration for his outfit. Shadow was perfect for Halloween; so thin and pale and anemic, he looked as if the vampires had been going back for seconds on him.
I shuddered. No telling what else there was under all the masks and paint and putty, but I had already seen enough to peel my nerves open like used artichokes. It was a reasonable assumption that the answers to several dozen unsolved crimes were here in the room. Of course, it wasn’t all gruesome. There was one very shapely gal who’d come as Eve. She was fun. And there were a couple of local stripteasers dressed, suitably, as things that go bump in the night. I quickened my steps anyway, needing a drink. The guy behind the bar was efficient, and quickly mixed me a bourbon and water that was mostly bourbon.
The band played loudly on my right. Beyond it, against the far wall, was the wide stairway I’d gone up on my previous visit here. Up there was Quinn’s office and Quinn’s safe, where I would have to be in — I looked at my watch — forty minutes. So I had forty minutes to kill. As I glanced up again, I got a shock that alerted every neuron in my nervous system. I raised my eyes to see the white, puffy face of Frank Quinn. It looked as if he were staring straight at me.
The sickly-looking flesh seemed to hang even more laxly from his facial bones, the lips seemed redder, the eyes smaller. It seemed a caricature of a face, a mask rather than the features of the man himself. And for a moment, while he seemed to stare at me, I felt exposed, unmasked myself.
But then he chuckled mildly, and pointed at someone or something beyond me. So he hadn’t been looking at me.
For a second or two there I had forgotten I was well hidden under blue nose and eyebrows, white and red greasepaint, and my three-button outfit. Nobody could know that Shell Scott was here, disguised as a clown. Even if Quinn had somehow suspected I might try to bust in here, he could hardly know I’d dressed as a fugitive from a circus. That thought reassured me, started me breathing normally again. But I decided that even though I was well disguised, I’d be careful to keep out of Quinn’s sight if I could.
Quinn was dressed in lush-looking robes, and on a guess I’d have said he was Henry the One-Eighth or something close to it. He turned away and spoke to a plump woman next to him. I let my eyes roam over the room. And I saw an interesting group walking across the floor in my direction, three men and three women. One woman’s costume was a gorgeous silver-blue mink coat, practically down to her ankles. That would probably have told me the men were Fargo, Blister, and Speedy Gonzales, even if I hadn’t been able to recognize them. But Fargo’s wedge-shaped chest and burly shoulders almost gave him away even without the fact that his face wasn’t covered, and you could identify Fargo by that immense, arching beak alone. He was costumed as a pirate, with a black patch covering one eye — his right eye, which I had hammered upon and damaged severely last night when Jay was leading me out of the Gardenia Room.
Blister was wearing a surgeon’s robe, stethoscope around his neck, and over his mouth and noseless nose a white surgeon’s mask, which effectively hid the even greater mess I had made of his nose. Speedy, the smallest of the three men, was wearing a matador’s “suit of lights” and probably looked splendid to everybody but me. But to me all of those guys looked like grim reapers stalking me.
They were stalking straight at me, too, all six of the group coming toward the bar. If they were thirsty, the bar was no place for me. I gulped the last of my drink and slid off my stool. The gang of six was already at the bar, practically surrounding me, ordering drinks, the girls giggling and the men snorting, having a high old time. Two of the girls ordered Stingers and Vava Voom! ordered a Martini. Fargo ordered a shot of straight gin for himself, bourbons for Blister and Speedy.
I was trying to keep from thinking about what these apes would do to me if they ever discovered I was Shell Scott, when blonde Vava, clutching her mink, looked at me and squealed, “Oooh, lookit the cute clown!”
I felt weak and dizzy all of a sudden. Fargo swung his nose around to point at me, and Blister looked glumly in my direction, and Speedy said, “Great outfit, pal. Can’t tell who you are under all that gunk, though.”
The blonde said, “Come on, honey, tell is who you are, huh?”
I gave a little hop, and another little hop, and then a great big hop, and kept going as the blonde squealed, “Ooh, isn’t he cute?”; I thought, “Oh, shut up,” and a number of disjointed things. At least that gang didn’t come charging across the floor after me to discover who the cute clown was. But, I thought dismally, give that blonde a couple more Martinis and no telling what would happen.
After that I didn’t settle down or stop in one place for long. I kept moving, brushing past men and women, picking up bits of conversation, mainly just trying to kill those minutes, one at a time, until nine o’clock when Mrs. Quinn was supposed to send her husband up to his safe. But I was getting worried — by another worry. I hadn’t seen Mrs. Quinn yet. If she’d been conning me, or wasn’t going to be here at all, I was stuck. I kept moving through the riot of color and costumes, the ballroom filled now, everybody present. Everybody, which meant exactly one hundred men, plus their wives or mistresses or keepers for the jolly evening.
Words, sentences, phrases, bounced off my ears. “Ikey got busted in Cincinnati, but he only done eight months of the bit . . .”
“. . . shot him twice in the head. Killed him dead”
“Dead, huh? Well, that’s life”
“They was all runnin’ around nekkid as banana splits when the fuzz crashed in, but after Lulu got through talkin’ to the sergeant he says — this’ll kill you — he says . . .”
I almost stopped and listened to the finish of that one, but Hal the Cad and Pizza Jim were nearby, and I wanted to keep going till they were farther away. As I passed them Jim was saying, “. . . and Shadow. But I guess we won’t be seeing Papa Ryan — I mean the late Papa Ryan.” And Hal said, “Late? What do you mean, late? He ain’t even comin’.”
I strolled on, keeping my eyes and ears peeled. And finally, at a few minutes before nine p.m., I spotted Mrs. Frank Quinn. She was dressed in an ankle-length white gown and long white gloves, and some kind of white plumes were sprouting from her hair, like mutant dandruff. Around her neck she wore a thick, glittering, heavy necklace made, according to the story she’d given me, of diamonds. I could understand why her husband would want to keep that item locked in his safe whenever it wasn’t being worn. Especially among a group of light-fingered citizens such as these.
But the sight of those rocks was corroboration of Mrs. Quinn’s story. That knowledge — plus the fact that I was still in one piece — gave me a lift like elevator boots, and suddenly I was relaxed, at ease. I felt good, and a kind of exaggerated feeling of confidence flowed through my veins. It occurred to me that I was almost casually mingling with an almost unbelievable collection of thieves and thugs, a collection unprecedented in my experience. Here were everything from forgers to boosters, from con men to killers. Here was the Syndicate, Mafia, Hoodlumdom, the riffraff of the rackets, the heirs to Al Capone and Dillinger, the monument raised to muscle. And here was I, strolling about in the midst of a hundred of the most vicious and dangerous criminals in Los Angeles, at least half of whom would take great pleasure in shooting me on sight — and I was almost enjoying it.
It was the kind of buoyant, invincible feeling that can make a guy get reckless, so I clamped down on it, kept it simmering lightly but under control. I knew it was caused mainly by the excess of hormones and fluids and juices poured into my blood because of the tension and excitement, the nearness of danger. But I figured this was the best time I could choose for my trip upstairs. It was a trip I had to make pretty quick, anyway, and there could be no better time for it than now, while I was feeling as if I could raise the house with one hand.
So I headed across the dance floor toward the stairs. When I reached them, I turned and looked at the crowd again. Either it was coincidence, or Mrs. Quinn had an idea that the blue-nosed clown was Shell Scott, but she had suddenly walked over to her husband. She stood on the far side of him from me, so that his back was toward me, and I saw her reach toward the necklace around her throat.
So the double-cross was starting.
The blood pumped a little harder in my arteries, and I turned, went up the wide stairs. I didn’t look around until I’d reached the top, but I couldn’t control the tightening of muscles between my shoulder blades and at the back of my neck. At the top of the stairs I glanced quickly below, but nobody seemed to be paying any attention to me. Mrs. Quinn was just handing the necklace to her husband. I turned left and walked rapidly toward Quinn’s office.
The door was unlocked. I opened it and stepped into the red-and-black room, closed the door behind me and leaned back against it. Something was wrong, out of place, and for seconds I couldn’t figure out what it was. Then I realized the lights were on in the room. That seemed odd, since it didn’t seem likely that Quinn would be using this room during his party.
And then I saw the clown.
For a crazy moment I thought it was a reflection of myself. But this clown had a red nose, and blue buttons down the front of his costume, just the opposite of mine. And he was lying flat on his back next to the wall. And there was a small hole at the side of his forehead, a hole through which a little redness, and a little pink and grayish ugliness, and all his life had spilled.
The sight was such a shock that my mind stopped functioning for seconds. It wasn’t just walking in on a dead man; I’d seen enough stiffs to populate a small cemetery. It was mainly, I think, that the corpse looked so much like me. Except for the hole in his head, and the fact that he was so dead.
I stared at him, walked to him and bent over to put my hand on his face. It was white-smeared with grease paint or cosmetics, but he was still warm. He felt much more normal than he looked. His lips were slack, the mouth open, but the red-painted lips still curved in a ludicrous smile. The little hole in his forehead looked as if it had been made by a small slug, probably a .32.
I stepped back from the corpse, mental faculties starting to function again, but slowly at first. I reached under my costume and got the Colt from beneath my coat, stepped across the room to the wall alongside the door. Mrs. Quinn had just been giving her husband the necklace, I recalled; he should be on his way up those stairs by now. And if he stepped in here and saw the dead man, I’d never get that safe open. I couldn’t move the stiff very far. There was a closed door in the wall near him. That would be the room directly opposite the head of the stairs, but I didn’t know what was in there.
