The Death Gods (A Shell Scott Mystery) (13 page)

So they say. And I think
they probably mean it. Maybe it’s because those sweethearts don’t
meet the same wonderful people that I do.

The wonderful person I’d
just given a convincer, got up awkwardly off the ground, took one
step toward me—I told you he was crazy—but his buddy said gently,
“Stuff it,” and the man he’d earlier called Kell did—stopped,
turned, walked toward the green van.

But even if he minded his
buddy and took his good advice, Kell wasn’t going to leave without
getting a last face-saving word in. Next to the van he turned,
holding his right hand cupped in his left, blotchy face
twisted.

“Gonna kill you,” he said.
Like, “Have a nice day.” Just a simple, sincere, “Gonna kill
you.”

SoCal Pest Control. Not
much point looking it up. They wouldn’t be in the book.

CHAPTER EIGHT

“
I’m The Grinner,” said the
pretty-lipped man, still standing about six feet away from me.
“Friends call me Grinny,” he went on conversationally. “You can
call me The Grinner if you want to.”

“
I’m not sure I want to
call you at all.”

I wasn’t surprised at the
hood moniker; the tag was a natural. Probably his friends had
watched him pumping a few into a pal’s back, or throttling an old
lady, noted his expression of enjoyment or orgasm or toothy rictus
and welcomed him into the club by nicking his name. Men on the
criminal turf, probably more than any other breed, refer to their
associates not by given names but with invented appellations like
The Joker or Garlic or Slippery Bob or the Waffler, monikers
usually appropriate and often surprisingly colorful, part of a
language that exists nowhere else.

So here was The Grinner.
Pleasantly asking me, “What’s your handle, pal?”

I could have told him I
was Elmer Hoopla from Red Dirt, Texas, and it would have delayed
his making me for maybe three minutes. Both these apes now knew my
Cadillac, its plates, and what I looked like, which was more than
enough. So I said, “Shell Scott. I’m a PI. As I told you, I’m
looking for a green van—but not that one.” I nodded toward the van
with Kell now sitting inside it, but didn’t let my eyes leave his
face.

“
A pimp, huh?” Grinner said
mildly. He wasn’t grinning, now that the fun was over, but his lips
stretched in what might have been a corpse’s smile. “I’d guessed
you was something like that. See you soon, pimp. Soon.” Then he
turned abruptly, walked toward the front of the van, heading for
the driver’s side.

Before it became shorthand
for private investigator, “PI” had indeed meant “pimp” in places
like, say, San Francisco. But that had been a long time ago, which
Grinner knew as well as I did. One of the quirks about men like him
and Kell, part of the sleazy world of warped values they live in,
is that the surest way to get a lot of crap from them in the end is
to let them get away with giving you just a little in the
beginning.

So I took three fast steps
forward, stopped a yard from where Kell was sitting inside the van,
eyeballing me much as a starving vegetarian might examine 205
pounds of raw liver. Grinner was in the street, reaching for the
door handle.

“
Hold it,” I said to him.
“I think you should hear this.”

He didn’t open the door,
just raised his head slowly and looked at me over the van’s
top.

“
Hear it, and memorize it,”
I said quietly. “Call me pimp one more time, Grinner and your pals
will start calling you Gummer. Try it right now, if you feel like
it.”

For all I knew, he might
have laughed, or tried to shoot me, or popped off some more with
his mouth. But he didn’t do anything like that. Just let his eyes
rest briefly on my face, maybe shot a few more rays of freeze out
of them, then casually opened the van’s door, got inside, and drove
away.

I stood there for half a
minute, shaking my head and looking bleakly at the landscape. I
knew, just as when you see lightning you know you’ll hear thunder,
I’d see those two lobs again. And that wasn’t a happy
thought.

Then I got into the Cad
and took off, heading for Maple Street and—maybe, though the
possibility now seemed more and more unlikely—a helpful meeting
with Guenther and Helga Vunger.

* * * * * *

It was a fairly large
house, two stories, painted a pale green that had been faded by
Southern California sunlight. I parked in a narrow driveway running
along its left side and ending at the closed door of the Vunger’s
garage. A few yards farther to my left was another house almost
identical to this one, painted exactly the same shade of faded
green. Lawns fronted both houses, bisected by cement walks leading
from front doors to sidewalks along Maple Street.

As I got out of the Cad I
noticed an elderly white-haired lady standing in the driveway next
door, leaning forward slightly and supporting her weight, what
there was of it, on two polished brown canes or walking sticks, one
in each small hand.

I nodded to her. “Morning.
Or, I guess it’s afternoon now.” A glance at my watch told me it
had been afternoon for twenty minutes.

When I looked up again the
lady was walking toward me. Or, rather, coming toward me in a kind
of slow shuffle, moving the stick in her left hand forward ten or
twelve inches, followed by her left leg, slippered foot
sliding...then the right stick, right leg, slipper
sliding.

With her eyes not on me
but on the ground, where she was carefully planting the walking
sticks, she said, in a quite strong and almost musical voice, “Good
morning, young man. Are you looking for someone?”

“
Yes, the Vungers. This is
their place, isn’t it?”

“
Yes. But they’re not—I
don’t think they’re home.”

She was still about ten
feet away from me. She’d been at least twelve or maybe even
fourteen feet away when she started. Watching her, I began getting
nervous. Or at least uncomfortable. She seemed bound and determined
to get way over here where I was, which was okay with me, but it
was taking her so damned long to get here. It was as if life was
passing me by, while I waited for her to move left stick...right
stick. I wanted to go over there and help her get here where I was
but of course then I’d be there, and... I shook my head, pushed the
weird thought away, waiting. She appeared so fragile.

“
I haven’t seen either of
them for more than a week now,” the fragile lady said, making one
final maneuver and stopping two feet away, looking up at me. “And
I’m worried about them.”

“
Do you have any idea where
they might have gone?” I asked.

She shook her head. “No
idea. I saw Helga—that’s Mrs. Vunger—in her back yard on Wednesday
after lunch, and didn’t see her at all Thursday. Or since then,
either. Do you know Guenther and Helga well?”

“
No, ma’am, only their
names.”

“
Oh, I’m Mrs. Brewster, ”
she said brightly. “Ellen Brewster.”

“
Hi, Mrs. Brewster. My
name’s Scott, Shell Scott.” I paused, then went on, “I’m a private
investigator, a detective, and I’m trying to locate the Vungers.
I’d appreciate anything you can tell me that might help, anything
at all.”

“
Oh-h. I don’t actually
know any more about where they went. Or why. Wish I
did.”

“
You say you saw Mrs.
Vunger Wednesday. And they haven’t been around for more than a
week. So it must have been Wednesday before last,
right?”

“
That’s right.”

This was Friday, October
28. Wednesday of last week had been the 19th. So there it was once
more, nine days ago.

“
She didn’t mention maybe
leaving for a few days, on a vacation, or to see
relatives?”

“
No, we didn’t say anything
to each other. We’re not real close, but if they’d been going on a
trip I think she’d have said so. Besides....”

Mrs. Brewster hesitated,
but only briefly. I had a hunch she welcomed the opportunity to
talk with somebody, almost anybody, about practically anything. It
was only a guess, but I was thinking of that agonizingly slow, and
perhaps physically agonizing for her, trek over here to speak with
me.

Anyhow, she went on, “I
really don’t think they could afford a vacation. It’s been hard for
them since they got laid off at Omega after they caught...” She
stopped, then continued, “Well, they were both awfully sick, with
that...”

She didn’t finish. Mrs.
Brewster couldn’t be aware that I not only knew the Vungers had
been suffering from IFAI, but also was working for the physician
who—if he’d told me the truth-had restored them to vigorous health.
Maybe she just didn’t want to say the ugly word. But she had said a
couple of things that grabbed my attention, so I tried to keep her
going.

“
If you mean IFAI,” I said,
“I know they had it, but I understand they’d been better lately.
Practically normal again, so I hear. Would you say—?”

Mrs. Brewster interrupted,
looking up at me from way down there. “Oh, they couldn’t have had
IFAI, Mr. Scott. That’s what I thought for a while, they were so
sick. In fact, that’s what Helga herself told me they had, when we
were still talking. It was a terrifying thing—them living right
next door, you know. It’s so catching—goes right through the air at
you, but you know that, of course.”

“
Sure.”

“
I guess everybody does
these days. But then, when I saw them both around outside, Helga in
her little garden again, both of them driving around and
all.”

“
When was that? When they
seemed to you to be healthier, or at least better than
before?”

“
Oh, a month or more back,
I guess. During the last few weeks they were a lot more active,
but—well, I had already talked to my doctor, to find out if there
was a shot or something I could take if they had IFAI to protect
myself from them, which there wasn’t, and when I told him my
neighbors I’d been worried about seemed lots better, he said I
wasn’t to worry any more, that they couldn’t have had IFAI because
nobody gets better, they all die.”

“
Yeah, I must have heard
that myself a thousand times.”

“
Probably just the flu bug,
he said. Or a virus going around.”

“
Uh-huh. I understand the
Vungers were being treated by a local doctor—”

“
Oh, I know about
him.”

“—
who was helping them, so,
you know about him?”

“
Helga mentioned it. That
was two or three weeks ago, she called over the fence to me, said
they didn’t have the IFAI any more and everything was all right.
Isn’t that crazy? She even told me this Dr. Hernandez’ name—sounds
like he’s a Mexican, doesn’t it?—and tried to get me to go see
him.”

I smiled, but merely said,
“I’ll bet you didn’t.”

“
Of course not! I told you,
I have my own wonderful doctor.”

“
Yes, you did say doctor.”
I smiled again. “I didn’t hear the wonderful.”

“
Well, he is. Just the most
wonderful man, he really cares. He’s trying to cure my arthuritis,
and a little heart angina and funny beats I got lately. But it’s
hard. There really isn’t any cure yet.”

“
There isn’t any cure—but
he’s trying to cure it?”

“
He certainly is, he’s got
me on three miracle drugs and two wonder ones. And I really think
maybe I’m better. Except for this little angina and missed
heartbeats once in a while. And the dizziness.”

“
Yeah. What did the
Vungers, or Helga, say about this Dr. Hernandez, Mrs.
Brewster?”

“
Well, they both thought he
was God Himself—that’s the way those quack doctors get to you, you
know. They said he’d cured their IFAI and some other diseases, and
they were feeling so good—and I’ll bet they’re dead now. Maybe
laying out in the streets somewhere, maybe even in their
house!”

There were nine things I
wanted to ask her, but I said, “Where did you hear Dr. Hernandez is
a quack?” Probably I should have asked one of the other eight
questions, because before Mrs. Brewster answered I knew what was
coming. “I’ll bet I know who—“ I began.

“
Naturally, when Helga told
me that, getting rid of the IFAI and all, I mentioned it to my
doctor and he really got upset. I thought he was going to throw
a... Well, he said this Doctor Hernandez was one of the worst
quacks in the country, getting rich pretending to cure IFAI and
cancers and AIDS and arthuritis and everything, and he was terribly
dangerous because he kept people from getting proper
treatment.”

“
That would be dangerous,
all right. Incidentally, I think you suggested maybe the Vungers
were dead? Maybe even in their house here? But if they just had the
flu, like your d—”

“
Well”... She sighed. “My
doctor didn’t actually examine them, of course. He just said it
sounded like a flu, or maybe some kind of spontaneous remisser...
remisking....”

“
Remission, yeah. There are
some of them going around, too.”

“
So if they really did have
the IFAI and got one of those remisster things temporary, and then
kept on going down, like they all do, they could have died by now,
couldn’t they? They might even have died in their house. Last week
maybe. Right next door! I can’t even sleep from thinking about
it.”