The Death Gods (A Shell Scott Mystery) (2 page)

I walked past the pair of
phone cubicles outside the lobby, and a considerably overweight
uniformed parking attendant, looking remarkably like a winged
creampuff in his glittery-pink coveralls, trotted up in front of
me, holding out one pudgy hand. I shook my head, continued on
toward the black-topped parking area, hearing the lad sniff behind
me.

So let him sniff. When I’m
alone, as when not escorting a famished lovely, I prefer to park
the Cadillac myself. Due to the nature of my work, I often have to
split in a hurry and therefore like to know exactly where my car is
and how to reach it without any delay.

But I was, unfortunately,
thinking less about that—the sometimes perilous nature of my
work—than about the lady I’d just left, about Dane, about soft
words spoken in a voice heated by a hot pink tongue and blistered
by provocative lips, about magnificent full breasts partially
revealed by the low-and-getting-lower neckline of a satiny green
dress, about a lovely face made almost unreal by great eyes of
emerald shadows.

And because I was, not for
the first time, dwelling overmuch on the implied promise of future
delights instead of what was happening right now, that
preoccupation came very close to getting me killed.

I saw the two men, one on
my right walking slowly between rows of parked cars and nearing the
rear of my Cad which was parked facing me as I approached, the
other leaning against the fender of a brown Mercedes-Benz sedan on
my left, twenty feet from the front of my Cad. But their presence,
even their movements, caused no ripple of alarm, no apprehension in
me. Not at first. They were just two men—both big, burly, wearing
dark suits—out here with me in the parking lot, but now moving
simultaneously toward the left side of my car, where in a few more
steps I would also be.

It was odd that they would
be walking toward each other, and toward the spot where I would
stand when I unlocked the driver’s-side door with the car keys
already in my hand. The quickening movement registered; I was aware
of it; but it was awareness without alarm. But suddenly that lack
of concern was gone.

I saw the flash of light,
metallic, glittering, a split-second of quicksilver brightness from
something low at the first man’s right side, something held there,
turning slightly in his hand.

I glanced at the other
guy, behind me and to my left—but moving more quickly now—and I
could clearly see the long-bladed knife in his hand, his left hand.
Two men, two knives, an right-hander and a southpaw. As a licensed
P.I., I almost invariably carry my Colt .38 Special in its
clamshell holster at my left armpit, but it was in my hand now. I
didn’t consciously reach for the gun, it was just suddenly there,
solid in my right fist. I crouched low, knees bending, feeling the
first great liquid leap of my heart, the quick papery dryness of my
mouth, chilling of my skin in the warm October air.

The guy on my right was a
yard closer than the other man and I shot him twice, saw him
stagger as the hard flat blasts banged my ears. Then I was swinging
my upper body left, pulling my left leg around in a short arc and
hearing the shoe leather of my Cordovans scraping over the asphalt,
flipping the .38 toward the other man now looming close and above
me.

I was fast, but not fast
enough. The man’s left hand was a swift blur sweeping up toward my
chest. That long blade clicked with surprising loudness as it hit
my gun, yanking the Colt from my grip, and immediately after that I
felt, simultaneously, something like a solid blow against my upper
arm—not a slash or cut but a punch like a swung fist—and the man’s
heavy body slamming into me.

I managed to grab one of
his wrists and hang on, but then went down hard—we both did. I’d
been crouched low, and when the impact slammed me onto my back the
man rushing at me flipped over my sprawled bulk like a runner
hitting a two-foot-high fence. I heard his head hit with a solid
thunk followed by the softer slap-thud of his feet flailing the
asphalt.

I turned, got onto my
knees, planted one foot under me and pushed, punching my gun toward
him—or, rather, punching my empty fist. No gun. There was blood on
the back of my hand, welling from a cut atop my index finger where
the man’s knife had obviously sliced me. But the man himself
appeared to be only half conscious, barely moving—so that dull
thunking sound, like a cantaloupe falling onto the kitchen floor,
had indeed been the guy’s head smacking the blacktop.

He was prone, stretched
out facing toward me, one hand pushing against the blacktop feebly
and without noticeable result. So he was no real threat to me at
the moment. Still, I looked around, spotted my Colt .38 and picked
it up, and seriously considered shooting the sonofabitch anyway.
Instead, I stepped to a spot near the man’s head—feeling, finally,
the pain of a knife cut under my left bicep and the warmth of blood
beginning to flow—eyed the knife-wielder’s skull, which was raised
a few inches above the blacktop, and kicked it with
enthusiasm.

After that, the man lay
still as death. I put a finger on the carotid artery in his throat.
His heart was still pumping. The other guy, with two of my bullets
in his chest, lay on his back a yard from my feet, head crammed
against the left rear tire of my Cadillac and bent forward at a
sharp angle. He was alive, moaning, making a wet bubbly
sound.

Probably no more than half
a minute had passed since I’d raised my gun and fired. But now I
started to feel that strange weakness, a tremulous quivering deep
in the gut. My skin was warmer, a thin film of perspiration on my
face, on my arms, slightly greasy along my spine. And I thought:
What the bloody hell? Who were these bastards, and why had they
come at me silently out of the night, long knives at the
ready?

Sure, I’d taken on a new
client this morning, a new case. But it was a routine job—for an
elderly and excitable but very pleasant and likable doctor, a
somewhat unorthodox healer of the lame and blind—but these two
bulky and now unmoving lobs sure as hell weren’t unorthodox
surgeons hoping to harvest free transplantable organs for sale to
patients who’d already ruined their own. No, I’d have given eight
to five these losers were career thugs with records like crime
encyclopedias.

Those thirty seconds—now
about forty-five—had been sufficient time not only for me to get a
little cut on my trigger finger and what felt like a much bigger
slash under my arm, and prepare two thugs for the Emergency Room at
Amiel-Fortis Hospital half a mile north, but also for several of
the curious nearby, who undoubtedly had heard the exciting
gunshots, to start running from near the Halcyon’s lobby toward the
fun.

Or, toward me, toward the
two guys limp on the ground. Those two weren’t going anywhere for a
while; but I was. Not wanting to use my own phone I trotted toward
the lobby and the outside phone cubicles there, and as the nearest
juvenile fun-seekers got close I waved my revolver in a half circle
before me and yelled. “Get the goddamn hell away from the scene,
you idiots!” and the unmistakable authority in my voice impressed
them enough that they almost instantly disappeared in several
directions. Maybe the gun helped.

At the nearer pay phone, I
dropped coins into their slot and started to call the Beverly Hills
Police Department, then changed my mind.

I’m on good terms with a
lot of cops in various divisions, but those I’m closest to, all the
drinking buddies and longtime friends, work out of Central Division
in downtown L.A. There weren’t any of my pals working Beverly
Hills; and I knew from considerable experience that, when I
explained why I’d had to shoot one citizen and kick another
enthusiastically in the head, it would almost certainly be better
if I explained to a friendly face instead of an unfamiliar
ear.

So I simply punched in 911
and, without identifying myself, reported a shooting in the Halcyon
Hotel’s parking lot, two men down, police and ambulance needed,
then hung up and trotted back to my Cad.

And once again thought:
What the bloody hell?

There was no big ape
sprawled face down on the asphalt, no second big ape resting his
head against the rear tire of my Cadillac. No guys, no knives,
nothing. I even stepped to the back of my Cadillac and checked the
license plate, in case I’d wound up next to somebody else’s
year-old sky-blue convertible. But it was my Cad, where I’d left
two totally-out-of-commission thugs only a couple of minutes
ago.

The sound of a car’s
engine rapidly accelerating nearby, then the screech of tires
skidding on asphalt, hit my ears. I looked up and saw, racing away
from me, a Mercedes black sedan, not the brown one still parked a
few yards from my Cadillac. The black sedan’s taillights flared
bright red as the driver braked and swung sharply right on the
private road leading from the Halcyon’s entrance out to Birch
Drive, then accelerated swiftly again.

I shoved a hand into my
pants pocket for the Cad’s keys—and came up empty. Sure, they’d
been in my hand, but when I grabbed for my Colt I had obviously
dropped or thrown the keys. I was turning, looking around, taking a
step when my shoe hit something on the asphalt, something that
clicked and tinkled. I bent down, picked up my key ring, unlocked
the Cad’s door, slid inside, jammed a key into the ignition. But I
didn’t even turn on the engine, because I knew that black Mercedes
was long gone by now.

I just sat there for a few
seconds as I acknowledged my anger. There was no real evidence that
the two burly mugs who’d jumped me had been in that Mercedes, but
the driver had left here in one hell of a hurry. And it was a sure
thing those two apes hadn’t left under their own power.

Well, the Mercedes had
gotten away from me, at least temporarily, but its registration
hadn’t. When the driver braked before turning right, I’d been close
enough to get a flash of the license-plate numbers. I got out my
notebook and jotted them down: CVY176, California
plates.

It was a start. So I
headed for home.

* * * * * *

Home is apartment 212 in
the Spartan Hotel, on North Rossmore in Hollywood, only a couple of
miles from Sunset and Hollywood Boulevards, those fabled and
glamorous movieland thoroughfares where congregate the shuffling
freakos, the empty-eyed crack and coke and H and
you-want-it-you-got-it dealers, stopping place for malnourished
runaways, temporary open-air home for the homeless, the losing and
the lost. The glamour isn’t as glamorous as it used to be; those
Boulevards don’t even smell the same any more.

But apartment 212 smelled
fine. I could pick from the air friendly aromas of burned toast, a
little bourbon, a wisp of perfume that Lallah Palooza—yeah, that’s
really her name, and maybe I’ll get around to Lallah later—had left
behind a couple of nights ago.

Home is living room,
bedroom, kitchenette and bath, yellow-gold carpet with a long
cushiony shag nap in the living room, upon which carpet sort of
scattered about are my big-enough-for-four chocolate-brown divan
and low black-lacquered coffee table on which a few
bourbon-and-water highballs and even a prettier drink or two have
been spilled, all of this aslant before a fake fireplace. Plus my
own personal leather chair, a couple of other chairs covered in
some kind of nubby chocolate-brown cloth, and three low leather
hassocks.

But not everything is
chocolate-brown and leather and yellow-gold. On the wall above that
gas-log fireplace is a lot of color, mostly flesh color, in a
yard-square frame—of Amelia, a well-endowed nude lady facing away
from the viewer but peeking back over one bare shoulder in
unquestionably friendly fashion.

More splashes of
brightness, always moving, are just inside the living room door.
Against the wall there I keep my two tanks of tropical fishes, a
ten-gallon tank filled with the kaleidoscopic color of fifteen or
twenty frisky guppies, and a twenty-gallon aquarium stocked with
red swordtails, black mollies, dangerous-looking little panchax
chaperii, a couple of scavenging catfish and, at the moment, three
vividly-glowing neon tetras partly hidden in the feathery green
Myriophyllum and Cabomba.

I walked past the
kitchenette and into the bathroom, pulling off my tie and shrugging
out of my coat and shirt. There was quite a lot of blood, which had
flowed from a three-inch-long cut on my upper arm. The coat and
shirt were ruined, but the arm still seemed to be serviceable. It
burned like fire when I flexed it, but everything worked. I cleaned
the arm, smeared the cut with some calendula ointment and covered
it with a makeshift bandage, then walked back into the living room,
plopped on my couch and lifted the phone from a small table at the
couch’s far end.

Before dialing, I thought
back to that attack by the pair of dark-suited men, and decided I’d
goofed. Not by failing to anticipate the attack—I still couldn’t
think of a good reason for anybody to suddenly want me dead—but in
failing to suspect that the men might not have been alone in the
Halcyon’s parking lot. Obviously, they hadn’t been. I hadn’t seen
the Mercedes driver at all, just the car. For that matter, I hadn’t
gotten a really wonderful look at my attackers, since all that
activity was crammed into very few seconds. But there were enough
impressions remaining in memory—bushy brows and thick lips and an
unusually prominent nose on the man I’d shot, thin face too narrow
for the wide body and small eyes and a thick mustache on the guy
I’d kicked on the conk—for me to know I’d never seen either of them
before.