The Death Gods (A Shell Scott Mystery) (4 page)

A plump middle-aged lady,
with black hair and a no longer young but very beautiful face, was
seated behind a small desk on my right. She looked up as I
approached.

“
I’m Shell Scott,” I said.
“Dr. Hernandez is expecting me.”

“
Oh, yes!” she said
enthusiastically, dazzling white teeth flashing as she smiled. “You
go right in, Mr. Scott. Henry is not with a patient.”

I nodded, glancing toward
a closed door on my left that she’d indicated. But before I could
move toward it, the lady leaned forward and said, “Wait,” speaking
softly.

I looked at her as she
said, almost in a whisper, “Mr. Scott, you are a detective. I
listened on the phone. Please help him. Please. He is very good
man, very good doctor. He should not have to suffer all
this.”

Suffer all this what? I
wondered. But I said, “Well, if he wants me to do a job for him,
and I decide....”

It was a little sticky. I
could hardly tell this lovely plump lady that, before I joined his
team, I wanted to be sure the Doc wasn’t a fruitcake. Once I agree
to take on a case for any client, I feel morally obligated to give
that client 100% no matter what comes down the pike, so I have to
be careful that I don’t sign on with dingdongs.

She was looking up at me
soberly, intently. “I am his wife,” she said, still almost
whispering. “Eleanora Hernandez. He will not beg. Never. Not if
death was the other...the altervativo? Ah—he is too proud. But I
will beg. Please? He cannot do this, not alone. He needs a man
young, strong, to help. A man with vigorous power, like you, Mr.
Scott. Do assist him, I pray. Please?”

It was more than a little
weird. The lady, Mrs. Hernandez, had suddenly moved me, in a
strange way had gotten to me. It wasn’t because she’d called me
young and strong and powerful—I already knew that—but because there
was a kind of fierceness, almost desperation, in her whispering
voice, a conviction and strength and need that I felt somewhere
inside me, not just in my ears.

“
Look,” I said, “I haven’t
even met Dr. Hernandez yet, but I’ll do my best to help him,
whatever it is he...you?...may want, honest, as long as I’m
convinced he’s not a complete—”

I cut it off. What I’d
started to say was “complete nut-case,” but I was afraid that
wouldn’t go over with a real bang here. However, I couldn’t think
of any other way to make my point completely clear, so I chuckled
lightly, I hoped, and added, “—nutcase.”

Surprisingly, she laughed,
pulling her head back and looking up at the ceiling, some extra
flesh beneath her chin wiggling during the merriment. “Nutcase, it
is like crazy, cuckoo, es un hombre muy loco?”

“
Yeah. At least yeah for
the crazy-cuckoo. I’m not sure– ”

“
My husband the doctor, he
is a nutcase, you bet, verdad! But he is a nutcrazy like Leonardo
De Vinci, or Viktor Schauberger, or Hahnemann and Lakhovsky and
Rife and Koch, like those. You will see.” She paused, peering
closely at me, then smiled. “And you will help. You are the
one!”

“
I’m the one?”

“
Si, yes. You are good man.
Good like my husband doctor. That way good. You will help, it will
be very well. I can tell this because I have some. I am a...” She
stopped, frowning slightly, and with one index finger tapped the
side of her head.

“
Nutcase?” I said
helpfully.

She laughed merrily again.
“Psychic, a little bit,” she said. “That is how you say it, I
think. Sometimes I have the clear seeing. All right, you go in
now.”

I shrugged, and did as I
was told, turning and taking a couple of steps toward the doctor’s
office door. Maybe there were two people a little bit psychic
here—not including me. Because at that moment the door opened and a
tall, slim, gray-haired man looked out, nodded at me, smiling with
large teeth as white as Mrs. Hernandez’, and saying: “Ah, bueno!
Mr. Scott, true? Do come in, please! I am Hernandez.”

CHAPTER THREE

I nodded at the doctor and
walked past him into his office, carpeted wall-to-wall in a kind of
bronze-gold. It was a large airy room dominated by a massive oak
desk directly in front of me. Behind the desk was a high-backed
swivel chair, its padded leather the color of caramel candy, and
facing the desk were two other big leather-covered chairs in the
same caramel shade.

Against the
dark-wood-paneled wall on my right, in the far corner, were three
gray metal filing cabinets; and nearly all of the remaining wall
space was filled with what appeared to be at least two dozen framed
diplomas, licenses, plus hand-lettered rectangles of paper or
parchment and several photographs, all but one of them
black-and-white. The other wall, on my left as I faced the desk,
was almost dizzying to look at, covered from one side to the other
and from as high as I could have reached on down to the
gold-carpeted floor with hundreds of newspaper clippings and what
appeared to be articles from magazines, plus stapled-together pages
of what looked like typed manuscripts, interspersed with newspaper
and magazine and photographs, all of that encyclopedic
whatever-it-was affixed to the paneling with large colored
pins.

Hernandez closed the door
behind me and then stepped briskly to his big desk, sat down behind
it facing me. The obviously long-used and well-worn desk was
cluttered with papers, a couple of fierce-looking clay figurines,
and some framed photographs.

Dr. Hernandez was not only
an unusually healthy-looking man but a very handsome old geezer.
I’d noticed when walking past him into the office that he was about
the same height as I, or a couple of inches over six feet, but he
was a hell of a lot thinner, lean and erect.

I guessed he was in
roughly the same age bracket as his wife, say late fifties or, in
his case, probably edging over the sixty mark. The skin of his
narrow face was smooth, unblemished—much like his wife’s—and as
dark as my own, though the doctor’s tanned-leather look was
undoubtedly due to his Hispanic heritage rather than the
weekends-at-the-beach sunshine that had darkened my
chops.

He was snappily dressed,
wearing gray slacks and a bright blue jacket, creamy-beige loafers
on his feet, a crisp white dress shirt and dark blue tie, tightly
knotted. In addition to the gray hair—a lot of it, combed straight
back—he had a wide but narrow gray mustache, neatly trimmed and
sharply pointed at the ends. He had a long straight nose that must
have been almost as thin as a knife when he was a young man, but
now was nearly normal, though also definitely pointed at its end;
it still looked sharp enough to slice cheese. Above the mustache
and nose were dark brown eyes of remarkable brightness, almost the
eyes of a fiery-blooded visionary—or maniac.

I seated myself in one of
the caramel-colored leather chairs, and without further ado, Dr.
Hernandez fixed those piercing eyes on me and said briskly, “I
thank you for coming. I appreciate your velocity. It is encouraging
to know you do not dawdle. Your time is valuable. Therefore, I
shall now tell you everything of importance. Then you may inform me
if you will care to...” It was the briefest of pauses. “...help me
from the situation wherein I find myself.”

“
Okay,” I said, but he was
continuing briskly, or with considerable velocity.

“
Nine days ago an attempt
was made to kill me. Two men driving in a green van—the color is
all I know, the make of it, and year, I have no
conception—attempted to demolish me with their vehicle. It was
deliberate, not an accidental confusion. They were accelerating,
moving with much quickness and swerving toward me when I leaped
with desperation backward onto the hood of my own vehicle. I am
quite agile.”

I believed that last part.
If he moved as rapidly as he spoke, it was surprising he hadn’t
flown clear over his car. I said, “Okay, doctor, let’s say the
attempt was deliberate, with malice aforethought. Why? Who would
want to kill you?”

“
This puzzles me
desperately. Of this, I have no concrete idea. All I know is, they
did it—those men in the green van vehicle—but why is a blankness.
My hope is, you perhaps can determine this? Before they do it
successfully?”

“
Where did this hit...or,
rather, miss-and-run occur?”

“
There.” He pointed toward
the street in front of his office, about where my car was now
parked at the curb. “It was three p.m. of Wednesday, last week. I
had been to see one of my patients, with one more yet to go, and
upon returning from her house I parked in front here instead of in
the driveway or garage. But I walked toward the driveway in order
to go around my wife’s planting experiment. She had just planted
the young little alstrameria, which the experts say will die
horribly if planted in October, but she does not believe any
experts—neither do I—so she is going to find out for herself, which
is a sure cure for brainwashing. You perhaps saw the healthy little
alstrameria when approaching?”

“
Uh-huh. Didn’t know those
green things were alstra... whatever, but I walked around the whole
area.”

“
Good. You are possessed of
careful wisdom. Me, also. I knew if I stepped upon them, she would
cut off my ears and nose and plant them also for composting, for of
this she—Eleonora, my lifetime wife—informed me with earnestness.
In loving jest, of course. Still, I did not step on them. It was
when I first exited from my automobile and took two steps toward
the driveway that the speeding vehicle’s acceleration noises
revolved on my attention, and I looked—and then leaped. Quick
backwards and flipping onto my own hood, head over
feet.”

He stopped, gazing at me
with the glowing eyes.

In just the last minute,
Doctor Hernandez’ comments had caused at least half a dozen
questions to pop up in my mind. However, the first thing I asked—or
started to ask—concerned what was perhaps the least important of
those questions. But I simply had to know.

“
Doctor—”

“
Hernandez,” he said. “Just
Hernandez. Or Henry—even Hank if you like, since you will
be—maybe?—energetically fixing everything? Your first name
is...Shell? Like a sea shell, or gun shell, or—”

“
Sheldon. But Shell’s
okay.”

“
I will call you Sheldon.
And I am Hank, your new old-buddy, who happens to be a doctor
instead of a shoe salesman. It is important what we call things, or
don’t call. Language precedes thought. Sometimes. So, now we are
friends?”

He had a habit of making
statements that ended with question marks. And I was getting the
impression that this guy either had several little cracks in his
brains, or else he was way ahead of me.

“
Yeah, sure,” I said.
“Sure. Ah, what was I going to ask you?”

“
I cannot help you there,
Sheldon.”

“
Ah, yeah, you mentioned
that you’d been to see a patient and were returning from her house.
Her house? You made a house call?”

“
Oh, yes. Every day, at
least once or twice, I go see the sick ones who think they are
dying and cannot venture forth lest they keel over into oblivion.
This one, Mrs. Poody, she is in truth nearly demolished, from the
ravages of many drugs given her by other doctors, those who possess
advanced degrees in stupid. Plus, there are other poisonous
substances which Mrs. Poody’s bowels and blood are full of. But I
am getting those out of her, and good unharmful substances into
her, and soon she will be dancing and kicking with her
heels.”

He nodded quickly. “As do
many others. I fix hundreds like this, who think they are dying.
Most, therefore, I never see again. But many send me letters of
friendship, and cards like at Christmas.” He paused, smiling. “It
is gratifying, more so than making a gazillion dollars, for which I
would have to keep them sick, true?”

Every time Hernandez
opened his mouth my ears filled up with more questions, some of
which I knew would probably remain forever unanswered. Clearly, I
would have to narrow the field, concentrate on finding out what
really had happened nine days ago, and why.

I said, “Let me ask some
questions. You say this car, van or whatever, almost ran you down
nine days ago. Why wait until now to get in touch with me? Or
another detective, or the police?”

“
The police I informed
immediately. They visited me, but could find no evidence in support
of what I told them. Also, for one week after I was wary, careful
of my whereabouts, without incident. But two nights ago, in the
dark I turned into my driveway here, and in my headlights were
illumined two men at the driveway’s end near the side of this
house. I think one of them held a gun. I am not sure. But something
in his hand reflected my headlights. I believe they—or at least one
of them—were in the green van, the attempted assassinators of
me.”

“
Did the men approach you,
or attempt to harm you, when you drove up the driveway?”

“
I did not stupidly
continue driving up the driveway. I reversed and backed with
dangerous velocity in the opposite direction, even though the two
men were fleeing away, having been brightly illumined. At a
neighbor’s home I phoned police and reported the occurrence. The
officer said a car would be dispatched, so I drove back here
rapidly and looked in the house and all around, without
result.”