The Death Gods (A Shell Scott Mystery) (52 page)

I said, “Probably
disappoints me, too.”

“
Evil.”

I believed him. But my
mind, really, was elsewhere. In front of my eyes was Dane’s lovely
face, melting green eyes, wondrously warm smile. and I remembered
Dane telling me last night about her friend, the woman who under—or
maybe even over—the influence of some kind of drug had said, with a
kind of holy awe, that the entire living universe was “a continuing
cosmic orgasm.” And the hell of it was, I had already been thinking
of Dane Smith, so that ruined me. Because I could not only see but
simultaneously feel every glowing and glorious part of Dane’s eyes
and lips and breasts and thighs, and also the rush of her blood and
the pulse of her heart, and then her lips, were like acetylene
torches vulcanizing my mov—”

The phone rang.

I jumped, involuntarily.
Even Hank jumped.

We both knew.

CHAPTER
THIRTY-THREE

Hank listened, said
softly, “Bueno, mil gracias,” and hung up the phone.

Looking at me, he said,
“None of our people have yet seen Wintersong, or your lady, Miss
Smith. But Hobart Belking was observed within the minute, on
Wilshire Boulevard. He is driving what I am told is his wife’s
Jaguar.”

I nodded. “Going which
direction on Wilshire?”

“
East.” Hank knew what I
was getting at, and added, “He was then half a mile from and
approaching Macadamia Street. As you have comprehended, he is
almost surely proceeding to his Dead Animal Mausoleum.”

I got to my feet. “I’ll
take care of it.”

Hank pulled at his lower
lip. “I can phone now, for assistance. Amateur assistance, but help
for you if you wish—”

“
No,” I said. “I don’t
wish.”

And I left.

* * * * * *

It was different at night,
driving up Macadamia Street with my lights out, turning into the
driveway alongside Hobart Belking’s Wild Animal Museum. This time
there was no sunlight—no lighting at all—illuminating the
modernistic building’s exterior. It was just a darker shadow
against the moonless night sky, the sign at its top not even
visible now. But there were lights on inside, and as I rolled
slowly along the driveway toward parking spaces in the rear, I saw
a darkened window at the building’s far left become
bright.

It all looked different,
but also, I felt different. I was tight, muscles pulling at the
back and sides of my neck and squeezing my gut. Part of the unease
was worry about Dane, even wondering about Wintersong, and some of
it, the natural build-up of tension during that last hour with
Hank. But part of it had to be knowing I would be confronting
Hobart Belking again within another minute or two, and this time
there would be not even a pretense of politeness. Not, at least, on
my part.

Driving here, I’d decided
it would be helpful if I could get into the Museum unobserved.
Helpful but not essential, since I assumed there was no way Belking
could know I’d been in that packing crate delivered to Omega
earlier today. Which also meant he couldn’t be aware of my real
reason for being here. So even if all the doors were locked and I
had to bang on them to get next to Belking, it should then be
simple enough to point my Colt Special at his chops and take him
away. I couldn’t think of any reason why that wasn’t true, but I
had a kind of irrational, almost ominous, feeling it might not be
that easy.

For one thing, Hobart
Belking had impressed me as a beefball who might not cooperate a
whole lot even with a gun muzzle screwed into his ear. But also I
kept wondering if I had overlooked something, forgotten something
I’d be much better off remembering.

Halfway down the driveway,
I stopped my Cad, cut the engine. I’d been heading for the parking
lot behind the building, intending to go inside again through those
back doors, or at least raise a racket there if they were locked.
But, on impulse, or maybe moved by those nebulous worries, I
decided not to repeat what I’d done before. So I got out of the Cad
and walked to the curving steps facing Macadamia Street, up them to
those twenty-foot-high wooden doors, gripped one of the large
curved-metal handles and pulled.

The door was unlocked,
moved easily. That should have pleased me; somehow, it didn’t. I
rolled my head left, right, trying to loosen that tightness in my
neck, then pulled the door open wide enough for me to step
through.

Inside, as the door closed
behind me with a barely audible shush, the sight that hit my eyes
was—for the second time today—stunning, almost a shock. Warm light
flooded the cavernous room, and arrayed before me was that almost
dizzying abundance of ersatz life I’d first seen this morning,
scores of freeze-dried and stuffed animals artfully posed and
positioned in strangely disturbing three-dimensional stillness.
Among the real-looking trees, shrubs, sand dunes, native huts, were
tiger, leopard, hippo and rhino, antelope and Oryx, monkeys on
branches and bright birds in the trees.

I saw again, almost with
pleasurable recognition, the awesome black-maned lion, silently
roaring; graceful snow leopard poised in mid-movement on
white-plastic ice; beautiful pair of white Dali rams; and in uneven
rows on three of the walls those mounted heads, of hippopotamus,
wart hog, Oryx, great white-tusked elephant, zebra, javelina, more,
and more, and more.

But nothing moved. At
least, not anything living. On my left, the natural-looking
waterfall I’d noticed this morning tumbled over dark rock into a
pool where a wild dog drank; and at both my left and right, flames
from the fake cook-fires before thatched huts flickered and waved.
No sign of Belking. I knew he was here, here somewhere. Knew not
because he must have turned on all the lights in the place, lighted
the fires and started the waterfall; it had nothing to do with
common sense or logic. I could feel him.

At least, I thought I
could feel the sonofabitch, and the skin-prickling sensation was so
strong I actually looked around, left and right and even behind. It
didn’t help a whole lot that, rearing above me too close on my
right was the enormous white polar bear Belking had taken “clean in
the heart,” its massive arms, with long curving claws unsheathed,
upraised and white-fanged mouth open so wide there appeared to be
room enough inside it for my head plus a couple of antelopes. On my
left, also too close, was the dark brown Kodiak bear on all fours,
head raised and glass eyes glittering.

I walked forward a few
steps, paused, then yelled, “Belking! Hey, anybody who’s here not
stuffed? Belking?”

Nothing. I moved forward
again, and:

“
Scott? That
you?”

The words—shouted, but
unmistakable in Belking’s deep, rasping voice—came from somewhere
near the Museum’s rear wall ahead of me. I could see, ahead and to
my left, the several three-walled rooms in which groupings of more
immobile but lifelike animals: zebra, gazelle, roaring lion, black
bear snarling, silently whooping hyena with neck arched and head
stretched back. But nothing else, no movement.

Then, suddenly, there he
was on my right, well over toward the far side of the big room,
stepping briskly toward me. Briskly, for a guy built like the rear
end of a rhinoceros.

“
I wondered when the hell
you’d get here,” he said. “Cops finally located you,
huh?”

I’d actually started
lifting my right hand, reaching for the Colt Special under my coat.
“Cops? Located—for what?”

Belking was about halfway
to where I stood. His shoe heels still clicking dully on the
composition floor. I was still puzzled by the way he’d seemed to
pop out of nowhere. Apparently he’d stepped around the
six-foot-high pecky-cypress panel that had temporarily blocked my
view of the central-room’s displays when I let myself inside this
morning. I was a little puzzled, too, about what he’d been doing in
that area. Couldn’t recall anything back there except the
open-fronted displays. And, of course...

It started nibbling at me,
but without quite enough time to bite. Because Belking, now only a
few feet away was saying, “Didn’t those bastards tell you?” He
waved something in his left hand; looked like a small piece of
paper. “Take a look at this Scott.”

And, therefore, much like
those French losers who adjusted their own necks for the
guillotines blade I looked. Yes, it was a little piece of paper.
With any luck, it was toilet paper. But this wasn’t to be my
luckiest moment of the week, day, or even moment, nor my most
brilliant, either. In fairness to Belking, he’d done a pretty good
job on me, carried it off with not unconvincing diversion. But the
real dumbness was my confidence that I could have little to fear
from a fifty-year-old cat, particularly one who had in his hands
nothing more lethal than a bit of toilet paper. And so it
goes.

Four things happened then,
simultaneously, or at least like lightning. I realized Belking must
have been lurking behind the pecky-cypress panel so he could stand
by the door there which had, not quite, bitten me; and I realized
he must have been standing by the door so that, when I stealthed in
through it, he could clobber or kill me with the club, or hammer,
or axe, or whatever he had chosen to use for that purpose; and I
realized he had not trotted out here to greet me, still holding
said chosen instrument, because upon observing it, I would have
figured everything out like lightning and shot him; and finally I
realized Hobart Belking had not paused a few feet away but had kept
on moving speedily and managed to hit me with a tree trunk, or
small locomotive, or wrecking ball, on the exterior, and perhaps
also interior of my guts. And I was on my butt, on the floor,
sliding backwards...which I guess was the fifth thing, I realized.
Anyway, five, six, whatever, they all happened like lightning,
which electrocuted me in the stomach.

I had no air in me. None.
And it was the kind of rare situation when you are so empty of air
that there’s no air to suck with. So I couldn’t fill up my
nostrils, much less my lungs, which probably is why I felt numb all
over. Even my eyes were numb, but I could still see clearly through
them, and I could clearly see this horribly squashed creature,
about two feet high and several yards across, stepping toward me
through a million silvery bubbles twirling in the smoke, and then
leaning over.

I guess I moved
automatically, from habit or muscle memory, flopping onto my back
while raising my legs so I could kick the big creature in its head,
if it had one—and as I cocked my feet and the deformed grock moved
quickly away, suddenly there was air in me. I couldn’t recall
breathing, so I wasn’t sure where the air came from, but I wasn’t
about to ask any indelicate questions. It was enough that I could
breathe, then scramble to my feet as the smoke vanished and silvery
bubbles popped, and I was standing, stomach feeling like a huge raw
bruise, and facing Hobart Belking.

He still looked squashed.
Even more than the man normally did, because he was in a slight
crouch, knees bent, arms raised and hamlike fists held before him
like the posture of a professional fighter—and stepping toward me.
But I’d had time to take a couple of deep breaths, sucking in air,
and this time I wasn’t looking at a little piece of paper in his
hand.

So when Belking feinted,
jabbing his beefy left arm and clenched fist toward my face then
pivoting as he drove that right toward my gut again. I bent aside,
felt his wrist and arm bounce harmlessly, then tried to bury my
left fist in his exposed side. I felt his ribs bend inward, heard a
muffled pop, raised my right arm high, hand open and thumb
stretched back, slammed it down toward Belking’s neck like a
flesh-and-bone cleaver. If the thick edge of my palm had landed
where I was aiming, just beneath his right ear, the blow might have
killed him, certainly the fight would have been over. But the blow
didn’t land—this guy was something else. I know I either broke one
of his ribs or tore it loose, but Belking didn’t even grunt. He
spun around, swinging his extended right arm like a club that
hammered me in the armpit and knocked me sideways at least a
yard.

The force of that swinging
forearm with the weight of his spinning body behind it nearly
lifted me off my feet, and when I turned back toward him he slammed
into my chest, head banging the side of my jaw as he wrapped both
arms around mine, pinning them to my sides. We flew backwards
together, landed heavily, rolled, and I heard something break, a
snapping sound, felt sudden inexplicable heat as if blood was
boiling in my face, and sucked acridness into my nostrils, sucked
in a smell like cloth or hair or flesh burning. Then there was
flickering redness in front of my eyes, flames wavering. We’d
rolled into that cook-fire burning before the hut nearest the
Museum’s entrance, scattering fake logs and something metallic that
clanged and rolled.

But Belking had wound up
beneath me this time, on his back, and a thick tongue of gas-fed
flame was flowing over the side of his forehead and into his hair.
Finally he made a noise, letting out a high harsh sound that was
more scream than yell, and rolled away from me rubbing both hands
over his hair and face. I got to my feet, reached him in two long
steps and hit him with a hard, jarring right hand that split skin
over his cheekbone and knocked him down, down to stay. Except he
went down and bounced up, just bounced up like a goddamn dancer,
didn’t even pause an instant down there.