The Death Gods (A Shell Scott Mystery) (53 page)

Something weird was going
on here; he wasn’t supposed to do that. I had felt the shock of
that last solid blow in my fist and wrist and arm and shoulder, and
I had said to myself with some satisfaction: that takes care of the
bastard, he’s down to stay!

So how come in an instant
he’s dancing about fresh as a daisy? Maybe he’d already knocked me
out, and I was dreaming. Belking was, sure enough, all bounced up
and, while I was still telling myself, “He’s down to stay!” he
slapped at my face with his open left hand, slapping almost like a
woman, and then—

My distinct impression was
that his fist went in my stomach, passed through my last meal, and
exited somewhere near my spine. Again, I went down on my back, but
this time when he stepped closer I rolled, hooked one heel behind
his ankle and kicked his kneecap hard with my other foot. He went
down heavily. Yeah. For an instant.

Then Belking was on top of
me, gouging at my eyes, clubbing the side of my face until I
managed to hug those burly arms to his side, hanging tightly on as
we rolled, him on top of me and then me on top of him, still
rolling bumpily—and crashing through a hut’s flimsy wall in a blur
of smoke and flickering flame and splitting bamboo and palm fronds
and noisily cracking plywood, out through the other wall, each of
us trying really hard to kill the other or at least to stay alive.
It went on for a while. I don’t know how long. And I’m not sure of
everything that happened; much of it’s fuzzy. But there was one
moment of extraordinarily sharp clarity at the end. I was down
again, on the floor, rolling through pain away from the lower legs
and feet of Belking, who was somehow or other standing, not merely
standing but sort of dancing about unless I was having delusions.
Everything was wrapped in warm, acrid, smoky fuzziness until that
moment.

But then—I don’t remember
how I got there, but I recall rolling and seeing blurrily the
striking mane of that magnificent lion I’d seen and admired, and as
I rolled, eyes swinging, it seemed almost that he was moving,
leaping, ten feet from me. And then my motion stopped and my eyes
fell and focused on the face of the female, one of his pride that
I’d noticed near him almost hidden in grass, head thrust forward
and resting on her paws.

But the strangeness was
that when I saw that handsome face and big beige head I didn’t see
a lioness, a sleek cat with glass eyes glittering, dead eyes
unseeing on my face. No, what I saw a foot from my own eyes was
Rusty.

Rusty’s face, with those
whitish, goofy brows.

Rusty’s severed head with
wires and tubes in its brain.

Rusty, dying.

Rusty, dead.

And before I got up off
the floor I felt Belking’s shoe bite into my side as he kicked me,
but it didn’t matter. On my feet, I set myself and watched almost
idly as Belking moved toward me. Noticed his bloody mouth, flap of
ripped skin over one eye, split and swollen redness at his
cheekbone. When he waved that almost-girlish left hand at my face
again I ignored it, measured the bastard and swung with all the
power I had left, right arm unwinding from bunched biceps and tight
shoulder muscles while my right leg straightened, driving me, and
arm, and fist, forward. When that fist met Belking’s mouth and nose
he was moving toward me, but only briefly toward me, then his head
snapped back on his thick neck and a splash of blood sprayed
through the air.

And after that, the fight
was essentially over. True, I hit him a couple more times, but I
had to lean down toward him to do it. The first time was when,
after several seconds, he got up onto his knees. But Belking wasn’t
looking at me. He stared past me, shock on his battered face, eyes
wide and filled with something like horror.

“
My God,” he said softly.
“Oh...my God.”

Near us there was a great
roaring and crackling, and a terrible velvety sound like humming
winds. I could feel the heat. Probably I’d felt it before, but only
then did I become fully aware of it. Belking and I had moved around
a lot while pounding on each other, but we’d wound up near that
black-maned-lion exhibit only a few feet from where we’d started,
where the battle had begun with me sliding backwards on my
butt.

Behind me were those big
double doors at the Museum’s entrance, and Belking was on his knees
before me, staring to my left and away from me. He was looking
toward the nearer of those two thatched huts, the one where we’d
rolled into the cook-fire; but the hut was no longer there. A
blackened framework of posts and two-by-fours remained, still
burning, but all the roof, and walls of palm leaves and fronds, had
vanished in fire and smoke.

The other hut next to the
first was still burning fiercely, sparks flying upward and spinning
lazily toward the rear of the room, and as I looked the whole thing
collapsed, even the inner framework holding it together falling
with a sound like a giant sigh. As it collapsed, burning bits of
leaves and wood arced outward and up, and a sudden wave of greater
heat made me turn my face briefly away.

Something flamed redly at
the back of the room, but my view of whatever burned there was
blocked by an exhibit of two fearsome-looking gorillas half hidden
among greenness of leaves and vines. I could see the dance of
reddish light flickering over the long left-to-right wall where, a
dozen feet above the floor, the severed heads of scores of animals
were mounted and arrayed in an uneven row.

Belking was making a
noise. Not words. Something more like, “Aahhh-ahh,” then he started
trying to get up, pressing one foot against the floor.

“
Don’t try it, Belking,” I
said. “I’ll just have to belt you again.”

I don’t think he heard me.
“It’s burning, it’s on fire, it’s all burning,” he moaned. “Help
me, you’ve got to help me.”

“
No, I don’t.
Belking—”

He pushed with his one
planted foot, got the other one beneath him and began wobbling
upward. So I belted him.

He landed on his chest and
face, rolled over, sat up. “Aaah-ahh...”

I squatted near him as he
licked his bloody lips, spat out a clot of blood, then said in an
unnaturally high voice, “You’ve got to help me. My God...It’s all
going. My God, my God, help me put out the fire.”

“
First, where’s Dane Smith?
And Dr. Wintersong? Maybe then we’ll do something about the
fire.”

I had to repeat it, after
rapping his forehead with my knuckles to get his attention. Even
then, he hesitated. But after looking around, left, right, eyes
staring, he answered my questions. Plus a few others.

I got to my feet. It
really was time to get the hell out of here—half the big room was
on fire now, there was even flame snaking through those interlaced
branches on the ceiling. Turning my head I saw that handsome pair
of prize Dali rams Belking had pointed out to me, saying he’d
“taken” one and Caesar Velli had blown away the other. A burning
limb, or vine, something, had fallen over them, rested against
their sleek whiteness, and they were burning as I watched, melting,
turning black.

Beyond them the
hindquarters of a grazing zebra was smoldering and smoking, only a
small half circle of flame moving on one hip, near its tail. Up on
the rear wall, far to the right, two mounted heads were burning as
was the wood around them. Oddly, the only other burning head was
far from those two, almost in the middle of the row. But that one
was really blazing, nearly consumed, already
unrecognizable.

I remembered it had been
immediately right of the prize exhibit on the wall, that great head
of an African elephant with curving tusks like thick white
scimitars.

Belking groaned, moaned,
grunted, and stood up.

Well, almost
up.

When he’d made it about
halfway, maybe a little more, I leaned over a bit and creamed him.
He went flat, face down, but moved his arms, pressed both hands
against the floor. This guy was unreal. But he wasn’t trying to
stand up again, just getting room to move his head around so he
could look at me, or at least toward me. His puffy lips moved and
sounds came out. I couldn’t understand them.

But he kept trying, so I
knelt down, put my face close to his, heard “Please...” Belking’s
hands moved slightly, scratching at the floor, and his mouth
continued to move. I looked at his battered face, broken nose,
puffed eyes, red mouth moving and heard the rest of the impossible
thing he was asking of me.

Heard him, but did not
sympathize.

Because what he said was,
“Save the animals.”

CHAPTER
THIRTY-FOUR

I walked the last hundred
yards, moving silently over sand.

This was no time to spook
anybody with flashing headlights or the sound of an approaching
car, so I’d left my Cad parked off the road, walked down
gently-slanting earth to the beach and turned left toward the big
two-story house.

It was the right house,
the only one within a mile of here. “Here” was a private, isolated
stretch of ocean-front property north of Malibu, and I was one of
the few people who knew the isolated residence was owned by
billionaire Hobart Belking. Maybe you had to know how to ask
him.

The owner of the house was
not, of course, in the house. He was bundled up, trussed and taped,
in the trunk of my Cadillac. You’re asking: Why in the trunk of
your Cadillac?

Right? Well, if you want
the truth, I wasn’t exactly sure what to do with him once I had
him. You can’t just turn a mad billionaire loose; he might hire a
police force, or an Air Force, or Nicaragua, and tell them: Kill!
That’s the way it is with some billionaires, they never know when
they’re licked. Even when you’ve just beaten the hell out of them.
Especially when you’ve just beaten the hell out of them. So maybe
one answer to your question is: Why not?

But if you want some more
truth, the whole situation was beginning to worry me. Just a little
bit. Not a whole lot—well, yeah, maybe a whole lot. For one thing,
by the time I had slammed the trunk’s lid over Belking—who by then
was commencing to wriggle menacingly and making muffled angry
noises—I could hear sirens. Many sirens, which appeared to be
converging upon the trunk of my Cadillac from all directions. That,
of course, was because Hobart Belking’s Wild Animal Museum was on
fire. But so many sirens?

The joint had sure been
burning, all right. You didn’t have to be inside it to know that.
You could tell from the outside that there were holes in the roof,
with flames shooting up out of them. Fortunately, I hadn’t done it.
Not all by myself. But I wouldn’t have put it past Hobart Belking,
owner of Hobart Belking’s Wild Animal Ashes, to lie and say I did.
I really wished I could figure out what to do with him.

But that would work itself
out, just turn it over to the old subconscious. Yeah.

I took a deep breath of
salt-fresh air, and walked swiftly along the tide marks, surf
booming on my right. There was no moon, but I could see the faint
gray-whiteness of breakers tumbling, hear the hiss as the sea’s
edge fanned over wet sand near my feet. When I stopped before the
two-story house I could see its lower floor was dark; but light
warmed one squareness of window above: Top floor left, farthest
room back. I went inside.

That part was easy enough.
The front door was locked and no windows were open. But I still had
in my pockets the stuff I’d carried into and out of the Omega
Medical Research Foundation. So my lock-pick kit made opening the
door a thirty-second job.

The thought of Omega
reminded me: When Belking was at last answering my questions, he
explained how he knew I’d been involved in, if not entirely
responsible for, the disastrous upheaval and commotion at Omega
including the catastrophic—especially for Dr. Wintersong—exposure
of what was going on there. Explained with some reluctance, but in
enough detail that I could figure out the parts left unsaid. The
young kid who’d seen me inside Omega, whom I’d left tied up in a
storeroom there was found by police who’d searched all three
buildings after finding and photographing the heads of Guenther and
Helga Vunger and Rusty.

The kid was allowed a
phone call, which he made to the attorney he had been advised to
contact about any matters concerning Omega and his job there, that
might require legal action or representation. Advised by the boss,
William Wintersong, M.D., who had been so instructed by the real
Boss, Hobart Belking, S.O.B. The kid didn’t know about the gruesome
things in that lab next to Wintersong’s office; but he knew some
animal-rights activists were milling about, and a lot of cops were
also there, and he did not fail to mention the large white-haired
ape, with up-angling and down-bending white brows et cetera, who
had tied him up and left him to die in a storeroom. Nobody assumed
the white-haired ape was a guy named Elmer Thudd, who had broken
into Omega to burgle some stethoscopes. By then, of course,
Grinner’s “murdered” corpse had been found, plus trussed-up George
Kell and the two guards he’d called Fred and Horse; and stated
conservatively, events simply proceeded inevitably from there,
toward hell-to-pay.

Anyhow, after instructing
Wintersong to take Dane Smith with him to the beach house,
where—unless Belking had lied to me about that—both were at this
very moment, and visiting Omega, and being respectfully
interrogated by the law downtown at Parker Center, Belking had gone
to his Museum. Partly because that was his baby, his prize, his
dream; partly because he suspected I might visit him there, and
devoutly hoped I would.