The Death Gods (A Shell Scott Mystery) (54 page)

So when I turned off
Macadamia into his driveway, Belking had seen me coming, and
immediately—assuming I would park again in the lot behind his
Museum—moved from the front to the rear doors to greet me. Greet
me, incidentally, with a three-foot length of heavy stainless-steel
pipe which he had kept handy for that very purpose. The only thing
he missed, fortunately for me, was my parking halfway up the drive
and walking to the still-unlocked front doors, and entering through
them. Which was understandable, considering his eagerness to knock
my block off; but also because he couldn’t have known I would do
that, since I hadn’t known it myself until I did it.

So now he was in an
uncomfortable position a hundred yards from here, and I was in an
uncomfortable position here. When I closed the front door of the
beach house behind me, I heard music. Somebody singing...a man, the
voice full, rich, powerful. It was classical stuff, opera—and
suddenly I recognized the artist and the song.

Let it be clear, I’m not a
classical musical buff. Normally I wouldn’t know Beethoven’s Fifth
from Mozart’s Quart. But a friend of mine was fruit for both old 78
rpms and early LPs, including RCA Victor’s dubbing of orchestral
music to recording classics, his favorite torture being Enrico
Caruso. Originally made in the first couple decades of the
twentieth century, my friend’s favorite torture being the voice, in
some foreign language of Enrico Caruso. That’s what I was hearing,
an ancient—and somewhat scratchy, wavering, but honest-to-God
original re-dubbed recording of Caruso singing Pagliacci. It was
somewhere around the beginning, where he goes “Tutti
Frutti”—whatever—I never figured it out, and that told me Belking
hadn’t lied; Wintersong was here.

I found the stairs, went
up them quickly and almost silently, saw light slipping beneath a
door up ahead. When I tried the knob, it turned; the door moved
inward a quarter of an inch. For some reason my heart was pounding
more than when I’d been preparing to meet Belking. I could feel the
solid thud in my chest, rubbery pulsing in my temples. I took a
deep breath, held it, let the air out slowly, then pushed the door
open and went in.

I didn’t see Dane right
away. My eyes fell on Wintersong—Wintersong’s back. He was seated
before a large wooden desk on my right, looking at some papers
illuminated by a small green-shaded lamp on the desktop. Next to
the papers was a stack of mail with a knifelike letter opener atop
the stack, but nothing else that looked like a weapon, certainly no
handgun. Beyond the desk, at the intersection of the walls, sat a
large TV set, silent, screen dark and dull and staring emptily like
the eye of a blinded Cyclops. Above it on the wall opposite me, a
large clock with, yes, a long second hand sweeping, sweeping.
Wintersong didn’t move, didn’t wiggle; obviously hadn’t heard me
come inside—which was understandable.

Caruso with considerable
lung power, was finishing the part that goes Tutti Frutti, or
however it goes, and Wintersong might not have heard anything else
if I’d slammed the door behind me. I took one long gliding step
forward, looking around—and saw Dane. She was in an overstuffed
chair to my left, hands behind her back, head rolled to one side.
But I could see the slow rise and fall of those abundant breasts
beneath the now not-quite-white blouse, so she was alive,
breathing. Maybe drugged or unconscious, but...no, not all that
unconscious.

Because as I watched she
cracked one eye, her left one, aiming it toward Wintersong. Good
girl, probably she’d been playing possum, or opossum, whatever the
hell those things are. The next thing was odd. She blinked that
left eye, then opened the right one, and rolled them both around at
me. Then she snapped her head around and opened her mouth wide.
Very wide.

I started to say, “Shhh!”
but it was too late.

Enrico had just got to
that tremendous Riiiiiddiiii Pahlyaaaa, but I missed it. Wintersong
also missed it. Everybody missed it. Because the sound she made was
noisier than two hard-rock bands playing at each other inside a
steel tunnel, and of all dumb things for her to yell it had to be
SHEEEEELLLLL—

Loud? Caruso had no lungs
at all. He was whispering. But you could hear him when Dane
stopped. Because that’s what she did, she yelled it and then
stopped and then yelled it again, over and over, talk about a
dumb—

SHEEEEELLL—

Iiiiiiiiiii

SHEEEELLLLL—

Pahllyaaaahh—

SHEEELLLL

aaaahh—SHEEELLL—chi—SHEEELLL—

“
Shut the hell up,” I said.
“Both of you.”

Then there was silence.
Except for Pahllyaaah—and Wintersong crying out, “Good God
Almighty, it’s—”

“
Yeah, Shell,” I finished
it for him. “How did you know? Well, Wintersong, I guess you also
know what I’m going to do to you.”

I was only a couple of
feet from him by then, and he was scrambling up from the desk,
shooting up out of his chair, turning to face me. But not in a
belligerent way. No, not in any offensive way at all.

He stood there, facing me,
his pasty face even paler than usual, almost white as a clown’s. On
his chops was a flickering montage of many expressions, none of
them joyous.

It wasn’t much of a fight.
Nothing like that stupendous bruising and hammering and battering
with Belking, which had absolutely ruined the man’s face. I, of
course, was beautiful. I hadn’t yet looked at my own face in a
mirror, but I’d felt it. And just feeling it made me feel bad. It
also made me feel pretty pissed off. And I had already been pissed
off with Dr. William Wintersong.

So I did not feel the
least bit guilty that Dr. Wimp was not flailing away at me, or
trying to hit me, or offering any resistance whatever. I just went
ahead and did it anyhow, with a considerable amount of
satisfaction, actually.

As already mentioned it
wasn’t much of a fight. Just one punch. But it was a dandy. As I
got set, planted my feet, cocked my right fist, Wintersong still
didn’t take a swing, didn’t even raise his hands.

He just eyeballed me like
a matador being gored from behind by the bull and said, “No! No!
No!”

“
Yes,” I said.

* * * * * *

As I turned away from
Wintersong, now silent and crumpled on top of the desk, Dane
cried—what else?—“Shell!”

“
Will you quit that?” I
said. I’m starting to get bugged by the sound of my own name. Also,
Enrico was still going on and on about something pretty miserable.
“Will you shut that damned thing off?”

She was silent for a few
seconds, probably thinking how thrilled she was that I’d rescued
her, that she was free, saved from no telling what, blinking the
big green eyes slowly and breathing deeply, those big plump breasts
rising and falling, straining hotly against the white blouse—yeah,
I always notice things like that, it’s one of my idiosyncrasies—and
then, with one last plump breath, said, “How?”

“
What?”

“
Turn it off how? Can’t you
see I’m tied up?”

Her wrists were not
manacled behind her, or wired, or anything like that, just tied
with several loops of quarter inch rope. But the knot wasn’t a
granny knot, it was a complicated... no, impossible—

“
Haven’t you got a
knife?”

“
Dane, what do you think I
am, a Boy Scout? If you’ll just give me a minute.” Earlier I’d
noticed a keen-edged letter opener on the desk, walked over there
and got it. Had to move Wintersong closer to the wall, but found
the knifelike opener, and it was sharp enough. A minute later
Dane’s hands were free and she stood before me, smiling and rubbing
her wrists.

“
Oh, that feels good,” she
said. “Shell, I was so shocked to see you! I didn’t really know
whether you were dead or not, I mean not for sure—”

“
What?”

“—
but they hadn’t killed me
yet, so I guessed you must still be alive. Or had been
alive—”

“
Wait-wait. What do you
mean had been alive, hadn’t killed you yet? What kind of
talk—”

“
What happened to you?”
Dane interrupted, her eyes suddenly very wide. She was staring, as
though revolted, at my face, my once resplendent garb, at my face
again. “Did someone beat you up?”

“
Beat me up? Beat me up?
Why do you ask?”

“
Well, you’re all
beat-up—and lumpy, and bloody, and your clothes are all practically
torn off, and you’ve got a big bump on your forehead, and you look
awful. I’m surprised I recognized you, you look so
awful.”

“
Exactly what the coroner
said to me during the autopsy. Isn’t that a
coincidence?”

“
Well, you don’t have to
get maad.”

“
Who’s maad?” I smiled
stiffly, which I discovered hurt like hell.

“
Oh, your poor lips...”
Dane said, more softly, reaching up to press cool fingers against
my mouth.

“
Enough about me,” I said,
feeling my poor lips moving against Dane’s erotic fingers. “But,
speaking of lips, well, what I mean is, this reunion isn’t going
exactly the way I dreamed or, oh, anticipated it.”

“
Reunion? That’s a
strange—”

“
I thought maybe when I
found you—rescued you? Would you buy resc...? Well, that you might
jump up and fling your arms around me, and give me a big—assuming,
of course, you weren’t dead, or being raped, or
anything—kiss.”

“
Kiss?” She looked
nonplussed, which also I had not anticipated.

“
Yeah, kiss, a
kiss.”

“
Who would think of kissing
at a time like this?”

“
Who? Me, that’s
who.”

“
You mean you want me to
kiss you? Now?”

“
No. A week from
Wednesday.”

“
But won’t it hurt?” Her
face seemed—softer. And the full lids drooped lower, half hiding
her green eyes.

For a brief moment I
misunderstood the question, until Dane brushed those cool fingers
over my lips again. “Probably a little,” I said, “isn’t that great?
But—ah, yeah. I mean, no. Don’t worry about it. What’s a little
agony? I can handle it.”

She lifted her face and
closed her eyes, smiling that same knowing smile women were smiling
before Adam reached puberty, and I wondered yet again: What does it
mean? I’ll tell you the truth, it beats the hell out of me. I don’t
know what it means: no man alive knows. I think it’s something they
all teach each other, maybe using witchcraft, when no guys are
around. And I felt it was important to understand this joyously
infuriating smilingness, it was a vital thing for a man to
know...but then almost instantly—yeah, almost instantly again, same
damn thing, just like always—there descended upon me the mystical
truth WHO CARES? As her full yielding body pressed against mine,
and I inhaled through my broken nose the delicate scents of
softness and loveliness and hard-as-nails sweetness, and her lips,
ah.

This was the only time
Dane had kissed me, or vise versa, since that first, and last,
memorable Osculation outside her room in the Halcyon Hotel, and
ever since then I had been wondering if she could do it twice. She
could. She did. Easy. Indeed, Dane Smith could somehow cram more
kissing into a quarter of a minute than most gals can manage in an
hour and a half.

There she was, a couple of
yards away, still emitting bolts of radioactivity. But at least she
hadn’t disappeared entirely this time. “Wow!” I started to say, for
lack of anything more significant at the moment, but I never got it
out because Dane said, “Are you in pain, Shell?”

“
Well, yeah, sort of.
But...you wouldn’t know anything about it.”

I had, in fact, suspected
that my lips, having been hit forcibly by Belking, and kicked
slightly by him, and apparently having fallen into a washing
machine filled with piranhas might cause me a little pain. I was
wrong. Caused me a lot of pain. In fact, it hurt like hell, it damn
near killed me. It was, of course, worth it, but now even my knees
hurt.

“
Shouldn’t we get out of
here, Shell?”

“
Changing the subject, hey?
Well, yeah, that’s a good idea.” I squinted, scowled,
thinking.

“
Does it hurt that
much?”

“
Yeah—no—this is something
else. I was kind of wondering, what should I do with Wintersong?
Can’t just leave him there, on the desk. Can’t call the cops, not
exactly, not quite yet. And I don’t think there’s room for two in
my trunk.”

“
Two? Trunk?”

“
Never mind. I’ll explain
later. If I can.”

The stereo, wherever it
was, had turned itself off, apparently having done all the damage
it could. Thus it was so quiet I could hear Wintersong’s breath,
sighing out of his mouth, pressed against the desktop. I walked
over there and looked down at him for a moment, feeling the return
of that unsettling uneasiness I’d begun experiencing after dumping
Belking into the trunk of my Cad.

At the moment, I had my
hands on the two major players in this murder/conspiracy/IFAI/et
cetera can of worms; I’d met each in fair battle and taken each
prisoner; and I knew both Wintersong and Belking deserved whatever
painful punishment they might get.