Gat Heat (18 page)

I leaned over Skiko. His eyes were rolling.

“Skiko,” I said, “where'd Bingo get that photo—” I stopped, started over. There might not be much time, and the number-one problem was making sure I stayed alive to ask other questions.

So I said, “Who set me up for the kill at the Hamilton, Skiko?”

He moved his head a little, got his eyes on my face. They weren't dull, but almost glowing, hot and feverish. I'm not sure he understood me. Maybe he didn't even hear me. He pushed his bloody tongue out and over the blood on his lips.

I put my head closer to his, looked straight at him. “Look, you knew you got Porter—didn't get me, anyway—because you and Stub showed up and tried again in Westwood. I know two guys did the blasting downtown and you phoned Samson right after that. So start there, at the Hamilton. You had to be near a phone. Who were the trigger-men?”

“Gippo,” he said. It sounded as if he were gargling, but I caught the name; and I knew the rest of it, Gippo Crane. “And … Tooth.”

“Billy?”

“Yeah.”

“No brains there, Skiko. Who set me up for that kill?”

His eyes rolled again. I grabbed the cloth of his suit coat, bunched cloth and shoulder padding in my hand, holding him up. “There at the Hamilton, Skiko!
Who set me up for that kill?
”

His eyes didn't look feverish any longer. He wasn't looking right at me, but past my head. Not much juice in him now. Brain sluggish, heart slowing.

“Dilly,” he said finally. “Dilly Pickle.”

I blinked. He would have sounded out of his skull if I hadn't heard so many hoodlum monickers; but this was a new one to me.

“Did you say ‘Dilly Pickle?'” I asked him.

He let the lids fall and rise over his eyes, moved his head as though trying to nod.

“Where'll I find him, Skiko?” I waited for him, then said, louder than before, “This Dilly Pickle, where'll I find the bastard?”

“Hidden Valley. Should be … by now. Lodge …”

“What's he got to do with Jimmy Violet? Where the hell does Violet fit into this?”

Skiko was dead.

I let go of his shoulder and his body slumped in the seat, crumpled almost out of sight below the table top.

I looked down at him for a moment, then used my handkerchief to rub blood flecks from the back of my hand. Well, he'd told me a little. Not enough, but a little.

That “Dilly Pickle” bit had thrown me for a second or two. I'd expected to hear the name of Jimmy Violet—assuming Skiko knew at that point what I was actually asking him. He'd been pretty close to the edge.

But if it was a hood's monicker, while unusual, it wasn't of an unprecedented goofiness. Sometimes a crook's nickname or underworld handle is based on an outstanding aspect of his personality or character. Like that of a little, not-too-unpleasant creep I'd known called Viper because he was deathly afraid of snakes. Or a monicker might be an addition to, or corruption of, a man's real name. The “Tooth” Skiko had mentioned, for example. His real name was William DeKay. And he had exceptionally large and horselike choppers. It was a natural; almost inevitably he'd become known to his chums as Billy “Tooth” DeKay.

So, it wasn't merely the name “Dilly Pickle” that had jarred me, but the fact that it was a brand new one to me, and I thus had nothing on which to base any deductions about why this particular Pickle would have arranged for me to get knocked off.

Well, maybe I could ask the bastard. Ask either pleasantly or horrendously. Because it appeared the guy had wound up at, or checked into, the Hidden Valley Lodge. Skiko had told me that much, in addition to tagging the boys who'd blasted Porter instead of me: Gippo Crane and Billy DeKay.

So I was going to the Hidden Valley Lodge.

The bartender was still standing next to the chubby blonde. He'd brought her a drink, and she was quiet now, but her upper lip, under her nose, was wet and shiny.

I took the bartender across the room, gave him Skiko's .45, and said, “You call the police?”

He nodded.

“All right. I'm taking off.”

I was. I didn't have time to stick around—not the time I knew would be consumed if I did.

“My name's Shell Scott.” I got out my wallet, handed him one of my business cards. “Tell the police just what happened. You saw it?”

He nodded again.

“You know Skiko?”

“Yeah. He's in here all the time.”

“You saw him go for his gun?”

The bartender swallowed, but nodded. “I seen it.”

“O.K. Tell the police what you saw.” I smiled. “But you won't make Skiko look like an innocent citizen assulted by a big white-haired thug, will you?”

His words, and voice, and eyes, and jumping Adam's apple, said he wouldn't make Skiko look like that at all.

I pointed to the blonde. “And keep that one here to tell her story, too.” Then I trotted to the Cad and got out of there.

The Hidden Valley Lodge was about as close as you could get to “country,” to trees and stream and birds chirping, to peace and restful quiet, without going clear out of the county.

Only a short drive north of Beverly Hills, it was, like the Bel Air Hotel not far away, in a very woodsy setting with lots of trees and bosky growth all around, a sylvan landscape where one might expect poets to brood, but where, in fact, the high-powered well-to-do—industrialists, members of the board, company presidents, bankers, and numerous Hollywood producers, directors, writers, stars and even starlets—relaxed and played.

The rates at Hidden Valley were prohibitively expensive, but the Lodge was generally filled nearly to capacity nonetheless.

Not, however, with hoods.

So what would somebody named Dilly Pickle be doing here?

The real pickle, however, was the fact that while I had no idea who Dilly was, it was crystal clear that he knew me.

Consequently, when I walked over the wooden bridge, beneath which flowed a ten-foot-wide stream, I not only wore a hat and dark glasses but carried my own movie camera, which I'd taken from the Cad's trunk. It was a sixteen-millimeter Bolex loaded with a hundred feet of unexposed film—unexposed, at least, except for a few feet I'd shot on my last trip to Laguna Beach, when with a gorgeous tomato named Tootsie.

Not that I intended to be making any movies at the Hidden Valley Lodge. But, by pretending to be catching a few candid shots, I could hold the thing in front of my face while looking the area over. The hat and glasses would hide my too-obvious hair and eyebrows, but today I wanted every bit of help I could get. Especially since my head was aching like fury despite the consumption of several aspirins, and at rare intervals my eyes failed to focus as well as I'd have liked. Occasionally I saw two things where there was only one thing.

But as I walked over the bridge and toward a side entrance of the Hidden Valley's enormous lobby, my vision was at least 20-20 and it was one of those moments of respite when my entire skull seemed intact. I hoped it stayed thus in one piece, for I had not forgotten my experience at the Sporks'.

Ten minutes later, after talking briefly to the chief of security, and getting his O.K. for a gambit I wanted to employ, I checked with a clerk at the registration desk. Nobody named Pickle, Pickel, Peckle, Packle, or even Pickerel had checked in today, or during the last week. In fact, there had not been any guests registered whose last name began with a P. I spent another ten minutes roaming through the bars, dining rooms, and grounds outside—taking lots of “pictures”—without seeing any recognizable faces, then went back into the hotel.

I walked across the lobby holding a hand before my face, as though having trouble keeping my nose on, and stopped before thick plate-glass windows beyond which was the huge swimming pool. The sun would be below the horizon in less than an hour, but in and around the pool four or five dozen carefree guests still swam, splashed, or lolled.

Only a few feet beyond the window, reclining on a blue chaise longue with its back slightly elevated, was a gal with a body so splendid it was getting almost as much attention as a naked tomato would have received.

She was lying on her back with her arms at her sides, and a big wide-brimmed straw hat over her face, and thus concealing some of her features. But it was the other features catching the eye of the men—and women—who strolled by.

She was wearing a swimsuit, but it wasn't a bikini or even one of those brief jobs cut way up at the sides. It was a form-fitting white dandy which came clear up to her neck and over her shoulders, something like a sleeveless leotard, but it must have been made from perhaps an ounce and a half of clinging jersey, because a guy close enough should have been able to count her pores, and if she'd had a wee mole on her ribs, I would undoubtedly have been able to spot it even from here.

The smooth bare arms and legs were deeply tanned, and she looked so relaxed she might earlier have fallen asleep in the sun. I wanted to think the straw hat was covering her face because she'd decided to nap during the bright afternoon; but with a trace of unusual pessimism I concluded it was probably because she knew the body was fantastic, and thus chose to conceal a kisser virtually unkissable.

I wondered who she was. Nobody I knew, I was pretty sure.

A number of other people appeared to be wondering the same and probably other things, and it was interesting to note the varied reactions of those whose eyes fell upon her. As she breathed, the thin white jersey rose and fell, tight against the skin of her flat stomach; the looming breasts swelled and sighed. And when the men strode by and glanced, or looked, or goggled, almost invariably their eyes seemed to flutter and dance, and their lips involuntarily curled, or twitched, or wiggled, or pooched.

Not the babes, though; not, not the babes.

The first gal who looked full upon the lyrelike outline and bulging bosom and taut stomach flaring sharply into hips worthy of sonnets, pulled her mouth into the round, compressed attitude of one sucking on a lemon gumdrop, and her eyes got smaller and smaller and finally disappeared entirely, or so it seemed to me. The next one gazed and yanked her head away, but the eyes—yes, narrowing, narrowing—stayed fixed and focused upon the cruelly unfair competition.

Two couples walked by, quite close to the gal in the white jersey dandy. Both guys looked and assumed expressions akin to that of alcoholics preparing gladly to leap off the wagon. You could see the cords swelling in their necks, the muscles wiggling in their eyebrows, nostrils thinning and flaring and again thinning, as might the nasal flaps of a bull ape upon scenting—after long lone days and days—a cow ape.

The first girl noted her fellow's apparent distress, and glanced about to see what horror it was his painted orbs had fallen upon. She saw. And on her pretty face grew an expression of unrestrained and total malevolence. Had it stayed there, her head could have been hung without alteration in the wax museum, suspended in mid-air below Jack the Ripper's bloody ripper, or perhaps even screwed upon Jack's neck.

But it was there for only an instant, a revelatory flicker which it is given to few men to see, and see so clearly. Fortunately. Then in a trice her features sprang back to their normal prettiness, were in fact even prettier—gay! glad! fun-fun!—as she snapped her head back toward her fellow's face, pressing closer against him, chattering and squirming in apparent ecstasy while nudging him toward the pool. Possibly to drown him.

The second girl did the same thing.

Too bad I've got to keep the old nose to the grindstone, I thought. I could stand here—or there—all day, learning about human nature, about life, about that babe in the white jersey dandy.

But instead I called a bellman over, slipped him a bill and asked him to have Dilly Pickle paged. I told him what I wanted said, and that it was O.K. with the chief of security. He smiled at the bill, and walked away.

Unfortunately, the p.a. system used for paging could not be used selectively—that is, for a specific dining room only, or a bar, or the lobby alone—so the call for Dilly Pickle would be heard simultaneously everywhere, in and around the hotel. Also unfortunately, I couldn't be every place at once watching everybody; so it was unlikely that when his name boomed over the p.a. system I'd be fortunate enough to note a small or tall or thin or fat fellow go into a squat of vast surprise, clutching at his heart, or gun, or hind end upon hearing his name.

So I stayed where I was, glancing at the people in the lobby and those visible in and around the pool.

Then came the announcement over the lobby speakers. “
Will Dilly Pickle please come to the Lost and Found Section at the main desk? Will Dilly Pickle
…” and so on.

Several of the guests glanced around; some smiled, a few chuckled and shook their heads. Nothing out of the ordinary. The name rang oddly on my ears, too.

“
Will Dilly Pickle please …
”

I hadn't expected much from the page. But it was the only thing I'd been abe to think of which might speed this pursuit. The alternatives were either to hang around here looking, maybe for hours and even then unsuccessfully, or else forget it and go to work on some of the other angles.

The lovely with the mesmerizing curves apparently had indeed been taking a nap. Because as I glanced through the windows toward the pool I saw her stir, move slightly as though awakening, beginning to stretch, or tensing her sexy muscles.

“
Will Dilly Pickle
…”

She arched her back slightly, filling her lungs with breath, and the already amazingly prominent breasts seemed to strain toward the sky as though countdown had ended and liftoff was imminent.

They seemed to quiver in anticipation, eager to take off and fly. Maybe my mind was beginning to stray hither and yon again, because for a moment I was actually thinking of wild birds soaring to yon horizon and then back hither; free at last of their downy nests; all sorts of bird junk was winging through my brain.