Over Her Dear Body (27 page)

Neither of them spoke this time either. But Goss licked his lips, turned a little toward me as if he wanted to speak. Silverman's lips looked as if they'd grown together.

I said to Goss, “Don't worry about the commissioner here. I've got enough to buy you both a pound of cyanide pellets in Q's little apple-green room. You know what I mean by Q, don't you, Morrison?”

He jerked when I called him by his real name.

“The way it looks to me,” I told him, “Silverman was the brains from the start, the guy behind the scenes. Knowing you were a fugitive from the police, I'd guess he didn't have much trouble convincing you that you ought to go along with him. Be his front man. Especially when it was so profitable.”

“Not so damned profitable,” Goss said.

“Shut up!” Silverman said, looking at Goss instead of me, “He can't prove a thing—it's just his word so far. And he's half dead now. Look at him. He won't last five minutes. Bob, listen to me. You know some of my connections. I can beat this for
both
of us.”

There wasn't any question about who the boss was. I said, “No, it's not just my word, Silverman. Right now, Navarro is telling the law all he told me. The police should be joining us in a minute, maybe less.”

Silverman said to Goss, “He's lying. He came here alone. There aren't any police coming, Bob.”

I heard a siren then. It didn't mean anything; the sound could be from police on their way here, or going in the other direction, but I said, “Bend an ear to that.”

Silverman believed me. But I don't think he'd doubted it. Goss jerked his head around and I said to him, “You're
both
cooked. Silverman's sure to have a fall guy around somewhere, though. Somebody he can blame everything on. A man with records in his name instead of Silverman's. A goat. A patsy, Goss. And who do you suppose that fall guy might be?”

Goss hesitated, but he was obviously thinking about what I'd said. He knew who the patsy was. Silverman didn't hesitate at all then. He looked at me and said calmly, “Strange as it may seem to a man of your mentality, Scott, Morrison has been behind all this, responsible for all your difficulties, from the beginning. As you have discovered, he is a man with a prison record. He personally broached the idea of utilizing my knowledge of probable freeway routes in order—”

“You lousy bastard!”

That, of course, was Goss-Morrison. He looked at me.

“Okay, Scott. That ties it. This bastard set everything up. Sure he had the dope about me being in the can and then on the lam. I couldn't have stayed out of stir this long without him pulling wires. He planned it all. The reason Belden was on the yacht was so
he
could look him over, talk to him, make up his mind whether to have him killed or not. On the yacht—hell, it's
his
yacht, just in my name like half his other deals—there wouldn't be any bugs, nobody listening. It would just look like a party, a big gay time, the farthest thing from anybody planning a murder. That's why everyone brought a babe along—and the party was already planned anyway, so he used it. After you busted in
he
said to me, ‘We've got to kill them both ...'” He stopped.

Goss had done rather well there for a while, but that “he said to me” phrase must have slipped out. He couldn't blame everything on Silverman that way. He went on, “Everything that happened was what
he
decided on.”

Not quite, I thought. But close enough. The siren hadn't gotten any louder. In fact, I couldn't hear it any longer. I began to worry about Elaine. And also about me. I noticed the gun's barrel was pointing at an angle toward the floor and brought it up again. It seemed to weigh forty pounds. I was pretty dopey; I hadn't even checked these guys for guns—but the way I felt, it was probably better if I didn't get too close to any of them.

“His ya—” I started over, got it out the second time. “His yacht, huh? I'd guessed it. You'd never have named it the
Srinagar
. The
Sea Slob
, maybe. It sounds like Silverman, though, he told me all about...” I let it trail off. I could see two of Goss, and that was twice as bad as just one of Goss.

He went on, “It's in my name, but his money bought it. He named it, all right.” Goss hesitated then. Some of his fervor for telling all he knew was leaving him. He looked at Silverman, who hadn't moved. Silverman's face was like cold stone as he stared fixedly at Goss, his eyes like ice. He didn't say anything, just stared, but frost should have formed on his eyebrows.

Goss seemed to jerk his gaze away with an effort, and went on, “Somewhere he's got a will he made me and Mitchell draw up, leaving practically everything to him if I died. Or got killed. He wasn't letting go of a thing.”

“All your money came from him? I saw about eight hundred thousand in checks that Ralph kept.”

“Most of the dough. He handed over a million or more a year. I declared a lot of it. I've got a wife and three kids, and he's a bachelor. So right there was a fat tax break, and with Mitchell's tricks there was plenty more saved. Besides, that way he stayed under cover on the deals. I still don't know where in hell he got all his dough, but you can bet it's crooked. I know most of it is.”

I looked around. I wanted a chair to sit in, so I wouldn't have to keep using most of my strength just to stand up. But there wasn't a chair near me. A couch was against the right wall of books, but it was a long way off.

The phone rang. It was on a small table at the end of the couch. Silverman started to speak, but I told him to keep quiet, I'd get the phone. I started toward the couch and the phone wobbled around in the air quite a bit. I shook my head hard, bit into my lip and the phone settled down again.

When I flopped onto the couch I could hardly feel it beneath my legs. Both Silverman and Goss were looking intently at me. I felt lousy. I felt dizzy and sick. Nausea climbed into my throat. It took a long time for me to get my hand on the phone, but the dull pain tearing at my shot-up chest cleared some of the fog from my numbed brain.

I picked the phone off the hook and managed to get it to my ear. A quiet respectful voice said, “Hello. Mr. Silverman?”

“Who's this?” I asked him.

“Lieutenant Strong, sir.”

“Yeah,” I said. “This is Silverman. I want you to come out and water my lilies.”

“What? What the—”

“This is Shell Scott, lieutenant. And where in hell are you?” Anger sent more feeling into my body, gave me more strength. I didn't feel exactly like a tiger, but for the moment I was a pretty strong kitten. Then fright charged me up even more. “Didn't Elaine Emerson get to the station?”

“Why, yes. I—there's a hysterical woman here, claiming impossible things.”

“They're not impossible, they're true.” I kept my eyes on the men across the room. “Especially about Robert C. Silverman.”

His voice was all shattered, like broken glass. “It ... Shell Scott? I thought you were dead.”

“I'm half dead. If you guys don't get here in a hurry I'll make it the rest of the way.”

That was about all the conversation. I didn't hang up the phone, just dropped it next to me.

Silverman spoke to Goss. “Well, the gentlemen of the police really are on their way now. You shouldn't have lied so fluently about me.” He smiled, and again I was reminded of a smile over filed-down teeth. “You know I won't spend a day in prison. You know, don't you, that I won't be convicted of anything?”

He sounded supremely confident. Then he frowned, as if at some small annoyance, and said to me. “I will admit that I probably won't be back in this house for a while. Shall we have one last glass of brandy?”

As if he were reaching for a crumpet to nibble with tea, he reached toward that mosaic-topped chest, pulled open one of the doors facing him in its side. Goss turned a bit—but away from me. I didn't get the significance of the movement, but I wasn't much worried about him now; his back was to me. Silverman was the boy I had my eye on.

I said, “Silverman.”

He looked up, hands inside the chest.

My gun was held steady on his middle. “You know if you try anything fancy, that's the end of it for you. You haven't a chance. Slow and easy, sit up straight.”

He raised his eyebrows and smiled, looking quite handsome.

“You wouldn't refuse the condemned man one last dram of this fine Armagnac, would you, Mr. Scott?”

He grasped something inside the chest and straightened up.

The shot was sudden and ear-splitting, a nerve-ripping sound in the quiet. Silverman's face seemed to leap from his skull. Bits of bone and flesh splatted against the wall of books. For a moment I thought my gun must have gone off, that I'd unconsciously pulled the trigger.

But Goss took one step backward and then I saw the gun in his hand, another .45 automatic. Silverman's body was still moving, thrown from the chair he'd been in and turning in the air. He fell, arms flailing crazily, rolled onto his back, most of his face gone.

Goss looked toward me.

“Drop it,” I said. “If you even wiggle your ears, I'll kill you.”

He dropped the gun. “I was just trying to save you from getting shot, Scott.” His voice was almost a whine. “He was going for a gun. I had to do it.”

“Sure. You had to.”

“I did. I had to do it. He'd have killed us both.”

“Sure. You saved my life.”

“That's it. You'll tell the cops that. I already spilled plenty. Ill give you all the rest of it, Scott. I can help you plenty.”

“I don't know, Goss. I don't know if I can stand any more of your help. Get over there with Mitchell and that other helpful gentleman.”

He got over there. From where Goss had been standing, he would have clearly seen every movement Silverman made. But from here, on the couch, the mosaic-topped chest blocked my view.

I thought about getting to my feet, thought some more, started up and finally made it. I walked over to the chair where Silverman had been sitting, sank down into it. On my right he lay quietly. Blood drained from his flesh, but slowly. His heart had stopped pumping. And at my feet was a wet stain, slowly spreading. The fumes of brandy rose in the air and filled my nostrils.

The bottle rested almost against one of my shoes. The bottle he had reached for, pulled from the chest. Silverman's brandy. Armagnac, Manoir St. Vivant. Thirty years old.

Then, the sirens. Coming, I thought hazily, to water the lilies. They made it inside the house in less than a year. I don't remember much about it. But then two uniformed men were near me, carrying a wheeled stretcher.

“Easy, Scott,” one of them said. “We'll give you a hand onto this and—”

“Never mind, friend. I made it this far. I guess I can make it to the ambulance.”

A fat lot I knew. I guess I did make it about halfway there. I know I took a couple of steps on grass, but then—that's all I remember.

There were some blurred days, and some not-so-good days with probings and transfusions and strange doings—none of which was by Dr. Fischer, who was in the can with a whole host of other people, including Hip Brandt and Joe Navarro and Geats. And then there were a number of good days. Visits from friends, and police including smiling boulder-chinned Samson, and, praise be, from several juicy tomatoes.

Even after I got out of the hospital it took a while to wrap everything up, make sure Goss was tied up tight, get the names of all the hoodlums still living who'd been in on any part of the numerous financial, and bloody, capers. But it all got done quickly enough; and with Goss talking a little, and Ralph Mitchell talking a lot and explaining all the papers in his blue-manila file, and with a number of other hoodlums singing almost in harmony, it made beautiful music to many ears, especially to mine.

Between the windup of the case and the time when everything was settled for good, there were several days not filled with reports and depositions, arguments and explanation. Several fascinating days, in fact.

Among them were the days when I saw Bunny, and we had lively chats and whatnot. She was doing a single, having had enough of dancing partners for a while—I caught the act a time or two, and it was great. As soon as I could, I made sure that no trouble had come to Arline—as it would have, if Mitchell and the rest hadn't been in the can. But Arline was a gal who could take care of herself, and the last I heard she'd even found a caretaker's job at what she called “the most wondrous new place.” It had a pool, and a gymnasium, and even—you guessed it—a steam room.

And then there was the day ... this day, in fact. The day when everything was wrapped up, over, finished, and life was wonderful. Nobody was shooting at me, it looked as if I'd live for a while longer, and for a while longer anyhow, I was sure living.

We didn't have a yacht. We had a thirty-six-foot cabin cruiser, rented, but still just as much fun as a yacht, anchored in a secluded Southern California spot I know about. It wasn't night, as it had been when all this had started, but a beautiful warm day with caressing sunshine and puffs of clouds in the blue sky. There were other points of similarity, though.

Again it was not only beautiful and balmy, great to be alive, but there was a gorgeous bare fanny in the water there ahead of me. Not Bunny's this time, but even lovelier—Elaine's. In fact, this was twice as good as when it had started—which is the way I like my cases to wind up when possible—because this time there were
two
bare fannies in the water. And, if it need be explained to any subnormal mentalities, that other bare fanny was mine.

Because I was in the water with Elaine. And only a damned fool jumps into the water with his clothes on. More than once, anyway.

And, I like to think—no matter what you may have heard—that I'm not a
damned
fool.