Always Leave ’Em Dying (24 page)

But I looked at the still, thin body crumpled near me and I knew one thing for sure: Arthur T

trammel would not rise again.

 

Chapter Twenty-Seven

I was still staring at Trammel's dead body when I heard them. They walked across the floor and stopped near me as I raised my head.

There were four of them, policemen, two in uniform and two in plain clothes. Each held a gun, and one of them finally spoke. "Don't try anything, Scott. Don't move."

Another man in uniform said coldly, "Let's go, Scott."

"OK. Will you give me a minute?"

"I'll give you a—"

"Wait a shake. Give me two minutes and I'll stand you on your heads. Trammel told me before he died of how he lied about me—about everything. Even how he worked his resurrection. It's on tape here."

I think the resurrection bit was what they were most curious about. They hesitated, and I kept it going. "Hell, he planned it years ago, when he first hit the revival trail, figured out how it could be worked, how he could swing it. When he came to L.A., he picked his Guardians and selected a doctor and a lawyer, to make sure there'd be no snags—even a mortician to 'embalm' his body, keep it under cover. Greased a few palms, everything figured out years ago."

One guy smacked a fist into his hand, staring at me, but they gave me my two minutes. I told them, fast, about Felicity and Trammel's other conquests, some of whom he'd sent to Greenhaven, to Wolfe and Dixon. "They did the jobs for him—and others," I said. "But he was the star customer. A year and a half ago he paid Wolfe five thousand dollars for an abortion, only that one was for a little Trammelite girl who was going to spill the beans about the All-High, so the operation had to go wrong. It did; she died. Wolfe and Dixon split the five thousand, which was expensive for an abortion but cheap to keep Trammel's name clean. Besides, the Trammelites' offerings paid for it.

"After that, Trammel had the kill—not manslaughter, but murder, cold-blooded, for money—to hold over their heads. In a way, Wolfe and Dixon had that on Trammel, too, but nobody would have taken their word against his. Anyway, they were all in on the kill together, so when Trammel ordered Wolfe to kill again, fast, he murdered Felicity."

They were listening, and my two minutes stretched into twenty, the twenty into an hour. Shortly after the police had come in, they'd switched off the recorder and put handcuffs on my wrists. Now they rewound the tape and switched the recorder on again.

With Trammel lying dead at our feet, the four officers and I listened to his whispering voice, my questions and his answers, and heard his voice get weaker. In Trammel's words, with details that only he could have known, the story unfolded again. He told again of crushing Dixon's skull with the shovel, and he told where she and Felicity were buried now. He told of others he'd caressed and kissed and named names—including Betha Green's. His voice faded and faltered, then he coughed and there was silence. After a minute or two the words an officer had spoken came from the speaker: "Let's go, Scott." It was quiet. Then the still unrolling tape reached the point where an officer had turned off the machine.

And suddenly, shockingly, Trammel's voice, recorded long before, burst with startling violence from the speaker, more obscene now than it had been in his life. The volume was still high and his words were shouted in the room. They came from the middle of the tape, words twisted by Trammel's then living lips, lascivious, suggestive, ugly: " . . . lusting for the flesh of the young, the innocent; for the evil sweetness of their breasts and thighs that inflame men's minds and make beasts of men—"

I shut it off.

There was shocked silence for a while. I'd told the police of these tapes, and looking at their faces now I knew that this, more than any words of mine, had convinced them of what Trammel had been.

Finally, one of the officers spoke. "Let's go, Scott." The same words, but more friendly now.

It hadn't really been so long, but it seemed as if a year had passed since Arthur Trammel had died.

A lot had happened. I'd had trouble with the police, but all was finally explained. There'd been a flurry and a holler and I'd had to do a bit in the clink, but I'd done it standing on my head, since only a few of the charges, like fomenting a riot and disturbing the peace and puncturing seventeen sets of automobile tires, had stuck. And I'd had to pay for the tetrahedron-punctured tires.

But the clink bit was mainly for clobbering Sergeant Meadows and Al, who were still on the Raleigh force. I'd probably sue the Ledger eventually, and enjoy it. They had printed a front-page retraction, which appeared, ironically enough, in the same issue that carried some editorial condemnation of "character assassination." It was not written by Ira Borch, however. He had been in a hospital at the time, wondering what had hit him.

It was all over for me. I was pleasantly relaxed, reading the newspaper and drinking a bourbon-and-water highball. This is Lyn's apartment, naturally.

Lyn came tripping out of the shower, wrapped in a towel and a smile. "Hi."

"Hi."

"Ready for dinner?"

"Ready for anything."

"Ho, ho. You're a crazy man."

"That's what people keep telling me."

She winked at me and padded barefoot into the kitchen. While she clattered and hummed in there, I thought of the case again. It had finally died out of the papers; it was stale now. But a lot of people hated me, including, of course, the Trammelites—who now called themselves the True Thinkers, having got rid of their old name but none of their old ideas. The Guardians were in jail but, unfortunately, still living. They were still living, but Felicity was dead.

Felicity, Trammel, Wolfe, Dixon, all of them dead and buried, but when I thought of any of them now it was usually the one I'd never met. I had met some people I liked and enjoyed, though. Randy and Olive and Jo—I'd seen them all several times. And, of course, Lyn. Definitely Lyn.

I tried to finish the paper while Lyn finished fixing dinner, but maybe because of my thoughts about the case I couldn't get many kicks from all the good news: Critics Laud Show of Modern Art; Pope Denounces Birth Control as Sin; Teenage Gang Slays Businessman; Eight Take Refuge in Fifth Amendment.

I thought I heard a bell ringing, but it stopped. I listened a minute, then read on. The rest of the news was better, really exciting. There was to be a one-and-one-half-inch difference in skirt lengths this year. One of Emily Post's prototypes solemnly declared that one must remember to tilt one's soup bowl with one's left hand or something like that; mustn't drink from the bowl, I gathered. All good stuff.

I heard that bell ringing again. A little tinkling bell. I looked over my shoulder.

Lyn stood in the doorway. Her towel had slipped, and I thus knew immediately what had set off bells in my head. Then I noticed she had a small bell, a real one, in her hand, and was tinkling it.

"What the hell is that?" I asked.

"Dinner is ready."

"Served."

"Served, baloney. You can help yourself. To food, Shell, to food."

"Stingy!"

She smiled and shrugged—a dangerous thing to do in that towel. "The bell always means 'Come and get it.' Remember that at your peril. Now come on," she said. "Steaks'll get cold."

They didn't. They were thick rare sirloins and they were delicious. We had coffee and lazed around for an hour chatting pleasantly and happily. Finally, we sat quietly until Lyn said, "Shell, what are you thinking?"

"Oh, about today's newspapers. And still thinking back, about the Trammel mess, instead of ahead."

She frowned and bit her lip. "Think ahead, then, darling, now that it's all over, what are you going to do?"

"It isn't all over, that's the hell—"

"Don't make a speech. What are you going to do?"

"I dunno. People really honest at Greenhaven?"

"Pretty honest."

"Maybe I'll go back there."

She didn't laugh. She didn't say anything. In a little while she got up and went out. A few minutes later, I heard her in the bedroom. And I grinned, then I laughed and got up. I walked toward the bedroom, and I could still hear her bell, hear it tinkling.