Strip for Murder (24 page)

In among the trees I kept going fast enough, but my lungs felt stretched like used gum and my head throbbed. A gunshot cracked and bark flew from a tree on my right. I saw water ahead of me. The pool. I had run into the damned blind canyon. And I sure as hell couldn't go up that cliff. I couldn't get back out of here now, either. When I turned I saw a man coming through the passageway.

I was trapped.

But then I saw my ladder in the sky. No, I wasn't trapped. Not me. Not old Eekle from Arcturus.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Everything in those next few seconds was; and will always remain, blurred in my mind. I remember running toward the rope that anchored those balloons, spotting the hunting knife I'd left on the ground the night before, grabbing it, and looping one leg over a rung of the rope ladder. A slug pinked my arm at almost the instant I slashed the rope holding down the balloons. And then
zoop,
I was airborne.

I didn't go up with really tremendous speed, though at first it seemed to me that I was hurtling through space like a meteor because I was upside down and dangling by one leg. But when I managed to grab the ropes and haul myself upright I was still only about fifty feet off the ground. I looked down. All three of the men had yanked off their hoods, probably to see better, and one of them, neck craned up—even from where I was I could see the gaping hole that was his mouth—was still running. He ran right into the water. The two other guys were stock-still, arms hanging at their sides and heads bent back almost far enough to snap.

I hoped I'd get out of pistol range before they recovered their senses, but suddenly Foo yanked up his gun and started popping away at me. I was really in a hell of a position. Only two shots were fired, though; Foo must have used up his other bullets during the chase.

At the last shot there was a little puffing noise above me and I looked up. A couple of my balloons sighed softly and collapsed. I sort of collapsed a little too. But my craft kept carrying me skyward. A mild wondering thought about when and where this would stop occurred to me, but then I looked down at the earth again. Three little men looked up at me; one shook his fist. I raised my eyes and looked over the trees to the clearing, and what I saw drove all other thoughts from my mind.

Never had I seen or read or heard or thought of such a wild vista. Over four hundred naked people, their bodies white against the green grass, were streaking every which way. I was still close enough to pick out details, and I saw that many were on the ground, rolling aimlessly, and lots more were beating their heads with their hands while still others were hanging onto friends.

Faintly I could hear a string of poppety-pops. The fireworks stand was blazing and as I watched a streak of smoke soared into the sky and blossomed into arching, many-colored fireballs. But there was a great deal more smoke than even the fireworks could account for.

Beyond the stand the roof of the dressing room was blazing. I was sort of numb, but I knew that inside it were all the clothes of all the visiting conventioneers.

But that was getting farther and farther from me. I was way up in the air and a stiff wind was blowing, pushing me along. I didn't seem to be going any higher, just moving over the scenery below at a fast clip. It was fairly easy to hang onto the rope ladder, both feet securely placed on separate rungs, but it wasn't exactly comfortable.

Time passed. I thought some more about the case, and several things got clearer. I dwelt on the fact that Samson had said that Brad Bender was, among other things, a cackle-bladder expert. A “cackle bladder” is a little bag of chicken blood that a con man puts into his mouth and bites on when somebody fires a pistol filled with blank cartridges at him. Blood squirts out of his mouth and the guy who fired the blank thinks he's killed him.

I also put a couple of dates together: Yates's report to “Client” was dated June 14; and on June 15, “Bob Brown” and his “wife” had entered Fairview. I was quite pleased with my mental processes. It helps to get off by yourself. Now I knew all the answers; this was a dandy time for it. I noted casually that, as usual, the wind was blowing from Fairview toward L.A.

And then I grabbed my ladder and clung to it, crying out hoarsely. Los Angeles?
Los Angeles?
I got cold all over. All over. Not that. But, yes, there was Figueroa Boulevard. There was Sunset. I could pick out the City Hall, towering high over everything else. As minutes passed I could even make out people down there in the streets. It must have been a big bargain day in the stores, there were so many people. As I watched, the mass of people got even bigger. Yeah, it was some bargain day, all right.

My mind was like mush. The strain was beginning to tell on me. The events of these last days, calisthenics and killers and races, that goddamned fruit juice—everything had conspired to turn my brain into oatmeal. Suddenly my eyes bugged and it actually seemed as though something snapped in my head. I knew, then, what had happened: This was a dream. It wasn't true. I was making it all up. This couldn't be happening. I wasn't up in the air, a soaring nudist, floating toward the Civic Center. Ah, but I was.

The sidewalks were crowded; people below were even thronging in the middle of the streets. Somehow I was much lower now, sinking, and the sinking sensation I had now made the last one seem like a rising sensation. I could see the people very clearly, but that wasn't the worst of it. Traffic had stopped. Way up here on my perch I could hear horns blowing. The distant sound of a crash reached my ears. No, not all the traffic had stopped. Directly below me there was a police car, keeping pace with my progress. Its siren was wailing continually. I, too, was wailing continually.

I had dropped much lower, even lower than the top of City Hall, which was pretty close at this point. Awfully close. It seemed appropriate that I was on about the same level with its twenty-fifth floor. The observation tower is on the twenty-fifth floor.

And then my mind tottered. I told myself over and over that this was impossible. That nothing could make it happen. Not even freak winds could make it truly happen.

But I had to accept it. The winds were right, the height was perfect. Years from now, when this tale was told, few of the coming generation would believe it. But it was true. I was going to float through space like a Zeppelin and moor at City Hall.

I had the feeling that Civil Defense was watching me, marking my progress on a chart. In panic I tried to figure a way out. Maybe I could make people think I was a visitor from another planet. A less thickly inhibited planet. Maybe I could float in through a window and babble gibberish as I had done with Laurel and they'd all bow down. I imagined the
Examiner
putting out an extra: “Saucer Man Arrives in Strange Craft!”

Then I thought: My God, what if Civil Defense reports me and the Air Force shoots me down? At that very instant a jet plane swooped past me and on toward the horizon. I almost lost my grip on the ladder. Those balloons above me probably looked like a squadron of flying discs—and they'd captured a human!

I heard noises, shouts. Slowly I came back from wherever I'd been. Smack in front of me was the wall of City Hall, dotted with people yelping from windows. One ass was leaning out and laughing so hard I thought he was going to fall fifteen stories. I looked down. Nothing but people.

You couldn't even see the goddamned grass around City Hall. Just a mass of upturned faces. And open mouths. And pointing fingers.

Ten feet away from me now, in an open window, was a man with a cigarette dangling from his lips and lighter in his hand. Suddenly I thought of all that gas up there above me.

“Don't!” I shouted. “Don't light it! I'm a bomb, a human bomb. I'll blow up City Hall, blow it down!”

If that happened, people would be sure I was a Russian secret weapon. Or a weapon from the Moon. Even a Martian. If I blew up, space travel would be set back a hundred years. People would cry: “The Martians are bombs!”

A lot of secretaries had their heads stuck out of windows. Most of them were screaming, but the little hypocrites were still looking. I recognized some of them, but by now I hardly cared. One big-eyed blonde, even bigger-eyed now than usual, recognized me in turn.

She pointed. “It is!” she screeched. “No, it isn't. My God, it is! It's Shell Scott!”

Chapter Twenty-Four

I nearly died of embarrassment. She didn't have to make it so obvious. But then I was banged into the building's side, and hands reached for me and pulled me into an office. Three secretaries ran out the door. Pushing through the crowd came some uniformed officers, some in plain clothes. I saw Captain Samson, his usually pink face a brighter hue. Alongside him was Lieutenant Rawlins, a good friend of mine. Once he had been a good friend of mine. He was laughing like hell.

I stuck my face close to his. “Well, what's so funny?”

That did it. The bastard choked and gurgled and finally sank to the floor on his fanny, roaring like an idiot, hands wrapped around his sides.

Sam stopped squarely in front of me, a cigar in his mouth. Slowly his teeth ground together. The cigar bent, then fell to the floor. “Shell,” he said in a voice taut with emotion. “Shell, you've done some crazy things before, but really, this is too much.”

“I've got to get back to the nudist camp,” I burbled. Well, what would you have said? Sam kept biting his cigar stub. More hilarious cops were in the room now. Guys slapped their thighs. Somehow we got out of there and I wound up in a police uniform that Rawlins found somewhere for me.

Then we were down in Room 42 and Sam was saying, “Well, let's go over to the jail.”

“Sam, I've been trying to tell you. We've got the whole thing. I've got to get out of here and—”

“We
have
to throw you in jail. All those people...” He shrugged helplessly.

Five minutes later I was still arguing, still explaining. Sam had told me that they'd picked up Brad Bender in Las Vegas and he'd been brought to City Hall half an hour before. The crime lab had reported that the stain in the nap of Norman's carpet was blood, all right; but not human blood.

“I tried to call you,” Samson said. “Couldn't even get an answer at that number. Something happened to the phone. I didn't know you were ... I didn't know you were...” He threw his hands in the air.

“Sam, listen. Throw me in jail later if you've got to, but right now let me talk to Bender. We know the slug tossed at me was from the gun that killed Yates. We know Mrs. Redstone didn't kill herself. We know almost all of it. Let me have two minutes with Bender, and we'll pick up the killer. Then I'll go to a monastery. Join the Foreign Legion.”

I won. Bender was brought into Room 42. I handed Rawlins the gun in my uniform holster, winked at Sam, and said, “I've got five minutes in your office alone with this bastard before you come in, right?”

“Right.”

“Pay no attention to any odd noises.”

“Naturally not,” he said.

Bender looked pale. He was about six feet tall, broad-shouldered and handsome, as are a lot of con men. He had plenty of wavy black hair, graying at the temples. His hands were manacled in front of him, the cuffs slipped under his belt so that he couldn't raise his arms.

He shifted his feet nervously. “What's coming off?”

“Can't you guess, Bender?”

He swallowed. “Look, I don't get this. I haven't done anything. All of a damn sudden you haul me back to L.A.” He paused. “You can't get away with working me over in there.” He jerked his head toward the inner office, and his voice was firm and confident. His face wasn't so confident, though.

He was right, of course. I couldn't work him over. Sam wouldn't have allowed it in the first place. But the important thing was to make him think I could get away with it. I said, “Maybe not, Bender. But I can give it a good try. Unless you want to spill the story of your phony murder. We know you're a cackle-bladder expert. And we know Andon Poupelle's supposed to have knocked you off. He still thinks you're dead, doesn't he?” I paused. “Take your pick, Bender. We know it all anyway.”

He looked at me, then at Samson.

“The way I see it, Bender, it was just a gag. Wasn't that it?” I looked at Sam. “He won't do time, will he? If that's all the deal turns out to be?”

Sam said to me, not looking at Bender, “I can't promise anything. It would look good, though, if he cooperated with the police. He knows that.”

Bender said, “You talk to Poupelle?”

I hesitated, then said, “I'll give it to you straight. We can't even find the guy. Maybe he's dead for all I know.”

He chewed his lip, seemed to make up his mind. “He's in Vegas. Some friends told me, but he didn't see me there.”

“Was Ed Norman the friend who told you?”

“Naturally.” He squinted at me. “It was a gag, remember. Here's how it went: Norman said we'd play a joke on Poupelle. Night of June 2 we all three were in Norman's office at the castle. Norman made sure there was a gun on his desk, loaded with blanks. I slipped the cackle bladder in my mouth. We rigged a fight, made it look good. I was choking Norman. He managed to yell at Poupelle to grab the gun. Poupelle plugged me and I staggered toward him, squirted blood all over him. You know the rest.”

“Yeah.” In Bender's language all the niceties and high points of the confidence man's technique were left out. Andon would have been played like a fish, ready for the psychological moment. He'd have grabbed the gun, fired at Bender—fired a blank—and Bender then would have bit on the cackle bladder. I could see the rest: blood spurting through his lips over Poupelle, over Bender's chin, blood all over, messy as hell. He'd have groaned a little, kicked a couple of times, and expired artistically. Bender had died that way about fifty times in his career, and nobody had ever thought he wasn't as dead as King Tut.

While Bender talked, Sam was on the phone, making sure that a couple of police cars would be in readiness down front. Bender said, “That's about all. What happened after that I wouldn't know. Norman sent me to Vegas, told me to stay there till he got in touch. It was a gag, remember.”