Shell Scott: Kill The Clown Part 11

"Sh.e.l.l, hi, boy. Jus' a minute." The phone clattered. Shortly he was back and said, "Fire away. Splashed some water on me, I'm awake now. Who do you want me to kill or kidnap?"

I grinned. "There's going to be a meeting held today on the ground floor of a local hotel. I hope to be somewhere else - but listening to and watching what goes on at that meeting. You're the TV expert. Can it be done?"

He was quiet for a few seconds. "Sure. I guess you want a closed-circuit TV system. Right?"

"You tell me. What would I need?"

"Well, you need a pickup camera at the source, one with a photo-conductive pickup tube, say, and transistorized if you want it small; a TV receiver to reproduce the picture; and enough cable to reach your receiving set."

"Cable," I said. "Cable? I thought it went through the air, or ether, or chloroform, or - "

"Sh.e.l.l, we are not the American Broadcasting Company. The cable runs from the camera to your receiver, and takes the place of the modulated radio wave utilized in commercial TV broadcasting - wireless, you'd probably call it."

"Man, whatever you said, that's what I want - wireless. Look, Gabe, I'd better explain a little more. At the meeting of which I speak, there will be crook-types who carry guns and such instruments. And if they have the faintest notion anybody is peeking, they will use those instruments on anybody in sight. So either I forget the idea entirely, or - "

"Yeah," he interrupted. "Got you. One of those deals, huh? Well . . . you got a place to hide the camera?"

I'd already thought about that. When I had briefly been in Sullivan's office last night I had noticed a gray desk, leather chairs, and a wooden bar aslant in one corner.

"I think so," I said. "But I'll worry about that end."

"I take it you don't want to be in the hotel."

"I would like to be several blocks away, and preferably in Las Vegas, Nevada. I'll sneak in to bug the joint, but I don't want to stay." I paused. "Unless I have to."

"Well, there's another way," Gabe said. "I mentioned the cable setup because I've got all the equipment you'd need at my Hollywood store, and I could get that to you in a hurry. But if you can wait a while, I'll dig up a transistorized TV camera plus a microwave transmitter and receiver. Using a microwave frequency you'll get both video and audio - and eliminate the need for cable."

"Sounds perfect. But you said - if I could wait a while. How long?"

"I can dig it up later this morning. I don't carry microwave myself. Say nine a.m. if I rush it."

I sighed. "Gabe, I've got to get this stuff planted and be out of sight before the sun comes up - if I want to see the sun come up. I may be able to get in and out of the place now, but I couldn't possibly do it when the joint is jumping. There's, uh, a little heat on me. I should have the whole thing done within an hour and a half. Or at most two hours."

"Then the microwave setup's out, Sh.e.l.l, It'll take me close to an hour just to pick up my stuff and get into town. You still want it - with the cable?"

I thought about it, then said, "Yeah, I want it."

"Where'll I meet you?" I told him and he said, "O.K., I'll go by the Hollywood store and pick up all you'll need. You'll want it all transistorized - small - I suppose."

"The size of a pea would be ideal."

"I'll pretend you didn't say it. Here's what you'll get. A TV camera, about the size of an eight millimeter home-movie camera. For the audio, I've got a Shure mike, about the size of a cigar, and a Bogen p.a. amplifier. It's, oh, half the size of a table-model radio. All right?"

"Great."

"That's all you'll need except coaxial cable to run from the camera to your monitor, and a two-conductor wire to the speaker in the set. I'll bring that along, too."

"One more complication, Gabe. I want to tape the sound, and make a movie of the action on the TV tube - if I can."

"Oh, brother." He paused. "I've got a sixteen-millimeter Bolex, even a portable magnetic-tape recorder - but shooting a movie of a TV show isn't like taking home movies out in the yard, pal. The picture on your set isn't there all the time. It's composed of scanning lines; sometimes the whole screen's filled, but at other times only part of the screen - or none of it. Depending on when the camera shutter is open, you might get a picture, or nothing, or the scanning lines of part of the image on the tube."

"I'd wind up with something, wouldn't I? Pictures at least part of the time that would match the sound separately taped?"

"Yeah, but on the sound, the lip-synch requires twenty-four frames a second. Shoot on Tri-X film at twenty-four instead of sixteen, and if this Bolex of mine actually shoots at twenty-four, and not twenty-three and a half for example, you might be O.K. If we had time to test the camera - "

"No time, Gabe."

"I'm on my way, Sh.e.l.l. I know what you need now - I'll make it as soon as I can." He hung up.

It was that cold, raw hour before dawn, and I stood in darkness, a foot from the door beyond which was the hallway at the rear of the Gardenia Room, the hallway which pa.s.sed before Sullivan's office. The kit of keys and picks I'd gotten from a sleepy local locksmith had made short work of unlocking the door, but with a hand on the k.n.o.b I paused a moment, wondering. I was wondering if I had all my marbles.

Gabe had come and gone. He'd brought all the equipment with him, packed in three small suitcases. He left one of the suitcases with me, then, carrying the other two, walked into the Barker Hotel, registered under an a.s.sumed name, insisted on an outside room, with television, at the rear of the hotel, and was checked into room 418.

From one suitcase he took his Bolex camera and several reels of Tri-X film, a telescoping tripod, a portable tape recorder, and extra magnetic tapes. From the other he took a couple hundred feet of coaxial cable and an equal length of two-conductor wire. He attached the wire to the tape recorder's speaker, and the cable to the antenna terminals at the back of the TV set already in the room. Then he dropped the remaining cable and wire out the window into the alley beneath - in which alley I was waiting.

By then I had blocked both ends of the alley with wooden signs, borrowed from a minor excavation on Eighteenth Street, reading, "Caution - Men and Equipment Working." They wouldn't keep the alley empty all week, but they didn't have to; half a day would suit me. Gabe met me in the alley, gave me the key to 418. We shook hands and, when he was sure I knew what to do, he wished me luck and left.

From the spot where the wire and cable was bunched in the alley to the window which I believed to be in Sullivan's office at the rear of the Gardenia Room was a distance of only fifteen paces. There was plenty of cable. All I had to do was get it into Sully's office and attached to the portable TV camera, then take up at least temporary residence in room 418 - inside the Barker Hotel.

Which was why, a moment ago, I had wondered if I was nuts. I sighed, opened the door and stepped through, closing it behind me. The hallway was dark and quiet. I waited, listening for any sound. Then, carrying the small suitcase Gabe had brought in my left hand, and in my right my own .38 Colt Special, I stepped forward.

It went like silk. I not only got into Sullivan's office, drew drapes over the window and turned the room lights on without causing any commotion, but my first look at the bar told me it would be suitable for hiding my TV camera. It was more than suitable; it was almost ideal.

The bar was in the corner of the room to my left, a big, solid thing of sanded and lacquered cottonwood, the top an eight-foot length of log cut lengthwise down the middle. In its front were the darker rings of several interesting knots. The bar was about two feet deep, with four neatly fitted doors on its back. On shelves inside it were bottles of gin, bourbon, brandy and other liquors, gla.s.ses, a silver ice bucket with an inch of water in its bottom.

I got busy.

I opened the small suitcase. In it were the pickup camera, amplifier, and little Shure microphone, all of them surprisingly compact for the job they had to do. The camera was a Blonder-Tongue transistorized TV camera, powered by a battery pack, also transistorized, inside the camera case; it was equipped with an electric eye which would adjust the lens aperture as available light in the room increased or decreased. Attached to it was the Bogen amplifier with the plug from the little cigar-sized mike already inserted into its sound input.

The only other items in the suitcase were the simple tools I would need. In four minutes by my watch I had banged a knot out of the bar's front and concealed my camera with its lens directly behind the resultant knothole, held steady by half a dozen nails driven into the shelf on which it sat, three at each side of the camera. It wasn't rock-solid, but steady enough. Next to it were the amplifier and microphone, all three items occupying a s.p.a.ce no more than a foot wide inside the center of the bar.

In another couple of minutes I'd bored a hole in the bar's left side, next to the window opening onto the alley behind the hotel. I turned out the lights, pulled the drapes apart, unlocked the window and tugged it up, climbed through into the alley. The wire and cable hung directly beneath the window of room 418. I planted a large rock on them to keep them hanging straight down instead of at a slant across the wall - and possibly across somebody else's window - and ran them along the alley's edge to the window of Sullivan's office, tossed the remaining lengths inside and climbed in after them.

I held them in place at the window's left side with a nail pounded part way into the sill and bent over them. Then I closed the window, pulled the drapes and switched on the room lights again, cut off the excess cable and wire and ran their business ends through the hole I'd drilled in the bar's side. In another minute or two I had the cable attached to the concealed camera, the wire fixed to the amplifier - and my closed-circuit TV-and-sound system, between this office and room 418, was complete.

And reasonably safe - if n.o.body wanted a drink. My equipment was in the center of the bar; I moved all the bottles and gla.s.ses to the outer ends of the cabinet and nailed the two center doors shut. And that did it - all was set for me to spy on Quinn's secret meeting later today. The job was done. I looked at my watch. I'd been inside Sullivan's office for seventeen minutes.

I had been working so rapidly, and concentrating so completely on the job, that for a while I'd almost forgotten where I was, and extraneous impressions had made little impact on me. Now, though, everything came back in a flood, and I realized it was the kind of flood a guy could go down for the third time in. I wondered if I'd heard something a few moments ago or not; my senses seemed very acute and I strained my ears, but there was nothing. I couldn't hear a sound except my pulse thudding against my eardrums, my suddenly heavy breathing. Just noises inside me.

But I recalled that when I'd been outside in the alley a few minutes ago, there had been a faint, almost imperceptible lightening in the east. Dawn was near. Dawn - the time when they shoot the spies. And that wasn't the kind of thought I wanted to come unbidden into my noodle. The job was done, and it was time to get the h.e.l.l away from here.

I gathered up the tools, extra lengths of cable and wire, put everything into the suitcase and carried it over by the door. Then I walked over to the big gray desk where, presumably, Quinn would sit later today. I went through the desk drawers, but there was nothing of interest to me. Some papers, a box of cigars, a couple of red berets - Sullivan, I remembered, wore a beret to cover his "thickening scalp." A dead, half-smoked cigar lay in a big ceramic ashtray on the desk top. Everything here in the office looked normal as could be.

By bending down I could see a faint gleam of light behind my knothole in the bar, but it looked like the reflection from a bottle, not the lens of a television camera. I was content. Now I could leave, knowing I had done all I could. I would be able to hear - and see - virtually everything that went on in this room - if the meeting were actually held, and held here instead of someplace else, and my camera wasn't found, and the police didn't remove my "Under Repair" signs, and n.o.body wanted a drink this morning, and n.o.body spotted the peculiar cable hanging down the building's rear wall, and enough other ifs to turn my stomach.

It sounded as if it had just turned over. At least I'd heard something . . . unless my imagination was working overtime again. But then there was another noise. Different from the first. If these noises were inside me, that second one must have been a small bone breaking, which didn't seem likely.

I looked at the door - and saw the k.n.o.b slowly turning.

That was the little clicking sound I'd heard. A whole flock of emotions exploded in me. First, I just about jumped straight up out of my trousers. And second, I got a horrible feeling of griping, anger, frustration, and I don't know what all. To come so far, get so close, go through all this work, and then have it blow up in my face - well, it was too much.

I yanked out my gun. The door opened an inch. I aimed at the crack, almost ready to shoot right through it.

But then - so suddenly and loudly that I jumped again - a voice yelled, "I'll be right back, honey." It was a woman's voice. "I'll only be a couple minutes."

What in the h.e.l.l? I thought.

Now, with the door cracked, I could hear answering voices - male, more than one, and apparently from out in the Gardenia Room - but I couldn't distinguish the words, only what struck me as a horrible roaring sound. I could easily hear the woman, though, as she cried, "Don't get in an uproar, honey. Mix me a drinkie - I'll be right back."

I didn't know whether to try climbing out the window - too late for that now - or hiding behind the door, or desk, or bar, or what. There was just too much to contend with in the approximately two or three seconds at my disposal.

But at least it was a woman, and she wouldn't be out there yelling if she had a gun and was coming in here to shoot me. There was a dandy bit of logic. If she knew me, recognized me, I was sunk. But maybe she didn't know me.

Maybe she . . . The thought wavered, faded, came back.

I was in Sullivan's office - maybe she didn't know me or Sullivan. It was possible. h.e.l.l, anything is possible; some day I might be eating cheese on the moon. Some day I might go through a whole case without getting hit on the head. Some day - there wasn't time for any more of this mental diddling. Something had to be done; she was coming in.

All I can say is, it was inspiration. Something bigger than I guided me, moved me. Maybe part of it was the thought of Sullivan in my mind, part merely an attempt to cover my white hair, but in one bound I was behind the desk grabbing Sullivan's red beret out of the drawer and clapping it on my head, s.n.a.t.c.hing his stale cigar from the tray, turning with my back to the door - just in time, just as the woman came inside - cigar visible in my left hand, the c.o.c.ked Colt out of sight in my right.

I pulled my head left a little, rolled my eyes sideways so I could peer at her, see if she was alone. She was. She shut the door behind her - and giggled.

Well, that didn't sound menacing.

"h.e.l.lo," she said. "I saw your light under the door. You don't mind, do you?"

"Mind?"

"You're Sully, aren't you? Huh?"

I turned my head clear around and looked straight at the gal, but her expression didn't change one iota. It remained a sort of happy, expectant, hopeful, drunk expression. She looked and sounded as plastered as a stucco duplex. I slid the gun back into its holster and turned to face her as she said, "Didn't you hear me? You're Sully, aren't you?"

"Ain't I seen you before?" I said, very friendly.

"No. Not yet, but you're going to," she said kittenishly. "I hope."

I didn't know what the h.e.l.l that meant, but I asked the vital question. "You mean you ain't seen old Sully before?"

She shook her head. "No, I been wanting to. But my honey says he don't want me in s...o...b..z. But I want to be in s...o...b..z. I got talent, honest."

s...o...b..z, talent. Comments I'd heard about Sully came back to me. Whatever it was that had moved me just kept on moving me, and I stuck the cigar between my teeth and said: "Well, come on in, baby. Lessee what you got."

She let out a little trilling squeal. Something had been bothering me until then, because she looked slightly familiar to me, but when she squealed trillingly I remembered. I'd seen her last night, sitting with Blister and Speedy and two other girls. She'd been the one without a partner, wearing a high-necked green dress.

Apparently she had a partner - her "honey" - tonight, and tonight she was wearing another clinging, high-necked dress, of bright orange knit wool, which was stretched all into the same shape as the other one. It was a splendid sight, even though undoubtedly tough on the wool, since she had a lot more stretchers than it had stretch. The blonde hair, which had been worn long when I'd first seen her, was piled on top of her head this time.

As her squeal ended in a little fruity sound, like a cat's meow, she clapped her hands in front of her and cried happily, "Oh, I was afraid you wouldn't let me." Then she wriggled her hips and snapped her fingers a couple of times. "I'm just going to warm up a little first," she said.

This was moving too fast for me. Maybe that whatever, which I'd thought was guiding me, had really been misguiding me. All I'd wanted to do was pa.s.s inspection from this tomato so she wouldn't let out a yell and bring numerous boy friends and casual acquaintances in here to shoot me. And now I was remembering more that I'd heard about Sully - his hiring all the show's acts, the "auditions" here in his office . . .

The blonde said, "O.K. I'm ready. I'll just have to do it without music, I guess."

"Ah, Miss, this won't do - "

But she went right on, "I'll have to do it real fast, before my honey comes in here and catches me."

"Catches you?"

"He'd kill me if he knew I was in here."

"Kill you?"

"I sneaked away - he doesn't sympathize with my desire for a career in the theayter. But I've got the whole act worked out, everything." She was starting to emote already, but the theayter she was thinking about was not the Biltmore Theayter. "I've even got the name for my dance," she went on. "The Dance of the Seven b.u.mps. Or is that too suggestive?"

"Baby, it's about as crude as the oil in the La Brea Tar Pits. But I guess that's what the public wants, hey?"

She didn't answer. Instead she was slinking about the room, reaching back to pull down a long zipper, starting to shake out of the orange dress. Shaking . . . shaking . . .

"Don't," I said. "Don't . . . do it."

"What? Don't? Why?"

"Well, I'm - all choked up. I mean booked up. No more spots for new - new goils."

"Oh, it'll only take a minute. I'm already started, and maybe you'll remember me when you've got a spot." She smiled like a gal sitting on something that tickled.

I said, "This won't do - "

But she kept talking - and moving. "I've got the whole act worked out, even my name. Vava. That's my new stage name."

"Vava?"

"Yes, isn't it wonderful? Sort of smooth and hot and all. And the last name - Voom!"

"What happened? Are you all right?"

"Of course."

"But you said - voom or something very - "

"That's my last name. Voom!"

"Good G.o.d, not Vava Voom!"

"Yes, isn't it wonderful?"

"Good G.o.d, not Vava Voom!" I said again, unbelieving. "Why, that's as bad as that Yaki gal, the j.a.panese dancer. What was it? Yeah, Suki. Suki Yaki. Good G.o.d - "

"I thought it up myself."