Getting Up With Fleas (Trace 7) Read online

  24

  I was starting to worry a little. It was past eleven o’clock and no sign of McCue. I stood at the front door of the hotel, but his Rolls-Royce wasn’t in the parking lot. Then I saw Pamela Scott’s head appear from between parked cars and she walked toward the front door.

  I held the door open for her. “Hello, Mrs. Scott.”

  “Hello,” she mumbled. She was still wearing all that heavy makeup she’d worn for dinner.

  “Nice night finally, isn’t it?” I said, but she didn’t answer as she walked away toward the stairs.

  Well, hell, it was a nice night. The storm had stopped and the weather seemed warmer. I strolled out to the front gate and tried to talk to the guard for a while, but he hadn’t seen McCue since dinnertime, and I wasn’t a star and so he was more interested in reading his Playboy magazine than talking to me.

  When I got back to the hotel, I saw Clyde Snapp crouched at the rear of a Cadillac in the parking lot.

  “What’s up, Clyde?”

  “Just changing a tire. Mrs. Scott noticed she had a flat.”

  “Don’t let me stop you.” I hate changing tires and I hate even thinking about changing tires. Idly I decided to stroll the grounds a little.

  The moonlight was hard, brittle, as I picked my way along the path behind the hotel, strolling down toward the lake.

  In the clearing where Quine had been injured, the big round rock still lay. It had been up on top of the ledge for what…Snapp said sixty years. Now it” was down here and it’d probably stay here for sixty years, unless somebody had a good reason for moving it.

  I scrambled up to the top of the shelf the round rock had fallen from, and squatted there, feeling the rock’s wet surface with my hand, thinking myself pretty much an idiot, because what could I hope to find?

  The moonlight made the world look dead, I was thinking, and then I heard someone walking along the path, below and to the right of me. The moon passed behind a cloud and the night suddenly grew very dark and for a moment I don’t think I would have minded carrying Sarge’s big elephant gun.

  Whoever it was was in the small clearing below me. The cloud swept clean the face of the moon and it seemed to shine brighter than it had before.

  I looked over the edge of the rock and saw the face of Pamela Scott looking up at me.

  “Hello, Mr. Tracy,” she said. She smiled; her teeth glinted like Dracula’s in the high moon’s light.

  “Mrs. Scott.”

  “Pamela, please,” she said. “It’s a beautiful night, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  There was silence for a while and she said, “Are you coming down or am I climbing up there?”

  I came down the side of the rock to the small clearing, and she said, “I thought I might as well enjoy the peace and quiet now. Once they start shooting next week, this place will be filled with platforms and lights and power lines and stuff. It’ll look like a freight yard.”

  “It might be fun to watch,” I said.

  “I guess so,” she said. “I was going to walk down to the dock. Walk along with me?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  We stepped side by side along the broad path and she pulled her light raincoat tighter around her.

  “You know you’re the only precinct I haven’t heard from,” I said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve heard what everybody else thinks about this film, except for you.”

  “What does everyone else think about it?”

  “They all seem to think that it’s an awful screenplay,” I said.

  “Well, Jack and I don’t. Oh, sure, it needs some work. But we think it can be a blockbuster. We’ve got all our personal resources in this film. That tells you how serious we are about it.”

  “By resources, you mean money?” I asked.

  “Sure.”

  “I thought producers never put up money. That you let other people take the risk.”

  “And sometimes, if not enough of them are willing to take the risk, you have to commit yourself to it,” she said. “That’s what we’ve done. If Jack seems a little abrupt sometimes, now you know why.”

  We had reached the dock and stood at its base looking out over the lake. Only the ripples reflected the moon-beams, like light peeking through rips in a piece of black fabric.

  Pamela Scott shuddered from the cold.

  “I’m surprised it was hard to raise money for this film,” Trace asked. “I thought with Tony McCue’s name, all you had to do was spread the word.”

  “Sometimes it works that way, sometimes it doesn’t. This one didn’t, so we had to pick up the slack,” she said. “If it works, we’re golden. If not…Well, there’s always the typing pool to go back to.” She shivered again. “I’m cold,” she said.

  “I am too,” I said. “The next time we make this trip, we’d better remember to bring a Saint Bernard with brandy.”

  We walked back slowly and I left her at the front door to their suite.

  A flight up, I heard voices and I paused on the landing to listen. They were coming from Tami’s room, and since I couldn’t hear well enough, I walked over closer to the door.

  I recognized the voices as Tami’s and Arden Harden’s.

  “I think you’ve got an obligation to me,” he said. There was an angry edge to his voice.

  “I think you’re dreaming. Arden, you helped me get started. For that, thanks. But that’s all. No more. Don’t think there should be any more because there won’t be any more.”

  “So you’re just going to sleep with anybody you think can help you,” he said.

  “Something like that,” she agreed.

  “You’re a bitch, Tami. Just a bitch. I’d like to wring your neck.”

  I waited for a moment in case he tried to wring her neck, but instead I heard her say, “You ought to get out of here. Now.”

  And he said, “I’m going. But I won’t forget.”

  And I took off and ran up the steps to the next floor. The lock was still on Tony McCue’s door and I was beginning to think I should have gone with them, after all. For all I knew, Ramona Dedley was a whacko drunk driver and they were lying, pieces of unrecognizable chopmeat, in a ditch somewhere.

  I walked back to my room just as Harden turned the corner.

  “Oh, you,” he said.

  “Just turning in,” I said.

  “Did Pamela Scott find you? She was up here looking for you.”

  “Yeah. I found her. Thanks.”

  “Think nothing of it,” he said, went into his room, and slammed the door.

  I lay down on the bed just to rest for a while and fell immediately asleep. Later, I heard a sound and glanced at my watch. One-forty A.M.

  I shook my head to wake up. The sound was Tony McCue and he was singing:

  “You can tell a brute who boozes.

  By the company he chooses.

  And the pig got up and slowly walked away.”

  “Shhhhh.” That was Ramona Dedley’s voice.

  They were in the hall. I heard thumping on the door of his suite and knew what had happened. The idiot, naturally, had lost the key to the lock. I got up from the bed and fished the spare padlock key from my jacket pocket and went out into the hall.

  McCue was seated on the floor in front of his door, legs outstretched on the worn old carpet. “It’s no use, Ramona,” he said. “We’re hopelessly lost. Are you sure this is my room?”

  Ramona saw me coming toward them and shrugged.

  “Trace, old buddy,” McCue said. “Let’s have a drink.”

  “You mean you left some in the world?” I said.

  “Do I detect pique? Is that pique?” McCue said.

  “That’s the grumble of a man who wants to get some sleep.” I reached over him and unlocked the padlock and stuck it and the key in my pants pocket.

  “I’ll see you in the morning,” I said.

  McCue wrapped both his arms around my left leg.


  “Don’t leave me now,” he whimpered. “She wants to do terrible things to me. Help me. Save me.”

  “Remington Steele episode. July 26, 1986. Pierce Brosnan and Stephanie Zimbalist,” I said.

  “Aaaah, you’re a pain in the ass.” He waved an arm at me in disgust. “You know when you’re grown-up?”

  “When?”

  “When your friends don’t want to come out and play anymore.”

  I looked at Ramona. “Can you handle him?” I said.

  “I’m used to it,” she answered. “No problem.”

  “Get some sleep, Tony,” I said.

  I went back into my room, undressed, and turned off the light. Through the wall, I could hear McCue roaring.

  “Not a goddamn ice cube. Just piss-warm water in the bowl. What kind of hotel is this?”

  “If you want ice cubes,” she said, “you have to put water in the tray.”

  “Bullshit,” he shouted. “That’s woman’s work.”

  “Tony, come to bed,” her voice answered softly.

  “Without goddamn ice for a goddamn drink, what goddamn choice do I have?” he yelled.

  Then all was quiet for a while and I thought they had gone to sleep.

  Then I heard Ramona cry out, “Oh Tony. Yes, yes.”

  With all that booze in him too. Who ever said a movie star’s life was easy?

  25

  “What? What?”

  Somebody was in my room shaking me.

  “What? What?”

  “Get up, Tracy.”

  “Who is it?” It was just starting to get light and I couldn’t focus my eyes yet real well.

  “Snapp. Get up. Something’s happened.”

  “What? What?”

  “Get your pants on and come downstairs to the kitchen,” he said. He left the room even before I had my feet on the floor.

  Down in the kitchen, I found Snapp standing in front of the stainless-steel table along the right side of the wall. The door to one of the dumbwaiters was open.

  He pointed to the opening. “In here,” he said.

  I came over closer and saw a pair of feet dangling only about eighteen inches above the floor of the dumbwaiter shaft.

  I turned to Snapp. “It’s Scott,” he said. “The TV guy.”

  “Dead?” I said. I still wasn’t functioning real well. What the hell did I think? He was alive and working on a new form of exercise?

  “Deader than Kelso’s nuts,” Snapp said.

  I pulled the stainless-steel table away from the way, leaned in, and looked up the shaft.

  “He’s dead,” Snapp said. “You can feel him. He’s colder than a freshwater clam.”

  “You got a flashlight?” I said.

  He slapped one into my hand like a relay-team baton. I climbed up into the opening of the shaft. The knees of my trousers got wet from something. For a moment I thought it was blood, but my hands felt water. There was a plastic bowl, the kind margarine is packaged in, in the corner of the dumbwaiter shaft. I got to my feet and shined the light upward.

  Jack Scott’s face was only about a foot from mine. His eyes were open and so was his mouth. His body stank in the long narrow shaft that rose four stories above this basement.

  I leaned against the wall for a better look and saw that the dumbwaiter rope had been twisted once around his throat and his head was bent off to the side as if his neck had been broken.

  “We ought to take him down, I guess,” Snapp said. “I didn’t want to do it, though, until you got here.”

  “Why me?”

  “You’re a private detective. I didn’t want to go destroying no clues or nothing. Should we take him down now?”

  “Leave him. Let’s call the police,” I said.

  “I just did. He’ll be here any minute.”

  I climbed out of the dumbwaiter. “What the hell’s this water?” I said.

  Snapp shrugged. “Old building. Sometimes you get a leaky pipe. Or maybe rain from that storm.”

  I said, “I wonder what happened to him. What the hell’s he doing in the dumbwaiter?”

  “Happens once in a while,” he said.

  “This is pretty common for you?” I said. “People get hanged in your dumbwaiter all the time?”

  “Np,” he said. He had taken a large wad of paper towels and was wiping up the water from the bottom of the shaft. He stuffed the towels into the plastic container and dumped the bundle into a plastic garbage bag. “No, what I mean is sometimes people get drunk and decide they’s Tarzan and start trying to climb the ropes. That’s why I closed off all those doors in the rooms upstairs.” He shook his head. “Never had one get hanged before,” he said.

  “How’d you find him anyway?”

  “I was up, starting to get breakfast ready.” He pointed to a large steel bowl filled with a couple of dozen eggs. “And I saw a little dribble of water coming out from under the door. So I opened the door—I didn’t bother to lock them down here because I ain’t gonna play Tarzan—and I saw his freaking feet right in front of me, swinging back and forth. Then I climbed in, like you did.” He brushed his knees. “Got wet just like you did too. I felt him. Cold and stiff.”

  “I’d better tell the others,” I said.

  “Guess so.”

  Birnbaum was wearing a sweatsuit and his face was soaked with perspiration when he answered my soft knock on the door. The sofa behind him had been opened into a bed. It was rumpled, unmade, and his barbells were in the middle of the floor.

  He called, “Come in. What gets you up at this hour?” he said as he hoisted a heavy barbell over his head.

  “You’d better put that damn thing down before I tell you.”

  He set the weight softly on the bed pillows he had placed on the floor to muffle the sound of the heavy weights dropping onto the carpet.

  “Jack Scott’s dead,” I said.

  He stared at me, blankly, no expression on his face. “Say what?” he finally said.

  “There’s been an accident. Jack Scott’s dead. Come on.”

  Birnbaum looked inside the dusty dumbwaiter shaft too.

  “It’s Jack, all right.”

  “We know that,” I said. “What we don’t know is what the hell he’s doing there.”

  “What the Christ do I know?” Birnbaum snapped. “I’m sorry, Tracy. I’m just shocked. I don’t know…it’s just too much…I don’t know. Have you told Pamela?”

  I shook my head. “I was waiting for a volunteer,” I said.

  “I guess it’s my job,” he said.

  I followed him up to the suite the Scotts had shared on the level above the main floor. Pamela Scott had been sleeping: her hair was tousled and her face not made up. She wore a heavy chenille bathrobe when she opened the door.

  “Hello, Biff.” She nodded to me. “Jack’s already gone, I guess.”

  When there was no response, she hesitated, then said, “What is it? What is it?”

  Birnbaum took her arm and led her toward the sofa. I followed as he sat her down and said, “There’s been an accident.”

  “Accident? What?” She looked at Birnbaum, then at me, then back at Birnbaum. “Jack?” she said, her voice rising in pitch.

  Birnbaum nodded. “There’s been an accident, Pamela. Jack’s dead.”

  She screamed, a long keening shriek, then slipped back out of Birnbaum’s arms and fell onto the sofa. I noticed her skin looked blotchy.

  “She’s fainted,” Birnbaum told me, quite unnecessarily.

  I walked to the refrigerator, but the ice tray was empty. I found a can of frozen orange juice and wrapped it in a napkin from atop the dresser and touched the cold compress to Pamela Scott’s temples, one side after the other.

  “Maybe I should get the doctor,” Birnbaum said.

  “No. You stay here. You’re a friend. I’ll get Ramona,” I said.

  I ran up the two flights of stairs to McCue’s room, just as I began to realize I’d better check McCue and make sure he had not had an acciden
t too.

  The suite’s door was locked from the inside and I pounded on it. Arden Harden stuck his head out the door on the far end of the hall, nearest the stairs, and shouted, “What the hell is that racket? Quiet it down there, Tracy. I’m trying to sleep.”

  “Get back inside that room before I step on you,” I snapped, and kept pounding.

  A few seconds later, Ramona, who had obviously dressed quickly in the clothes she had been wearing the night before, answered.

  “Oh…Trace,” she said.

  “Is Tony all right?”

  “Yes, of course. He’s still sleeping.”

  “All right. Can you come downstairs? We need you.”

  “What’s happened?”

  “Jack Scott’s died. And his wife just fainted.”

  “Oh, dear. Let’s go.”

  She followed me down the hallway. As we passed the door to Harden’s room, it opened a crack and I could see the little writer watching us as we went by.

  26

  Pamela Scott had been revived. She sat on the bed with Birnbaum, who had his arm around her shoulder. Tears streamed down her cheeks.

  Ramona Dedley shooed him off the bed and helped the woman lie down, covered her with a light blanket, and took her pulse. She nodded and said, “You’ve just got to rest for a while. I’ll bring a sedative down from my room.”

  “I’ll be all right, Doctor,” Pamela said.

  “I’m awfully sorry,” Ramona said. “I’m just so sorry.”

  “I know. Thank you for your kindness,” Mrs. Scott said as she turned her face away, toward the window, and lay unmoving.

  I walked back out into the living room and picked up the can of orange juice. Its cardboard sides were softer now and I put it back into the freezer.

  Birnbaum came over and we stood at the window, looking out over the front entrance to the hotel. “I guess we should tell the others,” he said.

  “What did Mrs. Scott say?” I asked.

  “She said she went to bed and her husband wasn’t back. She didn’t hear him come in, but sometimes he sleeps on the couch when he comes in late so he doesn’t wake her up.”