The Death Gods (A Shell Scott Mystery) (56 page)

“
Kept telling
you?”

“
Yes, basically the same
thing, first from Mr. Belking, then Dr. Wintersong, then Mr.
Belking again, as if they wanted to be certain I understood. Mainly
it was that the sounds I’d heard, those shots—when I became so
upset had nothing to do with you, you’d already left by then. So,
you certainly weren’t dead, and they not only could but would prove
that to me as soon as possible—but until they had proved it they
couldn’t let me go. There was important scientific work being
completed, agreements being negotiated involving hundreds of
millions of dollars, even billions, and at such a critical time
they couldn’t risk my making unfounded accusations against them
simply because I didn’t know the truth. Also, that could get me
into a great deal of trouble, and they didn’t want that to
happen.”

“
Sounds as if they were
kidnapping you for your own good.”

“
They really were quite
nice about it, friendly, almost apologetic.”

“
Yeah, they would
be.”

“
Anyway, then Mr. Belking
drove away very fast, and Dr. Wintersong brought me
here.”

I got up, said to Dane,
“Makes a curious kind of sense. At least part of what they told you
was true—the rest of what they said was probably
backward.”

“
What do you mean
backwards?”

The word, so often used by
Hank, reminded me of him and I said to Dane, “Just listen to the
conversation, and it will become clear.”

“
What
conversation?”

By the time she asked the
question I’d stepped to the desk and picked up the phone there.
Punching Hank’s number I said, “This one.”

CHAPTER
THIRTY-FIVE

Instead of my getting
Eleanora, as usual Hank answered the phone himself.

I said, “Shell here,
Hank,” and he broke into a small flood of Spanish, then switched to
a rapid, “You are all right, Sheldon? I feared—”

“
Yeah, I’m fine.
Everything’s fine. Except...” I paused, searching for the
just-right words.

While I was pausing, Hank
made it clear he knew—everybody knew—about the fire at Hobart
Belking’s Wild Animal Museum, and he’d feared I might have
“perished” in the “stupendous conflagration.”

I said, “How did you know
it was stupendous?”

“
It was on the news, radio,
television, on all the stations. Even there were bulletins.
Including you in them, Sheldon Scott—”

“
Why me? They don’t
know—umm don’t think I started the damned fire, do
they?”

“
Sheldon,
caramba-chihua—did you? Did you set it all ablaze and
afire—”

“
No, not exactly. I was
there when it happened, yes, but, look, Belking and I were fighting
and rolling around, and we broke a natural gas line, which—it was
an accident. I didn’t do it on purpose, Hank. But what’s this about
me on tele—?”

“
And what of Hobart
Belking, Sheldon? On the news was much conjecturings but nothing of
certainty. It was conjectured that he also may have perished in
this stupendous conflagration—”

“
Don’t worry about that,
Hank. I’ve got him in my trunk. He—”

“
You’ve got him
what?”

“
I knocked him out. Tied
him up. He’s in the trunk of my Cadillac.”

“
What? He is—you did
what?—he is where?”

“
Hank, you needn’t get
so... Look, I couldn’t just leave him in his damned museum to burn
up, could I? So we’re still in the beach house where I found Dane
Smith, which is another count against these guys. Wintersong was
hiding out here in the house owned by Belking, where they were—at
least Wintersong was—holding Dane against her will.”

Silence.

“
They told Dane,” I went on
doggedly, “they couldn’t let her go until they’d proved to her
satisfaction that I was alive. But, as you’ve probably guessed
already, the truth has got to be just the opposite. Or,
bassackwards, right? They know I drove her to Omega, thus I’m the
only guy who could give first-hand testimony that she was in fact
there—”

“
What, Sheldon, have you
done with Wintersong?”

“
Just a sec, Hank, let me
finish, okay? I told Dane to listen to this, too. See, the real, or
backwards, truth has to be: because I’m the only guy alive who
could—and, if still alive, would—prove Dane was at Omega when those
two apes tried to waste me, Belking and Wintersong couldn’t afford
to kill her until they’d made sure I really was dead. See? First
kill me and then her, not vice versa, which means they sure as hell
weren’t hoping to prove I was alive, but just the—well backwards,
okay? As you probably guessed already, right, Hank? Hello?
Comprende, senor?”

“
Comprendo. You have killed
Wintersong, verdad? You have massacred him—”

“
Hank, that’s—he’s
perfectly all right, Hank. Well, maybe not perfectly. That is, I
tapped him one, and he’s been unconscious for a while. But he’s
also tied up—or, taped—and in my car. So everything’s under
control, okay?”

Softly he said, “Madre de
Dios!”

Actually, those were
pretty much my sentiments, too. But I wasn’t going to tell him
that. I didn’t even like thinking about it.

Then Hank said, “What are
your plans to do with them?”

“
Plans?”

“
Them being Hobart Belking,
who—maybe I didn’t mention this—is Chairman of the U.S. President’s
cure-IFAI Committee, and President of the American Pharmaceutical
Council, and has been asked by a few Senators and a lot of
druggists to run for President himself of the U.S.A., and has
insisted the police arrest you without mercy. Plus, also W.
Wintersong, M.D., who maybe I didn’t tell you—”

“
Don’t tell me.”

“
That is who them is. And
now that you have—caramba, have both of them—what are your plans to
do with them?”

“
Yeah, that. I mean, them.
You have to understand, Hank, I’ve been very busy. Very busy. One
plan might be to...” I stopped, realizing I had not yet formulated
any plans. Well, I guess I could drown them, the way they do cats
in laboratories. Maybe I could call it a scientific
exp—”

“
Sheldon, I think you had
better come to my office before you drown anybody. I cannot myself
leave, since this is the command post, and so many things are
happening, you would not easily believe it. And it is essential
that you cogitate what to do about these catastrophes. So come here
rapidamente, quickly! If it is possible for you to do so without
being apprehended by police or crazy citizens.”

Something about that last
comment fell oddly on my eardrums, but I said, “Good thinking,
Hank. I was planning to do that. First, I’ve got to know what’s
this about mention of me on television? And Belking said I should
be arrested? Said when—and why, for that matter? It’s Belking and
Wintersong who should be. What do you mean, crazy
citizens?”

“
I will explain. I will try
to. It is apparent you have not seen the TV or listened to any
radio, right?”

“
That’s right.”

“
Where you are now, this
beach house, is there a television?”

“
Yeah, I’ll get Dane to
turn the TV on.”

I caught her eye, pointed
to the big console and she nodded, moved quickly to it. Watching
her, I noticed the hands of the wall clock above the set pointing
at four minutes to midnight. As sound came on the screen flickered,
I heard Hank inhale a deep breath and let it out in a soft whoosh.
Then he started telling me what I’d been missing.

Some of Hank’s info came
from reporters he knew, more from several of his people who’d
phoned him, but it became clear that much of it had issued from the
tusk-toothed mouth of Hobart Belking during a taped for TV
interview earlier today at Omega, a few hours before I’d found the
man at his Museum. It also became clear, after about a minute of
Hank’s rapid-fire summation of events that I might somehow be in
more trouble than either Belking or Wintersong.

Yes, more even than Dr.
Wintersong. He was, of course wanted by the police. Sheriff’s
deputies, Homicide investigators from the LAPD, and numerous other
citizens who desired to ask him a bunch of pointed questions at the
very least, satisfy their fervid curiosity about the three
heads—one dog, two human—in that private laboratory adjacent to his
office. Those heads had been found, photographed, and two had
already been identified as having once been parts of a Mr. Guenther
and Mrs. Helga Vunger. Nobody had yet identified Rusty.

So there was a local and
an APB out on Wintersong. But there was also a warrant with my name
on it, which didn’t astonish me; however, because by now I knew
Hank and his sometimes peculiar manner of expression quite well, I
got the distinctly unnerving impression that I was—for some reason
he hadn’t yet mentioned—even deeper in the soup than I’d suspected.
But I didn’t interrupt him, not at first.

Hank deduced, because of
my having told him where Dane and I were now, that after leaving
Omega with Dane earlier today Belking and Wintersong had split
up—probably about the time I was climbing out of my wooden
crate—with Wintersong heading for Malibu while Belking proceeded to
Belking Pharmaceuticals corporate offices on Wilshire Boulevard in
Los Angeles. It was a reasonable deduction, since Belking had been
in his suite atop the twenty-two story building, when a telephoned
message apprised him that something like all hell had broken loose
at the Omega Medical Research Center. The call, probably from Kell
or the lad I’d left resting uncomfortably in a storeroom, suggested
unmistakably that it was either Shell Scott, or someone looking
exactly like him, who had broken all the hell loose.

So unhappily for Belking,
it was back to Omega again, his third trip this Saturday. There,
presumably after being made even less joyous by the sight and sound
of half a hundred sign-carrying pickets yelling things like “Stop
Disemboweling Fido!” Belking had engaged in dialogue—apparently
more like monologue—with a small crowd of Sheriff’s deputies,
police officers, and reporters. I gathered there were a lot of
reporters, some accompanied by camera crews.

Belking had forcibly made
a great number of accusations and charges, none of them
successfully contradicted at the time, and called for the arrest,
prosecution, and implied sacrifice of several people, the most
important of whom, to me, was me.

Apparently referring to
notes he’d made, Hank rattled off some of those charges.

I was appalled by the
number of crimes I had committed: felonious entry into the Omega
Medical Research Center; violent assault upon young Timothy Wilson,
a trusted employee working his way through medical school and
supporting his invalid grandmother; various injuries including
mayhem committed upon three guards, namely Mr. Gordon Kell, Mr.
Edward F. Woffle, and Mr. Billy Horstling; heinous destruction and
ruination of innumerable vital scientific breakthroughs and
permanently traumatized experimental animals; conspiracy to
facilitate the illegal entry into a medical research facility of
vandals, hooligans, and vegetarians; and the unconscionable murder
of a highly valued Omega executive, the Vice President of Security,
Mr. Francis Harris.

Who? Francis Harris?
Grinner?

Yes, I was appalled. But
Hank was perhaps even more dismayed. For Belking had not failed to
repeatedly name the “notorious medical quack” Henry Hernandez,
asserting that the inexcusable anti-science picketing—and
Shell-Scott-assisted break-in and vandalism of Omega facilities—was
obviously the work of POCUEH, which organization of mouse-lovers
was the creation of none other than the aforementioned notorious
medical quack, Henry Hernandez. To be certain reporters and
officers got the criminal organization’s name right, Belking even
spelled POCUEH, including the H.

Almost as an afterthought,
Hobart Belking had admitted knowing about the unusual condition of
Mr. and Mrs. Vunger’s heads.

When Hank dropped that bit
of intelligence on me, I almost dropped the phone. “He what?” I
interrupted? “No!”

“
Yes! But that
brain-constipated animal-shooter is far beyond belief. According to
him, Wintersong may have done Guenther and Helga a kindness.
Sheldon, he made them—their heads—sound like
volunteers.”

“
No!”

“
Yes! Well, almost. You
must see it on TV, but I will give you a capsule of it. According
to Belking, Guenther and Helga become infected with IFAI while
employed at Omega by their good friend, Dr. Wintersong. While on
sick leave—”

“
Sick leave? Their good
friend? The guy who lopped off their—”

“
Sheldon, you need not
expostulate with me about the lies of liars. I have been trying to
educate you—”

“
Got it. I’ll try not to
expostulate, if that’s what I was doing.”

“
Unfortunately, while
dying, the Vungers succumbed to the blandishments of a notorious
charlatan—we know who he is—who dosed them with—useless quack
remedies, at great expense, thus preventing them from seeking
life-saving orthodox treatment, for their incurable disease.
Finally, at death’s door, they appealed for help to their dear
friend, Dr. Wintersong, the world’s expert on IFAI. He told them
there was no hope, their infected and ravaged bodies were dead
already, only their brains still lived, like there were minutes to
go and then pfft, finished.”