Free The Shell Scott Sampler by Richard S. Prather

learned that a man answering Alston Spaniel’s description had checked in last night, and was in Suite B on the top tier of the hotel. He answered the description, but was registered as William Simms, which I thought was sly of him. The suite was forty bucks a day, so Alston wasn’t living like a man without money—or at least without prospects. Not if he could afford to pay eighty bucks a day for rooms.
    Eighty, since twice forty is eighty, and Suite C last night had become occupied by what the clerk described as “a helluva good-looking redhead.” She’d registered as Miss Ardith Mellow. No, she hadn’t been with Mr. Simms, at least not so far as the clerk knew.
    I almost missed Alston when he came into view and climbed into a three-year-old Lincoln. I had the top up on the Cad, but it was a warm day and the sun pounded the canvas over my head. More, I’d done no sleeping last night, and my eyes were starting to feel like toasted marshmallows.
    Alston waved to somebody near steps leading down toward the beach, then started to pull out of the curving driveway and into the Boulevard. I got a glimpse of a girl waving back—some red hair and what appeared to be a very wavy figure—but I ducked down as the Lincoln went by me. I let it get a block away, then pulled into the light traffic myself.
    It was possible that I was wasting my time. Assuming, of course, that Alston had indeed lifted the Da Vinci, he might be in Laguna not to dispose of it, nor merely to lie low, but for the fun of spending some of his already ill-gotten gains. But I had to go ahead under the assumption that he’d not yet gotten rid of the drawing, and that completion of the score still lay somewhere in the future. Besides, Lupo had told me Spaniel expected sizable loot “by tomorrow or the next day.”
    So, though I would much have preferred to grab him and hit him for a while, the way housewives used to pound on tough steaks to tenderize them, I merely followed him.
    He didn’t go far. We were headed north, back toward the small business district, and before reaching the stoplight at the corner of Coast Boulevard and Laguna Avenue he swung left into the parking lot next to the Laguna Hotel. I was lucky enough to find a slot at the curb around the corner on Laguna Avenue, and was out of the car in time to spot Spaniel striding toward the double glass doors at the hotel’s front.
    Striding was the word. He was a tall, broad-shouldered and lean-hipped cat, and he moved with a long easy swing of leg, cleft chin thrust forward and splitting the air like the prow of a boat. He was undeniably a vital, handsome slob, and always looked like a guy bursting with vitamins and on his way to a wild party, which he usually was.
    I caught the green light and trotted across the street, entered the hotel lobby just as Spaniel stepped into the elevator. It was next to the desk, just beyond stairs on my right, and when the indicator stopped at “3” I started up the stairs.
    I almost trotted up them too fast. Spaniel was still in the hallway when I reached the third floor, and I clumped to a stop, waited, then peered around the edge of the wall. I saw him knock softly, glance down the hall, then look back at the door as it opened.
    â€œAl, darling!”
    Yeah. Everywhere the sonofabitch went, it was “Al, darling!” This one wasn’t a redhead. She came out in the hall far enough so I got a good look—and Al got a good squeeze and an enormously healthy smooch on the chops.
    The woman was between twenty-five and thirty years old, with a sensual face and an exceedingly feminine figure, including what Lupo might have called a great deal of too-much-fat displayed at the convex V of the kind of cocktail dress gals wear when they know they’ll be drinking double martinis with dear friends. Or with Alston Spaniel.
    Her hair was piled high on top of her head and was black—so either she wore