Up for Grabs

Chapter 15

I arrived at Dallas right on schedule, rented a car, went to the Meldone Apartments, took the elevator to the sixth floor, walked down to 614 and rang the bell.

Mrs. Bruno answered the door. She was all dressed up.

“Hello,” I said, “remember me? I’m Mr. Donald, the man who sold you the set of encyclopedias and gave you the premium.”

“Oh, yes,” she said, “the things are working fine, Mr. Donald.”

I looked past her into the room and saw a suitcase about half packed on the couch.

I said, “I’m checking up on the account.”

“You’ll find that I’m good credit, Mr. Donald. We meet our obligations right on the dot and—”

“Oh, it isn’t that,” I told her. “That’s in another department altogether. I’m in the premium department. I have the job of selecting the premiums that we give away with certain exceptional purchases. For instance, women who make purchases on their wedding anniversaries, women who are like you and buy the hundred-thousandth set and all of that. I have to buy quite a lot of premiums and I like to find out that the ones I get are giving satisfaction.”

“They did. Thank you very much. They’re doing all right.”

“Do you have any suggestions as to the type of premiums that women are interested in?”

“Heavens, no, you couldn’t have anything better than that electric can opener and that electric blender. They’ve been wonderful! Simply wonderful!”

“And they’re working all right?”

“Like a charm.”

She hesitated, then stood to one side. “Won’t you come in, Mr. Donald?”

“Thank you,” I said.

She said, indicating the suitcase, “I’m going to join my husband in Montana.”

“Are you indeed? Expect to be gone long?”

She said, “No, I’m just going up for a visit. He’s up there on a business trip. He telephoned me to ask if I wanted to join him.”

“That’s splendid,” I said. “When are you leaving?”

“Oh I don’t know” she said. “Sometime tomorrow. I’ll have to check with him again about planes. He’s going to call me later on.”

“I see,” I told her. “Now, there’s another small premium that we give for people who have won their prizes and who can give us testimonials about the encyclopedia. These are short testimonials and you get a hundred dollars apiece for them.”

“A hundred dollars!”

“That’s right. In cash,” I told her. “It’s pocket money for the housewife.” I smiled and went on, “If we made it in a check, it would have to go on the income tax, and the husband, as the business manager, would be apt to assert a proprietary interest.

“As it is, this is just a personal matter for the woman of the house, and we pay it in the form of cash, five twenty-dollar bills.”

“Well, for heaven’s sake, why didn’t you tell me about this before?”

“We can only afford to make this offer to a limited number of people,” I said. “And, of course, it’s confidential. No one is to know there was any compensation for the testimonial.”

“Of course... and how is it handled? What do I do?”

I said, “You just have to read a little statement that we prepare to the effect that you purchased the encyclopedias and were astounded to find how good they are. You have already become recognized as an authority on many bits of knowledge and the neighbors frequently come to you to settle disputes.”

“You say I have to read it?”

“That’s right. Then we put it on tape,” I explained.

“Oh,” she said.

“And then, of course, we put it in front of the television cameras,” I went on.

“Television!”

“Yes.”

“I... I don’t think I’d care to do that Mr. Donald.”

“No?”

“No.” She shook her head emphatically.

“It would only take a minute of your time, and several—”

“And, where would you use it, just locally?”

“Oh,” I said, “they’d probably use it all over the country, just in a spot announcement, you know, one of those little fifteen-second spot announcements that they buy on station time.”

“No,” she said. “I wouldn’t be interested.”

“Well,” I told her, “thank you very much. I just wanted you to know that we didn’t lose interest in our hundred-thousandth customer just because we had completed the sale.”

I left the apartment.

She was looking a little thoughtful as I left.

I took up a vigil outside of the apartment.

It was an all-night vigil. She didn’t come out until seven o’clock in the morning, then a taxi drew up and she came down and had the cabdriver bring down four suitcases. They were big heavy suitcases.

She took them all down to the airport, shipped the four of them by airfreight and kept only a little overnight bag with her.

She bought a ticket to Los Angeles.

There’s a knack about shadowing. If you are too anxious to be unobtrusive, you tip off your presence. If you just take it easy and are part of the scenery, it’s damned seldom people notice you.

I cut a small hole in a newspaper so I could hold it up and pretend to be reading. I kept watch until the Los Angeles flight was announced.

Mrs. Bruno was on first class. I got a ticket on tourist class went to the telegraph office, and sent a wire to Sgt. Frank Sellers Los Angeles Police Force:

I signed the telegram, “Sgt. Smith,” sent it extra rush, then got aboard the tourist class section of the plane.

It’s a wonderful thing in following a person on a plane to be in tourist class. There’s a complete line of separation. The first-class people don’t come back to the tourist class, and the tourist very seldom go up to the first class.

I settled back in my seat. The plane was nonstop to Los Angeles and I had nothing to do except doze and wonder how I was going to explain to Breckinridge that I had taken it on myself to violate his instructions.

We flew steadily westward, racing the shadows and, at the speed of jet transportation, seeming to almost keep up with them. The air was smooth, clear as crystal, and after we passed New Mexico, we looked down on the Arizona desert and then the Colorado River and the Imperial Valley.

I almost fancied that I could pick out the Butte Valley Guest Ranch as we flew over Arizona. Buck Kramer would be out putting saddles on the horses; Dolores Ferrol turning on the highly personalized charm, infatuating the guests.

Then we began our long, slow descent into the Los Angeles airport and landed so smoothly that it was hard to tell we had reached the ground until the braking effect of the motors made itself manifest.

I was at the head of the line in the tourist-class division, but after I got off and reached the point where the stream of passengers merged I hung back until I saw Mrs. Bruno walking along, very sedate, with eyes downcast.

Then suddenly Sgt. Sellers and a plain-clothes man came barging down the long corridor.

I hurried to catch up with Mrs. Bruno. “Well, well,” I said, “you didn’t tell me you were taking this plane!”

She turned to look at me with consternation on her face, then suddenly made up her mind to brush it off as best she could. “Oh, Mr. Donald,” she said. “Well, heavens, you didn’t tell me you were on this plane.”

“I guess you were in first class” I said “My company doesn’t encourage me to travel on extra fare—”

“Okay, Pint Size,” Sgt. Sellers said. “This way.”

I said, “Well, well, Sergeant Sellers! Permit me to present the woman for whose murder you’re trying to arrest Foley Chester. Mrs. Chester, this is a very dear friend of mine, Sergeant Sellers of the local police.”

She looked as though she wanted to run, and that look was the thing that undid her. If she had been just a little scornful, just a little defiant and said, “What in the world are you trying to pull?” Sellers might have let her get away with it. But that look of panic gave everything away.

“What the hell are you talking about, Pint Size?” Sellers said, but his eyes were on the woman.

I said, “Mrs. Foley Chester, alias Mrs. Helmann Bruno.”

Sellers did a double take, fished a photograph out of his pocket, and said, “I’ll be damned if it isn’t.”

Then was when she started to run.

Sellers and the plainclothesman grabbed her.

By this time a crowd of gawking passengers were gathering around, and Sellers and the plainclothesman were rough with them. “On your way, folks,” Sellers said. “Break it up. Keep moving. That’s a lawful order from an officer. If you disobey it you’ll be arrested. Either keep moving about your business or get a free ride to headquarters in the paddy wagon, whichever you want.”

That started them scattering like startled chickens.

Sellers and the plainclothesman led the woman down to one of the deserted loading rooms which they used as an interrogation room.

“All right” Sellers said, “come clean.”

“Well,” she said, “there’s no us denying it. You’ve caught me.”

Sellers looked at me. I said, “It had to be that way. Chester didn’t push his wife over the grade on that detour, and Melita Doon, the nurse, didn’t have all her trouble because she stole a couple of X-ray pictures for a malingerer. What bothered her was the fact that she had stolen a corpse.”

“A corpse?” Sellers said.

“Sure. Read the hospital report. A woman patient of Melita Doon’s was supposed to have got up and walked out. She was a patient who was in for treatment in connection with an automobile accident. She died in the night.

“Chester, alias Bruno, had been waiting for a chance at a corpse like that. Melita had been stealing X-rays. This time they wanted a corpse. They had been waiting for weeks for the right sort of a death on Melita’s floor. They wanted an unattached woman of about Mrs. Chester’s build.

“They smuggled this woman’s body out of the hospital; took her clothes; clothed the body in Mrs. Chester’s clothes, had Melita Doon report a walkout, and then they planted the body and burned it past recognition so Chester could collect insurance on his wife.

“Unfortunately, however, the police were a little too efficient. They examined the rented car Chester had, found where the paint had been scraped when they pushed the other car sidewise over the grade so it would look convincing, and Chester knew that part of the jig was up. Chester and his wife had a getaway all planned. They had established secondary identities as Bruno and wife in Dallas.

“And Chester had still another ace in the hole. As Bruno, he reported an accident, a purely synthetic and imaginative accident. As Bruno, he reported that a car bearing Foley Chester’s license number had bumped him from the rear and had given him a whiplash injury.

“Then he flew to Los Angeles, and as Foley Chester reported the accident to the insurance company, stating that it was all his fault and putting the insurance company in a position where they had to admit liability.

“Originally, that had been all there was to it. They’d have settled for some ten or fifteen thousand, but when you entered the picture and started making Chester a fugitive from justice, Bruno saw his real chance. He then hired an attorney to represent him so that the case could be settled without Bruno having to appear or do anything other than sign papers.

“Taken all in all, it was a sweet two-way fraud.

“The payoff was those tracks down the sandy wash.

“After Chester went down and set fire to that car, he wasn’t going to climb all the way back up the hill, so he had his accomplice who happened to be the woman he was supposed to have murdered, drive the car down to the foot of the grade. He then walked down the sandy wash.

“This guy, Chester, has been working a sweet racket. You’ll find he had two accomplices, Melita Doon and Josephine Edgar. He was playing Santa Claus for them in their apartment. They stole X-ray photographs for him and then when he wanted to hit the jackpot and had Melita sucked into the fraud scheme so there was no way out for her, he had her steal a corpse.

“If you go down to their apartment in the Bulwin Apartments you’ll find some of Chester’s clothes there, even a shirt with a neat little C embroidered on the pocket.”

Sellers had been looking at me while I was talking. From time to time he shifted his, eyes to the woman. When she began to cry, Sellers knew that he’d struck pay dirt.

“All right, madam,” he said, “I guess you’re going to have to go to headquarters: If you have the carfare, we’ll take a cab and that won’t attract quite so much attention.”

“Want me to go?” I asked Sellers.

Sellers jerked his thumb toward the door, “Scram,” he said.

I could tell then he was already thinking of the interview he was going to give to the reporters describing the brilliant detective work by which he had uncovered the fraud.

I didn’t bother to call Breckinridge. For one thing there wasn’t time. There was a night plane leaving for Dallas and I had to make it. I’d make my report to Breckinridge all in a lump.

I traveled first class this time. The hostess had made the trip in from Dallas, now she was flying back. She looked at me curiously but she didn’t say anything and I didn’t.

I settled back and got some sleep. I’d been up all night watching that apartment house.

I got back to Dallas, picked up my rented car and drove to Melvin’s offices.

Melvin was waiting for me. It was a magnificent suite of offices with a huge law library which doubtless furnished him the tools he needed in winning cases, but also was designed to impress clients.

And he had one of his secretaries working overtime, a girl in a suit that fitted her all over.

She pressed a buzzer, and Melvin himself came out of his private office to escort me in. The guy was so sore and stiff he could hardly walk, but he tried to keep a breezy air of cordial informality.

“Hello, Lam. Hello!” he said. “How are you? I got your wire saying you’d be in on this plane so I waited... Come in, come right in. I take it you’re prepared to close up this case of Bruno versus Chester.”

I smiled at him and said, “I think I have everything I need.”

“That’s fine. Sit down. Sit right down, Lam. There’s no reason you and I can’t be friends — after all, business is business, and an insurance company expects to pay out money. That is why it collects premiums. Their troubles are not our troubles. I’m representing a client. You’re representing a client.

“You know, Lam, we have a good deal of business scattered around the country and quite frequently we have to run down witnesses in Los Angeles and get statements. I’m very glad I met you. I’m satisfied we can be a lot of help to each other.”

“That’s fine,” I told him.

“You have the checks?” he asked, looking at my briefcase.

“I have the checks,” I told him. “Do you have the motion pictures?”

He smiled and took a circular tin container out of his desk drawer. He put it on his desk, and said, “We’ll settle everything all at once, Lam.”

I said, “Now, these checks are payable both to A. B. Melvin, as attorney, and Helmann Bruno, as the claimant.”

“That’s right. That’s right,” he said, smiling. “That’s the way to do it. I like to deal with an insurance company that protects the attorney. Of course, we can always accompany our client to the bank, but it’s a lot more dignified to have the client sign and then the attorney signs and the lawyer’s secretary takes the checks down to the bank.”

“Well,” I said, “that’s the way the checks are made, but I don’t think you’ll want them that way.”

“Why not?”

“Because,” I said, “if you sign them you’ll be signing yourself into the penitentiary.”

His face lost its cordiality and became hard and ominous.

“Now, look, Lam,” he said, “I’ve been dealing with you straight across the board. I don’t want you to try any smart double cross, because if you do I’ll make you and that insurance company so damned sick, neither one of you will ever get well.”

“I’m not trying any double cross,” I said, with a look of candid innocence on my face. “It’s your client who did that.”

“What do you mean?”

I said, “Helmann Bruno is Foley Chester.”

“What!” he exclaimed.

“And,” I said, “I think an investigation will show that Chester, alias Bruno, or Bruno, alias Chester, has been making a living out of malingering for a long time. He has quite a racket. He takes out an insurance policy, then he goes to another city, establishes a double identity, reports an imaginary accident, claims that the insured is in the wrong and then, as the insured, goes to the insurance company in the city where he has his alter home and confesses that it was all his fault.

“After that, he gets some attorney and they rig up a case with the aid of stolen X-ray photographs, the insurance company makes the settlement and then they move on to their next victim.”

Melvin’s jaw dropped. “You’re sure about this?”

I said, “The police arrested Mrs. Bruno this morning. It turns out she’s Mrs. Foley Chester, the woman that the authorities thought had been murdered.

“This time they used the nurse, not to steal X-ray photographs, but to steal a corpse. Then they dressed this corpse in Mrs. Chester’s clothes, set fire to the body and were prepared to collect a hundred thousand life insurance if they could, and, if they couldn’t, they were still going to keep their racket going of bilking the insurance companies on settlements of ten, fifteen and twenty thousand dollars.”

“You’re sure?” he asked. “You have proof of all this?”

I said, “You have a connection with the police force here. Get them to ring up Sergeant Sellers in Los Angeles and find out about the latest developments in the Chester case.”

Melvin pushed back his chair. “Excuse me a minute,” he said. “I want to see my secretary about something.”

He was gone about ten minutes; when he came back he was trembling.

“Lam,” he said, “I want to assure you on my professional honor that I had absolutely no inkling of all this. I was acting in the highest good faith.”

“Yes?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said.

I motioned toward the circular tin case with the motion pictures on his desk.

“What about those pictures?” I asked.

He looked at them, took a deep breath. I could see his mind working. “Pictures?” he said, vacantly. “Are those pictures?

“They seem to be.”

“It’s news to me. I’ve never seen them before. You must have brought them in.”

“I’m taking them out,” I told him.

I took the case, put it in my briefcase, and said, “Well, as you remarked earlier, it’s all in a day’s game. We’re each representing a client.”

“I make it a rule never to represent a crook, Melvin said. This is a shock to me. A great shock.”

“Where did you think those X-ray pictures were coming from?” I asked.

“My client had them taken.”

“You didn’t ask to interview the doctor?”

“I— Well, I’ve been terribly busy,” Melvin said, lamely. Of course when it came time to prepare for trial, I would have investigated, but— You know, how those things are, Lam.”

“I know how those things are,” I said, and walked out.