Cut Thin to Win

Chapter 10

I went to a Chinese restaurant and made certain that it was real Chinese, run by an old character who had a seamed face and bright, glittering eyes.

I walked up to the counter. “Hoh shah kai mah,” I said conversationally.

That was a form of Chinese greeting, meaning “Is the whole world good?”

He was looking down at some account books he was figuring and he answered mechanically, “Hoh shah kai.”

Since the Chinese language is one of varying tones, it is impossible to use the rising inflection as indicative of a question. Therefore, they put the word “mah” on the end of a sentence to show that there is a question. By answering me, the Chinese assured me that the whole world was good.

And then suddenly he jerked his head erect in surprise as he realized that I wasn’t another Chinese. “You speak Chinese?” he asked, his words all running together.

“Just a little bit,” I told him. “Dik kom doh. I have many Chinese friends.

“I want to write a letter to a Chinese friend. I want lots of red paper, big red envelope. Have you got one?”

I put a dollar bill on the counter.

“What kind of letter?”

“A joke letter,” I said, “gong seuh, I need a big envelope, very very red.”

He grunted, picked up the dollar, put it in the cash till, reached down under the counter and came up with a huge red envelope.

“Very fine,” I said. “Now, take your brush and write in Chinese on the envelope.”

“What do I write in Chinese?”

“The name of the restaurant, anything.”

He hesitated a moment; then dipped the brush in the black India ink and made flowing Chinese characters down the side of the envelope. “You read?” he asked.

I shook my head. “I don’t read. I only speak a little. I have lots of Chinese friends. I learn a little from them.”

“You live in Las Vegas?”

“No, Los Angeles.”

I picked up the envelope and extended my hand.

He gravely shook hands with me.

I walked out; went to one of the gambling houses and looked around for advertising matter. I finally found a big piece of cardboard that would just fit in the envelope. The cardboard advertised the advantages of gambling at that particular place of business.

I put it in the envelope, sealed the envelope, went to the post office, got airmail stamps and special delivery stamps; then addressed the envelope to Clayton Dawson at the Dawson Re-Debenture Discount Security Company at Denver, Colorado, wrote the address of the office building where Helen Loomis maintained the mail drop service, and dropped the envelope in the mail.

I looked up the schedule of planes to Denver and won a little over seven hundred and fifty dollars at the crap table before I had to leave.

I rented a drive-yourself car in Denver; had a good night’s sleep, and the next morning, bright and early, was where I could watch the office of Helen Loomis.

Once that red envelope with the Chinese lettering on it came in special delivery, I knew she was going to telephone her client, and I felt certain that the man who had given me the name of Clayton Dawson wasn’t going to let any grass grow under his feet in finding out what was in that distinctive letter.

At nine-fifteen, a special delivery mailman delivered the mail to the Loomis office. At ten-fifteen, an attractive young woman, in a tight-fitting outfit which showed her figure to advantage, entered the office. Ten seconds later she came out carrying the big, red envelope.

She made some effort to try and keep the envelope from being quite so conspicuous, but I had chosen it with care. Outside of putting it in a brief case, she couldn’t have done a thing with it where it wouldn’t have stuck out like a sore thumb.

She took the elevator to the ground floor, and I was in the same cage with her.

She was exceedingly naïve, didn’t pay the slightest attention to me.

I had expected a long chase by automobile, but she simply crossed the street to the adjoining office building and went up to the seventh floor.

I hadn’t intended to be so brash about it, nor had I expected to find it so easy, but since she was completely engrossed in her thoughts and apparently carrying on only a routine business errand, I got on the elevator and went up with her.

I was just a piece of animated scenery as far as she was concerned.

I had a chance to look her over as she walked down the corridor on the seventh floor. She had streamlined hips, legs that were long, straight and with just the right curves. I had the impression she was conscious of her beauty but didn’t flaunt it. She went about her business quietly, competently, and the way she held her shoulders showed that she had lots of self-respect.

She was a good kid.

I followed her to an office marked Alting L. Badger, Investments.

She opened the door and went in. I followed.

There was a receptionist at the desk with a telephone switchboard and another vacant desk.

My girl walked over to the vacant desk, picked up an office telephone, held the red envelope in front of her and started talking over the intercom.

She hung up, and a moment later a door marked “private” was pushed open with some violence and the man I had known as Clayton Dawson hurried across the office to the girl’s desk, picked up the envelope, looked at it, frowned, turned it over, studied it again; then turned and started back for the private office.

“Good morning, Mr. Dawson,” I said.

He whirled, looked at me, and his jaw dropped.

I said, “If you’re not too busy, I’d like to have a few moments with you about that matter we were discussing.”

He looked hurriedly around the office, saw the look on the faces of the two young women, said, “Very well, come in.”

I followed him into a sumptuous office.

“All right,” he said, “tell me, how did you do it? I suppose that envelope had something to do with it, but how in hell did you— Oh, well, it doesn’t make any difference. It’s done now. What’s the problem?”

“The problem,” I said, “is that a Los Angeles cop who is two-fisted, straight-shooting, belligerent and doesn’t like glib talkers, has got his hatchet out for me. He’s going to take my license.”

“Why?”

“Because I tried to protect my client.”

“What client?”

“You.”

“So what do you want me to do?”

I said, “You seem to know all about it.”

“I know a good deal about it,” he said.

“I suppose Colton Essex has reported by telephone?”

“All right,” he said, “suppose he has reported by telephone. Suppose I’ve retained him? What then?”

“I just wanted to know,” I said.

“They can’t touch you with a ten-foot pole,” he said. “The officer knows who your client is and knows that a settlement has been made in the accident case. He’ll never be able to find the victim. He’ll never be able to prove you compounded a felony.”

“That’s not what’s bothering me,” I said. “Your attorney explained that very carefully and, I thought, very forcefully.”

“Well, what are you worried about?”

“What I’m mixed in.”

“You aren’t mixed in anything.”

“The hell I’m not,” I told him. “There was a fake accident. It was all fixed up so that it would make a phony hit-and-run charge. I was to settle that, and as soon as I had made the settlement either you or your attorney tipped off Sergeant Sellers that I’d squared a hit-and-run case.

“That means that somebody knew generally of my relationship with Sergeant Sellers. It means that I was picked as a lamb for the slaughter... And you can call that a pun if you want to.

“It means that I was to be put on the spot; that I was to decoy Sellers to the apartment of your so-called daughter and to the automobile she was supposed to have been driving. Then Sellers was to have the police laboratory go over that car carefully and find threads from the clothing Mrs. Chester was wearing at the time of the supposed accident.

“This would give Sellers a perfect case of hit-and-run if he could find the victim and if he could prove the accident.

“In all probability, he can’t find the victim, and even if he does he can’t prove an accident. That leaves me holding the bag. Sellers can’t quite take my license, but he can hold it against me as long as I live.

“For your information, I don’t like to be picked as a fall guy.”

“How much do you want?” he asked.

“I want plenty.”

“I’m not going to be blackmailed. I don’t like blackmailers.”

“I’m not talking about blackmail. I’m talking about compensation, but before I talk about that I want to know what this is all about.”

“What do you mean?”

I said, “You staged a fake accident in Los Angeles. You staged it so that it would appear the woman we’ll call Phyllis was driving the car; so there’d be circumstantial evidence showing that she had been driving the car.

“You know and I know that there wasn’t any accident; therefore, Phyllis wasn’t driving the car at the time of the accident. Therefore, the only real reason you would be so anxious to risk all this is to give yourself an alibi.

“In other words, you want to show that either you or Phyllis, or both, were in Los Angeles at the time that accident was supposed to have taken place.

“The reason you want to show that is not because you want to have it appear you were in Los Angeles, but because it is necessary for you to have it appear that you were not in Denver.

“You’ve taken a chance on a rap which you can beat in Los Angeles to give you an alibi on a rap which you probably can’t beat in Denver.

“Now, if I work hard enough I can find out what it is. It isn’t anything minor. You wouldn’t have gone to all that trouble and taken all those chances unless it was something of major importance, something that involves your reputation here. Perhaps a hit-and-run while you were intoxicated; perhaps something even more serious.”

“And so?” he asked.

I settled down in the chair; put my feet out in front of me and said, “And so I’m sitting right here until I know what the score is.”

“You won’t like it,” he said.

“I know that.”

“You have me where I have very little choice in the matter. I simply can’t afford to have you messing around here in Denver.”

“I counted on that.”

“You’re right,” he said.

“In what?”

“That we had to have an alibi.”

“Who’s the we?”

“Phyllis and I. Principally Phyllis.”

“Am I also right in assuming that the rap you were trying to beat here was something pretty damned serious?”

He nodded.

“What was it?” I asked.

He looked me in the eyes. “Murder,” he said.

That jolted me. I came up in the chair. “Murder!”

“Yes.”

“Tell me about it.”

“A blackmailer,” he said. “A dirty, slimy, shrewd ingenious, diabolically clever, ruthless blackmailer.

“He had compromising photographs. He had original registration cards he’d secured from hotels. He had the works.”

“You couldn’t deal with him?”

“He wouldn’t stay put.”

“So what happened?”

He sighed, started drumming on the edge of the desk. “I goofed,” he said.

“In what way?”

“I wanted to get the evidence.”

“What did you do?”

“I was to give him money and he was to produce the evidence.”

“You met him?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“At a little rooming house that he had selected.”

“You gave him the money?”

“Yes.”

“He didn’t produce the evidence?”

“No, he said that he would get it for me; that he’d left it in a safe place. That he hadn’t believed that I was acting in good faith. He said he had thought that I might have the police grab him and search him.

“All of that was not very smart, because if I’d wanted to go to the police, I’d have gone to them in the first place. I didn’t dare to have that stuff come out. Having him searched by a police officer or anyone else was the very last thing I wanted.”

“So what did you do?”

“I bought him a drink, and Phyllis put the knockout drops in it.”

“Oh, oh!”

“He took the drink and right at the last realized we’d drugged him. He had a gun and tried to pull it. I clobbered him and he passed out cold. We got the keys to his apartment, his gun, and went up to his place. We searched for more than an hour before we found what we wanted. We took it. Then I went back to put the guy’s keys back in his pocket.”

“He was still out cold?” I asked.

“He was dead as a doornail. His heart had stopped on him.”

I thought for a moment and said, “So you called Colton Essex in Los Angeles and told him you needed an absolute, ironclad alibi for yourself and Phyllis.”

“Principally Phyllis,” he said.

“All right, you needed an alibi for Phyllis, and you had to have it fast. You had to be able to prove she was in Los Angeles.”

“Right,” he said.

I thought that over.

“Well?” he asked. “Did I do the right thing in telling you all this?”

“I asked for it... Where did you get the name ‘Dawson’?”

“I made it up,” he said.

“Why?”

“Phyllis and I used that name and address to correspond with each other.”

“You’re married?”

He stroked his chin. “Yes and no.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I’m married,” he said, “but my wife and I haven’t been getting along for a while. She went to Las Vegas to establish a six-week’s residence and get a divorce.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Then why take all these chances with a blackmailer?”

“She has a damned smart lawyer,” he said. “They knew that I had some outside companionship, but they couldn’t prove it. She held off for nearly a year getting a divorce, trying to catch me. They had detectives shadowing me; they tried everything.”

“Who’s the girl in the outer office, the one who got the letter for you?”

“She’s a girl I can trust.”

“What’s her name?”

“Mellie Belden.”

“Not Millie?”

“No, Mellie.”

“You trust her?”

“I trust her with my life.”

“Devoted to you?”

“Devoted to the job. She’s competent, capable, cool, collected and loyal.”

“Helen Loomis down there knows who you are?”

“No, she knows Mellie Belden and that’s all. When something comes in that’s important, she telephones Mellie. She thinks Mellie is the Dawson Re-Debenture Discount Security Company.”

I said, “You left a pretty wide back trail for your wife’s attorney not to be able to follow it.”

“They never did.”

“But you were afraid they were going to?”

“If this blackmailer had gone to my wife’s attorney, he could have sold the information he had for a big sum of money and he knew it.”

“Who was the blackmailer?”

“Deering L. Canby.”

I thought things over for a while. “How do you know he didn’t?” I asked at length.

“Didn’t what?”

“Go to your wife’s attorney?”

“Because they didn’t get the evidence. I got it.”

I said, “I know a little something about blackmail and blackmailers. When there’s a competitive market they like to sell to the highest bidder.”

“This one didn’t,” Badger said.

I thought some more. “You agreed on a price?”

“Yes.”

“How much?”

“Twenty thousand.”

“It was worth more?”

“I’d have paid a hundred if I’d had to.”

“You met him at this rooming house?”

“Yes.”

“He picked it?”

“Yes. He said he wanted to be certain the room wasn’t bugged.”

“But he didn’t have the stuff you wanted with him?”

“No.”

“Was a specific time fixed?”

He said, “Why do you ask that?”

“It might be important.”

“A very specific time was fixed and he warned me not to be over two minutes late.”

“Late?”

“That’s right.”

“You could have been earlier than the appointed time and that would have been all right, but you couldn’t be over two minutes late?”

“That’s right.”

I thought some more.

“How long before you’ll be in the clear on your divorce?” I asked at length.

“About ten days now.”

I took a long breath. “You had me mixed up in a hit-and-run deal,” I said, “and now I’ve listened to you and I’m mixed in a murder case up to my necktie. Some things are confidential, but information on a murder isn’t. If I don’t go to the police with this, I’ll be in a jam.”

He spread out his hands, palms upward. “You left me with no choice in the matter. I had to tell you. You were hot on the trail, and you’d have found it out.”

“Yes,” I said, “I’d have found it out. I intended to cover the police blotter for the time you had built your alibi and check on every crime... What do the police know about Deering Canby?”

“They know he was a blackmailer; they know that he was keeping an appointment with someone he was blackmailing; they know he had knockout drops slipped in his drink and that he was killed and they think papers and evidence were taken from his body.

“They know that Phyllis’ car was parked in the neighborhood. That’s why we had to work fast. They’re looking for her to question her and when they find her she has to have an alibi.

“I want the police in Los Angeles to give her alibi before things get too hot up here.”

I was silent for a while.

“Well?” he asked. “You going to blow the whistle?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“If you don’t,” he told me, “you can write your own ticket.”

“How strong?”

“The sky’s the limit. This means a lot to me now. They’ve been talking about running me for mayor. I’m a prominent citizen here. This scandal would break me wide open. The information in the hands of my wife would cost me a cool half a million.”

“Where did you get the idea for the knockout drops?” I asked.

“My wife,” he said. “She’d been a nurse before I married her.”

“She told you about chloral hydrate?”

“Yes.”

“That stuff is dangerous,” I said.

“I know it now. A great deal depends upon the condition of a man’s system, his heart, and all that — but we gave the guy what we thought was only enough to knock him out for half an hour. We had a long search in his apartment. I was afraid he was going to come to and make a squawk before we could get out.”

“Where did this take place?”

“At the Round Robin Rooms. He wanted to pick the place because he wanted to be sure it wasn’t bugged. He rented the room.”

“You and I have a good deal in common,” I told him.

He raised his eyebrows.

“We’re both in one hell of a mess,” I said. “I’ll contact you later.”

He reached for his wallet. “You want money?”

“Not now,” I told him. “Later.”

I left the office and walked to my hotel, thinking the thing over.

I stopped at the desk and got the key to my room.

A man stepped forward and said, “Donald Lam?”

I looked at him and nodded.

“Okay,” he said, “I’ve got a warrant for you from Los Angeles, compounding a felony, squaring a hit-and-run. You want to waive extradition?”

I said, “I’ll send a telegram and tell you then.”

He said, “We were told we’d have trouble.”

“Not with me,” I told him. “I’m docile as a kitten.”

I sent a telegram to Colton C. Essex, attorney at law:

I signed it Donald Lam, and turned to the plain-clothes officer, “Okay,” I said, “let’s go.”