Cut Thin to Win

Chapter 3

I had my answer within two hours, sent from Denver, Colorado, straight wire:

I got to the Parkridge Apartments within thirty minutes after receiving the wire and rang the bell on 609.

Phyllis Eldon was a dish.

If there was any resemblance to her father, I failed to see it. She was a ravishing honey-blond beauty with big, innocent-appearing blue eyes, a peaches-and-cream complexion and apparently all of the standard parts in the deluxe model.

“I’m Donald Lam,” I told her.

She said, “I’ve been expecting you. You want ten grand, don’t you?”

“I do.”

She said, “Sit down, please. What do you want — Scotch or bourbon?”

“Neither, at the moment. I’m working.”

“My, but you’re abstemious. I’m working, myself, but I’m going to have some Scotch and soda.”

“Double it,” I told her.

She went over to the bar.

It was a nice apartment, all dolled up with fancy gadgets and an air of loud luxury.

She got a couple of crystal glasses, splashed in Scotch, ice, squirted in soda, and brought it over.

“Here’s how,” she said.

“How,” I told her.

“I suppose,” she said, “you think I’m a very wicked woman?”

“Are you?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I suppose my father told you a lot of stories about me.”

“Trying to pump me?” I asked.

“No,” she said, “but I just consider myself a human being, and I’d like to have you look at me the same way.”

I looked her over and said, “I’m looking at you — and I think you’re human.”

She laughed at that and said, “I see you can twist words around to suit yourself.”

She raised her glass and looked at me over the rim. I bowed to her and we drank.

I could see she was sizing me up.

“My dad says that you’re a very high-grade detective.”

“That wasn’t the way he reacted when he first met me,” I said.

“He was disappointed. He thought you’d be a bigger man.”

“Sorry, I couldn’t accommodate him.”

“You look all right to me,” she said. “I think you’d be very competent — in a clinch.”

Her eyes met mine over the top of the liquor glass and she smiled.

Abruptly her expression changed. “Just what’s the pitch, Donald?”

I said, “Mrs. Harvey W. Chester was injured six days ago in a hit-and-run accident. She was struck down in a pedestrian crossing. She has no idea of who hit her except it was a car driven by a girl.”

“Go on,” she said.

I said, “I asked her about the extent of her injuries and about a settlement.”

“Donald, could you settle a case like that without compounding a felony?”

I brushed the question aside and said, “I told her that I knew a person who liked to buy up claims such as hers; that sometimes he bought them up and was able to find the culprit and settle for a very large sum and make a handsome profit; and sometimes he couldn’t find the persons responsible and, as a result, had to let the whole thing drop. And, of course, in cases of that sort, he lost out.”

She thought that over for a moment, then her eyes looked at me with a new-found respect.

“I’m to buy out the claim?” she asked.

I shrugged my shoulders and said, “If you think it’s worth it; it’s touch and go. The probabilities are we’ll never find the person who drove the car.”

“But if we do?”

“Then you’d have an assignment of the claim.”

“Wouldn’t a document of assignment of that sort be considered... well, incriminating?”

“The assignment would be to me,” I said. “I’d act as intermediary in case anything came up.”

“Wouldn’t that be a little risky in case anyone should ask questions?”

“People ask me questions all the time. Sometimes I don’t have to give them complete answers.”

“You do when the police ask.”

“I don’t have to tell the names of my clients.”

“Donald,” she said, “I think you’re wonderfully competent.”

“Thank you.”

“Do you want to know what all this means to me?”

“Hell, no!” I told her.

For a moment she flushed, then she laughed and said, “I guess I understand. What you don’t know, won’t hurt you.”

“What I don’t know, won’t hurt you,” I said.

“And you don’t want to hurt me, do you Donald?”

“You’re a client,” I said.

She said, “You sit right there.”

She walked into the back bedroom. Once I thought I heard hoarse whispering.

She came back carrying one hundred hundred-dollar bills, nice crisp currency.

She counted them out on my lap, her fingers from time to time brushing against my leg as she put the bills down.

“There you are, Donald, one hundred hundred-dollar bills. That’s a total of ten thousand dollars. Now, tell me, what’ll happen if the police do finally trace the car that hit this woman?”

“They’d ask her to prosecute.”

“And if they prosecuted?”

“They might get a conviction, depending on the evidence they had; but if she didn’t prosecute, they might have a little trouble.”

“And, so far, they have no evidence?”

“They have a dress, from which a piece of cloth was torn; and they probably have glass from the headlight. They usually have something like that.”

“One has to take chances these days, doesn’t one?” she said, smiling.

“One does,” I said.

I put down the empty glass and got up to go.

She watched me speculatively. “Donald,” she said, “I think you’re wonderful just absolutely wonderful!”

I grinned at her and said, “If I started disagreeing with you it would make too long an argument. Good-bye, Phyllis.”

“Goodbye, Donald.”