Cut Thin to Win

Chapter 5

When I walked in the office the next morning, there were danger signals flying all over the place. The receptionist held up her hand with the palm out. On the table where incoming mail was placed, there were two baskets — one marked B. Cool and one marked D. Lam. There were letters in the Lam basket, but on top of the letters was a red paperweight. That was the private danger signal that Elsie Brand had worked out.

Those signals gave me a chance to prepare for trouble. Usually it meant some big husky was threatening to beat me to pulp if I didn’t quit the job I was doing.

I braced myself for trouble, opened the door of my private office and walked in.

Sergeant Frank Sellers was sitting there with Elsie Brand, and Sellers was mad.

Sellers was a big, husky, two-fisted dedicated cop, who didn’t do very much talking himself and distrusted those who did talk.

Sellers believed in physical action. He wanted to be doing something all the time. He was always in motion. Sometimes he clenched and unclenched his hands. Most of the time he chewed on a soggy, unlit cigar stump.

Now he was both clenching and unclenching his hands and worrying the stump of the cigar.

“Hello, Pint Size,” he said, his voice ominous.

“Hello, Sergeant.”

“You’re in a jam!”

“Me?”

“You.”

“How come?”

“Don’t play that childlike, cherubic innocence with me. I don’t go for it.”

“I didn’t say I was innocent. I wanted to know what particular charge you are making against me.”

“You thought you were pulling a fast one.”

I said nothing.

“That hit-and-run business,” he said.

I raised my eyebrows.

“A dame by the name of Mrs. Harvey W. Chester who lives in a little old-fashioned bungalow in the rear of 2367 Doorman Avenue.”

“What am I supposed to have done with her?”

“That’s one of the things you’re going to tell me,” Sellers said. “This much I know. You knew we were investigating a hit-and-run. You were representing the person who did the hitting and running. You took a nice, fat wad of cold, hard currency out there, squared the deal with her and paid her to disappear.

“Now then, for your information, in case you’re too dumb to know it, that’s compounding a felony and we don’t like to have people compounding felonies.”

I sat down beside Elsie’s desk. She was looking at me with frightened eyes.

“Got a warrant?” I asked.

“Don’t crack smart,” he said, “or I’ll take you and throw your tan in the cooler just to show you what I can do. I’ve got enough on you to take you in on suspicion right now, but I am giving you a chance to come clean.”

“What do you want?”

“I want to know the name of your client.”

I shook my head. “That would be violating a professional confidence.”

“And if I don’t get the name of your client, it’ll be violating a state law.”

“Who told you all this stuff anyway?” I asked.

“Never mind that,” he said, and then added grimly, “we don’t divulge the sources of our information.”

“Well, why don’t you trace this woman, Mrs. Chester What’s-her-name, if you’re so smart?”

“Because, by God, you fixed it so we couldn’t trace her,” Sellers said.

“I did?”

“You know damned well you did! You had an ambulance call at the place, loaded her into that ambulance, had her taken to the airport and put in a wheelchair while she was about half full of dope. You put her on a plane for Denver, and when she got to Denver, she just plain disappeared.”

“Oh come, Sergeant,” I said, “she had to have a wheelchair meet her when she got off the plane in Denver and—”

“Sure, a wheelchair was there,” Sellers said. “She was met by private parties in a private automobile and she vanished into thin air.

“Before she left Los Angeles, she did a little talking, however, and she showed a friend a whole wad of hundred-dollar bills. She paid her rent with a hundred-dollar bill. So help me, she even used a hundred-dollar bill to pay off the ambulance.”

“What happened to her baggage?”

“Not a damned piece of baggage, except a little handbag.”

“What’s left in the house?”

“Nothing, somebody came and cleaned it out. Don’t be so damned innocent. I’m just letting you know what we have on you.”

“Why does it have to be me?”

“Because you parked your car a couple of blocks away from the house and made a pass of selling magazine subscriptions.

“One woman saw you park your car, get out with the magazines, and then you went to the door and solicited her. She didn’t think you looked like a magazine salesman, didn’t think your heart was in it, and thought you were casing the joint. So she took the license number of your automobile and phoned it in, asking us to check with the Better Business Bureau.

“Well, those calls are a dime a dozen, but we made the check. Then, when we went out to interview Mrs. Chester and found she’d been masterminded out of existence. I started checking back on things and Communications happened to remember that call.

“I went out and made a door-to-door canvass, personally. I found where you pulled the magazine racket on two other houses and then went to the Chester bungalow in back.

“That was your introduction, all right, the magazine racket. From then on, you played it by ear and you evidently made a pretty damned good job of selling.

“Now then, I’m putting it on the line. I’m not going to penalize Bertha on this thing, because we don’t have so much trouble with Bertha. But every damned time you get hold of a case, you start cutting corners, and this time I’m going to have your license.”

Sellers lurched to his feet. “Think it over,” he said. “Give us the name of your client and let us clean up that hit-and-run case or lose your license.”

“And if I give you the name of the client?”

“You’ve still got a rap for compounding a felony; but, if you’ll clip your wings a little bit and not try to fly quite so high, you can probably square that with the D.A.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“Okay, Pint Size, you’re a smart little operator and you’re like all these brainy little bastards that get smart. You just get too damned smart.

“We’ve got a hit-and-run charge and we want to clean it up, and we’ve got a few clues pointing in the right direction. We may be able to clean it up without any help from you, but that’s no skin off your nose. Either you come through with the full story on this, or you lose your license.”

“How long have I got?” I asked

“Just long enough to make up your mind,” Sellers said. “Not more than twenty-four hours.”

Sellers rolled the cigar around from one side of his mouth to the other, glowered at me, said, “You’ve given me a helping hand once or twice after you’ve made me walk over hot coals for a mile or two, and you’ve always been fair about giving me the publicity. That much I appreciate.

“But get this straight.” And Sellers reached out and grabbed my necktie and pulled me close to him. “Get this straight, you little bastard, I’m a cop! I’m the law! I’m enforcing the law. I respect the law, and I don’t like guys that cut corners with the law! And in case you don’t know it, that means Donald Lam!”

Sellers pushed me backward into the chair, let go of my necktie and stomped out.

Elsie Brand looked at me, on the verge of tears. “Did you do it, Donald?”

“Yes.”

“Are you going to tell the name of your client?”

“No.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’ll have to tell him, Donald.”

“Does Bertha know anything about this?”

“I don’t think so. Sellers came stomping right in here.”

“Okay,” I said, “I’m out for the day, Elsie. If anybody wants me, you don’t know where I am and,” I told her with a smile, “that’s going to be the understatement of the week.”

“Donald, will you please be careful?”

“It’s too late to be careful now,” I told her. “Better send to the drugstore, order a package of tranquilizers and deliver them to Bertha.”