Cut Thin to Win

Chapter 8

The next morning when I entered the office Bertha Cool was on the warpath.

“What in blue hell have you been getting into?” she asked. “Me?”

“You!”

“Nothing, why?”

“Don’t hand me that line! Frank Sellers is really gunning for you this time. You’re losing your license.”

“Who says I’m losing my license?”

“Frank Sellers, for one.”

“Phooey!” I said. “He’s got nothing on me. He took two and two and added them together and made sixteen. He thinks I covered up a hit-and-run case, compounded a felony and a few other things. But it’s all surmise on his part, and—”

“Surmise on his part, my eye!” Bertha interrupted, her little pig eyes glittering like diamonds. “You got suckered into a deal, got your neck stuck way out and Sellers might have protected us if you’d gone to him and put the cards on the table.

“Sellers tells me he gave you a chance.

“But did you take it? Not you! You were smart. You went traipsing off to Denver, to tell our client to get under cover and stay under cover. You made a pay-off in a hit-and-run case with the understanding that there wouldn’t be any prosecution.

“And don’t tell me that’s all a figment of Seller’s imagination. You know something?”

“What?” I asked.

“When they took that car of Phyllis Dawson’s down to the police lab and checked it over, they found three distinctive threads caught in the spring shackle. When they compared those threads with the torn dress Mrs. Chester had been wearing at the time she was struck down in the intersection, they found they had a perfect match on fibers.

“Let that glib lawyer the Dawsons have retained try to explain that away in front of a jury.”

“They impounded the dress that Mrs. Chester was wearing at the time?” I asked.

“No, they didn’t,” she said, “but they took a sample from the hem.”

“How come?” I asked.

“Mrs. Chester was picked up there in the intersection; she was loaded into an ambulance and taken to the hospital. She was suffering from shock, and the doctors warned her she was going to be mighty sore for a few days and would have to stay in bed. Fortunately, she had no bones broken.

“Since it was a hit-and-run case and they saw a tear in her dress, and, apparently, a little strip of cloth that had been gouged out of it by the automobile, the police took a small piece of the material from the inside of the hem.”

“Did they get her permission?”

“How the hell do I know?” Bertha blazed. “The police aren’t on trial here; you are! It’s routine in hit-and-run cases to pick up all the physical evidence they can get and salt it away.

“Having got rid of Mrs. Chester, the authorities might have had some trouble if it wasn’t for this circumstantial evidence, the dent on the fender, the fibers adhering to the shackle bolt, or whatever it is they call that part of the car. I think Frank Sellers said it was a shackle bolt.”

“So Sellers told you all about it?”

“He told me enough about it,” she said, “so that I wouldn’t need to get mixed up in it and have my license revoked along with yours. Sellers has been a damned good friend of mine.”

“I’ve been a good friend of his,” I said. “I’ve done a lot for him.”

“You’ve done it in such a manner that it irritates the hell out of him.”

“I can’t help how he feels. I’ve done it, haven’t I?”

“You’ve done it. Now you’re in a jam. There’s only one thing you can do.”

“What?”

“Beat Sellers to the punch and don’t say that I told you so!”

“You mean with Mrs. Chester?”

“I mean with Mrs. Chester. You gave her money. She took an ambulance to the airport. Apparently, she got aboard a plane for Denver. Something happened to her when she got to Denver. They had a wheelchair ordered for her, but someone must have spirited her out of the terminal. You have two guesses as to who that someone was.”

“Meaning our client?”

“Meaning your client,” Bertha said. “Fry me for an oyster, but I’d love to get my claws into him again!”

I said nothing.

“That goddam client,” Bertha went on, “just framed you in a picture. He laid a trap and baited it with a little money. Then he made damned certain he couldn’t be traced.

“You know something?”

“What?”

“Sellers thinks that this Phyllis Dawson is a complete phoney; that she’s not the guy’s daughter at all; that she’s the guy’s mistress; and he’s a rich guy, standing between her and ever being brought to account on this hit-and-run charge.”

I shoved my hands down deep in my pocket and slumped down in the chair.

“All right,” Bertha said after a while, “say something!”

“I’m thinking.”

“You’re thinking too damned late. You should have done your thinking before you stuck your neck in a noose. I’m going to miss you as a partner, but you sure as hell are going to lose your license over this one, and Sellers is mad. I’ve never seen him so mad.

“He’s told me that they’ve put thirty detectives on the trail of Mrs. Chester. They’re going to find her.”

“Perhaps,” I said. “But he can’t go after me.”

“What do you mean he can’t go after you?”

“He gave me a deadline to tell him the name of my client. He said in the presence of witnesses that if I told him the name of the client he’d turn off the heat.”

“No, he didn’t,” Bertha said. “He told me you tried to trip him into doing that, but he told you that if you’d cut one little corner he’d throw the book at you. He says you cut a corner. You told him the name of the client but you still compounded a felony.

“He says if you produce Mrs. Chester before noon today, he’ll be a lot more lenient with you, but he isn’t going to stand for any detective agency going around compounding felonies.”

I said, “I can’t produce her. I don’t know where she is.”

“Sellers will find her,” Bertha said.

After a while I said, “The case doesn’t add up. It doesn’t make sense.”

“What do you mean?”

I said, “Let’s begin at the beginning. This wasn’t too serious a hit-and-run case. The woman was struck in a pedestrian crossing, but there were no bones broken. That isn’t as though we were dealing with a corpse.

“Now then, mysterious people rush into the act with a lot of money, more money perhaps than Mrs. Chester could ever have recovered. We got money to go and call on the victim. It has to be hushed up right away and fast. I get an opportunity to settle for ten grand and wire our client.

“There isn’t even so much as a quibble. My judgment isn’t questioned. No one suggests that I try to get the amount whittled down. Whoever is back of this tossed the ten grand in my lap, fast.”

“I know what you’re getting at,” Bertha said. “That means someone who was important was driving the car.”

“Provided there was a car,” I told her.

“What?” Bertha asked.

I said, “How do we know there was a car?”

“What are you talking about?”

I said, “The whole damned thing is too pat.

“How did Frank Sellers get on my trail so fast? How did he know that Mrs. Chester had been paid money to forget the whole thing?”

“Because Mrs. Chester blabbed. She showed money to her neighbor.”

“And how did it happen that Sellers called on the neighbor?”

“He was investigating the case.”

“And how did it happen that a man of Seller’s stature in the police department started investigating the case?”

“Because it was... important.”

“It wasn’t important at that time,” I said. “It wasn’t important until he got the lead on a cover-up of compounding a felony — provided there ever was any felony.”

“It was a hit-and-run,” Bertha said.

“All right,” I said, “let’s concede for the sake of the argument that it was a hit-and-run. How did Sellers get on the job, personally and get there so fast?”

“I don’t know,” Bertha said. “Frank Sellers doesn’t confide in me.”

“There’s only one way he got on the job that fast,” I said. “He got a tip from someone.”

“And who is the someone?” Bertha Cool asked.

I sat there in the chair, thoughtfully silent.

“Well?” Bertha Cool asked, “who was it?”

“Under the circumstances,” I said, “it had to be one of three people — No, one of four people.”

“Who?”

“Either our client, Clayton Dawson, or his so-called daughter, Phyllis, or Sidney Eldon, the boy friend of Phyllis, or Colton Essex, the attorney... And we don’t know there really is a Sidney Eldon.”

“Are you completely crazy?” Bertha asked. “None of those people would have done it. They were the ones who stood to lose everything.”

I got to my feet and said, “I’m going to be out all day, and I may be out for several days.”

“You can say that again,” Bertha said. “You’re out, period. I’m not going to monkey with anyone who is losing his license. Sellers told me to get out from under. I’m getting out.”

“Okay,” I told her, as I walked out, “the partnership is dissolved.”

I went down to my private office.

Elsie Brand had been crying.

“What’s the trouble, Elsie?” I asked.

“Bertha told me.”

“About the license?”

“Yes.”

“Forget it,” I told her.

“It means the end of the partnership; it means the end of your career.”

“They haven’t got my license yet,” I said.

“Donald, I couldn’t stay on here for a minute without you — you know that.”

“Don’t sell me short,” I said.

She looked at me with warm eyes. “I’ve never sold you short, Donald,” she said, “but this time the cards are stacked against you and Bertha is on the warpath. She should have more loyalty as a partner,” Elsie blazed. “I could never work under her!”

“You’re not going to have to,” I said. “Stick around and be where I can reach you on the phone. I’m going to be out for a while.”

“Where can I reach you in case — in case any real emergency should turn up?” she asked.

“You can’t,” I told her. “I’ll call in from time to time.”

“Donald, please — please be careful.”

“It’s too late to be careful now,” I told her. “I’m dealing either with a crooked lawyer, a jealous boy friend, a scheming daughter, one hell of a wealthy father, or a combination of any number of them.

“You can’t be careful when you go up against a combination of that sort.”

“You could at least try,” she said, and watched me with anxious eyes as I walked out of the office.