Give ’Em the Ax

3

At one time the Rendezvous idea had swept the country like a plague. Night clubs built up a fine afternoon trade, catering to women between thirty and forty who wanted romance. Some of these women were grass widows on the make. Some of them were married women who kidded their husbands, and perhaps themselves, pretending they’d been shopping and had “just dropped in” for a drink.

It was a nice racket for the night clubs who found themselves suddenly catering to a very profitable afternoon business — for a while. Then the grief began to catch up. The men who hung around didn’t do the places any good. The general nature of the setup began to leak out, and the first thing these places knew, they were writing the answers in red ink.

Most of them began to put drastic regulations into effect — no unescorted women, no table hopping.

The Rimley Rendezvous kept open and, as nearly as I could tell, there were no restrictions, which was interesting.

Because the Stanberry Building was on the edge of a congested business district, it was hard to find a parking place. There was a parking lot in the middle of the next block, and I was heading for it when I got a break. A taxi moved out from in front of the entrance to the building and I spotted a space between the painted strip of curb which marked the loading zone and taxi stand and a big Cadillac parked just behind. There was barely room to squeeze in. I didn’t intend to stay long and acted on the assumption the big Cad might belong to one of the big shots. I squeezed the agency car up pretty close. After I got out, I saw it was even closer than I’d thought, but I left it there anyway.

The elevator shot me up to the Rimley Rendezvous — a faint hint of heady perfume, deep carpets, subdued lights, dreamy music, swift-moving, solicitous waiters — an atmosphere of clandestine class, coupled with security and stability.

A swell setup.

I had a Scotch and soda. It was served in an amber glass so I couldn’t see how pale the drink was. Even if Pittman Rimley was paying twenty dollars a bottle for his Scotch, he could still make money at the prices he was charging and the amount of liquor he was putting in the drinks.

The place had a marvelous orchestra, quite a few women and a sprinkling of men — the fat-faced executive type who had stayed over from the merchant’s lunch, the poker-faced guys with long sideburns who kept their stomachs lean and hard, and tried to look like movie actors. It never had been much of a spot for the younger type. That class couldn’t stand the tariff.

A voice came drifting over my shoulder. The accents were those of routine seduction, “Cigars — cigarettes?”

I turned around and got an eyeful. She was about twenty-three with a skirt that stopped two or three inches before it reached her knees, a fancy white apron, a blouse with wide, flaring collar and a low V in front. The conventional tray suspended from the shoulder harness held an assortment of cigars, cigarettes, and bonbons.

I paid two-bits of Georgia Rushe’s expense money for a package of cigarettes ostensibly on the theory that I might open up a contact, actually because I was enjoying the scenery.

She had whimsical light gray eyes that smiled a sophisticated “thank you,” and seemed to have a somewhat detached, philosophical consideration for men who liked to look at legs.

She didn’t move away, but waited to strike a match for me.

“Thanks,” I said.

“It’s a pleasure.”

I liked her voice, but that was all I heard of it. She gave me another smile and moved away.

I looked the place over and wondered if by any chance Mrs. Ellery Crail might be among those present. I didn’t see any women who would have fitted the description and the part. Anemic, female droops didn’t go in for afternoon romance. It took women with a restless sex consciousness to patronize a place like that.

There wasn’t any use losing any sleep over it. I had a routine chore of detective work at ten bucks per day, and there was no occasion to use a lot of finesse. I walked out to the telephone booth and called the agency.

Bertha was out. I gave careful instructions to Elsie Brand. “I’m at the Rimley Rendezvous. I want to get a line on a woman here. Take a look at your watch. Wait exactly seven minutes, then call the Rendezvous and ask if Mrs. Ellery Crail is here. Say that you’d like to have her come to the telephone, to page her if they don’t know her, that it’s important. Wait until they go to get her and then hang up.”

“Anything else?”

“Nope. That’s all.”

“Any messages you want to leave for Bertha?”

“Tell her I’m down here.”

“Okay, Donald. Good to hear your voice.”

“Good to hear yours. Good-by.”

I went back to my table. The waiter was hovering around as though I hadn’t been drinking my liquor fast enough. So I finished it up and ordered another.

The drink came just about at the expiration of the seven minutes.

I started looking around. The head waiter summoned one of the underlings, said something to him and the man nodded, moved very unobtrusively over to a table where a woman and a man were sitting. He said something to the woman and she got up and excused herself.

At first I couldn’t believe it. Then I saw from the way she walked as she headed toward the telephone that she must be the one I wanted. There was a little one-sided hitch to the walk. It wasn’t a limp, it was simply a vague stiffness as the back got in just one position.

But she wasn’t anything like Georgia Rushe had described her. She wasn’t any anemic little milksop. She was all woman, and she knew it. The cardigan suit was smooth over well-shaped hips; her chin was tilted at a saucy angle, and there was pert independence in the way she carried her head. When she walked, men turned to look at her and, in that environment, that alone spoke volumes.

While she was out at the telephone I looked at the man who was with her. He was a tall drink of water with all the robust sex magnetism of a marble slab. He looked like a bank cashier with a passion for exact figures — on paper. You couldn’t picture him as getting enthusiastic over any others. You felt certain his fingers knew their way around on the keyboard of an adding machine. He was somewhere around fifty with the expression amateur theatrical players like to assume when they’re taking the part of an English butler.

A couple of minutes later, Mrs. Crail returned to the table. The man who was with her arose and seated her with punctilious, unsmiling formality. Then he settled back in his seat and they talked in low tones.

For all of the expression on their faces, they might have been discussing the National debt.

I left the table once more, sauntered to the telephone booth and again called the office. Elsie Brand told me Bertha Cool was in now, and I told her to put Bertha on the line.

“Hello,” Bertha said. “Where the hell are you, lover?”

“Down at the Rimley Rendezvous.”

“Are you still there?”

“Yes.”

“That’s a hell of a way to work on a case,” she said angrily, “sitting at a table guzzling drinks on the expense account and...”

“Shut up,” I interrupted, “and get this straight. Mrs. Ellery Crail is here with a man. I don’t think they’re going to stay long. I’d like to know who the man is. Suppose you stick around the outside, pick them up when they come out and tail them.”

“You’ve got the agency car.”

“You have your personal car, haven’t you?”

“Well... Yes.”

I said, “Mrs. Crail is about twenty-eight. She weighs a hundred and twelve pounds. She’s five foot four and a half inches tall, is dressed in a black dressy suit, a large black straw hat with a red doodad on it, red reptile shoes and a red bag.”

“The man who’s with her is fifty-two, five feet ten, a hundred and seventy-one to a hundred and seventy-five, double-breasted bluish gray suit with a white pin stripe, long nose, long jaw, an expressionless map, dark blue necktie with a red pattern in big S curves, edged with white, sandy complexion, eyes either gray or light blue, I can’t tell which at this distance.

“You can pick up the woman by watching her walk. She swings her legs from the hips. But when she swings her right leg, the left side of her back has just a slight hitch. You’ll have to watch sharp to notice it, but if you watch sharp, you will notice it.”

Bertha, somewhat mollified, said, “Well, that’s all right, if you’ve got them spotted. I’m glad you’ve accomplished something. I’ll come right down. You don’t think I’d better go inside the club and wait?”

“I wouldn’t. I’d wait on the outside. It might be a little too noticeable if you got up and went out at the same time they did. They may be just a little suspicious after that telephone call that didn’t materialize.”

“All right, lover, I’ll take care of it.”

I went back and sat down at the table. The waiter, I noticed, was watching me rather closely.

“Cigars — cigarettes?”

The voice with the smile was right over my shoulder. I turned and looked at the legs. “Hello,” I said. “I just bought a pack of cigarettes. Remember? I don’t use them up that fast.”

She leaned slightly forward, said in a low voice, “Buy another one. You seem to enjoy the scenery, and I want to talk with you.”

I started to make a wisecrack, then caught the expression in her eyes and reached in my pocket for another quarter. “It’s a fair exchange,” I said.

She placed a package of cigarettes on the table, leaned forward to take my quarter and said, “Get out!”

I raised my eyebrows at her.

She smiled tolerantly as though I’d made some verbal pass, and tore off the corner of the cigarette package for me. She took out one and extended it to me. “You’re Donald Lam, aren’t you?” she asked, striking a match.

This time I didn’t need to raise my eyebrows. They popped up by themselves. “How,” I asked, “do you know?”

“Don’t be silly. Use your head. You’ve got one.”

She leaned forward and applied the match to the end of the cigarette. “Leaving?”

“No.”

She said, “Then for Heaven’s sake, circulate! Pick up some of these women who are looking you over with purring approval. The way it is now, you stand out like a sore thumb.”

That was an idea. I realized suddenly that unattached men didn’t drop into the Rendezvous simply to sip a highball. But I was still worried about how the cigarette girl had learned my name. I’d been in the Southwest Pacific for some eighteen months now. And before that I didn’t think I was particularly well known as a figure about town.

The dance orchestra started making noise. I picked a young vivacious looking brunette a couple of tables over. She seemed just a little too demure as I walked over.

“Dance?” I asked.

She looked up at me with a well-simulated expression of haughty surprise. “Why... aren’t you being just a little abrupt?”

I met her eyes and said, “Yes.”

That brought a laugh. “I like abrupt men,” she said, and arose to extend her arms to me.

We danced half around the floor without saying anything. Then she said, “Somehow you aren’t the type I had pictured.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“The way you sat over there frowning into your drink — you looked melancholy and belligerent.”

“Perhaps it was belligerency.”

“No. I was wondering about you. Oh, I suppose I’ve given myself away that I was watching you.”

“Any harm in watching me?”

“One isn’t supposed to admit it.”

I didn’t say anything and we danced some more. Then she laughed and said, “I was right all the time. You are belligerent and melancholy.”

I said, “Let’s talk about you for a while. Who are the two women with you?”

“Friends.”

“You surprise me.”

She said, “The three of us go around together quite a lot. We have something in common.”

“Married?”

“Well... No, not that.”

“Divorced?”

“Yes.”

We danced some more. She said, “You don’t come here very often, do you?”

“No.”

“I haven’t seen you. I wondered — something about you. You don’t look like the sort of man who does come here. You’re hard and... well, there’s nothing aimless or smirking about you.”

“What about the men who come here?” I asked.

“Most of them are no good. Occasionally you see someone who is — interesting. It’s once in a blue moon. There, I’m giving myself away again.”

“You like to dance, and occasionally you find a partner here, is that right?”

“That’s about it.”

The music stopped. I took her back to her table. She said coyly, “If I knew your name, I’d present you to my friends.”

“I never tell my name.”

“Why?”

“I’m not the sort you’d like to present to your friends.”

“Why?”

I said, “I’m married. I have three children who are starving. I can’t support my wife because I spend my afternoons in places like this. Time and again I’ve made up my mind to cut it out. But I just can’t do it. I’ll be walking along the street and see a beautiful face and figure like yours headed into one of these joints, and immediately I go plunging in after it, spending my last cent just for the pleasure of talking with you, holding you in my arms while I dance around a crowded floor.”

We were at the table now. She laughed and said, “Girls, I think his name is John Smith. He has the most delightful line.”

Two new feminine faces looked up at me with amused interest.

The head waiter stood close to me. “I beg your pardon, sir.”

“What rule have I violated now?” I asked.

“Nothing, sir. But the manager asked me to present his compliments and ask you to join him for a few moments. It’s quite important.”

“Well, I like that!” the girl with whom I had been dancing said.

The waiter remained silently insistent at my elbow.

I smiled at the three young women, said, “After all, I can be back, you know,” and then followed my guide out through the main doorway, through a curtained doorway into an anteroom, then through a door marked Private which the head waiter opened without knocking.

He said, “Mr. Lam for you, sir,” and retired, pulling the massive door closed behind him.

The man who was seated behind the big polished walnut desk looked up from some papers and his eyes hit mine; hard, dark, restless eyes that threw out the magnetic fire of a dynamic personality.

A smile softened the heavy mouth. The man pushed back the swivel chair and came around the desk.

He wasn’t particularly tall and he wasn’t fat, but he was thick all the way through, thick-chested, thick-necked, and a body that went straight up and down, with few curves. A tailor had done a marvelous job on him, and there was a well-groomed appearance about his hair that indicated a barber had spent quite a bit of time in painstaking toil. Every hair was smoothly tailored into place.

“How are you, Mr. Lam? My name is Rimley. I own the place.”

I shook hands.

He sized me up thoughtfully, said, “Sit down. Care for a cigar?”

“No, thanks. I smoke cigarettes.”

He opened a humidor on his desk. “I think you’ll find your favorite brand here. I...”

“No thanks, I have a package in my pocket I want to get smoked up.”

I fumbled in my pocket. It occurred to me that it might be very bad business, at the moment, to let him know about that second pack of cigarettes.

“Well, do sit down and make yourself comfortable. Care for a drink?”

“I’ve just had two of your Scotch and sodas.”

He laughed and said, “I mean a real drink.”

“Scotch and soda,” I said.

He picked up a desk telephone, flipped over a switch and said, “Two Scotch and sodas, my private brand.”

He clicked the switch off and said. “Just back from the South Pacific, I understand.”

“May I ask how you know?”

He made arches of his eyebrows. “Why not?”

There wasn’t any answer, so I went back to first principles. “I’ve been away for quite a while. While you were in business when I left, I don’t think I’d ever been out here. It just happened I hadn’t ever dropped in.”

“That is why your present visit interests me.”

“But how did it happen you knew who I was?”

He said, “Come, come, Mr. Lam. We’re realists, both of us.”

“Suppose we are?”

“Put yourself in my position. In order to run a place like this, one has to be on the black side of the ledger. One has to make money.”

“Naturally.”

“In order to make money, one has to put himself in the position of his customers. What do they come here for? What do they want? What do they seek? What do they get? What do they pay for? Obviously, Mr. Lam, if you’d put yourself in my place, and remember I am trying to think in terms of customers’ wants, you will readily understand that the unannounced visit of a private detective is... well, it’s something to be reported to me.”

“Yes, I can see that. Do you know all the private detectives?”

“Certainly not. But I know the ones who are smart enough to be dangerous.”

“How do you segregate?”

“I don’t. They segregate themselves.”

“I’m afraid I don’t follow you.”

“Being a private detective is like following any other profession. The incompetent ones have a tendency to weed themselves out. The ones who can just get by remain unknown, with only a nominal business. The ones who have what it takes begin to attract attention. They begin to get more and more business. People begin to talk about them. I know all of those.”

“You flatter me.”

“Don’t be so damn modest. Before you enlisted in the Navy, you’d made quite a name for yourself, a little guy with guts — guts and brains; a daring operator who played a no-limit game and always brought his clients out on top. I watched your career with a great deal of interest. I thought I might need you myself, sometime.

“And then, of course, there’s your partner, Bertha Cool. Rather an outstanding figure.”

“You’ve known her for some time?”

“Frankly, I never bothered with her until you teamed up with her and organized that partnership. Bertha was on my list, of course — one of the few agencies that would take domestic-relations cases. But nothing that needed to occupy my personal attention. She handled routine stuff in a routine way. Then you came along and you began handling routine stuff in a very unconventional manner. The cases you handled ceased to be routine.”

“You know a lot about me,” I said.

He nodded calmly, matter-of-factly, as one agreeing with an obvious fact. “I know a hell of a lot about you.”

“And why am I honored this afternoon?”

Knuckles tapped on the door.

“Come in,” Rimley called.

I noticed a slight movement of the right side of his body, heard a muffled click. The door opened and a waiter came in bearing a tray with glasses, a bottle of Johnny Walker Black Label, a container filled with ice cubes, and a big quart bottle of siphon water.

The waiter put the tray down on the corner of the desk, walked out without a word. Rimley poured two big slugs of whisky into the glasses, dropped in ice cubes, squirted in soda, handed me a glass.

“Regards,” he said.

“Regards,” I replied.

We took a sip from the glasses. Rimley swung around in the chair, smiled and said, “I hope I don’t have to dot the i’s and cross the t’s.”

“You mean that you don’t want me here?”

“Definitely.”

“Is there,” I asked, “anything you can do about it?”

His eyes were hard now, but his lips were still smiling. “Quite a bit,” he said.

“I’m interested. Barring the minor subterfuges of telling me the tables are all engaged, or instructing the waiters not to wait on me, I don’t see anything very subtle or very effective that you could do.”

He smiled and said, “Have you ever noticed, Lam, that the persons who talk about what they’re going to do very seldom do what they say they’re going to do?”

I nodded.

“I never talk about what I’m going to do. I do it. And, above all, I wouldn’t be so foolish as to tell you what I was going to do to keep you from being a regular visitor. Working on some particular case?”

I smiled and said, “Just dropped in because I wanted a little social life.”

“Obviously,” Rimley said smiling, “you can appreciate the reactions of my customers if someone should point you out and say, ‘That’s Donald Lam of the firm of Cool & Lam, private detectives. They’re one of the firms that handle divorce cases.’ I rather fancy there’d be lots of diners who would very suddenly remember they had engagements elsewhere.”

I said, “I hadn’t exactly thought of that particular angle.”

“Suppose you think of it now, then.”

We sipped our drinks.

“I’m thinking of it,” I said.

I wondered if Mrs. Crail and her escort had left the place yet, and if Bertha Cool was on the job. I also wondered if Pittman Rimley’s aversion to private detectives might not be due, at least in part, to the fact that he may have had some idea that a sale of the building in which his club was located was in process of negotiation — and did his lease have a clause that changed its terms in the event the premises were sold?

Rimley said, “Well, don’t let it get you down, Lam. How about freshening up your drink?”

He reached across for my glass with his left hand, held the bottle of Scotch over the glass, gurgled in amber liquid and squirted in siphon water.

I don’t know just how it happened that my eyes dropped down for a casual glance at the very expensive wrist chronometer with its sweep-second hand circling the dial, but they did. It was a big watch and only a big man could have worn it, but it was a watch that could keep time to a split fraction of a second.

The watch said four-thirty.

I did mental arithmetic. It couldn’t have been that late. I wanted to look at my own watch, but somehow it didn’t seem to be just the thing to do.

Rimley freshened up his own drink, smiled at me across the brim of the glass. “After all,” he said, “just so we understand each other.”

“Certainly,” I told him. “That’s all that’s necessary.”

I looked around the office very casually.

There was a clock on top of a filing case, one of those nautical affairs mounted inside the spokes of a bronze wheel.

I waited until Rimley was looking at something else then flashed my eyes back for a quick glance at the face of the clock.

The time was four thirty-two.

I said, “You must have your problems running a place of this kind.”

“It isn’t all gravy,” he admitted.

“I suppose you get to know your customers pretty well?”

“The regular ones, yes.”

“Have trouble getting liquor?”

“Some.”

“I’ve got a client who wants to bring suit against some people for an automobile accident. Know any good lawyers?”

“Is that the case that you’re working on now?”

I simply smiled.

“Pardon me,” he said.

“Know any good automobile accident lawyers?” I asked.

“No.”

“Guess there are some pretty good ones around.”

“There should be.”

I said, “Well, it’s nice liquor and I’ve enjoyed my visit. I suppose you’d prefer I didn’t go back to my table.”

“Go right ahead, Lam. Make yourself at home. Enjoy yourself. Relax. Have a good time. And when you leave, don’t bother about the check. Just get up and walk out. There won’t be any check. But don’t... come... back!”

He’d been holding me with liquor and talk. Now both the liquor and the talk had dried up. It was quite all right for me to go back to the Rendezvous — now. Why had he been so anxious to get me out of the place a few minutes before and was so willing to let me return now? Could it be because Mrs. Ellery Crail and her escort had left?

I tossed off the last of the drink, got up and extended my hand. “Nice meeting you,” I said.

“Thank you. Make yourself at home, Lam. Have a good time, and I wish you every success with whatever case you happen to be working on. Just remember to work on it some place other than here.”

He followed me to the door and bowed me out.

I went back to the main dining room.

I knew I didn’t have to look. I did it just to make sure.

The table where Mrs. Ellery Crail had sat with the unsmiling individual in the double-breasted gray suit was vacant.

I looked at my watch.

The time was three forty-five.

I didn’t see my cigarette girl, so I asked a waiter casually, “Cigarette girl here?”

“Yes, sir, just a moment.”

A girl came toward me, legs, apron, tray, but it wasn’t the same one.

I bought a package of cigarettes. “Where’s the other girl?”

“Billy? Oh, she went home an hour early today. I’m filling in for her.”

My girl friends over at the other table kept looking in my direction. I went over there. I didn’t dance but just chatted for a minute. I was, I told them, being arrested for nonsupport of my wife and seven children. I was going to have to arrange bail, and could they do something to keep me out of jail?

I saw they were puzzled, and interested. And the waiter came along again. Mr. Rimley’s compliments and would my friends care to join me in a drink on the house, some champagne, perhaps, or some of that Black Label Johnny Walker?

The young women stared as though they were seeing and hearing things. “My God,” one of them said, “he must be the Duke of Windsor!”

They all laughed.

I smiled at the waiter. “My thanks to Mr. Rimley,” I said. “Tell him that I enjoyed his hospitality, but I never drink more than I can hold comfortably. However, my friends will probably accept a drink on the house. I’m leaving.”

“Yes, sir. There’s no check, sir. Mr. Rimley’s taken care of that.”

“So I understand. But I suppose a tip would be in order?”

He seemed positively embarrassed. “If you don’t mind, sir, I’d rather not.”

I nodded, turned and bowed to the three most startled women in the city. “A business appointment,” I assured them gravely, and walked out of the main dining room.

I recovered my hat from the hat-check girl and she was perfectly willing to accept the two-bits I handed to her.

I took the elevator to the ground floor, tried to be nonchalant as I walked out and headed for the agency car. I’d misjudged the owner of the big Cad. Not only had he gone out before I did, but he’d calmly shoved his car into low gear and pushed the agency car forward so that it was right in front of the entrance of the building. A cab had moved into the place where the Cad had been parked.

A cab driver walked over to me. He had a broken nose and a cauliflower ear. “Your car?”

“Yes.”

“Get it the hell out of here.”

“Someone shoved it out here. I didn’t leave it here.”

He spat insultingly. “I’ve heard that one so many times it put this tin ear on me. I had to let a passenger out of my car way out from the curb. It cost me a dollar tip.”

He held out his hand.

I regarded the outstretched hand gravely. “You mean you lost a dollar?”

“Yeah.”

I reached for the door of the agency car. “I’m sorry, Buddy. I’m going to make it up to you.”

“That’s the general idea.”

I said, “I’m from the income tax department. Take it off your return and tell the department I said it was okay.” I started the motor.

He lunged toward me, met my eyes, hesitated.

I slammed the car door shut and drove off.

It was four twenty-three when I got to the office.