Give ’Em the Ax

9

The apartment house where I had been able to get a single apartment by dint of some pull and a lot of luck was about three blocks from the place where Bertha Cool had her apartment, which was altogether too close. It was a swanky place with a private switchboard and a garage, a rather ornate lobby, and the rent must have been fixed when the OPA had its back turned.

I parked the agency car, went up to the lobby desk and said, “Three forty-one.”

The man behind the desk looked at me sharply. “You’re new here?” he asked.

I nodded. “Just checked in today.”

“Oh yes. Mr. Lam, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“There’s a message for you.”

He handed me my key and the folded slip of paper. The paper said, “Call Bertha Cool, at once.”

“Also,” the manager went on, “a young woman has been calling you every ten or fifteen minutes. She won’t leave her name or number. Says she’ll call back.”

“A young woman?” I asked.

The manager smiled condescendingly. “Her voice sounds young and attractive.”

I pushed Bertha’s message down in my pocket and went up to my apartment.

The telephone was ringing as I entered. I closed the door, went into the bathroom, washed my hands and face and waited until it had quit ringing. Then I walked back to the telephone and said to the switchboard operator, “Don’t call me any more tonight.”

The operator said, “I’m sorry, I told this party that you didn’t answer. She seemed very much disturbed, said it was a matter of the greatest importance.”

“Woman?” I asked.

The girl downstairs said it was.

I changed my mind and said, “All right, go ahead and ring if the call comes in again. I’ll take it.”

I hadn’t taken time to unpack when I’d checked in. Now I threw my grip on the bed and started taking things out. One thing about the Navy, it teaches a man to cut his possessions down to the minimum.

I yawned, turned down the bed and got out my pajamas.

The telephone rang.

I answered it.

Bertha Cool’s voice said, “Well, for Christ’s sake! What’s the matter with you? Are you getting so damned high-hat you can’t call your boss on a matter of business?”

“Partner,” I said.

“All right, partner then. Why the hell didn’t you call me when you came in?”

“I was busy.”

“Well, you’re going to be busy. You’re in a hell of a mess. Get over here.”

“Where?”

“My apartment.”

I said, “I’ll see you in the morning.”

Bertha said, “You’ll see me now or you’ll wish the hell you had. Frank Sellers is over here and the only thing that’s keeping you out of the hoosegow right now is the fact that Frank is my friend. Of all the damn fools, trying to cut corners with the cops. I don’t know why the hell I should worry about you. I should let you get thrown in the can. It might do you some good.”

“Put Sellers on the phone,” I said.

Bertha said, “You’d better come over.”

“Put him on the phone.”

I heard Bertha say, “He wants to talk with you.”

A moment later, Sellers’ voice rumbled into the telephone.

I said, “Listen, Frank, I’m all in. I don’t want to go round and round with Bertha over some trivial technicality. Now suppose you tell me what’s the beef.”

Sellers said, “You know what the beef is, and don’t pull any of that innocent stuff with me, or I’ll push your teeth down your throat. I’m sticking my neck all the way out to protect Bertha in the thing, and it may break me at that.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“You know what I’m talking about. Of all the damn, dumb places to plant the murder weapon, that was it.”

“What murder weapon?”

“The hand ax, dope.”

“And where am I supposed to have planted it?” I asked.

“Don’t make me laugh,” Sellers said.

“I’m kidding on the square.”

“Don’t be a sap,” Sellers told me, “you’re in so deep now, the only way you can get out is by coming absolutely clean. If you don’t do that, you’re going to take a little ride with me, and you’re both going to lose your licenses. Now then, how soon can you get over here?”

“Exactly five minutes,” I said, and hung up the telephone.

Bertha’s apartment was on the fifth floor. My knees were weak as I stepped out of the elevator. I suddenly realized I was tired. It seemed like a mile to Bertha’s door. I pushed the button.

Bertha opened the door.

The smoky aroma of good Scotch whisky tingled my nostrils. I looked past Bertha and saw Frank Sellers sitting in his shirt sleeves, his feet elevated on a stool, a glass in his hand. He was frowning into the glass and looked as worried as a big cop can look.

“Well, come in,” Bertha snapped at me. “Don’t stand there staring at me.”

I walked in.

Bertha, in a loose fitting house dress, said, “My God, you’ve done some dangerous things in your time, but this is the first time you’ve ever gone plumb dumb on me. Of all the boob things to do. I suppose it was the legs.”

“What legs?” Frank Sellers asked.

Bertha said, “When this guy gets around a girl with looks and legs, he loses all sense of perspective.”

Sellers said mournfully, “That explains it then.”

“That doesn’t explain a damn thing,” I told him. “You should know by this time that if you listen to her, you’ll wind up behind the eight ball.”

Sellers tried to grin. It was a grimace.

Bertha said, “Don’t try to kid me out of it because you can’t make it stick.”

Sellers said, “I hate to do it to you, Donald, but you’ve led with your chin. You’re going on the carpet, and you’re probably going to lose your license. I may be able to keep Bertha out of it, but you’re in. And you’re in bad.”

“Wait until you hear what he says,” Bertha snapped at Sellers. “Don’t go pushing your weight around on Donald.”

Sellers said somewhat sullenly, “I’m not pushing any weight around, I’m telling the boy, that’s all.”

“Well, you don’t need to tell him,” Bertha said, bristling with belligerency. “He’s got more brains than you’ll have if you live to be a thousand.”

Sellers started to say something, then changed his mind and sipped his drink.

Bertha’s eyes were suddenly solicitous. “You’re white as a sheet, lover, what’s the matter. You aren’t letting this get you down, are you?”

I shook my head.

Bertha said, “You were supposed to take it easy. You told me that yourself. You — have you had dinner?”

Her question caught me by surprise. I thought back, trying to remember what I’d done with my time and then said, “No. Come to think of it, I haven’t.”

Bertha said, “That’s just like you, coming home half sick with your system full of tropical bugs and your resistance run down, under orders to avoid excitement and take it easy, and you go stir up a murder case and then go without your dinner.”

Bertha glowered at the two of us, then said, “Now, damn it, I suppose I’ve got to cook something for you.”

“There’s a place down the street,” I told her, “that’s still open. I’ll see what the law has to say, and go down there.”

“That joint!” Bertha snorted, and moved out toward the kitchen, her big body flowing along with a smooth grace inside of the loose house dress.

Sellers said, “Where did you get the hand ax, Donald?”

“Shut up,” Bertha snapped, turning to glare over her shoulder at him. “You’re not going to bullyrag the boy on an empty stomach. Have a drink of Scotch, lover, and come out here in the kitchen.”

I took a drink and went out to the kitchen. Sellers tagged along.

Bertha broke eggs into a bowl, dumped sliced bacon into a frying pan, shoved a pot of coffee on the stove, moving with an unhurried, ponderous efficiency that was deceptive because it didn’t seem she was moving fast.

Frank Sellers sat down in the little breakfast nook and put his drink on the table in front of him. He fished a fresh cigar out of his pocket and said, “Where did you get the hand ax?”

“What hand ax?”

Bertha said, “They’ve found the ax in the agency car, lover. The handle had been sawed off so it was only eight and a half inches long and the sawing wasn’t a neat job. It had been sawed part way through on one side, then turned around and sawed some more on the other side.

Sellers looked at my face. I met his eyes, shook my head and said, “It’s a new one on me, Frank.”

“Tell him how it happened you found it, Frank,” Bertha said. “I believe the little bastard’s telling the truth.”

Sellers said, “The police aren’t so dumb, you know.”

“I know.”

“Well,” Sellers said, “we went out to see Archie Stanberry. He was all broken up with grief, but he’d learned about the killing before we’d got there and...”

“How do you know that?” I asked.

“The way he acted,” Sellers said. “He was putting on an act that he’d rehearsed. He was all suave smiles when he greeted us, and wanted to know what he could do. We asked him a few questions and he was just too sweet and innocent. Then we told him and he was knocked for a loop — but it was acting. You could tell that. He made the mistake most people do of putting it on just a little too thick. Nothing you could prove in court, but something you could tell, just the same.”

I nodded.

“Okay,” Sellers said. “We pretended to take the guy at face value, told him a few things, then went out and tapped his telephone line and put a couple of shadows on the job to see who called on him.”

Again I nodded.

“You showed up in the agency car. You went inside and the boys thought it might be a good plan to give your car the once over, just to make sure about the registration certificate and all that. They didn’t recognize you, and they didn’t recognize the car. Remember, you’ve been out of circulation for a while.”

Again I nodded.

“Okay,” Sellers went on wearily, “they cased the back of the car and there was a nice little short-handled hand ax. They gave it a once over and there was blood on it. They handled it too damn much, but you can’t blame them for that. After all, they were just a couple of leg men on a routine chore.”

The aroma of bacon mingled with that of coffee. Bertha carefully poured grease off the bacon, turned it over in the frying pan and switched on the electric toaster, dropped in a couple of pieces of bread and pulled down the control mechanism. “How did that murder weapon get in your car, Donald?”

“It was the murder weapon?” I asked Sellers.

He nodded.

I said, “I’m darned if I know.”

“You’ll have to do better than that,” Sellers said.

“The little bastard’s telling the truth,” Bertha announced.

“How do you know?” Sellers asked.

“Because,” Bertha flared at him, “if he was telling a lie, he’d have one that sounded convincing as hell, and he’d have it all ready. That business of saying, ‘I don’t know’ is because he’s either dumb or innocent, and he isn’t dumb.”

Sellers sighed, turned his eyes back to mine.

I said wearily, “Okay. Let’s start in at the beginning. I got the agency car. I went down to the County Clerk’s Office to look up some records. I fooled around the Bureau of Vital Statistics. I went out to the Rimley Rendezvous. I got kicked out and came back to the office. Then I went out to look up a witness and left the car parked there...”

“You’ll have to do better than that,” Sellers said. “On the witness, I mean.”

“A witness that doesn’t have anything to do with the murder.”

“You’re in a jam, Donald.”

I said, “All right. This witness lived out on Graylord Avenue.”

“What number?”

I said, “Nix on it. You’d rock the boat.”

He shook his head and said, “It’s the hammer they killed him with, Donald. I’m standing between you and the D.A.’s office right now.”

I said, “Philip E. Cullingdon, 906 East Graylord Avenue.”

“What’s he got to do with it?”

“It’s another case.”

“What time did you get out there?”

“I don’t know.”

“How long were you there?”

I rubbed my chin and said, “I can’t say, Frank. Long enough for an ax to have been planted, I guess.”

“Cullingdon, eh?” Sellers said.

I nodded.

Sellers lurched up from the little bench in the breakfast nook, hitting the table and all but upsetting the drinks.

Bertha looked up from the stove and said, “Damn you, Frank Sellers, if you spill any of that whisky I’ll brain you. That’s customers’ whisky.”

He didn’t even look at her, and went in to the telephone. I heard him turning the pages of the telephone book, then after a while heard the sound of the dial on the telephone and low-voiced conversation.

“You’re in Dutch,” Bertha said to me.

I didn’t say anything. There was no use.

Bertha tore off a paper towel, folded it, put it on the top of a shelf over the stove, put the bacon on that to drain, poured a little thick cream into the eggs, beat them up, dumped them into the frying pan and started stirring.

The whisky felt warm in my stomach and I didn’t feel quite as much as though someone had pulled out the plug and let all of my vitality drain out through my toes.

“You poor little bastard!” Bertha said sympathetically.

“I’m all right.”

“Have another drink.”

“I don’t want any more, thanks.”

“Food’s what you need,” Bertha said. “Food and rest.”

Sellers hung up the telephone, then dialed another number and talked. Then he hung up the telephone and came back to the table. He’d refilled his whisky glass while he was in the sitting-room. He looked at me with puzzled scrutiny, started to say something, then checked himself and jiggled the table once more as he sat down.

Bertha glowered at him for his clumsiness, but didn’t say anything.

A moment later, Bertha slid a plate over to me that had hot scrambled eggs, toast with lots of butter, golden bacon, fried just right, and a big cup of coffee with little cream globules floating on the top. “Sugar it to suit yourself,” she said. “I remember you take cream.”

I dumped in sugar and nodded my thanks. The coffee turned the warmth that had been kindled in my stomach into a solid, substantial glow. The food tasted good. It was the first time I’d had a real appetite for months.

Bertha watched me eat. Sellers frowned into his drink.

“Well,” Bertha said, “this is a hell of a party.”

No one said anything.

“Did you get him?” Bertha asked Sellers.

He nodded.

“Well?” Bertha said.

Sellers shook his head.

“All right, clam up if you want to,” Bertha snapped at him.

Bertha sat down and Sellers reached out and put his hand over hers. “You’re a good egg,” he said.

Bertha glared at him. “It wouldn’t hurt you to say what’s on your mind.”

Sellers said, “Cullingdon is gun-shy. Too many people have tried to get him to talk by too many different arguments. What’s more, he’d gone to bed. He was sore.”

“So what?” Bertha asked.

Sellers just shook his head.

I took another sip of coffee and said to Bertha, “Be your age. He contacted a prowl car and officers are on their way out. He’s waiting for a report.”

Bertha looked at Sellers.

Sellers looked at me, then back at Bertha. “Bright kid,” he said.

“I told you the bastard had brains,” Bertha announced.

“Let’s go back to your story,” Sellers said to me. “You left the car out there. You didn’t say how long. See anyone else out there?”

“I could have — but no one who had any chance to plant that murder weapon.”

“You tell me facts, names and places. I’ll draw the conclusions.”

“Not some names.”

“How many?”

“One.”

“I want it.”

“You don’t get it — yet.”

“You’re in bad.”

“Not that bad,” I told him.

“I think you are.”

I just kept on eating.

Bertha glared at me as though she could bite my head off. “If you don’t tell him, I will,” she said.

“Shut up,” I told her.

Sellers looked at her expectantly.

“I’m going to,” Bertha said.

“You don’t even know,” I pointed out.

“The hell I don’t. Any time you’ve been spending the partnership funds to get three packages of cigarettes and then get that moony expression on your face when the sergeant asks you a simple question, I know the answer, and don’t think for a damn minute that I don’t. After all, in one way you can’t be blamed. You’ve been down in the South Seas for so long you’ve got your head filled with a lot of romantic ideas about womanhood. You come back and the jane that you’d have called a broad a couple of years ago looks like a vision of loveliness made and handed down with a heavenly aura still clinging to her.”

Sergeant Sellers looked at Bertha with admiration. “Hell, you’re romantic,” he said. He reached out and took her hand.

Bertha jerked her hand out from under his and said, “I’ll bust you on the jaw one of these days, if you keep making passes at me.”

Sellers grinned. “That’s the way I like women — practical and hard.”

Bertha simply glared at him.

I said, “Women like to think they’re soft and feminine, Frank.”

He looked at me in surprise.

Bertha said to me, “Keep your damn mouth shut. You’ve got troubles of your own.”

I pushed the empty coffee cup across at Bertha and said, “Guess you’ll have to do the honors.”

Bertha refilled the coffee cup.

Sellers watched her pouring in thick yellow cream and said, “I can’t get cream any more.”

“It’s too bad about you,” Bertha said sarcastically.

The telephone rang.

Sellers didn’t even wait for Bertha to move toward it. He spilled coffee over the edge of my cup into the saucer as he made for the living room.

Bertha called after him, said, “Just like a bull in a China shop, a big flat-foot cop trying to act civilized. Just a minute, lover, I’ll fix it.”

She went over to the sink and emptied the saucer, put more coffee in the cup, brought it back and said, “Hold your hat when the big ape sits down again. He’ll probably pull the damn table out by the roots this time. What’s the matter? Didn’t Bertha cook the bacon right?”

I nodded, said, “What I ate tasted fine.”

“Well, eat the rest of it.”

I shook my head.

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. It’s been like that lately. I’ll be hungry, then just a few mouthfuls of food, and my stomach turns. I couldn’t get another bite down to save myself. This is the most I’ve eaten for a long time. I was really hungry tonight.”

“Poor kid,” Bertha said sympathetically, sitting down at the corner place.

I sipped the coffee. Bertha’s little greedy eyes regarded me with a motherly solicitude.

After a while, Sergeant Sellers came walking back into the room. He was frowning, and so absent-minded he’d forgotten to take his drink along and pour in fresh whisky.

Bertha grabbed up my cup and saucer and held it above the table while Sellers sat down. Then she put it back on the table and said, “Well, what about it?”

Sellers said, “It’s okay. A couple of guys went out in a prowl car and shook this guy down. He says Donald came out and asked him questions about an automobile accident. By God, that’s once you fooled me.”

“How?” I asked.

“When you said it was something that didn’t have anything to do with this case. I’d have bet eight weeks salary against a thin plugged dime that that was a runaround. But the guy says you were asking him about an automobile accident that took place quite a while ago. Then he says a girl came out and claimed to be a reporter for one of the newspapers and started asking him questions about the same accident. He rang up the newspaper she claimed to be representing and found it was an act she was putting on, so he chased her out.”

Bertha looked at me with eyes that were just a little apprehensive.

Sellers went on, “Okay, the way I dope it out, Donald was a little careless, but he isn’t exactly a fool. He had this man Cullingdon spotted, went out to talk with him. The jane tagged Donald out there. Donald wasn’t so damn dumb. He knew she was tailing him. He waited until she went in and then he pulled a fast one on her. Cullingdon says he went to the window and looked out to see if he could get the license number of the girl’s car. He saw her get into her car, then Donald climbed out of his car, walked over and raised his hat to the girl. Donald was evidently telling her off. Then he climbed in the car and drove away with her. Cullingdon said Donald was careful to walk around the front of the car when he went around to get in, keeping a hand on it all the time so the girl couldn’t give him the slip without a chance to hop the running board. Cullingdon thinks Donald is a pretty smart egg.”

“He is,” Bertha said.

“So Cullingdon sort of kept an eye on things,” he said. “He admits that he went out to Donald’s car and looked at the registration to check up on Donald. Donald was telling him the truth. He’d given him his right name and told him what he was there for. That’s a point in Donald’s favor.”

I sipped coffee and didn’t say anything.

“The car was parked out there for quite a while, Cullingdon says. He looked out every once in a while and it was still there. Then he looked out and it was gone. He didn’t see Donald come and get it. Now then, if Donald can tell us...”

I opened my wallet and took out the taxicab slip that I keep for my expense account voucher. I handed it to Sellers and said, “That’s the taxicab that took me out there.”

“Where did you pick it up?” Sellers asked.

“Somewhere on Seventh Street,” I said casually. “I can’t tell just where.”

Sellers heaved a sigh and said, “Well, I guess this will do it all right. Someone planted the weapon in that car while it was parked out there in front of Cullingdon’s. Now who the hell could have done that?”

I said, “That’s a job for the police department. I’m going home and get some shut-eye.”

Sellers said, “Your friend Cullingdon appreciates the fact that you told him the truth, Donald. And incidentally, it’s a darn good thing, from the standpoint of the police department, that you did. Cullingdon said to tell you that the amount of the settlement was seventeen thousand, eight hundred and seventy-five dollars, and that the case, he thinks, was handled on a contingency basis, and her lawyers got either a third or a half.”

I said, “That’s nice of him.”

Sellers frowned and said, “The hell of it is that you were investigating another matter. I can’t get over that.”

Bertha said, “We’re a big agency. We have a lot of irons in the fire.”

Sellers looked at her thoughtfully and didn’t say anything.

“Well,” I said, “I’m going home and get some sleep. I’m all in.”

“You poor kid, you look it,” Bertha said.

Sellers followed me to the door with Bertha. He said, “After all, Lam, I should have known better. You wouldn’t have done anything so dumb as to have found that weapon and then dumped it in the back of the automobile.”

“Any fingerprints on it?” Bertha asked almost too casually.

“Just prints of the two guys that picked it up and looked it all over before they knew what it was,” Sellers said. “Any murderer who has sense enough to toss a murder weapon into the back of somebody’s automobile certainly has sense enough to wipe off the handle.”

“But the head of it?” Bertha asked.

“Bloodstains and a couple of hairs that showed up under the microscope. It’s the murder weapon, all right.”

“Thanks for the food,” I told Bertha.

Bertha’s tone was maternally tender. “You’re entirely welcome, lover. Now you get to sleep and get a good night’s rest and don’t let anything bother you. After all, we’re not mixed up in this murder case and we’re not going to get mixed up in it. And we’ve done two hundred dollars worth of work in that other matter.”

“Good night,” I said.

Sellers and Bertha chimed in a chorus. “Good night.”

Both voices were friendly.