Gold Comes in Bricks

Chapter four

Alta went out about quarter to ten. The butler opened the garage doors, and while he was doing that, I was streaking down the street. That’s one thing I’m good at sprinting.

Bertha Cool was waiting in the car. I climbed in beside her, and said, “Get that motor going. When a twelve-cylinder car streaks past us, give it everything you’ve got and keep the lights turned off.”

“You’d better drive, Donald.”

“There isn’t time. Get started.”

She started the motor and eased away from the curb. Alta Ashbury went past us like a flash. I said to Bertha, “Go ahead. Give it the gun.” I reached over and switched out the headlights.

Bertha started groping for the headlight switch. I jerked her hand away, grabbed hold of the hand throttle, and pulled it out all the way. We started going places. Bertha got jittery, and I leaned over to put a hand on the wheel. After a while, Alta came to a cross street just as the light changed. It gave us a chance to catch up and for me to run around the back of the car and let Bertha slide over.

When the light changed, Alta shot ahead as though she’d been fired from a gun. The agency bus rattled on across the street, gathering headway. Somebody yelled at me to put my lights on, but I kept running dark, hoping we’d get into a snarl of traffic. After a while we did. I switched the lights on and started jockeying for position, trying to keep just a little on the left and behind.

Bertha was full of apologies. “I should have listened to you, lover. You’re always right. Oh, why didn’t you make me listen to you?”

I had a job to do driving the car, so I didn’t say anything.

Bertha kept right on talking. She said, “Donald, I don’t suppose I can ever make you understand me. For years I had to fight my way. Every nickel counted. There were lots of times when I only allowed myself fifteen cents a day for eating money. Do you know, Donald, the hardest job I ever had was trying to learn how to spend money again after I began to make a little.

“I’d draw a hundred dollars every month from my bank account and make up my mind I was going to spend it on myself, and I just couldn’t do it. I’d find myself at the end of the month with seventy or eighty dollars I hadn’t spent. When you’ve once been right up against it where money means so damn much to you, it does something to your morale. You never get over it.”

“I’ve been broke,” I said.

“I know, lover, but you’re young, and you have brains. Bertha didn’t have brains, not the kind you have. Bertha just had to stay in there and pitch, and it was tough sledding. You have something I’ll never have, Donald. You’re resilient. Put pressure on you, and you bend. Then as soon as the pressure is removed, you spring back. I’m different. Put pressure on me, and I put pressure back. If anything happens, and I can’t put any pressure back sometime, I won’t bend, I’ll simply break.”

I said, “All right, forget it.”

“Where’s she going, lover?”

“I don’t know.”

“What’s she going to do?”

“I don’t even know that. We’ve kicked ourselves out of a hundred — dollar — a — day job. There’s everything to gain, and nothing to lose. We may as well shoot the works.”

“Donald, you’ve never failed me before. You’ve always worked out some scheme that let us wriggle through.”

“Shut up,” I said. “I’m trying to do it now.”

It was a tough job following her in traffic. All she needed to do was press her foot on the throttle. The motor would whisper a song of smooth power, and the car would whisk through an opening which would close up behind her. I had to keep my foot on the throttle of the agency car and hold it in second gear a good part of the time so I had the pick-up I needed for traffic.

She drove into a parking station. I didn’t dare go into the same station. The only open parking space was in front of a fire plug. I said, “All right, Bertha, we park in front of the fire plug. If you get pinched, you can charge it to Ashbury for taxi expenses. You go down toward Seventh Street. I’ll go up toward Eighth. Wait on the corner. When she leaves that parking lot, she’ll either turn toward you or toward me. If she comes toward me, don’t try to follow her. If she goes toward you, I won’t try to follow. Whichever one isn’t elected will come back and move the car.”

Bertha was meek as a lamb. “Yes, lover,” she said.

It was a job for Bertha to get in and out of the car. She had to twist around and squirm her way out. I didn’t wait for her, and I didn’t try to help her. I opened the door and walked down the street fast.

Bertha hadn’t gone more than twenty yards from the car, when Alta came out of the parking lot. She turned toward me.

I ducked in a doorway and waited.

She was considering the possibility of being followed all right. She kept looking behind her as she walked, but after she’d turned the corner, she evidently figured the road was clear. I picked up her trail. There was a cheap hotel midway in the block. She went in there. I didn’t dare follow until after she’d got out of the lobby, then I walked in and over to the cigar counter. There was an automatic indicator over the elevator. I watched the hand. It had stopped at the fourth floor.

The girl behind the cigar counter was blond with stiff, wavy hair. I remembered one time when I’d seen a strand cut from the rope used by a hangman in San Quentin. A travelling salesman had it, and he had combed the strands all out. That girl’s hair was about the same color, had about the same wave, and looked to be just about as stiff. She had light eyebrows, and big green eyes. She’d managed to get the expression on her face that one associated with virginal innocence back in nineteen hundred and six; mouth puckered up, eyebrows raised, lashes long and curly. It was the expression of a kitten just venturing out of the back closet into the living-room.

I said, “Listen, sister, I’m a travelling salesman. I’ve got a bill of goods I can sell the Atlee Amusement Corporation, but I have to have an inside track. There’s a gambler here in the hotel who can give it to me. I don’t know his name.”

Her voice was as hoarse and harsh as that of a politician the morning after election. She said, “What the hell do you take me for?”

I took ten bucks of Bertha Cool’s expense money out of my pocket, and said, “A girl who knows all the answers.”

She lowered her eyes demurely. Crimson-tinted fingernails slid across the counter toward the ten bucks. I clamped down on it, and said, “But the answer has to be right.”

She leaned toward me. “Tom Highland,” she said. “He’s your man.”

“Where does he live?” I asked.

“Here in the hotel.”

“Naturally. What room?”

“Seven-twenty.”

“Try again,” I said.

She pouted and lowered her eyes. Her nose and chin came up in the air.

I said, “All right, if you feel that way about it,” and folded the ten bucks and started to put it into my pocket. She glanced at the elevator, leaned across, and whispered to me, “Jed Ringold, four-nineteen, but for God’s sake, don’t say I told you, and don’t bust in on him. His sweetie has just gone up.”

I passed her the ten.

The clerk was looking at me, so I fished around a bit, looking over the cigars. “What’s the matter with the clerk?” I asked.

“Jealous,” she said with a little grimace.

I tapped a gloved forefinger on the counter. “Okay,” I said, “give me a couple of those,” took the cigars, and walked over to where the clerk was standing at the counter. “Poker game running down the street,” I said. “I want to get away for a couple of hours’ sleep, then go back. What have you got, something around the fourth floor?”

“Four-seventy-one,” he suggested.

“Where is it?”

“On the corner.”

“Nothing doing.”

“Four-twenty?”

I said, “Brother, I’m funny, but I always get along with the odd numbers. Four-twenty sounds about right, only it’s even. Have you got four-seventeen or four-nineteen or four-twenty-one?”

“I can give you four-twenty-one.”

“How much?”

“Three bucks.”

“With a bath?”

“Sure.”

I took three dollars out of my pocket and slid it across the counter. He smacked his palm down on a bell and called out, “Front!”

The boy walked out of the elevator. The clerk handed him a key and said to me, “You’ll have to register, Mr. — er—”

“Smith,” I said. “John Smith. You write it. I’m going to sleep.”

The boy saw I had no baggage and was giving me the fishy eye. I tossed him a quarter and said, “Snap out of it, son, and smile.”

He showed his teeth in a grin and took me up. “Work all night?” I asked him.

“Nope. I quit at eleven.”

“How about the elevator?”

“Goes on automatic.”

I said, “Listen, son, I don’t want to be disturbed. I’ve been in a gambling game and I’m tired.”

“Stick the sign on the doorknob, and nobody’ll disturb you.”

“Got any gamblers in the house?” I asked.

“No,” he said, “but listen, buddy, if you’d like a—”

“I wouldn’t,” I said.

He thought perhaps I might change my mind and hung around digging out the “Please Do Not Disturb” sign for me, pulling down window shades, and turning on the light in the bathroom.

I got rid of him after a while, hung the cardboard sign on the doorknob, locked and bolted the door, turned out all the lights, went over to the communicating door which connected with four-nineteen, got down on my knees, and started to work. I kept my light gloves on.

The proper place to bore a hole in the door of a hotel bedroom is at the corner of the paneling, just at the lower edge of the molding. The door is thinner there, and a small hole won’t attract much attention. A knife that has a crescent-shaped blade on it can be sharpened into a good boring edge.

I felt like a dirty snoop, but a man can’t argue with his bread and butter. And that goes double when he’s working for Bertha Cool. The way I felt didn’t keep me from doing a darn good job of boring a hole in the panel, and getting my eye up to the hole.

Alta was sitting on a davenport, crying. A man was sitting back in a big chair, smoking. Her tears didn’t seem to mean very much to him. I couldn’t see anything except his legs up as far as the hips, and occasionally the hand when it would take the cigarette from his mouth and come to rest on the arm of the chair.

After a while Alta got done crying. I could see her lips move, but couldn’t hear what she was saying. She didn’t seem to be exactly angry, more crushed than mad.

They talked for a while, then the man moved the hand that held the cigarette. A second later his other hand came into view with an envelope. He held it out toward Alta. She leaned forward on the davenport, took the envelope, and tucked it under her arm without even looking to see what was in it. She seemed in a grand rush. She opened her purse, took out a folded oblong of tinted paper, and handed it to him. He dropped it in the right-hand side pocket of his coat.

Alta got up hurriedly. I could see her lips say “Goodnight.” Then she walked out of the range of my vision.

The man seemed to be hurrying her along. He got up, and I had a glimpse of his face. He walked across the room. I heard the door open and close. The door was right across from the elevator. I could hear the cage rattling and wheezing up, then the sound of the door opening and closing. The man came back to the room, closed and locked the door.

I got up from my knees, brushed off my trousers with the palm of my hand, and then suddenly noticed the key which turned the bolt on the communicating door. Those are so rigged that when the bolt is closed, the little thumb grip that works it is straight up and down. This one was straight across.

Slowly, so as not to make any sound, I turned the knob of the door. When I had the knob back as far as it would go, I put my thumb up against the jamb and pushed easily against the door.

It opened about a sixteenth of an inch.

The door had been open all the time. That was something. For a moment I thought of opening it up and walking in, then decided against it. I closed the door, and eased the knob back quietly so that the latch wouldn’t click. Then I slowly twisted the brass thingumbob on the door so that it shot the bolt back home on my side of the door.

It was a crummy hotel with the carpets worn thin and the lace curtains dingy. The white counterpane on the bed had a rip that had been stitched together. The connecting door between the two rooms was a loose-fitting affair. I stood staring at it. While I was looking at it, the knob slowly turned. Someone was trying to open that connecting door. He tried it once, then quit.

I walked out into the corridor, closed and locked my door behind me, slipped the key in my pocket, went around to four-nineteen, and knocked.

I heard a chair move, then steps on the floor, and a man’s voice said, “Who is it?”

“Lam,” I said.

“I don’t get you.”

“Message from the chief.”

He opened the door and looked at me.

He was big, and had the lumbering good nature of a man who’s big enough and strong enough to know no one is going to push him around. The eyebrows were a little too heavy and came together across his nose. His eyes were such a deep reddish brown they were almost black, and I had to hold my neck back against my collar to look up at him.

“Who the hell are you?” he asked.

“I’ll tell you that when I come in.”

He held the door open. I walked in. He closed the door behind me and twisted the bolt. He said, “Sit down,” and walked over to the same chair in which he’d been sitting while Alta had called on him, put his feet up on another chair, lit a cigarette, and said, “What’d you say your name was?”

“Donald Lam.”

“You’re Greek to me.”

I said, “No, you’ve never seen me before.”

“You aren’t telling me anything. I never forget a face. You said you had a message?”

“Yes.”

“From the chief?”

“Yes.”

“Who do you mean, the chief?”

I said, “The chief of police.”

He was lighting a cigarette when I said that, and the match didn’t so much as waver. He didn’t look over at me until after he’d taken a deep drag at the cigarette, then his reddish-black eyes turned my way.

“Spill it.”

I said, “This message concerns your personal health.”

“My health is good. It’s going to stay good. What the hell’s the message?”

I said, “Don’t cash that cheque.”

“What cheque?”

“The one you just got.”

He took his feet down from the chair. “You’ve got a hell of a crust,” he said.

I said, “Brother, you’ve cashed twenty thousand bucks in cheques through the Atlee Amusement Corporation. That’s just twenty grand too much. You’ve got another check in I hat right-hand coat pocket. As soon as you give it to me, I’ll get out of here.”

He looked at me as though I’d been a funny tropical fish swimming around in an aquarium.

“Now,” he said, “you interest me. Who the hell are you?”

I said, “I’ve told you who I was and what I wanted. Now, what are you going to do about it?”

“In about ten seconds,” he said, “I’m going to throw you out of this room so hard you’ll bounce.”

He got to his feet, walked across to the door, unbolted it, opened it, jerked with his thumb, and said, “Out.”

I got up and picked my place, a place where I could make a nice pivot, throw his right arm over my shoulder, hear down as I twisted, and send him hurtling over my head.

He walked over to me, very casually.

I waited for him to move that right arm.

It didn’t come up the way I’d been practicing with Hashita. It came around from the side. It caught me by the coat collar. His other hand caught me around the hip pockets. I tried to brace myself, and might as well have tried to push a freight train off the track. I went out of that room so fast I could hear the doorjamb whiz as it went by. I threw up my hands to break the force of the impact against the wall on the opposite side of the corridor. I grabbed the edge of the glass mail chute beside the elevator. He tore my grip loose, pivoted, and sent me down the hall at the same time he brought up his left foot.

I know now just how a football feels when a player kicks a place goal.

What with the momentum of the bum’s rush and the force of the kick, I went sailing down the hall for twenty feet before I came down flat on the floor.

I heard him go back, close and lock the door. I limped on down the corridor and around a bend, looking for the stairs, made up my mind I’d picked the wrong end of the hallway, and started back.

I was still twenty feet from the “L” when I heard three shots. A second or two later I heard running steps in the corridor going in the other direction.

I ran around the right-angled turn. The door of four-nineteen was open. An oblong of light was streaming out into the hallway. I looked at my watch — eleven-sixteen. The elevator boy would have gone off duty, leaving the elevator on automatic.

I pressed the call button, and, as soon as I heard the cage start upward, went into four-nineteen on tiptoe.

Ringold’s body was huddled in front of the step that led up to the bathroom. His head was doubled back under his shoulders. His arms were twisted out at a goofy angle. One knee was just inside the door to the bathroom. The left arm was pressing up against the connecting door to four-twenty-one.

I dipped my fingers into the right-hand coat pocket and felt the perforated edges of a folded oblong of paper. I didn’t take time to look at it. I jerked it out, stuck it in my pocket, turned, and ran for the corridor. The light switch was near the door. I switched the lights out and stood for a moment in the doorway, looking up and down the corridor. The only person in sight was a woman about fifty-five or sixty with her hair done up in curlers who was hugging a red robe around her, and standing in the open doorway of a room down at the end of the corridor.

“Did you hear someone shoot?” I called to her.

“Yes,” she said.

I jerked my thumb toward four-twenty-one. “I think it came from four-twenty-one. I’ll go and see.”

She continued to stand in the doorway. I walked over abreast of the elevator, called out, “He’s got a ‘Don’t Disturb’ sign over the door. I guess I’d better go down to the office.”

The elevator was waiting. I opened it, rode down to the second floor, got out, and waited.

It seemed as much as a minute before I heard the elevator taken back down to the first floor, and then saw it go rattling back up. The indicator showed that it had stopped at the fourth. I walked down the stairs and out into the lobby. The clerk wasn’t behind the desk. The blond girl at the cigar counter was reading a movie magazine. Her jaws were moving slowly with the rhythmic chewing of gum. She glanced up, then back to her magazine.

After I got out on the street I took the folded oblong of paper out of my pocket and looked at it. It was a check payable to cash in the amount of ten thousand dollars. It was signed Alta Ashbury.

I put it in my pocket and walked down to the place where Bertha Cool had left the car. It was gone. I stood there for a minute and didn’t see any sign of Bertha. I walked three blocks, picked up a taxi, gave the address of the Union Depot. When I got there I dropped the hotel key into a mailbox, picked up another cab, and gave the address of a swanky apartment hotel three blocks from where Ashbury had his residence. I paid off the cab, and, after he drove away, walked down to the Ashbury place.

The butler was still up. He let me in although Ashbury had given me a key.

“Miss Ashbury in yet?” I asked.

“Yes, sir. She came in about ten minutes ago.”

“Tell her I’m waiting on the sun porch,” I said, “and that it’s important.”

He looked at me for a moment, blinked his eyes, and said, “Very well, sir.”

I went out on the sun porch and sat down. Alta came down in about five minutes. She swept into the room with her chin up in the air. “There’s nothing you can say,” she said, “no explanation you can make.”

“Sit down,” I said.

She hesitated a moment, then sat down.

I said, “I’m going to tell you something. I want you to remember it. Think it over tonight and remember it tomorrow. You were tired and nervous. You canceled a date. You went to a movie, but couldn’t stick it out. You came back home. You haven’t been anywhere else. You understand?”

She said, “I came down here because I want to make a good job of having this over with once and for all. I hate snoops and spies. I suppose my stepmother employed you to find out just how I felt... Well, she’s found out. I could just as well have told her to her face, but as far as you’re concerned, I think you’re beneath contempt. I—”

I said, “Come down to earth. I’m a detective. I was hired to protect you.”

“To protect me?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t need any protection.”

“That’s what you think. Remember what I told you. You were tired and nervous. You canceled a date. You went to a movie but couldn’t stick it out. You came back home. You haven’t been anywhere else.”

She stared at me.

I took the cheque from my pocket. “I don’t suppose,” I said, “that you bother to keep stubs of such minor cash outlays as ten-thousand-dollar checks, do you?”

Her face went white as she sat staring at that cheque, her eyes riveted on it.

I took a match from my pocket, struck it, and set fire to one corner. I held it until the flame got close enough to burn my fingers, then I dropped it into an ash tray. I ground the ashes to powder with the tips of my fingers.

“Good-night,” I said, and started for the stairs.

She didn’t say anything until I was going through the door.

“Donald!” she cried — just one sharp cry.

I didn’t turn around but closed the door behind me, went upstairs, and to bed. I didn’t want her to know he’d been murdered until she read it in the papers or until the cops told her. If anyone around the hotel knew who she was and the cops came out to question her, she could put on a lot better act of surprise, or grief, or relief, or whatever it was going to be, if she wasn’t acting a part.

I had a hell of a time getting to sleep.