Kept Women Can’t Quit

Chapter 5

Frank Sellers stopped the squad car in front of the office building, parking in a red zone, and said, “Camera supplies, eh, wise guy? Thought you were pretty smart, didn’t you?”

Bertha barged out of the car, looking straight ahead, her jaw pushed out, eyes glittering, saying nothing to anybody.

We rode up in the elevator. Bertha stalked into the office and said to the receptionist, “Did you get that package wrapped to return to San Francisco?”

The girl nodded.

“Unwrap it,” Bertha said.

Dorris Fisher knew Bertha well enough not to argue. She opened a drawer, took out a pair of scissors and cut through the wrappings on the package which was addressed to the Happy Daze Camera Company in San Francisco.

Dorris Fisher got the wrappings off the box. Sellers looked down at the excelsior-padded contents, fished out the thirty-five millimeter camera, looked it over frowningly.

“What’s this?” he asked.

I said, “In our work we have to have photographs. This was a bargain and I bought it.”

Bertha glared at me in speechless anger.

Sellers seemed puzzled, then his fingers explored further down in the interior of the box. Suddenly his lips twisted in a grin. “Well, well, well,” he said, and pulled out the box of five by seven enlarging paper. “What do you know?”

Sellers turned the box over in his hand, reached in his pocket, pulled out a penknife.

“Now look,” I said, “that’s enlarging paper. It can only be opened in a darkroom where there’s absolutely no light. Otherwise you’ll ruin it. If you want, I’ll go in the closet where it’s absolutely dark and open it and—”

“How nice,” Sellers said. “We’re going to open it right here in broad daylight. If there’s anything in there that can’t stand the light of day, Pint Size, we’ll let you do the explaining.”

Sellers started to cut the seals, then stopped, looked at the box thoughtfully, grinned and put his knife away.

“Of course, Donald,” he said, “you couldn’t have taken the paper out and put fifty grand in the box without cutting the seals. You did it very cleverly and with a very sharp knife so it hardly shows. Now, Bertha, I’m going to show you something about your double-crossing partner here.”

Sellers pulled the lid off the box, disclosing the package wrapped in black paper on the inside.

“Don’t open that black paper, Sergeant,” I warned. “That’s enlarging paper and light will ruin every sheet of it.”

Sellers ripped the black paper off, threw it in the wastebasket, ripped off the inner wrapping of black paper and then stood goggle-eyed staring at the sheets of photographic enlarging paper.

I tried to hold my face without expression. It was a good thing Frank Sellers and Bertha were looking at the paper.

“Well?” Bertha said. “What the hell’s so funny about this?”

Sellers picked up one of the sheets of paper, looked at it, inspected the shiny glaze of the coated surface on one side, then turned the paper over to the uncoated side. He picked up three or four sheets and studied them separately.

“I’ll be damned,” he said.

I walked over and sat down.

Sellers hesitated a moment, then dove back into the box, pulled out every bit of excelsior, dumped it on the floor, turned the box upside down, tapped on the sides as though looking for a false bottom or something.

He looked up at Bertha. “All right,” he said, “I should have known the little bastard would do something like that.”

“Like what?”

Sellers said, “This is a dummy package, Bertha. Don’t you get it? It’s a decoy.”

“What do you mean?”

“He was too smart to carry the fifty grand with him, Bertha, because he felt we might get wise to something and search him. He wanted the fifty grand shipped down here so it would be included in some legitimate business purchase he’d made up there. He’s just that much smarter than you think he is. He knew that I might call at the office and ask you if any package had been received from San Francisco. You’d have said that a package had just come in and I’d have told you to bring it down to Headquarters or else I’d have come tearing up here and opened it.

“It’s just like the brainy little bastard to have something like this darkroom paper that would be ruined when I opened it so he could have the laugh on me. Then he figured I’d have to dig up the price of a new box of enlarging paper out of my own pocket. Then, a couple of days later an innocent-looking package would come in from San Francisco. By that time the heat would be off and he’d just open the package, take the fifty grand and be that much ahead.”

“You mean he’s stealing fifty grand?” Bertha asked.

“Not stealing,” Sellers said. “He’s trying to get that fifty grand and make a deal with the insurance company.”

“If you weren’t so damned cocksure of yourself,” I said, “you wouldn’t pick up a button and sew a vest on it every time I start working on a case.”

Sellers started chewing on his wet cigar.

“All right,” Bertha said, “what do you want next?”

Sellers said, “I’m going to take Donald with me.”

Bertha shook her head. “No, Frank,” she said. “You can’t do that.”

“Why can’t I?”

“You haven’t got a warrant and—”

“Hell’s bells,” Sellers said, “I don’t need a warrant. I’ve got him on suspicion of murder and half a dozen other things.”

“Think it over, Frank,” Bertha said in a low voice.

“Think what over?”

“The minute you take him down to Headquarters,” Bertha said, “the reporters will be on your tail. There’ll be a big story in the newspapers about how you’ve arrested Donald and—”

“Not arrested,” Sellers said, “brought him in for questioning.”

“He won’t go unless you arrest him,” Bertha said. “He’s too damn smart for that. He’ll get you to stick your neck out in public before you really have all the evidence and then make you look like a monkey while he winds up smelling like a rose.”

Sellers chewed on the cigar for a few seconds, looked at me with angry eyes, looked at Bertha, started to say something, changed his mind, waited a few more seconds, then slowly nodded.

“Thanks, Bertha,” he said.

“Don’t mention it,” Bertha commented.

Sellers turned to me. “Now look, wise guy,” he said, “you make one move, just one move, and I’m going to give you the works. I’m going to throw the book at you and clobber you.”

Sellers turned on his heel and swung out of the office.

Bertha said, “Donald, I want to talk with you.”

“Just a second,” I said, and walked over to where Elsie Brand was standing in the doorway of my reception office where she had been watching proceedings.

I said in a low voice, “Get me the Happy Daze Camera Company on the line. I want the manager. I’ll probably be in Bertha’s office when the call comes in. You ring me there but hold this guy on the phone so I can come back and talk in my office.”

“Do you know the man’s name?” she asked.

I shook my head. “He’s Japanese. Just ask for the manager. I want him on the phone. They may be closed by this time. If they are, try and get a night number.”

Elsie looked at me. “Donald, are you in trouble, real trouble?”

“Why?” I asked.

She said, “The others were watching that camera box when Sergeant Sellers opened that box of paper. I was watching your face. You looked for a second as though you were going to fall down.”

I said, “Never mind my face, Elsie. I’ve got myself in pretty deep and may have you along with me.”

“Would I have to testify against you?” she asked.

“If they get you in front of the grand jury, you will. Unless...”

She watched me as I lapsed into silence.

“Unless we were married?” she asked.

“I didn’t say that,” I said.

She said, “I did. Donald, if you want to marry me so I can’t testify and then go to Nevada and get a divorce afterward, it’s okay with me. I’ll do anything... anything.”

“Thanks,” I told her. “I—”

“Dammit to hell!” Bertha screamed across the office. “Are you going to stand there yakkity-yakking all afternoon or are you coming in here?”

“I’m coming in,” I said.

I walked into Bertha’s office. She closed the door, locked it and stuck the key in her desk drawer.

“What’s that for?” I asked.

She said, “You’re going to stay here until you come clean. I don’t know what you were telling Elsie there in a low voice, but if you were telling her to call San Francisco and get the manager of that goddam camera store on the line, Bertha is going to sit right here and listen to every word you say.”

“What makes you think I’m calling anyone in San Francisco?” I asked.

“Don’t be a sap,” she said. “Any time you go and buy a box of enlarging paper that’s had the seals cut I want to know about it. All you bought that goddam camera for was so that you could include a box of photographic paper without arousing anyone’s suspicions. Now what happened? Did that cameraman high-grade what you put in the box?”

I walked over to the window and stood with my back to Bertha, looking down at the street. I felt like hell.

“Answer me!” Bertha screamed at me. “Don’t stand there trying to stall me. My God, don’t you know you’re in a jam? Don’t you know I’m in a jam? I’ve never seen Frank Sellers like that in all my life and you haven’t either. You—”

The telephone rang.

Bertha scooped up the receiver and said, “He’ll take the call right here.”

There was a moment of mumbled sound coming from the receiver, then Bertha yelled, “Goddammit, Elsie, I told you he’d take the call right here. Now, get that guy on the line.”

I turned around and said, “I can’t talk to him here, Bertha.”

Bertha said, “The hell you can’t. You talk to him right here or you don’t talk at all. Either pick up that phone and talk to the guy or I’m telling Elsie to cancel the call.”

I turned and looked at the glittering anger in Bertha’s eyes, walked over and picked up the telephone. “Is this the manager of the Happy Daze Camera Company?”

There was the rattle of quick, nervous, staccato Japanese accent on the line. “This is manager, Mr. Kisarazu.”

“This is Donald Lam,” I said, “in Los Angeles. Are you the man who sold me the camera and the enlarging paper?”

“That’s right, that’s right,” he jabbered nervously into the telephone. “Takahashi Kisarazu, manager, Happy Daze Camera Company, at your service, please. What can I do, Mr. Lam?”

“You remember,” I said, “that I bought a camera and a box of enlarging paper?”

“Oh, yes-s-s-s-s,” he hissed. “Delivered already at airport. Sent specially to airport for rush handling express.”

“The package is here,” I said, “but the stuff I bought isn’t.”

“Package is there?”

“That’s right.”

“But stuff you bought not there?”

“That’s right.”

“Sorry, please. I do not understand.”

I said, “I bought a special and particular box of enlarging paper. The box that came down here isn’t the box I purchased. The seals had been tampered with on that paper. It had been opened.”

“Opened?”

“Opened.”

“Oh, sorry. So sorry. I have everything here on purchase slip. Will send new box of paper at once. So sorry.”

“I don’t want a new box of paper,” I said. “I want the box I purchased.”

“Don’t understand, please.”

“I think you understand too damn much,” I told him. “Now, I want that box of paper that I purchased. The same one, understand?”

“Will be glad to send a new box right away, very quick, special handling charges. So sorry. Unfortunate accident. Perhaps someone has opened box of paper after you made purchase, no?”

“What makes you think that?”

“Because of finding five by seven enlargement paper on floor by counter. Am very sorry. Excuse, please. We will make good.”

“Now listen,” I said, “get this and get it straight. I want that box of paper and I want it down here fast. If I don’t get it, there’s going to be trouble. Big trouble. You understand?”

“Yes, yes, plenty trouble already. So sorry about paper. Am sending box right away. Good-by.”

He hung up the phone at the other end. I cradled the phone and met Bertha’s eyes.

“Sonofabitch,” Bertha said under her breath.

“Me?” I asked her.

“Him,” she said. And then after a moment added, “You, too.” Then she went on to say, “Dammit, Donald, you ought to know better than to try and outwit an Oriental. They can read your mind just like I can read the stock quotations in the newspaper.”

“This was a wonderful buy in a camera,” I said. “I think perhaps he smuggled it in.”

Bertha’s eyes were snapping. “Wonderful buy my eye,” she said. “You didn’t buy that camera because you wanted to take pictures. Now, why the hell did you buy it?”

“It might be better,” I said, “if I didn’t tell you. Maybe I’m in bad.”

“Then we’re in bad,” Bertha said. “What was this evidence that you were trying to have sent down to you without anyone knowing about it?”

“It wasn’t evidence,” I said. “Frank Sellers was right. It was fifty grand.”

Bertha’s jaw sagged. Her eyes began to widen.

“Fifty... grand...!”

“Fifty grand,” I said.

“Donald, you couldn’t have! How in hell did you find it?”

“Sellers was right again,” I said. “The guy was shipping a trunk. I juggled things so that I got his trunk and he got mine. The fifty grand was in his trunk. I just had a hunch that they might be laying for me, so I bought the camera and some enlarging paper. The box of enlarging paper had two packages of paper on the inside. I surreptitiously opened the box under the counter while the manager was getting some accessories for the camera I wanted and pulled out some of the paper and put the fifty grand inside the box. I said I wanted it shipped at once to the office here. I wanted a special messenger to take it to the air express so it would be here by the time I arrived.”

“My God,” Bertha said, “that’s enough to have made the guy suspicious right there.”

“No, it isn’t,” I said. “I did a lot of testing with the camera. I treated the paper as just a matter of course, nothing at all. The camera was the thing I seemed to be interested in. He was calling one of his clerks to rush it over to the air-express office when I left.”

Bertha shook her head. “You’re a brainy little bastard, Donald, and then at times you just knock yourself for a loop being too damn smart. Why the hell didn’t you pick a store run by an American? You can’t fool those Orientals. They bow and scrape and giggle, and all the time their shrewd little eyes are slithering around like a snake’s tongue, seeing things that wouldn’t mean anything to us but make us like an open book to them.”

“You’re provincial, Bertha,” I said. “All nationalities have their individual mannerisms. The Japanese probably feel that we look each other straight in the eyes, shake hands, clap each other on the back with expressions of cordial sincerity and are lying like hell all the time. The oriental manners you describe are simply ceremonial. You’re afraid of them because they can out-think you.”

Bertha glowered at me angrily. “Go to hell,” she said. “They didn’t outwit me, they outwitted you.”

“Well,” I said, “there’s no use arguing. You saw the package when it came in. Had it been tampered with?”

“Hell, no,” Bertha said. “It was all sealed up nice and shipshape and it had this label from the camera store and was addressed to the firm for your attention. So I took it and opened it to see what it was. I never did find out. I just had the wrappers off when the phone rang and it was Frank Sellers, and so I beat it out there.”

“Well,” I said, “now we’re really in the soup.”

“In the soup!” Bertha exclaimed. “We’re out of the frying pan and right in the middle of the fire. Somebody must have followed you, Donald. If it wasn’t that damn Jap, somebody must have followed you and when you went into the camera store managed to be where he could watch you through a window or something. Then he probably intercepted the package some way and—”

Bertha caught the expression on my face. “What is it, Donald?”

“It was a woman,” I said. “I remember that right after I went into the camera store a good-looking babe came in and started asking questions about cameras. She was down at another counter near the front of the store. I was in the used-camera department at the back end of the store.”

“What did she look like?” Bertha asked.

I shook my head.

“Don’t hand me that guff,” Bertha said, suddenly angry. “A good-looking babe and you can’t tell what she looked like?”

“Not this babe,” I said. “I was too intent on making a substitution of that fifty grand while the Jap was out back getting cameras to show me. I wanted a camera and a case, too.”

“All right,” Bertha said after a while. “We’ve been taken. Now, you switched trunks. What happened to the trunk you got from Downer after you got the fifty grand?”

I said, “I paid rent on a room in the phony name of George Biggs Gridley. It’s at the Golden Gateway Hotel. I left a teaser in my trunk so Downer would find it when he opened the trunk. That teaser would indicate that someone with the name of Gridley at the Golden Gateway Hotel was the owner of the trunk.”

“What did you do that for?”

“I wasn’t sure the money was in his trunk. I thought he’d fall for the gag the trunks had been mixed up by the railroad company and call Gridley at the Golden Gateway. I had things rigged so I could either take the call or fade out of the picture.”

“Did Downer call?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because he was dead.”

Bertha thought that over. “How come the police didn’t find the teaser and come barging down on the Golden Gateway Hotel looking for Gridley?”

“Because it wasn’t there.”

“Why not?”

“The killer took it.”

“Good God!” Bertha exclaimed. “You’ve got the police after you for a murder and killers stalking you for fifty grand... with some slick highgrading chick sitting pretty with our fifty grand stuck in her girdle.”

“It looks that way,” I admitted.

“Fry me for an oyster!” Bertha said.

Bertha sat silent for a while, then the thought of the money was too much for her. “Fifty... thousand... dollars,” she said. “My God, Donald, you had the money in your hands! We could have got a fifteen-thousand-dollar reward. Why the hell did you let it slip through your fingers?”

“There’s an angle I can’t figure,” I said. “There was a leak somewhere. Standley Downer knew Hazel had been in here.”

Bertha said, “That Hazel Downer! I’m going to start working on her!”

“You leave her to me,” I said. “She has confidence in me and—”

“Confidence in you!” Bertha screamed. “She’s twisting you around her finger like a sap. She bats those eyelashes at you and smiles and crosses her legs and shows you a lot of nylon stocking and you just get down on the carpet and roll over.

“Dammit, can’t you get any sense through your head? Don’t you know women well enough to know that a man never gets to first base with a woman unless she’s sized him up first, put the bat in his hand and given him a slow, easy pitch that’s good for a safe hit? That babe has been twisting you right around her finger. Now, tell me the rest of the bad news.”

I shook my head. “I’m doing this, Bertha.”

“You’re doing it?” she screamed. “Look what you’ve done! You’ve got the agency in bad, you’ve got Sellers on the warpath, you’re going to get yourself accused of murder and you damn well may get yourself convicted, for all I know. And, in the meantime, you’ve let fifty grand slip through your fingers. If you don’t tell the truth you’re licked and if you do tell the truth Frank Sellers is going to throw the book at you... and then you have the crust to stand there and tell me to leave things to you... And with professional killers on your tail for high-grading the swag!”

“I’m going to work on this Hazel babe down here. You get the hell back to San Francisco and don’t let me see that smug-looking face of yours until you’ve brought back the fifty grand.”

“Suppose,” I said, “that Evelyn Ellis is the answer? What then?”

“Would you recognize that babe who followed you into the camera store?”

“I might,” I said, “but I’m not certain. I doubt it. All I know is, she was young and easy on the eyes and smartly dressed.”

“Now look,” Bertha said, “she hung around there all the time you were there, is that right?”

“Yes, but she kept her back turned all the time.”

“She was there when you went out?”

“Yes.”

“You had to walk past her going to the door?”

“Yes.”

“Can’t you remember what she smelled like?” Bertha said. “A woman like that would have a little scent on and—”

I shook my head. “I can’t remember.”

“All right. I’ll tell you one thing you can do,” Bertha said. “You find out some way to get a picture of this Evelyn Ellis.”

“I’ve got pictures of her,” I said. “Pictures in a bathing suit, pictures in a ball gown, pictures in the near-nude and—”

“God almighty!” Bertha screamed at me. “Do I have to tell you how to be a detective? Take those damn pictures and beat it up to San Francisco. Go to that Jap photograph store. Find the man who was waiting on this babe, show him those pictures and ask him if that was the woman who was in there looking at cameras. If she’s the same one you wire me and I’ll come up and work her over. A good-looking leg and you’re putty in their hands. Let ’em try showing me leg and I’ll turn ’em over my knee. Now, for the love of Mike, get started before Sergeant Sellers gets wise and throws you in the clink.”

I said, “Bertha, either I’m getting so I think like you or you’re getting so you think like me, because that’s exactly what I was planning to do.”

“Well, get started,” Bertha yelled. “Don’t stand there telling me that we’re seeing eye to eye for a change. My God, you’ve got me where I’m going to lose my license and you’re just standing around here yakkity-yakking.”

I started for the door.

I didn’t dare to tell her the Japanese camera company had taken the publicity pictures of Evelyn Ellis. It was just as Bertha had said, I’d played myself for a sucker.