Kept Women Can’t Quit

Chapter 8

I was kept waiting at Headquarters for more than three quarters of an hour before Frank Sellers came in, and then I was taken into one of those dispiriting rooms so characteristic of police headquarters.

A battered oak table, some brass spittoons on rubber mats, a few plain straight-backed chairs and a calendar on the wall constituted the only furniture. The linoleum on the floor looked as though it was covered with caterpillars, each caterpillar being a burn varying from one to three inches in length, where cigarettes had been flipped casually in the direction of the spittoons and had missed.

The man whom Frank Sellers had addressed as Bill turned out to be Inspector Gadsen Hobart. He didn’t like the name with which he had been christened, everyone knew it and, as a courtesy, called him Bill.

Sellers kicked out one of the straight-backed chairs away from the table and pointed to it. I sat down.

Inspector Hobart sat down.

Frank Sellers stood looking down at me, nodding his head at me slightly as though saying, I always knew you’d turn out to be a crook and by George, I wasn’t disappointed.

“All right, Pint Size,” Sellers said at length, “what have you got to say for yourself?”

“Nothing.”

“Well, you’d damn soon better think of something because right now we’ve got a murder rap pinned on you so tight even you can’t squirm out.”

I didn’t say anything.

“We don’t know how you did it,” Sellers said, “but we know what you did. You switched trunks with Standley Downer. You got his trunk, you found the false bottom in it, you picked up fifty grand, maybe more, but fifty for sure.

“Now then, I don’t pretend to know exactly what happened after that. All I know is that you had fifty grand that was so hot it was like a stove lid. You had to find someplace to conceal it. You were afraid that somebody was going to frisk you before you got out of town, so you went to that camera store. You bought a camera and that gave you an excuse to get some enlarging paper. You opened the box of enlarging paper and spilled some sheets on the floor, then you substituted the fifty grand in place of the photographic paper you’d slipped out and told Kisarazu to ship the whole thing to your office in Los Angeles. You figured no one would ever think of opening a box of enlarging paper.

“Now then, somebody double-crossed you. That was the weak point in your scheme. You didn’t have enough time to cover your tracks, so somebody got onto those tracks and didn’t lose any time once he got started.

“Apparently this person had some dame shadow you into the photographic store and then they managed to open the package long enough to pull out the bills, or it was tampered with before it left the store — and I’m not giving that Jap a clean bill of health — not yet.”

I said, “I take it all of this makes me guilty of murder.”

“It helps.”

“Yesterday,” I said, “you were thinking that was a plant and the business at the camera store was just a decoy. What made you change your mind?”

“I’ll tell you what made me change my mind,” Sellers said. “We covered all the express offices up here and the postal offices to see if any more packages had been sent to you — and what do you think we found?”

“What did you find?”

“We found lots of things,” Sellers said. “We found a package of books and cards that had been sent to you by yourself. And you know what we think? We think those books and cards came out of Downer’s trunk.”

“Any proof?” I asked.

“We’re getting it,” Sellers said. “Don’t rush us. Just give us time. Here’s something else we found out that you don’t know. We found the cabinet maker that Downer hired to put a false bottom in his trunk. That little piece of information jolted you, didn’t it, Pint Size?

“A man doesn’t put a false bottom in a trunk unless he intends to conceal something in it, so we’re pretty certain something was concealed in Downer’s trunk. And knowing what we’re after, we know what it was — fifty grand in hot money. So since we know that Downer had your trunk we’re pretty certain that you had Downer’s trunk. These cards and things are probably in Downer’s handwriting. We’ve got the best handwriting expert on the Coast working on that stuff right now. If that turns out to be in Downer’s handwriting it ties you right in with Downer and the missing trunk, and that ties you in with the missing fifty grand, and that ties you in with murder.

“Now I don’t think you were intending to go south with the fifty grand. I think probably you were planning on making a deal with the insurance company so you could get a reward. I told you to lay off. I warned you this was something I was going to handle myself, but you wouldn’t listen to me. You had to go ahead on your own. Now then, you’re tied up to your neck in a murder case.

“Personally, I don’t think you murdered Downer. I don’t think you’re the type. Frankly, I don’t think you have the guts.

“I’m going to give you just one break — one more chance. You start talking and come clean, tell the whole thing so it makes sense, and if I figure it’s on the up and up we’ll sit tight for a little while before we throw the murder rap at you. I still think that murder was committed by someone else, but I’d bet ten to one that you got the fifty grand.”

Inspector Hobart hadn’t said a word. He was sitting there sizing me up, watching my every motion.

I said, “Suppose you quit using me for a punching bag for a while and let’s talk a little sense.”

“No one’s used you for a punching bag,” Sellers said. And then after a significant pause, added, “Yet.”

I ignored the comment and said, “You solved an armored car theft of a hundred grand. You came up with fifty grand. The thief says you got a hundred. That leaves you on the spot. What you want is to prove this guy is a liar and that you never had but fifty grand.

“About the only way you can do that is to find out who did have the extra fifty grand and come up with it. Then you can make Baxley eat his words.”

“Keep talking,” Sellers said. “I always like to hear you talk. Every time I listen I get stung, but I like to listen just the same. It’s like taking tranquilizers.”

“The hell you get stung,” I said. “Every time you’ve listened to me so far you’ve come out on top of the heap.”

Sellers said, “You always used me to get something you wanted.”

“And always gave you something you wanted,” I said.

“Keep talking,” Sellers said. “I’ve got other things to do besides argue with you.”

I said, “If what you say is right, Herbert Baxley and Standley Downer arranged to hoist a hundred grand out of that armored truck. That right?”

“Right.”

“All right, how did they know what to look for? How did they know which truck had the dough and how did they know there was a hundred grand in thousand-dollar bills?”

“They could have had a tip-off. They could have been on a blind.”

“The only way you can save your skin,” I told Sellers, “is by proving that Standley Downer was the other partner. Even if you should show up with fifty grand now and say that you had recovered it from Downer or from me, they’d laugh at you. They’d think that you had stashed it away someplace and had dreamed up a good story to help you out of a tight corner when the situation got too hot for you.”

“You think about saving your skin,” Sellers said. “I’ll worry about saving mine.”

I said, “If your hunch is correct, Baxley and Downer had the money long enough to make a two-way split. Therefore, Downer knew you’d corralled Baxley and felt Baxley would talk, and so he took his fifty grand and got out in a hurry.”

“You haven’t said anything so far,” Sellers said.

“Now, once more assuming that what you’re deducing is correct,” I went on, “I come back to the fact — how did they know that hundred grand was going to be on that particular truck, and how did they know it would be where they could get at it?”

“Your needle’s stuck,” Sellers said. “You’ve been all over that once before.”

“No, I haven’t. You say you found a secret compartment had been built in Downer’s trunk. Therefore, Downer got the trunk first and it wasn’t until later that he planned to get what he was going to put in it — fifty nice new thousand-dollar bills that would lie flat on the floor of the hidden compartment. He had the whole thing planned long before that armored truck ever picked up the money.”

Sellers frowned, then flashed a quick glance to Inspector Hobart.

Hobart, without taking his eyes off of me, said, “He’s got something there, Sellers.”

“All right,” Sellers said to me, “go on, Pint Size. Talk your fool head off. I’ll listen. When you get done you’d better have something that amounts to fifty grand, otherwise you’re going to be out of circulation for a long, long time.”

I said, “It was well planned and Downer was in on the play from the start. Downer knew that a certain private detective was going to be on his trail because his wife, or Hazel Clune, if you prefer that name, had consulted that detective. Downer knew that Hazel knew about the hiding place in the trunk. Therefore, it wasn’t safe any more. So Downer decided to keep the money in a money belt on his person.

“Downer came to San Francisco. He wanted everyone to think he’d lost the fifty grand. Therefore, he switched things deliberately so he’d get my trunk. The scheme worked. That was a trick taken by Downer. It fooled you and it fooled everybody except one person.”

“Who?” Sellers asked, frowning thoughtfully.

“The murderer. Now, if you want to get off the spot you only need to prove Baxley actually did have a partner. That lets you out.”

Sellers started rubbing the angle of his jaw with the fingers of his left hand.

Inspector Hobart said to Sellers, “The guy’s right, Frank. You get off the spot when you can prove Baxley had a partner. I get off the spot when I’ve found the murderer.”

“You’ve got him,” Sellers said.

“Maybe I have and maybe I haven’t,” Hobart said.

Sellers said, “You can hold him on suspicion.”

Hobart shook his head. “As a material witness is all.”

“I’m for calling in the press,” Sellers said. “I’d book him on suspicion of murder.”

Hobart thought it over for a moment, then said, “I don’t like it, but if it’ll help you personally, we can stand the gaff.”

I said to Inspector Hobart, “There should have been some clues there in the room where Downer was murdered.”

Sellers grinned. “Listen to him now. He’s telling you how to investigate a homicide.”

The Inspector motioned Sellers with his hand to keep quiet. “What sort of clues, Lam?” he asked.

I said, “The guy was stabbed in the back.”

“That’s right.”

“Fell forward on his face.”

“Right.”

I said, “If somebody was putting a lot of pressure on Downer, he’d hardly have turned his back on them.”

“Maybe he didn’t know the other person was in the room,” Sellers said.

“Maybe,” I agreed.

Inspector Hobart was interested. “Keep talking,” he said. “What do you think happened?”

I said, “Downer had just finished opening the trunk when he was killed.”

“Why was he opening the trunk when he knew it wasn’t his trunk?” Inspector Hobart asked.

“That,” I said, “is what I’m telling you. How do you know he didn’t switch trunks? Why did he get killed as soon as it became apparent someone had switched trunks?”

“You got the answer to that question?” Hobart asked.

“I may have,” I said.

“You’re in San Francisco now,” he said. “The extent to which you come out of this, if you do come out of it without losing a lot of hide, will be measured by the extent to which you co-operate with the San Francisco police.”

“That,” I said, “depends on what you mean by co-operation.”

“When we co-operate up here we do a reasonably good job,” Hobart said.

“Watch him,” Sellers warned. “He’s a smart little bastard and he’ll out-trade you if you give him a chance.”

I said, “Let’s concede that Standley Downer had a trunk made. He had a secret compartment in it. He wanted to use that secret compartment for storing fifty nice new one-thousand-dollar bills. Now then, where did he intend to get those bills?”

“Go on, wise guy,” Sellers said. “You’re telling the story. We’ve got lots of time. Tell us, where did he expect to get the fifty one-thousand-dollar bills?”

“He expected to highjack them,” I said.

“From whom?”

“From Baxley’s partner.”

“Baxley’s partner!” Sellers exclaimed. “What are you talking about? Standley Downer was Baxley’s partner.”

“What makes you think so?”

“Everything points to it. The fact that Baxley got in a panic and called Hazel Downer and... when he knew we were following him...”

Sergeant Sellers’ voice, which had started out full of confidence, began to lose some of its assurance and finally trailed away into silence.

“Exactly,” I said. “You’ve made the one mistake an investigator should never make. You’ve started out with an assumption and then you’ve tried to twist the evidence to support that assumption.”

“All right,” Sellers said. “What do you think?”

“I think,” I said, “that Baxley was smarter than you thought he was.”

“Go ahead.”

“Baxley and his partner both knew that Downer was a dangerous man, that he was on to what they were doing. When Baxley found out you were following him he deliberately led you to Hazel Downer. She was the red herring he wanted to draw across your trail so you wouldn’t get wise to his real partner.”

“All right, Pint Size” Sellers said, trying to appear jaunty, “I am tuning in on your broadcast so you may as well go ahead with the commercial. Who was the partner?”

“I don’t know.”

Sellers’ face began to get red. “You mean you’ve taken me all around the rosebush in order to tell me that you don’t know where you’re going?”

I shook my head. “I know who I think he is.”

“Who?”

“Dover C. Inman, the proprietor of the Full Dinner Pail. I was laying a foundation to go to work on him when you muscled in and gummed up my play.”

“What does the Full Dinner Pail got to do with it?” he asked.

I said, “You had all the knowledge in your possession right from the start. You just didn’t use your head. You made the mistake of being decoyed by a red herring and...”

“Never mind playing that same old tune,” Sellers said. “I’ve heard it so much I’m sick of it. Never mind my mistakes, smart guy. What makes you think Inman is the one that had the money?”

“Because,” I said, “Baxley went there and got some sandwiches and had them out in a paper bag. Then he sat and ate the sandwiches and put the paper bag in the trash box. Why did he do that?”

“Because he found out we were watching him.”

I shook my head and said, “After you and your partner followed him out of the drive-in, he found out you were watching him. Everything he did up to that point was prearranged.”

“Then why did he put sandwiches in a bag, and then eat them?”

“Because he had to have a bag so he could put his partner’s fifty grand into the trash box where the partner could get it. He made the switch right under your nose and you were too dumb to get it. Then when you nabbed him, he said you’d taken the whole hundred thousand because he had to give his partner time to get the money and hide it in a safe place.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Sellers asked, but there was just a trace of panic in his voice.

I said, “Look at it this way. If Baxley had ordered those sandwiches to take out, he’d have taken ’em out unless he saw you and became panic-stricken. If he saw you and became panic-stricken, he wouldn’t have eaten the sandwiches. He’d have mushed them up a bit and put them in the bag and thrown them away. But he sat there and ate the sandwiches, cool as a cucumber. Then he threw the paper sack in the trash container, wiped his hands on a napkin, got in his car and started to drive away. Then he spotted you and then was when he decided to drag Downer in as a decoy.

“Put yourself in Baxley’s place. Suppose you were dialing a number and you looked back and saw some officers watching you. Remember, you’re an old hand at the game. You’re a two-time loser. Would you drop the receiver, dash out and jump in a car and try to outrun a squad car from a standing start?

“You’d have done nothing of the sort. You’d have turned back to the telephone and, when someone at the Downer place answered, said, ‘Hold everything. I think some cops are on my tail. You’d better take it on the lam.’ Then you’d put in another dime and dial another number, pretend to talk for a while, hang up, stretch, yawn, and walk leisurely out of the telephone booth.

“You were either going to pick him up or you weren’t. If you were going to pick him up, there was nothing he could do about it. All of that panic stuff was an act he was putting on so that you wouldn’t go back to the one place where he didn’t want you to go — that trash box at the Full Dinner Pail.

“Everything points to the Full Dinner Pail in this thing. That’s where the job was pulled. That’s where the truck drivers of that armored car stopped all the time for a coffee break.

“Of course, I’m not sure it was Inman, the proprietor, who was in on it. It could have been one of the girls, but for my money, it was somebody there at the Full Dinner Pail and that fifty grand was put in the bag that had contained the hamburger sandwiches when Baxley dropped the bag into the container.”

Sellers looked at Inspector Hobart.

Inspector Hobart nodded, almost imperceptibly.

“Suppose I buy this thing,” Sellers said. “Then what?”

“I don’t care whether you buy it or not,” I said. “I’m just telling you the way it looks to me.”

“All right, then, how did it happen Hazel Downer had your name in her purse?”

“She didn’t have my name. She had the name of Cool and Lam, both of us. Actually, she wanted to find out if Standley was two-timing her with a babe by the name of Evelyn Ellis, who had won a few beauty contests and was making a play for Standley. Hazel wanted to know where she stood. So she decided she’d just have someone do a shadow job on Downer. She looked through the classified phone directory. Our names looked good — COOL AND LAM. She copied them on a piece of paper. She wanted to hire us to find out if she was the low babe on the totem pole or whether Standley was feeling his oats enough to do a casual job of cheating on the side which wouldn’t mean a thing.”

Sellers looked inquiringly at Inspector Hobart.

Hobart laughed and said, “All right, Frank, if you want my opinion the guy’s handing us a line of fact and fiction. The parts he wants us to layoff of he’s lying about. On the drive-in business he’s giving you a valuable idea.”

“How do you figure it?” Sellers asked. “You got any real proof?”

“Hell, no,” Hobart said, “only I’ve been years on this job. I get so I can tell when they’re lying and when they’re telling the truth. This guy is doing both.”

Sellers turned to me. “I’m not going to be a sucker. I’m going to look into this. I’m going to think it over. But this song and dance isn’t going to do you any good. You’re going to be sitting in a cell.”

I shook my head. “No, I’m not.”

“That’s what you think,” Sellers said. “You try and spring yourself out of this and you’re going to have a surprise.”

“I’m not going to try to spring myself,” I said, “and I’m not going to have a surprise. But I’m going to send for an attorney and after I get an attorney I’m going to have a press conference and I’m going to yell frame-up so loud that some of it is going to stick.”

“What do you mean, a frame-up?” Sellers asked.

“Draw your own conclusions,” I said. “Down in Los Angeles you’re in bad. Baxley says that you recovered a hundred grand. You say there was only fifty grand there. That makes a stink. You’re looking for an out, so you come up to San Francisco and try to nail me on a frame-up so as to take the heat off yourself.”

“You’d do that to me?” Sellers asked.

“If you throw me in the clink, I’ll do that to you,” I told him.

“Why, you little insignificant rat! You puny little nincompoop! I’d break you in two!”

“No, you wouldn’t,” I said. “This is San Francisco. They’ve got troubles of their own. They’re not going to get in bad over your trouble in Los Angeles. Inspector Hobart has got a murder to solve.”

“And I suppose it’s your idea you can help me out on that,” Hobart said.

“That’s right,” I told him.

“The brass of the bastard,” Sellers said.

I said, “Wait a minute. I’m not trying to hurt you, Sergeant, unless I have to. And I’m not going to try to do Hobart any good unless I have a chance to play my hand my way. Now then, you wanted me to talk. I’ve talked. Now I demand a lawyer.”

Sellers reached out and slapped my face hard with the palm of his right hand, than slapped it on the other side with the back of his right hand as he cuffed the hand back.

“Why, you little—”

Hobart’s voice was cold and hard. “Hold it, Sergeant!”

There was something in Hobart’s voice that caused Sellers to freeze.

“I think we’d better talk,” Hobart said. “I’ve got some ideas myself.”

“Don’t let him sell you,” Sellers warned angrily. “The little bastard is smart. I admit that.”

“If he’s that smart he can make us trouble,” Hobart said, “and if he’s that smart he can do us some good. I’ve got an idea. Come on in here. I want to talk.”

He turned to me and said, “You stay right there, Lam. Don’t move.”

They left the room.

I was left alone for about fifteen minutes. Then Inspector Hobart entered the room, drew up a chair at the table, opened a package of cigarettes, offered one to me, took one himself, lit up, settled back, inhaled deeply, then let the smoke come out of his throat as he spoke so that the words seemed wrapped in a smoky aura.

“Lam, you’re a liar,” he said.

I said nothing.

“And it’s damned skillful lying,” he went on. “You’ve mixed some truth and some lies all up together. I know what you’ve said is both false and true, a mixture of logic and crap. And I don’t know which is which.”

I kept silent.

“The annoying thing,” he said, “is that you must think the police are a terrible bunch of saps. You know, some fellows could get themselves in quite a bit of trouble trying to pull the type of stuff you’ve been trying to pull.”

I just sat there.

He looked up at me and grinned and said, “And the funny part of it is, I don’t give a damn.”

There was silence for a few moments. Then he took another deep drag at the cigarette and said, “The reason I don’t give a damn is because somehow I have a feeling that you’re on our side all the way through but you’re in so deep yourself you can’t take us into your confidence, and what you’re trying to do is to get enough slack on the rope so you can get out and clean this thing up before you get jerked off your feet. I think you had the fifty grand and lost it and want to get it back.

“Now then, Sergeant Sellers is in a bind. That’s one of the things that can happen in police work. He’s got to get out of it as best he can. Somehow I have an idea you’ve given him a lead that may amount to something.

“I’ll tell you what I’m going to do with you, Lam. I’m going to let you walk right out that door. I’m going to give you the keys to San Francisco. I’m going to let you just prowl around on your own. Only understand that if you stub your toe and get into trouble you’re going to be in trouble just as deep as though I’d never seen you in my life. In fact, I’ll let the other boys handle it. I’ll be home at bed or watching TV or something. You get that?”

I nodded.

“Now,” he said, “I’ve got a homicide to clean up. I’m going to give you lots of rope and let you stir around because I think perhaps you’re going to uncover some evidence.

“I don’t know what your game is, but I have an idea it isn’t solving a homicide. Personally, I think you’re in this thing a lot deeper than you’re letting on and I think you’re sweating because you’ve taken a chance with fifty grand in hot dough and someone has outsmarted you.

“However, I’ll tell you one thing. You’ve got enough brains to make a lot of trouble for Sellers in case you decide to do so. We haven’t got enough of a case to pin a homicide on you, and if we try to detain you and you blow the whistle on Frank Sellers and say that he’s using you as a patsy to cover up, you can get lots of publicity up here because this isn’t Sellers’ hometown and the papers here like to throw mud on Los Angeles.

“For your confidential information, Sellers has left for the airport. He’s taking a plane back to Los Angeles. I think you’d better keep away from the airport until after Sellers gets started. Sellers is pretty much put out. I had to do quite a bit of talking before he was ready to listen.

“You understand?”

I nodded.

Inspector Hobart jerked his thumb to the door. “Get the hell out of here,” he said. “And just remember a couple of things. One of them is that I have a homicide to solve; the other one is that you’re a private detective who has his own troubles — and those troubles could get worse.

“If you run onto any homicide evidence I want to know about it.”

“Where can I get you?” I asked.

He took a card out of his pocket, scribbled a couple of numbers on it and slid it across the table to me. “One of those numbers will get me any hour of the day or night,” he said.

“How anxious are you to get this thing cleaned up?”

“Just as anxious as any man could be for anything,” he said. “I’m so damned anxious that I stuck my neck out with Sergeant Sellers. I’m so damned anxious that I’m giving you a break when I have a feeling that I should take you across my knee and give you a good walloping in order to teach you that the police aren’t the damn fools you seem to think they are.

“Now then, does that answer your question?”

“It answers it,” I said.

I got up and started for the door.

“Wait a minute, Lam,” Inspector Hobart said, as I had a hand on the knob. “How do you feel about Sellers? Did those two slaps give you hard feelings?”

I looked at him and said, “Yes.”

“Going to make any difference in the way you co-operate with me?”

“No.”

“Going to make you try to get even with Sellers?”

“Not the way he thinks.”

Hobart grinned. “Go on. Get the hell out of here” he said.