Manhunt. Volume 9, Number 4, August, 1961

“Find my husband!” the woman said. And she dropped five fifties on Bill Sweeney’s desk.

One

I had been testifying in court all morning and hoisting a few highballs after lunch to forget about it. As a private cop you fight a hot and cold war with the police department on most cases, then you give testimony in their favor at the trial and a defense attorney hashes you up. Afterwards, you get to feeling like the inside of a sandwich. You wonder why you don’t work a straight forty-hour week on a sensible job and make a regular buck like the rest of the citizenry. The answer evades you, the drinks are medicinal.

This was October, a good month in San Francisco, when the days are bright and warm after the fog lifts in the mornings. The Giants had finished in the first division, the Forty-Niners looked good to win their first National League flag, and work was starting on the second bay bridge. Barring war and taxes, things looked bright for the eight to five o’clock shift. I was between cases again.

Hilda Hansen smiled up from her typing as I came into the partitioned cubby hole which housed Eureka Investigations. “There’s a Mrs. Anne Donaldson inside,” she informed me. “She’s been waiting twenty minutes. I called you at Hanrahan’s but they said the bum just left.”

“Must have been some other Bill Sweeney,” I said and went into my office.

Mrs. Donaldson sat placidly in front of my uncluttered desk, facing the view of the garage outside the window. She was a well tanned, well turned platinum blonde in a plaid skirt and tweed jacket. She smiled at me with blue green eyes and lightly rouged lips. We introduced ourselves and I took the swivel chair behind the desk. She was hatless and lively looking, like she belonged behind the wheel of a convertible with the top down speeding up the highway toward Lake Tahoe or Yosemite.

I offered her a cigarette and lit one for myself when she refused. She came straight to the point. “My ex-husband, Robert Donaldson, has been missing for almost two weeks, Mr. Sweeney. What’s more important,” she said angrily, her eyes more green than blue, “he has missed an alimony payment.” She opened one of those Mexican carved leather handbags that will hold enough provisions for a week end in the country and fished out a small snapshot. She handed it across the desk. “I want you to find him for me.”

The photo was of a young man in his twenties. He was wearing a corporal’s uniform, sitting behind a table full of drinks in a patent leather booth and obviously enjoying himself. The snapshot was apparently new and I asked Mrs. Donaldson if he was AWOL from the Army.

“No. That was taken just after we were married in 1944.”

“You must have been a very young bride.”

She colored slightly under the tan and said, “Thank you.”

“What does your husband do, Mrs. Donaldson?”

“He’s a salesman with the Mayflower Shirt Company.”

“Have you notified any of the authorities?”

“Yes. I checked on him when the alimony didn’t turn up and learned he hadn’t been to work or anything. Then I notified the police. They haven’t found anything except that he was last seen in Crescent City two weeks ago. He made a business call there and that’s the last anyone’s heard of him.”

Mrs. Donaldson reached into her bag again and withdrew five fifty dollar bills, placed them on my desk and looked at me expectantly. It was a wonderful way to do business and I hadn’t been exposed to it much. When I caught my breath I said, “You really do want to find him.”

“Ours wasn’t one of those civilized divorces,” she explained. “We don’t get on and I wouldn’t put it past Bob to leave the state, or even the country, to avoid his support payments.”

“Have you been divorced long?”

“A year.” She spoke in a clear, warm voice that matched the depth of her eyes. She showed a kind of armed neutrality when she talked about her husband, but she was extremely interested in finding him.

I asked the usual questions: who his friends were, how did he shape up on liquor, gambling, sex. Bob was from Utah originally and they had met and married here, while he was in the service. After his discharge, they lived together for only a few months. They had no mutual friends with whom he associated after she left him.

“Bob drank, but only moderately,” Mrs. Donaldson said. “I don’t think he gambled much. As for women... Well, let’s say he liked them and you have his picture in front of you.”

According to the snapshot Donaldson was a handsome character. He had wavy dark hair, good features and a square jaw with a reckless smile sitting in it. I decided that if he liked women they’d like him back.

“Was there anyone in particular he might have gone off with?”

“I don’t know,” she said evenly. “That’s what the money is for. Is it enough for a retainer?”

It was more than enough and I said it would do for a start. I asked where her husband had been living, jotted down the Van Ness Avenue address she gave me.

“I’m at the Westshire, apartment nine,” Mrs. Donaldson said, getting up. “Is there any more I can tell you?” Standing, she was taller than I thought, her legs were longer. I should have asked her to take off the jacket when I came in. You’ve got to make a client comfortable.

“Are you in business in San Francisco, Mrs. Donaldson?” I asked.

“No.” She smiled and her eyes became sea blue. I could see her ornamenting the terrace lounge at the fashionable Westshire, a little soft music in the background. “Don’t let the Nob Hill lodgings throw you, Mr. Sweeney. My home is in Oakland. I’m staying at the Westshire until we get this matter straightened out.”

I stood up and opened the door for her. “What shall I do about your husband, when and if I find him?”

“Call me and I’ll come at once,” she said. “I’ll have it out with him. If that doesn’t work we’ll have to take other steps. And I’m sure you’ll find him for me, Mr. Sweeney.”

Back at my desk I phoned the Westshire Apartments and asked for Mrs. Donaldson. She was registered but wasn’t in just now, would I care to leave a message? I said no, and hung up.

I was counting the pictures of Ulysses S. Grant, one of our finest Presidents I think, for the fifth time when Hilda Hansen entered. She grinned at the bills and reached out her hand. I gave her three of them.

Hilda said, “We’re in business again.”

“We’re still in business,” I corrected.

She bristled a little. “Are you going to tell me about it, or do I have to hire a detective to find out what my boss is doing?”

I told her about it.

“I hope nothing’s happened to him,” she commented, gazing dreamily at the photo of Robert Donaldson.

“Don’t worry. He’s probably latched onto some rich tomato on his route,” I said. “You know these traveling salesmen.”

“I don’t,” Hilda remarked acidly, “but, unlike some people I know, he appears to be a nice clean cut young man.” Hilda came into second hand contact with all the crud I did business with, typed my reports, kept the files and was sharper than most sergeants. Still, she always managed the optimistic view.

“Set the machinery in motion,” I told her. “Find Jack Holland and tell him to light someplace where we can get hold of him. I’ll phone you later.”

Hilda nodded. She was staring at the snapshot again. I picked it up and left the office.

Two

The Mayflower Shirt Company is a square, two-storied, corner building on lower Mission Street with display rooms under the main offices. I went in the side entrance and upstairs, past an idle switchboard to where a girl at a wide flat desk with three phones on it guarded a labyrinth of frosted glass cubicles. I asked for the boss.

The girl looked me over. “Who shall I say?”

“Bill Sweeney.”

She flipped a switch and picked up the receiver of one of the three phones, “Mr. Sweeney to see Mr. Booker.” She paused and asked me, “What do you want to see him about?”

I told her it was personal business. She relayed the information, nodded agreeably at the receiver and hung up. She said, “Follow me,” and led me through the labyrinth to a back corner of the building where she opened a door with “Sales Manager’s Office” stencilled on the frosted glass. She said, “This is Mr. Sweeney,” to another girl behind another desk with three phones on it, and left me.

“Go right in,” the new girl motioned to a door behind her.

The office wasn’t the glassed-in enclosure I expected. It’s walls were of inlaid mahogany and two Japanese prints hung on one of them. Opposite the prints a door with a brass knob the size of a cantaloupe had been cut in the mahogany. A large curtained window overlooking Mission Street was flanked by mauve drapes. The window was closed and the room was stuffy. A desk to match the woodwork, a leather couch and four, soft leather chairs stood on a red frieze carpet.

A slight, pasty faced man with bald head and incongruously bushy eyebrows sat behind the desk. He watched me through small gray agates.

“Mr. Booker?”

He said, “Yes,” in a weak voice that matched his chin.

I took a card from my billfold and handed it to him. “Mrs. Donaldson asked me to make inquiries about her former husband.”

He read the card, stood up as if it hurt and reached for my hand. I gave it to him and he tried pumping it a few times, until the weight became too much for him. “Sit down, sit down,” he said, waving at one of the soft leather chairs. “I’m glad you came by, most glad. I’ve been worrying about Robert. Where is he, why has he gone, was there an accident...?” He sank into the chair and ran a hand over his forehead, up through the hair he once had. “We’re filling in as best we can, but it can’t last much longer. Two weeks already.”

“When did you last hear from him, Mr. Booker?”

“Let’s see.” He riffled through the pages of a desk calendar and sighed deeply after the strenuous exercise. He said, “Two weeks ago last Wednesday, September twenty-ninth. Robert made an early call in Crescent City. That’s the last I’ve heard.”

“Has he ever been away like this before?”

“No. A day or two, once in a great while, but he always phoned in.”

“What happened to his car after the Crescent City call? Does he use a company car?”

“His own car. He’s on mileage and expenses.” Booker talked in a cracked hollow monotone, the echo of a distant grave.

“Can you think of any reason he might want to leave, to disappear?” I asked.

“Not one. He’s a good, well liked salesman, works our best northern California accounts. He’s been with us seven years.” He paused, gathering strength to register amazement. “Why, he has over two thousand dollars in our credit union.”

“Have you noticed any changes in Donaldson since he’s worked for you?”

“Oh, yes.” The filmy eyes opened wide and fastened vacantly on my necktie. I don’t know how the guy lived through the Fourth of July. “Robert started here as a stock clerk after the war,” he droned. “He became floorman, then salesman. He’s gone up and up.”

“I mean personally, especially during the past months, was there anything different about him?”

“No. I can’t think o£ anything.” He began worrying his mythical hair again.

“Could you give me an idea about what he’s been doing for the company lately? I suppose you keep records.”

“Yes. The records I can show you,” Booker said. He pushed himself out of the chair and went to the door, spoke to his secretary. I lit a cigarette and dropped the match in his desk tray, a large polished seashell. Booker returned to his chair with a large Manila folder. He opened it and inspected the contents.

“These are Robert’s expense sheets up through Friday, September twenty-fourth.” He handed me the folder. “I can bring you up to date. On the following Monday, he worked here in the office until about ten, and left for Eureka. He made some calls going north and he was in Eureka on Tuesday, we’ve received his orders. He must have gone directly to Crescent City from there and spent the night. His call in Crescent City next morning was before nine o’clock, and that’s a half day’s drive from Eureka.”

There were ten long pink sheets in the folder, one for each month, with the dates printed on the left, remarks and figures opposite most of them. Clipped to each of the pages were hotel and motel receipts.

“When Robert is on the road,” Booker explained, “he usually heads north through Tasco, over to Chico, down through Sacramento, to Oakland and home. Seven or eight times a year he extends the trip to cover the smaller, hard to get at areas. He takes in the territory up to Crescent City one time and Alturas, on the other side of the state, the next.”

Booker took an almost deep breath, the recitation sapping his strength. He continued, “Opposite the dates on those sheets are his expenses for meals and lodging. Receipts for the lodgings are attached at the top.” He paused again and I snuffed out my cigarette in his pretty ashtray. “At the bottom you’ll find the upkeep and mileage records for his car. Pull your chair over to the desk and look them over.”

I did this and studied each page briefly while Booker leaned back in his chair and watched me through half closed eyes. The records were all neatly typed, and signed by Robert Donaldson. The hotel bills were from pretty much the same sources, except that during the past six months Donaldson had passed up the Saint George Hotel in Tasco, where he stayed earlier in the year, for Casper’s Cozy Corner in Gravenstein, a small town south of Tasco.

I asked Booker, “Is there any particular reason why one of your salesmen would prefer one hotel or auto court to another? As a matter of policy, I mean.”

“No. Getting the job done is the important thing. They are allowed six dollars a day for accommodations. They can stop wherever they choose.”

I thumbed through the records again. Donaldson’s practice seemed to be as Booker described it, to arrive in Crescent City in the evening and work it fresh the next morning, then head back toward San Francisco. I found the make and year of his car at the bottom of one of the sheets and memorized the license number.

I closed the folder and placed it in front of him. “Thanks for your help, Mr. Booker.”

“Not at all,” he said. “Good luck.” He pressed a buzzer on his desk and his secretary led me out of the glass maze.

I walked half a block to a bar and used their pay phone to call the office. Jack Holland was waiting for me. Jack is a retired San Francisco cop with a private investigator’s license. When the horses are running he works for the security police at the bay area race tracks, and when they aren’t I have first call on his services.

“You were lucky to catch me,” Jack’s voice boomed over the phone. “I was just about to kill a guy who talked me off a winner at Jamaica this morning. You saved his life.”

“Did Hilda tell you the deal?”

“Yeah. You’re mixed up with another good looking broad. When I was younger...”

I interrupted, “Check on her old man’s car, Jack. It’s a fifty-two, blue Plymouth sedan.” I gave him the license number. My wrist watch read ten minutes past four. Before hanging up I asked Jack to get a line on Donaldson through Missing Persons if he had time today.

The phone call gave me an excuse to drink a couple of bourbons in the bar, then I walked back to my heap. The parking meter whipped to violation as I stepped on the starter.

Three

Donaldson’s apartment was in a tall, wide cream brick building at the foot of Van Ness Avenue overlooking Aquatic Park. I rang the Manager’s bell, pushed the wide glass door open when an answering buzzer sounded and walked through an immaculate tile floored, mirror walled lobby. I decided business must be good with Mayflower Shirts.

A big gray haired, rosy faced man was standing in the doorway of apartment 1A. He was holding a newspaper in one hand, gazing at me quizzically over the top rims of thick lensed glasses which sat on the end of his nose. When I gave him one of my cards he adjusted the glasses and squinted at it. I liked the smell of the food cooking behind him.

“Anybody can carry these,” he told me, handing back the card.

I pulled out my billfold, showed the photostats of my credentials.

He inspected them carefully and grinned at me. “I’ll be darned,” he said. “What have we got, adultery in the house?”

“I’m making inquiries about Robert Donaldson in apartment 24,” I said. “His office hasn’t heard from him since the end of last month. I thought you might give me a line on him.”

The gray haired man, large and hard but probably pushing seventy, nodded his head. “Sweeney, eh? My name’s Paddy McGonnigle. Come on in.”

We went inside and he left me alone in a small, modestly furnished room. The easy chairs and the davenport looked too comfortable to sit in for only a few minutes. I took a straight backed wooden chair at the desk in the corner. Hanging on the wall was a large picture of a heavily muscled athlete in the act of throwing a sledge.

“That’s me,” McGonnigle said proudly, returning with two tumblers and a bottle of John Jameson’s. “Greatest hammer-thrower in the state at one time, the darlin’ of the old Cork picnics.” He filled the tumblers and handed me one. “Cheers.”

My eyes burned after a swallow of the whisky but it felt fine. I’d liked to have heard about the Cork picnics. Instead, I asked him what he knew about Donaldson.

“He seems like a fine lad,” McGonnigle said. “He’s been here almost two years, the lease is up in December. He’s not around much, bein’ on the road most of the time.” He took another sip of Jameson’s and thought about it. “Donaldson’s been no trouble a’ tall, not so much as a broken light switch. I’m genuinely sorry to hear he hasn’t shown up for work.”

“Could I have a look at his room?”

McGonnigle squinted doubtfully through the thick lenses. “I don’t think I could be allowing that,” he said, regretfully. Then his face brightened and he came over to the desk. I moved out of the way while he opened it and rummaged. The glass was still in my hand, so I finished the drink.

“Here’s his mail.” McGonnigle handed me some magazines and a half dozen envelopes. He took my glass.

The only interesting piece of mail was an envelope stamped with the Marin County Sheriff’s Office return address, postmarked this month. I put the stuff back in the desk. When I turned McGonnigle handed me another stick of dynamite.

“Cheers,” I said. The athlete on the wall stared at me. “I went to a few Cork picnics myself when I was a kid,” I said. “At California Park. I probably saw you in action.”

“You were born here, I suppose?” When I nodded the old man wrinkled his forehead and rubbed a big hand over his face. “Sweeney, Sweeney,” he mused. “I should know your father. Not from out the Avenues?”

“No. I was raised in the Mission.”

“Ah, the Mission. There’s the climate for you,” McGonnigle commented. “What line of work is your father in?”

“He was a hod carrier,” I said. “He died when I was twelve.” I gulped down the drink and stood up.

McGonnigle arose with a sigh. He took my glass and put it on the desk top. “Come on, then,” he said. “Rules were made for exceptions. We’ll go up and see twenty-four.”

I followed him outside to the elevator, where a woman with a shopping bag was just getting in. McGonnigle greeted her with, “Good evening, Mrs. Granucci.”

“Evening, Paddy.” The woman with the shopping bag sniffed the Jameson’s and smiled pleasantly. As the elevator moved she added, “Could I see you for a few minutes before my husband comes home, Paddy? It’s about the tile in the bathroom.”

“I’ll be right down as soon as I’m through with this gentleman, Mrs. Granucci.” When the woman got out at five, McGonnigle whispered, “The place is full of Eyetalians.”

Donaldson had a two room apartment on the sixth floor, living room, bedroom, kitchenette and bath. A chaise longue, a lounge chair, a chestnut table with four chairs to match, and a writing desk stood on a blue broadloom carpet in the living room. The bedroom contained a double bed, night table, two chairs and a tall bureau. There was little to indicate Donaldson’s individuality except that it was neat and slightly dusty.

McGonnigle grew tired of following me around and said, “I’ll go tend to Mrs. Granucci, if you don’t mind.”

I didn’t mind. We shook hands. I thanked him for the drinks and he told me to drop by anytime. He walked spryly out of the room, jangling the ring of keys he had used to get us inside.

A more thorough search of the room yielded rent receipts, some minor unpaid bills, a bank book with a small balance and miscellaneous odds and ends. I was most impressed by the photograph of a girl on the bedroom bureau. She was a knockout. She had red hair falling loosely to her bare shoulders and there was light and humor in clear blue eyes. It was a colored full face portrait, the kind you find tacked up on any barracks wall. I unhooked the frame and slipped out the picture. The imprint on back read: Artcraft Studios, 26 Acacia Road, Gravenstein, Calif. I replaced it in the frame.

It was almost five o’clock. I went into the living room and used Donaldson’s phone to call my office.

“Jack phoned,” Hilda told me. “Donaldson’s car was towed away from the bus depot in Marin City ten days ago. The sheriff’s office is holding it as presumably abandoned since it hasn’t been reported stolen.”

“How long before it was towed away?”

“The cops tagged it first on the morning of the thirtieth, but Jack says it could have been parked there the night before. It’s an illegal parking zone in the daytime.”

“Good. Where is Jack?”

“He’s home. He says he’ll wait until the night man comes on at the Hall before he checks with the police. A friend of his.” I could hear Hilda shuffling papers, checking to see if she’d missed anything. “That’s all,” she said. “How are things?”

“Fine. I think Jack saved me a trip to Crescent City.”

Hilda said something more but a staccato knock sounded on the apartment door, muffling her voice. I said “Goodbye” into the phone and hung up.

“I hear you in there,” a jet haired almond skinned pantheress was shouting as I opened the door. Her right fist missed its target and punched me on the chest. She pushed me aside with the fist and stormed into the room, swung around and stood, hands on hips, glaring at me. The fire in her long lashed dark eyes dissolved slowly into wonder. She said, “Who the hell are you?”

“My name is Sweeney.”

This information didn’t seem to help. She turned abruptly and began a search of the apartment, a boxlike handbag hanging from a shoulder strap bouncing against her slim hips as she glided from kitchen to bathroom to bedroom. An organdy white dress she wore didn’t show a wrinkle to mar her graceful Latin movements.

After the closets, she gave up. She came back to the living room and sat on the chaise-longue. I took the chair opposite and offered my pack of cigarettes. We each took one and I lit them. She leaned back, showing how wrong Dior can be, and looked at me steadily through the curling smoke.

“Where is he?” she asked in a mildly husky voice with a dash of Spanish accent.

“Donaldson?”

“Whom do you think I mean? He lives here, does he not?”

“I don’t know where Donaldson is. I’m looking for him myself.” When she didn’t believe me, I added, “My name is Bill Sweeney, I’m a private investigator. You can check with my office if you like.”

She took a deep drag on her cigarette and exhaled the smoke slowly through magenta lips. She half smiled at me and said, “I will take your word for it, Bill. I am Eve Bustamente. I live next door and Bob is the good friend of mine. As I am coming home just now I heard you moving around, and I thought I heard voices...”

“I was using the phone.”

Eve Bustamente glanced at the phone absently and nodded. “Bob and I are quite the good friends,” she said, meeting my eyes. “We had the slight quarrel last month. I have not seen him since.” She snubbed her cigarette in the ash stand next to her. “Now, you tell me. What is it all about?”

“Donaldson is missing. He hasn’t checked in with his employers for the past couple of weeks. No one seems to know where he is?”

“And I think he is avoiding me,” she said, crinkling the corners of her mouth.

“He’s also behind in his alimony payments and his wife wants him found.”

“Wife.” Eve Bustamente was on her feet, eyes blazing like flamethrowers again. “He never had the wife. Who told you that lie?”

“Mrs. Donaldson was in to see me this afternoon.”

“Ha. That thing in there on his dresser, I will bet you. Is that who is saying she was married to him?”

“No, I saw the picture. She isn’t the same woman.” I put out my cigarette and sat back, watching her pace the floor. She was puzzled and angry, and uncertain what to do about it.

“He was not married,” Eve Bustamente said, sitting down again. She leaned toward me. “I have known Bob for a long time, very well. He got this apartment through me when the old tenants moved out. We are very close. He told me he was not married. I believe him.”

I let that drop and asked her why Donaldson should disappear.

“I cannot say. Last time we are together we are as always. Except we have the fight, the small argument, about that one in there,” she waved impatiently at the bedroom. “We understand these things,” she shrugged. “But I cannot stand her watching us.”

“Who is the girl?”

“Bob says she is his sister in Peoria.” Eve Bustamente’s anger melted into a mischievious grin. She added, “About that he lies.”

“How long has the picture been there?”

“I do not know, a few months perhaps.”

We had another cigarette and more conversation that didn’t lead anywhere. Finally we left the apartment and I walked to the door of twenty-five with her.

“Will you come in for a drink?” she asked in a new voice that was nothing to do with Robert Donaldson.

“No, thanks. I have some things to do.”

“I hope you will find Bob, but I am not worried. He can manage himself. About the one who pretends she is his wife, I do not know.” She fitted her key in the lock, opened the door and turned to me smiling. “I have the hot temper sometimes. Today, it was because I think Bob is standing me up all this time. Come see me again and I will be nicer.”

I said I would and meant it.

Outside, it was sunny with a light breeze whistling in from the bay. It was hot as a stove in the heap. I rolled down both windows, made a U-turn and drove up Van Ness Avenue. In the rear view mirror I noticed a green Buick sedan with New Jersey plates perform the same illegal operation.

Later, as I nursed my 37 Chewy along the outside lane of the approach to Golden Gate bridge, the Buick bobbed and weaved in the traffic behind me.

Four

Spanking winds on the bridge cooled the effects of Eve Bustamente and John Jameson. On the other side of the bay, short of Mill-brae, I turned off the highway into Mario’s Grotto and parked. I went into Mario’s and ate a big fat lobster at the bar.

When I returned to the heap the green Buick was crouching at the far end of the parking lot, a thin cloud curling from its exhaust. Two men in gray hats, too far away for identification, were sitting in it. I maneuvered the Chewy to the top of the exit driveway and waited for a break.

There is a continuous flux of speeding, hell for rubber motorists hurtling to and from San Francisco at this time of night. I plunged into the first opening they gave me, closed the gap on the car ahead and stayed in the center lane. The Buick was left at the gate.

At Millbrae I cut off the highway and slowed to twenty-five, hugging the shoulder, giving the men in the Buick plenty of time to catch me if they’d seen me turn. When they didn’t show by San Anselmo, I drove back to the highway through San Rafael and continued north. It cost me half an hour.

Gravenstein, located in a pocket of Geronimo County twenty miles South of Tasco, the county seat, is a fine town for chickens and people over sixty-five. The main street, about three city blocks long, is bisected by Russia avenue, the main thoroughfare to the resorts on nearby Geronimo River. The town, which prides itself in low taxes, due to the heavy fines levied on summer people who overpark in it, or speed through it, or get drunk in it on their way to the resorts, was asleep when I passed through at eight o’clock. A sign on the door of Artcraft Studios said: Open 8:00 A.M.

In the outskirts of Gravenstein a billboard with a paint chipped shingle hanging under it announced Casper’s Cozy Corner, Vacancy. It pointed at a horseshoe of square, flat cabins. I stopped at the first one, labeled Office. A scrawny, beak nosed woman with bones poking holes in her faded print dress was waiting for me on the porch. She showed me a mouthful of brown and silver, introduced herself as Mrs. Casper.

I registered, took the key and drove over to cabin number ten. Mrs. Casper watched from a curtained office window as I unlocked the turtleback and took out a traveling bag. The bag contained shaving gear and a fifth of Old Taylor. I took it into the cabin and used the contents.

Mrs. Casper wasn’t around when I stopped by on my way out. There were two camp stools on the porch. A copy of the Gravenstein Mail lay on one of them and enough light was reflected from the sunken sun to read it. I picked it up and sat down. The Mail was a three sheet weekly which reported the price of poultry, hops and apples, along with the news that the Hiram Slacks had done it again. There weren’t any after dark ads.

The screen door banged and Mrs. Casper stood looking down at me. “Was there something else?”

“I’ve decided to pay in advance, Mrs. Casper,” I said. “I may be leaving early in the morning.”

“All right, that’ll be four and a half,” she told me. “Stay right there and I’ll make out a receipt.”

I threw the newspaper on the other camp stool, stood up and leaned against the porch railing. In the distance, over the tops of the redwood trees, under a fading silver and orange sky, green peaks wore opalescent halos.

“Doesn’t seem to be much doing,” I remarked, paying Mrs. Casper for the receipt. “I appear to be your only guest.”

“Well, the season’s officially over now. Columbus Day ends it, you know.” She dropped into a camp chair with an accordian sound. “But the weather’s been good and they’re still drawing middlin’ crowds on the river. Too early in the week end for us to get the overflow yet.”

“I should have stayed in Tasco, I guess, since I’m going north in the morning. But a friend of mine recommended your place, said it was nice and clean and quiet. He’s right.” When Mrs. Casper brightened I added, “Robert Donaldson told me about it. Know him?”

“I should say,” she cackled. “Mr. Donaldson stays here quite often, spring and summer. Seldom a month goes by he don’t visit with us.” Mrs. Casper leaned toward me and spoke in a stern, confidential whisper, “Though heaven only knows what he wants a room for. His bed ain’t slept in half the time.”

I left Mrs. Casper on the porch, went back to the heap and headed out Russia avenue toward Geronimo River. After ten miles of corkscrew, climbing roads I was in Avonella, the hub of the resort section. I checked the hotel and a couple of clubs here, then drove out of town, following the river road. Three roadside joints later I found what I was looking for.

The Rio cabana, a small circular structure with a low thatched roof, squatted in a cluster of redwoods a few hundred feet off the highway. A neon sign in the center of the parking lot in front blinked its name, and the canvas banner below it advertised Doris Dawn at the piano. A showcase next to the door held an enlargement of the photograph on Donaldson’s bedroom bureau.

It was an intimate saloon, dimly lighted. To the left of the entrance there was a bar, an alcove at the end of it bearing the legend Rest Rooms, Telephone. On the right was a large room, wicker tables and chairs crowded around a Baldwin in the center of the floor. Three men and a woman stood at the bar, four couples sat at four different tables, a gum chewing waitress slouched against the far wall. The bartender, in a loud Hawaiian sport shirt, wiped the bar in front of me with a damp towel.

I ordered bourbon and soda and walked through the arch to the telephone booth. I looked for Doris Dawn’s name under all the towns listed in the thin directory. She wasn’t in any of them.

When I returned to the bar Doris Dawn was at the piano. She played well, looked better and was prettier than her picture. She wore a strapless green evening dress and her swirling red hair caught and hurled bright javelins from a floor spotlight as she played.

The bartender hovered. I gave him a dollar bill. He rang it up and brought back a quarter. I pushed it back at him. “I’d like to hear ‘If you can’t leave it alone, take it’,” I said. “And do you think the lady will have a drink with me?”

“She sure will,” he said emphatically. He flipped the quarter into a glass on the back bar and signalled the waitress. She came off the wall like the rebound in handball.

I carried my drink to a table and sat down. The waitress had a few words with the bartender and walked to the piano. As she talked the redhead glanced at me indifferently. The waitress kept talking. She must have been saying: So business is lousy, what the hell, let him buy you a drink. The redhead played my request.

After two more numbers Doris Dawn joined me. I thanked her for coming. She thanked me for asking her. The waitress arrived with another highball for me, a long stemmed glass of pink tea for the redhead. She gave me two dollars back for a pedro and looked surprised when I tipped her without argument.

“It’s my first trip to the river this year,” I said. “Looks like I missed the crowds.”

“Yes,” Doris Dawn said listlessly. Unlike her photograph, this girl’s eyes were lifeless, her face slightly drawn. She was worried about something and I wasn’t at the table at all.

“Do you play here all year round, or just during the summer?” I asked.

“All year except January and February,” she said. “We’re one of the few places that stay open.” She started to sip her drink, but put it down quickly.

“Could I order you something else? I’m up here alone, just feel like talking to somebody. My wife understands me and I have no troubles.”

She forgot she was worried about something and felt me with her eyes. The babes this Donaldson latched on to. She said, “Whatever you’re drinking.”

When the waitress brought a new bourbon Doris Dawn took a deep swallow of it and smiled at me. “When we’re busy all I do is play the piano,” she explained. “In the off season I drink this other swill with any two-bit jerk who can afford it.”

“Thanks.”

“I’m sorry,” she laughed musically. “I wouldn’t have switched if you were in that bracket.” The lights were in her eyes now and she was smiling with good white teeth.

“Where did you ever get a moniker like Doris Dawn?” I asked. “With that hair and those eyes it ought to be Murphy, or O’Toole.”

She continued to smile. “As a matter of fact it’s Doris O’Rourke. I used to play the night club circuit and my own name was death in the ads, so they told me.”

“Then you gave up the big cities for the peace and quiet of Geronimo River.”

Her smile disappeared, the lights went out and her preoccupied mood returned. “That was the idea,” she said passively.

We worked on our drinks a few more minutes, until she excused herself and went to the piano. I went back to the phone directory. This time I found it: O’Rourke, Dorothy, One Rosebud lane. A map at the front of the book showed me how to get there.

Five

A bright half moon helped me find Rosebud lane, a paved narrow stretch which shot off an artery of the main road and wound up the side of a hill. Number one was a fenceless cottage behind a narrow square of lawn, with a driveway and one car garage, at the foot of the hill. There was a night light burning over its door, but no signs of life. I passed the cottage, climbing the road behind it in low gear. The night was still as Tut’s tomb.

I had to go all the way to the summit to turn around. My headlights picked up a flurry of arms and legs, scaring the bejabbers out of a couple in the back seat of a parked car there. Coming down, the sudden flush of a toilet sounded like a dam breaking in the quiet, and I saw a thin sliver of light flash at the rear of Number one.

At the foot of the hill I turned into the driveway of the cottage and parked, went up to the door and pressed the bell. Musical chimes made an obscene noise in the stillness. When no one answered, I pressed again. And again.

The door opened a foot, disclosing nothing. A tight, hard voice said, “I’ve got a ’forty-five trained on your guts, buddy. Step inside, and when you’re in put your hands up.”

I followed instructions and the door slammed behind me. It was completely dark inside. The voice told me to turn around and face the door. I did, there was a sharp click and the room filled with light. From behind he frisked me with his left hand, prodding my kidneys with the nose of the ’forty-five in his right.

As he unbuttoned my left hip pocket and dug for my wallet I spun quickly, hammering my right fist down on his gun wrist. The ’forty-five thumped to the floor and I hit him hard on the side of his head with a left. He staggered back and I caught him flush on the chin with a right hand, sending him across the room. He tripped over a footstool and fell into an armchair in the corner. I retrieved the gun and held it on him.

“Stay in the chair, Donaldson.” I took out my wallet and threw it at him. He shook his head, glared at me when his eyes focused and began to examine the contents of the wallet. I seated myself in a curved sectional sofa in the center of the room, facing him.

Robert Donaldson was about thirty five, slightly under six feet tall, with plenty of well placed meat on him. He had wavy dark brown hair, cobalt blue eyes and sharp dark skinned features. His lips were set in a grim line as he studied my credentials.

“So what?” Donaldson flipped the wallet to me. “Have they figured a legal way to murder me?”

“Has who?”

Donaldson laughed flatly. “Don’t you know? Are we going to play games?” He took a cigarette from a pack in his shirt pocket and lit it. He frowned angrily at the ’forty-five in my hand, then his expression changed to perplexity. He asked, “Why aren’t you carrying a gun?”

“Your ex-wife hired me to find you, Donaldson. I had no reason to think a weapon was necessary.” I placed the gun on the sofa. “Is beating alimony this important?”

He sat there smoking for a minute, his forehead resolving into three deep lines. He said, “I expected you, or someone like you, to walk in here and put a bullet between my eyes. I didn’t expect a song and dance to go with it.” His eyes locked mine. “I’ll go along with you, what more can I lose? You say my ex-wife hired you. I don’t have any. I’ve never been married,”

“Someone else told me that today, but she was prejudiced.”

Donaldson’s face lighted and he smiled for the first time. “You talked to Eve.”

“Yes, quite a girl.” I picked up the gun and handed it to him. “A Mrs. Anne Donaldson gave me a retainer of two hundred and fifty dollars. The large fee in advance plus the fact that a couple of hoods tried to tail me this evening makes me wonder. Maybe there are people looking for you who can’t come out in the open about it.”

“They’re looking for me all right, looking real hard.” Donaldson held the gun tentatively, as if wondering why he had it, then placed it on a magazine stand beside his chair.

“What’s the trouble,” I said, “maybe I can help. I don’t like being shoved in the middle like this. You think someone is trying to kill you. If that’s true and it happens I’ll be next, since I’m the only one who can point a finger.”

Donaldson had been watching me speculatively, panning my words and appearance, weighing the result on his personal scale of truth. “I’ve got to tell somebody,” he said decisively. “I’m in an absolutely hell of a shape and I don’t know where to turn. I never felt so helpless in my life.” He got up and began stamping the floor in front of me. He lit another cigarette off the butt of the one he was smoking and threw the butt into an ashtray. He complained, “And all on account of a lousy box of candy.”

“Now and then, just before a holiday,” Donaldson began. “My boss gives me six or seven boxes of candy to deliver to a list of customers. The holidays are never the same ones, they can be anything from Easter Sunday to Election Day. Sometimes he thinks one up you never heard of, like Confederate Memorial Day. I used to figure the old duffer was off his rocker, but the gifts of the candy didn’t hurt my calls any so why worry about them.”

“Booker is your boss?”

He nodded. “Ralph Booker, my great and good friend. The last time I was in the office he told me he’d forgotten about Admission Day, but I could pick up the boxes of candy and distribute them before Columbus Day, suiting both occasions.”

“At Bassey’s Confectionery in North Beach. They’re supposed to make wonderful candy. I haven’t thought twice about the place until this last trip.” Donaldson sat in the armchair again. “The customers who get the candy vary for the most part. Once it will be Otham’s in Santa Rosa, another time it’ll be Grundy’s in Ukiah. But two stores are always on Booker’s list, the Pennant Shirt Shops in Tasco and Eureka.” When I didn’t register this news properly he enlarged, “Pennant is a Sacramento chain with stores in California, Oregon and Nevada. They’re Mayflower’s biggest customers.”

“So their store managers are always entitled to the holiday gift.”

“That’s what I figured,” Donaldson said wryly. “When I picked up the candy each box was always tied with a ribbon. Two of them are tied with black ribbons, the rest with pink.”

“The black ribbons go to Pennant Shops,” I prompted as he paused to extinguish his cigarette.

“Yeah. And they’re full of hop.”

I dragged on my cigarette and blew out the smoke. Two and two was making a nasty four. I said, “Mayower Shirts is a narcotic dealer?”

“I don’t know. I honestly don’t know. Mayflower, Booker or Bassey’s, or all three. Take your pick.”

“How often do you make these deliveries?”

“This was my fourth this year. Before, there was Washington’s Birthday, Easter and Decoration Day,” Donaldson said. “It’s been happening six or seven times a year.”

“That means a lot of money to someone. How large are the boxes?”

“Two pound boxes of assorted chocolates,” he said sourly. “On my way to Eurkea on this last trip I dropped one off at Otham’s in Santa Rosa. By mistake, I gave him a black ribboned box. Later I was having a cup of coffee next door when old Tom Otham came in and showed me the candy. He had bitten into two pieces and the insides looked like unmelted sugar in a kind of hard paper wrapping. I apologized and told him I’d take it back to the factory.”

“Was it horse?”

“I’m coming to that,” Donaldson said impatiently. “I still didn’t catch on, why should I? Bassey’s manufactures plenty of candy, probably they turn out a faulty batch once in awhile. I continued to deliver the rest of it, including a black ribboned box in Tasco. Next day in Eureka I gave Norton, at the Pennant store, a box with a pink ribbon. He caught up with me the following morning in Crescent City and demanded the other box. I explained that the regular box was defective and described what happened at Otham’s, but he told me it was a special type of Greek candy you can only get at Bassey’s. He insisted I give him the box, complete with the pieces Otham bit into.”

“The Greeks get blamed for everything,” I commented.

“On the way home from Crescent City I was almost killed twice on the highway,” Donaldson grimaced at the thought. “First, I hardly noticed it. A joker between Scotia and Garberville kept ahead of me on the straightaways, slowing down on the turns so it looked like I could pass him. I tired passing twice, and each time he speeded up. If a car had come the other way I’d have been a goner.” He lit another cigarette. “The second time was outside Ukiah. A logging truck forced me to the edge of a cliff when no other cars were in sight. I stopped cold, the truck almost went over instead, and I got the hell away from there fast.” Donaldson wiped a rivulet of perspiration from his forehead with the back of his hand.

“I began wondering then,” he continued. “The inside of the candy I delivered to Otham looked like sugar, but that was just a comparison. It wasn’t sugar, was more powdery, and what was it doing scaled in transparent paper? I was thinking it was white as snow under the wrapper, and then I had it: heroin. It seems unbelievable that all these years I’ve been transporting heroin in candy boxes for that silly boob Booker, but there’s no other solution.”

“If that was pure heroin,” I said. “Something less than two pounds in each of the two boxes is worth more than ten thousand dollars wholesale in the foreign market. Here, properly cut with sugar of milk, ten times that. Four deliveries come close to a potential million bucks.”

Donaldson got up and left the room. He returned with a bottle of Scotch and two water glasses. He poured two fingers in each glass and handed me one.

“What happened after Ukiah?” I asked.

“Well, I was scared and I pushed the Plymouth as fast as it would move. I was in San Rafael before I could think straight. I realized I wasn’t being followed and had better make some plans. San Francisco was out, I knew. They’d be waiting for me on the other side of the bridge. I thought of Doris and I was sure she’d take me in. At Marin City I parked the car and took a bus up here. I haven’t stepped outside the door since.”

“Have you told Doris?”

“Part of it.”

We sipped the drinks. The Scotch was warm and powerful. I took out the picture of Donaldson in his corporal’s uniform and handed it to him. “Ever see this?”

He stared at it and said, “Damned if I have.”

“It’s you.”

He nodded, concentrating on the snapshot.

“The alleged Mrs. Anne Donaldson gave it to me,” I said. I described my client, but he denied any knowledge of her. I asked, “Were you ever in San Francisco in uniform?”

“When we were at Stoneman before going overseas,” he remembered. “I had one forty-eight hour pass.” He added, “Come to think, I’d just got the stripes.”

“This could have been taken then.”

“Yes, but you know how it is. They’re forever taking your picture in those gin mills in the city. You’re a cheap tool to the girl you’re with if you don’t buy her one. It happens in any city, anywhere. You forget the picture, the bar, the night club, the girl. It’s something you do on leave, that’s all.”

“True, but this is a fairly fresh photograph, must have been developed recently from a negative in the files of some night club. Try and remember where you spent that leave.”

“Mason, Powell, Turk, Eddy, Ellis, O’Farrell streets,” Donaldson recalled, smiling. “Joints I wouldn’t be caught in now.”

“How about a place you were in during leave and after the war both?”

Donaldson studied the snapshot soberly. “The Green Slipper,” he said. “That’s it, The Green Slipper on Broadway. Eve and I have been there. I recognize the upholstery now. Whoever the girl was, she’s been cut out of the picture.”

We finished our drinks and Donaldson poured more Scotch in the glasses. He sat back, relaxed. “I feel good, telling you this, getting it off my chest.” He grinned. “I’m glad I didn’t shoot you.”

“Why didn’t you call a cop in the first place?”

“How could I?” He waved his arm in the air. “The candy’s gone, and I can’t prove anyone tried to kill me.”

“Does Miss O’Rourke have a car?”

“Yes.”

“Phone and get her out here,” I told him. “The two of you get in her car and get the hell away from here. You know Max Wendell’s farm in Moraga?”

“The fight camp? Yes, but...”

“Tell Max I sent you. He’ll put you up.”

“What about Doris? She has her job.”

“Get serious, Donaldson. I found this place and whoever wants to find you isn’t far behind. If they miss you, they’ll go to work on your girl friend.”

Donaldson swallowed a big chunk of nothing and went to the phone. When he was through talking to the Rio Cabana he asked, “What’re you going to do?”

I grinned at him. “Do you want to hire a private detective?”

He rubbed his chin reflectively, said, “All right.” His lips worked into the reckless smile of his snapshot and he added, “You can’t collect from a dead man.”

I finished my drink and stood up. “You’ll be safe with Max,” I said. “Take the gun with you.” We shook hands. He left the lights on as he let me out.

Parked in the shadows up the road I watched Doris O’Rourke arrive. Donaldson had evidently packed a bag for her, since they didn’t waste any time leaving the cottage. I followed them to the main highway, then drove back to Casper’s Cozy Corner and hit the sack.

Six

It was cool and foggy when I left the auto court early next morning. I drove to San Francisco with the windows up and the headlights on, arrived at my office shortly after ten o’clock. Hilda and Jack Holland were waiting.

“A Miss Bustamente phoned,” Hilda informed me. “She wants you to call her.”

“Good.” I sat behind the desk. Jack was planked on the edge of it.

“I told you about the Plymouth already,” Jack said. “Last night I checked with the department. They have no record of a missing Robert Donaldson. No one has inquried about him at all, and they’ve never heard of Mrs. Donaldson.”

“Donaldson hasn’t either.” I grabbed the phone and called the Westshire. Mrs. Donaldson checked out half an hour ago, they told me. No, there was no forwarding address.

“The phantom client,” Jack scowled. He pulled an Optimo out of his lapel pocket and unravelled it. As he lit the cigar, Hilda reached behind me and lifted the window to the limit.

“I talked to Donaldson last night,” I related. “We’re on his side now, for the moment anyhow.” Jack sat cross legged, puffing his cigar, and Hilda stood attentively, leaning her elbow on the filing cabinet, while I briefed them.

“A dope ring,” Jack slapped his thigh vehemently. “Man, how I’d like to put the kibosh on those skunks.”

Hilda asked, “Why use a man like Donaldson in an operation like this? He could blow up the whole thing, without knowing it.”

“That’s the beauty of it, from their standpoint,” I reasoned. “Donaldson not only cuts down the overhead, he won’t shoot off his mouth because he doesn’t know what he’s doing. And he’s a legitimate salesman with a compatible income, not a man with a record who might draw suspicion making deliveries.”

“My. They are clever,” Hilda commented.

“He must have been carrying virgin horse,” Jack suggested. “They pack it in some special paper, pour chocolate over it and freeze it so it looks like the McCoy. In Tasco and Eureka they cut the stuff and whatever they don’t peddle directly they can ship over through Nevada, or up the coast to Portland, and points North.”

“Pennant Shirt Shops has outlets either way.”

We chewed it over. They agreed that Eureka Investigations was apparently the pivotal point in a sucker play.

“You drop by the Westshire and get a line on Mrs. Donaldson, Jack,” I said. “I’ll see Miss Bustamente. We’ll meet here, or phone Hilda if we get anything hot.”

The fog had lifted. It was warm and brilliant as I drove out Van Ness avenue. Eve Bustamente, in a cerise towel housecoat, was hopping mad when she admitted me to her apartment.

“They slugged me,” she shouted, her dark eyes blazing, her black hair tossing like the mane of a wild horse, “Right behind the ear. If I can for one minute only get my hands on them I will teach them good.” She bucked up and down the living room, the housecoat billowing around her knees, waving her arms in windmill swings. I asked her to calm down and tell me about it.

“It was before eight o’clock, what a time to housebreak. I was leaving for work — I am a designer, but now I am not good for the work today, they make me so ma-ad. I pass by Robert’s room and I hear the noise. It seems I am always hearing the noises in there. The lock on the door is broken and I push it open. This man is looking through the drawers and closets, such a mess. I go to him and say ‘what are you doing?’ Bang. I am slugged on the back of the head. I am like a light, out. What a headache I have.”

“Did the men take anything?”

“I do not know. The police came and they said they could not know if anything was stolen unless the owner will tell them.” Eve made fists of her small hands, glowered angrily like a teased kitten. “Sit down,” she huffed at me. “You are grinning like the big ape.”

“I think you’re most beautiful when you’re angry,” I said, sitting at the end of a long tufted sofa.

“Ah?” Eve smiled pleasantly, the storm had passed. “Let us look at his room. The door is not fixed yet.”

I followed her into the hall. The door of Donaldson’s apartment had been clumsily jimmied. Inside drawers from the bureau and writing desk had been carelessly upended. The picture of Doris O’Rourke was gone from the bedroom and the frame which held it lay broken on the floor. That was all they needed.

We returned to Eve’s apartment. I resumed my seat and asked, “Can you describe the man you saw in there?”

“It was very quick,” she said. “He was ugly, short and wide and ugly. He wore a gray hat and suit. He wore the pink sport shirt. Pink.” Eve’s eyes widened in amazement. “He had a mean ugly face, I can not think of any more.”

“That’s fine.”

“Now I will fix a drink. I have had already at least one.” She turned and left the room through a swinging door, the housecoat swishing sibilantly. She returned with two aperitif glasses of rum, handed me one and sat beside me. She asked, “Is the drink nice?”

I sipped the rum and said it was fine.

Eve put her glass down on the coffee table in front of us and leaned back against me. My arm received orders from somewhere and looped around her. She settled into the hollow of my shoulder, said softly, “I have been through the most harrowing experience. You must comfort me.”

“Poor, defenseless creature,” I remarked. She laughed, pulling my hand down over her shoulder. She was as fragile as a curled cobra. Warm and soft against me she sent sparkling messages in bedroom cipher. My receiving set was picking them up loud and clear, but hell, Donaldson was in the bite.

“You are thinking of Robert,” she said, rubbing my knuckles with her finger tips. “What is it about, this missing business and the breaking in to his room?”

“You were right about his not having a wife, but he is being hunted by someone,” I explained. “I’m trying to help him.”

“So.” She turned and sent a shock into me with those deep, dark eyes. “So, you are going to leave?”

I put my other arm around her then and we kissed, a long, moist kiss. I didn’t want to go and I didn’t want to stay. Her hand stole inside my coat to my back, then she pushed me away.

“Now you must go,” Eve said firmly. “We will see each other again.”

I got back to the office before noon. Max Wendell had phoned and everything was okay in Moraga hills. Jack reported on Mrs. Donaldson.

“The lady registered yesterday morning at quarter past eight, giving an Oakland address,” Jack said, referring to a piece of Westshire stationery. “According to the phone company the address is a parking lot. She went out, presumably to consult you, in the afternoon and returned at about three o’clock. She ate her meals in the hotel and remained in her room the rest of the time.”

“They kept pretty good tabs on her.”

“Swanson’s the house man over there. He has an eye for a pretty broad. Between him and the desk clerk, Mrs. Donaldson was well guarded.” Jack consulted his pencil scratchings. “A skinny, well dressed man with a pock marked face called on her a couple hours ago. She checked out and drove off with him in a cream colored Lincoln. The bellman says the guy looked like somebody he’s seen around with Frankie Mortola.” Jack handed the notepaper to Hilda and added, “Sounds like Benny Lufts.”

“Another name on the roster.” I told them about the theft of the photograph from Donaldson’s apartment. “I want you to drive to Sacramento this afternoon, Jack, and case Pennant Shirt Shops. Their main office is there, you might find a tie-in with Mayflower. On the way up stop at the Artcraft Studios in Gravenstein. If someone was around there this morning trying to identify Doris O’Rourke’s photograph, call the sheriff’s office immediately; report a burglary at number one Rosebud lane and give them the leads from Artcraft and Donaldson’s apartment.”

“I’ll have to fly,” Jack growled. He plowed out of the office like an old quarter horse.

Hilda smiled after him. “When he rains, he pours.”

“I’m going to stake out our friend Ralph Booker,” I told Hilda. “Meanwhile, close up the office, go out and get all the dope on Mayflower Shirts, Bassey’s, and a bar on Broadway called the Green Slipper. Try the Herald, State Board, City Hall, everywhere.”

Hilda said, “I’ll have to fly too, if I’m going to cat lunch.”

My watch read ten minutes to twelve. Leaving, I said, “If you get hold of anything phone before you come back. I may be here.”

Seven

I parked up the street from the Mayflower building and sat, smoking cigarettes and watching the entrance to the upstairs offices, until half past one. There was no sign, going or coming, of Ralph Booker. Maybe he didn’t eat lunch.

I went upstairs, past the reproachful girl at the desk, through the maze of frosted glass to Booker’s office. The girl in the anteroom stopped typing and raised pencilled eyebrows at me. When I walked by her, into the manager’s inner sanctum, she rose hurriedly and followed.

The pasty faced man was drooping in the chair behind his desk, his elbows on the arms, chin reposing on the interlocked fingers of his clay colored hands. He opened the small clouded orbs under his bushy brows and stared at my feet, then rearranged himself so he was sitting upright.

To the girl Booker said, “Why don’t you go out for a cup of coffee, Miss Arnold? Have my calls put through the front desk.” When the door closed behind her he said, “Well, Mr. Sweeney, won’t you be seated?”

I took the chair nearest his desk, lit a cigarette and dropped the match into his polished seashell. His gray agates focused on the match like it was the aftermath of an atomic explosion.

“Where’s Mrs. Donaldson, Booker?”

“Has she disappeared too?” He ran a hand over his bald head, breaking the reflection of sun from the curtained window behind him.

“As far as I’m concerned she has, but I think you know where to find her,” I said. “You showed no surprise yesterday when I mentioned that Donaldson’s former wife had employed me to locate him; but you knew he had never been married. Even if he hadn’t mentioned his marriage to you himself, which is improbable, you’d have known about it from the records of his withholding taxes.”

The pasty faced man grabbed the arms of his chair and pushed himself up. He crossed to the side door in the mahogany wall and opened it by the canteloupe knob. Leaving it ajar, he walked impassively back to the chair and slumped into it.

Two men in gray hats came through the door. They had twin builds, short and chunky. One of them wore a blue gabardine suit, the other was dressed in gray. The man in gray wore a pink sport shirt and fitted Eve Bustamente’s description of her early morning assailant. He was ugly. They were both ugly, and angry looking with thick bloodless lips itching to snarl. They were two commercial diamonds of the sub-rosa industry.

“Sweeney, eh?” Pink shirt rasped. He turned to Booker, “This guy bothering you, Mr. Booker?”

The pasty faced man didn’t look at either of them. He stared listlessly at one of the Japanese prints on the wall. “He thinks I can tell him where Anne, Mrs. Donaldson, has gone.”

“Why, Syd and I will be glad to take him to Mrs. Donaldson, won’t we Syd?” Pink shirt offered.

The man in blue nodded his bulldog head agreeably. He asked me, “Would you care to accomp’ny Eddie and me to where the skirt is?”

I put out my cigarette and stood up. “Let’s go.”

The torpedos appeared disappointed. Eddie, in the pink shirt, growled, “You mean you don’t need convincin’?”

“I’m convinced,” I answered. “I want to see the girl.”

Booker was still gazing at the Japanese print as we filed through the side door. We walked down open wooden steps to a parking lot in back of the building. The green Buick was waiting. I got in the front seat, Syd in back.

“Why don’t chou save time and kill two birds with one stone, Eddie?” Syd asked his partner when he opened the door on the driver’s side.

Eddie laughed hoarsely. “You’re thinkin’ with your head again,” he said. He slammed the car door and walked back toward the steps.

I made it easy for Syd in the rear seat. I leaned back, my head straight up, an appetizing target. Millions of tiny, white hot arrows stabbed me behind the right ear. The glare of the windshield dimmed, the windshield and the dashboard floated into a blue vertical wave that turned inky black and disappeared altogether.

I was watching a key dance crazily at the end of a chain hanging from another key in an ignition switch. Miserable key. It resented the chain and wanted to free itself, I could see that. I reached out the hand I wasn’t lying on to rescue the key. A hard rap on the back of my wrist halted me.

“Papa spank,” a guttural voice reprimanded.

The sting in my wrist prodded me. I heaved myself into a sitting position and saw the owner of the voice, Eddie in the pink shirt, behind the wheel of a green Buick. We were driving South on Portrero avenue. The light and the speeding traffic hurt my eyes. I blinked away silver gray cobwebs and remembered. The back side of my head felt like a volcano crater looks. It was sore when I touched it.

I squirmed around to face Syd in the rear seat. He sat complacently, his right hand bulging under the left side of his coat. “Why did you do that?” I asked him.

“You needed sleep.” Syd showed me how tough he was. He made a fist of his left hand and shoved my face around with it.

We turned off Portrero, drove through Apparel City and over Winston avenue to a four storied white stucco apartment house. Eddie and Syd took me up a self service elevator to the fourth floor. They walked me halfway down a deep carpeted hallway to a door with a diamond shaped mirror at eye level in its center. In a slot over the doorbell alongside the door a neatly engraved card spelled out Mr. Frank Mortola. Eddie pressed the bell.

A grinning thin man with a sallow, rutted complexion admitted us to the apartment. He straightened his thin lips when I said, “Hello, Benny. How’ve you been?”

I was ushered into a large, high walled room with a fireplace at the far end. A picture window hid behind olive Venetian blinds on one side, oriental rugs lay around on brown and white checkerboard tile. There were a couple of ottomans, two sofas, a number of modernistic chairs, stand-up ashtrays and cocktail tables among them. Mortola must have decorated the joint himself.

The girl who hired me to find Robert Donaldson sat in one of the ottomans, an open magazine in her lap. She paled under the tan when our eyes locked for an instant as I came into the room. Frankie Mortola sat on a sofa, smoking a new cigar and seeming pleased to see me. Mortola was an ex-bootlegger, ex-bookie, who was now accepted in some circles, notably petty political ones, as high rolling, good humored Frankie: the rough exterior with the heart of gold. I knew better.

He was a big black haired fat faced man with a flat nose and one and a half ears. His thick black brows were frozen into a perpetual scowl, and when he tried to smile he looked like a pregnant satan. He was trying to smile now.

I walked to the other sofa and sat down, opposite Mortola. I said, “All I need is a drink.”

Mortola glanced at Benny Lufts, “Fix Sweeney a drink. And one for me.” He leaned forward toward the girl. “Will you join us?”

“No thank you.” Anne Donaldson spoke in a small, strained voice.

“No thank you,” Mortola repeated, turning to me. “What’s your pleasure, Sweeney?”

“A lot of whisky and a little soda. I’ve just been sapped and my head hurts.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said, looking over my shoulder. “Syd, Eddie. Come over and sit down, next to Sweeney. That’s it, one on each side, like for a group picture.”

The master having spoken, they performed accordingly. Mortola looked at the tip of his cigar, surprised to learn there was an ash on it. He flicked the ash with his thick little finger and it spattered on the rug. He asked, “Didn’t Sweeney want to come with you, Eddie?”

“I was all for it,” I interrupted. “I wanted to see Mrs. Donaldson, but when I got in the car with this guy Syd he bashed me on the head. Where’d you import these meatballs from, Mortola? No manners.”

Benny Lufts handed drinks to Mortola and me. I gulped half of mine and the sharp, sour taste chased away the remaining traces of mist behind my eyes.

“You mustn’t be too impulsive, Syd,” Mortola said, feigning displeasure by moving his fat head from side to side. “Where did you hit him?”

On his right, Syd said, “Here,” and poked the small lump back of my ear with his fingers.

It hurt like hell and I lost control of myself. I threw what was left of my drink in Syd’s face and followed through with the glass in the heel of my hand. The mouth of the tumbler cracked on the bridge of his nose and I kept shoving it, working the fingers of my other hand around his thick neck. A forearm around my own neck tugged me and I was standing over the sofa, held from behind. My eye caught Benny Lufts and the automatic in his hand on the other side of the sofa. I dropped the broken glass.

Red wrinkles oozed across the lower half of Syd’s face. He passed his hand over them dazedly and looked unbelievingly at the blood. Then he lunged off the sofa, coming between me and the automatic. I brought my knee up hard into his windpipe and he slithered heavily to the floor.

“Enough. Enough,” came from Mortola and the arm around my neck relaxed. “Get the hell up off the carpet and into the kitchen,” he barked at Syd. “Wash that stuff off your face.”

Syd shook himself like a wet bulldog, climbed up the sofa to his feet. He stood there, staring down at the broken glass on the oriental rug. Maroon spots flecked his gabardine suit. He felt his face and his neck. He reached for the bulge under his coat.

“Go on. Get in the kitchen,” Mortola barked.

When Syd trudged across the room the hold on my neck was released. Eddie walked over to Benny Lufts. I ignored the automatic and sat down. “I told you,” I reminded the room in general, “my head is sore as a boil.”

The girl had dropped her magazine. She stooped, picked it up and placed it behind her on the chair. She said, “If you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll go in the bedroom.”

“I won’t excuse you,” I stopped her getting up. “I came her to talk to you, damned if I won’t.”

Mortola held out one of his oversized paws like a circus cop and she sank back in the ottoman. He turned rheumy, dull eyes on me and directed, “Go ahead, talk to her.”

“Why do you want me to find Robert Donaldson?” I asked. “You weren’t married to him.”

The blonde glanced nervously at the big man. He answered her look with a long, arm stretching yawn. She said, “I want to see him for personal reasons.”

“What are they?”

“I can’t tell you. They’re personal.”

“You admit you weren’t married to Donaldson.”

“I admit nothing.” She smoothed invisible wrinkles in her dress and looked away from me.

Mortola moved restlessly on the sofa as we talked, stretched his legs in front of him, pulled them back, chewed lethargically on his cigar. Finally he blurted, “Where the hell is Donaldson?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I thought I had him last night. I just missed him.”

“We know about last night. You talked to Donaldson up the river.” He flicked his cigar ash on the rug, “Where is he now?”

“I didn’t talk to him last night. I traced a girl friend of his to the river and followed her home. The house was dark when she got there and it was after two, so I couldn’t break in on her. I waited until a decent hour this morning, but she was gone.”

“Then how do you know he wasn’t married?”

“It wasn’t difficult,” I explained, taking the long chance with a bald lie. “Mrs. Donaldson, or whoever she is, told me they’d been married during the war. I checked with the Army and they have no record of it.”

“Very pat, Sweeney. You have an answer for everything.”

“What’s your interest in this, Mortola?” I asked.

He rose to his feet and scowled over me. “Donaldson is a thief,” he said. “He heisted some stuff from a friend of mine. I used this broad here to get you to find him so’s I could get the stuff back without no trouble from the cops.” He puffed disgustedly on the cigar, which had gone out, and threw it in the fire place. “Are you going to tell me where this thief is, nice and gentle?”

“What did Donaldson steal?”

“You tell me.” Satan scowled.

“I can’t tell you what I don’t know.”

Mortola steered his wet eyes behind me expressively. I jumped off the sofa. Benny Lufts was pointing the automatic at me. Eddie, leering happily, took a step forward. The telephone chose this moment to fill the room with its screams.

Mortola started and said, “Hold it.” He answered the phone. “Yes,” he said into the receiver. “He’s here now... No... Wait a second, I’ll go in the other room.” He lay down the receiver and walked through a door on the far side of the room.

I lit a cigarette and threw the match in the fireplace. The girl sat tensely in the ottoman. She was definitely not so tan and composed today. There was an anxious, almost frightened cast in her blue green eyes as they observed the wrestling fingers in her lap. I started to compliment her on making a patsy of me when Mortola stuck his fat head through the door.

“Come in here, Benny,” he shouted.

Benny Lufts crossed over to the door and Eddie pulled a revolver, an undersized 38, from inside his coat. Nobody trusted me. From the other side of the room Syd came in. He was wearing two strips of adhesive tape and the uncovered part of his face was a jigsaw of wine colored scratches.

“Why don’t chou plug the bastard?” Syd asked his partner.

“Wait for Frankie,” Eddie advised, as if it were only a question of timing.

“Think of the neighbors too,” I warned.

Eddie laughed caustically. “No neighbors, and they’s no other tenants in the building.”

Mortola returned, followed by Benny Lufts. His step was less elephantine, his eyes shinier. “Put up the gun, Eddie,” he instructed, like a benevolent satan. “Sweeney is on our side, after all. Ain’t you Sweeney?”

“Indirectly,” I said, motioning toward the girl. “She’s my client.”

“Sure she is, and I sent her to you. You done a good job so far, consid’ring my boys been looking for Donaldson two weeks. Okay, stick to it. You find me Donaldson, I’ll pay you plenty.” He stood with his back to the fireplace, rubbing his buttocks sensuously as if he had just come in from a snowstorm and there was a fire in the grate.

“I have nothing against money,” I remarked.

“Course you haven’t,” Mortola inspected his three torpedos speculatively. “Benny, you and Eddie take Sweeney to the nearest cab stand.” He glowered at the bandaged gladiator, “Leave the gear with Syd, Benny.”

Benny Lufts handed Syd a square leather case, the size of a safety razor kit. Syd put it in his coat pocket and directed a venomous stare at me. “You and yours truly ain’t quits yet, Sweeney. Not by a long shot.” He spat the words at me.

I agreed I wasn’t through with him. Benny Lufts and Eddie led me to the elevator and back to the green Buick. This time I drew the rear seat. I relaxed on the foam rubber cushions, surprised and happy to be alive.

Driving, Eddie asked, “Who’s the guy on the phone?”

“Skip it,” Benny Lufts told him.

I interjected, “Don’t mind me, boys. You heard Frankie. I’m one of the family.”

“That’s what I mean,” Eddie kept on. “We’re all set to work this shamus over. Frankie gets a buzz and it’s all off, we’re buddy-buddy. What gives? I got a right to know.”

“Frankie’s got a contact,” Benny Lufts said. “Nobody knows him but Frankie. It’s none of our business. Shaddup and dump this clown off somewheres.”

They dropped me at a cab stand on Portrero and I caught a Yellow to the Mayflower building. The green Buick followed. There was a white ticket under the windshield wiper of my heap, the parking meter alongside blushed. It was three-thirty and they start towing cars away from Mission Street at four, but I decided to see Booker again before I moved it.

A handful of people were grouped outside the entrance to the Mayflower offices. They were talking and listening aimlessly to each other, like people do sometimes when there’s a big league ball game on a store radio. But there was no radio here.

I met Jimmy Underhill, a crime reporter on the Evening Herald, as he was coming down the stairs. His boyish face under a crew haircut registered astonishment. “Me and the cops are looking for you, Bill.” He grabbed my arm and turned me around, leading me into the street.

“The cops?”

“Your friend and mine, Inspector Hank Stroth,” Jimmy said. “The boss man of this shirt outfit is dead as hell. Hank thinks it’s murder and you’re his number one suspect.” We had covered half a block and were opposite a bar called Friendly’s. The green Buick was parked down the street. Jimmy added, “I don’t like to be seen in public with a murderer, but you can buy me a drink.”

I accepted. “Come on. Tell me how I killed this guy.”

Eight

After Syd and Eddie had escorted me from Booker’s office his secretary returned from her coffee break and proceeded with her usual routine. At five minutes past two a phone call came in for her boss. When he didn’t answer her buzz the girl entered his office and found him sprawled on the floor, dead. A superficial medical examination showed that Booker was an addict and had died from narcotics poisoning: he had taken or been given a shot of poisoned dope. A Mr. Sweeney called on him between one-thirty and two. No one saw him leave the office.

“This Booker was a real main-liner,” Jimmy was saying. “His arms had been punctured so many times the veins are covered with scar tissue. Hank figures, from the shape he was in, somebody had to give him his dose. Whoever it was, probably you, slipped him a hot shot.”

I ordered two more drinks and asked Jimmy to wait. I went to the phone booth at the end of the bar and called my office. When Hilda answered I asked if the cops were there.

She sing-songed, “Mr. Sweeney isn’t in right now, would you care to leave a message?”

“I’m at a place called Friendly’s near the Mayflower building,” I said. I read her the phone number off the dial. “If you get the chance, call me here.”

“I can let you have an appointment at ten o’clock Monday if that’s satisfactory, Mr. Ottomeyer.”

I hung up and returned to the bar. I gave Jimmy my car keys and told him where the heap was parked. “Move it for me before they tow it away, will you?”

“Sure. I came over in a squad car. I’ll drive it back to the mill and leave word where it is. But first, what’s the scoop?”

I gave Jimmy most of the pieces, including a warning against the two hoods in the Buick. We often work together, and he’s willing to hold up his story until he receives the sign. When I finished he whistled softly.

“They cut out the middleman,” he said. “There must be millions in this.”

“Not only that, but the arms of the octopus don’t know where the head is. Receive and deliver and get paid, that’s all the members of this organization know. Take Donaldson, he didn’t even know what he was doing.”

“Do you think they’ve organized the pushers too?”

“Certainly, and the pushers only see one man. All they’re interested in is the supply and quality. They’re easy. But what we’ve got is the whole trolley set up — Bassey’s, who package the horse, the damn fool salesman who ferries it up the coast, and these Pennant stores which are undoubtedly putting it up in caps and distributing it to the public. The only thing missing is the source.”

We finished our drinks and Jimmy left. I ordered a steak sandwich and ate it at the bar. When Hilda didn’t phone I ordered another. For no good reason I scowled at the bartender when he brought the food.

I was sore at a lot of people right now, but I wanted one big guy to bate and the name eluded me. Booker, the spineless sucker fish, was dead. Donaldson and Doris O’Rourke were counting each other’s fingers over in Moraga. Syd and Eddie, the imports, had helium between their ears. Benny Lufts was nothing more than a shadow for Mortola, a meatball to carry his horse and carriage around and take the rap for possession if they ever got picked up. Mortola was the bloat with the guns, but someone with brains was aiming them for him. And the girl?

The phone in the booth rang and I bounded to it. Hilda was calling from the ladies’ room of our office building. “A sweet young man in a blue suit has been keeping me company all afternoon,” she said. “I had to smuggle my notes out in my brassiere.”

“Read ’em while they’re warm.”

“First, here’s what I did this afternoon. I went to the Green Slipper. It wasn’t busy so early, and when the bartender left for a minute I got a good look at the liquor license on the wall. It’s issued to a Melvin Danzig, Frank Mortola is a limited partner. Then I went down to the recorder’s office and searched the Bassey and Mayflower Shirt properties. They are both leased out by the Sungate Investment Company.”

I interrupted, “Ashton Brubaker’s corporation?”

“Yes. I looked him up too, in the library. He is the Sungate Investment Company.”

“Hell, he owns half the state.”

“Wait till you hear the rest. Jack Holland phoned from Gravenstein a few minutes ago. He checked Pennant Shirts in Sacramento. They’re a wholly owned subsidiary of Sungate.”

“Yoicks.”

“And among other enterprises Sungate controls Zephyr House, a Los Angeles import-export firm,” Hilda related. “I couldn’t ask Jack many questions with the gendarme here, but I gathered Miss O’Rourke’s house up the river was broken into and whoever did it made inquiries at Artcraft Studios. Jack didn’t go to the police because they might hold him, so that’s all he knows.”

“Where is he now?”

“On his way home.”

“Good girl, Hilda. Will you stay at the office until he gets there?”

“I certainly will.” Hilda paused, and I heard a door slam over the receiver. “One more thing, Anne Donaldson phoned. She’s staying in room thirty-three at the Beckett hotel. She wants to see you.”

“The hell she does. Shall I wear a bullseye on my back?”

“She sounded awfully disturbed, Bill.”

“Okay, Hilda. It’s almost five. Lock up and get a bite to eat, then go back and wait for Jack.”

I hung up and rang Jimmy Underhill. He had left the chewy outside the Herald Building, the keys in the glove compartment. I went back to the bar and finished my steak. When the bartender cleared the plates away I asked him to call me two cabs.

“Two taxis?”

“That’s what I said.”

“Who’s the second one for?”

“Will you call the cabs or shall I go out in the street and whistle for them?”

The bartender shrugged and reached for a direct line phone under the counter. “Two cabs to Friendly’s,” he said. “Yeah, two.”

A few minutes later the driver of the first one came in. When I asked if he wanted to make a quick saw, he tilted his visored cap back on his head and regarded me shrewdly.

“There’s a green Buick sedan with two men in it parked down the street,” I explained. “I’m trying to dodge it.”

The driver walked to the front of the bar and peered through dusty Venetian blinds into the street. He lifted his cap, scratched his head and came back. “Jersey plates,” he commented. “I thought they might be cops.”

“They’re not cops.” I placed a ten dollar bill on the counter. “There’s a car in front and in back of them. You double park for five minutes so they can’t move out.”

“Wife trouble?”

I nodded.

The driver seemed doubtful. “There’s buses on this street, you know. I’ll get a whale of a ticket if I screw one up.”

“If it works, I’ll leave another sawbuck with the bartender for you tomorrow.”

The driver glanced at his wrist watch, picked up the bill and left. By the time the second cab arrived traffic was already congested. The hood of the double parked cab was up, the driver was angrily tapping engine parts with a screwdriver. Benny Lufts and Eddie cursed him violently from the trapped Buick. I hopped into the second cab quickly and directed the driver. He eased around the bottleneck and drove me to the Herald building, where I picked up the heap.

The Beckett hotel was an ancient, red shingled building which sat between two modern apartment houses and grinned rowdily with chipped marble teeth. I climbed the teeth to the lobby, sauntered past a drowsy clerk who was studying entries at Eastern racetracks he hoped to visit someday, and entered a fragile steel cage. A freckle faced Negro woman in a faded green jacket monogrammed Beckett let me off at the fifth floor. I walked past Men, Women and Bath to room thirty-three.

“Who is it?” an almost inaudible voice answered my rap on the door.

“William Jeremiah Sweeney,” I whispered.

The door edged open and I entered a stern, acrid room with a latticed wrought iron bed, two wooden chairs, a writing desk and a mirrorless dresser. A vee had been cut in worn carpet from the door to the bed to the wash basin in the corner. One grimy window admitted begrudgingly that there was light outside.

The blonde closed the door behind me and wheeled to the large handbag on the dresser. She took a billfold out of it, extracted a card and handed it to me.

The card was a driver’s license which described the blonde briefly, said she lived in Menlo Park and her name was Anne Marie Booker.

I returned the license. She glanced at it absently and tossed it on the dresser. I gave her a cigarette, took one myself, lit them. She dropped into the chair by the writing desk and said, “Ralph Booker was my stepfather.”

“You heard?” I decided the bed would hold me and sat on it.

“After you left, they let me go in the bedroom,” she said. “I was listening to the radio, hoping to get those awful people out of my mind, when the announcer interrupted with a news flash.” Anne shivered a little. “There was no one in the living room, I could hear the men talking in another part of the house. I just picked up my things and walked out. I caught the first bus I saw and it brought me downtown. I walked around for a while, wondering what to do, and then decided to register at a hotel.”

“You picked a good spot.”

“Oh, I feel such a fool,” she said tearfully. “I had no idea what I was doing. I walked into it blindly and trustingly, and I had no right or reason to trust him.”

“Tell me about it.”

“I want to. Those men are after you; and the police are looking for you, the announcer said. If it hadn’t been for me...”

“Cheer up. These things happen in my business.”

Anne crushed her cigarette in the desk tray and fastened her eyes on a vanishing hummingbird in the pallid wallpaper. “My mother was a registered nurse,” she said. “My father had been dead six years when she met Ralph Booker. He was a lung patient in the hospital where she worked and, for reasons I’ll never understand, she fell in love with him.” She was speaking laboriously, with a catch in her voice. “Ralph was in terrible pain at the time, perhaps pity grew into love. Anyway, he was operated on successfully, one lung was removed and my mother married him shortly afterwards.”

Anne reached for another cigarette. I lit it for her and snuffed out mine.

“I suppose Ralph received no more drugs while he was ill than any other patient, but he grew too fond of them. A slight cold, a business setback, anything, became an excuse to seek relief in narcotics. It became a habit. Mother worried and coddled him, even fought with him, but it was no use.” Anne shook her head, dropped her eyes to the floor. “We couldn’t find out where or how Ralph got the stuff. We did know he was paying extravagantly for it. He was squeezed out of his business finally, and was forced to take a salaried job with Mayflower, a company he organized himself.”

I asked, “Before that, what business was he in?”

“Sungate Investments,” she said, bitterness creeping into her voice. “Ralph started the company from scratch. Later he took in his attorney, Ashton Brubaker, as a partner. It was Mr. Brubaker who forced him out. Think of where he is today.”

“He’s somewhere, all right.”

“Mother hung on to Ralph, always hoping he would straighten out. When I was ready for college she dug into her savings and sent me to UCLA. I could have gone to Cal or Stanford, but mother wanted to get me away from the unwholesome atmosphere in our own home.” Anne frowned at her cigarette. “She died two years ago, just before I graduated, sick with worry and helplessness over Ralph. She wasn’t fifty years old.”

“After UCLA I took a position with a Menlo Park attorney and moved there,” she continued. “From time to time Ralph called and asked me to have dinner with him, or to attend one social function or another. I always accepted. Petty and weak as Ralph was, I knew mother would have wanted me to help him. I was his only family and I think our meetings, going out in public together, gave him a big lift.”

“I can see that.”

“On Wednesday he came down to Menlo Park himself,” Anne said “He told me that one of his salesmen, Robert Donaldson, had disappeared without a trace, and some valuable designs and patterns had disappeared with him. He told me Donaldson might be trying to sell out to a Mayflower competitor, or he may have met with an accident, but it was imperative he be found. Because of the publicity which would result if he had done anything dishonest the company wanted to soft pedal his disappearance and by-pass the police. It was Ralph’s personal responsibility.” She sighed resignedly, put out her cigarette. “He outlined his plan: I was to impersonate a non-existent ex-wife and employ you to find him. It seemed like a harmless ruse then. I agreed and arranged for time off with my boss. You know the rest.”

“You’re damn lucky his plan failed,” I observed. “If Mortola’s hoods followed me to Donaldson, you and I would be the leads to what happened to him later.”

“They wanted to kill him.”

“Yeah, they did. Ralph Booker was a pawn in a giantic narcotics’ operation. Murder is a mere business detail to them.”

“I was a fool,” she said bitterly.

“I don’t believe your step father realized you were in danger. He probably thought Donaldson and I would be taken care of quietly and you could return to Menlo Park in complete innocence.” Anne refused a cigarette, I lit another. “That seems to be the original plan. Later, when things got involved, Ralph Booker was eliminated because he wouldn’t stand for what they were doing to you. How did you happen to leave the hotel this morning with Benny Lufts?”

“He called at the hotel and said Ralph asked him to drive me home. He took me to Mortola’s instead and held me prisoner.”

“Your stepfather may not have known about that.”

“I’d like to think so,” Anne said wistfully. She added, “They’re planning to find out from you where Donaldson is located, I overheard them talking this afternoon. If you haven’t led them to Donaldson by eight o’clock, they expect to beat it out of you.”

“What happens at eight?”

“They’re having some kind of meeting. I overheard Mortola say that a shipment came in this afternoon and they’d have to get things straightened out before they could move it.”

“A shipment of heroin?”

“I don’t know. Whatever it is, they’re pretty excited about it.”

“Where are they meeting?”

“It sounded like Danzee’s, or Danzer’s.”

“Danzig’s, the Green Slipper?”

“Possibly.”

“That’s a break,” I said, getting up. “I’m going to leave you now, for awhile. I’m afraid you’ll have to remain here in your room though, tough assignment.” I squeezed her shoulder lightly. “Don’t leave under any circumstances.”

She smiled bleakly. “I’ll stay.”

Nine

I made two phone calls from the lobby of the hotel. The first was to my office, where a cop was still stationed. Jack Holland hadn’t turned up yet. I filled in Hilda on the latest developments, and asked her to pass them on to Jack when he arrived.

“Yes, Mr. Ottomeyer,” she said.

I dialled police headquarters and asked for Inspector Stroth, homicide. A gruff voice said, “Inspector Stroth speaking.”

“Hello, Hank. This is Bill Sweeney...”

“You son of a bitch, we’ve got a bulletin out on you, as if you don’t know. Where the hell are you?”

“Take it easy, Hank. I called to tell you about it,” I said into the phone. I began with my first visit to Ralph Booker and sketched in all the picture I had.

When I finished Hank snapped, “Come down to the Hall.”

“Let me play it my way. They need me bad, Hank. I’ll just walk into the Green Slipper tonight and see what happens.”

“You’ll get yourself killed,” he said. “No special loss, but we need you to finger these guys. Come down to the Hall.”

“Admit one thing, Hank,” I argued. “The most important guy in this setup is Brubaker. We have evidence on everybody but him. We don’t even know if he’ll show at the meeting. Only way we can trap him is for me to walk in there alone and declare my hand.”

“What is your hand?”

“The best. They can’t do business for Donaldson with anyone but me, and I won’t do business with anyone but Brubaker.”

“All right,” Hank said grudgingly. “Go ahead, I’ll be watching the Slipper. Seems to me they’ve got a room upstairs and a direct rear entrance, used to shoot craps up there at one time.”

“Yeah,” I said. “And Hank, will you call San Francisco’s finest off my back? I’d like to go home for a minute.”

“Go ahead, Bill. I’ll cancel the bulletin on you.” He hung up.

I left the hotel, nursed two bottles of beer through the next half hour in a nearby bar, then drove over to my apartment. I decided the time had come to strap on my shoulder holster. There was an assortment of weapons in the safe at my office. Why didn’t I go there?

I opened the door of my apartment and stepped inside, reaching for the wall light switch. The lights were snapped on before I found it. Frankie Mortola used his free hand to slam the door. In his other hand he held a .45 service automatic pointed at my belt buckle.

Ashton Brubaker, a neat white haired man in an oxford gray suit, was sitting in my reading chair. He was petting a black homburg in his lap and watching me gravely through sharp brown eyes. Like his pictures in the financial and society pages, he looked like a man any widow could trust with the life savings. He had a cherubic face with sparse white eyebrows, a Roman nose and full red mouth. His complexion, a credit to his barber, was soft, smooth and pink. His manicurist could take a bow too. His pink hands could easily advertise toilet soap for milady. With him in it, my apartment looked shoddy.

“Mohammed has come to the mountain, Sweeney,” Brubaker said in a cool, well modulated voice.

“Hello, Mo,” I greeted. “How can I be of service?”

“Sit down,” he commanded. When I dropped into a chair he proposed, “Let us begin by saying that you know the whereabouts of some people I am most anxious to see. You are going to tell me where I can locate these people. If you do so immediately, you will be rewarded with a fair sum of money in compensation for your efforts. If you don’t do so immediately... Well, you will eventually, and your only reward will be in the hereafter.”

“You have it all figured out.”

“Nicely.”

“Who are these people you’re looking for?”

“Don’t be evasive,” Brubaker advised sternly. “We are speaking, as you know, of Robert Donaldson, his lady friend, and Ralph Booker’s daughter.” His tone flew further north as he added in a hard cold voice, “I want them, you know where they are. I’m going to get them.”

“How much is this fair sum?”

“Five thousand dollars.”

“Considering you’re in a billion dollar business, that’s rather cheap.”

Brubaker frowned and stared at his manicured nails. He lifted the sharp eyes to Mortola inquiringly. Mortola shrugged.

“I know a lot, Brubaker,” I said. “You control a number of supposedly legitimate enterprises through the Sungate Investment Company. You import heroin, transport it up and down the coast, cut it and distribute it. You control what is probably the biggest illegal holding company in the country. Under the circumstances, five grand is short of the mark.”

Brubaker regrouped his features for bargaining, asked, “What would hit the mark?”

“One hundred thousand,” I told him blandly. “Now, tonight. For that I turn over all I’ve got.”

“Surely you don’t expect me to have that much money in cash.”

“No, but I have an idea. Suppose you give me the equivalent of a box of Bassey’s special brand of candy, say a kilo of heroin, for security. That’s worth more than a hundred grand to you. I’ll hold it until you come up with the cash.”

“Another impossibility,” Brubaker said. “We don’t keep the merchandise around, you know. We get rid of it as fast as it arrives.”

“You have plenty of it on hand now, and you can’t get rid of it through regular channels until Donaldson and friends are decommissioned.”

Brubaker directed another inquiring glance at Mortola. This time the ugly man spat, “The broad, Mr. Brubaker. She must’ve had her ear bent to the door while we was talking and then gone to him with it.”

“You’ve bungled every single thing today, Frankie,” Brubaker’s mouth curled contemptuously at his aide. He turned to me, “I sent Booker’s daughter to you, because you have a reputation for getting things done and I want Donaldson badly. You have done much more than I thought. So you’ve found the girl and learned we received a new shipment today. Do you know where the shipment is?”

“No.”

Brubaker laughed sourly. “It was a silly question.” He said to Mortola, “Give me that cannon.” Mortola handed him the .45 shakily, stood dumbly in the center of the floor until Brubaker ordered, “Now get on the phone. Change the rendezvous. Tell your men to get the stuff out of there and hurry it up.”

The heavy weapon looked ludicrous in Brubaker’s small pink mitt, but lethal enough. Brubaker began to laugh mirthlessly. The joke was on me, I knew.

“I agree to your terms, Sweeney,” he said over the sounds of Mortola on the telephone. “You were right about our having a supply on hand. A surprise shipment arrived this afternoon as a matter of fact. We’ll drive over and consummate our transaction, if that’s agreeable to you.”

“That’s agreeable,” I said. “Where are we going?”

“To my home,” he said, smiling icily.

“Your home.”

“My home,” he repeated.

Ten

They drove me to a rambling wooden mansion on Pacific street, a columnar, corniced affair shuddering in the thickening fog. As we pulled into the driveway the searching beacon on Alcatraz island in the bay below winked imperatively. Benny Lufts, unpleasantly surprised to see me, admitted us to a high ceilinged foyer in which you could have promoted jai-alai games. He ushered us into a thick carpeted library with a red brick fireplace, two draped French windows and walls completely lined with books.

“What, no butler?” I asked.

“The servants have been given the evening off,” Brubaker apologized.

The large, brightly lit room was comfortably furnished with two chesterfields, arm chairs and cocktail tables grouped around the fireplace. There was a flat maplewood desk and swivel chair in one corner. A small brown skinned man with a dry, wrinkled face sat in an overstuffed chair beside the fireplace. As we came in he placed a brandy glass on the table beside him and stood up. He moved lithely, like a jockey, to Ashton Brubaker and shook hands.

“And this is Sweeney,” Brubaker offered, turning to me. “Sweeney, meet Senor Ramero, one of my associates.” The brown skinned man eyed me curiously with flashing eyes as he gripped my hand. Brubaker said, “I’ll fix a drink. Benny, bring Syd and Eddie right in when they arrive.”

I sat in the mate to Ramero’s chair when he reseated himself. Mortola sat on a chesterfield.

“I have heard of you, Mr. Sweeney,” Ramero said with a bare remnant of some south of the border culture. “I have heard you are a very clever man.”

“Thank you, Senor.” I was weighing the availability of the andirons alongside the fireplace. With Hank Stroth geared for the Green Slipper I needed help from somewhere. When Brubaker distributed the drinks I asked, “Just get into town?”

“This afternoon,” Ramero said with a parchment smile.

Brubaker sat on the edge of a chesterfield. “Senor Ramero has personally engineered the shipment we talked about,” he said admiringly. “While the politicians were arguing and cutting throats in Guatemala, the senor calmly and efficiently raided their drug supplies.”

“We are talking openly,” Ramero cautioned.

Brubaker waved his glass expansively, “We’re making Sweeney a member of the firm, Senor Ramero. He knows too much, holds too many key cards for us to do otherwise.” He winked crudely at the other man as I tilted my head away to sip my drink. “Sweeney is holding some of our people for ransom, so to speak, and we are going to exchange a kilo of merchandise for their release. Additionally, I think he would be an asset to our organization. Don’t you agree, Senor?”

Ramero stared thoughtfully at the white haired man for a moment, then said, “I understand you, amigo. It is a wise decision.” Brubaker beamed into his glass.

“I could easily replace this tub of nerves,” I proposed, indicating the sweating Mortola. He half rose and Brubaker motioned him back. I added, “I’m surprised you tolerate hop heads in an operation this size, gentlemen.”

Brubaker frowned at the fidgeting Mortola. He said, “Frankie is a before and after picture. Originally, he had no use for drugs...”

I interrupted, “But you made them available and attractive, so he’d fall into the trap and your hold over him would be tightened. Like Ralph Booker.”

Mortola lunged off the chesterfield and I moved out of my chair quickly. Caught off balance, he steadied himself on the chair arm and straightened up, coming after me like an angry ape.

“Stop.” Ramero demanded in a voice so low it startled us. “Please sit down again, both of you.” He held a snub nosed 38 on us. We returned to our seats respectfully and he buried the gun somewhere inside his coat. “This is a time for words,” he explained briefly.

Chimes echoed in the deep foyer outside the library. Benny Lufts stuck his head inside the door. “They’re here, Eddie and Syd.”

“Tell ’em to bring the stuff in,” Mortola clipped. He cleared half the space on the cocktail table between the two chesterfields. My friends, Eddie and the bandaged Syd, entered. Eddie carried a small black satchel.

“You here, you bastard?” Syd thundered at me. The adhesive strips on his face reflected light and made his eyes look eerily chalked.

Eddie opened the bag and transferred five chamois pouches to the cleared space on the cocktail table. When he finished Brubaker said, “Now get out. Wait in the hall.” He turned to me and said coldly, “There it is Sweeney, five kilos of pure heroin, eleven pounds in all. It was originally destined for our candy maker, but now we will have one bag less.”

“Until you reach the bank in the morning,” I corrected.

I took a bag off the table and unwound the leather thongs which bound it. Inside the black, treated lining I saw the crystalline white mass, the tiny particles which transformed healthy men into degenerate cripples and swelled the cash boxes of perverted bloodsuckers. I retied the pouch and replaced it on the table, asked, “All the way from Guatemala?”

“Via airplane, pack mule, horse and truck,” Brubaker bragged.

Ramero grinned, “Followed by Cadillac.”

“Now for your end of the bargain, Sweeney. Where are Donaldson and his friend and the Booker girl.”

“I’ll take you to them,” I offered.

“We’re not fools. Tell us where they are and we’ll get them.”

“Mrs. Sweeney didn’t raise any stupid children either, Brubaker.”

Ramero stretched out his legs in the overstuffed chair. “We seem to be at an impasse,” he said calmly. “May I make a suggestion. Let Mr. Sweeney phone these persons and we will listen in on the extension. He can direct them here on a pretense. When they arrive we will complete the transaction.”

“I don’t like the idea of their coming here,” Brubaker said.

“It’s dark and foggy,” Ramero advised. “No one will see them arrive. It is the best way, I think. Mr. Sweeney?”

“I agree on one condition. I’ve got to be cleared on the Ralph Booker rap.” Mortola who had been sitting back listlessly, started as I spoke.

Brubaker hedged. “That wasn’t our agreement.”

“Take it or leave it. A hundred grand won’t do me any good with the cops looking for me.” Brubaker beckoned to Mortola and they retired to the far corner of the room and whispered at each other. When they were seated again Brubaker said, “Very well, Sweeney. The hypo Eddie used is in the glove compartment of the Buick. We’ll arrange to have him found with it after the deal is closed.”

Mortola had regained his bulllike poise and scowled self-confidently. I nodded agreement and went to the phone on the desk in the corner. Brubaker followed and picked up a second phone, flipped a switch on its base. His brows shot up when I called a Moraga number and Max Wendell answered.

“Hello, Max. How are my two clients?”

“Nice kids, Bill. They’re doing the dinner dishes.”

“Put Donaldson on the phone will you?”

Donaldson sounded excited. He asked immediately, “Is everything okay?”

I told him it was and gave him the Pacific street address. I said the police were here and wanted to ask him and Miss O’Rourke some questions.

“I’ll tear right over,” he shouted his relief.

“Don’t get picked up on the bridge for speeding,” I cautioned, hoping he would. It was eight-forty by my watch. The trip should take him slightly more than half an hour.

My next call was tougher. “Beckett Hotel,” a switchboard operator announced, as if she were proud of it. She rang Anne’s room several times before it was answered hesitantly. I gave Anne the address on Pacific street and asked her to come over.

“But you told me not to leave the room under any circumstances,” she said in a scared voice.

“There’s been a change in plans.”

“All right, I’ll call a cab. You’re sure it’s safe?”

Brubaker put his hand over the mouthpiece of the phone I was using. “No cabs,” he said harshly. “Tell her to stay where she is. Tell her you’ll pick her up.” He removed his hand.

“Never mind, Anne,” I said. “Stay where you are, as I said. I’ll drop over there and get you.”

When I replaced the receiver Brubaker took a phone directory from a drawer of the desk and strode across the room to Mortola. “Your hooligans haven’t been able to follow Sweeney across a street,” he blurted out in a high voice. “Do you think they could do a simple job like going to the Beckett Hotel and picking up Booker’s daughter?” When the big man nodded, Brubaker threw the phone book in his lap. “Look up the address and get her then.” As Mortola left the room he wiped his forehead with a silk lapel handkerchief.

I returned to my chair and gulped the remains of my drink. Ramero watched me with bright eyes as Brubaker replenished our glasses. “A satisfactory conclusion to a hard day’s work,” he toasted. Brubaker snickered and raised his glass. I drank to that.

Mortola came back and stood glaring down at me, the big meat-hooks at his side clasping and unclasping spasmodically. “You’re all mine, Sweeney. I’m gonna squeeze that neck of yours till the apple pops out.”

“I must ask you to be seated again,” came from Ramero.

Brubaker barked, “Sit down, Frankie.”

Mortola turned sullenly. “Why wait? We got what we wanted.”

“Wait for the others,” Ramero told him drily. “You will have one big meal.”

Eleven

At five minutes past nine we heard the screech of brakes in the driveway. Mortola, peering through one of the French windows, said, “Foggy as hell out there. It’s the Buick.” He turned, adding, “They got the broad with ’em.”

When the chimes sounded Mortola went to the library doors and flung them open. He hesitated in the doorway a moment, then leaped back drawing the .45 from inside his coat. He fired it twice through the doorway, then crouched against the side of the wall as his shots were answered.

Ramero managed to get the gun halfway out of his coat before I jumped him. It exploded into my shoulder, almost deafening me, as his chair overturned and we fell to the floor grappling. We struggled fiercely to the loud cacophony of stacatto shots echoing and reechoing in the tall rooms. My right arm was useless and I couldn’t hold off Ramero. He hit me across the ear with the gun, kicked himself away and sprang to his feet like a cornered lynx. As I lunged up at him I knew he’d be able to fire the .38 before I made it, but his hand sagged miraculously and he slumped to the floor amid a burst of gunfire. I sprawled over his twitching body.

“It missed the bone,” Jack Holland diagnosed. We were sitting on the chesterfield and Jack was inspecting the wound in my arm. He looked very chic in a tight linen dress and a wide saucer hat with a red ribbon on it.

“Mrs. Holland, I know your son Jack. How is he?”

“He’s fine and dandy,” Jack said, “and he just saved your bloody life. When you didn’t show at the Green Slipper by eight o’clock, Hank Stroth left his men there and we tailed the hoods in the Buick up here. When they left again to pick up the girl we ran ’em in on the burglary charge. Our client lent me this rig. Hank and Sergeant Purdy switched clothes with Syd and Eddie, and escorted me here in the Buick.”

“Thank God for that.”

“I had an idea you’d be pleased. I was pretty sure you were inside.”

The library still smelled of gun smoke. The late Senor Ramero lay on his side on the floor, the 38 gripped tightly in his brown hand. Over by the door, Frankie Mortola sat against the wall with blood on his face and coat. Ashton Brubaker sat dreamily on the chesterfield, as if he had never moved. I said, “That leaves Benny Lufts.”

“He’s dead. Mortola hit him firing at us.” Jack looked regretfully at the gasping man in the doorway. “Mortola will live.”

“Good,” I said. “He’ll sing his head off when they cut his supply of hop.”

Hank Stroth, in pink shirt, gray suit and hat, entered the room. He had just met Robert Donaldson and Doris O’Rourke, and sent them home. “You take some chances, boy,” he growled at me. “What happens if these people come over here and there’s no police around?”

“I knew there’d be cops,” I explained, “since I told this whole story to you, a man of experience, keen powers of observation and a high degree of intelligence.”

Hank started to say something, but glanced at Brubaker and checked himself. Instead he said, “The whole coast has been alerted since you phoned me — police, sheriffs, state and government narcotics’ agencies. I just radioed the go ahead. Well swoop down on every mother’s son of them before morning.”

The ambulance crew came in and fussed with Mortola.

“The ambulance is outside,” Hank snapped at me. “Go on, get in it. I’ll have a long talk with you later about the way you’ve handled this case.” He stomped across the room and jerked the dazed Brubaker to his feet, clapped the cuffs on him in almost the same motion. Hank hit Brubaker across the face with his open hand and clipped, “Wake up, bigshot. Time to holler for a lawyer.”

I watched the attendants struggle to place the wounded Mortola on their stretcher. He had passed out, but even in repose his fat face scowled. Defense attorneys wouldn’t be heckling me much at this trial. Frankie Mortola was going to talk and talk and talk.