Shills Can't Cash Chips

Chapter Six

Bertha Cool opened the door of her apartment as soon as I rang. She had on pajamas and her hair was in curlers. She was mad.

“Now will you tell me what this is all about?” she demanded as I entered the apartment and took a chair. “Why in hell can’t you go to the office, tap this stuff out on a typewriter and have it so I can show it to the client in the morning?

“Or, the way that damned secretary of yours looks at you with those puppy-love eyes of hers, she’d probably welcome the opportunity to have you get her out of bed and start dictating. Or you might not have to get—”

I interrupted. “This thing is too hot for anything like that, Bertha.”

“What’s hot about it?”

“I’ve been made.”

“By whom?”

“The Ace High Detective Agency.”

“What the hell are they doing cutting in on our case?”

“They’re not cutting in on our case. They’ve got a case of their own. They were hired to keep Doris Ashley under surveillance and to check on everything she did.

“So when I showed up on the scene and started watching her car, the Ace High operative picked me up and reported to the client, whoever the client was, on long-distance telephone.”

“Somebody here?” Bertha Cool asked, her eyes narrowing.

“I said long distance, Bertha. This is a dial operation now from Colinda. Here, take a look at this.”

I handed Bertha the Ace High report.

“Fry me for an oyster!” Bertha said when she had finished reading. “Do you suppose, Donald, that Lamont Hawley had another agency working on the case and— How did you get this, Donald?”

I told her what had happened.

“Then Hawley must be double-crossing us.”

“How else would the Ace High have been on the job?” I asked.

Bertha Cool’s greedy little eyes started snapping. “That’s it, Donald,” she said. “That’s what happened. The s.o.b. got two detective agencies, the Ace High and ours, and played one against the other. The Ace High people had been on the job for several days and hadn’t got results, so someone told the Consolidated Interinsurance people about you and how you could handle women and that explains why they terminated the employment of the Ace High people as soon as they found out you had made a personal contact with Doris Ashley.”

“Whatever the reason,” I told her, “let’s have a showdown on this thing. I don’t like being played for a sucker. I don’t like to have a client give me only part of the facts.

“Let’s get Lamont Hawley in the office and hand it to him straight from the shoulder.”

Bertha said, “That’s the spirit, Donald!”

She suddenly started blinking her eyes. “Wait a minute, Donald. We don’t have anything to support our claim except this report of the Ace High people, and of course Hawley is going to want to know how we got hold of that and—”

“Don’t tell him how we found out,” I said. “Let him wonder.”

Bertha thought that over, then suddenly her face wreathed in smiles.

“I’d just like to see that s.o.b.’s face, Donald. Here he is trying to play one detective agency against the other. He’s had the Ace High people trying to make a contact. They get nowhere. We come in, make a contact first rattle out of the box and then the next thing he knows we find out all about the other detective agency and his instructions to them. That’s going to curl his hair!”

“All right,” I told Bertha. “Now the question arises, where did that report come from?”

“You told me you got it out of Holgate’s office.”

“All right, how did Holgate get it?”

“He— Fry me for an oyster!” Bertha said, and lapsed into silence.

“He got it from some woman,” I said, “who came to the office. And shortly after that someone got into the office and a general fight started. Holgate and the woman were mixed up in it or else the man who came in and started the fight had a woman with him.”

“How do you know?”

I told her about the shoe.

“She’d have gone back and got that shoe,” Bertha said. “A woman can’t walk with high heels on one foot and nothing on the other.”

“Perhaps she kicked off the other shoe,” I said, “and went in her stocking feet.”

“She could have,” Bertha said, “if for some reason she felt it was dangerous to go back to get the other shoe. All right, what happened then? There was a fight. Who won?”

“The intruder won.”

“How do you know?”

“Because he just about wrecked the office looking for something.”

“This report?” Bertha asked.

“This report, hell,” I said. “This report was left there and there’s a damned good chance this report was taken there by the intruder, whoever he was.”

“How do you figure that out?”

I said, “The intruder came to the office. He started talking with Holgate. Then he pulled this report out of his pocket and handed it to Holgate for him to look over. That probably started the fight. The office was pretty well wrecked. This girl was in on it because she hit someone over the head with her purse and bent the frame on the purse, at the same time spilling the contents of the purse to the floor.

“When she left, she left the purse because it was bent and wouldn’t close, but took the things she wanted to take with her and probably wrapped them in a towel.”

“Why a towel?”

“There was a lavatory off the office and there weren’t any towels on the rack, but there was one towel that had been jerked to the floor.”

“Well,” Bertha said, “they can’t tie any of that in with us.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “That’s the thing that bothers me.”

“Why does it bother you?”

“Because this car drove up while I was there and some man came in the office. He could have been a night watchman. It could have been police. I don’t know who it was. I jumped out the window and made a getaway. He took after me and I outdrove him to a point where I could double back and throw him off the trail.”

“Well, you got away from him.”

“Suppose he got the license number of the automobile?” I said. “I’d left the rented automobile and was driving the agency car that’s registered in our names.”

“What the hell did you do that for?” Bertha asked. “My God, if that man got the license number—”

“I was cutting down on expenses,” I said.

Bertha glowered.

I grinned at her.

After a while Bertha said, “Don’t we have to report something like that to the police?”

“Something like what?”

“Where a man’s office has been broken into and—”

“How do we know it was broken into?” I said. “The office door was open. It’s a public place. Probably Holgate invited the person in.”

“Well then, the place was wrecked and papers were stolen and—”

“How do we know papers were stolen?” I asked her. “Someone was looking for something in the files and was rather careless in the way he conducted his search. He didn’t pull the filing drawers out and put them back, he pulled out one drawer after another and after they were all out the weight of the papers in the open drawers shifted the center of gravity so that the whole filing case toppled over. When it did, the papers spilled out and the person who had been conducting the search pushed the filing cabinet back into an upright position and that was all. How do we know he took anything?”

Bertha thought that over.

“In other words,” I said, “we don’t know any crime has been committed and there’s no reason for us to report a crime if there hasn’t been any crime.”

“You’re a brainy little punk,” Bertha said. “I wouldn’t dare to skate on that thin ice but if you think you can get away with it, go to it.”

“The point is,” I said, “I want to know what happened to Holgate.”

“What do you mean?”

“Did he wait until the intruders, whoever they were, had left and—”

“Don’t call them intruders,” Bertha said. “Call them visitors. I like this idea of yours that it’s a public office and that Holgate probably invited them in and tried to sell them a lot.”

“All right,” I said, “when his visitors departed, did Holgate take off after them or—”

“Sure, he took off after them,” Bertha said. “His car was gone. You said that when you drove up there, there weren’t any cars at all.”

I nodded.

“Well, he didn’t walk out to the place,” Bertha said. “He had his car there. The visitors left in their car and then Holgate left in his.”

“Before or after he called me?” I asked.

“Probably before,” Bertha said.

“Let’s hope so,” I told her.

“You don’t think so?”

“I don’t know, Bertha. Since they know who I am, this thing may get a little ticklish. I think we should call Lamont Hawley. Do you have a night number where you can reach him?”

“Hell, no,” Bertha said. “He didn’t give me any night number. This was supposed to be respectable business. He gave me a private number but I don’t suppose—

“My God, Donald, I don’t know what it is about you. Every time you start working on a case the damned thing blows up into some kind of an emergency and every now and then there’s a corpse.”

“Well, let’s hope this is the then,” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“If it’s a corpse now,” I told her, “it could be bad business.”

Bertha blinked her eyes. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about what would happen if it should turn out there was a corpse.”

“Who do you mean?”

“Holgate.”

“Don’t be silly.”

“What’s silly about it?”

Again Bertha blinked her eyes. “Dice me for a carrot!” she said.

There was a moment’s silence, then Bertha said, “Wait a minute. You’re just talking about somebody seeing the license number on your automobile. But what about fingerprints? You went out of there in a hell of a hurry. You must have left—”

“I left fingerprints all over the place,” I said. “Don’t be silly. I’m going to fix that.”

“How? You can’t go back and wipe all the fingerprints off. You don’t even know all the places where you put your hands.”

“Of course not,” I told her. “I’m going back and leave more fingerprints.”

“How come?”

“That’s one of the oldest gags in the book,” I told her. “If you can’t get rid of your fingerprints at the scene of a crime, make some excuse so you go back when you have a witness with you. Then you touch everything in sight. When the police find a fingerprint there’s nothing on it that tells when it was made. The only time element on this one is the powder cake out of the compact. I got that on my fingers and then touched things. I want to be sure to go through that routine again when I’m out there the second time.”

“And when’s that going to be?”

“Right now,” I told her. “Now, look, Bertha. Get busy and try and locate Lamont Hawley. The guy has a telephone somewhere, and the insurance company has some kind of an investigative service that has a night number. Get hold of Hawley and tell him what the score is.

“You can keep this report from the Ace High agency. I don’t want to have it with me. There’s one clue there. Notice that a part of the second page has been torn off, but there’s an expense account there with a long-distance bill of a dollar and ninety cents. And the woman’s shoe that I found out there was sold in Salt Lake City. So I have an idea you’ll find the telephone call was made to Salt Lake City and that’s where the client was living. As soon as the Ace High client found out I was a detective, she grabbed a plane and flew on to—”

“She?” Bertha asked.

“The shoe,” I said.

“Oh,” she said. “You’re taking too much for granted, Donald. I still think it’s Lamont Hawley.”

“I’m beginning to think it may be a woman in Salt Lake,” I said. “Anyway Hawley should know about what’s happening now.”

Bertha said, “Dammit, I was just getting comfortable! I got that damn girdle off and now I’ve got to struggle into it again. I wish to hell you could work cases the way other people do. There’s no reason on earth why we couldn’t build up a respectable, decent agency with the right kind of clients and—”

“You’ve got the right kind of a client now,” I told her. “That is, you told me he was the right kind when you closed with him.”

“Well, I’m not nearly as sure now as I was a couple of days ago,” Bertha said. “If he’s hiring one detective agency and then hiring another — fry me for an oyster, I’ll fix that bird!”

“All right,” I told her. “He’s all yours. Fix him.”

I crossed over to Bertha’s telephone, dialed information and said, “I want the number of Lorraine Robbins of Colinda, please.”

Information said, “Just a moment,” and a short time later gave me the number. “It’s three-two-four, nine-two-four-three. You can dial it from your phone.”

“Thanks,” I said. I dialed the number and after a moment heard Lorraine Robbins’ voice, calmly efficient, saying, “Yes?”

“Lorraine,” I said, “this is Donald Lam.”

“Oh, yes, Donald.”

I said, “I have to see you tonight on a matter of the greatest importance.”

“Oh, now really, Donald,” she said, “when I handed you that line this afternoon I was kidding.”

“What line?” I asked innocently.

“I told you that I might give you a lot... Look, Donald, it’s late and I’m going to bed and... I don’t like men who have to take half the night getting their nerve up to—”

“This is business,” I said. “This is something that’s tremendously important to you and to your employers.”

“Can’t it keep until office hours?”

“It can’t keep.”

“What do you want?”

“I want to talk with you.”

“All right,” she said, “I’ll fall for the gag. But now look, Donald, I’m going to tell you something straight from the shoulder. If this is a gag you’re using as a build-up, you’re going to be wasting an awful lot of time.

“I don’t want to have someone ring me up at this hour of the night and tell me it’s an emergency business matter and then use the contact as an excuse to start making passes. You’re four hours late for passes; no cocktails, no dinner... If you’re intending to make passes, say so right now and—”

“It’s business, Lorraine,” I told her. “I wouldn’t have bothered you otherwise.”

“I don’t know that that’s so flattering.”

“At this hour, I meant. I’d have called you earlier.”

“Well, why didn’t you?”

“I was busy.”

“You’re doing better all the time, Donald,” she said. “I was just going to bed. I’ll be waiting up. Do you have the address?”

“No.”

“It’s the Miramar Apartments. Two-twelve.”

“I’ll be there.”

“How long?”

“It’ll take me a little over half an hour. I’m calling from the city.”

“I’ll be waiting.”

I hung up and saw Bertha’s speculative eyes surveying me. “Who was that?”

“Lorraine Robbins,” I said. “She’s secretary to Holgate and Maxton, the subdividers.”

Bertha shook her head. “You sure as hell cover ground,” she said.

“That’s what I’m paid for,” I told her virtuously.

“With women,” Bertha added dryly.

There was no use trying to answer that so I walked out and pulled the apartment door shut behind me.