Shills Can't Cash Chips

Chapter Nine

We gathered in Bertha’s office: Frank Sellers, chewing on a fresh cigar, smugly satisfied with his cleverness; Bertha Cool, gimlet-eyed, cautious, playing them close to her chest; and Lamont Hawley, calm, dignified, reserved, quite evidently wishing to keep out of the whole mess as much as possible.

“All right, Pint Size,” Sellers said. “This is your party. You’ve called it. Start addressing the chair.”

He grinned at Bertha Cool.

Bertha Cool’s eyes blazed back at him. “The idea of you trying to pin a murder on Donald Lam, Frank Sellers!” she stormed.

“He’s trying to pin it on himself,” Sellers said, “and the more wading he does, the deeper in he gets. It’ll be over his head pretty quick.”

“I’ve heard you talk that way before,” Bertha said, “and by the time the smoke blew away Donald was right and you were riding along on his coattails to get a lot of credit you didn’t deserve. What’s more, that damn cigar of yours stinks. Throw it away.”

Sellers said, “I like the taste of it, Bertha.”

“Well, I don’t like the smell of it.”

“I’ll take it out if you want.”

“Well, take it out!” Bertha stormed.

Sellers got up and started for the door.

“Hey, wait a minute. Where are you going to throw it? There’s no place to throw that cigar out in—”

“Who said anything about throwing it?” Sellers asked innocently. “You said you wanted me to take it out. I was just going to take it out.”

“And take yourself with it?”

“Why, sure.”

“You sit down in that chair,” Bertha Cool said, “and you can listen for a minute and not be so damned smart. Now Donald, what the hell is this all about?”

I turned to Lamont Hawley. “You didn’t get the Ace High Detective Agency on the job?”

“No. I told Mrs. Cool all about that.”

“Why did you get me on the job?”

“I see no reason for going into that all over again, Lam, particularly in the presence of witnesses and since anything I say here may be repeated in the press.

“I don’t mind telling you — both of you — that my company looks with considerable disfavor on the inevitable publicity which will result from retaining you to investigate this accident.

“As you may be aware, and can readily understand if you give it any thought, we don’t court publicity in these matters and—”

“That’s a lot of double-talk,” I interrupted. “Why did you get us in this case instead of using your own investigative setup?”

“I’ve explained it a dozen times,” Hawley said.

“Try making it thirteen,” I said. “Sergeant Sellers might be interested.”

Hawley sighed patiently. “Sergeant, I don’t know how you feel about this but it seems to me Mr. Lam is sparring for time.”

“Let him spar,” Sellers said. “We’ve got lots of it. And he’ll have lots of it. Maybe a life sentence — if he’s lucky.”

I said to Hawley, “We’re waiting.”

Hawley said, “We felt that an outside agency could perhaps give us better coverage.”

I said, “Come again.”

“You heard me,” Hawley said.

“I heard you,” I told him, “and it didn’t make any sense. You wanted an outside agency for some reason. Was it because you were afraid of a libel and slander suit?”

His eyes narrowed.

“Was it?” I asked.

Hawley started to say something, then changed his mind.

Sellers, who had been watching Hawley with the shrewd eyes of a cop who has seen lots of people under interrogation, said, “You don’t like notoriety, Hawley. I think you’ve had a fair question Why not answer it here instead of at the D.A.’s office with the newspapermen hanging around the door looking for information and wondering why your insurance company got dragged into the thing?”

Hawley flushed and said, “That is one of the annoying features of this whole case.”

I said to Sellers, “My best guess is that the thing got too hot for them to handle. They had to make accusations against Holgate and they didn’t want to take the responsibility of doing it. It was worth some money to them to have an independent agency stick its neck out.”

Sellers turned to Hawley, took the cigar out of his mouth and pointed the end at him. “Anything to it, Hawley?”

Hawley, who had been doing a lot of thinking, suddenly changed his tactics. “There’s nothing to it in the way he expresses it, Sergeant. However, I will say this. Certain things about the way the claim for injuries was handled by Vivian Deshler led us to believe that we might be dealing with a professional setup.”

“What do you mean, a professional setup?”

“Well, the symptoms were listed with great detail, and in the offer of settlement which she submitted the itemization of the various amounts of pain and suffering and nervousness, the description of the symptoms and all of that, led us to believe we might be dealing with a malingerer.”

“Just because she made a claim?”

“It was the way the claim was made. Our adjuster had been a little bit undiplomatic and had made a statement, in the presence of witnesses, which bothered us. It could have been the foundation for some sort of action unless he had been able to prove his insinuation, and apparently there wasn’t much chance of doing that with the information we had available at the time or felt we could get with reasonable luck.”

Sellers turned to me. “That answer your question, Pint Size?”

“It detours it,” I said.

“All right,” Sellers said. “Let’s go on from there. What’s your next answer?”

I said, “The next answer is, there wasn’t any accident.”

“What do you mean, there wasn’t any accident?” Lamont Hawley said. “Of course there was an accident. We checked the garage that repaired Holgate’s car and we checked the garage that repaired the Deshler car. They even had a part of the Deshler fender that had been removed and the paint that was on it came from Holgate’s car. You’re going to have to do better than that, Lam.”

Sellers grinned and said, “Keep squirming, Lam. I like to watch you. You’re like a trout I landed last summer, a great big trout. I got him in the net and he fought like hell. He squirmed and flopped and thrashed his tail around but he wasn’t getting anyplace. He was in the net.”

Sellers chuckled at the recollection.

I said, “Don’t you see it yet? There wasn’t any accident. Carter Holgate got drunk. He started in with cocktails on the night of his secretary’s birthday. That gave him a good start. He went out someplace to dinner and got loaded. He came back and got involved in a hit-and-run accident and didn’t dare stop because he was drunk. So he made a clean getaway. But he’d smashed his car somewhat and he had to do something about that.

“He knew Vivian Deshler. My best guess is that Vivian had been involved in some other whiplash injury case, either herself or someone whom she knew pretty well. She knew that once the whiplash had been established, it was almost impossible for any doctor to give an accurate check on the injuries.

“So Holgate came to her as soon as he got sobered up enough to do some thinking. That was probably around midnight. He told her, ‘Look, Vivian, I’m in a jam. Let me hit the rear end of your automobile. Then we’ll fix up a synthetic time and a place where the accident happened, preferably sometime late in the afternoon but before I’d had my first cocktail. You can claim a whiplash injury and file a suit against me. I’ll pretend that I don’t know you, that you’re a perfect stranger but I will shamefacedly admit liability. The insurance company will have to pay off. I’ll get out of my jam on hit-and-run driving, you’ll have a perfect whiplash injury case against the insurance company and—’ ”

Lamont Hawley snapped his fingers.

“It registers?” Sellers asked.

“You’re damned right it registers,” Hawley said. “Now I’m beginning to get the picture. By God, the guy’s right!”

Sellers grinned. “Don’t swear,” he said, “ladies present.”

“You’re damn right, ladies are present,” Bertha said, “and let’s cut out the horseplay. What do you know about all this, Hawley?”

“We don’t know, but it begins to fit together,” Hawley said. “We made a routine check to try and find witnesses to that crash and we couldn’t find any. Of course, Holgate’s story was straightforward and we didn’t pay too much attention to that end of it. The thing that bothered us was the way the Vivian Deshler claim was made out. It had been made by some very shrewd attorney who knew all the ropes, or else by someone who had been— So that’s it!”

I said to Bertha Cool, “Ask Elsie to come in here.”

Bertha rang my office and Elsie Brand came in.

“How are your books on unsolved cases, Elsie?” I asked. “Do you have anything on hit-and-run cases within the last two or three months?”

“Lots of them,” she said. “Volume G, classification two hundred. Do you want to see it?”

“I want to see it.”

She looked at me apprehensively for a moment, then started for the door, turned, gave me a reassuring glance over her shoulder and was gone.

“What the hell are you doing, running a crime library?” Sellers asked.

“Something like that.”

“He’s putting in a hell of a lot of time on it,” Bertha said. “That is, that moon-eyed secretary of his is.”

“I don’t get it,” Sellers said, “unless you’re trying to run competition with the police department.”

I said nothing.

Sellers chewed on his cigar and said, “Of course, it could be bait. Whenever we catch you off first base, you try to tie in what you’re doing with some case the police are interested in and want solved. We give you a lot of leeway because we think you may turn up with something we want. Come to think of it, you’ve pulled that trick in the last couple of cases.”

Sellers’ eyes narrowed. “You know, Lam,” he said, “that’s the trouble with you. You’re a pint-size and it’s awfully damned easy to underestimate you.”

Elsie Brand was back, breathless with excitement and with the book under her arm.

“Here it is, Mr. Lam,” she said, and bent over me. I could feel her breath on my cheek.

She put the book on my lap and her left hand gave my arm a re* assuring squeeze.

“Something about the thirteenth of August,” I said. “Have you got them dated?”

Her nimble fingers turned the pages. “Here we are,” she said.

“Was there a hit-and-run on August thirteenth?”

“Yes, yes. Right here!”

I looked at the clipping, then passed it over to Sergeant Sellers. “There you are, Sergeant,” I said. “On the highway between Colinda and Los Angeles, a car weaving around the road sideswipes one car, goes out of control into a bus stop, kills two people and keeps going. All attempts to trace the car futile.”

Sellers said, “I’ll just ask a couple of questions. Elsie, you’re this guy’s secretary.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Was this scene rehearsed?”

“What do you mean?”

“Was it on the up and up? Did he play it straight? Had you told him about this hit-and-run before?”

“Oh, no, sir. I hadn’t even noticed it before, myself. I simply kept the scrapbooks.”

Sellers turned to me. “You got any evidence that ties into this picture, Lam, or are you just playing it by ear and had a lucky break?”

“I have evidence that ties into it,” I said. “The accident was supposed to be at three-thirty but I can produce a witness who will swear that Holgate’s car was undamaged as late as four-thirty in the afternoon. This bus stop hit-and-run accident took place at six-twenty.”

Sellers said, “That’s not in my department, but I’ll bet the traffic boys would sure as hell like to clear that one up. We don’t like to have these hit-and-run drivers get away without being caught. It gives too much encouragement to drunk drivers.”

Hawley said suddenly, “Here, wait a minute. Holgate is our client, Lam. He’s covered with our company. You’re getting us out of the frying pan into the fire.”

“I don’t make the facts,” I said. “I uncover them.”

Hawley said, “This is uncovering something we aren’t going to like.”

Sellers looked him over for a moment and said, “You wouldn’t want to compound a felony, would you?”

“No, no, of course not.”

“Well, if Lam is right about this thing, we’d better find out about it and you’d better give us all the co-operation necessary.”

“Yes, Sergeant,” Hawley said. “I was only commenting on an obvious aspect of the case.”

“Well, don’t comment on the obvious,” Sellers said. “It isn’t necessary.” He looked at me and started chewing on his cigar.

“Well?” I asked.

“I just don’t know about you,” Sellers said. “Once you start talking, you charm the birds out of the trees and— Hell, I just don’t know.”

Sellers looked at the account again, then went over to Bertha Cool’s telephone, picked it up, dialed a number, said, “Sergeant Sellers talking. I want to speak with Captain Andover in Traffic.”

A moment later he said, “Bill, this is Frank Sellers. I’m on the line of something that may clean up a hit-and-run accident that took place August thirteenth between Colinda and Los Angeles. A couple of people killed in a bus stop around six-twenty — drunk driver.

“Now, you got any witnesses that could give us any help there?”

Sellers listened for a while and said, “Now, don’t get me wrong. I just said I was working on something that might, just possibly might, give us a lead on cleaning that up... Look, I’m going to drive around there after a while. I’ll have someone with me. You get everything lined up.”

Sellers hung up the phone, looked at me and shook his head. “Every time I think we’ve got you on the ropes, you come bobbing up behind me somewhere. Now dammit, Lam, if you’re taking me for a ride on this thing, I’ll... well, I’ll give you something you won’t forget in a hurry.”

Sellers looked at his watch, looked over at Bertha and said, “I told an officer to have Chris Maxton, who’s Holgate’s partner, brought in here. Now, I’m going to have to leave before he gets here but when he comes I want you—”

The phone rang.

Bertha picked it up, said, “Hello,” listened for a moment, then turned to Sellers and said, “They’re here now.”

“You have them come right on in,” Sellers said. “We’ll just take time to button up this angle before we go any farther.”

Bertha said, “Send them in,” and hung up the phone.

The door opened. One of the officers who had been at the airport stood on the threshold and said, “Come on in, Maxton.”

The man who came in was the heavy-set man I had met at Elsie Brand’s apartment, the one who had given me the two hundred and fifty dollars.

He looked at me, said, “You two-timing crook!” and started forward.

Sellers shoved out an expert foot and tripped him.

“Back into line, Buddy,” Sellers said. “You don’t like him? What’s the matter?”

“Don’t like him!” Maxton yelled. “The cheap crook! He took me for two hundred and fifty bucks.”

“Tell us about it,” Sellers said.

“There isn’t anything much to tell,” Maxton said. “My partner—”

“What’s his name?”

“Carter Jackson Holgate.”

“All right, go ahead.”

“Well, my partner was involved in an automobile accident and I wanted to find some witnesses. I put an ad in the paper—”

“Use your name?” Sellers asked.

“No, it was just a box number.”

“All right, go ahead.”

“I put an ad in the paper offering two hundred and fifty dollars for a witness who had seen the accident. This cheap crook sent me a letter saying he had, and gave me a telephone number. He was supposed to be the brother of some woman named Elsie Brand, who has an apartment here in the city. He was supposed to be visiting her. He told a convincing enough story and I handed him two hundred and fifty bucks. Then I found out the accident didn’t happen that way at all and he’s a liar, he didn’t see it.”

Sellers looked at me.

“Why did you want a witness to the accident?” I asked.

“You know why. Because you always want witnesses to accidents.”

“Your partner was insured?”

“Of course he was insured. It’s partnership insurance. We wouldn’t drive any of the cars without having insurance on them, public liability and property damage up to the limit.”

“And your partner admitted that the accident was his fault?”

“Well, what if he did?”

“Well, why did you want witnesses?”

“I don’t have to let you ask questions.”

“And,” I said, “after your first ad for a hundred dollars didn’t bring forth a witness, your next ad ran for two hundred and fifty dollars.”

Maxton turned and said to Sellers, “You’re an officer?”

“That’s right.”

“All right, you seem to be in charge here,” Maxton said. “I don’t have to let this crook cross-examine me.”

“Well, I’ll ask you the same question myself,” Sellers said. “Why did you increase the ante?”

“Because I wanted to find a witness.”

“Why?”

“So there wouldn’t be any question about what had happened.”

“You knew the insurance company had hired a detective agency?”

“Hell, no. I was just trying to get things straightened out.”

“Your partner know you put the ad in the paper?”

“Of course he— Well, I don’t know that he knew, no. We pull together all the time. It was a close partnership, and Carter knew that I would help him any way possible.”

“You know where Holgate is now?” Sellers asked.

“No. He hasn’t been in the office and police have been out there looking the place over. It was robbed last night but I don’t think that had anything to do with this— Or did it?”

Maxton whirled to look at me.

Sellers jerked his thumb at the officer and said, “Take him out. Don’t tell him anything for a while.”

“Say, what’s all this about?” Maxton asked. “What — I came up here to prosecute a crook for obtaining money under false pretenses. You’re acting as though I might be charged with something.”

Sellers simply jerked his thumb at the officer.

“This way,” the officer said to Maxton, and took him by the arm.

Maxton started to hold back. The officer increased the pressure and Maxton went out.

Sellers chewed on his cigar.

“This is the damnedest case,” Hawley said irritably.

Sellers said, “Come on, Pint Size. We’re going places.”