The Chinese Doll

Chapter 12

Liebscher got the car out of the parking space, jockeyed around a stalled streetcar and shot towards town as fast as he dared, speed laws considering. The ramshackle appearance of his jitney belied the power under the hood.

Long ago Liebscher had developed the nervous habit of watching the street ahead with one eye while the other remained glued to the rear-vision mirror. It wasn’t a habit that made for sane driving because it was only a figure of speech; both eyes must move in unison. But under the present circumstances I was the last man in the world to complain of the habit.

We were both extremely happy to leave the neighborhood of the theatre.

“You sure put yourself in some of the damndest spots, chum,” he confided after a while. The tension had left him.

I said, “I wonder who that man was?”

“Didn’t you meet him? I saw only the back of his pants as he entered the doorway.”

“Heard him coming. Ducked into the empty.”

Traffic was better organized downtown and he swung the old car into line. After a while he suggested, “Rothman will be back in the office by now, let’s pick up some beer.”

He put the car in a twenty-five cent parking lot, told an attendant named Ollie to put it on the cuff, and we walked to the street. There was a tavern on our left. We stopped in for the beer which Liebscher paid for, and he led the way to their office, just around the corner from the tavern and up a flight of stairs.

“Convenient,” I mentioned to him.

He grinned, and because his arms were loaded, kicked the office door open.

Rothman was in. Rothman looked like a bona fide movie sleuth. He owns a derby hat he once snitched from the body of a minor gunman, and he constantly wears it, indoors and out, winter and summer. He had it on now. His theory was that the hat had brought death to its rightful owner and that therefore its mission in life was fulfilled; he could wear it with a kind of superstitious safety.

Rothman was sitting on the edge of his desk, swinging one leg. There was a limp, cold cigar in his hand.

He started the cigar to his mouth, stopped, looked at the sack Liebscher was carrying, and said, “Beer.”

“I hope so,” Liebscher retorted.

“Hello, Horne.”

“Hello. How’s the wife?”

“She talks too much.” He put the cigar in his mouth.

“Wait,” Liebscher chimed in, “until he starts talking.” Meaning me, of course. “He almost put his foot in it.” Liebscher produced a bottle opener from the desk drawer and began opening bottles.

Rothman said curiously, “Well?”

“Well what?”

“What did Evans want with you?”

“Nothing much — just bail him out of jail.”

“After what, for what?”

“After he got himself arrested for shoplifting— Now wait! Don’t throw that; I’m telling it straight.”

Rothman set the bottle down slowly.

I gave it to them, the whole story as I knew it. I told them what happened, or what I supposed had happened, in neat chronological order. Not the jumbled way the mess had at first appeared to me (for I had gotten into it in the middle of the picture), but from the beginning, from the very first reel up until the present moment.

“That sounds phony,” Liebscher cut in at one point. “Evans has a square rep around this town.” Rothman shushed him and opened another bottle of beer.

The both eyed me intently when I told them about my unexpected interview with the gambler in his office, and of driving by the lake later, and seeing the girl skating on the ice. I pointed out that I had believed Leonore when she said she was a good skater, and I will believed it. But the girl on the lake was doing a bad job of it.

Their interest changed when I mentioned Dr. Saari.

Later on, I stopped and asked Liebscher a question. “How did you know where Eleanor lived?”

“Easy. I know my way around that neighborhood. The Chinese colony — or parts of it — hangs out there. I’d previously seen this Eleanor coming out of that apartment, so I knew her when I saw her emerge from Ashley’s office building while you were upstairs talking to Ashley. I guessed she’d go home.”

“We’re running out of beer,” Rothman complained.

“My guess,” I continued, ignoring him, “is that Eleanor and her boyfriend — the man I almost met on the stairs — moved into the apartment when Evans and Leonore were no longer around to use it. There’s probably a lease, or the rent is paid well in advance, something like that.”

“We can damned soon find out. How about some more beer?” He looked at Liebscher but held out his hand to me. I put a dollar into it and Liebscher gathered up the bottles.

“No more dirt until I get back,” he warned. “Don’t want to miss nothing.” He dropped a bottle at the head of the stairs and it bounced without breaking all the way down to the street.

“That’ll remind him of a corny story,” I said.

Rothman just sat there sucking his thumb and trying to puff on the unlit cigar. From where I sat neither of them looked appetizing. Finally he broke the silence.

“There are some big holes in the story.”

“Don’t I know it! But name some — maybe they haven’t occurred to me.”

“For one thing,” he objected, sticking up a finger, “I don’t see Evans breaking off a happy love affair just because an accident occurred.”

“I’ve thought of that.”

“And two, I don’t see him writing a note or asking for the return of the bracelet. Especially the bracelet with that gimcrack engraved on it. That’s what is known as kicking a girl in the teeth after she is down.”

“Check, again. Eleanor didn’t see the note but she said it was in Evans’ handwriting.”

“Hell, it could have been forged. And three, I think Evans looked in on you for some other reason, real or imagined. He asked me for a reliable man in Boone. If he was afraid of a bastardy charge it would have been filed in Croyden; not in your town. And that wouldn’t have aroused his fear of a frame-up; that was too real. No — Leonore’s condition had nothing to do with his anxiety. His trouble was something he thought was about to happen in Boone — hence, you.”

“Yeah, but what?” My throat was dry and I wondered what was keeping Liebscher.

“I dunno,” Rothman shrugged. “And I can’t see, right now, where this Ashley fits in. Why should you phone him about Evans’ jailing? If Evans trusted him there would have been no need of those careful instructions he gave you. If he didn’t trust the attorney, why have you phone him at all?”

I stood up and walked to the window. Liebscher was coming along the sidewalk below me with another armload of beer.

“Let’s say Evans and Ashley were in some kind of business with the mutual friend,” Rothman rambled on. “The gambler friend of yours. Now suppose Evans decided to get out? Here’s this unexpected event showing up at home — I mean at Leonore’s — and he thinks the time has come to go straight; to get the hell out of his racket partnership and take care of Leonore and the kid right. But hell — where do your police fit into it? Do you have crooked cops?”

“Nope. The only man on the force I don’t trust is the chief. He swiped my license when it expired.”

“Why don’t you inquire into his background? It may be a useless pastime, but if you can find anything on him at all, you can force him to renew your license.”

Liebscher had reached the doorway to the stairs. He carefully set down his load on the bottom step and bent over to tie a shoelace.

“It strikes me,” I said over my shoulder, and idly wondering why Liebscher was wasting time with a shoelace, “that if Evans wanted to get out of something, or if the gambler wanted to get Evans out, it could be done in a friendly little family way. What’s the sense in tossing Evans into jail on a trumped-up charge? Why couldn’t — what the hell is the matter with you!”

Rothman had jumped off the desk and hurled his prized derby to the ceiling. It fell unheeded on the floor.

He was staring at me, open-mouthed.

Liebscher pushed through the door, staring at me with a queer expression on his face.

Rothman whirled on him, pointing a finger at me.

“You should have heard what this guy said,” he exclaimed. “What he just said—”

“Never mind that,” Liebscher interrupted briskly. “You should see what this guy has just done to us!”

We were all on our feet.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Take a look down into the street. In the doorway of that bakery across the street. We’ve got a shadow.”

Louise: Hazel just walked in with the lunch tray and asked for her pen back. She’s promised to let me have it a while again this afternoon.