The Case of the Vanishing Beauty

by Richard S. Prather

  "That's where the smog comes from," I said. "You, and guys like you, smoking dried leaves and llama dung."

  He bit into the cigar and lifted his upper lip. "Hah. Takes a real man to smoke one of these."

  "Takes a real man to watch one smoked. What's the inside on this Press guy?"

  Sam looked at me. "How's the hand?"

  "Not bad. Doc fixed it up. Didn't bleed at all, hardly."

  "Umph. Should have been your throat. Well, we wired those prints to the FBI—nothing here in the files—and they check back that they belong to Walter Press, supposed to have been killed in an accident in September of last year. Over a year ago."

  "Supposed?"

  "Yeah. They find him in his car at the foot of a cliff, burned all to hell-and-gone. Identified by rings, car, personal belongings. That kind of a deal. Which is why his prints weren't in the dead file. Yeah, I know what you're gonna say—it could have been somebody else." He ran a hand through the fringe of his iron-gray hair. "If it wasn't somebody else, how the hell did his prints get on that glass?"

  An idea started growing. "This Press. What did he look like?"

  Sam picked a paper off his desk and read briefly from it: "Walter L. Press. Description: Male, White, American, thirty-nine years, five feet seven and one-quarter inches tall, hundred-thirty pounds, medium complexion, brown eyes. He's bald, with a fringe of brown hair, and he has no identifying marks or scars. What's that give you?"

  The idea stopped growing and went away. "Nothing," I said disgustedly. "Not a thing. Give me that height and weight again."

  Sam rolled the ash from his cigar into a big glass ashtray. "Five-seven and a quarter, hundred and thirty pounds.. What you think, Shell?"

  "I'm damned if I know what to think." I lit a cigarette and played with ideas for a couple of minutes. "Sam, either Press was the guy in the car or he wasn't. Brilliant, huh? Anyway, if he was, then how the devil those prints got on a glass in Narda's room, I can't figure. If he wasn't the guy, it still doesn't add up fight. What else you got on Press? You said he was a con man. How about that?"

  "Well, we've been doing a lot of checking since the dope came from the FBI—trying to make it fit. Not much so far, but we know from the information we picked up that he worked the confidence games, made a few touches—none of 'em very big. He wasn't an especially good operator, it seems. It looks like he got in some kind of a jam. Can't get the straight of it yet, but he was working with another character and they made a big haul. Got a lot of dough from some guy. The pay-off is, Press skips with the load, the whole roll."

  "Interesting. Then he's found dead, huh?"

  "Not yet." Samson stuck out his heavy jaw and grinned, his cigar sticking up at an angle past his nose. "Not often I get a chance to surprise you, Mastermind."

  "Oh, you're going to surprise me now?"

  "Maybe."

  "Surprise away and be damned."

  "Walter Press is the guy that originally started what they call the Inner World Society of Truth Believers."

  "The hell! Explain it."

  "Not much to explain. We get it little by little, and we'll get more, but that much is sure. Not much else. It stacks up like so: Press was some kind of a gum-game artist, a salesman. Then back around the middle of summer—that's last year—he pops up with this IW Society. Right around then, too, he makes this touch with some other guy—don't know who, yet—and doesn't split."

  "And then he has an accident and gets all burned up."

  "Something like that. But don't jump to conclusions, Shell. We don't know the exact dates of anything except when he's supposed to have died."

  "When's that?"

  "September twelfth. Last year, up in Oregon."

  I said, "How about some of the people Press knew? Guys he worked with or ran around with, or people that started this IW racket with him. A little chat with some of them might be real interesting."

  "Funny thing about that, too. Seems like Press went along with this cult thing a while, and then, bang, he gets rid of everybody connected with it. We talked with one of the gals—woman named Lucille Stoner. That's where we got the dope about Press firing everybody. We're looking for a couple of the local men he's supposed to have worked with on the con games.

  I got the three names from Sam, including the woman's address, and we chewed it around some more. While we chewed it, I briefed Sam on everything that had happened to me up till now, except my swiping Narda's registers, which he didn't know about. Well, almost everything. Stuff concerning the case, I mean. We always wound up guessing about those prints, so I stubbed out my cigarette and stood up.

  "Time I was moving, Sam. Thanks for the info. I've got some ideas, but I've also got a feeling they all stink. Figured I was coming along pretty good for a while there." I thought a minute. "Say, this little guy, Press—you know if he ever operated down in Mexico?"

  "Uh-uh. Not so far as we know. What's that got to do with it?"

  "Nothing, I guess. Just an idea."

  Sam ground out his cigar and leaned back in his chair

  "I'm picking up this Narda," he said. "We'll find out who the hell he is then—and what those two hoods were doing out at his place. You should have spilled that sooner, Shell."

  "Yeah. Uh, Sam. I got something cooking. If you can hold off a little, I'd like to go out with you when you pick him up. I'll be back up here later if you can wait. It might be important. Won't hurt anything, will it?"

  He frowned. "Guess not. What you thinking?"

  "Hell, I hardly know myself right now. But I'll come back in later. O.K. by you? Maybe I'll have something."

  He was still frowning; but he said, "O.K. Only don't wait all night."

  I beat it.

  Chapter Fourteen

  I WAS SO HUNGRY I was shaking like a butterfly with delirium tremens. I stopped in Mike Lyman's and ordered prime ribs of beef au jus. While I worked on the shrimp cocktail, left-handed and awkward, I tried to make sense out of everything that had happened since Saturday. I didn't get very far. Always pieces missing, something off key. It was making me dizzy.

  The prime ribs came and I lost myself in the delicious morsels and succulent juices. Before I was half through, I knew one order wasn't going to be enough, so I flagged the waiter and sent him off for more. It was one-thirty before I was back in the Cad, but I felt as if I could wrestle gorillas.

  I drove back down to Broadway, took a left past Fourth, and swung in behind the Hamilton Building. I parked and went up to the office.

  There wasn't anybody there, and the gal at the PBX in the employment office down the hall told me nobody'd left word for me, but I did have some mail. None of it was important except the message from Mr. Martin. It wasn't a letter, just an oblong slip of paper signed by Cornell Martin: a check made out to me for ten thousand dollars. I hoped I was earning it. I addressed a stamped envelope to my bank, scribbled a note that I stuck in with the check, left the envelope with the gal at the PBX, and was off to see people.

  The people I wanted to see are the backbone of any kind of investigation—official, unofficial, private, what have you. Informants. Guys who got around where they might pick up information I could use. Some of them were personal friends of mine; some of them were just willing to pick up a buck the quickest way. Nearly all of them came in handy one time or another. I almost struck out, though, before I had any luck.

  I was trying to find either or both of the guys Sam had told me were at one time associated with Walter Press of the fingerprints: Fred Vincent and Foster S. Matthew, known to his friends as the Cardboard Kid. Why "Cardboard," I never did find out. I talked to bootblacks, bartenders, bookies, runners, waitresses, waiters, and more. After an hour I'd found a couple who knew one or the other, but not where I could find them. Then I stopped at Lucy's, a little cocktail spot on Hill Street. The far end of the bar was empty, so I walked down there and climbed on a stool. Lucy was wiping glasses with a clean white towel. He saw me, draped the towel over his shoulder,
and came over.

  Lucy is a big, fat Italian with a round, pink face like Santa Claus with no beard, and dingy teeth about the size and color of postage stamps, glue side out. His name is Lucieri, but nobody ever calls him that, at least not on Hill Street.

  "What you know, Shell?" he said, and showed me the postage stamps in a huge, gluey grin. "What you say?"

  "Draw me a beer, Lucy. I'm dry. I'm tired of walking."

  "You lookin' for somethin', hey? Hokay. A minute."

  He drew me a cool-looking beer and waddled back. "What you want, huh?"

  "Know a guy named Fred Vincent, or one called the Cardboard Kid?"

  "Sure. Know 'em both. Whatsa matter?"

  I'd heard that much already today, so I let some of the cold beer trickle down my throat before I asked him, "Where'll I find them?"

  "This Cardboard Kid—he's a guy named Matthew—you no gonna find. He's a dead one. He tries a heavy rackets when things get tough, and boom, he's inna morgue. Vincent, he's round. In here two, three days back. Got lotsa dough."

  I perked up on the stool. "Where's Vincent now?"

  He shook his head. "Dunno. Blowin' the roll, most like. Hey, he come in with this little jockey, this Waiter Duprel. Know him?"

  "No."

  Lucy fished under his apron for the stub of a pencil and wet it against his tongue. "I give you his address. He's not workin' right now. On a suspension or somethin' like." He scribbled the address on a bar check and gave it to me.

  It went like that for another forty-five minutes and a hundred bucks. Legwork. Shoe leather. Run around, ask questions, go nuts. From Lucy to Walter the jockey to Cookie Martini to Johnny Wolfe. But finally I found out where Vincent was. He'd been blowing a roll and he was still blowing. Wolfe told me I'd probably find him in the back room of the Lords and Ladies, 'a private club where people with loose cash played bridge or pinochle or canasta out front, and roulette, craps, and the ponies in back. Wolfe gave me a card he said would let me in.

  The Lords and Ladies didn't look like a club where gambling might be going on. It was an old-fashioned-looking building on Jefferson Boulevard, about half a block down from Grand Avenue. Stone steps ran across the front of it, and at the top of the steps were three cement columns like you see in front of courthouses. The entrance was two solid oak doors that swung together in the middle and were always closed unless somebody was going in hopefully or coming out disillusioned. I'd never been inside the place, but I'd heard about it.

  I walked up the stone steps, glanced at the little gilt sign over the doors giving the name of the club, and pushed the conspicuous buzzer. A little guy in a tux let me in the front part without any trouble, but without the card and the name of Johnny Wolfe I'd probably have had to wrestle the gorillas Mike Lyman's prime ribs had made me feel equal to. The gorillas being two long-armed, short-brained mugs who protected the portals to the back room.

  Short Brain on my right glanced at my bandaged right hand but didn't say anything. He took the card from my left hand and squinted at it. I could almost see him spelling out the letters.

  "Johnny Wolfe," I told him. "He said I could get in O.K."

  He kept on spelling, then glanced at me. "O.K."

  I wondered if he knew any whole words. I stuck out my hand for the card, but he folded it into a fist like a Swift's Premium Ham and said, "I'll keep it."

  I shrugged. I wanted in more than I wanted to wrestle.

  For three-thirty in the afternoon, the spot was getting a good play. About ten well-dressed men and women stood around the roulette wheel spinning in the middle of the room, and another half dozen concentrated on one of the two crap tables near the right wall. Other games were on the left, and a circle of quiet guys played poker at a felt-covered table in back.

  I got twenty bucks' worth of green chips from the cashier—four chips—and stepped up to the roulette table. I dropped one chip on the layout under the first column of figures—that's the column of twelve numbers headed by one, with four, seven, and so on underneath—and looked around while the croupier spun the wheel. I didn't have too good an idea what Vincent looked like, so I had to find someone I knew that might tell me, or else ask a perfect stranger.

  The ball fell into number 26 and I watched my green chip go the way of most of the others on the layout. I tossed another green under the first column. The ball clicked into 17. Bye-bye. Another chip. Seven this time; I was back with four chips, where I'd started. No way to get rich.

  Somebody said, "Hey, Shell," in a soft voice at my side. I looked around and down at the pinched face of Irv Coward. He ran a tip-sheet service from, but not limited to, L.A., and he made enough to hang around places like this in the afternoon. The injustice. Back in my horseplaying days, before I got cured by just the kind of tips he put out—plus my own selections and, finally, my own system that just couldn't lose—I'd even played a few of his choices at the track. Naturally, when they won, as occasionally they did, he got the results of a five-dollar win play from me. When they didn't win, as they usually didn't, I got nothing from little Irv. Somehow, it didn't seem quite cricket. We'd got to be friends, though, in spite of the horses.

  "What's the tip, Irv?" I grinned at him. "And when you going to break down and tell me you tipped ten horses in every race?"

  "Uh-uh. Never did. Never did. Look, Shell, that's not why I stopped you. I got a tip, all right, but it's no good. C'mere." He grabbed my sleeve and pulled me over to a corner. "There's a wiper out for you, Shell. A real bad guy. He means it, from what I hear, and he's hotter than hell. Guy named Seipel. I couldn't grab what it was all about, but I know he's gunning for you."

  "Thanks, Irv. It's O.K. Nothing to worry about."

  "The hell. This guy means it. Far as he's concerned, you're good as lost. I picked it up last night. I tried to get in touch, but you been nowhere."

  "He's dead," I said. "But thanks for the tip, Irv. How's about selling me a couple selections?"

  He wiggled his head back and forth. "The hell. I tell you because I don't want you lost, see? That's all. No selections." He screwed up his lips, looked up at me, and said slowly, "He found you, huh?"

  "Yeah. He found me. Say, you know Vincent?"

  "Fred Vincent?"

  "Yeah."

  "Sure. You want him?"

  "Where is he? He here?"

  "Sure. Roulette. He can't win. He's over at the bar now. The big redheaded guy."

  "Thanks, Irv. Thanks a hell of a lot." I started for the bar.

  "A cipher," Irv said behind me. "A nothing."

  I wondered if Vincent would spill anything. Confidence men as a class are personable, intelligent men that know their way around, and which side of the bread has the butter. Among grifters, those men who make their living by using their wits instead of guns, the con man is the acknowledged top dog. And he should be. He couldn't exist if his suckers, or marks, weren't larcenous themselves, and looking for the "best of it." Well, either he'd talk or he wouldn't, depending on how he sized me up and how he felt.

  I ordered a bourbon and water and turned to the redhead. "Can I buy you a drink? I'm going to try to pump you. O.K.?"

  He turned and faced me squarely, a big, good-looking, almost handsome man about forty-five. He grinned widely. "I'd be glad to accept the drink. I can't say I'll cooperate on the other matter, though."

  "Good enough." I bought him a rye and soda and walked right in. The nearest occupied stool, was halfway down the bar, so we were safe from big ears. I said, "I understand you once knew a man named Walter Press."

  He lifted expressive eyebrows. "Press? Press? I can't say I know anyone by that name."

  "I'll put it to you straight, Mr. Vincent. My name's Scott. Sheldon Scott. I'm a private detective. I'm working on something in which Press may be involved. I'm stumbling around half in the dark, and anything I can find out about him may help. I want to know what kind of a guy he was, trouble he might have been in, anything." He pursed his lips. "You know my name?"

>   "Sure." I grinned. "I know your name, your occupation, that you knew Press, worked with him. Hell, I spent all afternoon just hunting you down."

  "Indeed. Well. Assume, Mr. Scott—merely assume—that I should know a Mr. Press, and could tell you something about him. Isn't there some possibility that telling you might, well, reflect on me?"

  "Not a chance. Unless you had something to do with that accident he had a year or so back." I grinned when I said it.

  He frowned.

  "Besides," I went on, "like I said, I'm a private detective. Ninety per cent of the information I get on most of my cases comes from asking people questions, or from dope that's given to me voluntarily by people who know I want the information and will pay for it or do them a turn if I get the chance. Sometimes they're just friends of mine. But the point is, Mr. Vincent, if I let it be known where I got the information, who told me what—even one time only—I'd be out of business. I wouldn't have a chance of getting a peep out of anybody. So I can't afford to let anyone worm that dope out of me or beat it out of me. It's been tried."

  He looked directly at me, twirling his glass slowly on the bar. "I see," he said.

  "All I want's the background," I told him. "It goes no farther than me. But I have to know, myself, or I can't make sense. I don't want affidavits, written statements. All I want is to know, myself, what's cooking."

  I stopped and swallowed part of my drink. He didn't say anything. I put my drink back on the bar and said, "Look, Vincent. I'm not looking for any stem-court juice or anything like that. I don't want to give you any trouble at all. Anything you tell me stays with me. My word's good—it's got to be. Here." I pulled my identification, license, and papers out of my pocket. "These show I'm Scott. You want to check on me, O.K. I just don't have much time. And this doesn't concern you, personally, at all. Christ, Vincent, how the hell long do I have to work on you? You want some of my blood?"