Dames Don’t Care

by Peter Cheyney

  I stop the car behind some old broken down adobe wall that runs away from the end of the garage, an' I look up at the windows an' case the place. I can't see any lights an' I can't hear anything. I keep in the shadows an' I get around by the wall until I come to the windows on the side of the dance floor an' in about two minutes I am inside.

  The place is dark, but there are big patches of moonlight here an' there. I listen but I can't hear anything, an' I ease over to the bar, get over it, an' start workin' on the door of the storeroom behind the bar. I get this open an' go in. Mter I have closed the door I switch on the flash that I have brought outa the car an' go over to the ice safes. I look in 'em both an' I see that Sagers is gone. I thought he would be, because whoever bumped him would get him moved before the club opened again.

  Over on a shelf in the corner is some botiles. I go over an' look at 'em, an' I see one is a bottle of tequila that has been opened. I sit down on a box an' take a swig at this bottle, an' although the stuff is durn strong it is better than no drink at all.

  I sit there with this bottle in my hand flashin' the torch around an' wonderin' why I had this hunch about comm' back to see if they'd moved Sagers. I mighta known they woulda done this. While I am thinkin' about this the light flashes on a garbage can in the corner. Stickin' out from under the lid is what looks like the corner of a letter. I go over an' take the lid off an' stan lookin' at the rubbish inside. There is all sorts of junk in this can, an' I turn it over With my foot.

  All of a sudden I turn over what looks like a photograph that has been torn in two. I take the two pieces out an' put them together. The picture has been cut out of a newspaper an' underneath it I can see the caption that is indistinct because it has been folded over.

  I take this picture back to the box an' sit down an' have a look at it under the flash. I get a sorta idea that I have seen this guy in the picture before. Then do I get a start? I am lookin' at a picture of myself cut out of a newspaper. I straighten out the caption an' read it. It says Portrait of a G-man. Exclusive picture of Lemuel H. Caution, the Federal Agent who brought in the Yelltz kidnappers.

  Then I remember. This was a picture of me published in the Chicago Times two years ago after the Yelltz case. I remember how burned up I was at havin' my face in a newspaper so's every durn crook would know me on sight.

  Round at the side of the picture on the plain edge of the newspaper is some writin'. I look at it close. It says 'This is the guy.'

  I get it. Now I am beginnin' to understand a thing or two. It looks like somebody has sent this picture of me along here, an' written on it 'This is the guy' so's somebody would know me when I got here. I reckon that somebody back in New York, who knew I had been put on this case sends this picture along here so that the guys this end will know that something is goin' to happen.

  And this is why they killed Sagers! It hits me like a bullet. When I blew into the Hacienda Altmira the first time they knew who I was. They was wise to my act with Sagers. So they guessed he was workin' with me, an' when he told 'em that night that he was scrammin' to Arispe like we arranged, they bumped him. They thought he might know a bit more than he did an' they aren't takin' any chances.

  An' if they'll bump Sagers, well, I reckon they will bump me if they get the chance.

  I take a spot more tequila an' start doin' a little concentratin'. Who would be the guy who would get this old newspaper an' cut the picture out an' send it out here so's they would be waitin' for me? Wouldn't it be the same guy who went to the trouble of writin' me that anonymous note in New York so as to get me out here after the letters that Henrietta had got? You bet it would.

  This guy knows about the letters. He fixes to get me out here after 'em. In doin' this he knows that he must be puttin' the idea in my head that Henrietta bumped Granworth Aymes an' he also takes the trouble to send a picture out to somebody here so's they'll know I'm me.

  An' what is the big idea behind all this? Is it to get me out here because it will be easier to rub me out in this place - easier than anywhere else?

  I get up off the box. This counterfeit case is beginnin' to look sweet an' interestin' to me. It is gettin' so tied up that in a minute I shall think I done it myself.

  But way back in my head is an idea that I'm goin' to work on. The idea that it was this secretary bird Burdell who sent me that anonymous letter so's I should get out here an' get next to Henrietta, an' maybe start something that is goin' to end up with her bein' pinched on a first degree murder charge. An' if I am right about this what is he doin' it for? Is he doin' it because he thinks that he is helpin' justice that way or because he's got some reason for wanting to put Henrietta on the spot?

  I take another swig at the tequila an' I put the picture of me back in the garbage can - which is where a whole lot of crooks would like to see me too - an' I scram. I get outside an' get the car goin' an' I slide back in the direction of Palm Springs, because I think that it is time that I got busy on this case. I reckon that if nobody else won't start anything then I had better start something myself.

  When I get back to the Miranda House Hotel I find a telegraph waiting for me. It is coded an' is in answer to the one I sent to the 'G' office in New York asking for information about the people in Granworth Aymes' employ at the time of his death. It says:

  Aymes employees as follows stop. Langdon Burdell secretary in service seven years now carrying on Ayrnes business under own name New York stop. Enrico Palantza butler at apartment in service four years present location unknown stop. Marie Therese Dubuinet maid to Mrs Henrietta Aymes now in service Mrs John Viaford New York stop. Juan Termiglo chauffeur service three years present location unknown stop. Despatching to you photographs Palantza Dubuinet and Termiglo within two days stop.

  This don't tell me very much an' between you an' me I didn't see just then that havin' pictures of these guys was goin' to do me much good neither.

  I light a cigarette an' I do some thinkin'. I reckon that just for the moment I ain't goin' to do much good around here. Whether Henrietta decides that she is goin' to hitch up with Maloney or Fernandez ain't goin' to get me no place.

  Another thing is that I wanta have a little conversation with this guy Burdell. I reckon he can tell me a coupla things I would like to know, an' if he can then I reckon that I am comm' back here to start something good an' proper.

  Back of my head I have gotta big idea that Henrietta is holdin' out on me; that she is twicin' me good an' proper. There is something about that dame's face that is very nice, but that don't prove nothin' at all.

  I remember a dame in Nogales on the Arizona-Mexico border. She was a honey. This dame had a face like a saint an' she spoke that way too. She was Mexican an' she figured to get some more culture an' teach herself English by readin' the History of the Civil War to her husband every night. He was a bit older than she was an' of a very doubtin' disposition. While she was readin' the History of the Civil War with one hand she was mixin' in arsenic in his coffee with the other.

  One day this guy peters out. He gives a big howl and hands in his dinner pail. Some suspicious dick pinches the dame for murder although she says it musta been the History of the Civil War that gave him the pain in his stomach.

  When she goes for trial she gets a hot lawyer who knows all the answers an' he tells her to put a veil all over her face an' cry all the time she is in court. She is lucky. The jury disagree an' another trial is ordered. This time she gets another lawyer. He don't know anything about law, but believe me he knows his onions. He gets her all dressed up for the trial in a skin tight black lace dress an' flesh coloured chiffon silk stockings. He sticks her on the witness stand with a hand picked jury of old gentlemen all over seventy an' they take one look at her an' say not guilty without goin' outa the jury box.

  The judge - who is also an old cuss-gives her the once over an' says he agrees with the verdict. After the trial he gets her a job in the local dry cleaners an' the way the old boy used to rush around every week for hi
s laundry was just nobody's business.

  All of which goes to show you that you never know where you are with dames - especially when they got sex-appeal. The more SA a dame has got the more trouble she causes.

  An' Henrietta has got sex-appeal plus. Boy, she has everything it takes an' then a lot. When I was lookin' at her when we was havin' that coffee I was thinkin' that maybe she was like the dame in Nogales.

  Even then I reckon I wouldn'ta minded bein' her husband. I just wouldn'ta drunk coffee, that's all.

  CHAPTER 5

  NEAT STUFF

  I AM back in New York.

  Maybe you think that I am a mug for takin' so much trouble but the way I look at it is this:

  It woulda been easy for me to pinch Henrietta on suspicion an' bring her back here. I coulda got the New York police to re-open the Aymes inquest an' the production of the letters she wrote Granwortli woulda maybe justified it. But what good's it gonna do if she really an' truly don't know anything about the counterfeitin', an' even if she did kill Aymes still you gotta realise that I am a Federal dick investigatin' a counterfeitin' job an' not a guy rushin' around tryin' to teach New York coppers their business.

  Besides which I have gotta bunch of ideas stewin' around in my head. I have gotta hunch an' I'm goin' to play it, an' that hunch certainly takes in this Langdon Burdell who, if you ask me, is tryin' to play me for a mug. You'll see why pretty soon.

  I check in at the airport, fix myself up in my usual dump, have a shower an' change, an' after just one little bourbon just to keep the germs away, I jump me a yellow cab an' scram downtown to the Burdell office.

  Burdell is runnin' Granworth's old business, an' is in the same office building.

  I go up in the elevator an' walk in. In the outer office there is a fancy dame smackin' a typewriter about. She has got four inch french heels an' a pompadour that woulda made Marie Antoinette look like a big cheese.

  She is wearin' long jade earrings an' an expression like somebody was burnin' cork under her nose all the time, an' when she gets up from the typewriter as I go in, she has gotta wriggle when she walks that woulda won her a beauty contest anywhere where the judges' wives weren't around.

  She uses a beauty parlour plenty by the look of her pan, an' she has gotta mouth made up with a lipstick that is about four shades too light.

  It is a durn funny thing but I have only found about one jane in sixty-four ever uses the right shade of lipstick An' whenever I strike this odd one she is always goin' some place or is married or somethin' else that don't help me along any.

  I tell her I wanta see Mr Burdell an' she says he's in but I'll have to wait because he is in conference. I crack back that any time I have to wait to see Mr Burdell I will commit hankari with a tin-opener an' I walk straight into his room which is at the back of the office behind a fancy oak door.

  Burdell is sittin' behind a big desk helpin' himself to a shot of rye out of a swell flask.

  He looks up an' smiles.

  "Pleased to see you, Mr Caution," he says. "Come right in, I ain't busy."

  I stick my hat on a big bronze figure of a boxer that he is usin' as a paper weight, an' I sit down in the big chair opposite him an' help myself to a cigarette out of a swell silver box.

  "Listen, Burdell," I tell him. "I wanna talk to you, an' I want you to listen an' not make any slip-ups, otherwise I'm goin' to get very tough with you."

  He looks surprised. This Burdell guy is a bird about five feet four with sandy hair an' a thin face like a weasel with indigestion. He has got red eyes an' a pointed chin. He is one of them guys who might be good or bad or just nothin' at all. You just wouldn't know a thing by lookin' at him.

  "Listen here," he says. "You don't have to talk like that, Mr Caution. I've always told you anything you wanted to know, ain't I?"

  "Sure you have," I tell him, "but I wanta know some more that's all. Now stay quiet an' listen to this.

  "Two weeks ago when I get put on this counterfeitin' job I come around here an' I ask you a lotta questions. Well, the main thing is that you say that you and the servants at the Aymes apartments have given evidence at the inquest that Henrietta Aymes wasn't in town the night that Granworth bumps himself off.

  "OK. Well next morning I get around an' I talk to this watchman down at Cotton's Wharf - the guy who saw the car go over the edge, an' I grill this guy plenty. Finally he comes across that the mornin' after Aymes killed himself you got down there an' he told you that he saw some woman get outa that car way down the wharf. He says that you gave him a thousand dollars to keep his trap shut about that little fact, an' that he kept it shut.

  "OK. Three days afterwards I get an anonymous note sayin' that I oughta go to Palm Springs an' check up on some letters that Henrietta has got. Right, well I checked up an' I have found them letters.

  "Now I am very interested in who the guy was who sent me that anonymous note, an' I have come to the conclusion that the guy is you. You sent it to me, Burdell, an' you're goin' to tell me why, because you are a very contradictory sorta cuss. First of all you graft this watchman to keep quiet about the dame; then at the inquest you an' the servants say Henrietta Aymes wasn't in town on that night, an' a few months afterwards, after I have seen you an' heard one thing from you, you send me an anonymous letter that gets me out to Palm Springs where I find some letters that might hang a murder rap on Henrietta. So what? I'm listenin' an' I wanta hear plenty. Did you write that letter?"

  He looks serious.

  "Yeah," he says. "I wrote it, an' I'm goin' to tell you why, an' maybe when you've heard you'll understand why I played it like I did.

  "You gotta get the set up," he says. "In the first place I knew Mrs Aymes was comm' to town to see Granworth because I saw the letters she wrote. I knew she come to town on the night he died, but I kept my trap shut about it at the inquest, an' I told the servants at the flat to keep quiet too, an' I'll tell you why.

  "Granworth Aymes was a lousy dog. We none of us liked him, but we liked her plenty. We knew he usta play around with a lotta janes an' that he gave her a raw deal. But when he made that dough an' told us that he was goin' to give two hundred grand in Registered Dollar Bonds to her I thought that maybe he was goin' to start over an' be a good guy. I believe this because he acts that way, an' because he takes out extra insurance an' says he's goin' to be a regular feller.

  "On the night he died he went outa this office an' I knew that later he was goin' to meet up with Mrs Aymes an' talk to her about this dame that she was so burned up about. The next thing I hear is when the police ring up the next mornin' an' say that they have fished Granworth outa the river an' want identification. I go down an' do it.

  "I also knew that Mrs Aymes had gone back to Connecticut late the night before, because Granworth told me she was goin' back after she'd seen him.

  "Now I worked it out this way. I worked out that she'd seen him an' told him plenty; that she'd told him he was a lousy double-crossin' dog an' that she was goin' to leave him an' after that she'd started back for Connecticut. Well, I know Granworth. He was an excitable sorta guy an' he probably was a bit upset, so I reckon he has some liquor an' maybe makes up his mind that he will bump himself off. Knowin' him I reckon that he woulda been drinkin' with some jane somewhere an' that she was the woman that the watchman saw.

  "But I think that if I say that he saw Mrs Aymes that night that the police will think that the dame with Granworth was her; that they will bring her back here an' start givin' her the works an' makin' things tough for her So I get around to the apartment, an' I have a talk with the servants, an' we fix to keep quiet about her bien' in town that night I take a thousand that Granworth had in the drawer of this desk an' I graft the watchman to keep his trap shut. I thought then that Granworth had bumped himself off an' I didn't see why she should be brought into it. He'd caused her enough trouble anyway.

  "All right. Everything works out swell an' the inquest finishes an' that's that. But a few months afterwards you come
along an' you say that Mrs Aymes has tried to pass a phoney bond down at the bank at Palm Springs. You ask me a lotta questions before I have time to think this thing out, so I give you the same story as I handed out to the coroner at the inquest. But after you went I got down an' I did a little thinkin'. I knew durn well that the bonds that Granworth's lawyer handed over to Henrietta Aymes was the real stuff. They was got outa Granworth's safe deposit where they had been kept. I started thinkin' that if she had tried to pass a phoney bond then she musta got it from somewhere an' knew it was phoney.

  "Another thing. I looked in the drawer of this desk where Granworth had put those three letters. They was gone, an' I remembered that when she came down from Connecticut after the inquest I found her at this desk one day. I begin to get a screwy idea in my head. I get the idea that maybe I have been a mug, that maybe she did bump Granworth after all; that she was the woman the nightwatchman saw, an' that's why she wanted the letters.

  "Well, I may have sympathised with her in the first place, but I don't hold with murder an' I began to get a bit uncomfortable. Especially with you muscim' around because you have got a hot reputation, Mr Caution, an' I start wonderin' what is goin' to happen to me if you find out the truth. I was right here because the first thing you do is to go an' grill the truth outa the watchman, although I didn't know that at the time.

  "So I sit down at the typewriter an' I send you that letter, without any signature, because I work it out that way. If you get down to Palm Springs an' get them letters, well you can do what you like about it. If you think she bumped Granworth you can set out to pin it on her, or you can leave it alone, just as you think. I thought that you might not worry about who wrote the letter providin' you got the information, an' I also thought that if you did pin that letter on me I would come across with the whole works. Well, there it is. That's how it was, an' I'm sorry if I've caused you any trouble by bein' a mug an' not tellin' the truth first go off."