MILLION
DOLLAR
TRAMP
WILLIAM CAMPBELL GAULT
a division of F+W Media, Inc.
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Death Out of Focus
Also Available
Copyright
Chapter One
The address he’d given me was in a run-down district on Figueroa Street. The stairs leading to his second floor office were served by a doorway that opened off the street between a pawn shop and a doubtful cigar store.
There was a worn wooden handrail, slick with new varnish, and ancient wooden paneling on the walls below the handrail level. Above it, the walls were plaster and could have used a coat of paint.
I went up the steps, through the odor of new varnish and old dust, and paused at the top to see which way the numbers ran. His number, 206, was only a few yards to the right of whereI stood.
HEIRS, INCORPORATED read the lettering on his door. And below it,PLEASE ENTER.
Usually, in this neighborhood, that portion simply read WALK IN. Willis Morley was making an admirable attempt to rise above his environment.
The name and the district had led me to expect some dry and emaciated old fogey, bent over a ledger, or greedily counting his money. Willis Morley was nothing like that. As I came into the small waiting room,I could see through the open doorway that led to his office; Morley was sitting behind his desk in there.
His face was round and pink and his hair snow white. His tweed suit held many colors but the predominant color seemed to be orange. He would have made a perfect Santa’ Claus for a Hollywood bookie’s Christmas party.
He smiled at me through the open doorway, and his bright blue eyes twinkled. He asked, “Mr. Puma?”
“At your service,” I answered. “Mr. Morley?”
“Correct. Come in, Mr. Puma, and be seated.” He stood up and held out his hand. His body matched his face, round and plump.
I went over to shake his hand and then sat in the chair on the customer’s side of his desk. The office was clean. It looked clean and would have smelled clean, I was sure, if the window hadn’t been open.
“Another smoggy day,” he said, sitting down.
“Is there another kind?” I asked.
He smiled. “Not in Los Angeles, not any more.” He leaned back in his chair and studied me candidly. “You come well recommended, Mr. Puma.”
“I’m pretty good,” I admitted. “Who recommended me?”
He named an attorney I knew.
I asked, “Are you an attorney, Mr. Morley?”
For the first time, he frowned. “Not exactly. I’ve — had a rather extensive legal education but I never achieved a degree in law. Do you only work for attorneys, Mr. Puma?”
I shook my head. “I — uh — I mean, the nature of your business intrigued me. Do you look for missing heirs?”
He nodded. “At times. Though that kind of work would comprise less than a third of my total income. I’m a loan broker, Mr. Puma. I lend money to needy heirs against the time when they will no longer be needy.”
“I get it,” I said. “You keep ‘em living until their benefactor dies, is that it?”
For the second time, he frowned. “That was rather crudely put, but more or less describes my major service.” His smile was thin. “I didn’t plan to have you investigate me, Mr. Puma.” He looked past me. “A good number of the heirs aren’t waiting for anyone to die, of course. They are legatees whose legacies are due at some previously determined time in the future. There is little risk involved in a loan to borrowers in this category, naturally. The others …” He sighed.
I smiled. “The others pay a much higher interest rate.”
“Certainly.” He looked at me blandly. “Nobody is forced to come to me for money, Mr. Puma.”
“You’ve got a point,” I admitted. “In this — less rewarding third of your business, this search for missing heirs, I suppose you hire one of the large detective agencies, one of the national agencies?”
He nodded and stared at me.
I stared back.
He stood up and went over to close the window. “Damned smog,” he said, his back to me.
I said, “Don’t get the wrong idea. I can always use a day’s work. But it does seem strange that you didn’t phone that agency first.” I paused. “Or maybe you did — and they were too reputable to handle it?”
He sat down again and looked at me without emotion. “I was warned that you were insolent and arrogant. Are you trying to prepare me for an exorbitant fee?”
I shook my head.
He picked up a slide rule from his desk and considered it, while he said, “Mr. Puma, there are several national detective agencies and hundreds of small ones” — he paused — “like yours. A number of them seem to be prospering. They wouldn’t be unless their many clients had a reason for not taking their business to the police departments in their home towns.”
“True enough,” I agreed.
He took a deep breath. “Your reputation is not exactly — impeccable.”
“By my standards, it is,” I said. “I guess my standards are as good as most.”
“I’m sure they are. And I’m sure I’ve had less trouble with the police than you have, Mr. Puma. So mine must be at least equal to yours. Wouldn’t you call that a fair judgment?”
I grinned at him. “I guess. What’s the slide rule for?” He smiled. “I use it for figuring percentages. Very handy gadget. Shall we get down to business, Mr. Puma?” “I’m all ears,” I told him.
A girl was missing, he told me, a twenty-eight-year-old girl who was into him for almost forty thousand dollars. In seventeen months she would be thirty and come into her inheritance.
“And you get your forty grand,” I said. He nodded.
“Plus interest,” I said, “and maybe interest on the interest, to say nothing of your broker’s commission. That could be quite a package. That might take one hell of an inheritance.”
He looked at me coldly, his lips pursed primly. “Are you moralizing, Mr. Puma?”
I shook my head. “I’m trying to get the picture. If the debt is bigger than the inheritance, she’d have reason to be missing.”
He smiled. “Hardly. The total inheritance will be in excess of three million dollars. The first installment, due on her thirtieth birthday, will be almost a million dollars.”
I sat back and stared at him.
He continued to smile. The room was quiet.
Then I said, “Why here? Why you?”
“I’m not following you,” he said quietly.
“A girl with that kind of money due,” I explained, “could go to — well, to some lending institution that undoubtedly charges less than I’m sure you do. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying you’re a crook or anything like that. But you sure as hell aren’t working on six per cent.”
He nodded.
“Or even a clean twenty per cent, by the time you get through working that slide rule,” I continued. “Mr. Morley, it just doesn’t figure.”
He took a deep breath. “You’re a puzzle to me. I didn’t phone you for an auditing; I phoned you as a prospective client. I’ll say good-bye to you now, Mr.
Puma. You obviously don’t want my business.”
I stared at him for a few seconds and then stood up. I said, “I need the business. I need it real bad this month. But I don’t go into any job blind.”
It was quiet again, except for the traffic noises from below. Finally, he said, “I’m asking you to find a girl. You’re worried about how much interest she will pay. What business is that of yours?”
“None,” I said. “I wasn’t thinking of that. I was simply wondering why she came to you for money.”
•He took another breath. “Because she was fed up with all the red tape the banks go through in processing a loan.
And she was introduced to me through a mutual friend.”
“Okay,” I said. “Do you want to give me her name now?”
“Are you going to take the job?” I nodded.
“Her name,” he said, “is Fidelia Sherwood.”
He had me staring again. It was a big family in this town, old and respected. Fidelia had been a blot on the family shield, married to a bogus count at nineteen, to a jazz pianist at twenty-four. She had divorced the pianist two years ago and had only recently been named as a correspondent in a rather messy Hollywood divorce action.
“Brother!” I said, finally.
Chubby little Willis Morley smiled smugly. He handed me a note-sized sheet of paper. “Here’s a list of places she’s been found before when she was — missing. It might be helpful.”
I took the list and he added, “And here’s a letter I want you to give her when you find her.”
The letter was in a heavy, legal-sized envelope, sealed with red wax. He knew my rates and I knew as much as he wanted to tell me about his business. I took the letter and left.
The girl was probably not missing in the legal sense. She hadn’t been in touch with him lately and was not available at home, and he was understandably worried. If she had owed me forty thousand, I’d have been worried, too.
I went down the steps through the odor of dust and varnish, thinking about Fidelia Sherwood, trying to remember all I had read about her in the newspapers. She had never lacked for publicity.
She was a willful girl, that much seemed certain, even discounting the exaggerations of newspaper feature stories. She was, or would be, an extremely wealthy girl; she was the only heir to the Sherwood money, so far as I had read. Her first husband, the fraudulent count, had graciously bowed out for a settlement reputed to be around a quarter of a million. Her second husband, a true American boy, had asked for no alimony.
It was now noon and I ate downtown. I came to the heart of this town so seldom I felt guilty about leaving
it without making some token purchase for the good of the Downtown Association.
I was glad I ate a full lunch. Because I had a very active afternoon, hitting all the spots Willis Morley had mentioned in his list. The area roughly called Los Angeles includes a lot of communities that aren’t and some very remote neighborhoods that shouldn’t be.
Nothing. Nobody had seen her and only one man seemed interested in my interest. He was a psychologist named Dr. Arnold Foy, who had a very swanky office on Wilshire. He was a psychologist, remember, not a psychiatrist, and I didn’t know at the time how authentic that “Doctor” title was. In my town, anyone with two dollars and the first month’s office rent can set himself up with a “Doctor of Psychology” sucker trap.
He was a tall man, thin and about thirty-five, soft-spoken and somehow superior, though perhaps he didn’t mean to be. He was certainly a handsome bastard.
“Miss Sherwood missing again?” he said wearily. “Oh, God.”
“You treated her, Doctor Foy?”
He dismissed the breach of etiquette with a smile. “How long has she been missing?”
“You tell me and I’ll tell you,” I said. “Did you treat her?”
“I’m a professional man,” he said.
I shrugged. “So am I. You’re not an MD, are you?”
His lean face stiffened. “It so happens I’m not.” He studied me. “Are you implying that only MD’s are permitted ethics?”
I smiled. “Not exactly. But I guess we both know how little it takes to hang up that ‘psychologist’ shingle. Maybe, between us, we have enough information to do Miss Sherwood some good. Let’s not quibble.”
He shook his head in dismissal. “I’m sorry, Mr. Puma, but I’m sure we have nothing further to discuss.”
“We could talk about the Dodgers,” I suggested.
He smiled his good-bye.
There was a possibility he was an honest man, but he left a bad taste in my mouth. It was five o’clock now, and the traffic on Wilshire was bumper to bumper and the air blue with smog. I walked to the nearest restaurant.
Two drinks and a slice of roast beef later, I drank my coffee and considered the last place on my list. It was a bar, way out near the beach, on the border between Santa Monica and Venice. I’d had a busy day through Los Angeles traffic and I was aching to get home, but my professional conscience drove me west, toward the ocean.
The name of the place was “Eddie’s,” a piano bar struggling for respectability in an area overrun with pansy beds. There were a couple of the lavender lads in a corner booth, giggling together, when I came in.
Behind the bar, the big man in the white jacket looked sour. He studied me doubtfully.
I shook my head. “I’m one of the virile ones. Are you the boss?”
He nodded. “I’m Eddie. Those guys in the corner bother you, I can bounce ‘em. I’m looking for an excuse.”
“They don’t bother me,” I said. “I’m looking for a woman named Fidelia Sherwood. Has she been in lately?”
“Last night,” he answered. “She’ll be in again, probably.” He looked at the clock behind the bar. “In about twenty minutes, I’d guess, if you want to wait.”
“I’ll wait. I’ll have a bourbon and water.”
He set the drink on the bar and glanced annoyedly at the corner booth. “I try to keep ‘em out. They keep all the good trade away.” He sighed. “Every dime I own is tied up in this joint. I know now why I got it cheap.”
I nodded sympathetically and glanced at the piano, a baby grand, on the stage set into the far curve of the bar.
The bartender must have misread my glance. Because he said, “Pete’ll be in soon. Maybe they’ll come together.”
“Pete?” I asked blankly.
“Pete Richards,” he explained. “Why do you think she hangs around here?”
Pete Richards … Ah, yes, the second husband, the pianist. “Oh,” I said. “Oh, yes, of course.”
“You looking for him, or her?” he asked me.
“Her,” I answered, and showed him the wax-sealed envelope.
He frowned. “Summons?”
“No,” I said, and then realized I couldn’t be sure. “I doubt it,” I corrected myself. “How long has Richards been working here?”
“Since he went on the booze, again. About a month. Nobody else will have him when he’s on the booze.” “An alcoholic, eh?”
The big man shook his head. “I don’t think so. Just one of them compulsive drinkers; he can always navigate. I’m not much for this progressive stuff, but his piano is okay with me.”
“He’s about like Shearing, maybe?” I asked.
“About,” he said, and smiled cynically. “And cheaper. When he’s on the booze, anyway.”
“Does Miss Sherwood drink heavily?”
“Richards,” he said. “Her name is Richards. Her divorce didn’t change that.”
“All right. Does Mrs. Richards drink heavily?”
He looked at the bar. “Maybe you’d better ask her that when she comes in. I don’t yak about my customers.”
His attitude had cooled in the last minute. I held his gaze and asked, “Did I say something wrong?”
“No.” He took a deep breath. “You’re a private eye, right? Your name Puma?”
I nodded. “And you don’t like private invest
igators?”
He shrugged. “I don’t like to yak about my customers with ‘em.”
I ordered another drink and said no more. A couple came in and took the booth next to the gigglers. One of the gigglers said, “Tourists,” loud enough to be heard at the bar.
The bartender stared at them for seconds, and then went over to take the couple’s order.
A girl came in, glanced quickly at the piano, and then came over to climb onto a stool in front of the bar. Her hair was between chestnut and auburn, her eyes a greenish-blue, her figure firm and slim and proud. She was wearing a light-green linen suit.
“Miss Fidelia Sherwood?” I asked.
“Fidelia Richards,” she said, and looked at me without interest.
I slid the letter across the bar toward her. “From Willis Morley. He’s worried about you.”
From behind me, one of the weirdies in the corner called, “Fidelia, darling, come over and sit with us!”
She glanced their way, waved, and shook her head.
She looked back at me. “Do you work for little Willis?”
“Just for today. My day is done. Mr. Morley will want your new address. I think you’d better play along with him. You see, the law is on his side.”
She picked up the envelope and tapped it on the bar. She smiled and said nothing. I sipped my second drink and lighted a cigarette.
The gay, gay, gay voice behind me called, “Come over here, Fidelia. We’re certainly better company than that!”
The hair on my neck bristled, but I didn’t turn around. They were sick, I told myself; they had their problems. But why did they have to be vocal?
Fidelia smiled sadly and then the big man came around behind the bar again and she ordered a Scotch on the rocks. “Pete’s late,” she added.
He turned to look at the clock, nodded, and fixed her drink. I sipped mine and stared at nothing.
The bartender told me, “No trouble, understand? I don’t like ‘em, but they’re paying cash tonight.”
I nodded.
Fidelia Sherwood Richards said, “You’re Joseph Puma, aren’t you? You’re a friend of Mona Greene’s.”
“I was,” I admitted. “Is she still in Italy?”
She nodded. “And happy. Married and happy. She’s expecting a baby, and she’s a little worried about that. She’s thirty-nine, you know.”
Million Dollar Tramp Page 1