The officer looked at me appraisingly. “Okay, Lam,” he said, “we’ll take you to headquarters. Perhaps you can think up a better story by the time you get there.”
The officer walked me back to the car.
The officer in the car said, “How’d you come out?”
“Jasper says he never saw the guy in his life,” the officer said.
“I’ve been busy checking on the radio,” the officer behind the wheel said. “He’s a private operator, all right, has a license and is in good standing. They’re working on this Crockett case. You know, Dean Crockett who was murdered. Inspector Giddings and Sergeant Sellers are working on that. They want him brought in.”
“Well, I’ve already told him we’re going to take him in,” the other officer said.
They nodded to me. “Make yourself comfortable, Lam. You’re going to headquarters. They want to talk with you.”
Chapter Eighteen
Inspector Giddings looked me over. “Well, well,” he said, “you certainly look as though you’d been put through the meat grinder. Now, cut the comedy and tell me what really happened.”
I tried to grin, but my face was too lopsided with swelling, and one eye was pretty well puffed up. It hurt when I straightened up. “I ran into a door in the dark going to the bathroom,” I said.
Giddings gave me the benefit of a professional inspection; the way a trainer might look over a battered-up prize fighter in between rounds to see whether it was worthwhile throwing in the towel.
“You look as though you took the full count,” he said.
“Only the count of nine,” I told him.
“You think you’re still in there fighting?”
“Yes.”
He threw back his head and laughed at that. “Hell,” he said, “you took the full count, Donald. You really did. You’ve been down and now you’re out.”
“I only heard nine,” I said.
“Your ears were bad. I tell you, you’re out.”
“Meaning what?”
“Out. O-u-t. Do I have to spell it for you?”
“All right,” I told him, “you’re doing the talking.”
“Now,” he said, “you’re beginning to get some sense. I’m doing the talking and it’s damn near time that you recognized it. You know, we don’t like to have smart private dicks playing around in murder cases.
“You can imagine how it would look to have the public pick up a newspaper and see that Donald Lam, a pint-sized private detective, had solved the Crockett murder case while the police were running around in circles.”
Giddings paused and shook his head. “That would be what we call bad public relations.
“When you private eyes find out anything that has to do with a crime, you come right to us and tell us, and then we carry on from there.”
“And do you tell me what’s happening on my own tips?” I asked. “Or do I get to read it in the newspapers?”
He grinned in a fatherly way and said, “You get to read it in the newspapers, Donald. Now then, suppose we have an understanding and you start at the beginning and tell me just what this is all—”
The door pushed open, and Frank Sellers came hurrying in.
“Hi, Frank,” Giddings said. “We’ve got a beat-up little canary here. I’m just telling him about the way we like to have canaries sing. We like to listen to them.”
“Provided they sing the right tune,” Sellers said.
“Exactly,” Giddings agreed.
Sellers said, “Well, Pint Size, you’ve gone and done it again, eh?”
“I haven’t done anything,” I said.
“No, you don’t look like it,” Sellers admitted. “You’ve been more done against than doing.”
He threw back his head and laughed.
Giddings grinned.
“I’ve just told this guy he’s finished,” Giddings said. “We’re taking him out of the ring. He’s had the full count.”
“Well, what do you know, what do you know,” Sellers said, rubbing his hands as though his knuckles started tingling at the spectacle of my bruised face and the thought of the beating I’d taken.
He turned to Giddings. “It’s like I told you. The little bastard has a certain amount of brains and a hell of a lot of ingenuity. The trouble is he has nothing to back it up with. He’s always leading with his chin, and somebody’s always working him over. I’ll bet I’ve seen that guy a dozen times when he looked as though he should have been in the hospital—all from sticking his neck out in some damn case where he should have gone to the police.”
“Doesn’t the bastard ever learn?” Giddings asked.
“Not so far,” Sellers said.
Giddings’ face was hard. “We’ll learn him this time,” he said grimly.
“I doubt it,” Sellers said. “He has an affinity for sticking his face in front of fists. Don’t you, Donald?”
I didn’t say anything.
Giddings said, “I’m just going through the process of making a Christian out of the guy. I’m glad you got here, Frank.” He turned to me. “Let’s hear the full story, Lam.”
“Yeah,” Sellers said, pulling out a chair and sitting down. “The full story.”
He pulled a cigar out of his pocket, twisted off the end with his teeth, spat the little gob of tobacco on the floor, lit the cigar and acted like a man preparing to enjoy a good show. “Go ahead, Pint Size, start talking and it had better be true.”
“I don’t have anything to talk about.”
“Now, look,” Giddings said, “we’ve got lots of ways of making people talk, and we don’t have to do any brainwashing, either. We put pressure on you, Donald, my boy. We put the pressure on you right up and down the line. You can’t make a living in this town if the police are against you, and if you’re smart, you know that.”
“He’s smart,” Sellers said. And then after a moment, added, “But tricky, awfully damn tricky.”
“ You’ve never lost anything tagging along with me,” I told Sellers.
“Well, no,” he admitted, puffing thoughtfully at his cigar. “I can’t say I have, but I don’t think that would have been true if I’d sat back and waited for you to deal the hand the way you wanted it. After you get the cards shuffled, I’ve taken the deck out of your hand and done the dealing myself.”
“All right,” I told him, “I’m still shuffling. When I’m ready for the deal, you can take the cards.”
Giddings shook his head. “No, we don’t like that, Donald. Maybe Sellers has confidence in you, but I haven’t. I’m one skeptical sonofabitch. I don’t trust anybody.”
“You can say that again,” Sellers said. “You can’t stall around with Thad Giddings, Donald. You’d better start decorating the mahogany.”
“Otherwise?” I asked.
Sellers made noises with his tongue against the roof of his mouth, the sort of rebuke that an indulgent mother gives to a small child.
“Begin at the beginning,” Giddings said.
I said, “I don’t have a thing in the world except suspicions. I hate to—”
“That’s good enough for us,” Giddings said.
“But I hate to make accusations just predicated on suspicion.”
“We do it all the time, talking among ourselves,” Sellers said. “Just don’t say anything to anybody else, Donald—not the newspapers.”
I said, “It all starts with a model who poses for artists and photographers in the nude.”
“You’re not referring to our little friend, Sylvia Hadley, the babe who was posing for Mrs. Crockett the afternoon her husband got bumped off, are you?”
“That’s the one.”
“What do you know!” Sellers said, and turned to Giddings. “That’s one thing about Donald. He gets around with the babes. If there’s a babe in the picture, she starts unloading on his shoulder, and Donald’s really good at taking it from there. I guess they must want to mother the guy. He looks sort of helpless and unprotected. They feel they have to change his d
iapers. I’ve seen it happen a dozen times.”
“Go on,” Giddings said. “What about Sylvia Hadley?”
I said, “I think she’s some kind of a fence.”
“A fence? That babe?”
I nodded.
“He’s nuts,” Giddings said, turning to Sellers.
Sellers shook his head. “Let him go on, Thad. Let him ramble. He’s got an angle in this somewhere, but we can figure it out if we let him talk. Go on, Donald. You think she’s a fence. What makes you think so?”
I said, “She’s been going with an older man, a man by the name of Mortimer Jasper, who’s some kind of a collector and—well, it stands to reason, she wouldn’t have any interest in him, that is, any real romantic interest—he’s doing something for her.”
“What?” Giddings asked.
“I think he’s supplying her with…well, it’s just a hunch, but I think he supplies her with information about the value of things, and I think Sylvia picks them up and then gets rid of them.”
Giddings looked at Sellers and said, “For God’s sake, how dumb can a guy get?”
“Shut up, Thad,” Sellers said, his eyes boring into mine. “Go ahead, what’s the pitch, Donald? You’ve got a reason for thinking this. What gives it to you?”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” I said.
“Okay, go on. What happened?”
“Well,” I said, “I tried to follow it up, that’s all. I went out to call on Jasper and ask some discreet questions. I never even got in to see the guy. When I stopped the car and started to get out, a couple of goons came out and made me drive to a vacant lot. Then the guys beat the hell out of me.”
“On that point we’re willing to take your word for it,” Giddings said, grinning. “That not only sounds logical, but there’s evidence to support it.”
“You think there was some connection between Jasper and these two goons?” Sellers asked.
“Hell no,” I told him. “Get it straight. I think this jane, Sylvia Hadley, had these two strong-arm men follow me to see where I was going. When they saw I was getting hot on the trail, they worked me over. The idea was to keep me out of circulation for a while.”
“Did they take anything?” Sellers asked.
“What do you mean, take anything?”
“You didn’t have any evidence or anything they wanted?”
“If I’d had the evidence,” I told him, “I’d have been playing it closer to my chest. I wouldn’t have left myself wide open. Hell no, all I had was a hunch.”
Sellers and Giddings exchanged glances. “The guy may have something,” Sellers said, “with the cart before the horse, if you know what I mean, Thad.”
“I get you,” Thad said. “It’s worth a try.”
There was silence for a moment, then Giddings jerked his thumb at me. “What do we do with this guy?”
“Take him along,” Sellers said.
Giddings shook his head.
“You don’t know him like I do,” Sellers said. “He may be playing a deep game. Take him along. Keep him with us all the time. In that way, if there’s anything wrong with his story, the jane will let us see it as soon as we walk in with Pint Size here. She’ll think he’s double-crossed her and start squawking, and we can take it from there.”
“I don’t like taking him,” Giddings said.
“If we don’t take him, we’re licked,” Sellers said. “He’ll hash things up for us.”
“He wouldn’t dare.”
“The hell he wouldn’t,” Sellers said. “He’s got more guts than any six guys you ever saw. That’s the reason he’s getting beat up all the time. He has no sense of discretion.”
“We could lock him in a cell.”
“He’d spring himself with a writ inside of fifteen minutes,” Sellers said.
“Not if we left word that he couldn’t get to a phone, and—”
“And then he’d sue us for a million dollars’ damages and make it stick,” Sellers said. “I’ve played around with this guy before. He’s dynamite. He’s fast on his feet. You do like I say, Thad. We take him along.”
“Okay,” Giddings said. “You’re the boss. If that’s what you say, that’s what we do.”
“Okay. On your feet,” Giddings said to me.
I tried getting up out of the chair. The tortured muscles simply wouldn’t respond. My legs didn’t have enough strength to do the lifting.
Giddings grabbed me under the armpits, hoisted me to my feet. “Keep those muscles moving,” he said, “otherwise they’ll get sore as hell.”
“What do you think they are now?” I asked him.
He just grinned. “Come on.”
They got me to the elevator, down to a squad car and made time out through the traffic.
Inspector Giddings did stuff with the desk clerk at the apartment house. “We’re going up to Sylvia Hadley’s apartment,” he said. “We want to ask her a couple of questions. Don’t announce us.”
“Very well,” the clerk said.
“You heard me,” Giddings said. “I heard you.”
“If we’re announced, we’ll take it as an unfriendly gesture,” Giddings told him. “Come on.”
We got in the elevator, went up to the hall and down the hall to Sylvia Hadley’s apartment.
Frank Sellers banged on the door.
The door opened a couple of inches, held taut by a brass chain.
Sellers showed his badge and identification card all in a nice leather folder.
“Police,” he said. “We want to talk with you.”
“I’ve told you everything I know,” Sylvia said.
“I know,” Sellers said, “but we want to talk with you some more.…Come on, open up. We haven’t got all night to stand here and argue.”
She opened the door.
The three of us trooped in.
She took a look at me and said, “Donald, what happened?”
“I ran into a door,” I told her.
“And what are you doing here with these men?”
“They brought me along for the ride.”
“We’ll do the talking,” Sellers said. “Donald was here earlier, wasn’t he, Sylvia?”
“Yes.”
“What did you tell him?”
“Nothing…that is, just some of the things I told you.”
“What about Mortimer Jasper? What did you tell him about Jasper?”
From the look of sudden dismay on her face, Sellers knew he’d struck pay dirt.
“Go on. What did you tell him?”
“I didn’t tell him a thing; not a damn thing!” Sylvia blazed. “And if he told you anything about Mortimer, he…he’s lying, he’s—”
“Take it easy, take it easy,” Sellers said. “What about Mortimer Jasper?”
“Nothing about him.”
“What’s your connection with him?”
“I don’t have any.”
“You know him?
“I…I’ve met him.”
“And you didn’t tell Donald Lam anything about him?”
“I did not!” she blazed. “I don’t know what he told you, but whatever it was, it’s a lie.”
Sellers settled himself in a chair, crossed his ankles in front of him, pulled out another cigar. “What do you know, what do you know,” he said in a tone of intense self-satisfaction. It was the voice of a man who has just been advised he’s won the Irish Sweepstakes.
He bit off the end of a fresh cigar, spat it out on the worn threadbare carpet of the apartment, struck a match, held it to the cigar, puffed it a couple of times, said again, “What do you know?”
“I don’t like cigars,” Sylvia Hadley snapped.
Sellers might have had putty in his ears for all the attention he paid to that remark. He took a couple of deep, contented puffs, grinned across at Giddings and said, “We’re in the money now.”
Giddings raised his eyebrows at Sellers. Sellers nodded, turned to Sylvia and said, “You do know this Mo
rtimer Jasper?”
“I tell you I’ve met him, yes.”
“Been out with him?”
“I’ve been to dinner with him.”
“Anything else?”
“That’s all.”
“Any passes?”
“He’s old enough to be my father.”
“They still make passes,” Sellers said. “He could be old enough to be your great-grandfather and he’d still make passes. They might not find a receiver, but they’re always trying a forward pass.”
“Well…that isn’t—Mortimer Jasper isn’t like that.”
“Didn’t care about you as a dish?” Sellers asked.
“I tell you, of course not. He’s a gentleman.”
“Okay, then,” Sellers said, grinning, “what was the pitch? What did he want? Why should he buy you a meal?”
“He…he likes me, I think. It was a fatherly interest.”
“Oh, he took you out because he liked you, eh?”
“I guess that was it.”
“But no passes?”
“No passes.”
“Be your age,” Sellers said.
Sylvia said nothing.
“What do you know about Mortimer Jasper?” Giddings asked.
“Very little,” she said.
“How did you meet him?”
“I’ve forgotten. I think I was introduced to him at some gathering, probably something that Mr. Crockett put on.”
“You went to the Crockett blowouts?”
“Sometimes.”
“How did you happen to get in on those?”
“I was invited.”
“By whom?”
“Mr. Crockett—or Mrs. Crockett.”
“Sometimes Crockett invited you?”
“Yes.”
“Another fatherly interest?”
“He…he liked to have people there who could liven things up a bit.”
“And you livened things up a bit?”
“I tried to.”
“And that’s where you met Jasper?”
“It may have been. I don’t know. I can’t remember.”
“You don’t remember when you first met the guy?”
“No.”
“How long ago?”
“I can’t tell you that either.”
“When was the time he took you out to dinner?”
“Which time?”
“Oh, was it more than once?”
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