James Chase: Fast Buck

Rico made up his mind. For the past year now he had dealt with petty crooks, making a nice side-line in stolen property. Baird was his first big client. He had made a lot of money out of his transactions with Baird during the past months. Besides, if he fingered Baird the rest of them would drop him like a hot brick. He wasn’t going to be stampeded just when he was moving into big money.

‘If I knew, Lieutenant, I’d tell you,’ he said with an ingratiating smile. ‘But I don’t know. I don’t know nothing about Miss Bruce or her bracelet… not a thing.’

Olin sat for a moment staring at Rico, his face slowly tightening with rage.

‘Sure, Rico?’ he said, leaning across the desk. ‘And, by God! you’d better be sure!’

Rico flinched back.

‘I’m sorry, Lieutenant,’ he stammered, ‘but I can’t tel you what I don’t know. I haven’t seen Baird since the day before yesterday. I don’t know nothing about the bracelet…’

Olin got up.

‘I’ll get Baird,’ he said, his face set and menacing. ‘Make no mistake about it. Don’t kid yourself he won’t talk. He won’t go to the chamber alone. If you’re hooked up with him, you’ll go too! I’l give you one more chance, and you’d better take it. Have you got that bracelet?’

‘I tell you I don’t know a thing about it!’ Rico said, through clenched teeth.

Olin reached across the desk and grabbed hold of Rico’s coat front, pulling him out of his chair. He shook him savagely.

‘God help you if I find out you’re lying, you little creep!’ he snarled, and flung Rico back into his chair so violently the chair went over backwards and Rico sprawled on the floor. ‘And don’t think you’ve seen the last of me!’ Olin went on. ‘I’ll be back.’

For a long time after Olin had gone, Rico sat at his desk, staring with empty eyes at his twitching hands, and sweating.

Ed Dallas steered his tall, lanky frame into a pay booth. While he waited for a connection, he surveyed the busy hotel scene through the glass panel of the booth door, his eyes shifting from one beautiful woman to another, trying to make up his mind which of them he would take out for the night should a miracle happen and give him a choice.

A girl’s voice said in his ear, ‘International Detective Agency. Good evening.’

‘This is Ed,’ Dal as said. ‘Gimme the old man, will you, honey?’

‘Hold a moment, please,’ the girl said, and proceeded to make violent crackling noises in Dallas’s ear.

‘Must you knock my brains out?’ Dal as complained, holding the receiver at arm’s length. ‘Why don’t you use your hands instead of your feet?’

‘I would if I thought you had any brains,’ the girl said pertly, and completed the connection with a loud whistle on the line.

Harmon Purvis, head of the agency, said in his dry, flat voice, ‘What is it, Dal as?’

‘The Shine’s just had callers,’ Dal as said, speaking rapidly, the glowing end of his cigarette bobbing up and down within an inch of the telephone mouthpiece. ‘A man and woman. The man’s a well-nourished bird, pushing fifty, and looks made of money. The woman’s a nifty; young, blonde, with a shape that’s knocked my right eye out. The Shine was expecting them. They by-passed the desk and went right up. Want me to do anything about them?’

‘Don’t cal the Rajah a Shine,’ Purvis said coldly. ‘He’s a high-class Hindu. He may be coloured…’

‘Okay, okay,’ Dal as said impatiently. ‘I wouldn’t know the difference. What about these two? Want me to cover them?’

‘Better find out who they are,’ Purvis said. ‘We can’t afford to take chances. They’re his first callers, aren’t they?’

‘If you don’t count the two rubes from the Embassy, and the floozie he had up there last night to fix his insomnia.’

Purvis said he didn’t count them.

‘Well, okay. I’ll see what I can do. I’ll buzz you on the next move. So long for now.’

Dallas replaced the receiver, pushed open the booth door and walked fast across the lobby of the Hotel Cosmopolitan to where Jack Burns was reading a racing sheet, with one eye on the reception-desk.

Dallas leaned over his shoulder.

‘The old man wants me to find out who those two are,’ he said. ‘Stick around and try to earn your money. If anyone shows up, give the old man a buzz.’

Burns groaned.

‘If I have to sit in this goddamn lobby much longer, I’ll go nuts,’ he grumbled. ‘I wouldn’t mind trailing that blonde myself. Get her telephone number, Ed. She might make blind dates.’

‘Not with you, she wouldn’t,’ Dal as said. ‘A nifty like her needs the velvet touch. I could rock her dreamboat myself.’

‘You’d have to knock over a bank before you got within a mile of her,’ Burns said, mopping his round fat face. ‘A frill with that shape doesn’t have to give anything away. It’d cost you plenty.’

‘You could be right at that.’ Dal as straightened. ‘Don’t fall asleep on the job. The old man thinks this’s important.’

‘I wish I did,’ Burns said, yawning.

Dallas made his way through the crowded lobby to the main entrance. He sat down in a basket chair, shifted it around so he could watch the elevators and waited.

He had a long wait. It was over an hour before the Rajah’s visitors appeared. The girl came first: an elegantly dressed blonde with big blue eyes and a cold, sophisticated expression that intrigued Dallas.

She moved gracefully, swaying her hips in a way that made all the men in the lobby look back at her, aware she was creating a sensation as she passed, and accepting it as her due.

Her companion was a tall, darkly tanned man, a little heavy around the waist-line, but very upright.

His sleek grey hair was taken straight back, and his military moustache bristled. In his immaculate clothes he had an arrogant air of confidence and authority that impressed Dallas, who wasn’t easily impressed.

They passed Dallas without noticing him, and went down the hotel steps to the street. Dallas slid out of his chair and went after them. He was in time to see them get into a big black LaSalle, driven by a smartly uniformed Filipino chauffeur, and which moved away so quickly that Dallas saw he hadn’t a hope of following it.

He memorised the licence number and signalled to a passing taxi.

‘Police Headquarters,’ he said urgently, ‘and imagine you’re driving to a fire!’

Three minutes later, the taxi pulled up outside the concrete and steel building that housed the city’s police. As Dallas paid off the driver he saw Lieutenant Olin get out of a police car and start up the stone steps leading to the main entrance of the building. He ran after him.

‘Hi, George,’ he said, joining Olin. ‘Too busy to do me a favour?’

Olin frowned at him.

‘I’m pretty busy,’ he said reluctantly, ‘but I guess I can spare you a minute. Come on in. Have you heard Jean Bruce has been knocked off?’

Dallas’s eyes popped.

‘You mean she’s been murdered?’

‘That’s what I mean.’ Olin walked quickly along the passage to his small office, kicked open the door, entered and sat down behind a small battered desk. ‘A stick-up job with a couple of my boys sunning themselves within yards of it. The guy got away with an emerald and diamond bracelet worth five grand. He hit the girl on the side of her jaw — broke her goddamn neck.’

‘Jeepers!’ Dal as whistled. ‘Any idea who?’

Olin nodded.

‘Yeah, but never mind that. What do you want?’

‘Checking up on a black LaSalle, licence number AO 67. I want to know who owns it.’

Olin accepted the cigarette Dallas pushed at him, and then a light.