A Fair - Cut Thin to Win

“Now then, I’m going to tell you smart alecks something, all of you! The department likes to get hold of these hit-and-run drivers and button the case up. That’s a matter of policy.

“This case is going to be a lot more than a matter of policy. I’m going to turn this city upside down. I’m going to find Mrs. Chester if I find any evidence on that car we’ve impounded.”

“When does my client get her car back?” Essex asked.

“There are two ways of getting it back,” Sellers said. “The first one is that you can get a court order; the second one is that you can wait until we get done with it.”

Sellers lurched to his feet, turned to me and said, “And as far as you’re concerned, Lam, when I get this case solved, if you’ve cut one single corner, you’re going to be selling insurance or engaging in some other activity that will keep you out of my hair.”

“Perhaps you’d buy a policy from me?” I suggested.

Sellers jerked a cigar from his pocket, shoved it in his mouth defiantly, strode to the door and walked out.

It was several seconds after the door slammed before anybody said anything. Then I said to Phyllis, “Just where is your father?”

She shook her head. “I couldn’t tell you.”

“Because you don’t know?”

“Because I couldn’t tell you.”

“Couldn’t or wouldn’t?”

“Couldn’t.”

Essex said, “You’re in the clear, Lam. That was a clever stunt, getting an assignment— Of course, as a lawyer, I can tell you there’s some question about the validity of the assignment under the circumstances.”

“I was carrying out orders,” I said, “I’m not a lawyer.”

Essex grinned. “Dawson wanted a really good detective. He was a little disappointed in you when he first saw you, but I think you’re filling the bill admirably. I’m glad it’s happened that way. I feel completely justified.”

“Wait a minute!” I said. “You feel completely justified! Are you the one who recommended our firm to Dawson?”

He smiled knowingly. “A lawyer can’t tell anything about his conversations with his clients without being guilty of unethical conduct. If you have any more trouble, let me know, Lam.”

I took it that was a dismissal and said, “Okay, thanks... I still think there’s something in the background in this case.”

Essex said unctuously, “Virtually all cases have backgrounds. Human emotions, you know. The interplay of character, conflicting interests and sometimes complex motivations.”

“Yes,” I said, “complex motivations... And a good night to both of you.”

No one saw me to the door.

The next morning when I entered the office Bertha Cool was on the warpath.

“What in blue hell have you been getting into?” she asked. “Me?”

“You!”

“Nothing, why?”

“Don’t hand me that line! Frank Sellers is really gunning for you this time. You’re losing your license.”

“Who says I’m losing my license?”

“Frank Sellers, for one.”

“Phooey!” I said. “He’s got nothing on me. He took two and two and added them together and made sixteen. He thinks I covered up a hit-and-run case, compounded a felony and a few other things. But it’s all surmise on his part, and—”

“Surmise on his part, my eye!” Bertha interrupted, her little pig eyes glittering like diamonds. “You got suckered into a deal, got your neck stuck way out and Sellers might have protected us if you’d gone to him and put the cards on the table.

“Sellers tells me he gave you a chance.

“But did you take it? Not you! You were smart. You went traipsing off to Denver, to tell our client to get under cover and stay under cover. You made a pay-off in a hit-and-run case with the understanding that there wouldn’t be any prosecution.

“And don’t tell me that’s all a figment of Seller’s imagination. You know something?”

“What?” I asked.

“When they took that car of Phyllis Dawson’s down to the police lab and checked it over, they found three distinctive threads caught in the spring shackle. When they compared those threads with the torn dress Mrs. Chester had been wearing at the time she was struck down in the intersection, they found they had a perfect match on fibers.

“Let that glib lawyer the Dawsons have retained try to explain that away in front of a jury.”

“They impounded the dress that Mrs. Chester was wearing at the time?” I asked.

“No, they didn’t,” she said, “but they took a sample from the hem.”

“How come?” I asked.

“Mrs. Chester was picked up there in the intersection; she was loaded into an ambulance and taken to the hospital. She was suffering from shock, and the doctors warned her she was going to be mighty sore for a few days and would have to stay in bed. Fortunately, she had no bones broken.

“Since it was a hit-and-run case and they saw a tear in her dress, and, apparently, a little strip of cloth that had been gouged out of it by the automobile, the police took a small piece of the material from the inside of the hem.”

“Did they get her permission?”

“How the hell do I know?” Bertha blazed. “The police aren’t on trial here; you are! It’s routine in hit-and-run cases to pick up all the physical evidence they can get and salt it away.

“Having got rid of Mrs. Chester, the authorities might have had some trouble if it wasn’t for this circumstantial evidence, the dent on the fender, the fibers adhering to the shackle bolt, or whatever it is they call that part of the car. I think Frank Sellers said it was a shackle bolt.”

“So Sellers told you all about it?”

“He told me enough about it,” she said, “so that I wouldn’t need to get mixed up in it and have my license revoked along with yours. Sellers has been a damned good friend of mine.”

“I’ve been a good friend of his,” I said. “I’ve done a lot for him.”

“You’ve done it in such a manner that it irritates the hell out of him.”

“I can’t help how he feels. I’ve done it, haven’t I?”

“You’ve done it. Now you’re in a jam. There’s only one thing you can do.”

“What?”

“Beat Sellers to the punch and don’t say that I told you so!”

“You mean with Mrs. Chester?”

“I mean with Mrs. Chester. You gave her money. She took an ambulance to the airport. Apparently, she got aboard a plane for Denver. Something happened to her when she got to Denver. They had a wheelchair ordered for her, but someone must have spirited her out of the terminal. You have two guesses as to who that someone was.”

“Meaning our client?”

“Meaning your client,” Bertha said. “Fry me for an oyster, but I’d love to get my claws into him again!”

I said nothing.

“That goddam client,” Bertha went on, “just framed you in a picture. He laid a trap and baited it with a little money. Then he made damned certain he couldn’t be traced.

“You know something?”

“What?”

“Sellers thinks that this Phyllis Dawson is a complete phoney; that she’s not the guy’s daughter at all; that she’s the guy’s mistress; and he’s a rich guy, standing between her and ever being brought to account on this hit-and-run charge.”

I shoved my hands down deep in my pocket and slumped down in the chair.

“All right,” Bertha said after a while, “say something!”

“I’m thinking.”

“You’re thinking too damned late. You should have done your thinking before you stuck your neck in a noose. I’m going to miss you as a partner, but you sure as hell are going to lose your license over this one, and Sellers is mad. I’ve never seen him so mad.