A Fair - Cut Thin to Win

“You going to make it tough for me?”

“If I was making it tough for you, I’d have made it tough a long time ago,” I told her.

“I go to Salt Lake City. I have a daughter living there.”

“Married?”

“Widowed.”

“Children?”

“No, she has a little place that she keeps up. She always has room for me.”

“Do you pay her anything?”

“I don’t need to. She has a good job. I don’t ask her for anything and she doesn’t ask any questions.”

“She has ideas?”

Mrs. Chester chuckled and said, “You know, she looks at me at times rather enviously. I think she thinks I’m a scarlet woman; that I’m living some kind of an immoral life.”

“But she doesn’t suspect what it really is?”

Mrs. Chester shook her head.

“Give me the daughter’s address.”

She took a piece of paper and wrote out the address.

“What’s the daughter’s name?”

“Eileen Adams.”

“She has a telephone?”

“Yes. You want the number?”

“Put it on the memo,” I said.

She said, “I’m putting myself in your power.”

“ I put you in my power,” I told her. “Remember I can blow the whistle on you at any time I want to.”

“You going to do it?”

“I don’t know.”

She looked at me wistfully. “I’m an awfully good campaigner,” she said. “I know what you’re after. You’re smelling the money and you’re going to get your fingers on it. If you’d work with me, we’d get twice as much and we could make a fair division.”

“Why did you think I wanted your address?”

“So you could — Hell I don’t know. Why did you?”

“I may want to work with you,” I told her.

Her face lit up. “Donald,” she said, “you’re a good boy. You’re an awfully smart boy. I knew the minute you walked into the house with that magazine racket of yours that you were awfully damned good.”

“We’ll let it go at that,” I told her. “Be sure to keep in touch with your daughter so that I can reach you at any time. But remember one thing, I’m not making any deal with you; I’m only investigating a fraud case.”

“What kind of fraud?”

“A fraudulent accident.”

“There’s nothing more there to investigate,” she said. “You know it all already.”

“I sure wish I did,” I told her. “How are you coming on your ten per cent this time?”

Her face lit up again. “Donald, I’m way ahead. I’m fifteen hundred to the good right now.”

“On two-bit slot machines?” I asked.

“Heavens, no,” she said. “I plunge on roulette; then when my luck starts going sour, I cash in my chips and go to the dime machines. If I don’t do so good there, I wait for a day and go back and try all over again. If I start perking up on the dime machines, I try the quarter machines until I’ve hit two or three jackpots and feel that my luck is back, and then I go to the roulette table again.

“You can’t work out any kind of a mathematical system that can win at this racket because the mathematics are against you, but you can work out a rhythm system of hitting the line when you’re hot and drawing in your horns when you’re cold, and it pays off — believe me, Las Vegas doesn’t owe me any money.”

“What do you do with it?” I asked. “You got it in a bank somewhere?”

She grinned and said, “Somewhere, and that’s what you can beat your brains out on, Donald. No matter what kind of threats you use, I’m not going to tell you anything about that.”

“Keep it there,” I told her. “Good luck to you in Las Vegas and don’t go broke. Can the police get a line on your Salt Lake hideout?”

“Not a whisper of a chance,” she said. “I’ll use three air lines, two buses and five names getting there.”

“Get started now, then,” I told her, got up and walked to the door. “Want to ride the taxi back uptown?” I asked.

“Not tonight,” she said. “I think my luck has had a jolt. I’m going to be hard to find.”

“Okay,” I told her, “I’ll pay the taxi. Have luck!”

I got in the taxi and drove back to the airport.

I went to a Chinese restaurant and made certain that it was real Chinese, run by an old character who had a seamed face and bright, glittering eyes.

I walked up to the counter. “Hoh shah kai mah,” I said conversationally.

That was a form of Chinese greeting, meaning “Is the whole world good?”

He was looking down at some account books he was figuring and he answered mechanically, “Hoh shah kai.”

Since the Chinese language is one of varying tones, it is impossible to use the rising inflection as indicative of a question. Therefore, they put the word “mah” on the end of a sentence to show that there is a question. By answering me, the Chinese assured me that the whole world was good.

And then suddenly he jerked his head erect in surprise as he realized that I wasn’t another Chinese. “You speak Chinese?” he asked, his words all running together.

“Just a little bit,” I told him. “Dik kom doh. I have many Chinese friends.

“I want to write a letter to a Chinese friend. I want lots of red paper, big red envelope. Have you got one?”

I put a dollar bill on the counter.

“What kind of letter?”

“A joke letter,” I said, “gong seuh, I need a big envelope, very very red.”

He grunted, picked up the dollar, put it in the cash till, reached down under the counter and came up with a huge red envelope.

“Very fine,” I said. “Now, take your brush and write in Chinese on the envelope.”

“What do I write in Chinese?”

“The name of the restaurant, anything.”

He hesitated a moment; then dipped the brush in the black India ink and made flowing Chinese characters down the side of the envelope. “You read?” he asked.

I shook my head. “I don’t read. I only speak a little. I have lots of Chinese friends. I learn a little from them.”

“You live in Las Vegas?”

“No, Los Angeles.”

I picked up the envelope and extended my hand.

He gravely shook hands with me.

I walked out; went to one of the gambling houses and looked around for advertising matter. I finally found a big piece of cardboard that would just fit in the envelope. The cardboard advertised the advantages of gambling at that particular place of business.

I put it in the envelope, sealed the envelope, went to the post office, got airmail stamps and special delivery stamps; then addressed the envelope to Clayton Dawson at the Dawson Re-Debenture Discount Security Company at Denver, Colorado, wrote the address of the office building where Helen Loomis maintained the mail drop service, and dropped the envelope in the mail.

I looked up the schedule of planes to Denver and won a little over seven hundred and fifty dollars at the crap table before I had to leave.

I rented a drive-yourself car in Denver; had a good night’s sleep, and the next morning, bright and early, was where I could watch the office of Helen Loomis.

Once that red envelope with the Chinese lettering on it came in special delivery, I knew she was going to telephone her client, and I felt certain that the man who had given me the name of Clayton Dawson wasn’t going to let any grass grow under his feet in finding out what was in that distinctive letter.

At nine-fifteen, a special delivery mailman delivered the mail to the Loomis office. At ten-fifteen, an attractive young woman, in a tight-fitting outfit which showed her figure to advantage, entered the office. Ten seconds later she came out carrying the big, red envelope.