A Fair: Cut Thin to Win

“Just a few minutes now,”

“Open up,” Sellers said.

“I’m not ready to open up.”

“Open that door,” Sellers said, “or I’ll kick it in.”

“You wouldn’t dare do that,” she said. “I have a right to go to the bathroom. I—”

Sellers stepped back, stood on his left foot, elevated his right foot and lashed out with a flatfooted impact, hitting the door just back of the doorknob.

The door shivered.

“Come on,” Sellers said, “I’ll bust it down.”

“I told you I can’t come out now.”

Seller cocked his right foot and gave another terrific blow.

The door shivered. There was a sound of splintering wood. The door slammed open, hit against a doorstop and vibrated.

Mrs. Chester was standing there with her robe around her, looking out of an open window. It was about eight feet to the ground.

“None of that,” Sellers said.

“How dare you!” she said. “How dare you break in on me this way.”

“You’ve been in here fifteen minutes already,” Sellers said, “that’s time enough to clean your teeth, brush your hair, powder your nose, take a shower and do everything else you needed to do ten times over. I don’t want a runaround, I want the truth. Now come out here.”

She gave one last look at the open window, then marched out.

Sellers dropped back into his seat, indicated a straight-back chair for her. “Sit down there,” he said. “Lam, you sit on the bed.”

Sellers turned to her, wolfed the cigar around in his mouth, said, “what about this hit-and-run business?”

“What hit-and-run?”

Sellers said, “You complained of a hit-and-run incident.”

“It was stupid of me,” she said.

Sellers frowned.

“Actually it was mostly my fault,” she said. “I turned around and wanted to see something and kept right on walking, and I walked right into this car.”

“You were in a pedestrian crossing?”

“Yes.”

“And the car was coming how fast?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m beginning to think the car was standing still.”

“What?” Sellers yelled.

She nodded and said to me, “I’m sorry I took advantage of you, Donald, because you’re a nice boy, but after all this is a cruel world. A person has to look out for number one.”

“What do you mean the car was standing still?” Sellers asked.

“I didn’t say it was. I said it might have been for all I know.”

“That isn’t the way you told it to the police,” Sellers said.

“The police never gave me a chance. They acted on the assumption that the car was moving just because I was hit on a pedestrian zone.”

“You were hit?”

“Well I may have hit the car, I don’t know. I was walking along and all of a sudden there was this impact on my shoulder and I went down and the next thing I knew people were running all around me and somebody shouted, ‘Get an ambulance,’ and—”

“And what happened to the car?”

“The car went away.”

“Then it was a hit-and-run,” Sellers said.

“Well,” she said thoughtfully, “it was a run, I guess.”

I said, “Did you give the driver of the car your name and address?”

“No, why?”

“But you went away in an ambulance?”

“Yes.”

“Did you need to?”

She smiled archly and said, “Now, I was afraid you were going to ask that question, Donald, and I’m just not going to answer it. After all, I’m a helpless, lone widow and I have to look out for myself.”

Sellers grunted.

“Now,” Mrs. Chester went on, “that’s the peculiar thing about the law. The law says that if a motorist hits a pedestrian he has to stop and give aid, but it doesn’t say anything about a pedestrian hitting a motorist having to stop and give aid. At least I don’t think it does.”

“You’ve looked up the law?” I asked.

“It’s been looked up,” she said.

“You let Donald Lam here make a settlement of ten thousand bucks on you?” Sellers asked.

“Now,” she said, “it wasn’t that way at all. Donald Lam will tell you the true facts.”

“I want you to tell me the true facts.”

“Well, Donald Lam called on me. At first he said he was selling magazines. Then I told him about the accident and he said he knew a person who sometimes bought up accident claims for cash and then filed suit and got a lot more money. I let him know that I would be interested.”

“You mean he’d pay you money and suit would never be filed,” Sellers said.

“Heavens to Betsy,” she said, “it was nothing like that at all. He was buying the claim because he wanted to make more money out of it.”

Sellers quit looking at her and started looking at me. “You know, Pint Size,” he said, thoughtfully, “I’m beginning to smell something here, and I hope your hands are clean.”

“This is all news to me,” I said, “except that she’s telling the truth about the fact that I told her I wasn’t representing an insurance company and wasn’t making any settlement; that I knew a person who sometimes bought claims and then recovered on them.”

Sellers glowered at me. “Played it pretty smart, didn’t you?”

“The way she talked,” I said, “she had a very good claim if a person could find the car that hit her.”

“I see,” Sellers said, “and by a rare coincidence the person that you went to get the money from was the person who was driving the car that hit her.”

There was the banging of peremptory knuckles on the door and a man’s voice said, “Open up in here.”

Mrs. Chester jumped up with alacrity and opened the door.

A man of about fifty, with broad shoulders, a bull neck, a florid red face and feverish little brown eyes, set wide apart over a jaw that would have graced a prize fighter, said, “What the hell’s going on here?”

Sellers got up to face him, pushed the cigar out and upward at an aggressive angle. “And may I ask who the hell you are?”

The man said, “I’m Marvin Estep Fowler. I’m an attorney at 107 law. I’m representing Mrs. Chester here, and I want to know what’s going on. Now, who are you?”

Sellers said, “I’m Sergeant Sellers.” He pulled a leather container out of his pocket and flashed a badge at Fowler.

“Just a minute, just a minute,” Fowler said, as Sellers started to put the leather folder back in his pocket.

Fowler took the folder, looked at the badge and said, “Uh-huh, Los Angeles, huh?”

“That’s right,” Sellers said.

“I didn’t know the city limits of Los Angeles stretched into Nevada,” Fowler said.

“They don’t.”

“Then you’re out of your jurisdiction,” Fowler said.

“I’m working on a lead on a case — a hot lead.”

“And the way to do that,” Fowler said, “is to check in at police headquarters here, get a local man on the job and the two of you work on it together with the local man taking the responsibility.”

“There wasn’t time for all that,” Sellers said, but the angle of his cigar dropped three degrees.

The lawyer whirled to me. “And who are you?”

“The name’s Lam,” I said. “Donald Lam.”

Mrs. Chester said, “He’s the one I was telling you about late last night, Mr. Fowler. He’s the man that gave me the money and had me execute an assignment of my damage claim against anyone that hit me — or,” she added with a smile, “that I might have hit, only I didn’t tell him that.”

Fowler said to Mrs. Chester, “Your note said you were waiting in the bathroom.”

“He kicked the door down,” she said, pointing to Sellers.

“He what?” Fowler asked.

“Kicked the door down.”