A Fair: Cut Thin to Win

I drew up a chair and sat down by the head of the bed.

She lay there with her eyes closed for a couple of minutes. “Are you feeling better now?” I asked.

She gave a wan smile.

“Well,” I told her, “I’m going.”

“Don’t go.”

She opened her eyes and spoke with an apparent effort. She said, “You’re a good boy. You are only trying to help me, I know that. I need the money — on, how I need the money! I need attention. I need to have loving friends around me. I want to get to my daughter in Denver — I’ll take it.”

“Take what?”

“The ten thousand.”

I said, “You’d better wait until you’re feeling better.”

“No, no, I want to leave. I want to leave right now. I’ll get an ambulance to take me to the airplane and they can put me aboard the airplane and I’ll be in Denver in the shake of a cat’s whisker.”

I said, “You’ll have to sign a release.”

“Of course,” she said, “a man isn’t going to give a body ten thousand dollars for nothing. Do you have the paper?”

“I have a paper,” I said, “showing that for ten thousand dollars you sell, transfer, set over and assign to the Reserve National Bank, as trustee, all of your claims of any sort, nature and description against any person or persons, known or unknown, who have inflicted any injuries on you during the past year; and, in particular, any persons who may have caused an automobile to collide with you in any way. But generally, and specifically, you include any and all damages you may have for any reason or reasons whatsoever, because of any torts against any person or persons.”

“What’s a tort?” she asked.

“A civil wrong,” I said, “usually accompanied by an act of violence or infringing a person’s rights.”

“You give me ten thousand dollars and a fountain pen,” she said. “I’ll sign it. Lift me up in bed a minute, Donald.”

I handed her the document and she started to sign it.

“Read it,” I said.

“I don’t feel quite up to reading just yet.”

“All right, then,” I said, “I’ll come back in the evening when you do feel up to reading.”

“No, no, I can read it if I have to. I’m going to be in Denver this evening.”

She read through the document laboriously, moving her finger along each line as she read, and moving her lips, formulating each word.

When she had finished, she said, “Hand me the ten thousand.”

I handed her the ten thousand dollars and she counted it carefully. Then she signed her name.

“All right,” she said, “that does it... Young man, you move that telephone over by my bed. I’m going to get an ambulance and get to the airport. I’m going to make reservations for a ticket.”

“Do you think you could sit up on a trip to Denver?”

“I’m certainly going to try it,” she said. “They have nice soft, seats and I know the stewardess will let me stretch out on that curved seat at the back, particularly if the plane isn’t crowded. I’ll take care of myself all right. You’d be surprised how considerate people are of a person who’s fragile and has been hurt... You let me have the phone.”

“Do you want me to telephone for the ambulance?”

“No, I’ll telephone for it when those pills have taken their full effect. After I’ve taken those pills, I don’t feel really bad pain for three or four hours. The doctor told me not to take them any oftener than I had to because they might be habit-forming, but believe you me, young man, I’m going to take them all the way to Denver.”

I pulled the telephone over to the bed and said, “Is there anything else I can do?”

“Nothing,” she said.

I went out to the agency car, got an envelope, put the assignment in it, addressed it to myself at the office, stamped it, dropped it in a mailbox.

Then I sent a wire to our client in Denver: “BELT IS BUCKLED” and signed it Donald Lam.

When I walked in the office the next morning, there were danger signals flying all over the place. The receptionist held up her hand with the palm out. On the table where incoming mail was placed, there were two baskets — one marked B. Cool and one marked D. Lam. There were letters in the Lam basket, but on top of the letters was a red paperweight. That was the private danger signal that Elsie Brand had worked out.

Those signals gave me a chance to prepare for trouble. Usually it meant some big husky was threatening to beat me to pulp if I didn’t quit the job I was doing.

I braced myself for trouble, opened the door of my private office and walked in.

Sergeant Frank Sellers was sitting there with Elsie Brand, and Sellers was mad.

Sellers was a big, husky, two-fisted dedicated cop, who didn’t do very much talking himself and distrusted those who did talk.

Sellers believed in physical action. He wanted to be doing something all the time. He was always in motion. Sometimes he clenched and unclenched his hands. Most of the time he chewed on a soggy, unlit cigar stump.

Now he was both clenching and unclenching his hands and worrying the stump of the cigar.

“Hello, Pint Size,” he said, his voice ominous.

“Hello, Sergeant.”

“You’re in a jam!”

“Me?”

“You.”

“How come?”

“Don’t play that childlike, cherubic innocence with me. I don’t go for it.”

“I didn’t say I was innocent. I wanted to know what particular charge you are making against me.”

“You thought you were pulling a fast one.”

I said nothing.

“That hit-and-run business,” he said.

I raised my eyebrows.

“A dame by the name of Mrs. Harvey W. Chester who lives in a little old-fashioned bungalow in the rear of 2367 Doorman Avenue.”

“What am I supposed to have done with her?”

“That’s one of the things you’re going to tell me,” Sellers said. “This much I know. You knew we were investigating a hit-and-run. You were representing the person who did the hitting and running. You took a nice, fat wad of cold, hard currency out there, squared the deal with her and paid her to disappear.

“Now then, for your information, in case you’re too dumb to know it, that’s compounding a felony and we don’t like to have people compounding felonies.”

I sat down beside Elsie’s desk. She was looking at me with frightened eyes.

“Got a warrant?” I asked.

“Don’t crack smart,” he said, “or I’ll take you and throw your tan in the cooler just to show you what I can do. I’ve got enough on you to take you in on suspicion right now, but I am giving you a chance to come clean.”

“What do you want?”

“I want to know the name of your client.”

I shook my head. “That would be violating a professional confidence.”

“And if I don’t get the name of your client, it’ll be violating a state law.”

“Who told you all this stuff anyway?” I asked.

“Never mind that,” he said, and then added grimly, “we don’t divulge the sources of our information.”

“Well, why don’t you trace this woman, Mrs. Chester What’s-her-name, if you’re so smart?”

“Because, by God, you fixed it so we couldn’t trace her,” Sellers said.

“I did?”

“You know damned well you did! You had an ambulance call at the place, loaded her into that ambulance, had her taken to the airport and put in a wheelchair while she was about half full of dope. You put her on a plane for Denver, and when she got to Denver, she just plain disappeared.”

“Oh come, Sergeant,” I said, “she had to have a wheelchair meet her when she got off the plane in Denver and—”