Nelson Algren - The New Black Mask Quarterly (№ 1)

After three cups, I’d cleared enough cobwebs to call Al. He had Phalen’s arrest report. I thought about telling him about my dance partners last night, but rejected the idea. He would have just wanted me to waste a lot of time looking at mug shots, and I wasn’t in the mood. It wouldn’t have done any good, anyway. Even if I could have identified them, they would have had six witnesses who had been playing poker with them last night, my car was outside where they had thoughtfully dropped it, and there was no way to prove that my hand had not been stepped on when I’d bent down to pick up a quarter from the sidewalk. My blood pressure went up ten points when I thought about it, but I kept my mouth shut and took down what Al gave me.

Phalen had been arrested after the fire department had found evidence of arson in the grease fire that completely destroyed his Encino restaurant, Arnie’s Greenhouse. Traces of accelerants, possibly gasoline, had been found in the kitchen area where the fire had started, but Phalen claimed that those were possibly cleaning solvents which had been kept in a closet there. The case was weak, but it had been filed, anyway.

I thanked Al and called a friend of mine at Hooper Holms. The Hooper Holms Casualty Index in Morristown, New Jersey, contains the names of more than six million individuals and lists their insurance histories. The purpose is to spot insurance fraud. They had Phalen’s name. Before moving to California, Phalen had owned two buildings in Baltimore that had mysteriously gone up in flames. No legal charges had ever been brought against him in those cases and the insurance claims had been paid.

Arnie the Torch. With three fires to his credit in the past ten years, one more business going up in smoke would certainly bring him more heat than just the combustible kind. Maybe he figured it was time to humanize him claim base.

I called Anixter and gave him a report. When I told him about my welcome home committee, he sounded shocked. “My God. Are you all right?”

“A broken hand. They were just administering an object lesson. They let me know that next time, the damage would be more extensive.”

“You think they were working for this Phalen character?”

“Yeah, I think. And now he knows I’m working for you, not his wife.”

“Have you told the police?”

“It wouldn’t do any good—”

“But if he and Rhonda have been carrying on an affair all this time, and he’s the kind of man you say he is, they could have plotted Chip’s death from the beginning. He could have targeted Chip as a mark and sent her after him.”

That thought had crossed my mind. Phalen certainly had the connections and the experience, and his mind seemed to run in those directions. “It’s possible,” I said, more to keep him from running off on that track than anything. “Did Chip own his own scuba gear, Mr. Anixter?”

“Huh? Yes.”

“You’re sure?”

“I should be. I paid enough for it. Why?”

I bypassed the question. “I’d like to put a twenty-four hour surveillance on both the woman and Phalen, Mr. Anixter, but that would run into some money—”

“I told you I don’t care what it costs,” he snapped.

My kind of client. I told him I’d keep in touch, then called Transcontinental Life. The agent handling the Anixter claim was named Manning and I repeated what I’d learned to him, then asked if he could send an investigator over to Rhonda Anixter’s apartment and on some pretext ask to see Chip’s diving gear. When he asked what I was looking for, I told him I basically wanted an inventory of what was there. He said it should be no problem, and promised to get right on it.

I called some people I knew and arranged for round-the-clock surveillance on both Rhonda and Phalen, warning them to be careful, then called the phone company. I told the service rep that my name was Chip Anixter and that I’d just gotten my phone bill and noticed I’d been billed for a call to Fort Lauderdale I’d never made. I gave her Rhonda’s number and she came back on the line and said she could find no record of any such call billed to that number. Indignantly, I asked what calls had been made in the past month that she did have a record for, and she read off a list. I took them down and hung up.

Out of the sixteen toll calls Rhonda had made, two were to a number in Yuma, Arizona, seven were to a number in Los Angeles, and four to a Hollywood number. I started dialing. The Hollywood number, as I suspected, was the Paradise; all the calls had been made since she had returned from the Caribbean. The Los Angeles number belonged to the law firm of Sadler, Bacon, and Pitts, Rhonda’s attorneys. A woman named Zelda Banks answered the Yuma number when I called and it took a four-second scam to find out she was Rhonda’s mother.

Manning called back after lunch. “There’s nothing there,” he said. “She told my guy that she trashed the stuff after the accident. Too painful for her to keep, she said.”

I couldn’t help grinning.

“Another little item of note,” he went on. “She’s got a new attorney. A young, Beverly Hills fire-breather named Cohen. We’ve come up against him before in a couple of questionable fire claims. He’s already talking a five-figure lawsuit for damages unless we can show good cause why her claim shouldn’t be paid.”

“When did this happen?”

“We were notified of the change of counsel this morning, right after I talked to you.”

“How long would a lawsuit take to settle?”

“Months, years, who knows?”

“Tell them they’re going to have to sue. Tell them there’s new evidence to dispute the validity of the claim.”

“But there isn’t, really—”

“They don’t know that. Besides, there might be, if we can drag this thing out.”

“I don’t know if the company will go for it—”

“Do what you can do.”

He promised to try. I sat there, thinking about it, then went down to my car and drove downtown. Arnie Phalen’s arson case was listed in the index of the Superior Court. I took down the number and gave it to the clerk, who came back with a file. There wasn’t much in the file. The case had been dropped in preliminary for lack of evidence. Harold Cohen must have done a good job representing his client.

Phalen must have thought Rhonda’s attorney was a little weak and put his own man in to push a little harder. I couldn’t blame him, really; he was merely protecting his investment. Just as he had been protecting it when he’d sent his goons to break my hand.

There wasn’t much to do now but wait, so I went home, took a pain pill, made myself a drink, and started.

The waiting ran into a week. Harold Cohen screamed and threatened, but Transcontinental stood firm. Phalen stayed away from Rhonda, but he visited Cohen’s office twice during the week.

I was taking the Monday morning shift at Rhonda Anixter’s apartment when the Porsche pulled out of the driveway and headed down the street. I put the glazed doughnut I was eating down on the front seat and followed her to I-10, where she headed east. She drove fast and it was hard to keep up in my old Dodge, but I managed to keep her in sight all the way to the Harbor freeway. She lost me there, but I had a pretty good idea where she was going. I confirmed it when I pulled up across from the Paradise and saw the Porsche parked in the lot.

Twenty minutes later, she came through the front door and headed to her car. She was wearing big sunglasses and had her hair up, but even without makeup she made me drool. It made me sad that this was as close as I would ever get to her, playing Peeping Tom, but then I guess we all have our roles to play in life. Maybe I should brown-nose the Director more...