A. Fair: All Grass Isn't Green

“That’s all right,” he said hastily.

“So,” I went on, “the question arises whether you want us to quit when the deposit is used up or whether you want to put up some more money to have us go ahead.”

“Go ahead with what?”

“To find Hale, of course.”

He took a pencil from his pocket and started playing with it, putting the point on the table, sliding his thumb and forefinger from the eraser down to the point, upending the pencil and sliding his thumb and fore back again. He was thinking of what to tell me, or how tell me.

I beat him to the punch. “Just why did you want find Colburn Hale?” I asked.

He hesitated for two or three seconds, then said, “Somehow, Lam I doubt if that’s particularly important.”

“It might help if I knew.”

“And it might not.”

I shrugged my shoulders. “It’s your money,” I pointed out.

He took out his wallet and extracted two new fifty-dollar bills.

“I’m going to add another hundred dollars to the deposit,” he said. “That will take care of things for more days.”

“Not with traveling expenses,” I said.

“Well, then, for one more day after the three fifty used up.”

“Okay,” I told him, “you’re the boss. When this is us up you want me to pack up and go home?”

“If you haven’t found him by that time, yes. And make every effort to keep expenses down.”

I started to say something, then paused as I regarded the door from the hotel.

The surprise must have shown on my face.

Calhoun, whose back was toward the door, whirled to see what I was looking at.

Sergeant Frank Sellers of the Metropolitan Police saw me at just about that time. His own face registered surprise, although he fought to control the expression. Then he was coming over toward us.

“Well, well, well,” he said, “look who’s here!”

“Hello, Sergeant, how are you?”

“What are you doing down here, Pint Size?” he asked roe. “And who’s your friend?”

I said, quickly so that Calhoun would get the idea, “Mr. Calhoun, shake hands with Sergeant Frank Sellers of the Metropolitan Police. Sellers is sort of a liaison man who gets around on cases where outside jurisdictions telephone in for help. Are you down here on official business, Sergeant?”

Sellers grinned and said, “Very neatly done, Donald.”

Calhoun extended his hand. Sellers grabbed it, crushed it in his big paw and said, “Pleased to meet you.”

“What was neatly done?” I asked.

“Telling Calhoun who I was and warning him that I might be on official business. The way you’re acting Calhoun might be a client of yours.”

I didn’t say anything.

“I am,” Calhoun said.

Sellers turned to me. “What’s the pitch?” he asked. “What are you doing down here, Pint Size? What does Calhoun want down here?”

“Information,” I said.

Sellers pulled up a chair and sat down. “Think I’ll join you for a while. You two have had breakfast?”

I nodded. “The huevos rancheros here are very good, Sergeant.”

“Can’t eat ’em,” he said. “Have to go pretty easy on spicy food. Now then, let’s go back to where we were. You say Calhoun hired you to get information?”

“That’s right.”

“What sort of information?”

I smiled and said, “You’re asking the wrong person. I can’t betray the confidences of a client.”

Sellers turned to Calhoun. “What sort of information?” he asked.

Calhoun was plainly flabbergasted. “Is this official?” asked.

“It could be made official,” Sellers told him.

Calhoun gave him a long look, then said somewhat coldly, “I fail to see how any stretch of the imagination would make my business with Mr. Lam of any possible interest to you, Sergeant.”

Sellers didn’t back up an inch, “Then you’d be stretch your imagination some more.”

“I’ve already stretched it to the limit,” Calhoun said.

“The name Colburn Hale mean anything to you?” Sellers asked.

Calhoun couldn’t resist the slight start.

Sergeant Sellers grinned a triumphant grin.

“I see it does,” he said. “Suppose you start talking.”

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to talk about,” Calhoun said.

Sergeant Sellers said, “Now, Pint Size here is a fast worker and you can’t underestimate the guy. If you do you get into trouble. Now, take for instance the case of Marge Fulton who lives at Apartment Forty-two at Eight-seventeen Billinger Street. This man, Colburn Hale, Cole Hale, as his friends call him, had the apartment next door, Apartment Forty-three.

“Now, what do you think happened? Donald shows up and knocks on the door of Colburn Hale’s apartment. He gets no answer. So then he knocks again until finally Marge Fulton comes to the door of her apartment to see what the noise is all about and to tell Donald Lam that she doesn’t think Hale is home.

“Now, that’s where you can’t underestimate this guy. He’s ingenious. He leads Marge Fulton to think he Colburn Hale’s agent. He pumps her for all she knows — which is that Hale moved out in the middle of the night. Then Pint Size shows up down here.”

Calhoun looked from Sergeant Sellers to me, then back to Sellers.

“And,” Sellers went on, “Donald Lam somehow got information that put him on the track of coming down here to the border. So we’d like to know a little bit more about Hale and just what your interest is in the guy.”

“Is he hot?” I asked.

Sellers measured his words carefully. “He may be hot and he may be cold — very cold.”

I said, “The Calexico Police Department didn’t telephone for help just because someone in Los Angeles is missing.”

“That’s logical,” Sellers agreed affably.

“And,” I said, “if you were looking for Hale and you knew I’d been looking for him, you must have uncovered a lead which brought you down here without knowing you were on my back trail because you were surprised when you walked into the dining room here this morning and saw me.”

“Who says so?” Sellers asked.

“Your face said so.”

Sellers said, “We’re getting our roles mixed. I’m doing the questioning.”

“Has any crime been committed?” I asked.

“Could be,” Sellers said. “Hale is mixed up in a dope-running case. We don’t know how deep.”

I said to Calhoun, “In that case, if any crime has been committed and if there’s any reason to suspect you of any connection with the crime, you don’t have to say a word. Sellers has to warn you that anything you say can be used against you and that you’re entitled to the advice of an attorney.”

“But there can’t be any crime involved,” Calhoun said.

“Oh, sure,” I said sarcastically. “Frank Sellers just came down here to sell tickets to the Policemen’s Ball.”

Sellers grinned.

After a few moments of silence, Sellers said, “Now I’ll start telling both of you jokers something. I flew down here in a police plane. I didn’t get in until after five o’clock this morning, but I had some pretty good leads. I went right to work.

“Hale was a writer. He did all sorts of things, little short articles, fiction, and, occasionally, he’d run on some article that he could sell to the wire services.

“Now, somewhere along the line he found out something about the marijuana traffic. He had been investigating that quietly and under cover for some little time. He evidently stumbled onto something big because the night he disappeared he was pounding like mad on typewriter.

“Then something happened. Some man came to see him. We want to know more about that. Who was that man, a friend or an enemy?