A. Fair: All Grass Isn't Green

He led us over to the rear part of one of the pontoons.

I could see this had already been processed for fingerprints. There was dusting powder over it and a couple of good latents which had evidently already been photographed.

Sellers said, “Just a minute.” He picked up two bottle openers that were on a stool by the end of pontoon, fitted the two bent ends to a little ridge on pontoon and pulled.

The cap loosened.

Sellers took his handkerchief so he wouldn’t leave fingerprints and took the end completely off.

The pontoon underneath was filled with dried marijuana that had been stuffed in and packed until it was solid.

I gave a low whistle.

Calhoun said nothing.

Sellers said, “As you can see, we got a couple of go fingerprints off the tip here. Now then, just to protect yourselves, I think it will be a good idea if you’ll just sit inside the station with me and leave your fingerprints.”

“Why?”

“We just want to make sure that the latents we have developed aren’t the prints of either one of you.”

I looked at Calhoun.

“I don’t think you have any right to take our prints under the circumstances,” Calhoun said.

“Probably not,” Sellers said, “but I think we’re going to take them just the same — one way or another. What’s the matter, you got any objections?”

“None at all,” I said hastily. “As a matter of fact, you’ve got mine on file. You’ve taken them several times.”

“I know, I know,” Sellers said.

Calhoun said, “This is an arbitrary high-hand procedure. If you had the faintest reason to suspect either one of us it would be different, but you’re just on a general fishing expedition and—”

“And,” Sellers interrupted him, studying him with a cold, speculative eye, “we’ve been looking you up, Mr. Milton Carling Calhoun.

“You and your wife are separated. Since the separation you have been living in the Mantello Apartments, a very swanky apartment out on Wilshire Boulevard.

“Around nine-thirty last night you got a call from Mexicali which came through the apartment switchboard. Right after that you phoned the apartment garage, told the attendant you had to have your car right away, that you were being called out of town on a business trip.

“Evidently the call gave you information which was important enough so you left immediately for the Imperial Valley. You must have arrived about two o’clock this morning. It must have been rather a tough trip because of the rain. I thought you looked a little tired when I met you.

“You know, you must have driven right past this houseboat where it was parked by the side of the road when you came into town. You might have recognized the outfit. I don’t know. You may have stopped and gone inside. We’re finding a few fingerprints on the inside as well as these on the outside on the cover of the pontoons.

“Now Mr. Milton Carling Calhoun, would you like to step inside and have your fingerprints taken?”

Calhoun took a long breath. “How in the world did you find out about the telephone call and the time I left Los Angeles?”

Sellers grinned around the cigar. “Don’t underestimate the police son. I put through a long-distance call after I talked with you at breakfast and had the information I wanted within a matter of minutes. You are very law-abiding. When you changed your residence, you even notified the Department of Motor Vehicles of your new address — it’s very commendable. That’s the law, you know. Now, that Mantello Apartments is a swanky outfit. They have a twenty-four-hour switchboard service. The night operator didn’t listen in on your call, but remembers that it came from Mexicali. Do you suppose there’s any chance that it was Eddie Sutton who calling you to tell he’d reached the border okay with his shipment and you told him to park the outfit and until you got there?”

“You’re crazy,” Calhoun said.

Sellers pulled the soggy end of the cigar out of mouth, inspected the frayed end which he had chew put the cigar back in his mouth, pulled out a light snapped it into flame and held the flame at the end of cigar until a cold, bluish-white wisp of smoke made its appearance.

“So far I haven’t anything to go on except hunches,” he said. “But I’m playing hunches. Come on in and we’ll take your fingerprints.”

We went inside and Sellers took our fingerprints.

It was evidently the first time Calhoun had had all his fingerprints taken. He was a little awkward, and fingerprint technician had to hold the tip of each fin firmly as he gently rotated the finger. He also fumbled around a little when it came to handling the paper tissue with the ink solvent on it which the technician handed him.

Sellers puffed on the cigar.

“All right, you two,” he said, “I’ll take you back to motel. Be sure to let me know if you think of anything else.”

When Sellers had driven away, I said to Calhoun, “Suppose you come clean with me.”

“I’m already clean with you,” he said irritably. “You talk like that damn Los Angeles cop.”

I said, “All right, I’ll ask a few questions. Why did you want to find Hale?”

“I’ve told you why. Because I wanted to look for Nanncie.”

“And why did you want to find Nanncie?”

“Because I knew she was getting mixed into a very dangerous situation.”

“This man, Hale, was a rival of yours?”

“With a girl as good-looking as Nanncie, everybody is a potential rival.”

“And how did you know Hale was working on a dope story?”

“Because Nanncie told me.”

“She betrayed Hale’s confidence?”

“It wasn’t his confidence. Nanncie was the one who had lined up the story for him in the first place.”

“And where did Nanncie get it?”

“She got a tip from an operator in a beauty shop and followed up on the story.”

“Why? Because she was interested in dope?”

“No because she was interested in Hale. She knew he was looking for something that would make a sensational article and she thought this would be it. It was a man’s story.”

“Did she have details?”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t pull that line with me. You and Nanncie were pretty close. If she told you anything, she told you all. Did she say anything about a houseboat on a trailer?”

Calhoun didn’t answer that question for a second or two, then he said, “I’m not going to have you cross-examine me this way, Lam.”

I said, “You damn fool, I’m trying to save your bacon. You’ve left a broad back trail. Don’t underestimate the police. Frank Sellers is going after Nanncie.”

“And we’ve got to go after her,” Calhoun said.

“He’ll pick her up somewhere,” I said. “She didn’t have a car. She probably didn’t take a taxi. Somebody came and picked her up, probably about three or four o’clock this morning. That was shortly after you had arrived in Calexico. I think you did it.”

“You think wrong,” Calhoun said. “I only wish to heaven I had been the one. I’d have taken her and put her in a safe place.”

“Safe for whom?” I asked. “You or her?”

“Her.”

“I’m still not sure you didn’t pick her up,” I told him. “Now, we’ll come back to the original question. Did she tell you anything about a houseboat that was used in the smuggling operation?”

“Well, generally.”

“So when you drove into town in the wee small hours of the morning and saw a pickup with a pontoon houseboat on a trailer parked by the side of the road, what did you do?”

“All right, he said. I thought — well, I didn’t know what to think. I stopped the car and went across to try to get in the door of the houseboat.”