A. Fair: All Grass Isn't Green

“I think it is.”

“I have never seen him.”

“You’ve told me all you know about him?”

“No, I’ve told you all a good detective should need to know.”

“And,” I went on, “we’d like to know a little more about you .”

He regarded me with uncordiaI eyes, then reached over to Bertha’s desk and tapped the money with his fingers. “That money,” he said, “gives you all of my background you’re going to need.”

He got to his feet.

“Where do we make reports?” I asked. “By mail or telephone? In other words, how do we reach you?”

“You don’t reach me,” he said. “I reach you. I have your phone number, you have my name. You know what I want.”

“Just a minute,” I said. I want to take a look at a map of the city and get this location straight.”

He hesitated halfway to the door.

I hurried down to my office and said to Elsie Brand my secretary, “There’s a man in slacks and sports coat just leaving Bertha’s office, about thirty-one or thirty-two I’d like to find out where he goes. If he takes a cab, get the number of the cab. If he has his own car, get the license.”

“Oh, Donald,” she said despairingly. “You know I am a rotten detective.”

“You’re all right if you don’t act self-conscious,” said. “Get out there in the corridor. Get in the same elevator he takes and try thinking about something else while you’re riding down with him. If he acts suspicious, call off the job, but there’s just a chance he’ll be rather preoccupied and won’t pay any attention to you.”

I went back to Bertha’s office just as Calhoun left the reception room. She was fingering the money. She looked up and said, “I don’t like that smirking, supercilious son of a bitch.”

I said, “He’s putting on an act.”

“What do you mean?”

I said, “He knew more about us than he wanted to let on. All that business about being surprised that you were a woman and that I wasn’t built like a professional wrestler was part of an act.”

“How do you know?”

“I sensed it.”

“Why would he put on an act like that?”

“To get us on the defensive.”

Bertha rang for her secretary and handed her the money. “Take this down and deposit it,” she said.

I played a hunch. “This man that was just in,” I said, “Calhoun. What did he say when he entered the office?”

“He wanted to know if Mrs. Cool was busy.”

“Then he didn’t just see the sign on the door, COOL & LAM, and know nothing about the firm.”

She shook her head. “He knew about Mrs. Cool because he specifically asked for Mrs. Cool.”

“Mrs. Cool?” I asked.

“Definitely, Mrs. Cool.”

I glanced over at Bertha.

Her diamond-sharp eyes were blinking contemplatively.

I said, “The guy was very careful to keep from telling us anything about himself.”

“As far as that is concerned, his money talked,” Bertha said. “We don’t give a damn who he is. We’ll use up the three hundred and fifty and then we quit until he puts some more money in the kitty.”

“I don’t like it at all,” I told her. “Let’s take a look in the phone book.”

“Oh Donald, we can’t look through all the different district in the city. Here, let’s take a look at this one district and see how many Calhouns there are.”

“M. Calhouns,” I reminded her.

Bertha opened the phone book, found the proper page and said, “Here are half a dozen of them right here. M. A. Calhoun, an M. M. Calhoun, a Morley Calhoun, an M. Calhoun and Company... the guy could be anybody.”

Bertha had a reference book in back of her desk, Prominent Citizens of California . I pointed to it.

Bertha pulled the book down, opened it and said, “And here we’ve got a lot more Calhouns, Wait a minute, here’s Milton Carling Calhoun who looks something like our man — Milton Carling Calhoun, the Second.”

I looked at the picture. It could have been our client taken five years earlier. He was the son of Milton C. Calhoun, the First. His father, who was dead, had been stockbroker. Our man had graduated from college honors, majored in journalism and had married Beatrice Millicent Spaulding.

There were no children. There was a list of clubs long as your arm. Apparently the guy had never anything in his life except inherit money.

“Fry me for an oyster,” Bertha said, reading the copy. “The son of a bitch sure held out on us.”

“Well, we’ve got him pegged now,” I told her.

“Pegged is right,” Bertha said.

I went down to my office and waited for Brand.

Elsie came back with the report. “He took a cab,” she said, “a yellow cab. I managed to get the number. He evidently had the cab waiting at the curb because the flag was down and as soon as the cabbie saw him coming reached back and opened the door. Our man got in it and the cab drove away.”

“You couldn’t follow?”

“There was no cab I could grab in time,” she said. “I told you, Donald, I’m a lousy detective.”

“The number of the cab was what?”

“I got that all right. It was a Yellow Cab, number sixteen seventy-two.”

“Okay, Elsie,” I said. “You did a good job. I just wanted to make certain he was trying to give us a double cross. I’ll take it from there and thanks a lot.”

Eight-seventeen Billinger Street was an apartment house which had been converted from a three-story residence.

At one time that section of the city had been the site of imposing homes, but that had been many, many years ago.

The city had grown and engulfed the district. The luxurious homes had run downhill, then had been converted into rooming houses, or apartments with beauty parlors, small offices and nondescript stores on the ground floor.

I detoured a single-chair barbershop, found the stairs, climbed to the second floor, located Apartment 43 and stood for a moment at the door listening.

From Apartment 42, which adjoined it on the south, I could hear the steady clack of a typewriter, then an intermittent pause, then more clacking on the typewriter. From Apartment 43 there wasn’t a sound.

I tapped gently on the door. There was no answer.

The typewriter in Apartment 42 was clacking away again.

I stood there in the semi-dark hallway, undecided. I put my hand on the doorknob of Apartment 43. The latch clicked back. I pushed gently on the door for an inch or two. The door opened soundlessly.

I closed the door again and knocked, this time a little more firmly.

There was no answer.

I turned the knob, opened the door and looked inside.

It was a furnished apartment and someone had gone places in a hurry. There were a couple of empty cardboard cartons on the floor, and some old newspapers. Drawers had been pulled out, emptied, and left open. It was a one-room affair with a little kitchenette off to my right and an open door to a bath at the far end. There was a curtained closet, the curtain had been pulled back, exposing a wall bed. Empty wire clothes hangers were swinging dejectedly from a metal rod.

I wanted to go in and look around, but I had a feeling that it wasn’t wise. I backed out and gently closed the door.

The typewriter in 42 had quit clacking. I heard steps, coming to the door.

I raised my hand and knocked hard and loud on the door of 43.

The door of Apartment 42 opened. A woman in her late twenties, or perhaps early thirties, stood there at me appraisingly.

I smiled reassuringly at her and said, “I’m knocking forty-three,” and with that raised my hand and knock again.

“Are you Colburn Hale’s publisher?” she asked.

I turned to regard her searchingly. “Why do ask?”