A. Fair: All Grass Isn't Green

He took the ten dollars I handed him and said, “Is this on the up and up?”

“Of course it’s on the up and up. I’m just trying to get some stuff straightened out. I think Nanncie made mistake in packing up in the apartment and put a manuscript in which I’m interested in one of the boxes that was stored.”

“Okay,” he said, “let’s go.”

He pulled down the flag and I rode with him to the branch of the International Storage Company.

“Just wait here,” I said. “I won’t be long.”

I walked in and told the girl at the desk, “My assistant brought in a bunch of cartons from our apartment at Eight-thirty Billinger Street yesterday. The cab driver out there made the delivery. She signed the papers. There’s been a mix-up in the number of boxes. I want to find the bill of lading, or whatever it is you issue, and check on the number of boxes.”

She took it as a matter of course. “What name?” she asked.

“Nanncie Armstrong,” I said taking a shot in the dark.

She ran down an alphabetical list, said, “Here it is. There were six cardboard cartons.”

“Only six?”

“Only six.”

“Then six A is missing,” I said. “I’ll have to try to locate it. Thank you very much.”

I could see that there was just a faint hint of suspicion in the girl’s eyes, so I didn’t press my luck. I went back to the taxicab and said, “There’s been a mix-up somewhere. We’ll go back to Eight-thirty Billinger Street.”

On the road back, I said, “You took my assistant and her suitcases somewhere after she had stored the boxes?”

“That’s right.”

“Airport?” I asked.

He turned around with sudden suspicion. “Not the airport,” he said.

I laughed and said, “She’s always trying to save money. I suppose she went by bus. I told her to take the plane.”

“I took her to the bus depot,” he admitted.

I didn’t ask any more questions but paid off the meter when he stopped at Billinger Street and started for the stairs. “I’ve got to find that extra box somewhere,” I told him. “I suppose Nanncie left it with the manager for me to pick up. We’re giving up the apartment, you know.”

“So I gathered,” he said, then looked at the tip I had given him, nodded his head, said, “Okay,” and then drove away.

I got in my car, drove to my apartment and picked up a cardboard carton, took some old newspapers and three or four books that I didn’t care much about, sealed everything in the box and typewrote a sheet, NANNCIE ARMSTRONG, Box 6A.

I made up a detailed fake inventory and taped sheet of paper on the carton.

I then went back to the International Storage Company and came in lugging my dummy box with a cheerful smile on my face.

“All right,” I said, “I chased down the box that was lost. This is box number six A. Put it with the others you will, please.”

She took the box.

I said, “I presume there may be a little more to pay on the storage.”

“It won’t amount to much. We get two months’ storage in advance on jobs of this sort. There were six packs and she paid for them — there’ll only be fifty cents due a package this size, which we’ll put in with the others.”

“Fine,” I told her, handed her fifty cents, and started for the door, then checked my step as though struck an afterthought.

I walked back and said, “I’m sorry, but I’m going have to have a receipt.”

“But Miss Armstrong has the receipt,” she said.

“I know, for six cartons. Now there are seven, counting this one which is numbered six A.”

She frowned a minute, then said, “All right, I’ll make out a separate receipt.”

She took a piece of paper, scribbled “One cardboard carton added to Nanncie Armstrong’s account, General Delivery, Calexico, California,” marked “50¢ paid,” sign the receipt with her initials and handed it to me.

“You can put this with the others and it’ll be all right,” she said.

I thanked her and walked out.

Nanncie Armstrong had taken a Greyhound Bus. She had given an address, General Delivery, in Calexico. She didn’t have a car of her own. Colburn Hale hadn’t the faintest sign of a backtrack, but putting two and two together, it was a good bet that he and Nanncie Beaver were planning a meeting.

I drove back to my apartment, picked up a suitcase, threw it in the back of the agency heap and started for Calexico.

I drove through the Beaumont and Banning Pass with the San Gorgonio Mountains on my left and San Jacinto towering high on my right.

We made a charge to clients of fifteen cents a mile for the agency car, and as the miles clicked off I wondered how Bertha and the client were going to react to the expense account.

Bertha was always screaming to keep expenses down because that meant more of a fee for the agency, and driving down to Calexico was going to put a big nick in the client’s three hundred and fifty bucks — by the time I charged mileage and my living expenses on top of that.

There was still snow on the north side of San Jacinto, which towers more than two miles above sea level, but it was hot down in the valley, and by the time I had left Indio behind and the road dropped down to below sea level it was too hot for comfort. Bertha would never listen to having an agency heap with air conditioning. She claimed all of our driving was around the city and air conditioning was more of a nuisance that a benefit there.

I hadn’t reported to the office or told Bertha where I was going. I knew she’d have a fit. But the Calexico lead was the only one I had.

It was late afternoon when I reached Calexico.

Calexico and Mexicali are twin cities. Calexico on the north, Mexicali on the south, and the international boundary fence between the United States and Mexico is about all that separates the two cities.

Now, Nanncie had no car. She had taken a bus. She evidently wasn’t too flush with money. I felt she wouldn’t be staying at the rather swank De Anza Hotel. In fact, wasn’t sure that she was in Calexico at all. The only thing I had to go by was that address of General Delivery. She could very well have crossed the border and gone into Mexicali.

I knew that I was going to have to do a lot of routine work.

I had a decoy envelope with me which I had addressed to Nanncie Armstrong at General Delivery, and I dropped it into the mall.

Unless you’re a Federal officer, the post office will give out no information about its customers, but the decoy envelope is a good way to get you the information you want in a reasonably small town.

The decoy envelope is manufactured especially for that purpose. It is too big to be put in a pocket or in a purse. It has red and green stripes on it so it is as conspicuous as a bright-red necktie at a funeral. You mall the envelope, get a parking place where you can watch the door of the post office and keep an eye on the people who come and go, particularly at about the time the mall is being distributed.

If the subject calls for mail at the General Delivery window and gets the decoy envelope, he can’t put it in his pocket if he’s a man, or if it is a woman it won’t fit in her purse. The subject comes out the door holding the decoy envelope and usually pauses on the sidewalk to open it.

The decoy envelope has an ad in it, a routine solicitation to buy real estate, and the subject thinks it’s just part of a broadside mailing campaign.

The detective covering the post office gets a good look at the subject and a chance to follow.

After I mailed my envelope I drove up and down the street listing the motels and rooming houses. I didn’t have too much hope here because I had a feeling the subject had crossed over to Mexico but would continue to get mall at Calexico.