A. Fair - Bedrooms Have Windows

“What the hell’s it all about?” Bertha asked.

“Something you should know,” I said. “Call me back when you’ve finished reading it. Be careful what you say over the phone. Good-bye.”

I could hear Bertha Cool’s indignant sputtering in the telephone receiver as I dropped it back into its cradle on the bedside stand.

It was a full fifteen minutes before she called me.

Apparently she had made up her mind to put me in my place by not calling back, but when she read the news it was so disturbing she had forgotten her anger.

“Donald,” she said, “what’s up?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’re the one who drove that second car…”

“Careful!” I interrupted.

“And the name... well, it’s in your handwriting?”

“That’s right.”

“Why the hell did you sign his name?”

“Because I didn’t want to sign mine.”

“You put down the right licence number?” Bertha asked after a second or two.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Reasons.”

“Did you think any questions were going to be asked later on?”

“I considered it as a possibility.”

“Well, you’ve got yourself in a nice mess,” she said.

“You don’t know the half of it,” I told her. “There’s a chance that ‘business card’ in the coin purse was mine.”

“The hell it was!”

“I don’t know. It could have been. Now you just keep completely out of it and tell me where I can find this Claire Bushnell. I want to talk to her.”

Bertha said, “I wrote her address on a sheet of paper and stuck it under the corner of my blotter.”

“Any telephone number?”

“I don’t know, lover. I don’t think so. It came in too late to file, so I just took the data and left it all under the blotter on my desk. It was Saturday morning, and…”

“You cashed the cheque?” I interrupted.

“Don’t be a fool. Of course I cashed the cheque.”

“And it was good?”

“I had you go out there, didn’t I? If the cheque hadn’t been good I’d have had the little tart thrown in the can. Do you think it’d be smart to go to the police and tell them the whole story?”

“Not yet,” I told her. “Later on perhaps. When we tell the police, I want them to have something to work on.”

“They’d have something to work on if we told them, now, wouldn’t they, lover?”

“Yes!” I said. “Me!”

I slipped the receiver back on the cradle and went up to our office building. I signed the register the porter kept in the lift, and he took me up to our floor. I walked down to the offices where the frosted glass bore the legend COOL & LAM and down in the lower left-hand corner, Investigations. Walk in.

I entered the office, swung past the door to my private office and on into Bertha’s private office. Every piece of furniture was stamped with the individuality of Bertha Cool, from the creaky swivel chair behind her desk to the locked cash drawer over on the right-hand side — a drawer which locked with a separate key from any of the other drawers in her desk. It was always a safe bet that Bertha had everything under lock and key. She didn’t trust the secretary, the porters, or, for that matter, her partner.

I sat down in Bertha Cool’s swivel chair.

The squeak seemed to have been built into it, a peculiar squeak which came just at one place whenever I moved. I raised the blotter.

The memorandum was there.

I studied it. The address I wanted was 1624 Veronica Way.

Down underneath that in Bertha’s strong masculine hand writing, appeared the words, “Wants her aunt shadowed.”

Then Bertha had crossed out the ‘aunt’ and inserted ‘stock salesman’ in place of ‘aunt’.

Below that, Bertha had started doodling, evidently while she’d been talking with Claire Bushnell.

Bertha had started out writing ‘one hundred dollars’ in words. Then she had made ‘$100.00’ in figures. Then she had written ‘one hundred dollars’ two or three times. Then she had crossed out all of the ‘one hundred dollars’ and written ‘one hundred and fifty dollars’. Then she had written, ‘thinks stock salesman might be boy friend — thinks some cause for alarm here — something she is not telling us — wants Donald.’

Then Bertha had gone doodling again and this time the figure was ‘$175.00’, after which appeared the words, ‘Donald personally’.

Then there was more doodling, then the words, ‘Aunt’s address, 226 Korreander Street.’

Then there were more doodlings of aimless lines, then in Bertha’s handwriting, ‘Aunt’s name, Amelia Jasper; man who is trying to swindle her: Age 35, well-dressed, thick-chested, double-breasted suits, mostly grey: dark-complexioned, long, straight features; nervous laugh, smokes cigarette with long, carved ivory holder, a chain smoker, smoking one right after the other; good profile until he laughs, then mouth seems cruel; laughter harsh, profile beautiful.’

There were more doodlings, then Bertha, as an afterthought, had got the things I’d been trying to impress on her for the last three years: an accurate description of the man she wanted shadowed: ‘Height 5 feet 11; weight 195; dark hair, grey eyes.’

Once more Bertha had written ‘one hundred and seventy-five dollars’, then crossed it out, put in ‘two hundred dollars’, then more doodling, then, ‘Subject has appointment for four o’clock in afternoon. Have Donald shadow, picking up subject at 226 Korreander.’

Down underneath, in firm, angular strokes, appeared the one thing which, so far as Bertha was concerned, terminated the interview: ‘Received cheque, $200.00.’

It was all written on three sheets of legal foolscap which Bertha had clipped together and pushed under the blotter of her desk, intending later on to dictate a memo to go into the case-history file, but since the client had come in just before noon on Saturday, Bertha hadn’t had a chance to get at the dictation.

That was where I’d taken over. Bertha had called me in and I’d staked out at 226 Korreander, a well-designed but small stucco house.

I’d waited out there and the subject had come in exactly on the dot, just as specified, smoking a cigarette in a holder, wearing a double-breasted, well tailored grey suit with blue stripes. He’d remained for approximately an hour and ten minutes.

I’d tagged along behind when he left, keeping in the blind spot where his rear-view mirror couldn’t pick me up, noting the licence number of the car he was driving, watching the traffic, dropping as far behind as possible when I knew I couldn’t lose him, then crowding up close on him. He hadn’t given the slightest indication of being interested in anything that was going on behind him.

Yet the man had checked out of the hotel that night after I’d tailed him there. He must have been smarter than I thought, must have known he was being followed. I couldn’t figure out any other answer at the moment, and that answer bothered me, was bad for my self-respect — that which Bertha would have referred to as my damned conceit. I had always flattered myself on being able to tell when a subject knew he was being followed.

I made up my mind I’d be a lot more cautious with Mr. Thomas Durham in the future — in the event there was going to be any future.

It was typical of Bertha’s memo that she had boosted the price a hundred dollars while she’d been talking with the client, and a clinical record of Bertha’s mental processes was preserved on those sheets of legal foolscap, but she hadn’t even bothered to find out whether the client had a telephone, or anything about the client’s history. She’d received two hundred dollars, and that was that.