Erle Gardner - Beware the Curves

“Listen,” I said. “Keep your shirt on! The last time I saw you they were trying to put the squeeze on you for ten grand in addition to the fifteen you’ve already paid. You haven’t heard any more about that additional squeeze, have you?”

“No,” she admitted.

“You won’t,” I told her. “Sit tight. Don’t be a damn fool. Go to a bank. Turn your property over to the bank for management and start painting nudes.”

I hung up.

Another call came through. The voice was suave, polished.

“Mr. Lam?”

“Right.”

“I am Homer Garfield, President of the Citrus Grove Chamber of Commerce.”

“How are you, Mr. Garfield?”

“Very well, thank you, Mr. Lam. I have read various statements in the public press concerning a potential expansion of Citrus Grove. The authority for those statements seems to have come from you.”

“That’s right.”

“May I ask if you have some actual information?”

“You may.”

“Do you?”

“I do.”

“Can you tell me what it is?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“I can’t give you any information that I haven’t given the press,” I said. “However, I can tell you this: your evening paper carries a statement from Bailey Crosset about a campaign contribution made to him by Drude Nickerson. Why not get in touch with Drude Nickerson and find out about that campaign contribution? Why not interrogate the other members of the Trustees and see if campaign contributions have been made to them?”

“Nickerson is unavailable.”

“What the hell?” I said. “You’re representing the Chamber of Commerce. Who’s going to tell you that Drude Nickerson is unavailable? Are you going to sit back and let a plant with a twenty-million-dollar annual payroll go to Santa Ana because your city is so damn crooked a concern can’t get a reasonable change in your zoning ordinance? Are you going to let a bunch of cheap politicians keep twenty million dollars out of the pockets of your merchants because they want a two-bit contribution to election expenses?”

He cleared his throat. “That is a point I want to discuss, Mr. Lam. I want to find out more about that.”

“Then you’re calling the wrong person,” I said. “Your district attorney holds an elective office. Your sheriff holds an elective office. Who the hell is going to make Drude Nickerson unavailable to you in a matter of this sort? You sit around there and twist your fingers and Santa Ana will wind up with the plant.”

Again he cleared his throat. “May I ask where you got that twenty-million-dollar payroll figure, Mr. Lam?”

“Out of my head,” I told him and hung up.

I went out and went to work chasing down the secretary Karl Carver Endicott had fired, the one who had gone to Mrs. Endicott with the story about John Ansel being sent out on a suicide expedition.

She wasn’t hard to find.

Her name was Helen Manning. She wasn’t bad looking, a blonde with blue eyes, a little heavy in the seat, but she certainly could play tunes on a typewriter.

She was working in an office where her employer didn’t want her to talk on the job and she didn’t want to talk on the job.

We wound up making a dinner date.

I went back to the office and checked in.

“There’s a telegram,” Elsie Brand told me.

It was from Barney Quinn. It said simply: “Good. Keep it up.”

A reporter for the Citrus Grove Clarion called up. He wanted an interview.

“I can’t talk about the murder case,” I said. “You’ll have to get in touch with Mr. Quinn and—”

His voice showed nerve strain. “To hell with the murder case,” he said. “What about this factory?”

“Have you,” I asked, “talked with the president of your Chamber of Commerce about that factory?”

“Have I talked with him!” the voice said. “He’s talked with us!”

“Have you interviewed Drude Nickerson?” I asked.

“Now listen,” he said, “what’s all this about Drude Nickerson?”

“I simply asked if you’d interviewed him.”

“No,” he said shortly.

“I would suggest that you do so.”

“Now look,” he said, “something’s happening. Another member of the Trustees has stated that he received a two-thousand-dollar contribution from Nickerson for campaign expenses. He insists that there was nothing that could possibly be a tie-in with any zoning ordinance. He says that he’s going to investigate the facts in the case, and, if the money was in any way connected with any attempt to get him to vote for a change in the zoning ordinance, he’s going to be against it.”

“A fine bunch of Trustees you have!” I said.

“Is that sarcasm?”

“Is that sarcasm!” I said. “What are you talking about? The men have accepted campaign contributions. They state that if those contributions were connected in any way with pending ordinances they’re going to vote against the ordinances.”

“Now wait a minute,” the reporter said. “Do you think that’s fair?”

“What’s fair?”

“For them to vote against an ordinance that way if the change in the ordinance might bring an influx of prosperity to this community?”

I said, “That’s putting the matter on a dollars-and-cents basis. These Trustees have put it on a basis of personal integrity. I’m surprised that you’d even consider any financial argument in connection with a decision involving the personal integrity of any member of your city council. I have no further comment to make.”

I hung up.

I waited ten minutes and called Homer Garfield, President of the Citrus Grove Chamber of Commerce.

“I understand another councilman has admitted a two-thousand-dollar campaign contribution from Nickerson,” I said.

His voice was cautious now. “Yes,” he said, “that is true.”

“Have you interviewed Nickerson?”

“As I have said earlier, Nickerson is not available.”

“Are you,” I asked, “going to let them continue to get away with that? Why should he make campaign contributions?”

He said dryly, “Contributions of two thousand dollars are rather large for the office of city councilman.”

“That’s true,” I said. “You might also ask Nickerson what other campaign contributions have been made. It would be interesting to know if the four thousand dollars represent the only campaign contributions he’s made.”

“May I ask what is your interest in the matter, Mr. Lam?”

“An interest in pure government,” I said. “An interest in upholding the ideals of our country. An interest in seeing that the merchants in your community don’t look on you as a weak sister who lets Nickerson hide behind the district attorney’s skirts simply because he’s a witness in a murder case.”

“The district attorney tells me that you are vitally interested in that murder case.”

“He’s telling you the truth.”

“That you would like to see Nickerson discredited.”

“I’d like to find out the facts,” I said.

“He says that he refuses to permit his office to be jockeyed into the position of pulling chestnuts out of the fire for you.”

“That means that you can’t interview Nickerson?”

“He says it does.”

“And that the grand jury won’t be able to interview him?”

“I haven’t questioned him about that.”

“May I ask what your occupation is, Mr. Garfield?”

“I run a hardware store here.”

“Any property in Santa Ana?”

“No.”

“No vacant lots?”

“Well, I... I have some income producing property in Santa Ana.”

“I see,” I said.

“Just what do you mean by that?”