Erle Gardner: Beware the Curves

“If we can serve Mr. Ansel, Donald, we will, and if we can’t there’s no hard feelings, no hard feelings at all.”

Bertha’s lips were smiling affably. It became difficult for her to control the expression in her avaricious little eyes that were as glitteringly cold as the diamonds on her fingers.

Ansel looked dubiously from Bertha to me, from me to Bertha.

Bertha, a hundred and sixty-five pounds of woman, somewhere in the late fifties or early sixties, as tough, hard and rugged as a coil of barbed wire, now smiling and purring in a manner so exaggerated that it was obviously phony, evidently didn’t appeal to Ansel. Ansel was still standing. He quietly maneuvered his position across the office so that he was between Bertha and the door.

He looked at me, hesitated, and apparently was trying to find some way of saying what was on his mind without hurting my feelings.

Bertha hurried along with a line of sales patter, talking fast, trying to get her ideas over before Ansel got out of the door.

“My partner Donald Lam is young, and he doesn’t have the build you’d expect of a private detective. But he has brains, lots of brains, and because he looks so... so—”

Bertha, obviously groping for a word, suddenly decided the game wasn’t worth the effort of being polite and nasty nice. Tossing her cooing manners to one side, she quit talking in her tone of assumed culture, and got down to brass tacks.

“Hell,” she snapped, “he looks so goddam innocuous he can move around in the background and get all the dope he wants without anybody having any idea he’s a private detective. He’s a brainy little bastard, and you can gamble on that.

“Now then, do you want us or not? If you don’t, say so, and get the hell out of that door because we’re busy. If you do, come back here and sit down and start talking turkey. You give me the jumps standing on one foot and the other, like a guy waiting in front of the door at a boardinghouse bathroom.”

That did it. Ansel’s sensitive mouth twisted into a smile. He came back and sat down.

“I think I want you,” he said.

“All right,” Bertha told him, “it’s going to cost you money.”

“How much money?”

“Tell us your problem and we’ll tell you how much.”

Ansel said, “Writers are not exactly overburdened with money, Mrs. Cool.”

That line got him no place.

“Neither are detectives,” Bertha snapped.

Ansel’s eyes lowered to look at her diamonds.

“Except the good ones,” Bertha hastily amended. “What’s on your mind?”

“I want you to find someone.”

“Who?”

“I’ve forgotten his last name. His first name is Karl.”

“You kidding?” Bertha asked.

“No.”

Bertha looked at me.

“Why do you want to find him?” I asked.

Ansel ran long fingers through his dark, wavy hair. He looked at me and smiled. “He gave me an idea for a whale of a story,” he said.

“When?” I asked.

“Six years ago.”

“Where?”

“In Paris.”

“Why do you want to find him?”

“To see if I can get the exclusive right to use the story.”

“Fiction or fact?”

“Fact, but I want to turn it into fiction. It would make a powerful novel.”

“All right,” I said, “you met Karl in Paris. Lots of Karls go to Paris. What else do we have to go on?”

“I knew his last name at the time, of course, but I find that it’s slipped my mind. He came from around this part of the country, a place by the name of Citrus Grove which is a suburb of Santa Ana. He was rather wealthy and he was on his honeymoon. His wife’s name was Elizabeth. He called her Betty. She was a nice girl.”

“What was the story about?” I asked.

“Well, it was about a marriage situation... I— It was about a man who convinced the girl he loved but who didn’t love him that her real sweetheart was—” He stopped.

“I don’t want to give away the plot of a perfectly good story,” he said.

“All right,” I said. “We’re supposed to find a man by the name of Karl from Citrus Grove who went to Paris six years ago on his honeymoon, and who has the plot of a good story that you can’t tell us about.

“What did he look like?”

“Tall, hard, broad-shouldered, a driving personality, the sort who gets what he wants.”

“How old?”

“About my age.”

“How old is that?”

“I’m thirty-two now.”

“How did he make his money?”

“I don’t know.”

“What did he do for a living?”

“Investments, I think.”

“How rich was he?”

“I don’t know. He seemed to be fairly well fixed.”

“That’s rather a general term.”

“It’s the best I can do.”

“Blond or brunette?”

“Redheaded.”

“Eyes?”

“Blue.”

“Height?”

“Six feet.”

“Weight?”

“Heavy. Around two hundred and fifteen or twenty. Not fat. Sort of thick, if you know what I mean.”

“Troubled with weight?”

“I supposed so, but he didn’t diet He ate what he wanted. He got what he wanted.”

“You don’t know what hotel he stayed at?”

“No.”

“Don’t know whether he went over by air or boat?”

“I think it was by boat, but I’m not sure.”

“What month?”

“July, I think. I’m not certain.”

“What do you want us to do?”

“Just locate him. Get me his name. That’s all.”

“All right,” I said. “We’ll do it.”

“How much will it cost?”

“Fifty dollars,” I told him.

Bertha’s desk chair gave an indignant squeak as she abruptly leaned forward. She opened her mouth, started to say something, then changed her mind.

I could see her eyes begin to flash. She was blinking the eyelids rapidly and a slow flush crept up on her face.

“Where can we reach you?” I asked Ansel.

“How long will it take?” he wanted to know.

“Probably not over a day.”

“You can’t reach me,” he said. “I’ll be in at this same time tomorrow afternoon.” He gave me his hand, a light, sensitive grip of long fingers.

He bowed to Bertha Cool and dissolved out of the door.

Bertha could hardly wait until the door had clicked shut. “Well, of all the namby-pamby, diffident, weak-kneed bastards!” she said.

“Him?” I asked.

“You!” she yelled.

“Why?” I wanted to know.

“No retainer!” Bertha screamed at me. “Nothing down even for expenses! No address! A lousy fee of fifty dollars for finding a guy by the name of Karl who was in Paris six years ago. And you’re going to find him for a flat fifty bucks and not a damn cent down. You let that guy ease out of the office without so much as a red cent by way of retainer to cover expenses. You fix a flat fee of fifty bucks for doing something that may cost us a thousand.”

I said, “Calm down, Bertha. The guy is a writer. Someone gave him an idea for a plot in Paris six years ago. He doesn’t make much money. It was a factual story the man gave him, but he’s going to turn it into fiction and make a novel out of it. So he wants to find the guy, and quite naturally he employs a detective agency to locate this bird. It’s just routine.”

Bertha shook her head as the full implications of what I was saying dawned on her.

“Fry me for an oyster!” she exclaimed.

“Exactly,” I told her.

“I never thought of it that way,” Bertha said.

“Start thinking of it that way now,” I told her.

“Well, what the hell does he really want?” she asked.

“Perhaps we can find out by tomorrow afternoon. It could be that he’s writing an article on detective agencies, exposing the manner in which they try to stick their customers exorbitant fees for simple jobs.