A. Fair: Shills Can't Cash Chips

“She sounds very levelheaded,” I said.

“Very levelheaded indeed. In fact she has a smooth touch — almost a professional touch. She did state that she would be willing to accept a thirty-thousand-dollar settlement and let it go at that — and then she simply moved out of the picture. We don’t know where she went.

“Now, we’d like very much to find her. It bothers us when something of this sort happens. This claim, you understand, Mr. Lam, is one where we’re going to have to admit liability. It’s simply a question of how much we’re going to have to pay in order to get a settlement.

“Now then, we want your agency to find Vivian Deshler.”

“You have a pretty good investigative department,” I said. “Why don’t you use it?”

“We’re busy with other things and... well, frankly, Lam, we tried all the usual procedures and they didn’t work. We don’t know where she is. We can’t find her. We want her.”

I said, “Look, this is your business. You’re specialists. How do you expect us to find this girl if your organization is unable to get a clue?”

Hawley said, “We think that you’re just that much better than we are.”

Bertha beamed.

I said, “Come again.”

“I beg your pardon?” Hawley said.

I said, “Express that in terms that I can understand.”

Hawley said, “Well, I’ll put it this way. We have one clue to Vivian Deshler. She has one friend in Colinda and that friend, as it happens, lives in the same apartment house, the Miramar Apartments. Her name is Doris Ashley. She is twenty-eight, a brunette, with a very good figure, and no apparent source of income that we have been able to ascertain.

“Doris Ashley is very friendly with Dudley H. Bedford, a man of about thirty-five, who is reputed to have made money buying and selling real estate and apparently has been rather good at it.

“Now, our organization is one where the personnel is advanced upon merit in terms of seniority, and since the position of an investigator requires a great deal of experience and tact, the positions are not filled by the younger men.

“All routine contacts with Doris Ashley have failed and... well, we had a staff meeting and decided that a younger, more personable operative who had no known connection with our company might get the desired information.”

Hawley beamed at me.

Bertha Cool said, “My God, what Donald does to women! They cry on his shoulder, they unburden themselves completely. If you want a girl turned inside out, that’s the brainy little punk that can do it.”

“I’m satisfied he can,” Hawley said.

“I don’t think I’m going to like this,” I said.

“Oh, you’ll love it!” Bertha exclaimed. “It’s a challenge, Donald.”

I kept my eyes on Hawley. “Look,” I said, “if I go at this, I’m going at it in my own way. You want to locate Vivian Deshler, is that right?”

“That’s right.”

“You don’t care how it’s done, just so it’s done.”

“We have exhausted the obvious ways,” he reminded me.

“I understand all that, but the object of our employment is to locate Vivan Deshler, right?”

“Right.”

“All right, here’s the only way I’ll work on it. I’ll give it a onceover at a hundred a day and expenses. At any time I don’t want to go ahead we’re free to quit.”

“We wouldn’t like it that way, Lam.”

“We wouldn’t like it any other way,” I told him.

Bertha started to say something. My glance warned her to a reluctant silence.

Hawley sighed. “Okay, it’s a deal.”

“Okay, now tell me about Doris Ashley,” I said.

For the first time, Hawley looked at his notes. “She drives an Olds-mobile, last year’s model, license number RTD nine-thirteen. It’s a wide-door club coupe. She shops at the Colinda Supermarket, does her own cooking in the apartment except when she’s invited out at night and that’s mostly every night.”

“Dudley Bedford?” I asked.

Hawley nodded.

“What about the Miramar Apartments?” I asked. “Does it have a garage?”

“No, there’s a vacant lot to the north of the apartment house and they use that as a parking lot on a catch-as-catch-can basis. There are usually parking facilities available on the street in front of the apartment house.”

“Doris Ashley a late sleeper?” I asked.

“Very late,” he said. “She gets up a little before noon each day, goes shopping about two-thirty in the afternoon, apparently right after breakfast. We haven’t been able to find out too much about her. There’s an atmosphere of secretiveness, of mystery, about the whole setup that bothers us. Frankly, Mr. Lam, we’re willing to spend a little more than we expect to save on the settlement because we don’t like these things. We don’t like cases that don’t follow a pattern. We have to run our business on a basis of averages. That’s the way we figure our premiums. That’s the way we like to pay off our losses.”

“I see,” I said.

Hawley got up and shook hands. “I’ve left my private unlisted telephone number with Mrs. Cool,” he said. “You can count on cooperation from our organization on anything you want, but of course I must warn you against having any visible contact with us. As the insurance carrier, we assume we have been spotted and anything we might try to do would be anticipated.”

“I see,” I told him. “Well, thanks a lot. We’ll get busy.”

He bowed to Bertha, started out, paused in the doorway. “I may as well tell you, Lam, we think there’s an element of danger involved.”

“Personal?”

“Yes.”

“How do you figure that?”

He smiled. “We have had an interesting and anonymous tip-off on the telephone,” he said. “You’d better be careful.”

He stepped out and closed the door behind him.

Bertha Cool’s face was wreathed in smiles.

“Isn’t it wonderful, Donald?” she said. “Here’s a big insurance organization with its own investigative staff and when it gets to a really difficult case they turn to us.”

I said nothing.

“And of course,” Bertha said, “we’re not dumb enough to fall for all his line of chatter about why they’re willing to spend money to get the information they want. Something in the case is worrying them. They’ve made a pass at this jane, got a jolt, and they’re scared.”

“That’s for certain,” I told her. “Well, I’ll get going and look the ground over.”

“Keep me posted,” Bertha said. “This is an important case. And don’t frighten the client with those whopping big expense accounts you usually turn in. You can cut down...”

I closed the door behind me, cutting off the rest of what she was saying.

I went to a car rental agency, signed up for a convertible, put the top down, and drove to Colinda.

I cruised around the Miramar Apartments until I had spotted Doris Ashley’s automobile. Then I found a parking place, and settled down to wait.

About two-thirty a vivid brunette, who walked impatiently as though her good-looking legs were trying to push the sidewalk out of the way, came bustling out of the apartment house and climbed into the car.

I followed her to the Colinda Supermarket.

I was playing it by ear, without any prearranged plan.

I had to make a pickup but didn’t know just how to go about it. The old gag of letting my shopping cart swerve and lock a wheel with hers might work. It depended on her mood. But even if it worked, when she got to thinking back on it, she’d find lots of things fishy about my approach. I couldn’t afford that.

As someone has said, there are a million approaches you can use to get acquainted with a good-looking girl but none of them is any good unless the girl happens to be in the mood.