A. Fair - Shills Can't Cash Chips

“Now, you got any witnesses that could give us any help there?”

Sellers listened for a while and said, “Now, don’t get me wrong. I just said I was working on something that might , just possibly might , give us a lead on cleaning that up... Look, I’m going to drive around there after a while. I’ll have someone with me. You get everything lined up.”

Sellers hung up the phone, looked at me and shook his head. “Every time I think we’ve got you on the ropes, you come bobbing up behind me somewhere. Now dammit, Lam, if you’re taking me for a ride on this thing, I’ll... well, I’ll give you something you won’t forget in a hurry.”

Sellers looked at his watch, looked over at Bertha and said, “I told an officer to have Chris Maxton, who’s Holgate’s partner, brought in here. Now, I’m going to have to leave before he gets here but when he comes I want you—”

The phone rang.

Bertha picked it up, said, “Hello,” listened for a moment, then turned to Sellers and said, “They’re here now.”

“You have them come right on in,” Sellers said. “We’ll just take time to button up this angle before we go any farther.”

Bertha said, “Send them in,” and hung up the phone.

The door opened. One of the officers who had been at the airport stood on the threshold and said, “Come on in, Maxton.”

The man who came in was the heavy-set man I had met at Elsie Brand’s apartment, the one who had given me the two hundred and fifty dollars.

He looked at me, said, “You two-timing crook!” and started forward.

Sellers shoved out an expert foot and tripped him.

“Back into line, Buddy,” Sellers said. “You don’t like him? What’s the matter?”

“Don’t like him!” Maxton yelled. “The cheap crook! He took me for two hundred and fifty bucks.”

“Tell us about it,” Sellers said.

“There isn’t anything much to tell,” Maxton said. “My partner—”

“What’s his name?”

“Carter Jackson Holgate.”

“All right, go ahead.”

“Well, my partner was involved in an automobile accident and I wanted to find some witnesses. I put an ad in the paper—”

“Use your name?” Sellers asked.

“No, it was just a box number.”

“All right, go ahead.”

“I put an ad in the paper offering two hundred and fifty dollars for a witness who had seen the accident. This cheap crook sent me a letter saying he had, and gave me a telephone number. He was supposed to be the brother of some woman named Elsie Brand, who has an apartment here in the city. He was supposed to be visiting her. He told a convincing enough story and I handed him two hundred and fifty bucks. Then I found out the accident didn’t happen that way at all and he’s a liar, he didn’t see it.”

Sellers looked at me.

“Why did you want a witness to the accident?” I asked.

“You know why. Because you always want witnesses to accidents.”

“Your partner was insured?”

“Of course he was insured. It’s partnership insurance. We wouldn’t drive any of the cars without having insurance on them, public liability and property damage up to the limit.”

“And your partner admitted that the accident was his fault?”

“Well, what if he did?”

“Well, why did you want witnesses?”

“I don’t have to let you ask questions.”

“And,” I said, “after your first ad for a hundred dollars didn’t bring forth a witness, your next ad ran for two hundred and fifty dollars.”

Maxton turned and said to Sellers, “You’re an officer?”

“That’s right.”

“All right, you seem to be in charge here,” Maxton said. “I don’t have to let this crook cross-examine me.”

“Well, I’ll ask you the same question myself,” Sellers said. “Why did you increase the ante?”

“Because I wanted to find a witness.”

“Why?”

“So there wouldn’t be any question about what had happened.”

“You knew the insurance company had hired a detective agency?”

“Hell, no. I was just trying to get things straightened out.”

“Your partner know you put the ad in the paper?”

“Of course he— Well, I don’t know that he knew, no. We pull together all the time. It was a close partnership, and Carter knew that I would help him any way possible.”

“You know where Holgate is now?” Sellers asked.

“No. He hasn’t been in the office and police have been out there looking the place over. It was robbed last night but I don’t think that had anything to do with this— Or did it?”

Maxton whirled to look at me.

Sellers jerked his thumb at the officer and said, “Take him out. Don’t tell him anything for a while.”

“Say, what’s all this about?” Maxton asked. “What — I came up here to prosecute a crook for obtaining money under false pretenses. You’re acting as though I might be charged with something.”

Sellers simply jerked his thumb at the officer.

“This way,” the officer said to Maxton, and took him by the arm.

Maxton started to hold back. The officer increased the pressure and Maxton went out.

Sellers chewed on his cigar.

“This is the damnedest case,” Hawley said irritably.

Sellers said, “Come on, Pint Size. We’re going places.”

Captain William Andover of Traffic went with us to call on Mrs. Eloise Troy. He said she was the only witness whose testimony would be worth anything in connection with that hit-run traffic accident.

Sellers said to Andover, “Would it be all right if I did the questioning, Bill? I’m working on something a lot bigger than this traffic I’m working on a murder case.”

“Go right ahead,” Captain Andover said. “I’m working on a hot lead in this case, but I’m not ready to tip my hand yet. You go ahead.”

Sergeant Sellers rang the bell.

Mrs. Eloise Troy turned out to be a straightforward, rather fleshy widow, around fifty-two or fifty-three. She wore glasses, seemed poised and sensible.

Captain Andover identified himself and introduced us.

“We wanted to talk about that hit-run accident last August,” Sellers said.

“Heavens, I’ve told everything I know about that half a dozen times.”

“Would you mind going over it just once more?” Sellers said* “because I want to hear it first hand. I’m working on a lead which just might pan out.”

“Well, I certainly hope it does,” she said. “That was the most callous, brutal thing I have ever seen. It just made me sick to my stomach. I couldn’t sleep for a long while without having nightmares about what happened.”

“Would you mind telling us?”

“I can go over it again all right,” she said. “Come in and sit down.”

Her flat was a comfortable, homey place, with the aroma of good cooking coming from the kitchen.

She closed the kitchen door and said, “I’m cooking some chicken in a rotisserie and it gives a perfectly ravishing aroma, but very penetrating. I wasn’t expecting company.”

“It’s all right, we’ll only be a minute,” Sellers said.

“Oh, I don’t mind that at all. I just thought the flat was a little, well a little odoriferous.”

We took chairs and Mrs. Troy said, “Well, it was about six-thirty in the afternoon, I guess, right after the rush hour. I was driving toward Los Angeles and this car was coming behind me.

“I always make it a point to look at my rearview mirror from time to time, just to keep a line on what’s coming behind. Driving in traffic, if you have to stop, it always makes a great deal of difference about the car that’s right behind you. You want to know whether it’s a driver who has his car under control or whether he’s one that might bang into the rear end.