A. Fair - Shills Can't Cash Chips

I said, “Put it this way, Patton. You were shadowing a Doris Ashley at the Miramar Apartments in Colinda and when I entered the picture and got acquainted with her, you put a tail on me.”

“I don’t have to answer your questions, that’s a cinch,” Patton said.

“All right,” Sellers said, his face darkening, “you’re going to have to answer mine. Now did you have a tail on Doris Ashley or not?”

“It depends on what you mean by—”

“You know what I mean,” Sellers said. “Now, you can answer that question yes or no and damned fast.”

“Yes,” Patton said.

“You were keeping her car at her apartment under surveillance?” I asked.

“You’re talking to my deaf ear,” Patton said.

“Were you?” Sellers asked. “I’ll make it my question and put it to the other ear.”

Patton said, “Yes.”

“All right, who was your client?”

“We don’t have to tell you that.”

“I think you do.”

“I don’t.”

“For your information,” Sellers said, “this is now being tied into a murder case.”

“Murder!” Patton exclaimed.

“You heard me.”

“Who was murdered?”

“Carter Holgate. Know anything about him?”

“He... he enters into the picture in a general way,” Patton said, choosing his words cautiously now, and his manner showing that he was apprehensive.

“All right,” Sellers said, “I think the identity of your client may have something to do with our investigation. I want to know who was employing you.”

“Just a minute,” Patton said, “let me get the record.”

He walked over to a filing case, pulled out a jacket, opened it, looked at some papers, dropped the jacket back into the file and stood frowning.

“We’re waiting,” Sellers said. “And for your information, the police like a little more active co-operation from a private detective agency in connection with a murder case.”

“How much co-operation are Cool and Lam giving you?” Patton asked.

“All I’m asking for,” Sellers said. And then added with a grin, “More than I’m asking for.”

“Well, I’ll tell you this,” Patton said. “Our client was just a telephone number in Salt Lake City. Money for our services was received in the form of cash and we were instructed to telephone developments as fast as they happened to whoever might answer at this number.”

“And you didn’t look up the number?” Sellers asked.

“Sure, we looked it up,” Patton said. “We’re not that naive. It was the number of an apartment that was rented to a man named Oscar Bowman. It was a hotel apartment. No one knew anything about Bowman. He had paid the rent for a month in advance and that was it. Sometimes a man’s voice answered the telephone when we phoned in for instructions and sometimes a woman’s voice.

“We had Doris Ashley under surveillance for about a week. That is, we kept her apartment under surveillance, or rather her car at the apartment house. When she’d come out or go in, we’d clock the times of arrival and departure.

“When Lam showed an interest in the picture, we reported on that, and when Lam had made a contact and gone up to her apartment house with her, we phoned in that information and were instructed to drop the whole thing, to mail a report and terminate our activities at once.”

“You mailed the report to the apartment in Salt Lake?” Sellers asked.

“No, we didn’t. We mailed the report to Oscar Bowman, General Delivery, Colinda.”

“The hell,” Sellers said. “What about your fees?”

“We had received a retainer in the form of cash in an envelope sent through the mail. There is still a credit to the client on the case. We were instructed to forget about the credit and close out the case.”

“In other words,” Sellers said, “when Lam got on the job, it caused them to press the panic button and get out?”

“I don’t know,” Patton said. “All I know is what happened. I’m telling that to you.”

“Who told you to close up the case when you telephoned? Was it a man or a woman that was talking?”

“I remember that very distinctly. It was a woman talking.”

I said, “On a deal of that sort, Sergeant, they’d protect themselves.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’d tell her to hang on for a minute and he’d switch the phone conversation onto a recording. They’ve got a recording of the thing somewhere.”

Sellers looked at Patton.

Patton said to me, “I wish you’d drop dead.”

“He will someday,” Sellers said, “but right now I’m interested in finding out whether you have a recording of that conversation.”

“We have a recording.”

“Let’s listen.”

“ You can listen,” Patton said, “if you get tough about it. Lam can’t listen. We don’t have to turn the records of our employment over to a competitive agency, particularly when the man figures in the case and—”

“You’re right,” Sellers said. “I’m going to get tough about it. And I’m beginning to do a little thinking on my own.

“Donald, you can just toddle along. I know where to get you whenever I want you. Don’t try to pull any fast ones. Don’t try to leave town.”

Patton’s face lit up. “You mean he’s a suspect?”

“I mean he’s a suspect,” Sellers said, “and before I get done prowling through your records, there’s just a chance little Pint Size here is going to find himself mixed up in that murder worse than ever.”

Patton became downright cordial. “If you’ll step right this way, Sergeant,” he said, “I’ll dig out the records of the conversation. For your information, the whole conversation was recorded. That is, we phoned a report on Donald Lam entering the picture and immediately were ordered to discontinue our surveillance and close up the case, to send a final report to Oscar Bowman, care of General Delivery, Colinda and to keep the credit, whatever it might be... It’s all recorded on tape.”

Sellers took the cigar out of his mouth. “Get lost, Pint Size,” he said to me. “I’ll get in touch with you when I want you — and that may be pretty damned soon. If you’ve got any business you want to wind up, you’d better wind it up.”

I took a taxi to the offices of Cool & Lam, went up in the elevator, pushed my way through the big glass door into the reception room, nodded to the girl at the switchboard and said, “Don’t bother to tell Bertha I’m here for a minute. I want to—”

“But she wanted to know in case you came in, Mr. Lam. She wanted you just as soon as you arrived.”

“All right,” I said. “Tell her I’m on my way in.”

I walked through the door marked B. COOL — PRIVATE. Bertha was just hanging up the phone.

“All right, Donald,” she said. “What happened?”

I said, “They jerked the rug out from under me. The bottom fell out”

“What happened to all this theory of yours?”

“Out the window. Down the drain,” I said. “It was nice while it lasted.”

“It’s no good?”

“No good.”

“Where does that leave you?”

“Behind the eight ball.”

“What’s Sellers doing?”

“Getting an earful from the Ace High Detective Agency.”

“An earful or an eyeful?”

“Both. They have some recorded telephone conversations he’s listening to. Whoever it was hired them got in a panic as soon as it appeared another detective agency was interested and ordered the investigation stopped and the case closed out.”

“Why?”

“That,” I said, “is what I’ve got to figure out.”

“You’ve been figuring out too damned much,” Bertha said. “You got a theory and tried to sell Sellers on it and when the theory busted it leaves you behind the eight ball. If you’d just sat tight and told him it was up to the police to prove their case, it wouldn’t have looked so bad for you.