A. Fair: Shills Can't Cash Chips

“Elsie!” I yelled.

Elsie looked up and looked around.

“Over here, Elsie!”

Elsie saw me then and came running.

“Why, Donald — what is it? Whatever’s happened?”

Bertha came waddling up behind, took a look at the handcuffs and said, “So they found you.”

“They found me,” I said. “What did you want to see me about, Elsie? What was the news?”

She said, “Something in one of the scrapbooks, Donald— Oh, I hope it will help!”

“All right, what is it?”

She said, “The stick-up of that bank out in North Hollywood where they got away with forty thousand dollars. The getaway car was some kind of a sports car and no one got a very good look at it, but one of the witnesses said the hind end had been damaged. It had a big dent of some sort in it. It—”

“When was it, when was it, Elsie?” I asked, interrupting her.

“Just shortly before closing time on the thirteenth.”

I turned to Bertha. “You get the hell up to apartment six-nineteen in the Miramar Apartments. Vivian Deshler is in there. Either she was mixed up in that bank robbery or her car was. That explains the mystery. That’s the reason she was willing to ride along with Holgate. Now remember, there has to be some connection. Somebody that knew Holgate’s car was smashed had to know that the tail end of her car was caved in and she needed an explanation for that quick. Otherwise she’d have been connected with that bank robbery or her car would have been.”

Bertha blinked at me a couple of times, then turned and started for the apartment house.

“You want Elsie with you?” I asked.

“Hell, no,” she said. “I don’t need any help and I don’t want any witnesses.”

Elsie said, “You poor boy,” and climbed into the car beside me.

She’d been in the car about five minutes when Chief Dale came out and started walking thoughtfully over to the car.

“Hello,” he said, stopping suddenly and his hand dropping to his hip. “What’s all this?”

“This, Chief,” I said, “is my secretary, Elsie Brand. She saves interesting newspaper clippings of unsolved crimes.”

“All right,” he said. “What’s it all about? Now, just a minute, Miss Brand, this man is my prisoner. Don’t try to give him anything, don’t try to release those handcuffs.”

“I think you’re horrid,” Elsie said to him. “The idea of suspecting—”

“Take it easy, Elsie,” I said. “Show Chief Dale the clipping you were telling me about.”

Elsie squirmed out of the car, opened the scrapbook and pointed out the clipping to Chief Dale.

Dale leaned forward to read it. He read it once, looked up, squinted his eyes thoughtfully, then read it twice.

Then he said, “I’ll be damned!”

There was a long silence.

“How did you come out in there with Lorraine Robbins?” I asked.

“Lam,” he said, “she’s on the up and up. She’s a good kid. There’s something fishy about that accident just as sure as hell. Holgate’s car was all right at four-thirty on the thirteenth.”

“And,” I said, “Vivian Deshler’s car had the rear end caved in at three-thirty on the thirteenth.”

“By God, if it all does tie in! If Holgate was the hit-and-run guy and if that Deshler car was the getaway car in that bank robbery— Good God Almighty, what that would do!”

I said, “Be a pretty nice thing to clean all that mess up and walk in on the meeting of the city council at nine-thirty, wouldn’t it, Chief? You could show them that you’d cleared up the mystery of the hit-and-run driver, that you’d solved the bank robbery and—”

“All right,” he said. “I’ve fallen for it once, I’ll fall for it twice. I’m going back up.”

“Better take me with you,” I said.

He shook his head.

“You may need a witness.”

He thought that over.

“Two witnesses,” Elsie said.

“You take shorthand?” Dale asked.

She nodded.

“All right, come on,” he said.

He unlocked the handcuff that was holding me to the steering wheel, hesitated a moment, then snapped the handcuff back on my wrist. “Remember,” he said, “you’re still under arrest. I’m investigating this damned story but I’m not buying it. Not yet. I’m window shopping.”

We started toward the entrance to the apartment house.

I stalled things along as much as I could but eventually we got into the elevator and got up to the sixth floor.

As we walked down the corridor I could hear sounds of banging and thumping.

A woman screamed.

“What’s that?” Chief Dale asked.

I made my last stall. “It came from that apartment over there,” I said.

“I thought it came from farther down the line,” Dale said.

“No, I’m quite certain it was this apartment,” I said, and caught Elsie Brand’s eye.

“It came from this one right here,” she said.

Dale hesitated a moment, then went over and banged on the door of the apartment.

There was no answer.

He banged again.

After a moment a woman who had some kind of a robe hastily thrown around her shoulders, and who seemed to be completely nude except for that, opened the door a crack.

“Well,” she snapped, “what is it?”

“Police,” Dale said. “We’re investigating a disturbance.”

“There’s no disturbance here.”

“Didn’t you scream?”

“I certainly did not.”

Dale said, “I beg your—”

The door was slammed in his face.

Dale looked at me and said, “I’m beginning to know how the Los Angeles officers feel about you, Lam. You knew damned well those sounds didn’t come from that apartment. What are you stalling for?”

I said, “I could have been mistaken.”

“And you could have been playing games,” Dale said.

He strode on down to 519 and pressed the mother-of-pearl button.

Nothing happened.

After a moment he banged on the door with his knuckles, a hard, peremptory police knock. “Open up!” he said.

There was a moment of silence, then the door was jerked open.

Bertha Cool, her face flushed, said, “Well, come on in! Don’t stand there in the hallway gawking.”

Vivian Deshler was standing over in a corner sobbing hysterically. Her skirt had been ripped completely off. She was standing there in bra and panties, and the panties were embroidered with fancy mottoes.

“Who are you?” Dale asked Bertha Cool.

“I’m Bertha Cool, Donald Lam’s partner,” she said, “and this little minx is going to make a confession to you about being mixed up with a man by the name of Dudley Bedford in a bank robbery out in North Hollywood. They got about forty thousand dollars in cash and it’s somewhere in the apartment here. Where is it, dearie?”

Vivian Deshler put her hands in front of her eyes. “You stop!” she said.

Bertha Cool moved toward her. “Where is it, dearie?”

“In the suitcase in the closet!” she screamed. “Don’t you touch me! Don’t you dare!”

“Look in the suitcase in the closet,” Bertha Cool said matter-of-factly, and walked over to the closet, took out a coat and tossed it to Vivian Deshler.

“Stick this around you in case you feel self-conscious,” she said.

Dale looked at Bertha, looked at Vivian Deshler, looked at me. “And who murdered Holgate?” he asked.

“Do you need to ask?” I said. “You’ve seen those panties before, you know. She could get plenty of information out of Maxton — the cocktail party and all the rest of the background she needed.”

Dale said to Bertha Cool, “Can you keep her from trying to escape?”

“I can keep her from so much as flapping an eyelash,” Bertha said. “She tries to pull out on me and I’ll slap her to sleep.”