Erle Gardner: Turn on the Heat

“Perhaps a little later,” Bertha Cool said, nodding with just the right amount of condescension, and sailing majestically out of the door, which I deferentially held open. She looked for all the world like Mrs. Million-bucks taking her pet diamonds out for an airing.

I indicated the agency car. Bertha Cool said, “To hell with that bunch of junk. He may be looking out of the door. We’ll get a taxi.”

“We won’t find one cruising along here,” I said.

“We’ll stop at a drugstore and telephone.”

I said, “Let’s go up and see Marian,” and then watched Bertha Cool’s face out of the corner of my eye.

She said, “No, lover, we can’t go see Marian.”

“Why not?”

“I’ll explain to you later. You haven’t seen the morning papers.”

I said, “No, I’ve been on the job all night.”

“I know, Donald. Now listen, we can’t go to the office. We can’t go to your place. We can’t go to Marian’s place. I’ll telephone for a taxi. You go back and tell the relief operators to telephone reports in to me at the Westmount Hotel. We’ll go there.”

I said, “What’s in the morning papers? I’d better buy one.”

“Not now, lover,” she said. “Just keep your mind on this.”

I said, “All right. You get the cab and pick me up.”

I walked back to the operatives on duty and told them to report to Bertha at the Westmount Hotel, and, in case there was no answer there, to ring the agency and report to Miss Brand.

I was half-way back to the drugstore when Bertha showed up with a taxi. I climbed in, and we drove to the Westmount Hotel in silence. Bertha had a morning paper clamped under her arm, but she wouldn’t let me see it.

We registered as Mrs. Cool and Donald Cool. Bertha said, “My nephew and I would like two rooms with a connecting bath. I’m expecting some telephone calls. Please be certain they’re handled without delay. Our baggage will come later.”

She flashed her diamonds again, and the gang in the hotel fell all over itself giving us service.

In the rooms, I waited until the bellboy had left and then put through a call for the Key West Apartments. When I heard Frieda Tarbing’s voice on the line, I said, “Call Bertha Cool at the Westmount Hotel for any tip-off. We’re in six-twenty-one. Better make a note of the number.”

“Very well,” she said. “There’s nothing at present. I’ll call you back.”

I said, “Are you always as good-natured when you’re pulled out of a deep sleep?”

“Was I good-natured?” she asked.

“Yes. Mrs. Cool said you were one woman in a million, that I’d better lay siege to your heart and marry you before some other guy grabbed you off.”

Her laugh was melodious. “There’s merit to the idea,” she said.

“I thought so,” I told her.

Suddenly her voice changed to that of impersonal efficiency. “I have the message. I’ll see that it’s delivered,” she said. “Thank you.”

I hung up, and Bertha Cool, sprawled out in the overstuffed chair with her shoes kicked off and her stockinged feet elevated to another chair, looked at me and shook her head. “It’s a gift,” she said.

“What is?”

“Making women fall for you.”

“They don’t fall for me,” I said. “I was just kidding her along. I don’t even know whether she liked it.”

“Nuts,” Bertha said, and fitted a cigarette into her cigarette holder.

I walked over to the bed where she’d placed the morning paper and opened it. The news was on the front page. A key witness whom the district attorney’s office had been keeping under cover in the Evaline Harris murder case had disappeared. Circumstances made the police believe she’d been the victim of foul play. Police were “combing the city”. There was the usual amount of newspaper hooey: The police were following a definite lead and expected to have important disclosures to make before midnight. The witness, it seemed, had disappeared just as the police were ready to “break” the case. The police had hinted that developments of a most startling nature were to be anticipated.

I put on an act for Bertha. “My God,” I said, “if anything’s happened to her! Do you suppose the police were so damn dumb they didn’t anticipate something like this? Good God, here they were dealing with a murderer, and this girl was the key witness, and they left her entirely unguarded. Of all the damn fool plays I’ve ever heard or seen, that takes the cake!”

Bertha said, “Keep your shirt on, lover. She’s all right.”

“What makes you think so?”

“The only person she could have identified was our client. You know that he wouldn’t do anything like that.”

I read through the article and said, “There was blood in the apartment!”

Bertha Cool said, “Don’t worry, Donald. She’s all right. If they’d wanted to kill her, they’d have simply killed her there in the apartment, and the police would have found her body. The fact that she isn’t there means that she’s alive. The police will find her. They’re pretty thorough, you know, when they get on the job.”

I started pacing the floor and said, “I’d like to think you’re right.”

“Don’t get all stewed up,” she said. “There’s nothing you can do to help. We’ve got this other thing to handle. You’ve got to keep your mind clear.”

I paced the floor for a while, smoked a couple of cigarettes, and went back to read the paper again, and then went and stood looking out of the window.

Bertha Cool smoked in comfortable silence. After a while she called the office and talked with Elsie Brand. She hung up and said, “The cops are looking for you at the office, lover. I guess those boys in Santa Carlotta mean business.”

I let on that the information didn’t even interest me.

After a while she said, almost musingly as though thinking out loud, “For a little runt, you draw a hell of a lot of water.”

“What do you mean?”

She said, “I was running a detective agency. It was a run-of-the-mill agency. Most of the better-class outfits won’t handle political stuff, and won’t handle divorce stuff. I’d handle anything. My business wasn’t always the most savoury, but it was a nice, routine business. I made some money out of it, not a hell of a lot, but enough to get by. You enter the picture. I hire you to work for me, and the first thing I know, you’re dragging me so deep into murder cases that I’m in right up to my neck. I’ve ceased to be a detective and become an accomplice. The tail’s not only wagging the dog, but it’s shaking hell out of him.”

I said, “Forget it. You’re making money, aren’t you!”

Bertha Cool looked down at her big, firm breasts, at her big thighs, and said, “I hope I don’t lose weight worrying. I was so comfortable the way I was — just like a foot in an old shoe, and now look at me. Lover, do you know that if we don’t pull this case out of the fire, we’re going to be in jail?”

I said, “There’s lots of ways of getting out of jail.”

Bertha said, “Put that in writing and send it to the guys up in San Quentin. They might be interested.”

I didn’t say anything, and we sat for a while in silence. First Bertha’d look at her wrist watch, then I’d look at mine. Then I’d look out of the window, and Bertha would light another cigarette.

The street in front of the hotel furnished the only variation. A bakery wagon made some deliveries. An occasional housewife would sally forth to do some shopping. A couple of elderly people who looked like tourists spending a few months in Southern California strolled out of the hotel, got in a car with a New York licence plate, and drove leisurely away. The sky was blue and cloudless. The sun beat down, throwing intense, black shadows which gradually shortened.