Erle Gardner - The Case of the Moth-Eaten Mink

“Yes.”

“What about the fur coat?”

“I am terribly sorry about that. She leaves that with me, and I wrap it up and store it in a closet. I don’t think about moths. I think about me. She is hot and I am scared. I keep it back out of the way where no one can see it. She comes back. She wants her coat. I bring it out... Well. You saw it.”

“What did she say?”

“She says nothing. She starts wearing it. She cries like hell when she thinks I don’t see her.”

“Why did she come back here?”

“I tell you, Tom has the T.B. They are up in Seattle. In the winter it rains and it’s cold. Tom could take it no more. Dixie says they had to come back. They might beat the rap here, but he’d have died sure like hell if he’d stayed up there. Dixie has ideas. When she gets one you can’t talk her out of it. My doctor tells me Seattle is damp in winter but people up there live long as hell. Dixie thinks Tom dies if he stays another winter. Maybe she’s right. Maybe she’s wrong. She thinks she’s right. I don’t know.

“Dixie thinks everything is fixed, she can come back, no one knows. Tom she has hid — but good. Dixie’s smart as hell, one smart woman — the best!”

“She wasn’t clever enough to keep from having...”

“Oh, sure, Fayette. He knew about Dixie. The police didn’t. Fayette must have kept a watch on my place — the police, no — Fayette, yes.”

“Just who is Fayette?” Mason asked.

“Fayette,” Alburg said, “handled the payoff. I don’t know him from a lamp post. The name I know, nothing else. Dixie comes out to wait on customers. She sees him sitting there at a table by himself. She damn near falls over... Fayette would kill. He’d told Tom if Tom ever come back, or ever got a subpoena for a grand jury, it’s curtains, and...”

“So Dixie ran out the back.”

Alburg nodded. “Sure. She thought they’d torture her to make her tell where Tom was.”

“I’m damned if I get it,” Mason said. “If there was a payoff there must have been hundreds of boobies paying off, and...”

“But there’s only one cop murder, Mr. Mason. I can’t prove nothing. Dixie can’t prove nothing. But we both think Fayette kills that cop. If Tom comes back and maybe gets a good lawyer... What the hell?”

“All right,” Mason said, “go on and tell me what happened.”

“What happened?” Alburg exclaimed. “Everything happened. First, I am sitting pretty, then the roof caves in. Dixie says no one knows Tom is back. No one is ever going to find where he is. Then they walk in on her. She runs out; she almost gets killed. The cops come in. The cops don’t know Tom is my half-brother, but they know there is something. They don’t know who Dixie is, but they’re going to find out. I start getting under cover. There’s a bar where I have a friend. He’d protect me every time. Dixie knows that place. She calls me up. I tell her to stay under cover. I’m under cover. It’s hell.”

“Go on,” Mason said.

“Then some woman calls the place. She tells the cashier, who I can trust, that she has to get a message to me. The cashier is smart. She says give her the message. So the girl tells her to have me call a certain number and ask for Mildred.”

“You did?”

“Sure. I go to a pay station. I call the number. I say, ‘Who the hell’s Mildred?’ ”

“And what happened?”

“I’m thinking it’s a trap. Maybe cops are coming in the door. I am at a pay station where I can get out quick.”

“Go ahead.”

“This girl Mildred, she wants to talk. I tell her forget it. I’ve got no time to talk. Quick, what do we do?

“She says, ‘Don’t be a dumbbell. You’re hot. Dixie’s hot. I know who killed the cop.’

“I think it’s a trap. I say, ‘Yes. You are smart. Who killed the cop?’ She says, ‘George Fayette.’ I ask her how she knows. What’s it to her? She says Fayette sold her out. He two-times with another woman. She won’t stand for it. To hell with Fayette. If I meet her at the Keymont Hotel she tells me the story. She gives me the evidence. What the hell would you do?”

“What would I have done?” Mason said. “I’d have telephoned my lawyer quick.”

“Not that quick,” Alburg said. “I have been at the phone long enough. I don’t want them to trace the call. I say, ‘All right. You stay at that number. I’ll call you back.’ So what do I do? A while ago a waitress tries to blackmail me. I get a smart detective. He gets the whole proposition on tape recording. That waitress she is out of luck quick, like that. So I say to myself, ‘I will be smart. I will get a sound recording. I will get Mr. Mason.’ ”

Mason frowned. “Suppose it had been a police trap?”

“What the hell? I have to take a chance. I’m hot. I can’t go back to my restaurant. The restaurant is my business. If I don’t go back I lose my business. I have to do something. One thing else you don’t know. That Dixie can take a look at a number and flash, like that, it’s in her mind. When Dixie works for me I never need a telephone book. I show her a number once. She remembers it. Always for numbers that girl is smart. Anything with figures.”

“Go ahead,” Mason said.

“When she runs out the back door of the restaurant, running from Fayette, she sees the car come. It’s coming toward her. She looks at the car. She sees the number on the front license plate. Then there is a man with a gun. She runs and he shoots, but she remembers the license number.”

“Go ahead,” Mason said.

“She tells it to me. I am smart; I have connections. I look it up. It is a car registered to Herbert Granton. Dixie remembers Granton is a name Fayette uses sometimes when he is being respectable. All right, we have an ace in the hole. Maybe a smart lawyer can do us some good if he finds that automobile and it has a bullet hole.”

“Go ahead,” Mason said.

“So I get the detective to go first to the Keymont Hotel. Pie sizes the place up. Fie gets the room all wired. He says he will be where he can listen. Everything is fixed. I wait until after midnight, then I ring this girl. I tell her, ‘All right, Mildred, you come to the Keymont. Room 721.’”

“The girl had first told you about the Keymont Hotel?”

“That’s right.”

“Weren’t you suspicious about going there?”

“Sure, I’m suspicious, but what are you going to do? I told her, ‘Not the Keymont. Some place else.’ She said, ‘No, I am hot. Fayette will kill me. If he thinks I would give him a double-cross we would be rubbed out. I am at the Keymont and I don’t dare to go out. You get a room in the Keymont. You tell me where that room is. I will come to you. I will give you evidence.’ So I get this room 815. I get it for Dixie. I register her as Mrs. Madison Kerby and I pay in cash.”

“Now I begin to get the picture,” Mason said, “but why... Well, never mind. Tell me what happened.”

“So, I call you. I get you. I have the room wired. I make a date with the girl. We go to the room.”

“Did you have a gun?” Mason asked.

“Sure I had a gun. What the hell?”

“All right, go ahead.”

“I want you there all the time. If it is the police, you can be the smart lawyer. If it is a witness and she really has evidence, you can sew the thing up.”

“What happened?” Mason asked.

“I am worried. All the time I worry. The older I get the more I worry. I think about this; I think about that. Always I am worried. Too many taxes. Too many responsibilities. Too much labor trouble. Costs of running the business too high. Worry, worry, worry. All the time worry.”

“Go ahead.”

“So I am worried you get my call and go back to sleep. That would be the bad thing. After we are in the Keymont, I tell Dixie to call that number where we get you. Be sure Mr. Mason don’t go to sleep.”