A. Fair - The Bigger They Come

‘What was my brother telling you about me?’ she asked.

‘Nothing much.’

‘Yes he did. He — he has a nasty mind. I don’t care if he is my own brother.’

‘We,’ I reminded, ‘were to get a picture of your husband. Is it here?’

She made a little face by wrinkling her nose, and said, ‘Don’t, by any chance, forget whom you’re working for.’

‘I won’t.’

‘Well?’ she asked.

I raised my eyebrows in a silent question.

‘I’m waiting to hear what Bleatie had to say about me.’

‘Nothing much.’

‘Did he say I was selfish?’

‘I don’t remember exactly how he expressed it.’

‘Did he say that I was sex-crazy?’

‘No.’

‘Well,’ she said, bitterly, ‘he’s improving. He usually has that idea about me. My God, I wouldn’t put it past him to even claim Dr. Holoman was a lover.’

When I didn’t say anything, she let her eyes glitter at me from under half-lowered lids. ‘Well,’ she asked, ‘did he?’

‘Was that what you really wanted to know?’ I inquired.

‘Of course I want to know?’

‘Just what is it you want to know?’

‘What did Bleatie suspect — did he accuse me of being friendly with Dr. Holoman?’

‘I can’t remember.’

‘Your memory isn’t very good, is it?’

‘No.’

‘Perhaps you wouldn’t make a good detective.’

‘Perhaps.’

‘You’re working for me, you know.’

‘I’m working for a woman by the name of Bertha L. Cool,’ I said. ‘I make my reports directly to her. As I understand it, I’m employed to serve papers on Morgan Birks; and I gather that you brought me in here to show me some photographs of your husband.’

‘You’re being impertinent.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Oh well,’ she said, ‘I don’t know why I’m so crazy as to want an answer. I know what the answer is. Of course, he panned me. We never did care for each other as brother and sister are supposed to care. But I didn’t think that even he would drag Dr. Holoman into it.’

‘I’d prefer snapshots,’ I said, ‘that show the face with some sort of expression, laughing or smiling.’

She almost threw the album into my lap.

She opened the book. I started turning pages.

The first picture was of Sandra Birks seated on a rustic bench with a waterfall in back, pine trees, and a stream running across the left foreground. A man had his arm around her shoulders. She was looking up into his eyes.

‘That Morgan?’ I asked.

‘No,’ she said, and turned the page.

She turned the leaves rapidly. ‘I don’t know just where it is,’ she apologized. ‘I put these pictures in helter-skelter. We were on a vacation trip together and—’ She turned two more pages, said, ‘There he is,’ and leaned across me to point.

It was a good clear photograph of a tall, thin man with sharp features, glossy black hair combed straight back away from a high forehead.

‘That,’ I told her, ‘is exactly what I want. It’s a clear picture. Got any others?’

She slid the pointed tips of her crimson nails under the picture, lifted it from the corners by which it was fastened to the book. ‘Perhaps,’ she said.

She turned two or three pages — pages that were filled with ordinary photographs, people in cars, people sitting on porches, people grinning inanely at the camera. Then she said, ‘Here are three or four pages taken on our vacation. Some of us girls went swimming together — you mustn’t look.’

She peeked down into the pages, giggled, turned four or five of them all at once, and then found another picture of her husband. ‘This isn’t quite as good as the other,’ she said, ‘but it gives you a profile view.’

I took it, compared it with the other, and said, ‘This is fine. Thanks.’

‘Are those all you need?’

‘Yes.’

She continued to sit there on the bed, her lips slightly parted, her eyes focused on distance as though thinking something over. Abruptly she said, ‘Excuse me for a minute. There’s something I want to ask Alma.’

She jumped up from the bed and went out into the other room, leaving me holding the photograph album. I tossed it up to the head of the bed.

She was gone a couple of minutes. When she came back, Alma was with her.

‘I thought perhaps you’d like to have one of the newspaper pictures,’ Sandra Birks said. ‘Here it is.’

She’d clipped a picture from a newspaper. The caption read:

‘MORGAN BIRKS, ALLEGED PAY-OFF MAN FOR SLOT-MACHINE SYNDICATE, WHOSE PRESENCE IS SOUGHT BEFORE THE GRAND JURY.’

I compared the picture with the two photographs. The newspaper picture wasn’t clear but was quite evidently that of the man whose photograph I held.

Sandra Birks gave a little squeal and grabbed for the photograph book. ‘Oh, I forgot about this,’ she said.

Alma Hunter looked at her questioningly.

‘It has those swimming pictures in it,’ she said, and laughed. ‘I left Mr. Lam unchaperoned with them.’

I said, ‘I didn’t look. I’ll take these pictures, report to Mrs. Cool, and get in touch with Sally Durke. You’d better give me your telephone number so I can call you as soon as I have something to report.’

Sandra said, ‘One thing, Mr. Lam. I want to know exactly when the papers are going to be served.’

‘I’ll report to Mrs. Cool as soon as I’ve made the service,’ I said.

‘That isn’t what I want. I want to know about an hour before you serve the papers.’

‘Why?’

‘I have reasons.’

‘What are they?’

‘I think Bleatie may be planning to double-cross me.’

‘Orders,’ I said, ‘come through Mrs. Cool. You’ll have to get in touch with her.’

‘Will you wait?’ she asked.

‘I’ll stop by the office to report,’ I said.

‘All right. Here, take my telephone number, and you, Alma, take my car and go with him. You can drive him around. It’ll save time — you’ll need a car, Mr. Lam, if you’re going to be shadowing this girl. I have an extra one you might just as well take. Do you drive?’

I looked at Alma. ‘I’d prefer a driver.’

‘You’ll drive him, Alma? Do. There’s a good girl.’

Alma said, ‘I’ll do anything I can to help. You know that, Sandra.’

She walked across to the dressing table, patted her hair, powdered her face, and tilted back her head to apply lipstick. A stretch of her neck was visible above the high collar. I thought at first the reflected light from the mirror was throwing splotches of shadow on it. Then I saw they were dark spots-bruises.

Sandra Birks said quickly, ‘Well, let’s go in the other room and let Alma dress.’

‘I don’t want to dress,’ Alma Hunter said.

‘I’ll buy you a drink, Mr. Lam,’ Sandra Birks invited.

‘No, thanks. I don’t drink when I’m working.’

‘My, what a moral young man,’ she exclaimed, and her voice was mocking. ‘You have no vices.’

‘I’m working for you,’ I pointed out. ‘It’s costing you money.’

‘Yes, that’s right. I suppose you’re to be commended.’ Her voice didn’t sound as though she really thought so.

‘Your brother,’ I reminded her, ‘wanted to have that sedative the doctor left.’

‘Oh, he can wait — the big baby — tell me, what did he say about me?’ Her manner was teasing, coquettish. She was very much aware that she was a woman. ‘What did he say about Archie?’

Alma whirled away from the mirror to watch me with warning eyes.

‘He said that he thought Dr. Holoman was a very skillful doctor,’ I said. ‘He told me you were impulsive and headstrong but as good as gold, that he didn’t always agree with you on little things, but that you always pulled together on big things; that whenever you got in a jam of any kind you could call on him and he’d stand back of you to the limit.’