Top of the Heap (7 page)

I shook my head. “It isn’t like that at all.”

“I know,” Sheldon said. “I’m just telling you the way I thought it
might
be.”

I didn’t say anything.

“So you come up here and start looking around to try and find out about what happened. Now that’s all right as far as
you’re
concerned, but as far as the department is concerned we’d like to have the credit of cleaning up the case and solving it. You understand that, don’t you?”

I nodded.

Sheldon’s eyes got hard. “So,” he said, “if you know anything about it, you tell us and we’ll all co-operate and play palsy-walsy; but if you don’t co-operate, Donald, your man will be in one hell of a fix. There won’t be anything he
can
square. He’ll have the book thrown at him, and whenever you come to San Francisco you’ll wish you’d stayed home.” Again I nodded.

“So,” Sheldon went on, “now that we’ve become acquainted, what have you got to tell us?”

“Nothing, yet.”

“Now, we don’t like that, Donald, I don’t like the ‘yet’ and I don’t like the ‘nothing.’ž”

I didn’t say anything.

He said, “You’re going to want some co-operation at this end before you get done. Now’s the time to lay the foundation for it.”

I said, “You
could
be all cockeyed in your surmises.”

“Of course I could, of course I could, Donald! You don’t need to tell me that. Good heavens, some man could have walked into your office and said, ‘Look, Donald, my boy went up to San Francisco and when he came home I’m satisfied he’d been in trouble of some sort. Now, he’s a good boy but he does have a tendency to hoist a couple
and then go out and get behind a steering wheel. Now, suppose you just slide up to San Francisco and see if there’s any hit-and-run charge up there that hasn’t been accounted for.’

“Or,” Lieutenant Sheldon went on, “some man might have come to you and said, ‘I saw a hit-and-run job up there in San Francisco. I was out with a woman who wasn’t my wife and I simply can’t afford to get mixed into it, but I’ll give you a little information about what I saw and perhaps you can use it to locate the driver of the car and he’ll take care of me in some way.’ It could be any one of a hundred and one things.”

I said, “I have a client. I haven’t the faintest idea whether he knows anything about hit-and-run or not, but I’m interested in finding out. When I go back to Los Angeles I’m going to see that client. I’m going to put it up to him. If he was mixed up in any hit-and-run he’s going to try and square it, and if he tries to square it he’s going to come to you first. Now, how’s that?”

Lieutenant Sheldon got up, came around the desk, grabbed my hand, and pumped it up and down. “Now, Donald,” he said, “you’re beginning to understand how we work in San Francisco; the way we try to co-operate with you fellows when you’re up here. You don’t try to do any squaring on the side. You pick up the telephone and you call for Lieutenant Sheldon, person to person. You get it?”

“I get it,” I said.

“You tell me what you have, and you tell me what you want to do. Then the police, acting on your tip, get busy and solve the case by clever detective work. After we’ve solved the case you start trying to work your fix and we’ll do everything we can up here. We’ll tell you all we know and show you the ropes. If you can square it more power to you.”

I nodded.

“But remember, Donald,” he said, wagging a forefinger at me as though he’d been a schoolteacher and I was a naughty pupil, “don’t try to slip anything over on us. If you know anything, you’d better tell us now. If you know something you aren’t telling and we find it out, it’s going to be too bad, just too bad.”

“I understand.”

“Not only for your client, but it’s going to be too bad for your agency. We co-operate with people who co-operate with us, and we don’t co-operate with people who don’t co-operate with us.”

“Suits me,” I told him.

“Here’s a list of the witnesses on that hit-and-run,” he said, handing me a typewritten list of names and addresses. “That’s all we have to work on at the moment. But I feel sure you’re going to help us get more, Donald. I feel certain of it. You’ll want it squared up, and you’re not dumb.

“Now if there’s anything you want while you’re up here, any information we can get for you, don’t hesitate for a minute. Just tell us what you want, Donald, and we’ll get it for you.” I thanked him and walked out.

I took a taxi to the Palace Hotel, paid off, ducked through to the side entrance, picked up another cab. A car was tailing me. I couldn’t shake it off without tipping off the cab driver and making the driver of the car behind know I had him spotted.

I told the cabbie to drive along Bush Street. When I saw a rather pretentious apartment up near the top of the hill, I told the driver to stop and wait for me. I ran up the stairs, walked in to the desk, and handed the man on duty my card.

“I’m up here working on a case,” I told him.

His eyes were exceedingly uncordial.

“Do you have a tenant,” I asked, “who drives a very
dark blue Buick sedan?”

“I wouldn’t know. It’s quite possible we have several.”

I frowned and said, “This is the address I have and it should be here, a dark-blue sedan.”

“I’m sure I couldn’t tell you.”

“Could you find out for me?”

“I’m afraid not. We don’t spy on our tenants.”

“I don’t want you to spy on anyone. I just want a little information. I
could
get a list of tenants and look up the registrations.”

“Then why don’t you do that, Mr. Lam?”

“Because I can save time this way.”

“Time,” he said, “is money.”

I said, “In this case there isn’t much money.”

“Then you should have lots of time.”

I said, “I’ll see what I can do and come back.”

“Do that.”

I walked out, got in the taxicab, and went back to my hotel. I went up to my room, waited ten minutes, got in a cab, went out to Sutro Baths, and had myself a nice swim. When I got out of the baths I took a cab and started back along Geary Street. When I reached the cross street I wanted I paid off the cab and walked around the block. When I made sure no one was following me I stepped into a drugstore, called another cab, and went to the address of John Carver Billings. A maid answered my ring.

I said, “I’m Donald Lam from Los Angeles. I want to see John Carver Billings the Second, and you can tell him it’s urgent and important.”

“Just a moment,” she said.

She looked at my card, then took the precaution of closing the door while she vanished inside the house. Two minutes later she was back and said, “Come in.”

I went through a reception hall into a big drawingroom, and John Carver Billings the Second came forward
to meet me. He was not at all pleased to see me.

“Why, hello, Lam! What the hell are you doing up here?”

“Working.”

“I thought your agency did a very fine job for me,” he said, “but that’s all done — finished.
Pau,
as they say in Hawaii.”

He didn’t ask me to sit down.

I said, “I have another matter I’m working on.”

“If there’s anything in which I can assist you I’ll be glad to do what I can.” His voice was like cold linoleum on bare feet.

I said, “I’m investigating a hit-and-run case up here. The police are interested in it.”

“You mean the police hired a private detective from Los Angeles to—”

“I didn’t say that. I said the police were interested.”

“In a hit-and-run case?”

“Yes.”

“They should be.”

“A fellow down on the corner of Post and Polk Streets,” I said, “hit a man and broke him up a bit, then kept right on going. Someone tried to follow him and ran into a car that was just pulling out from the curb. That enabled the guy to make a getaway — temporarily.”

“What are you trying to do? Find the fellow?”

“I think I know who he is,” I said, looking him right in the eye. “I’m trying to find some way of fixing it up for him now.”

“Well, I can’t say I wish you any luck. These hit-and-run drivers are a menace. Was there anything else, Lam?”

I said, “Yes. Let’s have a little talk.”

“I’m rather busy now. I’m in conference with my father and—”

I said, “If you were sick and walked into a doctor’s
office and asked him to give you a prescription for penicillin, he gave you one with no questions asked and let you walk out, what would you think?”

“I’d think he was a hell of a doctor. Is that what you want me to say?”

“That’s what I want you to say.”

“All right. I’ve said it.”

I said, “That’s what you did. You walked into a detective agency, described the medicine you wanted, and then walked out.”

“I gave you a very specific assignment, if that’s what you mean. There wasn’t any medicine and I wasn’t sick.”

“You may not have
thought
and temperature.”

“Just what are you driving at, Lam?”

I said, “You fixed up a fake alibi, then you went out and planted it. You wanted us to uncover it for you. In that way you could act very innocent and say that you’d paid good money to get a detective agency to find the people who—”

“I don’t think I like your attitude, Lam.”

“The weakness of such a scheme,” I went on, “is that you don’t dare to approach a perfect stranger. You have to get someone you’re friendly with, and then your friendship for that person can be proven. Furthermore, in order to make Sylvia a fallen woman in name only, as well as to bolster your alibi, you insisted on having two people, so Sylvia got her friend Millie.”

“Do you have any idea what you’re talking about? Because I don’t.”

“And,” I went on, “after you’d made certain we were going to handle the case and everything was all fixed, you went dashing out to that motor court, put on a leather jacket and gold-braided cap, and went in where you could plant the evidence for me to find.

“I don’t know just how it happened that you picked that particular motor court. You may have stayed there before and thought there was a little something phony about it, or you may have just picked one at random.

“Now,” I went on, “if I knew what you were trying to cover up on Tuesday night, I
might
That’s what we’re for. To help you if we can.”

He said, very slowly, in cold anger, “I’d been warned about private detectives. I’d been told they tried to blackmail clients if they could get anything on those clients. I see now the warning was one that I should have heeded. I shall instruct my bank the first thing Monday morning to dishonor that check which was given to your agency. I am sending your agency a wire that payment on the check has been stopped. I don’t appreciate your meddling in my private affairs; I don’t appreciate your attempt at blackmail; and I don’t like you.”

I played the last card. “Your dad,” I said, “might resent it if his son received a lot of publicity as being the driver of the hit-and-run car. There is always the chance that we can square these things and—”

“Just a minute,” he said, “wait right there, Lam. I have something for you. That last remark really gave me an idea. Wait right there, don’t go away.”

He turned and left the room.

I walked over to a comfortable chair and sat down.

Steps sounded, a door opened, and Billings was back in the room with an older man.

“This is my father,” he said. “I have no secrets from him. Dad, this is Donald Lam. He’s a private detective from Los Angeles. I hired his firm to find out the people who were with me Tuesday night in a motor court in Los Angeles. He did an excellent job of getting the people located. I have his report here in writing showing that he located and talked with at least one of them, and that
everything is exactly as I reported it to him.

“I gave his agency a check for a five-hundred-dollar bonus in accordance with an understanding I made with them. I am not at all certain it was ethical for me to do that. I think perhaps that constituted a contingency fee and may be a breach of ethics on the part of the agency.

“Now he shows up and tries to blackmail me. He accuses me of having tried to fake an alibi and
is
intimating that I was mixed up in a hit-and-run charge Tuesday night, some accident which I believe occurred near Post and Polk. What shall I do?”

John Carver Billings the First looked at me as though I might have been something that had just crawled under a crack in the door and he wanted to get a good look at me before he stepped on me.

“Throw the son of a bitch out,” he said.

“Your son wasn’t in that motor court Tuesday night. He’s been trying to fix up a fake alibi. He’s made a clumsy job of it and if there should be any investigation the very fact that he had tried to fix up that fake alibi would fasten the brand of guilt on him, and at the same time alienate the sympathy of the court and the public. I’m simply trying to help the guy.”

The elder Billings continued to regard me with cold, patronizing scorn. “Are you quite finished, Mr. — Mr.—”

“Lam. Donald Lam.” ‘

“Are you quite finished, Mr. Lam?”

“Quite.”

Billings turned to his son. “Just what’s this all about, John?”

John moistened his lips with his tongue. “Dad, I’ll tell you the truth. I was on the loose in L.A. I picked up a girl. All I did was ask her to dance. After that
she
picked me up. Then she stood me up.

“It turned out this girl was the moll of a notorious gang-
ster. Now she’s disappeared.

“After she stood me up I fell in with a couple of nice girls from here. I didn’t know their names. The three of us spent the night in a motor court.

“I hired this man to find out who the girls were so I could, if necessary, prove that I wasn’t with this moll, Maurine Auburn.

“He did a good job of finding them. Now he’s trying to invalidate the result of his own investigation. He may have been given money or he may want some. Or it may be that one of the girls who hated my guts has lied to this man so she can cut herself a piece of cake.”

“That’s all you have to tell me, John?”

“So help me, Dad, that’s all.”

Billings turned to me. “There’s the door. Get out.”