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I smiled at him. “Now,” I said, “
you
interest me.”

He walked over to the telephone, picked it up, and said, “Police headquarters, please.”

I said, “Lieutenant Sheldon is the man you want to ask for. Sheldon is investigating a hit-and-run accident that took place on Post and Polk Streets Tuesday night at about ten-thirty.”

John Carver Billings the First never turned a hair. He said into the telephone, “Yes. Is this police headquarters?... I want to speak with Lieutenant Sheldon.”

It could have been a bluff. There might have been a switch that kept the phone from being connected. I couldn’t tell.

I waited. A moment later the receiver made a squawking noise, and Billings said, “This is John Carver Billings, Lieutenant. I am being annoyed by a private detective who apparently is trying to blackmail my son... He has given me your name... What’s that? Yes, a private detective from Los Angeles. The name is Donald Lam.”

“The firm name is Cool and Lam, Dad,” his son prompted.

“I believe he is of the firm of Cool and Lam of Los Angeles,” the old man went on. “He apparently is trying to find a fall guy to take the place of some client who quite apparently was mixed up in a hit-and-run case last Tuesday night... Yes, yes, that’s it. That’s what he said. At Polk and Post Streets at about ten-thirty... That’s the one. What shall I do? Shall I?... Very well, I’ll try to hold him until you can get here.”

I didn’t wait to hear any more. If it was a bluff they had more blue chips than I did, and they sure as hell had pushed theirs into the center of the table, the whole damn stack. I turned around and walked out.

No one made any effort to stop me.

Two taxicabs later I found myself on the south side of Market. It wasn’t a dive, it was a dump. It was good enough for what I wanted. It had to be.

At a little store on Third Street I picked up a shirt, some socks, and underwear. A drugstore sold me shaving things. Then in the dingy, stuffy inside room I sat down at a rickety little table and started checking over what had happened.

John Carver Billings the Second had needed an alibi and his need had been so urgent that he had spent a great deal of money, time, and effort in a clumsy attempt to fabricate something that would stand up.

Why?

The most logical thing was the hit-and-run charge, but that hadn’t seemed to faze him when I put it up to him.
Therefore he was either a better poker player than I figured, or I was on the wrong track.

I went down to a phone booth and phoned Elsie Brand at her apartment. Luckily I found her in.

“How’s Sylvia?” she asked.

“Sylvia’s fine,” I told her. “She wanted to be remembered to you.”

“Thank her very much,” she said icily.

“Elsie, I think I’m on the wrong trail up here.”

“How come?”

“I don’t know. It bothers me. I think perhaps the answer may have been in Los Angeles, after all. I wish you’d start pulling wires down there and get a list of all of the crimes that were committed in Los Angeles on Tuesday night.”

“That’s going to be quite a list.”

“Specialize first on the hit-and-run charges,” I said. “I’m looking for a case where a pedestrian was hit, badly injured, and the car wasn’t hurt enough so there were any clues left on the spot. Do you get me?”

“I get you.”

I said, “That also might cover anything in the immediate vicinity of Los Angeles. Oh, say, within fifty or a hundred miles. See what you can do, will you?”

“Is it urgent?”

“It’s urgent.”

She said, “You don’t care a thing about a girl’s weekend, do you?”

“You’ll have lots of weekends after I get back,” I told her.

“And a lot of good they’ll do me,” she retorted.

“What was that last?”

“I simply said to give my love to Sylvia,” she observed, and then asked, “Where can I call you?”

“You can’t. I’ll call you.”

“When?”

“Sometime tomorrow morning.”

“Sunday morning!”

“That’s right.”

“You’re getting more and more like Bertha every day,” she told me.

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll give you more time and more sleep. Let’s make it at the office Monday morning. I’ll call collect because I’m running short of cash.”

“Make it Sunday if you want, Donald. Anything I can do—”

“No, you won’t be able to get the information by then.”

“How do you know? A police detective is buying my dinner tonight.”

“You
do
get around.”

“Just local stuff.
I
don’t need to go to another city.”

I laughed. “Make it Monday, Elsie. That’ll be soon enough.”

“Honest?”

“Honest.”

“žBy now,” she said softly, and hung up.

I went out to Post and Polk and looked around. It was a nice intersection for an accident. Someone coming along Post Street and seeing a Go signal at Van Ness would start speeding to try and make the signal if he thought he had a clear run for it at Polk Street.

A kid was selling newspapers on the corner. There was quite a bit of traffic.

I took from my pocket the list of witnesses that Lieutenant Sheldon had given me and wondered if it was complete.

There was a woman whose occupation was listed simply as a saleslady, a man who worked in a nearby drugstore, a motorist who “saw it all” from a place midway in the block, and a man who ran a little cigar stand had heard the crash, and run out to see what it was all about.

There wasn’t anything about a newsboy.

I started thinking that over, then I walked up and bought a paper, gave the kid two bits, and told him to keep the change.

“This your regular beat?” I asked.

He nodded, his sharp eyes studying the people and the traffic, looking for an opportunity to sell another paper.

“Here every night?”

He nodded.

I said suddenly, “How come you didn’t tell the police what you knew about that hit-and-run case last Tuesday night?”

He would have started to run if I hadn’t grabbed his arm. “Come on, kid,” I said, “let’s have it.”

He looked like a trapped rabbit. “You can’t come busting up and start pushing me around like this.”

“Who’s pushing you around?”

“You are.”

“You haven’t seen anything yet,” I told him. “How much money did they pay you to clam up?”

“Go roll a hoop.”

“That,” I told him, “is what is known as compounding a felony.”

“I’ve got some friends on the force here,” he said. “Fellows that aren’t going to stand for having me pushed around.”

“You may have some friends on the force,” I said, “but you’re not dealing with the force now. Do you know any good judges?”

I saw him wince at that.

“Of course,” I said, “a good friend who is a judge
might
help you. This isn’t the police. I’m private, and I’m tough.”

“Aw, what are you picking on me for? Give a guy a break, can’t you?”

“What difference does it make to you?” I asked him.
“Did somebody give you money?”

“Of course not.”

“Perhaps trying a little blackmail?”

“Aw, have a heart, mister. Gee, I was going to play it on the square and then I realized I couldn’t.”

“Why couldn’t you?”

“Because I was in trouble down in Los Angeles. I skipped parole. I ain’t supposed to be selling papers. I’m supposed to be reporting to a probation officer every thirty days and all that stuff. I didn’t like it and I came up here and been going straight.”

“Why didn’t you report the hit-and-run?”

“How could I? I thought I was going to be smart. I took down the guy’s number and figured I’d make a grandstand with the cops, and then I suddenly realized what it would mean. The D.A. would call me as a witness and the smart guy who was defending the fellow would start ripping me up the back and down the front and show that I had skipped out on parole, the jury wouldn’t believe me, and I’d get sent back to L.A. as a parole violator.”

“Pretty smart for a kid, aren’t you?”

“I ain’t a kid.”

I looked down into the prematurely wise little face with the sharp eyes sizing me up, studying me for a weak point where he could take advantage of me, felt the bony little shoulder under my hand, and said, “Okay, kid. You play square with me and I’ll play square with you. How old are you?”

“Seventeen.”

“How are you getting along up here?”

“I’m doing good. I’m keeping on the straight and narrow. The trouble down in L.A. I had too many friends. I’d get out with the gang and they’d start calling me sissy if I didn’t ride along.”

“What were they doing?”

“Believe me, mister, they were getting so they were doing damn near everything. It started out with kid stuff, then when Butch got to be head of the outfit he said the only fellows who could run with the gang were the ones who had guts enough to be regular guys. I mean he’s tough.”

“Why didn’t you go to the probation officer and tell him all that?”

“Think I was going to rat?”

“Why didn’t you just stay home and mind your own business?”

“Don’t be silly.”

“So you took a powder and came up here?”

“That’s right.”

“And you’re going straight?”

“Like a string.”

“Give me the license number and I’ll try to keep you out of it.”

He pulled a scrap of paper from his pocket that had been torn from the edge of a newspaper. On it was scribbled a number, written with a hard pencil so that it was all but illegible.

I studied it carefully.

He went on in an eager, whining voice. “That’s the car that hit the guy. The driver came tearing down the hill and almost hit me. That’s when I got so mad I started to take his number. He was a fat, middle-aged guy with a little blonde plastered up against him. She started to kiss him just as they got to the corner, or he was kissing her, or they were kissing each other, I don’t know which.”

“What did you do?”

“I jumped out of the way and thought the guy was going to crash into the curb. I took his number — that is, I got out the pencil and was writing it down on the edge of the paper when he smacked right into this guy.”

“Then what?”

“Then he slowed down for a minute and I thought he was stopping; then the wren said something to him and changed his mind. He stepped on it.”

“No one after him?”

“Sure. A guy tried to nail him just as some goof swung out from the curb. They smashed up and littered the street with broken glass. By that time people were running around giving help to the old man, and all of a sudden I realized that I was in a spot; that if I told the police who the fellow was I’d be a gone coon.”

“Who was he?”

“I tell you I don’t know. All I know is he was driving a dark sedan, he was going like hell, and he and this babe were pitching woo right up to the time they hit the street intersection.”

“Drunk?”

“How do I know? He was busy doing other things besides driving the automobile. Now I’ve given you a break, mister. Let me go.”

I handed him five dollars. “Go buy yourself a Coca- Cola, buddy, and quit worrying about it.”

He looked at the five for a moment, then swiftly crumpled it and shoved it down into his pocket. “That all?” he asked.

I said, “Would you know this gent if you saw him again, the one who was driving the car?”

He looked at me with eyes that were suddenly hard and shrewd. “No,” he said.

“Couldn’t recognize him if you saw him in a line-up?”

“No.”

I left the newsboy and looked up the registration of the number he had given me.

It was Harvey B. Ludlow and he lived in an apartment way out on the beach. The car was a Cadillac sedan.

I slept until noon Sunday, in my south-of-Market dump. Breakfast at a nearby restaurant consisted of stale eggs fried in near-rancid grease, muddy coffee, and cold, soggy toast.

I got the Sunday papers, and went back to my stuffy room with its threadbare carpet, hard chair, and stale stench.

Gabby Garvanza had made news of a sort.

He’d discharged himself from the hospital, and his departure had given every indication that he was a worried, apprehensive man.

He had, in fact, simply vanished into thin air.

His nurses and physician insisted they knew nothing about it.

Garvanza was recuperating nicely and had been able to travel under his own power. Attired in pajamas, slippers, and bathrobe, he had announced his intention of walking down the hall to the solarium.

When his special nurse went to the solarium a few minutes later she drew a blank. A frantic search of the hospital yielded no clues and no Gabby Garvanza.

Theories ranged from the fact that the gambler had taken a run-out powder to abduction by the enemies who had tried to rub him out.

The mobster had left behind clothes which had been taken to him by Maurine Auburn on the day following the shooting.

The three-hundred-and-fifty-dollar suit of clothes, the silk shirt, and the twenty-five-dollar hand-painted tie which he had been wearing on the night he was shot, had been impounded as evidence. The bullet holes in the bloodstained garments were expected to yield perhaps
some clue on spectrographic analysis as to the composition of the slugs which had penetrated Garvanza’s body.

The day after the shooting Maurine Auburn had brought a suitcase containing another three-hundred-andfifty- dollar tailor-made suit, a pair of seventy-five-dollar made-to-order shoes, another twenty-five-dollar handpainted necktie, and an assortment of silk shirts, socks, and handkerchiefs.

All of these had been left behind. When he vanished the gambler had been wearing only bathrobe, pajamas, and slippers.

The hospital staff insisted that a man so clothed could not possibly leave the hospital by any of the exits, and pointed out that it would be virtually impossible for him to get a cab while clad in that attire.

Police retorted that whether or not it had been possible, Gabby had disappeared, and that he hadn’t needed a cab.

There was some criticism of the police for not posting a guard, but the police countered that criticism with the fact that Gabby Garvanza had been the target. He had not done any shooting and had, in fact, been unarmed at the time he was shot. Police had other and more important duties than to assign a bodyguard for a notorious gambler who seemed to be having troubles with competition that wished to muscle in on what the press referred to as “a lucrative racket” — despite the fact that the police insisted the town was closed up tight and there was no gambling worthy of the name.