Top of the Heap (9 page)

I took my knife, cut the clipping out of the newspaper, and folded it in my wallet.

Since I was, for the moment, at a standstill, and since I dared not circulate around too freely, I spent a long, tiresome day reading, thinking, and keeping under cover.

Monday I went out to get a morning paper.

The story was on the front page.

The body of Maurine Auburn had been found buried in a shallow grave near Laguna Beach, the famous ocean and resort city south of Los Angeles.

A shallow grave had been dug in the sand above hightide line, but air had seeped through the loose sand, the odor of decomposition had become noticeable, and the body had been uncovered.

From its location authorities felt the grave had been hastily dug at night, and that the young woman was already dead when a car drove down a side street, stopped near a cliff, and the body was dumped over the cliff to the sand below. The murderer then had hastily scooped out a grave in the soft sand and made his escape.

From an examination of the body, the coroner believed she had been dead about a week. She had been shot twice in the back — a cold-blooded, efficient job. Either bullet would have resulted in almost instant death.

Both of the fatal bullets had been recovered.

Los Angeles police, who had been inclined to wash their hands of the attractive moll after her distinct refusal to co-operate in giving the police information concerning the shooting of Gabby Garvanza, now had no comment to make. The sheriff of Orange County was breathing smoke, fire, and threats to gangsters.

In view of these developments, search was being redoubled for a young man with whom it was known Maurine Auburn had disappeared on the night that police now felt certain was the night of her death. Police had a good description and were making a “careful check.”

I went to a phone booth and rang up Elsie Brand at the office, putting through the call collect.

I heard the operator at the other end of the line say, “Mrs. Cool said she would take any collect calls from Donald Lam.”

A moment later I heard Bertha’s hysterical voice screaming oven the wire. “You damn little moron. What do you think
you’re
doing? Who the hell do you think is masterminding this business?”

“What’s the matter now?” I asked.

“What’s the matter?” she yelled. “We’re in a jam. You’ve tried to blackmail a client. They’re going to revoke our license. The client has stopped payment on the five-hundred- dollar bonus check. What’s the matter? What’s the matter? You go sticking your neck out there in San Francisco. The San Francisco police have a pickup on you, the agency is in bad, the five hundred dollars has gone down the drain, and you’re calling collect. What the hell do you think’s the matter?”

“I want to get some information from Elsie Brand,” I said.

“Pay for the call, then,” Bertha screamed. “There won’t be any more collect calls on the phone at this end.”

She slammed up the receiver so that it must have all but pulled the phone out by the roots.

I hung up the telephone, sat there in the booth, and counted my available cash.

I didn’t have enough to squander any money on telephoning Elsie Brand.

I went to the telegraph office and sent her a collect telegram.

WIRE ME INFORMATION PREPAID WILL CALL WESTERN UNION BRANCH FIRST AND MARKET.

Bertha probably wouldn’t think to stop collect telegrams.

I went back to my hole-in-the-wall hotel and kicked my heels, marking time while waiting for information.

The noon editions of the San Francisco newspapers blossomed out with useful information. The killing of Maurine Auburn suddenly assumed importance because it
had a swell local angle.

Headlines across the front page said:
Son of Wealthy Banker Volunteers Information in Gangster Killing.

I read that John Carver Billings the Second had voluntarily reported to police that he had been the one who had asked Maurine Auburn to dance at an afternoon rendezvous spot, that he had been the one whose fascination had charmed the attractive “moll” into leaving her companions.

The young man’s amatory triumph, however, had been swiftly eclipsed by humiliation when the moll had gone to “powder her nose” and had failed to reappear.

Young Billings reported that he had thereafter “become acquainted” with two San Francisco girls, and had spent the “rest of the evening” with them. He had not known their names until he had located them through the efforts of a Los Angeles detective agency which had uncovered the identity of the two young women.

Billings had given police the names of these two women, and, since they were reputable young ladies employed in San Francisco business establishments, and inasmuch as it seemed their contact with Billings had consisted merely in making a round of night spots and using him to “show them the town,” police were withholding their names. It was known, however, that they had been interviewed and had confirmed Billings’s story in every detail.

The newspaper carried an excellent picture of John Carver Billings, a good, clear photograph taken by a newspaper photographer.

I went around to the newspaper office and hunted up the art department. A couple of two-bit cigars got me a fine glossy print of the picture, a real likeness of John Carver Billings the Second.

I strolled back to the telegraph office. There was no wire from Elsie.

I took a streetcar to Millie Rhodes’s apartment.

I found her home.

“Oh, hello,” she said. “Come on in.”

Her eyes were sparkling with excitement. She was wearing an outfit which evidently had just been removed from a box bearing the label of one of San Francisco’s most expensive stores.

“No work?” I asked.

“Not today,” she said, smiling enigmatically.

“I thought your vacation was up and you were due back to work.”

“I changed my plans.”

“And the job?”

“I’m a lady of leisure.”

“Since when?”

“That’s telling.”

“Like it?”

“Don’t be silly.”

“You’re burning bridges, Millie.”

“Let ‘em burn.”

“You might want to go back.”

“Not me. I’m going places, not going back — ever.”

“That’s a new suit, isn’t it?”

“Isn’t it divine? It does things for me. I found it and it fits me as though it had been made for me. It didn’t need the slightest alteration. I’m crazy about it.”

She had been standing in front of the full-length mirror. Now she raised her hands slightly and turned slowly around so I could see the lines.

“It’s a nice job,” I said. “It does things for you.”

She sat down, crossed her legs, and smoothed the skirt over her knees with a caressing motion.

“Well,” she said, “what is it this time?”

I said, “I don’t want you burning bridges. It was all right to lie to me about the John Carver Billings alibi.”

“John Carver Billings
the Second,
” she amended with a smile.

“The Second,” I admitted. “Lying to me was one thing — lying to the police is another.”

“Look, Donald,” she said, “you look like a nice boy. You’re a detective. That makes you have a nasty, suspicious mind. You came here and intimated that I was lying in order to give John Carver Billings the Second an alibi. I rode along with you in order to see what you’d say.”

I said, “You broke down on cross-examination, and couldn’t tell a consistent story.”

She laughed as though the whole thing was very amusing. “I was just sounding you out, Donald, riding along with the gag.”

She moved over to the davenport and sat down beside me, put one hand on my shoulder, said softly, “Donald, why don’t you grow up?”

“I’ve grown up.”

“You can’t buck money and influence — not in this town.”

“Who has the money?” I asked angrily.

“Right at the moment,” she said, “John Carver Billings the Second has money.”

“All right. Who has the influence?”

“I’ll answer that question. John Carver Billings.”

“You left off
the Second,
” I told her sarcastically.

“No, I didn’t.”

“You mean that?”

She nodded. “I mean John Carver Billings, the old man. He’s calling the turns.”

I thought that over.

She said, “You stuck your neck out. You did things you shouldn’t have done. You said things you shouldn’t have said. Why didn’t you ride along, Donald?”

“Because I’m not built that way.”

“You’ve lost five hundred dollars, you’ve got yourself in bad with the police, there’s an order out to pick you up, and you’re in a sweet mess. Now,
if
you wanted to grow up and be your age you could have that all straightened out. The police would withdraw their pickup order, the fivehundred- dollar check would be reinstated, and everything would be hunky-dory.”

“So you’ve gone back to the alibi story.”

“I never abandoned the alibi story.”

“You did to me.”

“That’s what
you
say.”

“You know you did.”

She said almost dreamily, “John Carver Billings the Second, Sylvia Tucker, and I all tell the same story. You come along and
claim
that I changed my story to you. I deny it. John Carver Billings the Second says you tried to blackmail him. Police say you were snooping around trying to get something which you could use to blackmail a client.
That’s
not being smart, Donald.”

“So you’ve decided to sell me out?”

“No. I’ve decided to buy me in.”

“You can’t get away with it, Millie. Don’t try it,” I pleaded.

“You run your business. I’ll run mine.”

“Millie, you can’t do it. You can’t get away with it.

Within two minutes of the time I started to cross-examine you, you had yourself all mixed up.”

“Try cross-examining me now.”

“What good would it do if I trapped you again? You’d simply be that much wiser and you’d lie out of it.”

“I’m wise now, Donald. Why don’t
you
get wise?”

I said, “You’re dealing with a bunch of amateurs. They think they can fix things up. You’re a nice girl, Millie. I hate to see you get mixed up in this thing. You could get in pretty bad over this.”

“You’re the one who’s in bad now.”

I started for the door and said angrily, “Stick around and see who’s in bad.”

She came running to me. “Don’t leave like that, Donald.”

I pushed her to one side.

Her arms were around me. “Look, Donald, you’re a swell guy. I hate to see you get in bad. You’re bucking power and influence and money. They’ll crush you flat and throw you to one side. You’ll be discredited, convicted of extortion, you’ll lose your license. Donald,
please
. I can fix it all up for you. I told them they’d have to square things for you or I wouldn’t go along. They promised.”

I said, “Millie, let’s look at it from the standpoint of cold-blooded logic. It cost John Carver Billings the Second almost a thousand dollars to manufacture that alibi, and that isn’t taking into consideration what they paid you. I have an idea Sylvia was softhearted and they didn’t pay her much. They paid you two hundred and fifty dollars the first time. When they came back this second time they
really
decorated the mahogany.

“You started buying clothes and suitcases. You’re going to make an affidavit and then you’re going traveling, perhaps a trip to Europe.”

“All right,” she said hotly, “they sent for me. They paid me money,
big
money, and they gave me the protection of influence,
big
influence. I’m not going to Europe. I’m going to South America. Do you know what that means?”

“Sure I know what it means,” I said. “You’re making an affidavit and then you’re getting on a boat, where, for a time at least, you’ll be out of the jurisdiction of the court.

They can only question you by interrogations forwarded through the American Consulate. You’ll—”

“It isn’t that,” she said. “You’re looking at it from the other person’s viewpoint. I am looking at it from my viewpoint.

“Do you know what it means when a girl comes to the city and gets on her own? She doesn’t have any difficulty meeting a lot of boys — playboys. That’s all they want to do, play.

“At the start you think you’d like a little playing yourself. You’re on the loose. For the first time in your life you’re grown up, with all that it means. You’re an individual, completely free and unhampered. You have an apartment, you are your own boss, you’re making your own living. You don’t have to ask anybody for anything. Or, that’s what you think. You feel there’s lots of time to settle down whenever you get ready. You have a job and you’re getting a regular paycheck. You can buy clothes and you can do what you want when you want.

“It’s a fine sensation for a while and then the sugar coating wears off and you begin to taste the bitter that’s underneath.

“You’re not independent. You’re a cog in the economic and social machine. You can get just so high and no higher. If you want to play you can get acquainted with a lot of playboys. If you want anything else you’re stymied.

“After a while you begin to think about security. You begin to think about a home, about children, about — about being respectable. You want to have some one man whom you can love and respect, to whom you can devote your life. You want to have kids and watch them grow up.

You want to have a husband and a home.

“You don’t meet anybody who wants to be a husband or to make a home. You’re tagged as a playgirl. You’ve been having fun and there’s a tag on you. The homely little bookkeeper marries the bashful guy in the filing-department. You don’t get proposals. You get propositions. The headwaiters all know you and make a fuss over you — You’re tagged.

“The married men at the office all make passes at you
in their spare time. The boss slaps your fanny, tells you an off-color joke or two, and thinks he’s being devilish. You meet a lot of guys who look all right on the surface and who swear they’re bachelors on the loose. After the fifth drink they pull a wallet out of their pocket and show you pictures of the wife and kids.”

“I’m going on a boat, Donald. No one’s going to know anything about me or about my background. I’ll have good clothes. I’ll be chic and interesting. I’ll sit in a deck chair and have all day to look over the passengers. I’ll spot the ones who are eligible.”