You Never Know With Women (12 page)

He didn’t knock or stand on ceremony. He burst in on me like a runaway cyclone.

He was about six foot two and all of it hard muscle. At a guess he could be thirty or so, good-looking if you like the well-fed, rich face that a millionaire usually carries around with him. I could see why women went for him. He was the dominant type, with a personality that ran away with a lot of voltage, and was slightly overpowering at close quarters. His eyes were sharp, keen and alert. You had the impression you’d have to get up very early to trap him into anything and then you’d probably fail. By the set of his shoulders, the line of his mouth and his way of talking you knew without being told that he was in the money.

“Are you Floyd Jackson?” he barked and planked down his hat and stick on the desk.

“Yeah,” I said. “Mr. Brett, of course.”

He didn’t bother to answer that one, and glanced around the office, giving each stick of furniture an exclusive sneer.

“You blew the door off my safe last night and killed two of my guards,” he went on, glaring at me.

“Did I?” I groped for a cigarette and set fire to it. Now why did I do that?”

He caught hold of the visitor’s chair, jerked it up to the desk and sat on it.

“And don’t think that alibi of yours is any good. I know all about O’Readen. He’s a crook. You weren’t playing poker with him last night, you were up at my place.”

He sounded so convincing I was inclined to believe him.

“Redfern didn’t seem to think so,” I pointed out. I felt he might want to argue.

He took out a cigar, cut the end, lit it and blew a stream of rich smelling smoke at me.

“I don’t give a damn what Redfern thinks. I don’t have to be impressed by a Chief of Police even if Redfern is. I want the dagger back and I’m going to get it back. That’s why I’m here.”

I became suddenly very attentive.

“What dagger is that, Mr. Brett?” I asked.

“Now look, Jackson, you’re not going to act dumb with me. You know what I’m talking about. You stole the Cellini dagger from my safe last night and you’re going to give it back. This is a business transaction. The police don’t come into it.”

A tingle ran up my spine and I was aware of a feeling of suppressed excitement and I knew I’d have to step carefully. This could be either a ticket to the gas chamber or the means of collecting a lot of dough. It depended how I played it.

“And why don’t the police come into it?” I asked cautiously.

“Because they can’t do anything about it, but I can. I don’t give a damn for those guards. I don’t give a damn whether you go to jail or not. All I’m interested in is getting the dagger back, and I’m going to get it back. Make no mistake about it! Here’s my proposition: bring the dagger to me before ten o’clock tonight and I’ll pay you twenty-five thousand dollars. If you’re not at my house by ten o’clock I’ll start something that’ll surprise you.”

“Such as what, Mr. Brett?” I asked.

“I’ll break O’Readen,” he said bleakly. “It’ll take a little time and it’ll cost money, but I’ll do it. When I’ve broken him we’ll see how your alibi stands up in court. I’ll have you sent to the gas chamber if I have to buy the judge and jury.” He leaned forward and tapped on the ink-stained blotter. “You’ll find it doesn’t do to monkey with me, Jackson. I have a lot of influence around here. Please yourself what you do. I want the dagger.”

“And what dagger are you talking about?” I asked mildly.

He studied me for a long moment. I thought he was going to fly into a rage but he didn’t, although it was a near thing.

“The Cellini dagger,” he said in a voice you could crack a nut on. “If they didn’t tell you its history you’d better hear it now. Cellini was commissioned to make a pair of gold daggers for Cardinal Jacobacci. One of them eventually found its way to the Uffizzi, the other disappeared, believed stolen. It turned up a few months ago and I bought it. It is a collector’s piece and valuable, and I took the precaution to inform the authorities that I had bought it and its description has been widely circulated. It’s impossible for anyone to sell it. You might just as well try to sell the Mona Lisa. You were commissioned to steal it by an unscrupulous collector. I can even make a guess who it is, but I won’t. I haven’t the evidence, although I’m pretty sure who has it; only a dishonest collector would risk stealing it.

“Collectors are funny people, Jackson. If anything is rare enough, they just have to have it, even if they have to keep it under lock and key. I’m sure of one thing: you stole the dagger and you were paid to do so by a collector. You stole it because you were in a jam. You were up at my place yesterday morning and your bank account, which has been at zero for the past months, has now a substantial balance. That’s why I know you stole it.”

“How do you know about my bank balance ?” I asked mildly.

He gave me a hard little smile.

“I own the bank, Jackson, and I had your account examined.”

“Looks as if I’ll have to change my bank, doesn’t it?”

He got to his feet.

“That’s my offer. No questions asked, no trouble and twenty-five thousand dollars for the dagger. I don’t care how you get it, but get it. If you’re not at my place by ten tonight, look out. You’ll find you’ve been meddling with dynamite.”

“And suppose I get a break and find the dagger and bring it out to your place; what guarantee have I that Redfern won’t be there to hang a frame on me?”

“My word,” he said curtly.

We looked at each other.

“Okay,” I said and shrugged. “If that’s the best you can do, I’ll take the risk.”

He took out his wallet, dropped a card on the desk.

“That’s my telephone number. When you have the dagger, give me a ring. I’ll arrange for the guard to let you up to the house.”

I tucked the card into my vest pocket.

“Maybe I’ll be seeing you,” I said. “But don’t bet on it.”

“I’ll be seeing you all right,” he said grimly and stamped to the door.

“And what else was stolen from the safe, Mr. Brett?” I asked casually. “Any other offers?”

I watched him narrowly. I didn’t know if he would jump or turn pale or sag at the knees or even have a stroke. According to Gorman and Parker and Veda he should have done one or even two of these things. He didn’t do any of them. He looked over his shoulder and frowned.

“What are you talking about?” he demanded.

I wasn’t going to mention the compact just in case I had been given a bum steer, but I gave him another hint.

“Wasn’t there something else in the safe besides the dagger that was of value to you, Mr. Brett?”

He looked bewildered. It wasn’t an act. He just happened to be bewildered.

“Are you trying to be funny?”

I was trying not to be bewildered myself.

“I guess I am,” I said. “Think nothing of it. I haven’t been sleeping too well recently.”

He gave me a hard stare and went out. I waited until I heard him running down the stairs, then I fished out the bottle of Scotch, poured three inches of it into the office glass and drank most of it without drawing breath. The kids screamed and yelled as they fought each other amongst the rubbish in the vacant lot. A car started up in the street below and drove away with an open exhaust. A mouse popped out of its hole and sneered at me. The girl on the wall continued to smile. She seemed to enjoy the joke.

“Yeah, it’s funny,” I said to her. “It’s very, very funny and you can laugh all you like. You’re not in this mess: I am.”

I lifted my feet and placed them tenderly on the blotter and tried to sort it out. So there was a dagger after all, and the compact meant nothing to Brett.

“How do you like that?” I said to the girl on the wall. “That’s what comes of being smart. No one, to blame but Jackson, the boy detective, Sherlock the second, the punk with a paralysed brain. So I’m right back where I came in, and maybe Fatso’s yarn was true. Maybe that female enigma did walk in her sleep and steal the dagger and leave her compact in the safe. Maybe that’s why Fatso wanted the compact so badly, because Brett would know when he found it in the safe that it was Veda who had swiped the dagger. Maybe I’d better start from the beginning again. Maybe I’d better take this thick skull of mine and swop it for a bottle of Scotch. Maybe no one would want to swop it for a bottle of Scotch. I wouldn’t.” I set fire to a cigarette, rubbed my face with a hot hand and transferred my stare from Miss Cleavage to the telephone. I had a feeling Brett wasn’t bluffing when he said he’d start after me if I didn’t produce the dagger by ten o’clock. If he cracked O’Readen I’d be in a nasty jam. And he was big and rich enough to crack that smiling copper. I pulled the telephone towards me, dialled and waited.

A voice with an accent like a tin can rolling downstairs hit my ear. “Hollywood Banner.”

“Give me Al Ryan.”

After a lot of delay Al asked crossly, “Who is it?”

“This is Floyd Jackson,” I told him. “How are you, Al?”

“Terrible,” Al said with conviction. “Don’t bother me now. Call me next week. I’ll be on vacation then.”

“I want a little information, Al,” I said firmly.

“Not interested. I’m busy. Be a pal and throw yourself under a train. No one would miss you.”

“Very, very funny. How’s your wife, Al?”

“Still horrible. Why drag my wife into this?” Al sounded suspicious.

“And how’s that little redhead with dimples in her knees .I saw you with at the Brown Derby last week?”

There was a long, hurt silence.

“That’s blackmail, Jackson. You wouldn’t stand for blackmail, would you?”

“I want some information, Al,” I said gently.

“Well, why didn’t you say so? You know I’m always ready to help a guy if I can. What do you want to know?”

Miss Cleavage and I exchanged smiles.

“What do you know about a fat flesh-peddler who calls himself Cornelius Gorman?”

“Not much. He has an office in the Wiltshire Building on Wiltshire Boulevard, been in business five or six years, smart agent, handles a bunch of strippers and makes a good thing out of it. Got into trouble last year with the Mothers’ League for Good Morals and beat a Mann Act rap a couple of months ago, but a guy in his racket is always running into some kind of trouble.”

I frowned at the mouthpiece of the telephone. Nothing new: nothing I didn’t know already.

“Does he run any other rackets, Al?”

“Not that I know of. I don’t think so. He makes a lot of solid dough out of his girls. He might, of course.”

“Ever heard of a girl who calls herself Veda Rux?”

“Sure have.” He sounded enthusiastic. “She’s one of Gorman’s strippers. I’ve seen her toss off her clothes. It’s a nice experience.”

I was getting nowhere fast.

“Do you happen to know if Gorman has a pal who collects antiques?” I asked hopefully.

“Antique women?” Al asked, puzzled.

“No, you dumb cluck. Antiques — pictures, jewellery, stuff like that.”

“How should I know? He’s pretty thick with Dominic Boyd, who has a lot of jack and a big place on Beverly Hills. Maybe he collects antiques.”

I pricked up my ears.

“Is he a tall guy with slicked-down fair hair and a face like a lady horse?”

“Could be. Natty dresser and looks a bit of a nance.”

“That’s the fella.” I was excited now. “Who is he, Al?”

“I don’t know where he came from. He just arrived out of the blue four or five years ago. Some guy I know told me he was one of the booze barons from the North. Made a million or so out of running moonshine in the prohibition days. He’s a dangerous character from what I hear. The same guy said he was a fugitive from an asylum for the insane, but I don’t believe all I hear.”

I thought all this over.

“Well, thanks, Al, that’s about all, I guess. Sorry to have bothered you.”

“And forget about that redhead. That was just a business dinner we were having.”

“And I suppose you were cuddling her because she was cold?” I said and hung up.

So Gorman was a theatrical agent and Veda was a stripper after all, but my old pal Dominic wasn’t Gorman’s partner: he was a slap-happy ex-booze king of the name of Boyd.

I turned the whole thing over in my mind for twenty minutes or so. It got me a nice set of theories, but nothing I could take to the bank and cash into hard currency. One thing I was sure about: I would have to produce the dagger by ten o’clock tonight. I wasn’t going to call Brett’s bluff.

That stuff about the gas chamber worried me. I’d have to persuade Gorman to part with the dagger. I sat for ten minutes or so working out how I was to do it. There were ways and means; the most obvious one would be to go out to Boyd’s place and steal the thing, but I decided against that. I’d have to play this one safe. I thought some more, then pushed back my chair, closed the window, took a last look round and walked down the six flights of stairs to the street level.

It took me an hour and a half of driving fast to reach Gorman’s office on Wiltshire Boulevard. The layout of the place made me think I might do a lot worse than become a flesh-peddler myself. The office was located on the eighth floor of the Wiltshire Building. You go through revolving doors into a vast lobby of chromium and green and white rubber block flooring. A row of elevators is on your right; facing you is an arcade of shops where you can buy a flower for your buttonhole or a diamond tiara, according to your bank balance and inclination. To your left is an inquiry desk, a row of telephone booths and a theatre ticket agency. A sign at the head of a broad flight of stairs leading to the basement tells you you can have a haircut, shave, turkish bath and a meal if you can be bothered to walk that far.

I rode to the eighth floor in an express elevator and walked along some more green and white rubber blocks before I reached double plate-glass doors with
Cornelius
on one door and
Gorman
on the other. I looked through the glass at a cute little blonde at a switchboard and behind a railing, well out of reach of clutching hands. The rest of the room was given up to four rows of armchairs. A number of nifty-looking young women were sitting in the chairs and doing nothing in particular.