“You’re a riot tonight, Jack. A real riot.” After scanning a few more ads I tossed the paper aside. “Did you hear from the man keeping an eye on Spangler?”
“Yeah, and for once you were on the beam. He went stepping out with a broad, a cute piece of fluff according to the op. They were back at the hotel dancing when I hung up the phone about the time your cab pulled up out front.”
The telephone was in the hallway near the front door, which explained why he was standing there as if he were the housemother awaiting my arrival. Oh well, I told myself, the evening wasn’t a complete washout. I might not have transportation in the morning, but I’d have spaghetti for lunch.
A wrecker had towed my car to City Chevrolet, a large dealership on Market Street a few blocks east of downtown. After work I braved a biting west wind and walked there to see how things stood. A mechanic had already given it a quick look, so I said, “Whaddya think, can it be fixed?”
He gave me a baleful stare. “Anything can be fixed, ace, but if this was a horse I’d shoot it.”
The estimate was eighteen dollars to get the weary old buggy running again. For seventy-five they could put it in halfway decent shape, but no promises would come with the job.
I went outside and wandered around among the used cars, ducking behind one whenever a salesman came into view. A 1936 Ford Tudor looked good but was a little steep at three fifty-nine. I admired a nifty ’35 Terraplane priced at two seventy-nine, then stopped for a while at a ’32 Chevy deluxe coach much like my own car. Instead of being gray with the paint worn down to the primer, this one was a sparkling ebony black. At a hundred seventy-nine dollars the price seemed right.
Uncertain about what to do, I walked back to Main Street, hoping to bum a ride home with Jack Eddy. What little was left of the afternoon was ominously dark even for December. Headlights were coming on, lights from store windows cast oblong patterns on the sidewalk. Snow began falling before I reached the shelter of the Metropolitan Building.
While Jack wound up his day reading reports filed by Wellington operatives, I relaxed in a comer of his private office. We both looked up when the woman who doubled as receptionist and secretary cleared her throat at the doorway. “A Mr. Anderson Spangler is here to see you, Mr. Eddy.”
I laid aside the Wellington magazine, a house organ printed on slick paper and distributed to the thirty-three agency offices around the country. A soldier on horseback adorned the cover. Above him in old English type was a motto: WELLINGTON’S — WHERE WRONG-DOING MEETS ITS WATERLOO. Despite that affront to the senses, the stories inside were interesting. The latest issue contained a piece I had done on a Jack Eddy caper along with the usual fare on modem crime-fighting techniques, accounts of recent events, and adventure tales of Wellington agents pursuing Black Bart, the James gang, and other desperados in the Old West.
“Think he’s come to confess?” I said jokingly.
“Sure, buddy. And that was a pig that just flew past the window.”
Spangler walked briskly into the room, hat in hand like one businessman calling on another. Same business, different approach. Jack motioned him to a chair. “What’s on your mind, Andy?”
Spangler winced but allowed Jack’s deliberate use of the nickname to pass without comment. After a period of silently eyeing each other Jack said, “Rather talk in private?”
With a laconic smile Spangler looked toward my corner of the room. “Not unless your friend writes up the stories he hears in your office.” I stole a glance at the magazine I had just laid aside.
“Okay, so spill it.”
For a moment Spangler toyed with his pencil mustache. “There’s a girl I met here in Akron, Jack. She’s in a spot of trouble, and I’d like you to see if you can get her out of it.”
“Forget it, Andy. The agency isn’t taking you on as a client.”
“Not me, Jack, Beverly Keeler. She’s a sweet kid, you’ll see, and innocent as a newborn babe. She’s got money to cover your fee, so I’ll be completely out of the picture. That’s straight, word of honor.”
Rather than laughing, Jack tilted back in his chair and ran slim fingers through sandy brown hair that at twenty-six was already growing thin on top. Its sparseness went well with his angular features. When he leaned forward again, his elbows were on the desk, chin resting on folded hands. “Okay, shoot. But no guarantees, understand?”
“Sure, Jack, I know how it goes. It’s like this. A while back Bev worked for a lawyer, a Stefan Damokura. Legal secretary, girl of all trades, know what I mean? So twenty grand that was supposed to have been in an escrow account at the bank disappears, and he accuses Bev. Now I ask you, Jack, would anybody pull a stunt like that, then stick around waiting to be collared?
“Anyway, the only other person in the office was a kid fresh out of law school just learning the racket. Now he’s the key witness, the one who makes it something more than Damokura’s word against Bev’s. Even that way the court would probably believe the lawyer, but this kid Kenneth DeRidder wraps it up like a Hershey’s kiss.”
Jack took a crooked cigarette from a crumpled pack of Pall Malls, checked to see it wasn’t broken, then lit it and blew a perfect smoke ring. “So what makes you think I could do anything to help her? What’ve you got in mind, Andy?”
“Nothing, Jack, and that’s the truth, so help me. It’s out of my line, but I figure if anyone can get to the bottom of things it’s you. So will you talk to her?”
Jack wasn’t quick with a reply, so Spangler said, “Look, what’s to lose? Have her come in, and if you buy what she says, see what you can do. If you don’t, toss her out the door. But that won’t happen, take my word for it.”
Jack Eddy hesitated a moment longer before giving a shrug of acceptance. “Maybe I’m nuts, but okay, send her in. One thing, if I do take the case, the first time I even suspect you’re entering into it someway I’ll go to the judge and lay the whole thing out for him. Got that, Andy?”
Spangler arose, a wry smile on his face. “If I didn’t figure that’s the way you’d play it, Jack, I’d be talking to somebody else. A fair shake for the kid, that’s all I want.”
When he was gone Jack sat tapping a pencil against his desk for a minute or so, then turned to me. “Whaddya think, buddy?”
“I think you said one thing that makes sense.”
“What was that?”
“Maybe you’re nuts.”
Everyone offered conflicting advice about my car. The most succinct came from my boss, city editor Ben Goldsmith: “Get the old jalopy fixed, Geary, and now! I can’t have my police reporter riding around town on buses.”
Before dinner at the boardinghouse I discussed the situation with Mr. Reimer, the retired druggist. “Be very cautious, Abraham,” he said. “We’re in a recession, you know, and a great many economists think it will get worse in the months ahead.”
That sort of talk always made me wonder when the Depression had ended and the recession had begun. The difference escaped me, as it did the laid-off rubberworkers who gathered in small groups on Akron street corners and discussed matters beyond the ken of any economist in a warm and cosy office. It wasn’t as bad as 1932, but that oft-mentioned corner that prosperity was just around had proved to be a long one.
Kitty Bauer, the vivacious daughter of the landlord, came flouncing into the parlor. “Are you still talking about cars?” she said. “For heaven’s sake, Bram, buy a new one. Something ritzy to impress Sue Baney.”
Her father, who so far had escaped the latest round of layoffs at Goodyear, looked up from his newspaper. “Humph! That boy has as much business buyin’ a new car as I have buyin’ a house out on West Hill so I can hobnob with the Firestones and the Seiberlings.” He shifted his frown to me. “Act like you got some sense, young fella, and get yourself a nice Ford about two or maybe three years old.”