The pictures were in a plain envelope, unsealed. There were three of them and they showed His Honor, Mayor John Cash, attired in a dinner jacket and obviously very drunk. A woman in a low-cut evening dress appeared with him in all three: once on his lap with an arm around his neck and the other hand holding a champagne glass. Once sitting on a sofa with his head in her lap, and once with both standing while he administered what seemed to be a lingering kiss.
Aside from making His Honor look rather ridiculous, the pictures didn’t impress me as very hot stuff for blackmail — except for one thing. The woman was Anne “Bumpsie” Farrel, an ex-burlesque artist who had attained notoriety on three separate occasions by being named correspondent in divorce cases involving prominent men, each of which had ensconced her in what the papers delighted in calling “love nests.” I could understand how the mayor’s wife might react strongly to Bumpsie.
Slipping the envelope in my pocket, I examined the other item concealed behind the file folders. It was a plain cloth-bound notebook of lined paper. On the first page was written a statement that began: “This book has been prepared by me as a form of life insurance, since the enterprises in which I am engaged involve contact with various individuals who would like to replace me, and are not above murder as a means of accomplishing their end...”
It was signed: “Gerald Ketterer”.
The remainder of the notebook was a detailed list of nearly five-hundred bookshops, with addresses and proprietors, fifty-some dice and card games, and the locations of what must have been fifteen-hundred slot machines, though I didn’t bother to count. Every little-shot in the gambling rackets was listed by name, but nowhere was there mention of big Dan Ironbaltz, little Jimmy Goodrich or middle-sized Art Depledge.
We caught a down elevator at five minutes to six.
Chapter Four
The Cash-and-Carry Corpse
From the drug store where I had met Jackie Morgan, I phoned Raymond Margrove. An oriental servant who pronounced his “r”s like “l”s and wasn’t at all sure his employer was home answered the phone, and we went through a long argument in pidgin English before I finally got to talk to my fat client. Then before I could say anything, Margrove began issuing instructions.
“I’ve been trying to reach you at your apartment,” he said aggrievedly, apparently resentful that I wasn’t on hand to pop out of the wall whenever he pushed a button. “I’d like you to drop over right away.”
“That was my idea,” I told him. “I just phoned to make sure you were in.”
Outside the drug store I parted with Jackie, who accepted the twenty I thrust on him only after I assured him it would go on my client’s expense account. Although his small annuity was his total income, Jackie refused to accept pay for his unique services if he thought it was coming out of my own pocket.
Raymond Margrove lived in the most expensive section along Lindell Boulevard, and his house was one of the city’s show places. It was of the modern school of architecture — eighteen rooms all on one floor, built mainly of plate glass and steel, so that it resembled a huge outdoor aquarium.
The oriental servant, who turned out to be a round-headed butler about five feet tall, but built like a wrestler, let me in. I followed him through a sitting room furnished with glittering tubular furniture and whose entire front wall was a sheet of heavy glass looking out on the front patio, through a game room containing a bar but no windows, the ceiling of this one being glass, and into a study with two glass walls and a skylight.
The butler said something that sounded like, “Mlistel Mlanville Mloon,” bowed formally and removed himself by backing out of sight into the game room.
Raymond Margrove sat with a book in his lap in an easy chair twice the size of an ordinary chair. It was geometrically set to bisect the right angle formed by the two glass walls, its back to the corner in order to catch the best light. The fat man’s slippered feet were on a footstool, and on an end table next to his chair was a nearly empty box of chocolates.
I glanced around the room, noted the two walls not glass were lined with hooks which looked well-handled, but the built-in desk in the center of one wall had the display-window appearance of never having been used. I had my choice of two chrome and hard leather straight chairs, or the cushioned swivel chair which went with the desk, and was also specially designed for my client’s bulk. I chose the latter.
“Will you have a drink?” Margrove asked.
“No thanks,” I said, surprising myself, for it was perhaps the third drink I had ever refused. I laid it to the feeling of unease all the glittering modernism engendered in me.
“Piece of candy?”
I shook my head and watched while he popped two fat chocolates in his mouth at once.
“I called you over because I may be able to make your task easier,” Margrove said. “It didn’t occur to me this afternoon, but my company manufactured the safe Gerald Ketterer has in his office. I have the combination for you.”
I said, “I won’t need it,” walked over and tossed the notebook in his lap.
He spent five minutes examining it, then raised his head and looked at me in amazement. “How... how the deuce did you get it out of the safe?”
“Who said it was in a safe?”
He thought about this, then admitted, “No one. Knowing he had a burglar-proof safe, I just assumed he’d keep important matters in it. Where did you find it?”
“In a gutter,” I said, and when he just stared at me blankly, added, “Even though Ketterer isn’t likely to complain to the police, I don’t make a practice of going around admitting felonies. And if I did, you’d become an accessory. I found it in a gutter at Fourth and Walnut. Right next to the pictures the mayor wanted.”
“I see,” he said agreeably. “Then you have the pictures too?”
I nodded. “I’ll drop them at the mayor’s house when I leave here. You might phone and tell him to expect me.”
He pressed a button set in the arm of his chair, and almost immediately the butler appeared.
“Phone His Honor, Mayor Cash,” Margrove instructed. “Tell him to expect Manville Moon with that material he wanted in twenty minutes.”
As the butler backed out, Margrove began to study the notebook in more detail. Ten minutes passed in silence, after which he snapped it shut and grinned at me happily.
“This is really much better than I expected, Mr. Moon. I don’t know how to thank you.”
“Try it with money,” I suggested. “There was an expense item of twenty dollars.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Yes?”
I shook my head. “You’ll have to take my word for it. Again if I told you, you’d become an accessory.”
Huge shoulders moving in a ponderous shrug, he grunted and strained for his wallet. Somehow he managed to find a twenty among the half-inch sheath of fifties and hundreds, and extended it to me. Apparently there was to be no bonus for rapid service.
“Thanks very much.” I said politely, and bid him good night.
Mayor john cash’s home was also on Lindell Boulevard, a scant block and a half from Margrove’s. He lived in one of the old “Quality” homes, as the mansions built by rich men in the Nineties are called locally. It was a rambling but solid structure of three stories, old but in perfect condition, and as comfortable-looking as an old shoe.
Mayor John Cash himself came to the door. He was a suave, middle-aged man with distinguished iron-gray hair and a bland face which perpetually wore a slight smile.
“Mr. Moon?” he inquired, and when I nodded he held the door wide. “Come in. The servants are off tonight, but I’ve been awaiting your ring.”