Slowly, he put the cloth back in the envelope, the envelope back in the brief case.
“Now then,” I said, “if you want us to represent you, we don’t want to know anything more. We’ll get the facts from our own investigation. You want to find out what you daughter’s been doing, is that right?”
“That’s right.”
“You don’t know?”
“No, I suspect that she’s—”
“We don’t want suspicions,” I broke in. “All we want to know is that you want us to find out about your daughter. We’ll investigate in our own way.”
“I see,” he said. There was a note of relief in his voice.
“That,” Bertha said swiftly, “is going to cost you a hundred dollars a day and expenses with no guarantee on results.”
“Plus a retainer,” I added quickly, “of five hundred dollars, payable in advance.”
“As I told you,” he said “money is no object.”
Bertha said, “Now, if it should appear that—”
“I think your partner understands the situation, Mrs. Cool,” Dawson interposed quickly.
Dawson turned to me. “I beg your pardon for doubting your competency, Mr. Lam. You have a very quick alert mind.”
He took a billfold from his pocket, took out a stack of one-hundred dollar bills. “Here,” he said, “is a retainer of five hundred dollars, three hundred dollars for expenses, and pay in advance for seven days of investigative work. When the matter is concluded you can send me a telegram, care of the company in Denver, Colorado, or write me a letter. Be sure to mark either the letter or the telegram personal.”
“I’ll have the bookkeeper make a receipt,” Bertha Cool said.
“Good heavens, no,” Dawson exclaimed. He once more turned to me. “I think you understand the situation, Mr. Lam.”
He shot his left arm out so that he could look at his wristwatch, made clucking noises with his tongue against the roof of his mouth, said, “I am running farther behind schedule than I thought. I must leave. Goodbye.”
He virtually ran out of the office.
Bertha turned to me and said, “Well, you were so goddam smart, I hope you know what it is all about.”
“I think I do,” I said.
“Well, I’m your partner,” she reminded me.
“I think our friend, Mr. Clayton Dawson, is in a jam,” I said, “and he expects us to get him out.”
“He’s in a jam?” Bertha asked.
“Yes.”
“He said it was his daughter.”
“I heard what he said.”
“You don’t think that it is his daughter?” she asked, puzzled.
“Let’s put it this way,” I said, “I don’t think she is his daughter.”
“Then who is she?”
“His witness.”
“But she’s Eldon’s mistress.”
“So he said.”
“Then who the devil is this Sidney Eldon?” Bertha asked.
“He could be our client,” I said. “Clayton Dawson to you.”
Bertha jumped as though her chair had been wired. “We can’t take on a case of that sort,” she said.
“What sort?”
“The kind your intimating.”
“I haven’t intimated anything about the case,” I said, “only about the client.”
Bertha shook her head.
I said to Elsie, “Take this money out to the bookkeeper. Tell her to deposit it and credit Clayton Dawson of Denver.”
Bertha’s greedy eyes focused on the pile of money. “Fry me for an oyster,” she said. She heaved herself up out of the chair. “It’s your baby,” she announced, “and you can change the diapers.”
She waddled out of the office.
Chapter 2
Automobile injury cases, these days, are a dime a dozen. They are seldom worthy of a separate place in the news. They are lumped together.
John Doe gets killed in an intersection. It isn’t even worthy of a separate news item. Joe Doakes, driving home at three o’clock in the morning, “loses control” of his car and wraps it around a telephone pole. Joe is killed and Jane Whosis, a female companion, aged twenty-three, of 7918 Whatsis Street, is seriously injured.
A station wagon jumps over the dividing line on the freeway, careers out of control in the wrong lane, smacks another car head on, kills two people, scatters children all over the freeway, and some newspaper rewrite man bundles up the whole list of accidents, gives them one headline; then in four or five short paragraphs, disposes of the whole business.
The accident I thought I wanted was buried in a newspaper five days earlier. A Mrs. Harvey W. Chester had been in a pedestrian crossing. She was struck down, the victim of a hit-and-run driver.
The police learned that a small piece had been torn from the skirt she was wearing, so they felt that identification of the car and apprehension of the driver would be only a matter of time, inasmuch as there was one other clue which the police were not disclosing.
Mrs. Harvey W. Chester was forty-eight years old and resided at 2367-A Doorman Avenue. Her injuries were listed as “serious.”
The account then went on to describe a head-on collision and the apprehension of a stolen car, after a chase which at times reached the speed of one hundred and five miles an hour.
When the car had finally been forced to a halt, the driver had calmly stepped out and smilingly informed the police that since he was a juvenile they couldn’t lay a finger on him.
Such accidents as resulted in smashed automobiles, minor injuries, etc., were not newsworthy enough to be included.
It was all part of the pattern of life in a big city.
I purchased a bunch of magazines at the newsstand, put them under my arm, got the agency jalopy, and drove out to Doorman Avenue.
I parked the car two blocks away from the house I wanted. I called at three houses and asked each woman who came to the door if she would like to subscribe to magazines.
In all three instances my reception was somewhat less than cordial.
Having established the proper foundation, I went to 2367.
It was one of the deep lots left over from an earlier era of planning and building. The house in front, which was 2367, was a huge, old-fashioned affair, rambling, filled with waste space; a wide cement walk led around to 2367-A, which was a toy-sized bungalow in the back lot.
I climbed a couple of steps to a miniature porch and rang the doorbell.
A woman’s voice called out, “Who is it?”
“A man who has something for you,” I said.
“Come in,” the tired voice said. “You’ll have to open the door yourself.”
I opened the door and walked in.
A rather slender woman with high cheekbones and tired eyes was propped up in a wheelchair with her right ankle and her right forearm in bandages; a blanket was folded across her lap and the left leg. The right leg was protruding out through a fold in the blanket.
“Hello,” she said.
“Well, hello,” I greeted her. “You look as if you’d been in an accident.”
“Hit-and-run,” she said.
“That’s too bad,” I told her, spreading out the magazines.
“What do you want, young man? When I told you to come in. I thought you were someone else.”
“Who?”
“Just someone else.”
“I’m selling magazines,” I said. “Subscriptions to magazines.”
“I’m not interested.”
I said, “You should be, if you don’t mind my saying so, because quite apparently you’re laid up with nothing much to do.”
“I have my radio.”
“Don’t you get awfully tired of listening to disk jockeys, conversational patter and the same old type of commercial?”
“Yes, I do.”