“Sometimes it pays,” I told her. “All right. Make another U-turn now and go back to the east.”
She swung the car. “Do you know where this road goes?”
“Comes out around Inglewood someplace,” I said. “Just keep going.”
We followed the road, finally came to a place where there were some houses, then more houses, then a crossroad, then more houses. I said, “Start hitting the crossroads. I’ll watch the road behind us.
“Can we go someplace where we can talk?” I asked after another few minutes.
“To my apartment,” she said.
“Don’t be silly,” I told her. “They’re watching your apartment like hawks.”
“Donald, I don’t think they are.”
“Why?”
“Because I’ve been coming and going and there hasn’t been anyone around. I’ve driven the car places several times and each time have made absolutely certain that no one was following.”
“How did you do that?”
“The same way you did. I’d get in the car and drive out on a lot of side roads where I could spot any traffic coming behind.”
“You sure you didn’t ditch a shadow by going through a traffic signal just as it was changing or something?”
“No, Donald. I deliberately tried to make myself a sitting duck in case anyone was following.”
“Just the same,” I said, “we’re not going to take a chance on your apartment. Where else can we go?”
“What about your apartment?”
“They may be watching that, too.”
She said, “I have a friend. I can phone her. I think she’d let us use her apartment.”
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s get to a phone.”
We swung back onto a boulevard. She stopped at a phone booth, called, came back, said, “It’s all right. My friend will leave the door unlocked and she’ll give us an hour and a half. That should be all the time we need.”
“Should be,” I said. “Where is this place?”
“Not too far. We’ll be there in ten minutes. She thinks I’m having an affair with a married man and she’s dying with curiosity.”
I hitched around in the seat and kept looking behind us.
“Well?” she asked.
“Well what?”
“Am I or am I not?”
“What?”
“Having an affair with a married man?”
“How would I know?”
“Oh, all right, I’ll come right out with it. Donald, are you married?”
“No. Why?”
“Nothing.”
“But you are,” I said.
She started to say something, then checked herself.
We got to her friend’s apartment house, parked the car and took the elevator to the fourth floor. Hazel Downer walked unerringly down to the apartment and opened the door.
There was a long-legged grace about her that made it a pleasure to watch her move.
It was a nice apartment, one that really cost money.
I waited for Hazel to seat herself.
She chose the davenport, so I went over to sit beside her. “All right,” I told her, “now let’s get to the real truth.”
“About what?”
“About the money.”
“But I gave you the real truth about the money.”
“Don’t be silly,” I said. “I want to know the real truth. I’m not going to lead with my chin.”
“But we went all through this yesterday.”
“No, we didn’t,” I said. “You gave me a run-around yesterday about an uncle and all that. Now I want the real lowdown.”
“Why, Donald? Do you know where the money is?”
“I think I can get it for you.”
She leaned forward, her eyes starry, her lips half parted. “All of it?”
“Fifty thousand.”
“Donald,” she said, “I... Donald, you’re wonderful! You’re terrific!”
She looked up at me, holding her chin up, wanting to be kissed. I kept my eyes on the window and just sat there, waiting.
“Donald,” she sighed, “you do things to me.”
“That’s fine,” I told her. “Right now you’re stalling for time so you can think up a good story. Evidently this is the only stalling technique you know. I certainly thought you would have taken advantage of the time since yesterday to have thought up a dilly.”
“I have,” she said, and laughed.
“All right, let’s hear it.”
“Standley gave me this money.”
“For what?”
“Do I have to draw you a diagram?”
“For fifty thousand bucks you do.”
“Standley is a gambler, big-time stuff. He always felt he might be wiped out or held up — or even rubbed out.”
“Go on.”
“He kept some money in the bank, but he wanted to have money where he could get at it at any hour of day or night — in cash.”
“And so?”
“So from time to time he’d give me thousand-dollar bills. He said they were mine. In that way if he went broke no one could claim this money was his, but I could stake him — if I wanted to.”
“Phooey,” I said, “they’d simply claim the money was his and that—”
“No, Donald, whenever he’d give me these bills he’d take my manicure scissors and cut off just the very smallest piece on the corner... and finally I got fifty of these bills... and then he ran out on me... and I suppose this latest paramour of his is holding the stake.”
“But he gave you title to the money, so the—”
Heavy knuckles sounded on the door.
“Better see who that is,” I said.
She made a gesture of annoyance. “It’s some tradesman or somebody who wants to see my friend. Just a minute.”
She jumped to her feet, switched her skirt into place, walked over to the door with her characteristic long-legged grace, opened it and was pushed back almost off her feet as Frank Sellers shoved his way into the room and slammed the door behind him.
“Hello, Pint Size,” Sellers said to me.
“Well, I like this!” Hazel Downer said angrily. “You have your nerve barging in like this. You—”
Sellers said, “Now then, let’s cut out the monkey business, you two.”
“I don’t care to have you talk to me that way,” Hazel Downer said. “You—”
I interrupted. “Look, Hazel, do you know a good lawyer?”
“Why, yes,” she said.
“Telephone him and tell him to come over here fast,” I said.
Sellers said, “That isn’t going to do either one of you any good. I warned you about this, Donald. I’m going to bust you wide open — and I’m not going to administer an anesthetic while I perform the operation either.”
“Get that lawyer on the phone,” I said to Hazel Downer, “and start working fast.”
Sellers sat down in a chair, crossed his legs, pulled a cigar out of his pocket, bit off the end and spit it into an ash tray. He scraped a match into flame.
Hazel moved toward the telephone. Sellers made a grab at her, circled her with his arm.
“She’s calling a lawyer,” I said. “A citizen has that right. Try stopping her and see what it gets you.”
“Take your hand off my body,” Hazel said.
Sellers hesitated, then took his arm away. “All right, go ahead and call your lawyer. Then I’m going to show you both something.”
Sellers lit his cigar. Hazel made a low-voiced phone call and hung up. Sellers took the cigar out of his mouth, looked Hazel Downer over as she returned to the davenport.
“Well, Bright Eyes,” he said, “you really got yourself in a mess now.”
“Do you have a charge against me?” she asked.
“So far,” Sellers said, “receiving stolen property and criminal conspiracy. I think we can go a step farther and convict you of being an accessory after the fact, attempted extortion, and perhaps a few other things.”