“We boiled out of the car. Well, if he hadn’t seen us before, he sure as hell saw us then. He tore out of the booth, leaving the receiver dangling, and jumped into his car. Before he could get it started we had our guns on him and he didn’t dare to make a play for It, so he stuck his hands up in the air.
“We frisked him and found a gun, and we also found keys to his apartment, his address and all of that stuff, and by the time we worked him over he admitted he was a two-time loser.
“My partner drove the squad car behind us. I got in his car, put the cuffs on him and drove. We didn’t want to take a chance on leaving anything unsearched, so before we booked him we stopped by his apartment. We found a locked suitcase. I picked the lock and there were fifty G’s inside, a cool fifty thousand bucks, exactly one half of the loot. I took the damned apartment to pieces and I couldn’t find any more.
“So we took this guy and the fifty G’s down to Headquarters and what do you think the sonofabitch said after we got there?”
“That you’d gone south with fifty G’s,” I said.
Sellers chewed on the cigar, then took it out of his mouth as though he didn’t like the taste of it and nodded moodily. “That’s exactly what he said. What’s more, the Colter-Craig Casualty Company, that handles the insurance on everything shipped in the armored truck of the Specie and Securities Transfer Company, sort of halfway believe the sonofabitch. It was a damn good thing for him he waited to say it until he got to Headquarters or he wouldn’t be as smart-looking as he is now.
“All right, you know what that means and I know what it means. It means that he had a partner who was in on the thing with him and he split the swag two ways. Then he blew the whistle on us when we only found half of it.
“Okay, we had an answer of our own for that. We went out and started looking for the partner. Naturally the first clue we had was this telephone number, Columbine 6-9403.
“That’s a private phone. It’s in Apartment Seven A at the Laramie Apartments. It’s a high-class dump. The owner of Apartment Seven A is a cute trick named Hazel Downer. Hazel Downer has lots of this and that and these and those. By the time we got there she was packing up, getting ready to take a run-out powder. We nailed her before she could get anywhere. She claims that Herbert Baxley had been making passes at her but that she wouldn’t have any and that from time to time he’d called her; that he’d found out her telephone number somehow but that she’d never given it to him.
“Now then, we finally got a warrant and frisked her place, and I mean we really frisked it. All we found was this thing in her purse, that slip of paper with the name ‘Cool and Lam’ written on it.
“Now, the way I put two and two together, Hazel Downer was in on this thing with Herbert Baxley. She had managed to get hold of the keys to the armored car, had duplicates made and Baxley pulled the job.”
“She worked at the Full Dinner Pail?” I asked.
“No, she didn’t,” Sergeant Sellers said. “If she had, she’d have been in the can right now. But she’d been a car hop once, she’d been a secretary for a while, and then she had suddenly become fairly affluent. For the last few months she’s been living in this swank apartment and she hasn’t been working. We can’t find out where the man is that’s paying the bills. All we know is his name, Standley Downer. She’s posing as his wife. My best guess is she’s just a pickup. Somehow she managed to get word to this Downer guy, or someone tipped him off and he’s crawled into a hole and pulled the hole in after him.
“We can’t get a single damn thing on this Hazel Downer except that Baxley was calling her up from a phone booth. Well, we can’t hold her on that and if she got really nasty about it she could probably raise hell over the search-warrant business. I signed that affidavit myself. I was so damn certain we’d find the other half of the loot cached in her apartment that I stuck my neck way, way out. Either she or Standley Downer is Baxley’s partner but we’re going to have a hell of a time proving it — now.
“Now then, Pint Size, I’m just going to tell you that this girl is hotter than a stove lid. If you so much as give her the time of day we’ll have your license and—”
Bertha Cool’s telephone jangled.
Bertha ignored it for a couple of rings but the bell had thrown Sellers off his stride and he looked up, waiting for Bertha to answer it.
Bertha picked up the telephone, said, “Hello,” then frowned and said, “He’s busy now, Elsie. It can wait, can’t it?”
Bertha listened for a moment, hesitated, then said, “Well, all right, I’ll put him on.”
Bertha turned to me. “Elsie says it’s something important.”
I picked up the telephone and Elsie Brand, talking in a very low voice so that what she said couldn’t be picked up by anyone else in the room, said, “There’s a Mrs. Hazel Downer here to see you, Donald. She looks like a million dollars and she says It s Important and highly confidential.”
I said, “He’ll have to wait until I—”
“It’s a her,” Elsie interrupted.
“I said he’ll just have to wait. I’m in an important conference in Bertha’s office.” I hung up the phone.
Bertha’s greedy little eyes snapped. “If he’s a good client, don’t take any chance on losing him, Donald,” she said. “Sergeant Sellers only wanted to find out whether this Hazel Downer had been in touch with us. He’s said everything he wanted to say.”
Sergeant Sellers took the cigar out of his mouth, looked around and said, “Why the hell don’t you keep spittoons in this joint, Bertha?”
He deposited the remains of the soggy, chewed-up cigar in Bertha’s ash tray.
“We don’t keep spittoons,” Bertha said. “This is a high-class place. Take that goddam thing out of here. It stinks up the office. I don t like it... All right, Donald, Sergeant Sellers has told you what he wanted to say. Go ahead and do whatever it is this man wants done.”
I said to Sellers, “He ordered two sandwiches, one with onions, one without?”
“That’s right.”
“And then ate them both?”
“That’s what I said.”
“Then he must have become suspicious after he’d ordered the sandwiches and before they were delivered to him.”
“He wasn’t suspicious,” Sellers exploded. “It was the jane who was to join him. She stood him up. That’s why he ate both sandwiches.”
I said, “Then why not phone her from the drive-in? Why would he leave the place and then stop to telephone?”
Sellers said, “He wanted to find out why she hadn’t joined him. He didn’t know he was being tailed.”
“But he did see the binoculars?” I asked.
“I thought he did.”
“And went into a panic?”
“I ranked it,” Sellers admitted. “I sprung the trap too soon. He may not have seen the binoculars, but he seemed to be looking right into my eyes.”
I said, “Perhaps you missed something, Sergeant. I don t think he’d have let you watch him telephone if—”
Sergeant Sellers interrupted me. “Now look,” he warned, “you’re one damn smart customer. I’m not underestimating you one bit. My neck’s stuck out on this thing but I don’t need your help, and I don’t want your hindrance. Just lay off — understand?”
Bertha said, “You don’t need to talk to Donald like that, Frank.”
“The hell I don’t,” Sellers said. “This guy is too damned clever to suit me. He’s smart. He’s too damned smart. He thinks he’s even smarter.”