Pug said, “By God, he is a detective.”
“Do I get what I want about Corla Burke?”
“We haven’t anything, Honest Injun,” the girl said. “You don’t know anything about her?”
“No, honest — except what I read in the newspapers.”
“You read what the newspapers had to say?”
“Yes.”
“Las Vegas newspapers?”
She glanced at Pug, then let her eyes slide away from his.
Pug said to me, “Forget it. You ain’t goin’ to cross-examine her.”
“I can ask her questions, can’t I?”
“No.”
I said, “I don’t think there was anything published in the Las Vegas newspapers. The Los Angeles papers didn’t give it a big play. The man she was to marry wasn’t prominent enough to make it a subject of general interest. It was just another disappearance.”
“Well, she says she doesn’t know anything about it.”
“Except what she read in the papers,” I pointed out. Pug’s scowl creased his forehead. “Listen, guy, you’ve gone far enough, see?”
I said, “I don’t see.”
“Well, maybe something will happen to improve your eyesight.”
I said, “It costs money to get me working.”
“What’s that got to do with it?”
“It means that the people who have hired my agency to find Corla Burke are willing to spend money.”
“Okay, let ’em spend it.”
“And,” I said, “if a Los Angeles grand jury got the idea there was something back of that disappearance, it would call witnesses.”
“That’s fine. Let ’em go ahead.”
“The witness who testified before the grand jury would be testifying under oath. Any lies they told would be perjury, and you know what that means. Now, I’m here as a friend. You can tell me whatever it is you know, and I’ll try to find Corla Burke. I could leave you out of it — if I got results. If you appear before the Los Angeles grand jury, the situation might be different.”
“Forget it. I don’t want to appear before no grand jury.”
I lit a cigarette.
Helen Framley said, “Well, I’ll tell you. I—”
“Skip it,” Pug said.
“Shut up, Pug. I know what I’m doing. Let me tell it.”
“You’re talking too much.”
“No, I’m not. I’m not talking enough. Now, listen, Mr. Lam, I’m just like any other woman. I’m curious. Well, after this Mr. Dearbor — this engineer started asking me questions, I made up my mind I’d find out what he was talking about, so I wrote to a friend in Los Angeles to get clippings from the newspapers.”
“Now,” I said, “we’re doing a lot better. How about the clippings?”
“They were mailed to me.”
“What did you learn?”
“Nothing you don’t know. Just the stuff that was in the newspapers.”
“I haven’t seen the papers,” I said. “I was only employed on the case a short time ago. You got those clippings with you?”
“They’re in the bureau drawer.”
“How about letting me see them?”
“Lay off,” Pug said.
“Oh, forget it, Pug. There’s no reason why he shouldn’t see the newspaper clippings.”
She jumped to her feet, eluded Pug’s reaching hand with a swiftly graceful motion, vanished into the bedroom, returned after a moment with some newspaper clippings. I glanced through them. They had been cut from a newspaper and fastened together with a paper clip. The line along the edge of the paper was in irregular waves as though the cutting had been done very hastily.
“Could I take these for a few hours?” I asked. “I’d bring them back in the morning.”
“No,” Pug said.
I handed them back to her.
“I don’t see why not, Pug,” she said.
“Listen, babe, we ain’t going to help the law in this thing. If that girl took a powder, she had her own reason for doing it. Let’s mind our own business and keep our own noses clean.”
Pug turned to me. “I don’t exactly get you,” he said.
“What about me?”
“That slot machine. There was something funny about it. You don’t work that racket?”
I shook my head.
“Not even as a side line?”
I said, “Listen, when it comes to slot machines, I’m a babe in the woods. There’s one in the Golden Motto — the restaurant where I eat in Los Angeles. It isn’t supposed to be there, but it’s in one of the private dining-rooms, and the regular customers know about it. Bertha Cool goes crazy at the way I throw money away on that machine. Every time I go in, I look through my pockets for nickels. Ordinarily, I only play fifteen or twenty cents. I don’t think I’ve ever won anything out of the machine except a couple of small pay-offs.”
He said, “Serves you right. Machines that are in restaurants that way are after a quick take. They don’t go for steady customers. They put rollers on the sprockets so winning two cherries and a bell is darn near as hard as winning the jackpot or the gold medal award.”
I said, “Other people seem to win on it two or three times a week. The woman who runs the place will tell me about some of the salesmen who are pretty lucky on it.”
“They’re supposed to win?”
“They’ve won the jackpot three or four times.”
“You never saw ’em do it?”
“No. That’s what the woman who runs the restaurant says. She tells me about ’em every so often.”
He gave a contemptuous snort and said, “That’s kindergarten stuff. She’s probably telling the salesmen about how there’s a private detective who keeps the machine milked dry by playing twenty-five cents to half a dollar and always coming out a heavy winner.”
Helen Framley said to me, “You certainly have nerve.”
“Why?”
“Standing up to Pug the way you do. Most people are afraid of him. I guess that gets your goat, doesn’t it, Pug?”
“What?”
“To have this man so independent?”
“Aw, nuts.”
“I didn’t mean anything, Pug.”
“Well, see that you don’t.”
She turned slate-gray eyes on me again. “You must get around a lot. You know, get to know different types.”
“Not much.”
“What are you going to do with Corla when you find her?”
“Talk with her.”
“Then are you going to tell the man who was going to marry her?”
I grinned and said, “I’ll tell my boss. She’ll tell our client. Our client will use the information any way he damn pleases. I don’t care what he does with it. He pays Bertha Cool, and Bertha Cool pays me money. That’s all there is to it.”
Pug said, “It’s like I tell you, babe. Everybody in this world is on the make. You’ve got to take it where you can find it.”
She grinned across at me. “Pug thinks I’m developing a conscience.”
“On the slot-machine racket?”
“Uh huh.”
Pug said, “Forget it, babe.”
She said, “The machines are all dishonest. They’re stealing from the customer. Why shouldn’t we lift some from the machine?”
“It ain’t stealing,” Pug said. “It’s just taking back some of the public’s investment — and we’re the public, ain’t we? As far as the slot machine is concerned, we are. They use mechanical devices to keep the machines from paying off, and we use mechanical devices to make ’em pay off. It’s fifty-fifty.”
I said, “I think this man, Kleinsmidt, is going to be laying for you. He—”
“Oh, sure,” Pug said. “We’ve got to blow. They always told me never to try working Nevada with all the protection they’ve got here, but I had to have a crack at it. California’s different. Take Calermo Hot Springs for instance. You can always get a good play there. That’s the worst of it. Good play means competition. I remember one time we tried to work a resort right after another gang had pulled out. The owners had been checking up on the machines, and when they found how small the take was, they had some private detectives come down to see what was happening, and who was doing it.”