“Where had you picked up the car?”
“We had stolen it in San Francisco.”
“Who was this partner you refer to?”
“A man named Barlowe Dalton.”
“And you say this was a getaway car.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Where was it when it was taken from you?”
“It was at the Montrose Country Club.”
“And why do you call it a getaway car?”
“Because my partner and I had intended to get in the women’s cloakroom, go through the cloaks there, get some fur coats, purses, anything of value we could find, and make a getaway.”
“And what happened?”
“A woman stole our car.”
“Can you explain that?”
“This woman was at the dance. She was intoxicated. She had a fight with her escort and walked out on him, jumped in our getaway car which was standing there with the motor running and drove away.”
“And what did you do after that?”
“Well, there was one thing we had to do. We had to find that car.”
“Why?”
“Because we had left something over ten thousand dollars in currency in the glove compartment.”
“And where did this currency come from?”
“We had held up the branch bank in Santa Maria and had taken about eighteen thousand bucks. Ten thousand was wrapped up and was in the glove compartment. The rest of the money we had divided and had on us, about three — four thousand dollars apiece.”
“This was stolen money?”
“That’s right.”
“And how about the money that was in the glove compartment? What were the denominations?”
“That was all in one-hundred-dollar bills. The other money we had was in smaller bills, twenties, tens, a few fifties; but there was ten thousand in hundred-dollar bills, and we thought that money might be hot.”
“What do you mean, hot?”
“That perhaps the bank had the serial numbers on it. We had decided to hold it for a while.”
“Go ahead.”
“Well, we had to find the car, so we made inquiries through some of our underworld connections and learned that the car had been involved in a hit and run accident. And then we had a tip that the car was stashed in the garage of Dorrie Ambler, so we found the car but the money was gone. So then we started shadowing Dorrie Ambler.”
“And did you shadow her?” Burger asked.
“Yes. We had some difficulty picking up her trail but we finally did so and shadowed her for several hours.”
“Where did she go and when?” Burger asked.
“Objected to as incompetent, irrelevant and immaterial,” Mason said.
“We’ll connect it up, Your Honor,” Burger said.
“Overruled.”
“She went to the office of Perry Mason,” the witness said.
“And then?” Burger asked, as the jurors leaned forward in tense interest.
“And from there to the airport where she waited until the defendant went into the women’s room. At that time she jumped up, approached the news stand, said, ‘This isn’t a stick-up,’ fired a gun three times and ran into the women’s room.”
“Then what happened?” Burger asked.
“Shortly after that the defendant emerged from the room and was arrested. At first she had us fooled, but there was a difference in voices. So after the police took the defendant away we waited, and sure enough Dorrie Ambler emerged from the rest room. At this time she was wearing a coat which covered her clothes, and dark glasses.”
“What did you do then?” Burger asked.
“Followed Dorrie Ambler back to her apartment. By that time we had learned the other woman, the one the police had arrested, was Minerva Minden, an heiress; so we decided we might be on the track of something big.”
“And what did you do then?”
“We waited until the defendant had been released on bail and then we contacted her.”
“By her, you mean the defendant?”
“Right.”
“Both you and Barlowe Dalton contacted her?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Where did you meet her?”
“At a cocktail lounge that she suggested.”
“And what happened there?”
“We had a conversation in which we tried to pin something on her — something that would give us an opening for a shakedown, but she was too smart for us.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“She suggested that we had better go to the police if we thought something was wrong.”
“And then what happened? Go right ahead.”
“Well, naturally we couldn’t afford to have the police nosing around, and what with one thing and another she found out we were a couple of pretty hot torpedoes. The next thing I knew she was propositioning us.”
“What do you mean by propositioning?”
“She suggested that she wanted to have Dorrie Ambler kidnapped. She offered to pay twenty-five thousand dollars if we’d do the job.”
“Did she say why?”
“Yes.”
“What did she say?”
“She said Dorrie Ambler had seen her pictures in the papers and had decided to cash in on the resemblance by claiming she was the daughter of her mother’s sister and that they had the same father, that Dorrie’s father was also her father.
“She said Dorrie was clever and that she was trying to bring about some situation where she would be mistaken for the defendant, that some man was backing Dorrie with a lot of money and was trying to make such a spectacular case of it that it would cost her a lot of money to buy Dorrie off.
“So then we told the defendant Dorrie had grabbed off ten grand that belonged to us and that we’d decided to get it back — that she couldn’t do that to us, and one thing led to another and finally the defendant asked us if we could get Dorrie... well, out of the picture.”
“And what did you and your partner say to that?” Burger asked.
“Well, we said we could if the price was right. Well, she offered us twenty grand and we laughed at her and then she finally came up to fifty grand with five grand additional to cover initial expenses and as a guarantee of good faith on her part.”
“Go on,” Hamilton Burger said to the witness. “What happened after that?”
“We started making plans.”
“Immediately?”
“Yes, sir, that’s right — at the time of that same conversation.”
“Now, when you say we started making plans, whom do you mean?”
“Well, there was the defendant, Minerva Minden, my partner, Barlowe Dalton, and me.”
“And what did you do?”
“Well, she gave us the five grand and told us we’d better get busy.”
“And what did you do?”
“We went to the Parkhurst Apartments; that is, I did, and cased the joint.”
“Now, what do you mean by casing the joint?”
“Well, we looked the place over and made plans for handling things.”
“And what did you decide on? What did you actually do?”
“The first thing we did was to get in touch with the manager to see if some apartment on the eighth or ninth floors was vacant. We wanted a close-in place for a base of operations.”
“What did you find?”
“I found an apartment on the eighth floor was vacant, 805; that was right close to the stairs and almost directly under Apartment 907 where this Dorrie Ambler had her residence.”
“You rented that apartment?”
“Yes, sir. I told the manager that I wanted an apartment, that I thought that 805 would be about right but that I wanted my wife to look at it, that my wife was coming down from San Francisco, that she’d been up with her father who’d been very sick, and she wouldn’t be in for a day or so. I suggested that I pay a hundred dollars for a three-day option on the place and that my wife would look at it and if she liked it, then I’d sign up a lease on it and pay the first and last months’ rent.”