His eyes gleamed sharply through the gold-rimmed glasses.
“Ah!” He chuckled thinly. “I see your point. You think it may be possible to make some kind of deal with the thief, or thieves, as the case may be?”
“It’s up to you,” I shrugged. “Are you prepared to cut a loss?”
“Let us put this on a factual, businesslike basis, Mr. Boyd.” He rubbed his hands together briskly. “If you fail, you already have a thousand dollars and your return fare to New York—correct?”
“Sure,” I nodded agreement.
“If you recover the tiara, I am prepared to pay you another five thousand, with no questions asked,” he continued. “If you think it possible to make a deal with the thief under those terms—and still have something left for your own efforts—the decision is yours entirely, Mr. Boyd.”
I looked at him hard for a moment. He wasn’t about to give an inch. “Like Bargain Day at Macy’s, huh?” I muttered sourly. “Thanks a whole heap.”
“I see no reason for you to complain. You can handle this any way you please. Nobody’s forcing you into anything.”
“Yeah—just like nobody holding one hundred thousand bucks worth of rocks is going to hand it over for peanuts, and you know it.” I sighed. “Well, I guess I might as well start with the plastics people.”
“Tamara has a list of names and addresses,” he said. “You can get them on your way out.”
“The redhead?” I felt slighdy shaken. “Did she come to you straight from Van Wotzis and Whoever in Amsterdam, too?”
“She came to us straight from Santo Bahia High, about nine or ten years ago, Mr. Boyd.” A naughty gleam flashed from the gold-rimmed glasses for a brief instant. “But she does have a Russian mother, I understand, who married an American truck driver. Tamara O’Keefe—a living example of American compromise, wouldn’t you say?”
“That’s her whole trouble,” I said darkly. “She doesn’t have one ounce of compromise in her whole delightful body!”
So a couple of minutes later I was outside Elmo’s office, back with the redhead who had ice shifting through her veins, instead of red blood pulsating in eager response to the Boyd profile.
“There’s the list,” she said in a businesslike voice, and handed me a neady typewritten sheet. “Is there anything else you require, Mr. Boyd?—other than the services of an analyst, of course?”
“I’d like your confidential opinion on the whole problem and the people involved in it,” I said casually. “This will naturally take a great deal of time, and is also urgent, Miss O’Keefe. Why don’t we have dinner and discuss it?”
“Why don’t you get lost, Mr. Boyd, and start looking for that tiara?” she asked sweetly.
Once again she’d left me with the nasty alternative of dreaming up some brilliant repartee to top her crack, or else just getting lost. I folded the typewritten list of names carefully, then slid it into my wallet—and reluctantly got lost.
Before I’d gone calling on Elmo Jewelers to say hello to my new client, I’d checked into the hotel that held sad memories of my previous visit. A whole night of frustration with a gorgeous blonde waiting in my room, ready and eager to be transported into the rapture and delights of the intimate world of Danny Boyd—who just kept right on waiting, because I never did make it back to the hotel that night. My fervent hope now was that the pattern wouldn’t repeat itself; if it did, I’d probably walk straight off the hotel roof—or toss myself out a first floor window, anyway.
After checking into the hotel I’d gotten myself a U-drive convertible which stood waiting at the curb outside the jewelers, all bright and gleaming like real devil-may-care. I drove it down to police headquarters and its bright gleaming look vanished along with mine, once we parked right outside.
I asked the desk sergeant for Lieutenant Schell and my feeling of nervous depression strengthened with every step that took me closer to his office. The walls, I noted, were still the same attractive color of old dried blood; Schell was still the same tall, tough character with close-cropped gray hair and hooded dark eyes that didn’t like anything much, least of all Danny Boyd.
“Well, well,” he said, without making any move to lift his frame out of the chair. “If it isn’t Bug-Eyed Boyd, the moron from Manhattan, come to share another cute caper with us West Coast innocents!”
“You’ve been practicing that greeting for days,” I said accusingly, as I eased gently into the converted packing crate which passed for a visitor’s chair.
I lit a cigarette and we wasted maybe ten seconds just glaring at each other. “Okay,” I said finally, “so what’s the gag? What kind of Machiavellian plot is hatching in that evil mind of yours?”
“Are you talking about something?” he asked crisply. “Or maybe just stringing words together to hear how they sound?”
“Mr. Elmo hires me to get back his stolen tiara,” I said, my voice loaded with outright suspicion. “I ask how come he looks in New York for a private eye, and how come he picks on me? Because, he says happily, I come highly recommended by Lieutenant Schell.”
A nasty grin split the Lieutenant’s face, like someone had taken a delicate swing with a straight razor. “I’ll be frank with you, Boyd,” he said, his voice almost amiable. “We aren’t making much progress with the case at all, and naturally Mr. Elmo wants his tiara back. I figured the best thing he could do would be hire himself a smart
private detective—a guy who can work in areas that are barred to the police officer. What he needed, I told him, was a boy with no scruples, morals, or finer feelings. A guy with only one motivation in his whole life—money— and a guy who would do about anything to get it. In short, he needed Danny Boyd!”
“You don’t need to crawl to me with all those heady compliments, Lieutenant,” I growled at him. “A schemer like you needs to have a better reason for voluntarily dragging me back into your life.”
Schell shrugged his broad shoulders easily. “Anybody would think you didn’t trust me or something, Boyd?” “I’d trust you the way I’d trust an ex-wife looking for back alimony with a knife in her hand,” I said truthfully. “There has to be a mickey wrapped up in this someplace.”
“You don’t trust me?” He shook his head sorrowfully. “I’m hurt, Boyd, real hurt.”
“Okay,” I said. “So it’s all sweetness and light. Just how far have you gotten with the case?”
“Not very far at all,” he said ruefully. “Somebody made the switch in Elmo’s office, that’s for sure. The two armed guards are clean—supplied by an agency who only rostered them for the job that same morning—so neither of them had prior knowledge that they would get the Elmo job. It could just as easily have been any of the six guys employed by the agency.”
I pulled the list of names Tamara O’Keefe had given me out of my wallet and studied it. “So that leaves the three contestants, Machin, the publicity manager—and the president of the plastics corporation, a Mr. Rutter and his wife?”
“Right.” Schell nodded. “You can take your pick— we’ve tried and haven’t gotten anyplace.”
“No clues at all?—no suspicion even?”
“Nothing,” he said comfortably. “Maybe you’ll do better. I hope you will, Boyd.”
“Thanks,” I said doubtfully. “All I can do right now is follow your trail around and go see each one of them, I guess.”
“Why don’t you do that?” He smiled encouragingly.
“Take my advice and start with the contestants first. Try Louise Lamont for a start—she’s your kind of girl, Boyd!” “What does that mean?”
“Sexy, flamboyant—and as tough as nails!”
“I just might do that,” I said. “You have any other pearls of wisdom before I depart, Lieutenant?”