I didn’t get to read it all. Lieutenant Sheldon started talking. “Fold it and put it in your pocket, Lam. You’ll have an opportunity to study it at your leisure. What do you know about the hit-and-run charge?”
“Nothing.”
“You have a client, perhaps, who has an automobile that’s been smashed up a little. You’re a shrewd operator. You want to know just what you’re getting into before you represent him, don’t you?”
“No.”
“You should.”
“I mean I don’t have a client who has a broken-up automobile.”
“Tut-tut,” Lieutenant Sheldon said. “Let’s not spar around with each other, Donald.”
“I’m not sparring.”
His eyes twinkled. “And don’t try to get hardboiled. It doesn’t buy you anything — up here.”
“I’m satisfied it wouldn’t.”
“That’s fine,” he said. “So now we understand each other perfectly.”
I nodded. “If I knew anything that would help on that hit-and-run charge I’d let you fellows know.”
“Of course you would,” Lieutenant Sheldon said. “I know you would. In the first place, we’d be very grateful for any co-operation, and in the second we’d be very, very much put out if we didn’t get the co-operation.”
I nodded.
“Now, the way I see it,” Sheldon went on, “is that you’re from Los Angeles. You have a detective agency down there and somebody came to you and said, ‘Look, Lam, I had a little trouble when I was up in San Francisco. I had a few drinks and I had this girl along with me and she was getting affectionate and demonstrative, and there was a crowded street corner and I heard somebody yell. I don’t think I hit anybody, but I’d just like to have you find out. And if I did hit anybody, you try to square it for me, will you?’ž”
I shook my head. “It isn’t like that at all.”
“I know,” Sheldon said. “I’m just telling you the way I thought it might be.”
I didn’t say anything.
“So you come up here and start looking around to try and find out about what happened. Now that’s all right as far as you’re concerned, but as far as the department is concerned we’d like to have the credit of cleaning up the case and solving it. You understand that, don’t you?”
I nodded.
Sheldon’s eyes got hard. “So,” he said, “if you know anything about it, you tell us and we’ll all co-operate and play palsy-walsy; but if you don’t co-operate, Donald, your man will be in one hell of a fix. There won’t be anything he can square. He’ll have the book thrown at him, and whenever you come to San Francisco you’ll wish you’d stayed home.” Again I nodded.
“So,” Sheldon went on, “now that we’ve become acquainted, what have you got to tell us?”
“Nothing, yet.”
“Now, we don’t like that, Donald, I don’t like the ‘yet’ and I don’t like the ‘nothing.’ž”
I didn’t say anything.
He said, “You’re going to want some co-operation at this end before you get done. Now’s the time to lay the foundation for it.”
I said, “You could be all cockeyed in your surmises.”
“Of course I could, of course I could, Donald! You don’t need to tell me that. Good heavens, some man could have walked into your office and said, ‘Look, Donald, my boy went up to San Francisco and when he came home I’m satisfied he’d been in trouble of some sort. Now, he’s a good boy but he does have a tendency to hoist a couple and then go out and get behind a steering wheel. Now, suppose you just slide up to San Francisco and see if there’s any hit-and-run charge up there that hasn’t been accounted for.’
“Or,” Lieutenant Sheldon went on, “some man might have come to you and said, ‘I saw a hit-and-run job up there in San Francisco. I was out with a woman who wasn’t my wife and I simply can’t afford to get mixed into it, but I’ll give you a little information about what I saw and perhaps you can use it to locate the driver of the car and he’ll take care of me in some way.’ It could be any one of a hundred and one things.”
I said, “I have a client. I haven’t the faintest idea whether he knows anything about hit-and-run or not, but I’m interested in finding out. When I go back to Los Angeles I’m going to see that client. I’m going to put it up to him. If he was mixed up in any hit-and-run he’s going to try and square it, and if he tries to square it he’s going to come to you first. Now, how’s that?”
Lieutenant Sheldon got up, came around the desk, grabbed my hand, and pumped it up and down. “Now, Donald,” he said, “you’re beginning to understand how we work in San Francisco; the way we try to co-operate with you fellows when you’re up here. You don’t try to do any squaring on the side. You pick up the telephone and you call for Lieutenant Sheldon, person to person. You get it?”
“I get it,” I said.
“You tell me what you have, and you tell me what you want to do. Then the police, acting on your tip, get busy and solve the case by clever detective work. After we’ve solved the case you start trying to work your fix and we’ll do everything we can up here. We’ll tell you all we know and show you the ropes. If you can square it more power to you.”
I nodded.
“But remember, Donald,” he said, wagging a forefinger at me as though he’d been a schoolteacher and I was a naughty pupil, “don’t try to slip anything over on us. If you know anything, you’d better tell us now. If you know something you aren’t telling and we find it out, it’s going to be too bad, just too bad.”
“I understand.”
“Not only for your client, but it’s going to be too bad for your agency. We co-operate with people who co-operate with us, and we don’t co-operate with people who don’t co-operate with us.”
“Suits me,” I told him.
“Here’s a list of the witnesses on that hit-and-run,” he said, handing me a typewritten list of names and addresses. “That’s all we have to work on at the moment. But I feel sure you’re going to help us get more, Donald. I feel certain of it. You’ll want it squared up, and you’re not dumb.
“Now if there’s anything you want while you’re up here, any information we can get for you, don’t hesitate for a minute. Just tell us what you want, Donald, and we’ll get it for you.” I thanked him and walked out.
I took a taxi to the Palace Hotel, paid off, ducked through to the side entrance, picked up another cab. A car was tailing me. I couldn’t shake it off without tipping off the cab driver and making the driver of the car behind know I had him spotted.
I told the cabbie to drive along Bush Street. When I saw a rather pretentious apartment up near the top of the hill, I told the driver to stop and wait for me. I ran up the stairs, walked in to the desk, and handed the man on duty my card.
“I’m up here working on a case,” I told him.
His eyes were exceedingly uncordial.
“Do you have a tenant,” I asked, “who drives a very dark blue Buick sedan?”
“I wouldn’t know. It’s quite possible we have several.”
I frowned and said, “This is the address I have and it should be here, a dark-blue sedan.”
“I’m sure I couldn’t tell you.”
“Could you find out for me?”
“I’m afraid not. We don’t spy on our tenants.”
“I don’t want you to spy on anyone. I just want a little information. I could get a list of tenants and look up the registrations.”
“Then why don’t you do that, Mr. Lam?”
“Because I can save time this way.”
“Time,” he said, “is money.”