Silence at the other end of the line.
“Maurine put the finger on you.”
“You talk a lot,” Gabby said.
“You wanted facts. There they are.”
“You got proof — about Maurine?”
“Of course.”
“Well,” Gabby rasped, “spill it.”
I said, “The man who killed both Bishop and Maurine was Hartley L. Channing. He wants to take over The Green Door. He knew that with Bishop out of the way and enough murder mixed up in the thing the police wouldn’t dare let you muscle in up here.”
“Where are you now?”
“Right now,” I said, “I’m being held prisoner by Channing. I think he intends to pour some nice wet concrete around me and clunk me in the deepest part of San Francisco Bay. I’d like like hell to have you do something about it before—”
“How did you get to the phone?”
I said, “I talked my guard into the idea that you were going to be the new boss.”
Once more there were four or five seconds of silence, then he said, “You’re a naïve son of a bitch.”
“I’m talking, ain’t I?”
“Sure, you’re talking,” he said, “and your guard was Bill. Right?”
I hesitated a moment, and in that moment realized why it had been so easy to sell Bill on letting me talk to Gabby.
“Right,” I said.
“All right,” he said, “let me talk to Bill.”
I left the receiver dangling and tiptoed back to the room.
“Your boss wants you on the line,” I told Bill.
Without a word he got up and walked out, leaving me sitting there on the bed.
I wanted to give it an artistic touch. I went over and picked up Bill’s magazine. When he came back I was deeply engrossed in reading one of the so-called true detective cases.
“Come on,” he said, “you’re going out.”
I slowly got up from the bed.
He looked at me curiously.
“How the hell did you know I was one of Gabby’s men?” he asked.
I didn’t answer that question. I’d made the only play I had to make and the fact that Lady Luck had dumped the jackpot into my lap was just her way of squaring up for the bum break she’d given me when Frank Danby spilled his guts to Hartley Channing and sold me down the river.
I tried to look modest.
“You might be a smart bastard,” Bill said. “Come on, let’s go.”
Chapter Eighteen
From my cheap hotel I called police headquarters and got Lieutenant Sheldon on the line.
“Donald Lam speaking,” I said.
“Son of a gun,” Sheldon said. “Where are you, Donald?”
I gave him the address of the hotel.
“What are you doing there?”
“I’ve been hiding out.”
“What from?”
“Oh, I didn’t want to break in on your time. I knew you were a busy man and I thought some of your boys were trying to take me up to see you.”
“You shouldn’t have been so considerate, Donald. I want to see you. I want to see you pretty damn bad. In fact, I’ve had the word out to pick you up wherever you happen to be, either here or when you showed up in your office at Los Angeles.”
“I’ll be glad to see you, Lieutenant.”
“Would you now?”
“I have the information you wanted,” I told him.
“What information?” he asked, suspiciously.
“About the hit-and-run driver.”
“Oh-oh,” he said.
“Moreover,” I told him, “I can tell you all about the Bishop murder and you can solve both cases. When you come up to see me you’d better have your new uniform on and you’d better come alone.”
“How come?”
“The newspapermen will want to take pictures.”
“You know, Lam,” he said, “there’s a lot about you I like, but you have one bad point.”
“What’s that?”
“You don’t know geography. You think this is Los Angeles.”
“No, I know where this is.”
“You think the kind of stuff that sells real estate in Los Angeles will get you by with the San Francisco police department.”
“What do you think sells the real estate in Los Angeles?” I asked.
“Meadow mayonnaise,” he said.
“You’re wrong,” I told him. “It’s the climate,” and hung up.
I didn’t have to wait much over ten minutes. He hadn’t put on a new uniform but he’d taken a chance that there might be some favorable publicity and had come alone.
I said, “On that hit-and-run business—”
“Oh, yes.”
“I have to protect the source of my information.”
“I don’t like that, Donald.”
“But,” I said, “if you get a confession, you don’t give a damn who gave me the information.”
“Not if I get a confession.”
I said, “Let’s go and get one and then I’ll tell you about the Bishop murder case.”
“Where are we going?”
I gave him the name and address of Harvey B. Ludlow.
“You know, if this is a bum steer, Donald,” he said, “you could be awfully slap-happy when you came into court on a blackmail charge.”
I said, “I called you, didn’t I?”
“Yes.”
“I told you where to come, didn’t I?”
“Yes.”
“Do I look that dumb?”
“No, you don’t look that dumb, but I get fooled every once in a while on you Los Angeles creeps.”
I didn’t say anything. It was better not to.
We made time in the lieutenant’s car.
“How about the Bishop murder?” he asked after a few minutes.
I said, “Let’s try the Ludlow business first. If that’s pay dirt then you’ll be more ready to listen, and if it isn’t pay dirt you wouldn’t have confidence in anything I said.”
“Donald,” he said, “if that isn’t pay dirt you aren’t even going to feel like talking.”
We went to the Ludlow residence. Ludlow was in bed.
It was pay dirt.
Harvey B. Ludlow, a fleshy, heavy-set, retired broker, started to shake like cold consommé on a plate when he saw the lieutenant’s badge. Before Sheldon had asked half a dozen questions Ludlow was blabbing it all out.
It didn’t even need the marks on Ludlow’s car by way of confirmation to clinch the case. Ludlow was just aching for an opportunity to spill everything he knew and get it off his chest.
He’d had four or five drinks and had been at a business conference. One of his associates had had his secretary at the conference taking notes, and Ludlow had said he’d take her home.
They stopped for a couple of cocktails, and Ludlow kept looking the secretary over with an appraising eye. She didn’t like her job, knew Ludlow had lots of dough, and looked right back at him.
Ludlow didn’t tell us that angle, but we could see the money angle was the only inducement from a girl’s viewpoint he could have had to offer.
By the time Ludlow started for home by way of the girl’s apartment, he was feeling the effects of the four or five cocktails, and a sudden surge of self-confidence which made him think he wasn’t such a bad-looking old coot after all. The girl was willing to listen to his quavering wolf howls.
That was the story.
Ludlow had wanted to protect his “good name.” He saw a chance to get away and he took that chance. He’d been terror-stricken ever since.
He was a prominent clubman and it was going to make enough of a scandal so Lieutenant Sheldon thought he’d better get his captain in on the deal. He got him up out of bed.
The newspaper photographers came out and took pictures of them inspecting Ludlow’s car with a microscope, took pictures of Ludlow’s wife with her arms around his neck, stating that she’d stand by him through thick and thin, that it had all been a lamentable misunderstanding.