Bertha Cool called, “Who is it?” in response to my knock.
“Donald.”
“Come in, lover. The door’s unlocked.”
I opened the door. Bertha Cool was standing in front of the full-length mirror, looking back over her left shoulder at her reflection.
“What’s the idea?” I asked.
She lashed out at me irritably, “I’m just looking at myself. Can’t a woman look at the way her skirt hangs without you thinking there’s something unusual about it?”
I walked over to a chair and sat down. Bertha Cool continued to study her reflection from various angles. “How old do you think I am?” she asked abruptly.
“I don’t know.”
“Well, make a guess.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Good heavens, you’ve formed some opinion. A person always get an idea of how old anyone is. How old did you think I was when you first saw me? No, not then. How old do you think I look now?”
I said, “I don’t have any idea how old you are. I don’t even know how old you look. I came to tell you I was quitting.”
She jerked her head around. Her hard, glittering eyes stabbed into mine. “Quitting!”
“That’s what I said.”
“But you can’t quit.”
“Why not?”
“Why — why, you’re working on a case. You’re — why, what would I do without you?”
“You’d get along. You said just the other day that before you knew me, you were able to run a legitimate agency. That since you’d employed me, you were always in hot water.”
“Why do you want to quit?” she asked, coming over to sit down where she could look at me.
“I’m going away.”
“Going away?”
“Yes.”
“Where? Why?”
“I don’t know where. I’m in love.”
“Well, why quit your job just because you’re in love?”
“Because I think it would be better.”
Bertha Cool said sarcastically, “You know, people have been in love and still managed to keep their jobs. Lots of them get married and still manage to work. Don’t ask me how they do it, because I don’t know, but it has been done; and if you’re resourceful, you should be able to figure out some way. They tell me lots of men want to support their wives, and in order to do it, they have to work. Some men even put off marrying until they can get jobs. It seems a shame, but that’s what actually happens. They claim there are statistics to prove it.”
“I know,” I said. “I’m quitting.”
“And how are you going to support this little wren, or has she a fortune of her own?”
“We’ll get along.”
“Donald Lam, you listen to me. You can’t pull out and leave me in the lurch this way, and what’s more, you aren’t in love. You’ve just fallen for some little trollop who’s given you the come-hither eye. My God, if you knew as much about women as I do, you’d never even think of marrying one. Don’t ever kid yourself. They want security, and they don’t want to be old maids. They’re hunters, Donald, ruthless, skillful, unprincipled, who talk mealymouthed and make sheep’s eyes at you, but all the time in the backs of their heads they’re thinking, ‘Well; this man isn’t exactly what I want, but he’ll do in a pinch, and he’s so soft-hearted and polite that if I just string him along, I can lead him into a proposal of marriage without his ever knowing he’s had a ring stuck through his nose. He’s too much of a gentleman to turn me down.’ They—”
“This woman isn’t like that.”
“Oh, no! No, of course not. She’s different.”
“She is.”
“Well, why won’t she let you keep your job then?”
“Because she doesn’t like police. She doesn’t like detectives. She wouldn’t really fall for me if I kept on being a private detective.”
“What’s wrong with being a private detective?”
“Some people are just prejudiced, that’s 41. This girl has been on the other side for too long.”
“Who is she?”
“You wouldn’t know her.”
“Who is she?”
“She’s a nice kid, but she never did have the breaks. She—”
“Who is she?”
“She’s the girl who had the apartment where Harry Beegan’s body was found.”
Bertha Cool took a deep breath, folded her hands on her lap, looked at me steadily, then slowly exhaled and shook her head. “You’ve got me stopped,” she said. “I don’t know what to do with you.”
“Just get someone else to take my place.”
“Donald, are you serious?”
“Of course.”
“You realize what you’re saying?”
“Naturally.”
“You mean that you’re going to give up your job simply to make a play for a little tart who plugs slot machines for a living, and who was living with a broken-down prize fighter?”
“We’ll leave her out of it.”
“Don’t ever kid yourself, all she’s in love with is your pay check. You quit your job, and she’ll give you the air.”
“Not that girl. You see, she knows who murdered Harry Beegan.”
Bertha Cool said, “Now, listen, lover, you know as well as I do that— She what!”
“Knows who murdered Harry Beegan.”
“How?”
“She was in partnership with Beegan. Naturally, he told her everything.”
“In partnership!” Bertha snorted.
“That’s right. They were partners. It was a business arrangement.”
“Oh, yes,” Bertha sneered. “A business arrangement. Of course, he lived in her apartment, but it was just a business arrangement. She’s a dear, sweet little girl, and she couldn’t think of marrying a private detective. Oh, dear, no. And because Beegan was her partner he told her everything. I presume that means he talked to her after he was dead.”
“Will you lay off of her?”
“I’m just trying to keep you from making a fool of yourself. Within six months, you’ll wonder how you could have been such a complete utter ass.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Well, I do. I know it. I’ll tell you something else. If that girl knows who murdered Harry Beegan, she’d better come through with the information. If you ask me, I think it’s a stall. I think she murdered him. She must have. He was found in her apartment.”
“Will you make out a check for what I have coming and quit talking?”
“I’ll be damned if I do, not until you come to your senses. I wouldn’t give you your money if you were drunk, and I’m not going to give it to you while you’re crazy. And what are we going to do about finding Corla Burke?”
“You can hire someone else to get on the job, someone who’s had more experience than I have and who will be crazy to get the position.”
Bertha Cool said, “I’m not so certain that Harry Beegan’s murder isn’t connected with Corla Burke’s disappearance.”
I said, “Helen Framley’s a nice girl. She wouldn’t know about that. All she knows about is Harry Beegan’s murder, and you know how girls like that are. They won’t rat. That’s another reason why I’m quitting my job. She’ll tell me all she knows. If I were working for you, I’d have to betray her confidence. I don’t want to be in that position.”
“Donald, you’re crazy!”
“No. I’m in love.”
“Well, being in love doesn’t need to paralyze your brain cells. You don’t have to—”
There was a gentle knock on her door. She called, “Come in, please.”
The door opened, and Arthur Whitewell stood in the doorway.
Bertha Cool said, “Why, hel-lo, Arthur. Come in.”
He said, “I thought you might want to take a little stroll around the city, and look in on some of the roulette games. After all, we can’t let business entirely monopolize our time. All work and no play, you know. Is that a new dress?”
“Yes. I had it sent up. And it fits.”
“I’ll say it fits! It’s wonderfully becoming.”
Bertha said, “I never thought I’d see the day when I ‘could wear ready-made clothes again.”
Whitewell said, “You have a knack of wearing clothes. Anything you put on would look well. You have a marvelous figure — just the right proportions.”
Bertha Cool said archly, “Flatterer!”
“No. I mean it. How about the stroll down the main stem, and risk a few dollars on the wheel of fortune?”
Bertha said, “Do you know what’s happened to me?”
“No.”
She said, “Donald wants to quit. Can you imagine that?”
“Quit what?”
“Quit working for me.”
Whitewell looked at me. His eyebrows leveled. “ When does he want to quit?”
“Now,” I said. “Immediately.”
“What’s the matter?” he asked, looking from Bertha to me.
“He’s in love,” Bertha explained. “She’s a dear, sweet, innocent little girl who—”
I got up and started for the door. “If you’re going to discuss my private affairs,” I said, “you’ll probably feel more free to do so if I’m not here. And if you’re going to talk about that girl, I don’t want to listen. She’s far too good for you to understand.”
I pulled the door shut behind me and started down the corridor. I’d gone half a dozen steps when I heard the door jerk open, then Bertha Cool’s voice saying, “Let him go, Arthur. It won’t do any good. Once he’s made up his mind, he—” The closing door cut off the rest of what she had to say.
I walked back to the Cactus Patch. Louie Hazen hadn’t got back. I went down to the telegraph office and said, “I’m Donald Lam, with the B. Cool Detective Agency. I’m expecting a telegram from Los Angeles sent to me at the Sal Sagev Hotel. It—”
“Just a minute,” the attendant said. “I’ll take a look.”
She came back in a few minutes. “It was just coming in over the wire when you came in.”
“All right, I’ll pick it up here and save you the trouble of taking it to the hotel.”
She looked at me for a moment, then asked, “Do you have one of your cards with you?”
I gave her one of the agency cards.
She looked at it, opened a drawer, dropped it in, handed me the telegram. It was from Elsie Brand and said:
Sidney Jannix material being sent air mail. Married Elva Picard December fourteenth nineteen thirty-three. No record of any divorce. Find someone else has been looking up record. Believed to be detective representing some agency and interested in Elva Picard. Dietary complex may be due biological urge. Don’t let her fall too hard she might not bounce.
I put the telegram in my pocket and walked over to the Cactus Patch to wait.
The floor man came up to me and tried to get me to take a stack of chips with the compliments of the house. He said Breckenridge would appreciate it a lot if I’d “make myself ‘right at home.’ ”
I told him I appreciated the offer, but I was waiting for Louie Hazen to come in, and that I’d prefer just to stick around and watch the people.
He tried to get me to accept a drink, and seemed disappointed that I wouldn’t let the house do something for me. Also, he couldn’t seem to understand my attitude. After a while, he went away.
I’d been there about fifteen minutes when Louie Hazen came in.
“Everything okay?” I asked.
“It depends upon what you mean, okay. The bulls are nuts. Know what they’re tryin’ to do? The first rattle out of the box, they want to pin it on me.”
“Pin what on you?”
“Killing Sid Jannix.”
“You’re crazy,” I said.
“No, they are.”
“How do they get that way?”
“Well, it’s Jannix all right, see? I identified him, and they wanted to know how I knew. Seemed to ‘think that just because I’d seen a man once in the ring I couldn’t identify him when I saw him on a slab. So I told ’em I couldn’t have picked him out if I’d just seen him stretched out stiff, but that I’d seen him and talked with him the night before, that I’d seen him in action. When you fight for a living, you learn how to look for little peculiarities in a man’s fighting style, and once you’ve seen ’em, you remember ’em as long as you live. Well then, the bulls wanted to know all about where I saw him in action, and as soon as I told ’em, they started jumpin’ on me, said that I had a grudge against him, that he’d been too good for me, and had got me in bad on my job, and that I’d sworn was goin’ to get even. They called up Breckenridge and asked him all about it, and asked him if I hadn’t said something about getting even.”
“What did Breckenridge say?”
“He told ’em I’d made some crack, but that they wasn’t to pay any attention to me because I was slap-happy. Can you feature that? Louie Hazen, slap-happy! That’s a joke!”
“Then what?”
“Well, they really went to town, gave me the works, yellin’ at me that I knew I’d killed him and all that sort of stuff. Well, after a while I guess I convinced them that I didn’t know anything about it, and they told me I could go. Gripes, I was working all the time the murder was being committed. I tell you they’re nuts.”
I said, “I’ve got a little dough saved up, Louie. Breckenridge says he’ll give you a thirty-day layoff. How about really putting me in condition?”
“You mean for a fighter?”
I nodded.
His eyes lit up. “That’s the talk! We could really do something with you. You’ve got what it takes. You willing to go in the ring?”
“No. I just wanted to learn something about fighting.”
“That’s swell — but—”
“I’ve got this dough saved up, Louie. I’ll pay you just what you’re getting here. You won’t be out anything, and your job will be here when you get back.”
He said, “I could take you on right here. We could fix up a place down in the basement, and I could give you a little instruction every day, and—”
“No. I’m run down. I want to get out where I can be completely away from everyone. We’ll go somewhere and put up a little training camp — some place up around Reno, perhaps. There’d be a girl with us.”
“A girl!”
“Uh huh.”
He blinked at me for a minute, then grinned in snaggle-toothed appreciation. “When do we start?”
“Right away,” I said. “I’m going to pick up a secondhand car that will hold the outfit. We’ll camp along the road, and take it easy. It won’t cost us much.”
“Say,” he said, “I’m a swell camper. That’s one of the things I’m good at, camp cooking.”
I said, “Get your things together. We’ve got to get started in a hurry. I have an idea the cops may try to stop us if we don’t get the jump on them.”
For a moment, there was a flicker of fear in his eyes, then he said, “You can’t get started too quick to suit me, buddy. I got some gloves, but they’re pretty light. We’ll want to get a heavier set for training. And we’re goin’ to need a punchin’-bag. I sold mine when I left Los Angeles, but we can get a good one for—”
“We’ll pick it up in Reno,” I told him.