Bertha Cool had just finished pouring her third brandy at the end of an hour, when the telephone rang.
She looked at her wrist watch and said, “That’s prompt action. One of the operatives reporting on Harbet.”
She picked up the receiver and said, in that crisp, official voice of hers, “Yes, this is Bertha Cool talking. Go ahead.”
I couldn’t hear what was coming over the wire, but I could see the expression on Bertha Cool’s face. I saw the lips tighten, the eyelids lower. She said, “I don’t do any driving myself. That can be verified.”
There was another long period of silence while Bertha Cool sat listening at the telephone. Light scintillated from the diamonds on the hand that held the receiver. She avoided looking at me. After a while she said, “Now listen, I’ll have to check up on my records to find which operative was driving the car at the time you mention and where the car was in operation. Personally, I think there’s some mistake but... No, I’m not going to the office now. I’m in bed. It wouldn’t do me any good if I went there. I couldn’t find the records. My secretary has charge of those... No, I’m not going to have her disturbed at this hour, and that’s final. It isn’t that important. Nine times out of ten, witnesses who take licence numbers are mistaken... Yes, by ten o’clock in the morning... All right, nine-thirty then. That’s absolutely the earliest... I have several operatives. I have two or three out on a case now... No, I can’t tell you their names or the nature of the case. That’s confidential. I’ll look up my car records in the morning and advise you. I won’t do anything until then.”
She hung up the telephone. Her eyes swung around to rivet on me. They seemed as glittering as her diamonds. “Donald, they’re turning on the heat.”
“What?” I asked.
“Santa Carlotta has telephoned the police here asking for co-operation. They’ve found a witness to a hit-and-run case. The witness has given the licence number of the automobile. It’s the agency car. They looked it up on the registrations.”
I said, “I didn’t think he’d go that far.”
She said, “You’re in a spot, lover. They’ll railroad you sure as hell. Bertha will stick by you and give you what assistance she can, but the case will be tried in Santa Carlotta. It’s a felony. They’ll pack the jury.”
“When,” I asked, “did it happen?”
“Day before yesterday.”
“The agency car was stored in a garage,” I said. I have a signed receipt for the storage.
“The police came. They looked it up. The garage attendant says you came and took the car out after it had been in less than twelve hours, that you were gone with it for about two hours, and then brought it back, that you seemed excited. He doesn’t know you by name, but he’s given a description.”
I said, “The damn crook threatened to do that, but I didn’t think he would.”
“Well,” she said, “he has. He—”
The telephone rang again. Bertha Cool hesitated, then said, “What the hell, lover? I’ve got to answer it.”
She picked up the receiver, and said, “Hello,” cautiously. This time she didn’t give her name.
Her attitude relaxed somewhat as she listened. She picked up a pencil and made notes on a pad of paper. Then she said, “just a minute. Hold the line,” and cupped her hand over the mouthpiece:
She said, “Harbet left headquarters. The operative tailed him to an apartment hotel on Normandie. The name of the apartment hotel is the Key West. Harbet went in. It’s a swanky place with a night clerk on duty who announces callers. Harbet gave the name of Frank Barr. He told the clerk to ring apartment forty-three A. Forty-three A is occupied by an Amelia Lintig who registered as from Oakview, California. What do we do next?”
I said, “Keep him on the line. Let me think. It’s either a preliminary conference or else it’s an official visit. They’re getting ready to turn on the heat all along the line. Election is day after tomorrow. Tell your operative to stay on the job until we get there.”
Bertha Cool said, into the receiver, “Stay on the job until we get there... just a moment.”
She looked up at me and said, “Suppose Harbet comes out before we get there?”
“Let him go,” I said.
Bertha Cool said into the receiver, “Let him go,” and hung up.
I picked up my hat. Bertha Cool struggled into her coat, put on a hat, and then looked at the two glasses of cognac on the table. She picked up one of the glasses, and motioned me towards another.
I said, “It’s a crime to drink that stuff fast.”
Bertha said, “Well, it would be a greater crime to let it go to waste.”
We exchanged glances over the glasses, and drank the smooth, clear, amber liquid.
On the way down, in the elevator, Bertha Cool said, “Every step we take gets us in that much deeper, Donald. We’ve got our necks stuck out pretty damn far.”
“It’s too late now to pull them back in,” I said.
She said, “You’re a brainy little squirt, all right, but the trouble with you is you don’t know when to stop.”
I didn’t argue it. We got a taxi and drove over to where the agency car was parked. We went out to the Normandie address in the agency car. Bertha spotted the operative. He said, “The man I was tailing went out. I followed your instructions and let him go.”
I said, “All right. Stay on the job. If a woman about fifty-five with grey hair, black eyes, and weighing about a hundred and sixty pounds comes out, tail her. Station your partner in the alley. If he sees any woman who answers that description, leave the house, have him tail her.”
“Check,” he said.
His partner said, “I haven’t a car.”
“Take the agency car,” I said. “Park where you can watch the alley. She may come out that way.”
I said to Bertha, “Come on. We’ll go in and phone for a taxicab.”
Bertha looked at me for a moment, then heaved her bulk out of the agency car. I took her arm, and we walked across the street towards the apartment house.
I said, “You go in alone. Turn your grande dame manner on the clerk. Find out when the telephone operators come on duty at the switchboard, and get their names and addresses.”
“He’ll get suspicious,” she said.
“Not if you play it right. You’re trying to check up on your nephew. He has a crush on a girl who works on the switchboard at the Key West Apartments. You want to check up on her. If she’s a good egg, you’ll give him your blessing and not change your will. If she’s a fortune-hunter, you’ll get rough. Flash your diamonds in the clerk’s eyes. Be sure you get all the girls’ home addresses.”
“What’s the idea?” she asked.
I said, “It’s something I have to think over.”
Bertha Cool’s big diaphragm rippled as she heaved a sigh which seemed to come from her boot tops. “God, Donald,” she said, “before you started working for me, I used to get a decent night’s sleep once in a while. Now I couldn’t sleep even if I had the bed and the chance.”
I said, “Your only chance of getting out of this mess is to do what I tell you.”
“That’s what’s got me into it so far.”
I said, “Suit yourself,” and turned my back.
She stood there on the sidewalk, her eyes sparkling with anger. Then she turned without a word and sailed majestically into the lobby of the apartment house. I casually walked past the door and looked in after she’d been gone a minute or two. She was standing at the counter, her hands playing with a fountain pen, her diamonds sending out splashes of light. Bertha had an air of haughty condescension which seemed to be getting across. I hoped she’d remember not to pull any profanity.
After a while, a taxi drove up. Bertha stayed on inside, talking with the clerk. The cab driver went in. A few minutes later, Bertha Cool came out through the glass-panelled door to the sidewalk, walking in that smooth-flowing manner which was so characteristic of her.
The cab driver on one side and I on the other helped her get in the cab.
“Where to, ma’am?” the driver asked.
“Straight down the street,” I said. “Drive slow.”
I got in the cab. The driver pulled down the flag and started.
“Get them?” I asked.
“Yes, it’s easy.”
“Tell me about the day operator.”
“Her name’s Frieda Tarbing. She lives at 119 Cromwell Drive. She comes to work at seven o’clock in the morning and stays on until three in the afternoon. She’s a good scout with sex appeal. The afternoon operator’s a pill but highly efficient. Frieda Tarbing isn’t quite as skilful, but she’s easy on the eyes. The clerk is quite sure that she’s the one who is in love with my nephew, says the afternoon operator isn’t in love with anyone.”
“That,” I said, “makes it easier.”
I slid back the window in the partition and said to the cab driver, “119 Cromwell Drive.”
Bertha Cool settled back against the cushions and said, “I hope to God you know what you’re doing, lover.”
I said, “That makes two of us.”
She half turned her head, swung her eyes all the way around to look at me under half-closed lids. “You get me in any more jams, lover, and I’ll wring your damn neck.”
I didn’t say anything.
The cab made time through the deserted streets. The place we wanted was an apartment house with an individual bell signal on the front panel. I found the Tarbing name and held my finger against the button.
While I was ringing the bell, I said to Bertha Cool, “It’s up to you to get us in. Tell her you have to see her, that there’s money in it for her. She won’t let a man in at this hour of—” A speaking-tube next to Bertha’s ear shrilled into a whistle, and then a voice, which didn’t sound too annoyed, said, “What do you want?”
Bertha Cool said, “This is Mrs. Cool. I have to see you about a business matter — a chance for you to pick up some money. It’ll only take just a minute. I can run up and explain the situation to you and be out, all inside of five minutes.”
“What sort of a business proposition?”
“I can’t explain it to you here. It’s very personal, but there’s a chance for you to pick up a nice little piece of change.”
The voice through the speaking-tube said, “All right, I’ll bite. Come on up.”
The electric door-catch release buzzed into action. I pushed open the door, and held it for Bertha Cool.
Coming in from the fresh air of the night, the apartment-house corridor was thick with smell. We found an elevator, rattled up to the fourth floor, and walked back to Frieda Tarbing’s apartment. There was light showing over the transom, but the door was closed and locked.
Bertha Cool tapped on the panels.
“Who is it?” a voice asked.
“Mrs. Cool.”
The voice on the other side of the door said, “I’ll have a look at you first.”
The bolt turned, a chain rattled, and the door swing back about three inches, leaving a crack just big enough for a pair of dark, sparkling eyes to take in Bertha Cool’s big frame. Bertha moved her hand so the diamond glittered, and Frieda Tarbing rattled the chain loose, and said, “Come on in — good heavens, I didn’t know there was a man with you! Why didn’t you say so?”
Bertha Cool sailed on into the room and said, “Oh, that’s just Donald. Don’t mind him.”
Frieda Tarbing went back to the bed, kicked off her slippers, pulled the covers up, and said, “Find a couple of chairs that haven’t clothes on them. Perhaps you’d better close the windows.”
Her hair was too dark to be brown. It wasn’t exactly black. Her eyes were alert, curious, and bubbling with life. She’d wakened from a sound sleep looking as fresh as though she’d just come back from a morning walk. It was a face that could get by anywhere. She said, “All right. What is it?”
I said, “My aunt has just rented an apartment at the Key West Apartments.”
“What’s your aunt’s name?”
“Mrs. Amelia Lintig.”
“Where do I come in?”
I said, “My aunt is a widow. She has a lot of money and very little sense. A man who intends to grab off all her cash is making a play for her. I want to put a stop to it.”
The eyes looked me over without any particular enthusiasm. She said, “I see. You’re a relative. You hope that some day auntie will kick off and leave you the dough. In the meantime, she wants to play around and use it up. You don’t like that. Is that right?”
“That,” I said, “is not right. I don’t ever want a dime of her money. I just want her to be sure what she’s getting into. If she wants to marry this fellow on her own, that’s all right by me. But apparently he’s blackmailing her. He has something on her. I don’t know what it is. Probably it’s something serious. I think he’s convinced her that she could be called as a witness against him or he could be called as a witness against her on some kind of a criminal action, but I wouldn’t be knowing about it.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Listen in on her telephone tomorrow morning.”
“Nothing doing.”
I said, “You listen in on the switchboard when she talks with this chap. If they’re billing and cooing, that’s quite all right by me. I step out of the picture. But if he’s holding something over her head or talking about a crime, I want to know about it. There’s one hundred bucks in it for you.”
“That,” she admitted, “is different. How do I know there’s a hundred bucks in it for me?”
“Because,” I said, “you get the hundred bucks right now. It’s easier for us to take a chance on you than for you to take a chance on us.”
She said, “It would cost me my job if anyone knew about it.”
“No one,” I said, “will ever know about it.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Just notify me when she calls this man. If it’s a mushy conversation, I step out of the picture. If it’s blackmail, I want to put the cards on the table with her and say, `Look here, Aunt Amelia, you give me the lowdown on this before you do anything rash. ’”
Frieda Tarbing laughed, extended her hand, and said, “Gimme.”
I said to Bertha Cool, “Give her a hundred.”
Bertha, looking as though she had a mouthful of vinegar, opened her handbag, counted out a hundred dollars, and handed the bills over to Frieda Tarbing.
“When you see me,” I said, “don’t let on that you know me.”
She said, “Say, listen, if you think I’m that dumb, maybe I’d better coach you a bit. This is absolutely between us. I need the hundred bucks, but I need my job, too. Don’t make any dumb plays. The day clerk has been making passes at me, didn’t get to first base, and is just looking for a chance to trip me up on something.”
I said, “It’ll be okay. I’m going in to see Aunt Amelia early in the morning. When I go out, I’ll slip you a note with a number on it. When you get the dope, call me at that number. If the conversation sounds like a mushy, romantic one, you simply say, ‘You’ve lost that bet.’ If it sounds as though there s a crime mixed up in it, say, ‘You’ve won your bet.’ ”
“Okay,” she said. “Open that window as you go out, and switch out the light. I’m going to get another forty winks before the alarm goes off. Bye-bye.”
She rolled up the bills, shoved them in the pillow-case, and straightened out on the bed.
I opened the window, then the door. Bertha Cool switched off the lights. We went out into the corridor, and Bertha Cool said, “Think of having a disposition like that at this hour in the morning. Donald, if you want to take the advice of one who has seen something of the world, go marry that girl before someone else beats you to it.”
I said, “I’ve heard of goofier ideas, at that.”
“What do we do now?” Bertha asked.
I said, “We go back to the taxi. I go out to the Key West Apartments and keep the operatives on the job to make certain nothing slips. You go back to your apartment and grab a little sleep. I don’t dare to show up around the office because they’ll nab me on that hit-and-run charge. You stay away from that office appointment with the cops. Show up at the Key West about nine or nine-thirty, and we’ll go in and have a talk with Aunt Amelia.”
“What are we going to talk about?” Bertha asked.
I said, “I think I know the words, but I don’t know the music — yet. I’ll have to think it over. Keeping a watch on that apartment house will give me a chance to think.”
We climbed in the taxi, and I told the driver to take me to the Key West, and then take Bertha to her apartment.
As we were rolling along, Bertha said, “Do you think she’s going to skip out tonight, Donald?”
“No. Not one chance in a hundred, but we can’t afford to gamble on one chance in a thousand.”
Bertha Cool said, “Are you telling me,” and settled back against the seat cushions.
The cab driver deposited me at the Key West Apartments. I said good-bye to Bertha Cool and walked over to sit with the operative who was watching the front of the apartment house.
He was a man about fifty-five with twinkling blue eyes, a face like a cherub, and a detailed knowledge of underworld graft and corruption that made the ordinary racket sound like a Sunday school picnic. He’d worked with the government for fifteen years, and I listened to him talk until daylight showed in the east. The palm trees in front of the Key West Apartments began to take colour, and a mocking-bird started pouring its song into the dawn.
I’d heard all I wanted of prostitutes, dope fiends, pimps, and gamblers. I said, “If your insides are as cold as mine, you’ll want some hot coffee.”
I could almost see him start to drool at the mention of the coffee.
I said, “You’ll find an all-night restaurant down the street three blocks, to the left two blocks. It’s a little joint, but you can get good coffee there. I’ll sit here and watch. Don’t be in a hurry. This is a slack time. If she’d been skipping, she’d have made a break earlier.”
“That’s damn white of you,” he said.
“Don’t mention it.”
He climbed out of the car and stamped his feet to get circulation in them. I settled back on the cushions and quit thinking about the case, about murders, criminals, politics, frame-ups. I watched the east get brassy, saw the sun come up and send its first rays, turning the white stucco of the apartment house into a golden glow.
After a while the mocking-birds quit singing. I saw people beginning to move around in the apartment house, windows being closed, curtains being pulled.
The operative came back and said, “After I got there, I figured I might as well have breakfast, so you wouldn’t have to relieve me. I hope I wasn’t too long. It took a hell of a while to get what I wanted.”
I said, “It’s okay. Get in, sit down, and keep quiet for half an hour. I’ve got some thinking to do.”
We sat side by side in the car while the morning began to hum with activity.
Shortly after seven o’clock I walked around to the alley and relieved the other operative while he got breakfast. When he came back, J took time out to walk down to a service station, go in the wash room, and freshen up a bit. I walked around to the restaurant and had some ham, eggs, and coffee. Then I went back to the Key West and waited for Bertha.