Sellers finished the rest of his drink, put down the empty glass and said, “Come on, Lam.”
“Stick around and talk to me,” Carlton said. “I’m lonesome. Don’t leave.”
I saw instant suspicion flare in Sellers’s eyes.
I shook my head and said, “Not that way, Carlton. This guy’s trying to find out who hired me. If you act as though you want to talk in private, he’ll have you nominated in the first ballot.”
“Who hired you to do what?” Carlton asked.
“That’s what Sellers wants to know.”
Carlton stepped back and squinted his eyes as though trying hard to get me in focus. “Say,” he said, “maybe I want to talk with you, after all.”
I went over to the door, opened it, stepped out in the hall.
“All right, then,” Carlton called after us angrily, “go to hell if you want to, and see who cares.”
Sellers came barging out into the hall and pulled the door shut behind him.
I said, “You keep leading with your chin, Frank. Why don’t you stay home and read the funnies? This is a hell of a way to spend Sunday.”
“Ain’t it,” Sellers said grimly. “And I haven’t finished spending it yet, either. There’s one more thing I want to investigate.”
“What’s that?”
“You’ll find out.”
We went down in the lift. Sellers called the plain-clothes man in the lobby over to him and said, “I guess that’s all. He’s burnt up and we may as well let him go. He isn’t doing us any good the way he is.”
The plain-clothes man nodded. “Quitting when?” he asked.
“Now,” Sellers said. “Turn in your report. This is quitting time.”
The plain-clothes man grinned, and said. “That’s a break. I’m on my way. I had a date to take the wife and kid to the beach, and I’ve been in the dog house ever since I phoned her you’d staked me out up here.”
“Okay, get out of the dog house,” Sellers told him, and took me out to the police car.
This time we went to a parking lot.
Sellers said to the man who ran the place, “Dover Fulton keep a space by the month, huh?”
“That’s right.”
“His car in here last night?”
“It was yesterday afternoon. Say, that’s too bad about him. I had no idea he was in that deep.”
Sellers paid no attention. “What about the car? Who got it, Fulton?”
The man shook his head.
“Come over here and take a look at the guy with me,” Sellers said. “Get out, Lam.”
I got out.
“Ever see this guy before?”
The man who ran the parking station shook his head.
“What about Fulton’s car? Did you give him a check for it?”
“Not the regular tenants. We know them. They have stalls that are assigned to them by number and can come and go whenever they want to. They usually keep the cars locked. I don’t know whether Fulton kept his locked yesterday or not. It was the jane who got it.”
“The jane?” Sellers asked, surprised.
“That’s right. The one who was found in the cabin with him, I guess.”
“What did she look like?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t see her too well — just a trim little package came bustling on in here as though she knew right where she was going, and evidently had the keys to the car. I watched her get in. The way she acted, fumbling around at the door for a minute, I felt certain she had the keys.”
“Why didn’t you say something to her?”
The attendant grinned, and shook his head. “Not with the regular clients. Not with a guy like Dover Fulton you wouldn’t. If he sent some babe down after the car, you’d not go over and ask any questions, not if she had the car keys.”
“How did you know she wasn’t making off with the car?”
“They don’t do that. Not in this locality. But I know it was okay. She had one of Dover Fulton’s cards with an ‘OK’ scrawled on it.”
“How do you know?”
“She gave it to me when she went out. I wouldn’t have stopped her, but she waved the card at me.”
“Let’s take a look.”
The attendant said, “I don’t know where I put it. I knew it was all right. Wait a minute, I think I stuck it in the bottom of the cash register. I remember now, I did.”
He went over and opened the cash register, pulled up the weight which held the notes in place in the cash drawer and took out one of Dover Fulton’s cards. On the back of it was simply written the initials “OK.”
Sellers looked at him pityingly. “This Fulton’s handwriting?”
“I presume so. It’s his card.”
“A business card. He passes ’em out by the dozen.”
The man grinned. “You should have seen this doll.”
“Redhead?”
“I don’t rightly know the colour of her hair. She may even have had a hat on. It was her eyes that I noticed — great big dark-brown eyes, about the colour of ripe dates. I guess I was thinking of dates and thinking how lucky Fulton was. Lucky! That shows all I know about it. The poor sap was up to his necktie, and sinking deeper.”
“Say, wait a minute,” Sellers said. “I don’t think that’s the girl that was in the place with him. Would you know her picture if...?”
“Probably not her picture. But I’d sure know her.”
“And this chap wasn’t with her?” Sellers asked, jerking his head toward me.
The man shook his head.
“You watched the jane get in the car?”
“I’ll say I did — and believe me, there was something to watch.”
“You’re a lecherous old goat,” Sellers said.
“I guess I am, for a fact,” the attendant admitted sorrowfully.
“Why don’t you grow up?”
“Hell, that’s the trouble, I have grown up. The missus is like an old shoe. I wouldn’t trade her for anything. She’s got a form like a sack of potatoes, but she cook’s like nobody’s business. She grabs the pay-check as soon as I get it and she bawls hell out of me every so often. But — hang it, I don’t know, Sergeant, a man needs a little inspiration once in a while. Just watching a cute little trick like that, as supple as the greased cable out of a speedometer — damn me, it wasn’t so long ago that the wife was quite a dancer. We used to go out and hoof it…”
“Not very long ago,” Sellers said impatiently. “Thirty-five years is all.”
The attendant furrowed his forehead. “It ain’t as bad as that — twenty-two — twenty-three — about twenty-four years, and…”
“Okay,” Sellers said, “save it. Get back in the car, Lam.”
Sellers was thinking all the way back to the office. He let me out in front of the office building and said. “This is where I came in. Go on and resume the even tempo of your life, and remember I’m keeping an eye on you. If you try to pull a fast one on this, I’ll break you so fast it’ll make your head swim. I don’t care what Bertha says, I’ll bust you.”
I yawned, and said, “I hear that stuff so much it sounds like a radio commercial. Why don’t you get someone to put it to music so you could be like the smart boys on the radio and have a singing commercial. It wouldn’t tire the audience.”
Sellers glared at me, slammed the door of the police car and went away from there fast.
Eight
I rang the bell at Bertha’s apartment.
Bertha’s shrill whistle came screaming down the speaking-tube. “What is it now?”
“This is Donald.”
Bertha grunted under her breath and pushed the buzzer which unlatched the front door.
I climbed the flight of stairs and turned to the left, tapped on the panels of the door, and Bertha yelled, “Come in, it’s unlocked.”
I opened the door and went in.
Bertha was sprawled out in typical Sunday splendour, wearing loose-fitting pyjamas, a robe, her hair pulled straight back and stringing down behind her ears. The big easy chair in the middle of the floor was the centre of a litter of Sunday papers. On a coffee table by the side of the chair was an electric percolator. Near-by was a cup, saucer, milk and sugar; a big cigarette-tray was all but overflowing with the ends of cigarettes and matches.