“No, thanks, I’m going to try and get some rest for the balance of the day. I’ve been putting in enough of my Sunday on work.”
“Yes, it would seem so,” Elgin said. He was reading the account of the love-tryst, suicide-pact in the newspaper.
“What is it, Bob?” the blonde asked with languid disinterest.
“Just the same old murder-suicide business in a motor court.”
“My God,” she drawled, “why do the men have to kill ’em?”
“Because they love ’em,” Elgin said.
Her comment consisted of one word.
I said, “Well, I’ll be going.”
“Nice to have seen you,” the blonde said. “Come to the club sometime, Mr. Lam. I’d like to have you see my dance.”
“Thanks, I will.”
Bob Elgin walked to the door with me. I shook hands. The blonde’s impudently appraising eyes met mine over Elgin’s shoulder.
I took the lift down and went over to the clerk’s desk. “Do you,” I asked, “have any vacancies coming up?”
His smile was a weary attempt at being pleasant. “Not a thing,” he said.
I took out my note-case and picked out some notes. I started counting them casually. “Not a thing?” I asked.
He eyed the money avariciously. “Not a thing. Gosh, I’m sorry!”
I fingered through the money and said, “If I could get an advance tip on some apartment that was going to be vacated I…”
“Just a minute,” he said.
He moved over to the switchboard.
I saw that the call was coming from Bob Elgin’s apartment.
“Just a moment,” he said. “What was that number again? — All right, I have it — Waverley 9-8765.”
He made a note of the number, then dialled, after a moment said, “Here’s your party,” made the connection on the telephone and came back to the desk. “I’d like to be of help,” he said. “I might have a tip on something later on.”
“Later on isn’t going to help,” I said. “I’m in a jam.”
His mouth fairly watered as he saw the outside note. “I — gosh, I don’t know of a thing. I might get in touch with some of my friends and…”
I said, “I have another lead — in fact, I think I can get a place in another apartment house, but it isn’t as desirable as this. This is a nice place.”
“We try to keep it so.”
I sat around and chatted with him until Elgin’s call was completed. There weren’t any more calls, so I went out.
Ten
It was after nine o’clock when I located the girl who had the photographic concession at the Cabanita. Her name was Bessie and she lived in a trailer. She worked several of the night spots, going from one to the other in the trailer, which also served as a dark-room. Just now it was at the Red Rooster, a country road-house joint about three miles from the Cabanita. It was out away from things and rumour had it the place capitalized on its isolation to put over things that wouldn’t get by elsewhere.
I went in and looked the place over. It was easy to spot the girl with the camera. She was all teeth and legs, curves and affability.
It was Sunday evening, and since the place was way out in the outlying factory district it was pretty well deserted, but the photograph girl got four orders. After she’d shot the pictures and started out, she picked up a raincoat from the girl at the hat-check concession, threw the coat over her shoulders and then dashed for the trailer.
I fell into step beside her. “Want to sell some pictures?” I asked.
She looked at me out of the sides of her eyes. “Nudes?”
“Customers.”
“Sure.”
I said, “Last week you had a little trouble with a couple over at the Cabanita. They objected to having their pictures taken. Remember it?”
“Who are you?” she asked.
“My name is Cash,” I told her. “My parents christened me E. Pluribus Unum, but folks got to calling me Cash for short. My nickname is Long Green.”
She looked at me and smiled, and said, “There was a little trouble over one of the pictures I took. I’m busy now. When can I see you?”
“Right now.”
She said, “I have to get this stuff in the trailer and start getting it developed.”
“I’m an expert photographer.”
“I know,” she told me, “guys get lots of lines. They like to go in the dark-room with me. In the dark they have a tendency to…”
“I won’t,” I said.
“Oh well, come on,” she told me. “We have to take a chance sometimes.”
She unlocked the door of the trailer. I followed her inside. She closed the door, locked it and pressed a button. Almost immediately the trailer began to move.
She said, “My partner drives without jerks so I can get these pictures finished before we get to the next place. It’s a job. I have to rush them through.”
She set an electric timer with a luminous dial, turned out all of the lights and for a while we were standing there in absolute darkness, save for a very faint illumination given by a red bulb at the far end of the trailer.
After a moment my eyes accustomed themselves to the dim red light and I could see her moving around, her hands quick blurs of efficient motion.
I said, “You must have quite a job keeping all the stuff straight.”
“It’s not bad,” she said. “I put these things in a developing frame and as soon as the electric timer indicates…”
The electric timer contributed its share by ringing a bell at that moment.
She lifted the container out of one tank, put it into another, said, “We have two minutes now. Then I put them in a chemical bath which gets rid of the hypo and then we wash them in alcohol, dry them, and while I’m in the next place my partner, who’s driving the car, will make the prints. There’s a number on each of the films.”
“Tell me about what happened last Saturday.”
She said, “Every once in a while we run into something like that. I don’t know why. Usually I never take a picture until I’ve verified it, but this time it looked so much on the up-and-up that I fell for it.”
“What happened?”
She said, “This couple were sitting there, eating. Very quiet, very subdued. Just like people who have been married to each other for a long while. Ordinarily I don’t waste time with them. It’s the gay blades and the visiting firemen who want to have a picture of the cutie with them to show the boys back home that give me my business. Sometimes a family party.”
“Go on,” I said.
She kept her eye on the electric clock with the luminous hands.
“Someone asked me if I’d take a picture of the people at that table. I thought this person had been sitting at the table. I guess I was a little careless. I explained to her that we require a minimum of four prints at a dollar apiece and she said that was all right. She said the parties were having an anniversary dinner and she’d like to get some pictures to present to them later on. She said she’d take care of all the charges.”
“So what happened?”
“I went over to the table, smiled, and waited until they looked up. Then I snapped the picture. The man wanted to know what that was for and I told him it was to be a present for him; that it wasn’t to cost him anything. The girl got excited and then he got mad about it and said he hadn’t ordered any picture taken. I told him I knew, that it was a friend of his who was trying to arrange a surprise, and then one thing led to another and he wanted the manager.”
“Who’s the manager?”
“Bob Elgin. He’s the master of ceremonies, and he runs the place. He came over and we had a little pow-wow. I told them that it was all a mistake, and that I’d give him the negative and he could destroy it.”
“Did you?”