“I get you. What’s your trouble?”
Belder became uneasy once more. “Mrs. Cool, I’m in the very devil of a predicament. I don’t know what to do, where to turn. Every move I make seems blocked. I’ve racked my brain over—”
“Don’t get steamed up about it,” Bertha said reassuringly. “Lots of people who come in here are like that. Go ahead, open up. Get it off your chest.”
“Mrs. Cool, do you ever do any collection work?”
“What sort of collections?”
“Bad bills — judgments — things like that?”
“No”
“May I ask why?”
“There’s no money in it.”
Belder shifted his position in the chair once more. “Suppose I were to show you where there was a judgment of more than twenty thousand dollars to be collected, guaranteed that you’d be paid for the time you put in, and on top of that gave you a bonus if you did a satisfactory job.”
Bertha’s eyes showed interest. “Who’s the twenty-thousand dollar judgment against?” she asked.
Belder said, “Let’s express it this way. A. has a judgment against B. B. is judgment-proof, then C gets—”
Bertha held up her hand. “Stop right there. I’m not interested in this A.B.C. stuff. I have too damn many alphabetical headaches right now — what with O.P.A. and O.W.I. and W.L.B. and all the rest of that stuff. If you have something you want to say, say it.”
Belder said, “It is very difficult to put into words, Mrs. Cool.”
“Then you aren’t much of a salesman.”
He laughed nervously. “I want you to collect a judgment for twenty thousand dollars. You won’t be able to collect all of the judgment. You’ll compromise on a percentage basis and—”
“Who’s the judgment against?” Bertha interrupted.
“Me.”
“Do you mean you want to employ me to collect a judgment from you?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t get you.”
“I’m judgment-proof.”
Bertha said, with exasperation in her voice, “So that makes it very simple. You want me to collect a judgment from you because you’re judgment-proof... Oh, yes, just an ordinary, routine matter.”
Belder’s smile was apologetic. “You see, Mrs. Cool, a few years ago when there was lots of merchandise to be had and not a very brisk market, there was an excellent opportunity for salesmen who were up on their toes to clean up.”
“Did you clean up?” Bertha asked curiously.
“I made a small fortune.”
“Where is it now?”
“In my wife’s name.”
Bertha raised and lowered her lids rapidly, a sure sign of interest. Her eyes, hard and intent, held Belder as a moth is held on a collector’s pin. “I think,” she said with quiet emphasis, “that I’m beginning to see. Now suppose you tell me the whole business. Begin with the things you’d decided not to tell me. We’ll save time that way.”
Belder said, “I had a partner. A man by the name of Nunnely — George K. Nunnely. We didn’t get along very well. I thought Nunnely was taking advantage of me. I still feel that he was, and always will. He was running the inside part of the business. I was on the outside. Unfortunately, I couldn’t prove anything, but I decided to get even with him in my own way. Nunnely was smart. He hired lawyers and went to court. He could prove his case against me. I couldn’t prove mine against him. He got a judgment for twenty thousand dollars.
“By that time the tide had turned and was running the other way. Salesmanship was a drug on the market. I wasn’t making a thin dime. I couldn’t have done very much no matter how hard I tried, so not having any current income, I — well, Mrs. Cool, I turned everything over to my wife; put everything in her name.”
“Did Nunnely try to set the transfer aside?”
“Naturally. He claimed it was a transfer with intent to defraud creditors.”
“When did you make it, after he got the judgment?”
“Oh, no. I was too smart for that. I don’t think I’d better say very much about that angle, Mrs. Cool, because, of course, if Nunnely could establish even now that the real intent of the transfer was to defraud creditors — well, let’s just let it go as it is, Mrs. Cool. My wife has the property.”
“And in court proceedings she had to swear it was her sole and separate property?”
“Yes.”
“A gift from you?”
“Yes.”
“What did you swear?”
“The same thing.”
“What did the judge do?”
“Ruled that because I was engaged in a highly venturesome business, with periods when money came in quickly, followed by long periods when there was no income, that I not only had a right, but that it was my duty, to provide for my family, and that the intent with which I had made this particular transfer was to safeguard my wife from want.”
Belder grinned. “It was a nice decision.”
Bertha didn’t grin. “How much?” she asked.
“Twenty thousand dollars plus interest and—”
“Not the judgment, the property.”
“You mean that I turned over to my wife?”
“Yes.”
“It was a — a considerable amount.”
“I can find out by consulting the court records.”
“Over sixty thousand dollars.”
“You getting along all right with her?”
Bertha Cool’s question evidently probed the end of a raw nerve. Belder jack-knifed himself into a new position. “That’s one of the things that’s bothering me.”
“What’s the matter?”
“Oh, nothing — too much mother-in-law, I guess.”
“Where does her mother live?”
“San Francisco.”
“What’s her name?”
“Mrs. Theresa Goldring.”
“Any other children?”
“A daughter, Carlotta — rather a spoiled brat. She lives here in Los Angeles. She’s worked as a secretary, but she doesn’t hold jobs long. She’s been staying with us for the past few weeks.”
“Your wife’s sister, or half-sister?”
“As a matter of fact, Mrs. Cool, she isn’t related to my wife at all.”
Bertha waited for him to explain that statement.
“She was adopted when she was a child. She never knew she was adopted until just recently — within the last few months.”
“Older than your wife, or younger?”
“Quite a bit younger.”
“All right, she knows she’s adopted, so what?”
“She’s trying to find out who her real mother and father are.”
“Find out from whom?”
“From Mrs. Goldring and from my wife.”
“They know?”
“I guess so — yes.”
“And won’t tell her?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“They it would — well, they think it’s best to have things the way they are.”
“How old is Carlotta?”
“Twenty-three.”
“Your wife?”
“Thirty. But what I wanted to talk to you about, Mrs. Cool, was that judgment. All of this other stuff just” — Belder laughed apologetically — “well, it just crept in, Mrs. Cool — crept in casually.”
“The hell it did,” Bertha said. “I brought it in.”
“Well, yes, I guess you did.”
“And you want to settle Nunnely’s judgment”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I want to get it off my mind.”
“So you can get the money back out of your wife’s control?”
“I–I’m not certain of that— Well there’s my mother in-law to consider.”
“What’s she got to do with it?”
“A lot.”
“You mean your wife won’t give it back?”
Belder squirmed around uneasily. “Mrs. Cool, you do have the most disconcerting habit of boring right in. I hadn’t intended to tell you all this.”