Fast Buck (2 page)

Rico gulped, and his smile slipped. He thought with horror of the bracelet in the safe.

‘Murdered her?’ he croaked. ‘How do you know Baird did it? What proof have you got?’

‘He’s a killer,’ Olin said quietly. ‘I’ve rubbed around with crooks long enough to know who wil kill and who won’t. Ever since Baird blew into town I’ve been watching him. I knew sooner or later he’d break loose and kill someone. He’s dangerous, Rico. Up to now you’ve played around with the little punks, but Baird isn’t a lit le punk. He’s a kil er. Take my tip and keep clear of him. The guy who tries to pass that bracelet is booking himself a one-way ride to the gas-box.’

Rico felt a cold chill run up his spine. He hurriedly gulped down the rest of the whisky.

‘I’ve never been in trouble,’ he said, his face twitching. ‘You’ve nothing on me. You never have, and you never will have.’

Olin made a weary gesture.

‘Don’t be a sucker, Rico. You haven’t a bad lit le club here. You’re making nice money. Keep clear of guys like Baird. If you know anything about the bracelet, now the time to spill it. Why do you think I came here? Ask yourself why I didn’t send a couple of my boys to pul you in and push you around just for the hell of it. I’l tell you why. I’m ready to do a deal with you, Rico. There’s going to be a hel of a stink when the press hears this Bruce woman’s been knocked off. I want it cleaned up quick. If you know anything about it, spill it, and I’l keep you out of it. That’s a promise. I don’t want you: I want Baird!’

Rico felt a sweat trickle down the back of his neck. He knew he could trust Olin, but if he fingered Baird, and Baird heard about it before Olin could reach him, Rico’s life wouldn’t be worth a damn.

Olin, who had been watching him closely, guessed what was going on in his mind.

‘We’l pick him up in a few days. In the meantime, if you’d feel happier, I could tuck you away in a nice safe cell. Come on, Rico, get smart. It was Baird, wasn’t it?’

Rico made up his mind. For the past year now he had dealt with petty crooks, making a nice side-line in stolen property. Baird was his first big client. He had made a lot of money out of his transactions with Baird during the past months. Besides, if he fingered Baird the rest of them would drop him like a hot brick. He wasn’t going to be stampeded just when he was moving into big money.

‘If I knew, Lieutenant, I’d tell you,’ he said with an ingratiating smile. ‘But I don’t know. I don’t know nothing about Miss Bruce or her bracelet… not a thing.’

Olin sat for a moment staring at Rico, his face slowly tightening with rage.

‘Sure, Rico?’ he said, leaning across the desk. ‘And, by God! you’d bet er be sure!’

Rico flinched back.

‘I’m sorry, Lieutenant,’ he stammered, ‘but I can’t tel you what I don’t know. I haven’t seen Baird since the day before yesterday. I don’t know nothing about the bracelet…’

Olin got up.

‘I’ll get Baird,’ he said, his face set and menacing. ‘Make no mistake about it. Don’t kid yourself he won’t talk. He won’t go to the chamber alone. If you’re hooked up with him, you’l go too! I’l give you one more chance, and you’d better take it. Have you got that bracelet?’

‘I tell you I don’t know a thing about it!’ Rico said, through clenched teeth.

Olin reached across the desk and grabbed hold of Rico’s coat front, pul ing him out of his chair. He shook him savagely.

‘God help you if I find out you’re lying, you lit le creep!’ he snarled, and flung Rico back into his chair so violently the chair went over backwards and Rico sprawled on the floor. ‘And don’t think you’ve seen the last of me!’ Olin went on. ‘I’l be back.’

For a long time after Olin had gone, Rico sat at his desk, staring with empty eyes at his twitching hands, and sweating.

II

Ed Dallas steered his tall, lanky frame into a pay booth. While he waited for a connection, he surveyed the busy hotel scene through the glass panel of the booth door, his eyes shifting from one beautiful woman to another, trying to make up his mind which of them he would take out for the night should a miracle happen and give him a choice.

A girl’s voice said in his ear, ‘International Detective Agency. Good evening.’

‘This is Ed,’ Dal as said. ‘Gimme the old man, will you, honey?’

‘Hold a moment, please,’ the girl said, and proceeded to make violent crackling noises in Dallas’s ear.

‘Must you knock my brains out?’ Dal as complained, holding the receiver at arm’s length. ‘Why don’t you use your hands instead of your feet?’

‘I would if I thought you had any brains,’ the girl said pertly, and completed the connection with a loud whistle on the line.

Harmon Purvis, head of the agency, said in his dry, flat voice, ‘What is it, Dal as?’

‘The Shine’s just had cal ers,’ Dal as said, speaking rapidly, the glowing end of his cigarette bobbing up and down within an inch of the telephone mouthpiece. ‘A man and woman. The man’s a well-nourished bird, pushing fifty, and looks made of money. The woman’s a nifty; young, blonde, with a shape that’s knocked my right eye out. The Shine was expecting them. They by-passed the desk and went right up. Want me to do anything about them?’

‘Don’t cal the Rajah a Shine,’ Purvis said coldly. ‘He’s a high-class Hindu. He may be coloured…’

‘Okay, okay,’ Dal as said impatiently. ‘I wouldn’t know the difference. What about these two? Want me to cover them?’

‘Bet er find out who they are,’ Purvis said. ‘We can’t afford to take chances. They’re his first cal ers, aren’t they?’

‘If you don’t count the two rubes from the Embassy, and the floozie he had up there last night to fix his insomnia.’

Purvis said he didn’t count them.

‘Wel , okay. I’l see what I can do. I’l buzz you on the next move. So long for now.’

Dallas replaced the receiver, pushed open the booth door and walked fast across the lobby of the Hotel Cosmopolitan to where Jack Burns was reading a racing sheet, with one eye on the reception-desk.

Dallas leaned over his shoulder.

‘The old man wants me to find out who those two are,’ he said. ‘Stick around and try to earn your money. If anyone shows up, give the old man a buzz.’

Burns groaned.

‘If I have to sit in this goddamn lobby much longer, I’l go nuts,’ he grumbled. ‘I wouldn’t mind trailing that blonde myself. Get her telephone number, Ed. She might make blind dates.’

‘Not with you, she wouldn’t,’ Dal as said. ‘A nifty like her needs the velvet touch. I could rock her dreamboat myself.’

‘You’d have to knock over a bank before you got within a mile of her,’ Burns said, mopping his round fat face. ‘A fril with that shape doesn’t have to give anything away. It’d cost you plenty.’

‘You could be right at that.’ Dal as straightened. ‘Don’t fal asleep on the job. The old man thinks this’s important.’

‘I wish I did,’ Burns said, yawning.

Dallas made his way through the crowded lobby to the main entrance. He sat down in a basket chair, shifted it around so he could watch the elevators and waited.

He had a long wait. It was over an hour before the Rajah’s visitors appeared. The girl came first: an elegantly dressed blonde with big blue eyes and a cold, sophisticated expression that intrigued Dallas.

She moved gracefully, swaying her hips in a way that made all the men in the lobby look back at her, aware she was creating a sensation as she passed, and accepting it as her due.

Her companion was a tall, darkly tanned man, a little heavy around the waist-line, but very upright.

His sleek grey hair was taken straight back, and his military moustache bristled. In his immaculate clothes he had an arrogant air of confidence and authority that impressed Dallas, who wasn’t easily impressed.

They passed Dallas without noticing him, and went down the hotel steps to the street. Dallas slid out of his chair and went after them. He was in time to see them get into a big black LaSalle, driven by a smartly uniformed Filipino chauffeur, and which moved away so quickly that Dallas saw he hadn’t a hope of following it.

He memorised the licence number and signalled to a passing taxi.

‘Police Headquarters,’ he said urgently, ‘and imagine you’re driving to a fire!’

Three minutes later, the taxi pulled up outside the concrete and steel building that housed the city’s police. As Dallas paid off the driver he saw Lieutenant Olin get out of a police car and start up the stone steps leading to the main entrance of the building. He ran after him.

‘Hi, George,’ he said, joining Olin. ‘Too busy to do me a favour?’

Olin frowned at him.

‘I’m pret y busy,’ he said reluctantly, ‘but I guess I can spare you a minute. Come on in. Have you heard Jean Bruce has been knocked off?’

Dallas’s eyes popped.

‘You mean she’s been murdered?’

‘That’s what I mean.’ Olin walked quickly along the passage to his smal office, kicked open the door, entered and sat down behind a small battered desk. ‘A stick-up job with a couple of my boys sunning themselves within yards of it. The guy got away with an emerald and diamond bracelet worth five grand. He hit the girl on the side of her jaw – broke her goddamn neck.’

‘Jeepers!’ Dal as whistled. ‘Any idea who?’

Olin nodded.

‘Yeah, but never mind that. What do you want?’

‘Checking up on a black LaSal e, licence number AO 67. I want to know who owns it.’

Olin accepted the cigarette Dallas pushed at him, and then a light.

‘Working on something?’

‘A fifteen-year-old robbery,’ Dallas said. ‘Want to hear about it? It’s a good story.’

Olin shook his head.

‘Robbery isn’t my line. Besides, who cares about a fifteen-year-old robbery?’

‘The insurance companies – when the amount involved is four million,’ Dal as said seriously.

Olin looked startled.

‘Is that right? Four mil ion?’

‘Yeah. The insurance companies were caught for the lot. They paid up, but they’re stil trying to find the jewellery.’

Olin squinted at his cigarette end.

‘I think I remember something about that job: wasn’t it a Rajah’s col ection?’

‘That’s right. The Maharajah of Chit abad. He lent the whole of his family heirlooms to the Purbright Museum. That was fifteen years ago. The museum was staging an exhibition of the world’s most famous gems. The Maharajah had his collection flown to New York. They never arrived, and they’ve never been seen since. A year later a fence in Holland was approached by Paul Hater with some of the stuff.

Remember Hater? He was the smartest jewel thief of them all. The fence shopped Hater because Hater wouldn’t agree to his price. Hater was arrested, but he wouldn’t tell where he had cached the collection.

He got twenty years: he’s still serving his sentence, and is due out in a couple of years time. Old man Purvis is representing the insurance companies, and we’ve been trying to find the stuff ever since. Our one hope now is to wait until Hater comes out and then stick to him like leeches in the hope he’l lead us to the hiding-place. There’s four hundred grand in it for us if we get the stuff back, as well as a yearly retainer.’

Olin blew smoke down on to his grubby blotter, then waved it away irritably.

‘Did Hater do the job alone?’

Dallas shrugged.

‘No one knows. The pilot and the crew of the plane were never found: nor was the plane, for that matter. We figure they must have been working with Hater, but he wouldn’t finger them. We’re pret y certain the stuff’s never come on the market. Hater’s the only one, as far as we know, who knows where it’s hidden.’

Olin pushed out his aggressive jaw.

‘I guess my boys would have made him talk,’ he said sourly.

‘Don’t kid yourself. They worked over him until he looked as if he had been fed through a mincer.

Nothing anyone did to him – and they did plenty – could make him open his trap.’

‘Aw, the hel with this!’ Olin said impatiently. ‘I’ve got me a murder to solve. What do you want this car owner for?’

‘A couple of years back, the Maharajah died,’ Dal as explained. ‘His son came into the estate. This guy has his own ideas of how to live, and he’s been throwing his father’s money around like a drunken sailor. Rumour has it he’s run through half the old man’s fortune already. Without warning he suddenly turns up here. The insurance companies have the idea he’s over here to contact Hater. They think he’s going to do a deal with Hater somehow or other.’

Olin stared.

‘What sort of deal?’

‘They think Hater would be glad to sel the stuff back to the Rajah at a price. They argue the Rajah could get rid of it far easier than Hater could. From what they hear about the Rajah they think he’s quite capable of sticking to both the jewels and the insurance money. Personally, I think it’s a lot of phooey, but you can’t tell these insurance birds anything. They’ve hired us to watch the Rajah, and report to them who he’s seeing while he’s here. Up to now the only two he has seen are the man and woman who left his hotel in this LaSalle. I want to know who they are.’

‘Wel , I guess I’d better do something about it,’ Olin said, reaching for his phone. ‘Purvis has done me a lot of good in the past. How is the lug, anyway?’

‘Just the same,’ Dal as said gloomily. ‘Doesn’t spend a nickel more than he can help, and stil thinks a woman’s place is in the kitchen, and no place else.’

‘That’s Purvis al right. He gave me a box of cigars last Christmas I swear he made himself.’

‘You can consider yourself lucky,’ Dal as said, grinning. ‘He didn’t give me a thing. How about a little action on that car number? I haven’t got all night.’

Olin spoke into the phone, listened, waited, grunted and hung up.

‘The car belongs to a bird named Preston Kile. He has a house on Roosevelt Boulevard which puts him in the money. Does that help you?’

‘Not much. You wouldn’t like to ask Records if they’ve anything on him?’

Olin sighed, dialled, spoke again into the phone. While he waited, Dallas crossed over to the window and stared down at the two-way stream of traffic flooding the main street. He spotted the
Herald
truck unloading a pile of newspapers at the corner. The boy snatched them from the driver and began running along the sidewalk, yelling excitedly.