Gold Comes in Bricks (3 page)

The next morning Ashbury started to lift weights, found his muscles were sore, said there was no use going at the thing too damn fast, put on his big lap robe, came over and sat down beside me on the canvas mat, and smoked a cigar. He wanted to know what I’d found out.

I told him nothing. He said, “Alta’s fallen for you. You’re good.”

We had breakfast, and about eleven o’clock Alta Ashbury showed up. Mrs. Ashbury always had breakfast in bed.

When we took our walk that afternoon, Alta told me more about her stepmother. Mrs. Ashbury had high blood pressure, and the doctor said she mustn’t be excited. The doctor was standing in with her, gave in to her, wheedled her and petted her. She thought her dad should kick Bernard Carter out of the house. She didn’t know what there was about me that made her talk so much, unless it was because I was so understanding, and because she was so worried about her dad she could cry.

She warned me that if Mrs. Ashbury ever wanted anything, no matter how unreasonable, I wasn’t to cross her at all, because, as surely as I did, the doctor would make an examination, find her blood pressure had gone up, blame the whole thing on me, and I’d go out on my ear. I gathered she didn’t want me to go out on my ear.

I felt like a heel.

At two o’clock Bertha Cool picked me up, and the Jap kneaded me as though I’d been a batch of bread dough. When I got away from those stubby fingers I felt like a shirt that had been put through a washing machine, run through a wringer, and dried on a mangle.

I staggered in to supper. It was the same as the previous night, only Alta looked as though she’d been crying. She hardly spoke to me. After dinner I hung around, giving her a chance to talk with me in case there was anything she wanted to confide.

Alta didn’t make any secret about how she felt about Bernard Carter. She said he was
supposed
to be working on a business deal with her stepmother. She didn’t know just what it was. No one seemed to know just what it was. Alta said both of them hated her, that she thought her stepmother was afraid of some woman whom Carter knew, that one time she’d walked into the library just as her stepmother was saying, “Go ahead and get some action. I’m tired of all this dillydallying. You can imagine how much mercy she’d show me if our positions were reversed. I want you to—” Carter had noticed she’d come into the room and had coughed significantly. Mrs. Ashbury had looked up, stopped in the middle of a sentence, and started talking about something else with the swift garrulity of one who is trying to cover up.

Alta was silent for a while after she told me that, and then said moodily she supposed she was telling me things she had no right to, but for some reason or other I inspired confidence, that she felt I was loyal to her father, and that if I was going in business with him, I’d have to watch her stepmother, Bob, and Bernard Carter. Then she added a few words about Dr. Parkerdale. He was, it seemed, one of the fashionable boys with a good bedside manner. Every time Mrs. Ashbury had a dizzy spell from eating too much, Dr. Parkerdale became as gravely concerned as though it were the first symptom of a world-wide epidemic of infantile paralysis.

She told me that much, then clamped her lips shut lightly.

I said, “Go ahead.”

“With what?” she asked.

“The rest of it.”

“The rest of what?”

“The rest of the things I should know.”

“I’ve told you too much already.”

“Not enough,” I said.

“What do you mean by that?”

“I’m going in business with your father. He’s going to invest a bunch of money. I’ve got to see that he gets a fair return on his investment. I’ve got to get along with Mrs. Ashbury. I want to know how to do it.”

She said hastily, “You leave her alone. Keep out of her way, and listen. Don’t—don’t ever—”

“Don’t ever what?” I asked.

“Don’t ever trust yourself alone with her,” she said. “If she wants to take exercise in the gymnasium, be sure to have someone else there all the time she’s there.”

I made the mistake of laughing and said, “Oh, surely she wouldn’t—”

She turned on me furiously. “I tell you,” she said, “I
know
her. She’s a creature of physical appetites and animal cunning. She simply can’t control herself. All this high — blood — pressure business is simply the result of overeating and overindulgence. She’s put on twenty pounds since Dad married her.”

“Your father,” I said, “is nobody’s fool.”

"Of course he isn’t, but she’s worked out a technique that no man can fight against. Whenever she wants anything and anyone balks her, she starts working herself up to a high pitch of excitement, then she telephones for Doctor Parkerdale. He comes rushing out as though it were a matter of life and death, takes her blood pressure, and starts tiptoeing around the house until he’s created the proper impression. Then he takes whoever is responsible off to one side and says very gently and with his best professional manner that Mrs. Ashbury really isn’t herself, that she simply mustn’t become excited, that if he can only keep her perfectly calm for a period of several months, he can cure her blood pressure, that then she can start taking exercise and reduce her weight and be her normal self, but that whenever there’s an argument and she becomes excited, all the good that he’s done is wiped out, and he has to go back and begin all over again.”

I laughed and said, “That seems to be a hard game to beat.”

She was furious at me because I’d laughed. “Of course it’s a hard game to beat,” she said. “You
can’t
beat it. Doctor Parkerdale says that it doesn’t make any difference whether she’s right or wrong, that one mustn’t argue with her. That means you have to give in to her all the time. That means she’s becoming more selfish and spoiled every minute of the time. Her temper is getting more ungovernable. She’s getting more selfish, more—”

“How about Bernard Carter?” I asked. “Does he get along with her?”

“Bernard Carter,” she snorted. “Bernard Carter and his business deal! He’s the man who comes around when Father goes away. She may fool Dad with that business talk, but she doesn’t fool me a darn bit. I—I hate her.”

I observed that I thought Henry Ashbury was quite capable of handling the situation.

“He isn’t,” Alta said. “No man is. She has him hamstrung and hogtied before he starts. If he accuses her of anything, she’ll throw one of her fits and Doctor Parkerdale will come rushing out with the rubber tube he puts around her arm and take her blood pressure— Oh,
can’t
you see what she’s doing is simply laying the foundation for filing a suit for divorce on the ground of mental cruelty, claiming that Father was so unreasonable and unjust with her that it ran up her blood pressure and ruined her health and kept Doctor Parkerdale from curing her. And she has the doctor all primed to give his testimony. The only thing Father can do is efface himself as much as possible and wait for something to break. That means he has to give in to her. Look here, Donald. Are you pumping me or am I just making a fool out of myself talking too damn much?”

I felt like a heel again, only worse.

She didn’t talk much after that.

Someone called her on the telephone, and she didn’t like the conversation. I could see that much from the expression on her face. After her party had hung up, she telephoned and broke a date.

I went out finally and sat on the sunporch. I felt more like a heel than ever.

After a while she came out and stood looking down at me. I could feel her scorn, even though it was too dark to see the expression in her eyes. “So,” she said, “that’s it, is it?”

“What?” I asked.

She said, “Don’t think I’m entirely a nitwit. You, a physical director. I don’t suppose it ever occurred to you I’d take the license number of the car that calls for you every afternoon, and look up the registration. B. Cool, Confidential Investigations. I suppose your real name is Cool.”

“It isn’t,” I said. “It’s Donald Lam.”

“Well, the next time Dad tries to get a detective who’s going to pose as a physical director, tell him to get someone who looks the part.”

She stormed out of the room.

There was an extension phone down in the basement. I went down and called Bertha Cool. “All right,” I said, “you’ve spilled the beans.”

“What do you mean,
I’ve
spilled the beans?’’

“She wondered who was calling for me afternoons, waited around the corner, got the license number of your car, and looked it up. It’s registered in the name of the agency, you know.”

I could hear Bertha Cool’s gasp over the telephone.

“A hundred bucks a day thrown out of the window just so you could chisel a taxi fare,” I said.

“Now listen, lover,” she implored, “you’ve got to find some way out of this. You can do it, if you’ll put your mind on it. That’s what Bertha has you for, to think for her.”

I said, “Nuts.”

“Donald, you
must.
We simply can’t afford to lose that money.”

“You’ve already lost it.”

“Isn’t there something you can do?”

I said, “I don’t know. Drive the agency car out here, park it at the place where you usually meet me, and wait.”

CHAPTER FOUR

A
LTA WENT OUT
about quarter to ten. The butler opened the garage doors, and while he was doing that, I was streaking down the street. That’s one thing I’m good at sprinting.

Bertha Cool was waiting in the car. I climbed in beside her, and said, “Get that motor going. When a twelve-cylinder car streaks past us, give it everything you’ve got and keep the lights turned off.”

“You’d better drive, Donald.”

“There isn’t time. Get started.”

She started the motor and eased away from the curb. Alta Ashbury went past us like a flash. I said to Bertha, “Go ahead. Give it the gun.” I reached over and switched out the headlights.

Bertha started groping for the headlight switch. I jerked her hand away, grabbed hold of the hand throttle, and pulled it out all the way. We started going places. Bertha got jittery, and I leaned over to put a hand on the wheel. A I ter a while, Alta came to a cross street just as the light changed. It gave us a chance to catch up and for me to run around the back of the car and let Bertha slide over.

When the light changed, Alta shot ahead as though she’d been fired from a gun. The agency bus rattled on across the street, gathering headway. Somebody yelled at me to put my lights on, but I kept running dark, hoping we’d get into a snarl of traffic. After a while we did. I switched the lights on and started jockeying for position, trying to keep just a little on the left and behind.

Bertha was full of apologies. “I should have listened to you, lover. You’re always right. Oh,
why
didn’t you
make
me listen to you?”

I had a job to do driving the car, so I didn’t say anything.

Bertha kept right on talking. She said, “Donald, I don’t suppose I can ever make you understand me. For years I had to fight my way. Every nickel counted. There were lots of times when I only allowed myself fifteen cents a day for eating money. Do you know, Donald, the hardest job I ever had was trying to learn how to spend money again after I began to make a little.

“I’d draw a hundred dollars every month from my bank account and make up my mind I was going to spend it on myself, and I just couldn’t do it. I’d find myself at the end of the month with seventy or eighty dollars I hadn’t spent. When you’ve once been right up against it where money means so damn much to you, it does something to your morale. You never get over it.”

“I’ve been broke,” I said.

“I know, lover, but you’re young, and you have brains. Bertha didn’t have brains, not the kind you have. Bertha just had to stay in there and pitch, and it was tough sledding. You have something I’ll never have, Donald. You’re resilient. Put pressure on you, and you bend. Then as soon as the pressure is removed, you spring back. I’m different. Put pressure on me, and I put pressure back. If anything happens, and I can’t put any pressure back sometime, I won’t bend, I’ll simply break.”

I said, “All right, forget it.”

“Where’s she going, lover?”

“I don’t know.”

“What’s she going to do?”

“I don’t know even that. We’ve kicked ourselves out of a hundred — dollar — a — day job. There’s everything to gain, and nothing to lose. We may as well shoot the works.”

“Donald, you’ve never failed me before. You’ve always worked out
some
scheme that let us wriggle through.” “Shut up,” I said. “I’m trying to do it now.”

It was a tough job following her in traffic. All she needed to do was press her foot on the throttle. The motor would whisper a song of smooth power, and the car would whisk through an opening which would close up behind her. I had to keep my foot on the throttle of the agency car and hold it in second gear a good part of the time so I had the pickup I needed for traffic.

She drove into a parking station. I didn’t dare go into the same station. The only open parking space was in front of a fire plug. I said, “All right, Bertha, we park in front of the fire plug. If you get pinched, you can charge it to Ashbury for taxi expenses. You go down toward Seventh Street. I’ll go up toward Eighth. Wait on the corner. When she leaves that parking lot, she’ll either turn toward you or toward me. If she comes toward me, don’t try to follow her. If she goes toward you, I won’t try to follow. Whichever one isn’t elected will come back and move the car.”

Bertha was meek as a lamb. “Yes, lover,” she said.

It was a job for Bertha to get in and out of the car. She had to twist around and squirm her way out. I didn’t wait for her, and I didn’t try to help her. I opened the door and walked down the street fast.

Bertha hadn’t gone more than twenty yards from the car, when Alta came out of the parking lot. She turned toward me. I ducked in a doorway and waited.

She was considering the possibility of being followed all right. She kept looking behind her as she walked, but after she’d turned the corner, she evidently figured the road was clear. I picked up her trail. There was a cheap hotel midway in the block. She went in there. I didn’t dare follow until after she’d got out of the lobby, then I walked in and over to the cigar counter. There was an automatic indicator over the elevator. I watched the hand. It had stopped at the fourth floor.

The girl behind the cigar counter was blond with stiff, wavy hair. I remembered one time when I’d seen a strand cut from the rope used by a hangman in San Quentin. A traveling salesman had it, and he had combed the strands all out. That girl’s hair was about the same color, had about the same wave, and looked to be just about as stiff. She had light eyebrows, and big green eyes. She’d managed to get the expression on her face that one associated with virginal innocence back in nineteen hundred and six; mouth puckered up, eyebrows raised, lashes long and curly. It was the expression of a kitten just venturing out of the back closet into the living-room.

I said, “Listen, sister, I’m a traveling salesman. I’ve got a bill of goods I can sell the Atlee Amusement Corporation, but I have to have an inside track. There’s a gambler here in the hotel who can give it to me. I don’t know his name.” Her voice was as hoarse and harsh as that of a politician the morning after election. She said, “What the hell do you take me for?”

I took ten bucks of Bertha Cool’s expense money out of my pocket, and said, “A girl who knows all the answers.” She lowered her eyes demurely. Crimson-tinted fingernails slid across the counter toward the ten bucks. I clamped down on it, and said, “But the answer has to be right.”

She leaned toward me. “Tom Highland,” she said. “He’s your man.”

“Where does he live?” I asked.

“Here in the hotel.”

“Naturally. What room?”

“Seven-twenty.”

“Try again,” I said.

She pouted and lowered her eyes. Her nose and chin came up in the air.

I said, “All right, if you feel that way about it,” and folded the ten bucks and started to put it into my pocket. She glanced at the elevator, leaned across, and whispered to me, “Jed Ringold, four-nineteen, but for God’s sake, don’t say I told you, and don’t bust in on him. His sweetie has just gone up.”

I passed her the ten.

The clerk was looking at me, so I fished around a bit, looking over the cigars. “What’s the matter with the clerk?” I asked.

“Jealous,” she said with a little grimace.

I tapped a gloved forefinger on the counter. “Okay,” I said, “give me a couple of those,” took the cigars, and walked over to where the clerk was standing at the counter. “Poker game running down the street,” I said. “I want to get away for a couple of hours’ sleep, then go back. What have you got, something around the fourth floor?”

“Four-seventy-one,” he suggested.

“Where is it?”

“On the corner.”

“Nothing doing.”

“Four-twenty?”

I said, “Brother, I’m funny, but I always get along with the odd numbers. Four-twenty sounds about right, only it’s even. Have you got four-seventeen or four-nineteen or four-twenty-one?”

“I can give you four-twenty-one.”

“How much?”

“Three bucks.”

“With a bath?”

“Sure.”

I took three dollars out of my pocket and slid it across the counter. He smacked his palm down on a bell and called out, “Front!”

The boy walked out of the elevator. The clerk handed him a key and said to me, “You’ll have to register, Mr.— er—”

“Smith,” I said. “John Smith. You write it. I’m going to sleep.”

The boy saw I had no baggage and was giving me the fishy eye. I tossed him a quarter and said, “Snap out of it, son, and smile.”

He showed his teeth in a grin and took me up. “Work all night?” I asked him.

“Nope. I quit at eleven.”

“How about the elevator?”

“Goes on automatic.”

I said, “Listen, son, I don’t want to be disturbed. I’ve been in a gambling game and I’m tired.”

“Stick the sign on the doorknob, and nobody’ll disturb you.”

“Got any gamblers in the house?” I asked.

“No,” he said, “but listen, buddy, if you’d like a—”

“I wouldn’t,” I said.

He thought perhaps I might change my mind and hung around digging out the “Please Do Not Disturb” sign for me, pulling down window shades, and turning on the light in the bathroom.

I got rid of him after a while, hung the cardboard sign on the doorknob, locked and bolted the door, turned out all the lights, went over to the communicating door which connected with four-nineteen, got down on my knees, and started to work. I kept my light gloves on.

The proper place to bore a hole in the door of a hotel bedroom is at the corner of the paneling, just at the lower edge of the molding. The door is thinner there, and a small hole won’t attract much attention. A knife that has a crescent-shaped blade on it can be sharpened into a good boring edge.

I felt like a dirty snoop, but a man can’t argue with his bread and butter. And that goes double when he’s working for Bertha Cool. The way I felt didn’t keep me from doing a darn good job of boring a hole in the panel, and getting my eye up to the hole.

Alta was sitting on a davenport, crying. A man was sitting back in a big chair, smoking. Her tears didn’t seem to mean very much to him. I couldn’t see anything except his legs up as far as the hips, and occasionally the hand when it would take the cigarette from his mouth and come to rest on the arm of the chair.

After a while Alta got done crying. I could see her lips move, but couldn’t hear what she was saying. She didn’t seem to be exactly angry, more crushed than mad.

They talked for a while, then the man moved the hand that held the cigarette. A second later his other hand came into view with an envelope. He held it out toward Alta. She leaned forward on the davenport, took the envelope, and tucked it under her arm without even looking to see what was in it. She seemed in a grand rush. She opened her purse, took out a folded oblong of tinted paper, and handed it to him. He dropped it in the right-hand side pocket of his coat.

Alta got up hurriedly. I could see her lips say “Good night.” Then she walked out of the range of my vision.

The man seemed to be hurrying her along. He got up, and I had a glimpse of his face. He walked across the room. I heard the door open and close. The door was right across from the elevator. I could hear the cage rattling and wheezing up, then the sound of the door opening and closing. The man came back to the room, closed and locked the door.

I got up from my knees, brushed off my trousers with the palm of my hand, and then suddenly noticed the key which turned the bolt on the communicating door. Those are so rigged that when the bolt is closed, the little thumb grip that works it is straight up and down. This one was straight across.

Slowly, so as not to make any sound, I turned the knob of the door. When I had the knob back as far as it would go, I put my thumb up against the jamb and pushed easily against the door.

It opened about a sixteenth of an inch.

The door had been open all the time. That was something. For a moment I thought of opening it up and walking in, then decided against it. I closed the door, and eased the knob back quietly so that the latch wouldn’t click. Then I slowly twisted the brass thingumbob on the door so that it shot the bolt back home on my side of the door.

It was a crummy hotel with the carpets worn thin and the lace curtains dingy. The white counterpane on the bed had a rip that had been stitched together. The connecting door between the two rooms was a loose-fitting affair. I stood staring at it. While I was looking at it, the knob slowly turned. Someone was trying to open that connecting door. He tried it once, then quit.

I walked out into the corridor, closed and locked my door behind me, slipped the key in my pocket, went around to four-nineteen, and knocked.

I heard a chair move, then steps on the floor, and a man’s voice said, “Who is it?”

“Lam,” I said.

“I don’t get you.”

“Message from the chief.”

He opened the door and looked at me.

He was big, and had the lumbering good nature of a man who’s big enough and strong enough to know no one is going to push him around. The eyebrows were a little too heavy and came together across his nose. His eyes were such a deep reddish brown they were almost black, and I had to hold my neck back against my collar to look up at him.

“Who the hell are you?” he asked.

“I’ll tell you that when I come in.”

He held the door open. I walked in. He closed the door behind me and twisted the bolt. He said, “Sit down,” and walked over to the same chair in which he’d been sitting while Alta had called on him, put his feet up on another chair, lit a cigarette, and said, “What’d you say your name was?”

“Donald Lam.”

“You’re Greek to me.”

I said, “No, you’ve never seen me before.”

“You aren’t telling me anything. I never forget a face. You said you had a message?”

“Yes.”

“From the chief?”

“Yes.”

“Who do you mean, the chief?”

I said, “The chief of police.”

He was lighting a cigarette when I said that, and the match didn’t so much as waver. He didn’t look over at me until after he’d taken a deep drag at the cigarette, then his reddish-black eyes turned my way.