Month: November 2025

Spring 1933

The Crawler was striding back and forth across my detective agency office.  When he reached the wall, he made a hard right turn and paced to the window there, flattening a cheek against the glass to gaze out at nothing in particular.  That didn’t last long.  He about-faced and retraced his course.  As usual when he needed a fix of some sort or was gowed up on an illicit substance, his bad eye, which toed out, was dancing to a beat only his drug-addled brain could comprehend.  The tall, whipsaw lean ne’er-do-well was one of my better snitches, who I occasionally used for various other errands.  I stopped short of calling him an operative, which implied a level of competence beyond his ken.  What with his dalliances in the world of drugs, he was barely functional most days.

The tall, whipsaw lean ne’er-do-well was one of my better snitches….

“Take it easy on the rug, Crawler.  I don’t want to schedule a decorator to redo the joint.”

“What?”

“Never mind,” I insisted, dropping the cash on the desk.  “Here’s your fin for the job.”  I’d hired the doper to remove the air from a gangster’s tire.  It was a stall until the coppers could show and slap the cuffs on him.  His pinch closed my case and two of theirs.

“But, Gil,” he pleaded, “I let the air outta two tires!”

“I’m not paying you pro rata.”

“Huh?”

“Forget it, Ace.  I specifically said ‘a tire’.  ‘Let the air out of a tire.’  Singular.  Here.”  I lifted, then dropped the five-dollar bill on the desktop again.  He simply looked at it.  Compared to his usual performance when he was in this condition, the dope fiend was acting restrained.

“You should pay me for both tires.  A sawbuck.”

“Me and my fanny.”

He started to say something, but a sudden stunned expression crossed his face.  “I didn’t know you was married!”

Taking a long breath and letting it out slowly to maintain a measure of patience, I shot a hard glare at my informant.  I’m not a man of what some have termed a summer temperament.  Around the time I was ready to unload my frustration on him, someone knocked on my office door and opened it cautiously.

“Yes?” I called out, relieved to have a new focus.  I stood and shifted my eyes back to The Crawler.  “Take the fiver and blow!” I whispered harshly.  My snitch snatched the dough and skinned through the thin opening.

I moved around toward the door as it opened further, framing a tall, well-dressed, middle-aged man.   He scanned my office, critiquing his surroundings in my estimation, then the pale blue eyes behind his rimless glasses shifted to me.  The fellow removed his hat, advanced, smiling tightly, and held a hand out to me.  “You are Mr. Tanner?”  Without waiting for a response, he nodded toward the hallway.  “Did I interrupt something?  Perhaps I should have called for an appointment.” 

The man’s voice was soft, though high-toned.  His head, wide at the crown, narrowed as it descended to a pointed chin, and his red hair was brushed back and neatly parted.  The triangle of a handkerchief, which matched his tie, sat in the top pocket of his bespoke suit.  His meticulous appearance stood in stark contrast to that of my last caller.  I vaguely recognized his face, but couldn’t place a name with it.

“Yes, I’m Gil Tanner.  Please have a seat,” I offered, shaking his hand and gesturing to a chair.  If one can put a label on such things, he shook my hand gravely.   As he sat, I took his overcoat and hat and hung them on the office hat rack.   I retired to my chair and eased into it, leaning over the desk.  “What can I do for you, Mister…?

“Theodore Voysey,” he announced haughtily, shaping both words precisely.  He then shifted in his seat as if annoyed I hadn’t recognized him at once.  The gent tugged down on his coat and shot his cuffs in a hint of indignation.  Ted Voysey.  Of course.  He was a prominent businessman in our city, the owner of several automobile dealerships, including new and used heaps.  At his second-hand car lots, he advertised himself as “Ready Teddy,” indicating his willingness to deal.  Otherwise, he was known as a tough but square entrepreneur.  The papers had splashed his well-heeled puss across their pages when reporting a few charity events aimed at helping those hit hardest by The Depression.

He was a prominent businessman in our city, the owner of several automobile dealerships, including new and used heaps. 

I held out a cigarette from my deck.  He declined and retrieved an expensive-looking meerschaum pipe and a tin of Granger Rough Cut from his overcoat pocket.  As I set fire to my gasper, he filled and lit the thing.  I slid an ashtray toward him where he could more easily reach it.  We sat burning tobacco in silence for a minute.  Voysey seemed in no hurry to relate the purpose of his presence.  I was in no rush, so I waited.  He rested stiffly erect on the edge of the chair.

As my visitor finally started to speak, there came a hurried knock on the office door.  I excused myself to answer the summons, but before I reached the thing, Lester, the photographer from the studio next door, burst in.  “Gil, I need water,” he croaked as he waved an empty pitcher around.  I held up a hand to stop him short.  He glanced past me.  “Sorry.  I didn’t know you had company.”

Rather than make a scene over his rude interruption, I told him to get what he needed from my office watercooler and move on, which he did.  Back at my desk, I asked the other man if he cared to state his business while assuring him, I was not pressed for time.  He toyed with his pipe before speaking with a certain aloofness.  “My problem will probably be an old story to a private detective such as yourself.”  He paused, as if searching for the way to express what he wanted to say next.

I leaned back in my chair, relaxed-like, hoping to convey the same mood to him.  “A lot of stories are old and repeat a central theme,” I assured him.  “But that’s why they keep printing books and making moving pictures.  The details and the outcomes are not always the same.  Just lay it out, Mr. Voysey, and we’ll decide what we can do with this ‘problem,’ as you call it.”

His head shook slightly, but dismissively.  “An associate in the insurance business recommended your services, particularly considering your reputation for discretion.”  That might include a half-dozen people for whom I’d done work.  I didn’t pursue it further.  The businessman appeared to be bracing himself to tell me the reason for his visit.  After several seconds, his confident manner fell away.  During that time, his demeanor changed to that of someone who hated to admit they needed help, but desperately did.  The transition was remarkable.  He set his pipe on the desktop and hunched toward me.   “It’s my wife, Laura, Mr. Tanner,” he acknowledged.  Tears welled.  “Oh, I don’t even want to contemplate it,… but I think she’s having an affair,” he faltered and released a guttural moan.  

I dropped the pencil I was holding and went to the cooler to pour a drink of water.  When I tried to hand it to him, he didn’t seem to notice it, as he stared at his hands fidgeting in his lap.  After sitting the cup near him, I returned to my seat.  I leaned across the desk in his direction and studied him.  His face wasn’t the easiest to read, but it was there to interpret for one who chose to do so.  By turns, it showed hurt, fear, and confusion.  Speaking in as soothing a voice as I could muster, I asked, “What has led you to conclude she is seeing someone?”

He gazed at me with mournful, reddened eyes.  “This is difficult for me.  I apologize for breaking down like that.”  I made a meaningless hand gesture that I hoped might encourage him to go on with his story.  With an audible sigh, he continued, “I always thought we-Laura and I-were far happier together than the average couple.”  He waggled his head as if shaking his memory for what he’d observed.  “I’ve seen the way other men look at, no leer at her if they think I’m unaware.  There are those few who pay no mind to whether I’m cognizant of their lascivious gapes.  She seems not to notice them.  Laura’s never been the sort of woman who encouraged masculine attention, and their unwanted romantic behavior has never turned her head. 

“But now I fear that has changed.  There have been several inexplicable disappearances at odd hours by her from our home.  Occasionally, she’s been standoffish toward me.  In one instance, a whispered telephone conversation abruptly ended when I entered the room.”  He swallowed a deep breath.  “And now,” he added after a time, “sums of money have gone missing from her household accounts without explanation.  I love my wife.  I’ll do anything for her and to save our marriage.”  He put a palm to his face and sobbed momentarily.  He raised his head from his hand and pleaded, “Please help me, Mr. Tanner.  I cannot go on living with the uncertainty.”

“Has something happened that has caused a rift in your relationship?”  His chin drooped as he shook his noggin sorrowfully.  “Have you spoken to her regarding her being away from the home or anything else relating to your concerns?”

He looked up without lifting his face.  “Well, I attempted to inquire about her absences once, casually, mind you.  She became slightly agitated.  It was totally contrary to her character.  The next several days she was distant from me.”  He took up his pipe again, as if were the security blanket of a small child.  “See here, I have a reputation as a hard-hitting businessman.  And that’s fine as far as it goes.  But in dealing with Laura, I’m anything but tough.”

“And what was her explanation for them?”

The answer was a long while coming.  “She dismissed the thing as meeting girlfriends for luncheon.  But I knew better on at least one occasion.  The woman in question and her husband, a friend of mine, had been out of town at the time.  It was never mentioned again for fear of…,” he shuddered.  “I… I have to confess I attempted to follow her once, but my heart wasn’t in it and I returned to my office.”  He fell silent for a few seconds.

After an awkward moment, I gave Ted a hard look and advised, “If you hire me, I’ll do everything possible to solve your dilemma.  I guarantee my efforts on your behalf, but not the outcome.  You need to understand the result may be something you don’t wish to hear, because you want me to search for a possibility you don’t even dare to think of.”  I waited only long enough to let that sink in.  “Now there are two ways to approach my investigation.  I can gather evidence of her missteps, if there have been any.  Or I simply can find the answer for you.  Period.  It’s your decision.  But you must leave the detective work for me.  No more questioning your wife, no more trying to track her.”

“I guarantee my efforts on your behalf, but not the outcome.”

Voysey recovered his composure, saying, “Understood.  I… I just need you to learn if Laura’s having an affair.  Either way, I love her very deeply and want to reconcile things, if possible.  Any ‘evidence,’ as you put it, would only serve as an obstacle to putting a terrible circumstance behind us.  She still professes her passion for me.”  If I’ve learned anything in this racket, it’s that many women who proclaim their love for their husbands still find reasons to cheat on them.  But I offered nothing on that count.  We had a brief discussion of my fees, after which my visitor reached into an inside coat pocket.  “I’ll write you a check, if that’s okay,” he suggested, “for your first two weeks’ work, less expenses.  But spare no reasonable expense.”  I nodded, and he wrote the draft, dropping it on the desk.  I let it rest there.

Picking up the pencil again, I said, “I need to get additional information from you to proceed with, Mr. Voysey.  What–?”

“Ted,” he whispered, his face reddening faintly.  “I’m sorry for the manner in which I introduced myself.  I realize it sounded awfully stuffy.  Please call me Ted.  May I call you Gil?”

“By all means,” I smiled.  It was nice to have him among us mere mortals. “Now, what is your address?”

I jotted notes as he gave me his address in the exclusive Hammond Hills section on the northeast side of the city, then his home telephone number.  He said the best way to reach him during the workday was at his automobile showroom on Broad Street.  It was the one he’d taken over when his father passed away, and he considered it his “flagship” location.  His arrogant manner returned for the moment as he further explained he owned several dealerships around town, offering different makes.  I knew of three.  I’d bought my LaSalle from his Cadillac place on Broad near Concord.  Apparently, a few didn’t have Voysey’s name attached to the marquee for whatever reason, so I hadn’t associated them with the man.  Other than his contriteness over his marital situation, he had no meekness about him.

He seemed to forget the purpose of his visit momentarily and explained he’d had a Hudson-Essex lot for a few years.  When the manufacturer introduced the Terraplane a year earlier, he had constructed the new building to house his latest franchise acquisition and invited his VFW post to move to a meeting hall on the second floor.  I was familiar with that aspect of the place.  It was the post my uncle, a veteran of The Great War, attended.

We finally got back to the business at hand.  When asked, he assured me he suspected no one in particular of being his wife’s lover.  Voysey told me she was very active socially but wasn’t employed outside their home.  “She doesn’t have to,” he proclaimed proudly.  It struck me as a tactless statement when, with around twelve million people out of work by the latest reports, so many families had no source of income.  He appeared unaware or unconcerned.  Despite my feelings, I kept my lip buttoned.  He was paying me.  I had to eat, too.

Then we spoke briefly about their married life.  My client advised me that, owing to some unnamed medical condition, Laura couldn’t have children, so there were none from the marriage.  During the ensuing conversation, I gathered additional personal information regarding Mrs. Voysey.  The businessman shared with me what he referred to as her weekly schedule, which included bridge club on Tuesday mornings and garden society gatherings every other Thursday afternoon. 

She was on the board of the local library, but, according to Ted, their meetings were somewhat sporadic.  The lady was also active on an auxiliary committee at their country club, The Flat Creek Golf Club.  Again, this group had no set pattern of get-togethers.  On a hunch, I inquired if the lady’s unexplained absences had occurred on the same day of the week or the month.  Initially, he didn’t think so, but thought the question through more thoroughly.  He said he needed to check something to be certain, and he’d get back with me.  I suggested he do so as quickly as possible.

When I requested a physical description of the missus, Ted did one better and retrieved a photograph from his inside coat pocket.  Uncertainty clouded his eyes as he gazed at it longingly for a few seconds, then handed it to me.  It showed an attractive woman striking a sassy pose beside a breezer.  I could easily see why men found her appealing.  “Is that what she motors around in?”

He chuckled.  “No.  What might it say about a husband who owns several car lots if he lets his wife drive around in an old thing such as that?  That’s an older photograph, one I could bring you without arousing suspicion.  Now she drives a new Essex Terraplane.  It’s dark blue.”  He gave me the tag number. 

Because the snap was in black and white, he described Laura as having “satiny” dark-brown hair and cornflower blue eyes.  He added she was around five feet, nine inches tall.

When asked, Ted told me she’d been at home when he’d last seen her that morning.  He was unaware of any plans she had for the day, adding with a snicker she was a person of routine.  I couldn’t help smiling.  A creature of habit was my favorite kind of individual to bird-dog. 

I informed him my first step would be to tail her to see whether she might lead me to a rendezvous.  My mention of a possible tryst caused the other’s shoulders to fall lax.  Again, he fell silent briefly.  When he spoke again, it was to offer me the loan of another car from one of his lots for that purpose if I felt she’d made my heap as I pursued her.  After I told him I’d wait to determine if it was necessary, he left the office to return home.  He was to telephone me if Laura was still in the residence.

*  *  *

An hour and a quarter later, I was parked in view of the Voysey’s driveway.  My client had made the call to my office, and I’d hurried to the Hammond Hills area.  Stakeouts were one of my least favorite parts of the private investigation game.  But they were a necessary evil.  As usual, I slid across to the passenger seat.  I’ve found over time sitting on the passenger’s side during a surveillance gave anyone noticing the impression I was waiting for the driver to return.  It’d be less suspicious to the casual observer.  On my way out of the office, I had grabbed copies of the evening editions from the kid on the corner to occupy me while I waited.

Stakeouts were one of my least favorite parts of the private investigation game. 

The baseball season had gotten underway, so naturally, I turned to the sports pages first.  My Cincinnati Redlegs had climbed out of the cellar ten days earlier with a win over my pal Harry’s Cardinals, only to be slapped down a notch by another loss to the Pirates.  They currently had a record of four wins and four losses, what with the defeat of the Cards at Sportsman’s Park the day before.  I looked forward to rubbing Harry’s nose in it later.  So far this year, it sounded as if the Pirates might run roughshod over my boys.  Every one of their defeats had come at the hands of the Pittsburg team. 

In the horse-racing world, there was word the voters in California would soon vote on a proposition legalizing pari-mutuel wagering on horse races in their state.  According to the broadsheets, three other states were moving in the same direction.  In the meantime, I was still required to go on the quiet to my bookie, Iggy, to place a play.  And that crumb would take a bet on two flies fighting over a dead body, but at least he paid up when you copped.

I was halfway through an article rehashing the Tony Canzoneri-Wesley Ramey fight, when a city policeman pulled his machine over to the curb in front of me.   He heaved himself from the machine and slowly ambled in my direction, carefully eyeing the surrounding homes and yards.  Finding nothing apparently out of order on the landscape, he made his way to my car window.  He was a copper with whom I hadn’t had the privilege of an introduction.  We had a brief but taught discussion concerning my presence. 

I showed him my credentials, gave him a business card, and explained who I was and why I was there without giving the name of my client.  In addition, I suggested that he telephone detective bureau at headquarters and speak with Detective Waddell, who could vouch for me.  After studying my kisser for a minute and surveying his surroundings again, he grudgingly returned my identification documents and departed.   Okay, not everybody ignored a mug sitting in the passenger seat of a parked heap.  But a flatfoot is not someone I’d rate as a “casual observer.”

I set fire to another gasper and got back to my newspapers.  As I was reading a front-page report on newly inaugurated President Roosevelt and recalling how delicious my sister-in-law’s Election Cake had tasted, a Terraplane Eight appeared at the end of the driveway.  My quarry was behind the new, dark-blue car’s steering wheel.  When she swung toward me, I tossed the paper to the floorboards and ducked down in my seat.  After she hummed by, I slid to the wheel, coaxed the car to life, and made a U-turn in the direction of my target. 

 After a number of turns, the Terraplane pulled to the curb outside a relatively modest home, by Hammond Hills standards anyway, sitting close to the roadway.  Several women were gathered on the sidewalk.  Laura joined them and they went inside.  Although I couldn’t see anything through the heavy shrubbery at a front fence, I soon heard the gaggle, chattering incessantly, move out to the backyard.  This, then, I assumed, was the woman’s Thursday garden club meeting.

To be on the safe side, I returned to my auto and grabbed a sheaf of papers.  Then, I walked to the front door and knocked.  A maid answered.  When I shuffled through the papers and asked for a Mrs. McGillicuddy, the young lady informed me the home was the residence of a Mr. and Mrs. Joshua Caine.  She offered to go out to Mrs. Caine’s gathering and ask if there was a Mrs. McGillicuddy in attendance.  I asked her to do so.  Despite her request that I wait at the front entry, I followed her.  She went into the yard through a back door.  Standing at a picture window, I scanned the cluster of women seated on lawn chairs.  Laura Voysey was nowhere in sight.  My mind raced at the thought I had somehow missed her slipping away.

As I turned to leave, the muffled sound of a toilet flushing came to me.  Then a door opened and closed down a hall.  In the next moment, my prey walked past me on her way to the flora-loving crowd.  I pressed close to the window to avoid her getting a good look at my face. I stayed long enough to watch Mrs. Voysey take a seat in the yard.  At the same time, I saw the maid returning to the house. 

That was sufficient for me.  I didn’t wait and beat a hasty retreat.

I figured I might better spend the rest of the afternoon doing something else.  Besides, I didn’t want to get braced by another copper for loitering on a residential street in my car.  The folks in the highbrow community, which included politicians and prominent business people, drew a lot of water.  The bulls looked out for their interests.

*  *  *

My office telephone was ringing as I got to the door. I managed to make it inside and answer it before the caller gave up. It was Ted Voysey.  “Glad I caught you, Gil,” he whispered through the wire.  “Listen, it’s regarding those unexplained vanishings we discussed earlier.  I looked back at my desk calendar, where I’d recently began making notes to myself.  They’re cryptic, so, if you-know-who came across them, she won’t understand their gist.  In addition, under the pretext of planning a luncheon event for my wife, I spoke with Fiona, our housekeeper, who’s been with me a number of years.  She agreed the disappearances were always on Wednesdays, but not every Wednesday.  I wanted to get word to you as soon as possible.  It’s been a little over two weeks since her last Judge Crater routine.”

“They’re cryptic, so, if you-know-who came across them, she wouldn’t understand their gist.”

“That’s fine.  Thanks for the information.  I tracked the lady to her garden club meeting this afternoon.”

“Yeah, I was afraid that could happen.  She’s back home.  Sorry for the day’s wild goose chase.  At least now you have an idea of when your efforts might get serious,” he let loose an audible, grim sigh.

“Just so you know, I’ll probably keep tabs on her, regardless of the past events.  Situations such as this are not necessarily something you can set your clock or your calendar by.  Besides, I have to justify my fee somehow,” I chuckled, trying to lighten the moment.

My effort didn’t take.  “Sure thing,” he muttered in a voice that was hollow and without energy.  We disconnected.

Despite the information, I made plans to shadow the lovely Mrs. Voysey until she led me to an extramarital encounter.  Trailing her over the following fourteen days, I drew goose eggs.  She had her Tuesday morning bridge clubs, a few trips to their country club for luncheons and a tennis match, and one of her biweekly garden association soirees.  Oh, and an unexpected meeting of the library board.  The way she drove to the gathering, it must have been an emergency.  Perhaps the Dewey Decimal cards, the innovator of which had died in only the last year and a half, had been shuffled by a reading room ne’er-do-well.  I didn’t bother to inquire.

*  *  *

In the middle of my second week on the case, my client telephoned to see what progress I’d made.  I set forth what few facts I had to that point.  He said he understood and advised he’d drop a check in the mail for my next two weeks’ fee. 

The third week of my assignment was the charm.  It was Wednesday morning, around three hours after Ted departed their residence, when the wifey appeared at the street behind the wheel of her new Essex Terraplane.  By that length of time on the job, I’d gotten a handle on the usual direction my subject took from her home.  A trip to the garden society, the golf club, the library or the city required a left turn from their driveway.   I parked accordingly to avoid the U-turns.  The bridge group get-togethers met at different homes, so those routes of travel varied.  Anyway, on this day I was sitting pretty when she drove off.  I ditched my newspaper, tossed my half-smoked cigarette, and cranked the LaSalle, giving her a block head start.

Driving along streets washed clean by the recent rains, Laura motored her way to Broad Street, the major thoroughfare separating the north and south sides of our municipality.  There, she turned west.  Her big blue bus was easy to stay with, even in city traffic.  Three blocks ahead of the intersection with Market Street, she swerved into a parking lot.  Luckily, I came across a fella pulling out of a space nearby.  I knew the place she’d entered was enclosed by inaccessible buildings.  So she had to come back in my direction.  I sat and watched.  After a minute, she appeared on the sidewalk and walked west.  I rolled out of the LaSalle and kept pace a distance behind her.  

I had no trouble keeping my pigeon in sight, even among the crowds along Broad.  Aside from the tight-fitting blue number she wore, Laura Voysey was taller than every woman and most of the men on the street.  Part of the reason was the matching high heels she walked in.  Regardless, the lady was a real darb, a stiletto in a throng of flats.  I was half a block behind her when she reached the junction of Broad and Market.  The skirt halted at the crosswalk for a traffic signal.  I ankled into the glass embrasure of a department store where I could keep an eye on her.  She fidgeted nervously.

When the signal changed, the crowd she was part of moved across Market Street.  Thanks to a lug carrying a sandwich board begging for work and the curious throng he’d drawn, I had to hustle through a horde of pedestrians to make the crossing in time.   

Voysey continued on another two blocks and turned right, traveling north on Presley Avenue.  I hurried to reach the spot where I saw her shapely calf disappear into the side entrance of the Bixby Hotel.  The Bixby was an older inn, but clung desperately to an elegance from bygone years. As time had marched on, the establishment’s reputation eroded with age, as had its amenities.  It was what some might call a middle-grade hotel: first-class prices, third-class service.

I hurried to reach the spot where I saw her shapely calf disappear into the side entrance of the Bixby Hotel. 

My prey was either being canny or cautious in her movements.  Exactly which one was a toss-up.  I nonchalantly pushed through the brass-edged glass doors.  Laura was walking across the hobby’s worn maroon carpet to the registration desk.  While she talked in subdued tones with the clerk, I eyed postcards on a rack standing next to a big bronze mailbox mounted on the front wall.  As she spoke, Laura kept touching her wedding ring with her fingertips.  Was it a self-conscious manifestation of the betrayal she was about to commit?  Or was the woman debating whether to remove the symbol of her status?  

The doll face finished and proceeded to the elevator.  I followed and waited behind her for the car.  She turned halfway around to sneak a peek at me.  To avoid eye contact, I wheeled and pretended to be admiring etched glass figures of sailing ships, lighted softly from behind, on the opposite wall.  When the lift opened, a young man in the same brass-buttoned tunic and pillbox hat worn by the bellhops murmured in monotone, “Going up.  Mind your step.”

The lady boarded.  I did likewise and moved to the back of the car, again to be behind the only other passenger.  When the boy droned a request for floor destinations, Laura told him the fourth.  I added the seventh level.  During the ride, she asked him which direction from the elevator she would find room four-seventeen.  He explained briefly.  Meanwhile, I used the opportunity to admire the figure of my client’s wife, shown to its fullest glory under a smart hat that was color-coordinated with her dress.  I could see why the automobile dealer didn’t want to lose her.

At the woman’s destination, the operator announced it and opened the doors.  My chinch marched out, turned left, and moved along the hall.  As the kid started to close up, I stopped him.  Shoving a buck in his hand, I stepped into the corridor just as she disappeared around a turn in the passageway.  I veered right to throw the boy off.  I didn’t need him running his yap on her return trip that I’d been sniffing after her.  The young man grumbled something at me as the elevator closed, but I missed it.  When the lift was gone, I doubled back.

I crept to the corner, glimpsed beyond it, and found Laura knocking on a pastel-green door.  In no time, it opened.  She entered.  I walked to the entrance to four-seventeen.  Despite having heard her say the room number, I needed to see for myself where she went, considering the conniving way I thought she was acting.  A person may give me, even if inadvertently, the salient points as they know them, but I still want to go over pertinent ground myself and get the information firsthand.  There was no noise coming from inside.  I moved away.

Rather than deal with the guy on the elevator again, I dropped back down to the lobby using the stairs.  At the registration desk, I buttonholed the clerk, who wore a name tag reading “Kirk,” and palmed a police detective’s badge at him.  The thing was something I’d picked up along the way.  It was a medallion from Oklahoma City, but if I held it just right in my hand, I could cover up the town’s name with my fingers.  That and projecting authority usually got me what I needed.   He smiled and asked what he could do for me.  I tucked the buzzer away and requested to see the hotel’s register.  There was no sense in giving up a room number if I didn’t have to.  With less of a grin, he slid the guest book across the marble counter.  He slouched nearby. 

I started with that day and ran my finger up the page.  They had registered the accommodation in question that morning to a man named Jim Lassiter.  Was that merely an interesting coincidence?  Jim Lassiter was the main character in Zane Grey’s Riders of the Purple Sage.  I’d read the book when I was a boy.  They’d brought it to the silver screen with Tom Mix in a silent moving picture several years earlier.  The flicker was good, but I enjoyed the author’s writing more.  As I recalled, Gary Cooper had a part in the film. 

If Laura thought she was in love or was simply in lust with the mug she was doing the horizontal rumba with, she likely didn’t care what his name was.  To throw off Kirk, who hovered like a vulture, I pretended to search the entries for the previous two days.

When I looked up from the book, he was right there, eager.  “Find what you’re looking for?” he asked, beaming.

“Nah.  Neither the hooligan we’re after nor any of his known aliases are among your guests.  And he’d have registered in the last three days.”  The man’s shoulders drooped unhappily.  “Thanks anyway.  Well,” I sighed, “I need to call the station house.”

“You can use our telephone,” he offered, pointing with his square chin to the thing.

“No thanks.  I’ll spend a nickel in one of your booths.”  I chuckled, “Besides, I want a bit of privacy when I deliver the bad news to the chief.”

The young man shrugged his disappointment and moved on to something else.  I walked across the timeworn lobby to a support column.  Using the pillar for cover, I took in the reception area.  After a brief period, the registration fella disappeared through a door beside the numbered cubbyholes on the wall.  I made a beeline back to the counter.  I picked up one of the inn’s envelopes and a sheet of their stationery set aside for guests lying there.  After writing “Jim Lassiter, Room 417–Personal” on the outside and stuffing the folded notepaper inside, I sealed it and dropped it on the marble work surface for the counterman to find. 

Then, I walked to the hotel’s newsstand.  With my eyes fixed on the registration area, I grabbed the first magazine I could reach without really looking at it.  I paid the girl, who shot me an odd expression.  As I turned to go to a heavy, overstuffed chair in the lobby, Mrs. Voysey emerged from the elevator.  It had barely been ten minutes since she’d disappeared into her lover’s room.  If they were having a physical relationship, her new beau was a speed merchant in the art form.  She bustled out through the hotel doors to the sidewalk rather quickly, seeming distraught.  The clerk returned to the desk, found the envelope, and, with a puzzled expression, put it in a room’s mail pigeonhole.  I made a mental note of which it was.

It had barely been ten minutes since she’d disappeared into her lover’s room.

It wasn’t until I was seated in a chair partly hidden behind a column that I realized I’d picked up a copy of Good Housekeeping.  The women’s magazine explained the look from the gal at the newsstand.  Anyway, I used the thing for cover and was going through a few possibilities in my mind when a man came off the lift and strode to the front desk.  As he was checking out, the counter clerk removed my “message” from the room’s slot and handed it to him.  The fella read the outside of the envelope.  He turned and scanned the lobby carefully.  Cigarette smoke drifted up into his squinting eyes.

From behind the mag, I got a good look at his pan beneath a full head of ginger hair.  He had an athletic build on a frame just over six feet tall, packed into a brown suit that needed pressing.  I put him at around thirty-five or thirty-six years of age.  Turning back to finish his business, he opened the envelope and unfolded its contents.  After speaking to Kirk in hushed tones, he shook his nut decisively and crumbled the papers in his hand.  He held them out to the hotel employee.  The latter took them and tossed them to an unseen wastebasket somewhere beside him.  Lassiter, who I noted had no baggage, then donned his fedora and sauntered across to and out the side door.

Now I had the answer to who Laura Voysey was seeing, but wasn’t quite certain why they were meeting.  Something just didn’t add up.  When in doubt, bird-dog them.  A dozen seconds later, I dropped the magazine onto the chair and pursued this unknown guy. 

Pausing to light a cigarette outside, I caught sight of him where he’d crossed the street and was strolling north on Presley Avenue.  I casually did the same.  Several times over the next few blocks, my quarry stopped, cut his eyes behind him as he lit gaspers or studied reflections in storefront windows to see whether he was being followed.  The crowded sidewalk was to my advantage.  I kept people between us without losing him and pretended to window shop, turned and lit cigarettes, or engaged someone with a brief request for directions.  He was pretty cagey.  Somehow, I escaped his notice.

At one point, the brown-suited villain abruptly pivoted and retraced his steps, glaring at those he met.  I quickly stepped into a convenient tobacco joint to avoid his suspicious eyes.  It was in that moment, I noticed a fella across the street whose erratic motions caught my attention.  When he seemed to realize Jim’s intent in going back over his route, the third man suddenly ducked into a store’s recessed doorway.  There, he stood on one foot and then the other and cautiously ogled my prey.   

When Lassiter reversed his course and returned to his northerly trek on Presley, the twitchy new arrival matched his actions on the opposite sidewalk.  From the way the stranger acted, I figured he hadn’t tumbled to me.  I stopped momentarily to set fire to a fag while I sized him up.  He was youngish, of slightly less than average height.  With hands that fretted nervously, the man looked to be somewhere in his mid-twenties and sported a shiny blue serge suit that bagged at the knees. 

While observing this amateur gumshoe, I continued to tail my objective.   By this time, maintaining a low-profile presence was becoming harder: the sidewalk crowds thinned the farther we walked from the main downtown district.   Once, when my mark stopped dead still, the mug on the other side of the road jumped behind a telephone booth.  He labored strenuously to stay out of our sitting duck’s sight.  The guy was more cloak than dagger.  And not much of that.

When Laura’s supposed lover made a left turn at the corner of Washington Boulevard, the newcomer dashed across the thoroughfare to the building there, pressing himself against it.  I stopped to see what would happen next.  He peeped beyond the edge, then disappeared around it. 

By the time I got to the intersection and glimpsed my companions from the cover of a shop’s corner, the ginger-headed malefactor had crossed over to the other side of Washington.  The third fella mirrored his movements from my side of the road.  While eying the mysterious stranger, I resumed tracking the goon who was around two-thirds of a block ahead of me.  My co-stalker was half that.  Along the way, we passed my office building at the junction of Washington and Orchard Street.   Shortly after that, the lug the pair of us were skulking turned right onto Fremont Street.  Several doors from the corner, Jim walked in to a poolroom.  His two “shadows” remained outside, waiting patiently.  Okay, I waited calmly.  The guy in the blue suit stood in the doorway of a haberdashery across the avenue and continued to wring his hands. 

After a brief time, Lassiter reappeared and resumed his journey north on Fremont.  I wasn’t certain what business he’d had in the poolhall, but I knew it to be a place you could put a bet down on a bobtail or a prizefight.  With me continuing to bring up the rear of our little parade, we traveled several more blocks before my redheaded pigeon mounted the steps of a two-storied frame house.  They had converted the structure into apartments.  It was across the way from Roland’s Funeral Home.  Old man Roland, his son, and brother were standing out front waiting for somebody to die.  The blue suit still hadn’t piped to my presence.  While the sloppy sleuth took a position on the corner, I ambled over to the Rolands for a chat. 

In my younger days, I’d played baseball with the son, Johnny.  He had been a heck of a catcher for our team.  His old man had helped us out with equipment.  The boy used to scare the hell out of his teammates with his stories about sleeping in the same room with dead people.  Johnny was a good guy, but could be a little creepy now and then.

The boy used to scare the hell out of his teammates with his stories about sleeping in the same room with dead people. 

While I ran that string out as long as possible, Jim trotted down the steps and again walked north on Fremont Street.  I waited until the blue serge suit edged past, then resumed my position in the procession.  Half a block later, Laura’s friend entered a grease-joint.  The rube between us slammed to a stop and looked helpless.  Glancing at my strap watch, I figured my current target was in for a late lunch or an early supper.  I strolled by the hash house’s window and snuck a peek.  The lummox’s hatless head of red hair was sticking up over the top of a booth partition, as he studied a menu.  He was sitting by himself.

Estimating I had around half an hour and aiming to take advantage of the situation, I hustled the block back to the rooming house Lassiter had entered.  Inside, I found it was a four-unit apartment building with two up and two down.  A faint smell of fried food and dusty rooms hung in the air.  Nowhere was there any indication of the tenants’ names or even which units were occupied.  I walked the length of the central hallway to no great benefit.  Just as I was going to knock on doors, I heard the muffled murmur of a radio coming from behind a door under the staircase to the second floor.  I knocked.  When no answer came, I rapped harder on the door’s panel.  A man’s sharp voice called out for me to come in.

I opened the door to stairs leading to a basement bedsit.  It was home, I assumed, to either the landlord or the janitor.  At the bottom of the steps, I found an older man, with a florid complexion and stringy gray hair, sitting in a Boston rocker with a crocheted antimacassar over its back.  The thing creaked monotonously as he moved back and forth with vigor.  The room was sparsely decorated. 

Other than a floor lamp with a red shirred shade standing beside the chair, the only light in the place was the radio’s dim panel, from which a preacher thundered fire and brimstone.  The fella gazed at me with uninterested eyes, then surged from his seat and met me across the room.  “Whaddya want, mister?” he asked as he snapped his gnarled fingers impatiently.  The tall guy seemed imbued with a sense of urgency he wanted to get others to share.  He pulled anxiously at a mustache that was almost white.

I flashed the half of my “badge” I wanted him to see and advised him I had to insure confidentiality.   After gawking at the shield for a minute, he looked at me and waggled his head.  I asked who he was.  He spoke, but the radio sermon drowned out his words.  I reached around him and snapped off the receiver.  Apparently stunned by my action, he glared at me as if I’d committed a cardinal sin.  He recovered enough to identify himself as Algernon Nash, the building’s resident landlord and super.  His eyes were clouded with uncertainty.  I told there was no cause for alarm, but I needed information on his tenants.

He began by reiterating some of what I’d already realized.  There were four furnished apartments in the structure.  An older couple named Leary and their grandchild occupied the top unit on the right.  The other second-floor flat was home to sisters Virginia and Faye Gilbert, sweet young ladies who worked as telephone operators.  The first-floor residence, directly over Nash’s, was home to an Aaron Bunim.  Algernon didn’t know what the tenant did for a living, but told me he had a lot of visitors. 

He didn’t need to tell me.  I knew “Pinkie” Bunim to be a small-time, but prosperous, fence tied to a local gambling ring.  The nefarious man was a supplier of illicit items, including untraceable guns, to the criminal element in our city.  Frankly, it surprised me to learn he lived in such humble surroundings.  The scoundrel I’d been watching was not Aaron.  But he could have been calling on the hooligan when I saw him enter the building earlier.

A lug named Raymond Houges, who the landlord thought to be a traveling salesman because of his frequent absences, rented the last unit.  Algernon’s answer to my question had taken longer than expected.  By my estimation, I was running out of time before the ginger-haired punk finished his meal and returned home.  I asked the old man to describe this Houges fellow.  His description fit my pigeon to a tee.  Satisfied, I thanked Nash for his help and again impressed on him the need for secrecy.  He said he understood.  I took my leave as he shambled his way back to the rocker.

When I passed through the front door, I saw Lassiter on the sidewalk a block away, headed toward me.  Beyond him, the blue-suited man followed along the pavement on the other side of the street.  I scrambled down the steps and moved in the opposite direction of the approaching men.  After a short distance, I ducked into a driveway between two houses and stood where I could observe Jim’s approach.

He went into his apartment building.  The new interloper appeared uncertain what to do at that point.  After nearly fifteen minutes of eyeballing the place while surveying the street and shifting his weight between feet nervously, he turned and walked south on Fremont.  Based on the “schedule” of Laura’s rendezvous with her lover that her husband had given me, I counted on having at least a week until their next encounter.  In the interim, I had to crab who this third mug was, what he had to do with Lassiter, and if there was any connection between him and Mrs. Voysey’s circumstances.

When the skittish rogue passed my location, I dropped in behind him at a reasonable distance.  Shortly, he turned off Fremont and stopped in at a cheap diner on Wyngate Avenue.  Through the window, I saw him take a table and give his order to a waitress.  I hadn’t eaten since early that morning, so I went inside.  The dump was a narrow boxcar-like room with a dozen stools at a bar facing the grill.  Several wooden tables with mismatched chairs sat under the windows along the wall opposite.  

The dump was a narrow boxcar-like room with a dozen stools at a bar facing the grill. 

Over time, grease-soaked air had changed the color of the splotchy walls and the once blue linoleum floor.  Tattered menus were lying here and there on the counter and the tabletops.  A “cash only” sign next to one announcing “no spitting” and a calendar from a local filling station were the greasy spoon’s only wall decorations.  The thing still had the month of March displayed.

I climbed on a stool at the counter where I could ogle the gatecrasher in a mirror, but he couldn’t see me. There I got my first good, close-up look at him. He was thin, swart, and dark-eyed.

  After looking over a menu, I decided I was going to die of something sometime anyway, so I settled on a hamburger sandwich and coffee.  As I ate, my patsy sullenly consumed a meager meal.  If I’d had any notion he wasn’t a party to this little vignette intent on harm to my client’s home life, I might have felt sorry for him.

He finished his repast and lingered over a cup of joe.  When I sensed he was preparing to leave, I paid for my culinary delight and left the place.  Outside, I stopped on the sidewalk to light a coffin nail.  In a matter of seconds, he appeared and sidled along Wyngate.  For the moment, I was content to tail him.  Four doors from the diner, he turned in to a building.  I took up the pursuit.

A quick prowl revealed the blue serge suit lived in the only room over a bakery shop, which occupied the ground floor of a small two-story structure.  It was sandwiched between a pair of slightly taller buildings.  The bed-sitter was accessed from the street through an unlocked door leading to a narrow stairway and running along the side the bakeshop and ending at his apartment.  The business’s hours of operation were hand painted on the window.  I glanced at my watch.  They’d be closing within a half hour.  Not wanting to arouse the shopkeeper’s concern should my meeting with the resident upstairs become “noisy,” I paced the sidewalk and smoked a couple of butts.

*  *  *

When the shop’s proprietor flipped the sign hanging in front from “OPEN” to “CLOSED,” switched off the lights, and left, I was ready to learn more from the mysterious stranger.  I climbed the stairs and knocked.  A chair grated on the floor.  A shadow passed across the light under the doorsill.  Then a thin, high-pitched voice called through to me, “Yes, who is it?”

“I’m Detective Tanner.  I have a few questions for you concerning a friend of yours.”  Dead air hung between us momentarily.

A key fumbled in the lock and the door opened a two-inch crack.  “Can I see your credentials?”

By this point, I was fed up beyond endurance with this whole unexpected turn of events.  Though I didn’t want to hassle an innocent party, I hadn’t figured this yokel that way.  I needed answers about this setup and wanted them quick.  The time for niceties had passed.  I forced the door open and shoved the lug back into his squalid, one-room mansion, sparsely fitted out with rickety furniture.  Daily newspapers were spread across the rug, which missed being new by around twenty years.

“You’ve got plenty of nerve!” he protested, leaning against a scarred bureau with the drawers at various stages of closed.  “Leave!  Get out now!”

I pulled him to me and silenced him with a hard shake that slammed his mouth shut.  When he started to speak again, I slapped him across his boyish face with an open hand.  The blow cracked like a rifle blast.  His mitt shot to the offended cheek, and he flopped into a chair covered in tattered paisley brocade, sobbing.  He looked at me with pleading eyes and begged me not to hit him anymore.  I put a hand on his shoulder and assured him I wouldn’t if he answered my questions.  He gave me an up-from-under look and nodded weakly.

He looked at me with pleading eyes and begged me not to hit him anymore. 

“What’s your name?”

“Bruce Parker,” he whispered.

“So, Bruce,” I pressed him, “what’s your connection with Jim Lassiter?”

“I don’t know any Jim Lassiter,” he croaked low through his tears.

“Okay, then what about Raymond Houge, or whatever the hell you call the guy you were trailing earlier today?”

“Oh, him.”  He looked up at me with a startled expression.  “How do you–?”  The fellow cut off his question, paused thoughtfully, and answered, “His name is Richard Haralson.  At least that’s what he called himself in Chicago.”

“How did you know him in Chicago?”

The young man explained that his widowed mother had run a rooming house for women in The Windy City.  But her clientele differed from the norm.  The vast majority of the women who stayed there were pregnant.  They were usually in the city for one of three reasons.  Some came to have an illegitimate baby away from their hometown’s prying eyes, a few to have the kid and put it up for adoption, and others to have a termination of the pregnancy.  Parker’s Boardinghouse was known for its ability to meet their needs on the quiet.  The owner had a few contacts in the medical profession who could make things happen for her guests, despite the ethical or legal implications.

According to Bruce, one woman who stayed at the lodgings had been a girlfriend of this goon Haralson.  He showed up shortly after she did, but steered clear of Mrs. Parker, who was very protective of her “guests.”  He said he soon became aware of Haralson’s presence.  Nevertheless, he never told his mom.  The boy quickly realized the stranger was a grifter, operating various cons around the city.  After his sweetheart had had her procedure and departed, Haralson made himself known to the landlady without telling her why he was there.  

Eventually, the “crumb” began running around with Mrs. Parker, even though she was a few years older than him.  By that time, the fiendish redhead had glommed onto the woman’s racket.  And he’d learned she maintained detailed journals and records of the girls who resided with her, including medical files.  In addition, Mother Parker kept information about their backgrounds.  This latter knowledge came to her through casual conversations and by rummaging through their luggage, belongings, and handbags, unbeknownst to them.  Her boy had helped her in this endeavor.  They locked the documents away for safekeeping.  Only the mother and son knew where they were stored.  Bruce couldn’t tell me any particular reason for this “bookkeeping” by her.

When Mrs. Parker died unexpectedly of what Bruce termed “complications from diabetes,” he was devastated.  He told me he’d been unusually close to her.  Perhaps being a momma’s boy explained the touch of femininity he displayed during his recitation of the story.  After his mother’s death, he learned she’d mortgaged the rooming house to the hilt.  The woman had left nothing for him.  He was destitute.  Then Haralson stepped in with a money-making proposal for the young man.  With the material in the old lady’s files, he suggested they trace the women and learn their circumstances.  If they were of a social standing that release of the info would cause them injury and were able to pay to stop such publication, the two men could “obtain”-Lassiter’s term-cash from them.  With no other prospects, young Parker agreed.

My companion admitted he had stayed in Chicago initially while his “partner” took to the road with the data on several likely candidates for their scheme.  He promised to send money back.  Parker said his associate had a keen ability to locate the women, even if they’d married or, in at least one instance, changed their name, as long as they were in their hometown’s vicinity. 

But soon after, Bruce realized Richard had been handing him “chicken feed” while keeping the “big dough” for himself.  When Haralson telephoned for material on the next round of “clay pigeons,” his stooge picked two women who lived in our city.  As was their custom, with no other address to use, he sent the letter with their pertinent information to his colleague via general delivery here. 

That served the young man’s purpose well.   His chum had to appear at the post office to receive the thing, and the kid was waiting to get a line on his compatriot and pursue him.   Apparently, because they could not come up with a large sum all at once, Richard was squeezing money from the two skirts over a period of several months.  He had not known Parker was watching him.  The younger conspirator was building up the courage to face Haralson when I appeared on the scene.  “I’m not the chump he thinks I am!” he hissed between his teeth angrily.

With that, he retrieved a large carryall sitting against a wall.  He tossed it up on the bed and opened it.  I walked to the suitcase.  The bag held a voluminous amount of paper and several journals.  “This is the lot of it, detective,” he declared, scooping up two handfuls of the documents.  “Everything my mother gathered during her years running the boardinghouse.  I decided to burn it after….”  He looked at me plaintively, licking his dry lips, “Am I under arrest?” 

I continued playing my “official” role.  “That’s not for me to say just yet.  We’ll have to–”

Bruce’s pan twisted in panic and his body trembled.  His voice filled the room with a high, frenzied shriek.  “I can’t go to jail!  I’ll die!”  With both hands, Parker swept papers from the travel bag up to my face as he broke away and ran out of the apartment and down the stairs. 

Being on the opposite side of the bed from the door, I couldn’t reach him before he bolted.   I chased after him, pleading with him to stop.  He disappeared out onto the sidewalk.  A high-pitched scream and the screech of tires came to me.  Their squeal stopped just after a heavy thump echoed off the nearby buildings.  As I reached the bottom of the stairs, I saw a large furniture truck stopped in the roadway.  It had not come to rest until after the full load of its wheels had passed over the body of Bruce Parker.  One look left no doubt the impact had crushed him to death.  The moving van’s driver swung down from his rig and several people boiled out of an apartment building across the street.  The small throng made straight for the lifeless frame. 

I didn’t need to get tied up with coppers investigating a pedestrian fatality at that moment.  Plus, I needed to clear up a mess in the room upstairs before the anybody else got to it.  Turning on my heels, I ascended the stairs three at a time.  I gathered the journals and sundry papers Parker had tossed at me and loaded them into the carryall.

With the suitcase in hand, I eased back downstairs and stood motionless at the door, stalking.  As expected, the people crowded the battered corpse.  The truck driver was loudly pleading his case that “the jerk” had run into the street without looking and he couldn’t avoid hitting him.  I pulled my fedora low over my face, stepped outside, and headed for the nearest intersection at a quick pace, but not so fast as to garner attention. 

As expected, the people crowded the battered corpse. 

Having somehow escaped notice, I skidded around the corner and slowed to a walk.  Half a block away, I noticed a man park a car, get out, and amble across the sidewalk to a café.  After a deep breath, I straightened my hat and strolled to the coffee shop.  I entered, sat down, and ordered a cup of java.  In a little while, there were sirens.  I finished my joe, asked for a refill, and drank it with a cigarette.

*  *  *

I flagged a hack to return to my LaSalle, still parked on Broad Street.  As I rode, I put pieces together.  So, Laura Voysey had been one of Mrs. Parker’s roomers at some point.  What the exact purpose of her stay there was of less significance than her current predicament.  And Lassiter-I was going with the first name I knew him by-wasn’t her lover.  He was just a cheap chiseler.  I decided to forgo calling her husband.  He didn’t necessarily need to hear all the facts from me, and my priority was putting a tag on the ginger-headed miscreant.

After I collected my boiler, I drove to the blackmailer’s apartment house and parked where I had a good view of it.  After a time, he moved across a window that faced Fremont Street, so I knew he was in.  Not knowing the setup in his flat, I wanted to meet him elsewhere.  He didn’t emerge from the building that evening.  I settled in for a night in my car. 

*  *  *

Sometime after two in the morning, according to my luminous dial strap watch, I drifted off to sleep.  A blaring automobile horn early that morning interrupted my fitful slumber.  When I lifted my hat from my eyes, I saw a taxi waiting at the curb by Jim’s apartment house.  Around that time, the man himself came trotting down the steps.  Apparently, he was either flush or was in too big a hurry to walk to his destination.  The cab motored toward downtown.  I pulled away and tailed discreetly.

Eventually, they stopped at the Sumner Arms Inn on the south side of the city.  The passenger climbed out of the hack, moved across the sidewalk, and entered the hotel.  By the time I found a place to park and got to the hotel’s vestibule, my prey was nowhere in sight.  The Sumner was an older but refined establishment, so I took a cautious approach with the desk clerk.  From the array of names Parker’s crony favored, I tried the moniker he’d used at the Bixby.  On the pretext of meeting an old classmate for breakfast, I asked if Jim Lassiter had registered yet.  The counterman informed me he had just checked in.  He offered to telephone his room, one-twelve, for me.  I declined, saying he’d be back down soon and I’d wait for him in the lobby.

At the newsstand, I bought a magazine from which to observe the hotel’s comings and goings.  This time, I looked before I paid and got The Saturday Evening Post.  I crossed the vestibule, took a plant, and watched.  After a quarter of an hour, a vaguely familiar woman came in, checked at the desk, then continued to the elevator.  In a sudden burst of inspiration, I trailed her.  Sure enough, she knocked on the door to room one-twelve.  I returned to the atrium and my mag. 

Fifteen minutes later, the lady stepped off the lift and left the hotel.  It was then I recalled where I’d seen her.  She was the dark-haired, beautiful daughter of a prominent north side political boss, who was more feared than respected in our city.  With a striking resemblance to the moving picture star Raquel Torres, she’d been featured at a debutant ball here several years earlier.  In addition, the dailies had had photographs of her at her father’s side a few times during this last election cycle.  I guesstimated if I searched Mrs. Parker’s papers, I’d find her name.  

This was stacking up to a regular pattern for the extortionist or a modus operandi, as my copper pals would term it.  Apparently, he’d check into a hotel in the morning where he’d have a pre-arranged meeting with his victim.  Or possibly he’d call them and tell them where to contact him.   That way, the women wouldn’t know much ahead of time where they were to rendezvous and had no idea where he lived.  He had his marks meet him at different hotels for the payoff.

I waited.

An hour passed with no sign of Lassiter.  I went to the desk and requested the fella phone his room.  There was no answer.  A quick trip to his door likewise brought no response to my knock.  I stopped a passing bellhop and inquired whether there was another means of leaving the hotel without going through the main entrance.  He gave me an odd look and said he didn’t know who I was to be asking.  I retrieved a fin, held the Lincoln side out close to his puss, and asked if recognized that mug.  He reached for the bill.  As he tugged on the thing, I clutched it tight and repeated my question.  With a sardonic sidewise glance, he snickered, “Sure.  I’ll show ya.”

When I released the fiver, he pocketed it and related the hotel had two guest elevators and a service elevator which, he informed me, required a key to access.  Then the kid led me to the latter at the end of a far hallway.  He unlocked it and pressed the call button.  While we waited, the brash bellboy clarified the thing went to the hotel’s basement and heating plant, but we only wanted to take to it a back hall on the ground floor.  

In that corridor, my companion pointed to a door at one end and stated it was a passageway to the lobby.  At the other end was an exit which opened to the alley running beside the inn.  They kept it locked and only the manager had the key.  He chuckled, telling me too many bellboys were using it to sneak smokes or a drink when they were supposed to be at a post near the registration desk.  Bearing a sly grin, he then showed me the back entrance to the hotel barbershop. 

With the help of any house porter who had a key, he said you could go through the thing and out to the sidewalk with no one being the wiser.  That was the case, even if the shop was closed for the day.  And most of his pals had keys.  After he denied having helped anyone make a surreptitious departure that morning, I thanked him and crept through the door into the lobby. 

On the way out of the hotel, I picked up the City Edition of The Morning Star.  In my car, I browsed the rag.  A report of Parker’s death was on the front page of the second section, below the fold.  The cops had identified him from the papers found on his body.

*  *  *

As I drove toward Lassiter’s Fremont Street apartment building, I rubbed my unshaven chin in frustration and considered my options.  For the time being, I’d lost track of the criminal hounding Mrs. Voysey.  Finding him was at the top of my list.  Perhaps he’d returned to his flat.  Like it or not, I was going to check and, if necessary, confront him there about leaving Laura alone or else face the law.  Of course, it was a bluff, but I had the bulge of the suitcase of evidence sitting beside me on the seat.

I eased the LaSalle to a stop at the building on Fremont and cut the motor.  The rain that had started during the drive had subsided to a drizzle.  I checked the magazine in my gun and slipped it back into its holster.  From the passenger-side floorboard, I grabbed my sap and dropped it into a coat pocket for quick access.

At Lassiter’s bedsit, I knocked.  After a second, I rapped harder.  For a minute or two, I listened.  The only sound was someone across the hall, presumably Pinkie Bunim, coughing.   There were no signs of life reaching me from inside.  I glanced at the lock, smiled, and pulled a leather keyholder from a pocket.  Using one of its instruments, I snicked the lock, pushed the door open, and stirred around its edge, closing it behind me.  My pigeon wasn’t home.  I couldn’t re-secure the apartment on inside with the pick.  So, I needed to be prepared in case he returned.

I glanced at the lock, smiled, and pulled a leather keyholder from a pocket.

The apartment was littered with unappealing furniture resting on a brown carpet.  Dirty lace curtains hung in the windows.  Clothing was scattered here and there.  The place wasn’t top notch, but it was an enormous step up from the joint his junior associate had called home.  I gave the space a good going over and struck pay dirt in a dresser drawer. 

Tucked beneath some BVDs was an envelope addressed to “Richard Haralson, care of General Delivery” at our main post office.  I removed the correspondence and read the information Parker had sent to his partner.  The margins had notes in a different handwriting regarding the two women in our city.  Reading his scrawl, I had to admit the troublemaker had been relentless and thorough in his efforts to unearth them.  I slipped the letter into a pocket.  The rest of my search produced nothing of value to help locate Jim or to advance my investigation.

Back in the hall, I couldn’t relock the door.  I figured Bruce’s cohort already thought someone was shadowing him.  His clandestine departure from the Sumner Arms Inn was evidence of that.  If he needed any further convincing, the unlocked door he’d find at his apartment should do the trick.

*  *  *

It was just after one in the afternoon when I settled into my office chair. I reached for the telephone and began dialing the numbers Ted Voysey had given me.  On the second try, I got him on the blower. 

“Thank goodness you called, Gil!  I’ve been trying to reach you.”

“I was out working on your case.  Why?  What’s the matter?”

“Something is happening with my wife,” he gasped.  There was a pause on the other end of the line.  I waited.  “I went home for luncheon today.  While we were eating, Laura received a telephone call, which she took in another room.  I could hear her talking in whispers, but I couldn’t make out the words.  When she returned to the table, she looked very distraught.”  I imagined the expression I’d seen her wearing when she left the Bixby Hotel yesterday morning.  “She suddenly appeared preoccupied, disturbed.”

“Did you ask her anything?”

“Of course.  Without trying to upset her further, I asked if everything was all right.  She tried to brush it off by saying a friend of hers from the garden society had taken ill and she needed to visit her.  I don’t know most of the women in her club, so I’ve no way of knowing the truth.  When I suggested I go along, she told me the woman was suffering from a female malady, was on a women’s floor at St. Joseph’s Hospital, and couldn’t have male visitors.  I tell you, she was so distressed and adamant in her explanation, I was afraid to press the subject.  You must follow her this evening.  Find out if she’s seeing her lover again.”

I was certain she wasn’t meeting a lover but had a pretty good handle on what was occurring.  “Sure thing, Ted.  Do you know what time she’s leaving?”

“She said she’d be going at seven o’clock.”

“I’ll be waiting for her to drive away from six-thirty on just in case.”

“Please get back to me with what is happening.  This is most unusual.”

“I’ll stay in touch.”  With that, we hung up.

I spent part of the afternoon typing up the notes I had so far on the Voysey situation.  Although my experience had shown blackmailers were rarely violent with their victims, one of my concerns was that Lassiter might feel cornered and react accordingly.  Laura’s safety was my first concern.  Possibly, I could persuade the brute to leave my client’s wife alone.  With that in mind, I decided to stop by a hockshop later.

After a quick shave in my office’s small bathroom, I headed out to pick up a few things I thought I might need during the evening.  My destination was Monk’s Pawnshop, which was in a seedier section of our city.  Monk, owner and operator of the joint, was one of the sleazier inhabitants of the metropolis.  But, as they say, he had his uses.  I parked at the curb in front of his place and went inside.  I bought an .32 caliber revolver and several blank cartridges from the “private stock” in Monk’s backroom and dropped them in a coat pocket.

*  *  *

A few minutes ahead of six-thirty that afternoon found me set up near the Voysey driveway yet again.  The smell of rain was in the air. At seven sharp, the Terraplane with the lady of the house at the wheel appeared.  She turned into the street and drove away from me.  I teased my crate’s motor alive and pulled off after her.  Through a passing downpour, I kept as close as I dared.

The Terraplane made its way to the swank Peacock Lounge, a watering hole near downtown where the swells enjoyed fancy food and a bit of late-night hoofing.  Because of its influential clientele, the nightclub openly served alcohol, not that anyone cared anymore, what with FDR and his promise to end Prohibition now in the White House.  I’d taken women there occasionally when I wanted to make the right impression.  So I knew the layout. 

This place was definitely not St. Joseph’s Hospital.  Unfortunately, the parking lot there was of the valet variety.  I didn’t care to have my heap parked by a kid, then have to wait for it if I needed to leave in a hurry.  I grabbed a spot a half block away and scrambled along the sidewalk through what was now a misty blanket to the lounge’s door.  Under cover of the restaurant’s canopy, the doorman gave me his best mechanical smile as he bid me welcome.

Inside, I surveyed the place.  Laura and Lassiter were sitting across from each other at a table against the far wall, partly hidden by a large potted plant of some sort.  The woman was upset, though she tried not to show it.  The blackmailing bully was smirking like a dance-hall sheik.  I slowly squeezed by their location on my path to a stool at the bar.  They were speaking in low tones.  Her voice was flat and hopeless. 

Laura and Lassiter were sitting across from each other at a table against the far wall, partly hidden by a large potted plant of some sort. 

From my seat, I watched them in the mirror behind the counter.  Laura’s eyes were wide and round, and there was fear in their depths.  When she shook her head faintly, the man leaned toward her and spoke.  He emphasized whatever point he was making by jabbing the table with his forefinger.  His peepers then made a nervous, furtive sweep of the restaurant.  He was on edge, likely because he knew somebody was on to his gambit.  My guess was the penny-ante grifter was trying a final shakedown before he did the big flit.  The question of the moment seemed to be, with him apparently being on guard, how could I get him away from her?

I had another of those sudden inspirations.  Okay, maybe it might be classified as only a thought, but it was worth a try.  Sliding off the seat, I stepped to the end of the bar, where the waiters passed along a short corridor with their dinner orders and loaded trays going to and from the kitchen.  When an empty-handed waiter approached, I stopped him.  “I need a big favor.”

“Yes, sir.  What can I do for you?” he beamed.

I took a sawbuck from my wallet.  “I want you to go tell the gentleman at the table by the huge plant in the corner he has a phone call.  Tell him it’s from a Mister Parker,” I proposed, holding out the bill where he could see it.  “Then lead him back here to the pay station,” I instructed, nodding to the thing hanging nearby on the wall.  “I’ll take care of the rest if you’ll just get the key and open that door to the alley.”

His smile edged away.  “Sorry, but I can’t do that, sir.  I’ll lose my job.” 

“Not if only you and I know about it,” I responded, waving the sawbuck under the guy’s nose, “and I’m not talking.  Anyway, don’t worry.  He’ll not stick around long enough to tell anybody anything, ‘cause he won’t be coming back.”  He swallowed hard.  The blood drained from his face.  I chuckled and flashed my “detective’s badge,” again hiding the town’s name with my fingers.  “Hey, it’s not that serious, son.  He just doesn’t know yet he’s leaving town.  Leaving town,” I repeated, “that’s it.”

He smiled weakly and glanced in the couple’s direction.  “The man in the brown suit?”  I waggled my head.  He reached for the ten bucks.  When he walked to the end of the hall and unlocked the exit, I removed the receiver from the telephone and let it dangle.  As the kid moved past me toward their table, I sat on the barstool closest to the hallway.

The bully’s frayed nerves were on full display when the young man delivered the message.  He shook his head vigorously as he spoke to the waiter, raising his shoulders with his reply.  The kid shrugged more emphatically at his response and said something.  My client’s wife forced a smile.  Again, Jim essayed the room as he left the table and followed my go-between hesitantly.  When the pair passed me, I eased off the stool and tailed them.  The waiter quickly pushed through the kitchen door and disappeared.  My pigeon retrieved the receiver and spoke into it.

He bristled when I shoved the .32 revolver firmly against his spine.  “Keep walking, bub,” I whispered harshly, replacing the phone with my free hand.  Lassiter hesitated.  I smacked him on the back of his head with the gat hard enough to gain his compliance before poking his ribs with the barrel again.  He moved.

 Just outside the door, I quickly frisked him for weapons.  He had none.  I shoved him against the rubbish cans standing against the wall.  He caught hold of a container to keep from falling and pivoted to face me, both hands raised slightly in the universal posture of submission.  A wry grin twisted his somber face.  “What’s all the noise about, Ace?  Can’t my gal and I have a nice, quiet dinner without a punk with a rod getting tough?”

“Drop the veil.  I know everything about you.  Your little play squeezing money of the women in this city is finished.”

The cretin feathered the air with a hand.  “So you’re the jasper who was in my apartment today.  And took the letter from my bureau.”  Despite his physical build, I figured him for a pip-squeak mug.  Almost foppish with no sand for violent stuff.  Only tough with the frails.  I grinned as he snickered, “Hey, everybody’s gotta turn a buck.”  The other man seemed to resign himself to his immediate circumstances.  “What makes my business yours?”  When I didn’t reply, he stuck out his cleft chin and exclaimed, “You can’t go around rousting people!  I’ll call the police!”

“And tell them what?  That a relative of a woman you’ve been blackmailing wanted you dead and hired somebody to kill you?  That’ll put you behind the old eight ball–”

“Kill me?  You can’t be serious!”  His voice edged toward a snarl.  “You won’t kill me!”

“Oh, yeah?  A relation of the bim has hired me to rub you out.  And that’s just what I’m gonna do.  Even if I didn’t fulfill the contract and you talked to the law, I don’t think the cops are that hard up for cases to work on, especially when you admit to a crime.  I’ll never repeat what I’ve just told you.  So you’d likely end up behind bars for five to ten years, with the help of a few prominent political friends of the lady in question.  But it won’t come to that.  I’m gonna bump you off, Lassiter, or whatever your name is.  I already took care of your little friend.  You know, Parker, the one who fed you the information about the woman to begin with.  Now it’s your turn.”

“I’m gonna bump you off, Lassiter, or whatever your name is.  I already took care of your little friend.”

Nothing changed in his eyes.  The thug had a weird curve to his lips that stretched them back against his teeth.  He let loose with a laugh that had a confident, sneering sound. His voice got hard and skeptical.  “Bullshit.”

I pulled the folded newspaper from my coat’s side pocket and tossed it to him.  He looked at it lying on the ground.  “Go ahead.  Read it.  Front page, below the fold, second section.  I shoved your pal in the path of a convenient furniture truck.  Made it look like the accident the paper says it was.”

He picked the daily up, found the article, and skimmed it.  In the alleyway’s tepid light, he appeared to turn ashen.  He stared at me, panic-stricken.  “Look, fella, I shook the dames down for good money!  And they were glad to cough it up!  If you let me go, I’ll cut you in for–”

“What makes you think I’m not getting better dough for a job like this, even if the stiff is a lowlife.”  

“Which woman’s relation hired you?”  Now he was stalling for time, trying to crab his next move.

“Does it matter?  Dead is dead.”

I raised the revolver and slowly pulled the hammer back.  He held a loose hand out defensively.  “Don’t!” he begged.  “Please don’t!”  He managed a half-step forward and toward one of the trash bins.  “Look, I’ll fade!  I’ll find another burg to operate in!  I swear it!” he screamed.  “The broad will never hear from me or see me again!  Please!”  The front of his suit pants developed a large wet spot.  Liquid puddled at his feet.

“So, it’s just not your teeth that are yellow,” I laughed nastily.

Jim’s other hand had come to rest on a trashcan lid during this brief scene.  He suddenly snatched it, hurled it at me, and lunged.  Despite my ducking, the thing crashed into my face and stunned me.  But the blow wasn’t enough to allow the ginger-headed extortionist to cross the distance between us and gain the advantage.  When the grifting goon realized I was holding fast to the gun, he wheeled and skirred down the alley toward the street.  I fired off three of the blank cartridges and, for effect, stomped my feet as if I were chasing him.  My foot clomps echoing off the buildings walls gave added impetus to his effort.  He disappeared into the gathering dusk.  The way the bird was running, I doubted seriously if he’d even go back to the apartment for his clothes.

 I checked the backstreet in both directions and determined the thing was empty.  No witnesses.  Dropping the little handgun into the coat pocket the newspaper had come from, I picked up my hat and straightened my slightly disheveled self up to return to the restaurant.  The alley door was locked, so I made the trek back around to the main entrance and re-entered under the suspicious gaze of the doorman.

*  *  *

Laura Voysey was sitting where Lassiter had left her.  She wore an uncertain countenance.  I dropped into the seat recently vacated by her tormentor.  She appeared dumbfounded.  “Forgive me for being presumptuous, Mrs. Voysey, but I need to speak with you.”  The expression she wore told me that my calling her by name only perplexed her more.  For an interminable moment, no one spoke.  The same young waiter who’d helped me lure my mark to the alley happened by.  I touched his sleeve, and he stopped.  “Say, can I get a Jack Daniels neat?”  He chortled, nodded, and moved toward the bar.  When he brought the nectar, I gulped it down like an aspirin tablet and asked for another.

As he moved away, I shifted in my seat to face the woman across from me.

“I don’t understand.  Where’s Mr. Lassiter?” she asked.

“Would it really break your heart,” I chuckled, “if he disappeared?”  She shifted in her chair.  “You don’t have to answer that.  He won’t be coming back.  I promise.”

“Who are you?  Are you connected with–?”

“Let’s just say I’m a friend.  And, no, I’m not associated with your recent companion in any way.”  The waiter delivered my drink.  I asked Laura if she wanted anything.  She ordered a Manhattan cocktail.  I downed this round a little slower, but still with gusto. 

“I don’t follow any of this tonight.”  Her voice was jerky, uncertain.  “He demanded more money.  This miserable affair is making me feel queasy.”

I leaned over the table, rolling the empty glass between my palms.  “Relax.  Regarding Jim Lassiter, it’s over.”  Relief washed over her face as her eyes watered.  Her drink arrived, and she ordered another for me.  Then, for the first time since I’d seen her in person, a smile drifted across her face.  She dimpled a little when she grinned.  It was nice. 

Laura leaned toward me.  “You’re bleeding,” she whispered.  “From of your mouth.”

I picked up a table knife and used the reflection to see what she was talking about.  Blood oozed from my lip and was crawling down the line at the corner of my mouth.  That damned trashcan lid.  I wiped it away with a napkin.

“I don’t know what Lassiter’s play was,” I lied.  “Don’t care.  My guess is he was shaking you down for some reason.  Perhaps he demanded the money under threat of exposure for something haunting you.”  Her lips parted.  I raised a restraining hand to stop her from speaking.  “The only thing I know is he was trying to do harm to you and your husband.  A man who loves you very much, by the way.  More than any mug I’ve ever seen in love with a woman. 

Her lips parted.  I raised a restraining hand to stop her from speaking. 

“Anyway, Ted hired me to look out for you.  My job was to get Lassiter gone.  I did my part.  It was first suspected you were romantically involved with him.  Now I know you two weren’t having an affair.”  I jerked my head in the direction the hush-money hooligan had departed.  “He’d be fighting out of his weight class to chase after a doll like you.”  It was a salve to her dignity.

“You need to go to your husband.  Trust him.  Tell him the truth, whatever that may be, concerning the thing you’ve been afraid of.”  I reached across the table and patted her arm.  “I’m a pretty good judge of my fellow man.  Nothing you can say to Ted will diminish his devotion to you.  It won’t matter to him.  I’ve never seen a sucker so in love.  The best actor in Hollywood couldn’t pull off the passion he genuinely has for you.

She was on the verge of tears.  “I don’t know.  Did you ever have a shame so great it changed the path you were on?”  She hesitated for a moment, then continued in the same low tone, mumbling, “Damaged goods…,” before her voice trailed off.

I ignored her last words.  “Well, it’s your call.  But you can’t ignore what happened or what Ted thinks may have happened, even if it’s finished.”  She smiled half-heartedly.

*  *  *

Late the next morning, I put my entire report on the Voysey case together to deliver to my client.  Okay, I didn’t include every detail in the account.  I assured him his wife had not had an affair.  What she told him beyond that was her business.  I delivered the thing to him in the service department of his “flagship” dealership.  He was extremely grateful.

*  *  *

Later that night, the smell of rain filled the air again.  I was standing in the alley running behind my apartment building.  Next to me was the burn barrel Mr. Conforti, our building’s super, used.  A blaze was growing as I fed the contents of Bruce Parker’s carryall into it.  As the flames built, a light drizzle began falling.  The drops sizzled as they struck the side of the drum. 

I’m not known as nor will ever be seen as a sentimental lug, but I was having a bout of what my alienist pal might call melancholia as my mind drifted to Laura.   Lassiter had had her so tied up she couldn’t get away.  He was something of a shrike.  He “impaled” Laura on his knowledge of the long, thorny shadows from her past.  Instead of devouring her innards or organs as the bird does, he consumed her guilt financially.  She and all the rest of the women.  Whatever she decided to do, I hoped for the best for the Voysey’s.   ©