Contents

  Cover

  Acclaim for the Work of Erle Stanley Gardner!

  Some Other Hard Case Crime Books you will Enjoy

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter I.

  Chapter II.

  Chapter III.

  Chapter IV.

  Chapter V.

  Chapter VI.

  Chapter VII.

  Chapter VIII.

  Chapter IX.

  Chapter X.

  Chapter XI.

  Chapter XII.

  Chapter XIII.

  Chapter XIV.

  Chapter XV.

  Afterword by Russell Atwood

  Want More Cool & Lam?

  Try These Other Great Detective Novels from Hard Case Crime!

  Shamus Award Winner for Best Original Paperback Novel of the Year

  Acclaim for the Work of

  ERLE STANLEY GARDNER!

  “The best selling author of the century…a master storyteller…A clean, economical writer of peerless ingenuity.”

  —New York Times

  “Gardner is humorous, astute, curious, inventive—who can top him? No one has yet.”

  —Los Angeles Times

  “A fast and fiery tough tale…very very slick.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Erle Stanley Gardner is probably the most widely read of all…authors…His success…undoubtedly lies in the real-life quality of his characters and their problems…”

  —The Atlantic

  “One of the best selling writers of all time, and certainly one of the best selling mystery authors ever.”

  —Thrilling Detective

  “Zing, zest and zow are the Gardner hallmark. He will keep you reading at a gallop until The End.”

  —Dorothy B. Hughes,

  Mystery Writers of America Grandmaster

  I heard running steps on the sidewalk behind the car. It was a woman running. I turned to take a look, and saw Ruth Marr. She was carrying something in her right hand, something that glittered, and her face was frozen into a mask of terror.

  She flashed me a swift glance from glassy eyes, started to run on past, and then suddenly checked herself.

  “Donald!” she said, in a voice that sounded as though her mouth was dry.

  “What is it?”

  She climbed into the car and sat down beside me.

  “What’s that in your hand, Ruth?” I asked.

  She shook her head, refusing to meet my eyes. I slid my arm around her shoulders. She was trembling like a dead leaf in a breeze.

  “Ruth,” I said, “what is it?” and slid my hand down her arm, pulling her hand out into view. Then I switched on the dashlight, took a good look, and switched it back off.

  “Thirty-eight caliber, Smith and Wesson police positive,” I said. “What’s the idea? Did you stage a holdup or something?”

  She made a quick, convulsive half turn, flung her arms around my neck, and started to cry…

  SOME OTHER HARD CASE CRIME BOOKS YOU WILL ENJOY:

  TOP OF THE HEAP by Erle Stanley Gardner

  JOYLAND by Stephen King

  THE COCKTAIL WAITRESS by James M. Cain

  THE TWENTY-YEAR DEATH by Ariel S. Winter

  THE SECRET LIVES OF MARRIED WOMEN by Elissa Wald

  ODDS ON by Michael Crichton writing as John Lange

  BRAINQUAKE by Samuel Fuller

  EASY DEATH by Daniel Boyd

  THIEVES FALL OUT by Gore Vidal

  SO NUDE, SO DEAD by Ed McBain

  QUARRY by Max Allan Collins

  PIMP by Ken Bruen and Jason Starr

  SOHO SINS by Richard Vine

  QUARRY IN THE BLACK by Max Allan Collins

  SINNER MAN by Lawrence Block

  A HARD CASE CRIME BOOK

  (HCC-127)

  First Hard Case Crime edition: December 2016

  Published by

  Titan Books

  A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

  144 Southwark Street

  London SE1 0UP

  in collaboration with Winterfall LLC

  Copyright © 2016 by the Erle Stanley Gardner Trust

  Cover painting copyright © 2016 by Robert McGinnis from photos of Dita von Teese by Steve Diet Goedde

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Print edition ISBN 978-1-78329-927-0

  E-book ISBN 978-1-78329-942-3

  Design direction by Max Phillips

  www.maxphillips.net

  The name “Hard Case Crime” and the Hard Case Crime logo are trademarks of Winterfall LLC. Hard Case Crime books are selected and edited by Charles Ardai.

  Visit us on the web at www.HardCaseCrime.com

  Chapter I.

  Bertha Cool’s secretary was pounding away when I reported at the office, to see whether I worked that day, or sat twiddling my thumbs and speculating whether my monthly wages would total up to anything above Bertha Cool’s guarantee.

  That guarantee gave me just enough for bare necessities. Working regularly, I could have made a little surplus. So far, I’d never had a full month’s work, but, on the other hand, business had never been so slack Bertha Cool had been called on to pay anything under her guarantee.

  She was a wise baby, was Bertha Cool. If you made anything out of her, you sure as hell earned it.

  The secretary was a good-looking girl—or would have been if she’d given herself a chance. Some discouraging experience in her background had made her feel that she couldn’t be bothered with sex appeal, and so she slicked her hair back, used no make-up, and hated men. She didn’t seem to get much fun out of life and habitually kept her lips clamped in a tight line as though afraid a word might inadvertently spill out when it wasn’t absolutely necessary. For the most part, she made conversation by nodding or shaking her head. If I’d taken the time to have made a form chart, I have an idea the shakes would have outnumbered the nods about three to one.

  I closed the door behind me. Its frosted glass bore the legend, “B. COOL, INVESTIGATIONS.” A glance at the open door of the private office showed me that Bertha Cool wasn’t in. The secretary kept pounding away at her typewriter. I walked over to a chair in the corner, picked up a newspaper, and sat down. I didn’t say, “Good morning,” or she to me. After you’ve worked for Bertha Cool just so long, you don’t waste social amenities on anyone. I hadn’t been working quite that long, but the secretary had.

  I read down the front sheet of the newspaper. Half of it was devoted to statements by politicians that the citizens would never have to fight another war on European soil, and listing new legislation that was planned to keep America isolated from European troubles. The other half was devoted to the speeches of high officials calling European rulers liars, crooks, thieves, and gangsters.

  I turned over to the sporting section, and wondered if I could find something that looked good enough to carry two dollars of my money on its nose, and if I lost, what I could do without that would save two dollars.

  It wasn’t an easy problem. When you’re working for Bertha Cool, there aren’t a lot of economies you can make. She makes them for you.

  Over at the typewriter, I heard the sound of banging keys come to a halt as Elsie Brand ripped a letter out of the typewriter and fitted it under the flap of the envelope. She whipped another letterhead from the paper drawer, and looked squarely at me.

  “You work today,” she said.

  I couldn’t believe my ears—Elsie Brand actually getting friendly. “No kidding?” I asked. It was a useless question. Elsie Brand wouldn’t waste time kidding anybody.

  She fed the letterhead with its carbon copy into the roller of the typewriter and ignored the question.

  “What kind of a case?” I asked.

  “Divorce,” she said. “A Mrs.—” She consulted a memo on the desk. “Mrs. Atterby and a Mrs. Cunner.”

  “What time will Bertha be in?”

  “Any minute now.”

  “What makes you think it’s a divorce?” I asked.

  “Two women,” she said, “both Mrs.”

  I raised my eyebrows.

  “You’ll learn,” she said, and her fingertips descended on the keyboard of the machine, exploding it into racket.

  I turned back to the sporting page with more interest. If I worked today and tomorrow and maybe the next day, I could afford to take a chance on Silver Lining. If, on the other hand, it was only a one-day job—

  A big shadow blotted out all the light on the frosted glass panel of the outer door. The knob rattled, and Bertha Cool’s avoirdupois came flooding into the room.

  Bertha didn’t waddle when she walked. She didn’t stride. She was big, and she jiggled, but she was hard as nails, physically and mentally. She flowed across that office with the rippling, effortless progress of a cylinder of jelly sliding off a tilted plate.

  “Come in, Donald,” she said.

  I followed her into the private office.

  “Shut the door.”

  I shut it.

  “Sit
down.”

  I sat down.

  Bertha wasted no time in preliminaries. She was a great believer in not wasting anything which could be turned into money. And as for money itself, she hung onto it like a barnacle caressing the side of a battleship. “We have a divorce case today,” she said.

  “How long will it last?” I asked.

  “I don’t know anything about it, just the names. A Mrs. Atterby telephoned Elsie Brand, and asked for a ten o’clock appointment for herself and a Mrs. Cunner.”

  “Why,” I asked, “do two women mean a divorce case?”

  She beamed at me. “Jesus, Donald, but you’re dumb! About the business, I mean. Don’t take offense, my love.”

  I said nothing.

  Bertha Cool lit a cigarette. The quivering flesh around her breasts soaked in the tobacco smoke as she took a deep drag. Her breasts were firm, although her whole chest was enormous. She was big—big all over, and she was completely unrestrained. As she herself expressed it on occasion, “I like loose clothes, loose company, and loose talk, and to hell with the people who don’t.”

  Despite all her size, there was nothing wheezy about her. She stood erect as a granite column, her shoulders flung back, her triple chins hoisted up in the air, her big breasts pushed out in front with perfectly centered “buttons” showing unashamedly through the somewhat flimsy material with which she covered her body on hot days.

  She exhaled the tobacco smoke through large nostrils which gave the impression of having been darkened on the inside. “Oh well,” she said with a sigh, “someone has to tell you the facts of life, if you’re going to be worth a damn in this business. I may as well be the one.”

  She took another drag at the cigarette, then said, “Most agencies won’t touch two types of business. One’s divorce business. The other’s political investigation. They simply won’t handle ’em at any price—the divorce business because it’s nasty, the political business because they don’t dare.

  “All right, that’s where we come in, Donald, darling. We’ll handle any damn thing on the face of God’s green earth that pays money. I haven’t got the organization to compete with the big shots, and I have to charge just as large fees, sometimes larger. Therefore I figure that when people come to me, it’s a case that other agencies won’t touch. So much for that.

  “Now then, two married women calling on a detective agency means divorce business because nine times out of ten one’s the girl’s mother. A married woman thinks her husband is stepping out. She pulls a blonde hair off his coat, and busts into tears. He gives her the best lie he can think up at the moment. She doesn’t believe it, but she wants to believe it. Her brain tells her to throw it back in his face. Her heart tells her to cling to it like a drowning man grasping at a straw—Jesus, Donald, I’m getting poetic or romantic or something—I’ll have to watch that. You can’t have understanding without empathy, and you can’t have empathy without losing money. To hell with that stuff. I’m objective, Donald. I have no more feeling than the bullet that leaves a rifle barrel. If it’s a charging elephant that’s in front of it, the bullet smears him. If it’s a poor little deer, nursing a fawn, the slug tears through her vitals just the same. I’m like that, Donald. I’m paid to deliver results, my love, and by God, I deliver ’em.”

  I nodded. There was no argument on that point. She did.

  “Well,” she said, “Mama comes for a visit. She holds the daughter’s face up to the light, and says, ‘Sweetheart, you’re not happy. What has that big brute been doing to you?’ And then the daughter starts to cry, and pretty quick she tells Mama her suspicions, and Mama takes the girl by the hand and—”

  Elsie Brand opened the door, and said, “Mrs. Atterby and Mrs. Cunner.”

  Bertha Cool beamed all over her face. “Show them in,” she said, “show them in.”

  Elsie Brand backed away from the door. She didn’t need to say anything. The woman who came striding past her wasn’t one to wait for invitation. She was a hatchet-faced battle-ax with high cheekbones, big, black eyes with dark pouches underneath, a mouth which was a straight gash across her face, a nose like the prow of a battleship, and a long, determined stride which indicated her feet knew damn well she was going someplace to make trouble, and wanted to get her there as soon as possible.

  Her face was the color of a tropical sunset with rouge over the cheeks, and crimson lipstick trying to turn the upper lip into a cupid’s bow. The thing must have been weird enough so far as the average spectator is concerned, but to a detective who trains himself to look closely and see plenty of details, it looked like an oil painting done by Aunt Kate or Cousin Edith, the kind that are hung in a dark corner in the dining room where the open kitchen door will hide ’em during mealtimes.

  Behind her, came a red-eyed woman about twenty-five years younger, inclined to fat—not the hard, determined fat of Bertha Cool, but the sagging fat which pulls the muscles down until the body starts looking like a melting snowman.

  Bertha Cool got up and beamed across the desk. “Mrs. Atterby?” she asked of the battle-ax.

  Mrs. Atterby nodded, and looked at Bertha Cool with disappointed eyes.

  Bertha Cool turned to the pink-eyed one, and said, “You’re Mrs. Cunner. Do be seated. —This is Donald Lam, one of my operatives.”

  Mrs. Atterby didn’t sit down. She swung around to face me. I saw her chin go up in the air another notch. I listened, waiting to hear her sniff. She didn’t sniff, but she might as well have done so. Her reaction was obvious.

  Mrs. Cunner sat down—apparently, always glad to take her weight off her feet.

  Bertha Cool said to Mrs. Atterby, “Sit down, dearie. Don’t run your blood pressure up, thinking that because I’m a woman, and Donald is a little runt, we can’t handle your work, because we can. I’m tougher than shoe leather, and Donald here is just plain poison.

  “You’ll like him when you know him better. He started out to be a lawyer. They disbarred him because he told a client how to commit a murder and get away with it. The bar association said Donald was all wet, of course, but his ethics were bad. —And do you know, the little bastard was right all the time. After they disbarred him, he actually pulled it, and made it stand up. He has brains, that boy.”

  Mrs. Atterby said, “Since you’ve brought the subject up yourself, Mrs. Cool—or is it Miss Cool—?”

  “Mrs.,” Bertha Cool said, “and don’t pull your punches, dearie, because, after all, you haven’t a leg to stand on. The big detective agencies won’t touch your kind of case with a ten-foot pole, and you know it, or you wouldn’t be here. If we don’t handle your case, no one will. So sit down and tell us your troubles, and don’t mind if I cuss because I’m profane as hell when I get started.”

  There was a sudden glint in Mrs. Atterby’s eyes. It was almost as though she recognized a kindred spirit. She sat down.

  “Smoke?” Bertha Cool asked.

  Mrs. Atterby shook her head. I figured painting that mouth on took too much time and effort to risk taking any chances with it.

  Mrs. Cool shifted her eyes to Mrs. Cunner.

  Mrs. Atterby answered the unspoken question for her. “No,” she said, “she’s not smoking. She’s too upset.”

  As though the words were her cue, the younger woman fished a soggy handkerchief from her purse, shoved it halfway up to her eyes, then held it there, bravely fighting back tears.

  “Well,” Bertha Cool said cheerfully, “let’s start the ball rolling. Time is money, you know.”

  Mrs. Atterby looked at Mrs. Cunner. “Tell her, Edith,” she said.

  Edith immediately made a nose dive for the depths of the soggy handkerchief.

  Bertha Cool regarded her with steady, calm, almost disinterested appraisal, then shifted her eyes to Mrs. Atterby.

  Mrs. Atterby said, “The poor child is so upset. She’s never had anything like this. She’s always been sheltered from the sordid facts of life. I didn’t keep her in the darkness of ignorance; but I will say there was never a girl with a cleaner, sweeter, purer mind than Edith Atterby, and all of our friends realized it. I don’t know what it was that attracted her to Eben, unless it was the very contrast. Eben is a worldly man, and I knew the minute I set eyes on him that he wasn’t half good enough for Edith, but she would insist on going around with him. I told her— Well, I won’t go into that now, but Edith herself will be the first to admit that if she’d taken her mother’s advice years ago, this would never have happened.”