“You tell me what you have, and you tell me what you want to do. Then the police, acting on your tip, get busy and solve the case by clever detective work. After we’ve solved the case you start trying to work your fix and we’ll do everything we can up here. We’ll tell you all we know and show you the ropes. If you can square it more power to you.”

  I nodded.

  “But remember, Donald,” he said, wagging a forefinger at me as though he’d been a schoolteacher and I was a naughty pupil, “don’t try to slip anything over on us. If you know anything, you’d better tell us now. If you know something you aren’t telling and we find it out, it’s going to be too bad, just too bad.”

  “I understand.”

  “Not only for your client, but it’s going to be too bad for your agency. We co-operate with people who co-operate with us, and we don’t co-operate with people who don’t co-operate with us.”

  “Suits me,” I told him.

  “Here’s a list of the witnesses on that hit-and-run,” he said, handing me a typewritten list of names and addresses. “That’s all we have to work on at the moment. But I feel sure you’re going to help us get more, Donald. I feel certain of it. You’ll want it squared up, and you’re not dumb.

  “Now if there’s anything you want while you’re up here, any information we can get for you, don’t hesitate for a minute. Just tell us what you want, Donald, and we’ll get it for you.” I thanked him and walked out.

  I took a taxi to the Palace Hotel, paid off, ducked through to the side entrance, picked up another cab. A car was tailing me. I couldn’t shake it off without tipping off the cab driver and making the driver of the car behind know I had him spotted.

  I told the cabbie to drive along Bush Street. When I saw a rather pretentious apartment up near the top of the hill, I told the driver to stop and wait for me. I ran up the stairs, walked in to the desk, and handed the man on duty my card.

  “I’m up here working on a case,” I told him.

  His eyes were exceedingly uncordial.

  “Do you have a tenant,” I asked, “who drives a very dark blue Buick sedan?”

  “I wouldn’t know. It’s quite possible we have several.”

  I frowned and said, “This is the address I have and it should be here, a dark-blue sedan.”

  “I’m sure I couldn’t tell you.”

  “Could you find out for me?”

  “I’m afraid not. We don’t spy on our tenants.”

  “I don’t want you to spy on anyone. I just want a little information. I could get a list of tenants and look up the registrations.”

  “Then why don’t you do that, Mr. Lam?”

  “Because I can save time this way.”

  “Time,” he said, “is money.”

  I said, “In this case there isn’t much money.”

  “Then you should have lots of time.”

  I said, “I’ll see what I can do and come back.”

  “Do that.”

  I walked out, got in the taxicab, and went back to my hotel. I went up to my room, waited ten minutes, got in a cab, went out to Sutro Baths, and had myself a nice swim. When I got out of the baths I took a cab and started back along Geary Street. When I reached the cross street I wanted I paid off the cab and walked around the block. When I made sure no one was following me I stepped into a drugstore, called another cab, and went to the address of John Carver Billings. A maid answered my ring.

  I said, “I’m Donald Lam from Los Angeles. I want to see John Carver Billings the Second, and you can tell him it’s urgent and important.”

  “Just a moment,” she said.

  She looked at my card, then took the precaution of closing the door while she vanished inside the house. Two minutes later she was back and said, “Come in.”

  I went through a reception hall into a big drawingroom, and John Carver Billings the Second came forward to meet me. He was not at all pleased to see me.

  “Why, hello, Lam! What the hell are you doing up here?”

  “Working.”

  “I thought your agency did a very fine job for me,” he said, “but that’s all done — finished. Pau, as they say in Hawaii.”

  He didn’t ask me to sit down.

  I said, “I have another matter I’m working on.”

  “If there’s anything in which I can assist you I’ll be glad to do what I can.” His voice was like cold linoleum on bare feet.

  I said, “I’m investigating a hit-and-run case up here. The police are interested in it.”

  “You mean the police hired a private detective from Los Angeles to—”

  “I didn’t say that. I said the police were interested.”

  “In a hit-and-run case?”

  “Yes.”

  “They should be.”

  “A fellow down on the corner of Post and Polk Streets,” I said, “hit a man and broke him up a bit, then kept right on going. Someone tried to follow him and ran into a car that was just pulling out from the curb. That enabled the guy to make a getaway — temporarily.”

  “What are you trying to do? Find the fellow?”

  “I think I know who he is,” I said, looking him right in the eye. “I’m trying to find some way of fixing it up for him now.”

  “Well, I can’t say I wish you any luck. These hit-and-run drivers are a menace. Was there anything else, Lam?”

  I said, “Yes. Let’s have a little talk.”

  “I’m rather busy now. I’m in conference with my father and—”

  I said, “If you were sick and walked into a doctor’s office and asked him to give you a prescription for penicillin, he gave you one with no questions asked and let you walk out, what would you think?”

  “I’d think he was a hell of a doctor. Is that what you want me to say?”

  “That’s what I want you to say.”

  “All right. I’ve said it.”

  I said, “That’s what you did. You walked into a detective agency, described the medicine you wanted, and then walked out.”

  “I gave you a very specific assignment, if that’s what you mean. There wasn’t any medicine and I wasn’t sick.”

  “You may not have thought and temperature.”

  “Just what are you driving at, Lam?”

  I said, “You fixed up a fake alibi, then you went out and planted it. You wanted us to uncover it for you. In that way you could act very innocent and say that you’d paid good money to get a detective agency to find the people who—”

  “I don’t think I like your attitude, Lam.”

  “The weakness of such a scheme,” I went on, “is that you don’t dare to approach a perfect stranger. You have to get someone you’re friendly with, and then your friendship for that person can be proven. Furthermore, in order to make Sylvia a fallen woman in name only, as well as to bolster your alibi, you insisted on having two people, so Sylvia got her friend Millie.”

  “Do you have any idea what you’re talking about? Because I don’t.”

  “And,” I went on, “after you’d made certain we were going to handle the case and everything was all fixed, you went dashing out to that motor court, put on a leather jacket and gold-braided cap, and went in where you could plant the evidence for me to find.

  “I don’t know just how it happened that you picked that particular motor court. You may have stayed there before and thought there was a little something phony about it, or you may have just picked one at random.

  “Now,” I went on, “if I knew what you were trying to cover up on Tuesday night, I might That’s what we’re for. To help you if we can.”

  He said, very slowly, in cold anger, “I’d been warned about private detectives. I’d been told they tried to blackmail clients if they could get anything on those clients. I see now the warning was one that I should have heeded. I shall instruct my bank the first thing Monday morning to dishonor that check which was given to your agency. I am sending your agency a wire that payment on the check has been stopped. I don’t appreciate your meddling in my private affairs; I don’t appreciate your attempt at blackmail; and I don’t like you.”

  I played the last card. “Your dad,” I said, “might resent it if his son received a lot of publicity as being the driver of the hit-and-run car. There is always the chance that we can square these things and—”

  “Just a minute,” he said, “wait right there, Lam. I have something for you. That last remark really gave me an idea. Wait right there, don’t go away.”

  He turned and left the room.

  I walked over to a comfortable chair and sat down.

  Steps sounded, a door opened, and Billings was back in the room with an older man.

  “This is my father,” he said. “I have no secrets from him. Dad, this is Donald Lam. He’s a private detective from Los Angeles. I hired his firm to find out the people who were with me Tuesday night in a motor court in Los Angeles. He did an excellent job of getting the people located. I have his report here in writing showing that he located and talked with at least one of them, and that everything is exactly as I reported it to him.

  “I gave his agency a check for a five-hundred-dollar bonus in accordance with an understanding I made with them. I am not at all certain it was ethical for me to do that. I think perhaps that constituted a contingency fee and may be a breach of ethics on the part of the agency.

  “Now he shows up and tries to blackmail me. He accuses me of having tried to fake an alibi and is intimating that I was mixed up in a hit-and-run charge Tuesday night, some accident which I believe occurred near Post and Polk. What shall I do?”

  John Carver Billings the First looked at me as though I might have been something that had just crawled under a crack in the door and he wanted to get a good look at me before he stepped on me.

  “Throw the son of a bitch out,” he said.

  “Your son wasn’t in that motor court Tuesday night. He’s been trying to fix up a fake alibi. He’s made a clumsy job of it and if there should be any investigation the very fact that he had tried to fix up that fake alibi would fasten the brand of guilt on him, and at the same time alienate the sympathy of the court and the public. I’m simply trying to help the guy.”

  The elder Billings continued to regard me with cold, patronizing scorn. “Are you quite finished, Mr. — Mr.—”

  “Lam. Donald Lam.” ‘

  “Are you quite finished, Mr. Lam?”

  “Quite.”

  Billings turned to his son. “Just what’s this all about, John?”

  John moistened his lips with his tongue. “Dad, I’ll tell you the truth. I was on the loose in L.A. I picked up a girl. All I did was ask her to dance. After that she picked me up. Then she stood me up.

  “It turned out this girl was the moll of a notorious gang- ster. Now she’s disappeared.

  “After she stood me up I fell in with a couple of nice girls from here. I didn’t know their names. The three of us spent the night in a motor court.

  “I hired this man to find out who the girls were so I could, if necessary, prove that I wasn’t with this moll, Maurine Auburn.

  “He did a good job of finding them. Now he’s trying to invalidate the result of his own investigation. He may have been given money or he may want some. Or it may be that one of the girls who hated my guts has lied to this man so she can cut herself a piece of cake.”

  “That’s all you have to tell me, John?”

  “So help me, Dad, that’s all.”

  Billings turned to me. “There’s the door. Get out.”

  I smiled at him. “Now,” I said, “you interest me.”

  He walked over to the telephone, picked it up, and said, “Police headquarters, please.”

  I said, “Lieutenant Sheldon is the man you want to ask for. Sheldon is investigating a hit-and-run accident that took place on Post and Polk Streets Tuesday night at about ten-thirty.”

  John Carver Billings the First never turned a hair. He said into the telephone, “Yes. Is this police headquarters?... I want to speak with Lieutenant Sheldon.”

  It could have been a bluff. There might have been a switch that kept the phone from being connected. I couldn’t tell.

  I waited. A moment later the receiver made a squawking noise, and Billings said, “This is John Carver Billings, Lieutenant. I am being annoyed by a private detective who apparently is trying to blackmail my son... He has given me your name... What’s that? Yes, a private detective from Los Angeles. The name is Donald Lam.”

  “The firm name is Cool and Lam, Dad,” his son prompted.

  “I believe he is of the firm of Cool and Lam of Los Angeles,” the old man went on. “He apparently is trying to find a fall guy to take the place of some client who quite apparently was mixed up in a hit-and-run case last Tuesday night... Yes, yes, that’s it. That’s what he said. At Polk and Post Streets at about ten-thirty... That’s the one. What shall I do? Shall I?... Very well, I’ll try to hold him until you can get here.”

  I didn’t wait to hear any more. If it was a bluff they had more blue chips than I did, and they sure as hell had pushed theirs into the center of the table, the whole damn stack. I turned around and walked out.

  No one made any effort to stop me.

  Chapter Eight

  Two taxicabs later I found myself on the south side of Market. It wasn’t a dive, it was a dump. It was good enough for what I wanted. It had to be.

  At a little store on Third Street I picked up a shirt, some socks, and underwear. A drugstore sold me shaving things. Then in the dingy, stuffy inside room I sat down at a rickety little table and started checking over what had happened.

  John Carver Billings the Second had needed an alibi and his need had been so urgent that he had spent a great deal of money, time, and effort in a clumsy attempt to fabricate something that would stand up.

  Why?

  The most logical thing was the hit-and-run charge, but that hadn’t seemed to faze him when I put it up to him. Therefore he was either a better poker player than I figured, or I was on the wrong track.

  I went down to a phone booth and phoned Elsie Brand at her apartment. Luckily I found her in.

  “How’s Sylvia?” she asked.

  “Sylvia’s fine,” I told her. “She wanted to be remembered to you.”

  “Thank her very much,” she said icily.

  “Elsie, I think I’m on the wrong trail up here.”

  “How come?”

  “I don’t know. It bothers me. I think perhaps the answer may have been in Los Angeles, after all. I wish you’d start pulling wires down there and get a list of all of the crimes that were committed in Los Angeles on Tuesday night.”

  “That’s going to be quite a list.”

  “Specialize first on the hit-and-run charges,” I said. “I’m looking for a case where a pedestrian was hit, badly injured, and the car wasn’t hurt enough so there were any clues left on the spot. Do you get me?”

  “I get you.”

  I said, “That also might cover anything in the immediate vicinity of Los Angeles. Oh, say, within fifty or a hundred miles. See what you can do, will you?”

  “Is it urgent?”

  “It’s urgent.”

  She said, “You don’t care a thing about a girl’s weekend, do you?”

  “You’ll have lots of weekends after I get back,” I told her.

  “And a lot of good they’ll do me,” she retorted.

  “What was that last?”

  “I simply said to give my love to Sylvia,” she observed, and then asked, “Where can I call you?”

  “You can’t. I’ll call you.”

  “When?”

  “Sometime tomorrow morning.”

  “Sunday morning!”

  “That’s right.”

  “You’re getting more and more like Bertha every day,” she told me.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll give you more time and more sleep. Let’s make it at the office Monday morning. I’ll call collect because I’m running short of cash.”

  “Make it Sunday if you want, Donald. Anything I can do—”

  “No, you won’t be able to get the information by then.”

  “How do you know? A police detective is buying my dinner tonight.”

  “You do get around.”

  “Just local stuff. I don’t need to go to another city.”

  I laughed. “Make it Monday, Elsie. That’ll be soon enough.”

  “Honest?”

  “Honest.”

  “žBy now,” she said softly, and hung up.

  I went out to Post and Polk and looked around. It was a nice intersection for an accident. Someone coming along Post Street and seeing a Go signal at Van Ness would start speeding to try and make the signal if he thought he had a clear run for it at Polk Street.

  A kid was selling newspapers on the corner. There was quite a bit of traffic.

  I took from my pocket the list of witnesses that Lieutenant Sheldon had given me and wondered if it was complete.

  There was a woman whose occupation was listed simply as a saleslady, a man who worked in a nearby drugstore, a motorist who “saw it all” from a place midway in the block, and a man who ran a little cigar stand had heard the crash, and run out to see what it was all about.

  There wasn’t anything about a newsboy.

  I started thinking that over, then I walked up and bought a paper, gave the kid two bits, and told him to keep the change.

  “This your regular beat?” I asked.

  He nodded, his sharp eyes studying the people and the traffic, looking for an opportunity to sell another paper.

  “Here every night?”

  He nodded.

  I said suddenly, “How come you didn’t tell the police what you knew about that hit-and-run case last Tuesday night?”

  He would have started to run if I hadn’t grabbed his arm. “Come on, kid,” I said, “let’s have it.”

  He looked like a trapped rabbit. “You can’t come busting up and start pushing me around like this.”

  “Who’s pushing you around?”

  “You are.”

  “You haven’t seen anything yet,” I told him. “How much money did they pay you to clam up?”

  “Go roll a hoop.”

  “That,” I told him, “is what is known as compounding a felony.”