Huggins Roy - Roy Huggins: creator of Maverick, 77 Sunset Strip, the fugitive and the Rockford files

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STUART BAILEY...

The private eye with the Ivy-League look and the dock-wallopers punch, who operates out of that gilt-edged borderland between Los Angeles and Beverly Hills known as the Sunset Strip.

His profession may not be the oldest in the world, but its certainly among the most exciting.

Here is the same wry, engaging character whos the hero of the popular TV show, tangling with assorted zany characters, and solving three supposedly perfect crimes.

77 SUNSET STRIP

by Roy Huggins

DELL PUBLISHING CO, INC.

750 Third Avenue

New York 17, N. Y.

All rights reserved.

Portions of this work have appeared in The Saturday Evening

Post under the titles Appointment with Fear and Now You

See It, copyright, 1946, by The Curtis Publishing Company,

and in Esquire under the title Death and the Skylark, copy-

right, 1952, by Esquire, Inc.

Designed and produced by

Western Printing & Lithographing Company

This is a work of fiction and all characters and events in

the story are fictional, and any resemblance to real

persons is purely coincidental.

First printingFebruary, 1959

Printed in U.S.A.

Sunset Strip is a body of County territory entirely surrounded by the city of Los Angeles, a mile and a half of relentlessly contemporary architecture housing restaurants, bistros, Hollywood agents, and shops where the sell is as soft as a snowflake and just as cold.

There are also a few office buildings, and number 77 is one of them. I have an office there that I cant really afford, but I keep it anyway on the happy thought that the address is good for business and the view is good for my soul.

It wasnt yet dusk, but the lights were beginning to come on forlornly along Wilshire to the south, and the room was already darkening, which suited my mood just fine. I sat and listened to the muted sounds of the custom-built traffic on Sunset and wondered why the sense of depression wouldnt lift. I had just finished a job that had taken too long and paid too little, but I knew that wasnt it. It had also been dull, and dullness was an uncommon thing in my trade. Not that murder and mayhem are common, but if a private investigator keeps an open mind and avoids drafts he can learn an awful lot about his fellow man. And as long as he holds on to compassion for dear life and holds off cynicism for the same reason, its almost as good a way to earn a living as teaching school, and not half as dangerous.

The room was in almost total darkness by the time the fine odor of whisky and charcoaled steaks coming from Dinos across the breezeway suggested that I wasnt too depressed to be hungry. I got up and made my way through the dark to the outer door.

In the lobby a short, tweedy man was just leaving the building. He turned as he saw me locking my door, and walked toward me with a puzzled frown.

Are you Bailey? he asked.

Yes.

Didnt see any lights and decided you werent in. My names Glen Callister.

Inside the office once again I turned on the lamp, put Mr. Callister in the leather customers chair, sat at my desk and leaned forward to let him study my sincere, firm-jawed but sympathetic face.

I figured youd be an older man, he said, and offered me a large, obviously expensive cigar. Have a stogie.

No thanks, I said politely.

I like a man who smokes a cigar, Callister said, putting it between his teeth. Proves hes a man.

My grandmother smoked cigars, I said, not quite as politely.

There was a quiet moment, then Callister broke into a barrel-chested laugh. I think youll do fine, he chortled.

Do what fine?

With a surprised air he asked, Didnt you get my letter?

Lying on the desk were the letters Id picked up when I came in an hour earlier. I hadnt bothered to look at them. Callisters was there all right, delivered two days ago.

Shall I read it? I asked. Or would you

Read it, he cut in.

I read it. It was written in the manner of a businessman ordering office equipment. It said that he was making a trip to Honolulu on his schooner, the Skylark, with himself as captain, and that he expected to be killed on the voyage. The murder would be attempted either by his wife or his first mate, he wasnt sure which. He had recently discovered that they were carrying on illicitly behind my back. He wanted to know if I would come along and keep an eye on Madden, the first mate. If so, I was to come down and see him the next day.

I looked up and Callister asked, Dont you believe in reading your mail?

Been out of town on a job.

Heres a chance to get out again. Want it?

There didnt seem to be any doubt about it. Callister had meant every word hed written.

Well, I managed, I would like to ask a question or two.

Dont blame you.

The first ones pretty obvious. If you know one of thems going to try to kill you on this trip, why make it?

I never ran away from a fight in my life, he said matter-of-factly.

You say one of them intends to kill you. Dont you know which one?

I dont think Ill answer that one yet.

I let that pass. If your first mate intends to kill you, think having me aboard will stop him?

Do you?

No.

Do you want the job? Youll have to be free to leave Friday.

Im not sure I made myself clear.

You made yourself clear in exactly the way I hoped you would. No one could guarantee anything on a job like this. You want it? Youll be passed off as a business associate. We dont talk business on the Skylark, so you wont have to worry about that.

Sure, I said. Id love to make the trip, but will your first mate be able to sail the boat after he rubs you out?

Callister looked at me blankly for about ten seconds. Then he suddenly exploded m another laugh that came from the belt up. He laughed painfully for a full thirty seconds.

He stood up and, still fighting a little for breath, pulled a folded check from his pocket and laid it on the desk. It was a cashiers check for five hundred dollars, made out to casha handsome and discreet retainer.

He was getting ready to laugh again. Be there Friday morning at nine, he managed, slapping me on the shoulder. The Skylark, Los Angeles Yacht Anchorage were going to have a fine trip.

He didnt wait for any further word from me, but turned and walked out of the office. I sat there feeling a little as if the whole thing had never happened.

I spent a couple of days telling myself it was something I didnt want to be involved ineven if it did amount to a well-paid holiday in Hawaii. But by Thursday night nothing else had turned up but the bill for the office rent. Then I pointed out with telling logic that if the old boys fears had any foundation, my being along could make all the difference. I decided to pack a warbag, cash the check, and take an ocean voyage.

If it hadnt been for the yachts tied up at its long row of slips, the Los Angeles Yacht Anchorage would have looked like an abandoned fish hatchery. But the yachts were there, and as I went on down the floating boardwalk looking for the