CHAPTER ONE
I
ONE hot June afternoon I was sitting in my office at peace with the world, and conscious that the world was, for a change, at peace with me, when Paula put her dark, lovely head around the door to shatter my pipe-dream.
'You have the Wingrove job to do,' she said.
There are times when I regret having thought up Universal Services. (No matter how tough the job: we'll do it.) As a money-maker it was sound enough, and as somebody else's brainwave it was brilliant, but when I get stuck with something like the Wingrove assignment, then I begin to wonder if I shouldn't have my head examined for putting myself out on such a limb.
The Wingrove assignment was a job I wouldn't have touched with an eighty-foot pole if I had been consulted, but it had sneaked into the office, together with a five-hundred-dollar retainer, when I was in bed with a hangover, and Paula had accepted the money and sent off a receipt.
The daughter of Martin Wingrove, one of Orchid City's most affluent citizens, had reverted to type, and he wanted me to persuade her to return home.
I hadn't much of a proposition to offer her. Wingrove was fat and old and nasty. He kept one of Ralph Bannister's taxi-dancers in a pent-house in Felman Street: a big, brassy blonde whose mode of life would have horrified a monkey. He was grasping, domineering and selfish. His wife had run away with his chauffeur, who was half her age, but hungry for money, and his son was sweating out a drug cure in a private home. Not much of a home background to persuade a girl to return to, but then I hadn't seen her. For all I knew, she was tarred with the same brush. It would be a lot easier for me if she was, and it seemed likely. From Paula's notes on the case, the girl was living with Jeff Barratt, a notoriously vicious playboy who was about as rotten as they come.
I had been offered a free hand. The girl was under age, and Wingrove was within his rights to force her to return home. But Barratt wasn't likely to part with her easily, and she was certain to resist. On the face of it, it looked as if I would be in for quite a time. Obviously, it was a job for the police, but Wingrove had a horror of that kind of publicity. He knew if the police fetched her back, the story would hit the headlines, so he did what so many people have done in the past when they have a particularly dirty job on their hands, he unloaded it on me.
I had been side-stepping the job for the past three days, and had begun to hope that Paula had forgotten about it I should have known better.
'Eh?' I opened one eye and looked at her reproachfully.
'The Wingrove job,' she said firmly, coming into the office.
I sat up.
'How many more times do I have to tell you I don't want that job? Send the money back, and say I'm too busy. '
'You're not suggesting we should refuse five hundred dollars, are you?'
'I don't want the job.'
'What's wrong with it?' she asked patiently. 'It won't take you more than an hour. Why, it would be tempting Providence not to do it.'
'If Providence can be tempted that easy, then I'll tempt it. Now, don't bother me. Get on to Wingrove and tell him we're far too busy to handle the job.'
'I sometimes wonder why we're in business at all,' Paula said acidly. 'I hope you realize there're bills to be paid at the end of the month. I hope you haven't forgotten this desk you insisted on having hasn't yet been paid for.'
I knew she'd go on in this vein all the afternoon if I didn't stop her.
'Well, all right. Send Kerman. Why shouldn't he do a little work for a change? Why should all the dirty jobs have my name on them? You'd think I didn't own this joint the way I'm treated. Give the job to Kerman.'
'He's teaching Miss Ritter to drive.'
'What, again! He's always teaching Miss Ritter to drive! What's the matter with her? No one can take two solid months, six hours a day, to learn to drive a car. There's no one alive who can be that dumb.'
'She thinks Kerman is cute,' Paula said, suppressing a smile. 'I guess it's a matter of taste, but she tells me to sit beside Kerman in a car is an experience all women should have once in a lifetime. I'm not sure if I know what she means. I hope I'm not being unkind, but I think she's neurotic. Anyway, what does it matter? She pays very well.'
'That's all you think about - money! So because Miss Ritter is neurotic and Kerman's cute, I have to do all the dirty work, is that it?'
'You can always engage another assistant,' Paula pointed out,
'Now who's throwing our profits away? Well, all right, but understand from tomorrow Kerman gets down to a job of work. I'll learn Miss Ritter to drive- If she thinks Kerman is an experience, she's in for a surprise.'
'The address is 247 Jefferson Avenue ...' Paula began.
'I know! Don't tell me again. When I die, and you cut me open, you'll find it engraved on my spleen. For the past five days, that's all I've heard.'
I grabbed up my hat and made for the door.
II
247 Jefferson Avenue was an apartment house at the Fairview end of the avenue: a big, square shaped concrete building with green shutters at the windows and a gaudy canopy over the main entrance.
The lobby of the apartment house was dim and soothing. There were no murals or statues or violent colours to give the homecoming drunks a fright. The carpet was laid over rubber blocks and gave under my feet as I crossed to the automatic elevator.
Hidden behind a screen of tropical palms in brass pots were the desk and switchboard. A girl with a telephone harness hitched to her chest was reading the funnies. She was cither too bored to bother or didn't hear me come in, for she didn't look up, and that's unusual in a joint like this. As a rule they head you off from the elevator until they have called whoever you're visiting to make sure you're wanted.
But as I slid back the elevator door, a man in a shabby dark suit and a bowler hat set straight and square on his head appeared from behind a pillar and plodded over to me.
'Going some place or just taking the ride for the hell of it?' he growled.
His face was round and fat, and covered with a web of fine veins. His eyes were deep-set and cold. His moustache hid a mouth that was probably thin and unpleasant. He looked what he was: a retired cop, supplementing his pension by bouncing the unwanteds.
'I'm making a call,' I said, and gave him a smile; but he 'didn't seem impressed by my charms.
'We like callers to check in at the desk. Who do you want to see?' He sounded no tougher than any other cop in Orchid City, but tough enough to have hair on his chest.
I didn't want Barratt to know I was about to call on him. It would be quite bad enough without him being on his guard. I took out my bill-fold and hoisted up a five-dollar bill. The fat bouncer's eyes fastened on it, and a tongue like the toe of on old boot searched amongst the jungle of his moustache. I pushed the bill at him.
Fat, nicotine-stained fingers closed over it: a reflex action born of years of experience.
'I'll just take the ride,' I said, and showed him more of my teeth: those capped in gold.
'Don't take too long about it,' he growled, 'and don't think this buys you anything. I just haven't seen you."
He plodded back to his pillar again, then paused to scowl at the girl behind the desk, who had stopped reading the funnies and was watching him with a set smile on her foxy little face. As I closed the elevator door he was on his way over to her, probably to share the swag.
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