I rushed to the telephone and got though to the office. Trixy said Paula hadn't called. She said a man who wouldn't give his name had telephoned twice. I told her to give him Paula's number if he phoned again and hung up.
Kerman gave me a cigarette with a hand that shook slightly. I lit it without being conscious of what I was doing and sat on the bed.
"We'd better get out to the Dream
Ship," Kerman said in a
tight, hard voice. "And get out there quick."
I shook my head.
"Take it easy," I said.
"What the hell!" Kerman exploded, and started for the door. "They've got Paula. Okay, we go out there and talk to them. Come on!"
"Take it easy," I said, not moving. "Sit down and don't be obvious."
Kerman came up to me.
"You crazy or something?"
"Do you think you'd ever get near that ship in daylight?" I said, looking at him. "Use your head. We're going out there, but we'll go when it's dark."
Kerman made an angry gesture.
"I'm going now. If we wait it may be too late."
"Oh, shut up!" I said. "Get a drink. You're staying right here."
He hesitated, then went into the kitchen. After a while he came back with a bottle of Scotch, two glasses and a jug of ice-water. He made drinks, gave me one and sat down.
"There's not a damn thing we can do if they've decided to knock her on the head," I said. "Even if they haven't done it now, they'd do it the moment they saw us coming. We'll go out there when it's dark, and not before."
Kerman didn't say anything. He sat down, took a long pull at his drink and squeezed his hands together.
We sat there, staring at the floor, not thinking, not moving: just waiting. We had four hours, probably a little more before we could go into action.
At half-past six we were still sitting there. The Scotch bottle was about half full. Cigarette butts mounted in the ash-trays. We were fit to walk up the wall.
Then the telephone rang: a shrill sound that sounded sinister in the silent little apartment.
"I'll get it," I said, and walked stiff legged across the room and picked up the receiver.
"Malloy?" A man's voice.
"Yes."
"This is Sherrill."
I didn't say anything, but waited, looking across at Kerman.
"I have your girl on board, Malloy," Sherrill said. His voice was gentle; it whispered in my ear.
"I know," I said.
"You better come out and fetch her," Sherrill said. "Say around nine o'clock. Don't come before. I'll have a boat at the pier to bring you out. Come alone, and keep this close. If you bring the police or anyone with you, she'll be rapped on the head and dropped overboard. Understand?"
I said I understood.
"See you at nine o'clock then," he said, and hung up.
IV
Lieutenant Bradley of the Missing People's Bureau was a thickset, middle-aged, disillusioned Police Officer who sat for long hours behind a shabby desk in a small office on the fourth floor of Police Headquarters and tried to answer unanswerable questions. All day long and part of the night people came to him or called him on the telephone to report missing relatives, and expected him to find them.
Not an easy job when, in most cases, the man or woman who had disappeared had gone away because they were sick of their homes or their wives or their husbands and were taking good care not to be found again. A job I wouldn't have had for twenty times the pay Bradley got, and a job I couldn't have handled anyway.
A light still burned behind the frosted panel of his office door when I knocked. His bland voice, automatically cordial, invited me to come in.
There he was, sitting behind his desk, a pipe in his mouth, a weary expression in his deepset, shrewd brown eyes. A big man: going bald, with a pouch and bags under his eyes. A man who did a good job, had no credit nor publicity for it, and who didn't want any.
The placid brow came down in a frown when he saw me.
"Go away," he said without hope. "I'm busy. I don't have the time to listen to your troubles; I have troubles of my own."
I closed the door and leaned my back against it. I wasn't in the mood for a Police Lieutenant's pleasantries and I was in a hurry.
"I want service, Bradley," I said, "and I want it fast. Do I get it from you or do I go to Brandon?"
The pale brown eyes looked startled.
"You don't have to talk to me like that, Malloy," he said. "What's biting you?"
"Plenty, but I haven't time to go into details." I crossed the small space between the door and his desk, put my fists on his blotter and stared at him. "I want all you've got on Anona Freedlander. Remember her? She was one of Dr. Salzer's nurses up at the Sanatorium on Foothill Boulevard. She disappeared on May 15th, 1947."
"I know," Bradley said, and his bush eyebrows climbed an inch. "You're the second nuisance who's asked to see her file in the past four hours. Funny how these things come in pairs. I've noticed it before."
"Who was it?"
Bradley dug his thumb into the bell-push on his desk.
"That's not your business," he said. "Sit down and don't crowd me."
As I pulled up a chair a police clerk came in and stood waiting.
"Let's have Freedlander's file again," Bradley said to him. "Make it snappy. This gent's in a hurry."
The clerk gave me a stony stare and went away like a centenarian climbing a steep flight of stairs.
Bradley lit his pipe and stared down at his ink-stained fingers. He breathed gently.
"Still sticking your nose into the Crosbys' affairs?" he asked, without looking at me.
"Still doing it," I said shortly.
He shook his head.
"You young and ambitious guys never learn, do you? I heard MacGraw and Hartsell called on you the other night."
"They did. Maureen Crosby showed up and rescued me. How do you like that?"
He gave a little grin.
"I'd've liked to have been there. Was she the one who hit MacGraw?"
"Yeah."
"Quite a girl."
"I hear there was a shindig up at Salzer's place," I said, watching him. "Looks as if your Sports fund's going to suffer."
"I'd cry about that. I don't have to worry about sport at my age."
We brooded over each other for a minute or so, then I said, "Anyone report a girl named Gurney missing? She was another of Salzer's nurses."
He pulled at his thick nose, shook his head.
"Nope. Another of Salzer's nurses, did you say?"
"Yeah. Nice girl: got a good body, but maybe you're a mite old to bother about bodies."
Bradley said he was a little old for that kind of thing, but he was staring thoughtfully at me now.
"She wouldn't be any good to you, anyway; she's dead," I said.
"Are you trying to tell me something or are you just being tricky?" he asked, an acid note in his voice.
"I heard Mrs. Salzer tried to kidnap her from her apartment. The girl fell down the fire escape and broke her neck. Mrs. S. planted her somewhere in the desert, probably near the sanatorium."
"Who told you?"
"An old lady fooling around with a crystal ball."
He scratched the side of his jaw with the end of his pipe and stared blankly at me.
"Better tell Brandon. That's a Homicide job."
"This is a tip, brother, not evidence. Brandon likes facts, and I mightn't be ready to give them to him. I'm telling you because you may or may not steer the information into the proper channels and leave me out of it."
Bradley sighed, realized his pipe had gone out and groped for matches.
"You young fellas are too tricky," he said. "All right, I'll give it to my carrier pigeon. How much of it is true?"
"All of it. Why do you think Mrs. S. took poison?"
The clerk came in and laid the folder on the desk. He went away still at the slow deliberate pace. Probably his brain worked as fast as his legs.
Bradley untied the tapes and opened the file. We both stared at a half a dozen folded sheets of blank paper for some seconds.
"What the devil . . ." Bradley began, blood rising to his face.
"Take it easy," I said, reached out and poked at the sheets with my finger. Only blank sheets: nothing else.
Bradley dug his thumb into the bell-push and kept it there.
Maybe the clerk scented trouble because he came in fast.
"What's this?" Bradley said. "What are you playing at?"
The clerk gaped at the blank sheets.
"I don't know, sir," he said, changing colour. "The file was fastened when I took it from your out-tray."
Bradley breathed heavily, started to say something, changed his mind and waved a hand to the door.
"Get out," he said.
The clerk went.
There was a pause, then Bradley said, "This could cost me my job. The cram must have switched the papers."
"You mean he's taken the contents of the file and left that as a dummy?"
Bradley nodded.
"Must have done. There was a photograph and a description and our progress report when I gave it to him."
"No copies?"
He shook his head.
I thought for a moment.
"The fella who asked for the file," I said, "was he tall, dark, powerful; a sort of movie-star type?"
Bradley stared at him.
"Yeah. Do you know him?"
"I've seen him."
"Where?"
"Do you want those papers back?"
"Of course I do. What do you mean?"
I stood up.
"Give me until nine o'clock to-morrow," I said. "I'll either have them for you or the man who took them. I'm working on something, Bradley. Something I don't want Brandon mixed up in. You don't have to report this until the morning, do you?"
"What are you talking about?" Bradley demanded.
"I'll have the papers or the man by to-morrow morning, if you sit tight and keep your mouth shut," I said, and made for the door.
"Hey! Come back!" Bradley said, starting to his feet.
But I didn't go back. I ran down the four flights of stairs to the front entrance where Kerman was waiting for me in the Buick.
V
There were four of us: Mike Finnegan, Kerman, myself and a worried looking little guy wearing a black, greasy, slouch hat, no coat, a dirty shirt and soiled white ducks. We sat in the back room of Delmonico's bar, a bottle of Scotch and four glasses on the table, and a lot of tobacco smoke cluttering up the air.
The little guy in the greasy hat was Joe Dexter. He owned a haulage business, and ran freight to the ships anchored in the harbour. Finnegan claimed he was a friend of his, but by the way he was acting you wouldn't have known it.
I had put my proposition to him, and he was sitting staring at me as if he thought I was crazy.
"Sorry, mister," he said at last. "I couldn't do it. It'd ruin my business."
Kerman was lolling in his chair, a cigarette hanging from his lips, his eyes closed. He opened one eye as he said, "Who cares about a business? You want to relax, brother. There're more things in life than a business."
Dexter licked his lips, scowled at Kerman and squirmed in his chair. He turned pleadingly to Mike.
"I can't do it," he said; "not a thing like this. The Dream Ship is one of my best customers."
"She won't be for much longer," I said. "Cash in while the going's good. You'll make a hundred bucks on this deal."
"A hundred bucks!" Dexter's face twisted into a sneer. "Sherrill pays me more than that every month: regular money. I'm not doing it."
I motioned to Mike to take it easy. He was straining forward, making a growling noise in his throat.
"Look," I said to Dexter, "all we want you to do is to deliver this case of supplies to the ship to-night. Do that, and you'll get a hundred. What's scaring you?"
"And you're going to travel inside the case," Dexter said. "To hell with that for an idea. No one's allowed on that ship without a permit. If they catch you—and they will —they'll know I had something to do with it. The least Sherrill would do would be to shut down my account. He's likely to send someone over to crack my skull. I'm not doing it."
As I refilled the glasses I glanced at my wrist-watch. It was half-past seven. Time was moving.
"Listen, Joe," Mike said, leaning forward, "this guy's a friend of mine, see? He wants to get aboard that ship. If he wants to get aboard, he's going to get aboard, see? Sherrill ain't the only guy who can crack a skull. Do you do the job or do I have to get tough?"
Kerman pulled out his Colt .45 and laid it on the table.
"And when he's through with you. I'll start," he said.
Dexter eyed the Colt and flinched away from Mike's concentrated glare.
"You guys can't threaten me," he said feebly.
"We can try," Kerman said calmly. "Give you ten seconds before we start something."
"Don't crowd the fella," I said, and took from my wallet ten ten-dollar bills. I spread them out on the table and pushed them towards Dexter. "Come on, take your money and let's get moving. Sherrill's washed up. The cops will move in by to-morrow. Cash in while the going's good."
Dexter hesitated, then picked up the notes, and rustled them between dirty fingers.
"I wouldn't do it for anyone else," he said to Mike.
We finished our drinks, pushed back our chairs and went out on to the water-front. It was a hot-still night, with a hint of rain in the sky. Way out on the horizon I could see the lights of the Dream
Ship
.
We tramped down an alley to Dexter's warehouse. It was in darkness. As he unlocked and pushed open the door the smell of tar, oil, damp clothes and rubber came out to greet us.
The warehouse was big and cluttered up with cases and coils of rope and bundles tied up in tarred paper, waiting to be delivered to the ships at anchor beyond the harbour. In the middle of the floor was a five-foot square packing-case.
"That's it," Dexter said gloomily.
