The Case of the Vanishing Beauty (17 page)

I was trying to find either or both of the guys Sam had told me were at one time associated with Walter Press of the fingerprints: Fred Vincent and Foster S. Matthew, known to his friends as the Cardboard Kid. Why "Cardboard," I never did find out. I talked to bootblacks, bartenders, bookies, runners, waitresses, waiters, and more. After an hour I'd found a couple who knew one or the other, but not where I could find them. Then I stopped at Lucy's, a little cocktail spot on Hill Street. The far end of the bar was empty, so I walked down there and climbed on a stool. Lucy was wiping glasses with a clean white towel. He saw me, draped the towel over his shoulder, and came over.

Lucy is a big, fat Italian with a round, pink face like Santa Claus with no beard, and dingy teeth about the size and color of postage stamps, glue side out. His name is Lucieri, but nobody ever calls him that, at least not on Hill Street.

"What you know, Shell?" he said, and showed me the postage stamps in a huge, gluey grin. "What you say?"

"Draw me a beer, Lucy. I'm dry. I'm tired of walking."

"You lookin' for somethin', hey? Hokay. A minute."

He drew me a cool-looking beer and waddled back. "What you want, huh?"

"Know a guy named Fred Vincent, or one called the Cardboard Kid?"

"Sure. Know 'em both. Whatsa matter?"

I'd heard that much already today, so I let some of the cold beer trickle down my throat before I asked him, "Where'll I find them?"

"This Cardboard Kid—he's a guy named Matthew—you no gonna find. He's a dead one. He tries a heavy rackets when things get tough, and boom, he's inna morgue. Vincent, he's round. In here two, three days back. Got lotsa dough."

I perked up on the stool. "Where's Vincent now?"

He shook his head. "Dunno. Blowin' the roll, most like. Hey, he come in with this little jockey, this Waiter Duprel. Know him?"

"No."

Lucy fished under his apron for the stub of a pencil and wet it against his tongue. "I give you his address. He's not workin' right now. On a suspension or somethin' like." He scribbled the address on a bar check and gave it to me.

It went like that for another forty-five minutes and a hundred bucks. Legwork. Shoe leather. Run around, ask questions, go nuts. From Lucy to Walter the jockey to Cookie Martini to Johnny Wolfe. But finally I found out where Vincent was. He'd been blowing a roll and he was still blowing. Wolfe told me I'd probably find him in the back room of the Lords and Ladies, 'a private club where people with loose cash played bridge or pinochle or canasta out front, and roulette, craps, and the ponies in back. Wolfe gave me a card he said would let me in.

The Lords and Ladies didn't look like a club where gambling might be going on. It was an old-fashioned-looking building on Jefferson Boulevard, about half a block down from Grand Avenue. Stone steps ran across the front of it, and at the top of the steps were three cement columns like you see in front of courthouses. The entrance was two solid oak doors that swung together in the middle and were always closed unless somebody was going in hopefully or coming out disillusioned. I'd never been inside the place, but I'd heard about it.

I walked up the stone steps, glanced at the little gilt sign over the doors giving the name of the club, and pushed the conspicuous buzzer. A little guy in a tux let me in the front part without any trouble, but without the card and the name of Johnny Wolfe I'd probably have had to wrestle the gorillas Mike Lyman's prime ribs had made me feel equal to. The gorillas being two long-armed, short-brained mugs who protected the portals to the back room.

Short Brain on my right glanced at my bandaged right hand but didn't say anything. He took the card from my left hand and squinted at it. I could almost see him spelling out the letters.

"Johnny Wolfe," I told him. "He said I could get in O.K."

He kept on spelling, then glanced at me. "O.K."

I wondered if he knew any whole words. I stuck out my hand for the card, but he folded it into a fist like a Swift's Premium Ham and said, "I'll keep it."

I shrugged. I wanted in more than I wanted to wrestle.

For three-thirty in the afternoon, the spot was getting a good play. About ten well-dressed men and women stood around the roulette wheel spinning in the middle of the room, and another half dozen concentrated on one of the two crap tables near the right wall. Other games were on the left, and a circle of quiet guys played poker at a felt-covered table in back.

I got twenty bucks' worth of green chips from the cashier—four chips—and stepped up to the roulette table. I dropped one chip on the layout under the first column of figures—that's the column of twelve numbers headed by one, with four, seven, and so on underneath—and looked around while the croupier spun the wheel. I didn't have too good an idea what Vincent looked like, so I had to find someone I knew that might tell me, or else ask a perfect stranger.

The ball fell into number 26 and I watched my green chip go the way of most of the others on the layout. I tossed another green under the first column. The ball clicked into 17. Bye-bye. Another chip. Seven this time; I was back with four chips, where I'd started. No way to get rich.

Somebody said, "Hey, Shell," in a soft voice at my side. I looked around and down at the pinched face of Irv Coward. He ran a tip-sheet service from, but not limited to, L.A., and he made enough to hang around places like this in the afternoon. The injustice. Back in my horseplaying days, before I got cured by just the kind of tips he put out—plus my own selections and, finally, my own system that just couldn't lose—I'd even played a few of his choices at the track. Naturally, when they won, as occasionally they did, he got the results of a five-dollar win play from me. When they didn't win, as they usually didn't, I got nothing from little Irv. Somehow, it didn't seem quite cricket. We'd got to be friends, though, in spite of the horses.

"What's the tip, Irv?" I grinned at him. "And when you going to break down and tell me you tipped ten horses in every race?"

"Uh-uh. Never did. Never did. Look, Shell, that's not why I stopped you. I got a tip, all right, but it's no good. C'mere." He grabbed my sleeve and pulled me over to a corner. "There's a wiper out for you, Shell. A real bad guy. He means it, from what I hear, and he's hotter than hell. Guy named Seipel. I couldn't grab what it was
all about, but I know he's gunning for you."

"Thanks, Irv. It's O.K. Nothing to worry about."

"The hell. This guy means it. Far as he's concerned, you're good as lost. I picked it up last night. I tried to get in touch, but you been nowhere."

"He's dead," I said. "But thanks for the tip, Irv. How's about selling me a couple selections?"

He wiggled his head back and forth. "The hell. I tell you because I don't want you lost, see? That's all. No selections." He screwed up his lips, looked up at me, and said slowly, "He found you, huh?"

"Yeah. He found me. Say, you know Vincent?"

"Fred Vincent?"

"Yeah."

"Sure. You want him?"

"Where is he? He here?"

"Sure. Roulette. He can't win. He's over at the bar now. The big redheaded guy."

"Thanks, Irv. Thanks a hell of a lot." I started for the bar.

"A cipher," Irv said behind me. "A nothing."

I wondered if Vincent would spill anything. Confidence men as a class are personable, intelligent men that know their way around, and which side of the bread has the butter. Among grifters, those men who make their living by using their wits instead of guns, the con man is the acknowledged top dog. And he should be. He couldn't exist if his suckers, or marks, weren't larcenous themselves, and looking for the "best of it." Well, either he'd talk or he wouldn't, depending on how he sized me up and how he felt.

I ordered a bourbon and water and turned to the redhead. "Can I buy you a drink? I'm going to try to pump you. O.K.?"

He turned and faced me squarely, a big, good-looking, almost handsome man about forty-five. He grinned widely. "I'd be glad to accept the drink. I can't say I'll cooperate on the other matter, though."

"Good enough." I bought him a rye and soda and walked right in. The nearest occupied stool, was halfway down the bar, so we were safe from big ears. I said, "I understand you once knew a man named Walter Press."

He lifted expressive eyebrows. "Press? Press? I can't say I know anyone by that name."

"I'll put it to you straight, Mr. Vincent. My name's Scott. Sheldon Scott. I'm a private detective. I'm working on something in which Press may be involved. I'm stumbling around half in the dark, and anything I can find out about him may help. I want to know what kind of a guy he was, trouble he might have been in, anything." He pursed his lips. "You know my name?"

"Sure." I grinned. "I know your name, your occupation, that you knew Press, worked with him. Hell, I spent all afternoon just hunting you down."

"Indeed. Well. Assume, Mr. Scott—merely assume—that I should know a Mr. Press, and could tell you something about him. Isn't there some possibility that telling you might, well, reflect on me?"

"Not a chance. Unless you had something to do with that accident he had a year or so back." I grinned when I said it.

He frowned.

"Besides," I went on, "like I said, I'm a private detective. Ninety per cent of the information I get on most of my cases comes from asking people questions, or from dope that's given to me voluntarily by people who know I want the information and will pay for it or do them a turn if I get the chance. Sometimes they're just friends of mine. But the point is, Mr. Vincent, if I let it be known where I got the information, who told me what—even one time only—I'd be out of business. I wouldn't have a chance of getting a peep out of anybody. So I can't afford to let anyone worm that dope out of me or beat it out of me. It's been tried."

He looked directly at me, twirling his glass slowly on the bar. "I see," he said.

"All I want's the background," I told him. "It goes no farther than me. But I have to know, myself, or I can't make sense. I don't want affidavits, written statements. All I want is to know, myself, what's cooking."

I stopped and swallowed part of my drink. He didn't say anything. I put my drink back on the bar and said, "Look, Vincent. I'm not looking for any stem-court juice or anything like that. I don't want to give you any trouble at all. Anything you tell me stays with me. My word's good—it's got to be. Here." I pulled my identification, license, and papers out of my pocket. "These show I'm Scott. You want to check on me, O.K. I just don't have much time. And this doesn't concern you, personally, at all. Christ, Vincent, how the hell long do I have to work on you? You want some of my blood?"

He laughed out loud, then tossed down his rye and soda. "O.K., now I'll buy you a drink." He stuck two fingers up at the bartender and turned again to me. "Mr. Scott, you have vague, undeveloped abilities in my direction. You ever consider…"

I shook my head and grinned at him. "Uh-Uh. You stick to you
r
racket; I'll stick to mine."

He swallowed at his fresh drink and started to talk. Now that he'd thought it over and made up his mind, he relaxed and talked as if I were on the grift myself.

We left the bar for a small table in the corner and he said, "What do you want?"

"First, how were you connected with him? Second, what do you know about the accident he was supposed to have been killed in? Third, what was the deal when he skipped out on one or more of his pals with a pile of jack, and last, how and when was he connected with this religious gang that calls itself the Inner World Society?"

"You don't want much. You got all night?"

"I've got as long as it takes."

"O.K. It won't take long to tell my part, anyway. Press was a tear-off rat, and he should have been selling shoes. I worked with him myself once; that's how I know. That time we worked together was one too many. This mark we stung was a bald-headed pappy from Tucson. We gave him the point-out, then I told him the tale and gave him the convincer. Press had to hole up with the guy for nearly a week while he waited for his cush, and it must have been murder. The only reason the mark doesn't chili is he's such a lop-eared savage. Press was roper on the deal and how he ever steered even that winchell in I'll never understand. The mark acted like he wanted to blow his chunk. Press cracked out of turn and did everything wrong, but I kept patting the mark on the head and he blew twenty thousand. So it worked out O.K., but why Press didn't rumble him, I'll never know."

I nodded my head, just as if I had more than a vague idea of what he'd just told me. "This Press wasn't so sharp, I take it."

"Excess baggage. Strictly a heel grifter."

"What did he look like?"

"Little sawed-off shrimp. Skinny."

"He was American, wasn't he?"

"Hell, yes, he was an American. Think he was Egyptian?"

"O.K. What can you give me on the rest?"

"I don't know anything about that Inner World racket you mentioned, but it must have been after that runout he took when he didn't cut up the score. That was last year, up north, and he was working with Little Joe Hayden. Somehow Press roped this Dallas oil man and got Little Joe for inside man. They got the mark in the store up Frisco way, and put him on the send for sixty-five thousand. What happened then was that Press met the guy when he stepped off the train, told the winchell there'd been a change in the plans, and relieved him of the whole sixty-five grand. It wouldn't have worked if Little Joe hadn't tightened him up so good even Press could hardly knock him. Press didn't say boo to Little Joe or anybody else; just copped a heel with the whole score and didn't even try to cool the mark out. He might just as well have stuck a forty-some-odd in the chump's ribs. Well, naturally, the mark got hot and beefed gun and got the whole mob in trouble. Little Joe told me when the mark figured it out he really had a brain-blow. Started yanking out his hair like it was in a wig. Big fistfuls. Anyway, he beefed gun and ranked the store, and there was hell to pay all around.