The Collection (130 page)

I whirled back to see if Workus was going for the gun he'd
dropped, but he was sitting on the floor, doubled up and groaning in pain, and
Ellen had the gun.

I said, “Atta girl,” and then picked up the other gun and
put it in my pocket and went for the phone. I called Hank Granville's home
number and got a sleepily grunted “hello” after a minute or two.

“Hank,” I said, “this is Phil. Say, about that Dean-laboratory
burglary and murder. Was the secrecy because they'd been working on an
odorless lethal gas? Something in solid form that you drop in water like
carbide, and it---”

“Hey!” Hank sounded suddenly very wide awake. “Phil, for
God's sake where'd you find that out? It's supposed to be---”

“Yeah,” I cut in. “Secret. But a guy by the name of Workus
who had a front as a pet-shop owner, and another guy, got it. Dunno whether
they got it to peddle to a foreign power, or what, but they weren't sure they
had the right stuff and they wanted to test just how good it was. That's what
they wanted cats for; to see how far a given quantity of it would spread.”

“The hell! Phil, this is big! If you're right--- Where the
devil are you?”

“I don't know,” I told him. “Somewhere in the country. But I
got both guys here, and everything's under control. I'll leave this receiver
off the hook and you can get the call traced and come out with the Maria. So long.”

And without waiting for him to answer, I put the receiver
down on the table and crossed over to Ellen. She'd just picked up the little
gray cat, which looked a bit ruffled, but unhurt. She was soothing and petting
it and talking baby talk to it.

I said, “Gosh, I'm sorry I had to throw it, but--- Maybe I
can make friends with it again.”

And I reached out a doubtful hand, not knowing whether I'd
get clawed or not. But I wasn't. Ellen smiled at me, and the cat began to purr.
And I put my arms around Ellen and she had to put the cat down because it was
in the way. I hoped it would be a long time before the police got there and I
felt like purring myself.

“Hunter and Hunter,” I told the telephone, and it asked me
if this was one of the Mr. Hunters speaking and I said yes, I was Ed Hunter.

And I was, and still am. Hunter & Hunter is a two-man
detective agency operated on State Street on the Near North Side of Chicago.
My Uncle Am for Ambrose is shortish, fattish, and smartish; he'd been an
operative for a private detective agency once back when and then had become a
carney. We got together after my father's death ten years ago when I was
eighteen, spent a couple of seasons together with a carnival, and then got jobs
as operatives for the Starlock Agency in Chicago, and after a few years of that
started our own detective agency, just the two of us. It's still a peanut
operation, but we like peanuts. We get along with each other and most of the
world, and we make a living.

“Floyd Nielson,” the phone said. “Like you to do a job for
me. Be there if I come around now?”

“One of us will be here,” I said, “and probably both. But
could you tell me what kind of a job it is? If it's some sort of work we can't
or don't handle, I can save you the trip.”

“Missing person. My son Albee. Want you to find him.”

“Have you tried the police?”

“Sure. Missing Persons. Guy named Chudakoff. Lieutenant, I
think. Said he'd done all he could, unless there's new information. Said if I
wanted more done, I should get a private agency. Recommended yours.”

Sounded okay, I thought, getting into his laconic way of
talking. Every once in a while some friend of ours in the department tosses
something our way, and in that case it's bound to be on the up and up. Only
honest people go to the cops first and then sometimes turn out to want more
help than the cops can give them.

“How soon will you be here, Mr. Nielson?” I asked.

“Hour. Maybe less. I'm at the Ideal Hotel on South State.
You're on North State. Must be a bus that takes me through the Loop. Probably
faster'n getting a taxi.”

I told him the number of the bus, where to catch it, and
where to get off. He thanked me and hung up.

I put down the phone and was just about to pick it up again
to call Tom Chudakoff to see what I could learn about the case in advance; then
I looked at my watch and realized Uncle Am was already a few minutes overdue
back from lunch and decided to wait and let him listen in on the call. Either
or both of us might be working on the case.

He came in a minute later and I told him about the call from
Nielson, what there'd been of it, and suggested he listen in on my call to
Lieutenant Chudakoff. He said okay and went into his office, the inner one, and
picked up his phone while I was dialing.

I got Chudakoff right away and told him what we wanted.

“Nielson, sure,” he said. “He's been heckling me and I got
him out of my hair by sending him to you. If you make any money out of him, you
owe me a dinner.”

“Okay,” I said. “But he's on his way here now, and what can
you tell us in advance?”

“That there's no problem. His son owed a bookie eight hundred
bucks and took a powder. It's as mysterious as all that.”

“If his father's solvent enough to hire detective work,
wasn't he solvent enough to stand a bite to pay the bookie?”

“Oh, he gave the money to Albee all right. But it never got
to the bookie. Albee thought it was better used as a fresh stake, I'd guess.
He'd just lost his job, so what did he have to lose glomming onto the money
himself.”

“Tell me something about him. Albee, I mean.”

“Well, he had a fairly good job in a bookstore, and a padded
pad, was fairly solvent and played ponies on the cuff with a bookie named Red
Kogan. Know him?”

“Heard of him,” I said.

“Well, Albee booked with him and always paid up when he lost
until, all of a sudden a little over a week ago, Kogan realized Albee was into
him for eight hundred. One of his boys drops in at Albee's pad and doesn't
connect. He goes around to the bookstore and learns Albee's been fired from
his job. So what's mysterious?”

“A padded pad, for one thing. What is one?”

“Albee was a part-time hipster. He was square eight hours a
day---or whatever---at the bookstore, hip in his spare time. Look over his pad
and you'll see what I mean.”

“When was he last seen, Tom?”

“Week ago last Saturday night, July sixth. He borrowed car
keys from a friend of his, Jerry Score, on Saturday morning---that's the day
after he was fired from the bookstore. Gave 'em back late evening. If any of
his friends, or anybody else, has seen him since, they're not talking.”

“Sure. Said he was in a jam and wanted to see his old
man---that's your client---to raise some scratch. Floyd Nielson was a truck
farmer near Kenosha, Wisconsin---”

“What do you mean, was?” I cut in. “Isn't he now?”

“Sold his truck farm ten days ago, getting ready to blow
this part of the country. He's in Chicago, trying to see his son for one last
time first.”

“But he saw him only nine days ago.”

“Yeah. It's not so much that, or rather, I shouldn't have
put it that way. It's that he wants to be sure Albee is okay before he takes
off.

“And he thinks he's sure Albee wouldn't run off, just to
duck an eight hundred dollar debt---at least not when he had the eight hundred
in hand. Says Albee likes Chicago and has a lot of friends here, that he
wouldn't leave just because of that. Maybe he's got a point, I wouldn't know,
but hell, there's no evidence of foul play or anything
but a
run-out,
and we can't spend any more of taxpayers' money on it. I can keep it open on
the books, and that's all, from here on in. That is, unless something new turns
up. If you boys take the case and can turn up something, like maybe a motive
for somebody dusting him off, we'll work on it again.”

“Isn't his running out on the bookie a motive?”

“Ed, this isn't the old days. Bookies don't have people
killed for peanuts like that. Besides, Kogan's not that kind of guy. He might
lean on Albee a little, but that's all. Probably
did
lean on him, which
is what scared the guy. If Albee's stayed, he'd have turned over the
money---it's just that he figured he'd rather use it as a stake for a fresh
start somewhere else, and he had to do it one way or the other. Take my word
for it.”

“Makes sense, Tom,” I said. “But if it's that cut and dried,
aren't we just taking money away from a poor old man to take the case at all?”

“He's not that poor. Frugal, yes; don't try to bite him too
hard.”

He was just kidding, so I didn't answer that. He and our
other cop friends know that we don't bomb our clients. Which is why they send
business our way once in a while.

“Find out anything else interesting about Albee?” I asked.

“Well, he had a hell of a cute little colored sweetie-pie.
These beat boys seem to go for that.”

“First,” I said, “you say he's hip, now he's beat. Which is
he?”

“Is there a difference?”

I said, “Norman Mailer seems to think so.”

“Who is Norman Mailer?”

“That,” I said, “is a good question. But back to this girl.
What color is she? Green? Orange? Or what?”

“Ed, she's Hershey-bar colored. But listen, why pry this
stuff out of me piecemeal? I've got the file handy, so why don't I give you
names and addresses of people we talked to---there aren't many---and what they
told us. Then maybe you'll let me get back to work and quit yakking.”

I told him that would be fine and I pulled over a pad of
foolscap and made notes, and when I finished, Uncle Am and I knew as much as
the police did. About the disappearance of Albee Nielson, anyway. I thanked
Chudakoff and hung up.

Uncle Am came out of the inner office and sat down across
from my desk in the outer one. “Well, kid,” he asked, “how does it hit you?”

I shrugged. “Looks like Albee just took a powder, all right.
But if Nielson wants to spend a little before he's convinced, who are we to
talk him out of it?”

“Nobody. Anyway, we'll see what he's got to say.”

It wasn't long before we heard what he had to say. Nielson
looked anywhere in his fifties. Grizzled graying hair and a beard to match,
steel-rimmed glasses, and the red skin and redder neck of a man who's worked
outdoors all his life, even under a relatively mild Wisconsin sun.

“Damn cops,” he said. “That Chudakoff. Wouldn't believe me.
Told
him Albee wouldn't run away. Not for eight hundred dollars, and when he had
it.”

I asked, “How did you and Albee get along, Mr. Nielson? In
general, and the day he came to you for the money?”

“General, fair. Oh, we didn't see eye-to-eye on a lot of
things. Crazy ideas, he had. Left me alone the minute he got through high
school, came to Chicago. But we kept in touch. Letter once in a while. And he
dropped up once in a while, sometimes just overnight, sometimes a whole
weekend. Usually when he could borrow a car.”

“You ever visit him here?”

“Once-twice a year, if I had business in Chicago. Not overnight,
'less I had business that kept me. Then I stayed at a hotel, though. Didn't
think much of that---what he called a pad, of his.”

“What about Albee's mother? And any brothers or sisters he
was close to?”

“No brothers or sisters. Mother died when he was twelve.
What's
she
got to do with it?”

“We're just trying to get the whole picture, Mr. Nielson,” I
said. “And Albee and you lived alone till he was graduated from high school and
he came to Chicago?”

He nodded, and I asked, “How long ago was that?”

“ 'Leven-twelve years. Albee's thirty now.”

“Did he ever borrow money from you during that time?”

“Small amounts a few times. If he was out of work a while or
something. But always paid it back, when he got a job. That was back when.
Ain't borrowed since, till now, from the time he got that bookstore job. That
paid pretty good.”

“So you didn't worry about his paying back the current eight
hundred?”

“Oh, it'd of taken him a time to do it, but he would of.
Especially as he'd learned his lesson---I think---and was through with
gambling.” He stopped long enough to light a pipe he'd been tamping down, “Oh,
I bawled hell out of him before I give it to him. That kind of gambling, I
mean. Not that I'm agin gambling in reason. Used to go into Kenosha most every
Saturday night myself for a little poker. But stakes I could afford. It was
going in
debt
gambling that I laid Albee out for. Laid him out plenty,
'fore I give him the money.”

“But you didn't actually quarrel?”

“Some, at first. But we got over it and he stayed for
supper, and we talked about my plans, now I'm partially retiring.”

“What do you mean by partly retiring, Mr. Nielson?” Uncle Am
cut in with that; I'd been wondering whether to ask it or skip it.

“Place near Kenosha's a little too much for me to handle any
more. By myself, that is, and I don't like hired hands. Always quit on you when
you're in a jam.

“So I'd decided---if I could get my price, and I did, near
enough---to sell it and get a smaller truck farm. One I could handle by myself,
even when I get some older'n I am now. Maybe give me time to set in the sun an
hour or two a day, not work twelve, sometimes more, hours a day like I been.
And
in a milder climate.

“That's mostly what me and Albee talked about. I'd thought
Florida. Albee said California climate'd be better for me, dryer.”

“Have you made up your mind now which?”

“Yes-no. Made up my mind to take a look at California.
Saw
Florida once. If I like California better, and find what I want, I'll
stay.”

“And since this conversation with Albee a week ago Saturday,
you haven't heard from him? Not even a letter?”