“Money he owed?” Graham gave me a puzzled look. He evidently didn’t know about Brenner’s gambling debts. It had fallen into place while I was talking with Susan Jenkins. She mentioned a gambling hall Brenner took her to once. She also made mention of Brenner laying down five grand on a single roulette spin, then leaving immediately after he lost. To the average person, that probably sounds like high living. Shoot the wad, easy come easy go, shrug it off and let’s go out for a champagne breakfast! I’m sure Brenner had been well paid, but he was no millionaire. He couldn’t afford to lay down five thousand a bet; that kind of play had the stink of desperation. And when does a gambler become desperate? When he’s trying to win back a ton of dough he’s already lost. I’d also recognized the name of the gambling hall when she said it, one of Joe Trianna’s joints. If Brenner had gotten in over his head with Trianna, the mystery of his sellout cleared up pretty damn fast. It might even have been a matter of Trianna setting Brenner up, finding out who he worked for and then rigging the games so that Brenner started off winning big and ended up so far under he had two choices: sell Graham out or go for a long swim. Ironically, he ended up doing both.
I explained all this to Graham. He seemed less impressed with my deductive skill than annoyed that I’d paid a visit to Brenner’s former fiancée.
“You should have let me know you intended to do that,” he said sternly.
“You should have let me know a few things up front as well. It would have saved us both a lot of wasted time and effort. Since you saw fit not to, I’m handling this my way now.” Go ahead, Graham, push me on this. I have the notebook and two other guys are willing to kill me for it. Push me one little bit.
“It really doesn’t matter,” he said, trying to sound dismissive. “Brenner’s reasons for what he did are far less important than the situation his actions have created for me.” That irked me even more. It’s tough to argue with a guy when he’s talking sense.
“Let me see if I have it all up to now,” I started. “Trianna blackmailed Brenner into giving up some of your most important business secrets. Then he put them all neatly into a notebook which he gave to Craig Carlton, with instructions to show it to you and demand you take him on as a subcontractor. Trianna didn’t want anyone else having the full score on this, so he gave Carlton the dope in code. Of course, he would have given Carlton a couple of tidbits for his meeting with you, so he could hold up the notebook and convince you that the stuff in it was legit. That tally so far?”
“That was the essence of my first meeting with Carlton, yes,” Graham said.
“So you started the ball rolling to set Carlton up working for you. What choice did you have, really? At the same time, the two of you set Brenner on Carlton’s tail, trying to find out more about him and also find out how Trianna ended up with this information. You didn’t realize at the time that Brenner was the rat, and by the time it dawned on you, he’d gone missing.”
“All right,” I said, slipping a hand into my pocket and taking another pull at my drink, “you hired me ostensibly to dig up any dirt on your new business partner. Hell, you could have called the Chief of Police personally and gotten all the criminal records you wanted. I’ve seen your influence downtown. No, you were grooming me to pick up where Brenner left off, hoping I could learn enough to help you get the notebook back.”
“We did entertain the notion that you might be able to provide additional services for us,” Lundquist admitted diplomatically, “once we’d had the opportunity to observe the quality of your work.”
“Then when Brenner turned up dead,” I continued, “you had to regroup, rethink your strategy. You haven’t been leaning on the police to solve his murder because you don’t want them investigating and finding out about these trade secrets of yours. And you threw Brenner’s fiancée a nice little packet of green so she wouldn’t squawk too much either. Am I still on track here?”
“More or less,” Graham admitted.
“More than less, I’d say. And then Carlton got iced and you had to come up with a new reason to keep me in the picture, so you hired me to chauffeur your daughter around. Was she bait, Mr. Graham? Were you hoping to lure someone out of the woodwork? Whoever might step in to finish the play that Carlton started?”
“That’s preposterous,” Graham said flatly, looking me in the eye when he said it.
“Okay. You figured if I could get the notebook for you, you could decode it and find out just how deep in the soup you were. If I went the way of Brenner and Carlton, well, scratch one private detective and you’d be no worse off. You could always try again with someone else. That about the size of it?” Neither man answered, which was answer enough.
“My price just went up again,” I muttered.
“Mr. Caine,” Lundquist said softly, “We don’t ask you to approve of or even understand the decisions Mr. Graham and I sometimes find ourselves forced to make.”
“Thanks, that’s a real load off. When’s the last time either of you heard from Harold Draymore?”
“He was at the house the week before last,” said Lundquist.
“That night you marshaled the troops after the police identified Brenner’s body?”
“Yes.”
“He hasn’t been in touch since? Hasn’t tried to contact you or make any threats?”
“No, we’ve heard nothing from him.”
“Why did he come that night?”
“To offer his condolences,” snorted Graham. “And to try to sit in on our meeting. I turned him out, of course.”
“Mr. Caine,” Lundquist started, “if Draymore has the notebook as you say—”
“As he says, Mr. Lundquist,” I corrected.
“—why haven’t we heard from him?”
“Because he plans to sell it back to Trianna. That’s what he hired me for, to serve as an intermediary so he can keep his hands clean.”
“And you will intercept the notebook and deliver it to Mr. Graham?”
“For a hefty sum,” I said.
“May I ask how you plan to do this?”
“No, you may not. I’m not about to have Trianna find out that I queered his deal, which means I’m not about to offer up any particulars regarding my methods.”
“I must have that notebook,” Graham said flatly.
“And your daughter back,” I reminded him.
“Of course,” he blinked.
“Mr. Caine,” Lundquist asked, “do you have any idea where Miss Graham might be right now?”
I looked into Lundquist’s pale blue eyes and shook my head, then pretended something just occurred to me.
“Does she have a favorite hotel she stays at in the city?” Lundquist looked at Graham, both of them no doubt wondering why they hadn’t thought of that. Lundquist walked over to the desk and started making a few calls. He hit it on the third try, hanging up and looking relieved.
“She’s taken a room at the Muehlebach Hotel,” he told Graham.
“Get the chauffeur,” said Graham. “We need to bring her home.”
“You might want to give that a second thought, Mr. Graham.” He looked at me as though I’d suggested he might want to wear his pajamas to his next gallery opening.
“What are you talking about, Caine?”
“She left for a reason. If you haul her back here against her will, it’s good odds she’ll bolt again as soon as she has the chance.”
“I won’t give her the chance.”
“She’ll find a way. She’s headstrong, Mr. Graham, same as her father. Only next time, she’ll be careful to go some place where you can’t find her.” Graham thought about this for a moment, reason fighting with emotion, and usually only damned disciplined people win that fight.
“Look,” I said, “I’ll stop off there on my way home, check to make sure she’s all right. I know the house detective there. I’ll have a word with him and make sure he keeps an eye on her.”
“Won’t she leave the hotel once you’ve shown yourself?” Graham asked.
“I’ll tell her I found her through one of my contacts, and promise not to tell you where she is provided she stays put. She trusts me well enough. If you go get her or have her picked up, I’m telling you, she’ll run off again.”
Graham and Lundquist had one of their silent exchanges and Graham finally said: “If you think it’s best. But after you see her, see that she’s all right—”
“I’ll call you.”
We were finished for now. Lundquist showed me down in the elevator.
“Do you need anything, Mr. Caine?”
“Just a visit to the lavatory on my way out,” I said, digging my keys out of my pocket and holding them out to him. “Would you be good enough to have Felding start my car for me?”
¥ ¥ ¥
I stopped at a drugstore and used the phone booth in the rear to call Graham. I told him I’d seen Melinda and she was fine, and that I’d spoken to the house dick.
“Did she say why she left?”
“Yes, she did. She picked up the telephone this morning and overheard Trianna threatening her life. She got spooked. She’s still spooked. Let her rest. The house detective will keep watch over her.”
It didn’t set well with me, telling Graham I’d seen his daughter safe and sound with my own eyes that night when I hadn’t. With everything that was going on, I figured it couldn’t hurt to make sure. It was late when I got to the apartment she was staying in, but there was light coming from under the door. I gave the knock and she was there in a flash, hugging me to her before I could get all the way inside. I moved us both in and locked the door behind me. I told her I’d been to see her father and what I’d told him regarding her whereabouts.
“So that’s why you had me book a room at the Muehlebach. Devlin, that was brilliant!”
“I do this kind of thing for a living, you know.” If people want to confuse a lucky impulse with masterful strategy, I usually let them. “You have everything you need for tonight?”
“You’re leaving?” Her eyes looked up at me imploringly and I started to say something. “Devlin, don’t leave. Stay here tonight. Please. I’d feel safer. I’d be safer.”
I started to give her an argument but couldn’t come up with one. She was in danger, and it wasn't like there was someone at home who would miss me.
“Okay,” I told her, throwing my hat on the table. “Get me a pillow and a spare blanket. I’ll sleep on the floor.”
“There’s no reason for that.”
“There’s every reason for that.”
“Nonsense. Oh, the bed’s a bit small perhaps, but I don’t take up that much room, surely?”
“Melinda—”
“Devlin, I want you to come to bed with me.” Hearing her say it so bluntly and looking into those wide, dark blue eyes made my head spin a little. We looked at each other for a moment and she reached up to give me a very soft, very long kiss. When we broke, she pulled away and walked over to the bed, sitting down at the foot of it.
“I fell for you because of your honesty,” she said. “If you don’t want me, just look at me and tell me, and I’ll believe you.” If there’d been flirtatious teasing in her eyes, in the corners of her mouth, I could have joked her out of it, but there wasn’t.
“It’s not simple as that.”
“It is if we want it to be.” She turned her head and raised her eyebrows at me. “I can even pretend I’m a virgin if you like.” I laughed, knowing she wasn’t trying to be seductive, just protecting herself in case I rejected her.
I walked up to her, placed my hands on her shoulders, and kissed her on the forehead, explaining that professional men of my age didn’t take advantage of young ladies in distress, and reminding her that we were both under a great deal of tension that could easily cloud our better judgment, cause us to take actions we’d regret later. At least that had been my plan, but somehow in the half dozen or so steps it took me to reach her, the plan pretty much fell apart. I felt her soft shoulders and breathed in her scent and saw the look in her eyes, and an hour later, we were laying in the dark together, closer to each other than the small bed really made necessary.
“Where did you get that?” She was tracing the deep scar along my left thigh.
“Cut myself shaving.”
“You shave your legs?”
“It was wartime, honey. There weren’t any women. We had to take turns.”
She laughed and slapped me on the arm, then rolled up on her side and leaned over me.
“There’s a woman here,” she said.
¥ ¥ ¥
In the morning I found myself sitting in a chair, my body turned slightly sideways, chin resting on one fist in a half-hearted attempt at Rodan’s The Thinker, feeling like a complete idiot.
“How much longer?”
“You’re so impatient,” she complained. She held a piece of charcoal in her left hand and balanced a sketchpad on her lap with the right. Either they were already in her overnight case or they were the two things she’d save in the event of a fire.
“I’m also cold,” I told her.
“Your hat isn’t keeping the heat in?” she asked sarcastically. “Seriously, Devlin, it looks ridiculous. The only thing it’s covering is your face.”
“That’s the idea, sweetheart.” I stood up and she started to protest.
“I’m not finished!”
“I am. I have things to do today and I need a shower.” I walked by the open closet and saw two maroon dresses hanging up, identical from what I could tell. I remembered she’d bought two of the style she liked during our shopping trip.
“You brought two of the same dress with you?” I asked.
“I packed in a hurry,” she said tartly. “Someone was trying to kill me, remember?”
“Someone still is. Remember that. Where are you going?”
“I need a shower, too,” she said, making toward the bathroom.
“I’m going first,” I told her firmly.
“First?” She looked at me in mock puzzlement and I threw my hat at her.
¥ ¥ ¥
Jennings was waiting for me outside my office, and I could tell from the envelope under his arm and the pleased look on his face that he’d been successful. I unlocked the offices and we went in, Jennings putting the Leica, flashlight, lockpick set, and envelope on the desk while I called Gail’s house.
“Mr. Caine, I’m sorry, I’m running a little late this morning.” Gail’s voice sounded like a train motor. “I’ll be in right away.”
“Not sounding like that you won’t. Nothing doing. I don’t want important clients calling and thinking I’ve got Bronco Nagurski working for me. You get right back into bed and don’t come back here till you can talk like a lady.”
“Well,” she hesitated, “I am still feeling pretty weak.”
“Get some rest, Gail. Consider that an order from your boss. I’ll see you later in the week.” If I lived that long. I hung up the phone and turned to Jennings.
“No problems?”
“Piece of cake,” he grinned.
“Okay, let’s see what we’ve got.” I opened the envelope and took out the photographs Jennings had developed that morning. They were all close-up shots of official documents, documents Jennings had removed temporarily from a file cabinet in an office in the State Capitol. I grabbed a magnifying glass out of my desk and went over each of them. Jennings had made good use of the instructions I’d given him about this type of photography: the typing, dates, seals, and signatures were all in focus and easy to read. All but one of the documents related to the adoptions of Stella Pintner and her sister. There were two certificates of live birth, two applications for adoption, two letters from physicians certifying the general health of the infants, and two official records of adoption with the signatures of the birth mother and the adopting parents. I looked them over quickly, then moved onto my real point of interest (and my real reason for having Jennings take such a risk): the records pertaining to Ronald Graham’s adoption of Melinda. I frowned up at Jennings.
“This is it?”
“That’s all there was in the file folder,” he told me.
Whereas the first two files had been loaded down with various bits of official paper, there had evidently been only a single Record of Adoption in the Graham file. The information was scant, but every date and signature was in place. The mother was listed as Mary Stanton, age 21, a seamstress from Littleton, Colorado, child’s name Jane. All the blanks were filled in and all the important signatures were in place – doctors, state officials, and Graham himself. It looked like it had been rushed through the works, everyone offering up his John Hancock on the same date. It was neat, it was too complete, and it told you next to nothing. I was pretty sure I was looking at a fake.
“Find what you were looking for?” asked Jennings.
“Yes and no. Mostly no.”
“You want me to go back and try again?”
“No, I’m sure this is all they have. Go home and get some sleep.”
“Want me to do that second round of interviews for Mr. Jakowski?”
“Jakowski can go suck an egg. I need you by the phone, rested and ready, boy-oh.”
¥ ¥ ¥
I drove over to Maxie’s for a late breakfast. I’d eaten a few bites of runny egg and burnt toast with Melinda that morning. She knew how to light a stove, all right, but she didn’t have much idea what to do with it once she got it going. Al greeted me as I took a stool at the counter.
“Getting a late start today, Mr. Caine?”
“More like an early break,” I told him. “I’ll have two eggs over easy, bacon, some cottage fries and coffee.”
“Comin’ right up,” he said, pouring the coffee. I sipped it and thought about Melinda Graham’s adoption record. What was the real story behind that single sheet of paper? Someone trying to avoid a scandal? Maybe Melinda’s mother was somebody famous. Infamous could work just as well; the mother might have been a criminal sent off to some women’s penitentiary. Could be she was someone in Graham’s own family, young and unmarried, and this was how they’d kept it quiet. That’s what I love about my work: you never run out of maybes. Then again, I wasn’t really sure what I’d been hoping to find in the first place. Something in my gut had told me I needed to see the record (I wouldn’t have had Jennings take such a risk for a monthly ten-dollar check from Mrs. Pintner), but that something could have been me grasping at straws since I had nothing else to make bricks with.
I forced myself to think about what I should do come the end of this week. I could sell the notebook to Trianna and have Draymore kill me. I could sell the notebook to Draymore and have Trianna kill me. Or I could sell it to Graham and have Trianna and Draymore kill me. Not what you’d call an appealing set of options. Was there a way I could turn them against each other and still manage to stay out of the crossfire? It was an attractive idea, but I was damned if I could figure out how to pull it off.
I tried to recall why I’d gotten into this mess to start with. I could have left the notebook in the hotel when I first found it, or even moved it to an easier place to find. I could have handed it over to the first person who asked for it. I’m a cautious man by nature. There’d been no real reason to buy into this game in the first place, and less reason to stay in once I saw how high the stakes were being raised. I wrapped up playing dumb with myself because it wasn’t getting me anywhere. I knew full well the reason I was in the thick of this: she had long, black hair, dark blue eyes, soft skin, a face like a siren, and she was across town from me at this very moment, probably sketching in her pad and (just maybe?) thinking about me.
Okay, Caine, so you took a shine to some girl you met. Now you’ve set yourself up to get killed over her? It was more than a shine, I answered myself. It was certainly more than that now. I’m old enough to know that love isn’t the end-all, be-all that the poets and songwriters would have us believe, but that doesn’t make it any less powerful, or any easier to ignore. I had no illusions about being a permanent part of her life; I just wanted to make sure she got the chance to go on living.
I drove over to the library. There was a new girl behind the counter, one I hadn’t seen before. Pretty enough, but she couldn’t hold a candle to my Melina.
“Phyllis have the day off?” I asked her.
She shrugged. “She hasn’t been feeling well lately.”
“I thought she had some new beau, had her walking on air.” She looked at me a moment, making sure nobody was within earshot.
“Are you a friend of hers?”
“Friendly enough. We went together for awhile.” It was enough for a bored young girl stuck in a quiet place and wanting to share a little gossip. She leaned forward and lowered her voice.
“Her new beau turned out to be married.” She raised her eyebrows in a what-do-you-think-of-that gesture. I raised mine in return.
“You don’t say!”
“Yeah,” she said, smacking her lips for a second before pulling her face down to demonstrate sympathy. “She’s pretty blue about it, I guess. Hasn’t come into work once this week. The boss is getting pretty impatient, but she’s been here awhile, you know.” Poor Phyllis, if there was a depressing enough outcome to any situation, she managed to find it. I let the girl have another line or two, then headed off to the reference section. I worked my way back through old newspapers – starting with the last day of September – until I found the engagement notice for Steven Brenner and Susan Jenkins back in mid-August. Brenner himself wasn’t high society, but working for Graham all these years had rated a picture of the happy couple. The bride-to-be was dolled up and smiling brightly. I thought Brenner looked a little smug, but most men who pulled down that kind of salary and scored that kind of tomato probably would. I wondered when Susan Jenkins would break the news to her daughter, that there would be no big new house and no pony. In my mind’s eye I saw the little girl blowing on her finger and smiled to myself.
Shhhh! It’s a secret!
I toyed with the idea of going over to the courthouse and seeing if Brenner had filed for a marriage license, but I didn’t really see the point. I was just poking my toe in the sand here, trying to turn over anything interesting. The intended wedding was on the level so far as I could tell. No clue here that might lead to discovering who had killed Brenner and why.
I killed a couple more hours running some errands, and around one o’clock I was walking through the front door of the Italian Gardens restaurant. I’d parked my car several blocks away in case anyone inside the restaurant felt like monkeying with it. I knew Trianna favored this place and lunched here frequently, and wasn’t surprised to see him at his corner table surrounded by flunkies. No sign of Vinnie and Gino, though. I guessed they were out somewhere breaking legs, Vinnie doing the heavy lifting while Gino tossed out snotty remarks from the sidelines. Trianna looked over and saw me standing inside the door. He shot me a quizzical smile and I waited until he waved me over. The last guy to leave the table patted me down and took my gun.
“Do you have a minute, Mr. Trianna?”
“Two for you, shamus. What’s the good word?” The patter was there but there wasn’t much steam in it, and his movie-star smile wasn’t nearly so dazzling today. Trianna appeared to be under a bit of pressure. He gestured and I took the chair across from him.
“It’s all set for Friday,” I said, keeping my voice low.
“Tell me about it.”
“Draymore has the notebook in a safe deposit box at one of his banks. Friday, a few minutes past noon, I’m going to walk in there with a mask and a gun, stick up the bank, and take it.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that.”
“Which bank?”
“Draymore won’t tell me till the day of. I’ve tried asking, but I don’t want to push too hard, make him suspicious.”
“No, you don’t want to do that,” Trianna said, in that tone he always used that suggested he didn’t believe you. “You got much experience knockin’ over banks, Caine?”
“Don’t need it. The whole job’s a setup. The guards and the bank president himself are all in on it. Hell, I probably don’t even need the mask.”
“Why all the rigmarole?”
“It’s how Draymore plans to square himself with you. See, he figures to sell the notebook to Graham, and when you came around, hey, sorry, I got robbed. Somebody took it right out of my box. Fluke thing. He’s even got the bank president and the guards to stand up for him on it.” If Draymore had followed my instructions as he claimed, he’d told Trianna that he was setting me up to take a fall, either to get me off his back or to pay me back for some private affair. This would jibe nicely, provided I didn’t overplay my part with Trianna. I had to come across as just dumb enough.
“And what are you going to do with the notebook after the robbery?”
“I’m supposed to take it straight to Draymore.”
“Supposed to, huh? And what are you really going to do with it?”
“Take it straight to you. Hell, you can have Vinnie and Gino waiting on the corner. I’ll tell Draymore I got jumped by your people, had it taken off me. It’d be better for me that way, really. I can use Draymore’s own play to square myself with him.”
Trianna took out a cigarette and fitted it into his onyx holder, turning his gold lighter over in his hand for a minute before firing it up, looking into my eyes the whole time. This is it, I thought. Trianna’s the one who already has the copy from my safe. He’s the one who tried to dynamite my car. And idiot me just walked right into his lair, trying to feed him a line of hooey. He’d raise one finger and the goons at the next table would hustle me out the back, put a bullet in my skull, and dump me in the garbage can. Nothing to do now but wait for it.
“Just one problem,” he said. I held my breath and waited for him to continue. “How the hell am I supposed to know what corner to send Vinnie and Gino to Friday afternoon?”
“Is there a telephone number you can give me? I’ll call as soon as I know which bank it is.” Trianna thought for a moment, then took a card out of his pocket and flipped it at me. I picked it up, noting there was a telephone exchange printed on it but nothing else.
“Don’t use any names when you call,” he said. “Just tell whoever’s on the other end when and where. Got that?”
“I got it. One more thing, though.”
“What?”
“Draymore’s going to be plenty steamed about losing the notebook. He might make trouble for me afterward. I know he has friends on the north side. I don’t know how powerful those friends are.” Trianna started laughing and it took him several seconds to stop. Either my situation really amused him or he really needed something to laugh about these days.
“You asking me for protection? You’re a big boy, solve your own problems. The only protection I’m selling is protection from me, and the price you pay for that is the notebook in my hand Friday afternoon. Right?”
“Right.”
“Don’t go gettin’ smart, Caine. You know how many guys I’ve seen, they’re almost to the finish line and they think they can win bigger running a different race?” He picked up his wineglass and swirled the liquid inside. “Draymore’s nobody. I’m the one you need to worry about.”
I collected my gun, walked the several blocks back to my car, checked it out, and drove back to my office. Two down, one to go, I thought. Graham was still chomping at the bit for the notebook, and I’d walked out of the Italian Gardens without any extra holes in my body, which meant Trianna didn’t have it either. That chubby little bastard Draymore had taken the copy from my safe and then tried to kill me, and for a moment, I was angrier than I was scared. It made for a nice change. Besides, there’d be plenty more time to be scared again later. At least a day or two, I figured.
I came up the back way to my office and saw the familiar pair of Kansas City’s finest, Detectives Spengler and Plowden, waiting in the hall for me.