Jerry drove the cart back to the clubhouse.
‘You buy it?’ he asked. ‘His story?’
‘That he hired somebody to make the drop? It’s possible, I guess.’
‘We’ll know when we find the guy.’
‘If it’s a phony story, he wouldn’t give us the guy’s name and address.’
‘He would if he was gonna warn him.’
‘Then I guess we better get there fast.’
We got back to the clubhouse, returned the cart and caught a cab out front. I gave the driver the address Begelman had given us.
‘I think the address is legit,’ Jerry said.
‘Why?’
‘He was too scared.’
‘Of you?’
Jerry nodded. ‘See, this time I was tryin’ to be scary.’
‘And a fine job you did of it, too.’
David Begelman told us he hired a PI to make the money drop, that his instructions came over the phone. The photo he received in the mail was supposedly a copy. When the PI made the payoff, he would get the other copies, the original and the negative …
‘Did he?’ I had asked.
‘He gave me copies, what he said was an original, and some negatives.’
‘And?’
‘I burned them all.’
‘So you have no way of knowing if there were any other copies? Or negatives?’
‘No,’ Begelman admitted, ‘but I haven’t heard from the blackmailer again.’
‘How did you choose the PI who made the drop?’
‘I didn’t,’ he admitted, ‘the blackmailer did …’
‘You know, Mr G.… ’ Jerry said.
‘Yeah?’
‘The PI who made the drop could also have been the blackmailer.’
I looked at him. ‘Jerry, I was just having the same thought.’
The private dick’s name was Jimmy Jacks, and he had an office in a seedy section of LA called the Nickel, on Fifth Street, right in the heart of Skid Row.
‘Jeez, Mr G.,’ Jerry said, as we drove down Fifth, ‘you’d think somebody with the money that Bagel guy has would hire somebody better than this.’
‘Remember,’ I said, ‘he said he didn’t pick the guy.’
‘Well, seein’ where his office is – or maybe he even lives here – I don’t guess he’d be the blackmailer himself.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘If you had fifty grand, would you stay here?’
‘If I didn’t want people to know I was a blackmailer, I would – at least for a while.’
‘I getcha, yeah. Maybe he’s, whatayacallit, bidin’ his time.’
The address we had was an office over a dive called Sammy’s Bar.
‘You guys sure this is where you wanna go?’ the cab driver asked.
‘We’re sure,’ I said, ‘but maybe you could wait for us, with the meter runnin’, of course.’
‘No skin off my nose,’ he said, with a shrug.
‘Thanks.’
I had considered calling Nat Hiller to see if he knew anything about Jimmy Jacks, but his address seemed to say it all. Now that we saw his office, I knew I’d made the right decision. I may have been judging him too harshly, but that remained to be seen.
Jerry peered through the dirty front window at the interior of Sammy’s Bar and said, ‘Geez, even I wouldn’t drink here, and I been in some pretty good Brooklyn dives.’ Pretty good actually meaning pretty bad.
There was a door to the right of Sammy’s which we found unlocked. There was a mailbox, but no indication if it was for a business or a residence. I figured it was for both. Who’d want to wake up in the morning at home and have to come here to work? Unless home was even worse.
We looked up at the long stairwell that barely had room for Jerry’s shoulders. He almost had to turn sideways to go up. We came to a worn wooden door with worn gold lettering that stuttered: J–Ja–ks, In–est–ga–tio–s.
I knocked and there was no answer. A look at Jerry, who shrugged, told me we both had the same feeling. I tried the knob and it turned.
Inside, we found a cramped office with a scarred desk, chair and dented file cabinets. It looked as if Jacks had repatriated his furniture from a garbage dump. There were papers scattered on the desk and floor, and I would have thought the place had been tossed but for the fact that all the desk and cabinet drawers were still closed. Usually when rifling somebody’s office, closing the drawers after you’re done is not a priority.
‘What a mess,’ Jerry said.
‘Yeah, but I get the feelin’ it always looks this way.’
It was early, but as I peered out the dirty front window I could see that, after dark, Sammy’s neon sign would be filling the room with a bright, perhaps even blinking light.
‘Mr G.’
I looked over at Jerry, who was standing in an open doorway.
‘In here.’
I walked over and followed him into an equally cramped room that became more so with both of us in it. There was a sagging bed with a poor excuse for a mattress, and a chest of drawers that looked as if it had come from the same dump as the office desk.
I walked over to the chest and checked the three drawers. The top two had clothing; the third was empty.
Jerry came and looked over my shoulder. ‘No tellin’ if there was anythin’ in that bottom drawer,’ he said.
‘No.’
Jerry walked to another door, opened it to reveal a closet with one shirt and one pair of trousers hanging. On the floor was a worn pair of brown shoes. On the shelf was an old suitcase.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘unless he had a set of suitcases, he didn’t pack and leave.’
‘With fifty grand, he could buy new clothes, a new suitcase, and move to a new neighborhood,’ Jerry observed.
‘You’re right about that.’
‘So if he is the blackmailer, he blew town with the money.’
‘The blackmail took place months ago, before Judy’s tour,’ I said. ‘Let’s ask around, see if anyone has seen him recently.’
‘Downstairs would be a good place to start,’ Jerry said.
‘Let’s go.’
In the office I took the time to go through the desk drawers first, while Jerry checked the file cabinets.
‘I got some pretty sloppy files,’ Jerry said. ‘Whatayou got?’
‘Paper clips,’ I said.
We both slammed our drawers and went downstairs.