The Doan and Carstairs Mysteries

by Norbert Davis

  It was really quite a marvelous place. It covered an area half the size of a city block, and you could buy anything in it from lollipops to life insurance. Doan got out of the car and headed for the long and empty meat counter. There was only one butcher behind it, and he looked as though he wished he were somewhere else.

  "I'd like a three-pound porterhouse steak," Doan told him.

  "So would I," said the butcher.

  "I know you've got one hidden out in the icebox," Doan said.

  "How do you know?" the butcher asked.

  "I'm a Japanese spy. We spies get around."

  "Palooey," said the butcher in a disgusted tone. "Now it's jokes I have to put up with. In my financial condition. All right. So suppose I've got a steak in the icebox. So why should I give it to you?"

  "That's my car out in front--the big, shiny one. Take a look at what's in the back seat."

  The butcher said: "I wouldn't care if..." He paused for a long moment. "Just what is that?"

  "A dog."

  "It's got awful big teeth for a dog," the butcher said slowly. "And I don't know as I like the way he's lookin' at me."

  "The teeth are bigger at closer range," Doan said. "Would you like a demonstration?"

  "No," said the butcher quickly. "Now listen, chum. I don't want no trouble with you or that gargoyle, but I can't sell you that steak. It was ordered three weeks ago by an old customer of mine. She's a very, very special customer. She's Susan Sally, the movie gal."

  "She doesn't need a steak. She's too fat now."

  "Fat?" the butcher echoed, stunned. "Susan Sally? Say listen, she comes in here all the time in nothing but shorts and a bandanna. I mean, short shorts and a bandanna the size of a cocktail napkin. She ain't fat."

  "She will be if she eats too many steaks. You wouldn't want that to happen, would you?"

  "I should say not," said the butcher.

  "Give me the steak and save the risk. Look at my car now."

  "Hey!" said the butcher, alarmed. "He can't get through that window, can he?"

  "He probably could if I called to him. Shall I? The only trouble is that I can't control him. He runs around snapping and gnashing, and he's awfully careless about what he gnashes on."

  "You're threatening me," said the butcher. "That's what you're doing."

  "I'm glad you finally found it out. Are you going to give me a steak out of the icebox or off of you?"

  "It's a hell of a fine thing, that's all I got to say. A man can't even do business any more without being submitted to terrorism."

  The butcher went stamping down the counter and opened the heavy icebox door and went inside. He came out again carrying a big, rich red steak reverently in front of him. He plopped it down on the scales, and the dial swung just short of the three-pound mark.

  "Okay," said Doan. "Now put it through the grinder."

  "Grinder!" the butcher repeated, horrified. "This steak? This steak here?"

  "Yes."

  "Oh-oh," the butcher mumbled. He ran the steak through the grinder, turning his head away to keep from witnessing its desecration. He wrapped up the results in oiled paper and slapped it on the counter. "There! Now I hope you're happy!"

  "Sure," said Doan. "I see you've got your ceiling prices pasted up over there."

  "Yeah. And we follow 'em, too."

  "That's fine. I notice that the ceiling price on dog meat is twelve cents a pound. This wasn't quite three pounds, but I'll be generous about it. Here's thirty-six cents and a penny for tax, and you won't need my rationing book because dog meat and scraps don't come under the rules."

  The butcher's face was very pale. "Chum," he whispered, "you can't do this to me."

  "Thanks," said Doan. "Good-by." He headed for the car.

  The butcher leaned over the counter and pointed a long, accusing arm. "Oh, you wait! If you ever meet up with Susan Sally... And I'm gonna tell her you said she was fat! You're gonna be a sad man if she ever lays hold of you!"

  Doan ignored him. He got in the car and let Carstairs sniff the meat and then drove down Sunset until he located an open-air, car-service restaurant. He drove the Cadillac in under the wooden, pagodalike awning and parked. Grunting and groaning with the effort, he leaned over the back of the seat and opened one of his bags and took out a square cardboard carton.

  A very trim and trig little girl in red pants and a red jacket and a high bussar's hat with a red plume on it came up and slapped a card on the windshield and leaned in the window, all glistening teeth and lipstick and beaded eyelashes.

  "Good afternoon, sir! And what will--" Her smile went away and left her face as blank as a freshly whitewashed wall. "What's that in the back seat?"

  "Just a dog," Doan said. "A poor, harmless, little puppy that loves women and children."

  "He looks awful--hungry."

  "That's because he is. And speaking of that..."

  Doan unwrapped the meat and held it up for her to see, rich and luscious in its nest of pink oiled paper.

  "Gee!" said the waitress. "Meat!"

  "Right," Doan agreed complacently. "Now I'll tell you what I want you to do with it. Take it into your kitchen and put it in a pan and put the pan in the oven. Warm the meat. Don't cook it or sear it. Just warm it. Then take it out and put it in a big bowl--a clean one. Follow me?"

  The waitress nodded doubtfully. "Yes."

  Doan held up the cardboard carton. "Know what these are?"

  She nodded again. "Sure. Those are special-extra-fancy English tea biscuits. I've seen them in some of the real high-priced markets in Beverly Hills."

  "Okay. After you get the meat warm, take the biscuits out of the box, crumple them carefully, and stir them into the meat. Mix them up nice and smoothly. Got it?"

  The waitress had backed a step away from the window. "Yes," she said warily.

  Doan took a small green bottle from his pocket. "When you get through mixing the biscuits, pour three drops of this in the bowl and mix that in, too. It's concentrated cod liver oil. Bring a door tray back when you come, Carstairs refuses to eat off the floor. He knows it makes him look like a giraffe taking a drink."

  "Is this for the dog?" the waitress asked incredulously.

  "Sure."

  "Oh!" she gasped, relieved. "I thought it was for you!"

  "I wish it was," said Doan, "But if I tried to eat it, you'd hear an awful lot of hell-raising around here. You haven't got anything in the meat line you could put in a sandwich for me, have you?"

  "Oh, no."

  "Okay. Bring me six melted cheese sandwiches with chopped nuts spread on them and a quart of beer and three glasses of water."

  "A quart of beer and three glasses of water?" the waitress repeated.

  "Yes."

  She shrugged. "It's your plumbing, mister."

  She sauntered back into the restaurant. Doan explored in the dashboard compartment and found the strip maps and the gas rationing book Arne had said would be there. He studied his route to Heliotrope, muttering to himself as he calculated mileages.

  The waitress reappeared, loaded down with trays. Doan ran down one of the back windows, and she slid one tray inside and fastened it to the door. She clamped the other one over the steering wheel and then made another trip and returned with sandwiches, water, and beer on one arm and a shiny earthenware bowl under the other.

  Carstairs mumbled happily at her as she put the bowl on his tray. She gave Doan the beer and the water and the sandwiches and stood watching for a moment, shaking her head slightly, and then went away.

  Carstairs was too well-bred to slobber or slop things around, but he ate with a sort of deadly efficiency. Doan was only on his second sandwich when Carstairs began to snuffle commandingly behind his right ear.

  Doan picked up the water glasses one after the other and, leaning over the seat-back, poured them into the earthenware bowl which was now as clean and glistening and empty as it had been when it came from the store.

  Carstairs slapped his tongue h
appily in the water and then said: "Whumpf," in a moistly satisfied way. The car rocked back on its springs as he hurled himself full length on the rear seat. He began to snore instantly.

  When he had finished his sandwiches, Doan beeped the horn softly, and the waitress came back. She looked at the empty beer bottle and the three empty water glasses and then said:

  "It's right over there."

  "Thanks," Doan said. "But not now."

  "You'll be sorry," said the waitress. "Listen, did you know your back trunk compartment isn't locked? The handle is turned wrong. Somebody's liable to steal your spare if you don't watch out."

  "I don't care," Doan told her.

  She stared at him. "You don't care if somebody swipes your spare?"

  "No. I can easily get another."

  "Are you one of these ration bootleggers?"

  "No," said Doan. "I'm a Japanese spy. Rationing doesn't apply to spies. Look it up if you don't believe me..."

  "Huh!" said the waitress. "I'm going to die laughing some day at the funny cracks I hear on this job."

  "How would you like to go for a ride?" Doan asked. "Up around the hills, and look at the city and stuff."

  "The stuff is what I wouldn't go for," she said.

  "You'd like me if you knew me better," Doan told her.

  "I doubt that, but we'll never find out, will we?"

  "Are you married?" Doan inquired.

  "Yes."

  "Oh, that's a shame," Doan said. "But then we all make mistakes. Why don't you get a divorce? You can get one cheap in Nevada. I'm on my way up that way to do some spying. Come on along. I'll split the expenses with you."

  "I can hardly resist, but I think I will. Here's your bottle of cod liver oil. Your bill is a dollar and fifty-three cents--"

  Doan counted out a dollar and sixty cents. "You gave us such nice service that I'm going to let you keep the change, all for yourself."

  "You're too good to me," said the waitress. "Come back again-- three weeks after never."

  "It's a date," said Doan.

  Chapter 3

  THE MOJAVE DESERT AT SUNSET LOOKS remarkably like a painting of a sunset on the Mojave Desert which, when you come to think of it, is really quite surprising. Except that the real article doesn't show such good color sense as the average painting does. Yellows and purples and reds and various other violent subunits of the spectrum are splashed all over the sky, in a monumental exhibition of bad taste. They keep moving and blurring and changing around, like the color movies they show in insane asylums to keep the idiots quiet.

  After this gaudy display is over the shadows move in, swift and blue and silent, and then the place resembles a rundown graveyard slightly haunted by rattlesnakes and battered beer cans. It is quite uncanny.

  The highway that Arne had marked in red on the maps swooped and curved and coiled casually through draws, canyons, barrancas and such other natural barriers as cluttered up the landscape, and Doan drove along it in sort of a mild coma. The sun had rippled the highway surface just enough to give the car a sleepy, rocking motion that was very pleasant. Doan was driving at exactly thirty-five miles an hour. Not entirely from choice. Someone had installed a governor on the Cadillac. It wouldn't go any faster.

  Doan and Carstairs and the Cadillac were all alone and had been for the last two hours. There hadn't been any signs of civilization at all, not even an abandoned gas station. No other cars had passed him going in either direction. It was as though the highway had decided to run off somewhere at random on an errand of its own.

  Doan saw the figure when it was almost a mile ahead of him, standing beside the road with the shadows pooling deep around its feet. It looked like a totem pole sawed off at top and bottom, and then as he rolled closer it moved and jiggled its arm, semaphore fashion, and became human.

  Doan slowed up. The desert at dusk is not a one hundred percent safe place to pick up hitchhikers. Quite often they rap you on the head and throw you in a ditch where, after suitable curing, your skull makes a nice nesting place for scorpions. However, the prospect didn't bother Doan much. He knew from some spectacular experiences in that line that he was difficult to murder.

  The figure, on closer inspection, turned out to be a female one complete in all its component parts and encased in a neat blue slack suit and possessing blond hair done up precisely in a blue snood. It was a young female figure and had an air of coordinated and trained determination.

  Doan pulled up beside her. She opened the door opposite him before he had a chance to, and leaned in the car and looked at him. Her features were even and assembled with good taste, and she had earnest, deep blue eyes.

  "Hello," said Doan mildly. "Would you like a ride?"

  "What's your name?"

  "Doan," said Doan.

  "I'm Harriet Hathaway, and I'm on my way to Fort Des Moines to join the WAACs and serve my country."

  "Happy to meet you," said Doan. "Would you like a ride?"

  "Do you propose to make improper advances to me, Mr. Doan?"

  "Well, I hadn't thought of it," Doan told her. "But if you really insist I can probably turn up something in that line."

  "I don't insist! And if you have any such ideas I advise you to discard them."

  "Plunk," said Doan. "Gurgle-gurgle. They're discarded. Would you like a ride?"

  "Yes, I would. Don't bother to move, please. I can handle this." She picked up a small, dark blue bag and placed it precisely in the middle of the front seat. She got in and sat on the far side of it and closed the door efficiently. "I'm ready."

  Doan started the car.

  "If you'd use the clutch properly the gears wouldn't grate that way," Harriet Hathaway informed him. '

  "No doubt you're right," said Doan.

  "Men are very nasty beasts."

  "Aren't they, though?"

  "I've just gone through a singularly unpleasant experience with one."

  "A fate worse than death?" Doan asked.

  "What? No! I'm quite capable of protecting myself from anything like that. I'm the woman's golf champion of Talamedas County."

  "Oh," said Doan.

  "I was also the runner-up in the finals of the Basin City National Tennis Tourney last year."

  "Oh," said Doan.

  "I'm also considered the best horsewoman in the Rio Hondo Riding Club."

  "Oh," said Doan.

  "This experience had nothing whatsoever to do with--with sex."

  "It must have been rather dull," Doan observed.

  "It was not! It was beastly! This person offered me a ride in Masterville. He was wearing dark glasses and I detest people with weak vision, but I accepted. I was willing to accept any means of transportation to get to my post of duty as rapidly as possible."

  "Sure," said Doan. "Through rain and snow the postman always rings twice."

  "What?" said Harriet Hathaway. She watched him narrowly for a moment. "Are you intoxicated?"

  "Just slightly dizzy," Doan answered.

  "It's probably because the sun has been so bright today. You should pull your windshield visor down when it glares. That's what it's for. But to go back to this horrible person who gave me the ride. He was a slacker. He admitted it!"

  "How interesting," said Doan.

  "Interesting! It's criminal! If I only knew his name I'd report him. I asked him what he was doing to serve his country in this emergency and he said, 'Nothing.' I asked him what he intended to do in the future and he said, 'Less.' Have you ever heard of anything like that?"

  "Never in my life," said Doan. "Did you tell him you were going to join the WAACs?"

  "Yes."

  "What did he say to that?"

  "He asked me if they knew it."

  "Do they?"

  "Well, no. I put in an application, but they haven't replied to it. Naturally they'll accept me."

  "Naturally," Doan agreed.

  "I told that to this horrible person. I told him that no matter how degrading and disgusting the work th
ey assigned me might be, I would smile and serve."

  "What did he say to that?"

  "He just said, "Oh, God,' in a very disgusted tone. I didn't mind the profanity, although I think it's bad taste. It was the sentiment behind it I disapproved of. I told him so, very emphatically. I explained to him the duties and responsibilities we owe our country for the glorious privilege of being one of its citizens."

  "Then what?"

  "He stopped the car and told me to get out. He said he wanted to vomit, and he always vomited in private if he could manage it. He literally pushed me out! Right on this deserted road in the middle of the desert! And then drove off and left me!"

  "You said you didn't know his name," Doan remarked. "Haven't got any idea where he hangs out, have you?"

  "No. Are you going to try to find him and teach him to respect patriotic American womanhood?"

  "Well, not exactly," Doan said. "I think maybe I could use a slacker like he is in my business--"

  "What is it--your business?"

  "It's rather confidential."

  "Oh!" said Harriet Hathaway, thrilled. "It's government work, isn't it?"

  "Not unless you're thinking of a different government than I think you are."

  "Oh, I know you can't say anything about it," said Harriet understandingly. "I'll just bet you're an agent of some kind or other."

  "Of some kind or other," Doan agreed. "Other, to be strictly accurate."

  "You can trust my discretion, Mr. Doan. I know just What's that queer noise?" She turned around. "There's a dog in your back seat!"

  "I noticed that," Doan told her.

  "He's awfully big."

  "Yes," said Doan.

  "He's snoring--"

  Doan sighed. "Yes."

  "He's a Great Dane--"

  "So his pedigree says."

  "I don't like Great Danes. They're stupid, and they're a nuisance."

  "You're telling me."

  "Then why did you buy this one?"

  "I didn't. I won him in a crap game."

  "I don't believe in gambling. You might lose."

  "I did," said Doan. "The only trouble was that I didn't know it at the time. I thought I'd won something pretty fancy until I got him home and he started sneering at me and snubbing me because I didn't have a ten-room suite in the penthouse of the Park-Plaza Hotel."