Million Dollar Tramp

by William Campbell Gault

  He couldn’t have made it clearer if he’d winked. I felt like a star quarterback at a football college.

  I hesitated, studying the top of his desk.

  “Is something troubling you, Mr. Reeve?” he asked gently.

  I looked up sheepishly. “Well, yes. Damn it, Dr. Alecont, I feel qualified right now. I mean, the way people tell me things and the way I helped them, I’ll bet I’m as good as most of the psychologists I see practicing around Long Beach.”

  “It’s entirely possible,” he admitted. “Then why did you come to us, Mr. Reeve?”

  I held my breath, so it would look like I was blushing. I said quietly, “Well, that diploma — I mean, a man, a professional man, should have something hanging on his wall, something that makes his customers — I mean his patients — realize he’s, well, qualified, if you get me.”

  “I understand,” he said softly, “and there are provisions for that. “Any time you can pass the examinations that lead to a doctorate here, you will be able to achieve it after payment of the proper fees. You have to understand, Mr. Reeve, that though we are not as traditionally strict as the larger schools, we must maintain standards.”

  I nodded. “Naturally. I understand that. If I passed these exams, how much would the fees be?”

  “Five hundred dollars,” he said firmly, studying me for a reaction

  “Cash?” I asked. “In advance?”

  “Not necessarily. We are willing to work out agreeable financial arrangements for the convenience of any student who is worthy of it.”

  “Gosh,” I said, “I don’t know. Five hundred dollars, huh? And I call myself Dr. Temple Hawkins Reeve?”

  He smiled benignly. “A very impressive title, Mr. Reeve.”

  “Five hundred dollars,” I said musingly. “I wonder if I could pass the exams?”

  “We have a comprehensive text,” he said, “which you will read before you take the examination for the doctorate. I guarantee you will pass the examination after reading that text.” He smiled. “No student has ever failed the examination after reading that text.”

  “Gosh,” I said. “Five hundred dollars.”

  He paused, frowning. Then, “We have another arrangement, Mr. Reeve. You pay us three hundred now and two hundred, plus interest, out of your earnings, once you have set up your practice.”

  “That sounds more like my dish of tea,” I said. “That sounds real fair, Dr. Alecont.” I stood up. “I’ll sure think that over. There’s another school on Santa Monica Boulevard I wanted to check before deciding, but I don’t mind telling you this course of yours sounds very fine.”

  “Another school?” he asked worriedly. “Are you referring to the Stacy Studio of Psychic Research?”

  “That’s the one,” I agreed. “I know psychic research isn’t psychology, not today, maybe, but today’s superstition is tomorrow’s science and vice versa, right, Dr. Alecont?”

  “Never,” he said rigidly. “If you don’t mind a frank professional opinion, Mr. Reeve, the Stacy Studio is highly suspect. And they’ve had a lot of trouble with the Better Business Bureau only recently. A degree from that place is — is meaningless!”

  “They’ve got a real impressive diploma,” I argued.

  “Impressive?” he asked heatedly, his goatee quivering. He pointed toward his on the wall. “Take a good look at that one, Mr. Reeve, and then tell me the Stacy diploma is impressive. Take a long look.”

  I went over to examine it. It was a beauty, all right. A rich parchment with embossed printing and a shining, embossed gold seal over twin baby-blue ribbons. It was a sweetheart. It made U.C.L.A. look like a cow college.

  “Five hundred dollars,” I said musingly.

  “All right,” he said impatiently, “all right! I guess we’re both men of the world. Two hundred dollars, no examination, and you walk out of this office as Dr. Temple Hawkins Reeve. I guess I know a qualified man when I see one.”

  I shrugged, looking thoughtful.

  “Those quacks at the Stacy Studio will never match that,” he assured me. “And think of the prestige. We’re not going to haggle, are we, Mr. Reeve?”

  “We’re not even going to do business,” I said quietly.

  He stared at me, his eyes wary. His mouth opened, and closed.

  “I’m a patient of Dr. Arnold Foy’s,” I said. “I only dropped in to assure myself of his qualifications.”

  His mouth opened again. “You — you — Get out of here! I’ll have the police — ”

  “Relax,” I said. “I’m not after you. I just wanted to see if the twelve hundred dollars I spent with Dr. Foy were well spent. I’ve seen enough. Good day to you, Doctor.”

  “Get out, you grifter,” he said.

  In the waiting room, the mammarial brunette looked up anxiously. The Doctor’s voice had been strident.

  “Terrible disposition, hasn’t he?” I asked her. “I hope you’re well paid.”

  “He’s a fine man,” she said frigidly. “A scholar and a gentleman.”

  “And a quack,” I added. “What an unusual combination. Well, it’s the Stacy Studio for me!” That was my exit line.

  Outside, the sun was trying to break through the overcast but not making it. The smog made my eyes sting.

  Doctor Arnold Foy’s degree had come from this “school” I had just left. Was it only in Los Angeles that a man like Foy could attract patients at the Sherwood level? He had helped her, she had claimed. How? If he had helped her, she hadn’t needed help.

  Dr. Foy had seemed too confident, too sure, to be trusted. I knew nothing of the field, but this I knew: any man who was sure of anything today, including the multiplication table, was either a fool or a fraud. And Dr.

  Foy had given no indication of being a fool.

  Could I bring to Fidelia this story of Sunset College? Not yet. It would be taking away her rock. I headed for Brentwood.

  It was an older house, small and faintly Spanish. The front yard was all crushed rock and cacti, yucca, jade plant and stratified boulders, streaked in black. An enormous bird of paradise tree shaded the small front patio. A minimum upkeep yard.

  The woman who answered to my ring had faded blue eyes and bleached hair, the roots brown. She was wearing snorts and a ? shirt and thong sandals. She was atractively sun-browned, but her face was taut and her breasts weren’t.

  “Well?” she asked.

  “Mrs. Foy?” I asked.

  “Right. So?”

  “My name is Joseph Puma,” I said. “I’m a private investigator.”

  “Oh, Jesus!” she said. “What’s he dreamed up now? Don’t tell me he’s going to make me trouble again?”

  “If you mean your former husband,” I answered, “he didn’t send me. I came here to ask about him.”

  Relief softened her tense face and she smiled wryly. “You came to the right place, Sherlock. Come in, come in.”

  I entered a small hall and from there into a living room furnished with crude and dusty mission furniture, dark and heavy. The ashtrays were all filled with cigarettes; in the dining room the dishes on the table indicated it hadn’t been cleared for at least three meals.

  “You’ll have to excuse the house,” she said. “It takes me four cups of coffee to stoke up enough energy to attack it. Sit down wherever it’s comfortable for you.”

  I sat in a heavy, wooden chair with leather seat. “Why did you think your ex-husband had sent me?” I asked.

  “Why not? Would you like a cup of coffee? The place might give you the wrong idea; I make damned good coffee. Even Arnie admits that.”

  “I’d like a cup, thank you.”

  She went into the kitchen and I looked around. Disorderly, yes, but comfortable, for some reason. As she was.

  She brought me back a cup of coffee and it was fine. She took hers to a worn, sagging couch and sat down with her legs curled under her.

  I asked again, “Why did you think your ex-husband had sent me?”

  “Twice he’s
tried to have me committed to some quack rest home and alcoholic’s haven he has an interest in. That was before we were divorced. Since then, I’ve made a scene in his office a couple of times. I suppose that’s bad for business and I have a hunch he’ll be making a move one of these days.”

  “A move?” I asked. “Certainly you don’t expect him to resort to physical action?”

  “He’s hit me. He’s a violent man when things don’t go his way. And let me tell you, they didn’t go his way for a long time.”

  “How long has he been a psychologist?” I asked.

  She wrinkled her forehead. “Let’s see. It’ll be five years next month. Before that, he had this cult out in the hills above Malibu. That one didn’t pan out. Cults don’t pay unless you got a real gimmick, and he didn’t.”

  “And before that?” I prompted her.

  “Before that, he was a chauffeur,” she told me, “for a wealthy Pasadena family I don’t want to name. He knocked up the daughter and took a settlement instead of the wedding ceremony. He lost all that money in the cult.”

  “And before that?”

  “I didn’t know him before that,” she said. “I met him at the cult. From what one of his old friends has told me, I guess he was a beach bum. Why the biography bit, Hawkshaw?”

  “Because I wondered where he got his education,” I said.

  “He never had any, or nothing to amount to anything. He learned about clothes from that Pasadena family and he learned about women at the cult. I was one of them.”

  “He’s very successful,” I said. “Don’t you think he should have more education than he has to treat patients who could conceivably be seriously ill?”

  “Hell, yes,” she said. “But I didn’t set the standards for psychologists in this crummy state. Write your assemblyman, Buster.”

  I asked her quietly, “Do you know Fidelia Sherwood?".

  “I’ve seen her name in the papers,” she said. “Why?”

  “She’s one of your husband’s patients.”

  “God help her!” She stretched her legs out and kicked off the thong sandles. “Who told you about me? I’m not in the book.”

  “A man I met last night.”

  “Tampett, maybe?” she asked. “No, he wouldn’t sell Arnie out.”

  “Sell him out? You mean Tampett works for Dr. Foy?”

  She nodded. “You got a cigarette?”

  I gave her one and held a light for her. I came back to settle in the heavy chair again and she blew smoke toward the center of the room.

  “Tampett,” she said, “is a cute one. I don’t know if he was ever queer or is now, but he knows all the pansies and hangs around their favorite joints. And the ones that have the money and the inclination to change — why, he steers them to Arnie and between Arnie and Bob the poor sucker really gets milked.”

  I said softly, “The man who was killed night before last, that Brian Delsy, he was a patient of Foy’s. And the last man to see him alive, so far as we know now, was Robert Tampett.”

  She stared at me and the hand holding the cigarette trembled. “Murder?” she said hoarsely. “You think Arnie — ?”

  I shrugged. “Nobody knows anything yet. Do you think Dr. Foy is capable of committing murder?”

  “Hell, yes! He’s capable of anything.” She took a deep breath and stared at her trembling hands. “Cripes, I need a drink.” She looked up helplessly. “Get it for me, will you? On the drainboard in the kitchen. Pour me a real jolt, will you?”

  I started to protest, but then realized it was a bad time for a lecture on the evils of alcoholism. I went to the kitchen, poured her a third of a tumbler of the supermarket bourbon I found there, and brought it back to her.

  She swallowed half of it in the first gulp. She sniffed, brushed back her hair with her wrist, and looked up at me piteously.

  “I doubt if it was Foy,” I reassured her. “What reason would he have?”

  She sniffed again. “Who knows? Who knows what goes on in that conniving mind of his?”

  “One thing that goes on is self-preservation,” I said. “We can bank on that as the prime urge in Dr. Arnold Foy. And murder is an idiot’s act.”

  “You don’t know his temper,” she said hoarsely. “The things he’s called me, and the times he’s struck me. Oh, nobody knows that bastard like I do.”

  “He’ll be checked,” I assured her. “I’ll personally see to that. Are you going to be all right?”

  She nodded. “I’ll be all right. I’m not an alcoholic, you know. A compulsive drinker, but not an alcoholic.”

  She and Pete Richards, the same distinction. And how many million others? I thanked her for what she had told me and went out again through the minimum-upkeep front yard to the street.

  My car was parked about a half-block away, the only available space when I had arrived. I was walking toward it when I saw the ebony Cadillac convertible moving slowly, the driver looking for a place to park.

  I turned to watch it slide into a space in front of Mrs. Foy’s house. I waited until the driver got out.

  It was Lou Serano.

  Chapter Eight

  He saw me standing there, and waved. I went back.

  “I don’t think it’s a good time to talk with her,” I told him. “That’s what you’re here for, I suppose?”

  He nodded. “I heard a real gone rumour this morning. I heard this Tampett was a shill for Foy, steering the swishes to him.”

  “Mrs. Foy just told me that. Is that all you wanted to ask her?”

  “That’s all.” He studied me doubtfully. “What’s bugging you now?”

  “You and Tampett,” I answered. “Buddies. How come you didn’t know all along he was working for Foy?”

  “What am I, the F.B.I.? If I knew, why would I come out here to ask?”

  “Maybe you came here for another reason,” I said.

  His face tightened. “Puma, you don’t like me. And you got muscles, so there’s nothing I can do about that. But stop and think, if you’ve got anything to think with. Who steered you onto Mrs. Foy? And that phoney college? That makes me a friend of Foy’s or one of his shills? When I started to investigate Foy, Tampett approached me. But he was never any kind of buddy.”

  It made sense. I said, “I apologize — for now. See you around, Lou.”

  He went back to his car and I went back to mine. I drove directly to the Santa Monica Police Headquarters.

  There, I caught Captain Aaron Amos just as he was ready to go to lunch. I asked him if they’d picked up Tampett.

  He shook his head. “Can’t seem to find him at home. Got anything new on him?”

  I told him what Mrs. Foy had told me.

  He frowned. “That ties in Dr. Foy. And he’s outside my jurisdiction.”

  “He’s not outside mine, Captain. I’ll keep you posted on him.”

  “You make it sound personal,” he said. I said nothing.

  “All right,” he dismissed me, “we’ll pick Tampett up eventually. And I’ll let Loepke work on him; that should crack him. Thanks, Joe.”

  It was past noon now, and I was hungry. I drove over to the Avalon Beach, thinking of Robert Tampett. He had been a friend of Brian Delsy’s and Pete Richards’ and Fidelia’s. He had seemed to be a confidante of Lou Serano. Where was he now?

  Fidelia was wearing shorts and a ? shirt and she did much better by the combination than Mrs. Foy did.

  “You told me three-thirty,” she teased. “You couldn’t stay away, could you?”

  “I got hungry,” I explained. She smiled.

  “For food,” I added. “I thought we could have lunch together.”

  She pointed to the phone. “Order us a pair of Martinis. I have the menus here.”

  We drank the Martinis and then they brought our lunch in a tricky cart that kept everything hot.

  She asked me, over the lamb chops, where I had spent my morning. I couldn’t tell her I’d been checking Foy’s college and Foy’s ex-wife. Not until
I knew how dependent she was on him.

  So I said, “I’ve been checking out this Tampett. He seems to have disappeared.”

  There was a silence, and then she said, “I wasn’t tired last night. I was angry, Joe. The way you blew up at Lou Serano — And then I remembered how you put the top of your head into poor Brian’s face, that night at the bar. And yesterday, when you struck Sergeant Loepke — There’s a frightening well of violence in you, isn’t there?”

  I nodded. “I try to control it. I’m better than I used to be. As a kid, I was much worse; a clawing tiger.”

  Silence again. She finished her chops and buttered a roll.

  I asked, “If it isn’t personal, what was in that letter you got from Willis Morley?”

  “Some advice,” she said. “Some personal advice.”

  “You don’t want to tell me what it was?”

  She bit into the roll and shook her head.

  “Trust me,” I said. “Believe in me. I’m on your side.”

  She swallowed. “All right. God knows where he heard it, but he warned me against Foy. He said if I needed that kind of help, I should go to an MD, to a psychiatrist. He said Dr. Foy could put me into a state of mind where my estate would be held in trust indefinitely.”

  “He wasn’t lying.”

  Her chin lifted. “That’s why I didn’t want to tell you, because I knew you’d agree with him. Joe, I don’t want to hear anything against Dr. Foy.”

  “Let’s talk about Willis, then. I suppose he’s worried because if you’re judged unfit to inherit the estate, Willis would be out all the money he’s advanced you.”

  “What else?” she asked.

  “It’s only a guess,” I added. “There’s a remote possibility that cherubic Willis Morley is as kind and genial as he looks.”

  She chuckled. “Remote is the word. It’s … Martian.”

  “I think I’ll drop down there this afternoon, anyway. Maybe Willis knows about somebody besides Dr. Foy.”

  “I thought we could go to the beach this afternoon,” she protested. “It’s been such a boring morning!”

  “Fidelia, a man is dead. That comes first. Don’t you agree?”