The Collection

by Fredric Brown

  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.

  THE MISSING ACTOR

  “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 t
o 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?”

  “Nope. No reason for him to write. Told him I'd be passing through Chicago in a few days on my way either to Florida or California, hadn't made up my mind for sure which then, and that I'd look him up to say so long. That was the last thing between us.”

  “And this would have been about eight o'clock Saturday evening, which would have got him back to Chicago about ten.”

  “It's about two hours' drive, yes. And I left Monday. Didn't take me long to pack up as I thought. Been here since, a week today. Want to find Albee, or what happened to him---or something---before I take off. No hurry in my getting to California, but I'm wasting time here and I don't like Chicago. Kill time seeing a lot of movies, but that's about all I can do. That Chudakoff, he thinks Albee run off. I still don't. He says if I want more looking, try you. Here I am.”

  “And if we have no better luck than the police,” I asked, “or if we decide they're right in deciding your son left town voluntarily, how long do you intend to stay in Chicago?”

  Nielson burst into a sudden cackle of laughter that startled inc. Up to now he hadn't cracked a smile. “What you're asking is how much I want to spend. Let's take it from the other end. How much do you charge?”

  I glanced at Uncle Am so he'd know to take over; when we're both around I always let him do the talking on money.

  “Seventy-five a day,” he said. “And expenses. I suggest you give us a retainer of two hundred; that'll cover two days and expenses. That'll be long enough for us to give you at least a preliminary report. And there shouldn't be many expenses, so if you decide to call it off at the end of two days you'll probably have a rebate coming.”

  Nielson frowned. “Seventy-five a day for both of you to work on it or for one?”

  I let Uncle Am tell him it was for one of us, and argue it from there. He finally came down to sixty a day, saying it was our absolute minimum rate---which it is, for private clients. We charge less only to insurance companies, skip-trace outfits, and others who give us recurrent trade. And Uncle Am finally settled for a retainer of one-fifty, which would allow thirty for expenses.

  Nielson counted it out in twenties and a ten. Then he had another thought and wanted to know if today would count for a day, since it was already two in the afternoon. Uncle Am assured him it wouldn't, unless whichever of us worked on it worked late enough into the evening to make it a full day.

  I'd thought of another question meanwhile. “Mr. Nielson, when Albee borrowed the money from you, did he tell you he'd lost hi
s job at the bookstore?”

  He gave that cackle-laugh again. “No, he didn't. I didn't find out that till I phoned the store to see if I could get him at work. Albee's smart, figured I'd be less likely to lend him money if I knew he was out of work. Guess I would of anyway---he's never been out of a job long---but he didn't know that and I don't blame him for playing safe. Told me he wasn't working that Saturday cause the store was closed for three days, Friday through Sunday, for remodeling.”

  “One other thing, did you give him cash or a check? If it was a check we'll know something when we find out where it clears from. He couldn't have cashed a check that size late Saturday night or on a Sunday.”

  “It was cash. I'd closed out my bank account, had quite a bit of cash, cashier's check for the rest. Still got enough I won't have to use that cashier's check till I'm ready to buy another truck farm.”

  He stood up to go and we both walked to the door with him. Uncle Am asked something I should have thought of. “Mr. Nielson, if he still is in Chicago and we find him, what do we tell him? Just to get in touch with you at the Ideal Hotel?”

  “You can make it stronger'n that. Tell him to get in touch with me or else. I never made a will, see, so being my only living blood relative, he's still my heir. But it don't have to stay that way. I can make a will in California and cut him off. Cost him a lot more than eight hundred dollars, someday.”

  He reached for the doorknob but Uncle Am's question and its answer had made me think of something. I said, “Just a minute, Mr. Nielson. Has this possibility occurred to you? That he did blow town while he had that eight hundred as a stake, rather than pay it to a bookie just to stay here, but that he intends to write to you as soon as he's got another job somewhere and can start paying off what he owes you?”

  “Yep, that's possible. Sure I thought of it.”

  “This is not my business, Mr. Nielson, but if that does happen, would you still make a will to disinherit him?”

  “Make up my mind if and when it happens. Maybe according to what he says when he writes, and if he really does start paying back. Right now I'm mad at him if that's what happened---if he did that without letting me know so I wouldn't waste time and money trying to find him here. But I could get over my mad, I guess.”