The Bigger They Come

by Erle Stanley Gardner

  ‘Well, I’m in the business of getting information and capitalizing on it,’ she said. ‘I have something you want. You tried to beat it out of my operative. I don’t like that.’

  ‘We were a little abrupt, for a fact,’ the chief conceded.

  ‘It costs me money to get my information. I don’t pass it out for charity.’

  ‘I’m very much interested in that Perkins Hotel situation,’ the chief said. He said to his wife, ‘Do you suppose, m’love, that we could have had the double-cross?’

  ‘Something screwy somewhere,’ she said.

  ‘Should we say a hundred dollars to Mrs. Cool?’

  The little woman nodded.

  ‘One hundred dollars,’ the chief said.

  ‘Make it two hundred,’ Bertha Cool said.

  ‘A hundred and fifty,’ Mrs. Cunweather said to her husband, ‘and if she doesn’t want that, give her nothing.’

  ‘All right,’ Bertha Cool said, ‘a hundred and fifty.’

  The fat man turned to his wife. ‘Do you happen to have a hundred and fifty, m’love?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘My wallet is upstairs. Would you mind running up and getting it?’

  ‘Take it out of your belt,’ she said.

  He moistened his lips again, and said, ‘I’ll tell you, Mrs. Cool, you go ahead and tell us, and I’ll guarantee that you’ll have the hundred and fifty. I’ll promise it.’

  ‘You get the hundred and fifty,’ she said.

  He sighed with resignation, got to his feet, and opened the top part of his pajamas. His belly was huge, white, and flabby. A chamois-skin money belt circled his middle. It had been soaked and discolored with perspiration. He opened one of the pockets and took out two hundred-dollar bills.

  ‘That’s the smallest you have?’ Bertha Cool asked.

  ‘That’s the smallest.’

  ‘It’s going to take nearly all of my small change.’

  ‘I’m sorry. That’s absolutely the smallest.’

  Bertha Cool fished around in her purse, then looked hopefully at me. ‘Got any money, Donald?’ she asked.

  ‘Not a nickel,’ I said.

  She counted out her money and said, ‘I have to save five dollars for the taxi bill. I’ve got forty dollars in change. I’ll give you thirty-five. Call it square for that or you can go upstairs and get your wallet.’

  ‘We’ll call it square for that,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t walk upstairs to save fifteen dollars.’

  ‘Bring over the two hundred, Donald,’ she said.

  The fat man extended the money to me. I carried it over to Mrs. Cool. She gave me the change in one-dollar, five-dollar, and ten-dollar bills. I took them over to Cunweather. He passed them over to his wife. ‘Put that somewhere,’ he said. ‘I don’t want that chicken-feed in my money belt: He closed the flap of his money belt, buttoned up his pajamas, tucked the coat down in the pants, looked across at me, and said, ‘Does Lam do the talking?’

  ‘Lam does the talking,’ Mrs. Cool said.

  I said, ‘Sandra gave Morgan Birks a—’

  ‘Never mind that, Donald,’ she said. ‘That’s betraying the interest of a client. Just tell him what happened about Morgan, how we found him, and how we served him. But don’t tell him the name or address of Morgan’s sweetie.’

  ‘Bleatie,’ I said, ‘gave me the name of Morgan’s girl friend. I went to her and put on an act that we were going to drag her into the divorce action, and then shadowed the place. She led me to the Perkins Hotel. She registered as Mrs. B. F. Morgan and got room 618. I bribed the bell captain to find out about what rooms were in the vicinity. He—’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Cunweather interrupted. ‘We know all about that, Donald. We know everything you did from the time you got to the Perkins Hotel.’

  ‘Then you know about serving Morgan Birks?’ I asked.

  ‘You didn’t serve Morgan Birks—you served somebody else.’

  ‘The hell he did!’ Bertha Cool interrupted. ‘He served Morgan Birks.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In the girl’s room-in 618.’

  Cunweather and his wife exchanged glances. ‘There’s some mistake,’ Cunweather said.

  ‘No, there isn’t.’

  ‘Morgan Birks didn’t go into room 618. We’re absolutely positive of that.’

  ‘Don’t worry. He was in there all right,’ Bertha Cool said. ‘I saw him myself.’

  ‘How about it, m’love,’ Cunweather said, turning to his wife, ‘shall we–’

  ‘Let Donald finish his story,’ she said.

  Cunweather looked back at me. ‘Go on with your story, Donald.’

  I said, ‘I got a room. Several people were with me. Sandra and Bleatie came in. Alma Hunter was there. I left them, and went out to a masquerade costume place, and got a bellboy’s uniform that would fit me. I had a telegram addressed to Mrs. B. F. Morgan, care of Western Union. I waited around until the telegram came in, signed for it, and wrote in lead pencil on the envelope, beside the address, “Try Perkins Hotel.” Then I got a notebook, forged a few signatures in it, went up to the hotel, and found the party in a hell of a stew because Morgan Birks had come in shortly after I’d left. I changed to the bellboy’s uniform, went out and knocked on the door of 618. When they wanted to know what it was, I said it was a telegram. They told me to shove it under the door. I shoved it far enough under the door so they could see the address, and that it was a telegram, but it was in the notebook, and the notebook was too big to go all the way under the door. I told them they had to sign a receipt. They fell for it and opened the door. I walked in, and Morgan Birks was lying on the bed. I served the papers on him. While I was doing that, Sandra got excited and came in. There was conversation back and forth. There was no question but what it was Morgan Birks.’

  The fat man glanced for confirmation at Bertha Cool.

  ‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘I saw him, and I’ve seen his pictures in the newspaper. It was the same man.’

  The fat man started rocking violently back and forth in the chair. Bertha Cool said, ‘The next time I have any information you want, don’t try to get it by beating up one of my operatives. You get better service this way.’

  Cunweather said, ‘We didn’t think Mr. Lam was going to be so difficult’

  ‘My operatives are all tough,’ Mrs. Cool said. ‘I pick ‘em that way.’

  Cunweather said, ‘Let me talk to my wife, Mrs. Cool. I think we can make you a proposition. How about it, m’love? Would you like to step in the other room for a minute?’

  ‘Go ahead,’ Mrs. Cunweather said. ‘You’re doing fine.’

  The chief turned back to Mrs. Cool. ‘We’re interested in hiring your agency for one particular purpose,’ he said. ‘We want to get in touch with Morgan Birks’ sweetie. We want to find out how many safety deposit boxes she rented in her name. We want to find out where they are. We want that information fast.’

  ‘How much is it worth?’ Mrs. Cool asked.

  ‘Suppose we say two hundred and fifty dollars for each box you tell us about.’

  ‘How many are there?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know, Mrs. Cool, and that’s a fact. Frankly, I’m not certain there are any, but I have my suspicions. I do indeed.’

  ‘No soap,’ she said. ‘I don’t think I could make any money at it.’

  Cunweather said, ‘Now let’s be reasonable about this, Mrs. Cool. You know where this woman is. You won’t have to waste any time. Morgan Birks is pretty well hidden, and is going to stay pretty well hidden. He’s just a little too smart for the police. He had his sweetie rent some safety deposit boxes. There may be five. There may be two.’

  ‘And there may not be any,’ Bertha Cool said.

  ‘There you go again,’ Cunweather chuckled. ‘There’s that unique personality of yours coming to the front. It’s refreshing, but we aren’t getting anywhere, and seconds are slipping through our fingers. Now there’s Lam, a clever boy. He could go to this g
irl and have the information in no time.’

  I said, ‘Count me out.’

  Cunweather said, ‘Now, Lam, don’t be like that. You’re a nice boy. You should be more forgiving. After all, what happened tonight was just a matter of business.’

  ‘Forget Donald,’ Mrs. Cool said. ‘You make terms with me. I’ll take care of Donald.’

  ‘We might make it three hundred dollars a box,’ Cunweather said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘That’s our limit.’

  Bertha Cool said, ‘I’ll give you a ring and let you know-after I’ve talked with Sandra.’

  ‘We’d want your answer now.’

  ‘You have it’

  Cunweather started rocking back and forth in his chair. Mrs. Cunweather said, ‘Ask her where Morgan Birks is now.’

  Cunweather said, ‘Come, come, Mrs. Cool. You’ve received a hundred and sixty-five dollars of my money. You know where Morgan Birks is. I think you should tell us.’

  She pursed her lips thoughtfully, and said, ‘That information night not do you any good. Again it might be worth money. I’m not one to give something for nothing.’

  The telephone rang while Cunweather was rocking back and forth thinking the thing out. ‘Would you answer it, m’love?’

  ‘Answer it yourself,’ she said, sitting perfectly still. He sighed, tightened his fingers around the arms of the rocking chair, heaved himself to his feet, and waddled out into the other room. He took the receiver off the hook, and said, in a cautious voice, ‘Yes, what is it?’ After that, he was silent for eight or ten seconds. Then he said, ‘You’re sure? —well, come on out here, and I’ll give you some instructions. There’s a new angle on the case.’

  He dropped the receiver into place without saying ‘good-by,’ came waddling back, and beamed at Mrs. Cool. ‘I can well appreciate how you feel, Mrs. Cool,’ he said. Then he turned to his wife and said, ‘Morgan Birks is dead, m’love. A girl named Alma Hunter shot him in Sandra Birks’ apartment early this morning. She shot him in the back, just as he was trying to run from the apartment.’

  ‘Dead?‘Mrs. Cunweather asked.

  ‘Like a doornail,’ Cunweather assured her.

  ‘That,’ she said, ‘makes it different.’

  Mrs. Cool said, ‘Come on, Donald.’

  I got to my feet. She closed her purse, slid her legs back so that her feet were as far under the chair as she could get them, pushed her hands down against the arms of the chair, and got to her feet.

  We started for the door. Cunweather and his wife were whispering. After a second or two, and before we were out of the hallway, Cunweather called, ‘Just a minute, Mrs. Cool. I want to ask you a question: He came waddling out into the hallway, and said, ‘Do you know whether Morgan Birks was in room 618 all the time? In other words, was he in there when this mistress of his registered?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘How about it, Donald?’

  ‘No chance,’ I said, ‘unless she was standing in with the bellboy, and Morgan Birks had been planted there. The clerk rented her 618 as a vacant room. She’d telephoned and asked for two rooms with a connecting bath. She’d been assigned 618 and 620. When she registered, she gave up 620, saying the other party hadn’t—’ I broke off as something came to my mind.

  ‘Hadn’t what?’ Cunweather asked, interested.

  ‘Hadn’t shown up. The bellboy took her up to 618. The captain got me the information, and I rented 620.’

  ‘Who had the bath?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Then 618 had rented without the bath?’ Cunweather asked me.

  I said, ‘I guess so-unless there was another bathroom between 618 and 616.’

  Mrs. Cunweather called from the other room, ‘Let her go, William. We’ve got enough information to handle it ourselves.’

  The chief said, ‘Well, Mrs. Cool, it’s been most delightful having you drop in. Do come again some time. I’ll remember you. I will for a fact-and don’t hold a grudge, Lam. After all, my boy, you were splendid, and your nose doesn’t look at all bad. I can see from the way you’re walking, your ribs are a bit sore, but you’ll get over it in another twenty-four hours. You—’

  He waddled over and held the door open for us.

  I walked past him out into the night. He followed me out on the porch. ‘Come, come, Lam,’ he said. ‘Let’s shake hands!’

  ‘Shake hands with him, Donald,’ she said.

  He pushed out his hand. It was like picking a chuck of cold oatmeal out of a pot. He looked in my eyes, and said, ‘You’re still sore, Lam.’

  He dropped my hand. ‘Have it your own way,’ he said, and waddled back into the house, slamming the door behind him.

  Bertha Cool said, ‘He’s a customer, Donald. We can’t quarrel with customers.’

  I didn’t say anything.

  Chapter 9

  THE CAB driver was waiting for us. He held the door open. Bertha Cool said, ‘Stillwater Apartments,’ and pulled herself into the cab. I followed, and said, as the cab driver closed the door, ‘Didn’t you want to go to see Sandra?’

  ‘Not just yet,’ she said.

  The cab lurched into motion. I said, ‘I’ve got a wild idea.’

  ‘How wild?’ she asked.

  ‘Awfully wild.’

  ‘Let’s hear it, Donald.’

  ‘A couple of things about this case are screwy. I have a hunch Cunweather is connected with this slot-machine business. He’s probably higher-up. Morgan Birks was contact man. Morgan was given money for a pay-off, and now that information about the pay-off is commencing to come out before the grand jury, it appears that Morgan Birks was making a rake-off of his own. In other words, every time he told the ring they had to pay off a hundred dollars, the pay-off was really only fifty. He was giving fifty to the cops, and salting fifty in a safety deposit box.’

  ‘There’s nothing wild about that idea,’ she said, groping around in her bag for a cigarette, ‘and nothing very original. It’s been done before-you’re probably right at that.’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ I said. ‘I’m coming to something.’

  She pulled out her cigarette, and said, ‘Go ahead and come to it.’

  ‘Earlier in the evening Cunweather was confident that Morgan Birks never got to the Perkins Hotel. He seemed to know everything I did at the Perkins Hotel. I played one person at the Perkins Hotel for information. That person was the bell captain. The bell captain must have been one of their gang who was planted there.’

  She said, ‘That’s sense.’

  ‘Then they must have planted the bell captain before I got there.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘And it probably took a little money and preparation so they must have been working on that for a day or two.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘But the Perkins Hotel didn’t actually figure in the play until Sally Durke went there,’ I said, ‘and I was right on her heels. And the bell captain was pretty well established by that time.’

  ‘That means they had a good tip-off service,’ she said.

  ‘It means more than that. How did anyone know Sally Durke was coming to the Perkins Hotel? She didn’t have any occasion to meet Morgan Birks until after I’d gone to her and made my play. That was what started her hunting for Morgan.’

  ‘Go ahead. What’s your idea, Donald?’

  I said, ‘Cunweather knew Birks used the hotel as a place to meet his sweetie. He didn’t know who the girl was. He did know Morgan Birks would come there to meet the girl sooner or later. Cunweather is a pretty able citizen. You can gamble he had the hotel sewed up so Birks couldn’t get in or out. Yet Birks got in, and he got out.’

  Mrs. Cool said, ‘What the hell are you trying to pull, Donald? You say he couldn’t get in or get out-and yet he did get in and get out. You’re the one who’s screwy.’

  ‘Look here,’ I said. ‘Let’s figure this thing from a different angle. Notice that they put us in room 620. I tried to get a room across
the hall. That’s what a detective would ordinarily have done. He’d have wanted a room where he could watch the door of Sally Durke’s room. But all of those rooms had been taken. Now that may have been an accident. You’d think so if it weren’t for the fact that Sally Durke had reserved room 620 for me.’

  ‘For you, Donald?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How do you figure?’

  ‘She’d telephoned in and reserved two rooms with connecting bath. She had 618 and 620. When she came in, she took 618. Unless there was another bath in connection with that, she took the room without the bath. That left 620 with the bath for me. Now that was damned considerate of Sally, no matter how you try to figure it.’

  ‘But what makes you think she left it for you?’

  ‘Everything. She wanted me to have the room with the bath because she wanted me to use the bath:

  ‘But you didn’t use it. Bleatie was in there.’

  ‘Can’t you see?’ I said. ‘That’s the whole thing. Bleatie was intended to be in there. Bleatie isn’t Sandra’s brother. He’s her husband. Bleatie’s Morgan Birks!’

  She looked at me with cold, hard eyes, and said, ‘Don’t be a God damn ass, Donald.’

  ‘Everything points to it.’ I went on, ‘We’ve been dumb not to see it before this.’

  ‘Don’t you suppose Sandra Birks knows her own brother when she sees him?’

  ‘Of course she does-if she has a brother. But she was in on this play. That explains why Bleatie was always sticking up for Morgan. It explains why he made Sandra kick through with a release of any property that was in the safety deposit boxes. It explains every single fact in the whole case. Sandra Birks wanted a divorce. Morgan Birks was willing to give it to her probably wanted a divorce just as badly as she did. But she had to serve papers on him. He was a fugitive from justice. Someone had to make the service-someone who could go into court and swear that the service had been made. That’s where we came in. We were the fall guys.’

  ‘But she met Bleatie at the train, and had this automobile’ accident and—’

  ‘Look up that automobile accident,’ I said, ‘and you’ll find that there wasn’t any. It was all a frame-up. They hired this doctor to put splints on the man’s nose. It was a big heavy nose guard which ran pretty well up to his forehead. Then there was tape to pull his eyes out of shape and twist his mouth. You, certainly couldn’t see what he looked like with his face all’ patched up with that nose business.