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John Carver Billings the First looked at me as though I might have been something that had just crawled under a crack in the door and he wanted to get a good look at me before he stepped on me.

“Throw the son of a bitch out,” he said.

“Your son wasn’t in that motor court Tuesday night. He’s been trying to fix up a fake alibi. He’s made a clumsy job of it and if there should be any investigation the very fact that he had tried to fix up that fake alibi would fasten the brand of guilt on him, and at the same time alienate the sympathy of the court and the public. I’m simply trying to help the guy.”

The elder Billings continued to regard me with cold, patronizing scorn. “Are you quite finished, Mr. — Mr. —”

“Lam. Donald Lam.” ‘

“Are you quite finished, Mr. Lam?”

“Quite.”

Billings turned to his son. “Just what’s this all about, John?”

John moistened his lips with his tongue. “Dad, I’ll tell you the truth. I was on the loose in L.A. I picked up a girl. All I did was ask her to dance. After that she picked me up. Then she stood me up.

“It turned out this girl was the moll of a notorious gang- ster. Now she’s disappeared.

“After she stood me up I fell in with a couple of nice girls from here. I didn’t know their names. The three of us spent the night in a motor court.

“I hired this man to find out who the girls were so I could, if necessary, prove that I wasn’t with this moll, Maurine Auburn.

“He did a good job of finding them. Now he’s trying to invalidate the result of his own investigation. He may have been given money or he may want some. Or it may be that one of the girls who hated my guts has lied to this man so she can cut herself a piece of cake.”

“That’s all you have to tell me, John?”

“So help me, Dad, that’s all.”

Billings turned to me. “There’s the door. Get out.”

I smiled at him. “Now,” I said, “you interest me.”

He walked over to the telephone, picked it up, and said, “Police headquarters, please.”

I said, “Lieutenant Sheldon is the man you want to ask for. Sheldon is investigating a hit-and-run accident that took place on Post and Polk Streets Tuesday night at about ten-thirty.”

John Carver Billings the First never turned a hair. He said into the telephone, “Yes. Is this police headquarters?... I want to speak with Lieutenant Sheldon.”

It could have been a bluff. There might have been a switch that kept the phone from being connected. I couldn’t tell.

I waited. A moment later the receiver made a squawking noise, and Billings said, “This is John Carver Billings, Lieutenant. I am being annoyed by a private detective who apparently is trying to blackmail my son... He has given me your name... What’s that? Yes, a private detective from Los Angeles. The name is Donald Lam.”

“The firm name is Cool and Lam, Dad,” his son prompted.

“I believe he is of the firm of Cool and Lam of Los Angeles,” the old man went on. “He apparently is trying to find a fall guy to take the place of some client who quite apparently was mixed up in a hit-and-run case last Tuesday night... Yes, yes, that’s it. That’s what he said. At Polk and Post Streets at about ten-thirty... That’s the one. What shall I do? Shall I?... Very well, I’ll try to hold him until you can get here.”

I didn’t wait to hear any more. If it was a bluff they had more blue chips than I did, and they sure as hell had pushed theirs into the center of the table, the whole damn stack. I turned around and walked out.

No one made any effort to stop me.

Chapter Eight

Two taxicabs later I found myself on the south side of Market. It wasn’t a dive, it was a dump. It was good enough for what I wanted. It had to be.

At a little store on Third Street I picked up a shirt, some socks, and underwear. A drugstore sold me shaving things. Then in the dingy, stuffy inside room I sat down at a rickety little table and started checking over what had happened.

John Carver Billings the Second had needed an alibi and his need had been so urgent that he had spent a great deal of money, time, and effort in a clumsy attempt to fabricate something that would stand up.

Why?

The most logical thing was the hit-and-run charge, but that hadn’t seemed to faze him when I put it up to him. Therefore he was either a better poker player than I figured, or I was on the wrong track.

I went down to a phone booth and phoned Elsie Brand at her apartment. Luckily I found her in.

“How’s Sylvia?” she asked.

“Sylvia’s fine,” I told her. “She wanted to be remembered to you.”

“Thank her very much,” she said icily.

“Elsie, I think I’m on the wrong trail up here.”

“How come?”

“I don’t know. It bothers me. I think perhaps the answer may have been in Los Angeles, after all. I wish you’d start pulling wires down there and get a list of all of the crimes that were committed in Los Angeles on Tuesday night.”

“That’s going to be quite a list.”

“Specialize first on the hit-and-run charges,” I said. “I’m looking for a case where a pedestrian was hit, badly injured, and the car wasn’t hurt enough so there were any clues left on the spot. Do you get me?”

“I get you.”

I said, “That also might cover anything in the immediate vicinity of Los Angeles. Oh, say, within fifty or a hundred miles. See what you can do, will you?”

“Is it urgent?”

“It’s urgent.”

She said, “You don’t care a thing about a girl’s weekend, do you?”

“You’ll have lots of weekends after I get back,” I told her.

“And a lot of good they’ll do me,” she retorted.

“What was that last?”

“I simply said to give my love to Sylvia,” she observed, and then asked, “Where can I call you?”

“You can’t. I’ll call you.”

“When?”

“Sometime tomorrow morning.”

“Sunday morning!”

“That’s right.”

“You’re getting more and more like Bertha every day,” she told me.

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll give you more time and more sleep. Let’s make it at the office Monday morning. I’ll call collect because I’m running short of cash.”

“Make it Sunday if you want, Donald. Anything I can do—”

“No, you won’t be able to get the information by then.”

“How do you know? A police detective is buying my dinner tonight.”

“You do get around.”

“Just local stuff. I don’t need to go to another city.”

I laughed. “Make it Monday, Elsie. That’ll be soon enough.”

“Honest?”

“Honest.”

“zBy now,” she said softly, and hung up.

I went out to Post and Polk and looked around. It was a nice intersection for an accident. Someone coming