Read Online Top of the Heap by Erle Stanley Gardner - Free Book Online Page A

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