Top of the Heap
Authors: Erle Stanley Gardner
“An ingenious story.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“One of the best in the series... An illegal casino, bogus mines, former strippers and dead bodies abound... You can only love a book where everyone gets exactly what they deserve in triplicate.”
—Karen Ellington, The Mystery Read
“A fine elaborate business of stock manipulation and (to fit in with the current worries of us all) income tax deception.”
—Anthony Boucher, The New York Times
“It’s a neatly knotted puzzle and Donald unties it very neatly, too.”
—New York Herald Tribune Book Review
“A fast-paced, action-packed story.”
—Springfield Republican
“The best selling author of the century... a master storyteller.”
—The New York Times
“Gardner is humorous, astute, curious, inventive — who can top him? No one has yet.”
—Los Angeles Times
“A fast and fiery tough tale... very very slick.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Erle Stanley Gardner is probably the most widely read of all... authors... His success... undoubtedly lies in the real-life quality of his characters and their problems... “
—The Atlantic
“A clean, economical writer of peerless ingenuity.”
—The New York Times
“One of the best selling writers of all time, and certainly one of the best-selling mystery authors ever.”
—Thrilling Detective
“Zing, zest and zow are the Gardner hallmark. He will keep you reading at a gallop until The End.”
—Dorothy B. Hughes,
Mystery Writers of America Grandmaster
The blonde nervously took a cigarette case from a black bag and tapped the cigarette on the side of the polished silver. I snapped a match into flame, and she leaned forward for the light. I could see the long curling eyelashes, the mischievous glint of saucy hazel eyes, as she looked me over.
“Thank you,” she said.
Abruptly the floor manager glided up to the table. His smile was reassuring. “I have been asked,” he said, “to invite you to step into the office, Miss Marvin, and the boss would like to see Mr. Lam, too.”
The floor manager escorted us deferentially to a big door marked Private. He didn’t come in. The door clicked shut behind us. I turned to look. There was no knob on the door.
Channing shook hands with both of us. “How are you, Lam?” he said.
“Fine,” I told him.
I didn’t see Channing give the signal, but abruptly the door from the outer office opened and a man in a tuxedo stood quietly on the threshold.
“Mr. Lam,” Channing said, “had a card when he entered the place. He doesn’t wish to produce that card. I’d like very much to look at it.”
The newcomer reached forward and grabbed my wrist. I tried to jerk the arm free. I might as well have tried to pull against a steel cable.
Swift, efficient fingers did things to the wrist. The other hand hit against my elbow. My arm doubled around, flew up against my back, the wrist doubled into a grip that pulled the tendons until it was all I could do to keep from screaming.
“The card,” Channing said...
MONEY SHOT
by Christa Faust
ZERO COOL
by John Lange
SHOOTING STAR/SPIDERWEB
by Robert Bloch
THE MURDERER VINE
by Shepard Rifkin
SOMEBODY OWES ME MONEY
by Donald E. Westlake
NO HOUSE LIMIT
by Steve Fisher
BABY MOLL
by John Farris
THE MAX
by Ken Bruen and Jason Starr
THE FIRST QUARRY
by Max Allan Collins
GUN WORK
by David J. Schow
FIFTY-TO-ONE
by Charles Ardai
KILLING CASTRO
by Lawrence Block
THE DEAD MAN’S BROTHER
by Roger Zelazny
THE CUTIE
by Donald E. Westlake
HOUSE DICK
by E. Howard Hunt
CASINO MOON
by Peter Blauner
FAKE I.D.
by Jason Starr
PASSPORT TO PERIL
by Robert B. Parker
STOP THIS MAN!
by Peter Rabe
LOSERS LIVE LONGER
by Russell Atwood
HONEY IN HIS MOUTH
by Lester Dent
QUARRY IN THE MIDDLE
by Max Allan Collins
THE CORPSE WORE PASTIES
by Jonny Porkpie
of the
HEAP
by
Erle Stanley Gardner
WRITING UNDER THE NAME ‘A. A. FAIR’
A HARD CASE CRIME BOOK
(HCC-003)
First Hard Case Crime edition: October 2004
Published by
Titan Books
A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd
144 Southwark Street
London
SE1 0UP
in collaboration with Winterfall LLC
Copyright © 1952 by William Morrow & Company, Inc.
Copyright renewed 1980 by Jean Bethell Gardner
Cover art copyright © 2004 by Bill Nelson
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Print edition ISBN 978-0-85768-316-8
E-book ISBN 978-0-85768-381-6
Design direction by Max Phillips
www.maxphillips.net
The name “Hard Case Crime” and the Hard Case Crime logo are trademarks of Winterfall LLC. Hard Case Crime Books are selected and edited by Charles Ardai.
Visit us on the web at
www.HardCaseCrime.com
Chapter One
I was in the outer office, standing by the files, doing some research on a blackmailer, when he came in, all six feet of him.
He wore a plaid coat, carefully tailored, pleated slacks, and two-tone sport shoes. He was built like a secondhand soda straw, and I heard him say he wanted to see the senior partner. He said it with the air of a man who always demands the best, and then settles for what he can get.
The receptionist glanced at me hopefully, but I was deadpan. Bertha Cool was the “senior” partner.
“The
senior
partner?” she asked, still keeping an eye on me.
“That’s right. I believe it is B. Cool,” he announced, glancing toward the names painted on the frosted glass of the doorway to the reception room.
She nodded and plugged in to B. Cool’s phone. “The name?” she asked.
He drew himself up importantly, whipped an alligatorskin card case from his pocket, took out a card, and presented it to her with a flourish.
She puzzled over it for a moment as though having difficulty getting it interpreted. “Mr. Billings?”
“Mr. John Carver Billings the—”
Bertha Cool answered the phone just then, and the girl said, “A Mr. Billings. A Mr. John Carver Billings to see you.”
“The Second,” he interposed, tapping the card. “Can’t you read? The Second!”
“Oh, yes,” she said, “the Second.”
That evidently threw Bertha Cool for a loss. Apparently she wanted an explanation.
“The Second,” the girl repeated into the phone. “It’s on his card that way, and that’s the way he says it. His name is
John Carver Billings, and then there are two straight lines after the Billings.”
The man frowned impatiently. “Send my card in,” he ordered.
The receptionist automatically ran her thumbnail over the engraving on the card and said, “Yes, Mrs. Cool,” into the telephone.
Then she hung up and said to Billings, “Mrs. Cool will see you now. You may go right in.”
“
Mrs.
Cool?” the man said.
“Yes.”
“That’s B. Cool?”
“Yes. B. for Bertha.”
He hesitated perceptibly, then straightened his plaid sport coat and walked in.
The receptionist waited until the door had closed, then looked up at me and said, “He wants a man.”
“No,” I told her, “he wants the
senior
partner.”
“When he asks for you what shall I tell him?”
I said, “You underestimate Bertha. She’ll find out how much dough he has, and if it’s a sizable chunk she’ll ask me in for a conference. If it isn’t a big wad and John Carver Billings the Second intimates he thinks a woman isn’t as good a detective as a man, you’ll see Mr. John Carver Billings the Second thrown out of here on his ear.”
She looked very demure. “You’re so careful with your anatomical distinctions, Mr. Lam,” she said without smiling.
I went back to my office.
In about ten minutes the phone rang.
Elsie Brand, my secretary, answered, then glanced up and said, “Mrs. Cool wants to know if you can come into her office for a conference.”
“Sure,” I said, and gave the receptionist a wink as I walked past and opened the door of Bertha’s private office.
One look at the expression on Bertha’s face and I knew everything was fine. Bertha’s little, greedy eyes were glittering. Her lips were all smiles. “Donald,” she said, “this is John Carver Billings.”
“The Second,” he amended.
“The Second,” she echoed. “And this is Mr. Donald Lam, my partner.”
We shook hands.
I knew from experience that it took cold, hard cash to get Bertha to assume that ingratiating manner and that cooing, kittenish voice.
“Mr. Billings,” she said, “has a problem. He feels that perhaps a man should work on that problem, that it might—”
“Be more conducive of results,” John Carver Billings the Second finished.
“Exactly,” Bertha agreed with a cash-inspired alacrity of good humor.
“What’s the problem?” I asked.
Bertha’s chair squeaked as she moved her hundred and sixty-five pounds around so as to pick up the newspaper clipping on the far corner of her desk. She handed it to me without a word.
I read:
KNIGHT DAY’S COLUMN — DAY AND NIGHT
BLOND BEAUTY DISAPPEARS. FRIENDS
FEAR FOUL PLAY. POLICE SKEPTICAL.
Maurine Auburn, the blond beauty who was with “Gabby” Garvanza at the time he was shot, has mysteriously disappeared. “Friends” have asked police to make an investigation.
The police, however, who feel that the young woman was considerably less than co-operative during their
investigation into the shooting of the mobster, are inclined to feel that Miss Auburn, who kept her own counsel so successfully a few nights ago, is about business of her own. So far as police are concerned, her failure to pick up milk bottles from the doorstep of her swank little bungalow in Laurel Canyon is a matter of official indifference. In fact, officers pointed out quite plainly that Miss Auburn resented having police “stick their noses” into her private life a few days ago, and the police intend to respect her desire for privacy whenever possible.The story as given to police by “friends” is that three days ago Maurine Auburn, who was the life of the party at a well-known nitery, became peeved at her escort and walked out.
Nor did she walk out alone.
Her departure was prefaced by a few dances with a new acquaintance whom she had met for the first time at the night club. The fact that she left the place with this newfound friend, rather than with members of her own party, is a circumstance which police consider to be without especial significance. Friends of the young woman, however, regard it as a matter of the greatest importance. Detectives are frank to state they do not consider this occurrence unique in the life of the mysterious young woman who was so singularly unobservant when Gabby Garvanza was on the receiving end of two leaden slugs.
When milk bottles began to pile up on Miss Auburn’s doorstep, the peeved and jilted escort, whose name is being withheld by the police, felt that something should be done. He went to the police — perhaps for the first time in his life. Prior to that time, as one of the officers expressed it, the police had gone to him.
In the meantime, Garvanza, who has so far recovered
that he has been definitely pronounced out of danger, continues to occupy a private room at a local hospital and, despite his convalescence, continues to employ three special nurses.After coming out of an anesthetic at the hospital following the operation which resulted in removing two bullets from his body, Gabby Garvanza listened patiently to police inquiries, then, by way of helpful cooperation, said, “I reckon somebody who had it in for me must have taken a coupla shots at me.”
Police consider this a masterly understatement of fact and point out that as an aid to investigative work it is somewhat less than a valuable contribution. There was a distinct feeling at headquarters that both Gabby Garvanza and Miss Auburn could have been much more helpful.