“The whole play. You can’t stick me without bringing your life’s history into court, anyway, so you may as well spill it now.”
I said, “I’m a private detective. I’m here on business. I’m employed by the B. Cool Detective Agency. Bertha Cool and a client are up in the Sal Sagev Hotel right now. Give her a ring if you want to. Bertha Cool’s been in a sanitarium for months. This is her first day out. I’ve been running the Los Angeles office. I’m here to try and find a certain person. The person was out when I called. I killed time playing the slot machines.” They tried to interrupt me, but I droned right on. “I put in a dollar without getting a smell. The last nickel gave me two cherries. I scooped out the winnings, and the next nickel hit the jackpot. I never saw either of those other two people in my life, and I don’t know a damn thing about the slot-machine racket. I’m telling you all this because I don’t want you to be able to stand up in front of the jury and say that I didn’t co-operate by giving you everything. It’s your move now. Go ahead.”
The manager looked at me for a minute, then picked up the telephone, and said, “I’m calling your bluff.”
“Go ahead.”
He called the Sal Sagev Hotel. “You got a Bertha Cool registered there?” he asked. “That’s right, from Los Angeles. Let me talk with her.”
He held the phone a moment, then suddenly said to the officer, “Better make this official, Bill, just in case.”
“Uh huh,” the officer said.
His thick fingers enveloped the telephone. He swallowed the receiver in his big hand, and raised it up to his left ear. Watching his face, I could tell when Bertha came on the line.
“This is Lieutenant William Kleinsmidt of the Las Vegas police. You’ve got a man working for you whose first name is Donald?… I see… What’s his last name?… How about a description?”
He held the phone and looked at me as though checking things off. Once he grinned, and I knew that Bertha’s description would have the unmistakable salty tang that characterized all of her utterances.