Umney's Last Case Read Online Free PDF Page A

frosted-glass door marked CLYDE UMNEY PRIVATE
    INVESTIGATOR,
    restraining a
    renewed urge to see if I could drop-kick a can of Dutch Boy Oyster White through the
    window at the end of the hall
    and out onto the fire-escape. I was actually reaching for my doorknob when a thought
    struck me and I turned back to
    the painters . . . but slowly, so they wouldn't believe I was being gripped by some
    new seizure. Also, I had an idea that
    if I turned too fast, I'd see them grinning at each other and twirling their fingers
    around their ears--the looney-gesture
    we all learned in the schoolyard.
    They weren't twirling their fingers, but they hadn't taken their eyes off me, either.
    The half-smart one seemed to be
    gauging the distance to the door marked STAIRWELL. Suddenly I wanted to tell them that
    I wasn't such a bad guy
    when you got to know me; that there were, in fact, a few clients and at least one exwife
    who thought me something of
    a hero. But that wasn't a thing you could say about yourself, especially not to a
    couple of bozos like these.
    ``Take it easy,'' I said. `Ì'm not going to jump you. I just wanted to ask another
    question.''
    They relaxed a little. A very little, actually.
    `Àsk it,'' Painter Number Two said.
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    `Èither of you ever played the numbers down in Tijuana?''
    ``La lotería?'' Number One asked.
    ``Your knowledge of Spanish stuns me. Yeah. La lotería.''
    Number One shook his head. ``Mex numbers and Mex call houses are strictly for
    suckers.''
    Why do you think I asked you? I thought but didn't say.
    ``Besides,'' he went on, ``you win ten or twenty thousand pesos, big deal. What's that
    in real money? Fifty bucks?
    Eighty?''
    My mom hit the lottery down in Tijuana, Peoria had said, and I had known something
    about it wasn't right even then.
    Forty thousand bucks . . . My Uncle Fred went down and picked up the cash yest'y
    afternoon. He brought it back in the
    saddlebag of his Vinnie!
    ``Yeah,'' I said, ``something like that, I guess. And they always pay off that way,
    don't they? In pesos?''
    He gave me that look again, as if I was crazy, then remembered I really was and
    readjusted his face. ``Well, yeah. It is
    the Mexican lottery, you know. They couldn't very well pay off in dollars.''
    ``How true,'' I said, and in my mind I saw Peoria's thin, eager face, heard him
    saying, It was spread all over my mom's
    bed! Forty-froggin-thousand smackers!
    Except how could a blind kid be sure of the exact amount. . . or even that it really
    was money he was rolling around in?
    The answer was simple: he couldn't. But even a blind newsboy would know that la
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    lotería paid off in pesos rather than
    in dollars, and even a blind newsboy had to know you couldn't carry forty thousand
    dollars' worth of Mexican lettuce
    in the saddlebag of a Vincent motorcycle. His uncle would have needed a City of Los
    Angeles dump truck to transport
    that much dough.
    Confusion, confusion--nothing but dark clouds of confusion.
    ``Thanks,'' I said, and headed for my office.
    I'm sure that was a relief for all three of us.
    _______________________________________________________________________
    IV. Umney's Last Client.
    ``Candy, honey, I don't want to see anybody or take any ca--''
    I broke off. The outer office was empty. Candy's desk in the corner was unnaturally
    bare, and after a moment I saw
    why: the IN/OUT tray had been dumped into the trash basket and her pictures of Errol
    Flynn and William Powell were
    both gone. So was her Philco. The little blue stenographer's stool, from which Candy
    had been wont to flash her
    gorgeous gams, was unoccupied.
    My eyes returned to the IN/OUT tray sticking out of the trash can like the prow of a
    sinking ship, and for a moment my
    heart leaped. Perhaps someone had been in here, tossed the place, kidnapped Candy.
    Perhaps it was a case, in