Kept Women Can’t Quit

“Don’t go away,” Hobart said. “Don’t let anybody touch anything. I’m coming down.”

“Okay,” I said, and started to hang up.

“Just a minute,” the porter said, and pushed me away from the telephone. “Hello,” he said, “this is the porter at the hotel. With whom am I talking?”

The receiver made squawking noises.

“All right,” the porter said. “I’ll see that no one touches anything and that everyone stays here. You’re coming right down? Okay, thanks.”

The porter hung up and said apologetically to Ernestine, “I know you, Ernestine, but I don’t know this man, and this is important. The police are coming right down.”

Ernestine grabbed my arm. Her fingers clamped so tight they hurt.

“Donald,” she squealed, “oh, Donald, I’m so excited... I suppose I’m going to have to learn to control myself, but this thing is... this is terrific!”

The porter looked at her speculatively. “How did you know that knife was in there?” he asked me.

“I didn’t.”

“You came and asked for it.” He turned to Ernestine. “Who is this guy?”

“Donald Lam,” I said, “of Cool and Lam, Los Angeles.”

“All right, what’s Cool and Lam?”

“Investigators.”

“Private eyes?”

“Call us that if you want.”

“How did you know what to ask for and what to look for?”

“I didn’t. I looked. I found.”

“Also, you asked.”

“I asked,” I said.

“That’s the part I want to know about.”

“That’s the part the police may want to know about,” I said. “You can stick around and listen.”

“I’ll be sticking around and listening,” he promised. “Don’t worry.”

Inspector Hobart made it in record time. He had a laboratory man with him. I showed him what we had. The laboratory man took it into custody and Hobart wanted to know about Ernestine.

I told him.

Hobart looked me over and said, “All right, let’s go.”

He took Ernestine and me out to the squad car and up to Headquarters.

I was back in his office within an hour and a half of the time I’d left it.

“Private investigators,” Hobart said, “can serve papers and get evidence in divorce cases and things of that sort. The police solve murder cases.”

I nodded.

“I just wanted to be sure you understood that,” he said.

“What does that mean?” Ernestine asked.

“It means,” Inspector Hobart said, “that your boy friend is inclined to take in too damn much territory.”

Ernestine flushed and said hastily, “He’s not my boy friend.”

Hobart looked us both over. “You sit there,” he said to Ernestine. He crooked his forefinger at me. “Lam, you come with me.”

He took me into another room and said, “Give.”

“On what?”

“Ernestine.”

I said, “Ernestine is a TV enthusiast. She’s nuts over private eyes.”

“Go on.”

“She’s the roommate of Bernice Glenn, who is a telephone operator at the hotel.

“Bernice is easy on the eyes and attractive to men. She goes out. She seldom eats a meal in the apartment. Ernestine keeps the place clean and thrills to hear Bernice’s adventures when she gets home at night from a date. That’s Ernestine’s whole life, vicarious substitution of other people’s experiences for her own. She gets her romantic adventures by listening to Bernice. She gets her excitement from watching television.

“When she found out I was a private detective she looked at me with stars in her eyes.”

“What are you doing, just playing her along?”

I said, “Believe it or not, I’ve got plans for Ernestine.”

“Such as what?”

“I think I’ll get her a job.”

“Where?”

“In Los Angeles.”

“Doing what?”

“Being an operative.”

“Has she had any experience?”

“She has talents.”

“Keep talking.”

“Notice her face,” I said. “She does her hair all wrong. She’s so eager to learn about life from other people that she doesn’t stop to think about living her own life herself. If she keeps on she’ll be a mousy person with frustrations. If she can only learn to quit selling herself short she’s going to marry some earnest, sincere guy who will make her a good husband and she’ll make a wonderful wife and mother, and, later on, a damn fine grandmother.”

“So what do you intend to do?”

“Get her excited, get her to break out of her shell, to take a look at life, get her doing things, get her to use some sense in the way she does her hair, get her to develop some of her natural aptitudes.”

“Trying to turn a wallflower into a vamp in the approved Hollywood tradition, aren’t you?” he asked.

“Don’t be silly,” I said. “I don’t want her to be a vamp. She doesn’t want to be a vamp. She loves people. She wants human contacts. She wants to feel she belongs. She doesn’t want to be a sultry femme fatale. She wants to be an honest, hard-working girl with an honest, hard-working husband. She wants to raise a family that will be a credit to her and to the community. In the meantime, she has exceptional talents of observation and dependability.”

“You’ve just gone off your rocker falling for a dame who appealed to your sympathies,” Hobart said. “It takes talent and training to be a detective. You damned amateurs! You give me a pain.”

I said, “We found the murder weapon, didn’t we?”

He looked at me, grinned, and said, “Ouch!”