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Copyright © 1959 by Ace Books.
Published by Wildside Press LLC.
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For J., with love.
CHAPTER I
YOU KNOW how it is some mornings. That second cup of caffeine puts zip in your blood and skip in your step. So I kept my eye on the bull’s-eye as I walked along Pacific Avenue. The bull’s-eye in this case was one of the prettiest little posteriors I’d seen for months.
She wore a sky-blue skirt, made of a gleaming taffeta which hugged her lovingly, high-lighting the gentle to-and-fro motion as she stepped along on blue spike heels.
She was quite small, five feet or under, and she took such tiny steps I had to slow up to keep from walking into her.
At Pacific and Third Street, she paused uncertainly, then continued walking, and as she approached my place I knew it would be asking too much to expect her to stop there.
But she did.
She glanced up at my sign: LEW POOL, Bail Bonds.
She hesitated, and then I saw her glance at the signs of my competitors further up the street, and I knew the time had come for direct action.
I caught up with her.
“I’m Lew Pool,” I said.
As she turned toward me, I was pleasantly surprised. She was oriental, her features small and perfect, her complexion a light cream color with just a hint of Filipino or Chinese in it. I could feel my adrenal glands start to vibrate cheerfully. I’ve taken a special interest in oriental women ever since the government gave me that all-expenses-paid junket to North Korea and the Yalu River.
“Got a problem?” I said, re-establishing what I hoped would look like poise on my foolish features.
“Yes,” she said in excellent English. “Do you get people out?”
“I try,” I said. “Shall we talk about it inside?”
I hated to look away from her, even for a moment, because I’d discovered that the sky-blue nylon sweater definitely was as attractive as I had expected. But I had to unlock the door, of course, and perform such other gentlemanly duties as dusting Billy’s footprints off the chairs.
“It’s my fiancé.” She placed her beautiful bare legs closer together and smoothed her skirt with a quick, nervous gesture.
I refused to be disappointed. After all, there are many varieties of fiancés, ranging from A to A—Ardent to Asinine. And if I were lucky, hers might turn out to be one of the latter.
“He’s in jail?” I asked.
She nodded.
“I’ll need some information.” I picked up a sheet of office paper and a ball-point pen. “I’ll need his name, age, address, and the charges.”
“Certainly.” She nodded and said something else which I missed; because just then I decided her eyes were entirely too large and too Dresden blue to be real. And they were in stunning contrast to her high oriental cheekbones and the glossy darkness of her long black hair which she wore in a cute pony tail.
“Would you repeat that, please?” I asked.
She frowned delightfully. “Yes, of course. His name is Felix Pia. He’s thirty-six,” she said. “He lives at 2828 East Thirteenth Street. And I believe they arrested him because he was in a fight last night.”
“What kind of a fight?” I said. “A brawl, a riot or just a plain donnybrook? If it’s simple assault, we won’t have any trouble.”
She didn’t reply at once, but rose from the chair, walked to the office front door and closed it.
“I don’t know what kind of a fight,” she said.
I got up from my desk, walked to the door and opened it. Then I returned to the desk.
“You weren’t there?” I said.
“No,” she said as she stood and walked to the door. “I didn’t even know about it until Felix’s sister phoned this morning, all excited.”
She closed the door again and gracefully returned to her chair.
When I rose again, she held up a slim hand.
“Please leave it closed,” she asked.
Well, it was a balmy California morning, with April only a couple of days away, and since she had on that sky-blue nylon sweater she couldn’t be too chilly, so I walked over again and opened the door. And I didn’t feel like explaining to her why I had to have the door open.
“I’m sort of an idiot,” I said, giving her the old fib. “I like to gulp fresh air the way a fish gulps H2O.”
“Oh?” she said. “Is that why you look sort of like a hammerhead shark?”
From the cool way she said it I couldn’t tell whether she was kidding, or whether by some obscure feminine talent she had seen through my lie. I am ugly, of course, in a fascinating way; but I’m no hammerhead shark, not even at eight o’clock on Monday morning.
“Your round,” I said, grinning my best grin, which didn’t effect her in the slightest.
She went to the door and closed it again and suddenly I realized she was extremely nervous and had been trying all along to conceal it. I decided it was time for me to act less like Lew Pool, the working girl’s Casanova, and more like Lew Pool, the workingman’s bail bondsman.
“I’ll need your name also,” I said in a brisk, business-like tone.
“It’s Ti-lo,” she said. “With a hyphen.”
“Got it,” I said. “First name or last?”
“First,” she said. “My last name is Sullivan. My mother was Filipino,” she explained, “and my daddy was Irish.”
I asked semi-harmless questions like her address and phone number.
She refused to tell me until I insisted for the third time that the information was strictly for my business records.
Then the door got to bothering me again and I walked over and opened it.
That really put the freeze on.
“Must this take so long?” she demanded, giving me an irritated look. “And how much is this going to cost me?”
“It all depends,” I said. “If your boy friend has been a model inmate we’ll have him out in a few hours. If he’s been playful, if he bit the jailer’s hand or spit in his ear, it’ll take longer.”
I dialed the cop-shop number and talked to Winebrenner, the booking sergeant. After he flipped through a few arrest reports, he informed that one Felix Oretga Pia was being held on a 4130.
“Thanks,” I said, hanging up.
“Not bad,” I told her. “We’ll have him out this afternoon.”
She wasn’t looking at me. She was gazing at the open door and as she rose from her chair again I assumed she was going to continue our little I’ll-close-it-you-open-it game.
And then the explosion came.
There was a tremendous flash just outside the open door and a tremendous noise which thundered back and forth between the walls of the small office, knocking down my framed bondsman’s certificate, blowing a stack of receipts off the bookcase and making my eardrums vibrate like organ pipes.
Ti-lo screamed once. She reached out for the chair to support herself, missed by a yard and toppled.
She landed smack on her little taffeta-covered posterior, rolled over