Carnival of Death (13 page)

“Si.”

“What happened then?”

“The pink
limonada senora
gave him a paper cup of
limonada
.”

“Where was
Senor
Laredo?”

“He was standing by the big box holding a
pistola
.”

“Did he shoot it?”

“No.”

“What did he do with it?”

“He put it back in the box.”

“And where did the pink
limonada senora
get the
limonada
she served to the guard?”

The five-year-old looked at Daly as if he were slightly stupid. “From the big glass
cisterna
where she keeps it.”

“The same glass tank that she took the lemonade from that she gave you children?”

“Si.”

“Are you sure?”

“
Si
. I saw her.”

“Go on. What happened then?”

“Then the man got sick and fell down on the ground and money fell out of one of the bags and the man who was with him picked it up and went back to the truck and hit on the door with his
pistola
. And another man got out and put the bags of money in the truck. Then they ran back to where the sick man was and the man who had been inside the truck said he was his
hermano
.”

“Go on, Luisa,” Daly encouraged her.

“Then a
médico
tried to help the sick man. He sent one of the men from the truck to get some
medicina
, I think. And while he was gone the
médico
put a big needle in the sick man’s arm. But it didn’t do any good.” It was just a word to the child. “The sick man was
muerto
. So the
médico
put the needle back in his pocket and one of his legs hurt him as he walked to the big car where his
senora
was waiting. And he got in the car and they drove away.”

Daly puzzled, “One of his legs hurt him?”

Luisa bobbed her head. “
Si
. He walked just like
Senor
Laredo walks.” She was so intent on the story she was telling that when Daly tried to stop her to clarify the point, he couldn’t. “Then a bad
bufón
started the little train and when it was going fast he got off and all of the children were frightened, and I could hear Brigida and Margarita crying. Then another
bufón
he opened the door of the truck and he threw money to the big boys and girls.”

Daly succeeded in stopping her. “Let’s go back a little, Luisa. You say the doctor walked as if his leg hurt him?”

“Si.”

“Would you know the doctor if you saw him again?”

The child nodded.

“Would you know the
senora?
”

She nodded a second time.

“Can you describe the
senora
for us?
I
mean, can you tell us what she looked like?”

The five-year-old thought for a moment. “She had yellow hair and big mother bumps on her chest. And when we pass a
senora
or a
senorita
like her on the street, my mother always spits on the sidewalk.”

It was a graphic description. It fitted a number of women. It fitted the woman the barman at the ski lodge had described.

“Now tell us this, Luisa,” Daly said. “Did you happen to notice the color of the car that the yellow-haired
senora
was driving?”

The child beamed. “
Si
. It was pink. Just like the pony I was riding.”

“Thank you, honey,” Daly smiled. “Go on.”

He knew the rest of the story. It was much the same as Luisa had told himself and Gene and, later, the Spanish-speaking policewoman whom Charlie Schaeffer had sent to the Garcia home.

She had only seen three
bufóns
, including
Senor
Laredo. None of them had been carrying any bags of money. Luisa was equally positive, and made a point of it, that it hadn’t been
Senor
Laredo who had shot the nice old man or the young
senora
with the baby in her arms. It had been one of the bad
bufóns
, the one who hadn’t been crying.
Senor
Laredo had been stopping the little train so Brigida and Margarita wouldn’t be hurt.
Senor
Laredo hadn’t even come to the merry-go-round until after the bad
bufón
, Luisa cocked a chubby thumb and forefinger, had shot his
pistola
, bang, bang, bang,
una, dos, tres
, times.

It had been an interesting interview, Daly thought as they went off the air. It had also opened a new dimension. While proving it might be difficult, there was no doubt in his mind that the elusive Dr. Alveredo and the nude girl who had pistol-whipped him in the cabin had been participants in, if not the actual instigators of, the plot to rob the armored truck. He also felt that he was missing something, something right under his nose, that he hadn’t the perception to see.

As he helped Luisa off his lap and removed his necktie mike, he realized that Terry was speaking to him.

“This one is for you,” she said. She handed him the phone. “She insists on speaking to you personally. And, personally, you can have her.”

Daly spoke into the phone. “Tom Daly.”

He’d thought he knew most of the words, but nothing he’d ever heard compared with the string of four-and five-letter obscenities issuing from the mouth of the woman on the other end of the wire as she questioned his antecedents, his nocturnal relationship with his maternal parent and his maggot-infested intelligence. On top of that he was poking his mucous-filled nose into something that was none of his business and if he continued to do so it was odds on that he would never make another telecast.

“Nice?” Terry said.

“Who is this?” Daly asked.

The woman continued to curse him in a lifeless monotone. Then, informing him of the specific amatory act he could engage in with himself, she terminated the one-sided conversation, presumably before the call could be traced.

Daly looked up to find that Gene DuBoise had pushed his way through the crowd of admiring cameramen, technicians and members of the studio audience clustered around Luisa and her mother. “What now, Tom?” he asked.

Daly cradled the phone. “I just stepped on someone’s toes. Someone out there doesn’t like me.”

“Good,” DuBoise said. He handed Daly an interstudio communication memo. “Here’s another interesting item. Dr. Alex Murman phoned the switchboard and asked you be given this message. He said he was listening to the show and when your little guest said that the man who treated the dying guard walked with a limp, it rang a faint bell in his mind. And while he wouldn’t want to get an innocent man into trouble, he would like to talk to you.”

T
HE SPACIOUS
ranch type house was built in the Hollywood Hills on an acre of carefully tended grounds, complete with a Junior Olympic-sized swimming pool and a low-walled brick patio that commanded a breathlessly beautiful view of the city.

His family had long since been asleep but Dr. Murman was waiting for them when Daly and DuBoise drove up the drive. After introducing himself, he explained the reason for his phone call over drinks in the starlit patio.

“I suppose,” the physician admitted, “I should have called the police. A Lieutenant Schaeffer gave me his card and asked me to let him know if anything occurred to me. But this is a rather delicate situation. I’m not certain the man I have in mind is in any way involved. And if he’s not the man who posed as a Dr. Alveredo and sent the armored truck guard to my office for a stomach pump, I wouldn’t want to get him into any more trouble.”

Daly mulled the statement. “Any
more
trouble?”

“That’s right,” Dr. Murman said. “In a way, I’m sorry for the poor devil. You see the man of whom I’m thinking is named Davis. James Davis. It’s been a number of years since I’ve seen him and I’d never have thought of him again if the little girl on your show hadn’t mentioned that the
‘médico’
limped. Putting that together with the mysterious Dr. Alveredo’s description, as printed in the newspapers, I came up with Davis. He is of Irish origin, I believe, but dark-complexioned enough to pass as Spanish. And wearing a hairline mustache, he could easily get away with a name like Alveredo. What’s more, due to an accident in his youth, his left leg is an inch shorter than his right leg, giving him a decided limp.”

“This Davis,” DuBoise asked, “is a fellow physician?”

Dr. Murman shrugged. “Yes and no.” He explained, “If Davis is the man who posed as Dr. Alveredo, he was once a promising young doctor about thirty-five or thirty-six years of age. But his license was revoked a year ago.”

“For what reason?”

“Not a very savory one. Davis tried to get rich in a hurry via the abortion mill route, charging whatever the traffic would bear. But unfortunately one of his patients died. And while there wasn’t enough evidence for the State to make a criminal charge stick, there was enough for the State Medical Board to revoke his license to practice medicine.”

“I see,” Daly said.

Dr. Murman’s cigar had gone out. He relit it. “What made me wonder if it could have been Davis is the fact that my clinic is less than a block from the shopping plaza. I’m hardly ever there on Saturday mornings and Davis knew that. He worked for me for some months, about two years ago. He was a good doctor. He knew his business. But it seems that part of his problem is that he is overfond of the opposite sex and I was forced to terminate our connection because a number of my younger and prettier female patients, especially prospective mothers, complained he was being overzealous in his prenatal examinations and, in several instances, had actually attempted to force extramarital coitus on them, saying it would relax their reproductive organs and make the child they were carrying easier to bear.”

Thinking of the nude girl in the cabin, whom Luisa seemed also to have placed in a pink car at the new shopping center on the morning the armored truck was robbed, Daly said, “He sounds like he could be our man. Another thing. One of the homicide boys turned up several witnesses who said that Dr. Alveredo spoke very knowingly about heat stroke and acute food poisoning while he was working on the dying guard. I imagine that would come within Davis’ scope of knowledge?”

Dr. Murman nodded. “Davis would know. As I said, he is an excellent doctor.”

DuBoise finished his drink and refused another. “Can you tell us where we might find this Davis, Dr. Murman?”

“No,” Murman said. “I can’t. But I wasn’t entirely accurate when I said it has been a number of years since I’ve seen him. I saw him, briefly, late last fall, in the new King’s Harbor Marina in Redondo Beach. You see, I berth my boat farther down the coast and I was talking to the harbor master about renting a slip in King’s Harbor when Davis chugged by the jetty at the wheel of a thirty-two-foot cruiser. A twin-screw Owens, as I remember.”

DuBoise and Daly looked at each other.

Dr. Murman continued, “But I’m afraid that’s not much of a clue. Davis could berth his boat at the harbor, or he could have put in to fill his tanks or use some of the other facilities at the marina.”

“And that’s all you can tell us?” Daly asked.

“I know it isn’t much, but I thought I’d better call you.”

“I’m glad you did,” Daly said. “Now would you mind telling us this, Dr. Murman. Can chloral hydrate be induced into the human system in any manner other than oral?”

“Yes. It can be administered by rectal or intravenous injection. But usually it is ingested. And I believe that was the case in this instance.”

“Why do you think that?”

“From the rapidity with which it worked. That’s what gives it its common name of knockout drops. The few times I’ve encountered it, it was given secretly in food or drink, to render the victim suddenly helpless for the purpose of robbery or rape. Besides, if the account I read in the newspapers is correct, the dead guard was already unconscious and had fallen to the ground before any injection was given. As stated in the newspaper, he stopped at the lemonade stand presided over by Mrs. Laredo. He drank a cup of lemonade she served him. A few seconds later he complained of not feeling well, then collapsed. How do you get around that, Mr. Daly?”

“We don’t,” Daly admitted. “That’s the way it was. That’s one of the humps we have to get over.”

After he and DuBoise had left the Murman house, Daly rode in silence for a few minutes. Then as DuBoise stopped for a traffic light, he asked if the other man happened to have Miss Polly Madden’s home address or telephone number with him.

“In my little black book,” DuBoise said. “Thinking about that thirty-two-foot cabin cruiser?”

“That’s right,” Daly answered. “If we can connect Davis with Kelly we may have something. Miss Madden said that a friend of his was going to lend Kelly a thirty-two-foot cabin cruiser. And it would be very interesting to say the least if that friend’s name turned out to be Davis.”

“I’ll stop at the next pay phone we come to,” DuBoise said.

Miss Madden’s phone rang for a long time before she answered it. When she did, she wasn’t pleased to be awakened at two o’clock in the morning. “Look, Mr. Daly,” she protested. “I told you everything I know while you were interviewing me. Besides, what do you expect for a lousy fifty bucks? I talked to that Mex kid’s mother before I left the studio. And she told me you were paying her five hundred dollars.”

“That’s right,” Daly admitted. “Mr. DuBoise figured that Luisa would be worth it. I think she was. But I’ll tell you what I’ll do, Miss Madden. If you’ll answer one more question, I’ll put another fifty dollars in the mail tomorrow morning.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Does the name Jim or James Davis mean anything to you?”

“No.”

“You didn’t ever hear Kelly mention anyone by that name?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Then tell me this. While we were talking you told me that if Tim hadn’t been killed Saturday morning, a friend of his was going to lend him a thirty-two-foot cabin cruiser and you intended to spend the rest of the weekend cruising to and around Santa Catalina.”