Case Pending - Dell Shannon (20 page)

"I deduce that the lieutenant is on the
narcotics team, or whatever you call it."

"And as you and I are not the only people in the
world who speak Spanish, we will now cease to talk shop. . . .What
are we offered? All the standard Parisian concoctions. Women
living alone subsist mostly on casseroles anyway, no treat to you—I
suggest the one concession to Americanism, a steak."

"Medium well," she agreed meekly. And when
the waiter had gone, "May I ask just one question? People make a
lot of money in that—er—business you mentioned. Wholesaling
you-know-what. Why should they go to all the trouble of holding down
regular jobs too? I always thought of them as—as coming out at
night, slinking furtively down alleys, you know—like that—not
punching time clocks."

"Oh, God!" he said. "Now you've taken
my appetite away. Well, there's a den of crafty bloodsucking robbers
in Washington—you'll have heard of them—"

"Which ones?"

"It says Bureau of Internal Revenue on the
door. Now, the L.A.P.D. couldn't get one useful piece of
evidence against the gentleman I mentioned—as we can't always
against a lot of others in a lot of businesses, and I do mean big
businesses, on the wrong side of the law. But we can't poke our noses
into some things those fellows can. A hundred-thousand-dollar
apartment house—a new Cadillac—a mink coat for the girl
friend—you are doing well, Mr.  Smith, how come you never told
your uncle about it?  And if Mr. Smith can't explain just
where it all came from, he's got a lot more grief than a mere city
cop could ever hand him."

"Oh, I
see
.
I do indeed. Cover."

"And then," added Mendoza, not altogether
humorously, "when uncle has stowed Mr. Smith away in jail
for tax evasion, the indignant public points an accusing finger at us
and says, Corrupt cops!—they must have known about him! Stupid
cops!—if they didn't find out!  Why wasn't he arrested for his
real
crimes? You
try to tell them, just try, that it's because we have to operate
within laws about evidence designed to protect the public. . . . .I
wonder whether I ought to call in and tell Pat's office about this."
Mr. Tomes-Domingo, who had made a precipitate exit on first catching
sight of him, reappeared round the screen at the service doors,
polishing his bald head with a handkerchief. He shot one furtive
glance in Mendoza's direction, pasted on a professional happy smile,
and began to circulate among the tables, pausing for a bow, a word
here and there with a favored patron. "Oh, well, there's no
hurry—he won't run away, and for all I know he's reformed and
hasn't any reason to anyway."

The steaks could have been less tough; the service
might with advantage have been less ostentatious. Mendoza asked her
presently whether she'd got anything useful from any of the girls.

"I wondered when you'd ask. Nothing at all,
I'm sorry to say—she hadn't said anything to any of them about
that. But she didn't know any of them well, after all."

"No. I didn't expect much of that. 
I've got a queer sort of an—can I it a lead?—from another angle,
but I don't know that that means much either. . .What do you
think of the murals? I've never asked you what kind of thing you
paint."

Alison said the murals constituted a libel on the
feline race and that she was herself unfashionably
pre-Impressionistic. "This and that—I'm not wedded to any
one particular type of subject. Now and then I actually sell
something." They talked about painting; they talked about cats.

"But when you're away all day, you can't keep
pets, it's not fair."

"Nobody keeps a cat. They condescend to
live with you is all. And as for the rest of it, I moved. It's miles
farther for me to drive, and the rent's higher, but it's on the
ground floor and they let me put in one of those little swinging
doors in the back door, out to the yard. You've seen the ads—let
your pet come and go freely. Yes, a fine idea, but she won't use
it—she knows how it works, but she doesn't like the way it slaps
her behind, and she got her tail pinched once. Fortunately the other
seven apartments are inhabited by cat people. Four of them have
keys to mine and run in and out all day waiting on her, which of
course is what she schemes for. I believe Mrs. Carter and Mrs.
Bryson," he added, looking around for the waiter, "alternate
their shopping tours and visits to the beauty salon—coffee,
please—" And pairhaps some of our special brandy, sair?"

"That I need," said Alison, "after
listening to this barefaced confession. Battening on the charity
of your neighbors like that—"

"One of the reasons I picked the apartment. The
Elgins keep her supplied with catnip mice, they buy them in wholesale
lots, having three Siamese of their own. Of course there is a man two
doors down who has a spaniel, but one must expect some undesirables
in these unrestricted neighborhoods." The waiter came back with
the coffee, the brandy, and the bill on a salver, contriving to slide
that in front of Mendoza by a kind of legerdemain suggesting that it
appeared out of thin air, not through any offices of this obsequious
and excellent servant. Mendoza looked at it, laid two tens on the
salver and said now he needed the brandy too.

"I have no sympathy for you," said Alison.

When they came out into the foyer, Mendoza hesitated,
glancing at the discreet row of phone booths in an alcove. "I
wonder if I had—" There had appeared no bowing, smiling
headwaiter as they left the dining room, to make the last honors to
new patrons, urge a return. "Oh, well," and he put a
hand automatically to his pocket for more largesse as one of the
several liveried lackeys approached with Alison's coat.

"So 'appy to 'ave 'ad you wiz us, sair and
madame—I 'ope you enjoyed your disenair? You mus' come back
soon—Holy Mother o' God, what the hell was that?" Between them
they dropped the coat; the lackey took one look over Alison's
shoulder, said, "Jesus, let me out of here!" and dived
blindly for the door, staggering Mendoza aside. The second volley of
shots was a medley of several calibers, including what sounded like a
couple of regulation's. From the dark end of the corridor off the
foyer plunged a large, shapeless man waving a revolver, and close
after him the tuxedo-clad rotundity of Mr. Tomes-Domingo,
similarly equipped. The checkroom attendant prudently dropped flat
behind his counter as the large man paused to fire twice more behind
him and charged into the foyer.

"Wait for me, Neddy!" Mr. Tomes-Domingo
sent one wild shot behind him and another inadvertently into the
nearest phone booth as he continued flight.

The first man swept the gun in an are round the
foyer. "Don't nobody move—I'm comin' through—"

Mendoza recovered his balance, shoved Alison hard to
sprawl full length on the floor, and in one leap covered the ten feet
to the gun as it swung back in his direction. He got a good
left-handed grip on the gunhand as they collided, his momentum
lending force to the considerable impact, and as they went down
landed one right that connected satisfactorily.

Neddy went over backward and Mendoza went with him;
the gun emptied itself into the ceiling as they hit the floor with
Mendoza's knee in the paunch under him; Neddy uttered a strangled
whoof and lost an interest in the proceedings.

Mr. Tomes-Domingo yelped, fired once more and hit the
plate-glass door, turned and ran into the embrace of an enormous
red-haired man in the vanguard of the pursuit, which had just erupted
down the corridor. The red-haired man adjusted him to a convenient
position and hit him once in the jaw, and he flew backward six feet
and collapsed on top of Mendoza, who was just sitting up. One of the
three men behind the red-haired man dropped his gun and sank onto the
divan beside the checkroom, clutching his shoulder.

There was a very short silence before several women
in the crowd collecting at the dining-room door went off like
air-raid sirens.

Mendoza heaved off Mr. Tomes-Domingo, sat up and
began to swear in Spanish. The red-haired man bellowed the crowd
to quiet, and turned to the man nearest him: "Find a phone and
call the wagon and an ambulance-and—" flinging round to the
man on the divan—"just what in the name of Jesus, Mary, and
Joseph did you think you were doing, you almighty bastard? You—"

"
¡Hijo de perra!
—Take
your hands off that man, you son of a Dublin whore!" Mendoza
shoved him away and bent over Higgins, who was fumbling a
handkerchief under his coat. "Easy, boy—

"It's not bad, Lieutenant—I just—"

"Before God!—Luis Mendoza!—does this belong
to you? Just what the holy hell are you doing in this?—you tellin'
me you put this blundering bastard out back there—to bitch up two
months' work and the first chance I've had to lay hands on—I ought
to bust you right in the—I ought to—"

Mendoza twitched the handkerchief from the red-haired
man's breast pocket, wadded it up with his own, shoved Higgins flat
on the divan and pulled aside the coat to slap on the temporary
bandage. "Temper, Patrick, temper! We're in public—you'll
be giving people the idea there's no loyalty, no unity in the police
force. And listen, you red bastard, next time you have to knock
a man out to arrest him, for the love of God don't aim him at
me—you've damn near fractured my spine! There's the squad car. For
God's sake, let's clear this crowd back—Who's this?"

The little round man who had popped out like a cork
from the dining-room crowd was sounding off in falsetto. "I am
the manager—I am the owner—what do you do here in my place,
shooting and yelling? I call the police!—what is all this
about?—shootings—gangsters—I will not have gangsters in my nice
quiet place—"

"Then you shouldn't hire one as a headwaiter,"
said Mendoza. "And you should also change your butcher, your
steaks are tough." He pushed past him and went over to Alison,
who was just somewhat shakily regaining her feet. "I don't
usually knock them down the
first
date,
mi vida
—apologies!
Are you all right? Here, sit down."

"
I'm
all right," said Alison, "but you owe me a pair of
stockings."

* * *

Morgan had read somewhere that marijuana did this to
you, played tricks with time, so first it seemed to slow down, almost
grind to a full stop, and then sent everything past you at the speed
of light. His watch told him he'd been standing here on this corner
just an hour and twelve minutes, no more and no less; for a while it
had felt like half eternity, and then, a while after that, time began
to go too fast. Where he'd been tense with impatience, wound up tight
for action—
God, make him come
—suddenly,
now, he could have prayed for time to stop.  Not now, he said to
Smith frantically in his mind, you can't come now, until I've thought
about this, figured it out, got hold of another plan.

Oh, Christ damn Luis Mendoza and his little
slum-street mugging!—what the hell did that matter, some damn-fool
chippy knocked off, probably she'd asked for it, and that crazy idea
about those Lindstroms who couldn't by any fantastic stretch of the
imagination have had anything to do. . .Because, yes, this
upright citizen Morgan had a good innocent reason to visit that
apartment house, he wouldn't care if the whole L.A. police force
stood by in squads to watch him go in—but after he was clocked in
by men watching, he couldn't lie in wait maybe an hour, and do what
he'd come to do, and then say
Just as I got to
the top of the stairs
— Nor could he call at
the Lindstroms' first, thinking to say,
Just
as I was leaving
— That woman might not be
very smart but she could tell time, and suppose he'd left her half an
hour before, as might well happen? Also, of course, there was no
telling about the cops: where and how and how many. It might be a
desultory thing, one man outside up to midnight, something like that;
it might be a couple of men round the clock; it could be a couple of
men inside somewhere.

So he hadn't dared go near Graham Court at all. It
had had to be the street corner; and on his way here, and up to a
while ago, he'd been telling himself that after all the street was
safer. Once you were off Main, off Second, along here, the
streets were underhghted and there weren't many people; in all this
while he'd stood and strolled up and down outside the corner
drugstore here, only four people had come by, at long
intervals. Safer, and also more plausible that Smith would try a
holdup on a darkish side street, instead of in the very building
where he lived.

Morgan had been feeling pretty good then: ready for
it, coldly wound up (the way it had been before action, when you knew
action was coming) but-in control. He'd known just how it would go,
Smith coming along (he'd been wary before, sent the boy to check that
Morgan had come alone, but this time he wouldn't bother, he thought
he had Morgan and—the ransom—tied up); and Morgan pretending
nervousness, saying he had the money locked in the glove compartment,
his car was just round the corner. Round the corner, an even
narrower, darker street. Sure to God Smith would walk a dozen
steps with him . . . .