Case Pending - Dell Shannon (8 page)

Dwyer had called in at one-thirty to report that
Tomás Ramirez had left Liggitt Street and was sitting alone in a
bar—and that it might be a good idea if the relief man sent to join
Dwyer understood Spanish. Sergeant Lake's prim script appended—Sent
Smith, so that had been taken care of.

Mendoza got up restlessly and stood at the window,
not really focusing on the panoramic view of the city spread out
before him. He wished the Ramirez house had a phone; there was, he
had thought, no such great urgency about the matter that it could not
wait a couple of hours—he would stop on his way home, or Hackett
could see them tomorrow. Now suddenly he felt that it was urgent.

It was four o'clock. He told himself he was a
single-minded fool, and on his way out told Sergeant Lake he'd be
back in half an hour. He drove the few blocks to Liggitt Street, and
as he pulled up at the curb before the house Teresa Ramirez came out.
Scarf over her hair for the rain, shabby brown coat, folded string
shopping bag on her way to market, probably for tonight's dinner.
("You got to think about them that's still alive.") He
lowered the window and beckoned her.

She ducked in beside him for shelter from the rain,
held the door shut but not latched. "You found out anything
yet?"

"A little. Something else I want to ask you
about."

"Well, O.K., only I got the shopping to do—but
it don't matter, I guess, if it'll help you catch this fellow."

"I'll drive you wherever you're going. Did your
sister—"

"That's real nice of you, but I don't want to
put you out. But maybe you get gas allowance on the job?—excuse me,
I don't mean to sound nosy, but I guess you don't get paid much,
driving such an old car, and I wouldn't want you should go out of
your way for me—"

"No trouble at all," said Mendoza without a
smile. "Tell me—and take your time to think about it—did
your sister say anything to you recently about being annoyed by a man
who followed her and stared at her?"

"They did, sometimes," she said, nodding.
"I told her it was account of her looking so—you know—and
that Miss Weir at that school said so too. But—you mean special,
just lately? I can't remember she mentioned anything like that. . .
.Wait a minute though, she did! Only it wasn't a man like that, like
you mean, somebody whistling at her or making smart cracks. Way she
said it, it was more as if there was something sort of funny about
it. She didn't say much—just about some guy who stared at her, got
on her nerves, you know. She said she was going try find out who he
was, and get him to stop."

Mendoza almost dropped his cigarette, suppressing an
exclamation. "She said that? It sounds as if he were someone
local then, someone who lives or works around here?"

"Don't know anything about that, I don't think
she mentioned any particular place she'd seen him—except—she did
say, and I guess that must've been what she meant, she thought she
knew somebody who knew this guy. A kid over on Commerce Street, she
said. . . .No, I don't know if this kid lived on Commerce or she'd
maybe just seen him there, see. She just said, next time she saw him
she was going to ask him who this other guy was, and tell him tell
the guy stop bothering her."

"She had seen this boy with him?"

"Maybe. I don't know. She must've, or how would
she know the boy knew him? All Elena said she knew about him, was his
name's Danny. . . .I didn't pay much notice to it, she didn't sound
like it was anything important, just—like it made her kind of mad
because it was so silly."

Do we start moving at last? Mendoza asked himself. A
little something, a nuance, no more—maybe nothing at all—but a
starting place.

He was pleased. He asked her where she wanted to go.

"Main an' First, its nice of you.... You mean
you think this guy might be the one? But it wasn't anything at all,
or I'd sure have remembered and told you before! She didn't sound
like she was scared of him or anything. You might ask that Miss Weir
about it, though, if you think it's real important, because Elena did
say she was going to tell her all about it—maybe she told her more
than she did me."
 

FIVE

Martin Lindstrom put on the blue corduroy jacket that
was getting too small for him, and buttoned it up slowly. He didn't
feel very good.

"Where you going?" she asked sharply.

"Just out awhile." He still had fifteen
cents left but that wasn't enough to get into a movie, except the one
over on Main that had Mexican pictures, and those were never any good
even if you could talk Mexican, nothing interesting in them.

"You be back for supper, mind! I don't want you
gallivanting all over the streets alla time like these kids their
mothers don't care what they're up to. Why you got to go out, Marty?
It's raining something fierce, you better stay home."

"I—I—got to see a guy's all," he said.
"One o' the guys at school, Ma, I said I'd help him with his
homework, see."

"Oh." Her tight mouth relaxed a little; she
was proud of his good marks at school.

It was a lie; and he didn't want to go out in the
rain, but he didn't want to stay here either; he felt bad, but he
wasn't sure about what exactly, just everything. He'd been feeling
that way a long while, all wrong but not knowing how or where, seemed
like. Of course he knew when everything had sort of started to get on
top of him like this, it was after Dad went. He wondered where Dad
was now. The funny thing was, and it was part of the bad feeling now,
he ought to be feeling better about everything because of what that
guy this morning said about finding Dad.

"Ma," he said. "Ma, you think that guy
will—you know—find him, and—" He looked back at her from
the door; right then, he dimly knew himself, he was begging her for
the reassurance, Things will get like they used to be.

"I don't care if they do or not," she said,
and besides the crossness in her voice there was the quivering fear
he sensed from her almost all the time now. "It's not right,"
she whispered to herself, "asking a person all them questions.
Just because you get where you got to ask relief, they think they can
go nosing into ever'thing. Not as if I like to take charity—didn't
ask till I had to. Nobody in our family ever been on charity
before—comes hard to a respectable woman allus held her head up an'
took nothing from nobody. Way they act, you'd think I was doing
something wrong, ask for enough keep a roof over our heads 'n' food
in our mouths. Forty dollars a month!" She sat hunched in the
rocker, thin arms hugging her flat body. "County's got millions.
Come poking around with their questions before they let me have forty
dollars!"

"He only ast four-five things, Ma—"

"He ast four-five things too much! What business
is it of theirs? No, acourse, they won't find your dad, they'll never
find him." She said that with fear, with hope, with insistence.
"If your dad was minded go off like that, he'd be real careful
make it so's nobody'd ever find him, an'—an' it's seven-eight
months back he went, too."

The boy was silent. He knew all sorts of things in
the dumb, vague way thirteen does know—hardly aware that he knew.
She made out she didn't mind Dad going off, except for the money, but
she did. She was afraid and making out she wasn't. He knew there were
things in her mind that for years she'd shut away somewhere, and now
they'd got out, they were shapeless unseen monsters, crowding in on
her and him both.

"Don't you stay out later than six," she
said. "Six is supper like allus."

Then, all of a sudden, he knew why he felt bad—why
he'd been feeling like this all the time since. In awful clarity it
came to him that things never stayed the same, or even got back to
what they'd been before. However bad things were, you were safe,
knowing what a day would be like, tomorrow and next week; but it
would change so you didn't ever know, and you couldn't stop it any
way. She wanted to, and she thought she had, and now she'd found
nobody ever could. One of the invisible monsters right here with them
now was the threat and promise of change to come.

It was knowledge too big for thirteen, and he turned
blindly and ran out, and down the dark rickety stair into the rain.

The rain was cold coming down but like mostly in
California when it rained it wasn't really cold, not cold like back
in Minnesota with the snow and all. The snow was kind of nice,
though—Dad said—Dad didn't like California much—maybe he'd gone
back east, and he stopped, breathless, and leaned on the window of
the drugstore on the corner there, as if he was looking at the
picture of the pretty girl saying Instant Protection, but he didn't
see anything in the window.
Oh, Dad!
he cried in silent agony.

He'd lost Dad too, just then, and forever. It
wouldn't matter if Dad came back, things would never be like they
were, ever again.

"Hi, kid," said Danny behind him.

Marty turned, eager for companionship, for anybody to
talk to. "Hi, Danny, wh-what's new?" It came out kind of
squeaky-sounding, like a real little kid, and embarrassed him all the
more because of Danny being—well, Danny.

"Nothin' much. Say, Marty—"

Mr.  Cummings had already turned on the lights
in the drugstore, the rain made it so dark-it was getting dark
anyway, fast-and Marty could see their blurred reflections in the
glass of the window. They looked funny together, him and Danny Smith,
but maybe only to anybody knew them. Because he was so big beside
Danny, he'd grown so fast just this last year—Dad said their family
always did start to grow awful young-last month when all the kids got
measured for gym in school, he'd been sixty-eight inches and some
over, and that was only four inches shorter than Dad. In the glass
there, sideways, he saw himself looking man-size, looming alongside
of Danny—but it was the other way round inside them. Danny was like
a grown-up somehow, things he knew and said and did, not having to be
in any special time, and always having money, and sometimes he smoked
cigarettes. It wasn't just Marty, he guessed most of the guys around
here felt the same about Danny, and Danny sort of bossed them around,
and they let him.

The figures in the window glass weren't sharp, just
shapes like, but just the way the smaller one moved you'd know it was
Danny, didn't have to really see his sharp straight nose and the way
his forehead went up flat, not bulgy, into black hair that was wavy
like a girl's with a permanent, or his eyes that moved a lot and were
bluer than most blue eyes.

"Say, Marty, why'd you run off las' night?"
Danny was asking. "At the show, alla sudden—we hadden seen it
right through yet either. You scareda your ole lady, hafta get home
when she says?"

"I didn't so sudden," he said quickly.
Danny and a lot of the guys around here, they thought that was
funny—both kinds of funny; they sort of needled you if your mother
said a certain time and you did what she said. "I just decided
to," he said. "It wasn't a very good pitcher anyway."

"You kiddin'? It was—"

"I seen it before," said Marty,
desperately.

Danny just looked at him. Then he said, "You
been down t' see where the murder was?"

Something moved a little, dark and uneasy, at the
very bottom of Marty's mind. "What murder?"

"Jeez, don't you know
anything
happens? Right down at Commerce 'n Humboldt, you know where that
house burn down across from the wop store. It was some girl, an' boy,
was she a mess, blood all over an' one of her eyes punched right
out—whoever did it sure musta been mad at her—I dint get there
till after they took her away, but you could still see some o' the
blood, oney the rain—"

Marty's stomach gave a little jump. He put his right
hand over that place on the left sleeve of the blue corduroy coat,
where the mark was. It wasn't a very big spot, but it showed dark
against the light blue and it was stiff. It hadn't been there this
time last night when he put the jacket on; he'd noticed it this
morning.

I got it in the theater last night
,
he told himself. Of course it wasn't blood. Something on the seat in
there, it was.

Empty lot where a house had burned down. All of a
sudden he remembered how it had been, in the dark last night:
something tripping him, hard squarish cement something when he felt
of it, like what was left when a house was burned. A lot of grass
around it.

No, it wasn't
, he said in
his mind frantically,
it wasn't like that, I
must remember wrong
. His mind said back at
him,
Like you remembered wrong before?

Danny was going on talking but he couldn't listen.
Please, oh, please, it can't have happened
again
. It never did happen, nothing happened
before, you just remembered wrong is all. You can't ever be sure in
the dark, and it was night then too, of course it had to be, it was
always night when—When things happened. A light green shirt that
time because it was hot, it was summer, and the mark didn't come out
when she washed it, you could still see where it'd been. That wasn't
blood either, acourse it wasn't, how could it be?