Extra Kill - Dell Shannon (5 page)

"Possessed of the devil. I intended to keep one
of the kittens, but I ended up with this El Se
ñ
or
as well because nobody else would put up with him. He's got no sense
at all except for planning deliberate mischief, and that he's very
damned smart at. I call him El Se
ñ
or
for convenience—sometimes it's Se
ñ
or
Estupido, and sometimes Se
ñ
or
Malicioso, and other things. I believe he must have been a witch's
familiar in another incarnation. But even when he's being stupid, he
can look down his nose at me as superior as the other two."

"Madame Cara," said Sergeant Woods,
regarding his Beef Stroganov thoughtfully, "says that the
highest point of animal reincarnation is represented by cats, and
they're all of them superior human souls on the way—er—up the
ladder again."

"And who in hell is Madame Cara?" Goldberg
wanted to know. Woods grinned. "This thing I'm on now. That
embezzlement. I suppose I should say ‘alleged,' like the
papers—I've got no proof he did it, and as far as I can see I never
will unless I catch up to him—and it looks as if maybe he borrowed
one of their spells and made himself invisible.”

"Oh, that Temple of Mystic Truth thing,"
said Goldberg.

"What is mystic about the truth?" asked
Mendoza.

"There you've got me, Lieutenant," said
Woods. "All I know is what it says on the sign out front.
Myself, I thought at first it ought to have been handed over to
somebody in Rackets, but of course however the Kingmans came by the
money it did belong to them—that is, to the—er—church, which is
officially incorporated as a nonprofit organization—"

"Now there's what they call labored humor,”
said Goldberg.

"—And this Twelvetrees hadn't any title to it
just as their treasurer. Yes, I thought," said Woods, looking
intellectually amused, "that I'd learned pretty thoroughly what
damned fools people can be, but Madame Cara Kingman and her
husband've given me another lesson. Twenty-three hundred bucks, if
you'll believe me—one month's take."

"Good God," said Goldberg, "I'm in the
wrong business. Just for telling fortunes?"

"Well, it's dressed up some. Quite fancy, in
fact—fancy enough to attract people with money and—er—more
sophistication than the kind who patronize the gypsy fortune teller
at the amusement pier. But nine out of ten people are interested in
that sort of thing, you know, it's just a matter of degrees of
intelligence."

"Twelvetrees," said Mendoza meditatively.
"He absconded with the take?"

"That he did, at least he's gone and the money's
gone, and at the same time. Where I couldn't say. I've been looking
for six days, and not a smell. Mr. Brooke Twelvetrees has pulled the
slickest vanishing act since vaudeville died."

Mendoza laid down his fork. "Mr. Brooke
Twelvetrees. Elegant-sounding name. Did it really belong to him, I
wonder?"

"Your guess is as good as mine. Sounds almost
too good to be true, doesn't it? And sort of gratifying in a way—you
know, the biter bit and all that—the Kingmans seem to have trusted
him absolutely. Yes, he's done a very nice flit, overnight—left a
note for his landlady and not so much as a bag of dirty laundry to
provide a clue, and disappeared into the blue."

“
I suppose you've looked at his recent quarters,
then—as well as elsewhere. Out on 267th Street."

Woods stared at him, also laid down his fork, and
said, "How d'you come to know that, Lieutenant? I didn't know
Homicide was interested in Twelvetrees. What—"

It ran a small finger up between Mendoza's shoulder
blades, the feeling he'd waited for before in vain. "Woods—when
did he go?" he asked softly.

The sergeant cocked his head at him curiously, and
then, as if divining his urgency, answered, terse as an official
report. "A week ago last night. Last seen four in the afternoon
by the Kingmans. They came in Monday to lay a charge."

Mendoza said, "
Donde
menos se piensa solta le liebre
—isn't it
the truth, things happen unexpectedly . . . Indulge me a minute,
Sergeant—he's just vanished, no sign at all of his leaving for
anywhere, even in disguise?"

"Not a smell. We've been working our tails off
looking. His car was found abandoned down near the Union
Station—nothing in it. None of the personnel there could identify
his photograph, and he's a man you'd remember if you'd seen
him—especially a woman. Nobody remembered him at an airport or a
bus station either. Or any of the places he might have gone to buy a
disguise-false whiskers or something. If he dyed his hair, he didn't
do it with anything he bought at a drugstore near where he lived or
near this—er—Temple. Oh, yes, we've looked in all the indicated
places, but maybe he's been too smart for us. And now, why?"

"
Aqui está
,
wait for it—wait. Now what is this, what could it—? What kind of
a car-did it have long tailfins that curved up at the ends?"

Woods opened his mouth, shut it, and said, "Well,
no. It's a two-year-old Porsche, an open roadster."

"You don't tell me," said Mendoza slowly.
"You don't tell me. Now, I wonder .... A two-year-old Porsche.
And twenty-three hundred dollars. That cancels out in a way, doesn't
it? Not like a battered ten-year-old heap not worth fifty bucks on a
turn-in. And he couldn't retire on twenty-three hundred. Not a very
big job, was it?—‘worth all the trouble of a disguise, covering
his tracks so thoroughly—leaving the car—? I mean, surely he
could have accumulated a bigger take than that if he'd planned to
steal any money at all .... " What was it in his mind,
struggling up to the surface? He sat very still, letting it find its
own way out. "Woods—when and how did you take a look at that
place Twelvetrees lived?"

The half-untouched food congealed on their plates.
Goldberg went on eating, watching and listening interestedly. "Mix-up
about that," said Woods. "We couldn't get the address for a
while—the one the Kingmans had was three years old, the place he'd
lived when he hooked up with them nearly four years ago. They knew
he'd moved, they thought they had the address somewhere but couldn't
find it. There'd evidently been no occasion to contact him at home.
Thought they had the phone number too, but couldn't find that. That
kind of peop1e—or making out they are—unworldly, you know. In the
end we got it from one of the—er—members of the sect, phone
number that is, and that was Wednesday morning. When I got the
address from the phone company, I went out there, of course—Wednesday
afternoon—and I looked it over. Well, I didn't take the floors up,
but—"

"You didn't take the floors up," said
Mendoza. "Maybe you should have done just that, Sergeant. Maybe.
That—that perpetual talking machine Mrs. Bragg—she didn't follow
you around pointing out all the amenities, I take it."

"I don't," said Woods, "encourage
people to watch me work, no. I shut the door on her. And just how do
you know about Mrs. Bragg and 267th Street? What's your interest in
Twelvetrees?"

"I don't know that
I've got any—yet. But I think you and I and my Sergeant Hackett
will go out there right away and take a closer look at a couple of
things. I'l1 explain it to you on the way, it's a funny little
story—and I may be seeing ghosts, but it just occurs to me that
maybe, just maybe, Mr. Twelvetrees is being slandered .... All that
blacktop, so inconvenient. And a trowel. Of all things, a trowel . .
.
Vaya
, I must be
seeing ghosts—it's even more far-fetched than what Walsh— But no
I have to make sure."

* * *

They stood in the middle of the little living room,
the three of them, at two o'clock that afternoon, and Hackett said,
"You haven't got much to make this add up, Luis." They had
got rid of Mrs. Bragg by sheer weight of numbers and official
supremacy, but she might well be lurking outside, suspicious of their
intentions toward her good furniture and rugs. "If you're just
relying on a hunch, and the damnedest far-fetched one I ever knew you
to have, at that—"

"Not at all," said Mendoza. "Sober
deduction from sober fact, it's just that I happened to have a couple
of facts Woods didn't have. I admit to you I've had a little funny
feeling that something's fishy—it's been growing on me—but the
facts are there to be looked at, and very suggestive too. Anybody
could add them up. I don't say it's impossible Twelvetrees didn't
decide to decamp with a month's take when he could have made it the
whole bank account, and we all know from experience that people can
disappear without trace. But it's odd he should go to so much trouble
for a relatively small amount, when it involved abandoning an
expensive car and the promise of more opportunity to come—after
all, he'd been with this racket for four years, didn't you say,
Woods? Evidently it paid off. Why should he walk out on it just for
twenty-three hundred he wasn't entitled to? It isn't reasonable—I
know crimes get committed for peanuts, but not by people of this
kind."

"Which," said Woods, "did occur to me,
Lieutenant, but there's a couple of ways it could have happened.
Maybe some skirt was making things hot for him and he had to get out.
Maybe he was afraid the Kingmans were going to fire him, or somebody
was threatening to tell them the tale on him, and he'd be out
anyway—and he figured he might as well take a little something
along. Maybe it was just impulse. People aren't always reasonable, in
fact I'd say very seldom."

"I know, I know," said Mendoza. "But
look at a couple of other things to add up. Why a note to tell Mrs.
Bragg he was leaving? All he had to do was go six steps from his own
front door and tell her in person. She was home that Friday night, we
know. He didn't leave in that much of a hurry, not when he took time
to pack up all his personal belongings. Why in hell should he
thumbtack that note to his front door instead of ringing her
doorbell? And if he was in such a hurry, why did he take time out
from his packing to do a little desultory gardening on that
anemic-looking Tree of Heaven out there? She says she had her nice
new trowel about noon that day, she knows, because she used it to pry
open a can of paint."

"A trowel," said Hackett in exasperation.
"A trowel, for God's sake."

"All right, all right, it won't take long to
look!” Mendoza turned and went out to the kitchen. "I couldn't
help remembering it, we get in the habit of noticing things
automatically, that's all. Damn it, look—the man had lived here for
nearly three years, and if he didn't cook his own meals he made
coffee in the morning anyway, he used this table for something
sometimes." He laid a hand on it; it was steady, but when he
moved it to any other angle it rocked at a touch. “How does a table
get shoved around out of its usual place? In the process of cleaning
the floor, something like that. I doubt if Twelvetrees was that good
a housewife. A bachelor living alone, mostly if he doesn't hire it
done it doesn't get done—what the hell? But the table was in the
wrong place on Wednesday morning—before you got here, Woods—and
Mrs. Bragg said she hadn't got round to cleaning here yet. And that
trowel was over there by the kitchen door. Why?" He shoved the
table clear away from the trap door in the iioor at this end of the
kitchen. It was about two feet by two and a half, the trap, and
covered with linoleum like the rest of the floor; only a little dark
line round it, and the small flat hinges, betrayed its presence. One
of the makeshift arrangements to be found in such jerry-built new
rental units, in a climate where jerry-building wasn't always
detectable at once. Mendoza reached down and pulled up the trap by
its dime-store bolt, which slid back and forth easily. "Who's
going down?"

"Not you, obviously," said Hackett, "in
that suit. I'll go."

"You've been gaining weight, I don't think you
could make it. All right, it's my idea, I'll do the dirty work."
Mendoza sat down and slid his legs through the opening.

"That's a lie, a hundred and ninety on the nose
ever since I left college. Be careful, for God's sake, don't go
breaking a leg—hell of a place to haul you out of."

"Hell of a place to get anything into,"
added Woods to that, gloomily.

"He gets these brainstorms," said Hackett,
squatting beside the trap resignedly. "About once in a hundred
times he's right, just by the law of averages, you know, and that
convinces him all over again to follow his hunches. Well?" he
bellowed down the hole, where Mendoza had now vanished.

"
No me empuje
——don't
push me! I've just got here." Mendoza's voice was muffled. "I
need a flashlight, hand one down ....
Válgame
Dios y un millén demonios!
" That came
out as he straightened too abruptly and hit his head on the floor
joists. Like most California houses, this sat only a little above a
shallow foundation; the space undemeath the floor was scarcely four
feet high.

Hackett laughed unfeelingly. "He wants a
flashlight—why didn't he think of that before? You got a
flashlight, Woods?"

"I seldom carry one in the daytime," said
Woods.