Felony File (10 page)

Hackett, Higgins, Palliser and Mendoza got there at a
quarter to ten. It was a closed hearing; there wouldn't be any press.
In the last row of folding chairs, over by one of the tall windows,
Cathy Robsen was sitting. She had been subpoenaed, they could guess,
just in case the judge wanted to question her. The men from
Robbery-Homicide hadn't seen her since last August. She looked older
and thinner: still a good-looking woman, dark-haired, in the
mid-thirties. Just before ten o'clock the Hoffmans came in: Sergeant
William Hoffman of Hollenbeck precinct and his wife Muriel. Neither
of them looked at Mrs. Robsen or the men from headquarters; they sat
down near the front, on the opposite side of the aisle, and just
waited, looking straight ahead. They had both aged ten years in three
months. Muriel Hoffman, once the smartly groomed good-looking blonde,
was haggard; there was a too-bright rinse on her hair, and she wore a
rather dowdy black suit. Hoffman, a man as big and burly as Hackett
and Higgins—another big man who might as well have worn the plain
label COP—looked somehow shrunken. He was very correctly dressed in
a dark suit, white shirt, dark tie; he was shaved and tidy; and he
looked queerly like a corpse propped up there.

They all sat in silence,
waiting for the bailiff, the attorneys, the prisoner and the judge to
appear, for the ritualistic legal formalities to get under way.

* * *

Walt Robsen and his wife Cathy had been close friends
of the Hoffmans; they lived within blocks of each other and had been
friends for years, all much of an age—the Hoffmans with two boys,
the Robsens with a boy and a girl a little younger. Robsen and
Hoffman had both put in fifteen years as LAPD men. They had ridden a
squad together as rookies, made rank together, shared an office at
Hollenbeck division as detective sergeants, helped each other and
given each other advice.

And it had been Robsen who had argued Hoffman out of
the idea of building a pool in the back yard: the whole Silver Lake
area was running down, property was losing value.

Larry Hoffman, in his junior year at high school, had
wanted that pool. He was better at athletics than anything else, and
on the swimming team. It was, of course, all Robsen's fault that
there wouldn't be any pool. So he had taken his father's target
pistol one afternoon, biked over to the Robsens' on Robsen's day off,
and shot him dead while he sat alone over a book.

When Bill Hoffman knew about it, he had nearly killed
him. Today he looked to be in tight control of himself.

The judge, Fletcher, was notoriously given to the
standard euphemisms and platitudes of the left: thieves, killers,
rapists, perverts were unfortunate victims of society, their
undesirable behavior caused by poverty, divorce, racism. But there
wasn't much he could do with a charge of first-degree homicide. Given
a good fire-breathing defense attorney, he would doubtless have done
what he could. But Larry Hoffman's attorney played it very quiet and
careful.

He was a portly middle-aged man named Norman, and he
made it clear from the outset that he was not  there to plead
for a minimum sentence, any lesser sentence than the offense merited,
or to offer any excuse for that offense. He called the judge's
attention to the psychiatric report, and just in case Fletcher hadn't
read it, read it to him. The psychiatric evaluation, which for once
seemed to make sense, found Larry Hoffman to be of normal
intelligence, but an immature and egocentric personality prone to
faulty judgment. He then read the signed confession to the judge and
sat down. Fletcher didn't want to question the Hoffmans, or Cathy
Robsen. He wanted to know all about that confession and he questioned
all the men from Robbery-Homicide at length, sending the others out
of the courtroom while he questioned them separately. He was
obviously annoyed at being unable to discover any discrepancies in
the testimony.

All that time Larry Hoffman sat silent beside his
attorney, head down, not looking at anybody. Hoffman never once
looked at him; Muriel Hoffman did, once or twice, with an unreadable
expression.

Fletcher adjourned for lunch, reopened the hearing at
one o'clock, and to everybody's surprise handed down an abrupt
verdict without any lecture attached. After complaining of the
district attorney's uncalled-for severity in making the charge one of
first degree, he admitted that under the circumstances he had no
choice as to the verdict, or as to the sentence; it was a mandatory
proceeding. The minimum sentence the charge carried was twenty years
to life, and that was what he handed down, adding some unctuous
phrases about the prisoner's youth and high chances of
rehabilitation.

The bailiff took Larry's arm. Norman never looked at
him again, but busied himself gathering papers into his briefcase.
Larry vanished through the door at the rear of the court, and the
Hoffmans stood up. The Robbery-Homicide men were in the aisle nearer
the double doors, and as the Hoffmans approached, Hackett stepped
toward them, hand out.

"
Hoffman—"

Hoffman sidestepped and moved right past him, eyes
remote; he marched straight for the door and through it.

Muriel Hoffman spoke his name, but he gave no sign
that he heard. She said to Hackett simply, "I'm sorry." Her
eyes went to Higgins, Mendoza, Palliser. She said, "You were all
kind. I'm sorry about Bill. It's just, you see, he's so ashamed. He
won't even talk to any of the men at his own station. If he'd
just—talk it out—even go out and get drunk I wouldn't worry so
about him."

She looked anxious and
strained. "I'd better go after him—damn it, I wish he would
get drunk," and that was half to herself. She hurried up the
aisle; she checked as she came past the row where Cathy Robsen was
sitting,  and they exchanged one grave long look. Perhaps there
was too much those women had to say to each other for any of it to be
said at all.

* * *

"
And with that out of the way," said
Mendoza, taking Hackett by the arm, "we shall now play detective
and trace down Marion Stromberg."

"I still say—"

"
The eternal pessimist.
Sé
bueno, hijo mio
, and see what perseverance
and imagination can do." In the Ferrari, he lit a new cigarette
and got out the list from the phone books. "Huntington Park,
now," he said. "I don't think so. A solid old area, but
blue collar, and a black tide rising. Whereas that new coat with the
real fur collar—mmh, yes. Ambrose Avenue, Hollywood—very
possible. Also Beachwood Drive." Mendoza knew his city backward
and forward. "Arriba Drive, Monterey Park—also possible.
Beverly Hills, no. That coat, the shoes—Bullock's, not Magnin.
Glendale. Oh, yes. An unpretentious town, but solid money in some
parts."

"
You're going by the clothes?" said
Hackett. "And the fact that she worked at Lockheed during the
war so she was living here then. She could have been living in New
York ever since, and come out here to visit a cousin, been seen off
at Union Station and run foul of a suitcase snatcher who knocked her
down before she got on the train. That place is deserted before and
after trains come and go."

"
Thank you. One of the porters tidied up the
station by dumping her in Lafayette Park?"

"
There aren't any porters anymore. Menial work.
Or she could have been living with a relative named Zilch, in Zilch's
house, and she hasn't been missed because Zilch is on a trip."

"
With human people, anything is possible,"
said Mendoza. "Let's try going by the probabilities." He
switched on the engine. "Glendale is a very definite
possibility, we'll try there first."

However, the M. B. Stromberg on Valley View Road,
Glendale, turned out to be at home; he was a garrulous pensioner
eager for company, and they got away with some difficulty.

The apartment on Ambrose Avenue in Hollywood was on
the way back from the valley, so they tried there. Nobody answered
the door; Mendoza tried the apartment across the hall, and raised a
red-nosed thick-voiced young woman home from work with the flu, who
told them irritably that Miss Stromberg worked at the phone company.
Yes, she knew her. May Stromberg.

"Seen her recently?" asked Mendoza.

"
I saw her come in last night, why? I'd
forgotten to get the mail, I was downstairs when she came home."

She wasn't curious, preoccupied with her own
troubles; she shut her door sharply.

"
Beachwood Drive," said Mendoza. "Now
that's the right sort of place, Art, for that coat—and the
solitaire diamond. Not at all fancy—solid unobtrusive worth. Let's
have a look at Beachwood Drive."

"
You always had an imagination," said
Hackett.

Beachwood Drive curved up into the hills above
Franklin Avenue; there were no new houses up there; it was a quiet
area of solid old places dating from the thirties. It was a place of
upper-middle-class gentility: conservative. The houses on this block
sat on standard city lots, fifty by a hundred and fifty, with lawns
in front, curving walks, bordered flower beds, separate garages at
the end of cemented driveways.

The one they wanted was a good-sized Spanish stucco
with a red tile roof. The overhead door on the double garage was
raised; no car was inside. Mendoza pushed the doorbell five times;
there was no response.

"
I don't think anybody's out gardening in this
temperature," he said, "but we'll look." Down the
drive, they looked at an empty neat back yard with a rectangle of
lawn, trees, flower beds. Mendoza walked briskly back to the sidewalk
and up to the house next door, which was French Colonial with a long
wing to one side. The door was opened by a tall thin woman looking to
be in the sixties, with a mass of curly white hair.

"
We're looking for a Marion Stromberg,"
said Mendoza. "Would that be the Mrs. Stromberg next door?"

She looked him over carefully. "What's your
business with her?"

"
My God," said Hackett, "don't tell
me."

"
Marion Stromberg does live next door?"
Mendoza brought out the badge, which agitated her considerably. She
demanded to know what police wanted of Mrs. Stromberg, apologized for
being suspicious.

"
But when a woman lives alone, with so much
crime going on—what do you want with her? I've been just a little
worried that I haven't seen her around just lately, I usually do, but
then—Police coming and asking—"

"
You haven't seen her lately. Tell me, is Mrs.
Stromberg about fifty-five, medium height, medium weight, smart
dresser, tinted blonde hair?"

She lost some of her high color. "Why, yes. Yes.
Something's happened to her, and you—oh, my heavens. What's
happened to her?"

"We have an unidentified body downtown,"
said Mendoza gently. "It looks as if it may be this Mrs.
Stromberg. Could you tell us about any family, someone who could
identify her?"

"There isn't any family," she said. "You'd
better come in, it's freezing out. I'm Mrs. Caldwell. Sit down. Oh,
my heavens! There's nobody at all—they never had any children, she
was all alone after Dr. Stromberg died. That was about five years
back, he was some older than she was." She looked shaken.
"They'd lived next door since nineteen-fifty-nine, the year
after we moved here. My heavens. What happened to her?"

"
She was found dead on the street," said
Mendoza.

"But that's awful-dropping dead, a heart attack
or— But you didn't know who she was? She'd have had identification
in her handbag—there'd have been her car—" She put a hand to
her mouth. "I had been just a little concerned. Not seeing her
around. Not that we were close friends, but we were always—friendly.
I've got a big family, I'm out a good deal, and she wasn't. Always
very quiet they were, even when he was alive—they never went out
much. But I'd see her nearly every day, leaving to drive to market,
or we'd be taking the trash out at the same time on Mondays—and I
hadn't seen her in a while, and the garage door`s been up, she always
closed it when she came home." She was looking very distressed.
"Why, she was a good ten years younger than I am—I can't get
over it."

"Isn't there anyone—possibly the husband of
some friend—who could identify the body?"

"
I don't know at all. She had a few good
friends, there was a Jean she'd mentioned, and a Paula—but I
couldn't tell you their last names. But I could tell you if it is
her. I wouldn't mind, really. Not a very pleasant thing to have to
do, but I've seen bodies before—I was with both my parents when
they died, and my husband. And we want to be sure it is her. Do you
want me to come now? I'll just get a coat."

She was a common-sensible old lady, and practical;
she said to Mendoza on the way to the car, "I can show you where
she hid a spare key to the house. She told me in case of fire when
she was away. Not that she ever was away much, it was just in case."
This was one of many occasions when Hackett deplored Mendoza's
predilection for sports cars; he hunched on the jump-seat
uncomfortably on the way down to the morgue.

Mendoza took her into the cold room; when they came
back she was looking sick and even more shaken.

"
It's terrible to see someone like that. She
always kept herself up so well—not flashy, just smart and nice. Oh,
dear, this has upset me." She sat down heavily on the bench
along the wall. "Seeing her like that—and nobody knowing who
she was—I suppose somebody stole her handbag, the car too very
likely. But it seems queer."