Felony File (6 page)

Hackett and Wanda went over to the hotel, but there
wasn't a guest registered who matched the description.

And at Missing Persons, Lieutenant Carey said
immediately they hadn't anybody like that reported.

"
Yes," said
Mendoza to himself. "There was that pretty little woman in the
phone booth, not missed at once because she lived alone. That's
probably it." He took himself out to a solitary lunch. Later, he
phoned the lab to send a man to the morgue for her prints.

* * *

At five-thirty he was swiveled around in the desk
chair watching the gray rain blotting out the Hollywood hills in the
distance, when Scarne came in with a manila envelope.

"
Higgins was deviling us this morning for what
we got in that Portia Street place. Here's the report. Damn all.
Plenty of prints, but they all belong to the dead man or the
brother."

"
What can't be cured," said Mendoza.

"
Anyway, there's the report. Oh, and I got the
prints off your latest body. Thank God for computers. They're not on
file with us. I sent 'em to the Feds."

"
Probably a waste of time." But of course
the F.B.I. had the prints on file of a good many perfectly
respectable people.

As Scarne went out, Conway, Palliser and Grace came
trooping in; Mendoza went out to the communal office. "You look
as if you'd done a day's work."

Conway snarled. "Do you have any idea how many
employees Bullock's has? And we're looking for the ones who quit or
got fired up to six months ago too. I said, it'll take a month of
Sundays, and it won't give us a damned thing."

"
And if you mention routine—" said
Palliser. There was a smear of ink on his handsome straight nose, and
his eyes look strained.

"
At least I haven't been endangering my
eyesight," said Grace cheerfully. "I've finished checking
the guards, and we can forget about them. The outfit they work for is
one of the biggest around, very high reputation, and they screen
their men to hell and back. Also, all of the security men at
Bullock's have been there for a good long time—seven, six, five
years—Masters is the newest and he's been there two and a half
years."

"
It'll end up getting stashed in the dead
files," said Conway wearily.

Mendoza slid a long hand up his long jaw. "Same
as in Philly and Pittsburgh. I'd like to think not. Because I had a
little feeling—"

"
Hunch?" asked Grace.

"
No sé
. Just a
little premonition that these slick operators—"

"
Oh, you too?" said Palliser. "Another
hit?"

"
I just wonder,"
said Mendoza. "Philly in March, Pittsburgh in April. Maybe it's
taken them this long to get rid of the estimated four hundred grand."

* * *

 
Sometimes Saturday night could get a
little hairy in this part of L.A., but that night the rain seemed to
slow them down, keeping people inside. Piggott and Schenke, sitting
on night watch, didn't get a call until ten-thirty. They both went
out on it.

It was a dairy store on Virgil, and Patrolman Bill
Moss was soothing the victim, a pretty blonde who had been crying.
She looked about twenty, and her name was Sonia Murphy. She said to
Piggott and Schenke, still tearful, "I'm sorry, but it is, I
wish to heaven they'd called me Sally or Betty or something because
it sounds funny, but I can't help it if Mother's Polish, I've got
kidded all my life. But that woman! I just can't believe it! Didn't,
I mean. I don't like working at night, but I'm not usually alone,
usually Mr. Knight's here, he's the manager, because he doesn't like
the girls being alone at night either. I take three nights a week and
Marge takes three, and usually I'm not here Saturday at all—but Mr.
Knight's wife is sick, it's some kind of emergency operation, she
just went into the hospital today and he called me to ask if I'd come
in because Saturday's usually a good day—"

"
Now, now," said Moss benevolently. "They
just want to hear what happened. Like the old TV show, you know.
Facts."

She looked at him blankly and they realized that she
was too young to remember Dragnet. Not even reruns?

"Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to— But to
think! To think I was relieved. I was almost going to close early,
there hadn't been many people in on account of the rain I suppose,
and I was just going to lock up and call Bob—that's my boy friend,
Bob Boyd—to come get me and take me home, when she came in—and I
was so relieved to see it was a woman! I was! And then she said, you
all alone here, honey, and I said yes—and she got a great big gun
out of her purse and pointed it at me and said she wanted all the
money in the register! I thought I'd die! Honestly!" Sonia
gulped. "And poor Mr. Knight losing all that money—of course I
had to give it to her—"

"
Calm down," said Moss. "Can you tell
the detectives what she looked like?"

"
Oh, yes. She was—" Sonia hesitated and
finally chose, "flashy. She had on a red pantsuit and black
ankle boots and a big white plastic rain hat with a brim. It had
y-yellow flowers on it. And her hair was a real brassy blonde, pretty
long, down to her shoulders anyway, and she had a sort of—wel1, a
lot of figure, if you know what I mean—"

"
Stacked?" said Schenke dead-pan.

"
I guess you'd say so."

"
Any idea how much was in the register?"

"
I'm not sure. The tab'll say. At least a
hundred dollars."

"
Well," said Piggott, "she's not doing
so bad, Bob. That figures to about five hundred for two nights'
work."

"
Do you know her? Know who she is?"

"
I only wish we did," said Piggott.

Surprisingly, that was the
only call they had on Saturday night.

* * *

Nothing much was accomplished on Sunday. Mendoza came
in very late; he wasn't supposed to be in on Sunday at all but he
generally was, if not for a full day, and nobody would dream of
mentioning Sunday Mass to him—he was a little touchy about getting
back into the fold after a good many years outside it.

Yesterday Galeano had spent the whole day chasing
down the heist man, who had turned out to be one Randy Becket, still
on parole after a term for armed robbery. He felt he deserved a quiet
Sunday.

When Mendoza finally came in, Higgins was waiting to
bring him up to date on Whalen.

"It's damn all, Luis, and we might as well
forget the whole thing now. We'll never drop on them, to make a legal
case." He told Mendoza what he'd got from records, the very thin
leads.

"I struck out on Scott, he's moved and nobody
knows where. I found Wiggett. He just got beat up by somebody's
husband and he's wearing a cast on a broken ankle. I also found
Early. He could be, couldn't be—we'd never prove it. Says he was at
the movies Friday afternoon."

"
It'll go in Pending," said Mendoza.

"Damn it. That poor damned Whalen—maybe it
sounds as if he's feeling sorry for himself, but you can see the spot
he's in—his whole life destroyed, because the louts didn't care
what they did for a little loot. He'll probably have to go to a rest
home."

"
And I wonder," said Mendoza, "what
will happen to Merlin."

"
M— oh, the cat." Higgins regarded him,
amused.

Mendoza was a cat man. A long time ago there had been
a case—when they'd finally identified the corpse, Mendoza had been
a lot more concerned about her starving cat than he had been with the
killer; and come to think, that was the cat he had wished onto Art
and his wife, Angel; they were cat people too.

Mendoza called the lab; they hadn't had a kickback
from the Feds yet, on the lady in Lafayette Park. Of course the Feds
had computers too, but as Marx reminded him, they also had, as a
rule, a long backlog of requests for information. There'd be
something eventually.

It was just sprinkling on and off today.

Glasser came in next and told him about Alice Engel.
"We ought to get the autopsy report tomorrow. The bartender at
Pete's says Fratelli's a regular, in two or three times a week—puts
it down pretty heavy. Funnily enough, the place where he works—the
Eagle Grill—the owner says he never drinks on the job. Nobody at
Pete's remembers noticing him specially on Thursday night, the
barkeep says he was there but didn't notice when he left or if he was
alone. Nobody named Sam is one of their regulars. Of course, I
haven't chased down anybody else who was in the place then—the
barkeep parted with five names of regulars who were there."

"
In fact, all up in the air," said Mendoza.

"
So what do you think?"

"
That you'd better wait for the autopsy and lab
report."

Hackett wandered into his office about four o'clock
to say that he'd been talking to other forces around the county about
the blonde heister. "So far, no bells ringing . . . Luis?"

"
¿Qué pasa, compadre?
"

"
Oh, hell," said Hackett. He thrust his
bulk out of the chair—he had really been serious about the doctor's
diet last month and was down to two hundred—and stood staring out
the window at the silver curtain of rain. "The Hoffman hearing.
Tuesday. Who do you want to cover it?"

"
¿Nada más?
"
said Mendoza. "
¿Qué puede uno hacer?
What can anyone do there, Art? You were on it, me, George, John. We'd
all better show up. You don't know what testimony the judge may ask
for. At least it's not a jury trial, with the confession on record.
And he's turned eighteen, he's a legal adult."

"
And the judge," said Hackett abruptly, "is
Fletcher." "
Bastemte
.
The mills of the gods," said Mendoza sardonically.

"
I just hope to God I don't have to testify.
What I couldn't help saying—and Fletcher the bleeding heart looking
sideways at that confession and talking about police brutality—"

"
Cross the bridge when we get there," said
Mendoza, and stabbed out his cigarette as if it was a personal enemy.
 

THREE

ON MONDAY MORNING, with Palliser off, Mendoza came in
rather late and was just glancing at the night-watch report when
Bainbridge came bustling in, plunked himself down in the chair beside
the desk, and brought out a fresh cigar.

"
Business being a little slow for once, I did
the autopsy for you myself." He laid the official report on
Mendoza's desk. "Got her identified yet? Well, you probably
will. She was somewhere in her middle fifties, and what's called well
preserved. She'd lived an easy life, that is, never had to scrub
floors or whatever. She'd never borne a child. What you want to
know—it was a depressed skull fracture all right. I doubt if there
was any weapon involved, what it looks like is that she fell, or was
knocked, against some broad flat surface, and kaput. She might have
died within five minutes or so. The indications are that she had a
little struggle with somebody—there are bruises on both her upper
arms, as if somebody had taken hold of her pretty roughly, and
there's a fainter bruise on the left side of her jaw."

"
Yes. And?"

"
Well, she hadn't been raped and she hadn't been
engaging in sexual intercourse. She'd had a meal about four hours
before she died, which was any time between seven and midnight Friday
night, but we decided to call it about ten. There was the equivalent
of about three drinks in the stomach contents. I don't know what, I
haven't done any analyses. If you're bound to know what her last meal
consisted of, or whether she drank martinis or Scotch highballs, I
can probably find out."

"Yes," said Mendoza. "Not much to go
on until we know who she was. But thanks so much, Doctor. Maybe you'd
better do those analyses, give us some details. What about her
clothes?"

"I sent 'em to your 1ab." Bainbridge fished
in his pocket and dropped the two rings onto the desk. "You
never know what little detail may show up to give you some lead. I'll
get to the analyses, probably get back to you sometime on Wednesday."

Mendoza didn't watch him out; he picked up the
diamond ring. It wasn't a new ring, and quite anonymous, just a nice
solitaire diamond in a Tiffany setting. The wedding band was just a
wedding band—no engraving. Mendoza rummaged and found a paper-clip
box in the top drawer, dropped them both in. If they ever identified
her, and any relatives showed up .... A well-preserved lady of middle
age. Whom nobody had yet missed, or Carey would have called. And
nothing in from the Feds yet or the lab would have called. But a
woman of this type would be bound to be missed sooner or later. Wait
and see.

He picked up the report again and saw that the night
watch, after a quiet Saturday, had had a hectic Sunday night. Three
heists—two bars and a pharmacy—and a man dropping dead in an
all-night cafeteria on Wilshire. He went out to the central office to
see who was doing what. Landers and Grace had roped Conway into
helping out on the paperwork on the Bullock's job. There were five
witnesses due in on last night's heists to make statements and look
at pictures, and that would occupy Glasser, Hackett and Galeano quite
nicely. Higgins had gone out on the dead man: there'd been I.D. on
him but Piggott and Schenke hadn't been able to raise anybody at the
address.