Felony File (7 page)

Mendoza wandered back to
his desk chair again and swiveled around to the window. It was
raining again, and in southern California in November, that certainly
meant another wet winter. His mind slid from the well-preserved lady
to Alison's new—old estancia—certainly the right word for it;
they'd been up there yesterday morning, and she was wild to make the
move. It had certainly—if expensively-turned out an impressive
place, high up in the hills above Burbank, with a spectacular view
right down to the beach. Because the four and a half acres were
outside the city limits in the county, the taxes were not all that
bad. She had, of course, been having a field day buying new
furniture, the house being four times the size of the place on Rayo
Grande, what with the separate suite for Mairi. His red-haired
Scots-Irish girl providing him with the set of feudal retainers.
Mairi had arrived as a nurse for the twins, and turned into an
honorary grandmother. And now there were the Kearneys—caretakers of
the estate—and the new apartment for them created out of the old
winery. But that was just as well—except that the Kearneys had a
black cat named Nicodemus, and how he and El Señor were going to
share even four and a half acres remained to be seen. And the matter
of the ponies was becoming pressing. Ever since the subject had been
first, and unfortunately, mentioned in their hearing, the twins had
been demanding to know when the ponies might appear. And Ken Kearney
the former rancher would know about ponies. Mendoza supposed there'd
be some available, somewhere around. There were bridle trails in
Griffith Park where you saw people on horses, so there must be
stables somewhere. Yes, and Kearney casually suggesting a few sheep
to keep the undergrowth eaten down; there'd only be landscaping
around the house. A small stable for the potential ponies had been
contrived out of an old shed up there, and there were plans for a
riding ring; that had set the twins off again yesterday.  "This
where the ponies gonna live, when are we gonna get the ponies,
Mamacita
?" At
least, since they'd been in nursery school, they'd got English and
Spanish untangled. And there ought to be a good parochial school
somewhere at that end of the valley. He wondered suddenly if the
sheep would need a barn too. Now he thought about it, he'd never seen
a real live sheep in his life. The things that girl got him into ....

* * *

Higgins had gone out on the necessary routine; cops
didn't always deal just with crime. The paramedics had been called
last night when the man collapsed in the cafeteria, and said it was
probably a massive coronary; he'd been gone before he hit the floor.
His I.D.—driver's license, Master Charge, Exxon gas card—said he
was Earl Harper of an address on Genesee Street in Hollywood. They
had looked around the cafeteria last night and found a car registered
to him parked on a side street, and brought it into the police
garage.

It was one of the unpleasant chores of the job,
breaking bad news. The I.D. card in his wallet had said, in case of
emergency notify Mrs. Marjorie Harper. The address was an old frame
house, neatly maintained; Higgins parked in front, went up and rang
the bell.

She was a plump, cheerful-looking woman, and she
stared at Higgins on her doorstep—Higgins might as well have had
COP tattooed on his forehead—and listened to
him
without a change of expression. She just stood there while he told
her the facts, and her eyes started to glaze a little.

She said in a too-calm tone, "I never gave it a
thought. Not a thought. He's usually home and in bed by eight, but he
might've been delayed. Or gone on an errand. My daughter just brought
me home a few minutes ago."

"
You didn't expect him home last night?"

"Earl works the night shift," she said.
"He's a male nurse at St. Vincent's Medical Center. Most nights
he has dinner home, of course, but last night I was going out with my
daughter to the theater, the Pasadena Playhouse, and we'd be late so
I stayed over with her, she lives in Pasadena. Earl said he'd get
dinner out before he went to work."

"
I see," said Higgins. "I have to tell
you it's mandatory to have an autopsy, unless he'd seen a doctor
within ten days. You'll be notified when you can claim the body. His
car— Are you all right, Mrs. Harper? Would you like me to call
someone for you?" They were still there on the porch, the front
door open.

"
Thank you," she said politely. And then,
suddenly, "But Earl can't be dead! He's only fifty-nine, he's
never had a sick day in his life! You can't be talking about Earl—"
And then she started to cry, and in the end he had to go in and call
the daughter, and wait until she got there with her husband. The
husband was equally incredulous and insisted on going to the morgue
to identify the body. It was, of course, Earl Harper. His son-in-law
looked very shaken, and kept mumbling, "Fifty-nine, fifty-nine,
and never sick in his life—my God—"

By the time Higgins got
back to the office it was nearly eleven o'clock.

* * *

Glasser had just finished taking a statement from one
of the witnesses to the pharmacy heist last night when Sergeant Lake
brought two people in to see him. The man—small, gray and
ferociously energetic—was Michael McNulty of the Board of Health,
and the woman—large, florid and flustered—was Miss Florence Cook
from the Aid to Dependent Children agency.

Glasser lifted a hand at Wanda across the office, and
she came over at once. "Miss Larsen is with me on the case,"
said Glasser.

"
Absolutely disgraceful" said Miss Cook
violently. "That house! Merciful heavens, that house! Our office
was notified, of course, by Juvenile Hall—I understand the police
had told them the children were A.D.C. subjects—and immediately I
found the memo on my desk this morning—of course we are not open on
Saturdays—I went to interview Mrs. Engel. I had not been to the
house before, needless to say."

"Why not?" asked Wanda innocently.

"
I beg your pardon?"

"Well, after all you're disbursing taxpayers'
money to see that children are looked after properly," said
Wanda, "and I should think you'd want to know something about
their homes."

"
My dear girl, we are extremely shorthanded at
the office—such a heavy case load—if we attempted to visit
personally every single applicant, we should never get through the
necessary paperwork."

"
Had you ever seen Mrs. Engel's children?"
asked Wanda.

"
Of course she did not bring them to the office
when she applied—"

"
Then you didn't even know they existed? She
just said she had four children and no money, and you started handing
her some?"

Glasser opened his mouth to shut her up, but too
late. "My dear girl," said Miss Cook, "you must
realize that our time is limited, extremely limited. With all the
paperwork—"

"
Taxpayers' money is also limited," said
Wanda. Her eyes were very blue, and seemed to be shooting sparks at
Miss Cook, who swelled for further speech. "But you saw Mrs.
Engel—didn't it occur to you that she couldn't be a very
satisfactory parent?"

"
If I had ever dreamed of such conditions,
naturally I—that house!" said Miss Cook.

"
Simmer down," said Glasser to Wanda. "It's
the bureaucratic mind. No entry. One way."

"
What`?" said Miss Cook.

"
If anyone is at all concerned that any action
is being taken," said McNulty, with an arctic glance at Miss
Cook, "I can assure you that it is. Unlike some other civic
agencies, the Board of Health does not automatically and arbitrarily
withhold its services from the public on weekends. Two of my
colleagues and myself examined the house on Darwin Street on
Saturday, and gave the tenants a verbal eviction order at that time.
In fact, I considered the danger of infection to be so severe—only
three months ago we had several cases of typhoid in that general
area—that I had the house sealed at once. I have not let the grass
grow under my feet, I assure you, Sergeant—"

"
Detective," said Glasser.

"—And I obtained a condemnation order this
morning. It was when I had driven down there to post it properly that
I discovered—" his glare was frosty- "this—er—Miss
Cook on the premises. She had actually broken the seals on the door."

"
I had to see Mrs. Engel! How did I know the
house was empty? You hadn't left any signs on it. After what the
matron at Juvenile Hall told me about the children—"

"
My dear madam, you might have inferred that
some authority had placed the seals. Now I am in a position to know
that the police discovered the condition of the house on Friday—and
you have taken no steps until this morning, to protect children
nominally in your care. I, on the other hand, spent my entire
Saturday afternoon and Sunday hunting down records to discover the
owner of the property and informing them—"

"
Who is it?" asked Glasser.

"
Like several blocks of property in that general
area, all that block is owned by a large realty corporation—there
has, of course, been some talk of an urban renewal project—"

"
Profiteers!" said Miss Cook.
"Monopolists!"

"
And the condemnation order is now posted,"
said McNulty triumphantly.

"
But where is Mrs. Engel?" demanded Miss
Cook.

"
I must locate her at once! She will be taken to
court as an unfit mother—we'll need a warrant for that, of course—"

"
Sorry," said Glasser, "you're in the
wrong office for that. You'1l have to go down to juvenile and tell
the story there. We'll try to find Mrs. Engel for you—we want to
see her again too." When the two of them had gone out, he sat
back and laughed.

"
It's not that funny, Henry," said Wanda.
"I'll bet I could walk into that office and say I had six kids
and no husband or money, and they'd simply hand out the monthly
checks."

"But we had,"
said Glasser, "better find out where Fratelli and Hose have
flitted to. That place he works will be open at two."

* * *

Mendoza had just come out of his office, hat in hand,
at a few minutes before twelve, with the intention of going out to an
early lunch with whoever was unoccupied. Only Galeano was in the
office, typing. Sergeant Lake was just coming in.

"
Oh, you're still here, Lieutenant. You've got
something new. Homicide down on Twenty-seventh." He handed
Mendoza the memo-slip with the address.

"
¡
Condenación!
"
said Mendoza. But the homicides got committed—and discovered—around
the clock. "That means you and me, Nick."

"
Right with you," said Galeano. As they
walked down to the elevator, Mendoza thought irrelevantly that
Galeano was looking a bit younger and more cheerful lately; he'd lost
some weight too—like Hackett he was inclined to put it on. Mendoza
wondered if that had anything to do with that German girl Nick had
fallen for in such an unlikely way: how was he doing with her?
Everybody had thought amiable, stocky, dark Galeano was a confirmed
bachelor at thirty-five. Still, thought Mendoza with a sudden inward
chuckle, look at George Higgins. And as he pressed the elevator
button, a small imp at the back of his mind said, Or Luis Mendoza,
and he burst out laughing.

"Something funny?" said Galeano.

"
Just human nature, Nick." Everybody had
thought Luis Mendoza was a confirmed bachelor too, and a good deal
older than Galeano or Higgins, and six years later, where that girl
had got him; the twins, and now the new one (who would turn out to be
another redhead, of course), that dog, and now a vast (well, for
L.A.) estate, the feudal retainers, and now more livestock. What
next, he wondered. But she'd said she was going to take up painting
again, with a real studio. That might quiet her down a little; one
never knew.

They made a dash for the Ferrari through the rain:
not a downpour, but the steady kind of rain that brought a lot of
water down.

The address on Twenty-seventh Place—this was one of
the solidly black areas—was an old stucco house on a narrow
residential street. It wasn't an affluent-looking block, but all the
houses were well enough kept up, with strips of lawn and Bower beds
in front. This one was painted pink, and at the largest front window
were crisp white priscilla curtains, visible from outside. There was
a squad parked at the curb, with Patrolman Barrett waiting in the
front passenger's seat. Beyond the square front porch the front door
of the house was open.

"
What have we got?" Mendoza and Galeano
ducked into the back seat of the squad.

"Something damned queer," said Barrett.
"Rather you than me, try to figure it out. These two women are
at home—they're sisters—and the doorbell rings, woman says she's
selling something and gets let in, and a minute later brings out a
gun and shoots one of them. A Mrs. Leta Reynolds. That's about all I
got—the other one was pretty shocked and upset. There's a little
girl there too. The other girl asked if she could call her mother and
I said she'd better wait for you. She seems a pretty good type—maybe
she's got over the shock enough to answer some questions. I left Ray
with her."