Mark of Murder - Dell Shannon (15 page)

"I rather like that," said Mendoza,
"because in the ordinary way he would be taking care. Not being
a fool, and having some experience. What you were going on to say was
that obviously, if he'd had any reason to be suspicious of Cliff
Elger, he'd have been taking double pains to be careful, a gorilla
like that-bigger than Art himself."

"That's just what I was going to say."

"And you'd be right. And come to think,"
said Mendoza, "am I right about that belt? People living in
apartments wouldn't have any clothesline lying around, but a good
many people do keep cord for wrapping packages. For--for tying up
things to put away, like Christmas decorations and winter clothes. I
don't know. Maybe it was just the first thing X thought of. But maybe
not too. Because--it wasn't a very cunningly faked accident, was it?"

Palliser shrugged. "The squad car first on the
scene spotted it right away. By the tracks. No skid, no try at
braking--the car was backed around deliberately to face the drop."

"Yes. Not a brain, whoever set it up. So he
might not have realized that we'd spot how the belt had been used
either. On the other hand, it must have made him a little more
trouble. When he got up there he had to take the time to put it back
on Art--rather an awkward little job, rolling a big heavy man around
getting his belt through all the little loops. I think we're safe in
saying that he used the belt in the first place because he couldn't
lay hands on anything else in a hurry. And why tie him up at all?
Yes, why? Here was a badly injured man, unconscious--he wouldn't be
getting up and walking away anywhere."

"Well, so X didn't have any medical knowledge,
to know that,"

"Yes, but also that says maybe he stashed Art
away somewhere awhile, before he set up the accident .... Oh hell,"
said Mendoza, and started the engine. "There's not much in all
that. I don't know. Let's go back to the office and see if anything's
come in."

"By the way, you said to the Corliss woman you
thought she'd had the same bright idea Nestor had had. What was
that?"

"Maybe something to check--if we had any way of
knowing where to look." Mendoza smiled. "That scrapbook
full of the doings of high society. When I looked at it, one thing
struck me. Every single clipping, whatever it was about, included a
photograph. And every single photograph included at least one young
woman .... I said I think Nestor was aiming at the moneyed women.
He'd get others too, of course. Kinsey has alerted us to the fairly
high incidence of abortion in unexpected places. And of course a lot
of those customers would give false names. I think Nestor was keeping
his scrapbook on the off-chance of recognizing former patients. I
don't think he was above a little genteel blackmail."

"Oh," said Palliser, enlightened. "I
get you. He recognizes Jane Smith, who came to him last year for a
job, as being really a socialite debutante, and puts the bite on
her--but how could he? Without giving himself away?"

"
He couldn't, really,
beyond threatening to tip off her parents, or boy friend, or husband
for that matter, anonymously--but a lot of women in that position
might not clearly realize that. I wonder if he'd found a victim yet,
from all his diligent research? And, if he had, whether she'd paid
up. Well, see what routine's turning up for us."

* * *

Routine had turned up a couple of interesting things.
Sergeant Lake said, only half kidding, "I might have known
things would start to move, Lieutenant, soon as you got home and had
a hunch."

Landers, making the round of the bars in that
downtown area asking whether silver dollars had been part of their
take lately, had turned up two leads. A bartender at a
hole-in-the-wall joint on Broadway remembered a fellow coming in
several times who'd paid with silver dollars. He had made a
statement, and if there wasn't much in it, there was something. He
couldn't give any kind of description. "¡Natuiralmente!"
said Mendoza irritably. "They will keep bars so damn dark."
All he remembered about the fellow was that he was very poorly
dressed, in what looked like somebody else's clothes, and usually
kept a hat pulled down low on his forehead. Maybe, oh, four, five
times he'd been in. Always at night, and once or twice quite late,
staying until the bar closed at 1 AM. He was, said the bartender
vaguely, medium-sized and kind of thin. And he always ordered
bourbon, straight.

The other bartender worked at a place on Main. It
wasn't quite down into Skid Row, but on the fringes; and he was a
tough customer, who didn't much care for cops and was reluctant to
open up with any information. Landers had persuaded him, finally, to
come out with what he knew. And that wasn't much either, but again,
something. There was this old bat, he said, kind of a
regular--probably a setup, also a lush. He wasn't admitting that she
was working out of his bar, naturally, because he didn't want to lose
his license; but that, said Landers, was what it sounded like.
Anyway, her name was Rosie--that was all the bartender knew. And the
last couple of times she'd been in, she'd paid him with a silver
dollar. He gave a vague description of her; no, he'd never heard her
last name, and of course he didn't know where she lived--he could do
the hell of a lot better than that for himself.

"Well--something, but what?" said Mendoza.
"Put out a call on Rosie. Trace it down, and probably find the
customer she got the silver dollars from just blew in from Vegas and
has nothing to do with our Slasher. However--”

Nothing had turned up on that search of hotel
registers in the downtown area. Mendoza called the city editors of
the Times, the Herald, the Hollywood Citizen, and the Glendale
News-Press, and requested them to run cuts of that signature they had
from the Liverpool Arms register: promised to send over prints. He
sent a man down to get the prints and deliver them by hand. The first
body had been found the day before he and Alison had left for New
York; he hadn't heard many details on it. Now he settled down to
reread all the reports on the five victims .... He said to Lake,
"That stuff we picked up in the hotel room--is it still around?
Lab send it back?"

"I seem to remember it did----probably be in
Art's desk." Lake looked, and brought him a shoe box containing
a few odds and ends. "No prints, nothing suggestive."

Mendoza looked at it sadly. No guarantee either--the
Liverpool Arms being what it was--that any of these things was
connected with the Slasher, who had occupied that room such a short
time. Found in the room with the body, but ten to one the rooms there
weren't so thoroughly cleaned between tenants.

A half-empty packet of matches. A single penny, dark
with age. An empty crumpled-up cigarette package, king-size
Chesterfields. A dime-store handkerchief, soiled. A crumpled-up paper
cup that had held bourbon at some time.

He picked up the matches idly and opened the cover.
He looked at the dozen matches left in it and said to himself, "
¿Y
qué es esto?
Somebody's slipping, either the
lab or us. Jimmy!"

"What now?"

"This Mike. The first victim. I suppose you
couldn't tell me whether he was left-handed?"

"Nor I don't know what color eyes his
grandmother had either. Why the hell?"

"We can probably find out," said Mendoza.
"He seems to have been known down on the Row. And I'd like to
ask Bainbridge his opinion on this one too .... Why? Have all of you
so-called detectives gone blind? Look at this packet of matches. The
ordinary right-handed person, tearing off a match, holds the book in
his left hand and naturally reaches for the first match at the
extreme right.
¿Cómo no?
He gradually works his way through the book from right to left. All
right. Whoever started to use this book of matches did it just the
opposite--all the matches that have been torn out were at the extreme
left. If Mike wasn't left-handed, there's a fair probability that
these were the Slasher's matches and that he is left-handed."

"Oh," said Sergeant Lake. "That might
narrow it down, sure. From about seven million to only two and a
half."

"Well, it's another something," said
Mendoza.

Dwyer came in at five-fifteen, Scarne and Glasser
after him; Landers had just finished taking the second bartender's
statement. All the people in Nestor's address book looked
ordinary--other chiropractors who'd been in his graduating class, men
around his own age, salesmen, clerks--some family men, some not. Of
the women, a few looked like typical tramps, a few others were
married; one of those women, a Mrs. Anita Sheldon, had been scared,
said Glasser, and begged him not to drag her name in--nobody knew
she'd known Nestor, her husband would kill her if he knew. "Husband's
a truck driver," Glasser added. "National moving firm.
Those guys are usually pretty hefty."

There wasn't much there. They'd look harder at the
Sheldons.

Dwyer said he'd seen Elger's two associates in their
office, and they'd given him names of a couple of others who knew
him, another agent and a producer. The consensus was that Elger had
the hell of a hot temper, was known to fly off the handle over any
little thing. "The kind who gets mad quick and then cools down
fast and it's all over, you know. But everybody seems to like him."

"
Yes. And that kind sometimes cools down fast to
find an unintended body around," said Mendoza. "Especially
when they're as big as Cliff Elger. Well, boys--any of you feel like
doing a little more leg work tonight?"

None of them minded.

* * *

When he got home Alison met him at the door. "What's
wrong, querida?" he asked, seeing her eyes. He held her close.
The hospital was still saying, No change.

"Oh, Luis," she said shakily. "Nothing
now. But--I didn't tell Angel, I asked the nurse not to. We were at
the hospital this afternoon, and the nurse told me. They they thought
he was going, this morning. Then his pulse picked up, for no reason,
and he--"

Mendoza put his head down on her shoulder for a
minute. "Well, he's still here anyway," he said. "Maybe
Adam was doing some extra earnest praying about then. I want to talk
to Angel. Can she--"

"Yes, of course."

He went into the living room, where Bast greeted him
loudly and El Señor contemplated him evilly through green slits,
from the top of the phonograph. The record-cabinet doors were open
and El Señor had dragged out four albums. Mendoza said absently,
"
Señor Molestial
"
and put them away

Mrs. MacTaggart came trotting in with a shot glass
and a saucer. "I heard the car," she said. "You'll be
needing a drink before dinner, and that unnatural cat giving you no
peace unless he has his share." She set the saucer down for El
Señor, who had an unaccountable taste for rye and lapped eagerly.
"And the longer the man hangs on there, the better chance there
is, as I needn't be reminding you. Mercy on us, what's--"

Pandemonium broke out in the hall. Mark Christopher
staggered in clasping a wildly struggling Sheba around the middle.
"Kitty-kitty!" he was announcing triumphantly. Miss Teresa
Ann, still very uncertain on her small feet, staggered after him
wailing loudly, and bringing up the procession came Master John Luis
on all fours, also wailing.

"Now what is all this indeed? Like banshees the
lot of you-- Mark, put the kitty down now--" Mrs. MacTaggart
hurried to Sheba's rescue.

El Señor finished the rye, thoughtfully licked his
whiskers, and looking slightly cross-eyed jumped down to cuff Sheba,
who was indignantly smoothing down her coat. She shrieked and spat at
him.

"The happy home," said Mendoza resignedly
to his drink. "Talk about the patter of little feet . . ."

When Angel came in with Alison he eyed her and said,
"I think you could stand a small drink before dinner too."

"I'm all right," said Angel.

"Cocktails all made, waiting," said Alison
with a show of briskness. "I thought we both could. I'll get
them."

Mendoza sipped rye, looking at Angel. He and Art's
nice domestic little wife had never appreciated each other to any
extent; he couldn't say he knew her very well. He was rather
surprised she wasn't weeping and fainting all over the place. She
looked pale, but she'd put on make-up and combed her hair. Just
another pretty dark-haired woman: but for the first time he noticed
the firmness of her jaw and her steady eyes.

Alison came back with two glasses, and he waited
until Angel had taken a sip. "Now, I expect Alison told you I
want to hear every detail you remember, about what he said to you
that night."

"Yes, of course," said Angel. "The
worst of it is, I wasn't paying too much attention--of course I
couldn't know it was important then. And what with coping with Mark
pounding the table legs with one of his pull-toys--but I've tried to
think back as well as I can. I know  definitely he said he was
going to see that hotel clerk." She sipped her cocktail; her
voice was steady. "He was worried about this mass killer, on
account of all the fuss the newspapers have been making, what they
were saying about the force. He said something about Nestor's wife I
too, and a woman named Corliss. And he mentioned somebody named
Elger. That's all I remember, I'm sorry."