Mark of Murder - Dell Shannon (25 page)

"Hell!" said Mendoza. There was nobody else
in the office. "Where?"

"
San Pedro and Fifth. Squad car just got there."

"All right. Rout out Bainbridge?

There was quite a crowd around when he got there; a
second car had arrived and two uniformed men were rather helplessly
trying to move the crowd on. The press had also arrived; he saw the
flash bulbs going off, and Wolfe of the Citizen gave him a
tight-lipped humorless grin as he pushed into the crowd.

"They do say the population's rising too fast,
Lieutenant. This is one way to cure it, I guess. But we always
thought you boys were a little smarter."

"Like to change jobs?" said Mendoza curtly.
"Let me through, please .... What have you got on it so far,
boys?”

They hadn't got much. The body--looking much the same
as all the other bodies the Slasher had left behind him hadn't any
identification on it. It was the body of a middle-aged man, and the
only items on him were half of a Greyhound Bus ticket from San Diego
to Los Angeles, three single dollar bills and some change, in an
otherwise empty wallet, and a Hat pint bottle of scotch, nearly
empty. His clothes were old and shabby, and he looked unkempt.

The body had been left where, probably, it had become
a body, in the middle of a narrow alley between two buildings. It had
been found by a couple of truck drivers backing in there to make
deliveries.

Nothing much to be done on the spot. Quite impossible
to say whether an item or so among the many dirty, miscellaneous
items in the alley had been dropped by the Slasher.

"All right," said Mendoza. "You know
the routine."

Lake would be chasing up somebody to come and take
pictures. "When the surgeon's seen him and we've got some
pictures, let the ambulance boys take him. Drivers' names? . . . O.K.
We'll try to identify him through the bus ticket--I'll take that
stuff now."

But as he pushed out through the crowd again a hand
touched his arm timidly. "Please, you are one of the Polizei,
sir? I--I--maybe I know something about this terrible man, sir. I--"

He looked down at her. The careful English was thick
with German accent. She was a little plump blonde, a real blonde,
about thirty-five; she looked like the illustration on bars of very
good Dutch chocolate, pink cheeks and all. She was wearing a mightily
starched white apron over a very neat blue house dress. "Please,"
she said anxiously, "I am Gertrud Flickschuster, sir."

The interested crowd surged nearer, and Mendoza said,
"For God's sake, can't you get these ghouls to move on?
Mrs.--Flickschuster?--come over here, please. What is it you think
you know?"

"
I hear the poor man is found, it is another
from--by this terrible murderer, so I come. To find a--the word I
don't know--
Geheimpolizist
--to
tell. I think I have seen this man. In our delicatessen he
comes"--she pointed up the street--"last night."

"You'd better come back to headquarters and make
a statement," said Mendoza.

She hesitated. "You will--I may come out again?
There is Rudi alone in the shop--"

"Yes, of course." He smiled at her; by the
accent, she hadn't been in the theoretically free country long. He
put her, starched apron and all, into the Ferrari, drove back to
headquarters, and took her up to his office. "Take
some notes on this, Jimmy. Now, Mrs. Flickschuster?"

It seemed that the Flickschusters, who had come here
four years ago, kept a delicatessen. They stayed open until nine most
evenings, and one or the other of them or both were always behind the
counter. And just before they closed last night a man had come in and
bought a half pound of sausage, a pound carton of potato salad, and a
quart of milk. Gertrud had waited on him and remembered him
well--"Because he is so ugly, sir, a terrible face. It has the
hollow cheeks like a death's head, and this terrible mark on his
face--
vernarben
--
die
narbe
on his face, from the burn, it
looks--all red, across the nose. But it is not until Rudi has been
reading the newspaper that I have known--it is saying about this
man--"

"Yes." And that might be a more interesting
and significant little story than it looked at first glance. Mendoza
got her signature to a statement, phoned for a car to drive her back
to the delicatessen .... The Slasher, buying precooked food at night.
The man was staying somewhere, damn it, but with the press relaying
his now known description to the public, he hadn't rented another
room as yet--that they knew. Nobody was likely to rent him one when
they'd had a look at him.

Etta Mae Rollen attacked at San Pedro and Emily. The
latest unknown corpse near San Pedro and Fifth. Mendoza frowned at a
city map: about four blocks apart.

The Slasher holed up somewhere, in hiding? Sense
enough to read the papers, know he had to hide? But where, for God's
sake, in that rabbit warren of crowded downtown streets? Business of
most kinds was thriving--there wouldn't be many empty buildings. And,
true enough, the population increasing at such a rate that there
wouldn't be many empty houses, either. In that section people lived
cheek by jowl, there wasn't much privacy. What hole could a loner
like the Slasher have found? Hell. He wondered what, if anything, the
Hollenbeck station was getting from that pawnbroker. It would be a
help to clear those juveniles out of the way, know definitely they
had an alibi for Nestor--if they had. Which would say that their
story about the gun was probably gospel truth. He decided it was too
soon to call Hollenbeck and ask.

Sergeant Lake came in and said that Nestor woman was
here, asking to see him. "You haven't had a chance for lunch at
all, shall I tell her to wait or come back?"

"No, that's O.K.--shove her in." He was
curious to know what she wanted.

As Madge Corliss put it, a funny kind of woman
indeed. He didn't think any disillusionment with Nestor was
responsible for her flat emotionlessness. He remembered what Marlowe
had said of her and silently agreed: rather a stupid woman.

She came in and sat down in the chair beside his
desk. Her mouse-brown hair in its old-fashioned shoulder-length bob
hung lank about her face. She had on a printed cotton house dress,
bright pink, and a shabby green cardigan over it; white ankle socks
with the kind of cuban-heeled black oxfords made for old ladies with
fallen arches. She hadn't any make-up on except lipstick, and most of
that had worn off.

Nestor's essential character aside, reflected
Mendoza, it really wasn't hard to see why he had . . .

"Yes, Mrs. Nestor?"

"Well, I'd just like to know," she said in
her fiat nasal voice, "when I can get into his office. You
people have put a seal on the door. The rent'll be due in ten days
and of course I don't want to pay another month's rent. And there are
some valuable things there I could sell for quite a lot of money. To
another doctor."

"Well, I'm afraid I can't tell you anything on
that," said Mendoza. "We don't know, it may be we'll want
to have another look around there. But I see your position, and we'll
try to arrange to free it before the end of the month."

She did not thank him. "It's been a nuisance, I
must say," she said. "The bank not giving up that money and
so on." The news of Madge Corliss' arrest had made minor
headlines this morning, the revelation of Nestor's undercover trade;
evidently Mrs. Nestor didn't read newspapers and had no kind friend
to tell her about it, for she didn't mention it at all. But with one
like that, who could say? She might, if he asked her, say, Oh, that.
I'd suspected it all along.

"As long as you're here, Mrs. Nestor, I'd just
like to go over it with you again--about Friday night, when Sergeant
Hackett came to see you .... " He took her all through it again,
and she gave him the same answers, disinterested.

He let her go, dispiritedly. His head had begun to
ache again. He couldn't see where to go from here--if nothing turned
up on that button. But he didn't know yet that those juveniles were
in the clear, of course. And if they weren't, where else to look on
Art?

It was one forty-eight. It seemed to him that lately,
the last few days, time had slowed down somehow so that there were
twice as many hours in a day. He wondered what the boys were getting
on their searching jobs. Sergeant Lake came and looked at him
disapprovingly and told him to go get some lunch.

"Yes," said Mendoza, and dialed the offices
of Cliff Elger and Associates. He was told that Mr. Elger was out to
lunch with a client. Where? Well, probably Frascati's on the Strip or
the one on Wilshire.

Mendoza tried Frascati's on the Strip first, as the
nearer place, and spotted his man at once. Elger's great bulk, clad
in loud tweed, was perched on a bar stool. He was doing most of the
talking, gesturing widely, laughing. The man sitting next to him was
much smaller, presenting a thin, narrow-shouldered back and a bald
spot.

Mendoza climbed up on the stool at Elger' s other
side. Elger was halfway through a martini: probably not his first.
The other man, a depressed-looking middle-aged man, was staring
silently at a glass of beer.

"--just got to take it in your stride,"
Elger was saying heartily. "You know? Script writers always
change a book around some. What should you care, you've got the
money. You worry too much, friend."

The depressed-looking man said in a surprising Oxford
accent, "But she wasn't a chorus girl, she was the vicar's
daughter. It all seems quite pointless to me, and rather silly."

"Now you just stop worrying, old boy," said
Elger.

The bartender came up and Mendoza said, "Straight
rye. Mr. Elger!"

Elger swung around, looking surprised. "Oh--it's
you," he said.

Mendoza smiled offensively at him. "Business as
usual? I thought you'd be keeping a closer eye on your Ruthie. Or
have you hired a private eye?"

Instantly Elger's expression darkened. "What the
hell d'you mean by that? That bastard Nestor--and I wasn't surprised
when I saw the Times this morning! Ruthie told you how it was, she
hardly knew the guy, it was just to spite me she--"

"
Naive, Mr. Elger!" said Mendoza cynically.
"They can sound quite convincing, that sex."

"Damn you--"

Mendoza picked up the shot glass and swallowed half
the rye. "Don't sound so upset," he drawled. "Happens
in the best of families--"

Elger swung on him and he ducked, alert for it, and
caught the man's wrist in both hands. It had been an awkward swing,
from a seated position; but if Elger had been on his feet . . .

He said incisively, "Hold it, Elger! Take it
easy. Now what did I really say? Nothing much. You lose your temper
that easy very often? Because, if you do, I'm surprised you haven't
got stuck with a corpse--or a near corpse--long ago!"

"What the hell,” said Elger sullenly. He shook
his arm free of Mendoza's grip. The other man was watching
interestedly. "You talking about Ruth--damn cop--"

"To see what little thing might set you off.
Look at me!" said Mendoza sharply. "Did you lose your
temper last Friday night, Elger? Did you? Because of some little
remark Sergeant Hackett made to you? Did--"

"I told you I never heard of that guy!"

"Did you follow him down to the street and
attack him there, Elger? And then find you'd nearly killed him? And
there he was, right in front of your apartment--and if he came to,
he'd talk--or he might just die, so we'd get you for manslaughter if
nothing worse--and there's your business and reputation gone. Was it
like that?"

"I don't know what the hell you're talking
about," said Elger roughly. He threw the rest of his martini
down his throat so fast he nearly choked on it.

"So you thought of the clever little plan-- If
you did that, Elger, by God, I'll get you for it? said Mendoza. In
that moment he was nearly persuaded that Elger was his man: Elger so
quick to hit out in blind fury, over very little; and the suppressed
savagery in his tone, the expression in his eyes, made Elger draw
back a little.

The bartender was looking worried. They didn't like
disturbances in a high-class place like this. Mendoza finished his
rye. "Make no mistake," he said, "if it was you, we'll
get you. I'll be seeing you again, Elger." He slapped down a
bill and stood up ....
 
And where
had that got him? He knew that a very small thing might trigger
Elger's temper.

The lab, he thought. They really did work miracles
these days, those boys. Would there be any difference in the
composition of blacktop--could they tell its age, or degree of
wear--something to pin down the locality?

A forlorn hope. He could ask.

He ate a flavorless sandwich at a drugstore and went
back to the office. Sergeant Lake was leaning back reading a
teletype.

"Here's our boy," he said, handing it over.
"Not that it helps us much on catching him."

Mendoza read the teletype standing. It was from the
sheriff of El Dorado County up north of Sacramento. The inquiries on
any known knifings with the same M.O. as the Slasher's had been out
for nearly three days; this was the first response.