Streets of Death - Dell Shannon (19 page)

"Look, I told that sergeant or whatever he was,
sure, Leo landed here, God, I dunno, way time gets away from you, it
was about three weeks, a month back--he says he’s on leave, he only
stayed overnight, he said he was goin’ up to ’Frisco. That’s
all I know."

Hackett and Higgins looked at each other and
shrugged. Dead end. It could be that in the short time he was here
Mullarkey had sold or given some cigarettes with that PX seal to
somebody around here. He could have stayed right around here and been
the X they were hunting. That was probably as close as they were
going to get. But Higgins had caught the one word. "You said we,
Mrs. Mullarkey. Your husband could back that up?"

"Husband!" she said, and barked a laugh.
"Just all I can do take care of myself, without some lazy man. I
got shut of him years back. It’s enough I got two no-good boys,
bring the cops down on me. But I got to say, Billy’s got some
feelings, not like Leo--believe it or not he gives me some loot just
the other day, though where the hell he got it I don’t know and
can’t say I care, the way money goes these days--"

"Billy?" said Hackett. "Is he here?"

"Last I looked, watchin’ TV and drinkin’ the
last o’ my beer. Cops!" said Mrs. Mullarkey bitterly. "That
damn Leo! Always makin’ trouble--I could wish I’d never married
that bum--" She stared resentfully at them as they came past her
into the house.

Billy Mullarkey was a big beefy young man in stained
T-shirt and jeans, sprawled in an armchair wolfing pretzels and beer,
watching a game show. He stared up at Hackett and Higgins, and the
badge momentarily mesmerized him.

"How about it, Bill?" said Hackett. "Leo
gave you some cigarettes when he was here, didn’t he? You had them
on you when you decided to find out if it was so, old Mrs. Faber kept
lots of money around? You were up early, weren’t you? About
seven-thirty that morning, you walked in there, she was just open,
and you--"

"What the hell are you talkin’ about?"
asked Mrs. Mullarkey.

Without saying a word, Billy stumbled up to his feet
and ran blindly for the door. The two big men were more than a match
for him, and wrestled him down before he got there. He began to
swear, and then he started to cry, and as they hauled him up to his
feet and got the cuffs on he sobbed, "It was all her fault,
Goddamn it! I wouldn’t ’a’ hurt her, but she wouldn’t tell me
where all the rest was--a lousy forty-two bucks I got--if she’d ’a’
told me I wouldn’t ’a’ hurt her--it was all her Goddamned
fault--"
 

EIGHT

AFTER THEY GOT HIM into the car they asked if he’d
make a statement, and he said he wasn’t going to say nothing more,
embellishing that with various obscenities, so they took him straight
down to the Alameda jail. They had enough to get a warrant, and it
was to be hoped the charge would stick. After it was passed to the
D.A.’s office it was out of their hands.

They got back to the office, nearly at the end of
shift. Palliser and Conway were in, nobody else. "It almost had
to go back to the restaurant," Conway was saying. "The time
element. So this says so all over again, John. Between us we’ve
talked to all the other witnesses, and what the hell do they all
say?"

"The boss here?" asked Hackett.

"Oh, he took off." Palliser grinned. "Jase
had a bright idea on Buford, and when I passed it on our Luis went
all absentminded and wandered out--having the same hunch Jase had, I
gather. I expect we’ll hear about it. Rich thinks we’ve got
somewhere on Ames, which would be gratifying?

"Well, what did we hear?" Conway flung
himself back in the desk chair and lit a cigarette. "Talk about
nebulous! Which wasn’t surprising, when Ames himself didn’t know
he’d been stabbed, apparently. They said they didn’t notice him
at all, or just casually saw him come in and sit down--a couple of
them recognized him from seeing him there before, didn’t know
him--why should anybody have noticed him? But the night watch got all
the names and addresses down, and there they are all present and
correct to talk to, until I come to this Tom Sawyer. Address turns
out to be an empty lot. And all I say--"

"Yes, and I’d agree with you," said
Palliser. "It’s too late to do anything about it today, but I
think we get back to Mallow on it, and see if Piggott or Shogart can
give us any description. You look self-satisfied," he added to
Hackett. "Been doing any good?"

"Breaking a case. The Faber thing. Routine does
sometimes pay off. What was Jase’s little idea?"

"Interesting,"
said Palliser thoughtfully. "At least our Luis thought so."

* * *

Mr. Sam McAllister was about sixty-five, tall and
angular, with a few wisps of gray hair. He was retired from the
personnel department of The Broadway department store. He was
regarding Mendoza rather sheepishly, and he said, "Now how’d
you come to hear about that?"

"Mr. Reinke was annoyed," said Mendoza,
grinning back at him. "Never mind. Did you do any good?"

"Well, Millie was annoyed too," said
McAllister, involuntarily looking over his shoulder toward the
kitchen where an emphatic banging of pans betrayed Millie’s
presence. This was a neat little stucco house in the middle of an old
block of neat homes, minute lawns in front. "Not too bad, I come
out a little ahead. Lordy, but I don’t know when I’ve done such a
thing, not in years. We all kind of got carried away, I suppose. Old
Charlie fussing about it being illegal--guess he had a point. Tell
you one thing, I was bushed when I got home that night--not so young
as I used to be!" He laughed.

"Your nephew was in on it too, wasn’t he?
Reinke said, a young sailor."

McAllister nodded. "Young Ted Nygard, my niece’s
boy. Dropped a little too--I was sorry about that later. He just
joined up a while back, green kid from the farm, it was his first
leave out here. He’s on a cruiser, real proud of it."

He added the name; he looked at Mendoza with some
belated caution; at first he’d just been glad of an audience. "Did
I understand, you’re with the state board, something to do with
Charlie’s license? Lordy, he did say something, but I just never
thought--I sure hope you aren’t going to blame Charlie. It was all
my fault we got started, come to think."

"Wel1, we’ll overlook it this time," said
Mendoza casually.

"I wouldn’t want to think I got Charlie in any
trouble," said McAllister.

Mendoza looked at him, the simple and honest--and
rather stupid--old man. "You needn’t worry about that, Mr.
McAl1ister."

"That’s good. Oh, Lordy, there’s
Millie--don’t like to rush you off, but she likes to be regular
with dinner--"

"I was just leaving."
Mendoza clapped on his hat against the slight mist; it was already
dusk, and trying to work up to rain again. He was going to be late
home.

* * *

The night watch came on, and not long after Shogart
had switched the radio on Mendoza called. He wanted the phone number
of the captain in Harbor division. "I think his name’s Noble,
Matt. I’ll hang on."

Curious, Piggott consulted the main desk and passed
it on. "Now what’s that about?" he asked Schenke.

"Couldn’t say. Look, E. M., tune that thing
down, will you? Both of us rode a squad long enough it’s no
novelty, you know." Shogart glowered at him but complied. They
got their first call at nine-twenty, a heist at a seven-to-eleven
dairy store on Hoover. The young fellow alone in the place was scared
green; it was only his second week on the job. "I mean, one
thing I thought when I took this job," he said to Piggott, "it’s
not like a liquor store, a drugstore, where you’re liable to get
held up! My gosh! A dairy store! I mean, it’s crazy."

"A lot of things are these days. Could you tell
me what he looked like?"

"My gosh, no! He had a ski mask on, covered his
face, and a cap--I couldn’t say anything except he was big, about
six feet. He got all the cash, about sixty bucks."

So there wasn’t much to
do about that but write a report.

* * *

When Mendoza came into the kitchen Alison was sitting
at the table, hiccuping over coffee. The cats were weaving around her
feet, and in the backyard the twins were galloping around with Cedric
and Mrs. MacTaggart in pursuit.

"Children!" said Alison with loathing.
"Hic! Those little devils know they have to get ready
for--hic!--the school bus, why they have to make so much trouble for
M--oh, damn!" She leaped up and fled for the bathroom, and the
cats dispersed in all directions, El Señor spitting furiously.

Mrs. MacTaggart came in, herding the twins before her
breathlessly, and he said, "You don’t think there’s anything
wrong, Máiri? I know what the doctor said, but--"

"Ach, doctors!" said Máiri. "She’ll
be fine in a bit, it’s just she didn’t expect it, having it easy
the first time. That bus will be here any minute and these two
heathens not washed--there’s coffee on the stove-"

"I’ll get breakfast out, Máiri." He
dodged Cedric slurping from his bowl on the back porch. He backed out
the Ferrari, but didn’t head downtown. It was nine-fifty when he
walked into the office of Captain Noble of Harbor division and asked,
"What about it?"

Noble was a hardbitten middle-aged man, big and
stolid. "Well, I’ve got him here for you," he said. "When
you called last night I checked with the Shore Patrol and found he
was aboard all right. We picked him up this morning, about an hour
ago, after a little argument with the chief petty officer. What do
you want him for, Mendoza?"

"I don’t know that I want him for anything,"
said Mendoza. "It’s just a little hunch. And when I checked
with the Navy and found the ship was still in port, I thought I’d
better talk to him while I could."

Noble shrugged. "He’s in an interrogation room
down the hall. Ready to chew nails and talking about his rights as a
citizen."

"Lead me to him."

When he went into the little room and shut the door
behind him, Ted Nygard swung around belligerently. "Who the hell
are you and what the hell’s this all about?" He was about
twenty, a good-looking youngster with crew-cut blond hair and a pink
and white complexion, trim in his blue uniform. "What is all
this, anyway? Police--"

"Lieutenant Mendoza, Robbery-Homicide. Sit down,
Mr. Nygard. I’ve just got a few questions for you." Mendoza
laid down his hat, got out a cigarette and contemplated him
consideringly. "You were on leave about a week, ten days ago.
You went to stay with your uncle--or great-uncle--Mr. McAllister, up
in L.A."

Nygard flushed, to betray his youth. "My mother
asked me to go see them," he muttered. "I was only there a
couple of days. Why?"

"You got into a hot poker game while you were
there, at a little neighborhood bar."

"You’re Goddamned right I did!" said
Nygard.

"Bunch of silly old bastards like Uncle Sam, I
thought, and it turned out, I guess I was the sap--they cleaned me
out! Not Uncle, he dropped some too, but this one guy was stacking
the deck, I could swear. He walked away with a wad, mostly mine."
He looked at Mendoza more warily.

"But so what, what’s your business with me?
Did you say--"

"The poker session, Mr. Nygard. Was this
fellow’s name Buford? And you thought he was ringing in a cold
deck? Naturally you were annoyed." Mendoza was filling in gaps,
and it was easy to do. "You went home with your uncle that
Tuesday night, and he was tired and went right to bed--but you were
still missing your money. You went out again and found Buford’s
place--mmh, yes, I could guess. You knew his name, and that he lived
in the neighborhood--he’d be in the book. Yes, it’s one thing to
lose money legitimately, but when you thought he was a sharp--"

"Hell!" said Nygard, flushing deeply. "Did
he lay some kind of charge? I wouldn’t think he had the nerve! All
I wanted was my money back. Yeah, I found the place, the door was
open and I went in and he was sound asleep in front of the TV. If you
know so damned much--"

"But he woke up when you started to search him
for the money," said Mendoza, "and you had a little
scuffle."

"Well, damn it, I didn’t want to hurt him,"
said Nygard, "he was a lot older than me, but I wasn’t going
to let him get away with that loot, and I told him so. Did he lay a
charge on me? Damn it--"

"No," said Mendoza, "but I’m afraid
we’re going to. He’s dead, Mr. Nygard. We won’t be calling it
Murder One, but he got knocked down and cracked his skull and died of
it."

Nygard lost all his pink
freshness; he stared at Mendoza in dismay, incredulity. "Oh,
no," he said, "I just gave him a little push--I didn’t
even hit him--I thought he’d knocked himself out and I just--oh, my
God! I never meant a thing like that--my God!"

* * *

Mendoza got back to the office just after lunch, and
met Duke coming in. Hackett was alone in the sergeants’ office,
laboring over a report. Mendoza told him about Nygard: Harbor
division would send him up to be booked Q in, and there’d be the
statements to get, the warrant to be applied for. It was Higgins’
day off, and everybody else was out on something.