Streets of Death - Dell Shannon (9 page)

There was silence at the other end, and then a
cautious male voice said, "You guys picked up Bobby Chard, you
got him in your morgue. You read it he got took off by accident like.
You better look again."

Piggott didn’t ask who was calling. "Is that
so? Why?"

"There was reasons." The phone clicked and
was dead.

"Chard," said
Piggott to himself. The one Traffic had thought was a hit-run. Well,
maybe they’d better look three times instead of twice. Or it might
be a mare’s nest. He wrote a note for Higgins and left it on his
desk.

* * *

On Friday morning, with Glasser off, Palliser roped
Landers in to help out on the legwork on Sandra. The two likeliest
suspects Stephanie had picked out of Records, on account of their
pedigrees, were Richard Lamont and Earl Rank. Lamont’s latest
address was Burbank, Rank’s Van Nuys, but as Palliser pointed out,
people did move. They went looking.

Landers found Lamont after three tries. Lamont’s
sister in Burbank thought he might be staying with a pal in
Hollywood; the pal said Dick was living with a woman in the Atwater
section, and there Landers ran him to ground, in one side of an old
duplex, watching TV. Lamont fit Stephanie’s description, down to
the little goatee, but he told Landers earnestly he was real clean.
Last time he’d been in, the judge had sent him to one of those head
doctors, cured him from wanting to do funny things to girls, and he’d
never do a thing like that again.

"
So you can tell me where you were last
Tuesday?" asked Landers.

Lamont thought. "All day, sir? Well, I was at my
job all day, it’s at McGill’s garage out Vermont, Mr. McGill’s
teaching me all about engines and says I take to it good. I got to
leave for the job pretty soon too, I don’t go on till noon ’cause
we’re open tonight. I just come home--last Tuesday you mean,
sir?--and Lilly Ann could say I was here, if that’s good enough,
sir. She’s a real honest girl, never been in no trouble, we’re
fixin’ to get married. She works at this upholstery place on
Jefferson, you could ask and she’d say."

Landers went on to find Lilly Ann; there was no point
in hauling Lamont in to lean on him heavier until they were a lot
surer. Lilly Ann sounded positive, and had a clean record. This one
was up in the air.

He came back to headquarters to find Palliser just
bringing in a likelier suspect.

Earl Rank had the kind of record which made him
likely, and he hadn’t any alibi; he was living alone in a single
room on Fourth, but Palliser had found him at his mother’s place on
a tip from a pal at the car-wash where he worked.

"A house down on Ceres," he told Landers.
"Two-bedroom place, about what you’d expect, but it could tie
in." Ceres Street was five blocks from San Pedro. "And his
mother’s just got back from visiting a married daughter in ’Frisco,
how about that?"

"I like it," said Landers. "It ties in
very neat. Let’s see what he has to say about it."

They took him into an interrogation room and started
asking questions. Rank was sullen and belligerent in turns, the usual
attitude, and they didn’t get much out of him."Don’t you
remember where you were last Tuesday, Rank?"

"Around. Just around." He was about thirty,
a pale-skinned black with a wispy little goatee, a thin mustache,
secretive eyes, a hard mouth. "I didn’t do anything."

"We’ve got a witness who says maybe you did.
You picked up any juvenile females to sweet-talk lately, Earl?"

He’d done that at least once, by his record; the
parents had reneged on letting her testify, and there’d been no
prosecution.

"I never did no such thing. You can’t prove I
done nothing."

They couldn’t. It might be interesting to hear what
Stephanie would say about his mother’s house on Ceres Street; but
they’d have to show cause and get a court order even to take
pictures, and she might not recognize pictures. It was just
suggestive, no real evidence at all. "And you know, Tom,"
said Palliser, scratching his nose, "that girl was so scared, by
her own admission, I wouldn’t like to take her description of the
man or the house as gospel truth. She couldn’t be certain. You stop
to think, she only saw the man three or four times--in a car at
night, and at the house. She spent some time at the house, but we
couldn’t get much of a description--al1 she could say was, two
bedrooms, no rugs, an old refrigerator, the TV was new. She also
picked this other mug-shot, Steven Smith. He’s got no sex counts,
just B. and E., but I suppose there’s always a first time. But I
wouldn’t bet on it."

"They do train us to be thorough," said
Landers.

"We’d better look for him too."

They let Rank go, at least temporarily, and went
looking for Smith without any luck. He was off parole, he’d moved
from the latest address in his tile, and nobody admitted to knowing
where he was. There were no relatives listed for him. He could be
Stephanie’s Harry, but he needn’t be.

And Palliser said, "I tell you, Tom, I wouldn’t
rely on that girl. If I felt surer she’d been sure about that
description, I’d like Rank for it a lot. As it is, she picked out
two other shots too. In a way, I think we’d be safer just going by
the general description and looking at mug-shots ourselves."

"You do like to do it the hard way. You talked
to her," said Landers with a shrug. "So where do we go from
here?"

"We go call on Earl Rank’s mother," said
Palliser. "She may be a perfectly honest woman--nothing says she
isn’t, though she didn’t like it much when I brought him in--and
if Earl is the X on Sandra, possibly Mrs. Rank noticed something when
she came home yesterday. Things missing from the refrigerator--or
that nice little greenstriped plane case he forgot to get rid of."

"Well, we can ask,"
said Landers. He didn’t sound very hopeful.

* * *

Mendoza’s insatiable curiosity had fastened on the
strange case of Edwin Fleming. There wasn’t much to be done, in the
way of the usual routine, on the equally strange rape-assaults or the
merely brutal pretty boys, but questions could be asked about
Fleming. After a desultory glance at the night report, he went out to
ask some; and he’d be covering ground Carey had already been over,
but then Mendoza always preferred to ask the questions personally,
and he flattered himself he’d get more out of those other girls
than Carey had.

He started out at the Globe Grill, where he was
resented because they were still busy with the late-breakfast trade.
Rappaport wasn’t there. He used the badge without compunction,
aware that Marta Fleming was watching him with smouldering eyes. The
first one he talked to was Betty Loring, a black-haired buxom female
of, he suspected, very medium intelligence.

"I don’t know her very well, like I told the
other cop. I mean, she’s all business, she don’t talk much to the
rest of us. No, I don’t mean she’s unfriendly exactly, just
quiet. What you mean, Mr. Rappaport? Oh, he’s a real gentleman, he
don’t allow any funny business from customers. I worked some
p1aces"--she rolled her eyes- "but he’s real strict. I
don’t get why you’re asking about Marta, it’s her husband
something happened to, I guess. Cops! All this fuss over him going
off."

The other one, Angela Norton, was older and brighter.
She said curiously, "All you cops around, just on account of her
husband. I don’t know anything about it, she’s a quiet one, but
it seems funny. Didn’t he just walk out?"

Mendoza told her about that, and she stared. "I
didn’t know that, about him being paralyzed. That’s terrible. She
never said a thing, and she’s worked here nearly six months. But
you don’t mean you think she had anything to do with it? Honestly,
she’s--she wouldn’t have--that other cop asking if she had
boyfriends, that strikes me as silly, honestly--she’s so serious,
all business. If you want to know, it’s my guess she’s been awful
homesick. That sounds silly too, but I think she is."

Mendoza was slightly taken aback. Cigarette halfway
to his mouth, he said, "Why do you say that?"

"Oh, well--she’s quiet like I said, but once
we took a break together, and I forget what brought it up, somebody’s
birthday I think, but she got to talking about Germany, and her
family--someplace they’d gone on a picnic for her sister’s
birthday, in the country, and she was all different, sort of gay and
laughing hard. She’d never talked about her family to me before. I
don’t know what you’re thinking about her, but honestly she’s
so straitlaced, I wouldn’t think--"

"Cops don’t tell what they think," said
Mendoza absently. The other two waitresses here worked different
hours, didn’t know Marta as well even as these two had, and Carey
hadn’t got anything out of them. Mendoza didn’t ask to talk to
Marta; yesterday, with Carey’s report in his mind, he’d thought
he had read her, and been amused at Nick Galeano. Now he took the
Ferrari up Vermont Avenue to the office of Dr. Sylvester Toussaint,
and used the badge to pull rank again.

Dr. Toussaint, annoyed at having routine interrupted,
answered questions briefly. "I hadn’t seen Fleming in
sometime, there was nothing I could do for him after all. Nothing
anybody could do, poor devil. He was referred to me by the specialist
in therapy at the General--he hadn’t had a regular physician, and
it was just to keep an eye on him generally. Apart from the
paralysis--the spine was almost completely severed--he seems to have
made a good adjustment--ah, that is, physically. Quite a healthy
specimen. Did I understand you to say he’s disappeared? I don’t
see how--"

"Neither do we. He could manipulate the
wheelchair by himself?"

"Oh, yes. The couple of times his wife brought
him in here--as is often the case, he was developing extra strength
in his arms. But," said the doctor, "but how on earth--"

"His wife thinks he’s committed suicide. You
said, the couple of times he was in. Not regularly? Not in how long?"

"I’d have to look at his file. Not for four or
five months, I’d say. I told them there was nothing to be done, and
there seemed to be some financial difficulty--there was no insurance.
I told her there was no necessity for me to see him on a regular
basis."

"You’re an honest man, Doctor," said
Mendoza dryly. "What did you think of her, by the way?"

Toussaint took off his glasses and polished them with
his handkerchief. "Mrs. Fleming? She seems like a nice young
woman--not much to say for herself. She took good care of him, I will
say--he was clean and neat."

"Did he ever seem suicidal to you?"

Toussaint put his glasses back on. He was looking
very interested now. "That’s a difficult thing to say about
anybody, Lieutenant. But the last time I saw him--well, he felt
resentful, which I suppose we can both understand. A man his age, a
hopeless invalid. He said to me, he could live to be eighty, and it
wasn’t fair to his wife. He’d be better off to cut his throat and
save everybody the trouble, he said."

Mendoza cocked his head at him. "He said it just
like that--cut his throat? I see.
Interesante
."

"But evidently he didn’t," said the
doctor. "How could he have disappeared?"

Mendoza got up and yanked down his cuffs. "Simpler
if he had cut his throat. And if he thought of suicide in those
terms, and really wanted to--but if I’ve learned one thing at this
job, Doctor, it’s that you never can tell what  people will
do. As I suppose you have, too. Thanks so . much." He left the
doctor looking very curious, and ambled slowly back downtown in
traffic a little heavier than usual, in the gray mist.

Before he got off the freeway it began to rain again
in a hesitant way, short of storm but getting everything very wet.
The little side street down from Wilshire was empty, only an
occasional car parked along the one side where parking was legal. He
was on the wrong side, and had to back and fill around four times to
turn the Ferrari’s length. He walked across the street and down the
drive of the apartment house. All the garages but one were open and
empty; the exception was the one at the left end, and he went around
to peer into the little window. Inside was a middle-aged tan Dodge
sedan, and by Carey’s report that would be the car owned by Edwin
Fleming, the car too expensive to run, which they’d been going to
sell. There’d be some red tape to that now, without his signature.

He wondered suddenly if she had a driver’s license.
How had she got him to the doctor’s office?

He went back up the drive and into the building. It
was as silent as it had been yesterday, everybody out at work.
Anything could have gone on here, damn it, and nobody been the wiser.
The Archangel Gabriel could have swooped down and carried Fleming
off, with no witnesses. More realistically, how easy it would have
been for the boyfriend--Rappaport or somebody else--to have walked
in, got into the apartment by the simple expedient of ringing the
bell, and knocked Fleming out.

"
¿De veras?
"
said Mendoza to himself. But why in hell’s name take him away? If
that had been the general plan, to fake a suicide, easy enough to
slash Edwin’s throat, cut his wrists, leave the knife there with
his prints on it,  and walk quietly off. There was a good solid
suicide, with a reasonable motive behind it, and likely nobody would
have asked questions.