Felony File

by Dell Shannon

  The prints were those, said the F.B.I., of Marion Barry Stromberg, and the reason they were on file with the F.B.I. was that back in 1943 Marion Stromberg was working for Lockheed Aircraft. "¡Ca!" said Mendoza. He passed the sheet to Hackett.

  "Now that's helpful," said Hackett. "Thirty-seven years back."

  "Well, it gives us a name," said Mendoza. He marched back into his office, the two of them on his heels, and got out the phone books.

  "Oh, for God's sake," said Hackett. "There must be four pages of Strombergs, Luis, and in thirty-seven years some people get divorced and remarried—"

  "Not everybody," said Mendoza. The F.B.I. computer had just turned up the name and the connection; no doubt on microfilm somewhere was a record of where Marion Stromberg had been living at the time, her marital status, her age and even description: the standard application form at Lockheed would have accompanied her prints. They might have to ask the Feds to dig for that, and how long it might take to unearth it God knew.

  "Use a little imagination, Arturo," said Mendoza briskly. "Barry sounds like a surname—her maiden name? Could be. So she was married then. A surprising number of people do stay married to the same husbands and wives."

  He riffled through the Hollywood book to the S's. There were a good many Strombergs, all right.

  "What's your idea, set Jimmy to calling every one in the book?"

  "Sarcastic," said Mendoza. "The little gray cells, amigo. If the lady in the park had been living in the midst of a loving family, she'd have been missed and reported by now. ¿Cómo no? So the probability is that she was living alone, which would probably mean that she wouldn't be listed under a former husband's first name in the phone book. Come on—" he shoved the Valley book over to Hackett. "Many hands make light work. Forget Central for now— I'll swear she didn't come from anywhere down here."

  In the end, astonishingly, they collected only eight which Mendoza chose as probable-possibles. Out of a welter of Strombergs from the five county books, they rejected all those in Watts, Lynwood and Lennox; those were rather solidly black areas. Out of all the Strombergs listed only by initials, there were five M.B.'s and three M's, in Glendale, Hollywood, Studio City, Beverly Hills, West Hollywood, Huntington Park. "First cast," said Mendoza, looking at the list. "And don't tell me these are all male householders. A lot of single women use initials only to avoid the possible obscene calls."

  "A lot of women living alone," said Hackett, "have unlisted numbers."

  "And the phone company's bound to answer questions from the police," said Mendoza.

  There wasn't much point in starting work on any of the cases on hand; the Hoffman hearing was scheduled for ten o'clock, at one of the smaller courtrooms in the Hall of Justice.

  Hackett, Higgins, Palliser and Mendoza got there at a quarter to ten. It was a closed hearing; there wouldn't be any press. In the last row of folding chairs, over by one of the tall windows, Cathy Robsen was sitting. She had been subpoenaed, they could guess, just in case the judge wanted to question her. The men from Robbery-Homicide hadn't seen her since last August. She looked older and thinner: still a good-looking woman, dark-haired, in the mid-thirties. Just before ten o'clock the Hoffmans came in: Sergeant William Hoffman of Hollenbeck precinct and his wife Muriel. Neither of them looked at Mrs. Robsen or the men from headquarters; they sat down near the front, on the opposite side of the aisle, and just waited, looking straight ahead. They had both aged ten years in three months. Muriel Hoffman, once the smartly groomed good-looking blonde, was haggard; there was a too-bright rinse on her hair, and she wore a rather dowdy black suit. Hoffman, a man as big and burly as Hackett and Higgins—another big man who might as well have worn the plain label COP—looked somehow shrunken. He was very correctly dressed in a dark suit, white shirt, dark tie; he was shaved and tidy; and he looked queerly like a corpse propped up there.

  They all sat in silence, waiting for the bailiff, the attorneys, the prisoner and the judge to appear, for the ritualistic legal formalities to get under way.

  * * *

  Walt Robsen and his wife Cathy had been close friends of the Hoffmans; they lived within blocks of each other and had been friends for years, all much of an age—the Hoffmans with two boys, the Robsens with a boy and a girl a little younger. Robsen and Hoffman had both put in fifteen years as LAPD men. They had ridden a squad together as rookies, made rank together, shared an office at Hollenbeck division as detective sergeants, helped each other and given each other advice.

  And it had been Robsen who had argued Hoffman out of the idea of building a pool in the back yard: the whole Silver Lake area was running down, property was losing value.

  Larry Hoffman, in his junior year at high school, had wanted that pool. He was better at athletics than anything else, and on the swimming team. It was, of course, all Robsen's fault that there wouldn't be any pool. So he had taken his father's target pistol one afternoon, biked over to the Robsens' on Robsen's day off, and shot him dead while he sat alone over a book.

  When Bill Hoffman knew about it, he had nearly killed him. Today he looked to be in tight control of himself.

  The judge, Fletcher, was notoriously given to the standard euphemisms and platitudes of the left: thieves, killers, rapists, perverts were unfortunate victims of society, their undesirable behavior caused by poverty, divorce, racism. But there wasn't much he could do with a charge of first-degree homicide. Given a good fire-breathing defense attorney, he would doubtless have done what he could. But Larry Hoffman's attorney played it very quiet and careful.

  He was a portly middle-aged man named Norman, and he made it clear from the outset that he was not there to plead for a minimum sentence, any lesser sentence than the offense merited, or to offer any excuse for that offense. He called the judge's attention to the psychiatric report, and just in case Fletcher hadn't read it, read it to him. The psychiatric evaluation, which for once seemed to make sense, found Larry Hoffman to be of normal intelligence, but an immature and egocentric personality prone to faulty judgment. He then read the signed confession to the judge and sat down. Fletcher didn't want to question the Hoffmans, or Cathy Robsen. He wanted to know all about that confession and he questioned all the men from Robbery-Homicide at length, sending the others out of the courtroom while he questioned them separately. He was obviously annoyed at being unable to discover any discrepancies in the testimony.

  All that time Larry Hoffman sat silent beside his attorney, head down, not looking at anybody. Hoffman never once looked at him; Muriel Hoffman did, once or twice, with an unreadable expression.

  Fletcher adjourned for lunch, reopened the hearing at one o'clock, and to everybody's surprise handed down an abrupt verdict without any lecture attached. After complaining of the district attorney's uncalled-for severity in making the charge one of first degree, he admitted that under the circumstances he had no choice as to the verdict, or as to the sentence; it was a mandatory proceeding. The minimum sentence the charge carried was twenty years to life, and that was what he handed down, adding some unctuous phrases about the prisoner's youth and high chances of rehabilitation.

  The bailiff took Larry's arm. Norman never looked at him again, but busied himself gathering papers into his briefcase. Larry vanished through the door at the rear of the court, and the Hoffmans stood up. The Robbery-Homicide men were in the aisle nearer the double doors, and as the Hoffmans approached, Hackett stepped toward them, hand out.

  "Hoffman—"

  Hoffman sidestepped and moved right past him, eyes remote; he marched straight for the door and through it.

  Muriel Hoffman spoke his name, but he gave no sign that he heard. She said to Hackett simply, "I'm sorry." Her eyes went to Higgins, Mendoza, Palliser. She said, "You were all kind. I'm sorry about Bill. It's just, you see, he's so ashamed. He won't even talk to any of the men at his own station. If he'd just—talk it out—even go out and get drunk I wouldn't worry so about him."

  She looked anxious and strained. "I'd bet
ter go after him—damn it, I wish he would get drunk," and that was half to herself. She hurried up the aisle; she checked as she came past the row where Cathy Robsen was sitting, and they exchanged one grave long look. Perhaps there was too much those women had to say to each other for any of it to be said at all.

  * * *

  "And with that out of the way," said Mendoza, taking Hackett by the arm, "we shall now play detective and trace down Marion Stromberg."

  "I still say—"

  "The eternal pessimist. Sé bueno, hijo mio, and see what perseverance and imagination can do." In the Ferrari, he lit a new cigarette and got out the list from the phone books. "Huntington Park, now," he said. "I don't think so. A solid old area, but blue collar, and a black tide rising. Whereas that new coat with the real fur collar—mmh, yes. Ambrose Avenue, Hollywood—very possible. Also Beachwood Drive." Mendoza knew his city backward and forward. "Arriba Drive, Monterey Park—also possible. Beverly Hills, no. That coat, the shoes—Bullock's, not Magnin. Glendale. Oh, yes. An unpretentious town, but solid money in some parts."

  "You're going by the clothes?" said Hackett. "And the fact that she worked at Lockheed during the war so she was living here then. She could have been living in New York ever since, and come out here to visit a cousin, been seen off at Union Station and run foul of a suitcase snatcher who knocked her down before she got on the train. That place is deserted before and after trains come and go."

  "Thank you. One of the porters tidied up the station by dumping her in Lafayette Park?"

  "There aren't any porters anymore. Menial work. Or she could have been living with a relative named Zilch, in Zilch's house, and she hasn't been missed because Zilch is on a trip."

  "With human people, anything is possible," said Mendoza. "Let's try going by the probabilities." He switched on the engine. "Glendale is a very definite possibility, we'll try there first."

  However, the M. B. Stromberg on Valley View Road, Glendale, turned out to be at home; he was a garrulous pensioner eager for company, and they got away with some difficulty.

  The apartment on Ambrose Avenue in Hollywood was on the way back from the valley, so they tried there. Nobody answered the door; Mendoza tried the apartment across the hall, and raised a red-nosed thick-voiced young woman home from work with the flu, who told them irritably that Miss Stromberg worked at the phone company. Yes, she knew her. May Stromberg.

  "Seen her recently?" asked Mendoza.

  "I saw her come in last night, why? I'd forgotten to get the mail, I was downstairs when she came home."

  She wasn't curious, preoccupied with her own troubles; she shut her door sharply.

  "Beachwood Drive," said Mendoza. "Now that's the right sort of place, Art, for that coat—and the solitaire diamond. Not at all fancy—solid unobtrusive worth. Let's have a look at Beachwood Drive."

  "You always had an imagination," said Hackett.

  Beachwood Drive curved up into the hills above Franklin Avenue; there were no new houses up there; it was a quiet area of solid old places dating from the thirties. It was a place of upper-middle-class gentility: conservative. The houses on this block sat on standard city lots, fifty by a hundred and fifty, with lawns in front, curving walks, bordered flower beds, separate garages at the end of cemented driveways.

  The one they wanted was a good-sized Spanish stucco with a red tile roof. The overhead door on the double garage was raised; no car was inside. Mendoza pushed the doorbell five times; there was no response.

  "I don't think anybody's out gardening in this temperature," he said, "but we'll look." Down the drive, they looked at an empty neat back yard with a rectangle of lawn, trees, flower beds. Mendoza walked briskly back to the sidewalk and up to the house next door, which was French Colonial with a long wing to one side. The door was opened by a tall thin woman looking to be in the sixties, with a mass of curly white hair.

  "We're looking for a Marion Stromberg," said Mendoza. "Would that be the Mrs. Stromberg next door?"

  She looked him over carefully. "What's your business with her?"

  "My God," said Hackett, "don't tell me."

  "Marion Stromberg does live next door?" Mendoza brought out the badge, which agitated her considerably. She demanded to know what police wanted of Mrs. Stromberg, apologized for being suspicious.

  "But when a woman lives alone, with so much crime going on—what do you want with her? I've been just a little worried that I haven't seen her around just lately, I usually do, but then—Police coming and asking—"

  "You haven't seen her lately. Tell me, is Mrs. Stromberg about fifty-five, medium height, medium weight, smart dresser, tinted blonde hair?"

  She lost some of her high color. "Why, yes. Yes. Something's happened to her, and you—oh, my heavens. What's happened to her?"

  "We have an unidentified body downtown," said Mendoza gently. "It looks as if it may be this Mrs. Stromberg. Could you tell us about any family, someone who could identify her?"

  "There isn't any family," she said. "You'd better come in, it's freezing out. I'm Mrs. Caldwell. Sit down. Oh, my heavens! There's nobody at all—they never had any children, she was all alone after Dr. Stromberg died. That was about five years back, he was some older than she was." She looked shaken. "They'd lived next door since nineteen-fifty-nine, the year after we moved here. My heavens. What happened to her?"

  "She was found dead on the street," said Mendoza.

  "But that's awful-dropping dead, a heart attack or— But you didn't know who she was? She'd have had identification in her handbag—there'd have been her car—" She put a hand to her mouth. "I had been just a little concerned. Not seeing her around. Not that we were close friends, but we were always—friendly. I've got a big family, I'm out a good deal, and she wasn't. Always very quiet they were, even when he was alive—they never went out much. But I'd see her nearly every day, leaving to drive to market, or we'd be taking the trash out at the same time on Mondays—and I hadn't seen her in a while, and the garage door`s been up, she always closed it when she came home." She was looking very distressed. "Why, she was a good ten years younger than I am—I can't get over it."

  "Isn't there anyone—possibly the husband of some friend—who could identify the body?"

  "I don't know at all. She had a few good friends, there was a Jean she'd mentioned, and a Paula—but I couldn't tell you their last names. But I could tell you if it is her. I wouldn't mind, really. Not a very pleasant thing to have to do, but I've seen bodies before—I was with both my parents when they died, and my husband. And we want to be sure it is her. Do you want me to come now? I'll just get a coat."

  She was a common-sensible old lady, and practical; she said to Mendoza on the way to the car, "I can show you where she hid a spare key to the house. She told me in case of fire when she was away. Not that she ever was away much, it was just in case." This was one of many occasions when Hackett deplored Mendoza's predilection for sports cars; he hunched on the jump-seat uncomfortably on the way down to the morgue.

  Mendoza took her into the cold room; when they came back she was looking sick and even more shaken.

  "It's terrible to see someone like that. She always kept herself up so well—not flashy, just smart and nice. Oh, dear, this has upset me." She sat down heavily on the bench along the wall. "Seeing her like that—and nobody knowing who she was—I suppose somebody stole her handbag, the car too very likely. But it seems queer."

  "We'd like to find out about it," said Mendoza._

  "What can you tell us about her, Mrs. Caldwell? Her routine, her friends, her interests?"

  She shook her head. "Not very much. We lived next door to each other all those years, but aside from saying good morning or whatever—as I say, I've got a big family. She was—just quiet. She didn't go out much. She had charity meetings of some kind, I think it was, a couple of times a week. She called them her good deeds just a few times, I happened to be in the yard when she was leaving, she'd say off to do my good deed for the week. Sh
e wasn't interested in gardening and she didn't play cards. I suppose she read a lot. She'd go out to market a couple of times a week."

  "Her husband was a doctor?"

  "An optometrist, not a real doctor. But he had his own office on Hollywood Boulevard for years, I guess he made a good living. She must have been pretty well off, not a lot of money but plenty—I know she owned a house she rented. She was—well, what my mother used to call a real lady. Kept herself to herself, you know, but she was friendly too and, well, nice. Just not very social."

  That seemed to be about all she could tell them, but the house might tell them more. They went back to Beachwood Drive and she showed them where the key was hidden—not a very safe place—under an empty flower pot on the counter in the garage. They thanked her and she retreated into her own house a little reluctantly.

  They unlocked the front door and went into Marion Stromberg's house. Whatever had happened to her, for whatever reason, it hadn't happened here; that was immediately obvious. The house was immaculately clean, museum-like in its orderliness. The very slight film of dust, from her five days' absence, they could guess she could not have tolerated. The furniture was old, some of it antique, solid and good furniture, the rooms tastefully arranged. It was all conservative and a little colorless, but with an atmosphere of elegance. Nothing, obviously, had been disturbed in the large living room, formal dining room, kitchen with its spacious built-in nook, the two front bedrooms with a bath between, the smaller den at the back of the house. They found an address book on the desk there, containing only a few names: one entry was that of a legal firm. There was no correspondence around, or none she'd kept. In the desk drawers were neat files of canceled checks, receipts for bills.

  "Not much use getting the lab up here," said Hackett.

  "We'd better get the plate number and put out an A.P.B. for her car." Mrs. Caldwell had told them that she had driven a light-blue Buick Skylark about five years old.

  "Yes," said Mendoza vaguely. He stood in the middle of what had obviously been Marion Stromberg's bedroom—closet full of good clothes, double bed made up with an expensive quilted spread—and looked around.