Felony File

by Dell Shannon

  "Look," he said, "look, Lieutenant, we did that great production for Rubinstein's new cologne—we did the Hercules luggage commercials, you must've seen those— Fantastic! Imagination, that's our specialty—we're one of the biggest outfits doing commercials in the business, because we're good, see? We've got the imagination to do different commercials, see?"

  "I told you I'm not interested."

  "But this has got to be the greatest ever, Lieutenant! You got to see it! Listen, it's the Crunchy Catty account—they got both canned and dry cat food—-and the idea is this, see?" He was pattering along beside Mendoza, talking fast, while Hackett and Higgins, nobly choking down mirth, strode ahead. "Now we all know how fussy cats are about what they eat, right? So O.K., we get in with the human interest right away, the sympathy of all these people love cats, by running that great shot of you saving the poor little cat from the fire—that's a beaut of a shot, Lieutenant—and then we put the spiel—It Takes a Smart Detective to Discover What Cats Like Best—and we show a shot of you, with a lot of cats eating Crunchy Catty like they're starving, see— Please, Lieutenant, you can see what a great idea—"

  "If either of you say a word—" said Mendoza, violently locking the door of the Monte Carlo.

  "Well, it is quite an idea," said Hackett. "You could expand it, Luis. How I Became a Veteran Detective Through Tracking Down My Cat's Opinions. Silver Boy won't look at that Crunchy Catty stuff."

  "If Alison has ever bought any," said Mendoza, "she won't be buying any more. ¡Dios!"

  They came back from lunch; Palliser and Landers had been questioning a possible heister and had let him go—he'd had an alibi of sorts. It wasn't raining, but it was cold and gray. They lingered in the office; there was legwork to be done, but it would probably be unprofitable.

  Sergeant Lake came in with a manila envelope. Mendoza slit it open idly and slid out the contents: the autopsy reports on Dick Sanford and Consuela Rivera. Sanford had sustained a skull fracture. Same as Marion Stromberg, he thought. The filing case: that had been obvious at the scene. He passed the report to Hackett; he was perched on one corner of Hackett's desk in the big communal office. He looked at the other report. And he said, "¿Y qué significa eso? I'll be damned."

  Hackett took his glasses off and looked up. "Something?"

  "Something," said Mendoza. "The Rivera girl wasn't raped. Not even an attempt."

  They were all surprised. "Well, that's a funny one," said Palliser. "By all the evidence, after the killer had disposed of Sanford—he probably never realized he'd killed him—he had plenty of time to deal with the girl."

  "Suppose," said Hackett, "it was about the time the other cleaning people came looking for her, and scared him off?"

  "Sloppy deduction, Arturo. They'd be coming in the back way and would have seen him. Look at the estimated times of death. Both Sanford and the girl six-thirty to eight."

  They thought about it. "All right," said Higgins, "he'd just got back to the girl when something else startled him—one of the cleaning people in the alley, whatever."

  "And he'd already killed her by then?" She'd been manually strangled. "Now, you've seen enough rape cases, George. She was strangled—when does that happen in a rape? Not every woman who gets raped is killed, but what they do tell us, the most dangerous moment, when the rapist's at the peak of excitement and violence, is—"

  "When he's just done the rape," said Hackett. "That's so. Where does that take us?"

  Mendoza's eyes were glittering. He lighted a new cigarette carefully. He said, "The way this looked, so obvious, the would-be rapist didn't know Sanford was there. That was—mmh—extraneous. The girl was the intended target." He emitted smoke. "Suppose it was the other way around, boys? Suppose Sanford was the intended target—and somebody didn't know the girl was there?"

  "By God!" said Higgins.

  The phone rang and Mendoza picked it up. "Yes, jimmy .... " He looked at Palliser. "The hospital. Linda Carr's conscious."

  Palliser and Landers went out in a hurry. "Jimmy," said Mendoza, "put me through to S.I.D .... Scarne?

  About those prints Duke lifted off that body last Friday night .... "

  * * *

  Linda Carr was still swathed in bandages, but she had a couple of pillows propping her head up higher, and her eyes showed awareness. "You can't talk to her long," said the nurse firmly. "Three minutes."

  "All right," said Palliser. He bent over the hospital bed. She was alone in this two-bed room.

  The blue eyes blinked. "Remember you—police officer."

  "That's right. Listen, Linda. Can you tell us who hurt you?"

  "He said—call him—Mike. Mike."

  Palliser tried to think of the most vital questions to ask her. "Where did he take you, do you know?"

  Immense surprise widened her eyes. She croaked, "Where I—jumped out—window. Finally couldn't—stand—didn't mind if I killed myself—he left me untied in bathroom—I broke the window—and jumped out."

  "What?" said Palliser.

  "Woman there—never helped. Foreign. The man at the restaurant, he was there—before the bus—"

  NINE

  THEY HADN'T SEEN the original Traffic report; it had been phoned up to the office. They went back there in a hurry, and Traffic located it for them. The reporting patrolman was Moss, and he wouldn't be on until the shift changed at four o'clock, so they called him at home, hoping he was there.

  He was. "What the hell?" he said, surprised. "It was Eleventh—the block just north of Alvarado, the right-hand side about the middle of the block."

  It was a block of old apartment buildings, a few with shops on the ground floor. Palliser was driving; Landers spotted what they were looking for and said so, and Palliser pulled over into a red zone at the curb. In the grimy-faced tan brick building midway down the block, one of the second—story windows was broken, a rough piece of cardboard covering it from inside.

  By the layout on the first floor, it should be apartment 7-B to the left upstairs. There wasn't any nameplate on the door; at Palliser's third imperative knock it opened halfway, and he shoved it all the way. The girl, standing there holding a baby, began to back away across the room; she looked terrified. There was a toddler about two on the floor. It was a shabby, dingy room.

  "No Engleesh," she said. She was quite a pretty girl, dark, with a creamy, warm complexion.

  They went through the place while she watched in fearful silence, and it was the place where Linda Carr had been held. There were the coils of wire on a closet floor, some of it still bloodstained, and they found her handbag on a shelf in the bathroom, all her I.D. in it, the billfold empty. Neither of them had any Spanish; Landers swore, found a public phone up the street, and summoned Mendoza.

  The girl clutched the baby to her and huddled on the frayed old couch, watching their every move. She didn't seem much relieved when Mendoza arrived and started to question her. She looked at the badge and said, "I cannot read. It is police? You have arrested him."

  "Not yet. Your name?"

  "Alicia Contreras."

  "And who is he?"

  "My husband. Michael Contreras. Now I do not know how we will live, the babies and I. I have no English, I cannot work and take care of the babies. I am ignorant, I do not read or write. Please, it was because of this I did nothing, I could do nothing." She gestured apathetically.

  "Your husband was holding a woman prisoner here."

  She burst into slow tears and a spate of explanation. All her family was dead except her papa, a plague it had been, and she and her papa had come here from Sonora, because there would be work and good pay for him; it was four years ago and she was but fifteen. But they had no papers, and then her papa was killed in an accident in the street and she had nothing, she did not know what to do. But he had said he would marry her so she might stay here. "Who?" asked Mendoza. Michael Contreras, he lived near where they had lived then, and he was a born American. He was young and good-looking, and she did not know
what else to do. And now there were the babies. Diego and Maria. She must think first always of the babies.

  "You will tell me about the woman he kept prisoner here," said Mendoza sharply.

  "Yes. She is not the first. But the others are all girls without papers, they do not dare go to the police and tell about it. He never kept another girl so long here. He made her have the sex with him while I watch, I do not want to but he makes me. He says he will cut my heart out, I untie her or give her food when he is not here. So I do not. I am much afraid of him," she said simply.

  "Where is he? Does he work?"

  She picked up a bundle from the couch beside her and gave it to him. It was a white jumpsuit; she had been I mending a seam neatly. Across the left breast was embroidered in scarlet the name Arrowhead. "It is there," she said. Mendoza looked at Palliser and said briefly,

  "Go pick him up," and Palliser and Landers went out. He looked through the apartment, which was reasonably clean; the children were clean and plump, solemn-eyed little things. "I did not dare disobey him," she said. "What will I do now? How shall we live?"

  "Wasn't he alarmed when the girl escaped? Did he think this girl would keep silent like the rest?"

  "No, but he said she must have been killed, she is killed when she jumped out, and he was tired of her anyway."

  "For the love of God," said Mendoza.

  "I was very sorry for her, but I am afraid of him, and afraid he would hurt my babies," she said timidly. In the end he took her over to the jail. A couple of the matrons spoke Spanish, though they were going to have a fight getting those babies away from her to deliver to juvenile Hall. He wondered if the D.A. would want to hold her as an accessory. And where would she end? If the A.D.C. office heard about her, they'd turn her into a professional welfare recipient pronto. But she was very young, and at least she'd shown some guts and cunning in protecting her babies. Maybe not altogether a lost cause.

  He called the lab out to process the place; judges liked evidence spelled out in black and white. They didn't pick up Michael Contreras until he trundled the big Arrowhead truck into the company lot at the end of the working day. When he saw the badges he said, "Did that little bitch go and snitch?"

  "If you mean your wife, no," said Palliser, watching him. Contreras was at least six-three, powerfully built; he looked like an ugly customer. "But you can guess what we want you for." They expected trouble, but he came quietly enough once the cuffs were on. At the jail, however, he refused to talk at all; he just sat and glowered at them, and they finally left him alone.

  "I hope to God they put him away for a stretch," said Landers, "but would you bet on it?" He didn't have any record with them. It would be at least a charge of assault with intent, but a first offense, legally speaking. It remained to be seen what the D.A. would decide to do about the girl.

  * * *

  The day men had done some overtime on that, and Piggott and Schenke heard about it when they came on night watch; Palliser was still there finishing a report. "Brother," said Schenke, "what we do see on this job. People."

  "Satan going roundabout seeking to convert souls," said Piggott, and he meant it seriously.

  "He's finding a lot of takers," said Schenke.

  The middle of the week was usually quiet, but occasionally they got surprised. It turned out to be a busy night. There was a knifing in a bar, and a hit-run, and they'd just got back from that when the desk called up a heist. That was at a liquor store on Beverly, and they both went out on it.

  The patrolman was Bill Moss, and he was chatting with one of the two men in the place. Another one was just standing. And on the floor, propped up against a glass case of imported wines, was the flashy blonde female heister.

  She didn't look quite as flashy as they'd heard her described a few times. The blonde hair was a long wig, and she had resettled it crooked so that some of her own dark hair showed at one side, and she looked sullen and shaken. She had on a red pantsuit, and the whole front of it was darkly and wetly stained from shoulder to hips. She was breathing hard.

  "Evening," said Moss gravely. "You see we've got a present for you. Mr. Doyle, Mr. Murray, who own this place."

  Murray started laughing. "If you could've seen Gene's face! Funniest damn thing I ever saw, and me thinking we were going to lose a day's take—"

  Doyle was the one just standing. He was a great big sandy fellow, and plain on him were the marks of the ex-pro fighter still in training; the bulging biceps, the narrow waist, the litheness of quick movement as he turned. He had a heavy bulldog face with genial blue eyes, but just now he was looking; faintly horrified.

  "More cops," he said. "My God."

  Murray was still giggling. "She came in here and put the gun on me. We were just closing, I was counting out the take from the register. And she didn't know Gene was in the back room."

  "My God," said Doyle. "I came out not knowing anything's going on, and she's got Dean up against the counter, her back to me—and I think to myself, that is a guy all dressed up like a female, because anybody knows that females don't go around pulling heists on liquor stores or any place else. And I'm in a dandy position, so I just catch the gun arm from behind and haul the guy around and bring one up from the ground—straight to the jaw, pow. And it's a female after all! Smack into that display of domestic wines. It's a female after all!"

  In front of the rear counter where the register was, there was a mess of broken bottles and spilled wine all over the floor.

  "If you could've seen your face!" gasped Murray.

  "When you connected—"

  "My God, I never hit a woman in my life," said Doyle.

  She spoke for the first time. "Nearly busted my jaw," she said resentfully.

  "Well, my God, I'm sorry, lady—not that you had any business trying to heist us—why the hell are you going around pulling heist jobs? A dame ought not to be doing that."

  "Damn it, I wouldn't be," she said querulously, "if I had a husband to do it for me, but he's in the joint for the last job he pulled."

  Schenke and Piggott began to laugh then, and she held her jaw and groaned.

  * * *

  On Wednesday morning, with Hackett off, Mendoza wasn't in the office five minutes, and the other men just drifting in talking desultorily, when Scarne came in. "How did you know where to look?" he asked seriously. "The crystal ball, I presume."

  Mendoza grinned at him slowly. "So," he said. He went to the door. "George—Jase. Evidently that little idea off the top of my mind made a hit with the lab."

  Higgins and Grace came in looking interested. "It was a match?"

  "The only trouble with these Kromekote cards," said Scarne, "is that you need the hell of a lot higher magnification—they take longer to process. Reason we only get back to you now. Duke spent all night at it, but I think we've got enough for you. There were three prints. We made nine points on one, eight on another, and eleven on the third."

  "Not enough for court," said Mendoza. They had to show fourteen matching points on a fingerprint before the court would accept it as evidence. "But enough, I think."

  "Oh, there's no question but it's his prints. There's a distinctive tented arch—two were the right forefinger, the other the left middle finger."

  "Muy bien," said Mendoza. He hunched a shoulder at Higgins and Grace. "Go get him. You'll probably find him at one place or the other."

  Half an hour later, when they brought Newton in, Mendoza was sitting swiveled around to the window. The rain and gray skies had gone away, and it was very clear and cold. The back mountains glistened with new snow.

  "Sit down, Mr. Newton," said Higgins.

  Mendoza swiveled back to face the room.

  "Sure," said Newton. "What's this about? Any way I can help you—"

  "What," asked Mendoza, "was the argument about, between you and Sanford on Friday night?"

  "There wasn't any, I told you, we were partners eleven years, we got along fine—"

  "Until last Friday
night," said Mendoza. "Then you had a fight with him."

  "I never saw Dick all last week. I told you, I got in a poker game Friday night, I can tell you the fellows I was with-"

  "Possibly, later on. But at half-past six—or seven—or sometime, you were in the Wilshire store, and you had a fight with Sanford. We found your fingerprints there, you see."

  Newton hadn't sat down. He was very natty in beige and brown sports clothes. He gave Mendoza an incredulous, contemptuous smile. "What's with you stupid cops anyway? I was part owner of the place, I was in and out, every reason my prints'd be there all around. You're the one wanted 'em to compare, weed them out from any others. So what if you found my prints?"

  "You see, they were in a rather special place, Mr. Newton," said Mendoza gently. "They were on the girl's naked body."

  Newton stood very still. "You can't—make fingerprints on a—"

  "Oh, yes, you can. The difficulty up until recently has been to lift specimens clear enough to be read. But there's a new technique for that now. And three prints from the body—the girl's left arm and left thigh—are a perfect match for yours, Mr. Newton. And that proves that you were there, that you arranged that very obvious rape scene."

  Very deliberately Newton smacked the flat of one hand down on the desk, in one display of temper, and uttered one heartfelt obscenity. Then he sat down. "All right," he said dismally. "So I lost the gamble. I thought it was worth taking."

  "We'd like to hear about it."

  "You'll hear about it," said Newton, "because it was a Goddamned accident. I was mad at Dick but I never meant to kill him, for God's sake. I'd suspected he was getting into the accounts, and I'd been doing some looking, and he had. He usually stayed late on Friday nights, and I dropped in to have it out with him. He tried to bluster it out, claimed there was some mistake—when I could show him the figures!—and I got mad and lammed him one. We were in the office, and he went down against that file case—I swear I heard his skull crack. And I was just going over to see—see if he was O.K. when there was that damned girl, right outside the door! How the hell did I know the cleaning people came on Friday night? Mine come on Saturdays. She was scared, she'd seen the whole thing, and I could see she was about to let out a scream, so I just took hold of her by the throat to stop it, that's all. I kept telling her I'd pay her to keep her mouth shut, but all of a sudden I realized she'd gone limp, I—she was dead! I never meant—"