Felony File

by Dell Shannon

  "Marion Stromberg."

  "Was that her name? I never knew it."

  "We knew there'd be a man. Where did you—mmh—pick each other up?"

  Clifford said slowly, "I'm a bachelor. I got out of service, I settled here because I like the climate, but I didn't know anybody here then. I haven't had a permanent home for years, of course. Now—well—not being exactly as naive as I was when I joined up at eighteen, I know where to find a woman if I want one. But I happened to wander into one of those porn stores on the boulevard, right after I landed here—I don't go for that stuff, but they had some Oriental carvings in the window I wanted to look at—I spent some time over there after the war, I like their art. Well, being there, I looked around, and spotted that bulletin board. I got a mild kick out of it, and just on impulse I stuck up my phone number. That was all. So what? The fags or the kinks call, no sweat, hang up. A chick maybe I look at."

  "She called you," said Mendoza.

  "That's right. She didn't sound young, but hell, neither am I. The years catch up. They slide by, and all of a sudden .... Well, I met her for a drink. We looked each other over. And—"

  "You thought she'd do?" said Mendoza.

  Clifford smiled slightly. "No, sir. I felt damned sorry for her. You see, she'd never had anything else. Than just the sex." He was silent; he got out a pack of cigarettes, lighted one, and said to it, "There was a girl in London in nineteen fifty-three, a special thing and we'd be together forever—only she got herself killed by a damn stupid drunk driver. I felt sorry for the woman. And don't tell me I just obliged her. I liked her too."

  "All right, we'll take that as understood and go on to specifics. That Friday. November the sixth," said Mendoza. "She called you about eight o'clock."

  Clifford raised his eyebrows. "You've been doing some detective work. That's right. We'd always used my place—I told you I never knew her full name, where she lived. She said she was coming over, and hung up before I could tell her not to. You see, my sister and brother-in-law were staying with me, they'd flown out from Chicago three days before, they'd be there for a week or so. They just left last Saturday. And they had my car. I hadn't felt like going sightseeing with them that day. I expected them back any time, nine, ten o'clock.

  "Well, she came, and she was annoyed when I told her that, that she couldn't stay. I said, come on, we'll go out and have a drink anyway, and we went to a place down on Beverly. It was raining like hell."

  "She had two daiquiris," said Mendoza.

  "That's right. She was restless and she was annoyed with me. Hell, I hadn't wanted to come out at all, and I was annoyed with her. I was driving. When we got back in the car I went down Beverly looking for some dark side street and I ended up on Lafayette. I said 0.K. if she was so hot, I took hold of her maybe a little rough—and she was insulted, she wasn't going to do it in the car like a slut, and there we were in all the God-damned rain and I'd rather the hell be home where it's warm, waiting for Allie and Chuck to come in—I swear I didn't know I was going to do it, I just backhanded her one and revved the motor at the same time, and she was thrown against the dash—" He passed a hand over his mouth.

  "Oh, yes, I see," said Mendoza.

  "She fell off the seat. I—she was limp. I put the brake on, I— Well I never meant anything like that," said Clifford. "And just then there was a police car passed six feet away from the Buick, and I was sitting there shaking, half off the seat where I'd been feeling for her pulse—and I was thinking of Allie and Chuck coming back and wondering where the hell I was, out in the rain—and cops asking how I happened to be with her when I didn't even know her name, and everybody she knew saying I was a liar, she'd never be up to anything like that.

  "I don't excuse myself. It was maybe a damn cowardly thing to do. But she was out of it, she wouldn't feel anything. I just got her out of the car quick and drove off. It was ten minutes to ten. I was damned sorry about the rain—hell of a place to leave her—"

  "But it stopped."

  "Yes, by the time I got back to Hollywood it had stopped. I thought if I left the car in the hospital parking lot it'd be found sooner or later."

  "Sooner or later—how right you were," said Mendoza darkly.

  "I walked home. Allie and Chuck had just got in, wondered where I was. I said I'd just gone up to the drugstore for cigarettes." Clifford sat back and reached for another cigarette.

  "That's very much the kind of story I expected to hear," said Mendoza.

  "Which means you don't believe it."

  "Luis—" said Hackett.

  "Now, Art, you should trust my instinct for human nature. It's not an edifying story but it's an understandable one, Mr. Clifford. It's the kind of thing I had a strong hunch was what really happened?

  "God, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," said Clifford heavily.

  "That poor damned woman. It was all she understood. The surface. You know?" And after a silence he asked, "So where do we go from here?"

  "I think, to a simple charge of involuntary manslaughter, and probably probation," said Mendoza. "You can't even say she invited trouble. She was so cautious up to a point. But the accidents will happen."

  * * *

  They still hadn't picked up Doug Carpenter, but they would sometime. It would be a moot point whether the D.A.'s office decided to charge Myra Amberson along with him.

  There were three heists still making legwork, and there would probably be others coming along. But for the moment Mendoza's mind was at rest; the really annoying little puzzles were cleared up—until the next one happened.

  And tomorrow was also a day.

  He went home, to El Señor demanding his share of rye, and Bast, Nefertite and Sheba circling under the dining-room table demanding samples because it was fish, and Cedric coming in proudly in the middle of dinner with a very dead bird.

  "Och, the creature—such a household this is—" Mairi pursued him armed with a broom and dustpan.

  Alison had been having discussions with the movers, and everything, she said, was settled. "December tenth. Anything we haven't sorted out by then will just have to come along, and we'll sort it at the other end. That's a very useful word of Mairi's, sorting things, it can mean such a variety of—"

  The phone rang, and Mendoza went down the hall to answer it. Dr. Robert Douthit the vet was on the other end. He said, "Just a little favor, Mendoza. A friend of mine writes the veterinary column for the biggest national cat magazine—you know the one. The chief editor wants to do a one-page feature on your rescuing that cat from the fire—that was quite a thing—and he couldn't get through to you on long distance the other day. Knowing this friend of mine had contacts here, he asked— Now look, Mendoza, I know you don't go for the publicity, but it's a specialty magazine—not too many people would see it. They can buy a copy of the Times photo—all they want is a shot of you and the cat in its new home. A sort of before and after piece, you see. We've got it all set up with the new owner, she's been very cooperative. It's entirely at your convenience, whenever you're free in the next day or so. Look, it won't take half an hour of your time—"

  "Oh, hell and damnation," said Mendoza, "this is blackmail."

  "Not at all." Dr. Douthit chuckled. He had looked after the Mendoza animals for years, and unwillingly Mendoza capitulated.

  Knowing cats, he wasn't surprised at the outcome. He showed up at the house on Portia Street on Wednesday morning; Douthit was there with a local photographer who set up his outfit and got everything arranged; he posed Mendoza against Mrs. Meeker's living-room drapes, focused and set his lens, and said, "All right, now let's get the cat."

  Mrs. Meeker succeeded finally in coaxing Merlin down from the refrigerator top (also a favorite brooding place for El Señor, Mendoza reflected). "Come, pussin, nice pussin, we want to take your picture with the nice man who saved your life-"

  He should have known what would happen. Merlin was placed in his arms tenderly, and at the exact moment the photographer snapped the shutter, he s
pat in Mendoza's face, drove his hind legs into Mendoza's chest, and departed rapidly from the scene.