Mark of Murder llm-7

by Dell Shannon

  "Not exactly that way," said Mendoza. He was outlining his ideas about that when the sergeant came in with a manila folder. "Dates," said Mendoza. "Let's look at some dates."

  Vice had got interested in the Sally-Ann Beauty Shoppe in May of 1961, three years and two months ago. The sisters had been arrested in mid-June, and investigation had continued for a week or so.

  "Yes," said Mendoza. "How nice. Frank Nestor graduated from his chiropractic course that very June. He also had a legacy about that time-a little earlier-only it wasn't a legacy. Five thousand bucks. I do wonder, now, if that doesn't represent his first job in this line."

  Andrews made an incredulous sound. "Five G's? For a lock-picking job? I've run into a lot in that trade, but I never heard of prices like that."

  "No, it does seem a bit steep. Well, anyway, for whatever reason, he's thinking it might be very profitable to set himself up in that trade. He's inexperienced, and he sees right away that the main difficulty is publicity. The right kind of publicity. And-I suppose the Sally-Ann business got press coverage-one morning he opens his paper, and lo, here's mention of a woman who's recently been involved in such a business, and reading between the lines he could make out that it's only for lack of evidence you're not holding her. Very likely her address was given-it usually is. I'll have to check with the papers. But, yes, I can see him waiting for the all-clear until he saw she'd been released without charges, and then going to see her and propositioning her. Another little piece of the puzzle, explaining how they could have got together. Well, this fills in a little, thanks very much."

  "Good luck on it," said Andrews through another yawn.

  He got back to his office just in time to take Alison's call. When he heard her voice he found he was gripping the phone too hard, and felt a sudden constriction in his chest. "Luis-Luis darling-they just called, the hospital I mean-"

  "Yes, amada."

  "They think he's just a little better! Oh, the nurse was awfully cautious and-you know-roundabout, and said it didn't mean he'll be all right, he could easily have a relapse-you know how they are-but his blood pressure's up a little and his pulse is better. I didn't know if they'd call you, and I- But it's got to mean-"

  "Yes," he said. "Good news. We don't know whether it meansThanks, querida… "

  He'd just put the phone down when Palliser came in, smiling. "The hospital just called, he's better, his pulse-"

  "I know. But they're still not waving any flags. And there's the other question."

  "Yes, there's that. But it's something."

  "Something," said Mendoza. "And the more I think about that, the more-confusing-it looks. How the hell did it happen, let alone why? I don't know-" He passed a hand over his forehead. "Like to take a little ride with me before lunch?"

  ***

  The first difficulty about it was, he thought, how had Art been put down~and out? If it had been Elger, no question there; so, on one like Elger, if he'd had reason to suspect him, Hackett would have been watchful-but Elger was enough bigger to have taken him.

  But anybody else they knew of in either case would scarcely be a match for Hackett. Larry Webster was big, and he might be tough, but the women… Of course there was that truck-driver husband of one of Nestor's girl friends; he ought to go and see her, get what details on that he could.

  And he hadn't asked the Elgers where they'd been on Tuesday night.

  Cliff Elger, who had the hell of a temper. And also a reputation and a good business, which he'd want to protect.

  "Just ahead," said Palliser beside him. "Stop here."

  Mendoza pulled up the Ferrari and they got out. "We can probably see some traces," said Palliser. He led Mendoza up thirty feet and pointed silently.

  This road wound up into the hills above Hollywood, through one of many little canyons. The lots were cut out of the hillside, and many of the houses looked down on the road from twenty or thirty feet up; a good many of them were set back, behind trees, fifty or sixty feet. Here and there the hill at one side or the other fell away, and dropped rather abruptly down to a tiny box canyon. There had been a cycle of dry winters, and the underbrush looked scrubby and brown-tall wild grass, a little sage, wild flowering shrubs. Few trees; these foothills didn't grow many trees except those deliberately planted.

  At the roadside here, above a steep drop of several hundred feet, there were still traces in the loose earth where they'd taken casts of the tire marks. Some of the marks still showed. Palliser led him across the road and showed him others-the wheel marks of a car pointed straight across the road toward that drop. There had been a two-bar post and rail fence, and about ten feet of it was carried away. It had never been intended as a barrier, being only a couple of feet high; white-painted, it was meant for a guideline at night. No street lights up here, and not every house had a light by its drive.

  Where the Ford had gone over, a great swath was cut in the underbrush, ending about two hundred feet down where a young pepper tree had been violently uprooted. "If that hadn't stopped him," said Palliser, "he'd have gone on down another hundred feet. God. And the ignition on-it could have gone up like--"

  "Yes. Maybe that was intended," said Mendoza. "X wouldn't have noticed that tree in the dark." He looked around. The nearest house was just a glimpsed roofline about fifty yards away. "We've been very glib about this," he said slowly.

  "I don't get you."

  "Well, _in the first place, this is something very damned unusual," said Mendoza. "Not a cop getting attacked, but getting attacked in this way. Why did it happen?"

  "He found out something on--"

  "Yes, I know we said that. But, so he did, and X somehow managed to put him down and out. Why did X go to some trouble to fake this accident?"

  "Because, obviously-"

  "How much easier it would have been simply to-well, for instance, bash him again until X was sure he was dead, and leave him in the handiest dark street. Or-well, the point is, to start with, this is probably a long way from wherever the first attack happened-"

  "Which is probably why," Palliser pointed out.

  "Yes, that could be. What's in my mind," said Mendoza, "is a funny little discrepancy. Look, John. After the initial attack, wherever and whyever and however it was made, X could have disassociated himself in several much easier ways. He didn't need to make it look like an accident in order to disassociate himself. As I say, he could have bashed Art's head in, left him in an alley, to make it look like a mugger. But he went to all this trouble instead. What does that say?"

  "He's overcautious?" guessed Palliser, following slowly.

  "I don't see what-"

  "We said, to disassociate himself, he set up this faked accident. lf he was working alone, he went to quite a little trouble on it. Another thing, was there any reason he picked this particular road? Was he familiar with it, for some reason? It'd be lonely and dark, but I don't think it's the kind of road to appeal to neckers, somehow… Quite a little trouble. He'd have to drive up here, from wherever it happened. Stage the accident. Then he'd have to walk down, in the dark, to where he could pick up a bus-because he wouldn't have risked a cab, he might be remembered if we ever did ask-though at that he might have, considering. And you know, John, if it was after ten-thirty or so, there wouldn't be any buses running. Except a very occasional one to L.A.-I'll look it up-only about two between midnight and 6 AM., I think."

  "Well…" said Palliser. He didn't get what was bothering Mendoza. Mendoza with quite a reputation as the smart boy, but for the first time Palliser got what Hackett meant when he said that Mendoza had a tortuous mind, looked for complexities and imagined subtleties where they didn't exist.

  Mendoza got out a cigarette and lit it, carefully stepping on the match to bury it in loose earth. "I will grant you," he said, "that anybody wanting to set up a fake accident around here would be likely to think right off of a car going over a cliff. Brakes failing, or a moment's inattention, on a lot of roads around here… My own first thought w
ould be, somewhere up in Griffith Park. But it's the summer season, the Greek Theater's open, and there'd be crowds up there, maybe to notice something. Or maybe, as I say, he knew this road for some reason."

  "Yes," said Palliser patiently.

  "Anyway, he was taking pains at it. Some effort and time spent.? Conforme?"

  "Yes, sure."

  "And then," said Mendoza, "when he came to the actual faking of the accident, our clever, cautious X did it in the damnedest silliest way possible. As if he thought we'd take one casual look, and say, ‘Too bad, the poor fellow must have missed that bend in the road,' and never take a second look. As if he hadn't any idea that the Ford would leave tire marks for us to see, that we can take casts of-that we'd obviously look for skid marks and not find any. He'd used Art's own belt to tie him up, and he took a little trouble putting it back on him. It wouldn't have taken another thirty seconds to get Art's prints on the wheel and gear selector, but instead, he just wiped them both clean, and of course that told the story right there. He had heard of fingerprinting. But apart from that-"

  "I don't see what you're getting at," said Palliser.

  "Apart from that," said Mendoza, "either he didn't know that police forces are quite bright these days, with scientific labs and all the rest of it. Or he didn't care."

  "I don't-"

  "We built up a nice theory here," said Mendoza, and he was looking tired, a little sad, a little grim. "We said, wishful thinking maybe, it must have been that Art had found out something definite on one of these cases, and whoever he'd dropped on managed to jump him, put him out of action. And set up this fake accident so he couldn't pass on the information… You've been a cop long enough to know that the obvious thing is generally what happened. just look at the surface facts here and tell me whether we weren't reaching a little far out, toward the detective-story plot."

  "Well, it's damned offbeat, sure, but-"

  "He meant to see Telfer," said Mendoza. "We don't know whether he did. But that's not a very savory district around there. And didn't we say, not many men could put Art down and out just so easy. I'll tell you what's in my mind. just a little easier than I can see that offbeat, implausible plot, I can see him-maybe on the way back to his car-getting jumped by three or four or five louts. Juvenile louts, maybe riding high on liquor or H. And the louts, rolling him, finding out he's a cop, and saying, ‘Hey, let's have some fun with the cop.' And talking it over, forgetting about his wallet-I know he wasn't robbed-looking for his car, finding it. Tying him up in case he came to, while they argued about how to have fun with the big cop- Maybe riding around in both cars awhile, talking it over. And finally- And by that time so high they didn't take any special care about it. They'd have been disappointed the gas didn't explode. Can you see that?"

  Palliser said, "Damnation. That's a story. Looking at it like that-just as a separate thing, I mean- Hell, I've got to say it'd be just a little more likely- I mean, well, expectable, if that's the word for it. But there's nothing to say-"

  "We're like lawyers," said Mendoza. "We have to go by precedent. The obvious is usually just what happened… I'll just say, let's keep open minds. It could be the way we thought-but it could be something altogether different too." He dropped his cigarette and stepped on it carefully. "Let's get back and see if they've picked up Webster."

  ***

  At about the same time, Sergeant Nesbitt of the Wilcox Street detective bureau was feeling pleased with himself. There'd been quite a spate of break-ins lately, with practically nothing to go looking on, and it was gratifying to have enough to make a charge on one of them. Three young punks just starting to accumulate records; a good many cops would be seeing a good deal of them from now on. He just thought about that in passing; he wasn't a particularly imaginative man, and crooks were just crooks to him. It was his job to deal with them. He dealt with them very efficiently.

  These particular crooks had had a couple of weapons on them-tvvo guns and a switch-blade knife.

  He finished writing up his notes on it and said casually on his way out to lunch, "Oh, Bill. You better send those cannisters down to headquarters Ballistics. They're so damn fussy about checking everything. just in case."

  "O.K., will do," said Bill, and subsequently sent them, by way of an annoyed plainclothesman who had hoped to finish the Times crossword puzzle before anything came up.

  ***

  The man full of hate was feeling something new and pleasant now.

  He was important. He was the Goddamnedest most important guy in

  L.A.

  He was in all the newspapers, by God.

  It was exciting, it was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to him.

  He couldn't make out why. Maybe it was different in a big town? Because there'd been others-he thought back, vaguely, to the others. He remembered a girl, a pretty girl, who had fought him and said, "Please." There had been that guy, Dago some kind, he'd been pretty high and hadn't fought him. And a while before that, another woman. He didn't remember where that had been, but in the country somewhere.

  Not much fuss made about them. But of course he hadn't stayed around. Maybe there had been at that. He got out his knife and looked at it. He was proud of the knife. He had made it himself, back at Marlett's old farm workshop. Out of a piece of old iron he'd made it, in his spare time, and Jesus, he'd sweated blood over setting them teeth in it, like a saw. It was a good knife. It had made him somebody important.

  He was in all the papers. When he'd heard some guys talking about it, in that bar last night, he'd gone out and bought a paper, and managed to spell out what it said. Some of the long words were hard, but he could read most of it. Right on the front page, it had been. Him! The Slasher, they called him. He liked that. He liked the new, exciting feeling of being important.

  It was a thing he hadn't expected, hadn't reckoned on at all. He liked looking at the blood, but it was a personal, temporary thing. In a vague way he'd known that if they caught him they'd kill him-the law-just like he'd killed.

  He didn't mind. No. His life hadn't been so good a thing to him that he minded. Ever since the fire in the school, back there when he was just a kid…

  But now-now he was so important to millions of people!-he would mind. He thought back to the best one, the kid. Oh, Jesus God, he had liked that one, the feel of doing it. The kid, the damned little Mex kid, calling him sir. It had been all there ahead of him, the whole bit-his whole life, sex and fun and liquor and money-why the hell should he have it, when I never had nothing? I took it away from him, he thought. Like God or something.

  Important. Hell, the whole state was talking about him, thinking about him. Just because…

  He wouldn't have minded, a couple of days ago. Now, he thought furiously, delightedly, he'd like to do a lot more before that happened. Really show them-pay them all back, the whole world, for what they'd done to him. So he minded, now. He was thinking about that now. They'd be looking. Every man's hand against…

  But it had always been that way.

  He thought, and he made a plan. So they wouldn't find him.

  He'd stayed in a lot worse places.

  He hadn't much to pick up, in the room. He still had the money he'd saved on that job up north, a lot of money, nearly four hundred bucks. He put the bottle of bourbon into his pocket; and the cigarettes, the paper bag full of doughnuts, the extra shirt and sweater went into the little canvas bag.

  He went out of his room, down the hall, and out the back door. Four houses up, along the little alley there, was Los Angeles Street. He walked up it to Temple, and on his way he passed the massive rectangular bulk of the Police Facilities Building, but he didn't know what it was.

  As he walked up Temple a plainclothes detective was talking to the landlady in the house he had just left. "He had such a scarred face? What name did he give you?"

  THIRTEEN

  Just after four o'clock a very angry man burst in on Sergeant Lake and demanded, "This is the murder
office, where they hunt the murderers? I will sue you all! Every man in the police I will sue! Infame! You call me a murderer, and it's a lie! You slander my good name!" He waved a copy of the Times in one hand and shook his other fist under Lake's nose. He was a little fat man about fifty, with a few strands of black hair plastered across a round bald head, a round olive-skinned face, and a pair of luxurious braggadocio mustaches. "Scoundrels!" he said richly. "I denounce you!"

  Every man in the office heard him and came to find out what was happening. Mendoza said, "What's this all about?" and the little man swung to face him.

  "Who is the chief man here? It is an outrage! My name you publish in the paper, and say it is that of this madman who kills children! I will sue you all-"

  "Now just quiet down and come into my office, and let's hear all about this, Mr…?"

  "Oh, you pretend you don't know my name! I am Tosci as you very well know- Francesco Tosci-isn't it plain to see in my own writing here? And I'm a respectable man, never in my life have I killed anyone-it is infamous!" He glared at Mendoza. "In all the newspapers, plain to be read, my name!"

  Mendoza exchanged a glance with Palliser. "Let's see what you're talking about," said Mendoza.

  Mr. Tosci was more than willing. He flung down the Times and with a shaking finger pointed out the reproduced illegible signature from the Liverpool Arms register. "My signature, it is-this I admit-but I do not kill people! It is-"

  Mendoza and Palliser got him soothed down between them, with elaborate apologies, and Mr. Tosci sat down, sizzling only gently. Mr. Tosci was, it appeared, a barber, with his own shop over on Flower Street, and he had never so much as had a moving-violation ticket. He had not seen the newspapers today until a customer left a Times behind and, in tidying up, Mr. Tosci had picked it up and to his horror recognized the reproduced signature on the front page. He had rushed straight out, leaving the shop in his assistant's charge, to come here and accuse them of slander. He- "Libel," murmured Palliser.