by Dell Shannon
"Identify-that mean you're not sure it is Elena?" asked the girl sharply.
"No, that we know. It's only a formality of the law."
"Yes, I understand," said Ramirez. "You're kind, we thank you."
Mendoza took the girl's arm and led her out to the dining room. She looked up at him alertly, half-suspicious. "Well, what now?"
"No need to upset your father more," he said easily. "Will you give me the address of this school your sister attended, please-how long had she been going there?"
"A-about three weeks it was, yes, just three because today's Saturday an' she began two weeks ago last Monday. I don't know that it was doing her much good at that, she couldn't seem-"
"Miss Ramirez, you're a smart girl. You can look at things straight, and I don't think you'll lie to me just to defend your sister's memory. Tell me, do you think she'd have let a stranger pick her up, as they say?"
Teresa put a hand to her cheek. "That's a hard one to answer, mister. Right off I'd say no, an' not to, like you said, make out Elena was better than she was. When I said we're respectable folks, that wasn't no lie either-us girls've been raised proper, know what's right 'n' wrong, even if maybe we don't know everything like about which forks an' spoons. No, sir, Elena wouldn't ever have gone with a strange fellow, way you mean, somebody whistled at her on the street or offered her a ride. But it might be she would think it was O.K. if it was somebody she'd seen around, if you know what I mean, and he acted all right. This rink place, f'r instance, she went there a lot, belonged to some crazy club they got for regular customers, and if some fellow there got talking to her and maybe offered her a ride home, if she was alone, or said he'd walk with her, she might've thought it was O.K., if he seemed polite and all. She-she couldn't size people up very good. I know-I told her time an' again-she made herself look cheap, bleaching her hair and all that make-up, but she wasn't like that really. She was"-her face twisted suddenly-"she was just a kid. Rollerskating…"
"I see, thank you. Someone will come for your father-you'll see he's ready? I'll cease to intrude for the moment then, but as this and that comes up, one of us will be back to ask more questions."
"I s'pose you got to."
"Were you very fond of your sister, Miss Ramirez?" he asked, soft and offhand.
She was silent, and then looked up to meet his eyes. "She was my sister. That don't say I couldn't see her faults-nobody's all good or bad. It don't seem fair-she should die like that before she was even nineteen, hadn't had nothing much. But it's a thing that happens, people dying, age don't seem to have an awful lot to do with it sometimes.
Little babies, like a couple of Mama's. You got to figure God must know what He's doing. And think about them that's still alive."
There was in her round brown eyes all the sad, inborn, fatalistic wisdom of the primitive tribe living close with the basic realities of life and death.
At the door, Mendoza met the priest just arriving: round-faced, rich voiced, middle-aged Irishman, the self-introduction as Father Monaghan unnecessary to guess his ancestry. "You are-? Oh, ye-s-but what an incredible, tragic thing, I can hardly believe- Before I go in, then, Lieutenant, perhaps you would tell me in more detail-" And when he had heard, steady blue eyes fixed on Mendoza, he said quietly, "God grant you find this poor wicked man soon. If there is any way I can be of help- I know this district well, and most of those living here, you know-"
"Yes, thank you, we'll keep it in mind."
"You said, Lieutenant-Mendoza? At least it must be some comfort to them that one of their own people should be investigating, one of their own faith who-"
"Not for some while of that or any, Father."
"Ah," said the priest, "but not forever, my son, will you say that to God. One day you will return the full circle."
Mendoza smiled, stood back to let him pass, and went out to the porch. Adjusting his hat, he said to himself, "?muy improbable, venga lo que venga-nada de eso! "
The man called Tio Tomas was leaning on the porch railing. He showed yellow snags of teeth in a brief grin. "Nothing doing-that's what I say to them kind too. All they're after is money. For a cop maybe you got a little brains." The grin did not change his wary cold eyes. His skin was bad, showing relics of the smallpox.
"You will be a brother to Manuel Ramirez, I think."
"Sure, that's right, but I don't live here, I'm just visiting. Too bad about Elena, she was a nice kid."
Mendoza looked him over thoughtfully. "I'll hear your permanent address."
"I live in Calexico, I got a business there, I didn't have nothing to do with-"
"Indeed?" said Mendoza; small satisfaction warmed him for something, however irrelevant and minor, to take hold of. The most respectable families had black sheep, and this was one of them, that he could see with half an eye. "You're a Mexican national, not a citizen? I'll see your entry permit." The man brought it out promptly; it was in order. "Exporter. What do you export?"
"I got a silversmithy," said Ramirez. "Nothing big, you know, just a man and four girls-jewelry. You know how the tourists go for native stuff, and here too. I make a better profit on it up here even with the duty, you can mark it up higher. I'm just up on a little business trip."
"With success?" asked Mendoza genially.
"Oh-sure, sure. Got to get back, though, the business don't run itself." His eyes shifted. "Say, I won't have to stay, just account this thing about Elena? I didn't have nothing to do with- I mean, it was some crazy fellow killed her, wasn't it-"
"It would be as well if you stay for the inquest," said Mendoza, gave him a last smiling inspection and went unhurriedly down the walk to his car; he felt the man's eyes on him. He drove back to Commerce and caught Higgins and Dwyer comparing notes before leaving for headquarters. No one in the block had heard anything unusual last night.
He had not expected much from that. He sent Dwyer with the headquarters car over to Liggitt Street, to keep an eye on Tomas Ramirez.
"Maybe a waste of time. Maybe something for us, but not connected with the murder. He's been in trouble, I think he's been inside, anyway he doesn't like cops-not too close. Exporter, his papers say. He might be just that, indeed."
Dwyer said, "Marijuana-or the big H. Sure, he might. And how about this, Lieutenant-t-he girl finds it out and either says she'll turn him in or wants a cut, so he-"
Whatever he is or isn't, he's small time. I don't think so, but of course it's a possibility we'll have to check. Stay on him, I'll send a man to relieve you." He took Higgins back to headquarters to pick up another car and ferry the father down to the morgue.
Himself, instead of returning to his office where he should be attending to other matters, he set off to see the Wades. There should be just time before lunch. It was a very routine errand, something for Hackett or even one of Hackett's underlings, and not until he was halfway there did Mendoza realize clearly why he felt it important to see to it himself, why he had gone to the Ramirez house. The sooner all this personal matter was cleared out of the way, proved to be extraneous, the better.
And he must satisfy himself doubly that it was irrelevant, because it was always dangerous to proceed on a preconceived idea. He had been seized by the conviction, looking at the body, that this girl had been killed by the killer of Carol Brooks-but it was little more than a hunch, an irrationality backed by very slender evidence.
Carol Brooks, three miles away over in East L.A.-maybe a bigger loss than this girl had been. A young, earnest, ambitious girl, who had earned her living as a hotel chambermaid and spent her money not on clothes but voice lessons-with an expensive trainer of high repute, too, who thought a good deal of her, was giving her a cut price. He had said she needed constant encouragement, because she didn't believe a black girl could get very far, unless she was really the very best, and she'd never be that good. Maybe she would have been; no one would ever know, now.
Nothing very much to support his conviction, on the surface evidence. And he must guard ag
ainst holding it blind, if other evidence pointed another way. As it would-as it did. Nobody lived long without giving at least a few people reasons for dislike, sometimes reasons for murder. They might turn up several here. And that was the easy way to look for a murderer, among only a few, the immediate surroundings and routines of the girl who'd been killed.
If he was right, they'd need to spread a wider net. For someone quite outside, someone without logical motive. Someone, somewhere among the five million people in this teeming metropolitan place sprawling in all directions-someone who was dangerous a hundred times over because the danger from him was secret, unsuspected.
This time Mendoza would like to get that one. Because he had missed him six months ago, another girl was in a cold-storage tray at the city morgue now.
FOUR
They met for a not-too leisured lunch at Federico's, out on North Broadway. Hackett left him to mull over what meager information they had; his own next stop was obviously the skating rink. The waiter whisked away the relics of the meal, apologetically; they never hurried you at Federico's, you could sit as long as you pleased. "More coffee, sir?"
"Please." Mendoza brooded over his refilled cup; he should go back to his office and occupy himself at being a lieutenant; there were other cases on hand than this.
The girl who had found the body, nothing there immediately: nothing known against her, but little emerged of her background either. It was a very long chance that she had anything to do with it, but of course she had to be investigated. As did every aspect of the Ramirez girl's life. And after that, where to look?
He drank black coffee and dwelt for a moment on Mrs. Elvira Wade. In her appalingly cluttered, tasteless, middle-class-and-proud-of-it living room: a God-fearing upright citizen, Mrs. Wade, who had spread a little too much in the waist and hips, not at all in the mind.
"Of course we didn't like it, to say the least-a Mexican girl-and such a girl, all that cheap-looking bleached hair and perfectly dreadful clothes, but of course they're always so fond of garish colors, you know. And then of course there was the religious question. Really, boys have no sense, but it's beyond me how a son of mine could be so taken in, after all you'd think he'd have some finer instincts, the way I've tried to bring him up. Not that I'm not sorry for the poor thing, the girl I mean, and one shouldn't speak ill of the dead. I try to take a Christian view I'm sure and after all people can't help being born what they are, but when it comes to accepting them into one's family' It was something, however, to have embarrassed such a woman even momentedly: her belated furtive glance at his card, her ugly pink flush, almost ludicrous. "And of course," she had added hurriedly, "there's all the difference in the world between people like that and the real high-class old Spanish families, everyone knows that, I understand the peasant class is actually mostly Indian and the real Spaniards wouldn't have anything to do with them. But I'm sure you can see how we, my husband and I, felt'
Mendoza sighed into the dregs of his coffee. It did not, apparently, cross Mrs. Wade's mind that she had perhaps, in a sense, contributed to the girl's death. The boy had been strictly forbidden to see Elena again ("really such strong measures were necessary, though he is nineteen and ordinarily I don't believe in iron discipline"), and when it was discovered, through a garrulous acquaintance of Ricky's, that he had not borrowed the family car to go to the movies last night but to take Elena to that awful skating place-Well, I said to Mr. Wade, when it comes to lying to his own parents, something drastic must be done! You can see how she corrupted him, he'd never done such a thing before-I said to Mr. Wade, you'll go right down there and, So Mr. Wade (could one conjecture, breathing fire, or were the men married to such women capable of it?-at least he seemed to have acted effectively) had, by bus, sought out the Palace rink, publicly reprimanded the erring Ricky, and fetched him ignominiously away. After this soul-scaring experience, nineteen-year-old Ricky had probably been in no state to consider how Elena would get home, and if it had occurred to the Wades, presumably they had thought a girl like that would be used to going about alone at night.
As, Mendoza conceded, she had been: she had probably got home alone before. He pushed his coffee cup round in a little circle, aimlessly; and of course the girl would also have been angry, humiliated-quite possibly she might have let a stranger pick her up, a thing she wouldn't ordinarily do. Someone at the rink?
He wondered what Hackett would find out there. He paid the bill, redeemed the Ferrari from the lot attendant, and instead of turning back downtown for headquarters, negotiated his way through the bottleneck round the Union Station and turned up Sunset Boulevard. It had begun to rain steadily, after long threat.
The address Teresa had given him was close into town, along the less glamorous stretches of that street. It proved to be the upper half of a small office building, not new. A narrow door and a steep stair brought him to a landing and a sign: THE SUNSET SCHOOL OF CHARM. A mousy girl with a flat figure and harlequin glasses was scrabbling among papers at the receptionist's desk.
"Miss Weir?"
"Oh, dear me, no." She moved the glasses up to focus on him better. "No classes on Saturday, sir, and we don't enroll gentlemen anyway."
"Which is not what I am here for," said Mendoza, annoyed at the implication. "I want to see Miss Weir on private business."
"Not here on Saturdays…. Of course I have her home address, but I don't know-oh, well, I suppose it's all right."
New directions took him, tediously, several miles into Hollywood, to a street of solidly middle-aged apartment buildings, a little shabby, thirty years away from being fashionable addresses, but neatly kept up. The row of locked mailboxes in the foyer of the Blanchard Arms informed him that Miss Alison Weir lived on the fourth floor. A hand-lettered placard further informed him that the elevator was out of order.
Mendoza said mildly, "Damn," toiled up three flights of dark, dusty-carpeted stairs, pressed the bell of 406 and, regaining his breath, hoped his quarry was in.
When the door opened to him, he was gratified for more reasons than one. Miss Alison Weir was worth the drive through traffic, worth a wasted afternoon. A middling tall young woman, with an admirably rounded yet slender figure, less conventionally pretty than charmingly provocative-rather square chin, a nose too small, a mouth too large, alert gray-green-hazel eyes under feathery brows, a magnificent mattewhite complexion, and crisply cut and curled hair somewhere between copper and auburn, which was moreover nature's own choice for her. Her tailored dress was exactly the color of her hair, there were discreet gleams of topaz costume jewelry, her lipstick and nail polish were of the same burnt-orange shade. Twenty-nine, thirty, he said to himself: recovered, thank God, from the arch uncertainty of girlhood, and miraculously not bent on maintaining it: one might even suspect that great rarity in a woman, a sense of humor.
"Yes?" And her voice matched the rest of her, a warm contralto. As he produced his credentials, explained, he swore mentally at the destiny which involved the woman in a case. It was not a good idea to mix personal matters with the job, and he was scrupulous about it. Until this woman was proved definitely to be clear of any connection with the case-he would be extremely surprised if she had, but it had to be checked, of course-strictly business, Luis, he said to himself regretfully.
"Good lord!" she exclaimed. "Well, come in, Lieutenant-you're lucky to catch me, I've just got in myself."
"Then you're excellent advertisement for your business. Any woman who can come in out of a rainstorm looking so charming-" It was the usual apartment of this vintage, but the personal touches were firmly individual: a good many books in cheap low cases against the wall, a row of framed pen sketches above them, a coffee table with Chinese teak underpinning topped with a large Benares brass tray, in serene indifference to incongruity with the rest of the furniture, and an enormous aerial photograph of a suspension bridge over the simulated hearth. He sat down facing that, at her gesture, on the sofa, and disposed his hat and coat beside him.
"That one's not such a good advertisement," he grinned.
"But I can't keep books. what's all this about the Ramirez girl? Cigarettes in that box, by the way-and don't you usually hunt in couples?"
"I've got no business hunting at all," said Mendoza, lighting her cigarette, then his. "I ought to be in my office doing this and that about a dozen other cases. As it is, I'm tying up loose ends-"-he gestured-"you might say, on the perimeter of this business. I don't think it was a personal business, you see-I think it was more or less chance that the Ramirez girl was the one killed-but we have to be sure. I don't know what I expect from you, but you've been seeing the girl five days a week for the last couple of weeks, and anything she said to you-any little problem she mentioned, maybe-?"
"I see." Alison studied her cigarette. "You're always reading about these things in the papers-never think of its happening to anyone you know. The poor kid… I don't know that I can tell you anything."
"I'm hoping you can't," he said frankly. "We've already run across a couple of things in her personal life that might-just might-have led to murder. They have to be looked into. If you tell me something else, that's got to be investigated too. And I don't believe anything personal is behind it, I don't want to waste time on that."
"I see," she said again. "One of these psychos, blowing off steam every so often, on anyone convenient at the moment."
"They exist. Something like that, anyway. And I don't think this is his first, either. I'd like to find him before he, shall we say, has the impulse again."
"Amen to that," she said seriously. "But how on earth do you even start to look for a man like that? It might be anybody."
