by Dell Shannon
"You wanted to see me, Miss Ramirez? Sit down here, won’t you?"
"Oh, thanks, but it won’t take long, what I come for. I wasn’t sure you’d be here, Sunday an’ all, I thought I’d ask could I leave a note for you-" She took a breath. "There was some of your guys come with a warrant, to look all through Elena’s things-Mama, she just had a fit, she don’t understand about these things so good-"
"I’m sorry it troubled her. We have to do that, you know."
"Sure, I know, it don’t matter, we haven’t nothing to hide."
He wondered: the visiting uncle? The faint defiance over the honesty in her round brown eyes looked convincing. He thought, whether they caught the shifty Tio Tomas at anything or not, that was a wrong one; but he also thought the Ramirez family hadn’t an inkling of that. He waited; she had something else to say. She fidgeted with the shawl, burst out a little nervously, "I-I thought of something else, Lieutenant, that’s why I come."
"Yes?"
"I don’t want to sound like I’m telling you your own business, see, but-well, you are sort of looking into that Palace skating place, aren’t you? I mean-"
"We are. Why?"
"I don’t know nothing about it," she said. "I never been there myself, and anyway I guess this don’t have anything to do with it, I mean whoever runs it, you know. But I got to thinking, after you asked me yesterday about any guy bothering Elena, I tried to remember just what she did say, if there was anything I hadn’t told you. And I remembered one more thing she said. It was when she was talking about this fellow watching her, she said, ‘He gets on my nerves, honest, I nearly fell down a couple times.’ "
"Now that’s very interesting," said Mendoza.
"See, she must’ve meant it was at the rink she saw him. Once, anyways. Because where else would being nervous make her almost fall down? I-"
"Yes, of course." And there were a number of possibilities there; a little imagination would produce a dozen different ideas. He thought about some of them-(Ehrlich, the attendants, the other kids)-as he thanked the girl for coming in. Alison came out of his office with Hackett and was sympathetic, friendly with Teresa, asking conventionally about the funeral. The girl was a little stiff, responding, using more care with her manners and grammar.
"Well, I-I guess that’s all I wanted tell you, Lieutenant, I better get home-"
Alison sent Mendoza a glance he missed and another at Hackett which connected; he said he was going that way, be glad to drive her home, and gave Alison a mock-reproachful backward look, shepherding Teresa off.
"Your draft’s quite all right. Hey, wake up, I said-"
"Yes," said Mendoza. "Is it? Good." He summoned one of the stenos on duty, took Alison back to his office to wait, gave her a chair and cigarette but no conversation. She sat quietly, watching him with a slight smile, looking round the room; when the typed pages were brought in she signed obediently where she was told and announced meekly that she could get home by herself.
Mendoza said, "Don’t be foolish." But he was mostly silent on the drive across town. When he drew into the curb at the apartment building, he cut the motor, didn’t move immediately. "Tell me something. Did you like dolls when you were a little girl?"
"Against my better judgment you do intrigue me. Most little girls do."
He grunted. "Ever know any little boys who did?"
"When they’re very young, otherwise not. Though I believe there are some, but they can’t be very normal little boys. The psychiatrists-"
"I beg you, not the doubletalk about Id and Ego and Superego. Especially not about infantile sexuality and the traumatic formation of the homosexual personality. Esta queda entre los dos. Just between the two of us, I find a most suggestive resemblance between the Freudians and those puritanical old maids who put the worst interpretation on everything-and with such damned smug-satisfaction into the bargain."
She laughed. "Oh, I’m with you every time! But what’s all this about dolls?"
He got out a cigarette, looked at it without flicking his lighter. "Suppose you’re taking one of those word-association tests, what do you say to that?-doll."
"Why, I guess-little girls. Why?"
"And me too," he said. "Which is what makes it difficult. Well, never mind-inquisition over for today." He lit the cigarette and turned to her with a smile. "You’ll have dinner with me tomorrow night, tell me what you get out of your girls, if anything?
Alison cocked her auburn head at him. "I seem to remember you said you didn’t mix business and pleasure. Do I infer I’m absolved already?"
"I’m always making these impossible resolutions." He got out, went round and opened the door for her. "Black," he said, gesturing, "something elegant, and decollete. Maybe pearls. Seven o’clock."
She got out of the car, leisurely and graceful, and tucked her bag under her arm; she said, "Charm isn’t the word. But I have heard-speaking of the Freudians-that there are some women who really I enjoy being dominated. Seven o’clock it is, and I’ll wear what I damned well please, Lieutenant Luis Mendoza!"
" Mi gatita roja," he said, smiling.
"And," said Alison, "I am not your little red kitten, you-you- tu macho insolente! "
"What language for a lady. Until tomorrow." He grinned at her straight back; there was-he was aware-a certain promise in being called an insolent male animal, by a female like Alison.
***
It sat on the corner of Matson and San Rafael, a block up and a block over from Commerce and Humboldt. Not really much of a walk home for Elena, a quarter of an hour by daylight: down San Rafael to Commerce, to Humboldt, across the empty lot and down a block to Foster where Humboldt made a jog to bypass a gloomy little cul-de-sac misleadingly called a court: another block to Main, another to Liggitt and half a block more to home. Little more than half a mile, but that could be a long way at night. Main was neon lights and crowds up to midnight anyway, but these other streets were dark and lonely.
It was a big barn of a building. Matson Street wasn’t residential, but strung with small warehouses, small business that must permanently balance on the edge of inso1vency-rug cleaning, said the faded signs, tools sharpened, speedy shoe repair, cleaning amp; dyeing-and in between, the secretive warehouses unlabeled or reticent with WHOLESALE PARTS, INC.-MASTERSON BROS.-ASSOCIATED INDUSTRIES. At Matson and San Rafael, there was a graveyard for old cars on one corner, with a high iron fence around it (SECONDHAND PARTS CHEAP), and warehouses on two other corners, and on the fourth the Palace Roller Rink. The building wasn’t flush to the sidewalk like the warehouses, but set back fifteen or twenty feet, to provide off-street parking on two sides.
Mendoza parked there, among six or eight other cars: mostly old family sedans, a couple of worked-over hot-rods. It was ten past four, a good time for the experiment he had in mind. He fished up a handful of change from his pocket, picked out a quarter, a dime, and a nickel, and walked up to the entrance.
There were big double doors fastened back, but at this time of year, the place facing north, not much light fell into the foyer. That was perhaps ten feet wide, three times as long up to the restroom doors at either end. There was a Coke-dispensing freezer and a big trash basket under a wall dispenser for paper cups. In the middle of the foyer was a three-sided plywood enclosure with a narrow counter bearing an ancient cash register; and inside, on a high stool with a back, sat Ehrlich the proprietor, a grossly fat man in the late sixties, bald bullet-shaped head descending to several rolls of fat front and rear, pudgy hands clasped over a remarkable paunch: wrinkled khaki shirt and pants, no tie. Ehrlich, peacefully drowsing-still, very likely, digesting a solid noon dinner which had ended with several glasses of beer. Mendoza surveyed him with satisfaction, walked quietly up and laid the silver on the counter. The fat man roused with a little grunt, scooped it up and punched the register, and produced from a box under the counter a sleazy paper ticket, slid it across. Mendoza picked it up and passed by. At the narrower door into the main part of the buil
ding, he glanced back: Ehrlich’s head was again bowed over his clasped hands. So there we are, thought Mendoza. The man had raised his eyes just far enough to check the money: if the exact change was laid out, a gorilla in pink tights could walk by him without notice.
The second door led Mendoza into more than semi-darkness. It was a rectangle within a rectangle: a fifteen-foot-wide strip of dark around all four sides of the skating floor. That was a good hundred and fifty feet long, a little more than half as wide, of well-laid hardwood like a dance floor. There was an iron pipe railing enclosing it, with two or three gaps in each side for access to the occasional hard wooden benches, scattered groups of folding wooden chairs, along the four dark borders. A big square skylight, several unshaded electric bulbs around it, poured light directly down on the skating floor, but not enough to reach beyond: anywhere off the edge of that floor it was dark. The effect was that of a theater, about that quality of light, looking from the borders to the big floor.
Straight ahead from the single entrance, at the gap in the rail there, sat one of the attendants, sidewise in a chair to catch the light on his magazine. Beside him was a card table, a cardboard carton on it and another on the floor; those would hold the skates. Not just the skates, Mendoza remembered from the statements taken: flat shoes with skates already fastened on-something to do with the insurance, because as Hayes (or was it Murphy) had put it, otherwise some of these dumb girls would come in with four-inch heels on. As Elena had, he remembered.
It was shoddy, it was dirty, a place of garish light and dense shadow, of drafts and queer echoes from its very size. No attempt was evident to make it attractive or comfortable: the sole amenities, if you could so call them, appeared to be the Coke machine and, at the opposite side of the floor, an old nickel jukebox which was presently emitting a tired rendition of "The Beautiful Blue Danube." And yet the fifteen or twenty teenagers on the floor seemed to be enjoying themselves, mostly skating in couples round and round-one pair in the center showing off, with complicated breakaways and dance steps-half a dozen in single file daring the hazards lined down the far side, a little artificial hill, a low bar-jump. Those girls shrieked simulated terror, speeding down the sharp drop; the boys jeered, affected nonchalance. It was all very innocent and juvenile-depressingly so, Mendoza reflected sadly from the vantage point of his nearly forty years.
But he hadn’t come here to philosophize on the vagaries of adolescence… If you went straight down to the attendant, to give up your ticket and acquire your skates, you would be noticed; otherwise, he could easily miss seeing you. Mendoza had wandered a little way to the side from the door, and stood with his back to the wall; he was in deep shadow and he’d made no noise. He stood there until his eyes had adjusted to the darkness, to avoid colliding with anything, and moved on slowly. He knew now that it was possible to come in here without being noticed, but could anyone count on it five times out of five?
There would be times Ehrlich was wider awake, for one thing.
He sat down in a chair midway from the railing, twenty feet from the attendant. In five minutes neither the man nor any of the skaters took the slightest notice of him. He got up, drifted back to the wall, and began a tour of the borders.
When he got round to the opposite side of the floor, he made an interesting discovery. In the corner there a small square closet was partitioned off, with a door fitted to it. He tried the door and it gave to his hand with a little squeak. He risked a brief beam from his pencil-flash: rude shelving, cleaning materials, an ancient can of floor wax, mops and pails. Hackett was quite right; nobody had disturbed the dust in here for a long time. He shut the door gently and went on down the rear width of the building.
The jukebox was never silent long; it seemed to have a repertoire only of waltzes, and now for the third time was rendering, in all senses of the word, "Let Me Call You Sweetheart."
He came to the far corner and with mild gratification found another closet and another door. "At a guess, the fuse boxes," he murmured, and eased the door open. A quick look with the flash interested him so much that he stepped inside, pulled the door shut after him, and swept the flash around for a good look.
Fuse boxes, yes: also, of course, the meter: and a narrow outside door. For the meter reader, obviously: very convenient. He tried it and found himself looking out to a narrow unpaved alley between this building and the warehouse next to it.
And does it mean anything at all? he wondered to himself. He retreated, and now he did not care if he was seen or not; he kept the flash on, the beam pointed downward… How very right Hackett had been: this place had not been so much as swept for years. But full of eddying drafts as it was, you couldn’t expect footprints to stay in the dust, however thick. He worked back and forth between the rail and the wall, dodging the chairs. He had no idea at all what he was looking for, and also was aware that anything he might find would either be completely irrelevant or impossible to prove relevant to the case.
Now, of course, he had been noticed; he heard the attendant’s chair scrape back, and a few of the skaters had drifted over to the rail this side, curious. He didn’t look up from the little spotlight of the flash: he followed it absorbedly back and forth.
"Hey, what the hell you up to, anyway?" The attendant came heavy-footed, shoving chairs out of his path. "Who-"
"Stop where you are, for God’s sake!" exclaimed Mendoza suddenly. "I’m police-you’ll have my credentials in a minute, but don’t come any closer."
"Police-oh, well-"
And Mendoza said aloud to himself, "So here it is. But I don’t believe it, it’s impossible." And to that he added a rueful, "And what in the name of all the devils in hell does it mean?"
In the steady beam of the flash, it lay there mute and perhaps meaningless: a scrap of a thing, three inches long, a quarter-inch wide: a little strip of dainty pink lace, so fine that it might once have been the trimming on the lingerie of a very special doll.
***
Ehrlich went on saying doggedly, "My place didn’t have nothing to do with it." That door, well, sure, the inside one oughta be kept locked, it usually was-but neither he nor the attendants would swear to having checked it for months, all three maintaining it was the other fellow’s responsibility. Mendoza found them tiresome. Hackett and Dwyer, summoned by phone, if they didn’t altogether agree with Ehrlich were less than enthusiastic over Mendoza’s find; Hackett said frankly it didn’t mean a damned thing. He listened to the story of Carol Brooks’ doll and said it still didn’t mean a damned thing.
"I don’t want to disillusion you, but I’ve heard rumors that real live dolls sometimes wear underwear with pink lace on-and just like you say, it is nice and dark along here. Not havin’ such a pure mind as you, I can think of a couple of dandy reasons-"
"And such elegant amenities for it!" said Mendoza sarcastically. "A wooden bench a foot wide, or a pair of folding chairs! I may be overfastidious, but I ask you!"
"There’s a classic tag line you oughta remember: It’s wonderful anywhere."
"So maybe it doesn’t mean anything. Nevertheless, we’ll hang onto it, and I want a sketch of this place, showing that door and the exact spot this was found."
"O.K., will do." There was always a lot of labor expended on such jobs, in a thing like this, that turned out to have been unnecessary; but it couldn’t be helped. And in case something turned out to be relevant, they had to keep the D.A.’s office in mind, document the evidence.
"And what happened to you‘?" added Mendoza, turning on Dwyer, who was sporting a patch bandage taped across one eye.
Dwyer said aggrievedly he ought to’ve run the guy in for obstructing an officer. All he’d been doing was try to find out more about that Browne girl who’d found the body-as per orders. First he’d got the rough side of her landlady’s tongue-the girl wasn’t home-for asking a few ordinary little questions, like did the girl ever bring men home, or get behind in the rent, and so on-you’d have thought she was the girl’s ma,
the way she jumped on him-if the police didn’t have anything better to do than come round insulting decent women-! She’s still yakking at him about that when this guy shows up, who turns out to be some friend of the girl’s, and before Dwyer can show his badge, the guy damns him up and down for a snooper and hauls off and-"Me, Lieutenant! It was a fluke punch, he caught me off balance-"
"That’s your story," said Hackett.
"I swear to-Me, walking into one off a guy I could give four inches and thirty pounds-and his name turns out to be Joe Carpaccio at that!"
"So now you’ve provided the comic relief, what did you get?"
"Not a damn thing but the shiner. Except she’s only lived there three months or so. But how could she be anything to do with it, Lieutenant?"
"I don’t think she is, but no harm getting her last address."
"Well, that was why-"
"Let me give him all the news," said Hackett. "You take the car and go on back, send Clawson over to do a sketch. And then go home and nurse that eye, you’ve had enough excitement for one day." Dwyer said gratefully he’d do that, he had the hell of a headache and he must be getting old, let anything like that happen. Hackett said, "Let’s sit down. I’ve got a couple of little things for you. First, Browne. I was bright enough to ask for her last address when we took her formal statement-let her think it was a regulation of some kind-thought it might be useful. And you might say it was. She gave one, but it turned out to be nonexistent. Which is why I sent Bert to sniff around some more."
"That’s a queer one," said Mendoza. "You think it’s anything for us?"
Hackett considered. "It doesn’t smell that way to me, no. She struck me as an honest girl, and sensible too, which means it’s not likely she’s mixed into anything illegal. But they say everybody’s got something to hide. We might trace her back, sure, but I think all we’d find would be the kind of thing innocent people get all hot and bothered about hiding-an illegitimate baby or a relative in the nut house, or maybe she’s run away from an alcoholic husband. I think it’d be a waste of time myself, but you’re the boss."
