Case Pending llm-2

by Dell Shannon

  "Yes," said Gunn thoughtfully, "and what does that mean, either? Sometimes these husbands head for home and mother, we usually query the home town first-and I have here a reply from the vital records office in Fayetteville saying that no such family has ever resided there."

  "You don't tell me," said Mendoza.

  "This I'll tell you," said Morgan, "because we run into it a lot. Some of these women are ashamed to have the folks at home know about it, and they don't realize we're going to check on it-the same with former addresses here, and she gave me a false one on that too, sure. It doesn't necessarily mean-"

  "No. But it's another little something. What have you got on the boy?"

  "Nothing, why should I have? He exists, that's all we have to know. He's normal, thirteen years old, name Martin Eric Lindstrom, attends seventh grade at John C. Calhoun Junior High."

  Morgan shut the book.

  "That's all? I'd like to know more about the boy. We'll have a look round. No trace of the father yet?"

  "It's early, we've only been on this a few days. Routine inquiries out to every place in the area hiring carpenters-to vital records and so on in other counties-and so on."

  "Yes. Will you let me have a copy of all that you've got, please-to my office. We'll keep an eye on them, see what shows up, if anything. Thanks very much."

  When the two men from Homicide had gone, Gunn said, "Get one of the girls to type up that report, send it over by hand."

  "O.K.," said Morgan. "I suppose-" He was half-turned to the door, not looking at Gunn. "I suppose that means he'll have men watching that apartment."

  "It's one of the basic moves. What's the matter, Dick?"

  "Nothing," said Morgan violently. "Nothing at all. Oh, hell, it's just that- I guess Mendoza always rubs me the wrong way, that's all. Always so damned sure of himself-and I think he's way off the beam here."

  "It doesn't look like much of anything," agreed Gunn. "But on the other hand, well, you never can be sure until you check."

  TEN

  "I have the feeling," said Mendoza-discreetly in Spanish, for the waiter who had seated them was still within earshot-"that I'd better apologize for the meal we're about to have."

  "But why? Everything looks horribly impressive. Including the prices. In fact, after that automatic glance at the right-hand column," said Alison, putting down the immense menu card, "I have the feeting I've been in the wrong business all my life."

  "I never can remember quite how it goes, about fooling some of the people, etcetera." Mendoza glanced thoughtfully around the main dining room of the Maison du Chat, which was mostly magenta, underlighted, and decorated with would-be funny murals of lascivious felines. "It's curious how many people are ready to believe that the highest prices guarantee the best value." The waiter came back and insinuated under their noses liquor lists only slightly smaller than the menus. "What would you like to drink?"

  "Sherry," said Alison faintly, her eyes wandering down the right column.

  "And straight rye," he said to the waiter, who looked shaken and took back the cards with a disappointed murmur.

  "Not in character. I'd expected to find you something of a gourmet."

  "My God, I thought I'd made a better impression. The less one thinks about one's stomach, the less trouble it's apt to cause. And I know just enough about wine to call your attention to those anonymous offerings you just looked at-port, muscatel, tokay, and so on. At three dollars the half-bottle, and they'll be the domestic product available at the nearest supermarket for what?-about one-eighty-nine the gallon."

  "They're not losing money on the imported ones either."

  "About a one hundred percent markup." He looked around again casually, focused on something past her shoulder, and began to smile slowly to himself. "Now isn't that interesting…"

  "I couldn't agree more-I said I've always found the subject fascinating. You're pleased about something, and it can't be the prices."

  "I just noticed an old friend. And what's more, he noticed me. He isn't nearly so pleased about it." The waiter, doing his best with pseudo-Gallic murmurs and deft gestures with paper mats to invest these plebeian potions with glamour, served them. Mendoza picked up his rye and sniffed it cautiously. "?Salud y pesetas! And if this costs them more than a dollar a fifth wholesale, they're being cheated, which I doubt."

  "Why did we come here? I gather it's new to you too."

  "We came because I'm interested in this place, not as a restaurant-professionally. Of course I also wanted to impress you."

  "You have."

  "And I'm gratified to find you see through these spurious trappings of the merely expensive. Next time I'll take you to a hamburger stand."

  "You will not. I like an excuse to get really dressed up occasionally." She had, after all, compromised with his dictation: pearls, and a very modest decollete, but for the rest an oyster-silk sheath.

  "I complimented you once, don't fish for more so early," said Mendoza placidly. "And what I expected to get by coming-besides rooked out of a little money-I don't know. Mr. Torres-Domingo is an unexpected bonus. You see, the uncle of your late pupil went out of his way to visit this place last night, which seemed a little odd."

  "Oh! I should think so. Who is the other gentleman you mentioned?"

  "I wouldn't say gentleman. He just barely avoided an indictment for homicide about eighteen months ago-he was then the proprietor of a bar on Third Avenue. Another gentleman who later turned out to have been a small-time wholesaler of heroin got himself shot full of holes by a third gentleman who subsequently said that Mr.-the first gentleman-had offered him a substantial sum of money to do the job. We didn't doubt his word-after what showed-but unfortunately there just wasn't enough evidence. The first gentleman retired modestly across the Mexican border, though he is an American citizen, and it's interesting to know he's back home. I don't want him for anything myself, but Lieutenant Patrick Callaghan will be very interested to hear that he's now the headwaiter at a fashionable restaurant."

  "I deduce that the lieutenant is on the narcotics team, or whatever you call it."

  "And as you and I are not the only people in the world who speak Spanish, we will now cease to talk shop… What are we offered? All the standard Parisian concoctions. Women living alone subsist mostly on casseroles anyway, no treat to you-I suggest the one concession to Americanism, a steak."

  "Medium well," she agreed meekly. And when the waiter had gone, "May I ask just one question? People make a lot of money in that-er-business you mentioned. Wholesaling you-know-what. Why should they go to all the trouble of holding down regular jobs too? I always thought of them as-as coming out at night, slinking furtively down alleys, you know-like that-not punching time clocks."

  "Oh, God!" he said. "Now you've taken my appetite away. Well, there's a den of crafty bloodsucking robbers in Washington-you'll have heard of them-"

  "Which ones?"

  "It says Bureau of Internal Revenue on the door. Now, the L.A.P.D. couldn't get one useful piece of evidence against the gentleman I mentioned-as we can't always against a lot of others in a lot of businesses, and I do mean big businesses, on the wrong side of the law. But we can't poke our noses into some things those fellows can. A hundred-thousand-dollar apartment house-a new Cadillac-a mink coat for the girl friend-you are doing well, Mr. Smith, how come you never told your uncle about it? And if Mr. Smith can't explain just where it all came from, he's got a lot more grief than a mere city cop could ever hand him."

  "Oh, I see. I do indeed. Cover."

  "And then," added Mendoza, not altogether humorously, "when uncle has stowed Mr. Smith away in jail for tax evasion, the indignant public points an accusing finger at us and says, Corrupt cops!-they must have known about him! Stupid cops!-if they didn't find out! Why wasn't he arrested for his real crimes? You try to tell them, just try, that it's because we have to operate within laws about evidence designed to protect the public…. I wonder whether I ought to call in and tell Pat's off
ice about this." Mr. Tomes-Domingo, who had made a precipitate exit on first catching sight of him, reappeared round the screen at the service doors, polishing his bald head with a handkerchief. He shot one furtive glance in Mendoza's direction, pasted on a professional happy smile, and began to circulate among the tables, pausing for a bow, a word here and there with a favored patron. "Oh, well, there's no hurry-he won't run away, and for all I know he's reformed and hasn't any reason to anyway."

  The steaks could have been less tough; the service might with advantage have been less ostentatious. Mendoza asked her presently whether she'd got anything useful from any of the girls.

  "I wondered when you'd ask. Nothing at all, I'm sorry to say-she hadn't said anything to any of them about that. But she didn't know any of them well, after all."

  "No. I didn't expect much of that. I've got a queer sort of an-can I it a lead?-from another angle, but I don't know that that means much either… What do you think of the murals? I've never asked you what kind of thing you paint."

  Alison said the murals constituted a libel on the feline race and that she was herself unfashionably pre-Impressionistic. "This and that-I'm not wedded to any one particular type of subject. Now and then I actually sell something." They talked about painting; they talked about cats.

  "But when you're away all day, you can't keep pets, it's not fair."

  "Nobody keeps a cat. They condescend to live with you is all. And as for the rest of it, I moved. It's miles farther for me to drive, and the rent's higher, but it's on the ground floor and they let me put in one of those little swinging doors in the back door, out to the yard. You've seen the ads-let your pet come and go freely. Yes, a fine idea, but she won't use it-she knows how it works, but she doesn't like the way it slaps her behind, and she got her tail pinched once. Fortunately the other seven apartments are inhabited by cat people. Four of them have keys to mine and run in and out all day waiting on her, which of course is what she schemes for. I believe Mrs. Carter and Mrs. Bryson," he added, looking around for the waiter, "alternate their shopping tours and visits to the beauty salon-coffee, please-" And pairhaps some of our special brandy, sair?"

  "That I need," said Alison, "after listening to this barefaced confession. Battening on the charity of your neighbors like that-"

  "One of the reasons I picked the apartment. The Elgins keep her supplied with catnip mice, they buy them in wholesale lots, having three Siamese of their own. Of course there is a man two doors down who has a spaniel, but one must expect some undesirables in these unrestricted neighborhoods." The waiter came back with the coffee, the brandy, and the bill on a salver, contriving to slide that in front of Mendoza by a kind of legerdemain suggesting that it appeared out of thin air, not through any offices of this obsequious and excellent servant. Mendoza looked at it, laid two tens on the salver and said now he needed the brandy too.

  "I have no sympathy for you," said Alison.

  When they came out into the foyer, Mendoza hesitated, glancing at the discreet row of phone booths in an alcove. "I wonder if I had-" There had appeared no bowing, smiling headwaiter as they left the dining room, to make the last honors to new patrons, urge a return. "Oh, well," and he put a hand automatically to his pocket for more largesse as one of the several liveried lackeys approached with Alison's coat.

  "So 'appy to 'ave 'ad you wiz us, sair and madame-I 'ope you enjoyed your disenair? You mus' come back soon-Holy Mother o' God, what the hell was that?" Between them they dropped the coat; the lackey took one look over Alison's shoulder, said, "Jesus, let me out of here!" and dived blindly for the door, staggering Mendoza aside. The second volley of shots was a medley of several calibers, including what sounded like a couple of regulation's. From the dark end of the corridor off the foyer plunged a large, shapeless man waving a revolver, and close after him the tuxedo-clad rotundity of Mr. Tomes-Domingo, similarly equipped. The checkroom attendant prudently dropped flat behind his counter as the large man paused to fire twice more behind him and charged into the foyer.

  "Wait for me, Neddy!" Mr. Tomes-Domingo sent one wild shot behind him and another inadvertently into the nearest phone booth as he continued flight.

  The first man swept the gun in an are round the foyer. "Don't nobody move-I'm comin' through-"

  Mendoza recovered his balance, shoved Alison hard to sprawl full length on the floor, and in one leap covered the ten feet to the gun as it swung back in his direction. He got a good left-handed grip on the gunhand as they collided, his momentum lending force to the considerable impact, and as they went down landed one right that connected satisfactorily.

  Neddy went over backward and Mendoza went with him; the gun emptied itself into the ceiling as they hit the floor with Mendoza's knee in the paunch under him; Neddy uttered a strangled whoof and lost an interest in the proceedings.

  Mr. Tomes-Domingo yelped, fired once more and hit the plate-glass door, turned and ran into the embrace of an enormous red-haired man in the vanguard of the pursuit, which had just erupted down the corridor. The red-haired man adjusted him to a convenient position and hit him once in the jaw, and he flew backward six feet and collapsed on top of Mendoza, who was just sitting up. One of the three men behind the red-haired man dropped his gun and sank onto the divan beside the checkroom, clutching his shoulder.

  There was a very short silence before several women in the crowd collecting at the dining-room door went off like air-raid sirens.

  Mendoza heaved off Mr. Tomes-Domingo, sat up and began to swear in Spanish. The red-haired man bellowed the crowd to quiet, and turned to the man nearest him: "Find a phone and call the wagon and an ambulance-and-" flinging round to the man on the divan-"just what in the name of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph did you think you were doing, you almighty bastard? You-"

  "?Hijo de perra! -Take your hands off that man, you son of a Dublin whore!" Mendoza shoved him away and bent over Higgins, who was fumbling a handkerchief under his coat. "Easy, boy "It's not bad, Lieutenant-I just-"

  "Before God!-Luis Mendoza!-does this belong to you? Just what the holy hell are you doing in this?-you tellin' me you put this blundering bastard out back there-to bitch up two months' work and the first chance I've had to lay hands on-I ought to bust you right in the-I ought to-"

  Mendoza twitched the handkerchief from the red-haired man's breast pocket, wadded it up with his own, shoved Higgins flat on the divan and pulled aside the coat to slap on the temporary bandage. "Temper, Patrick, temper! We're in public-you'll be giving people the idea there's no loyalty, no unity in the police force. And listen, you red bastard, next time you have to knock a man out to arrest him, for the love of God don't aim him at me-you've damn near fractured my spine! There's the squad car. For God's sake, let's clear this crowd back-Who's this?"

  The little round man who had popped out like a cork from the dining-room crowd was sounding off in falsetto. "I am the manager-I am the owner-what do you do here in my place, shooting and yelling? I call the police!-what is all this about?-shootings-gangsters-I will not have gangsters in my nice quiet place-"

  "Then you shouldn't hire one as a headwaiter," said Mendoza. "And you should also change your butcher, your steaks are tough." He pushed past him and went over to Alison, who was just somewhat shakily regaining her feet. "I don't usually knock them down the first date, mi vida -apologies! Are you all right? Here, sit down."

  " I'm all right," said Alison, "but you owe me a pair of stockings."

  ***

  Morgan had read somewhere that marijuana did this to you, played tricks with time, so first it seemed to slow down, almost grind to a full stop, and then sent everything past you at the speed of light. His watch told him he'd been standing here on this corner just an hour and twelve minutes, no more and no less; for a while it had felt like half eternity, and then, a while after that, time began to go too fast. Where he'd been tense with impatience, wound up tight for action- God, make him come -suddenly, now, he could have prayed for time to stop. Not now, he said to Smith
frantically in his mind, you can't come now, until I've thought about this, figured it out, got hold of another plan.

  Oh, Christ damn Luis Mendoza and his little slum-street mugging!-what the hell did that matter, some damn-fool chippy knocked off, probably she'd asked for it, and that crazy idea about those Lindstroms who couldn't by any fantastic stretch of the imagination have had anything to do… Because, yes, this upright citizen Morgan had a good innocent reason to visit that apartment house, he wouldn't care if the whole L.A. police force stood by in squads to watch him go in-but after he was clocked in by men watching, he couldn't lie in wait maybe an hour, and do what he'd come to do, and then say Just as I got to the top of the stairs – Nor could he call at the Lindstroms' first, thinking to say, Just as I was leaving – That woman might not be very smart but she could tell time, and suppose he'd left her half an hour before, as might well happen? Also, of course, there was no telling about the cops: where and how and how many. It might be a desultory thing, one man outside up to midnight, something like that; it might be a couple of men round the clock; it could be a couple of men inside somewhere.

  So he hadn't dared go near Graham Court at all. It had had to be the street corner; and on his way here, and up to a while ago, he'd been telling himself that after all the street was safer. Once you were off Main, off Second, along here, the streets were underhghted and there weren't many people; in all this while he'd stood and strolled up and down outside the corner drugstore here, only four people had come by, at long intervals. Safer, and also more plausible that Smith would try a holdup on a darkish side street, instead of in the very building where he lived.

  Morgan had been feeling pretty good then: ready for it, coldly wound up (the way it had been before action, when you knew action was coming) but-in control. He'd known just how it would go, Smith coming along (he'd been wary before, sent the boy to check that Morgan had come alone, but this time he wouldn't bother, he thought he had Morgan and-the ransom-tied up); and Morgan pretending nervousness, saying he had the money locked in the glove compartment, his car was just round the corner. Round the corner, an even narrower, darker street. Sure to God Smith would walk a dozen steps with him…