Extra Kill llm-3

by Dell Shannon

  "That's so. It makes a picture, all right. And that'd give the Kingmans a dandy reason to put him out of the way. I'll say this too, it makes it look even more natural, maybe, that they stood it nearly four years before getting fed up. Because con men don't use violence, they like everything nice and easy and smooth, it isn't once in a blue moon you find one of 'em committing actual physical assault. It might be that it wasn't until Twelvetrees got a little too greedy and asked too much blackmail that they got worked up to that. The only thing I don't like about it, Luis, is the spot Twelvetrees landed in-treasurer. The Kingmans wouldn't have handed him anything like that, as blackmail payment. Why, he could have taken off with the whole bank account any day."

  "So he could. But I think we'd find, Arturo, that it was treasurer in name only-that Kingman was damned careful to keep a check on the account. A kind of gentleman's agreement. You know, let me in on your racket and I won't tell-and on Kingman's side, you level with us on the racket or I'll tell what I know about you. Don't forget, Twelvetrees still had dreams of a future as a big stat. His agents wouldn't care about keeping him on their books, he wouldn't have a chance of getting anywhere in big-time show business, if it was known he'd served apprenticeship as a pimp and got tagged for it. He got Kingman to give him a job openly-he wanted an excuse to quit the nine-to-five job he had, which he probably didn't enjoy much. But I'll bet you too that the bank will tell us that one of the Kingmans made some excuse for coming in regularly to check up. It was a fifty-fifty deal, scratch my back and I'll scratch yours."

  "Something in that, sure."

  "I should hate," said Mendoza, "to have to arrest Madame Cara. She's a very intelligent woman, she says I have great insight and wisdom. But it would have been so much more convenient, you know, if there'd been two of them on the job, on account of Twelvetrees' car. If just one person did it all, how awkward that part of it would be-driving the Porsche clear down to the Union Station, a good ten miles or more, and then having to get back to pick up the car left at the apartment. If, of course, there was one and the murderer hadn't been driven there by Twelvetrees. It's a great pity Mrs. Bragg minded her own business so assiduously… There are a lot of things we don't know yet. But it's very helpful that we can almost pin it down to that Friday night-"

  "I don't see that we can," said Hackett. "I don't like it much, Walsh's thing, about Bartlett."

  "I do. I think it makes sense." Mendoza sat up and swiveled around to the desk again. "I don't say it's certain, no, but I like it enough that I've told the D.A.'s office to get a continuance on bringing those kids up, until we know a little more. Here's what Ballistics says on the gun. It's one of an experimental lot of smooth-bore revolvers made by Winchester about fifty years ago. Not too many like it will be floating around these days, but it's nothing antique in the sense of being rare or valuable-we're not likely to get an identification of ownership on it that way. Now, as the class will remember from yesterday's lecture, I trust, we all know that a firearm with a smooth-bored barrel is never as accurate over distances as one whose barrel is rifled with spiral grooves. However, at fairly short distances a smoothbore is accurate enough in expert hands. Ballistics had a lot of fun firing different kinds of bullets out of this at different distances, and they tell us that with a cannelured bullet-which, if you will recall, was the type found in Bartlett and on the kids-a reasonably good shot can expect quite fair accuracy out of this at up to about twenty-five feet."

  "You say it's just coincidence the kids were carrying. 38 cannelured bullets and Bartlett got killed with the same kind?"

  "If you'd just think about these things, that's all I ask-a little rudimentary logic. The kids had a homemade gun, and quite naturally it also has a smooth-bored barrel. Actually a piece of pipe. Anybody who knows anything at all about guns, and is stuck with a smooth-bore, is going to try to make up for the handicap by using cannelured bullets, which are grooved. Has the class any questions?"

  "Yes, please, teacher. How does a slick con man-or in fact anybody we've heard of in this case so far-come to be such a Deadeye Dick with an old cannon like this?"

  "Now there you do ask an awkward question," admitted Mendoza. "I don't know. But it's a fifty-fifty chance that it was just wild luck, you know. And I'll say this. We've been thinking that whoever fired those shots at Bartlett and Walsh did it in the dark-a dark rainy night, along a stretch of road lighted only by high arc lights. I went out there last night, before I waylaid Laidlaw, and roped Gonzales and Farber in on a little game. I'd got Walsh to tell me just where the squad car was sitting in relation to the light at the corner of Cameron and San Dominguez, and I placed Gonzales and Farber there and drove past a couple of times. And you know what? Just the way it had slipped my mind about patrolmen changing round at the wheel, another little thing slipped all our minds when we thought about this before. Go on now, be a detective and tell me what it was."

  "My God," said Hackett. "The roof light."

  "That's my boy, you get A-plus. Going on and off almost right over the driver's head, whenever the car's standing still. It's a nice straight road along there, and the shoulder where the squad car was sitting is unobstructed for a hundred yards each way. And thirty isn't really very fast, in relation to an object, say, fifteen feet to the side-you've got time to see it, coming up. I think it must have been a double take-that whoever it was spotted the car by its number, maybe when Bartlett and Walsh had stopped that car for speeding. So X speeded up and doubled back, to try his shot without that additional witness-and so, coming up on them, he knew it was the right car, he didn't have to spot the number and get in position to fire, all at once. It's just a question-I tried a dry run on it last night-of taking your right hand off the wheel, your eyes off the road, for about three seconds, and tiring at right angles out the driver's window."

  "That's if there was only the driver-even saying it was whoever killed Twelvetrees, that there's any connection."

  "Sure. If there were two, a lot easier. One to drive, one to shoot. But when you come to think, whoever killed Twelvetrees had quite a bit to do that night-"

  "I still say there's nothing to show definitely it was that night."

  " Pues mira, chico -look here-al1 right, but it was some night, because if it had been broad daylight Mrs. Bragg, or one of the housewives in the other apartments, would have seen someone arrive and leave. Going to Twelvetrees' place you'd have to walk or drive past all those other front doors. I refuse to believe that human nature has improved so much since I first began to notice it among the five women who're usually at home most of the day in that court, not one was curious enough about a good-looking bachelor to take at least casual note of his movements and visitors. You grant me that's likely? Then I say it's also likely that whatever happened happened that Friday night, when it was raining and overcast and people were staying inside ignoring the neighbors. And also because on the Saturday and Sunday nobody seems to recall seeing the Porsche in Twelvetrees' carport. True, they wouldn't be looking for it, he was probably out a good deal, and nobody would take special note of it one way or the other, there or not there, so that's negative evidence. But we haven't yet found anybody who remembers seeing him after the Kingmans saw him leave the Temple at four o'clock on Friday. The three or four restaurants he habitually used say he didn't come in that night. The garage where he took the Porsche hadn't seen him for three weeks. No gas station he might hit on his way home sold him any gas. His agents don't remember that he'd come in since several days before. The autopsy says he'd had, probably, beef stew, salad, and some kind of pie about two to six hours before he died. Not helpful unless we find the restaurant where he went, and they remember. All right. Nobody remembers either how long the Porsche had been standing where it was left. We've got no evidence, except negative evidence. But why didn't he show up anywhere on Saturday or Sunday?"

  "We don't know he didn't," said Hackett. "Maybe somebody just hasn't come forward to say. Maybe this old flame of yours knew where he
was those two days. Maybe, for that matter, he never did leave the Temple on Friday and the Kingmans just say he did. Maybe he was killed there and ferried out-"

  " Caray, let's not make it any more complicated than it is! You're forgetting those suitcases-those carefully packed suitcases. What did we say when we looked at them? He was getting ready to clear out, of his own choice. Now maybe he was just moving to another apartment, maybe he was going to get married, maybe he'd just heard he'd inherited a million dollars and didn't have to stay in the racket any longer-but one of the possibilities is that for some reason his whole private racket was up, here, and he had to get out. Say he was going to clear. Then tell me what he'd have done too, just before he left."

  "That's an easy one, he'd have taken some of the Kingmans' money along with him. But it depends on a lot of ifs."

  "Well, I don't know that it does. There are a lot of fishy things about the Kingmans' behavior, but two things are a little fishier than the rest. In the first place, you'll never get me to believe-no matter whether all this about Twelvetrees' blackmailing them was so or not-that Mr. Martin Kingman is so unworldly and unbusinesslike that he didn't have a home address and a phone number for the treasurer of his Temple. Why didn't he give Woods that information right away, if he was so anxious to catch up with Twelvetrees? And second, he jumped the gun very damned quick, didn't he, on laying a charge? If, as I think we can almost take for granted, the Kingmans and Twelvetrees looked on this Mystic Truth business as nothing but a business, there wouldn't be anything very peculiar about dear Brooke missing their Sabbath ceremonies-it must have happened before, his taking a weekend off. He couldn't have gotten into the bank then before ten on Monday morning, either to deposit the month's receipts or close out the accounts. And, de paso, that in itself poses a funny little question, you know. If he was planning to run with a big handful of the profit-as much as he could persuade the bank to let him have-why was he packing up and getting ready to leave as early as Friday? It'd be Monday before he could-"

  "So there you are, maybe it wasn't Friday."

  "Reason it through," said Mendoza. "It wouldn't have been very sensible, if he intended to take off on Monday morning, to start packing on Saturday night. And we know it wasn't Sunday night, because Mrs. Bragg found the note on Sunday noon, he'd already gone by then. I wonder if that bank-yes, well, file that for thinking about… Kingman knew what time the bank opened, after all, and closed. When he saw Twelvetrees on Friday afternoon, the banks were still open-if he was afraid Twelvetrees was planning larceny, why didn't he contact the bank then? And bright and early Monday morning we find him ‘checking with the bank'-evidently because he's leaped to this conclusion over the Saturday when dear Brooke didn't show up-and at a quarter past ten he's up in Theft laying the charge. Which looks-" Mendoza stopped and interrupted himself reflectively, "Or, of course-"

  "You've argued yourself into a corner there," said Hackett. "If he thought there was any danger Twelvetrees was going to try to clean them out-or already had-then he didn't know Twelvetrees was dead."

  "Or it was a double play," said Mendoza. "And also-"

  "Oh, the hell with it," said Hackett. "We've wasted half the morning talking about it-let's get busy and collect some more facts to fit into the picture."

  “Those we can always use more of," agreed Mendoza. But when Hackett left he was still sitting there motionless, staring out the window… Doubtless still trying to fill in details on his idea about Joe Bartlett, thought Hackett.

  ***

  And Mendoza knew Hackett didn't go along on that, thought it was a wild one. He also knew it might be, that he must keep an open mind on it himself. His besetting sin was that dislike for ragged edges, wanting everything neat, precisely dovetailed; and criminal cases, like a lot of other things in life, didn't always work out that way. Often there were ragged edges all round the truth-human nature and real life being what it was.

  That was a satisfying, dramatic little picture he'd seen, on Walsh's thing-a murderer panicking, killing Bartlett in error. But it might not be the true picture: maybe those kids had killed Bartlett after all, and that had nothing to do with the Twelvetrees case. Maybe it had been Twelvetrees himself who opened the door when the squad car was sitting there and didn't think twice about it when he saw it was the alcoholic Johnstones again.

  By the same token, he couldn't let himself get so sold on the Kingmans that he ignored evidence pointing away from them. But he fancied the Kingmans quite highly: if Pennsylvania could offer any suggestions as to what Twelvetrees might have had on them, their stock would go even higher.

  He wanted to locate Marian Marner, find out what she'd had to do with Twelvetrees, and he wanted to find out from Twelvetrees' agents anything the man might have said about himself, and possibly contact in that way any friends Twelvetrees might have made among people in that circle, show business hopefuls. The paper had had this since the late extras on Saturday, and probably everyone who had known him had seen the news: if anyone had any information to volunteer, it should turn up today or tomorrow. And just for the record, they'd have a look at Whalen. But on the whole the Kingmans looked like the obvious bet…

  He'd see the Kingmans himself.

  Before he left his office, however, one of those things happened that a detective had to get used to-some new bit of evidence turning up that made a favored theory more doubtful.

  Sergeant Lake, who was going through the amended list of model agencies looking for Marian Marner, came in and said there was a cab driver outside in answer to the official enquiry sent out to all the companies. "Oh?" said Mendoza, rather surprised. “Well, all right, I'd better see him." Because if it had been the Kingmans working together, there'd have been no need for whoever had disposed of the Porsche taking a cab backs to the apartment: one would have driven the Porsche, the other their own car.

  The cab driver was tall, thin, elderly, a clerkish-looking fellow with rimless glasses and a diffident manner. He had a funny little story to tell, and Mendoza listened to it in growing annoyance that it couldn't be fitted into any theory he had.

  "It was just after midnight that Friday night, the thirtieth," the driver said when his slight nervousness had been soothed and he was sitting back more at ease with a cigarette. "I'd just taken a couple to the Union Station, I guess to make the Owl for San Francisco-only passenger I know of leaving about then. Business is always slow that time of night, you know. I hung around waiting for the Lark down from the north, she was late-due in at ten-forty, but she didn't get in until eleven-fifty, some trouble on the line up at Santa Maria, I heard. Well, I guess you aren't interested in all that, it was just-not many came off her and none of 'em wanted a cab-all been met, you see-so I thought I'd go uptown where chances were better for strays. I went up Alameda and through the old Plaza, you see, and it was just as I came by the old Mission Church there, this woman hailed me. I guess maybe you'll know it's dark as hell along there, that time of night-all the shops in Olvera Street was shut then, and those old streets are so narrow, and all the trees in the old Plaza square-we1l, she had to step right off the curb almost into my headlights to hail me. And that was the only real good look I got at her, rest of the time it was all dark-"

  "What did she look like‘?”

  "She looked like the Witch of Endor," said the driver frankly. "And she acted about as queer. I wasn't surprised one bit to see your official query in our office last night-of course it didn't give any description, but the places nailed it for me, I says right off, that's my girl. This one look I got at her, in the head-beam, you see, well, I couldn't give you a real description, I mean how tall she was or what color eyes or hair or even. what sort of age, naturally. But there she was with this Mexican serape over her head like a shawl, see, and kind of wound around her neck, and what made it look so funny was that she'd put it on top of a hat-I guess maybe to protect her hat from the rain. And the hat had a veil, and she'd pulled that right down over her face. But what I could see
of her face under the veil, well, she'd just plastered the make-up on-looked like a clown, or something-God knows what her natural face looked like under it."

  " Fuera, la drama extravagante," muttered Mendoza. "Can it be? Yes, go on, what about the rest of her clothes?"

  "She had on a long coat, that's all I could see. It was a lightish color and it had dark bands, like trimming of some sort, down the front. And when she talked, she had a funny kind of foreign accent. She said ‘ze' for ‘the,' you know, and ‘Please to take me,' and all that, but I couldn't say what kind of accent it was, French or German or what-and she didn't say much. She was just in the light like that a second, and I stopped, and she hopped around and got in the cab before I knew it, hardly, with her suitcase-”