Obit Delayed

by Nielsen, Helen

  Unless you’re hiding something you don’t want the police to find—but Mitch kept that thought to himself. The important thing at the moment was finding at least some corroboration for Frank Wales’s story that Virginia was afraid. Add fear to Dave Singer’s appearances at Pinky’s lunchroom, plus the puzzle of Pinky’s unlikely prosperity, and all kinds of interesting possibilities came to mind. Suddenly Mitch was very curious as to whether Dave Singer’s flashy convertible had ever been parked at Virginia’s door, but before he could frame the question Mamma Molina was trotting down the walk to shake a threatening fist at a boy who was allowing his dog to misuse her parkway lawn.

  “Get away from here, you bad boy!” she shouted. “Ain’t you caused me enough trouble already? Go home!”

  The boy nonchalantly pushed his dog into the gutter, but the concession didn’t satisfy Mamma. “You don’t live on this street,” she scolded. “Why don’t you stay on your own street?”

  “I can stay on any street I want!” the boy retorted. “Streets belong to everybody!”

  “Well, my house don’t belong to everybody! Break into my house again and you’ll be sorry!”

  This was even more than Mitch had hoped for. He didn’t have to find the boy; the boy had found him. And the dog, an awkward, half-grown mongrel held in tow by a clothesline leash, really was Virginia’s. The boy had apparently won his dispute for possession.

  “Isn’t that Virginia Wales’s dog?” Mitch asked, and the boy’s face turned dark with anger.

  “Duke’s my dog!” he insisted. “He’s always been my dog!”

  “Pay no attention to the boy,” Mrs. Molina broke in. “That’s Virginia’s dog, all right, and he knows good and well it is. He pestered me enough to get it after poor Virginia was murdered!”

  “Because he was my dog! That’s why I pestered you. I told you that before.”

  Whatever the boy had told Mrs. Molina he wasn’t going to waste time telling Mitch. That truck down the street might be interesting, but not enough to risk having his right to the dog challenged. “Hey, wait a minute!” Mitch yelled as both boy and dog took to their heels. But yelling only made them run the faster. “Darn that kid!” he fumed. “I wanted to talk to him. I wonder what he was up to in that house last night.”

  “No good, you can be sure of that!” the woman declared. “He’s a bad one, that boy. Just like his brother. I only gave him the dog to get rid of him and now look, back already!”

  By this time Mamma Molina was armed with a rake and busily repairing her damaged lawn, which gave Mitch a chance to speculate about that dog. It wasn’t more than six months old, and if Virginia had acquired the animal for protective purposes he might be able to put a starting-date on her fear. But when he put the idea before Mamma she shook her graying head.

  “Virginia didn’t buy the dog,” she insisted. “It was the other one, the brother, he gave it to her. I don’t know but what it really was Jimmy’s dog the way he says. I wouldn’t put it past Mickey Degan to give away his little brother’s puppy just to make a hit with a girl.”

  Now she stopped and rested a moment on the rake, completely unaware that Mitch was strangling on the words he finally sputtered. “Not Virginia!” he said.

  “Sure, Virginia. He was crazy about her. She used to laugh about that. ‘Mamma,’ she’d say, ‘I don’t know whether I should go out with him or adopt him.’ To her it was a joke, everything a big joke.” The woman sighed and peered sadly at the house next door. “It don’t seem the same,” she mused. “Nobody laughs around here any more.”

  It was a nice epitaph for Virginia but Mitch didn’t hear it. He was already sprinting down the street after a boy and his dog.

  Mickey Degan’s life had been short but colorful. He’d been in enough police line-ups to be identified as a hoodlum, junior grade, and Mitch saw no reason to doubt Pinky’s allegation that a trade in marijuana was one of his pastimes. But to be even a small-time operator in Valley City Mickey had to get orders from the same source as Dave Singer, and that’s what made Mamma’s words so interesting. If Mickey had been one of Virginia’s suitors then a little light was showing in the darkness. Now Virginia’s shabby world might actually be linked to the chrome-and-plush model of Vince Costro’s.

  Not being adept at climbing fences, Mitch had to cover a couple of blocks before intercepting Jimmy Degan at his own front door. Like all wise men of twelve Jimmy was coldly suspicious of strangers who followed him home.

  “Aw right, so I’m Jimmy Degan,” he admitted under questioning. “What’s it to you?”

  “I’m Mitch Gorman of the Independent,” Mitch responded brightly. “You’re the boy who found Frank Wales, aren’t you? I’d like your story for the paper.”

  The psychology seemed right but the subject didn’t respond. Maybe Jimmy didn’t approve of newspapers. “I got to go in now,” he muttered.

  “That was sure smart of you, looking in the one place the police never thought of looking. How did you know Wales would be there?”

  The boy hesitated, one foot on the bottom step. What was this guy trying to pull, anyway? Frank Wales was a murderer and Jimmy Degan wasn’t messing around with any murderer. “I didn’t know,” he insisted. “I wasn’t even looking for him.”

  “Then what were you looking for?”

  “A dog collar. Just a little old dog collar, and it belongs to Duke anyway.”

  “Duke?” Mitch eyed the pup, a mongrel without a trace of lordly bearing. “You mean the dog your brother gave to Virginia Wales.”

  “He’s my dog!” Jimmy said.

  “Sure he is, and he needs a collar. How much does a good collar cost these days? A dollar, maybe?”

  Psychology had its uses but currency was a lot more persuasive with a realist like Jimmy Degan. The billfold Mitch was holding in his hand began to make an impression.

  “Two dollars?” he prodded.

  “That collar Virginia bought him has a license on it,” Jimmy recalled.

  “Plus two dollars for a license makes four dollars. Or do you still have to go in?”

  Jimmy took his foot down off the step and eyed the four dollars hungrily. Nobody handed out money for nothing—he’d lived long enough to learn that much—but it didn’t hurt to listen.

  “Why did Mickey give your dog to Virginia?” Mitch asked.

  “So she’d like him, I guess. So she’d go out with him.”

  “And did she go out with him?”

  Jimmy hesitated, never taking his eyes from the bills in Mitch’s hand. “Sure,” he said at last, “she went out with him lotsa times. What of it?”

  It was true, then. Mickey Degan and Virginia Wales, as queer a combination as Mitch could have imagined. A young punk like Mickey with his roaring hot-rod and exaggerated toughness—what could he offer a woman like Virginia Wales? Youth, of course, and laughter. A good time. Mitch was beginning to get the hang of it now. That shabby little shack a couple of blocks away didn’t stack up with Dave Singer and his expensive surroundings—it wasn’t even in Rita’s class. But Mickey Degan, yes. A kid from the same side of the tracks who liked music and dancing, and who would probably talk mighty big in the presence of what he considered a woman of the world. He might even have flashed a few samples of his stock in trade, or bragged about how it was brought across the border.

  But Mitch was going to have to do his woolgathering elsewhere, because now the screen door was sighing open at the top of the steps and a woman’s voice caught him in the act of passing over that four dollars.

  “Jimmy, what’s going on down there?”

  Mitch looked up to find a thin-faced woman who might have been halfway pretty once upon a time glaring down at him. “Mrs. Degan?” he inquired.

  “What do you want?” she demanded.

  “I was just talking to your son about his discovery last night. I thought he deserved some kind of reward.” (That was to cover for the bills Jimmy was hastily stuffing into his jeans.)

  “He’s
already had a reward,” the woman announced ominously, “and he’ll get worse if he breaks into anybody’s house again! Are you from the police?”

  That explained the fear in her eyes. Mrs. Degan had experienced her share of policemen on the doorstep when Mickey was alive. But Mitch wasn’t from the police and telling her that should have eased the tension instead of worsening it.

  “Jimmy’s got nothing to say to the newspapers,” she insisted. “It’s hard enough to bring a boy up right without having him read about himself and get big ideas.”

  “I see your point,” Mitch conceded, “and I certainly don’t want to cause trouble. It just seemed an interesting sidelight that Wales was found because of a dog collar.”

  “Has he been talking about that collar again? Jimmy, get into the house this instant!” Mrs. Degan took a step forward, and Jimmy responded by taking to his heels, dog, four dollars, and all. “Do you see?” She sighed. “Do you see what I have to contend with? I’ve lost one boy. Do I have to lose Jimmy, too?”

  The words cut deep when Mitch remembered that Mickey was a scant four weeks in his grave, but he hadn’t earned that early grave all by himself. “It’s possible,” he said grimly, “so long as certain elements in this town can get away with murder.”

  Murder was a word with many uses. It could stop a conversation or open one, depending on the persons involved, and Mrs. Degan had learned by experience to watch out for hidden meanings. A strange man at the doorstep passing out money to her son and asking questions about Virginia Wales wasn’t likely to be merely passing the time of day. Reluctantly, she held open the door while Mitch ascended the steps into a tiny living-room that tried pitifully to be attractive without the benefit of funds. The cheap cretonne at the windows was meant to be gay, and the dime-store landscape over a slip-covered sofa probably constituted a major luxury.

  Mrs. Degan didn’t offer Mitch a chair. He was in the house only because private conversations weren’t held on open doorsteps.

  “I know what you’re after,” she said. “I heard you questioning Jimmy before I came out. Mickey did know Virginia Wales but I can’t see what difference it makes now. He can’t be blamed for her death, too.”

  “Nobody’s trying to blame him,” Mitch said. “I was pumping Jimmy because I’m interested in learning anything and everything about Virginia. She was afraid of something, Mrs. Degan, that much I do know. Since she was a friend of Mickey’s, maybe you know something about it.”

  Now the woman looked mystified. Everybody knew that the man who killed Virginia Wales was fighting for his life at the hospital—the radio gave hourly bulletins. Besides, she didn’t know Virginia. Virginia was Mickey’s friend, she explained, and Mickey didn’t bring his friends home. “When I heard who he was dating I told him to stop,” she said. “I thought Virginia Wales was too old for him and maybe a little fast.”

  Fast for Mickey Degan? Mitch restrained a smile.

  “I hadn’t met her then,” the woman added.

  “Then you did meet her later?”

  “After Mickey was dead.”

  They weren’t easy words for a mother to speak. Mitch counted the clock ticks for a few moments, and became aware of the photograph on a side table. The Independent had run that photo the day Pfc Michael Degan’s widow had received his Silver Star. Alongside it was a likeness of Mickey, only this wasn’t a photograph. It was a sketch.

  “She brought me that the day of the funeral,” Mrs. Degan remarked, noting his interest. “They’d been on a date somewhere and had it made. She thought I might like to have it.”

  A date somewhere. Mitch moved closer and studied the drawing and that hen-track signature, and that somewhere became rather special.

  “I could see Mickey didn’t mean anything to her,” Mrs. Degan added, “but she seemed, well, just sorry about everything. She even brought a doll for my little girl—she’s sleeping with it now. I don’t know if she was really fast or not, people always talk about a divorced woman. But if she was afraid of anything, as you say, Mr. Gorman, she never told me.”

  Naturally not. A fear too private for Mamma Molina or the police wasn’t likely to be shared with a stranger. But the fear was real, all right, and now Mitch had an idea where it might have started. Too bad Ruiz didn’t date his masterpieces.

  Mitch had a lot on his mind walking back to the coupé. He felt as if he’d put his last coin in a slot machine and hit the jackpot—only it was too soon to tell whether it was silver or slugs. It might be worth another trip south to test Ruiz’s memory, providing he could chase Jimmy and Duke off the front bumper. “Your mother wants you,” he reminded, and the kid wrinkled his nose. “I was just rememberin’,” he mused. “I think that collar in Virginia’s house has a leash on it.”

  “And you’ll have one on you if you go near it.”

  “Aw, Ma don’t know everything!”

  That was something Mitch could believe without effort. And then he had a hunch that wouldn’t cost a cent to play. “Do you mean like Mickey dating Virginia after she told him not to?”

  “Sure. How did you know?”

  “You just told me. But I’ll bet you can’t tell me the last time he dated her.”

  Just a kid with a wicked grin and everything hanging on his answer, because there had to be a reason for Virginia taking Mickey’s death so hard. And then the grin widened.

  “That’s easy,” Jimmy chirped. “He gave me fifty cents to wash his car so he could take her to Mexicali. It was the night that lousy cop shot him.”

  17

  MAYBE THERE WAS some justice, after all. The wise used wisdom and the clever cunning, but a small boy with a gripe could confound them both with one word—Mexicali. Not that there was anything sinister about an ordinary date in Mexicali. People did it all the time. The music was loud, the beer warm, and the streets colorful and crowded the way tourists expected them to be; but when a lad like Mickey Degan journeyed across the border the event took on certain implications. And when he was shot shortly thereafter, and his companion of the evening later terrorized and murdered, the situation added up to something that made Mitch sympathize with Virginia’s request for new locks on her doors.

  Had Mickey gone to Mexicali merely for a good time, or had he combined business with pleasure? And in the event he had brought back something other than a souvenir, where was it now? These were a few of the questions Mitch pondered on his way back to the office, because now he had work to do in the files—a lot of work. Four weeks was a long time to remember the details of the death of a punk like Mickey Degan.

  One man had seen Mickey die, and he was going to hit the ceiling at the mention of the kid’s name. Mitch put it off as long as possible and then gave Lois a number to call, an assignment she fulfilled grudgingly, one eye on the clock that was rapidly approaching quitting-time. After that Mitch went back to his office to mull over the testimony recorded in a back number of the Independent: Kendall Hoyt’s testimony at the inquest into the death of Mickey Degan.

  The story was clear, concise, and unrevealing. At approximately two a.m., after a normally unlawful Saturday night, Officer Hoyt had been cruising in a police car down Fremont Avenue. As he neared the intersection of B Street the night was pierced with the wail of a protesting burglar alarm. Hoyt slammed on the brakes, leaped from the car, and ran toward the sound which was coming from a liquor store on the corner. When a figure darted out of the shadowed doorway and sprinted for the car waiting at the curb, Hoyt shouted an unheeded warning and fired twice. That was the sworn record of how Mickey Degan died.

  The verbal testimony didn’t do a thing for Mitch’s newly acquired theory, but there was an ambitious kid in town who possessed a good camera and a morbid sense of values. He free-lanced whatever he could to the Independent, and there in the files was a nice big glossy of the shooting scene that had everything including the pool of blood. The shot had been taken from behind Mickey and showed his sprawled body just as it had fallen when he raced toward th
e car at the curb. The right-hand door of the car gaped open tauntingly, and that’s where Mitch’s eyes came to rest for a while—on the right-hand door. He was still studying the photograph when someone big and hostile walked in and planted himself at his shoulder.

  Strange the way time could slip away when the mind was busy. Mitch looked up to see the outer office deserted and the dusk beginning to crowd against the windows, but all of that was beyond Kendall Hoyt’s square shoulders. It was too late to shove the picture out of sight, and it really didn’t matter since there was no such thing as a tactful approach to the subject of Mickey’s death. Let Hoyt take a good look and warm up his curiosity.

  “Is that what you ruined my nap for—just to look at a picture?”

  The complaint seemed logical. Sleep was still lingering behind the anger in Hoyt’s eyes, and his slacks were wrinkled and his collar awry. Out of uniform he looked a little lost.

  “What about the picture?” Mitch urged. “Is that just the way it was?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, the car door, for instance. Was it open that way?”

  Hoyt studied the print and scowled. “I guess it was. I sure as hell didn’t open it.”

  Now, Mickey Degan hadn’t been a careful sort of boy. He lived fast and drove the same way, and it wasn’t likely that he’d have pulled a car up to the curb, slid under the wheel, and eased out of the right-hand door—particularly at an hour when the streets were devoid of traffic. That’s what Mitch had in mind, and that’s what he pointed out to Hoyt in words of few syllables. And the man listened in spite of himself, hostility giving way to curiosity and curiosity to interest.

  “In short,” Mitch concluded, “I think that Mickey had someone with him in that car—someone who got out fast when the shooting started.”

  “I didn’t see anybody,” Hoyt declared.

  “Of course you didn’t. You were busy bending over Mickey to see who he was and how badly he’d been hit, and you didn’t hear anybody, either, because of that burglar alarm screaming from the liquor store. Just the same, there was someone in Mickey’s car.”