by Dell Shannon
"George is talking to the DMV right now."
"I'll be in," said Mendoza. "I'm flying to France on Tuesday, but I'll be in pronto." "
"My God, you are persistent. You'll never find out a damned thing. You haven't anywhere to start looking and you know about four words of French."
"By God, I'll have a try at it. I'll be down. Thank God they've got computers in Sacramento."
The computers, of course, would give them some legwork—a lot of it. The computers would sort out all the Ford pickup trucks registered in L.A. County a lot more quickly than the detectives could take the individual looks at the owners, and while there wouldn't be as many pickup trucks i in an urban area as in a rural one, there would be plenty. The names and addresses were still coming in by the middle of the afternoon, and they had other cases to work, and probably other calls would go down. But there was priority on this pair, who had attacked one of their own.
Dubois was still holding his own, but still unconscious. As the names of those owners came in, the first use they made of them was to run them through the R. and I. Office. It was possible that one or both of that pair had a prior record. It was even probable, given the instant unprovoked attack on Dubois. The break-in artist seldom went armed, and whoever had fired those shots was quick and handy with a gun.
There were more pickup trucks in the county than anyone could have predicted. They did some overtime, but they hadn't finished looking through Records with their own computers by the middle of Sunday evening.
* * *
THEY ALL LANDED at the office together, a little early on Monday morning. Palliser had come in even if it was his day off. Mendoza called the hospital. Dubois had rallied a little. There was a full day's work ahead and maddeningly, just as they settled down to it, they had a call. The job was like women's work, never done, and they were always having to drop one thing and pick up another.
And this one would just pose a lot of paperwork, and you could blame it directly on the fact that at eight o'clock that morning, at the intersection of Grand and Sixth Street in downtown Los Angeles, the temperature had hit ninety-nine degrees and was rising.
The patrolman who brought the woman into the office said, "My God, it's like a battlefield. You never saw such a hell of a thing. There were five squads out and three ambulances. I don't know how many people got killed, but I saw three bodies myself. When we got her out of the car, she looked ready to throw a fit, and then all of a sudden she calmed down. But maybe you ought to get her to a doctor."
Her name was Laura Fenn and by her driver's license she was forty-four and lived in South Pasadena. She told them in a dead and dull voice that she was a librarian at the main library and asked someone to call the library and explain that she'd be late. Then she just sat and looked at the wall and Wanda Larsen tried to talk to her.
"My goodness, you never saw such a thing," said the patrolman. Miss Fenn, driving a nine-year-old Dodge without air—conditioning, had caught a red light at that corner on her way to work. A good many other people had caught it too—on both streets. The lights were stuck, both on red. After about four minutes, the horns started, tempers began to rise, and cars began to edge cautiously into any opening. There were also a good many pedestrians on both streets.
The Dodge, second in line at the light on Grand, had gone roaring up onto the sidewalk, sideswiped the car first at the light, charged across the intersection where people on foot were crossing, and finally plowed into a city bus on Grand. When Wanda finally got her to say anything, she just said, "It was too hot—just too hot. I had a headache and the library's air-conditioned—and there was such a jam on the freeway—and all of a sudden it was just too much. "
When they came to sort it out, she had killed four people and injured eleven seriously and severely damaged three cars. The Dodge was totaled. And Mendoza said exasperatedly, "Iet the D.A. worry about what to call it. People!"
* * *
IT WAS IN THE MIDDLE of Monday afternoon, with a vague idea of clearing up a muddle before he left tomorrow, that he went up to Outpost Drive and talked to Joseph Alisio.
"We'll probably never know," he told Alisio. "With so many people there, it's been very difficult to check on who was where, when. It's all up in the air."
Alisio heaved a sigh. "I can appreciate that, Lieutenant. One lunatic among all those people. My God. Poor Carl. We knew he was on the way out, the first of us to go, and I don't suppose it makes any difference whether it was now or six mouths from now. But it's a terrible thing he had to go like that. We've all been shook up about it, but poor Randy—I never saw anybody so broken up. He's all to pieces and Mary says he's been drinking some. Well, he was Carl's favorite and I guess it's been a little worry to him, he'd been managing Carl's affairs for him since the cancer got diagnosed last year and Carl was so sick. It was the obvious thing to do, Carl had left him everything anyway, but it's probably made a little extra work for him." He passed a hand over his bald head. "I appreciate your coming, Lieutenant. No, I suppose we'll never know what happened. The lunatic getting into the hospital some way."
A small cold finger inched up Mendoza's spine. The other boys laughed about his hunches. Mendoza's crystal ball. But Luis Rodolfo Vicente Mendoza had been a detective a long time and he knew enough to respect his hunches.
He stood at the curb on Outpost Drive and looked at the haze of smog over the city below him. He said to himself, "Ridículo." His imagination working overtime. He got into the Ferrari and drove over to Glendale to that new high-rise office building.
Randy Nicolletti was at his desk in the big office, but he looked gray and ill. He had dropped some weight. Mendoza stopped beside his desk and Nicolletti looked up at him after a moment, his expression dull and vague.
"You did it, didn't you?" asked Mendoza. "I'd like to know why."
And Randy Nicolletti said in an expressionless tone, "How did you know?"
EIGHT
HE DIDN'T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT, and what he said after some prodding was, "It was all my fault. I know that. Uncle Carl, I was his favorite, but he was always careful about money. The only times he ever got mad at me was about the gambling. I guess that's just in my nature. And he was dying up to a month ago—the doctor said he could go any time—and since he'd been so sick six months ago, he'd signed me onto his checking account, his savings account, so I could pay all the expenses—and it was all left to me anyway—it didn't matter. I got in pretty deep with a couple of fellows at a poker place in Gardena, it was over ten thousand and I was damned worried about it—one of them's kind of a tough customer. I thought it didn't matter, I paid up by cashing in one of the T-bills on his account. He hadn't been up to looking at the statements in months. And then I dropped a couple of thousand more and I paid that—and all of a sudden he got better—the doctor said, in remission and it might be three, four, six months."
He was staring dully at the floor of the little interrogation room at the jail. "He was sitting up and taking notice of things again, and just a couple of days before he'd asked me to bring in all the bank statements—and the first thing he said—that Sunday when I got there—had I brought them, and I had to say I forgot about it, but I knew he'd keep on about it, and he was always at me about the gambling. He'd raise all hell when he found out. He'd call me a damn thief. The rest of the family, they don't like the gambling either and it would be one goddamn king-size mess, and I just didn't know what to do. I'd thought by then it'd be all over and the will in probate." He passed a shaking hand over his face. "And that day, when I went back for my cigarettes, the last thing he said to me—don't forget to bring those statements the next time you come, boy. And I—and I—" He put his face in his hands.
Mendoza said to Higgins when they came out of the interrogation room, "And God knows I was the hottest poker player in town before the domesticities ruined my game, but the compulsive gambler I never was. More fatal than the drink, that. And in the end he's made even more of a king-size mess for hi
mself than he had already."
"You and your hunches," said Higgins. "All the damned legwork we did on that, and all for nothing."
"He was ready to break, George. If I hadn't had the hunch, he'd have come in to confess within a matter of time."
* * *
THE DOCTORS were saying that Dubois would make it, but it would be a long convalescence for him. Most of the men at the Robbery-Homicide office were on that. They still had a long list of names of pickup-truck owners to process and nobody was taking any time off. Hackett had got deflected temporarily to arrange that lineup, but the witness couldn't definitely identify the suspect and they had to let him go.
On Tuesday morning, the computers in R. and I. turned up their first lead. The owner of a Ford pickup truck showed up in the records with a pedigree of armed robbery—Alfonso Barrios, last known address the same as the current registration, Maxson Place in El Monte. Landers and Galeano were alone in the office when the word came up and Galeano said, "If he's our boy, what the hell was he doing so far from home base? Don't say it, I know—freeways. And he won't have lived in El Monte all his life. Let's see if we can find him." The lab had told them yesterday that the slugs out of Dubois had been fired from a .45 Colt.
Barrios' wife told them that he worked at a garage on Rosemead Boulevard and they picked him up there, brought him in. Higgins was back in the office by then and they stood over him and asked him questions. He was a wiry dark small man in the thirties, and he snarled back at them. "I'm clean since I got out last time, I done nothing. Just because a guy got a little record, the fuzz come down on him alla time—"
Higgins said, "All right, where were you on Saturday night?"
"Iast Saturday night? I was sittin' in a game of draw with four other guys. We went on late, they can tell you." He supplied names and addresses and they went to look, stashing him in jail meanwhile. The poker game, he said, had been in a private home in El Monte; and none of the other men had any police records. The wife of the householder said, "Do I know that Barrios? Sure he was here that night. These damn fool men and their cards, they went on till two in the morning and nobody got any sleep. That damn Barrios—he took nineteen bucks off Joe and I'll be short on grocery money all this week."
You won some, you lost some. They let Barrios go. It had just been a first cast.
* * *
PALLISER HAD BEEN our looking for one of the heist suspects up till noon on Tuesday. When he came back to the office after lunch, Lake said the lab had been calling him.
"Well, all right, put them through." He sat down at his desk and picked up the phone when it rang.
Duke said, "I'd have called you right away but I know you've been busy."
"We still are."
"You do any good on that shooting yet?"
"Not yet. What do you want?"
"Well, I'd like you to come and look at something interesting. You can get a warrant and clean one up on it. Come and see."
Palliser, slightly intrigued, took the elevator up to the lab. There in that big busy office, the long room with long tables and glaring strip lighting, the microscopes and Bunsen burners and cameras in a string of smaller offices, Duke led him to a microscope at one end of a table and said, "This is from one of Wells' shoes. The right shoe of a pair of black oxfords."
Palliser peered into the microscope and asked, "So what is it? You're the technician." He had nearly forgotten Toby Wells.
Duke said, grinning, "I didn't suppose you'd be an expert on house plants, but it's another kind of offbeat little thing like that damn snapshot. Sometimes we do turn them up. It's Beloperone guttaia. "
"Come again?" said Palliser.
"To you, the common shrimp plant. We spotted it when we were taking photographs in the Coffey apartment. There was a big potted plant knocked over and in the little iight the old lady put up, somebody trampled all over it on the floor. You could see where branches and leaves had been stepped on. I thought there was an outside chance that there'd be some trace on the soles of somebody's shoes, those leaves are pretty tough and springy—and I was right. There was one whole squashed leaf stuck on the arch of the shoe where the wet earth from the pot acted like glue. It's not that common a plant, Palliser. And if you can show that your boy hasn't been near another one since the murder—"
"By God," said Palliser. "Those will be his best shoes. He had them on for the date with the girl and he probably hasn't had them on since. By God, what a damned queer little thing."
"It's the little things that trip them up," said Duke. "Little things most people don't notice."
Palliser and Galeano went to bring Toby Wells in, and they had to spell it out for him, how they knew, what the definite scientific evidence was. He didn't take it in at first, said, "How'd anybody know one little leaf from another'?"
"The men at the laboratory can tell," said Galeano. "They've got ways. You were there when that plant got knocked over, you stepped on it and that tells us you were there when your grandmother was killed." Wells thought that one over for awhile.
"Why?" asked Palliser. "Why did you go there that night?" Wells just looked at the floor.
"Your own grandmother," said Galeano. "She'd been good to you. Gave you a birthday party just the week before, hadn't she, and got you out of that little trouble a couple of years ago. Why?"
Wells said, "Oh, for Gossakes. I was out of money." He didn't look up at them. "It all goes so quick—and she had money put away. She made good money out of that business. She never spent nothing on herself. She had that couple hundred bucks to hand right over—time I took those clothes and got caught. And she gives me a lousy ten bucks for my birthday. A lousy ten bucks! I was cleaned out, time I paid the bill at that disco that night. I went to see her, ask her to loan me some bread, and she let me in and then when I asked she started to talk real sharp, how I was young and foolish and ought to be careful, save some out of my salary—and I got mad. Old people just don't know how it is for young people these days—and I hit her and she fell against that plant and I started to look around for any money. I knew she had some hid away somewheres—but she came after me into the kitchen. She was yelling and calling me names and that hammer was laying on the counter and—"
"And did you find any money?" asked Galeano.
"There was only ninety bucks in her purse in the closet, I thought there'd be a lot more. I'm sorry. I never meant to do it. Never meant to hurt her so bad. I just needed some money to take Mae to that show she wanted to see."
Palliser picked up the phone to ask for the warrant on him.
* * *
THE JET DECANTED MENDOZA at Orly Airport into a chilly gray early morning. With the time difference, it was early morning here and already autumn in northern Europe. He was feeling tired and stale, though he'd slept on the plane. The travel agent had got a reservation for him at the Hotel Crillon and he picked up a cab at the airport entrance. It was a big hotel in the middle of the city. What he could see of Paris in the cold morning light was just another old, dirty city. Older than his town and parts of it dirtier, with the occasional streets of new, shining office buildings, apartments. Everybody at the hotel seemed to speak English and he was shepherded to a good-sized room with a private bath on the top floor. He undressed, went to bed and slept for four hours, and woke feeling more alert. He took a shower and shaved, got dressed again, and went downstairs for a cup of coffee at the hotel restaurant. The elegantly uniformed attendant at the main entrance called him a cab. He had taken an unreasonable prejudice against the Sûreté and said to the cab driver, "The Prefecture de Police," as distinctly as possible."
The cab driver raised a thumb. "O.K., bud," he said and let in the clutch with a jerk.
Mendoza had got traveler's checks cashed at the hotel and let the driver pick what he wanted of the sleazy thin paper.
The building was a square grim old pile looking like an old-fashioned military barracks, and he found out later that that was how it had begun life. He start
ed out talking to a uniformed man at the desk in the lobby, who spoke some heavily accented English and presently summoned another man in civilian clothes who spoke more fluently, introduced himself as Delahaye, prefaced with a title Mendoza didn't catch.
"I think,"said Delahaye after deliberation, "M. L'lnspecteur Rambeau will like to speak with you," and he used the phone on the desk, spoke rapid French. He took Mendoza up in a creaking elevator to the second floor, down a long gloomy hall. At the end of it he opened a door and bowed Mendoza in. "The American police officer, Inspecteur."
The man at the desk in the large plain office stood up. There was a little wooden plaque upright on the front of the desk with lettering: INSPECTEUR LAURENT RAMBEAU.
"Ah," he said. "A pleasure to meet a colleague." He offered a firm hand. "Once I have visited your country, but not so far as California." His English was very good. He was about Mendoza's age and size and he had a thick crop of wiry curly black hair and a flourishing black Gallic mustache, inquisitive bright brown eyes. "Sit down and tell me how we can help you."
Feeling warmed and welcomed, Mendoza took the chair beside the desk and began to tell the story. Rambeau listened absorbedly, chin planted on hands and elbows on desk, and at the end he sat up, reached to the package of cigarettes on the desk, offered it politely, and said, "So, do we not all know how it goes. Day by day there is nothing but the little stupid violences, and then all of a sudden, once in ten years, arrives something complicated and strange. This is very interesting. I like it. I like it as a mystery. But the poor little Juliette." Mendoza had handed over the envelope of photographs and he shook his head over them. "A beautiful girl. One feels for the poor fiancé."
"The Sureté gave us nothing at all. They don't know her fingerprints and I can't give you any more information on her."
"Ah," said Rambeau. "The Sûreté. These big important men of affairs, sometimes they can be a trifle arrogant."
