Exploit of Death llm-34

by Dell Shannon

  "It was just a friendly little game," said Perez uneasily.

  "I mean it started out like that, see. The guys don't get to playing cards in here-I mean all the time, I mean it's not a regular thing. Just once in a while. You can tell them, can't you?"I

  Grace exchanged a cynical look with Palliser, who shrugged. But it took the rest of the afternoon to clear it away. The morgue wagon came for the body and they took Aguilar down to the jail and booked him, went back to the office. Palliser set the machinery going on the warrant. It would get called murder two and might easily be reduced to plain manslaughter under the circumstances.

  Grace typed the report and then they went over to Boyle Heights and talked to Delgado's landlady. He'd been renting a room in an old single-family house. The landlady's name was Bream and she didn't seem very much upset to hear about her roomer. "Wel1, he wasn't here much. I never had much talk with him. Couldn't say if he had any relatives." She agreed indifferently to let them see his room and they looked through drawers and pockets, but found no address book or letters. Delgado had probably been a drifter and somewhere there might be people concerned about him, but there was nothing to say so here. They let it go. And that took them nearly till the end of shift, and thankfully they both left early.

  As Palliser drove home, he was thinking vaguely about the way the crime rate was up in Hollywood. But they had an equity in the house, and Trina was a good watchdog. Maybe when he got his next raise they could look somewhere farther out.

  And Grace, easily shelving the routine job, was thinking fondly and fatuously about the new baby. The plump brown little boy who would be christened Adam John at the Episcopal Church next Sunday. He'd been worth waiting for.

  ***

  It was Piggott's night off. Schenke and Conway drifted in together at eight o'clock to the big communal detective office that always seemed so much bigger and emptier at night than when it was full of busy men on day watch.

  "What do you bet we'll have a busy night?" said Schenke. "The heat building and the weekend coming up."

  The switchboard was shut down. Any calls would be relayed up from the desk downstairs.

  Conway assented cheerfully. He had a date set up with his new girl, Marilyn, tomorrow afternoon. They were going to one of the few new movies worth seeing and out to an early dinner at that Italian place on the Strip. She was on the eleven-to-seven shift at Cedars-Sinai. He thought about Marilyn happily. A nice girl, no nonsense to her, perfectly happy to have the date without going all serious. He'd just met her last month when they had that rape case. After his latest couple of girls starting to talk suggestively about real estate prices and what good cooks they were, Marilyn was a joy-pretty, too, with her glossy brown hair and blue eyes. Conway was a good-looking man himself with his regular features and cool gray eyes, which he appreciated without undue vanity.

  He was sitting at Higgins' desk and there were a couple of glossy eight by tens on the desk blotter. Conway looked at them appreciatively. He could see that the poor girl was dead, but she'd been a hell of a good-looker. "I wonder what this is about," he said.

  Schenke, also a born bachelor, but not particularly a man for the girls, said indifferently, "No idea."

  They got their first call at eight-fifteen, a heist at a liquor store on Third Street. The address rang a faint bell in Conway's mind. They both went out on it, and when they got there, the owner was mad as hell. "It's the third time I've been held up in five months, goddamn it. I have had it. I have had it up to here, I've goddamned well had my fill of this goddamned business. My wife's been after me to retire and move up to Santa Barbara- Hell, who can afford to retire with the goddamned Social Security about to go down the drain, and I'm only fifty-five but these goddamned punks roaming around-"

  He looked vaguely familiar to both Schenke and Conway. His name was Bernard Wolf and he was a short, stocky, dark fellow with an unexpected bass voice. Schenke said, "Yeah, the latest one was back in July, wasn't it? We were both out on that then."

  "I remember you," said Wolf. "You goddamned well were, and goddamn it, you never picked up that bastard, he got away with a hundred and seventy bucks-it was a Saturday night. You had me down there looking at pictures of all the punks and I couldn't make any, all of these god-damned louts look alike-"

  "Well, can you give us any description of this one tonight, Mr. Wolf?" asked Schenke patiently.

  Wolf let out a long exasperated sigh of resignation. "I don't know that I can, goddamn it. There'd be ten thousand punks look like him-all over this goddamned town. I was alone in the place-my wife's nervous about me being here at night, but the young guy I hired to come in, he's in the hospital with a leg in traction. Do I shut at six and miss all the business-the weekend coming up? There'd been a customer just left, the punk came in and showed me the gun and I gave him all the paper in the register and he went out-call it three minutes. All I can tell you, goddamn it, he was a spick."

  "Latin," said Conway.

  "Sure, maybe five ten, thin, black hair, little mustache, and he couldn't talk English so good, had a thick accent. He got maybe a hundred and fifty bucks. Goddamn it. God-damn it, I have had it. I can't afford to retire, but the hell with it. I'll get something for the business and maybe I can find a part-time job up in Santa Barbara. I have had it with this goddamned business and this goddamned town-"

  "Did he touch anything in here?" asked Schenke.

  "Nothing but the goddamned money," said Wolf.

  They went back to the office and Conway typed the report on it. It was probably the only report there'd be. There would be a hundred possible heisters conforming to that description in Records, and they'd never pin the charge on any one of them. He stopped typing to light a cigarette. "At least it would be cooler up in Santa Barbara," he said. He had just finished the report when another call came in, and another a minute later.

  The first was a heist at an all-night pharmacy on Beverly Boulevard, and the other was a body on Rosemont Avenue in the Echo Park area. Schenke went out on the heist and Conway looked up Rosemont Avenue in the County Guide. When he got there, it was a narrow, shabby old eight-unit apartment building. Four apartments down, four up. The man waiting for him at the entrance was about forty-five, a heavily built man with a bald head and rimless glasses. His name was Robert Peterson. He was the manager of the apartments, lived in the right front one downstairs. The door was open and an anxious-looking gray-haired woman was visible in there listening.

  "I don't know what happened, Officer, but it's Mrs. Eberhart. Maybe a stroke or something, only she's not that old. Why, she could've laid there hours before anybody found her-a terrible thing-the Kohlers are off on vacation, they've got the apartment across the hall, they've gone to visit their daughter-you see Mrs. Eberhart's apartment is on the rear right. Why, she could've laid there all night, except that I took the trash out and naturally went out the back door and passed her apartment."

  "So, let's have a look," said Conway.

  Down the dim hall the door of the rear apartment on the right was open. With Peterson dithering in the background, Conway took a quick experienced look. The woman was dead. A big, buxom blond woman, the blond courtesy of peroxide, wearing a flowered cotton house robe. She was sprawled just inside the door and there was dried blood on one temple-just a trace. There was a table beside the door, standing sideways out from the wall. You could read it. She'd been knocked down, hit the table. The autopsy report would probably say, fractured skull. He thought resignedly, better get out the lab. It could, of course, have been accidental: Maybe she'd been drunk and fallen down, but also it could be something else.

  He asked questions. Peterson said, "Well, her name's Rose Eberhart. I don't know about any relations. She's lived here about six years. Well, yes, I do know where she worked. It was McClintock's Restatuant on Sunset. She was a nice quiet tenant, Officer, never any trouble and always on time with the rent. I suppose it could've been a heart attack. That can happen to anybody, age doesn'
t seem to matter. Oh, for goodness' sake, no, I'd never seen her under the influence of alcohol."

  A couple of men from the night watch at the lab showed up in a mobile truck. Conway said, "You better give it the full treatment, boys."

  Just in case. And leave it to the day watch to look at further.

  FOUR

  SATURDAY WAS Sergeant Lake's day off and Rory Farrell was sitting on the switchboard. Mendoza glanced over the night report and passed it on to Hackett. "So we'd better find out something about this Eberhart woman, in case it is a homicide. Wolf's coming in sometime today to make a statement, but there's damn all on that, we can file it and forget it."

  Hackett said, "I wonder if they've got the air-conditioning back on at the jail. “We've still got to talk to Gerber. Of course, Bauman had the gun, it's likelier he did the shooting. Which reminds me-" He called the lab and talked to Horder.

  He had dropped the gun off at the lab on Thursday.

  Horder said, "Oh, yeah, that's the equalizer, O.K. Matched the slug out of the body."

  So they could write a report after they got the statement from Gerber, if he'd say anything, and send in the evidence to the D.A.'s office and forget it. This time, Bauman might go up for a sizable stretch.

  It was Landers' day off.

  On the other heist last night, the pharmacist had given a fairly good description, volunteered to look at mug shots. He'd be in this morning. Hackett went over to the jail to talk to Gerber. Palliser said, looking over the night report, "I suppose this restaurant won't be open until ten or so. Has the warrant come through on Aguilar?" It hadn't, but would be showing up sometime today.

  Bernard Wolf came in about nine and made a brief statement, and Wanda Larsen took him down to look at mug shots. But there could be a thousand walking around who conformed to that description.

  And finally the coroner's office sent up the autopsy report on the supposed Ruth Hoffman. Mendoza read it over rapidly, one hip perched on a corner of Higgins' desk, and passed it over. "So, a few possibly suggestive things," he said.

  The report said that the girl had died of a massive overdose of a common prescriptive sedative, a phenobarbitol base. Interestingly, there were indications that it had been accumulative over a brief period of time. There had been the equivalent of a couple of strong drinks in the stomach contents. The percentage rate was. 010, and. 014 was the rate for legal intoxication. The estimated time of death was between eight and midnight last Tuesday night. There were no bruises or other marks on the body. She had been a virgin. She had had a meal about six hours prior to death, consisting of some sort of fish, potatoes, green vegetables.

  "This is your offbeat one," said Palliser.

  "The wild blue yonder," said Higgins.

  "Well, it says a little something.' ' Mendoza lit a cigarette with a snap of his lighter. "But there's a gap between Saturday and Tuesday. Where was she? That library card-this was set up awhile ago. If they, whoever, had arranged the killing, why not do it right away? Grandfather! Could she have been with Grandfather? I can't see any pattern to it at all, damn it."

  "Have you heard anything about the possible missing reports?" asked Higgins.

  Mendoza had sent out queries to every force in the country about that.

  "Nothing's come in yet. Where the hell was she and why? We should be hearing something from the cab companies, if there's anything to get."

  "Those Daggetts could tell us something," said Higgins.

  "I wonder," said Mendoza. "They know something but maybe not that much. I haven't leaned on them because we haven't a damn thing to go on, for God's sake. There's no smell of legal proof that the girl was the Martin girl. And whoever primed the Daggetts with the Hoffman story, all they have to do is stick by it, we can't prove it's a lie. What the hell use would it be to lean on them, George? They're not big brains, but they understand that much. Grandfather, Grandfather! If only there was some way to find out where she was going, or thought she was going-" He brushed his mustache back and forth angrily.

  "There's just no handle to any part of it," said Higgins.

  Mendoza picked up the phone, asked Farrell to get Communications, asked if there was anything in, from any force, on a possible missing report on the girl. So far most of the police forces in the country had responded and none had any record of such a report.

  "So what does that say?" Mendoza emitted a long angry stream of smoke. "Grandfather! " The phone buzzed at him and he picked it up.

  "You've got a new body," said Farrell. "Hoover Street."

  "Hell," said Mendoza and took down the address and passed it on to Higgins.

  Palliser and Higgins went out on that and Mendoza wandered back to his office and sat staring out the window at the view of the Hollywood Hills, chain-smoking, until Farrell rang him and said he had somebody from the Yellow Cab Company on the line. "Put him through," said Mendoza.

  The man on the line was a Mr. Meyers, sounding efficient. "You wanted to know about any passengers picked up at International Airport a week ago today. I've got a list for you from the dispatcher. There were only nine."

  "Fine," said Mendoza. "We can cut corners here and save some time. I'd like all those drivers to come in to headquarters to look at a photograph."

  "Oh, my God," said Meyers. "What a hell of a nuisance, but we do have to cooperate with the police. All right, where are they supposed to come?"

  ***

  THE ADDRESS on Hoover Street, a secondary main drag, was in the middle of half a dozen little shops, all in an old building stretching for half a block. There was a shoe-repair place, a women's dress shop, a little variety store, a photographer. Three of the shops were empty, with for rent signs, and there was a dingy independent drugstore on the corner. The squad and the uniformed patrolman were in front of the little variety store. Higgins slid the Pontiac into the curb behind the squad and they got out.

  There was a woman with the patrolman, a stout middle-aged black woman. She looked neat and respectable in a dowdy blue cotton housedress, but her round face still wore a shocked expression.

  "There are the detectives, ma'am. This is Mrs. Sadler, she found the body."

  "That's right," she said. "It's just awful, the poor soul lying there dead, it's terrible the things happen nowadays, all these criminals running around. Mrs. Coffey was such a nice woman, she wouldn't have hurt a fly. To think of a thing like that happening to her-"

  The faded sign over the front door said VERNNS VARIETY.

  "Mrs. Verna Coffey?" asked Palliser. She nodded. "Just tell us what happened, Mrs. Sadler."

  "We1l, I'd run out of green thread. I'm making a dress for myself for my daughter's wedding next week, and I just stepped over here to get some thread. Mrs. Coffey's store is real handy for lots of little things. I just live up the block on Twenty-fourth, it's only a step, and she's always open by eight. The door was open and I went in, but she wasn't there and I waited a few minutes but I didn't hear her in the back. She lives in the back of the store, has a little apartment there, you see. And I called her name and then I went back and just looked in the door and-Oh!" She put her hands to her mouth. "Oh, just terrible! The poor soul, her head all bloody and the place in a mess, I could see she was dead and I called the police on the phone there-"

  So they'd have to get her prints for comparison with any others the lab might pick up. But the honest citizens didn't know much about scientific investigation.

  There were a few curious bystanders out now, from the shoe-repair shop, the drugstore. Palliser and Higgins went into the little store, dim without lights on, past double counters stocked with the cheap cosmetics, shoelaces, sewing materials, plastic dishes, all the odds and ends of variety goods, to the door at the rear. It led into a small living room, crowded with old furniture-couch, two upholstered chairs, end tables, a T.V. on a metal stand. One of the tables had been knocked over, the drawer from the other one dumped on the floor, three pictures pulled off the wall and thrown facedown. The body was s
prawled between the T.V. and the couch, the body of a fat black woman. There was a faded pink nylon housecoat rucked up around her legs. Under it she'd been wearing a pink nylon nightgown. There was dried blood on one temple and the white of the skull showed where one blow had landed on vulnerable thin bone. On the floor beside her was an ordinary hammer with black tape on the handle. On the other side of the body, in front of a side window, a big potted plant on a metal stand had been knocked over and spilled wet earth and leaves over the thin carpet.

  "No sign of a break-in in front," said Palliser.

  "No. She was undressed for bed, she could've done that early in the evening, but it was after she'd closed the store," said Higgins. "Somebody knocked at the door-somebody she knew?"

  They looked through the rest of the small shabby apartment. There was a tiny bedroom with a single bed neatly turned down for the night but showing no signs of having been occupied. The bedroom had been ransacked too. There was a tiny kitchen with a clean sink and counter tops. There was a back door giving on an alley that ran behind this block of shops, and that door was locked and bolted.

  "Somebody she knew," said Palliser. "Which could be anybody around here. But she probably wouldn't have opened the door to a stranger. Living alone, she'd keep the doors locked after dark." The dumped drawers, the pictures pulled off the wall, were the earmarks of the pro burglar.

  They went back out to the street and Palliser used the radio in the squad to call the lab. Higgins asked Mrs. Sadler,

  "Do you know anything about Mrs. Coffey's family?"

  "Well, I know she had a married daughter in Pasadena. She had another daughter who died. Her husband, I guess he died quite awhile back."

  There had been an address book beside the phone. They would find out.

  "Do you know if she kept much money here'?"

  "I don't know at all. I don't suppose she got an awful lot from the store-enough to get by on-but I don't know."