Case Pending
Page 1
Copyright © 1960 by Elizabeth Linington
Introduction and notes © 2020 by Leslie S. Klinger
Cover and internal design © 2020 by Sourcebooks and Library of Congress
Cover design by Heather Morris/Sourcebooks
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Cover image: Dolls in a Rural Home in Madison, North Carolina. Carol M. Highsmith, 1980–2006. Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Prints & Photographs Division, Library of Congress, LC-DIG-highsm-15917
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Contents
Front Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Foreword
Introduction
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Reading Group Guide
Further Reading
About the Author
Back Cover
“The cause is hidden, but the result is known.”
—Ovid
Foreword
Crime writing as we know it first appeared in 1841, with the publication of The Murders in the Rue Morgue. Written by American author Edgar Allan Poe, the short story introduced C. Auguste Dupin, the world’s first wholly fictional detective. Other American and British authors had begun working in the genre by the 1860s, and by the 1920s we had officially entered the golden age of detective fiction.
Throughout this short history, many authors who paved the way have been lost or forgotten. Library of Congress Crime Classics bring back into print some of the finest American crime writing from the 1860s to the 1960s, showcasing rare and lesser known titles that represent a range of genres, from “cozies” to police procedurals. With cover designs inspired by images from the Library’s collections, each book in this series includes the original text, as well as a contextual introduction, brief biography of the author, notes, recommendations for further reading, and suggested discussion questions. Our hope is for these books to start conversations, inspire further research, and bring obscure works to a new generation of readers.
In Case Pending, author Elizabeth Linington, writing under the pseudonym Dell Shannon, introduces us to one of the first Latino detectives to appear in fiction. Independently wealthy and a snappy dresser, Mexican American homicide lieutenant Luis Mendoza faces skepticism from his colleagues in the police force. But he excels at his profession, and cracks case after case in more than thirty books in Linington’s Mendoza series.
Early American crime fiction is not only entertaining to read, it also sheds light on the culture of its time. While many of the titles in this series include outmoded language and stereotypes now considered offensive, it’s fascinating to read these books and reflect on the evolution of our society’s perceptions of race, gender, ethnicity, and social standing. Linington’s mid-century Angelenos face racial prejudice, economic disparities across neighborhoods, and other challenges that are still with us today. Her exploration of these issues adds a welcome dimension to an already entertaining read.
More dark secrets and bloody deeds lurk in the massive collections of the Library of Congress. I encourage you to explore these works for yourself, here in Washington, D.C., or online.
Carla D. Hayden, Librarian of Congress
Introduction
Police procedurals, stories in which official detectives and their methods are featured, are not a new addition to crime fiction. Detectives star in some of the very earliest works of the nineteenth century, beginning with the memoirs of Vidocq, Emile Gaboriau’s novels about the police detective Monsieur Lecoq, and the plethora of semifictional books appearing in America as the “experiences” or “recollections” of various detectives.1 The first modern American police procedural is Lawrence Treat’s V as in Victim (1945). In nine novels, Treat used actual law enforcement routines and extensive scientific evidence in showing police at work, usually interpreted by Jub Freeman, a police scientist.
The idea of focusing on the police in this way was taken up by Hillary Waugh, who wrote two series of procedurals, and in 1956, by the prolific Ed McBain, whose fifty-six novels and dozens of short stories about the fictional “87th Precinct” in a thinly disguised New York City continued until his death in 2005. The first woman to tackle the form, however, was Elizabeth Linington, who penned four different series (three under pen names) and produced more than eighty titles of crime fiction. Linington’s success paved the way for other women, such as Dorothy Uhnak and Lillian O’Donnell. More importantly, her blending of the personal lives of the police officers with their jobs and her unflinching portrayals of the victims and villains led to greater development of characters and the political and social issues of the day in crime writing. Later writers of cop-oriented crime fiction like Joseph Wambaugh or Michael Connelly, whose books give us rich pictures of the families of the police officers, clearly owe a debt to Linington’s work.
Case Pending, first published in 1960, is remarkable in several respects. First, Linington develops detailed portraits of the police in the story, including Detective-Sergeant Arthur Hackett, the critically important investigator Dick Morgan, and, of course, her lead character, Lieutenant Luis Mendoza. In particular, Mendoza’s relationship with Alison Weir, which has its flirtatious beginnings here, as well as Mendoza’s friendship with Hackett, are developed fully in later novels. Second, we also get clear pictures of the victims and their families. Although Linington’s portraits of the Ramirez family, the witness Agnes Browne, and the family of Carol Brooks suffer from racial stereotypes, she devotes more time and care to writing about their lives than was generally thought necessary for popular crime fiction. Third, Linington was among the first to weave together multiple story lines into a tapestry of police activities. Linington shrewdly recognized that unlike the amateur detective, the police deal with a multiplicity of crimes and victims and must juggle their investigations along with paperwork, rivalries among agencies, shortages of manpower, and other common features of modern government agencies.
Linington was well aware that the writer of police procedurals was under even greater scrutiny than the average mystery writer with regard to realism. To ensure reasonable accuracy, she not only researched the rules and regulations of the Los Angeles Police Department, she also cultivated friendships with police officers, including one in Atlanta who often provided her with the true facts of unusual case
s. Linington often based her fictional crimes on accounts from “true crime” magazines and newspapers and relied on friends and maps to provide her with geographical details after she moved away from Los Angeles.
It does not appear, however, that Luis Mendoza sprang from any sort of personal experience. In an interview, she addressed the subject directly:
[Interviewer]: “How did you pick up on the idea of Luis Mendoza? Did the Spanish theme come from living in this area [Southern California]?”
[Linington]: “Well, it didn’t. I had this little idea for the plot of Case Pending, and introduced the detective on the scene—just in carrying out the plot. And he rose off the page and captured me alive, and I couldn’t stop writing about him.”
[Interviewer]: “Do you happen to know why he happened to be Mexican American?”
[Linington]: “I couldn’t tell you—it just came.”2
Linington certainly recognized that she was creating an artificial character. She admitted that her Spanish was poor, and no one would regularly say something in Spanish and then repeat the same phrase in English—a common occurrence in her Mendoza novels. More importantly, Linington seems to go out of her way to emphasize that Mendoza is a cut above the “regular” Mexican Americans who appear in Case Pending. Not only is he wealthy, well-dressed, and eccentric in his choice of cars, people with whom he interacts make a point to observe that he is of “true” Spanish blood and therefore a gentleman and aristocratic in bearing. Certainly many of the police—and many of the other minor characters—look down on the “Mexes” with whom they interact in Los Angeles and are careful to distinguish Mendoza from that lot. Linington seems to have little sympathy for the families struggling in the neighborhood she depicts, whether they are Mexicans, black, Irish, or Scandinavian. Her real sympathy seems reserved for Dick Morgan and his wife and child.
Although Linington has Mendoza express disdain for psychological theories of sexuality and crime, it is very apparent that she understood those theories well and she uses them to great advantage in Case Pending. Her depiction of the dynamics of the Lindstrom family rings true, down to the details of the killer’s obsession with dolls and the peer pressure felt by Marty. While Linington may have unkindly intended her story of Agnes Browne, who is convinced of her own culpability, as a sort of comic relief, it sadly also seems genuine.
Linington deftly captures the “melting pot” that was Los Angeles of the late 1950s, with masses of immigrant populations of all ethnicities crowded into the neighborhoods east of downtown, many of whom would soon be displaced by the development of Elysian Park and the Los Angeles Dodgers’ new baseball stadium. Though the “zoot suit riots” of 1943—violent clashes between American servicemen and Mexican American youths in Los Angeles—were more than 15 years in the past, the city, with a population of almost 2.5 million people of widely diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds, had yet to have a mayor who was not white, and racial tensions still simmered throughout the region.
In a 1967 essay about her craft, Linington characterized the mystery-detective novel as exciting and the most challenging type of writing. She saw the detective story in political and philosophical terms, as “the morality play of our time,” with the police procedural its purest expression. In this, she helped develop a new school of crime writing, in which the plots took backseat to the development of the characters. Linington wanted to show the police not just as instruments of detection or punishment but as individuals, with jealousies, failures, and personal struggles. Writers like Joseph Wambaugh and Michael Connelly embraced this approach, expressed by Wambaugh like this: “The best crime stories are not about how cops work on cases but about how cases work on cops.”3
Although Linington was not the first to write police procedurals in America, the volume and popularity of her multiple series justify her coronation as the “Queen of Police Procedurals.” Case Pending is not only her first effort in the field, it is one of her finest.
Leslie S. Klinger
1 The earliest were “dime” novels, which began to appear in America in the 1870s. Allan Pinkerton, founder of the eponymous detective agency, jumped on this bandwagon with his own (probably ghostwritten) memoirs in 1876, with the first book to bear his name being The Expressman and the Detective, and more than a dozen additional titles before 1900.
2 Margaret J. King, “An Interview with Elizabeth Linington,” Armchair Detective 13, no. 4 (Fall 1980): 301.
3 Elina Shatkin, “Cop on Crime Writing: Joseph Wambaugh,” Jacket Copy (blog), Los Angeles Times, April 26, 2008, https://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2008/04/how-do-you-like.html.
One
When Gunn came down the hall to his office at half-past eight, he found Curtis waiting. Curtis was holding up the wall beside the door; he opened his eyes at Gunn’s step. He looked tired and rather dirty.
“And a good, good morning to you too, Chief,” he said. Gunn didn’t like to be called chief.
“What’d you draw?” Gunn unlocked the door.
“Just what we expected. I won’t come in—I’m going home to bed—I can give it to you in ten words. Williams showed up about eight, you’ll get that on Henry’s report. Went in, about twenty minutes later came out with our Ma Williams, and they went down to the Redbird bar on Third. Ten forty, shifted to the Palace.4 Henry called me from there, and I took over at midnight. They drifted home about half an hour later and stayed. His car’s still outside.”
“Well, now,” said Gunn, pleased. “Fancy that.”
“And for your further information,” said Curtis, “I damn near froze to death sitting it out in my car. Next time I’ll take along another blanket and a portable radio.”
Gunn grinned benignly and told him to go home. He went on through the stenos’ room to the center of three partitioned-off rooms at the rear, hung up his hat and coat, and sat at the desk. Henry’s report was neatly centered, waiting for him there; Henry never missed getting in a written report immediately, however late his duty. Williams in 7:57, it announced laconically, and the rest of what Curtis had said. Very nice, thought Gunn.
So now they knew that Mr. John Williams hadn’t deserted his wife and four children. The county had been passing over sixtythree dollars and fifty cents per month5 to Mrs. John Williams for four months, on her claim of desertion and failure to provide. The kids had to be fed, had to be sheltered and clothed—after a fashion—by somebody. It appeared that once again the county had been rooked. Williams was a skilled carpenter, probably making good money on an out-of-town job. Gunn made a notation on the report, Morgan to see, and sighed. Naughty, naughty, Mr. and Mrs. Williams, collusion to defraud the state—and maybe next time they’d think up something slicker.
He got out his file of current investigations, wrote a brief summary of the conclusions in the Williams case, and set the file page aside for refiling among cases completed. He flicked over the rest. He heard the girl stenos begin to drift into the outer office.
Rossiter. Brankin. Peabody. Prinn. Fraty. Kling. A new one, Lindstrom. There were follow-up reports to be typed in on six or seven of them; he took those out to the stenos. “Morning, girls.” Morgan and Stack came in together.
“I want to see you about that Mrs. Gold,” said Stack.
“What about her?”
Stack followed him back into his office. “I told you I finally caught up to the guy—the Reno D.A.’s office found him, he’s working in some joint there as a waiter. I had it all set up to crack down on him, see, Reno says he ought to be good for seventy-five a month, and I went round to give the glad news to the missus. And then the rabbi puts the kibosh on it.”
“What rabbi?”
“Mrs. Gold’s rabbi. He was there. He says please will we just drop the whole thing and leave it to him—I guess he figures it’ll be less of a disgrace or something if he can handle it—”
“Oh,” said Gunn. “Well, he migh
t have something there. If he can get it without any fuss, so much the better. Man’d feel better about it if he’s persuaded instead of forced, the money’ll come easier—less chance we’d have more trouble. It works out with ministers sometimes, but we can’t let ’em stall forever. You tell him we’ll give him a couple of weeks to try it his way before we crack down.” Gunn went out with Stack and looked into the room next to his own; Morgan was sitting there at one of four desks, looking at some papers. “Oh, Dick.”
Morgan looked up. “Yes, sir?” he responded dully.
“Little job. Henry and Curtis have tied up the Williams case. Another collusion, way you figured. Williams is weekending—they were at a bar until midnight and it’s a good chance you’ll catch him still in bed with her if you make it snappy. Here’s the report.”
Morgan got up. “All right. Williams—yes.”
Gunn looked at him more closely. “You look a bit off-color.”
“I’m all right,” said Morgan. He did not look it. As he took his topcoat from the peg behind the door, Gunn saw his hand shaking. He was the thin, sandy type that doesn’t change much between boyhood and old age, doesn’t look much different sick or well. But there were lines around his mouth now that Gunn hadn’t seen before, and his eyes looked tired, as if he hadn’t slept. He had a little trouble folding the paper Gunn handed him, putting it away in his pocket.
“How’s Sue?” asked Gunn casually. “And Jan?”
“Fine,” said Morgan, buttoning his coat carefully. “Just fine, thanks.”
“Must get together again soon, Christy was saying just last night—she’d like to kidnap that Janny of yours, kind of lonesome with our three grown and off.”
“Oh—yes, sure. I guess so. We’ll do that, thanks.”
Gunn stood in the door of his office, absently jingling the coins in his pocket, and watched the other man out to the corridor. What was wrong with Morgan? He felt some responsibility for Morgan, unreasonably, for it had been his doing that Morgan got this job. Dick Morgan was the son of an old friend of Gunn’s, and he’d known the boy most of his life. Boy, well, Dick was thirty-eight, but it depended where you sat: Kenneth Gunn was sixty-two. And good as he’d ever been too, once he’d got out of the hospital after that business last year; but the doctors wouldn’t pass him for active duty again. Nearly forty years’ service, and then a home-made bullet out of a punk’s zip-gun6 retired him. And Bill Andrews got the promotion to head of Homicide instead. Way the cards fell, and Bill was a good man; but Gunn hadn’t known what to do with himself that six months. He’d jumped at this minor post in the D.A.’s office; and he could say now, a year later, he’d given Kelleher something to talk about at the next election, by God.