Case Pending

by Dell Shannon

  “I see. I also dislike egotistical men.”

  “Mi gatita roja,42 what you mean is that you dislike the ones honest enough to admit to vanity—nobody walking on two legs isn’t an egotist. And you should have more common sense than to talk so rudely to a rich man.”

  “Are you?”

  “I am. None of my doing—in case you were thinking of bribes from gangsters—my grandfather was shrewd enough to buy up quite a lot of land which turned out to be just where the city was expanding—office buildings, you know, and hotels, and department stores—all crazy for land to build on. And fortunately I was his only grandson. It was a great shock to everybody, there he was for years in a thirty-dollar-a-month apartment, saying we couldn’t afford this and that, damning the gas company as robbers if the bill was over two dollars, and buying secondhand clothes—my God, he once got a hundred dollars out of me on the grounds of family duty, to pay a hospital bill—and me still in the rookie training school and in debt for my uniforms! And then when he died it all came out. My grandmother hasn’t recovered from the shock yet—she’s still furious at him, and that was nearly fifteen years ago.”

  “Oh. Why?”

  “For fifty-eight years she’d been nagging at him to stop his gambling—she’d been telling him for fifty-eight years that gamblers are all wastrels, stealing the food out of their families’ mouths to throw away, and they always die without a penny to bless themselves. And that’s where he got his capital—his winnings. And to add insult to injury—because if she’d known about it, she’d have found some way to save face and also, being a woman, something else to nag him about—he managed to get the last word by dying before she found it out. Frankly, I think myself it wasn’t all luck, the old boy wasn’t above keeping a few high cards up his sleeve, but you know the one about the gift horse. And unfortunately,” added Mendoza, sliding neatly ahead of an indignant bus to get in the right-turn lane, “by then I’d got into the habit of earning an honest living, and I’ve never cured myself.”

  “Well, it’s an original approach to a girl,” said Alison thoughtfully. “Such a fascinating subject too—I’ve always been so interested in money, if only I’d had the chance to study it oftener I might have developed real talent for it. But I must say, I should think you’d bolster up your ego more by doing the King Cophetua business,43 instead of practically offering a bribe. Not at all subtle.”

  “I’m always loved for myself alone. And why? Es claro—a woman of high principle like you, she’s afraid to be taken for a gold digger, so she starts out being very standoffish. She’s so busy convincing me she’s not interested in my money, vaya, she’s never on guard against my charm.”

  “Ah, the double play. I keep forgetting you’re an egotist. But what about the stupid ones?—the ones like Elena, all bleached curls and giggles and gold ankle chains? The ones those tired middle-aged businessmen—”

  “¡Vaya por Dios!44 I never go near such females, except in the way of work. There’s no credit to the marksman in an easy target.”

  “Or to the wolf who catches the smallest lamb? I see what you mean.”

  “So I’ll let you have the last word. You’ll do me a favor tomorrow—”

  “What?” She regarded him warily.

  Mendoza grinned at her. “Don’t sound so suspicious, I don’t operate so crude and sudden as that! Look, I want you to ask all your girls if Elena said anything at all to them about this staring man. Don’t tell them much, don’t lead them—a couple of them might make up this or that to be important—but you’ll be more apt to get something helpful out of them if anything’s there to be got. Official questioning might encourage them to romanticize.”

  “Oh, well, certainly I’ll do that, I meant to anyway. Yes, I think you’re right about that.”

  At headquarters he piloted her upstairs to his office. She looked around curiously. “What exactly is the procedure? I’ve never done this before.”

  “I’ve made a rough draft, here, of the substance of what you told me. Just look it over and see if you want to change or add anything, and then we’ll get it typed for you to sign. And what do you want?” he added as Hackett wandered in after them. “I thought you were safely occupied for the afternoon.”

  “Una expectativa vana,”45 said Hackett, spreading his hands. “Kids! It’s the damnedest thing, they’ll be budding Einsteins at twelve, but the minute they hit their teens I swear to God they all turn into morons. You’d think they were blind and deaf.” His eyes were busy on Alison.

  “It’s a phenomenon known as puberty,” said Mendoza. “Nothing?”

  “Nada. You goin’ to remember your manners, or do I count as the hired help around here?”

  “Miss Weir—the cross I am given to bear, Sergeant Hackett.”

  “The brawn,” said Alison wisely, nodding at him. “I knew you must have somebody to do the real work.”

  “And she has brains too,” said Hackett admiringly. “You got a visitor, Luis, before I forget. That Ramirez girl.” He jerked a thumb.

  “Oh?” Mendoza got up. “You’ll excuse me, Miss Weir—if this cave-man type gets obstreperous, you’ve only to scream.”

  Standing there by the clerk’s empty desk in the anteroom, before she spoke, she wasn’t this century at all. Black cotton dress too long, the shabby brown coat over her arm, and a black woolen shawl held around her, both hands clasping it at her breast. No make-up: she’d come straight from church, from late mass, probably. This large official place had somewhat subdued her.

  “You wanted to see me, Miss Ramirez? Sit down here, won’t you?”

  “Oh, thanks, but it won’t take long, what I come for. I wasn’t sure you’d be here, Sunday an’ all, I thought I’d ask could I leave a note for you—” She took a breath. “There was some of your guys come with a warrant, to look all through Elena’s things—Mama, she just had a fit, she don’t understand about these things so good—”

  “I’m sorry it troubled her. We have to do that, you know.”

  “Sure, I know, it don’t matter, we haven’t nothing to hide.”

  He wondered: the visiting uncle? The faint defiance over the honesty in her round brown eyes looked convincing. He thought, whether they caught the shifty Tío Tomás at anything or not, that was a wrong one; but he also thought the Ramirez family hadn’t an inkling of that. He waited; she had something else to say. She fidgeted with the shawl, burst out a little nervously, “I—I thought of something else, Lieutenant, that’s why I come.”

  “Yes?”

  “I don’t want to sound like I’m telling you your own business, see, but—well, you are sort of looking into that Palace skating place, aren’t you? I mean—”

  “We are. Why?”

  “I don’t know nothing about it,” she said. “I never been there myself, and anyway I guess this don’t have anything to do with it, I mean whoever runs it, you know. But I got to thinking, after you asked me yesterday about any guy bothering Elena, I tried to remember just what she did say, if there was anything I hadn’t told you. And I remembered one more thing she said. It was when she was talking about this fellow watching her, she said, ‘He gets on my nerves, honest, I nearly fell down a couple times.’”

  “Now that’s very interesting,” said Mendoza.

  “See, she must’ve meant it was at the rink she saw him. Once, anyways. Because where else would being nervous make her almost fall down? I—”

  “Yes, of course.” And there were a number of possibilities there; a little imagination would produce a dozen different ideas. He thought about some of them (Ehrlich, the attendants, the other kids) as he thanked the girl for coming in. Alison came out of his office with Hackett and was sympathetic, friendly with Teresa, asking conventionally about the funeral. The girl was a little stiff, responding, using more care with her manners and grammar.

  “Well, I—I guess that’s all
I wanted tell you, Lieutenant, I better get home—”

  Alison sent Mendoza a glance he missed and another at Hackett which connected; he said he was going that way, be glad to drive her home, and gave Alison a mock-reproachful backward look, shepherding Teresa off.

  “Your draft’s quite all right. Hey, wake up, I said—”

  “Yes,” said Mendoza. “Is it? Good.” He summoned one of the stenos on duty, took Alison back to his office to wait, gave her a chair and cigarette but no conversation. She sat quietly, watching him with a slight smile, looking round the room; when the typed pages were brought in she signed obediently where she was told and announced meekly that she could get home by herself.

  Mendoza said, “Don’t be foolish.” But he was mostly silent on the drive across town. When he drew into the curb at the apartment building, he cut the motor, didn’t move immediately. “Tell me something. Did you like dolls when you were a little girl?”

  “Against my better judgment you do intrigue me. Most little girls do.”

  He grunted. “Ever know any little boys who did?”

  “When they’re very young, otherwise not. Though I believe there are some, but they can’t be very normal little boys. The psychiatrists—”

  “I beg you, not the doubletalk about Id and Ego and Superego. Especially not about infantile sexuality and the traumatic formation of the homosexual personality. Esto queda entre los dos. Just between the two of us, I find a most suggestive resemblance between the Freudians and those puritanical old maids who put the worst interpretation on everything—and with such damned smug self-satisfaction into the bargain.”

  She laughed. “Oh, I’m with you every time! But what’s all this about dolls?”

  He got out a cigarette, looked at it without flicking his lighter. “Suppose you’re taking one of those word-associations tests, what do you say to that?—doll.”

  “Why, I guess—little girls. Why?”

  “And me too,” he said. “Which is what makes it difficult. Well, never mind—inquisition over for today.” He lit the cigarette and turned to her with a smile. “You’ll have dinner with me tomorrow night, tell me what you get out of your girls, if anything.”

  Alison cocked her auburn head at him. “I seem to remember you said you didn’t mix business and pleasure. Do I infer I’m absolved already?”

  “I’m always making these impossible resolutions.” He got out, went round and opened the door for her. “Black,” he said, gesturing, “something elegant, and decolleté. Maybe pearls. Seven o’clock.”

  She got out of the car, leisurely and graceful, and tucked her bag under her arm; she said, “Charm isn’t the word. But I have heard—speaking of the Freudians—that there are some women who really enjoy being dominated. Seven o’clock it is, and I’ll wear what I damned well please, Lieutenant Luis Mendoza!”

  “Mi gatita roja,” he said, smiling.

  “And,” said Alison, “I am not your little red kitten, you—you—¡tú, macho insolente!”

  “What language for a lady. Until tomorrow.” He grinned at her straight back; there was—he was aware—a certain promise in being called an insolent male animal, by a female like Alison.

  * * *

  It sat on the corner of Matson and San Rafael, a block up and a block over from Commerce and Humboldt. Not really much of a walk home for Elena, a quarter of an hour by daylight: down San Rafael to Commerce, to Humboldt, across the empty lot and down a block to Foster where Humboldt made a jog to bypass a gloomy little cul-de-sac misleadingly called a court: another block to Main, another to Liggitt and half a block more to home. Little more than half a mile, but that could be a long way at night. Main was neon lights and crowds up to midnight anyway, but these other streets were dark and lonely.

  It was a big barn of a building. Matson Street wasn’t residential, but strung with small warehouses, small businesses that must permanently balance on the edge of insolvency—rug cleaning, said the faded signs, tools sharpened, speedy shoe repair, cleaning & dyeing—and in between, the secretive warehouses unlabeled or reticent with WHOLESALE PARTS, INC.—MASTERSON BROS.—ASSOCIATED INDUSTRIES. At Matson and San Rafael, there was a graveyard for old cars on one corner, with a high iron fence around it (SECONDHAND PARTS CHEAP), and warehouses on two other corners, and on the fourth the Palace Roller Rink. The building wasn’t flush to the sidewalk like the warehouses, but set back fifteen or twenty feet, to provide off-street parking on two sides.

  Mendoza parked there, among six or eight other cars: mostly old family sedans, a couple of worked-over hot-rods. It was ten past four, a good time for the experiment he had in mind. He fished up a handful of change from his pocket, picked out a quarter, a dime, and a nickel, and walked up to the entrance.

  There were big double doors fastened back, but at this time of year, the place facing north, not much light fell into the foyer. That was perhaps ten feet wide, three times as long up to the restroom doors at either end. There was a Coke-dispensing freezer and a big trash basket under a wall dispenser for paper cups. In the middle of the foyer was a three-sided plywood enclosure with a narrow counter bearing an ancient cash register; and inside, on a high stool with a back, sat Ehrlich the proprietor, a grossly fat man in the late sixties, bald bullet-shaped head descending to several rolls of fat front and rear, pudgy hands clasped over a remarkable paunch: wrinkled khaki shirt and pants, no tie. Ehrlich, peacefully drowsing—still, very likely, digesting a solid noon dinner which had ended with several glasses of beer. Mendoza surveyed him with satisfaction, walked quietly up and laid the silver on the counter. The fat man roused with a little grunt, scooped it up and punched the register, and produced from a box under the counter a sleazy paper ticket, slid it across. Mendoza picked it up and passed by.

  At the narrower door into the main part of the building, he glanced back: Ehrlich’s head was again bowed over his clasped hands. So there we are, thought Mendoza. The man had raised his eyes just far enough to check the money: if the exact change was laid out, a gorilla in pink tights could walk by him without notice.

  The second door led Mendoza into more than semidarkness. It was a rectangle within a rectangle: a fifteen-foot-wide strip of dark around all four sides of the skating floor. That was a good hundred and fifty feet long, a little more than half as wide, of well-laid hardwood like a dance floor. There was an iron pipe railing enclosing it, with two or three gaps in each side for access to the occasional hard wooden benches, scattered groups of folding wooden chairs, along the four dark borders. A big square skylight, several unshaded electric bulbs around it, poured light directly down on the skating floor, but not enough to reach beyond: anywhere off the edge of that floor it was dark. The effect was that of a theater, about that quality of light, looking from the borders to the big floor.

  Straight ahead from the single entrance, at the gap in the rail there, sat one of the attendants, sidewise in a chair to catch the light on his magazine. Beside him was a card table, a cardboard carton on it and another on the floor; those would hold the skates. Not just the skates, Mendoza remembered from the statements taken: flat shoes with skates already fastened on—something to do with the insurance, because as Hayes (or was it Murphy) had put it, otherwise some of these dumb girls would come in with four-inch heels on. As Elena had, he remembered.

  It was shoddy, it was dirty, a place of garish light and dense shadow, of drafts and queer echoes from its very size. No attempt was evident to make it attractive or comfortable: the sole amenities, if you could so call them, appeared to be the Coke machine and, at the opposite side of the floor, an old nickel jukebox which was presently emitting a tired rendition of “The Beautiful Blue Danube.” And yet the fifteen or twenty teenagers on the floor seemed to be enjoying themselves, mostly skating in couples round and round—one pair in the center showing off, with complicated breakaways and dance steps—half a dozen in single file daring the hazards lined
down the far side, a little artificial hill, a low bar-jump. Those girls shrieked simulated terror, speeding down the sharp drop; the boys jeered, affected nonchalance. It was all very innocent and juvenile—depressingly so, Mendoza reflected sadly from the vantage point of his nearly forty years.

  But he hadn’t come here to philosophize on the vagaries of adolescence… If you went straight down to the attendant, to give up your ticket and acquire your skates, you would be noticed; otherwise, he could easily miss seeing you. Mendoza had wandered a little way to the side from the door, and stood with his back to the wall; he was in deep shadow and he’d made no noise. He stood there until his eyes had adjusted to the darkness, to avoid colliding with anything, and moved on slowly. He knew now that it was possible to come in here without being noticed, but could anyone count on it five times out of five? There would be times Ehrlich was wider awake, for one thing.

  He sat down in a chair midway from the railing, twenty feet from the attendant. In five minutes neither the man nor any of the skaters took the slightest notice of him. He got up, drifted back to the wall, and began a tour of the borders.

  When he got round to the opposite side of the floor, he made an interesting discovery. In the corner there a small square closet was partitioned off, with a door fitted to it. He tried the door and it gave to his hand with a little squeak. He risked a brief beam from his pencil-flash: rude shelving, cleaning materials, an ancient can of floor wax, mops and pails. Hackett was quite right; nobody had disturbed the dust in here for a long time. He shut the door gently and went on down the rear width of the building.

  The jukebox was never silent long; it seemed to have a repertoire only of waltzes, and now for the third time was rendering, in all senses of the word, “Let Me Call You Sweetheart.”