Case Pending

by Dell Shannon

  The steaks could have been less tough; the service might with advantage have been less ostentatious. Mendoza asked her presently whether she’d got anything useful from any of the girls.

  “I wondered when you’d ask. Nothing at all, I’m sorry to say—she hadn’t said anything to any of them about that. But she didn’t know any of them well, after all.”

  “No. I didn’t expect much of that. I’ve got a queer sort of—can I call it a lead?—from another angle, but I don’t know that that means much either… What do you think of the murals? I’ve never asked you what kind of thing you paint.”

  Alison said the murals constituted a libel on the feline race and that she was herself unfashionably pre-Impressionistic. “This and that—I’m not wedded to any one particular type of subject. Now and then I actually sell something.” They talked about painting; they talked about cats. “—But when you’re away all day, you can’t keep pets, it’s not fair.”

  “Nobody keeps a cat. They condescend to live with you is all. And as for the rest of it, I moved. It’s miles farther for me to drive, and the rent’s higher, but it’s on the ground floor and they let me put in one of those little swinging doors in the back door, out to the yard. You’ve seen the ads—let your pet come and go freely. Yes, a fine idea, but she won’t use it—she knows how it works, but she doesn’t like the way it slaps her behind, and she got her tail pinched once. Fortunately all the other seven apartments are inhabited by cat people. Four of them have keys to mine and run in and out all day waiting on her, which of course is what she schemes for. I believe Mrs. Carter and Mrs. Bryson,” he added, looking around for the waiter, “alternate their shopping tours and visits to the beauty salon—coffee, please—”

  “And pairhaps some of our special brandy, sair?”

  “That I need,” said Alison, “after listening to this barefaced confession. Battening on the charity of your neighbors like that—”

  “One of the reasons I picked the apartment. The Elgins keep her supplied with catnip mice, they buy them in wholesale lots, having three Siamese of their own. Of course there is a man two doors down who has a spaniel, but one must expect some undesirables in these unrestricted neighborhoods.” The waiter came back with the coffee, the brandy, and the bill on a salver, contriving to slide that in front of Mendoza by a kind of legerdemain suggesting that it appeared out of thin air, not through any offices of this obsequious and excellent servant. Mendoza looked at it, laid two tens on the salver and said now he needed the brandy too.

  “I have no sympathy for you,” said Alison.

  When they came out into the foyer, Mendoza hesitated, glancing at the discreet row of phone booths in an alcove. “I wonder if I had—” There had appeared no bowing, smiling headwaiter as they left the dining room, to make the last honors to new patrons, urge a return. “Oh, well,” and he put a hand automatically to his pocket for more largesse as one of the several liveried lackeys approached with Alison’s coat.

  “So ’appy to ’ave ’ad you wiz us, sair and madame—I ’ope you enjoyed your dinnair? You mus’ come back soon—Holy Mother o’ God, what the hell was that?” Between them they dropped the coat; the lackey took one look over Alison’s shoulder, said, “Jesus, let me out of here!” and dived blindly for the door, staggering Mendoza aside. The second volley of shots was a medley of several calibers, including what sounded like a couple of regulation .38’s. From the dark end of the corridor off the foyer plunged a large, shapeless man waving a revolver, and close after him the tuxedo-clad rotundity of Mr. Torres-Domingo, similarly equipped. The checkroom attendant prudently dropped flat behind his counter as the large man paused to fire twice more behind him and charged into the foyer.

  “Wait for me, Neddy!” Mr. Torres-Domingo sent one wild shot behind him and another inadvertently into the nearest phone booth as he continued flight.

  The first man swept the gun in an arc round the foyer. “Don’t nobody move—I’m comin’ through—”

  Mendoza recovered his balance, shoved Alison hard to sprawl full length on the floor, and in one leap covered the ten feet to the gun as it swung back in his direction. He got a good left-handed grip on the gun-hand as they collided, his momentum lending force to the considerable impact, and as they went down landed one right that connected satisfactorily. Neddy went over backward and Mendoza went with him; the gun emptied itself into the ceiling as they hit the floor with Mendoza’s knee in the paunch under him; Neddy uttered a strangled whoof and lost all interest in the proceedings.

  Mr. Torres-Domingo yelped, fired once more and hit the plate-glass door, turned and ran into the embrace of an enormous red-haired man in the vanguard of the pursuit, which had just erupted down the corridor. The red-haired man adjusted him to a convenient position and hit him once in the jaw, and he flew backward six feet and collapsed on top of Mendoza, who was just sitting up. One of the three men behind the red-haired man dropped his gun and sank onto the divan beside the checkroom, clutching his shoulder.

  There was a very short silence before several women in the crowd collecting at the dining-room door went off like air-raid sirens. Mendoza heaved off Mr. Torres-Domingo, sat up and began to swear in Spanish. The red-haired man bellowed the crowd to quiet, and turned to the man nearest him: “Find a phone and call the wagon and an ambulance—and”—flinging round to the man on the divan—“just what in the name of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph did you think you were doing, you almighty bastard? You—”

  “¡Hijo de perra!55—take your hands off that man, you son of a Dublin whore!” Mendoza shoved him away and bent over Higgins, who was fumbling a handkerchief under his coat. “Easy, boy—”

  “It’s not bad, Lieutenant—I just—”

  “Before God!—Luis Mendoza!—does this belong to you? Just what the holy hell are you doing in this?—you tellin’ me you put this blundering bastard out back there—to bitch up two months’ work and the first chance I’ve had to lay hands on—I ought to bust you right in the—I ought to—”

  Mendoza twitched the handkerchief from the red-haired man’s breast pocket, wadded it up with his own, shoved Higgins flat on the divan and pulled aside the coat to slap on the temporary bandage. “Temper, Patrick, temper! We’re in public—you’ll be giving people the idea there’s no loyalty, no unity in the police force. And listen, you red bastard, next time you have to knock a man out to arrest him, for the love of God don’t aim him at me—you’ve damn near fractured my spine! There’s the squad car. For God’s sake, let’s clear this crowd back—who’s this?”

  The little round man who had popped out like a cork from the dining-room crowd was sounding off in falsetto. “I am the manager—I am the owner—what do you do here in my place, shooting and yelling? I call the police!—what is all this about?—shootings—gangsters—I will not have gangsters in my nice quiet place—”

  “Then you shouldn’t hire one as a headwaiter,” said Mendoza. “And you should also change your butcher, your steaks are tough.” He pushed past him and went over to Alison, who was just somewhat shakily regaining her feet. “I don’t usually knock them down the first date, mi vida—apologies! Are you all right? Here, sit down.”

  “I’m all right,” said Alison, “but you owe me a pair of stockings.”

  * * *

  Morgan had read somewhere that marijuana did this to you, played tricks with time, so first it seemed to slow down, almost grind to a full stop, and then sent everything past you at the speed of light. His watch told him he’d been standing here on this corner just an hour and twelve minutes, no more and no less; for a while it had felt like half eternity, and then, a while after that, time began to go too fast. Where he’d been tense with impatience, wound up tight for action—God, God, make him come—suddenly, now, he could have prayed for time to stop. Not now, he said to Smith frantically in his mind, you can’t come now, until I’ve thought about this, figured it out, got hold of anothe
r plan.

  Oh, Christ damn Luis Mendoza and his little slum-street mugging!—what the hell did that matter, some damn-fool chippy knocked off, probably she’d asked for it, and that crazy idea about those Lindstroms who couldn’t by any fantastic stretch of the imagination have had anything to do… Because, yes, this upright citizen Morgan had a good innocent reason to visit that apartment house, he wouldn’t care if the whole L.A. police force stood by in squads to watch him go in—but after he was clocked in by men watching, he couldn’t lie in wait maybe an hour, and do what he’d come to do, and then say Just as I got to the top of the stairs—Nor could he call at the Lindstroms’ first, thinking to say, Just as I was leaving—That woman might not be very smart but she could tell time, and suppose he’d left her half an hour before, as might well happen? Also, of course, there was no telling about the cops: where and how and how many. It might be a desultory thing, one man outside up to midnight, something like that; it might be a couple of men round the clock; it could be a couple of men inside somewhere.

  So he hadn’t dared go near Graham Court at all. It had had to be the street corner; and on his way here, and up to a while ago, he’d been telling himself that after all the street was safer. Once you were off Main, off Second, along here, the streets were underlighted and there weren’t many people; in all this while he’d stood and strolled up and down outside the corner drugstore here, only four people had come by, at long intervals. Safer, and also more plausible that Smith would try a holdup on a darkish side street, instead of in the very building where he lived.

  Morgan had been feeling pretty good then: ready for it, coldly wound up (the way it had been before action, when you knew action was coming) but—in control. He’d known just how it would go, Smith coming along (he’d been wary before, sent the boy to check that Morgan had come alone, but this time he wouldn’t bother, he thought he had Morgan and—the ransom—tied up); and Morgan pretending nervousness, saying he had the money locked in the glove compartment, his car was just round the corner. Round the corner, an even narrower, darker street. Sure to God Smith would walk a dozen steps with him…

  Safe and easy. Sure. Before a while ago, when the scraggly bald old fellow had peered out the drugstore door at him.

  Morgan knew this window by heart now. Everything in it a little dusty, a little second-hand-looking: out-of-date ad placards, the platinum blonde with a toothy smile, INSTANT PROTECTION, the giant tube of shaving cream, the giant bottle of antiseptic, the cigarette ad, GET SATISFACTION, the face-cream ad, YOU CAN LOOK YOUNGER. In a vague way he’d known the drugstore was open, but the door was shut on this coolish evening, he hadn’t glanced inside. When people came by, he’d strolled away the opposite direction: nobody had seemed to take much notice of him—why should they? And then that old fellow came to the door, peered out: Morgan met his glance through the dirty glass panel, by chance, and that was when time began to race.

  God, don’t let Smith come now, not until I’ve had time to think.

  The druggist, alone there, pottering around his store in the hopeful expectation of a few customers before nine o’clock, or maybe just because he hadn’t anything to go home to. Time on his hands. Looking out the window, the door, every so often, for customers at first—and then to see, only out of idle curiosity, if that fellow was still there on the corner, waiting… All that clutter in the window, Morgan hadn’t noticed him; not much light, no, but enough—and without thought, when he was standing still he’d hugged the building for shelter from the chill wind. Most of the time he’d have been in the perimeter of light from the window, from the door. God alone knew how often the old man had looked out, spotted him.

  The expression in the rheumy eyes meeting his briefly through the dirty pane—focused, curious, a little defensive—told Morgan the man had marked him individually.

  And hell, hell, it didn’t matter whether the druggist thought he’d been stood up by a date, or was planning to hold up the drugstore, or was just lonely or worried or crazy, hanging around this corner an hour and twelve minutes. The druggist would remember him… That was a basic principle, and only common sense, in planning anything underhand and secret—from robbing Junior’s piggy bank to murder: Keep it simple. Don’t have too many lies to remember, don’t dream up the complicated routine, the fancy alibi. The way he’d designed it was like that—short, straight, and sweet. Now, if he went on with it that way, there’d be the plausible lie to figure out and remember and stick to: just why the hell had Morgan been hanging around here, obviously a man waiting for someone?

  Half-formed ideas, wild, ridiculous, skittered along the top of his mind. You know how it is, Officer, I met this blonde, didn’t mean any harm but a fellow likes a night out once in a while; sure I felt guilty, sure I love my wife, but, well, the blonde said she’d meet me—I tell you how it was, I’d lent this guy a five-spot, felt sorry for him you know, guess I was a sucker, anyway he said he’d meet me and pay—Well, I met this fellow who said he’d give me an inside tip on a horse, only he wouldn’t know for sure until tonight, if I’d meet him—

  All right, he thought furiously, all right; of all the damn-fool ideas… So, produce the blonde, the debtor, the tipster! It couldn’t be done that way.

  He stood now right at the building corner, close, out of the druggist’s view. Think: if, when Smith comes, what are you going to do now? What can you do?

  The little panic passed and he saw the only possible answer: it wasn’t a very good one, it put more complication into this than was really safe, but that couldn’t be helped. Obviously, get Smith away from this place. The farther away the better. In the car. Stall him and get him into the car, and Christ, the possibilities, the dangers that opened up—couldn’t drive far, maybe not at all, without getting him suspicious. Sure, knock him out with a wrench or something as soon as they got in, fine, and have it show up at the autopsy later on. Great, shoot him in the car under cover of the revving motor, and get blood all over the seat covers. All right: think.

  Yes. It could be managed, it had to be: the only way. In the car, then, right away, and in the body, so the clothes would get the blood. Have to take a chance. Then quick around to Humboldt or Foster, only a few blocks, both dark streets too, thank God; park the car, get him out to the sidewalk, get his prints on the gun, make a little disturbance, fire another shot, and yell for the cops. I was on my way to visit this case I’m on, when—And the druggist no danger then, no reason to connect a holdup there with his corner.

  Not as safe, but it could work: maybe, with luck, it would work fine.

  Now let Smith come. Morgan was ready for him, as ready as he’d ever be.

  He looked at his watch. It was seventeen minutes past eight.

  And suddenly he began to get in a sweat about something else. Smith had made him wait on Saturday night, deliberately, to soften him up: but why the hell should Smith delay coming to collect the ransom he thought was waiting?

  Cops, thought Morgan—cold, resentful, sullen, helpless—cops! Maybe so obvious there outside, inside, that Smith spotted them—and thought, of course, Morgan had roped them in? God, the whole thing blown open—

  54 “Health and fortune!”

  55 “Son of a bitch!”

  Eleven

  Cops, Marty thought. Cops, he’d said. Funny, the words meant the same, but seemed like people who didn’t like them, maybe were afraid of them, said “cops,” and other people said “policemen.”

  He sat up in bed in the dark; it was the bad time again, the time alone with the secret. And a lot of what made it bad was, usually, not having outside things to keep him from thinking about it, remembering; but right now he had, and that somehow made it worse.

  He sat up straight against the headboard; he tried to sit still as still, but couldn’t help shivering even in his flannel pajamas, with the top of him outside the blanket. If he laid right down like usual he was afraid he’d go to slee
p after a while, even the long while it’d got to taking him lately; and he mustn’t, if he was going to do what he planned safe. He had to stay awake until everybody else was asleep, maybe two, three o’clock in the morning, and then be awful quiet and careful… Like a lesson he was memorizing, he said it all over again to himself in his mind, all he’d got to remember about: don’t make any noise, get up when it’s time and put on his pants and jacket over his pajamas and get—it—and remember about the key to the door, take it with him so’s he could get back in. He knew where the place was, where he was going; it was only three blocks over there, on Main Street.

  Wouldn’t take long, if nobody saw—or if—

  This was the only way to do it if he was going to, and the worst of that was it didn’t seem like such a good idea now, a kind of silly idea really but he couldn’t think of anything else at all, without breaking the promise, doing the one unforgivable thing. He’d tried this morning, he’d waited until she was busy in the kitchen, thought he could pick—it—up and call out good-bye and go off quick, before—