Case Pending

by Dell Shannon

  “Well, they got a nerve, snooping around you just on account you found a body! What the hell they after, anyway? You didn’t have anything to do—Listen, Agnes, I don’t get it, Rita says there was a guy came up to her after work, another cop, asking about you—I guess she told you—I just got in, had to work late, and when she—”

  “Oh, dear,” whispered Agnes to herself. “I—I know, she called me…” Rita was Joe’s sister who worked the same counter as Agnes, it seemed funny to think if she’d got that job at Kress’s instead she’d never’ve met Rita or Joe, and it’d been just chance really—and she couldn’t wish she hadn’t, but—“Oh, dear.” Asking questions about how long had she known Agnes, Rita said, and like that. They must suspect. “I—I don’t know what they’re after, Joe, but no call for you to get in trouble account of me, it’s my own—”

  “You got nobody to talk up for you, I guess your friends got a right to—”

  “You mustn’t,” said Agnes in agony. “It’s awful good of you, Joe, but you don’t know—you—you better just not b-bother about me any more, because—” But she couldn’t come out with it like that, over the phone, hear what he’d say, know what he’d think—she just hung up quick and went back to her room, shut herself in. It’d been bad enough feeling guilty all the while, worrying, but when it came to getting your friends in trouble—Agnes dried her eyes and blew her nose and thought forlornly, Well, that’s that. And serve her right too. Tomorrow morning, go to them and tell the truth—shame the devil, like her grandma used to say—and have it done with, that was all. Whatever they’d do to her for it. And afterward Joe and Rita and the others that’d been nice, that she’d liked having for friends, they wouldn’t want any more to do with her when they knew, but you couldn’t expect different, she’d just have to take her medicine was all. Better go to the store first, tell Mr. Snyder she was quitting, she’d have to anyway—and it’d mean finding another room too, because Mrs. Anderson wouldn’t—

  And it was silly, go on crying like this, when it was all her own fault…

  56 “See you around.”

  Twelve

  The rookie who’d been riding the squad car that answered the call to Elena Ramirez’s body was on night shift this week, and came into the precinct station on Main to check out at five past eight that morning, with his partner. They found the desk sergeant and a couple of the day men who’d just reported in guffawing over something on the sergeant’s desk.

  “We got a present from an anonymous admirer, boys—ain’t she purty? I guess somebody figures we’re not getting enough feminine companionship.”

  The rookie went up to look, and it was a doll—an old, dilapidated, half-broken-apart doll lying there. A big one, good three feet long. “Where the hell did that come from?” asked his partner.

  “Vic found it propped up against the door when he came on just now.”

  “Like somebody’d sat it up there on purpose,” said Vic. “The damnedest thing. Kids, I guess.”

  “Aughh,” said the desk sergeant, “what some o’ these punks think is smart! Here, Vic, stick it out back in the trash, will you? I—”

  “Just a minute, Sergeant,” said the rookie. He had a funny feeling, looking at the thing; it was crazy, but—“Hey, Pete,” he said to his partner, “does it kind of remind you of something? Look at the way it’s got that one eye—I mean—it’s the damnedest thing, but that dead girl over on Commerce, Saturday—you know. I mean—”

  They all looked at it again and Pete said what about it, and the rookie said weakly, well, he’d just wondered if there could be any connection. “I mean, it’s crazy, but maybe the boys downtown’d be interested—”

  “In this?” said the sergeant. “Now that’d be something. I can just see myself calling headquarters, ask if anybody down there wants to play dolls.”

  “No, but—” The longer he looked at it, the funnier the feeling got. They had a little more backchat, the rest of them kidding him because that had been his first corpse and he hadn’t acted as hard-boiled as maybe he should have; and the sergeant finally said, if he wanted to play detective so bad he could do it with his own dime and be sure and tell whoever he talked to it was strictly his own idea, none of the precinct’s responsibility. They didn’t think he’d have the nerve to do anything like that, but by then he was feeling stubborn about it, and he said all right, by God, he’d do just that, and got Vic to change a quarter for him and called downtown.

  He got hold of Hackett after a little argument with Sergeant Lake, and in the middle of talking with him Hackett broke off to relay the news to Mendoza who’d just come in. The rookie hung on, listening to the lieutenant’s exclamation in the background, and then jumped as Mendoza’s voice came crackling over the wire: “Tell your sergeant I’m coming right around—leave it as it is, and stay there yourself!”

  “Yes, sir!” said the rookie, but the wire was already dead. Ten minutes later Mendoza walked in and took a look at the doll before he remembered to throw a good-morning at the sergeant.

  “¡Vaya una donación!”57 he murmured very softly to himself, and his very mustache seemed to quiver with excitement. “Now what does this mean? But by God, whatever it means, it’s the one—no odds offered!” He swung on the sergeant. “Let’s hear all about it!”

  There wasn’t much to hear, when they got down to definite details. It had been sitting up against the left side of the double doors, in a position where it wouldn’t either interfere with that door’s opening or necessarily be noticed, in the dark; this was an old precinct station, and the doors were set at the back of a recessed open lobby at the top of the front steps, which was temporarily unlighted due to defective wiring. Consequently there was no terminus a quo;58 the thing might have been there since midnight and gone unnoticed by the various patrolmen going in and out during the night; or it might have been put there ten minutes before Vic found it, though it was likelier to have been before daylight.

  And of course every man there had handled the thing, but it was no good swearing about that now. Mendoza demanded a sheet of wrapping paper and swathed the doll in it carefully; Prints would have to isolate any strangers from the precinct men, that was all.

  “So I’ve you to thank for this,” and he turned to the rookie, who was nearly as surprised as the sergeant. “What’s your name?” The rookie told him. “I’ll remember that, you showed intelligence. What struck you about it?”

  “Well, I—it’s crazy, Lieutenant, but the way it looked lying there, it reminded me of that dead girl—the eye and all—it was just a sort of feeling—”

  “Yes. You’re a good man. Any time you want to get out of uniform, when you’re qualified, I’ll be glad to put in a word for you.”

  The rookie, who had heard a little more about Mendoza by this time, stammered incredulous gratitude; the sergeant was struck dumb; and Mendoza walked out with the doll cradled tenderly in his arms.

  He could not resist showing it to Hackett before he delivered it to Prints; they looked at it lying there on his desk, mute, ugly, and enigmatic, and Hackett said, “I laid myself open—say it—I told you so.”

  “I’m magnanimous this morning. But that’s the only thing I could say about it, boy—I’m just one big question mark about it otherwise. What the hell has it got to do with this?”

  “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Ya veremos—I hope.”

  “Waiting for time to tell is just what we can’t do, damn it. Take it down, will you?” While Hackett was gone he called Gunn’s office.

  “Morgan? He just got in—”

  “Bueno,” said Mendoza happily. “I want him. Now. Immediately. Sooner. Apologies to take him away from his job, but I need him.”

  Gunn said resignedly all good citizens had a duty to aid the police when requested and he’d shoot him right over. Mendoza looked up another number and called it. “Mrs. Demarest? Lieutenant Me
ndoza. I want to see you some time today. I think we’ve got the doll, and I want your identification—if it is. Also Mrs. Breen’s… I don’t know one thing about it except that I’ve got it—it just came out of the blue. Look, I won’t ask you to come all the way down here, suppose you see if you can get hold of Mrs. Breen for some time this afternoon, and I’ll bring it to your house. I probably won’t get it back from Prints until noon, anyway. Right, then, you’ll call me back.”

  Waiting for Morgan, he called Callaghan in idle curiosity about Ramirez. They had found an ounce and a half of uncut heroin in a plastic bag taped to the underside of the bureau in his room at the Ramirez house, he had been taken into custody, and yes, Callaghan agreed that the rest of the family looked innocent enough but of course a check had to be made. And was what he heard in the background evidence of how they usually examined witnesses in Homicide because if so it ought to be reported to the Chief.

  “I’m just about to find out,” said Mendoza, and hung up. Somebody out in the anteroom was shouting angrily; he could hear Hackett saying, “Now take it easy,” and a woman saying something else. He opened the door in time to see a little dark fellow take a swing at Hackett which almost connected. Hackett, looking as surprised as a Great Dane attacked by a belligerent Peke, held the fellow off with a hand on the chest and went on saying, “Take it easy now—”

  The woman was Agnes Browne, and she was saying, “Joe! Oh, you mustn’t—please, Joe—”

  “What’s all this about?” Mendoza plucked Joe off Hackett and swung him around. “Now calm down, all of you, come into my office and let’s hear about it—Miss Browne, or it’s Mrs. Browne, isn’t it—”

  “No, it’s n-not!” said Agnes desperately. “That’s just what I came to tell you, sir—only I went to tell Mr. Snyder I was quitting first, and Rita would go and call Joe, and he has to come after and start all this ruction—he doesn’t mean any harm, sir, please—”

  “The hell I don’t! I’d like to know what the hell you guys are up to, persecuting an innocent citizen what it amounts to and by God I’ll see it carried to the Supreme Court if—you got no reason—just because she happened—”

  “Oh, Joe! They have. I—I couldn’t tell you, but now I got to—I came to confess and have it all done with, I know I’ve done awful wrong, sir, but please, Joe didn’t know—”

  Hackett said to nobody in particular, “I better apologize to Dwyer, I see how he came to walk into it.” Joe stared at Agnes in astonishment and subsided, and Mendoza told them all to sit down.

  “You want to confess what?” he asked Agnes.

  She collapsed into a chair and began to cry. “I’m black!”

  They all looked at her. Hackett said, “Well, I’ll be damned. You see, Luis, I told you—it was that sort of thing, nothing at all. Now we know… You don’t look very black to me, Miss Browne.”

  “I am—it’s the law—I—I know I don’t look so—my mother was half white, sir, and my dad more’n half, they didn’t either, I’m about an eighth I guess or something like that, and everybody always said I could pass, and I thought I’d—but I’ve felt just awful about it, I’ve never done anything against the law before, sir, I swear I haven’t! I—I don’t know if that counts, makes any difference to how long I’d maybe have to go to jail—”

  “Nobody’s goin’ to put you in jail!” said Joe.

  “It’s the law!” sobbed Agnes. “They know it’s the law! And I gave a wrong address and all, I s’pose they found out and then of course they’d suspect something funny—”

  “Well, now, I grant you we got some damn funny laws on the books,” said Hackett, “but that’s a new one to me, Miss Browne.”

  “It is the law, most states and I guess here too.59 I know it was wrong, sir.” She emerged from her handkerchief to blow her nose. “It says anybody with any black at all who pretends—”

  “Oh, that one,” said Hackett. “I forget now, does it say it’s a misdemeanor or a felony?” He looked at Mendoza.

  “I seem to remember it says misdemeanor,” said Mendoza, “but offhand I wouldn’t know whether the mandatory sentence is thirty or sixty days. A judge—”

  “Now listen,” said Joe.

  “A judge might have a little trouble finding the latest precedent, somewhere around 1900 I should think.”

  “They leave all that stuff in to make life hard for law students,” said Hackett. “There’re some a lot funnier than that.”

  “Don’t ridicule the law,” said Mendoza severely. “If you ask me some of those ought to be looked up and enforced. There’s another one that says it’s a misdemeanor for a female to wear male clothing in public, and if you’ve ever walked down Broadway and seen all the fat women in pants—”

  Agnes stared at them a little wildly and asked weren’t they going to arrest her? “Agnes honey,” said Joe, as if the sense of it had just penetrated, “you mean that’s why you’d never go out with me, always acted so—Well, I’ll be damned!” He leaned on Mendoza’s desk and laughed. “You want to know something, I—I been in kind of a sweat about it because I figured it was on account I’m Catholic and you wouldn’t have nothing to do—”

  “Why, Joe! However could you think such a thing of me, I’d never—why, that’s un-American, go judging people by what church—”

  “Yes, I think there’s a law about that too,” agreed Hackett thoughtfully.

  “Honey, one-eighth isn’t so awful black, you know. Matter o’ fact, you’re a lot lighter-complected than me, and far as I know I got nothing but Italian both sides back to Adam. Though I guess at that a lot of us’d get some surprises if we knew everything was in our family trees like they say. You stop crying now, Agnes, it’s all right, you see it’s all right—”

  “But—you mean you don’t care—and they aren’t going to arrest—”

  “Well, I tell you, Miss Browne,” said Mendoza, “the court calendars are pretty full, and we don’t want to overburden the judges. I think we’ll just forget it, but maybe Mr. Carpaccio here—it is Mr. Carpaccio?—would care to take the—er—probationary responsibility for your future good conduct, in which case—”

  “That’s a damn good idea,” said Joe. “Come on now, Agnes, stop crying and come with me, you see they’re not going to do nothing to you, it’s nobody’s business but yours… Don’t I care? Listen, honey, you’re the nicest girl I ever knew and the prettiest one too, and I couldn’t care less if you’re all colors of the rainbow. And no, Rita won’t care either, I’d like to see her try—Besides, I read some place about a thing called Mendelian law, it says—”

  “Take her away and explain that one thoroughly,” advised Mendoza, shooing them out to the anteroom. “Yes, yes, Miss Browne, you’re very welcome, thank you for coming in… Morgan, good morning, what kept you? Come in here, I’ve got a job for you.”

  * * *

  Morgan wasn’t enthusiastic about the job, took it on grudgingly, while taking Mendoza’s point of view. “I’ve got no real reason to ask questions about this boy, and the school people would undoubtedly raise an uproar, want to know all about it, if a Homicide man walked in wanting to know all about one of their seventh-graders. There may be nothing in it anyway, and in any case not much to find out at the school, but it’s obviously the first place to go for information about him. They may be a little surprised at your office wanting to know, but they won’t be alarmed about it, and everybody’s so used these days to being asked irrelevant questions by busybody government agencies, ten to one they won’t think twice about it. Try to see his teacher—or all his teachers, if there are more than one—and his school records. I’ve jotted down some questions you might ask.”

  “All right.” Morgan took the memo ungraciously. “I’ll get what I can for you, but I do have a job of my own, you know—and things I’ve got to do today.”

  “I realize that.” Mendoza also realized that so
me of the reluctance was due to the fact that Morgan didn’t like him much personally; that was just one of those things. Morgan being a reasonably intelligent man, Mendoza didn’t put it down to any irrational prejudice, though he wasn’t much concerned with the reason if there was one. Probably not, just a matter of personal chemistries; and he never wasted time trying to ingratiate himself with people who felt that way. He’d had the same reasonless reaction himself often enough to know that it was a waste of time. He merely thanked Morgan politely, saw him out, and deciding he could not decently call down to Prints, to see if they’d found anything interesting, before eleven, sat down to look over the latest reports on his other current cases.

  Before he had read the first three lines of what Sergeant Brice had to tell him, another disturbance commenced outside his door. He said resignedly to himself, “¡Me doy por vencido!”60 and went to investigate. As he might have expected, it was a delegation representing the family Ramirez, consisting of Papa, Teresa, and Father Monaghan. Ramirez was being impassioned in Spanish, and Hackett was patting his shoulder and repeating, “No se sofoque usted, amigo—está O.K., compreende?”61

  “Lieutenant—” Teresa clutched at his arm. “Please, you got to believe none of us knew what my uncle was up to—”

  “Never, never, never!” Ramirez whirled to state his case to higher authority. “This villain, this bandit, to bring such disgrace on the family—I swear before God to you, never would I have him in my house if I knew what he is guilty of! And now you’re thinking bad things for all of us, that we’re all criminals—I swear to you—”

  “Calm yourself, my son, I’ve told you the police will judge fairly, you must not worry. Lieutenant, I do hope there’ll be no misunderstanding, I’m quite certain these people had nothing to do—”

  “Yes, yes, yes,” said Mendoza. “Ramirez—quiet! You’ve been in this country long enough to know that we’re not ogres! Listen now. Your brother has broken the law and he will go to prison, but his crime isn’t in my jurisdiction, understand? He was arrested by my friend Lieutenant Callaghan, and I have spoken with the lieutenant, who agrees with me that you people very likely knew nothing of the crime, although naturally he must investigate that. You understand that there must be investigation when a crime is committed. But if you’ve done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear from the police.”