Felony File

by Dell Shannon

  "What?" said Palliser.

  "I don't think he's going to appreciate it much," said Lake seriously. He offered them the morning Times. In the lower left corner of the front page was a very candid close-up shot of Mendoza holding Merlin while a fireman administered oxygen. He looked very sternly noble, and the billows of smoke rising behind him made an effectively dramatic background. VETERAN P.D. OFFICER RESCUES CAT, said the headline. The story started out, "Lt. Luis Mendoza of the Robbery-Homicide office forgot official duties today to save the life of a pet cat, forgotten in a fire which all but gutted a modest home on Portia Street. This tragic and heartwarming story came to light—"

  "Oh, my God, he'll have a fit," said Hackett. "We didn't hear about the cat. He'll be fit to be tied. I wonder where the hell they got the picture."

  There were a couple of lab reports in; Lake handed them over. "And some of you'll be heading for Glendale."

  He gave Piggott's note to Palliser.

  "I knew it!" said Palliser. "By God, I had the feeling they were going to make another hit! Of all the gall—no details, but it's got to be the same gang. Hell's fire, and we've got just nothing at all—" He huddled with Landers and Grace.

  Even in this usually monotonous job, surprises came along; Hackett read the first lab report with some astonishment. He'd nearly forgotten that two-week-old corpse found in the derelict house last Friday; it had looked like an O.D., and he seemed to recall that there'd been an autopsy report confirming that, heroin overdose. Now here was a kickback from the Feds on his prints, and it seemed he'd been one William Wilfrid Edgard, with a homicide warrant out on him in Indianapolis. Everybody got to California sooner or later, thought Hackett. There was also that pawnbroker to see, about the little loot from the Whalen house; but first he put through a call to Indianapolis to tell the force there they could stop looking for Edgard.

  The other report was from S.I.D. ballistics, on the gun in the Reynolds case. There ought to be an autopsy report sometime today. Galeano read it, and got on the phone. "Listen, this ballistics report. I never heard of this damn gun—a Bernadelli automatic? What the hell is it?"

  "They're not as common as some others," admitted Scarne, "but I've seen a couple of others. We found the ejected shells, by the way, but there aren't any prints on them. It's an import, Italian made. Takes .22 short ammo. It's a little bit of a thing, about four inches long—useless sort of gun, but of course at short range—"

  It had been very short range. "I'll be damned," said Galeano.

  "But it's not a rarity—there are some around?"

  "Sure. Couple of big East Coast importers deal a lot in Italian stuff. This one's been made for twenty years or so.

  About then Mendoza called in to say that he was going directly to see that lawyer, would be in later. The inquests on Dave Whalen and Alice Engel were set for ten o'clock, in different courts. Palliser, Landers and Grace had taken off for Glendale.

  Galeano went to catch Melinda Corey before she left the house. She agreed to try for a look at Mrs. Armstrong this afternoon. "But it seems awfully far-fetched."

  "Are you sure you would know the woman?" he asked "For sure?"

  She pressed her lips together. "I know I said I only saw her for about two seconds, Mr. Galeano. But I'm sure. There's a sort of picture frozen in my mind—her at one end of the couch and Leta standing facing her. I can't describe her, but I'm sure I'd know her if I saw her."

  Galeano wondered. A waste of time—could she really be sure? It was nine-thirty; he headed back downtown for the Hall of justice to sit in on the Whalen inquest. Glasser would cover Engel: the evidence on Fratelli would have been passed on and all the evidence would be offered on that one, which would take longer. On Whalen, the jury expectably returned an open verdict, persons unknown.

  * * *

  Hackett went down to the pawnshop on Second Street, on the track of the pitiful little loot from the Whalen house. The pawnbroker was a thin dark young man with very steady shrewd dark eyes in a narrowly handsome face; Hackett thought he'd hate to try to put a lie over on him. His name was Weingard. He said, "No offense, Sergeant, but in this neighborhood it doesn't help the business image much, police dropping in often—reason I brought the stuff over. Sure, I can tell you who brought it in. Kid by the name of Pete Jackson. They live in the neighborhood, up on Boylston. His mother gets rid of the welfare money a little faster than usual, she's got a good old Longines watch she hocks now and then—saves up to get it back for next time."

  "Know anything about the kid? He ever been in trouble?"

  Weingard shrugged. "He is now, isn't he? He tried to offer me some merchandise I saw right away was shop-lifted—cheap costume jewelry, and he didn't even have the sense to take the tags off. That was a couple of weeks ago."

  "Well, thanks very much," said Hackett. Against all the odds, were they going to drop on Whalen's killers after all? The mother's name was Marie, Weingard said; he had the address from the times she had pawned things with him.

  It was a ramshackle old apartment building, and she had one of the back apartments giving on an alley. She wasn't particularly distressed at a police sergeant asking questions; there was a subtle aura of muscatel about her even at this hour. She looked pure African, thick lips and woolly hair and glistening black skin. "Pete?" she said. "I don' know where he'd be. Not at school—he don' like school much. He usually comes home at night."

  Hackett went back to the office and told Lake to put out the word to their street informants that they wanted Pete Jackson. He'd also ask Piggott and Schenke to try to pick him up, if he came home tonight.

  * * *

  "Well, there you are," said Palliser. "It's the same pros, and there just isn't anywhere to go on it."

  "Except," said Landers, "that the same thing holds true for this set-up—anybody wandering around the store could have found out enough to make the intelligent guess."

  "Only did they?" wondered Grace. "It's six of one, half dozen of the other. Could also have been the inside dope."

  Landers laughed sharply. "At least it won't be us pawing all through the employee records, if that's the route you want to go."

  They had met the Glendale men—Sergeant Costello, Detective Dahlman—at the Robinsons' store that had been knocked off last night. It wasn't nearly as big a store as Bullock's downtown, and they wouldn't have got as big a haul, but it would amount to a nice take even so. Maybe all department stores had much the same arrangements; this one resembled Bullock's in miniature, with its administrative offices on the top floor. Here there was only one freight elevator: other than that, it was the same arrangement: registers closed out, money bags taken up to Accounting, then taken to the bank night drop by two guards.

  The store was in a pleasant small shopping plaza, with smaller shops around it but at a little distance. They were now sitting on a couple of stone benches facing the front of the store, smoking and kicking it around. "I don't think much," said Costello, "of that little idea you got from the boy in Philly." He was a stocky blue-chinned tough. Dahlman was younger, quieter, competent-looking. Glendale had a pretty good force, if a small one.

  "Neither do I," said Palliser, "but it's all we've got to hand you."

  The operation had gone off the same way: four masked men in the Accounting office just as the store was closing, the staff and security guards tied up. "I'll tell you another way it was one Goddamned slick job," said Costello morosely. "They'd have taken a bigger haul in the Galleria, but they played it safe."

  "What's that?"

  "Big new shopping center—well, a few years old—over on the other side of town. There are bigger department stores—The Broadway, Buffums', Penneys'. But also a lot more lights, and restaurants open after the stores close, and more people around. They played it safe and hit here."

  "The accountants," said Dahlman, "are saying around seventy thousand."

  "And we had another thought on that aspect," said Landers. "The Bullock's people said three hundred
G's, which seemed fantastic—of course they deal in a lot of expensive stuff, furs, cameras, furniture—but when we had second thoughts and asked, it wouldn't have been that much in cash. A lot of the take isn't actual take—just transference of credit with Master Charge, Visa, Bullock's own credit cards. And there'd be a certain number of personal checks. They finally said, more than half of all transactions would have been like that. But even so, it was a good haul."

  "So say it's the same here, and it probably is," said Costello. "Auuggh! People thinking of the paper as money—robbing Peter to pay Paul. Say it was half cash. They'll just have dumped all the checks from both jobs, burned them somewhere?

  "So we go through the motions," said Dahlman, "checking the guards, the employees? I buy your idea, Landers, anybody could have spotted that routine with a little snooping. Ask me, the security wasn't so damn tight either at Bullock's or this place."

  They sat in silence for awhile; nobody had any more ideas. The Glendale lab, of course, was dusting for prints and looking at the rope used; they would probably turn up the same results the lab downtown had. Or rather, the lack of them.

  * * *

  The lawyer's name was Duane Earnshaw, and he was a large genial man about sixty. His practice was obviously successful; his offices were on Fairfax Avenue in a low, modern, single building. He had two partners and the front office boasted three glossy, youngish secretaries. He had been conventionally sorry and surprised to hear about Marion Stromberg. He said he and his wife had been socially acquainted with the Strombergs. He volunteered information, and none of it was of immediate use to Mendoza. Stromberg, he said, had been a shrewd investor: stock, real estate. He had left her around two hundred and fifty thousand soundly invested, a couple of pieces of rental property. Marion Stromberg had made a will after his death, which still held: she had divided the estate between a second cousin of hers back in Illinois and her husband's niece. "The only relatives either of them had, a very fair thing to do," said Earnshaw.

  "You say you knew them socially. What did you think of her, Mr. Earnshaw—as a person?"

  Earnshaw sat back in his large expensive desk chair and lighted a cigarette. "Well," he said a little perplexedly, "they were difficult people to know, Lieutenant. My wife didn't care for either of them, and it had been a very tenuous acquaintanceship—we never saw them often. Dr. Stromberg didn't seem to have any particular interests at all, you couldn't get him talking on politics, sports, any subject you could name. He was a colorless sort of fellow, all business, and she was the same. I must say she surprised me a little, after he died—she had quite a good business head, she was a more intelligent woman than I'd thought. But—well, colorless is as good a word as any."

  "Yes," said Mendoza. By all they'd heard, a sterile sort of life; but if she'd never known anything else, possibly she hadn't realized that. "What about this niece? Were they close at all?"

  "I doubt it. She said—" Earnshaw thought back—"when she made the will, she thought it was only fair that Mrs. Dunn should share the money, being Fred's only relation and it being Fred who'd made the money. The Dunns live in Santa Monica, by the way."

  "Well, thanks very much." Mendoza stood up. He had gone to the house on Beachwood Drive before coming here, and rummaged; in a photograph album in the den he had found a studio portrait of her taken, he thought, about five or six years ago; he'd wondered why. Or was it older, had it belonged to her mother? She hadn't had a face that changed much with time; he thought anyone would recognize it who had seen her lately. It wouldn't do any harm to get it into the Times; maybe it would jog someone's memory, who had seen her last Friday night.

  The Brown Derby, he thought, getting into the car. Or the other restaurant. Unfortunately, the staff who would have been on duty at the dinner hour on Friday wouldn't be on until this afternoon. Catch them then. He stopped at the Times-Mirror building, saw a sub-editor and passed over the photograph. He walked into the Robbery-Homicide office at ten minutes to eleven. Lake was reading a paperback at the switchboard. Hackett was on the phone, and nobody else was in. He went into his office and found the morning Times neatly spread out on his desk blotter.

  Hackett grinned as a wounded roar rose from the inner office. "¿Para qué es esto? Diez millones de demonios desde el inferno! ¿Y ahora qué? Goddamn it, of all the gall—and who the hell wrote this guff—"

  Hackett strolled in. "Pretty picture," he said. "You look quite romantic, Luis—just a little reminiscent of Barrymore playing Hamlet three sheets in the wind."

  "And where in hell they got that picture—" Mendoza flung himself on the phone book. "The fire station—damn it, there wasn't any press there—Jimmy!"

  He called the fire station on Sunset, got the assistant chief, and fired off furious questions. The assistant chief was amused. "Why, Lieutenant, we always carry a camera in case of getting records for the arson squad—when I saw what that was yesterday, I told Tony to get a few shots. He must have peddled that one to the Times for human interest value—not supposed to do it, of course. I thought it was kind of nice, myself. You so concerned for that poor little kitty-cat."

  "You can go to hell!" snapped Mendoza. He sat back and brushed his moustache back and forth irritably. He was still fuming when Galeano came in and told them about the Whalen inquest. "What about Reynolds? Have you got anything on it?" Galeano started to tell him about that, and Lake came in with a new call.

  "It's a double homicide. Coronado Street."

  "Oh, for God's sake," said Mendoza, getting up. "One thing after another. Come on, Art."

  It wasn't quite as cold today, which could mean that it was building up to more rain. They took the Ferrari and Mendoza got on Beverly, driving a little faster than usual. Coronado crossed there just below Rampart, and as they turned the corner they saw the squad sitting about halfway down the block. This was a residential street, the houses old in this part of the city; it was a middle-class block of comfortable places, nothing fancy. The house where the squad car waited was an old California bungalow flanked by others very similar; it was painted white with green trim. A lawn in front was brown with winter.

  Patrolman Yeager had two people in the back of the squad. He got out as Mendoza and Hackett came up.

  "My week for looking at bloody messes," he said gloomily. "These people just found them. Mr. and Mrs. Coons. That's their car." It was an ancient Chevy parked in the drive. "They're old friends of these people—Mr. and Mrs. Jackman, Brian and Jessie Jackman. They hadn't seen them in a month or so, and landed here about half an hour ago, found the door unlocked, walked in and found them. They're pretty old, and it was a shock—they had to go back to the main drag, find a phone and call in."

  They were walking up to the house.

  There was a screen door sagging on its hinges; the inner door was wide open. They went in to the expectable living room of this kind of house, old-fashioned furniture, a worn flowered rug, rather fussy curtains. It was a combination living-dining room, with a built-in sideboard with glass doors at the far end, an old round, oak table there and chairs. The room was dusty and dim, the house facing north, but it looked fairly neat.

  "The kitchen," said Yeager behind them. They went through the dining area to a swinging door propped open. The kitchen, as usual in a place of this vintage, was large and square. There was a square painted table to one side with a pair of matching chairs. And the kitchen was not neat.

  The table had been shoved crookedly against the wall, and one chair had fallen over on its side. There were dishes on the table with food on them and two pans on the stove. A large bowl had been upturned on the floor and lay in pieces among the remains of whatever it had held. And sprawled on the floor, lying against one another, were two corpses, a man's and a woman's.

  "This didn't happen yesterday," said Mendoza. The food was congealed and moldy; the blood on the floor and the bodies was long dry and brown. The heat was on in the house, a gas furnace most likely, but the thermostat was turned low and the bod
ies had not suffered much change except discoloration.

  "We'd better turn the lab loose first," said Hackett.

  "And I want a doctor's opinion about time, right now," said Mendoza. "By all the blood, they were knifed."

  "You better take a look in the bedroom," said Yeager. In silence they followed him down a cross hall.

  There were two bedrooms. The front one was the larger; it held an old-fashioned bedroom set, double bed, large dresser with a mirror fixed over it, another chest of drawers.

  "¡Por Dios!" said Mendoza. On the mirror, crudely drawn in what looked like black paint, in letters three inches high, were the two words IDLE WERSHIPERS!

  "I'll be damned," said Hackett under his breath.

  On the dresser, just below that, stood a small china statue of the Virgin. There was a crystal rosary on the dresser tray, and a framed lithograph of the vision of the Virgin at Fatima on one wall. Mendoza backed out and went down to the living room again, looking around. On a table in front of the window was another china statue of Our Lady of Carmel, and in an open—shelved curio cabinet in one corner were several other religious figurines—St. Francis, St. Anthony, St. Michael.

  "You see what I mean," said Yeager.

  "I do indeed." Mendoza led them both out, got in the front seat of the squad and called in for a lab truck, talked to the coroner's office. Hackett got into the passenger seat. Mendoza swung around and introduced himself abruptly to the silent couple in the rear seat.

  "This is Sergeant Hackett. Now I know you're considerably upset by this and we don't want to make things any harder for you, we'll let you go home as soon as we can. But you understand, we'd like to know something about Mr. and Mrs. Jackman."

  They nodded at him dumbly. They were over the first shock, though she had been crying. They were very old people, perhaps in the late seventies. He was a tall, gaunt, bald man with stringy jowls and faded-blue eyes; she, a short, heavy woman with a round face, neat gray hair. "What d'you want to know?" he asked.