by Dell Shannon
"Well, I guess you can call it funny," said Simms. "And I don't know that I believe it myself." He was a stout, short, pugnacious-jawed fellow about sixty-five, in neat and clean sport shirt and slacks. He took the chair Palliser pulled out for him and regarded them dubiously. "This is the damnedest thing I ever ran across. Joe! Of all people, Joe getting killed like that."
"Mr. Simms was a friend of Mr. Kelly's," said Palliser.
"Well, I was," said Simms as if there'd been some argument about it. "You see, while Joe was working he'd gotten transferred around so much by the railroad, him and his missus hadn't ever bought a house. Just rented. Myra and me had—I was in carpentry and cabinetmaking all my life—we had a nice little place over in Lincoln Heights, but the goddamn state took it, when they were expandin' the Golden State freeway they just took it, some damn thing called eminent domain —give me twenty-five thousand, I coulda sold it for forty then if I'd wanted to, which I didn't. Damn government. And it was along about then Myra died, so that's how come I'm in the apartment on Miramar and got to know Joe. We ran into each other at the market, and got talking. We had the same kind o' background, thought the same way about things, 'round about the same age and all—both of us widowers without much to do, y'know‘? We used to get together, him living only a block away—I got a color TV, and we'd play checkers sometimes. I don't know how much there is to this, though I'm bound to say Joe wasn't a fellow to go imagining things." He cocked his head at them.
"For what it's worth—" said Palliser.
"Wel1. I couldn't believe it, about Joe. Mr. Moreno, fellow lives across from him and found him, he knew Joe and I were friends, he called me after he called the cops. I was just, well, flabbergasted. Joe! Who'd want to knife Joe, for Gossakes? There's no sense to it at all. He wasn't even robbed—nine bucks and some change on him, you said, didn't you? It just don't make no sense. But I just got to thinking about what he said on Wednesday, and that don't make no sense either but, I mean, there it is. Which sounds sort of silly, but now this has happened, well, Joe wasn't no fool."
"He told you about this on Wednesday," prompted Palliser.
" 'S right. Wednesday afternoon on his way home. He said he thought this guy was following him, see. He noticed him first at the library—Joe was a great one for Westerns, he went to the library about once a week regular—and then he spotted him at the market, and then, he said, be damned if the guy wasn't on the bus when he started home. And seemed to be watching him sort of funny. I thought he must be imagining things, though that wasn't like Joe. It was probably just a coincidence, but—well, it's funny."
"Did he tell you what the fellow looked like?" asked Hackett.
"He just said, a young fellow—blond, ordinary clothes, ordinary sort of looks, nobody he ever recalled seeing before. It sounds crazy—Joe just an ordinary guy, never did any harm to anybody, nobody have any reason to—but now this happens, it sort of sticks in my mind, y'know? But it is crazy. Somebody knifing Joe. Mr. Moreno said he never heard a thing, after he heard Joe leave about an hour before—and he would have, if Joe had had time to yell or put up a fight—just there he was, all bloody and the bag of groceries scattered around—" He shook his head. "Crazy. Sergeant Palliser seems to think—"
"Well, it's interesting," said Palliser.
"So somebody had time to rob him," said Mendoza.
"Yes, that's the point," said Palliser absently. "A little off-beat."
"Well," said Hackett, "it may mean something or not, but I can't see any connection with your Skid Row derelict."
Palliser rubbed his jaw thoughtfully. "I never said there was, Art. Except, funnily enough, there was a kind of resemblance—they were both in the sixties, middle-sized, sandy coloring—that's just coincidence. Hell, he could have imagined this, but why should he?"
"But why in hell should anybody be shadowing Joe?" asked Simms reasonably.
Palliser said, "Well, I'll get a statement typed up for you to sign. God knows what it means, but we'll put it in the record."
"Whatever you say. Just, after it happened, I got to thinking about it, y'know." Simms sat back and looked interestedly about the big office.
Higgins came in with another suspect heister to question, and Hackett went to sit in on that, which was also inconclusive. The suspect offered an alibi; he'd been at a big party and a lot of people would say so. What that was worth was moot; he had quite a long record, was four months on parole from a charge of attempted homicide, and his associates were probably of the same ilk. But they had to go through the motions. Hackett went out to start checking while Higgins wrote the follow-up report.
Mendoza wandered down the hall to the coffee machine about two forty-five; Grace and Landers were just coming in with another possible suspect. "Nick and Henry are killing time down in R. and I. waiting for those witnesses to pore over the mug shots," said Grace. "I think myself Mutt and Jeff are newcomers to the crime scene—pair of morons, they'd have been dropped on before now, and nobody's made them yet, and the lab did pick up some latents from the register on that first job." His regular-featured chocolate-brown face with its narrow mustache as neat as Mendoza's registered amused annoyance. "It's a dull job lately—nothing but these damn stupid heisters. To think anybody can still imagine it's a glamorous exciting job—and when I think of all the offbeat complex mysteries in the damn-fool detective novels—"
"Don't complain, or we may come in for a couple of those," said Mendoza sardonically. He took his cup of coffee back to his desk and sat looking out over the city view, ruminating idly on Mr. Simms, and desultorily on the man with the Doberman. There was no going anywhere on that, of course. When the new call went down at three-thirty, everybody else was out or interrogating suspects, and Mendoza went out on it with Higgins.
It was an old apartment building, about sixteen units, on Vendome down from Beverly. The black-and-white squad was sitting in front; mostly on the Central beat they ran two-man cars, and Patrolman Zimmerman was at the entrance waiting for them, said Gomez was upstairs securing the scene.
"Looks like some sort of O.D.," he told them. "Maybe suicide. Hell of a thing, the little kid found her. The daughter, kid about ten or eleven. She went to the neighbor, who called us. Mrs. Werner, it's apartment fourteen—the corpse is next door in sixteen. A Mrs. Marion Cooper."
It was a shabby old building, the rents probably middling low. Up the uncarpeted stair and down a narrow dark hall they came to Patrolman Gomez, massive in navy uniform, being noncommittally polite to a plump middle-aged woman. "I don't understand what you mean by an O.D.—why, she was just a young woman, I know young people can have heart attacks too but—heavens, it's just terrible to think of Harriet finding her like that. What could have happened? . . ."
She'd had a shock, and the talk was compulsive, but she looked like a normally sensible woman, plainly dressed, graying dark hair.
"Mrs. Wemer," said Gomez, looking relieved at the advent of Mendoza and Higgins. "These are the detectives, ma'am."
"We'll want to talk to you shortly," Higgins told her.
"All right. I've got—I brought Harriet into my place. It seemed— She's only eleven. I suppose we ought to call her father. I just don't understand—I didn't know Mrs. Cooper very well, but she was just a young woman, couldn't be much over thirty—"
"We'll get back to you," said Higgins. She retreated into her own apartment, and Gomez edged the door of apartment sixteen farther open with one toe.
"It looks like an 0.D. There doesn't seem to be any suicide note."
Mendoza stopped inside the threshold and looked around with distaste. Expectably, in an apartment of this vintage, the walls needed painting, the furniture was old and dun-colored; but the little living room hadn't been cleaned or straightened for some time, there were clothes and dirty dishes on every surface in wild disarray, and the place smelled stale and fusty. Past the living room to the left was a glimpse of a small kitchen with just enough space for a tiny square table and a couple
of chairs at one end. In the other direction a minute cross hall led directly to a small square bathroom, a pair of equally small bedrooms to each side.
The body was in the bedroom on the left, quite peacefully reposing in the bed. "The covers were all pulled up," said Gomez apologetically. "We had to see if she might still be breathing, but——"
She looked to be about thirty, and no dead body is beautiful but they could see that she'd been a pretty woman: a taffy blonde, with a heart-shaped face, a small pouting mouth, and in the. low-cut blue nylon nightgown her figure was curvaceous. She had died easily and comfortably without struggle. One hand was curled up around her head, a small plump hand with the nails painted dark red. The bedroom was in disorder too, the top of the bureau and dressing table heaped with miscellany, clothes on the one straight chair, the foot of the double bed; the door to the little closet was open, and that looked cluttered and untidy.
There was a little two-drawer nightstand at one side of the bed; it held a small ceramic lamp with a ruffled shade, an ashtray, and a used glass with a few dregs at the bottom.
Higgins bent over and took a sniff. "Scotch."
"And maybe something else," said Mendoza. He looked at Gomez. "Get on the mike and rustle up a lab unit, will you?" He went out of the bedroom, across the living room, to the kitchen.
The sink was stacked with dirty dishes, but the little table was oddly clean and empty. Standing at one edge of the counter nearest the table was a pint bottle of a low-priced brand of scotch; there was only about a jiggerful left in it.
"So," said Mendoza.
"Turn the lab loose on it. They'll give us all we'll get on this."
"Maybe," said Mendoza. When they came out to the hall, Gomez was coming back. He said a mobile unit was on the way.
The door of the next apartment was ajar. Mendoza tapped on it and went in. Mrs. Werner got up anxiously from a sagging couch across the room. "Oh, have you found out anything? What have you—"
"Are you the policemen?" asked a thin little voice.
"Yes, that's right," said Mendoza.
"What—what happened to Mama?" She was a nice-looking little girl, if not exactly pretty: thin and pale, with dark-brown hair in a modified Dutch bob, and steady hazel-green eyes, a straight little mouth.
"Our doctor will find out," said Mendoza. He hesitated; questioning a child could be tricky; but she looked back at him gravely and began to answer questions unasked.
"She never got up as early as me, I always get my own breakfast. Her alarm's set for eight, so she can get the nine-fifteen bus—she doesn't have to go to work till ten, see. So I—I never saw her this morning—it wasn't till I got home from school—I saw she was still—still in bed, and it was funny—" Suddenly the square little chin quivered, and she clamped her jaw tight. "I thought—I'd better ask somebody—if she was sick—"
"You did just right, honey," said Mrs. Werner.
Mendoza sat down uninvited. "What about last night, Harriet?" he asked gently. "Did your mother have a friend come, or was she out somewhere? Or—"
"Oh, she was out. Like usual," said Harriet. She sounded surprised that he hadn't known that. "She went out most nights, someplace where there were people to talk to, and TV. Barney's, or the Ace-High Bar, mostly. I was asleep when she came home, I usually am. I didn't hear her come home, but this morning I saw—I saw she was in bed—just like usual, and—" She swallowed. "Please," she said, "she's—she's dead, isn't she?"
Nobody said anything until Mrs. Werner got out stiffly, "Yes, honey, I'm afraid she is."
"I thought—prob'ly she was," said Harriet. A tear rolled down one cheek, and she sniffed valiantly. "I suppose—somebody'd better call Daddy. I mean Grandma. Daddy'll be at work, but Grandma's usually home."
Mrs. Werner, who had sat down again, got up with sudden decision and said to Harriet, "Yes, we'll do that in just a minute. I just want to talk to the officers a little while, you stay here, honey." She led them out to the hall, and shut the door behind them, went down the hall. She had a rather sheeplike face, and continually reached to push overlarge fashionable spectacles up on her nose, but her eyes were unexpectedly intelligent. "Now I don't know anything about this," she told them uncompromisingly, "but I guess neither do you yet, and I might as well tell you what I do know about Mrs. Cooper."
"Yes, Mrs. Werner?" Mendoza waited interestedly.
"Which isn't all that much, but a woman can read another woman, you take me. That's a nice little girl in there, nicer than you'd expect a woman like that to have. But I don't think there was any harm in her—she was just flighty. Sort of, you know, irresponsible. She held a job—she was a waitress at a coffee shop on Beverly," and she named it. "I've only been in her place a time or two, we didn't neighbor, but you could see she was a terrible housekeeper—dressed her- self up like a bandbox, but that was as far as it went. And she left Harriet alone a lot too much, even when she first moved here four years ago when Harriet was just a little thing. She was divorced from Harriet's father, he has her on weekends, I only met him once but he seems like a real nice steady fellow."
"I see," said Mendoza.
"She didn't die of anything natural, did she?" she asked shrewdly. "Well, all I'll say is, I don't think there was any harm in her. She didn't throw wild parties, or bring men home, or get drunk or anything. I was sorry for the little girl, she wasn't any kind of mother to her, but that's the worst anybody could say."
"Thanks very much," said Mendoza.
"I suppose somebody had better phone the father. I mean, she can't be left alone, and he always has her weekends—"
Mendoza and Higgins consulted mutely and shrugged at each other. That certainly made more sense than taking the child to Juvenile Hall. They went back to the Cooper apartment and found Duke and Scarne just finishing the photography. There was an address book beside the phone in the living room, and Duke told them to keep their paws off it, nothing had been printed yet. "Preserve calm," said Mendoza, and used his pen to turn the pages. There was a number for Dan listed under the C's. "Disorganized females." He went back to the apartment next door.
"Yes, sir, that's right, Dan's my daddy. It's El Centro Street in South Pasadena."
Back in the Ferrari, Mendoza lit a cigarette and used the phone on the dashboard while Higgins made some notes for a first report. He got a sensible-sounding female who took the news calmly with only a few exclamations and questions. She said her son drove a city bus, on a Hollywood route; he wasn't due home until seven o'clock, and she didn't have a car available. If the neighbor could kindly keep Harriet until then, her father would be right over to pick her up. Would that be all right? Mendoza reassured her, resignedly climbed stairs again to pass that on to Mrs. Werner.
It was a quarter past five. There would be places to ask questions on this, but they probably couldn't ask intelligent ones until they'd heard what the lab had to say. Higgins agreed with that and said he'd half promised to take the family out to dinner and it would be nice to get home early.
"The city pays you to put in eight hours," said Mendoza, and swung the Ferrari onto Beverly Boulevard.
The coffee shop where Marion Cooper had been a waitress was one of a chain, a bright and scrupulously clean big place.
Just inside the front door was a cashier's counter; the girl perched on the stool behind it was about thirty, synthetically attractive with a little too much makeup, slightly protruding teeth. She stared at the badge. "The m-manager?" she said. "Mr. Boatman? He's in the back—what's it about?"
Higgins said they were sorry to tell her that Mrs. Marion Cooper was dead. "We understand she worked here."
"Marion? Dead? Oh, my God!" she said. "Oh, my God—how? How could she be dead? She's only thirty-one—"
"We're not sure yet," said Mendoza, "but it looks as if it could have been suicide."
She drew her head back stiffly, and her expression was utterly blank for ten seconds, and then she said, "Marion? She'd be the last person in the world—I'
ll never believe that! She's always right on top, I never knew her to worry about anything—that just couldn't be—I can't believe she— Oh, Mr. Boatman!" She tumbled down off the stool and ran around the counter toward the man just emerged from the door marked Private at the back of the restaurant. "Mr. Boatman, it's police—and they say—"
He was a big egg—shaped man with shrewd dark eyes and the remnants of a Brooklyn accent. He ushered them out smoothly to the foyer, away from the customers inside, and listened to what they had to say with obvious astonishment.
"Now I don't know what facts you got hold of," he said, "and I don't know what you want from me, gentlemen. I just knew the girl as an employee. But one thing I'll tell you right off the bat. That one a suicide? Like Sam Goldwyn put it, in two words, impossible. That little nitwit didn't have the brains to get depressed enough."'
"Which," said Higgins back in the car, "is also interesting. And it's five past six. If you don't want to go home, I do, and seeing I missed my day off this week I think I'll stay home tomorrow."
* * *
When Mendoza got home, Alison informed him that she'd found the people to install the electric eye, but they'd also have to take all the cars in to a garage to have a gadget installed to make the electric eye work. And it would take about a full day, but it couldn't be helped.
"Oh, hell," said Mendoza. But it would be worth it, for the convenience.
"And they can't come until next week. But when we know it'll get done eventually . . . I never realized how awkward it was going to be, having to open and shut those gates—"
"Just," said Mendoza, "one thing leading to another again,. my love."
* * *
Landers was off on Saturday, and with the wedding this near, Galeano wasn't much use as a detective. There had been another heist at a pharmacy overnight; the clerk would be coming in to make a statement, look at the mug shots. Before he did, the cashier from the chain coffee shop, whose name was Marge Colbert, and one of the waitresses, Rena Hiller, showed up as arranged to answer some questions. They had both known Marion Cooper well. She had worked at the coffee shop for four years or so. "Ever since she got the divorce," said Marge Colbert. "Maybe she wasn't the brainiest girl around—I heard what old Boatman said to you yesterday—but she was always nice, nice to be around, everybody liked Marion, she was always so cheerful and happy."