Mark of Murder llm-7

by Dell Shannon

  "We just want to talk to you," said Mendoza. The bartender came up and slapped a highball in front of her.

  "Sure. That's what they all say," said Rosie, and giggled again. She drank thirstily.

  "About silver dollars," said Higgins. "You've been spending a few lately. Don't often see silver dollars any more."

  Rosie didn't say anything. She looked at him, setting her glass down, and small fright was in her eyes.

  "Where'd you get them?" asked Higgins casually.

  "H-how d'you know I had any silver dollars?" Suddenly she read them; Rosie would have had this and that to do with cops in the course of her misspent life; and she gasped and shoved violently against Higgins. "You're fuzz-you leave me be, I haven't done nothing-let me go!" She made no impression whatever on Higgins' solid bulk; but her voice rose, and the bartender came over in a hurry.

  "I said no disturbance in here, bloodhounds! Listen-"

  "We don't want you, Rosie," said Higgins. "Quiet down, you stupid little- We just want you to answer some questions, damn it. We've got nothing on you, see? Take it easy-here, drink your drink."

  She shrank into the corner of the booth. "I haven't done nothing,” she said sullenly.

  "You've spent a few silver dollars, Rosie," said Mendoza. "That's all we want to know about. Where'd you get them?"

  "Why's it matter to you, anyways?" She reached for her glass.

  "It matters. Where?"

  "From a friend o' mine," she said.

  They could translate that. A customer. "What's his name, where'd you meet him?" asked Mendoza.

  "I don't have to-it's no damn business of yours-"

  "We'll go on sitting here," said Mendoza, "until you tell us, Rosie." Sharp savage irritation rose in him: obstructed every small step of the way! And Art- Don't think about Art. "All we want to know is what he looks like."

  "None o' your business. I didn't mean nobody gave 'em to me, I-l got this friend o' mine to change 'em for bills, see-" She was still busy defending herself on the obvious vice count.

  "I don't care how you came by them," said Mendoza.

  "Who did you get them from? Do you know his name?"

  "What the hell are you insin-sinuating about me?" she flared up. "I know lotsa people, no reason I shouldn't-I'm a model, see, I got a good job all lined up, you guys can't-”

  "Sure, honey," said Higgins, "we can see you're a real high-class girl. We just want to know which friend gave you the silver dollars." He sounded patient.

  Mendoza wasn't. He leaned across the stained, scarred old table. "Listen to me, you stupid female! I don't give a single damn who you go to bed with, how often or for what price. There's the hell of a good chance that the man you got those silver dollars from is this killer, the Slasher. You can tell us what he looks like, and that's all I want from you, if you can get that much through your-"

  It didn't penetrate at once, and then when it did she half screamed, "The- Oh, my Christ! No-I never saw him, I don't know whoLet me outta here for God's sake! Jesus, you don't-"

  "I told you what I mean," said Mendoza coldly. "We think that man's the Slasher. Now will you tell me all about him or shall we take a little ride to headquarters?"

  She made one sudden, convulsive effort to squeeze past Higgins again; she looked almost witless with fright. Then she said faintly, "O.K., O.K., you take me in and I tell you. Please take me in, mister-on account of if he knew I told--"

  "Whichever way you want," said Mendoza. He dropped a couple of bills on the table and slid out of the booth. Higgins took her by the arm and followed.

  They went single file down the narrow aisle to the door, the woman between and Higgins' hand on her arm. They came out to clean fresh night air, and Mendoza said, "Where's your car?"

  "Up the block to your right- God damn!" said Higgins. Rosie was out of his grip like an eel, leaving a torn edge of her tawdry dress behind; she fled up the block wildly, dodged around the corner there, and was gone. They ran after her, swearing, and turned into the darker side street. They heard the clatter of her high heels, sharp on the sidewalk ahead, and then lost them.

  "Go call up a car," panted Mendoza. "God damn the little-"

  She was gone. He stood there waiting for the car, to start the futile block-by-block hunt. She'd be diving into whatever cheap rented room she called home, bundling her few possessions together to run on-maybe out of L.A.-thinking of her own skin, Rosie. The Rosies did that. And, being Rosie, she'd know how to go to ground, anonymous, in some other Skid Row.

  Damn her, damn her. She might have given them a very damn definite description-if that was the Slasher-and he knew they'd never pick her up.

  But he set up the routine hunt. You had to try.

  ***

  That night he didn't sleep much. He lay and stared into the darkness and, senselessly, his mind went back over every detail of every case he and Art had worked together. A lot of cases. You got to know a man pretty well in that length of time.

  No way to be certain… permanent brain damage…

  He was still lying there at five-thirty when light out-lined the window, and El Senor got up, yawned and stretched, trampled over Bast and went to sit on the window seat and make chattering noises at the early sparrows in the tree outside. Bast sent a disgusted glare after him, wrapped her tail round her nose, and went to sleep again. Alison was heavily asleep still, lying motionless. He got up, shaved, and dressed. Went out to the living room. Hospitals were always awake. At six-fifteen he called. No change. They had said it could be days. And no way to be certain…

  When he heard faint sounds from the kitchen he wandered out there, and the brisk little Scotswoman smiled at him. "Coffee in five minutes. And it's a senseless sort of thing to be saying to you, but it's never any bit of good worrying over a thing that's out of your hands entirely."

  "I know, Mairi,', he said. "I know that."

  "It's a great pity you've no religion to depend on. I don't know," said Mrs. MacTaggart, "but what I haven't stayed in this heathen household with the hope of reconverting you, my gallant man. And I'm making a novena for the sergeant, so you'll have to find your own breakfast if you want any… I've taken the wee boy into his mother, and our two are fast asleep still and likely'll stay so until I'm home."

  "Yes," said Mendoza… He drank the coffee too hot. He watched her hurry off to the garage for Alison's car. Damned ridiculous, he thought. Superstitious… On her knees at the nearest one, the Church of Our Lady of Good Counsel, obeying the ancient meaningless ritual. What happened or didn't happen, to Art or Luis Mendoza or anybody else, it was just according to how the hands got dealt round.

  ***

  They hadn't picked up Rosie.

  The reproduced signature had made the front page of the Times, blown up twice life size. It was certainly an odd signature, almost totally illegible. Fred, Frank, something like that, and whether the second name started with a T or an L was hard to say, or what the rest of it might be. Anyway, there it was. See if anybody recognized it. It'd be in the afternoon and evening papers too.

  Routine was chuming out background information, the kind of thing you collected automatically; none of it was at all suggestive.

  William Marlowe was fifty-nine, and a Harvard graduate. He'd inherited an estimated ten or twelve million from his father; there'd been money in the family for some time. Oil money and other interests. They came originally from Connecticut, where the family had been since preRevolutionary days. He was married-his wife was a D.A.R. member-and had one son and two daughters. Andrea Nestor's father had been a self-made man. Self-made by gambling on the stock market. He'd died broke six and a half years ago. She had attended local private schools. No close friends had shown up; the neighbors hadn't known much about the Nestors. She seemed to be a neutral sort of woman-nothing to get hold of, good or bad.

  Frank Nestor had come here from New Jersey about ten years back. No background showed at all before that; he never mentioned any relations, wrote no le
tters back home.

  The only interesting thing turned up overnight was Larry Webster. Corliss had met him at a bar and grill on Grand Avenue for dinner, and they'd gone back to her apartment. The tail had got his name and address from the registration in his car, and called in.

  Webster had a record. Mendoza rather liked the record. Lawrence Richard Webster, forty-four, Caucasian, six feet one, one ninety-five, complexion medium, eyes blue, no distinguishing marks. He'd served six months for aggravated assault in 1947, been picked up three times on a D.-and-D., and done a one-to-three for burglary.

  Very nice, thought Mendoza. Just the boy friend for Corliss. And she said he'd been at her apartment on Friday night… He thought he'd like to have a little talk with Larry Webster. He put out a call on him.

  He phoned down to Vice. Lieutenant Andrews had been out on a stake-out last night and wasn't expected in until about eleven. "O.K., tell him I want to see him-I'll be there."

  That damned-that Goddamned stupid lush Rosie.

  Who could have given them a description.

  A description… You just had to try everywhere. Mendoza stood up abruptly. Palliser was a good man, but… He said to Lake, "If they pick up Webster, hold him for me. I probably won't be long."

  ***

  "I know it was almost dark," he said to Miguel Garcia. It was nine-thirty. Miguel was attending summer school; he'd talked to the public-school principal, who had called Miguel out of class for him. They sat here in an empty classroom, Mendoza uncomfortably perched on the edge of a too small desk, and Miguel looked at him with round solemn eyes. "Maybe it's easier for you to tell it better in the Spanish, Miguel? I-”

  "It doesn't matter, sir." They were speaking English. "My dad says we got to know English real good, to get on, see. So we do good at school and all. Well, I mean. Get a good kind of job, see. My dad works for the city, for the parks department, keeping it all nice and the grass watered, see."

  "WelI, I suppose you could say I work for the city too," said Mendoza.

  Miguel gave him an uncertain grin. "Yes, sir. You carry a gun?"

  "Well, no," said Mendoza. "I'm afraid not. Now look, Miguel. You saw this man-the one who probably killed Roberto. He's killed other people too, and we'd like to catch him."

  "I sure hope you do, sir. That was just an awful thing, Roberto. My dad said I should help the cops-oh, gee, excuse me, he said you shouldn't say cops, you don't like it-the policemen all I can, and I told that other one-"

  "Well, we're cops, like it or not," said Mendoza, smiling.

  "I told him all I knew, sir. All I remembered."

  "Try again, Miguel. Think back, hard. He said something to you, and for some reason you felt seared of him, and walked on past-"

  "Yes, sir. I don't know why I got scared. He just stood so kind of still-and then stepped out and said something like, ‘Hey, kids.' Like that. I-"

  "You told the other officer he was thin and had on clothes that looked too big for him, and had a red face."

  "Yes, sir."

  "How did you see that, Miguel? It was nearly dark, and the man had a hat on. You said there wasn't a street-light near. And what exactly did you mean, his face was red? Like a drunk?" Miguel, living down here, would know about that: the broken red veins of a lush.

  "No, it was-gee," said the boy, "I don't know how to say about it, sir. It wasn't very light, almost dark, sure, but there was some light, from the drugstore on the corner-and he- Well, I guess it was that sort of scared me. It was silly. I could see-it was red all over his face, and-sort of puckered, like. Like Pokey."

  "Pokey?" said Mendoza softly.

  "Yes, sir. My dad says you shouldn't make like you don't like looking at him, it isn't polite," said Miguel. "It's not his fault he got burned so awful bad like that, one time, on his face. He looks real awful, sir, one side of his face all drawed up like, and all red. But this was even worse, see, it was all over the middle of his face, and I guess it was that sort of scared me, it was silly."

  "Who's Pokey?"

  "Oh, he sells papers at Figueroa and Third, sir. I guess my dad's right, but-well, anyway, this guy was worse, see. I told the other policeman. Red all over his face, and-”

  "Thanks very much, Miguel," said Mendoza fervently.

  TWELVE

  "A real break," he said. "Something more than definite-it might lead us to him in the next twelve hours. Evidently a bad scarring, from an old burn-red scar-tissue and the skin puckered, you know what I mean. God, if we'd had this before-"

  "My fault,” groaned Palliser. "Damn it, if I'd had the sense to press the kid more-"

  "You couldn't know. It was just one of those last-resort hopes that paid off. And of course it's not a hundred per cent sure, but damn near, that that fellow Roberto stopped to talk to was the Slasher. We'll get this on the wires right now-tell everybody. Yes, and no wonder it wasn't spotted in those bars, you can't see your hand in front of your face-"

  "But why the hell didn't that desk clerk spot it?" said Dwyer.

  "Telfer didn't spot it," said Mendoza exasperatedly, "because that night he was probably so full of cheap port when the Slasher came in, he wouldn't have noticed if the man had been painted bright green with red polka dots. I dropped in on him last night. I'd have a guess that, with cops all around, maybe last night's the first time he's dared risk drinking on the job again. It's not a very high-class place but all the same, if the owner or manager found out, Telfer would get fired safe enough. He's the kind who can carry it off-he looked just a little high, you know, and probably if I'd asked for a room he'd have assigned me one and found the right key, automatically. The way they say sleepwalkers never fall over anything. But he'd seen me before and didn't recognize me. I don't think he'd remember now that I came in last night."

  "Tight enough to pull a blank, in other words. That's something all right," said Palliser. "I'll be damned. And of course that's why he was so cagey about giving a description. But at least he didn't mislead us by making up some description, and now we've got this-"

  "You think he hasn't misled us?" said Dwyer. "So maybe last night wasn't the first time he'd taken the chance since. Maybe he was carrying a load on Friday night and doesn't know whether Art came in or not."

  "?Que demonio!" said Mendoza. "I hadn't got that far. My God, that could be so. And we'll have to tackle him on it to make sure… Hell. Jimmy, get this news about the Slasher's scar relayed out-with every cop in town looking for something as noticeable as that, we ought to lay hands on him inside twenty-four hours anyway."

  "I've only got one head and two hands," complained Sergeant Lake. "Sure, that's urgent, I'll get it out, but could somebody give me a hand on this damn appointment book? I've been phoning for two days and haven't made a dent in it."

  Which was understandable. Building up the fictitious large practice for Nestor, the Corliss woman had scribbled down nearly a hundred names throughout the book.

  Under the circumstances, most of them had been very common names, and throughout the county area the same names made up long lists in all five phone books. And every name had to be checked out, that its owner had never been a patient of Dr. Nestor's, if they were going to prove that on her. It was, in fact, one hell of a job. Mendoza suggested that Dwyer lend a hand, and Dwyer groaned.

  But as he started downstairs Mendoza felt a great relief at this new break: something as glaringly obvious as that disfigurement ought to mean that they'd pick up the Slasher within hours. Not too many people, even in a city as big as this, would possess such a disfigurement; and he seemed to be keeping inside the one area. Check every rooming house, every flophouse-run extra cars… With any luck, and God knew they were due for some luck, they should get him now. And before he used his knife again…

  He found Lieutenant Andrews just arriving and followed him in. "When did you get back?" asked Andrews. "I thought-oh, sure, they'd let you know about Hackett. How is he?… Hell of a thing. Do I come into it?" He yawned and sat down.

&nb
sp; "Late night?”

  "I sometimes wish I was down in Traffic or somewhere," said Andrews. "Or Records-that must be a nice peaceful place. I never used to believe it, but I'm beginning to-that sins don't get committed until after midnight. I didn't get home until five."

  "Too bad. Well, what I want to know is, Percy, do you remember a woman named Margaret Corliss? I don't know whether she was calling herself that then, but an unspecified while ago you evidently had her in for questioning? He described her in detail.

  Andrews leaned back and shut his eyes. "It rings a bell," he said. "It definitely rings a bell. Wait a minute, now. Traces of a Cockney accent, you said? What the hell was it on? Oh, my God, yes, sure, it was that Sally-Ann thing. Pierce"-he raised his voice to the sergeant outside-"look up the records on that beauty salon thing-two, three years back-you know, the Finn sisters."

  "Have to dig for it," said Pierce. "O.K."

  "Twin sisters," said Andrews, "named Finn. Ran this Sally-Ann Beauty Shoppe. Which was a blind for an abortion mill. The Corliss woman was an employee-the only employee. It comes back to me-"

  "Very nice, very nice," said Mendoza. "You couldn't prove she was in on the deal?"

  "We tried, but no. She is, if I remember rightly, a very canny customer. Kept her head, registered shocked indignation all the way, and there wasn't a thing to tie her in. Just the strong probability, you know."

  "That's my girl," said Mendoza. "I think, with luck, we'll get her this time."

  "They will go and do it once too often," said Andrews. "She tried it on her own and got involved in a homicide, I take it."