Mark of Murder llm-7

by Dell Shannon

  He wished now he'd asked those punks if they remembered anything about the hypothetical man who'd dropped the. 22. But it had almost certainly been after dark, and they wouldn't remember any details. Hell. And no way to…

  "We'd better check," he said to Nesbitt. "The pawnbroker, and his stock. Just in case."

  "Sure," said Nesbitt sadly. "We have to check everything."

  Boyle Heights-Wl1ittier Boulevard. That would be the Hollenbeck station, and Mendoza thought he'd get them to check it out for him. He thanked Nesbitt for cooperation and drove back to headquarters, thinking about the gun.

  The Sheldon woman hadn't shown, though it was after eleven. He called the Hollenbeck station, and the sergeant he talked to groaned but said he knew they were keeping busy with this Slasher down at headquarters, and they'd check out the pawnbroker for them. "How's that sergeant of yours doing in the hospital?"

  "Not so good," said Mendoza. But a sudden queer warmth spread through him, for the real concern in the man's voice. That sergeant over at the Hollenbeck station had probably never laid eyes on Art Hackett. This was a big police force, though perennially undennanned for the population it served, and it took pride in itself for being, for all that, the top force anywhere. He realized suddenly that every man on this force who had read that brief newspaper story-Veteran Homicide Officer in Near Fatal Accident-was pulling for Hackett. Just because he was another cop.

  Cops had to stick together.

  He put the phone down. Palliser came in, looking annoyed, and said that Miguel Garcia hadn't recognized any of the three men with burn-scarred faces they'd held overnight. "I got the Rollen girl to look at them too, she said definitely no. So we let them go."

  "Yes. It won't be as easy as that," said Mendoza. "Have those search warrants come through yet?"

  "A few. Your idea was that button? Well, if that is a real clue," said Palliser, "and Nestor really did snatch it off his killer, I should think X would have felt it go. And-" He stopped.

  "Yes," said Mendoza. "Belatedly, I saw that too. If he realized that Nestor had snatched it, maybe in reaching for the hand that held the gun, how easy simply to take it back when Nestor was dead. So he doesn't know it's gone from his jacket or whatever. Or didn't then. So maybe he's hung the jacket away in his closet for us to find… I thought for a little while we'd cleaned up Nestor, but I'm having second thoughts." He told Palliser about the young punks, about the gun.

  Palliser said thoughtfully, "Well, I'm bound to say, if I had a hot gun to get rid of, that might be a damn safe way to do it. Down there, nobody'd be likely to hand it to the nearest patrolman and say, ‘Look what I found- Of course you're checking with the pawnbroker."

  " Naturalmente -or rather, Hollenbeck is. You and Bert and whoever else is available had better go out on these warrants. Of course, there's every chance that since the murder X has noticed the missing button and, taking no chances that he dropped it somewhere incriminating, has got rid of the jacket or suit-or replaced the button. Anyway, have a good look for that-a button that doesn't quite match the rest… l want to see Elger again-and this damn Sheldon woman-"

  The outside phone rang, and Sergeant Lake looked in and said, "It's your wife."

  All Mendoza's muscles semed to tighten. If the hospital… He said, "O.K.," and picked up the phone, seeing his fears mirrored in Palliser's dark eyes… " Querida? "

  "Luis," she said. "Luis-we're at the hospital. Angel's just got the doctor to tell her-how it really is."

  "Oh," said Mendoza. Some of the tension went out of him, and Palliser, seeing it, drew a breath and went out.

  "I'm sorry about that."

  "He kept looking so serious, and- When we'd thought- And he tried-but Angel kept at him, and he finally told us-how it might be. Luis, it can't happen, can it?"

  "I don't know, belleza. It's a thing, we wait and see."

  "I know-but-”

  "How is she taking it?"

  "All right," said Alison. "It's no good fainting and having hysterics, but- She's-all right, so far. But I can't bear-"

  "Yes,” he said. "There's more to Art's Angel than I'd thought. She's a good girl. But I'1n sorry she knows. I'd hoped-"

  " Protecting us!" said Alison with a little angry half sob. "Just not running to meet trouble, amante."

  "No. I know. But-"

  Neither of them said anything for a moment; there was nothing more to say. The line hummed between them, a small comforting contact.

  "Alison," he said. "Alison."

  "Yes."

  "How would you feel about it-if I resigned from the force?"

  There was another little silence. "You mean…? I-I don't know, darling," said Alison. "Would you-want to? I mean-"

  "I don't know," he said.

  "What would-you do with yourself?"

  "Something, I suppose. Find something. Esa es cuesti o n aparte. I don't know."

  "If you really wanted to-" she said. He heard her draw a little breath. "Will you be home at all? I know how you're working at it-"

  "I don't know that either, my darling. I'll call. You take care of Art's girl-and yourself."

  "Yes," she said forlornly. "Yes, Luis."

  He put the phone down. He looked around the office.

  He really didn't know. Twenty-two years. Riding a squad car. In plain clothes, down in Vice-spotting the pro gamblers mostly, because maybe he was half a pro gambler himself. And eleven years in this office, sergeant and then lieutenant.

  He'd sat at a desk up here for eleven years, working the cases as they turned up. Always plenty of cases to work. He wondered how it would feel, to be plain Mister instead of Lieutenant. To have nowhere special to be at a specified time every morning. To have no work to do at all. Just time to play.

  The job wasn't necessary. All that nice money, in giltedged securities, in real estate. No. But…

  Sergeant Lake looked in and said, "That Sheldon woman's here, Lieutenant."

  Lieutenant. He had a place in life, as lieutenant. But maybe not fair to Alison, to the twins-and if Art… But meanwhile, thankfully, he had the job to do. He said, "O.K., Jimmy, shoot her in." He snapped his lighter, lit a cigarette.

  SIXTEEN

  Anita Sheldon was a vapid-looking little blonde with china-blue eyes, and she was very frightened. She hadn't known Frank Nestor very well, she didn't know anything about him really, it'd just been like meeting him for cocktails somewhere, nothing bad, but Bill had got so mad about that Youngman guy that time, there hadn't been anything in it, but Bill-if he got to know about this-He didn't understand, him away off on some job maybe four or five days, and a girl liked a little fun…

  Within five minutes Mendoza put her down as a shallow little tramp; and when he heard that she'd been married to Bill for five years he provisionally crossed off Bill, who must have found her out in that time if he wasn't mentally deficient. Bill hadn't got mad enough to shoot any of her other pickups; it wasn't likely he'd shot Nestor. When he learned that Bill had been on his way up to Santa Barbara with a truckload last Tuesday night he crossed him off definitely.

  Well, she had met Nestor in his office on two occasions."But not to stay there, of course, we'd go on to some nice restaurant, somewhere like that."

  When Mendoza thanked her, told her she could go, she shot off like a scalded cat. Evidently, he thought, Nestor had picked up whatever came handy: and from all he knew of him, that ran true. Ladies' man, not too particular. The ones like Anita Sheldon flattered and caught by his charm-but Ruth Elger had been something else again. Going out with him because she'd had a fight with her husband. Using Nestor. And maybe the first time she'd strayed, and Elger… But would Elger have shot him? Hair-trigger Elger more likely to have beaten him up, maybe?

  Mendoza took out the button and looked at it. Well, see what turned up there. He felt harried; he was getting nothing on all this at all, and time was catching up to him-he had the worried feeling that there was something, some relevant fact, right under his nose, if
he wasn't too stupid to see it.

  He forced himself to sit still, take a couple of deep breaths. He was trying to go at it too fast, do everything at once. Sit and think calmly over the evidence, take it easy.

  Nestor's high-society scrapbook was lying on his desk along with a few other things; he picked it up. It occurred to him that possibly, if his guess as to its purpose was the right one, and if Nestor had even once recognized a patient, he might have indicated it in some way. Either in the scrapbook or on that list in Madge Corliss' safety box. Idly he started leafing through the book.

  The first item taped to the page was short: Miss Susan Marlowe, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. William Marlowe, spent a delightful Easter weekend cruising aboard the yacht of the J. Haskin Treadwells. No pictures on that. Of course Nestor would have been interested because of his slight connection with Marlowe. He went on looking; the year-in, year-out social affairs, the races, operas, first nights, teas and dinners and lectures. A lot of pictures, but Nestor hadn't scribbled anything in the margins. "?Nada! " said Mendoza, and shut the book.

  And the outside phone rang on Sergeant Lake's desk… "It's another one, Lieutenant. Another Slasher job. Just found."

  "Hell!" said Mendoza. There was nobody else in the office. "Where?"

  "San Pedro and Fifth. Squad car just got there."

  "All right. Rout out Bainbridge?

  There was quite a crowd around when he got there; a second car had arrived and two uniformed men were rather helplessly trying to move the crowd on. The press had also arrived; he saw the flash bulbs going off, and Wolfe of the Citizen gave him a tight-lipped humorless grin as he pushed into the crowd.

  "They do say the population's rising too fast, Lieutenant. This is one way to cure it, I guess. But we always thought you boys were a little smarter."

  "Like to change jobs?" said Mendoza curtly. "Let me through, please… What have you got on it so far, boys?”

  They hadn't got much. The body-looking much the same as all the other bodies the Slasher had left behind him hadn't any identification on it. It was the body of a middle-aged man, and the only items on him were half of a Greyhound Bus ticket from San Diego to Los Angeles, three single dollar bills and some change, in an otherwise empty wallet, and a Hat pint bottle of scotch, nearly empty. His clothes were old and shabby, and he looked unkempt.

  The body had been left where, probably, it had become a body, in the middle of a narrow alley between two buildings. It had been found by a couple of truck drivers backing in there to make deliveries.

  Nothing much to be done on the spot. Quite impossible to say whether an item or so among the many dirty, miscellaneous items in the alley had been dropped by the Slasher.

  "All right," said Mendoza. "You know the routine."

  Lake would be chasing up somebody to come and take pictures. "When the surgeon's seen him and we've got some pictures, let the ambulance boys take him. Drivers' names?… O.K. We'll try to identify him through the bus ticket-I'll take that stuff now."

  But as he pushed out through the crowd again a hand touched his arm timidly. "Please, you are one of the Polizei, sir? I-I-maybe I know something about this terrible man, sir. I-"

  He looked down at her. The careful English was thick with German accent. She was a little plump blonde, a real blonde, about thirty-five; she looked like the illustration on bars of very good Dutch chocolate, pink cheeks and all. She was wearing a mightily starched white apron over a very neat blue house dress. "Please," she said anxiously, "I am Gertrud Flickschuster, sir."

  The interested crowd surged nearer, and Mendoza said, "For God's sake, can't you get these ghouls to move on? Mrs.-Flickschuster?-come over here, please. What is it you think you know?"

  "I hear the poor man is found, it is another from-by this terrible murderer, so I come. To find a-the word I don't know-Geheimpolizist -to tell. I think I have seen this man. In our delicatessen he comes"-she pointed up the street-"last night."

  "You'd better come back to headquarters and make a statement," said Mendoza.

  She hesitated. "You will-I may come out again? There is Rudi alone in the shop-"

  "Yes, of course." He smiled at her; by the accent, she hadn't been in the theoretically free country long. He put her, starched apron and all, into the Ferrari, drove back to headquarters, and took her up to his office. "Take some notes on this, Jimmy. Now, Mrs. Flickschuster?"

  It seemed that the Flickschusters, who had come here four years ago, kept a delicatessen. They stayed open until nine most evenings, and one or the other of them or both were always behind the counter. And just before they closed last night a man had come in and bought a half pound of sausage, a pound carton of potato salad, and a quart of milk. Gertrud had waited on him and remembered him well-"Because he is so ugly, sir, a terrible face. It has the hollow cheeks like a death's head, and this terrible mark on his face- vernarben – die narbe on his face, from the burn, it looks-all red, across the nose. But it is not until Rudi has been reading the newspaper that I have known-it is saying about this man-"

  "Yes." And that might be a more interesting and significant little story than it looked at first glance. Mendoza got her signature to a statement, phoned for a car to drive her back to the delicatessen… The Slasher, buying precooked food at night. The man was staying somewhere, damn it, but with the press relaying his now known description to the public, he hadn't rented another room as yet-that they knew. Nobody was likely to rent him one when they'd had a look at him.

  Etta Mae Rollen attacked at San Pedro and Emily. The latest unknown corpse near San Pedro and Fifth. Mendoza frowned at a city map: about four blocks apart.

  The Slasher holed up somewhere, in hiding? Sense enough to read the papers, know he had to hide? But where, for God's sake, in that rabbit warren of crowded downtown streets? Business of most kinds was thriving-there wouldn't be many empty buildings. And, true enough, the population increasing at such a rate that there wouldn't be many empty houses, either. In that section people lived cheek by jowl, there wasn't much privacy. What hole could a loner like the Slasher have found? Hell. He wondered what, if anything, the Hollenbeck station was getting from that pawnbroker. It would be a help to clear those juveniles out of the way, know definitely they had an alibi for Nestor-if they had. Which would say that their story about the gun was probably gospel truth. He decided it was too soon to call Hollenbeck and ask.

  Sergeant Lake came in and said that Nestor woman was here, asking to see him. "You haven't had a chance for lunch at all, shall I tell her to wait or come back?"

  "No, that's O.K.-shove her in." He was curious to know what she wanted.

  As Madge Corliss put it, a funny kind of woman indeed. He didn't think any disillusionment with Nestor was responsible for her flat emotionlessness. He remembered what Marlowe had said of her and silently agreed: rather a stupid woman.

  She came in and sat down in the chair beside his desk. Her mouse-brown hair in its old-fashioned shoulder-length bob hung lank about her face. She had on a printed cotton house dress, bright pink, and a shabby green cardigan over it; white ankle socks with the kind of cuban-heeled black oxfords made for old ladies with fallen arches. She hadn't any make-up on except lipstick, and most of that had worn off.

  Nestor's essential character aside, reflected Mendoza, it really wasn't hard to see why he had…

  "Yes, Mrs. Nestor?"

  "Well, I'd just like to know," she said in her fiat nasal voice, "when I can get into his office. You people have put a seal on the door. The rent'll be due in ten days and of course I don't want to pay another month's rent. And there are some valuable things there I could sell for quite a lot of money. To another doctor."

  "Well, I'm afraid I can't tell you anything on that," said Mendoza. "We don't know, it may be we'll want to have another look around there. But I see your position, and we'll try to arrange to free it before the end of the month."

  She did not thank him. "It's been a nuisance, I must say," she said. "The bank
not giving up that money and so on." The news of Madge Corliss' arrest had made minor headlines this morning, the revelation of Nestor's undercover trade; evidently Mrs. Nestor didn't read newspapers and had no kind friend to tell her about it, for she didn't mention it at all. But with one like that, who could say? She might, if he asked her, say, Oh, that. I'd suspected it all along.

  "As long as you're here, Mrs. Nestor, I'd just like to go over it with you again-about Friday night, when Sergeant Hackett came to see you… " He took her all through it again, and she gave him the same answers, disinterested.

  He let her go, dispiritedly. His head had begun to ache again. He couldn't see where to go from here-if nothing turned up on that button. But he didn't know yet that those juveniles were in the clear, of course. And if they weren't, where else to look on Art?

  It was one forty-eight. It seemed to him that lately, the last few days, time had slowed down somehow so that there were twice as many hours in a day. He wondered what the boys were getting on their searching jobs. Sergeant Lake came and looked at him disapprovingly and told him to go get some lunch.

  "Yes," said Mendoza, and dialed the offices of Cliff Elger and Associates. He was told that Mr. Elger was out to lunch with a client. Where? Well, probably Frascati's on the Strip or the one on Wilshire.

  Mendoza tried Frascati's on the Strip first, as the nearer place, and spotted his man at once. Elger's great bulk, clad in loud tweed, was perched on a bar stool. He was doing most of the talking, gesturing widely, laughing. The man sitting next to him was much smaller, presenting a thin, narrow-shouldered back and a bald spot.