Mark of Murder llm-7

by Dell Shannon

  "Heavens, I don't know. I suppose we were here, if we weren't- Oh no, the Werthers' party was on Wednesday, wasn't it?"

  "It's not so very long ago," said Mendoza.

  "Why on earth you want to know- Oh. That-that was the night Frank was shot, wasn't it? For heaven's sake. You can't be thinking we had-"

  "Just try to remember, please."

  "Oh well! It was-yes, we went out to dinner-to the Tail o' the Cock, I think. Tuesday. Oh, I do remember, yes, as a matter of fact we were arguing all through dinner about that silly charge-account thing, and all the way home for that matter, and it wasn't long after we got home that Cliff got really mad and sort of slammed out-"

  "Arguing over a bill you'd run up?" said Mendoza. "And he left the apartment. When?"

  "Heavens, I wasn't watching the clock, about half past nine, I suppose… No, I don't know where he went. What does it matter? I expect to a bar somewhere, he was a little high when he came home."

  "At what time?"

  She shrugged petulantly. "About midnight, I guess. I was in bed."

  "Mrs. Elger, has your husband ever owned a gun?"

  "A- Well, of course not," she said. "What on earth-You simply can't be thinking- Frank? Good heavens, it was just--just an episode. Not important."

  "What's important or not," said Mendoza, "depends on who's looking at it. Thanks very much… "

  He sat in the car thinking about that. Cliff Elger in a temper, and he might be quick to hit out at a man, but probably not the type to knock a woman around; so, rushing out, in his temper. To a bar? Or had he, on the way, started brooding over Ruth and Nestor again? And. ..

  Wait a minute. How could he have known Nestor would be in his office at that hour? Had he known Nestor's home address? Well, it was in the phone book. He'd have tried there first, wouldn't he? But he hadn't.

  Mendoza was still liking the idea of Cliff Elger for Nestor, because-admit it-he'd like to think the Nestor thing was behind the assault on Art, and Elger was the only man they'd run across so far who could certainly have handled Art without too much trouble.

  All right, he thought. Suddenly he saw another, more plausible picture. Elger rushing out to a bar. Downing three or four highballs. Maybe it affected him the way it affected Mendoza; but whether or no, say he was brooding. And worked up a rage at Nestor. Maybe she'd been lying about the gun, or maybe he kept one at his office and she didn't know that, maybe Nestor had had the gun unknown to Madge Corliss. That sounded more plausible; a man Nestor's size might well reach for a gun, if he had one, when a gorilla like Elger came in mad. Yes, say that whatever Nestor's appointment had been, it was over, and Nestor was maybe just about to leave when Elger burst in- Why Nestor's office? How had he known- Say he was drunk, but- Hell.

  He drove back to the office. The hospital hadn't called. They had, however, got an ident on that unknown victim of the Slasher, through the Greyhound Bus office and the San Diego police. His name was George Snaid, and he'd been picked up for vagrancy in San Diego and given the usual twenty-four hours to leave town. Nothing more was known about him. Another of the victims who wouldn't be missed.

  The court order to open Madge Corliss' safe-deposit box hadn't come through yet. "Damn judges," said Mendoza. He wanted to see that list.

  He sent Lake out for coffee. He sat at his desk chain smoking nervously. Dwyer, with nothing special to do, was playing solitaire desultorily, laying out the cards on top of a filing case, wandering over to stare at the phones on the desk every Eve minutes. He wasn't much of a cardplayer, and his inept, awkward shuffling of the deck got on Mendoza's nerves.

  "I did think of something," he said presently. "A little thing. You know how that dame in the room next to Florence Dahl said the Slasher kept shouting something like ‘Every ham's gaining on me'? It came to me what it was. Every man's hand against me. Out of the Bible, isn't it?"

  "I couldn't say," said Mendoza. "Very likely. Yes, that's probably what it was. I wonder if we could trace him back at all. Where he started, how he got that way. That landlady on Boardman Street said he had a Southern accent."

  But he wasn't thinking about the Slasher; that was over and done, and there was other work to do. "Bert?"

  "Well?"

  "You talked to those old pals of Nestor's who used to play poker with him. Any of them mention anything about that?"

  "About what?"

  "What kind of poker player he was."

  "Oh." Dwyer considered, looking at the deck in his hand. "One fellow-another chiropractor-said he was a wild gambler. Take any long chance, he said. So he lost oftener than he won."

  "Yes. That kind of poker player," said Mendoza. "But that wasn't why he lost oftener than he won. That was because he didn't play enough poker. The man who's playing any game regularly, day to day, always has an edge over the occasional player… Do you have to try to tear the deck in half every time you shuffle? Look."

  He took the cards from Dwyer and shuffled them. "Gentle and easy, see?"

  "I'm not a pro gambler," said Dwyer.

  "No." Having the cards, Mendoza kept them; absently he shuffled, squared the deck neatly, cut it, and turned up the ace of diamonds. " Tuerto," he said. "A lucky card."

  He shuffled the deck again, squared it and cut, to show the ace of diamonds again.

  "Don't ever ask me to play cards with you," said Dwyer. "It's just a trick." Mendoza shuffled again, using a different method, and began to deal him a poker hand, calling the cards as he tossed them face down. "King of spades. Deuce of clubs. Ace of hearts. Four of hearts-"

  "Wrong. Three of clubs."

  "Hell, I'm out of practice at crooked deals… " The cards moved restlessly between his hands. "Did I tell you about meeting Benny Metzer on that cruise liner? I took twenty bucks off him-he could have killed me." Mendoza laughed sharply.

  "One of your pro gambler acquaintances? Do tell." Dwyer was watching the telephone again.

  "That's right, you came up here from Forgery, didn't you?"

  "And a damn dull job that was," said Dwyer absently.

  "Sometimes it can be." Mendoza dealt himself a straight poker hand and quite by chance drew a full house. "So it can happen," he muttered.

  Think about this thing, damn it. Nestor. If that nice story he'd built up about Cliff Elger was so, then-when Nestor was still in his office-his appointment, whatever it was, must have taken up some time. Not the usual job, because Corliss hadn't known about it. The spot of genteel blackmail? And, naturally, the blackmailee arguing, and the sparring back and forth about the price? Only, really, why bring in Elger, in that case? Blackmail was quite a reasonable motive for murder.

  Only what did the blackmail have to be? Threat of revealing an abortion. These days, with the relaxed morals… And besides, Nestor couldn't have carried out such a threat without revealing himself and his part in it, which anybody with common sense would.. .

  All right. All right. Some featherbrained woman, not seeing that, shooting him in panic? A man had got rid of the. 22. So, the woman confessing to some protective male-father, husband, boy friend-who had thereupon set up the bogus burglary and got rid of the gun.

  And that would say for pretty sure that the assault on Art had been the outside thing.

  Wouldn't it? Well, for ninety-eight per cent sure. Art hadn't known about those illicit patients-couldn't have known who they were, of course. Hard to see how he might have inadvertently stumbled across

  …

  Mendoza shuffled and cut, and turned up the knave of clubs. He stared at it for a moment, slapped the deck together, centered it on his desk, and stood up. "Do you know what the knave of clubs means in cartomancy?"

  "I don't even know what cartomancy means," said Dwyer.

  "Fortunetelling with cards. The knave of clubs," said Mendoza, "stands for a bearer of unexpected news. I'm going out to find him. I probably won't be long."

  "Let's just hope it's good news," said Dwyer after him. This was a will-o'-the-wisp, of course. Just a
n idea. But sometimes you grabbed at any small hope there might be, looking for a lead.

  He went straight out Wilshire, and there wasn't much traffic this early. It wasn't ten o'clock yet. Just on ten. The street signs changed to elegant black on white, and he was in Beverly Hills. He turned left on Beverly Drive and went down four blocks to a line of expensive-looking shop fronts. Miraculously he found a parking slot, and found he had a nickel in change. He yanked the handle on the parking meter; nothing happened; he shook it hard, and it condescended to bury the red Violation sign in its insides. He walked back to the most expensive-looking shop front of all. It presented a genteel pale fawn facade with tinted glass double doors. There was no legend on the doors at all; the only designation it offered to reveal its commercial purposes was a single discreet name in lower-case giIt letters above the door: herrrington.

  Mendoza went in. There was pale fawn carpeting, nothing so vulgar as a counter; this room, an anteroom to the high mysteries beyond, was only about fifteen feet square. An exquisite young man in pale fawn dacron drifted up, identified him, and murmured, "I'll fetch Mr. Harrington, sir. Do sit down."

  Mendoza didn't sit down. He wandered over to one of the full-length triple mirrors and decided absently that the Italian silk was too dark a gray. He adjusted his tie. "You again," said Harrington abruptly behind him. "Good God, I just made you two new suits and those evening clothes. You're a vain bastard, Mendoza."

  Mendoza turned around. "You malign me. No, I don't want anything new. I want some information."

  Harrington was a solid, round little man of some heft, with a bald round head and pudgy little hands. He also had a pair of very sharp black eyes. He cocked the bald head at Mendoza. "Oh?"

  "Which you probably can't give me," said Mendoza. He handed over the button, the little ordinary button. "Can you tell me anything about that? It occurred to me it's in your line. You're quite a specialist on anything to do with male attire, aren't you?"

  Harrington looked at the button, turning it over in his fingers.

  "I know it's a very ordinary sort of thing," said Mendoza apologetically.

  "My God, and you a detective!" said Harrington. "Of course, maybe only a specialist would spot it. I can tell you this and that about it, of course. To start with, it's obviously a button from the sleeve of a jacket. Too small to be an ordinary jacket button. It's-"

  "The sleeve of a- But-"

  "No, I know. Those conservative bastards,” said Harrington with a chuckle. "Grandpa had buttons on his sleeves, so naturally you go on putting buttons on sleeves. No scope-no progress. I haven't put any buttons on sleeves since, lessee, about 1939, but they still do. Most of 'em. I get some of their stuff in for repair occasionally."

  Mendoza was staring at him. "Harrington," he said, "did you ever wonder how that fellow in the Bible felt when his ass started to talk to him? Not that I mean to imply- Whose stuff?"

  Harrington tapped the button thoughtfully. "There you are," he said, "something else. Bone. Old-fashioned. Practically everybody uses plastic these days. Well, I could give a random guess. Either Rowlandson, or Herrick and King, or possibly Shattuck. Savile Row, of course."

  "Of course," repeated Mendoza gently… And quite suddenly, in one single lucid moment, everything fell into place and he saw it unreel before him like a moving picture. Of course.

  "Say something to you?" asked Harrington interestedly. But Mendoza was raptly placing the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle where they belonged. "A delightful Easter weekend," he said absorbedly. "Oh yes

  … have announced the engagement… Five thousand bucks, but he'd be willing to pay high for- Oh yes, I see. Smart up to a point. And then-and then-" His eyes turned cold, and he whispered to himself, "The bastard-just a cop-to cover it up. And naturally, cops being morons or they wouldn't be cops, and he-"

  "Did I say something?" asked Harrington, sounding more interested.

  Mendoza focused on him with a little difficulty. "Harrington," he said earnestly, "you are indeed the knave of clubs. A bearer of news. I forgive you that tweed monstrosity you palmed off on me two years back. I forgive you- Well, never mind. My heartfelt thanks. Give me that thing." He almost ran out.

  "Knave of clubs?” said Harrington after him, blankly. Mendoza gunned the Ferrari up Beverly as fast as the law allowed. By God, he'd have a siren installed in this thing before he was a week older… He got onto Wilshire and headed back downtown, and all the way the jigsaw pieces went on fitting themselves together, so nice and neat

  …

  Oh yes. Andrea Nestor. The belt, of course. And the button. Kenmore Avenue-but a dark stretch along there… And- It was ten-fifty when he came fast into the office and looked round. Palliser was just coming out of the sergeants' office with a teletype sheet in his hand.

  "We've got in a little more on Tenney. The S.P. told us he listed his birthplace as Younker, Georgia, and we-"

  "?No importa! " said Mendoza. "I only dropped in to pick up somebody-to keep an eye on me while we drop on the X who shot Nestor and sent Art over that cliff. Might as well be you, John.?Pues vamonos ya! Let's be on our way!".

  Palliser stared at him and dropped the teletype. "You know-”

  "I know all about it," said Mendoza grimly. "Let's go and take him. And if I will be resigning from this force, I'd like to leave a fairly clean record, so if I start to lose my temper, boy, you restrain me… That Goddamned self-important stupid bastard! That-"

  "Evidence?" said Palliser.

  "Oh, there'll be evidence," said Mendoza. "By God, there will! Has the hospital called?"

  "Not yet."

  "Come on-1et's go and take him," said Mendoza.

  TWENTY

  The impassive manservant blinked up at Mendoza. "I'm afraid Mr. Marlowe has just finished breakfast, sir, I don't know whether he'll see you-"

  "Oh, he'll see me!" said Mendoza. He walked in past the man. "Where is he?"

  His tone made the man blink again; a rather sly smile crept over his mouth. "In the library, sir."

  Mendoza led Palliser down to that door and opened it. Marlowe, in a handsome tailored silk dressing gown, was sitting at the desk opening his mail. He glanced up, and his expression darkened. "What do you-"

  "I've come for you, Marlowe," said Mendoza. "I've run across a lot of stupid killers before now, but you're one of the silliest. I want you on the charge of murdering Francis Nestor and assauly with intent to murder on Arthur Hackett. Will you wait for the warrant here or downtown?"

  Marlowe went an ugly red. "You must be a lunatic, sir. I don't know what you're- That's quite absurd! Why should I have wanted-Paul! My servant can tell you that I was here all that evening, and I'm sure you must- Ah, Paul. Just-"

  "I'll do the asking," said Mendoza. "Was Mr. Marlowe here, from about eight forty-five on, a week ago Tuesday night?"

  The man said, wooden-faced, "He certainly came in around then, sir. He came to this room and said he didn't want to be disturbed. I didn't see Mr. Marlowe again that evening, sir."

  "Interesting," said Mendoza.

  "But of course you knew I was here, man! Why on earth-"

  "I can tell you the whole story now," said Mendoza. "And I don't give a damn about Nestor, but for what you did to Hackett, we're going to get you but good. It's never very smart to try to kill a cop, Marlowe. First let me ask you if you own a gun?"

  Marlowe said coldly, "You needn't think you'll get away with such highhanded- Yes, I own several guns, but-"

  The manservant coughed. "There is a small amateur target-shooting range in the basement, sir, beside the recreation room. The young gentlemen-"

  Marlowe said furiously, "You may go, Paul!"

  Mendoza sat down on the arm of a chair. "And that just about puts the lid on your stupidity, doesn't it? You did get rid of the gun, and the way you did that wasn't such a bad idea either, but you never really expected to be connected to the case in any way. You stupid bastard, don't you realize we can dig all those slugs out of the sand
bags or whatever your target backs up to down there, and find quite a few to match up to that gun that killed Nestor?"

  Marlowe took a step back, and his mouth tightened. "I had no reason-"

  "You had a couple of very good reasons. You want to know what I know? I'll tell you," said Mendoza. "A little over three years ago you found that your youngest daughter Susan had got herself, as they say, in trouble. You think the hell of a lot of your line old family name, don't you? Yes, so maybe you didn't think the young man was good enough for her-inconceivable that he wouldn't have jumped at marrying this kind of money! Well, you didn't have any contacts with an abortionist, and anyway you wanted to be sure of a good safe job. And you thought of Frank Nestor, the bright young man you'd staked to the chiropractic course. It's quite a serious training these days, and he'd know enough to do the job and do it nice and clean. And you didn't think he'd jib much at it. He didn't, did he? Maybe it wasn't that Easter weekend she was supposed to be yachting, but maybe it was too. Anyway, he obliged you-and Susan-for, I think, the cancellation of his debt and the nice round sum of five grand… How am I doing, Marlowe?"

  Marlowe sat down again in the desk chair. "That's-no, I-"

  "We'1l cut this short," said Mendoza abruptly. "That was that. I don't suppose you knew you'd put ideas in Nestor's head and he'd set up a profitable little abortion mill. But he did like the long green, didn't he, and when your daughter recently got engaged he saw how he might get some more out of you. For his silence." Mendoza smiled. "Has she, maybe, caused you a little trouble, Marlowe? The wild type? So you were only too pleased at the prospect of getting her respectably married? And in this one case Nestor could have told what he knew. Could have told the young man-or his parents-how he knew she'd once been in the market for an abortion, because you had asked him to do it, which of course he'd righteously refused to do. Not a thing a young man-or his parents-would like to hear about his fiancee, was it? Especially a young man named Baxter W. Stevens III. And you saw right then that if you paid him once-this time-every time Nestor ran a little short, or was in the mood, he was going to threaten that again. And, yes, you're very proud of your name and your social position, aren't you? You'd feel a lot happier if the one outsider who knew about that was-out of the way.