by Dell Shannon
"Not a smell. We've been working our tails off looking. His car was found abandoned down near the Union Station-nothing in it. None of the personnel there could identify his photograph, and he's a man you'd remember if you'd seen him-especially a woman. Nobody remembered him at an airport or a bus station either. Or any of the places he might have gone to buy a disguise-false whiskers or something. If he dyed his hair, he didn't do it with anything he bought at a drugstore near where he lived or near this-er-Temple. Oh, yes, we've looked in all the indicated places, but maybe he's been too smart for us. And now, why?"
" Aqui esta, wait for it-wait. Now what is this, what could it-? What kind of a car-did it have long tailfins that curved up at the ends?"
Woods opened his mouth, shut it, and said, "Well, no. It's a two-year-old Porsche, an open roadster."
"You don't tell me," said Mendoza slowly. "You don't tell me. Now, I wonder… A two-year-old Porsche. And twenty-three hundred dollars. That cancels out in a way, doesn't it? Not like a battered ten-year-old heap not worth fifty bucks on a turn-in. And he couldn't retire on twenty-three hundred. Not a very big job, was it?-‘worth all the trouble of a disguise, covering his tracks so thoroughly-leaving the car-? I mean, surely he could have accumulated a bigger take than that if he'd planned to steal any money at all… " What was it in his mind, struggling up to the surface? He sat very still, letting it find its own way out. "Woods-when and how did you take a look at that place Twelvetrees lived?"
The half-untouched food congealed on their plates. Goldberg went on eating, watching and listening interestedly. "Mix-up about that," said Woods. "We couldn't get the address for a while-the one the Kingmans had was three years old, the place he'd lived when he hooked up with them nearly four years ago. They knew he'd moved, they thought they had the address somewhere but couldn't find it. There'd evidently been no occasion to contact him at home. Thought they had the phone number too, but couldn't find that. That kind of peop1e-or making out they are-unworldly, you know. In the end we got it from one of the-er-members of the sect, phone number that is, and that was Wednesday morning. When I got the address from the phone company, I went out there, of course-Wednesday afternoon-and I looked it over. Well, I didn't take the floors up, but-"
"You didn't take the floors up," said Mendoza. "Maybe you should have done just that, Sergeant. Maybe. That-that perpetual talking machine Mrs. Bragg-she didn't follow you around pointing out all the amenities, I take it."
"I don't," said Woods, "encourage people to watch me work, no. I shut the door on her. And just how do you know about Mrs. Bragg and 267th Street? What's your interest in Twelvetrees?"
"I don't know that I've got any-yet. But I think you and I and my Sergeant Hackett will go out there right away and take a closer look at a couple of things. I'l1 explain it to you on the way, it's a funny little story-and I may be seeing ghosts, but it just occurs to me that maybe, just maybe, Mr. Twelvetrees is being slandered… All that blacktop, so inconvenient. And a trowel. Of all things, a trowel… Vaya, I must be seeing ghosts-it's even more far-fetched than what Walsh- But no I have to make sure."
***
They stood in the middle of the little living room, the three of them, at two o'clock that afternoon, and Hackett said, "You haven't got much to make this add up, Luis." They had got rid of Mrs. Bragg by sheer weight of numbers and official supremacy, but she might well be lurking outside, suspicious of their intentions toward her good furniture and rugs. "If you're just relying on a hunch, and the damnedest far-fetched one I ever knew you to have, at that-"
"Not at all," said Mendoza. "Sober deduction from sober fact, it's just that I happened to have a couple of facts Woods didn't have. I admit to you I've had a little funny feeling that something's fishy-it's been growing on me-but the facts are there to be looked at, and very suggestive too. Anybody could add them up. I don't say it's impossible Twelvetrees didn't decide to decamp with a month's take when he could have made it the whole bank account, and we all know from experience that people can disappear without trace. But it's odd he should go to so much trouble for a relatively small amount, when it involved abandoning an expensive car and the promise of more opportunity to come-after all, he'd been with this racket for four years, didn't you say, Woods? Evidently it paid off. Why should he walk out on it just for twenty-three hundred he wasn't entitled to? It isn't reasonable-I know crimes get committed for peanuts, but not by people of this kind."
"Which," said Woods, "did occur to me, Lieutenant, but there's a couple of ways it could have happened. Maybe some skirt was making things hot for him and he had to get out. Maybe he was afraid the Kingmans were going to fire him, or somebody was threatening to tell them the tale on him, and he'd be out anyway-and he figured he might as well take a little something along. Maybe it was just impulse. People aren't always reasonable, in fact I'd say very seldom."
"I know, I know," said Mendoza. "But look at a couple of other things to add up. Why a note to tell Mrs. Bragg he was leaving? All he had to do was go six steps from his own front door and tell her in person. She was home that Friday night, we know. He didn't leave in that much of a hurry, not when he took time to pack up all his personal belongings. Why in hell should he thumbtack that note to his front door instead of ringing her doorbell? And if he was in such a hurry, why did he take time out from his packing to do a little desultory gardening on that anemic-looking Tree of Heaven out there? She says she had her nice new trowel about noon that day, she knows, because she used it to pry open a can of paint."
"A trowel," said Hackett in exasperation. "A trowel, for God's sake."
"All right, all right, it won't take long to look!” Mendoza turned and went out to the kitchen. "I couldn't help remembering it, we get in the habit of noticing things automatically, that's all. Damn it, look-the man had lived here for nearly three years, and if he didn't cook his own meals he made coffee in the morning anyway, he used this table for something sometimes." He laid a hand on it; it was steady, but when he moved it to any other angle it rocked at a touch. “How does a table get shoved around out of its usual place? In the process of cleaning the floor, something like that. I doubt if Twelvetrees was that good a housewife. A bachelor living alone, mostly if he doesn't hire it done it doesn't get done-what the hell? But the table was in the wrong place on Wednesday morning-before you got here, Woods-and Mrs. Bragg said she hadn't got round to cleaning here yet. And that trowel was over there by the kitchen door. Why?" He shoved the table clear away from the trap door in the iioor at this end of the kitchen. It was about two feet by two and a half, the trap, and covered with linoleum like the rest of the floor; only a little dark line round it, and the small flat hinges, betrayed its presence. One of the makeshift arrangements to be found in such jerry-built new rental units, in a climate where jerry-building wasn't always detectable at once. Mendoza reached down and pulled up the trap by its dime-store bolt, which slid back and forth easily. "Who's going down?"
"Not you, obviously," said Hackett, "in that suit. I'll go."
"You've been gaining weight, I don't think you could make it. All right, it's my idea, I'll do the dirty work." Mendoza sat down and slid his legs through the opening.
"That's a lie, a hundred and ninety on the nose ever since I left college. Be careful, for God's sake, don't go breaking a leg-hell of a place to haul you out of."
"Hell of a place to get anything into," added Woods to that, gloomily.
"He gets these brainstorms," said Hackett, squatting beside the trap resignedly. "About once in a hundred times he's right, just by the law of averages, you know, and that convinces him all over again to follow his hunches. Well?" he bellowed down the hole, where Mendoza had now vanished.
" No me empuje -don't push me! I've just got here." Mendoza's voice was muffled. "I need a flashlight, hand one down… Valgame Dios y un millen demonios! " That came out as he straightened too abruptly and hit his head on the floor joists. Like most California houses, this sat only a little above a
shallow foundation; the space undemeath the floor was scarcely four feet high.
Hackett laughed unfeelingly. "He wants a flashlight-why didn't he think of that before? You got a flashlight, Woods?"
"I seldom carry one in the daytime," said Woods.
“That's funny, neither do I. Use your lighter!" he advised Mendoza heartlessly.
There followed a period of silence but for the muffled sounds of Mendoza moving around cautiously down there; then another curse and a longer silence. Suddenly Mendoza straightened up through the trap and demanded an implement of some kind. "Failing the trowel, a soup ladle or something-look in the drawers. The place is furnished, there ought to be tablespoons, a cake server-"
Hackett rummaged and offered him a tablespoon, a hand can opener, and a long wooden fork. "Nada mds? A big help you are," and Mendoza vanished again with the spoon and fork.
"Does it come on him often?" asked Woods sympathetically, offering Hackett a cigarette.
"Thanks. Five days out of seven he's as sensible as you please. I've thought tranquilizers might help, but on the other hand, just once in a while he does hit pay dirt. I got it figured that it's because essentially he's a gambler-he's in the wrong line, he ought to have been a cardsharp. He calls himself an agnostic, but that's a lie-he's superstitious as hell about his hunches, whether he'd admit it or not."
"Well, we all have foibles," said Woods. "I knew a fellow once who collected paper bags, had a closet full of them. Card player, is he? I kind of fancy myself at bridge, does he go in for it?"
"I think that's a little genteel for Luis, he likes poker. But he won't play for the kind of stakes you and I could stand."
Mendoza's upper half appeared through the trap; he rested an elbow on the ledge and laid the fork and spoon tidily on the floor. His shoulders had collected a good deal of dust and his tie was crooked, but he looked pleased with himself.
"If you've finished slandering my character, and the phone's still working, chico, you can go and call the rest of the boys."
"Hell and damnation," said Hackett incredulously. "You don't mean he is down there?"
"Didn't you hear me fall over the suitcases? Give me a hand." Mendoza hauled himself out of the hole up into the kitchen, and began to brush down his clothes fastidiously. "You can stop looking for your embezzler, Woods, and hand over what you've got on him to us."
"Holy angels in heaven," said Woods mildly. "No wonder I couldn't find him. How, when, and where exactly, Lieutenant?"
"Not being a doctor and having only the lighter, I'll pass that one. He's not very deep, only six inches or so on top of him, and I just dug away enough to be sure. The hell of a job it must have been to get him there-and of course I'm premature in saying it is Mr. Twelvetrees, but it's somebody, and in male clothing, I think. And, at a guess, he's been there just about the time Mr. Twelvetrees has been missing. About four feet from the trap, say under the door to the living room. And three suitcases alongside him, not buried."
"I will be damned," said Hackett. "This one you really got by radar, boy. And I suppose from now on you'll quote it every time anybody laughs at your hunches." He looked at the gaping black hole of the trap- "And how the boys are goin' to love that job." He went to call headquarters for a homicide detail.
FOUR
It was six o'clock before they were finished at the apartment. Mendoza went down again with the surgeon and the men to fix up some kind of light; all of them let out frequent curses, crowded together down there. Woods went down to look at the corpse when its face emerged; he provoked an outburst of profanity on his way up by inadvertently pulling out the wire from the nearest outlet down the trap, and plunging the laborers into darkness. He shoved the plug back in and said to Hackett tersely, "Twelvetrees, all right."
Down below, Mendoza could be heard telling someone to keep his clumsy paws to himself, they'd get to the corpse all in good time, but if there was any little something buried with it by accident, he'd like to see it before it got buried again. "Well, well," said Hackett. "It is, is it? How?"
"Surgeon thinks a bang on the head, or several bangs."
Hackett grunted. They sat smoking, carefully sharing the ashtray out of the Facel-Vega to avoid using anything here, until Marx and Horder climbed out of the hole laboriously with all their equipment and Marx called back down, "What d'you want up here, Lieutenant!"
"Everything, everything! And don't forget the bottoms of window sills and the tops of doors!”
Marx sighed and shrugged at Horder; they went into the bathroom to start. Mendoza came up and hauled out the suitcases, one by one, as they were handed to him. "O.K., boys, now we get busy." He sat down on the davenport and produced a folded envelope.
"Treasure-trove from the grave."
They looked at the thing he shook out into his palm-a small round pearl-finished button. "Could've fallen down the trap any time and rolled," said Hackett dubiously.
"Don't think so. It was about an inch under the surface, in the loose dirt shoveled over him. Couldn't have been there very long, either by the look of it, even if it just happened to be there when he was covered up. And I think it tells us what we're going to find out anyway-someone was smart enough to wear gloves."
"Why?"
"It could be off a number of things, this shape and size and color." It was flat on top like a stud, not rounded, it had a shank, it was amber-colored. "A woman's blouse. A man's sport shirt. A dress, even a skirt, though I'd say it was too small for that. But what I think it came from was a glove-a glove with a button, or buttons, at the wrist." He put it away carefully. "Now, the suitcases. They've all been printed outside, and they're clean. Which is very odd indeed, only not in this case, of course." He laid the first one beside him on the couch, brought out a key ring-“From the corpse, I haven't searched him, except for these, when I found the cases were locked"-and opened it. Clothing, neatly packed: six solid-colored sport shirts, in two layers, on top-just back from the laundry, by the way they were folded and pinned: the kind of shirts that sold for fifteen dollars and up. Two of them monogrammed.
Another half-dozen less expensive white dress shirts underneath. A leather case with eighteen or twenty ties neatly folded in it. Clean socks rolled up in pairs. Shorts and undershirts, almost all of knit nylon. Three pairs of silk pajamas, all of exotic colors. Two pairs of shoes, on trees and wrapped in paper: one pair tan suede, the other black.
"Thirty bucks at a guess," said Mendoza, setting them down carefully without touching the shoe trees. Under the tied-down flap of the lid was a leather case containing an electric razor, a manicure set, and a number of jars and bottles, all bearing the same green-and-gold label and, in tortured script, the words Flamme d'Amour .
" Que hombre! ” said Mendoza, removing the top from a bottle of cologne with handkerchief-shielded fingers, and sniffing.
"He wouldn't like himself much right now," commented Woods. Another fitted case with hairbrushes and comb. Six belts, tidily rolled up. A flat leather jewel case containing half a dozen pairs of links, tie clasps, a monogrammed sterling buckle.
"Don't," said Hackett to Woods earnestly, "ask him for any deductions or we'l1 be here all night. One of the things he's an expert on is clothes."
"Nobody needs to be an expert to deduce from all this that he was a man of no taste," said Mendoza. "The latest fashion, the expensive, but"-he lifted his lip at the cologne bottle-"Main Street masquerading as Beverly Hills." He opened the second case, which was of the tall and narrow kind designated a fortnighter; it contained four suits, six pair of slacks, and four sport coats, all carefully arranged on the hangers, and four more pairs of shoes.
"However," said Mendoza, "all this has something to say besides that," and he looked at the two cases thoughtfully before opening the third.
This was older than the others, of scuffed brown leather instead of plane-weight aluminum; it looked as if it had seen hard usage. When Mendoza lifted the lid, all of them stared in silence, and then Mendoza ca
lled Marx and Horder. " Pronto, let's see if there's anything on this."
"Very pretty," said Woods. "Never saw one quite like it-looks kind of antique, would you say? But he wasn't shot, was he?"
"It's an old one," agreed Hackett. "Look at the length of the barrel. A six- or seven-shot of some kind-open cylinder like one of those old colt six-shooters, but not quite the same-" They watched the two men from Prints lift it out carefully and set to work.
Mendoza looked at Hackett pleasedly. " Cuanto apuestas -how much do you bet it's a smooth bore?" he asked happily.
Hackett fingered his jaw. "Walsh's business. You want to hook it up to this. I don't know that I'd lay any bets, Luis, but I can't see any connection offhand."
"Can't you? Well, it's all up in the air yet, nothing solid, but I can see a couple of little things to build a plot on, you know-stories to tell ourselves about it."
"You don't suppose that any surgeon's going to be able to say, this man died at eight o'clock P.M. on Friday the thirtieth? After all this time? What are you trying to make out-that Bartlett saw this murder done and just forgot to mention it to Walsh, and the killer followed them and an hour and a half later shot Bartlett? I used to like fairy tales, about thirty years back, but they don't thrill me any more."
" Tengo paciencia, I'm not filling in that plot yet-we'll just file it for reference. But I'll say this about the Bartlett business. Here we've got a homicide that isn't fresh enough so the surgeon can say within a day or a day and a half when it started to be a homicide. Isn't it a little helpful that we've got this other thing nailed down as to time? Coincidences do happen, but this is just the least little bit suggestive, or it could be. We can't operate on the arbitrary premise that these two things must be hooked up, but let's keep it in mind, because if they are, we've got a much narrower time limit for the corpse than the autopsy could possibly give us. And now let's look at the rest of this." He turned back to the third suitcase.