by Dell Shannon
The disco wasn’t open, of course, but there was a rickety stair going up one side of the old stucco building, and they climbed it. At the top was a door painted a violent royal blue, and Landers knocked on it.
"You can’t expect the free spirits to be up at this hour," said Wanda when he’d knocked five times.
"I can hear somebody in there." At the seventh knock the door was fumbled open.
"What the hell? What you want?"
"Mr. Robinson? Ford Robinson?"
"Yeah?"
"We’d like to ask you some questions about Rodrigo Peralta." Landers showed him the badge.
"Cops!" said Robinson disgustedly. "Cops, in the middle o’ the night. A lady cop yet. What’s with Roddy?" He yawned and scratched his chest. He was covered with so much hair that it was hard to tell what he looked like; he had a mane of wiry curly chestnut hair to his shoulders, he was only wearing shorts and his entire torso was covered with more, like his arms and naked legs.
Landers regarded him for a moment, considering the best approach to use. Wanda spoke up sweetly. "We’re looking for any friends of his who saw him last Monday night. To, you know, say where he was."
"Oh," said Robinson. "Like an alibi. I didn’t see him Monday-more like last Saturday, maybe." He thought. "But I tell you who might of. Yeah, sure. The Kings."
"The Kings?" said Landers, not looking at Wanda.
"Yeah-Nita and Gerald. I run into them on Monday night, downstairs at the disco, they said they were going to see Roddy, see if he had-well, going to see him."
"I see," said Wanda, making businesslike notes. "What time was that?"
"Uh-seven, seven-fifteen like."
"Do you know where the Kings live?"
"Sure, they got a pad right back of here, on Thirty-first." He added the address. "They could prob’ly say Roddy wasn’t wherever you thought he was. Damn cops coming-"
"Thank you very much," said Wanda prettily.
"Listen," said Landers on the sidewalk, "you’re just supposed to be tagging along."
"Men," said Wanda. "You notice we got what we were after. I always believed the old adage that you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar."
***
Mendoza was sitting at his desk staring out at the Hollywood hills at three o’clock that Friday, the cards scattered on the desk behind him; he had spent an unproductive couple of hours brooding over Fleming. At least the rain had departed definitely; as usual in southern California after a rain, it had turned very cold, and it was brilliantly clear, the back mountains glistening with snow, the nearer hills sharply defined.
The office was quiet; everybody was out on something. The A.P.B. hadn’t brought Benoy in yet. There ought to be a report from S.I.D. on the Hopper killing sometime today. A couple of autopsy reports were in; nothing much in them.
"?Ca! " said Mendoza to himself. " A su tiempo maduran las uvas. " He got up and fished in his pocket for change for the coffee machine, and Sergeant Lake came in and shut the door behind him.
"We’ve got ca1lers," he said. He was looking grim and rather pleased; he had one hand behind him.
"Anybody interesting?"
"Oh, I think so," said Lake. "I think you’ll like her. A very respectable widow by the name of Mrs. Consuelo Gomez. She’s got a mustache, seven sons, and a tender conscience."
"Meaning what, Jimmy?" Mendoza sat down again. Sergeant Lake brought his hand from behind his back with something in it. He laid it on top of the cards on Mendoza’s desk. Mendoza stared at it.
It was a large silver crucifix on a long silver chain. The center of the cross was studded with an opaque pale-green veined stone. It was, in fact, the crucifix which had been torn from Father Patrick Joseph O’Brien when the pretty boys attacked him.
Mendoza raised his eyes from it, and they had gone very cold. "Suppose you show the lady in."
"Oh, she’s got one of them with her," said Lake. "Her youngest, Guido." He went out, and a minute later they came in. Mrs. Gomez was mountainous, in ancient and decent black silk, black hair piled in a knob on her head. But his eyes passed over her to the big boy behind her. Boy-he might be twenty, he was big but gangling: unused to his size as yet, awkward. Almost handsome, a poor attempt at a mustache, long waving black hair. And the very natty loud sports jacket, striped blue and green, a dark shirt, a wide tie.
She sat in the chair beside the desk and flooded Mendoza with emotion, religious and otherwise. "He is my youngest, my baby, I worry over him, I know he goes with these foolish young ones, and he does not come to church any more-I try to talk to him, I say-"
"Oh, for God’s sake knock it off, Mama! You just wasting their time with your crazy ideas-" He gave Mendoza a calculatedly apologetic smile. "Listen, she’s old country, know what I mean, you don’t want to pay no notice, I didn’t want to come here waste your-"
"You be still or I smack you again seven times! Oh, no, you don’t want to come here, to police, and I am stupid and old, but I am yet your mother! I have to drag him here, he feels my hand hard-and maybe he should feel it more often since he thinks he is all grown to a man! Away from his so-clever modern friends, he comes with me, I see to that!" She was breathing asthmatically, and her little black eyes were bright. Queerly, for she didn’t look anything like Teresa Sanchez y Mendoza, he was reminded of his grand mother.
"That," she said, and pointed to the crucifix on the desk, "that is why! That, I find in his drawer! It will be-"
"For God’s sake," he said, "for God’s sake. I told you I found it. On the street."
"That, I know. It is the crucifix the priest at the church always was wearing. Father O’Brien. And he has been murdered, the other Father has told us, by these terrible wicked ones. I have seven sons," she cried emotionally, and all her chins wobbled magnificently, "and I thank the good God the six of them are decent Christian men, it is for my sins I have this wicked one-I tremble to think what he has done, if indeed it can be he has attacked a priest, but I know my duty to God and the law-I bring him to you!"
"For Christ’s sake!" said the boy. "Of all the crap! I told you I found the damn thing, I thought it might be worth a couple bucks at a hock shop. That’s all I know about it."
"Where’d you End it?" asked Mendoza.
"It was over on Fourth somewheres, just lying in the street."
"When?" asked Mendoza.
"Oh, Jesus’ sake, couple o’ days ago." He met Mendoza’s cold eyes and suddenly backed away. "You aren’t gonna believe the stupid old lady, I had anything to do-I found it!"
"I have known he is running with wicked ones, late at night, never would he tell me where he is, and sometimes drinking too much wine-I have implored him, take the good little job his uncle offers, earn the money-I do not know where he has money, his clothes-"
"Knock it off!" he said furiously. "For God’s sake, all that crap about God and the law- That guy outside, he said Mendoza-I suppose you go for all that too, hah? I got shut of that a good long while back! Anything to all that, the hellfire, nobody in the world get out of it-I told you it was all in your silly Goddamn mind, you takin’ a hand to me like I was still a kid-"
"I know my duty to God!"
"To hell with your stupid God! And these Goddamn cops, stupid damn pigs-" His eye fell on the gadget on Mendoza’s desk, the life-sized pearl-handled revolver, and he laughed a little wildly. "Great big men, long as you got the guns around! You believe her, take me in and beat me up so I say anything-"
"Suppose we all calm down," said Mendoza. "Did you mention finding this to anyone, Mr. Gomez?"
"Goddamn all of you!" he said. And suddenly he made a grab for the gadget, snatched it up and turned it on his mother. "You Goddamned fool!" And he pressed the trigger.
Mendoza was on his feet. The barrel belched forth the torch-like flame, and Guido Gomez dropped the thing and began to scream hoarsely. "Fires of hell-fires of hell- fuegos del infierno -I didn’t mean to kill the priest, I didn’t know he was a priest, I di
dn’t mean-"
TEN
It took a while to calm him down. Sergeant Farrell shooed Wanda in three minutes later, when she and Landers came back, and she got Mrs. Gomez out and down to First Aid; Hackett came in and cowed Guido considerably by mere looks. Within ten minutes he was talking, sullen, reluctant, resentful, but talking.
They spelled it out for him that they knew there were three of them, and he came out with two names, Jay Folger, Bruce Hardwick. "We met up the semester I went to L.A.C.C. Goddamn it, you got me you’re sure as hell goin’ to get them-they been pullin’ break-ins up in Hollywood for the bread, I wasn’t in on that, I swear." He gave them addresses: Emmett Terrace, Alta Loma Drive, "Jay, he drove me home one night, we saw that crazy old lady Miller lives at the end o’ the block on her way home, he says have some fun with the old scarecrow, and we- No, we never got any loot off them, it was just for kicks. God-damned old creeps, think they know it all, tell everybody else how to live- But that night-that night-I never knew it was a priest, till I saw his clothes."
Mendoza held up the crucifix. "How about this?"
Guido shivered and looked away. "I grabbed it-and then I was afraid, after, to hock it or anything. I shoulda put it in the trash, got rid of it, but I-and the Goddamned old woman-"
Mendoza sighed deeply and dropped it on his desk.
"Take him away, Art," he said. "I do get so tired of the punks, the brainless louts."
Palliser was back then, and they all went up to Hollywood after Jay Folger and Bruce Hardwick. They didn’t find either one. At the address on Emmett, a flustered middle-aged woman told them, "I don’t know when either of them’ll be home, Jay or his father-l’m just the house-keeper-Mr. Folger travels a lot for his company, and Jay, goodness knows where he is, he’s got his own car."
At the Alta Loma address, Mrs. Hardwick stared at the badge in Mendoza’s hand and said, "Police? What-what do you want with Bruce?" She was a fake redhead with a foolish face, a slack mouth, and she bleated like a sheep at them. "Bruce wouldn’t do anything wrong, I see he has plenty of money of his own, he wouldn’t-"
"God give me patience," said Mendoza.
Both of them were supposed to be attending L.A.C.C., but when the school was contacted the registrar said they’d both dropped out last semester. Eventually they would show up at their respective homes; the Robbery-Homicide men went up to the Wilcox Street precinct house and talked to Sergeant Barth, who said he’d have a squad car check at intervals, bring them in if they showed.
At least they knew who the pretty boys were; sooner or later they’d be in custody.
Mendoza went home to tell Alison what a successful gadget her Christmas present had proven to be.
***
With Guido coming apart, they’d have picked up Folger and Hardwick sometime; as it turned out, they were forestalled. Folger and Hardwick were out for some more lighthearted fun in the slums that night, and at nine-fifteen, having left Folger’s sporty Jaguar parked on a side street, they had the misfortune to jump on Miss Maureen O’Connor. Miss O’Connor was tired, on her way home from work at a cafeteria uptown, and she was rather short-tempered by nature anyway.
"Come out at me like a pair of wild men," she told the uniformed men indignantly. "See me limping when I got off the bus, I s’pose, I twisted my ankle in the kitchen, and think they’d snatch my purse and I wouldn’t do nothing-Hah! Fat chance I’d let ’em try! I just let ’em have it, and I bet they think twice, tackle a poor defenseless old woman again!"
"Defenseless?" said the Traffic man to his partner.
"Well, it’s not a very apt word for it. And listen, doesn’t this look like the pair we had the word on at briefing? We better take ’em in to First Aid to start with." Miss O’Connor had felled Folger with one lusty blow of her heavy handbag, I knocking him clean out on the sidewalk, and tripped Hardwick up and sat on him, yelling mightily for cops all the while. A nearby householder had obliged her by calling it in.
So there they were neatly in jail on Saturday morning, and Mendoza and Hackett talked to them, not very long. They were saying various things about Miss O’Connor.
"We had the word out on you already," Mendoza told them. "Your pal Guido told us where to find you."
"That Goddamn-I might’ve known, weak-bellied little spick!" Folger would have been the leader of the three, a dominating crude force like an aura about him. "Ever since we got that damn priest he’s been ready to have kittens-" Hardwick just glowered.
"You do realize it’ll be a charge of Murder One," said Mendoza. "It was just blind luck you only killed one of them. It really doesn’t matter whether you’re inclined to make statements or not." Folger growled and told them where they could go for statements. "So there’s no point in wasting any more time on you two louts." Mendoza looked them up and down contemptuously. "Come on, Art." In the corridor they met Barth, who wanted to talk to the two louts about a few unsolved burglaries. "I wish you joy of them," said Mendoza. "I’m getting old, Barth. These punks without brains or bowels make me sick and tired."
Barth laughed and said, "You haven’t changed in years, Luis. And I hear your wife’s expecting again."
"More than that," said Mendoza. "Talking about moving to a ranch, I gather. And God knows, there are times I feel like buying a thousand acres in the middle of wilderness somewhere and building a fence around it and staying inside. What the hell are we doing at this thankless job?"
***
When he and Hackett got back to the office Landers was slouched at his desk rereading a report, and followed them into Mendoza’s office. "This Peralta," he said. "No damned loss, but we have to do the routine. I’ve now got statements from three other people besides Ford Robinson that these Kings-Nita and Gerald-were at that disco on Monday night and said they were going to see Peralta. By inference, to see if he had any dream powder. I haven’t turned up anything else. Walter Pepple, across the hall from Peralta, says it might have been two people running away. And the Kings have taken off from their apartment. He had a part-time job at a service station, and the owner says he hasn’t been in all week."
"So maybe we’d better put out an A.P.B.," said Hackett. "They sound likely for the job, Tom. At least we want to talk to them."
"I think so. I just put a query to D.M.V. about the car."
Hackett went out, heading for the sergeants’ office, and met a diffident-looking couple in the hall. "Oh-Mr. and Mrs. Joiner."
"You asked us to come in, sir. Detective Grace said-"
"That’s right," said Hackett. "Come in here." Carla Joiner was Myrtle Hopper’s daughter. Hackett settled them down in front of his desk, and Grace and Higgins came over. The Joiners looked with faint awe at Higgins, that craggy man with COP all but emblazoned all over him, and were dumb before Hackett. Carla was small and pretty, her young husband round-faced and earnest.
"Just as we told you, Mrs. Joiner," said Grace easily, "all we want from you is some idea of what’s missing from your mother’s house."
"Well, there wasn’t much there to steal," said Carla frankly. "Mother wasn’t one for much jewelry or fancy things. But one thing we’d better tell you, her credit cards are gone. You people said we could go through the house yesterday, after you got finished looking around, and as soon as I looked I saw they were gone, she always kept them right in her wallet, and there was still a little change in it but the cards were gone."
"Which are they?"
"A BankAmericard and the gas company card. She was careful about charging, but it was convenient, she always said."
Her husband broke in diffidently. "We’d like to know when we can, you know, fix up for the funeral."
"The coroner’s office will let you know," said Grace. "Is there any other family, Mrs. Joiner?" asked Hackett, the kind of random question to put witnesses at ease.
Her husband said, "I suppose we got to tell Isabel, Carla," and she just shrugged.
"I’ve got a sister, that’s all."
"Nothing e
lse is missing from the house that you noticed?" asked Grace.
"I don’t think so, except her silver teapot. An old lady she used to work for gave it to her, and she treasured it a lot. I don’t know what it’d be worth," she said miserably.
"Have you contacted the credit-card companies to let them know the cards are stolen?"
"Why, no-we never thought-we don’t have any ourselves-"
"We can do that." Grace smiled at them, and had his mouth open to ask another question when Sergeant Farrell looked in the door.
"Traffic just picked up Benoy and Allesandro. It’s a mess, sounds like-there was a high-speed pursuit down Victory and they rammed the squad-one Burbank man in serious condition, the squad wrecked, and wouldn’t you know the two punks didn’t get a scratch. Burbank’s sending them in."
Hackett and Higgins got up in a hurry and went out, and the Joiners looked questioningly at Grace. "They’re pretty hot suspects for your mother," Grace explained.
"We’ve been looking for them for another homicide, but we think it’s possible they killed your mother too. One of them is definitely tied to the murder of those Freemans, more or less in the same neighborhood."
"Oh," said Carla. "I saw about that in the paper. It was awful. But I don’t see how-I mean, Mother was always careful about locking doors and like that." They had both relaxed slightly, alone with Grace in the office. She looked at her husband. "It said in the paper you-the police-wanted to question some man about that murder, something about what it called an all points-"
"Bulletin," supplied Grace. "That’s him. It’s just turned him up."
"But," said Carla, "it said he’s a white man. I forget all the description, how tall and so on, but he’s white."
"Well?" said Grace.