“So what do we do,” Krug demanded, “about getting him identified?”
“Don’t give up, Al. There’s a sister, it says here. They’re going to try to track her down right away. They’ll let us know how they make out in an hour or so.” Timms leaned back in his swivel chair, groaning softly, rubbing the nape of his neck. “So that’s that for now. Looks like all we’ve got in the way of a solid lead is that teenybopper. The one who was passing the phony twenties.”
“Name, Maryanna Hawkins,” the Juvenile man, Abner Lilly, read off from his case file. “Called Yanna by her friends and family. She’s a student at Samohi. Pretty good grades, no trouble before. But that may change now,” he predicted moodily. “Nobody but Mommy and Daddy bought her story about finding the counterfeit money, but she stuck to it, so what could we do? Score one for her. We gave her the usual warning, and released her to her parents.”
“Hope they tanned her butt for her.” Krug growled.
“You’re kidding—in this age of the sacred child? They’re probably both at the nearest shrink right now, trying to find out how they failed their little darling.”
“What’s her girlfriend’s name?” Casey inquired. “The one she went to the rock concert with?”
“Elise Janoff.”
“You talk to her at all?”
“Not enough to get a real line on her,” Lilly admitted. “Shy type—or playing it that way. The Hawkins girl is obviously the dominant partner. But if you could scare the other one a little, work on her guilt, you might get something out of her.”
“How about these Hawkinses,” Krug asked while Casey took down the addresses for both girls. “They nice-type people? Respectable citizens?”
“Sure.” Lilly shrugged. “Only the kid’s got ’em buffaloed. You know the story. Sixteen years old, she knows all the answers, they got nothing to give her but the Establishment line.”
“Another teenybopper philosopher.” Krug grunted. “Okay, we get ’em every day, Ab, no sweat.”
“That’s what you think,” was Lilly’s parting shot. “After I got through with Yanna-baby, I felt like I’d been in a steambath!”
The Hawkins house was in a quiet neighborhood not too far from where Casey lived. Two blocks away was Lincoln Junior High, but Santa Monica High School was miles to the south. She probably rode her bike there as he had, Casey guessed. Or caught a bus. Only the tenderer types were chauffeured by mothers made anxious by accident and crime statistics.
“Nice hydrangeas,” Krug commented as they trudged up the walk, squinting in the late, low sun hanging over the distant invisible sea. “Mine’ve got some kind of infestation. Keep spraying ’em every week, but the damn bugs seem to like the stuff. Next thing I know they’ll be spitting it back at me.”
Casey punched the doorbell and they listened to chimes inside.
“Yes?” a voice called after a moment from somewhere. “I’m over here.” A pleasant-looking woman in her late thirties was peering around the corner of the building—a gardener, they saw; Yanna’s mother, she told them. “Oh, no,” she moaned when they identified themselves. “Not police again—”
“No problem, Mrs. Hawkins,” Casey told her hastily. “We only want to talk to her for a minute.”
“Well, she’s doing her homework now. At least, I hope she is. They’re so independent, aren’t they? I was never that independent Why, when my parents—Oh, never mind. This way.” She started down the driveway, pulling off her gardening gloves. “Excuse the back door, but the front’s locked. My husband always insists on it when he’s not home.”
The kitchen was shiny-clean, Casey noticed as they followed her in, remodeled several years ago probably, color-schemed to match the bronzy appliances. Through an open door, he glimpsed a wide hall which had been made into a picture gallery. Prosperous, trendy, culture-hip, middle-class, the Hawkinses would be knowledgeable about wines, he guessed, music, the theater—everything, in fact, but their daughter.
“Darling.” Mrs. Hawkins was tapping timidly on a door to what had been meant to serve as a maid’s quarters. From within came a squalling voice over pounding rock rhythm—the late Janis Joplin, Casey recognized. “Darling? Yanna?”
“What is it?” a young voice called bitchily, and Krug glanced at Casey. Uh-hunh.
“There’re some men here to see you, dear. Policemen.”
Something banged inside. Then the music cut off. A second later, the door opened revealing a short girl with a huge mop of fuzzy golden hair.
“Just a couple questions, Yanna,” Krug said, smoothly stepping around the mother. “Mind if we come in?” And once they were in, he smiled at Mrs. Hawkins, blocking her way in. “Only be a minute, ma’am.” He closed the door in her face.
“So what’s the hassle?” Blue eyes shining, face pink, the girl glared at them. But it was halfway an act, Casey decided. Behind the sexpot stance—legs apart, hands on hips—something could be sensed that was still tender and capable of alarm.
“Just take it easy, Yanna,” Krug was saying. “Nothing to be scared of.”
“Who said I was scared, pig?”
Ignoring her, Krug glanced around the room—a little study, apparently, with bookshelves, posters on the walls, a huge office desk taking up most of the floor space. “Nice,” he commented. “This your dad’s den?”
“What’s it to you?”
“Nothing.” He smiled placidly. “How about if we sit down for a minute?”
“I’ve got homework to do.”
“Yeah, your mother told us. Time for finals, hah?” Krug twiddled with the dials on the small transistor radio sitting on the desk. “You always study with the music going?”
“When I feel like it. Hey, man,” she protested as Krug seated himself at the desk, “I was sitting there!”
Krug grinned, settling himself comfortably.
“Shit,” she muttered. “Fuckin’ fuzz.” She dropped into a shabby armchair, curling her blue-jeaned legs under her—a sweet-sour dumpling, Casey thought as he chose a straight chair near the door.
On the other side of the panel, he could hear the floor squeaking. Mrs. Hawkins was eavesdropping. The missing Mr. Hawkins was due for an earful.
“Barrett,” Krug was saying. “Gerald Hower Barrett.” He hesitated, staring at the girl until she began to fidget. “You read about him in the Outlook this afternoon maybe? No? Sure?” He made a disapproving tch-tch sound. “Ought to read your local paper, keep up with what’s going on. Or maybe you didn’t even know your shack-up’s name?”
The girl kept licking her lips—a nervous tic, Casey realized, but it looked enticing, lascivious. Her voice, when it came out at last, was too shrill, defensive: “What’re you talking about, pig? I don’t know anybody—”
“He’s dead, Yanna. Somebody killed him.” Krug leaned toward the girl, his voice lowered clandestinely. “Let’s start at the beginning, okay? At that rock concert. And never mind what you told your folks, we want the truth, understand? Chapter and verse, Yanna. He picked you up at Santa Monica Civic—and then what?”
TEN
“If I had any kids,” he was fuming half an hour later, “I’d poison ’em, do the world a favor. Turn right here.”
“It’s left, Al.” Casey made a screeching turn through the yellow warning signal, barely missing a car that had rushed the opposite traffic light.
“Jesus!” Krug braked unconsciously in the passenger seat. One of these days, Casey knew, the floorboards would go through. “Anybody ever tell you you’re a menace on the road?”
“Not in the last hour. Al, we’re not going to get anyplace trying to bully these kids.”
“Bullshit. Pushing ’em is the only way we’ll nail ’em.” Raising his voice in a poor falsetto imitation of a girl’s, he said, “ ‘Man, we rapped with a lot of dudes. Practically everybody at Civic Saturday night!’ Who’s she think she’s kidding?”
“Us, and so far she’s doing fine, I’d say.”
“Yeah, we
ll, we’ll see about that when we hit her girlfriend.”
Glimpsing his partner’s angry, fiery face from the corner of his eye, Casey smiled to himself, recalling Abner Lilly’s comment that his session with Yanna had left him feeling like he’d been in a steambath. Krug looked as if he’d spent the week in one.
“Don’t like witnesses who lie,” he was saying savagely. “And for damn sure I don’t like sassy little bitches making a fool out of me!”
“I dig, Al. All I’m suggesting is we try another line.”
“Like what, for instance?” Casey explained his idea, but Krug only grunted. But as they pulled up in front of the apartment building where Elise Janoff lived, he said grudgingly, “Okay, try it your way. But if it don’t work, I’m hauling both of ’em in. Maybe a night or two getting chased around by some baby dyke at Juvenile might straighten ’em out.”
Elise would be back in perhaps ten minutes, the thin tiny old lady who opened the door of the Janoff apartment informed them. Would the gentlemen care to wait?
Surprised at her lack of curiosity as to who they might be, Casey identified himself properly and said if she didn’t mind, yes, they’d like to wait. “This is my partner, Detective Sergeant Krug.”
“So,” she murmured. “Policemen. Well, come in, please.” She showed them into a living room crammed with dark, heavy Old World furniture.
“You’re a member of Elise’s family, ma’am?” Casey inquired.
“Grandmother, yes.” Her heavy-lidded, weary eyes closed briefly. “Poor child, I am her only family. Imagine. So young and only an old foreigner to talk with. We are like creatures, I think, from two distant planets. But excuse me,” she went on briskly. “I have not said my name, or asked you to sit. I am Elisaveta Janoff. Her father’s mother. May he rest in peace.” She shook hands delicately, using her fingertips only, then gestured toward two massively carved thronelike chairs sitting by the large front window. “Please be comfortable. You will take refreshment?”
“No thanks, ma’am,” Krug replied before Casey could. “We’ll just wait here if you’ve got something else to do.”
The idea seemed to astonish Elisaveta Janoff, and she smiled uncertainly, obviously at a loss as to how to answer. “I bring tea,” she declared finally, and excusing herself, left the room.
“ ‘Two distant planets,’ ” Krug muttered when an inner door had closed behind her. “She hit it on the button, all right. How d’you figure a kid like that other one fitting in here?”
“Beyond me, Al.” Casey glanced around, savoring the atmosphere of another world. “Looks like a museum.”
“Mausoleum, you mean.” Krug grinned at his own cleverness. “You want to change your mind about handling the questions and answers?”
Casey was about to say no when the front door opened. They glimpsed a young female hand on the knob, heard a light clear voice crooning something, then a small dog like an animated ragheap trotted in and began barking shrilly.
“Stop it—Oh!” Poised in the doorway, the small, dark, clever-looking girl stared in at them—surprised at first, Casey saw, then shocked, then frightened. But by the time she had closed the door, she had recovered herself.
“You’re Elise Janoff, miss?” he inquired. “We’re police officers.” They both flashed their identifications. “We’d like to ask you a few questions.”
The dog kept growling at them, and she snatched it up, hugging it to her. “Stop it, Pupsi.” Casey saw her swallowing nervously. “I suppose—suppose you’ve been talking to my grandmother?”
“Not yet,” said Krug, coming down hard on the last word. “And if you’re a smart girl, Elise, maybe we won’t have to.”
Oh, great, Casey thought disgustedly. So after an opening punch like that I’m supposed to carry on with the friendly local fuzz bit? Trying to allay the girl’s nervousness, he began with a series of mild questions about her activities at Samohi, hobbies if any, friends both male and female in and out of high school. She didn’t make the mistake of leaving Yanna Hawkins off the list, and when Casey let the name go by without comment, she seemed encouraged enough to chatter a bit, mostly about her flute playing and the possibility of a musical career later. Mozart was her favorite composer, she admitted.
“Classical bag,” Casey commented to Krug. “No rock, no jive, no down home blues.”
Elise giggled nervously, and they both looked at her, waiting. “We-ell,” she drawled, obviously imitating someone, “that’s a heavy scene, yeh, but it’s not all of it, man. There’s room for everybody.”
“Like the Stones?” Casey suggested, and she nodded. Yes, the Rolling Stones were fine. “Like the Grateful Dead? Like—?” He kept naming rock groups, at last dropping the one that had played Saturday night at Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. “Your friend Yanna likes them, too. She told us you stayed through four encores, and whooped it up for more till they finally had to turn out the lights.”
“Yes, it was a good concert.” She was stiff now, abruptly reverting to Grandmother’s girl. “We enjoyed it very much.”
“No, you didn’t,” Casey said gently. “And you’re a lousy liar, Elise. Better give up trying.”
Her eyes darted toward the inner door her grandmother had gone through. “What—what do you mean?”
“The man who picked up your girlfriend at the concert was murdered early this morning.”
The girl’s mouth opened, but nothing came out.
“His name was Gerald Barrett, and we’re sure his death has some connection with that money Yanna got from him.”
“Don’t tell my grandmother,” she whispered. “Please don’t! She wouldn’t understand, you see. From the old country, and she—she—”
Her voice broke suddenly and she began to cry in a quiet, hopeless, despairing way which tore at Casey. Despising himself, his rotten bullying job, he gritted his teeth. Without looking at Krug, he said, “Elise, we’re not here to torment you. Or Yanna either. But we’ve got to know the truth. You can’t protect her anymore, it’s gone beyond that now.”
By the time they checked into the squad room again, it had been dark for what seemed hours to Casey. Another report was in from North Platte PD, they discovered. Barrett’s sister had been located and notified of her brother’s death. “According to the chief, she’s taking a bus to someplace called Grand Island,” Timms told them. “From there she’ll catch the first plane west, so for sure she’ll be here tomorrow. Any luck with the kid?”
“Kids, you mean,” Krug corrected him sourly. “If it wasn’t for the girlfriend, we’d be up shit creek for sure. You tell it,” he added wearily to Casey. “I’m too beat to try to sort out all that teenybopper guff.”
Baloney, Casey thought. The guff was already sorted, checked where possible, question-marked where not. They had left both Yanna and her mother in tears. “Barrett buzzed them during the intermission,” he began. “Big dude making the scene. You know the type, sir. A few joints he’s willing to share, a few bucks or something to the guy in the seat next to them so he can move in and take over. By the end of the concert Yanna was stoned out of her mind and ready for anything.”
“So they ditch the girlfriend?”
Casey nodded. “Yanna was supposed to spend the night at Elise’s, so she didn’t even have to think of a story to call home. She and Barrett split during the encores. Elise went home alone, of course. Grandma was asleep, so no problem there. But I guess she worried all night anyway.”
“Good thing she did,” Krug commented. “Made it easy for Yanna to lie so she could swear to it.”
“About five the next morning—that’s Sunday,” Casey went on, “Elise said she came tapping on the door.”
“Ready to tell all to her square little friend, I suppose.” Timms grimaced. He had daughters of his own—but grown, naturally. “Girls will be girls. Okay, what next?”
“We took the story back to Yanna.”
Timms peered at him suddenly. “She a pretty girl? Maybe old for her a
ge?”
Casey could feel himself flushing. “Yes, sir, I’d say she was.”
“Glands,” Krug muttered. “And boy, has she got ’em! That kid’s as hot—”
“All right, Al, don’t blow a gasket, I get the picture.” Timms nodded to Casey. “Go on, I’m listening.”
“We hit her with Elise’s story, but she denied everything at first, and bad-mouthed Elise some.” He glanced at Krug. “So we told her we’d have to take her in.”
“Not kosher.” Timms grinned. “But okay—then what?”
“She didn’t break till we invited Mama in to listen.” Casey sighed unconsciously. “They both had hysterics, then Mama called Daddy long distance and told him.”
“Guy had balls enough to listen anyway,” Krug added. “At a buck or so a minute, I gave it to him the second time straight, no holds barred. Then he asked me to put the kid on. Took her about two minutes after Daddy got through with her to wrap it up for us.” He glanced at Casey. “Your move again, sport.”
“Well, there isn’t much more.” Casey consulted his notebook. “She kept saying she was too stoned to remember much. Seems he was driving a car—she doesn’t know what kind—and they didn’t go directly to his pad. She was a little confused about the details, but what it sounded like, he’d either borrowed the car or jumped it. Anyway, they drove down some alley to a garage, she remembers. A ratty old place, she said, maybe around Fifth or Sixth. She thinks Colorado was the nearest cross street.”
“This a public garage she meant?”
“No, sir, sounded to me like it belonged to a house. And there was a motorcycle in the garage, she said. Barrett wheeled that out, then put the car in. They went the rest of the way to his pad on the cycle.”
Timms leaned back in his chair, staring at the ceiling, appearing to digest the story. “Fifth or Sixth near Colorado,” he muttered. “Probably one of those old houses that backs up to the alleys. You’re sure she said the garage opened into the alley?”
“That’s what she said, sir.”
“Could be one he rented from a private party. Worth a fast look, anyway, see if we get lucky for a change.” The lieutenant glanced at his watch. “Not too late to try either. You two got pep enough left for a last push?”
The Complete Krug & Kellog Page 24