Exploit of Death llm-34

by Dell Shannon

"Don't dither at me, George. Yes, I'm sure. Not going senile yet."

  "Well, if we lean on those witnesses, they may come apart."

  "And maybe not." Mendoza brushed his mustache back and forth in habitual irritated gesture. "Somehow I think they're-background. Just there for effect."

  "I don't get you," said Palliser blankly.

  "I'm not sure I know what I mean myself, John."

  But there were a few obvious things to do. He went down to Communications and dispatched a cable to the Surete in Paris, requesting any information on Juliette Martin, French citizen, probably resident in Paris, probably on a plane from Paris to New York last Thursday or Friday, and appended a description. He sent a request to the U.S. Customs in New York asking for any record of her arrival. Did they take down the numbers of passports? He hadn't any idea. He seemed to recall that when they landed in England the Customs officers had simply glanced at the joint passport and waved them on.

  They drove back to the ancient apartment house in Higgins' Pontiac. The lab men were just packing up to leave and it was getting on for three o'clock.

  "Why the full treatment on a suicide, Lieutenant?" asked Duke. "And what a hell of a place to die. Damn pretty girl, too."

  Horder said with unaccustomed violence, "And so damn silly, by those letters. Stupid. No real reason to kill herself, over the silly love affair, but they will do it."

  "I trust you got those close-up shots," said Mendoza.

  "Yep," said Duke. "Doubt if we'll make any latents except maybe hers. Place looks neat enough on the surface but probably hasn't had a good cleaning in months. So it's all yours."

  They went out. Higgins picked up the old worn billfold from the bureau top. "I thought you said a Social Security card. Not exactly," he said, flipping it open.

  "No, but a lot of people carry them," said Mendoza. He looked at it again in the plastic slot of the billfold. The original Social Security card was a rather flimsy small piece of cardboard, easily misplaced or defaced. He had seen these replicas advertised in a good many mail-order catalogs: the numbers and name stamped onto a thin sheet of tal. There was SOCIAL SCURITY at the top, an eagle with wings spread, name and number below. The nine-digit number was anonymous, the name Ruth Hoffman only slightly less so.

  Higgins, echoing the thought, said, "How many Ruth Hoffmans in the whole country?"

  "No guesses," said Mendoza, "and I suppose the computers in Washington would trace down the number in time, if we're allowed to ask-which is debatable. The IRS can harass the citizens as much as they please, but nobody else is supposed to invade the citizens' rights."

  They looked through the shabby old furnished apartment. The lab men had left a handbag on the bureau, the only handbag there, a big bone-colored plastic bag. There wasn't much in it. Two keys on a ring, one to the door here, one to the mailbox in the lobby. A couple of tissues, a soiled powder puff, a half-used lipstick. There was a shabby suitcase, unlocked and empty, and a meager wardrobe of clothes in the tiny closet, none new and no labels in any of them. There were four pairs of shoes, the labels of three of them indecipherable. The newest pair bore a logo from a local chain, Kinney's. All the clothes were size fourteen. In the kitchen cupboards was a modest stock of food-cereal, canned soups, canned vegetables, instant coffee. In the little refrigerator was a half-empty quart bottle of milk, an unopened package of hamburger, a quarter-pound of margarine, a loaf of bread. There were no dirty dishes.

  "All very plausible," said Mendoza. "All very ordinary. Easy to read. Somebody went to a little trouble to set up the picture."

  Palliser said doubtfully, "Wel1, it looks plausible all right. You are sure about the girl?"

  "How often do I have to say it? Yes, it's a very pretty effort, and if I hadn't recognized the girl there'd be one stereotyped report getting filed away right now." Mendoza brushed at his mustache. He was looking exasperated.

  "Would you have thought twice about the missing envelopes, on those letters?"

  Higgins massaged his craggy jaw. "Probably not," he admitted. "Nothing in the wastepaper basket, but the place is fairly neat. She could've emptied the trash last thing."

  "We can guess those letters never went through the mail, and there'd be a chute to an incinerator in the basement, a place this old." Mendoza flipped through the billfold again and said, " Asi, how nice." There was something else in the last plastic slot of the billfold. A library card made out to Ruth Hoffman, from the Los Angeles Public Library on Sixth Street. The date of issue was the sixth of August just past. "So that much we know."

  "What?" asked Palliser.

  "That this caper, whatever the hell it's all about, was set up that long ago, at least. I'll be damned, I will be damned," said Mendoza.

  "But the witnesses-" Higgins still sounded doubtful.

  "Oh, yes," said Mendoza gently. "Those witnesses."

  ***

  HE HADN'T TAKEN formal statements from them yet. They brought them into the office that late afternoon and heard what they had to say again, Palliser taking notes. They told the plain, plausible story, and they looked like ordinary, honest people. The Hoffman girl had rented the apartment from Daggett just over four weeks ago, paying cash by the week, forty dollars. Daggett was less nervous now, and he showed the carbons of the receipts he'd given her, all correctly dated. That was the only time the Daggetts had seen her, when she paid the rent. "I don't think she'd got a job," said Daggett. "The only thing I remember her saying about herself, she came from Chicago." His wife nodded placid affirmation.

  "That's right. She seemed like a nice, quiet girl."The other woman, her garish makeup in the strip lighting revealing more wrinkles than it covered, was garrulous and confidential. Her name was Helen Garvey. She was a widow and worked part-time at a dress shop on Pico Boulevard. She had lived in the apartment house for nearly six years, and it would be hard to find another place at the same rent when the building was torn down. She'd met the Hoffman girl over the borrowed coffee. They'd got talking and the girl had told her how she'd followed her boyfriend out here and then found he didn't want to marry her after all, and she was all broken up about it.

  Mendoza listened to them at length, leaning back in his desk chair, smoking quietly, giving them time. When Mrs. Garvey finally stopped talking, he sat up and said sharply, "Now that is all a damned pack of lies, isn't it? When did you first lay eyes on the girl? She hadn't been there that long, that we know."

  Daggett's prominent Adam's apple jerked once, but his lantern jaw thrust forward and he said with just the right tone of indignation, "You've got no call to say I'm a liar. It was all just like we told you. Why'd we want to tell lies about it? None of us really knew the girl at all. It was just like I said, I went up to get the rent and found her like that. Poisoned herself, she had. Why'd we want to lie about it?"

  "She'd been here a month," contributed his wife insistently. "I'm sure I don't know why you'd call us liars. We ought to know."

  "She told me," said Mrs. Garvey emotionally, "how downright miserable she'd been about her boyfriend. His name was Jim. That was all she ever said. She thought he wanted to marry her-"

  "Who primed you with the pretty story?" Mendoza's voice was sharp.

  "I don't know what you mean. We just told you the plain truth." Daggett was defiant. They weren't showing any overt signs of nervousness, and when Higgins brought in the typed statements they signed them without a tremor. Mendoza let them go. It was nearly five-thirty.

  "You're absolutely sure-"

  "For God's sake, don't say it again, George."

  "Well," said Palliser, "it's just your word, but if we're working it by the book, there are obvious things to do."

  "So go and do them," said Mendoza. `

  Palliser got waylaid in the hall by Jason Grace. Grace had been wasting everybody's time enthusing about the new addition to the family. They were planning a formal christening next week and Celia couldn't wait to meet her new baby brother. They would probably bring him home on Su
nday. It had all been worth the long wait-

  Palliser said yes and fine and just before the end of shift he got down to Communications. He sent off a teletype to the Chicago force asking for any information they could dig up about a Ruth Hoffman, description appended. Just on the very long chance he got hold of Duke in the lab and asked him to wire the girl's prints to Chicago. Mendoza sounded damn sure about the French girl, but on the face of it, it was an unlikely story. Mendoza had on occasion been known to be wrong. Palliser ruminated about it on the way home to Hollywood, but when he got there it slid to the back of his mind as he kissed Roberta.

  "You feeling better?" She'd been having a bout of morning sickness.

  She smiled up at him as two-year-old Davy came running. "I'm fine, the doctor said it's nothing to worry about. Don't fuss, John."

  ***

  HIGGINS WAS WONDERING about Ruth Hoffman, too-a very offbeat thing, if Luis was right. But it was all up in the air and Luis wasn't infallible; and it was likely to stay up in the air because there was nothing to get hold of on it. Unless the French police came up with something definite. But a lot of queer things had shown up in Higgins' long years on this job, and he put it out of his mind as he pulled into the drive of the rambling old house in Eagle Rock.

  Mary was just setting the table. The little Scottie, Brucie, was underfoot demanding his dinner. Laura Dwyer was busy over homework, Steve not yet home from basketball practice. Their own Margaret Emily was cuddling a stuffed toy on the living-room couch. Higgins built himself a drink and sat down to relax before dinner. Thank God tomorrow was his day off.

  ***

  THE NIGHT WATCH didn't leave them anything new, and there were still a few statements to get on the pharmacy heist. Hackett was fascinated with the Hoffman-Martin thing. "But what the hell could be behind it, Luis?"

  "I haven't the faintest idea," said Mendoza. "And don't ask me if I'm sure it's the same girl. Not a girl you'd forget. A good-looker in a distinctive way-"

  "And you're just the boy to notice. I'll take your word for it."

  " Ya paso aquello -I'm a respectable married man."

  "Well, we can try to pin it down. Wire photos and prints to Chicago and the French police."

  "It's done," said Mendoza, "but damn it, Art, it's a long chance her prints would be in French records. The girl a perfectly respectable girl, what used to be called a lady, and they don't print all the citizens any more than we do."

  "But eventually somebody will miss her," said Hackett reasonably, "and start asking questions. There was the fiance, she must've had friends who knew where she was going here."

  " De veras. Eventually. By God, I'd like to know what the hell is behind it, Art."

  "These Daggetts. Do you think they were paid to tell the tale?"

  "I'm damned sure of it, and they're probably regretting it now, but they're stuck with the story, and, condenacion, I should've let them think we'd swallowed it until there's something concrete to throw at them."

  "If there ever is," said Hackett.

  Nothing had come in from Chicago. It was too early to expect it. The lab sent up the photos Mendoza had requested, full face and profile, close-ups of the lovely dead face, queerly more dignified in death.

  Hackett looked at them and admitted it wasn't a face you'd forget. "But these Daggetts-what possible connection with a French girl?"

  "How should I know? I don't think there is any. I think the Daggetts and the talkative widow are-mmh-just background. Put in for verisimilitude as it were."

  "How?" asked Hackett.

  "For the nice money. The setup cost a little something, if not much. The clothes, the stock of food, the cash on hand, enough to bury the poor silly suicide, so maybe we wouldn't try so hard to trace her back. And in a city the size of Chicago, how many Ruth Hoffmans? How many living in the bosom of families not listed anywhere? Those two letters, even minus the envelopes, a plausible substitute for a suicide note."

  "Very neat," agreed Hackett. "If you hadn't just happened to have seen her before, it would've gone into a routine report and got filed away. Well, wait and see what may turn up."

  "I want to ask some questions about that library card," said Mendoza.

  ***

  JUST BEFORE NOON Landers came in with one of the two pharmacists on that Bryan killing. He had unexpectedly picked out a photograph down in Records, identified it positively as one of the heisters. The pedigree on file backed him up.

  Joseph Bauman, Caucasian, six one, black and brown, one-seventy, twenty-four two years ago. He'd been charged with one count of armed robbery and prior to that with assault and possession of controlled drugs. He'd got a one-to-three on the robbery count. Landers got a statement from the witness and called the Welfare and Rehab office to find out what they knew about Bauman. The address in Records was two years old. A sergeant at that office looked up their records and said Bauman was on parole since three months ago. He was living at an address on Madera Avenue in Atwater and he had a job at a chain fast-food place on Sixth Street.

  Hackett went out with Landers to find him.

  The manager at the fast-food store told him he hadn't laid eyes on Bauman in a week. "And good riddance. That probation officer talked me into hiring him. I didn't like the idea so good, and that Bauman, he just doesn't want to work so hard-all the time goofing off."

  So they tried the place on Madera in Atwater, which was I a modest frame house, neatly maintained, on the narrow side street, and showed the badges to the fat, nondescript middle-aged woman who answered the doorbell. She looked at them, and first she looked alarmed and then resigned.

  "He's in trouble again, is he? I just don't know why. I tried to bring him up right. It was hard without my husband. Joe's father got killed in an accident when Joe was only four, but I tried. Lord knows I didn't spoil him. Tried to teach him right from wrong."

  "Is he here?" asked Hackett.

  "Yes, he's not up yet. He got in pretty late last night. He said he was out playing pool with some pals." She stepped back, tacitly inviting them in.

  Bauman was still in bed in the back bedroom, looking as if he had a hangover. He was dirty and unshaven. He snarled when he saw the badges, and he said exactly what they'd expected him to say. "I haven't done nothing. The fuzz got no call to come picking on me." It was automatic. Hackett told him to get dressed. The woman said she didn't mind their looking around, but they'd wait for a search warrant. He wasn't likely to get sent up for a long stretch within the courts in the state they were, but they'd take no chance on making the charge stick.

  They took him in to the jail and applied for both warrants. Landers called the lab and talked to Scarne. "Oh, I was just about to make a report on it," said Scarne. "Yeah, the coroner's office sent the slug over and I was just having a look at it. It's out of an old beat-up S. and W. thirty-two. Probably hasn't been cleaned in years, it's a miracle the damn thing fired at all. Yeah, we can match them if you ever pick it up."

  The search warrant came through after lunch. Hackett and Landers went back to Madera Street. At least Hackett's Monte Carlo was air-conditioned; it was up to ninety-four or so, humid and muggy. Madera Avenue was paved with blacktop and it looked as if it were ready to melt; it felt sticky to their feet. "Why anybody lives in this climate-" said Landers.

  They hadn't questioned Bauman yet, just stashed him in jail. The witness had been very positive on the identification. The woman let them in silently, looked at the warrant. They started to hunt around Bauman's bedroom and within five minutes Landers came across a beat-up old S. amp; W.. 32 under a pile of clean socks. It was unloaded. There was a box of ammunition for it in the next drawer down. Landers said sadly, "And some people think it's a glamorous job, or that you've got to be big brains to do it."

  "And in all the brainy arch-villains," rejoined Hackett.

  "All I can say, Tom, is that I hope to God some soft-headed judge doesn't give him a slap on the wrist and six months in the joint."

  "I w
on't hold my breath," said Landers.

  They poked around some more but didn't come up with anything interesting. So they started back to the jail to talk to Bauman. When he knew they had the nice evidence, he might be inclined to tell them who the other heister had been on that job, and they were both aware, as certain as death and taxes, that Bauman would claim it was the other fellow who fired the gun and the other fellow-if they picked him up-would claim it was Bauman.

  The job wasn't glamorous, but it was often discouraging.

  ***

  "OH, DEAR ME, I couldn't say at all," said Mrs. Marsh blankly. She stared at the glossy eight by ten enlargement.

  "She looks sort of dead."

  "She is," said Mendoza. "You've never seen her?"

  "I just don't know." Mrs. Marsh was thin and sharpnosed, about forty, with pale blue eyes and over-large round glasses. She was one of the assistant librarians at the big main library on Sixth Street. She looked back at the library card and shook her head.

  "Who would be the one to issue cards?" asked Mendoza,

  "Any of us. Anyone on duty at the check-out desk." She had laid the photograph down hastily, pushing it toward him. "It would depend who was on duty when-when the person requested a card. I don't think anybody would remember. I mean I don't think anybody would recognize that-any photograph."

  "Why not?" asked Mendoza.

  She wet her lips. "Well, we have a lot of people in. It's a big library, and we issue a lot of new cards. Unless the person was a regular, who came in a lot-they're just faces. If you see what I mean. And at least I can tell you that the girl wasn't a regular. I don't think I ever saw her in my life."

  It was what he had expected, a slight gratification. "But whoever took out the card, it's not so long ago. If we can locate the librarian who issued it-"

  She was still shaking her head. "You mean, maybe to tell you what she looked like. Oh, I shouldn't think so. You just don't realize, we're always pretty busy. We get a lot of students in, you know, and we're always issuing new cards. It's-it gets to be automatic. Like filing or checking books in and out. And it doesn't take five minutes-you know. You get the name and type it on the card and put in the date and that's that."