Exploit of Death llm-34

by Dell Shannon

  SATURDAY NIGHT on the Central beat could be busy. But if the heat stirred up the violent emotions, it also kept people ready to stay inside. The night watch got called out only twice the whole shift. The first call was a hit-run on Beverly with a young woman D.O. A, and there had been plenty of witnesses to say the car had run a light and was going about forty, but no one had got the plate number and there was confusion about a description of the car. The consensus was that it had been a medium-sized sedan, not very old, not very new.

  Traffic was probably busy writing tickets and dealing with drunks, but the night watch sat and waited until the second call came in at just on midnight. Piggott had finished the report on the hit-run. Schenke was reading a paperback historical novel. Conway was just sitting. When the desk called, it didn't sound like much. A body in the street. Conway went out to look, expecting the drunken derelict, and that was almost what it was. On a quiet, run-down side street, just up from Venice Boulevard, the man dead in the gutter wasn't more than twenty-five. He hadn't been dead long and the minute Conway laid eyes on him in the glare of the squad-car headlights he knew what the autopsy report would say.

  "Christ," he said disgustedly to the uniformed man.

  "These stupid damn punks. Rotting what brains they have on the dope."

  The uniformed man said succinctly, "They've got no brains to start with or they wouldn't."

  Conway went over him. There wasn't any I.D., but in one of his pantspockets was a cardboard box with about fifty Quaaludes in it. "My God," said Conway, "if the dope hadn't got him, he might've got taken off for this. Let's have that light closer." The patrolman shifted the flashlight. "I thought so. More of the fake stuff. It's coming in by the ton, by what Narco says. Mostly from South America."

  "It isn't the real stuff?" The patrolman was interested.

  "Oh, it's the real stuff. It'll kill you as quick as the bona fide American-made, but look at the little stamp mark."

  The pills were slightly smaller than a dime and in the beam of the flashlight they could make out the tiny legend stamped on each. LEMMON 74. "The real pharmaceutical company doesn't use that mark, but it looks like a guarantee that these are American-made. Real Quaaludes."

  "I'll be damned," said the patrolman. "I suppose we want the morgue wagon?"

  "What else?" said Conway. "I'll see these get handed over to Narco, as if they needed any more."

  ***

  AT ELEVEN-THIRTY, one of the sergeants sitting on the central switchboard at Hollywood Division got a call from a frightened citizen. At first she was rather incoherent, but he calmed her down and got her talking straight. "Now, have I got your name right, Frances Holzer? Yes, Mrs. Holzer. Start out again, it's about your mother?"

  "Miss," she said. "Miss Holzer. Yes, I'm just worried to death because she should've been home hours ago, she's a good driver, but an accident-but she's carrying identification, I would've heard about it, somebody would've called. And she was only going to stay a little while, Mrs. Lincoln's been pretty sick and visitors aren't supposed to stay long-"

  "Just let me have your address, Miss. 0. K, Del Mar Avenue. What's your mother's name?"

  "Mrs. Edna Holzer. She was going to the French Hospital to see Mrs. Lincoln. She left about seven and she should've been home by at least eight-thirty, I've been worried to death. She was coming straight home, she said so, and-"

  The sergeant thought rapidly. That was a pretty classy address, up above Los Feliz, and the girl sounded straight.

  "What's she driving?"

  "A Chrysler Newport-two years old-navy-blue." She was more businesslike now, reassured by the solid masculine voice. "Wait a minute, I've got the license number. It's one-E-D-seven-four hundred."

  It passed fleetingly across the sergeant's mind that these seven-digit plate numbers, issued since the state ran out of different six-digit ones, made life a little complicated. He wrote it down. "I'd like a description of her, please."

  "Of M-mother?- She's f-forty nine, five six, a hundred and t-t-twenty," and the girl burst out crying.

  "Now, Miss Holzer, try to get hold of yourself. Miss Holzer?"

  She hiccupped and sobbed once more and said, "I'm sorry. I don't want to sound stupid, but it's just, she was so p-p-proud of herself, she'd been on a diet and lost twenty pounds-she's got brown hair and blue eyes and she's wearing a sleeveless blue nylon dress and bone sandals."

  "All right, Miss Holzer. That's fine. We'll have a look around. Check the hospitals, and so on. I'll get back to you.".

  He did the obvious things on it. Called the emergency rooms, the Highway Patrol. If the woman had been heading for Hollywood from downtown she'd likely have been on the freeway and the Highway Patrol handled freeway accidents. He drew a blank. So then he called Central Traffic, explained and asked them to look around that area for the car. The woman could have had a heart attack, a lot of things could have happened.

  At twelve-fifty, Central Traffic called back. A squad had checked the parking lot at the French Hospital. The Chrysler wasn't there. The squad had looked all around side streets there and it wasn't anywhere. Funny, thought the sergeant. What could have happened to the woman? Of course, without knowing anything but what the girl said she could have stopped for a drink, she could have gone to see a friend and lost track of time, she could have-

  He called the girl back. "No, she hasn't come home. What have you found out?"

  "I'm sorry, I haven't a thing to tell you. But we'll keep looking. Miss Holzer, have you checked with any of her friends? She could have stopped in to see someone. She could have-"

  "At nearly one A.M.?" she said. "She told Mr. Shepherd she'd be in the office at nine, she's his secretary. Mr. Lynn Shepherd, he's the head of the firm-Shepherd, Lynch, and Morse. Mother's been his secretary for twenty years, and there was this important tax case, there has to be a deposition and the witness could only come in on Sunday. She said she'd be home by eight-thirty."

  They both sounded like responsible citizens, but of course even that kind came all sorts. The sergeant said, passing the buck, "Well, we've done all we can do, Miss Holzer. I tell you, if your mother hasn't come home by morning, you can file a missing report with Central Headquarters."

  "And what would they do?" she asked wildly.

  The sergeant wasn't too sure. He said stolidly, "Well, that's what you'd better do. All I can tell you, your mother hasn't been involved in an accident in the last six hours."

  "That's all you know?"

  "I'm sorry, Miss Holzer. That's all."

  "Well, thank you," she said.

  ***

  THE MISSING REPORT on Edna Holzer got filed at nine A.M. on Sunday morning, but that was not a busy office, Missing Persons. Their business was quiet and slow, and Lieutenant Carey was off on Sunday. The sergeant in that office filed the report without thinking much about it. Carey didn't see it until Monday morning.

  On Sunday morning there was another cable from the Surete. They had turned up Juliette Martin's passport number. She had applied for it on the first of August. It had been issued on the nineteenth. No information was required for a passport except evidence of citizenship. There was no address available. No further information.

  "?Diez milliones de demonios desde infierno! " said Mendoza.

  FIVE

  ON SUNDAY Wanda Larsen was off. Higgins and Palliser might have taken her along to help break the news to Verna Coffey's daughter; a woman officer was helpful at that sort of thing. The address corresponding to the Pasadena listing was one side of a duplex, on a quiet middle-class street, but nobody had been home. Now this morning they tried there again and found the family just starting off for church, Robert and Julia Elmore and an eighteen-year-old daughter, Lila. There was the usual reaction to news of violent death. Palliser and Higgins gave them time. These were more honest solid citizens, as Verna Coffey had been. The husband worked at a Sears store here, the girl was a senior in high school. But Julia Elmore was a sensible woman and when her first gr
ief subsided, she answered questions readily.

  "I couldn't say exactly how much money might've been there. Mother only went to the bank once a week, on Wednesdays." She was a thin sharp-faced woman, not very 'black. "She didn't drive and her arthritis bothered her. She had to take the bus, she used to close the store for a couple of hours-same as when she went up to the market once a week."

  "I don't suppose," said Elmore, "she made an awful lot out of the store, but more than you might think. It was a steady trade." He was a heavy-shouldered man, medium black. "I suppose she might've had a hundred bucks or so, in cash, maybe more."

  "Where did she keep the money, do you know?" asked Palliser.

  "She kept it all in an old handbag in the closet," said Julia Elmore. "But she was careful about keeping the doors locked, Sergeant, living alone like she did-and that's an old building and it was lonely at night there-you know, she was the only one lived there, all the rest of those stores were closed and empty at night. She was crying a little again. "Oh, we worried about it-"

  Elmore said, "But there were good deadbolt locks on both doors, I'd seen to that, I don't see how anybody could break in, but you say it looked as if she'd opened the door to somebody." He shook his head. "She wouldn't have let anybody in after dark."

  "Unless it was someone she knew," said Palliser.

  "But nobody like that would've hurt her." They were incredulous.

  "She knew a lot of people around that neighborhood," said Julia. "She'd lived there for more than forty years, but I don't think she'd have opened the door to anybody after the store was closed."

  He said, "She'd had some trouble with kids. Some of the kids there-coming in and stealing candy bars. She was always having to chase them off. But no kid-"

  "Oh, we did worry," she said. "I wanted her to close the store and come to live with us. She was sixty-nine and her arthritis was getting worse all the time, and she had Daddy's Social Security, but she'd had the store so long she didn't want to change. That isn't too good a neighborhood now, not like it used to be. Oh, I can't stand thinking how scared she must've been-the last time we saw her was a week ago today, she had a little birthday party for Toby-"

  "Who's that?" asked Higgins.

  "My sister Eva's boy, Toby Wells. Eva died last year. We were all there, she had a cake and ice cream and she gave Toby ten dollars for a birthday present. It was his twenty-fourth birthday. He's a nice boy, Toby. Got a good job at a Thrifty drugstore up in Hollywood." She wiped her eyes.

  Higgins asked, "Was she hard of hearing at all, Mrs. Elmore? How was her sight?"

  She was shrewd enough to catch his thought. "You mean she might've thought somebody she knew was at the door when it wasn't? Oh, no, I don't think so. She wasn't deaf and her eyes were good. It was just the arthritis bothered her. I just can't imagine her opening the door to anybody after dark."

  "Do you know anyone in that area? Does anyone there know your name?" asked Palliser.

  What had occurred to him, someone like that might have got her to open the door with a tale that the family had tried to call her-that the phone was out of order.

  "Not for twenty-four years-since Bob and I were married," she said. "Of course, we didn't live in the store, then. We had a house on Twentieth. It was just since Dad died I that she lived in the back of the store. And the neighbor hood had changed, not the same kind of people around."

  Higgins explained about the mandatory autopsy. That they'd be told when they could have the body. They just nodded quietly.

  "Did she have any close friends around there?"

  "Well, there's Mrs. Wiley. She lived next door on Twentieth Street and she's still there, she's a widow now. She came to see Mother now and then-and Mrs. Buford, but she's in a rest home on Vermont. Sometimes Mother went to see her."

  Back in the car, Palliser rubbed a finger along his handsome straight nose and said, "Ways it could've happened-so she was a careful old lady. If somebody banged at the door and said the building was on fire-"

  "She wasn't attacked in the store," said Higgins. "Not until they'd gone into the living room at the back." He hunched his bulky shoulders.

  "Well, the women friends. Nothing likely there."

  "I suppose they had families and she'd know them. But damn it!-that was a crude spur-of-the-minute attack-don't see any rudimentary planning to it. She was an old lady, John. She'd been familiar with that neighborhood for years-before the crime rate started to climb. Maybe she wasn't just as cautious as the family thinks. She might've opened the door for any reason. Wait and see what the lab report has to say. There just could be some prints on that hammer."

  "Wait and see," agreed Palliser.

  ***

  WHEN IT COULD BE EXPECTED that people would be up and dressed on Sunday morning, Galeano drove up to Beachwood Drive and at the little frame house found Cora Delaney at home. She looked at stocky dark Galeano-according to regulations in a whole business suit, white shirt and tie, when most men wore casual and sports clothes, and at the badge in his hand-with surprise and curiosity. She was somewhere around Rose Eberhart's age, short and plump and defiantly blond. She let him into a neat livingroom with a collection of old but good furniture, and Galeano told her about Rose Eberhart. She broke down and cried for five minutes and then sat up and blew her nose.

  "We knew each other for forty-five years, since we were in kindergarten together. She was only forty-nine. But how could it have happened? You said it looked like she was attacked by somebody. I don't understand-a burglar-"

  It hadn't been a burglar. The apartment had been intact, not ransacked, and there'd been thirty dollars in her wallet, a modest amount of good jewelry undisturbed.

  "That's what it looks like, Mrs. Delaney. When did you see her last?"

  "I talked to her on the phone Wednesday night. She sounded just her usual self, but of course she wouldn't know she was going to be attacked. She'd been feeling run-down lately, said she was taking extra vitamins." She blew her nose again. "Oh, and she was annoyed at some woman who'd been pestering her. Some woman named Arvin."

  "What about?" asked Galeano.

  "Oh, she was claiming Rose owed her some money and she didn't. It was some woman she used to work with. She hadn't seen her in a long time and ran into her at the corner market. She wasn't really worried about it, just annoyed. Have you talked to Alice-her daughter? Does she know?"

  He told her about that, gave her the name of the funeral parlor. The body would probably be released tomorrow.

  "Oh, I'd better call Alice, I'll be glad to make the arrangements. This is all the poor girl needed, a sick baby and her husband laid off. Yes, I've got her number, thanks." She began to cry again. "We were going out to lunch together today. It's her day off. I said I'd meet her at the Tick-Tock at twelve-thirty. It just doesn't seem possible she's dead."

  Galeano drove up to McClintock's Restaurant. It was just open, no customers in yet. He ordered a cup of coffee from Marie Boyce, who said blankly, "I don't think I ever heard the name. Arvin? l can't recall anybody named that ever worked here. Since I've been here anyway."

  Whitney came over and sat on the opposite side of the booth. "Arvin," he mused. "It seems to ring a faint bell. I've heard the name somewhere." He accepted a cigarette and brooded over it. "Somebody she used to work with. Well, she'd been here ten years. About as long as I've managed the place. I tell you, in that time there's been a little turnover in the staff. Most of our girls are pretty steady, but now and then we get one who isn't satisfactory and I let her go, or one doesn't stay for some reason. It could've been one like that-here for just a short while-sometime back. I just don't remember, Mr. Galeano."

  Galeano went back to the office. Jason Grace had just come in, having taken the morning off. He had just bought himself a Polaroid camera, and he was passing around shots of the christening, a broad smile on his face. Galeano grinned at him over the snapshots. Grace's wife, Virginia, was a nice-looking woman, and the baby was a cute one, round and
brown with solemn eyes and a little fuzz of hair. The little three-year-old girl was a honey, in a starched white dress and a red hair ribbon. "Nice family, Jase." Galeano had been a bachelor for a long time and he was looking forward to a family of his own.

  He told Grace what meager information he had turned up and Grace said, "It doesn't sound like much, Nick, but we don't know one hell of a lot about this anyway."

  ***

  MENOZA WASN'T supposed to come in on Sunday, but he usually did for a while, to keep track of what was going on. He drifted in about two o'clock and Lake said that Sergeant Donovan from Chicago had been asking for him. "So get him on the phone." Mendoza swept off the Homburg and went into his office.

  "We've got damn all for you," said Donovan. "There are about a thousand and one Hoffmans in the greater Chicago area, but none of them seems to be missing a Ruth."

  "I didn't expect so," said Mendoza. "That must've been a hell of a job. Thanks very much, Donovan."

  "At least we could check by phone, didn't have to do the legwork in this damn heat. But thank God, it's beginning to cool off now, getting into fall."

  "I wish I could say the same." He was just off the phone when an autopsy report came in from the coroner's office on Anthony Delucca. He had to think before he remembered-the teenager on the bus-stop bench. It had been an overdose of Quaaludes. He filed it and forgot it.

  The office was humming along quietly, Higgins typing a report, Palliser on the phone, nobody else in. Hackett and Landers had gone over to the jail to talk to Gerber. Mendoza swiveled his desk chair around to the window and sat smoking, staring at the view over the Hollywood Hills, and tried to think if there was anything else to do on Juliette Martin. There wasn't. Wait for the French police. Hell, he thought. There must be a catch to that somewhere. X would know about that possibility, too. Wait and maybe never hear anything from France on Juliette. Why not? He didn't have any ideas about it at all.