by Dell Shannon
"I must ask you to 1eave," said Alison in her iciest tone.
"I will go, because he is not here and it is of no use to stay. A pity, for I had in my mind all the things I wish to say to him, and you know how, when one loses one's temper, the words go out of the head and one can only stutter! But you will tell him, miss, I am not so stupid and innocent as he think! You will tell him, he does not give Lydia the— the stall, the run— about, forever!— you see I know even your American slang, I am not what he would say the easy mark! You tell him this— that I deal direct with him, one chance more I give him to be honorable with me— in two days, he take it or he leave it— and he will be very wise to take it! He knows where I am to be found." She gave Alison a significant, queenly nod and sailed out the door.
For thirty seconds Alison was too possessed by rage to move. Then she whirled for the phone at the desk, had to look up the number, dialed it wrong twice, finally got police headquarters and demanded the Homicide office, got Sergeant Lake. "I want to speak to the lieutenant .... Oh, yes, I'll hang on! With pleasure! . . . This is the lieutenant speaking? Lieutenant Luis Rodolfo Vicente Mendoza, the well known great lover? Well, Lieutenant, I have several things to say to you— "and she took a deep breath and commenced to say them, beginning with the announcement that if he thought it amusing to hand out her name and address to his other girl-friends, she did not, and in any case she didn't feel at all flattered to be one of a company which included this Lydia—
"What, who? What have I done?" protested Mendoza. "It's a lie! ¿Come dice? Tómelo can colma, chica— "
"— Lydia," said Alison distinctly. "If you search your memory, or maybe you keep a neat little list of them all, you'll remember her, I'm sure! A black-eyed hussy in spike heels and a Jacques Fath original with a phoney-sounding accent— and about half a pint of Chypre. Surely you haven't forgotten Lydia? You really should keep a list! Yes, ¡villano, tú canalla, tú calamidad!— I am annoyed, ¡estoy muy molest!— ¡no lo niego!— looking at me as if I was a peasant or something, and smelling like a high-class brothel— very nice if one likes the color, she says, this— this— ¡perra negra!— ¡nunca abbía visto tamaño descaro, such impudence! ¡Es demasiado, too much!"
"Wait a minute, chica, calm down, what the hell is this all about? ¡Eso no es cierto— I'm absolutely innocent, I don't know any Lydia! I never-"
"Oh, you liar— ¡tú mentiroso!— ¡no tengamos la de siempre, the same old story! And, damn it, I hadn't even any lipstick on— looking at me as if I was— and— "
"¡Vaya despacio, no hay tal! I swear to you— what the devil is all this? I'm innocent as day, querida .... All right, all right, hold everything, I'm coming round, I want to hear about this! ¡Por Dios!— ruining my reputation, calling here through the switchboard— — ¡no metan tanta bulla, not so much noise!"
"I couldn't care less, and besides they must all know what you're like by now— I wouldn't doubt having a good laugh over it— Men! A— a— a poor man's Gabor, looking down her nose at me— "
"I'm coming, I'm coming!— ¡ni qué niño muerto!— nonsense!" The phone clicked firmly in her ear.
Alison went on talking to herself, kicking the hassock in passing and groping after some of her father's favorite swearwords, for about five minutes. Then she went to the kitchen and got down the bottle of rye, and eyeing it began to laugh. So all right, how senseless could you get? She didn't like rye, but he never drank anything else.
"Is it safe to come in?" asked Mendoza when she opened the door.
"Querida mia, what have I done to deserve this? One female at a time enough to keep any man occupied!"
“Have you placed Lydia?" asked Alison grimly.
"I have not. I never knew one. I don't know one now. I don't want to know one. Mi novia, mi hermosa, why would I want a Lydia— "
"Now you just keep your distance!" said Alison. "Oh, yes, try to pass it off and make me forget it! Walking in cool as you please, this hussy, and calling it a squalid little flat!— it's a wonder I didn't kill her— "
"No, really now, no joke— no little games, chica." He pulled her down beside him on the couch. "What happened?" She told him, more or less coherent by then. "I will be damned," said Mendoza. "Honestamente, I don't know her— don't know anything about it. What the hell could have brought her here? She knew your name, you said? Me, for better or worse I was raised halfway a gentleman— you don't bandy females' names around! I'm surprised at you, thinking such a thing of me."
"Well!" said Alison, relaxing slightly. "I was mad. With reason. And she said— "
“Yes, let's hear it all, as clear as you remember .... That's a very funny little story. Where could she have got your name? And a couple of things she said— all that about dealing direct— it doesn't exactly sound like any romantic affair, does it? More like a business deal of some kind, maybe? . . . And who is 'he'? I wonder . . . ¡un momento! the car! Now I do wonder— whoever took the car— maybe she'd had a ride in it, and noticed the registration slip, and thought you were the girl-friend of the thief. It could be."
"I suppose so," said Alison doubtfully. "It seems sort of far-fetched .... Luis? You're not just making it into a mystery to take my mind oif, are you?"
He laughed and kissed her. "You're too suspicious. I don't know one thing about it— it's just a funny little story. Go and get dressed— that amber thing— and I'll take you to dinner. Más primero, acérquese— come nearer .... O.K., querida?"
"Well, O.K.," said Alison with a sigh. She drew away and looked at him, head cocked. "Of course, I nright feel a little more satisfied if I didn't happen to know you're an awfully good poker-player .... D'you want a drink while I'm getting dressed?"
* * *
It was after midnight when Mendoza got home, to the rather old-fashioned apartment building on a quiet dead-end street, and put the car away in the garage, let himself into his apartment. The sleek brown Bast greeted him with pleased soft cries. Various visitors had left five notes in a row propped on the mantel; he read them from the left to right as he took off his coat and tie. That autocratic old lady Señora Teresa Maria Sancia Mendoza, who at eighty-six was enjoying life far more than she had in her youth, living in a Wilshire Boulevard apartment and telling everyone grandiloquent lies about her impeccable Castilian ancestry, informed him in a black scrawl that he should be more careful about what persons he gave access to his quarters; she would not put it beyond this Carter woman to pry into one's drawers, having found her on the premises when she called. And it was nearly two weeks since he had come to see her, and she trusted he would not forget her birthday next week. When he acquired a wife, which was devoutly to be hoped for, as he was not getting any younger, these affairs would be better arranged for him— always supposing he had the sense, which she frequently doubted, to choose a sensible and satisfactory wife. She much desired that he should make time to visit her soon, as there were some pleasant new neighbors she would like him to meet.
Mendoza grinned at the scrawl: the old lady had been trying for fifteen years to get him married to a comfortable, modest, practical wife— of her own choice— preferably one who could coax him back to the priests. Probably had a new candidate to trot out.
Mrs. Carter from across the hall informed him that Bast had had her wheat germ in fresh liver at four o'clock and he was not to give her any more until Thursday.
Mrs. Bryson from upstairs, front, informed him that she had let Bast out for a little run at nine o'clock.
Bertha, the eminently satisfactory maid-of-all-work who managed the domestic lives of the whole apartment population, informed him that he was out of half-and-half and that there was a sale on that coffee he liked this week at a local market.
Mr. Elgin from upstairs, rear, expressed himself as uneasy concerning Bast and that smart-aleck young Siamese tom of his; it was, he thought, quite possible that he and Mendoza might find themselves joint owners of some crossbred kittens presently.
Mendoza looked at Bast. "W
hat, have you grown up finally and discovered sex? Misbehaving yourself, gatita— he's a good year younger than you! Well, time will tel1," and he wandered into the bedroom unbuttoning his shirt.
But he sat up another half hour, ruminating not only on his latest corpse, but now on Alison's visitor— and a few other things.
FIVE
When Hackett got to the office on Wednesday morning, early for once, there was someone waiting to see Mendoza— Sergeant Lake passed over the business card noncommittally under the visitor's eye. Charles Driscoll, and the name of a national insurance firm.
Hackett looked Driscoll over. About forty, tallish and broadish, sandy, and by the coolly insolent stare he gave in return, a brash one. Flashy pencil-striped suit off the rack, a garish tie. "Yes, Mr. Driscoll, if you'd like to come into the office?"
"You wouldn't be Lieutenant Mendoza," said Driscoll, standing up, "don't tell me."
"Sergeant Hackett. Just come in, the lieutenant'll be here soon."
Hackett exchanged a look with Lake, left the office door open, saw Driscoll settled in the armchair beside the desk facing the door, and offered him a cigarette.
"Thanks very much. Quite a setup you've got here— compared to most police H.Q.'s." Driscoll ignored Hackett's proffered lighter, produced an ornate black-and-gold one of his own.
"We find it satisfactory," said Hackett.
"But kind of stultifying all the same, you know— " Driscoll gestured with his cigarette. "I always feel sorry for you guys— having to stay inside so many rules and regulations. Must be damn annoying. Bein' in the private-eye line myself, I know all the ropes, if you get me. Though I get the hell of a lot more interesting cases than you poor bastards, acourse .... That your lieutenant?" He dropped his tone only a little, looking out to the anteroom where Mendoza had stopped to have a word with Sergeant Lake. "My, my, what the best-dressed man will wear— quite the gigolo, isn't he? Protégé of the Chief's, to be sittin' at a lieutenant's desk? Doesn't look much like a cop."
Mendoza came in and said good morning to Driscoll. "Some odds and ends on Domokous, Art— go out and see Dwyer, will you, he's just checked in .... Now, what was it you wanted to see me about, Mr. Driscoll?"
Hackett went out regretfully. He wasn't equipped by nature to reach the Driscolls with any kind of back talk that really got to them: they just made him mad, and that only pleased them, naturally. About thirty seconds from now, when Mendoza had sized him up, Driscoll was due to be snubbed more subtly than he'd ever been in his life, and it would have been gratifying to see. Mendoza was so good at that kind of thing when he wanted to be— the polished aristocrat condescending to the bumptious peasant. He could get more insult into one polite phrase than any other man Hackett knew, and all smooth as silk on the surface.
What Dwyer had to say was that Domokous' wallet had turned up. Empty of cash, whether or not it had held any, but everything else probably intact, and not much: I.D. card laboriously filled out in English, Social Security card, L.A. Public Library card, and that was all, except for a snapshot of a girl, a rather fuzzy close-up of a not-very-pretty dark girl smiling into the camera. The wallet had been turned in to a Main Street precinct station by a housewife who'd found it near the corner of San Rafael and Main; she said it had contained no cash when she picked it up.
And that tied in to a run-of-the-mill business, sure. Somebody coming across Domokous in that alley, either dead or unconscious, and taking the only thing of value on him— a few bucks, maybe, in the billfold— taking the cash, dropping the billfold on the street. Kind of thing that happened every day, this way or that way.
Hackett thought himself that Luis was building this thing up into more complexity than the facts indicated: so, all right, say that scrap of paper was part of a list of some kind, to do with Skyros' business. Domokous had been a clerk there, no reason he shouldn't have it in his pocket, was there? You wanted to be intricate about it, say it'd got torn off accidentally and he'd felt guilty, stuck the torn piece in his pocket instead of throwing it away.
Domokous still looked quite straightforward to Hackett. He didn't like Mr. Skyros much, any more than Mendoza did— a very canny customer and out for profit for Mr. Skyros every time, but what was that? A lot of people like that. Most people. Domokous was just another victim of a pusher, probably one of those employed by this Bratti.
But, run-of-the-mill or not, there was still routine to be done on it. Hackett went down to Carey's office, signed the necessary forms, and received the contents of Domokous' hotel room. Not much: he went through it desultorily. A suit, probably his Sunday one, fairly new if cheap: a few shirts, socks, a little underwear, a modest pile of dime store handkerchiefs: odds and ends of personal possessions otherwise— an ancient cardboard-covered album of family snapshots, all obviously dating from years back in the old country— a little box containing an old-fashioned tie pin with a red glass stone in it, a tarnished silver ring, an old pocket watch— a couple of letters in some language Hackett took to be Greek, funny— looking sort of stuff, both recently postmarked Athens.
He'd gone through collections like that often enough before, the relics left of a life: they always secretly saddened him a little. All there was to show— whatever sort of life it had been, good, bad, or indifferent; and so immediately losing any importance, what had had value in someone's mind .... N0 pockets in a shroud, he thought vaguely, putting the album back in the cardboard carton where Carey had stashed the smaller articles.
Dwyer, Higgins, and Reade were on Skyros; Dwyer had reported in, and so far as Hackett could see there wasn't much there either. All looked on the level, perfectly ordinary. Andreas Skyros, Inc., had been operating for seventeen years, dealt mostly in European imports from a number of countries; Skyros had never been in trouble with the law, privately or businesswise. He was married, but had no family: owned a house in a good residential district of west Hollywood, and ran an almost new Buick; his wife had a new Chevvy convertible. He was doing all right, especially in the last six or seven years, but all aboveboard. So? Skyros was exactly what he looked like. The whole thing was a mare's nest.
He left Domokous' possessions with Sergeant Lake for Mendoza, and drove down to Skyros' offices on Figueroa. Skyros wasn't in, which was just as well; Hackett introduced himself to the clerk in the front office, and interviewed all the personnel who'd worked with the dead man— four other stockroom clerks and the bookkeeper, a pretty brunette. He didn't get much more than they already had, or anything to contradict Skyros except a nuance or two.
Sure, Domokous had been kind of lonely, they all said: couldn't seem to settle down, like. Quiet sort, and not talking English so good he couldn't join in, if the sergeant saw what they meant— didn't get jokes and so on. They'd all liked him well enough, but what with his being quiet anyway and not talking the language much, he was hard to get to know, and he hadn't been here long. He liked to read, used to go to the public library and get books in his own lingo. But he had a girl, all right— he'd said a little something about her, and he had her picture in his wallet. The girl bookkeeper spoke up then, pertly, and said maybe he had but if she was any judge and she figured she was, he wouldn't have let that hamper him— way he eyed her every time she came out back. Awfully good— looking he'd been, and it was terrible, have anything like that happen— she'd never have thought he was the kind to go for dope. Which the others confirmed: reserved, you might say, but not nuts, or queer any way.
None of them remembered Domokous ever mentioning anyone named Bratti. And none of them could say what his girl's name was or where she lived. And it didn't matter much, because probably the news story would bring her in— unless, of course, she'd been mixed up in his death somehow, which didn't seem likely.
* * *
The news story about Domokous' identification had, in fact, already brought her in; she was sitting on the edge of a chair in Mendoza's office, looking less grieved than sullen. She was about twenty-five, dark and thin, no striking bea
uty but not ugly either. She sat with head bent over her clasped hands, and looked at Mendoza through a tangle of black hair fallen across her cheek.
The other woman said nervously, "He was a good young man, sir. Never would he do such a thing as that you say. He save his money to marry Katya, like we tell, in the spring they are to marry, all is arranged." She was in black like the girl, a spare old woman, patience and tragedy in her big dark eyes. The grandmother. Slav, from this place or that, and definitely Old Country; but the girl born here, probably— little accent. "Someone tells lies about him, fixes up a lie, to make you think this. Stevan, not even much wine he drinks— he's careful with money."
"It's that man, where he worked!" burst out the girl.
"And what makes you say that, Miss Roslev?" asked Mendoza.
"When he did not come, on the Thursday, for Katya's birthday, we knew something bad happen— the man at the hotel, he knows nothing, and we did not like to go to his place of work,"Katya said. "And all the time, lying out so, dead, none to care for him, pray for him— Oh, it is bad to think! And he is so of hopes, the long journey here and the better chance to make success— "
"Always you're so scared!" said the girl contemptuously. “Think this looks bad, that don't look right— had my way, I'd have gone and asked, all right! I knew there was something funny going on— Stevan, he was worried— "
"Katya, you talk too much, you get us in trouble," whispered the old woman. "We don't know nothing at all, it's only in your head— only we know Stevan was a good boy— "
"He was too good!" said the girl. "I said— oh, well, never mind that .... You scared even come to the police, they don't eat you, here."