by Dell Shannon
About then Dwyer came in to report, on his way home; he said Hackett might have given him a break, and let him see something of this dame, on day duty— it wasn't, after all, often that a respectable married man had the chance to follow a skirt like that all over town on his legitimate job. As it was, she'd already been in her suite when he took over from Higgins, and he'd only had a brief look at her this morning before Reade showed up.
"Still in the hotel?"
"Was when I left. I kind of wandered in after the place woke up a little, you know, and around on that floor. About nine o'clock, just when I was expecting Reade, the door opened and out came the maid. It's the damndest thing," said Dwyer, yawning, "I don't figure they teach you right— I don't know— I took two years of French in high school, but they might as well have been talking Chinese, for all I could get of it. Except 'cabriolet'— maybe she was telling the maid to take a taxi, I don't know. Seemed to be sending her on some errand, anyway, by all the gestures— and you shoulda seen the bathrobe, Sergeant, or I guess that wouldn't hardly be the name for it— "
"Negligee," suggested Hackett.
"Or even something fancier. Pink, and a lot of lace. I guess the maid didn't like the idea of going, nervous about a strange town and all, they seemed to be having quite a little argument and the dame said an address over three-four times, finally wrote it down for her."
"All this was with the door open, or were you hiding in the bathroom?"
"Around the corner in the hall, sure, the door was open— like I say I didn't get any of the talk but it looked to me maybe the maid got cold feet at the last minute, you know, tried to back out. Anyway, finally she went off, and by that time Reade was there, he heard some of it too."
Dwyer yawned again and produced a slip of paper. "I wrote down the address the dame said."
"O.K.," said Hackett, and Dwyer went off. The address didn't say anything to Hackett: just an address, in Hollywood somewhere, he thought. But as long as Mendoza wasso set on looking at every little whipstitch . . . He called Driscoll's hotel again; Driscoll was still out. Probably wandering around the County Museum again, thought Hackett: or no, it wasn't open in the morning; he was probably at a bar. Oh, well.
He looked at a map, went downstairs and got his car, and drove up to Hollywood. It wasn't a classy street, and it wasn't by any means a slum street: just an ordinary run-of-the-mill district, and mostly lined— along this block— with middle-aged apartment buildings. The name of the one he wanted, as near as Dwyer had been able to transcribe it, was the Blon-shair Arms. There wasn't one by that name, but there was, in the middle of the block, a Blanchard Arms, and he deduced that was it. Apartment 406. He went around the block hunting a parking space, finally found one, walked back, went into the lobby and examined the rows of locked mailboxes with their little hand-written name slots. And then he said aloud, "I will be damned! I will be damned? What the hell was this?
The name on the box marked 406 was Miss Alison Weir. Hackett straightened and stared at the blank wall opposite, feeling as confused as he'd ever felt in his life. Alison Weir?— what did she have to do with the elegant, expensive visiting Parisian at the Bever1y-Hilton? Who also knew Mr. Andreas Skyros, employer of Stevan Domokous? It didn't make any sense. But there it was: Madame Bouvardier had known her address. Why?
Hackett debated looking up the address of her school and going to ask her; but on second thought reflected that it might really be said to be Mendoza's job.
He drove back downtown, and fidgeted around the office waiting for Mendoza to come in. No, Sergeant Lake said, he hadn't said where he was going. Nor when he might be expected back. He wou1dn't be in the building because he'd taken his hat.
Where the hell had he gone? Hackett had a feeling he ought to know about this right away: and yet, what could it mean? He couldn't settle to any routine work; every time the phone rang he jumped at it. But it was nearly noon before Mendoza called in. Hackett, belatedly wondering how he'd take it, relayed the extraordinary news. There was a moment's silence at the other end of the wire, and then Mendoza said, "¡Qué demonio!— ¡aguarda un momento!— I wonder! By God, I wonder! Listen, Art— you there?"
"I'm still here."
"Por Dios, it'd be an incredible coincidence— or would it?— coincidences do happen, after all, and surprisingly often too. Listen, call down to Traffic and get hold of a Sergeant Rhodes. I want to ask him some questions. What time is it? . . . Look, bring him to lunch with us. I haven't got the car, come and pick me up, will you?— I'm at the corner of Daggett and San Pedro, the drugstore. O.K.?"
"Well, O.K.," said Hackett, and started to ask what he was doing down there, but Mendoza had rung off.
So he called down to Traffic and got hold of Rhodes. It had been some time since he'd had anything to do with Traffic, and for a few minutes he thought they must be scraping the bottom of the barrel all right these days, because Rhodes couldn't seem to take in what he was saying. "L-lunch? L-Lieutenant Mendoza?" he kept stuttering, and then apparently pulled himself together and said, "Oh, yes, sir, yes, sir, of course, I'll meet you at the front door in five minutes, sir— " And was off the phone before Hackett could remind him he was just talking to another sergeant.
ELEVEN
Mendoza had rather enjoyed himself that morning. In all the places he'd be going, the Facel-Vega would earn him too much attention, and he'd walked from headquarters down Main, out of the Civic Center. It wasn't often he had occasion to be on foot down here. Wasting time with a vengeance in a way, he thought as he turned into Daggett Street; but he didn't feel guilty at all.
Daggett Street hadn't changed much in twenty-three years, he'd noticed recently driving down it. Walking, he thought the cracks in the sidewalk might be the same. Different faces, that was all. He enjoyed the walk. Along here, you turned to look at anyone speaking English; these couple of blocks were all business, and the store-front signs said Comestibles abarrotes, Ropas de Mujeres, Zapatos, Vina y licares, and also, ¡Gangas! Venga Ud. y mire!— ¡Venta por quiebra! Always bargains, always bankrupt sales .... And the old and the new cheek by jowl: the old ones in rusty black, sometimes ankle-length: the young ones in the same bright this-year's fashions in the shops uptown. In the middle of the third block he looked across at the sagging old frame apartment, wondered if Mrs. Gonzales still owned it; such very good torrijas she had made, and always one to spare for a hungry boy: she'd had a son in medical college .... "Los arios, se pasan rapidamente," he muttered ruefully to himself.
Then it changed, the street: signs in English, and presently an even frowsier look, something about the houses, the business blocks, not only shabby, but furtive and stagnant. Rooming houses, cheap hotels, bars, pool halls. And here was 341. Once a single-family house, with the third storey for servants: now bearing a sign, Rooms Cheap, but the fancy fretwork round every inch of eaves and porch was good as new. He didn't think this place would be too particular, either about strange males calling on the female residents or about names; he smiled persuasively at the dispirited-looking woman who opened the door and asked simply, "Which room'll I find Amy?"
He was right; she never asked a question, but said, "Second floor, left front," and went clumping away down the hall without a back look. So he climbed up to the second floor, knocked, and was rewarded with the sight of Amy in negligee— an affair of pink chiffon, not too clean, showing glimpses of a dancer's blue-mottled legs. The remains of last night's make-up were also visible as well as a dark parting in the silver-flax hair, and the burgundy-colored nail polish was chipped and ragged. She leaned on the doorpost and said coldly, "Yeah?"
Mendoza gave her a hopeful leer and said, "I'm looking for a couple of guys, and I been told they're friends of yours. Angie and Denny. You know where I could find either of 'em?"
Her expression didn't change. "Sorry, mister, never heard of 'em."
"Oh, yes, you did," said Mendoza. "Look, I got a favor to do this Angie, see. You do him a good turn, tell me where I can c
ontact him."
"Is that so?" said Amy. "Well, that's just too bad, because I still don't know. And I don't like your looks much, mister." She stepped back inside the room and slammed the door.
Mendoza sighed and went back downstairs to the street. Nothing there, except the implied fact that the woman knew what kind of business those two were in— whatever it was and whoever they were— and that it was on the wrong side of the fence, whether she was personally mixed up in it or not. And, now he came to think, he should have it stopped at that Anselmo's bar first; it was on the way here and now he'd have to go back.
He walked back to Main and found Anselmo's. A hole in the wall, dirty, ancient, and cheap. He wondered if the liquor was safe, but went in and ordered rye. It was raw, but well-diluted— what pro slang called baptized. The bartender, sole occupant of the place at this hour, was a hairy young fellow running to paunch already and with a pair of shifty eyes. Nice if generalizations were all true, thought Mendoza: most crooks had exceptionally honest faces, and most bartenders, honest or not, developed the shifty eyes from continual watching of customers.
"I'm 1ooking," he said, "for a fellow named Angie. Know him? I got the word he comes in here sometimes."
"That so?" said the bartender. "Couldn't say. What you want him for?"
Yes; Angie definitely a wrong one, if his friends and/or acquaintances were so chary of admitting they knew his whereabouts. But did this fellow know him, or was he just cagy by nature? "Well, I might have a little job for him," said Mendoza at random. "Kind of a better deal than he's got now."
"Is that so?" said the bartender without batting an eye. "Well, you don't know his last name, can't help you, mister— couple of Angies come in here, now 'n' then. Couldn't say at all."
Mendoza left the rest of his drink and came out. The hell with it, he said to himself; anything you got on a wild hunt like this, you got with infinite patience. A man, several men, watching and waiting around corners sometimes for weeks before the one little word was dropped that told you something. It was time to turn this over to one of Hackett's men and get back to his office where he belonged. Instead, he walked back up Daggett to San Pedro and found the Elite, which added to its name the misnomer of Club.
Inside, it was a small square place with a minute platform at one end for a band, now holding only a battered upright piano. Someone, a long time ago, had decorated it ambitiously with black lacquered tables and chairs, a home-carpentered banquette along one wall, and dime store decals on the wainscoting, an Oriental motif. Opposite the banquette was the bar: at the bar the bartender, two men standing; five others sat at one table over a hand of poker, monosyllabic.
Mendoza went up and leaned on the bar, leaving his hat on in deference to local custom. "Straight rye." It was surprisingly good quality; he told the bartender so. This was a bald middle-aged fat man who nodded shortly at the compliment without a word. Mendoza looked the other customers over casually.
Next to him at the bar, a big bruiser in a green nylon shirt and black slacks; just missed being handsome, in a saturnine rugged way: about forty. A smaller, older man, dark, needed a shave, lank black hair falling over one eye. At the table, the dealer was cadaverous, bushy-haired, ji young; the edge, a flashily dressed, very clean and pleasant-looking twenty-year-old; two of the others nondescript men in their thirties, who looked disconcertingly like respectable citizens— one in brown slacks, one in gray. And the fifth man was a pale brown Negro with the regular, handsome features of the West Indian, a soft British accent. Mendoza half turned back to the bartender. "By the way, I'm looking for Angie. Where's he hanging out these days?"
Green Shirt glanced sideways at him; Bushy Hair hesitated the fraction of a second in picking up a card. The bartender might have been carved out of wood for all the expression he showed. "Sorry, mister, never heard of him." He turned away to answer the phone.
Mendoza finished his rye and came out. A wasted morning. But maybe some discreet looking around this place, and Anselmo's, and at Amy, might turn up something interesting eventually. Piggott, he decided. It was surprising how like a small-time pro Piggott could look and act, for a pillar of the Free Methodist Church and a cop with a spotless record. Let him mix with the crowd in here, and at Anselmo's, for a few nights.
He was tired and hot, and he'd begun to want his lunch. He went into the drugstore next to the Elite and called his office; and what Hackett had to tell him effectively took his mind off food .... Now what the hell was the connection here? That woman— Lydia? That Bouvardier female out at the Beverly-Hilton? Could it be, it must be, the theft of the car: it had to be, the only possible thing. Find out what there was to find out about the car, obviously. He told Hackett to get hold of Rhodes.
Leaving the phone, he realized what a scorcher of a day it was: must be up around a hundred and ten. And these squalid streets, these old buildings, airless and fetid. There was a fan turning above the door, but it only stirred the stale air. However, hotter out on the corner in the sun. He was out of cigarettes, and bought a pack from the rat-faced druggist, opened it and lit one, drifted over to join a couple of women looking at the magazines. But he didn't see them very clearly; his mind was working furiously at this new, curious feature of what he wasn't too sure he could call a case .... He looked up automatically when the door opened, though it was too soon to expect Hackett—
Green Shirt and Bushy Hair came in together, spotted him and looked pleased. Gray Slacks and Brown Slacks, behind them, collected the two women and trundled them out to the street. “This store's closed, ladies, come back some other time."
"Hey," said the druggist weakly, “I ain't either closed— "
"You are now," said Green Shirt, and slammed the door, locked it, and pulled down the shade. "Get in the back room, buster, and you didn't see or hear nothin' or nobody."
The druggist looked at him, licked his lips and backed away. "That's right, I didn't," he said. "I sure as hell didn't." He vanished into the rear of the store.
"Castro must be feelin' his oats, friend," said Bushy Hair to Mendoza, "send his errand boys round in broad daylight. Anyways, he sure looks like one o' Castro's boys, don't he?— cute li'l moustache an' all. This ain't healthy territory for you, friend. Castro oughta know that. Castro ain't took over from Pretty yet, or leastways he hadn't when we all went to bed las' night, an' I don't guess it'd happen without us knowing, hah, boys? He oughta send a bodyguard along with you anyways, if he wants you back any shape to do business for a while. Maybe he wants t' get ride of you, though, sendin' you out alone over here, askin' for Pretty's best boy to offer him another job? Kinda a shame, you so innocent 'n' all— nice li'l gennbelman like you— and ain't he a fancy-dressed one, boys?"
"Real sharp," said Green Shirt, grinning.
"Pore fella," said Bushy Hair, poking a bony finger into Mendoza's chest.
Mendoza had the depressing suspicion that this was one of the occasions when he would wish he habitually carried a gun. Entre la espada y la pared, he thought in exasperation, between the sword and the wall! — haul out his I.D. card, fine— they didn't like cops any better than who they thought he was, but more important, he had no intention of letting it be known that a cop was asking around for Angie— whoever Angie was. ("Pretty's best boy"— well, well. In that case, Piggott and every one of the rest of Mendoza's men could go on looking from now till Christmas: no Angie.
He smiled at Green Shirt and said, "Castro? Afraid I don't know him, you must have me mixed up with someody else." There was, of course, Hackett— and Rhodes— on the way, and not very far to come, a matter of blocks.
"Oh, boy, he's a fancy talker too," said Gray Slacks admiringly.
"He sure don't belong in this crummy neighborhood," agreed Brown Slacks.
"But we don't want to send him back to his boss," said Green Shirt,
"without a little something to show what we think of him— do we, boys?" He produced a short weighted sap from an inside pocket and tested it thoug
htfully on his palm.
“Oh, we sure as hell wouldn't want to do that," said Bushy Hair, and by legerdemain there was a flat black thing in his hand: a little click, and the switchblade shot out long and wicked.
Mendoza was alarmed by the thought that he must be getting old, to slip up on a thing like this. That phone call at the Elite bar had been the hairy fellow at Anselmo's, of course— or just possibly Amy. He'd been thinking too hard about Angie and Denny, and all the rest of this thing— too damned single-minded, that was always his trouble. He also remembered bitterly that he was wearing a new suit. But these things happened. He dropped his cigarette, gave Green Shirt a very nervous smile, and backed away; he said, "Now listen, mister, I haven't done anything— "
They were pleased, as this kind always was, to find the victim timid and fearful. They began to close in on him and he backed another few steps, brought up against a counter, and with his hands behind him felt around cautiously: cards of something, combs, and— ah— a large bottle. "You got me all wrong," he said.
"We got him all wrong, boys," said Brown Slacks. "Ain't that a shame!" He reached out, clicking open another blade, and took hold of Mendoza's tie. "I seem to remember I forgot to sharpen this, and me, I'm fussy about that, I don't like no dull knives— let's just see," and he sliced off a clean strip of the tie halfway up.
Brown Slacks didn't know it, but the tie was a Paris import and had cost twelve dollars two months ago. Mendoza was considerably annoyed: so annoyed that he forgot all about using delaying tactics until he should see Hackett's black sedan slide past the window, or Hackett's shadow on the shade, trying the door.
He said gently to Brown Slacks, "Now that you shouldn't have done, you bastard," and just on the chance, before beginning operations, he fired the bottle in his hand accurately at the big front window. It went through with a satisfactorily loud crash, but by then he was too busy to notice.