by Keene, Day
Daly excused himself to the girl with him, gave her a handful of twenty-dollar chips to amuse herself with while he was gone, then led the way through the casino to an unoccupied table in the lounge.
“Don’t tell me you flew down here just to talk to Gene and me?”
“Evidently you haven’t read the evening paper.”
“I seldom do while I’m here.”
Lieutenant Schaeffer took a Los Angeles paper from his suit coat pocket and handed it to Daly.
Daly unfolded the paper and studied the picture on the front page. It was a four column cut, presumably of his male guest of the evening before, with Laredo wearing his clown costume and sitting with one arm around his pretty young wife. There was a carousel in the background and what appeared to be a male and female body in the foreground. Over the picture, a scare headline read:
ARMORED TRUCK LOOTED OF $178,000!
The caption under the picture was equally as sensational. It read:
One-legged Veteran Of Cuban Exile Invasion Brigade And Wife Are Held For Murder And Grand Larceny.
Daly realized he was holding his breath.
“I thought you’d like it,” Schaeffer said.
The story began:
At approximately ten a.m. today, at the new East Valley Shopping Plaza at the juncture of Willowcrest Road and San Victoria Boulevard, hundreds of teen-agers and adults staged a mad scramble for thrown money in what is believed by police to be part of a fantastic and successful plot to steal $178,000 from a Ramsdale armored truck.
Believed to have been led by Miguel Tomas José Guido Laredo, onetime member of the famous circus family of the same name, at least six men, wearing identical clown costumes, tossed an estimated $10,000 to a mob of screaming teen-agers and adults to cover the theft of the remaining $168,089 that the truck was carrying.
Dead in the bold daylight robbery is Timothy Kelly, armored truck guard, of an overdose of chloral hydrate, believed to have been given him by Mrs. Laredo in a paper cup of pink lemonade. Also dead are nineteen-year-old Mrs. Dick Wilson, mother of an eight-month-old infant, and an as yet unidentified carousel attendant who attempted to hold one of the clowns for the police …
Daly looked up from the paper. “I don’t believe it. Sure, the guy was pushed for money, but he wasn’t that hungry.”
DuBoise joined them. “You don’t believe what, Tom?”
Daly handed him the paper. “This.” He looked across the table at Lieutenant Schaeffer. “What does Laredo say?”
The homicide man sipped at the coffee he’d ordered. “He denies it Naturally. Why wouldn’t he? Three people are dead and the bulk of the money is still missing.” He moved his head from side to side. “You fellows should have been there. I happened to be cruising the neighborhood on another matter when we got the squeal and I never saw anything like it. Teen-agers were fighting with adults. Adults were fighting with each other. And when we tried to quiet them down and recover some of the money, the crowd turned on us and we were finally forced to use fire hoses before we got the thing under control.”
Daly asked, “Where were the Laredos all this time?”
Schaeffer admitted, “We haven’t any idea. Probably hiding the bulk of the money. We found them sitting on the platform of the carousel, just as they are in the picture.”
Daly glanced at the picture again. “That looks like blood on Laredo’s face and costume.”
“The dead guard’s brother did that.”
DuBoise asked, “What does Mrs. Laredo say?”
“Nothing,” the homicide man said. “And I mean that literally. It turns out the girl is a mute.”
“What a pity,” DuBoise sympathized. “She’s such a beautiful girl and seemed so intelligent. But that explains why she let her husband do all the talking last night.” He was puzzled. “But where do Tom and I come in on this?”
“Who arranged for his appearance on Tom’s show last night?”
“I did,” DuBoise said. “Part of my job is finding interesting guests for Tom to interview and I penciled Laredo in two weeks ago.”
“What kind of a guest did he make?”
Daly lit a cigarette from the stub of the one he was smoking. “Not very good. But you haven’t answered Gene’s question. Why fly down here to talk to us?”
Lieutenant Schaeffer made certain that Daly and DuBoise understood the department’s position. “Now, look, Tom. We’re not throwing off on either of you. You’ve given us too many good plugs. But we’re on a spot and will be until we nail down every detail of this affair. And we don’t want to make any mistakes. Did anything unusual happen before, during or after your show last night?”
“I got this eye,” Daly said.
DuBoise explained. “Tom was slugged by two goons when he drove onto the studio parking lot last night.”
“That’s why I’m here,” Schaeffer said. “I didn’t catch the show last night, but one of the boys on the squad did. And he said that Tom asked Laredo some questions that could tie in with what happened this morning.”
“They could at that,” Daly admitted. “As Gene just said, I was slugged by two goons who asked me, very politely, to warn Chico not to try something as that one was their pigeon. And that could have been the armored truck job.”
“Go on,” Schaeffer said.
Daly continued, “To emphasize their request they gave me this eye and knocked me down on the pavement and kicked me. Later, while we were on the air, I asked Laredo if the message meant anything to him, if he had ever been called Chico. And he said that the message didn’t mean anything, but that some of the boys in the invasion brigade had called him Chico.”
The homicide man was pleased. “Good. Did you record the show last night, Gene?”
“I always do.”
“The D.A. will want to listen to the tape. So far we haven’t filed charges against either Laredo or his wife. But as we see the deal, the two goons who beat Tom were members of the unsuccessful invasion who hoped to make money for the cause by looting the armored truck and didn’t want Laredo to beat them to it. Or they were planted by Laredo to shift the blame from his shoulders.”
“What does he say?”
“He claims he didn’t have anything to do with the caper, that the job was pulled by two John Does dressed in clown costumes and wearing makeup identical to his.”
“The story in the paper says there were at least six clowns.”
Lieutenant Schaeffer shrugged. “You know how eyewitnesses are. Few of them ever agree. All we know for certain is that Laredo was in clown costume and there was another clown in the money compartment of the truck. The one who threw the loose bills and silver to the crowd.”
“What,” DuBoise asked, “do the surviving guards say?”
“There,” Schaeffer said, “was one of the really clever parts of the caper. One guard wasn’t even on the lot while the truck was being looted. A doctor we can’t locate sent him for a stomach pump. And the guard who stayed behind, the one who should have been inside the truck, is the dead man’s older brother and so emotionally upset that his testimony is practically useless.”
“I suppose you’ve considered the possibility of it being an inside job?”
“We have. But that possibility seems remote. The guard who went for the stomach pump, an older man named Quinlan, has been with the company for thirty years. As I just said, the other man was the dead guard’s brother.”
Daly sucked at his cigarette for a moment “All right What do you want me and Gene to do?”
Schaeffer told him. “Give me a deposition as to what happened on the KAMPC-TV lot last night. Also written permission to get the tape of last night’s show out of your files.”
“We’ll do better than that,” Daly said. “We’ll fly back with you. On one condition.”
“Name it.”
“That we be given permission to talk to Laredo and his wife without a police guard or a stenographer standing by.”
“Granted. But
if he lied to you last night, he’ll lie to you now. What do you hope to get out of him?”
“I don’t know,” Daly admitted. “But this could be one of the biggest local stories to come along in years and I want the whole of it before I go on the air Monday night.” He continued quietly, “It can be that Laredo is in this thing up to his eyes. Then, again, it can be that someone deliberately pinned it on him.”
“Come off it, Tom.”
“I mean it,” Daly said. “I’m not easily impressed, but while he gave a lousy show, Laredo impressed me. And it’s a little difficult for me to believe that a man willing to lose a leg and give up what he and all the other boys in the invasion brigade tried to do, against impossible odds, would go around killing old men and young mothers with babies in their arms for any amount of money.”
“You’ve a point,” Schaeffer admitted. “But you’re up against one big stumbling block.”
“What’s that?”
“Young Mrs. Laredo. Following your line of reasoning, girls as young and pretty as she is normally don’t go around slipping lethal doses of chloral hydrate into pink lemonade.”
“We don’t know she did.”
Schaeffer Was impatient with Daly. “Climb down from that cloud and get with the rest of us, Tom. There’s been bad blood between the Laredos and the dead guard for weeks. Ever since Kelly squeezed one of her boobies and tried to kiss her on a parking lot in Burbank. There was another exchange of words this morning, with Laredo admitting he was angry enough to shoot the dead guard if he made another pass at his wife.”
“But he didn’t.”
“No,” Schaeffer said. “He didn’t shoot him. But we have testimony to the effect that five minutes before he died, Tim Kelly had never felt better in his life. Then, to needle Laredo, he stopped at the stand and asked for — and Paquita Laredo gave him — a free cup of pink lemonade. Two hundred witnesses will testify to that Kelly drank the lemonade and walked on. A few feet from the stand, without making any other stop, he clawed at his throat and complained that his belly felt like it was on fire. Three minutes later he was dead, with, according to the lab report, enough chloral hydrate in him to kill two men.”
“It doesn’t look good,” DuBois said.
Daly studied the newspaper picture. “Who took this?”
Schaeffer finished the last of his coffee. “I don’t know the man’s name. But as I understand it, he’s a free-lance photographer and public relations man who was hired to beat the drum for the new shopping center.”
Daly continued to study the picture. “I assume it was taken before the police got there.”
“That’s right.”
“And the clown in the picture is Laredo?”
“Yes.”
“And the girl is Mrs. Laredo?”
“Yes. That’s just the way we found them.”
“With Laredo bleeding from a vicious pistol-whipping and Paquita Laredo holding the dead woman’s baby?”
DuBoise nodded. “I think I see what you’re getting at, Tom.”
“That’s more than I do,” Scheaffer said.
Daly tapped the picture. “Okay. Tell us this, Lieutenant Why, if Paquita Laredo is so cold-blooded that she could poison a man as her part in a plot to loot an armored truck of one hundred and seventy-eight thousand dollars did she stop on her way to her badly injured husband to pick up a crying baby? More important, if she and Mickey plotted the looting of the truck, why aren’t they out trying to get some of the money instead of sitting on their butts on the platform of a two-bit kiddy carousel?”
“I don’t know,” Schaeffer admitted.
“Neither do I,” Daly said. “But I intend to find out.”
Chapter Nine
THE LEGEND over the doorway read:
DETECTIVE BUREAU
HOMICIDE
“Oh, yes,” the information officer on duty said. “Mr. Daly and Mr. DuBoise. We’ve been expecting you.” He directed the two men to the closed door of an office three doors down the hall. “I’ll have the Laredos brought up from downstairs right away. But if you gentlemen don’t mind, Captain Franks, the watch commander, would like to talk to you before you talk to them.”
“Whatever you say,” Daly said.
He’d met Captain Franks. He didn’t know the man with him, nor had he ever met the plainly dressed young woman weeping silently into her handkerchief. Captain Franks introduced the man. “Tom Daly, Gene DuBoise, Assistant District Attorney Jack Carter.” He explained, “Jack is handling the case for the D.A.’s office.”
“Gentlemen,” Carter nodded.
“I assume you gave Lieutenant Schaeffer the tape,” Franks said.
“Yes,” Daly told him, “we did. We just came from the studio.” He added, “We went directly there from the airport.”
“Thanks a lot, Mr. Daly,” Carter smiled. “If we proceed on our current assumption, that tape could prove invaluable when we go to trial.” Carter continued to smile. “While I’ll be the first to admit we’re still floundering through a maze of evidence, or rather lack of it, we do feel it is fairly obvious that this wasn’t an on the spur of the moment robbery. We feel that it was well planned and that the razzle-dazzle on the parking lot of KAMPC-TV just before you went on the air Friday night was a puerile attempt to establish a preformulated supposition of innocence for Mickey Laredo, better known to his fellow members of the Cuban invasion brigade as Chico.”
Daly rested his hip on the edge of Captain Frank’s desk. “I’m afraid you’re not getting through to me, counselor.”
“Let me put it this way,” Carter said. “On what little we have been able to determine so far, the District Attorney’s office feels fairly certain that Laredo masterminded this deal. Our reasons are as follows. One, he was in desperate need of personal funds. Two, by his own admission, he still believes very strongly that the current regime in Cuba should be overthrown, by force if need be. And the still missing one hundred and sixty-eight thousand dollars would allow him to finance both needs.” Carter held up his hand when Daly tried to speak. “Let me finish. I was here with Captain Franks when Lieutenant Schaeffer called from Las Vegas and told us he’d located you and Mr. DuBoise and you had agreed to fly back with him. He also told us the reason why you gentlemen find it difficult to believe that either Laredo or his wife are guilty of this charge. May I ask how well you know Laredo, Mr. Daly?”
Daly admitted, “I don’t know him at all. I never met the man before we went on the air Friday night.”
“Then you don’t know his basic reason for joining the invasion brigade?”
“Yes. He said that much on the air. He said it was because he didn’t like the way things were going in Cuba. Because, while he hadn’t been born there, both his mother and his father had been and he felt obligated to do something about the situation.”
“But he didn’t say how deeply obligated?”
“No.”
“I thought he might have told you after you went off the air. But, since he didn’t, I will. As you undoubtedly know, The Flying Laredos, the aerial act in which he worked for years, was composed of his mother and father and one of his uncles.”
“Yes. That much I do know.”
“Do you know why the act broke up?”
“I imagine because he lost a leg at the Bay of Pigs.”
Carter shook his head. “No. The act broke up six months before that When his father and mother and uncle went back to Oriente Province for a visit and the local Castro commandante sent his father and uncle to the wall as suspected agents provocateurs for this country, and his mother died, literally, of a broken heart.”
“That explains a lot,” DuBoise said.
Carter made an apothecary scale of his hands. “One balances out the other. Laredo and his wife’s normal humane interests against a desire for revenge and enough money to set up another strike. He knows he can’t go back. But there are other members of the brigade who can, if and when they can finance another expedition
. And that’s why we think he got into this thing. You can buy a lot of carbines and rifles and cartridges and machine guns for one hundred and sixty-eight thousand dollars.”
“Then you haven’t recovered the money?”
“Not the bulk of it.”
Daly got up from the desk and walked to the window and back. “I don’t know what to think.”
Captain Franks said, “Look, Tom, be reasonable. You’ve made a name for yourself as a sucker for the underdog. That’s commendable. But we have Laredo dead to rights. Look at it this way. Week after week his kiddy rides played shopping center parking lots for peanuts while he watched armored trucks pick up and deliver hundreds of thousands of dollars. The guy was in hock up to his eyes. He also wanted money for the cause so bad he could taste it. So he set up this thing with four or five guys who were in the invasion with him and yesterday morning they pulled the plug. Maybe they didn’t intend to kill anyone. They probably hoped they wouldn’t have to. All they intended to do was to create a diversion to get the inside guard out of the truck. But when, according to plan, Mrs. Laredo gave young Kelly the knockout drops, she made the dosage too strong and instead of just knocking him out, it killed him. Then they panicked. Oh, they got the money all right — how we don’t know yet, but they did. We do know that bit of having one of the clowns throw money to the crowd was merely part of the diversion. So far we’ve recovered less than ten thousand dollars. But we do have a hundred witnesses who are willing to testify in court that they saw Laredo, or a clown dressed in a costume identical with his, fire the three shots that killed the old roustabout and young Mrs. Wilson.”
“Proving what?” DuBoise asked.
Captain Franks told him. “If we can tie Laredo into this, murder in the commission of an armed robbery, which is murder in the first degree.”
Daly protested, “But as I understand it, the old man worked for Laredo. Why would he want him killed?”
“He probably didn’t,” Carter said. “It probably never entered his mind. But when the old man tried to stop the clown with the gun, the clown lost his head and shot him. And if the Laredos were in on the job, which we are certain they were, that makes them equally guilty, even if they didn’t pull the trigger of the gun.”