by Keene, Day
The priest was more puzzled than embittered by his experience, but he was inclined to attribute it to God’s will to place a man of the cloth in a position where he could give spiritual consolation to the survivors of the ill-fated April 17,1961 invasion.
Yes, he’d met Miguel Tomas José Guido Laredo. No, he didn’t think Mickey was psychologically capable of committing the crime with which he was charged. During their months together in prison he’d talked to the one-legged youth perhaps a hundred times and while he had found Laredo a rather worldly young man, much more concerned with how his youthful bride was getting along without him than he was in eventual salvation, the priest was willing to swear on his breviary that Mickey, as the newspapers called him, had no part in conspiring to rob or in robbing the armored truck.
“What do you think?” Daly asked Keeley during the string of commercials that followed the interview with the priest.
His floor manager shrugged. “If I were the foreman of a jury trying him, I’d vote not guilty without leaving the box. But when you roll it out, all the priest really proved was that, in his opinion, Laredo is a pretty good joe. Or was when he knew him.”
It was debatable whether Daly’s second guest of the evening, Polly Madden, did the cause he was championing as much good as she did harm. A tall, shapely brunette in her early twenties, a typist for one of the space missile firms in the area, she was bitter about the guard’s death.
Yes, she had been Tim Kelly’s girl. They had been engaged to be married. At least that had been her understanding. No, she hadn’t known that Kelly had any other girls. Yes, to the best of her knowledge, Kelly had been satisfied with his salary. He drove a good car. He always had plenty of money to spend. No, he’d never discussed suicide. Why should he kill himself? He had everything to live for. For example, he had a friend who owned a thirty-two-foot cabin cruiser and on the afternoon of the morning he’d been murdered they had intended to take off and spend the balance of the weekend cruising to and around Santa Catalina. No, the murdered man had never mentioned Paquita Laredo to her or said anything about having words with her husband. Miss Madden was smug about it. Tim hadn’t had to go on the make for any married woman. He’d had her.
Realizing that he was losing more ground than he’d gained in his interview with the priest, Daly terminated the interview with Miss Madden as quickly as he could.
He did better with Luisa Vinifreda Teresa Garcia. Some performers objected to working with a child. They claimed that no matter how minor the part was, a child always stole the scene. Daly enjoyed working with children. He liked them. They liked him. He didn’t care who came out best as long as they gave a good show and his viewers were pleased.
Because the five-year-old was unable to reach the microphone on the desk even when sitting on a stack of piled telephone books, Daly conducted the interview wearing a “necktie mike” and holding the child on his lap. He began by asking her name.
“Luisa Vinifreda Teresa Garcia,” the little girl told him soberly.
Daly attempted to put her at ease by expending most of the Spanish he knew in the one sentence. “Isn’t that a rather grande name for such a poco muchacha?”
The five year old giggled. “Si.”
Daly inclined his head at the camera. “Now you just look at that little red light out there, honey, and tell all the nice people sitting at home what you saw at the new shopping plaza parking lot on Saturday morning.”
“Si.”
Daly added, “In your own words. In English.”
The child wet her lips with her tongue. On Saturday morning, right after she’d had her breakfast, Brigida and Margarita, they were her best girl friends, had come to the house and asked if she could come out and play. For a while they had jumped rope and played sky blue in front of the house. Then Brigida had suggested they go to the new shopping plaza and look at the merry-go-round and the wheel with the hanging baskets and the little train. While they had been looking at the merry-go-round and hoping that they would be able to ride on the ponies, the pink limonada senora and the sad bufón had arrived. Luisa was very pleased about it. Then the pretty senora who couldn’t talk had picked her up and sat her on the counter of the limonada stand and had let her, and her friends, watch her make the limonada. She’d even given them paper cups of it while it still wasn’t very cold.
Daly asked, “And while this was going on, what was Senor Laredo doing?”
“He was trying to make the music box on the merry-go-round play music.”
“Did he?”
“Si.” The five-year-old moved her body in time to imaginary music. “It made pretty music.”
“Didn’t he yell at you kids for hanging around the lemonade stand?”
“No. He always spoke very gently to the niños.”
“Then what happened?”
The child continued in detail, describing the arrival of the old roustabout and Laredo’s working on the locomotora of the little train. Then, seeing Senor Laredo take his white bufón costume from a big box, she and some of the other children had followed him to the gasolina station and had waited for him to come out so they could laugh with him.
They had been laughing and having a lot of fun until the big truck that carried money had almost run them down. Then, afraid that they might be hurt, Senor Laredo had turned so fast he had fallen down and one of the men in the truck had laughed at him and Senor Laredo had been very angry.
Daly didn’t press the point. “Go on, Luisa.”
The child continued. Then, after the truck had driven on, Senor Laredo had gotten to his feet and even if their mothers and their fathers had not yet bought anything in the stores to get the tickets that permitted you to go on the rides, Senor Laredo had been very gracious. The child was pleased by the memory. “He took some tickets from his pocket and gave them to me and to my friends so we could start riding right away.”
Daly was certain of one thing. Up to this point, at least, the interview was giving the viewing public an image of the Laredos that was entirely different from the one that had been plastered over the front pages of the newspapers. Luisa was making it plain she thought both of them were fine people. And the child’s opinion should bear some weight. Even the normally blasé cameramen were hanging on every word she said.
The five-year-old continued talking. At first she couldn’t make up her mind which ride to take. Brigida and Margarita had run to the little train. Some of the others had gotten into the baskets of the big wheel that went around. But, after thinking it over, she had decided to spend all of her tickets riding on the merry-go-round. She was very earnest about it. So, after the nice old man in the white hat and the green coat had given her a balloon, she had climbed up on a pink pony.
Daly forgot he was interviewing a five-year-old. “Which gave you a pretty good vantage point, eh, Luisa?”
The child looked puzzled until DuBoise who was standing off camera explained what Daly wanted to know in fluent Spanish.
“Si,” she beamed. “From on top of the pink pony I could see everything.”
“Did you see the guard from the money truck stop at the lemonade stand?”
“Si.”
“What happened then?”
“The pink limonada senora gave him a paper cup of limonada.”
“Where was Senor Laredo?”
“He was standing by the big box holding a pistola.”
“Did he shoot it?”
“No.”
“What did he do with it?”
“He put it back in the box.”
“And where did the pink limonada senora get the limonada she served to the guard?”
The five-year-old looked at Daly as if he were slightly stupid. “From the big glass cisterna where she keeps it.”
“The same glass tank that she took the lemonade from that she gave you children?”
“Si.”
“Are you sure?”
“Si. I saw her.”
“Go on. What happe
ned then?”
“Then the man got sick and fell down on the ground and money fell out of one of the bags and the man who was with him picked it up and went back to the truck and hit on the door with his pistola. And another man got out and put the bags of money in the truck. Then they ran back to where the sick man was and the man who had been inside the truck said he was his hermano.”
“Go on, Luisa,” Daly encouraged her.
“Then a médico tried to help the sick man. He sent one of the men from the truck to get some medicina, I think. And while he was gone the médico put a big needle in the sick man’s arm. But it didn’t do any good.” It was just a word to the child. “The sick man was muerto. So the médico put the needle back in his pocket and one of his legs hurt him as he walked to the big car where his senora was waiting. And he got in the car and they drove away.”
Daly puzzled, “One of his legs hurt him?”
Luisa bobbed her head. “Si. He walked just like Senor Laredo walks.” She was so intent on the story she was telling that when Daly tried to stop her to clarify the point, he couldn’t. “Then a bad bufón started the little train and when it was going fast he got off and all of the children were frightened, and I could hear Brigida and Margarita crying. Then another bufón he opened the door of the truck and he threw money to the big boys and girls.”
Daly succeeded in stopping her. “Let’s go back a little, Luisa. You say the doctor walked as if his leg hurt him?”
“Si.”
“Would you know the doctor if you saw him again?”
The child nodded.
“Would you know the senora?”
She nodded a second time.
“Can you describe the senora for us? I mean, can you tell us what she looked like?”
The five-year-old thought for a moment. “She had yellow hair and big mother bumps on her chest. And when we pass a senora or a senorita like her on the street, my mother always spits on the sidewalk.”
It was a graphic description. It fitted a number of women. It fitted the woman the barman at the ski lodge had described.
“Now tell us this, Luisa,” Daly said. “Did you happen to notice the color of the car that the yellow-haired senora was driving?”
The child beamed. “Si. It was pink. Just like the pony I was riding.”
“Thank you, honey,” Daly smiled. “Go on.”
He knew the rest of the story. It was much the same as Luisa had told himself and Gene and, later, the Spanish-speaking policewoman whom Charlie Schaeffer had sent to the Garcia home.
She had only seen three bufóns, including Senor Laredo. None of them had been carrying any bags of money. Luisa was equally positive, and made a point of it, that it hadn’t been Senor Laredo who had shot the nice old man or the young senora with the baby in her arms. It had been one of the bad bufóns, the one who hadn’t been crying. Senor Laredo had been stopping the little train so Brigida and Margarita wouldn’t be hurt. Senor Laredo hadn’t even come to the merry-go-round until after the bad bufón, Luisa cocked a chubby thumb and forefinger, had shot his pistola, bang, bang, bang, una, dos, tres, times.
It had been an interesting interview, Daly thought as they went off the air. It had also opened a new dimension. While proving it might be difficult, there was no doubt in his mind that the elusive Dr. Alveredo and the nude girl who had pistol-whipped him in the cabin had been participants in, if not the actual instigators of, the plot to rob the armored truck. He also felt that he was missing something, something right under his nose, that he hadn’t the perception to see.
As he helped Luisa off his lap and removed his necktie mike, he realized that Terry was speaking to him.
“This one is for you,” she said. She handed him the phone. “She insists on speaking to you personally. And, personally, you can have her.”
Daly spoke into the phone. “Tom Daly.”
He’d thought he knew most of the words, but nothing he’d ever heard compared with the string of four-and five-letter obscenities issuing from the mouth of the woman on the other end of the wire as she questioned his antecedents, his nocturnal relationship with his maternal parent and his maggot-infested intelligence. On top of that he was poking his mucous-filled nose into something that was none of his business and if he continued to do so it was odds on that he would never make another telecast.
“Nice?” Terry said.
“Who is this?” Daly asked.
The woman continued to curse him in a lifeless monotone. Then, informing him of the specific amatory act he could engage in with himself, she terminated the one-sided conversation, presumably before the call could be traced.
Daly looked up to find that Gene DuBoise had pushed his way through the crowd of admiring cameramen, technicians and members of the studio audience clustered around Luisa and her mother. “What now, Tom?” he asked.
Daly cradled the phone. “I just stepped on someone’s toes. Someone out there doesn’t like me.”
“Good,” DuBoise said. He handed Daly an interstudio communication memo. “Here’s another interesting item. Dr. Alex Murman phoned the switchboard and asked you be given this message. He said he was listening to the show and when your little guest said that the man who treated the dying guard walked with a limp, it rang a faint bell in his mind. And while he wouldn’t want to get an innocent man into trouble, he would like to talk to you.”
Chapter Sixteen
THE SPACIOUS ranch type house was built in the Hollywood Hills on an acre of carefully tended grounds, complete with a Junior Olympic-sized swimming pool and a low-walled brick patio that commanded a breathlessly beautiful view of the city.
His family had long since been asleep but Dr. Murman was waiting for them when Daly and DuBoise drove up the drive. After introducing himself, he explained the reason for his phone call over drinks in the starlit patio.
“I suppose,” the physician admitted, “I should have called the police. A Lieutenant Schaeffer gave me his card and asked me to let him know if anything occurred to me. But this is a rather delicate situation. I’m not certain the man I have in mind is in any way involved. And if he’s not the man who posed as a Dr. Alveredo and sent the armored truck guard to my office for a stomach pump, I wouldn’t want to get him into any more trouble.”
Daly mulled the statement. “Any more trouble?”
“That’s right,” Dr. Murman said. “In a way, I’m sorry for the poor devil. You see the man of whom I’m thinking is named Davis. James Davis. It’s been a number of years since I’ve seen him and I’d never have thought of him again if the little girl on your show hadn’t mentioned that the ‘médico’ limped. Putting that together with the mysterious Dr. Alveredo’s description, as printed in the newspapers, I came up with Davis. He is of Irish origin, I believe, but dark-complexioned enough to pass as Spanish. And wearing a hairline mustache, he could easily get away with a name like Alveredo. What’s more, due to an accident in his youth, his left leg is an inch shorter than his right leg, giving him a decided limp.”
“This Davis,” DuBoise asked, “is a fellow physician?”
Dr. Murman shrugged. “Yes and no.” He explained, “If Davis is the man who posed as Dr. Alveredo, he was once a promising young doctor about thirty-five or thirty-six years of age. But his license was revoked a year ago.”
“For what reason?”
“Not a very savory one. Davis tried to get rich in a hurry via the abortion mill route, charging whatever the traffic would bear. But unfortunately one of his patients died. And while there wasn’t enough evidence for the State to make a criminal charge stick, there was enough for the State Medical Board to revoke his license to practice medicine.”
“I see,” Daly said.
Dr. Murman’s cigar had gone out. He relit it. “What made me wonder if it could have been Davis is the fact that my clinic is less than a block from the shopping plaza. I’m hardly ever there on Saturday mornings and Davis knew that. He worked for me for some months, about two years
ago. He was a good doctor. He knew his business. But it seems that part of his problem is that he is overfond of the opposite sex and I was forced to terminate our connection because a number of my younger and prettier female patients, especially prospective mothers, complained he was being overzealous in his prenatal examinations and, in several instances, had actually attempted to force extramarital coitus on them, saying it would relax their reproductive organs and make the child they were carrying easier to bear.”
Thinking of the nude girl in the cabin, whom Luisa seemed also to have placed in a pink car at the new shopping center on the morning the armored truck was robbed, Daly said, “He sounds like he could be our man. Another thing. One of the homicide boys turned up several witnesses who said that Dr. Alveredo spoke very knowingly about heat stroke and acute food poisoning while he was working on the dying guard. I imagine that would come within Davis’ scope of knowledge?”
Dr. Murman nodded. “Davis would know. As I said, he is an excellent doctor.”
DuBoise finished his drink and refused another. “Can you tell us where we might find this Davis, Dr. Murman?”
“No,” Murman said. “I can’t. But I wasn’t entirely accurate when I said it has been a number of years since I’ve seen him. I saw him, briefly, late last fall, in the new King’s Harbor Marina in Redondo Beach. You see, I berth my boat farther down the coast and I was talking to the harbor master about renting a slip in King’s Harbor when Davis chugged by the jetty at the wheel of a thirty-two-foot cruiser. A twin-screw Owens, as I remember.”
DuBoise and Daly looked at each other.
Dr. Murman continued, “But I’m afraid that’s not much of a clue. Davis could berth his boat at the harbor, or he could have put in to fill his tanks or use some of the other facilities at the marina.”
“And that’s all you can tell us?” Daly asked.
“I know it isn’t much, but I thought I’d better call you.”
“I’m glad you did,” Daly said. “Now would you mind telling us this, Dr. Murman. Can chloral hydrate be induced into the human system in any manner other than oral?”