Streets of Death - Dell Shannon

by Dell Shannon

  "What?" asked Higgins. "I don’t see anything, Luis."

  "Like the dog that didn’t bark in the night, George. O’Brien dropped the keys when they jumped him, but they didn’t take the car. I know we’ve got nada absolutamente on these louts, as far as court evidence goes, but a picture builds in my mind." Jason Grace had wandered in, Landers and Conway behind him, and Galeano; they listened to the boss having a hunch. "The fancy clothes," said Mendoza, picking up the flame-thrower lighter and pointing it absently at Higgins, who shied back. "And one of the victims--a woman--said that one of them, she thinks the tall blond one, called her a dirty peasant. Which is not the kind of--mmh--invective you hear around Temple Street, boys. And they couldn’t be bothered to steal a ten-year-old Pontiac. I get the feeling they’re not native to our beat."

  "Then what the hell are they doing down here, jumping the senior citizens?" said Higgins. "For kicks?"

  "Es posible," said Mendoza. He pressed the trigger, the flame shot out and he lit his cigarette. "They haven’t made any kind of haul. Any halfway smart four-year-old around here would know that the average senior citizen in this area isn’t exactly loaded, or he wouldn’t still be living in the area. It’s possible our pretty boys in their fancy clothes--from somewhere a little way up the social scale--are prowling around here just for the kicks, beating up the senior citizens for fun. Mmh. Cómo no--maybe with the idea that cops wouldn’t go to much trouble over these particular senior citizens."

  "That’s a little far out," said Higgins, "or is it?"

  "He smells these things," said Grace seriously. "I’ll add, what you might call a mixed population down here. One of these here racists, Loo-tenant suh?"

  Mendoza laughed. "I don’t know if I smell anything or not, Jase. Just off the top of my mind, if I remember right, two of the victims were Mexican, three black, the rest just people--and O’Brien. They must have seen his priest’s collar--but it was dark. But--¡vaya historia!--that 'dirty peasant’ sticks in my mind. Not Temple Street. More like U.C.L.A."

  "Which may be a thought, but it doesn’t take us anywhere to look," said Conway. "Have you had a chance to look at the offbeat thing Carey handed us? I like it, as a story, but it’s going to be a lot of work for nothing. I want to see that blonde."

  Mendoza picked up the night report, didn’t start reading it. "You’ll tell me about it. A blonde?"

  "I’m bound to say," said Galeano, "it’s the wheelchair that sort of caught my imagination--the empty wheelchair. You can see what Carey means--it’s a locked-room puzzle in a sort of way."

  "An empty wheelchair," said Mendoza, cigarette suspended. "So, I’ll hear about it."

  Sergeant Lake looked in. "There’s a Mrs. Chard here and some other people. A Mrs. Moseley and a Mr. and Mrs. Peacock asking for Palliser."

  "So the night watch got hold of the Chard woman," said Galeano. "I’d better talk to her, Jimmy. John hasn’t showed up yet. You can tell the boss about the wheelchair, Rich."

  * * *

  Mrs. Cecelia Chard identified the body with loud sobs and groans. She was a thin dark hard-faced woman with shrewish black eyes, and Galeano didn’t take to her at all. She was supported by her mother, Mrs. Wilma Dixon, and her brother Elmer, both generally resembling her.

  "Poor Bob," she lamented, drying her eyes with a Coty-scented handkerchief when they’d got back from the morgue and Galeano had settled them down in the office to make a statement. "Like I said, Mr. Galeano, I never reported him missing because I thought he was off on a bender, like he did every now ’n’ then, and goodness knows--Mother and Elmer can bear me out. I’m not about to say he was the best husband in the world, Mr. Galeano, but I wouldn’t have wished him a terrible death like that--he must’ve got into a fight with somebody when he was drunk. I got to say, he used to get fighting mad with any liquor in him, it takes some like that, you know."

  "A regular mean man in drink he was, all right," said Elmer, and giggled.

  "He certainly was," said Mrs. Dixon with a long sigh.

  "It’s a sorry thing he should’ve come to such a bad end, but running around with riifraif the way he did, in all them bars, no wonder. I’m sorry to say it, Mr. Galeano, but I guess my girl’s rid of a bad bargain."

  Galeano didn’t think much of them at all, but there was the one about birds of a feather. Their estimation of Chard was probably right. He’d been found about half a block down the side street from a bar on the corner of Venice Boulevard, and it was very likely he’d got into a brawl with some other drunks and died of it. It was just more of the sordid violence cops got paid to cope with, and it made him feel tired.

  He got the gist of that down in a statement, and Mrs. Chard signed it. He told them they’d be notified when the body could be released, and they thanked him and went away.

  And he supposed that somebody ought to ask a few questions at that bar, try to find out who the other drunks were--not that it seemed very important.

  * * *

  Mendoza scanned the night report before he listened to Conway, and handed the Buford thing to Landers and Grace. It didn’t look as if there’d be much handle to it, unless S.I.D. turned up something.

  Then he heard all about Carey’s blonde and the empty wheelchair, and like Galeano he was fascinated. Luis Rodolfo Vicente Mendoza was not, perhaps, temperamentally suited to be a cop, who by the nature of the job had to deal with physical evidence, facts and figures and tangibilities. The men who worked with him were convinced that his natural calling was that of a cardsharp, that most innocent of con-men who relied on instinctive knowledge of human nature.

  "I see what Carey means," he said amusedly. "Masterly gall. Please, sir, he’s gone, I don’t know where. But the empty wheelchair--which was probably quite inadvertent, if we’re reading it right--it’s a nice touch. ¡Me gusta!"

  "So all we do is find the boyfriend," said Conway.

  "I thought Carey’d made kind of heavy weather of it. In spite of the--er--imaginative touch, it looks open and shut to me."

  Mendoza regarded him sardonically. "Yes and no, Rich. In this job, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, things are just exactly what they look like. Just occasionally they aren’t. But I want a look at Carey’s blonde and the wheelchair. That so eloquently empty wheelchair!"

  "So does Nick. But there’s only one obvious answer, isn’t there?"

  "Es posible," said Mendoza. "Go see if he’s back from the morgue."

  * * *

  Palliser had got caught in a jam on the freeway, a pileup backed up for a mile, and it was nearly nine o’clock when he came into the office to find four forlorn-looking people waiting to see him. Mrs. Anita Moseley, Mr. and Mrs. Simon Peacock, and Stephanie Peacock.

  Mr. Peacock offered to go to the morgue to make the identification. "I knew Sandra all her life, since she and Stephanie started school together. I wish you’d let me, Anita--save you the agony--" But Mrs. Moseley said tautly she had to see for herself and be sure. She was a nice-looking woman, late thirties, brown hair, good figure, conservatively dressed. They were all nice people, Palliser could see, in the euphemistic phrase: upright middle-class people: Peacock an insurance agent, the two women ladies. At the morgue, Mrs. Moseley looked at the body and said thinly, "Yes, that’s Sandra. That’s her. Oh, my God, to have it all end like this--I tried so hard-- To see her like that-- No, I’m all right. Honestly, I’m all right. But when it was all for nothing--no reason for her to--"

  Back at the office, Palliser got Wanda Larsen in for support, and she was briskly sympathetic but businesslike, their very efficient policewoman; Mrs. Moseley talked mostly to her, and Wanda took unobtrusive notes.

  "I have to say, she--Sandra--had been more and more difficult--since the divorce," she said painfully. "You see, I divorced her father last year. He--that doesn’t matter, the reasons, but you see he’d always spoiled her dreadfully, and I’m afraid--she’s just a child really, she didn’t understand about the divorce, she always idolized " her father and I did
n’t want to--to destroy any of that--maybe that was a mistake, if I had told her--but I guess that doesn’t matter now either. I tried to discipline her--sensibly--God knows I tried. But--"

  They listened patiently, asked questions. When Sandra hadn’t come home, last Saturday, she had called the Peacocks first. "Because Sandra and Stephanie were always together, best friends, and I thought--" And Stephanie hadn’t come home either. By next day it was pretty clear they’d run away together: some of their clothes were missing. "Oh, I’ve got to say it," said Mrs. Moseley, "Sandra would have been the leader, she always was--" She’d gone to the police then.

  The Peacocks said that, of course, they’d been frantic, their only daughter missing, and then she’d phoned them last night. She was in a big railroad station in L.A. with no money--scared and sorry and wanting to come home. "We told her just to stay there, we’d come as soon as we could," said Mrs. Peacock. "And we called Anita--"

  "If you’d called us," said Wanda, "we’d have taken care of her until you got here, Mrs. Peacock."

  "Well, we don’t know anything about the police. Naturally. We just wanted to get here and find her. And thank God she’s all right--when I think what could have happened--that wild headstrong girl--I’m sorry, Anita, but you know she was, you tried but you know yourself--"

  Mrs. Moseley sobbed once, convulsively, and Wanda brought her a glass of water.

  "Well, now, Stephanie," said Palliser, wishing he knew more about teenagers, "suppose you tell us what you know about this."

  She was a thin, gawky girl, not terribly pretty and looking even younger than she was, with long brown stringy hair and mild brown eyes; right now she was scared. "I--I--I didn’t really want to--it was all Sandra! I was scared all the time, but Sandra--"

  "My poor darling!" said her mother.

  Peacock had better sense. "Now listen here, young lady," he said roughly. "If you were scared it was your own damn fault for being such a little fool. You speak up and tell whatever you know right now!"

  "Y-yes, Daddy. I’m sorry. I w-will," gulped Stephanie unsteadily.

  THREE

  "I DIDN'T WANT to, it was Sandra," began Stephanie nervously. "She said--she said her mother was so strict and old-fashioned and she’d--she’d treated her father awful bad, she didn’t want to, you know, stay with her any more and--" She stopped and looked uneasily at Mrs. Moseley, her parents, and stuck there. Mrs. Peacock cast a somewhat unloving look at Mrs. Moseley, and Wanda intervened smoothly.

  It might be better, she suggested, if they just left Stephanie to her and Sergeant Palliser; it was likely to be a long business taking a statement, and she’d be right with Stephanie all the time, they might be asking her to look at some photographs. Peacock said that was a good idea, they’d heard enough of it that he didn’t want to hear it all again, and he wasn’t going to face that drive again until tomorrow. Mrs. Moseley said faintly she’d just like to go back to the motel and lie down. Peacock exchanged a look with Palliser and urged his wife, protesting, to the door. "I guess we can leave it to you. We’re at the Holiday Inn off the Hollywood freeway."

  "What would we do without you, lady?" said Palliser to Wanda, and meant it.

  "All part of the job .... Now, Stephanie, you can say whatever you want to us, you know, we won’t mind," she said comfortably. "We want to know anything you can tell us that might help to find out what happened to Sandra."

  "You’re a policewoman, aren’t you? I guess that must be kind of an interesting job. Well, I know that. It’s all just so awful--Sandra dead and all--but I want to tell how it was, only Mama and Daddy carried on so, and I didn’t like to say in front of Sandra’s mother---"

  "That’s all right now, you just tell it the way it happened."

  "She said awful things about her mother," said Sandra miserably, "but maybe they were so, I don’t know. She said we could go to L.A., Hollywood, and get jobs, school was stupid and all the teachers squares and silly. She wanted to be a model, she said maybe we could get jobs like that right away, or there are schools where you can learn. I--well, I didn’t want to, I like school all right, but Sandra--she could always make me go along, sort of. She’d done it other times too. And her mother works, since the divorce, and my mother had a club meeting--last Saturday, I mean, so that’s when we did it. I packed a lot of clothes and things in Mama’s biggest suitcase, and Sandra had an overnight bag and a plane case, and we just took the bus out the state highway. It was crowded and nobody paid any notice, and at the end of the line we--uh--got out and, you know, started to hitch." She took a breath. "I was scared right from the first, that’s a thing you’re never supposed to do, get in strange cars, but Sandra wasn’t afraid of anything ever. She had fifteen dollars she’d saved from her allowance and I had nearly eight."

  Palliser and Wanda refrained from looking at each other. Glasser wandered in and pulled up a chair behind Palliser silently. She hardly noticed him; she was talking to Wanda.

  "Well, this man gave us a ride all the way to L.A. He was a salesman of some kind, he was nice and friendly, he joked with Sandra--she told him we were both eighteen and I guess he believed that. She said we were going to see some relatives of hers here and just to let us out at Hollywood Boulevard, that was the only name here we knew, and he did. He said, Hollywood and what, and we didn’t know what to say." Palliser put out one cigarette, lit p another, and thought, People. "But it was all so queer, sort of," said Stephanie, still sounding surprised. "Not what l we thought it’d be--not what we thought Hollywood’d be like! Just a great big city, and Woolworth’s and Penney’s and drugstores just like home, only some funnier-looking people--I mean, it wasn’t glamorous or anything at all! And we had some sandwiches at a place, but it was Sunday and no place was open, I mean we looked in the yellow pages for those model agencies like Sandra said, but they wouldn’t be open till Monday and I said where were we going to sleep. And then Sandra got talking to this man--"

  "Sunday," said Wanda. "The man who drove you here, that was over Saturday night? Do you know his name?"

  "He said to call him Jim, that’s all. Yes, ma’am, we drove all night, he bought us two sandwiches at a place on the way. And this other man Sandra got talking to, it was at this place on Hollywood Boulevard we went in to eat. I mean, I didn’t like it, but a person doesn’t know what to do," said Stephanie, blinking back sudden tears.

  "My mother doesn’t think black people are very nice at all and Daddy always says nonsense, you judge people as individuals, and at school they seem to think they’re better than us because of slavery and all that and how do you know, anyway-- But I didn’t like him! He got talking to Sandra and she told him about going to be a model and get jobs here and he said maybe he could help. He said did we have any place to stay and Sandra said not yet, and so he said we could stay at his place, his wife’d be glad to have us--I didn’t want to go, even when he said that, but Sandra said not to be silly. And he had a car, he took us to this house."

  "Did he tell you his name? What did he look like?"

  "Sure. His name was Steve Smith. I didn’t see how he might help us get jobs, because, you know, he talked--oh, real ignorant and bad grammar. But after, Sandra said maybe he was a servant to somebody real high up in the movies or something like that. Anyway, he took us to this house, but his wife wasn’t there and he said she must’ve gone someplace."

  "Did you notice the name of the street?" asked Palliser.

  She shook her head. "It wasn’t a very good neighborhood, I guess--lots of narrow little streets and awful run-down old houses. There wasn’t much furniture there, just some chairs and a TV and a couple of beds. And he went and got some hamburgers and asked would we like a couple of joints, and Sandra said sure but I knew that was marijuana and I was scared to because of what the school nurse told us last semester, so I didn’t take any but Sandra-- Oh, what he looked like. Well, he was kind of tall, as tall as you anyway," she said, looking at Palliser, "and not very black, just sort of medium, and h
e had a mustache and a funny little beard just at the end of his chin."

  "What about the car?" asked Wanda.

  "I don’t know the--the brand. It was an old car, a two-door. Blue, I guess. Anyway, Sandra got to talking real silly and I was scared then but I didn’t know what to do, I just went in the bedroom and shut the door. I guess I went to sleep. And all next day he was gone someplace and we mostly watched TV. There were Cokes and a lot of stuff to eat there, only by then I--just--wanted--to--go home!" said Stephanie. "And he came back that night and said he’d been talking to somebody he knew about jobs for us, and so Sandra said wait and see. But the next night when he came, he got to talking sort of, you know, dirty, and tried to fool around with Sandra and I got more scared and I ran out the back door without my suitcase or anything, and I just about died till it got light--only I didn’t know where I was or what to do--I had my wallet in my pocket, I still had about four dollars and some change, and pretty soon I found that big public library, I felt sort of safe there and it was warm, but it closed at six and I just sort of walked on and I wanted to go home just the worst way, and so when I found that big railroad station I knew what to do. There were public phones and I got the operator and said to reverse the charges, and called home, and Daddy swore at me the minute he heard my voice, I guess he’d been awful scared about me. But I bet he couldn’t have been as scared as I was."

  And with reason, thought Palliser. Kids! If she was immature for her age--unlike the other one--still it was a funny age, a mixture of emotion and ignorance. She’d been lucky to be scared enough to run. "It was Tuesday night when you left Sandra there, wherever it was?" That fitted in; the state of the body yesterday morning, she had probably been killed Tuesday night.

  "Yes, sir."

  "Do you think you could recognize the house where he took you? Did you notice any street names when you ran away?"

  She shook her head. "It was dark. Oh, I remember one, Flower Street, just before I came to the library."