Streets of Death - Dell Shannon

by Dell Shannon

  "Here is the key. You will know the address. I ask only that you return it before I must go home, I have no other. There are no secrets there, you may look as you please."

  "Thanks so much," said Mendoza. She marched out again, her shoulders squared. "Saint Nicholas to the defense of accused womanhood! We don’t need Carey to point out obvious facts. Who had a motive to be rid of him?"

  "You’re only inferring that, as the cheap Goddamned cynics you both are," said Galeano hotly. "For all we know, she was still mad in love with him--"

  "Ha-ha," said Conway. "And you’ve been on the force how long?"

  "Peace, niños," said Mendoza. "Since the lady handed over the key so obligingly, I’ll believe her that far, there aren’t any secrets there. But I’d like to see the wheelchair, and the general terrain. Come on."

  He and Conway went on discussing it on the way over there in the Ferrari, while Galeano sat in silence in the little jump seat behind. For the first time he realized that this job held a built-in hazard, just as she’d said: too many cops, from too much experience, automatically expected the lies, the hypocrisy, the guilt. Conway was a cynic from the word go, but Galeano would have expected more insight from the boss. That girl was so shiningly honest--and when you thought what she’d been through-- And then to have all the cops come poking around suspecting her, Dio, it was a wonder she’d been as polite as she had.

  But just what, inquired the remnant of his common sense, had happened to Edwin Fleming? It was raining again. (Just why had she minded that question about her shopping trip?) The narrow old streets down from Wilshire were dispirited and drably gray in the drizzle. The six-family apartment, when they went into it, was silent as the grave. Everybody here out at work, except the bibulous Mr. Offerdahl. There was a tiny square lobby with a single row of locked mailboxes. They climbed uncarpeted stairs, steep and slanted old stairs--no, a man in a wheelchair couldn’t have come down here, and if he had somehow crawled down, where had he gone from there?--to the second of three floors. There were two doors opposite each other in a short hall. Galeano remembered Mrs. Del Sardo across the hall, who had seen Fleming that morning as Marta said good-bye to him.

  Mendoza fitted the key in the lock and opened the door.

  It was a small, old, inconvenient apartment: what she could afford. But it was all as shiningly clean as the restaurant where she worked, furniture polished, stove and kitchen counter-top immaculate; that was a German girl for you, thought Galeano. There was the wheelchair, pushed to one side of the little living room, a steel and gray-green canvas affair. A few pieces of solid dark furniture, probably chosen with care at secondhand stores, possibly several pieces bought before his accident, when he was still earning and they were planning a home of their own. Just the one bedroom, sparsely furnished: a small square bathroom, a minimum of cosmetics in the medicine cabinet. She had wonderful skin, milk-white, evidently didn’t use much on it.

  "There is," said Mendoza, "only one little thing in my mind, boys." He looked out the rear window in the bedroom. "Yes, even as Carey said--who was to see anything there was to see?" This was a square building on a short lot. There was a single driveway to a row of six connected single garages across the back; and on the lot behind a building had recently been torn down. The old house across from the driveway was vacant, with a FOR RENT sign in front of it. "Just one thing," said Mendoza. "When did she have time?"

  "Time for what?" said Conway. "She took care to have an alibi. We said--"

  "Time to acquire the boyfriend. She’s working eight hours a day, and Edwin must have taken up some more. On the other hand, there is Rappaport. Quite a handsome fellow. Right at the restaurant."

  "Oh, for God’s sake," said Galeano.

  "And then again, a restaurant. Sometimes these things don’t take all that long. Quite probably there are regular customers. And she could be out shopping on Sunday, on her afternoon break, without the neighbors noticing--there is that. But how in hell to locate him, if it isn’t Rappaport--there won’t be any letters--"

  "Woolgathering!" said Galeano. "And you’re supposed to be such a hot detective! If you can’t see that that girl is honest as day--"

  Mendoza shook his head at him. "You do surprise me, Nick. Let’s see if Mr. Offerdahl is home." Carey had said he was down the hall; actually Offerdahl lived on the next floor. They climbed more steep stairs, knocked. There were fumbling sounds beyond the door; presently it opened and Offerdahl gazed blearily out at them.

  He was the wreck of a once big man: still tall and broad-shouldered, but cadaverously thin, a few wisps of white hair on a round skull, his skin gray and flabby. He was not quite falling-down drunk, and a rich aroma of Scotch enfolded him.

  "About Mr. Fleming," said Mendoza conversationally.

  Offerdahl blinked. "You used to go see Mr. Fleming? The fellow in the wheelchair? Take him a little drink now and then to cheer him up?"

  "Tha’s right," said Offerdahl after a dragging moment. "Poor fella. Poor fella. Jus’ young fella. Para-paraparalyzed."

  "Did you see him a week ago last Friday?"

  "Oh, don’t be silly," muttered Galeano. "He doesn’t know March from December."

  "Haven’t you found the poor fella yet?" asked Offerdahl. "Strange. ’S very strange. Poor, poor fella." He leaned on the door jamb looking thoughtful, and suddenly added, "Good-bye," and shut the door.

  "And what you think that was worth," said Galeano sourly, "I don’t damn well know."

  "Neither do I," said Mendoza. "Here--you take the key back to her, amigo. And for God’s sake preserve your common sense."

  Cunningly, Galeano waited until just before two o’c1ock to take the key back, and offered to drive Mrs. Fleming home through the rain. She thanked him formally, and emerged in a practical hooded gray coat over a subdued navy dress.

  "I am sorry if I have offended your chief," she said in the car. "But it is so silly to ask the questions over and over."

  Her profile was enchanting, with its little tilted nose and the wisp of tawny hair under the hood. Galeano nearly ran a light. "Wel1, we have certain routines to go through," he said. "Look, nobody suspects you, Mrs. Fleming. I mean, we can see you’ve had a bad time. What with everything."

  She was silent. When he stopped in front of the apartment, went round and opened the door, she said, "Thank you--you are kind. I am sorry, your name--"

  "Galeano. Nick Galeano."

  "Mr. Galeano. Thank you." She ran into the apartment quickly and he stared after her, for a moment forgetting to put on his hat.

  * * *

  By five o’clock Stephanie had pored over a lot of mug-shots, and pointed out three though her responses were laced with doubt. "I mean, all of these look something like him. Not just exactly, but they could be."

  Wanda shepherded her back to the Peacocks at the Holiday Inn. If this came to court, she’d be asked to identify X positively; as it was, Palliser and Glasser looked at the possibles she’d picked out with mixed feelings as well. Steven Edward Smith: pedigree of B. and E. Richard Lamont: indecent exposure, assault with intent. Earl Rank: rape, B. and E.

  "Two possibles, by their records," said Glasser. But the addresses were nowhere near downtown L.A., and they were fairly recent addresses; Lamont was just out of jail. "People move around," said Palliser. "We can have a look at them, Henry."

  FOUR

  AFTER A COUPLE of quiet shifts, the night watch was busy. They had E. M. Shogart back, that stolid plodder who’d put in twenty years in the old Robbery office before it got merged with Homicide, and was still a little unreconciled to the change. He would be up for retirement next year if he wanted to take it, and probably would.

  A rather bored Schenke was listening to Piggott talk about his tropical fish, an unlikely hobby which had seized him a while ago, when they got the first call, to a heist up on Seventh. Early, but time meant nothing to the punks. They both went out on it.

  It was, expectably, a liquor store, and the owner had be
en there alone, just about to close. "I got this place up for sale," he told them, "and not before it’s time. I been heisted four times the last nine months."

  "Can you give us any description of him?" asked Schenke.

  "Description? I could draw you a picture." The owner was a little fat man about sixty, named Wensink. "Talk about adding insult to injury, they not only walked off with the cash from the register, about a hundred and forty, they loaded up a station wagon with a thousand bucks’ retail of my best stuff! There was three of them. One with the gun. The one I saw best was that one. A guy maybe forty, medium-size, not much hair and he had one walleye. And what looked like a forty-five. All business, he was. The other two were younger, one with a mustache, the long hair."

  "Well, that’s a switch," said Schenke. "Taking the stock. A station wagon? You got a look at it?"

  "I sure did," said Wensink. "They parked right in front, come in just at closing time. Anybody noticed them carrying stuff out, I suppose thought they were just customers. I didn’t get a look at the license plate but it was a Ford nine-passenger wagon, white over brown, about five years old."

  He thought the one with the gun might have touched the register, so they called out a man from S.I.D. to dust for prints. Wensink said he’d recognize a mug-shot and would come in tomorrow to look.

  When they got back to the office, Shogart had gone out on another call; also a heist, he reported when he came in. An all-night movie-house on Fourth, and the girl in the ticket box was a nitwit, couldn’t say anything except that he’d had a gun. "I wouldn’t even take a bet on that. And God knows they deserve to lose some of their ill-gotten gains, it’s a porno house."

  "Amen to that," said Piggott, "but two wrongs, E. M.--" He was interrupted by the phone, and the Traffic man on the other end said he and his partner had just come across a body.

  Schenke went out to look at it while Piggott typed up a report on the liquor-store heist. It didn’t, said Schenke when he came back, look like any mysterious homicide to occupy the day watch: an old bum dead in a doorway over on Skid Row; but a report had to be written, an I.D. made if possible.

  Piggott had just finished the first report and Schenke was swearing at the typewriter when the phone buzzed and Piggott picked it up. "Robbery-Homicide, Detective Piggott."

  There was silence at the other end, and then a cautious male voice said, "You guys picked up Bobby Chard, you got him in your morgue. You read it he got took off by accident like. You better look again."

  Piggott didn’t ask who was calling. "Is that so? Why?"

  "There was reasons." The phone clicked and was dead.

  "Chard," said Piggott to himself. The one Traffic had thought was a hit-run. Well, maybe they’d better look three times instead of twice. Or it might be a mare’s nest. He wrote a note for Higgins and left it on his desk.

  * * *

  On Friday morning, with Glasser off, Palliser roped Landers in to help out on the legwork on Sandra. The two likeliest suspects Stephanie had picked out of Records, on account of their pedigrees, were Richard Lamont and Earl Rank. Lamont’s latest address was Burbank, Rank’s Van Nuys, but as Palliser pointed out, people did move. They went looking.

  Landers found Lamont after three tries. Lamont’s sister in Burbank thought he might be staying with a pal in Hollywood; the pal said Dick was living with a woman in the Atwater section, and there Landers ran him to ground, in one side of an old duplex, watching TV. Lamont fit Stephanie’s description, down to the little goatee, but he told Landers earnestly he was real clean. Last time he’d been in, the judge had sent him to one of those head doctors, cured him from wanting to do funny things to girls, and he’d never do a thing like that again.

  "So you can tell me where you were last Tuesday?" asked Landers.

  Lamont thought. "All day, sir? Well, I was at my job all day, it’s at McGill’s garage out Vermont, Mr. McGill’s teaching me all about engines and says I take to it good. I got to leave for the job pretty soon too, I don’t go on till noon ’cause we’re open tonight. I just come home--last Tuesday you mean, sir?--and Lilly Ann could say I was here, if that’s good enough, sir. She’s a real honest girl, never been in no trouble, we’re fixin’ to get married. She works at this upholstery place on Jefferson, you could ask and she’d say."

  Landers went on to find Lilly Ann; there was no point in hauling Lamont in to lean on him heavier until they were a lot surer. Lilly Ann sounded positive, and had a clean record. This one was up in the air.

  He came back to headquarters to find Palliser just bringing in a likelier suspect.

  Earl Rank had the kind of record which made him likely, and he hadn’t any alibi; he was living alone in a single room on Fourth, but Palliser had found him at his mother’s place on a tip from a pal at the car-wash where he worked.

  "A house down on Ceres," he told Landers. "Two-bedroom place, about what you’d expect, but it could tie in." Ceres Street was five blocks from San Pedro. "And his mother’s just got back from visiting a married daughter in ’Frisco, how about that?"

  "I like it," said Landers. "It ties in very neat. Let’s see what he has to say about it."

  They took him into an interrogation room and started asking questions. Rank was sullen and belligerent in turns, the usual attitude, and they didn’t get much out of him."Don’t you remember where you were last Tuesday, Rank?"

  "Around. Just around." He was about thirty, a pale-skinned black with a wispy little goatee, a thin mustache, secretive eyes, a hard mouth. "I didn’t do anything."

  "We’ve got a witness who says maybe you did. You picked up any juvenile females to sweet-talk lately, Earl?"

  He’d done that at least once, by his record; the parents had reneged on letting her testify, and there’d been no prosecution.

  "I never did no such thing. You can’t prove I done nothing."

  They couldn’t. It might be interesting to hear what Stephanie would say about his mother’s house on Ceres Street; but they’d have to show cause and get a court order even to take pictures, and she might not recognize pictures. It was just suggestive, no real evidence at all. "And you know, Tom," said Palliser, scratching his nose, "that girl was so scared, by her own admission, I wouldn’t like to take her description of the man or the house as gospel truth. She couldn’t be certain. You stop to think, she only saw the man three or four times--in a car at night, and at the house. She spent some time at the house, but we couldn’t get much of a description--al1 she could say was, two bedrooms, no rugs, an old refrigerator, the TV was new. She also picked this other mug-shot, Steven Smith. He’s got no sex counts, just B. and E., but I suppose there’s always a first time. But I wouldn’t bet on it."

  "They do train us to be thorough," said Landers.

  "We’d better look for him too."

  They let Rank go, at least temporarily, and went looking for Smith without any luck. He was off parole, he’d moved from the latest address in his tile, and nobody admitted to knowing where he was. There were no relatives listed for him. He could be Stephanie’s Harry, but he needn’t be.

  And Palliser said, "I tell you, Tom, I wouldn’t rely on that girl. If I felt surer she’d been sure about that description, I’d like Rank for it a lot. As it is, she picked out two other shots too. In a way, I think we’d be safer just going by the general description and looking at mug-shots ourselves."

  "You do like to do it the hard way. You talked to her," said Landers with a shrug. "So where do we go from here?"

  "We go call on Earl Rank’s mother," said Palliser. "She may be a perfectly honest woman--nothing says she isn’t, though she didn’t like it much when I brought him in--and if Earl is the X on Sandra, possibly Mrs. Rank noticed something when she came home yesterday. Things missing from the refrigerator--or that nice little greenstriped plane case he forgot to get rid of."

  "Well, we can ask," said Landers. He didn’t sound very hopeful.

  * * *

  Mendoza’s insatiable curiosity h
ad fastened on the strange case of Edwin Fleming. There wasn’t much to be done, in the way of the usual routine, on the equally strange rape-assaults or the merely brutal pretty boys, but questions could be asked about Fleming. After a desultory glance at the night report, he went out to ask some; and he’d be covering ground Carey had already been over, but then Mendoza always preferred to ask the questions personally, and he flattered himself he’d get more out of those other girls than Carey had.

  He started out at the Globe Grill, where he was resented because they were still busy with the late-breakfast trade. Rappaport wasn’t there. He used the badge without compunction, aware that Marta Fleming was watching him with smouldering eyes. The first one he talked to was Betty Loring, a black-haired buxom female of, he suspected, very medium intelligence.

  "I don’t know her very well, like I told the other cop. I mean, she’s all business, she don’t talk much to the rest of us. No, I don’t mean she’s unfriendly exactly, just quiet. What you mean, Mr. Rappaport? Oh, he’s a real gentleman, he don’t allow any funny business from customers. I worked some p1aces"--she rolled her eyes- "but he’s real strict. I don’t get why you’re asking about Marta, it’s her husband something happened to, I guess. Cops! All this fuss over him going off."

  The other one, Angela Norton, was older and brighter. She said curiously, "All you cops around, just on account of her husband. I don’t know anything about it, she’s a quiet one, but it seems funny. Didn’t he just walk out?"

  Mendoza told her about that, and she stared. "I didn’t know that, about him being paralyzed. That’s terrible. She never said a thing, and she’s worked here nearly six months. But you don’t mean you think she had anything to do with it? Honestly, she’s--she wouldn’t have--that other cop asking if she had boyfriends, that strikes me as silly, honestly--she’s so serious, all business. If you want to know, it’s my guess she’s been awful homesick. That sounds silly too, but I think she is."