by Dell Shannon
"A lot of things are these days. Could you tell me what he looked like?"
"My gosh, no! He had a ski mask on, covered his face, and a cap--I couldn’t say anything except he was big, about six feet. He got all the cash, about sixty bucks."
So there wasn’t much to do about that but write a report.
* * *
When Mendoza came into the kitchen Alison was sitting at the table, hiccuping over coffee. The cats were weaving around her feet, and in the backyard the twins were galloping around with Cedric and Mrs. MacTaggart in pursuit.
"Children!" said Alison with loathing. "Hic! Those little devils know they have to get ready for--hic!--the school bus, why they have to make so much trouble for M--oh, damn!" She leaped up and fled for the bathroom, and the cats dispersed in all directions, El Señor spitting furiously.
Mrs. MacTaggart came in, herding the twins before her breathlessly, and he said, "You don’t think there’s anything wrong, Máiri? I know what the doctor said, but--"
"Ach, doctors!" said Máiri. "She’ll be fine in a bit, it’s just she didn’t expect it, having it easy the first time. That bus will be here any minute and these two heathens not washed--there’s coffee on the stove-"
"I’ll get breakfast out, Máiri." He dodged Cedric slurping from his bowl on the back porch. He backed out the Ferrari, but didn’t head downtown. It was nine-fifty when he walked into the office of Captain Noble of Harbor division and asked, "What about it?"
Noble was a hardbitten middle-aged man, big and stolid. "Well, I’ve got him here for you," he said. "When you called last night I checked with the Shore Patrol and found he was aboard all right. We picked him up this morning, about an hour ago, after a little argument with the chief petty officer. What do you want him for, Mendoza?"
"I don’t know that I want him for anything," said Mendoza. "It’s just a little hunch. And when I checked with the Navy and found the ship was still in port, I thought I’d better talk to him while I could."
Noble shrugged. "He’s in an interrogation room down the hall. Ready to chew nails and talking about his rights as a citizen."
"Lead me to him."
When he went into the little room and shut the door behind him, Ted Nygard swung around belligerently. "Who the hell are you and what the hell’s this all about?" He was about twenty, a good-looking youngster with crew-cut blond hair and a pink and white complexion, trim in his blue uniform. "What is all this, anyway? Police--"
"Lieutenant Mendoza, Robbery-Homicide. Sit down, Mr. Nygard. I’ve just got a few questions for you." Mendoza laid down his hat, got out a cigarette and contemplated him consideringly. "You were on leave about a week, ten days ago. You went to stay with your uncle--or great-uncle--Mr. McAllister, up in L.A."
Nygard flushed, to betray his youth. "My mother asked me to go see them," he muttered. "I was only there a couple of days. Why?"
"You got into a hot poker game while you were there, at a little neighborhood bar."
"You’re Goddamned right I did!" said Nygard.
"Bunch of silly old bastards like Uncle Sam, I thought, and it turned out, I guess I was the sap--they cleaned me out! Not Uncle, he dropped some too, but this one guy was stacking the deck, I could swear. He walked away with a wad, mostly mine." He looked at Mendoza more warily.
"But so what, what’s your business with me? Did you say--"
"The poker session, Mr. Nygard. Was this fellow’s name Buford? And you thought he was ringing in a cold deck? Naturally you were annoyed." Mendoza was filling in gaps, and it was easy to do. "You went home with your uncle that Tuesday night, and he was tired and went right to bed--but you were still missing your money. You went out again and found Buford’s place--mmh, yes, I could guess. You knew his name, and that he lived in the neighborhood--he’d be in the book. Yes, it’s one thing to lose money legitimately, but when you thought he was a sharp--"
"Hell!" said Nygard, flushing deeply. "Did he lay some kind of charge? I wouldn’t think he had the nerve! All I wanted was my money back. Yeah, I found the place, the door was open and I went in and he was sound asleep in front of the TV. If you know so damned much--"
"But he woke up when you started to search him for the money," said Mendoza, "and you had a little scuffle."
"Well, damn it, I didn’t want to hurt him," said Nygard, "he was a lot older than me, but I wasn’t going to let him get away with that loot, and I told him so. Did he lay a charge on me? Damn it--"
"No," said Mendoza, "but I’m afraid we’re going to. He’s dead, Mr. Nygard. We won’t be calling it Murder One, but he got knocked down and cracked his skull and died of it."
Nygard lost all his pink freshness; he stared at Mendoza in dismay, incredulity. "Oh, no," he said, "I just gave him a little push--I didn’t even hit him--I thought he’d knocked himself out and I just--oh, my God! I never meant a thing like that--my God!"
* * *
Mendoza got back to the office just after lunch, and met Duke coming in. Hackett was alone in the sergeants’ office, laboring over a report. Mendoza told him about Nygard: Harbor division would send him up to be booked Q in, and there’d be the statements to get, the warrant to be applied for. It was Higgins’ day off, and everybody else was out on something.
"And what have you got?" he asked Duke, sitting down at his desk and reaching for the flame-thrower. "The first report on these Freemans." Duke spread out glossy 8 by 10’s. "The autopsies’ll give you more, but provisionally we think they were attacked by at least two men. They don’t seem to have made much effort to defend . themselves, as if they’d been taken by surprise, both struck down at once maybe. I don’t think they had a chance.
There was the usual mess, and not much there to get--it was raining, and there were some muddy footprints on the hall carpet, but not distinct enough to make anything of." The photographs were just as usual too, not very pretty. "But you called our attention to the phone book, and we took a little trouble there--lifted a very nice set of 1atents."
Duke sounded smug. "All four lingers, for a wonder. They’ve just gone down to R. and I., if we’ve got him on file we’ll know who one of them is anyway."
"Bueno," said Mendoza. "You’ll let us know. Where is everybody, Art?"
"Out. John and Rich got some kind of lead on Ames, and nobody’d done much on that addict who turned up dead, Peralta. Nick had an inquest to cover."
"The Olson girl. That was muy extraño," said Mendoza, and Sergeant Lake buzzed and said the D.A.’s office wanted him. It was one of the juniors, and he wanted to talk about Joey. They didn’t feel it was a case to prosecute formally, and to save time and money a reduced charge would probably be brought. The D.A. would be interested in Robbery-Homicide’s opinion about that; it would really be easier all round if they simply put him away as incorrigible, in which case--
"In which case," said Mendoza sharply, "he’ll be automatically released when he turns into a legal adult, with no charge on his record. I wouldn’t go along with that at all. He’s exhibited a good deal of violence, and very likely the minute he’s turned loose he’d continue to do so."
Well, the D.A.’s office felt it wasn’t worthwhile to do anything else. They had quite a case-load here, as Mendoza knew.
"¡Qué demonios!" said Mendoza to Hackett. "What do you bet that kid will be out and roaming around with a knife again before he turns eighteen? The trouble we go to, and then the damned lawyers--I swear I’m going to get out of this rat race! And somebody’s got to get those statements on Buford, Art."
"I’m going, I’m going," said Hackett hastily. As he went out, Mendoza had opened the top drawer and brought out the deck of cards.
* * *
"Tom Sawyer," said Fred Mallow blankly. "Outside of the book, I never heard of one." He looked at Palliser and Conway. "But I said I didn’t know everybody in that night."
"Well, we can try to narrow it down some," said Conway. "You knew most of the people by sight if not name, no? O.K., between us Sergeant Pall
iser and I have seen all the rest of them, except this bird who gave us the phony name and address. So let’s start from scratch--"
Mallow yawned again, looking puzzled. "I don’t see--oh, I get you. Maybe we could at that. You figure it was this guy, whoever he is, stabbed Ames? I still don’t see how anybody did." They had waked him up again, but he was ready to be cooperative.
"A1l right, the ones you know by name and looks first." Palliser handed him the list. Mallow checked it off obediently: four people, three men and the girl, Edna Willis. "You didn’t know the man with her, but we do, A having talked to him--Michael Jarvis. Who was there you knew by sight and not name?"
"Jesus, I’d have to think back--lessee, there’s a guy about forty, sandy hair, thin, comes in two-three times a week, wears sports clothes usually. Usually in about nine."
Palliser looked at Conway, who said promptly, "That’d be Adrian Forbes. He lives at the hotel around the corner."
"And there was a guy in work clothes, young, long hair dirty blond, about six feet. He’s been in before, not regular but I recognized him."
"Ralph Ensler," said Palliser. "He drives a Times delivery route. I talked to him."
"That’s it," said Mallow, looking at the list. "These others, I don’t know the names. Toombs, this Sawyer--Pace and Woods. But, say, where’s--"
"Forget about everybody else but Sawyer. The others are O.K., we’ve talked to them. Now, the big question is, what does Sawyer look like? This is a secondhand description, Mr. Mallow, and you may not place it even if you’d seen him before." Considering all they knew now about Don Ames’ reputation, it seemed hardly conceivable that anyone had had a grudge on him, deliberately sought him out; but you never knew. "You remember it was our night watch came out on it. We’ve talked with the two officers and tried to get anything they remembered about the witnesses." It had been a roundabout way to do it: the witnesses had been just strange faces to Piggott and Shogart, but on the other hand they were trained to notice faces. And it could be that this shy witness had defeated his own purpose with the false name, because it had caught Piggott’s attention as he took it down, and remembered more about the man.
"Well, shoot," said Mallow obligingly. "I’ll see what he sounds like."
"The best we can get, he was on the young side, between twenty and thirty, medium height, stocky, with light hair going thin, and glasses," said Palliser. "He might have been wearing a tan jumpsuit."
Mallow stared. "Why, that’s Georgie," he said. "I just now noticed on this list, Georgie’s name isn’t here and he was there that night. I saw him talking to the officers when they were taking names. You don’t mean it was Georgie who-"
"We don’t know. Maybe he was just shy of giving police his name for some reason," said Conway, his gray eyes hooded. "Georgie who?"
"George Little, he works at the Shell station kitty-corner from the restaurant. But Georgie wouldn’t do a thing like that! I don’t know him except as a customer, but he seems a very decent guy." Mallow was troubled. "I can’t make out why he should give a wrong name."
"Well, we’ll hope to find out. Thanks very much, Mr. Mallow."
They weren’t feeling certain that this was going to provide an answer. People did foolish, impulsive things for all kinds of reasons and no reason: it was just a lead that had to be followed up. As they left the apartment building where Mallow lived, Palliser buttoned his coat and said, "I don’t know when we’ve had so much rain in January.”
"Probably mean an extra-hot summer," said Conway. They were using his Buick. They made the eight blocks to the little chain restaurant quickly, in the middle of the day, and Conway slid into the left-turn lane, crossed and pulled into the Shell station.
A young kid came up, long hair falling over his eyes, and said indolently, "Yuh?"
"Is George Little here?"
"That’s him over there." The kid jerked his head at a broad back bent over the raised hood of a car away from the pumps.
"O.K." Conway pulled to the side of the apron and they both got out. "Mr. Little?"
The man straightened and turned. "That’s me," he said; and then he saw the badge in Palliser’s hand and stood very still. "Cops."
"That’s right. Is there somewhere where we can talk to you? The station--"
"Sure," said Little dully. He was mechanically wiping his hands on a rag, over and over. "Sure." He tossed the rag away and turned to the little glass--fronted station; they followed him in. "I bet I know how you found me," he said. "It was a damn fool thing to do, give you guys a wrong name. Fred Mallow knew I was there." And of course one small annoying thing about it was that they needn’t have gone the long way round; if they’d shown the list to Mallow he’d have told them right away who wasn’t on it and should have been.
"That’s right. Why did you do it?" asked Palliser. Little sat down on the edge of the desk. "Because I was scared," he said in a low voice. "I didn’t believe it, when Mallow went over and said he was dead. I just didn’t believe it. But then when the squad car came--and they said we all had to stay for the detectives--I was scared. I just wanted to get away." He raised his eyes briefly.
"Why?” asked Conway.
"Ah, you know why." He was silent, and they gave him time; he made several false starts at it, ran oily fingers over his thinning hair, and finally said, "The whole thing don’t make any sense at all. I don’t know why it happened. Yes, I do, but it was--it wasn’t--I don’t know. See, there’s this girl. She goes out with me sometimes. I--that night, I wanted to call her, but not from the station, I--the boss--he don’t mean anything but he likes to kid people. I went over to the restaurant on my break." He was talking expressionlessly, head down, as if under a compulsion to explain just how senseless it had been. "There’s a public phone just outside the rest rooms, down that little hall the other side from the counter. I’d just got up to it when I found out I didn’t have any change, and this guy came up just then, this Ames--I didn’t know his name, I’d seen him there before. And I asked him for change for a dollar, and he gave it to me and went into the rest room. So I called Dorothy--I still had the rest of the change in my hand--only she wasn’t home, her sister said she was out with somebody. And I was, I guess, so mad and kind of upset about it, I just stood there, and then I looked at the change in my hand and it was only eighty cents, he’d short--changed me a dime. And then he came out and I told him so, and he said he hadn’t, and I was still mad, I put the change in my pocket and there was my knife----" He brought it out slowly and showed it, an only slightly oversized pocketknife with a white handle. "It’s a gadget," he said, and pressed a catch on the top to fold and unfold the blades, one long and one short, very thin and pointed. "I did it before I knew I would, just like a little kid--I--I--just wanted to hurt somebody," he said. "And I never thought I’d really hurt him--I called him a name and he looked kind of surprised and then just went by me, and after a minute I came out and sat at the counter and had some coffee. And then--over in that booth-- And Mallow said he was dead! I swear to God, I thought he’d had a heart attack, it couldn’t’ve been what I-- And then that one big plainclothes cop said he’d been stabbed. I couldn’t believe it." He raised his head. "You’ll arrest me now, I guess."
"That’s right, Mr. Little. We’ll want to get all this down in a formal statement."
"Me, killing somebody. I still can’t believe it," said Little. "All right, I know you got to. I better call the boss
to come in. That snotnosed kid can’t fill a tank without falling over his own feet."
* * *
What with one thing and another, not much had been done about Rodrigo Peralta, the addict found knifed on Monday night. Landers had started out to do some legwork on it, had talked to Walter Pepple and failed to find the other two tenants at home. They had turned up a record for Peralta, a petty pedigree of narco possession and B. and E., and that had given them the address of a relative, an uncle, Rubio Gonsalves. Glasser hadn’t found him yesterday, so now Landers
tried the address again, down on Santa Barbara, and found him home. He was sitting in his single room, clad in underwear and slacks, reading a Spanish-language newspaper. He listened to Landers impassively and said, "The boy is dead? Let God judge him. He was nothing to me any more."
"You don’t know who any of his friends were?"
"No sé. Nor I did not care. He had chosen his own road." He shrugged massively and picked up his paper again.
It didn’t seem to be the best moment to tell him that the coroner’s office would come down on him to pay for the funeral. Landers went downstairs again, into the dirty, dingy city street where refuse blew down the sidewalks and collected in the gutter, to where he’d left the Corvair down the block. It had begun to rain again, rather hard. He got into the car, and the engine was dead, wouldn’t even try to turn over. Landers said a few things, got out and looked under the hood, decided it was hopeless to do anything in the rain. He found a public phone, called the auto club and huddled in the overhang of a building for thirty minutes until the tow truck came.
The driver had a look at the Corvair’s innards, slammed the hood and said, "She’ll have to go in, mister. She’s about had it. Good little car, but a car’s only good for so many miles, you know. You need practically everything new. Oh, sure, a garage can fix her up, but it’ll only be a question of time before she goes out again."
Landers said a few more things. "Well, tow it in to the agency," he said. "I’ll talk to them about it."
He called a cab and got back to the office in the middle of the afternoon.
* * *
Hackett had just got back to the office at five o’clock, after getting the formal statement from Nygard and starting the machinery on the warrant. It was pouring rain outside, and he was wet. He found Landers blowing off steam about his car to Glasser, who said they’d all been telling him to trade that thing in for a year.