Streets of Death - Dell Shannon

by Dell Shannon

  The two began arguing about where they’d been last Tuesday. They’d been living at an old hotel over in Glendale, but they didn’t know the terrain out here and got confused about directions and distances. They agreed they’d spent last Tuesday night in a bar someplace, but couldn’t say where.

  "What the hell does it matter?" said Higgins to Hackett. "We’ve got them for the Freemans anyway. These days, a heavier charge means nothing."

  * * *

  That Saturday night was a busy one for the night watch, three heists and a market clerk shot dead in one of them. There were three witnesses to that, and Piggott, Schenke and Shogart were busy until the end of shift. The witnesses came in on Sunday morning to look at mug--shots, and annoyed Galeano and Phil Landers. As witnesses sometimes were, they were confused by the very number of photographs to look at.

  "I just couldn’t say," said Akiko Tomito. "It all happened so fast--that looks like him, but so does this one, some--no, I guess this one here’s more like, only his face was fatter--"

  "Oh, dear me, I wouldn’t like to say definitely," said Mrs. Marilyn Vail brightly. "If he’d had dark hair instead of light, he’d look a lot like this man--but then he didn’t, so I guess it wasn’t. On the other hand--"

  "Nobody could say, just look at a picture," said Gus Severson with a growl. "Some pictures look like the people and some don’t. I told you what he looked like. Couldn’t say just from a picture."

  Galeano suppressed any retort and thanked them for trying. "Description!" he said to Phil when they’d trooped out. "What the hell did they give the night watch? Six feet, five-ten, five-nine, medium, light, sandy, brown, sort of thin, kind of stocky, blue pants, black slacks, tan coat, white coat. I ask you."

  Phil laughed. "The civilians aren’t trained to notice things."

  They’d be reduced to doing that the hard way, looking for men with the right pedigrees who lit the general description. And before they got down to it, they had a new homicide--a middle-aged man, Harry Schultz, a bookkeeper at a brokerage, stabbed to death as he walked up the drive to his own back door from the garage, just after dark. It was cold and misty, threatening to rain again, and nobody had been looking out windows or had doors open; even though it was a crowded neighborhood, houses on forty-foot lots, there were no witnesses and no leads. His wife said he might have had fifteen or twenty dollars on him.

  "Round and round the mulberry bush," said Piggott, typing the initial report. "Just like ancient Rome, E. M. The weakened moral fiber, relaxation of standards, all the easy welfare, bread and circuses--and the pornography and you get all the senseless violence, the killings done for peanuts, the killers given a slap on the wrist and let go to do it again. Makes you wonder where it’ll all end, doesn’t it?" He got no reply and looked up from the typewriter. Shogart had his feet propped up in Landers’ desk chair and his head had fallen forward at an angle. He emitted a small snore. Shogart, up for retirement next year, had ceased a long time ago to get involved with the crime he was paid to look at.

  Piggott sighed and went back to the report. "Sodom and Gomorrah," he muttered to himself. Talk about making bricks without straw--

  * * *

  On Monday morning, in a threatening gray mist, Palliser tried all the book’s suggestions on Trina again, without much noticeable success. When it started to rain he came in, and Trina shook her wet self all over Roberta’s clean kitchen floor. "You know, John," said Roberta, "I’ve had a look at that book too, and it says a few minutes every day, morning and afternoon. You can’t expect to try once a week and get anywhere."

  "Damn it, I’m busy all day and tired when I get home," said Palliser. "Even if I could get her to one of these c1asses--"

  "Well, you’re not accomplishing anything this way. I wonder how much it might cost to have a professional trainer do it?"

  "Too much, if I know anything about prices these days. Yes, she’s a very nice dog," said Palliser, sitting down and looking at the scratches on his shoes where Trina had been pretending to be a teething puppy again, "but why in hell did it have to be me who went out on that freeway accident? Just because I rescued Madge Borman’s champion hound, so she has to give us one of his pups in a burst of gratitude--"

  "Who I’m very glad to have around, she’s a good watchdog. I’m home most of the day, you let me have a try at it."

  "All I can do is wish you luck, Robin."

  * * *

  Hackett, Galeano and Higgins had gone out on the anonymous Schultz thing. Glasser and Conway were looking for possibles on the heist jobs, and Wanda was typing a report across the hall, when Jason Grace wandered into Mendoza’s office on Monday just as Sergeant Lake put through a call.

  "What’s on your mind, Jase? Just a minute. Robbery-Homicide, Lieutenant Mendoza."

  "Sergeant Richards up here in Santa Barbara," said a heavy male voice. "You’ve got an A.P.B. out on a Mr.

  and Mrs. King, sixty-three Ford sedan, plate AGN-740. We just picked them up."

  "Thank you so much," said Mendoza. "We think they may be connected to a homicide here."

  "Well, you’ll have ’em on possession anyway," said Richards. "There was about a pound of marijuana in the car. Which is wrecked, by the way, they tried to run when the squad spotted them and King had a little load on and piled it up in a ditch. Do you want somebody to ferry ’em down there'?"

  "Well, we are a little busy," said Mendoza. "It’d be a nice gesture, thanks."

  "Glad to oblige. I don’t mind a little drive down the coast. Be with you sometime this afternoon," said Richards, and hung up.

  Mendoza passed that on to Grace. He’d been sitting here practicing stacking the deck, and looked, as Grace told him, like an old-style riverboat cardsharp, hair over one eye where he’d run fingers through it, cigarette in mouth corner. "I’ve been brooding over Fleming, Jase. What have you got?"

  "Just a little idea." Grace sat down and lit a cigarette. "This Mrs. Hopper. As George said, really not much M.O. about it, and Benoy and Allesandro denied it. The daughter told us her credit cards were gone, so I got on to the companies. Daughter also told me"--he grinned at Mendoza--"and don’t say there’s nothing to this race business, she’d never have come out with it to Art or you or George--that she’s got a sister. Very unsatisfactory sister--they’re all ashamed of her--lived around with this man and that, couple of illegitimate kids, on the welfare. Carla said Isabel had stolen things from Mother before, and it could be she’d helped herself to the cards, it mightn’t have been the murderer."

  "Interesante."

  "I thought so. When I talked to the BankAmericard people--I didn’t get any satisfaction on Saturday, of course--I just now heard that Mrs. Hopper had reported it herself, last Tuesday, and put a stop on any charges. Which looked possibly suggestive. I talked to Carla again and she told me her mother had put up with a lot from Isabel. Every time, Isabel all remorseful, never do it again, but she always did. And Mother wasn’t playing any more."

  "Are you heading where I think you are?"

  "That’s just where. Just for fun I looked in Records, and there’s Isabel Hopper big as life. Soliciting, prostitution, possession, petty theft, and she’s been tied up with a couple of mean characters. Maybe she still is, or could find one when she needed one."

  "Probably," said Mendoza, his eyes on the cards. "And if Mother phoned her and said she knew who’d snitched her credit cards and this time she was going to prosecute--Dios, Jase, I have had it too, with these brainless brutes who hit first and think later! But that hangs together. Have you located her yet?"

  "She’s not where she was the last time she was picked up, but the welfare board will know where she is. I’m just waiting for somebody to come in to go with me, in case she’s got one of the mean characters sharing quarters with her. I don’t want to end up as a statistic in our files.”

  Mendoza laughed. "I won’t volunteer. It’s started to rain again. She’s all yours, Jase."

  * * *

  Hackett
had come in by the time Richards got there with the Kings. He shook hands around, said, "Glad to oblige. You’ve got quite a place here, haven’t you?" He eyed Hackett interestedly, one big man to another. "If you don’t want this pair, we do."

  "Maybe you’d better hang around until we find out."

  Mendoza looked at the Kings, who were huddled together on the bench beside the switchboard. "Tom in, Art? He’s the one decided we were interested." Hackett went to see, and came back with Landers. They shepherded the Kings down the hall to an interrogation room while Mendoza offered to show Richards around.

  The Kings looked like birds of a feather. They were in the early twenties, both with the long hair, both slightly scruffy and unkempt. Gerald King was short and sandy, with the red-rimmed eyes and persistent cough of the user; Nita was short and inclined to be too fat. They sat behind the little table and looked at the police fearfully, sullenly, defiantly.

  "About Rodrigo Peralta," said Landers. "We’ve heard several people say you were going to see him that night, a week ago tonight. What about it, did you?"

  They didn’t look at each other, and neither said anything. "Come on, did you'?" repeated Landers.

  "No," said the girl. "No, we didn’t see Roddy that night, not for a long time."

  "Then why did you pack up and run away?"

  "We wasn’t running anywhere," said King. "We just went off on a trip."

  "With Roddy’s supply of marijuana?" said Hackett. "It wasn’t his, it was mine."

  "Where’d you get it?" asked Landers.

  "None of your damn business, pig."

  It went on like that for quite a while, and Hackett and Landers were thinking it was a waste of time, until Landers happened to mention that one of their informants from the disco was Leona Petty. Nita turned on her husband and said, "I told you to lay off that bitch! You hanging around her again that night, sweet-talking hey just because I danced a couple times with Rusty--"

  "Couple times! You were with him half the afternoon," said King, "and I’ll talk to who I damn please, and you can--"

  "And you had to tell her we was going to see Roddy, ask for the grass, so naturally she spills it to the damn pigs and they--"

  "Well, Jesus’ sake, how’d I know what was going to happen when we got there, damn it? I never meant to kill anybody, did I? But--oh," said King. "Oh." He looked at Hackett and Landers. "Oh, hell."

  "So why did you'?" asked Landers.

  "Him!" she said with an angry sob. "The big man! Roddy askin’ too much bread, and he has to think, pull the knife and scare him, only Roddy tried to grab it--"

  "Let’s go book them in, Tom." In the corridor outside Hackett added, "I see just what George means. It’s a wonder we retain any brains at all, associating with these--these so-called homo sapiens. I swear my five-year-o1d’s got better sense!"

  * * *

  It stopped raining on Tuesday, but only momentarily, and on Wednesday the weather bureau made the front page: the most rain in one continual fall since 1877, but clearing promised for tomorrow and no more to come. Everybody made satiric remarks about that: wait and see. Grace hadn’t found Isabel Hopper yet; she hadn’t been home since Monday, and the neighbor left to baby-sit the kids hadn’t an idea where she was.

  Higgins was off, and the rest of them wandering around looking for the possibles on the heist jobs. Hackett had come back briefly just as they had a call from Traffic to a new body. Swearing, he went out on that, passing Galeano on his way. It had somehow got to be two-thirty. "Look," said Galeano, "we’ll never get anywhere on this Schultz thing. Rich and I have been out on it, and there’s nothing. Naturally S.I.D. didn’t pick up anything at the scene, it was wet as hell. I vote we stick it in Pending now."

  "Save time," murmured Mendoza, and Sergeant Lake looked in.

  "You’ve got a visitor, Nick."

  Galeano turned, and she came in uninvited, a little breathless, looking somehow different, more alive--Marta Fleming. She had thrown the hood back from her thick waving tawny hair, and under the coat she was wearing her waitress’s uniform from the Globe Grill. She looked hopeful, uncertain, excited.

  Mendoza stood up and said, "Mrs. Fleming."

  "Marta--what is it?"

  "I had to come at once," she said to Galeano. "At once when I read it--I could not believe it, but it is! It is! And, oh, if it should tell us--if he could tell us--what happened, where he is! That has been the nightmare, not to know. But I knew you must hear at once, I do not even change from my uniform, I must bring it--"

  "Hey now, slow down," said Galeano. "Bring what?"

  With shaking hands she set down her handbag on Mendoza’s desk, a big worn brown leather bag, and unfastened the straps. She took out of it a fat envelope with two big green foreign stamps on it, the writing square, foreign-looking. She took the letter out, held it. "You do not read German? No--then I must tell you, explain what--how it is. I told you"----she was talking to Galeano--"how that day I remembered my letter to Elisa. How I came home to fetch it, to post it, and I was in such a hurry because of getting to the shops--so I fold up the letter and put it in the envelope and I rush off to post it."

  "Yes. Take it easy, now. All right."

  "Well! I told you also, we cannot afford to send letters by air, it is so expensive, even if it takes so long by sea--three weeks and more sometimes. But today--half an hour ago--I came home, and there is mail, and this letter by air mail from Elisa. She and Mama were so surprised--I had said nothing of all this, somehow I could not bring myself--I kept thinking, we should find out what happened and then I can tell them, he is dead. They could not understand it, but they knew it was important, so Elisa writes and sends it by air mail--"

  "The letter? Why?" Galeano was slow on the uptake, watching her excited bright eyes.

  "And this! This! It was the only writing paper in the apartment--I see just how it came about--my own tablet. Edwin used it, and left the sheet on top of my letter, and in such a hurry I must have gathered it all up together, put it in the envelope-- But you see--you see! It is what I have said all the time, he meant to kill himself!" She thrust the whole sheaf of paper at Galeano.

  Four, five sheets written closely in German. And the extra sheet--the same cheap stationery torn from a dime-store tablet--in another hand.

  "¡Media vuelta!" said Mendoza, looking over his shoulder "¡Ya esta! And how simple when you know. But what a damned queer--"

  It was Edwin Fleming’s suicide note, the scrawl of a man ill-educated and also probably half drunk--see what the lab experts said about that.

  Dear Marta, I say good-bye and good luck. Youve been good to me and Im no use to you or anyboddy so I better get out of it Ill be glad to. Old Ojerdol is goin to help me. You deserv better good girl I hope you find better life, Edwin.

  "I will be Goddamned!" said Galeano. "I will be--"

  "Offerdahl!" said Mendoza, making it sound like a curse. "That drunken old bum--but he barely knew the man-- Porvida, we’ll hear what he has to say about this--"

  "But I do not think so, immediately," said Marta.

  Suddenly she chuckled, a warm infectious chuckle that did funny things to Galeano. "Mr. Offerdahl--there was a terrible disturbance last night, he comes knocking at every door, shouting that God is bringing a new flood and we must run for our lives. And then he fell down in the hall, and I thought he was dead, but Mr. Del Sardo called an ambulance and the attendant said it was the D.T.’s. I do not know what--but he is in the hospital, and not dead, and please God he will tell us--"

  Mendoza burst out laughing. "I only hope to God he isn’t right--I want to hear about this!"

  * * *

  It was Thursday morning before Offerdahl was sufficiently dried out to talk to them coherently. Flat in the hospital bed, the first time they’d seen him sober and halfway sensible, he was weak and wan and remorseful. He blinked up at Mendoza, Galeano, Marta, and said, "Fleming. I was sorry for the poor fellow. Haven’t--haven’t you found him yet?"
/>   And he’d asked them that before, but they hadn’t realized how he meant it. "No, Mr. Offerdahl," said Mendoza. "We thought you could tell us where to look."

  "Poor damned young fellow," said Offerdahl. "Felt sorry for him. Don’t know what you think, but talk about sin, seemed a sin and a shame t’ me he should have to go on living--maybe fifty years. Damn shame. Nice young wife, have to support him, take care of him. He said so. Said he wanted to die and be out of it. That day, I forget just when it was, I went down to see him--took a bottle along, cheer the poor fellow up. But he kept saying, better be dead--he wanted to be dead. Better for everybody. Like to go drown himself, he said. He asked me to help him and I said I would. Reservoir in Griffith Park, he said, and his wife had some money hid away, he’d give it to me if I helped him. So I did. He had keys to the car, and I carried him out to it. Used to be strong as a bear," said Offerdahl, weakly flexing his muscle. "He left a note for his wife. Didn’t she find it?"

  "Eventually," said Mendoza. "Then what, Mr. Offerdahl?"

  "I couldn’t find the damn reservoir up there. Drove and drove, all round little winding roads, and it was raining like hell. Then we came to this place--that big building up on top of the hill." Griffith Park Observatory, the planetarium. "There wasn’t anybody around, place all empty. He said, a cliff just as good, fall off it, bang. I drove right up there, helped him out--place where there’s a wall round the building, big drop off the hill. He pulled himself up on the wall, and he said, just as good, and he fell over. The poor fellow. I ’greed with him--best for everybody. Sin and a shame--"

  "And you drove the car back and put it in the garage, and put the keys back in the apartment," said Mendoza.

  "Of course," said Offerdahl with dignity. "Wasn’t my car. I’m an honest man."

  * * *

  When they went to look, they had to call the Fire Department with their ropes to get down there. But they found him after a while, deep in the underbrush there at the foot of the sheer drop from the wall around the observatory. It wasn’t such a long drop at that to the first slope, maybe three hundred feet, and springy thick undergrowth below, but he was dead, and had been since that day. That was all wild growth in there, as through most of the park, and he might not have been found for years, until only bones were left.