A Nice Girl Like You (Lt. Andy Bastian Mysteries Book 2)

by Richard Wormser

  Norman Patterson kneeled and took his wife in his arms. I looked away. This was none of my business, but I had to stay there. I had to get information. My job was to catch a felon and turn him over to the district attorney; this was the place to start that job.

  Miss Crowther was no place in sight. But then I heard her heels clicking as she crossed from one Navajo rug to another, coming down the long length of the C-3 living room. She had a glass of water in one hand, a bottle in the other.

  She handed me the water, and shook three pills out in her hand. “The bottle says two for sleeplessness, so I guess three won’t be lethal.”

  “No. Go ahead.”

  She was very good. She tapped Norman Patterson on the shoulder, and when he looked up, she inserted her hands like a wedge between him and his wife. “Here, Mrs. Patterson. Take these.”

  “No, no. I have to go to Nora.”

  “They wouldn’t let you see her now.”

  But Mrs. Patterson saw snakes in Miss Crowther’s hands where I saw pills. She kept pulling away.

  I turned on my bark. “Your daughter’s knocked out for the night. I saw the doctor give her the needle. Get your rest; she’ll need you tomorrow.”

  The old voice of command worked. She swallowed the pills, she took the water. Her throat twitched twice, and the sleeping pills were down.

  Miss Crowther said: “Come with me, Mrs. Patterson,” but the lady had been ordered around enough. Mrs. Patterson said: “Norman will need me –”

  But her eyes were dimming. Miss Crowther handed me the bottle and said: “You call the doctor.”

  I almost asked her which doctor. Then I realized that I was a detective, and looked at the label. The prescription had been signed by Dr. Crory.

  Not straining my education, I looked him up in the phone book. There was an office number, and an all-hours number; I tried the second one. It was a medical answering service. The girl there sounded noonish instead of midnightish. She said that Dr. Crory was not available; he was at the hospital in the city. Dr. Levy was taking his calls.

  Hal Levy again, but that was not so startling; only four doctors, a dentist and a physiotherapist had rented offices in our Naranjo Vista. I said: “Get me Dr. Levy, then.”

  The girl said: “Just a moment, I have a number for him,” and I heard the dial on her switchboard whirring.

  The next voice was my wife’s. Olga said: “Yes?”

  My throat felt tight. “You all right, Olga?”

  “Of course, Andy. Why?”

  “Is Dr. Levy there? The answering service said he was taking Dr. Crory’s calls.”

  Norman Patterson came up behind me and said, roughly: “We don’t need a doctor. We don’t need strangers in our house at all, at a time like this.”

  “Afraid I’ll have to be the judge of that.”

  The phone said: “This is Dr. Levy, lieutenant. I was just looking up something in one of Olga’s textbooks.”

  “I’m on Columbia Circle. Family called Patterson. They’re the parents.”

  Hal Levy was fast as a cop. “Of the girl who was – hurt? All right. I know the Pattersons, patients of Lonny Crory. I’ll be right there.”

  The phone was nearly back in its cradle when I realized he hadn’t rung off; Olga was talking. I put the black object back to my ear: “I didn’t get that.”

  “You want any help, Andy?”

  “No. Miss Crowther from the high school is here; she seems adequate.” I rang off, aware that I had sounded stuffy and husbandly. But frankly, midnight was not the time I wanted my wife’s textbooks looked at by a bachelor doctor.

  When I turned from the phone, Norman Patterson was so close to me that I would have felt his breath if my mind hadn’t been on the room at the other end of the phone. He had put on a jacket, a windbreaker. It took me a moment to recognize it; it was Army-issue, circa 1943.

  One side sagged, and I needed no moment to figure out why. I was too close to him, by the judo manual, so I stepped back till the phone table bit into my thighs, before I made my lunge.

  The pocket of the windbreaker tore, and I had his gun.

  We stood, facing each other, breathing hard. He said: “Give that back. A householder has every right –”

  The night was filled with amateur lawyers. I said: “Correction. Unless you have a licence to carry a concealed weapon, this gun becomes contraband the minute you put it in your pocket. What were you going to do with it?”

  His voice was high for such a virile man. I listened for a car out on Columbia Circle. I could use Dr. Hal Levy at the moment; this poor devil was about to fold. He was no nitwit, from his appearance or occupation, but the hardest mind has its limits.

  “What the hell do you think I’m going to do?”

  “Subjunctive: were going to do. Run out in the night and shoot someone, I suppose. Anyone.”

  “No. What do you think I am? But a man’s got the right to kill anyone who – who hurts his –” He was breaking down fast.

  But I am a cop. All day, all night, no matter how I hate it. I said: “The law is handling things.”

  “No jury would blame me,” Norman Patterson said, and went into his fold. He drooped down to the floor and buried his strong face in his long, straight fingers, and started crying, a horrible noise, like a wounded animal in a little cave.

  Dr. Levy, kiss my wife good-bye and hurry.

  More car noise in the street, but again it didn’t stop. There was a curious and familiar rhythm to it.

  Patrol. A car or cars were going around Columbia Circle in a regular rhythm, a ninety-second patrol rhythm. Drew Lasley, or Jack Davis, if he was back at the station and in command, must have gone nuts. We only had four cars in the whole department; we couldn’t spare one for something like this. . . .

  The gun was still in my hand. I looked down at it. A Colt Woodsman’s .22 . . . a target pistol, accurate and easy to aim as a pointed finger, but with no killing impact.

  Norman Patterson was making sobbing, breathless noises on the floor. I dehorned the gun, dropped the cartridges into my pocket, and tossed the long, thin firearm on the foam rubber couch, while the car went by again.

  Eleanor Crowther came out of the back part of the house. “She’s asleep.”

  “Dr. Levy’s on the way.”

  She looked down at Norman Patterson and said: “I don’t suppose he’d take a sedative if I offered it. I’m glad it’s Dr. Levy. He inspires a lot of confidence.”

  “That’s because he has a prematurely bald head and a big nose.”

  Eleanor Crowther squinted her eyes at a hanging bubble-light across the room. They were, I noticed, green eyes. “You’re not a girl,’ she pointed out, unnecessarily. “Dr. Levy’s very attractive to women.”

  And he is a questing hound after textbook knowledge, day or night. “If you say so, Eleanor.”

  “What is that car doing, prowling around this house? It’s been going on since I don’t know when. Give me a cigarette, lieutenant.”

  When I held the match for her, she put her hand on mine. Her nail polish was natural-coloured, like Olga’s . . . No, by God. Olga had started tinting her nails a couple of weeks ago. . . .

  Norman Patterson’s sobbing had stopped. He got up off the floor, stared at us as though he’d never seen us before, and went over and sat in a slatted armchair made of whatever kind of wood Danes make chairs out of. His fingers plucked at the cloth over his knees.

  I pulled aside the fibreglass window curtains and looked out. The circling car was two-toned, but not black and white, not a police car. Two men were in the front seat.

  More posse men? I thought I’d scared all that back into its burrow. Jack Davis might have asked for county help, but then the men wouldn’t be in an unmarked car. And anyway –

  Another car came up, stopped, and Dr. Hal Levy got out. He reached back for the inevitable black bag, and then walked quickly through the Patterson’s front yard.

  I met him at the door. He said: “How�
��s Mrs. Patterson?”

  “Knocked out. Miss Crowther’s here, she got the lady to take three sleeping pills.”

  Hal Levy said: “Sleeping pill is quite a generic term.”

  “Prescribed by Dr. Crory, doctor. Bottle reads take two; she’s taken three.”

  “I’ll look at the bottle.”

  Yet he was a nice guy; Olga and I were always running into him at parties and so on. He was just protecting his profession; he didn’t like other people doling out pills.

  I said: “It’s Norman Patterson, Hal. Without trying to diagnose, he looks like a bad shock case, and I’d like to question him.”

  “We’ll see if it’s possible. First things first. The pills you gave Mrs. Patterson.”

  They were on the phone table. He walked into the living room with me as I went for them. “Olga said to ask you if you want your uniform. She could send it to the station in a cab.”

  “No thanks, Hal. I’m making noises like a detective just now. Here’s the bottle.”

  He looked at it, smiled. “Crory’s quite old-fashioned,” he said, enjoying some quiet professional joke with himself. “No, three of these won’t hurt her. Where’s Mr. Patterson?”

  We had passed Norman Patterson without arousing his curiosity in the least. I pointed, and Hal Levy turned to see the man sitting in his sleek chair, showing all the signs of idiocy.

  Instead of going to Patterson, the good doctor gestured at me with his chin, and we walked down towards the lanai. He said: “I can give him a stimulant, and he’ll be in good shape to talk to you. He’ll also be in excellent shape to suffer whatever tortures a man in his position suffers. I can knock him out, and force him to get some rest. It’s up to you.”

  This wasn’t fair of him. I compromised: “I’ll try and talk to him the way he is, and if it works, you can give him the sedative afterwards.”

  “All right, but he’s nearly in shock.”

  Crouched on my heels in front of Norman Patterson, I put my hands on his knees. “Norman, I hate to do this, but it’s my duty. Who are some of Nora’s friends? Boy friends, particularly.”

  “She’s very quiet,” he said, clearly. “She didn’t go steady, as the kids call it. Muriel and I wouldn’t let her. She is a very docile girl, very obedient.”

  “Yes. But she went to dances and things. Who took her?”

  “Oh, she could have her pick of any boy in the class. She is so pretty.” He was going from past to present tense with ease; I had seen this before. He knew his daughter would never again be a normal, quiet, high school girl, but he could only stand to think of it a moment at a time; then he would revert to the present tense and pretend she was untouched again.

  But she wasn’t; she might be a nervous wreck, or she might recover because of her youth, but she’d be a curiosity in high school, and they would probably have to move.

  “Which is her room, Norman?”

  He pointed at one of the doors, and I stood up. “He’s all yours, Hal. I can probably get as much out of dance programmes and school annuals as he could give me. After all, girls are seldom assaulted by their friends.”

  “How true.” Hal Levy picked up his black bag and opened it. As I went through the door into the room Norman Patterson had indicated, Dr. Levy had the inevitable needle out.

  Nora’s room was not as austere as the Patterson living room. Her bed had a checked spread on it, somewhat like a French tablecloth, and the same red and white pattern had been carried out in the window curtains. Her desk was clean cut, but she’d softened it with silly Japanese dolls climbing up each of the four legs.

  I thumbed her textbooks and notebooks first. But nineteen is a little old to be writing Nora Loves Osbert in schoolbooks. Then I went through the drawers of the desk for love notes or just notes.

  Finally the mirror of her dressing table gave me three names of boys she’d gone to three successive school dances with. It seemed to me that this was abnormal, that every high school girl had a short spell of thinking some boy was the only one in the world, but it was unfamiliar territory for me.

  I looked up to see Miss Crowther in the doorway. “Getting any place, Andy?”

  “Nope. Not really. I’ll take you home.”

  “Good. Miss Hellman’s here; Dr. Levy phoned for her. We’ve got Mr. Patterson in bed. Have you looked in the school annuals?”

  “No. A thought.” I followed her pointing finger to a row of blue-leatherette volumes in Nora’s bookcase.

  She’d been on the debating team, the girl’s basketball team, she’d joined bowling, swimming clubs. She’d been secretary of her class one term. . . .

  In her pictures, she was pretty enough, but not the raving beauty her father thought her.

  I said: “She would have been almost twenty when she graduated. Isn’t that rather old?”

  “Not these days. People move around so much their kids lose a year or so transferring.”

  “Oh.”

  Eleanor Crowther said: “What have you got, Andy?” and put one hand on my shoulder so she could bend over and look at the three annuals I had spread out.

  As a freshman, sophomore and junior, Nora Patterson had appeared in the front row of her class each time, being rather a short girl.

  The books went back in the case. Out in the living room, Miss Hellman, the public health nurse, was spreading blankets on the foam rubber couch. She looked up: “Good evening, lieutenant. Everything all right?”

  What her definition of all right was, I didn’t know. Nothing worse than a criminal assault had happened, that I knew of. I said: “Just fine, Miss Hellman.”

  “I’ll just sleep here,” she said. “It really isn’t necessary, but Dr. Levy, quite correctly I’m sure, doesn’t like the idea of two patients under sedation and no one else in the house. Though Bartlett houses are quite fireproof.”

  “Nevertheless, we have a fire department,” I said. “Just like we have a police force and a public health staff. Live and let live, Miss Hellman.”

  She looked at me as though I’d taken leave of my senses.

  But I didn’t bother to explain to her; why should I? I was a great big police officer, inspiring awe and admiration in everyone’s heart; I explained to no man.

  Chapter Five

  Miss Crowther and I went out and got in my car. She said: “That was a mean crack you made to poor Miss Hellman.”

  “Poor? She gets to live in Naranjo Vista, doesn’t she? What greater bliss?”

  “A husband,” Eleanor Crowther said. “When she comes to the school, she sheep-eyes every bachelor teacher on the faculty. It’s kind of pathetic.”

  “How about you, Miss Crowther? Do you pine for married bliss?”

  She turned on the seat and stared at me. “My, you’re in a nasty mood,” she said. “Why?”

  My breath came out of my chest with an intensity that surprised me. “You are respectable,” I said. “No night prowler. You, therefore, aren’t aware that we’ve passed a great many more cars than I have ever seen out this late in Naranjo Vista, even on New Year’s Eve. We must have seen a dozen of them. And here comes another.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “What every cop fears most,” I said. Now that I was talking about it, I felt better. Before, it had been like there was a steam in my head, trying to burst out. “That barricade we ran into wasn’t an isolated incident. The damned citizens are about to take the law into their own hands. Riot, Eleanor. Mob rule. Those damned county cops with their sirens told the people what is going on, what has happened.”

  She waved a hand to the right, and I turned that way. We went under a street light, and I could see she was frowning.

  As I stopped in front of her house, she said: “But people have a right to know what is going on. They pay your salary, just the same way they pay me. I wouldn’t have the right not to tell them what’s going on at the school.”

  “There’s a slight difference,” I said. “If they find out that the dear little c
hildren have been putting bubble gum on the teacher’s chair, they aren’t going to string Junior up to the nearest flagpole.”

  She said: “Oh!” and put her hand to her mouth. “But whoever did that to Nora; I mean –”

  “You mean some lawyer will get him off. All lawyers are crooks, all judges are corrupt, all cops can be bought.”

  She stared at me, and then slid out of the car, leaving the door open, and ran for her front door.

  I switched on my spotlight and covered her. She had a very good figure, but I was not rubbernecking. There was a molester somewhere in Naranjo Vista; I wanted to see her inside her house, with the door closed.

  When all this had happened, I drove off.

  In the next block I passed two more cars, each with two men in them; no women.

  I headed for the Centre, and the police building. Cars were parked all around our headquarters; an enterprising cop could have handed out half a dozen parking tickets. But I wasn’t feeling enterprising.

  Poor Drew Lasley could handle them; Jack Davis was an experienced officer and by now an experienced chief; he would have ducked. So I drove slowly home; I’d call Drew from there, to let him know where I was.

  There was nothing much I could do about tracking down the criminal. We’d get the known appropriate criminal files in the morning from the state, from the county, from Los Angeles. We had none of our own.

  While Naranjo Vista undoubtedly contained a few deviates, maybe more than a few – consult the Kinsey report – none of them had criminal records. So my men would run double patrols all night, and drop dead if they found the criminal attempting a second assault; but they would run the patrols because they had to do something.

  And for the same reason, county and maybe state detectives – certainly Los Angeles men – would be out tin-earing the wino joints. This smelled like a wino job, the work of one of those desolate gutter-crawlers trying to make contact with the world they’d lost, the world of clean people and young girls.

  Turning into my block, I cracked an approach to the case; I hadn’t any up till now. Get the boys out and question householders: had they employed any transient, unskilled labour lately, to cut a lawn or clean out a garage?