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

by Richard Wormser

  “If it didn’t,” I said, “there are two of us, trained policemen, to defend him. Let’s get out of my garage and to the station. I want to call that Sergeant Ernen I told you about.”

  Jack Davis said: “It’s about two in the morning by now. You think he’ll be there?”

  “Yes.” I was going on the fact that I would have been there; and Ernen was a lot more like me than I was like Jack Davis.

  I cuffed little John Davis to my wrist, and we moved out; I noted the time for my log. There was no chance that this was a member of a dangerous gang who would make a furious assault to free him, but I noticed that Jack Davis moved his gun from under his coat to his topcoat pocket before we raised the garage door; I had my own side arm available too.

  That is the way to move a prisoner; that, and no other.

  We got into Jack Davis’s car. He drove; the prisoner sat between us; I sat on the outside.

  The streets of Naranjo Vista were quiet now. Here and there a light was still on in somebody’s living room or bedroom; but the two-toned cars and the sports cars were all in their driveways or in the garages. Jack Davis lifted a heavy hand off the wheel and flicked a thumb at a lighted window. “Somebody telling his wife what a hero he was,” he said.

  “Our bosses.”

  Jack Davis said: “Sure.” He turned off Corona Circle, and we were in the homestretch; the lights of the station house were dead ahead.

  Little John Davis – I had better call him Wino Davis – said: “It’s the law that you guys gotta tell me what I’m charged with. You gotta –”

  “Little man,” Jack Davis said, “we don’t gotta anything. But I don’t mind; give it to him, Andy.”

  “In educated language,” I said. “Maybe he even is a lawyer, who knows? You are charged with a first degree felony, in that you committed criminal assault on a female against her will, punishable by fifty years in state prison. Clear?”

  Wino Davis said: “Oh, my good God,” in the most cultured accent he’d used yet.

  “Guilty or not guilty?” Jack Davis asked.

  Wino Davis said: “I spied on a woman, yes. On the officer’s wife here. But she was quite all right when I was pulled away.”

  “She’s still all right,” I said. “But the other one’s in County Hospital.”

  The little body squeezed between Jack Davis and me was shivering. But Wino was controlling the chatter of his teeth. He said: “There wasn’t any other one.”

  I twisted around to look down at him. He had caught his lower lip between his teeth, was chewing on it. His filthy, scabbed forehead was wrinkled.

  “We’re not framing you, you know,” I said. “We don’t do things like that.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t think you are,” he said, “but it would be quite easy, you know. I’ve no money for a lawyer.”

  “Where’d you go to college, Davis?”

  He named one of the most respected universities in the East. I’m withholding the name in case I ever want to blackmail the alumni association. “Only for a year, though,” he said. “They fired me.”

  “Ever been in the armed forces?”

  The gutter, the Skid Row crowded back up in him. “Aw, no,” he said. “That’s for the birds. Who wants to put on a uniform an’ go marchin’ around, totin’ a gun?”

  “Rejected as too short,” I said.

  “Yeah. Wanta make somethin’ of it? Lissen, you guys better go easy on me, I know a lotta things you wouldn’t – oh, and I need a drink awful bad.”

  Jack Davis twisted the wheel and cut the car into the drive of the station house; we dipped down and into the open-front garage where the department cars and the chief’s private car parked. Drew Lasley and the other cops and I kept our wheels in a parking lot behind the station.

  Chapter Seven

  Two rookies were washing the cars down. I am pretty certain that Scotland Yard does not expect its apprentice patrolmen to wash cars or do other menial work, but Jack Davis was Army-trained; sweeping floors and scrubbing windows was good for young policemen, just as it had been good for rookie soldiers.

  They carefully paid no attenion as we got in the big elevator – capable of carrying a stretcher and four men – and rode up one twelve-foot flight.

  We’d taken three steps down the hall towards the chief’s office when the newspapermen spotted us. They came charging up; lights went off, cameras clicked, all of them talked at once. The usual thing.

  Jack Davis handled it in the usual way. He was big enough; I got credit for the pinch; no statement now, but he was pretty sure we had our man; more complete details in a half an hour.

  The newsmen looked very happy. They were third or fourth stringers left here in the bare possibility that the criminal might be picked up in Naranjo Vista. The big shots would have passed on to the county seat or to Los Angeles.

  Now the little guys had the story; and since most of them weren’t even on salary, but were paid by the picture or the column inch, they were jubilant; and easy to handle.

  They let us through into Jack Davis’s office. I unlocked the cuffs and stowed them in my pocket. Jack Davis flipped the switch on his squawk box and told the duty sergeant: “Bring Lieutenant Bastian’s evidence case in here. And you better get us some hot coffee.”

  Wino Davis said: “Coffee ain’t gonna do me no good. I gotta have a drink, chief.”

  “Against the law,” Jack Davis said. “No stimulants or narcotics. . . .”

  “You’d better get a doctor,” I said. “Our pal is coming unstuck.”

  The little man was bent over, his hands clutching his solar plexus. He was muttering: “Bottle in ya desk, know it, jes’ one swallow. . . .” He had the dry retches, and in between spasms, he was muttering words that couldn’t be understood. His face was a dull purple.

  Jack Davis hit the box again and told the sergeant to get us a doctor.

  We couldn’t question him the way he was; we couldn’t do anything with him. If I’d been alone, I would have maybe given him a drink; there was a bottle in my office, though I’m not much of a drinking man.

  I suspect Jack Davis would have allowed the little man a snort, too, if he had been alone. But neither of us was going to say it to the other one, and so little Wino could suffer.

  A patrolman, Leatherwood, brought in my evidence case. I could work on that. I pushed Wino Davis into a chair, took scrapings from his shoes, his pants, and so on and so forth; what with filling out the labels, it passed a good deal of time. I got his fingerprints, the hand I was not holding was twitching uncontrollably, classified them and gave them to the desk outside to be put on the teletype.

  When I got back, Wino had slid to the floor, and was moaning there. Big drops of sweat had popped out on his forehead.

  Of course, he wasn’t as bad off as he acted, but self-pity is about the commonest characteristic of winos. This one was an expert at it.

  Jack Davis sat behind his desk, looking disgusted. I couldn’t blame him. I tried to feel sorry for Wino, but it was hard to do. He was a disgusting sight and a self-caused one. Maybe life had been hard for him, maybe it was unfair not to let him grow; maybe his mother hadn’t nursed him long enough, or his father had not given enough deference to his three-year-old opinions.

  But I had been raised in a poorly run orphan asylum, and both Jack and I had joined the Army at seventeen, more for economic than patriotic reasons. Poor Andy, poor Jack; but we didn’t behave like little Wino Davis, retching on the floor.

  More to get away from the sight than anything else, I raised an eyebrow at Jack Davis’s phone, and the captain nodded for me to go ahead. I asked the operator to get me Sergeant Ernen at County Headquarters.

  Voices passed the word along, and then Ernen said his name and title into the phone. I gave him mine. He said: “I was about to knock off and go home. Understand you’ve got the guy; I’ll work up the evidence for the D.A. tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Swell.”

  “You’re a goo
d science man, lieutenant. Most of the specimens you collected read five by five, Any time they fire you down there, I could use you in the lab.”

  “Well, thanks, sarge.”

  “You sure you got the right guy? There’s many a slip twixt, etc., etc.”

  His voice sounded weary. Mine did, too. “I’m sure now. After a good defence lawyer gets hold of me, I may shake a little. Suspect this guy’s folks have money.”

  “We catch them,” said the philosopher of the laboratory. “Then if the courts let ’em go, it’s not our fault. Short guy, is he? Mousy brown hair?”

  “Right,” I said. “Oh, we’re not sure about the hair. It’s too dirty to tell what the real colour is.”

  Ernen said: “Yeah? That’s funny. We come up with five buck a bottle hair tonic from under the girl’s fingernails.” He no longer sounded sleepy; I no longer felt sleepy. I said: “You’d better give me what you have, Ernie.”

  “Hold the phone, Andy.”

  Cold sweat was forming between my shoulder blades. I held the phone while assorted noises came over it; paper rattling, static crackling, a click as his switchboard or ours checked the line for something or other. Then his voice again, businesslike and faintly worried: “Suspect five-feet eight, give or take an inch. Weight, indeterminate. Age unknown. Wearing hair tonic, Lanolin base, grand Sussex, odour mixed floral . . . That’s the manufacturer’s description, Loot. Coat probably brown tweed, possibly imported. Trousers fawn flannel, pure wool. Beard black, curly. . . .”

  As I looked down at Wino Davis retching on the floor, nothing fitted. I said: “Give me the beard again. How did you get it?”

  “The victim,” Sergeant Ernen said. “She scratched his face badly. Type AB blood, and dark hairs, almost black, not perfectly round, indicating his beard would have been curly if he let it grow. You know, beard hair is no indicator of top-of-the-head hair; she pulled a tuft, and it’s medium-light brown, and straight.”

  Still holding the phone, I reached down and grabbed Wino Davis’s dirty, gritty hair, and pulled his face up so I could look at it. “Wrong guy, sarge,” I said. “We have the wrong guy. I’ll want to get that on the air, fast.”

  “Okay,” he said, very staccato. “I’ll give it to teletype from this end, too.” And he rang off.

  Jack Davis was staring at me. I jiggled the hook. “Sergeant, get out an APB. We do not, repeat not, have the suspect in the Patterson case. APB and urgent.”

  Jack Davis said: “You’re sure?”

  “Sure,” I said. “This one checks out inches short, which I could overlook; those lab men with their angles of incidence and coincidence can get thrown on that. But our man has scratched jaws and cheeks, and this punk just has a scabbed forehead. You don’t get whiskers off a forehead. And the man we want was wearing good clothes, it sounds like, and the wrong colour and texture.”

  Jack Davis sighed, deeply. “Take him to a cell,” he said. “The doctor can look at him there.”

  I reached down and got a hand under Wino’s armpit, hauled him to his feet. I felt awful. Our All Points Bulletin announcing our catch had undoubtedly cooled down the search for the assailant of Nora Patterson. Maybe in some towns it was called off altogether. We shouldn’t have been so fast.

  But what could we have done? We’d set a duty to get the gun-toting citizenry off the street before they shot each other; we had a duty to calm the mob around the station house before they committed a crime in their gun-toting zeal. No situation involving a major crime is ever simple, and this one had been worse than most, because it was in such prime danger of becoming several felonies at one time.

  The stairs to the lockup were in the other wing of the station; I hauled Wino down that way. He gave me no help at all; I was going to call ahead for a patrolman or a sergeant to take his other side, but he was such a little guy. I could have carried him in my arms, if I’d wanted to.

  But he went fairly well with my arm around his back, my hand under the armpit farthest from me. I hated to touch him, filthy as he was, but I was sorry for the bad time we’d given him; sorry and feeling a little guilty. Maybe I had been oversore because it was my wife he’d been staring at.

  We were approaching the front door and the desk that faced it. I took a firmer grip; whoever was on duty there could take over for me.

  The front door opened, and two men came in. They weren’t together, but they were so close that the second man got in before the door closed behind the first one.

  The first one was Dr. Hal Levy. He blocked my view of the second one.

  “What have we here, Andrew?”

  “You sure are the open-eyed medico,” I said. “Don’t you ever sleep and let the competition –”

  The second man had come around Hal Levy by then. Time slowed down, stumbled, almost stood still for me. The second man was Norman Patterson. He let out an unintelligible shout, and then I saw what he had in his right hand and I went for my own gun, and Hal Levy was swinging his medical bag, and we were both too late.

  Norman Patterson brought up the pistol I should have taken away from him, and squeezed off a shot.

  The miserable little body I was supporting jumped like a straw man on the pistol range.

  Twenty-odd years of constant practice paid off. Before he could fire again, I had shot one of Norman Patterson’s legs out from under him. As he fell, Hal Levy caught him on the head with the heavy black bag, and Norman Patterson was, for the moment, through.

  Chapter Eight

  Doors were opening and slamming, feet were running. Among the light blue shirts and serge coats of our guys, I saw the blue flannel shirts of the firemen; the shots must have boomed in their wing too.

  I could even hear Sergeant de Laune phoning: “Get an ambulance rolling for the police department, Naranjo Vista. Code Two.” Code Two means red light and siren.

  I knelt, slid a hand under Wino’s shirt. He was slick with blood; when I pulled my hand out, it showed bright red – arterial. Hal Levy dropped to his knees next to Norman Patterson. I called: “Switch patients, Doc. I don’t know how bad this one’s hit; but Patterson has a hole in his thigh. I know just where to put the tourniquet on.”

  Hal Levy jumped up, kicked his bag so it slid to me, and came over. As I passed him I already had my necktie off. I bent, fumbled a fifty-cent piece from my pocket, and knotted it around Patterson’s upper leg. The blood gushing out under his trousers stopped.

  Hal Levy said: “Not serious. Another inch and he’d have missed altogether. Why don’t they shoot for the belly?”

  He was ripping away Wino’s filthy clothes with his ball-end dressing scissors. It was a good thing I had already checked the little fellow for evidence. I wiped my hands on Norman Patterson’s trouser leg and lit a cigarette.

  Hal Levy said: “This the bozo who assaulted the Patterson girl?”

  “We thought so for a while, but he’s not. I guess Norman Patterson here still thought so.”

  Dr. Levy had come over. He used his scissors to look at Patterson’s thigh. “A couple of stitches in the artery and a week or so in bed – a very lucky shot. So he shot an innocent guy, huh? A policeman’s lot is not a happy one.”

  As he strolled back to pick up his bag and bend over Wino again, I wondered how many times I had heard that one, since I had become a seventeen-year-old rookie in an M.P. company. Usually, though, it was said by the cop. I wondered how many of the men who had said it knew it came from The Pirates of Penzance, by W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, both later knighted.

  I wondered how you addressed someone named Sir W. S. Gilbert.

  I wondered a great many things.

  Civilian clothes were mixed with the blue of the force, now. I asked Patrolman Leatherwood if Lieutenant Lasley were still around. He shook his head. “He went home when you and the captain brought this fellow in,” he said.

  There was no use in getting him back. I could handle the press myself. I could handle anything; a very tough cookie, Andrew Bastian. And
maybe when I got through handling everything, I could get a nice clean job peddling dishrags from door to door. I could handle that, too.

  The human mind and the human frame are very resilient, and they persist in living, which means earning a living.

  So I walked to my own office, followed by the men in civilian clothes, the second-string reporters left to cover the tail end of our story, and now striking it rich.

  Real newspapermen would have been easier to handle. These lads had studied the technique on television; they were automatically belligerent. “Did you ever see your victim before?” “Who was the man you were taking down the hall?” “Is it customary for a lieutenant to personally escort a common drunk?” And so on and so forth, all coming at me at once, trying to machine gun me down.

  For a moment I tried to answer them, but it was impossible; one strident voice would drown out the response to the question another strident voice had shot at me. I took out my side arm and pounded on the desk with the butt, something that should never be done with a pistol.

  It silenced them. I said: “We’ll have a little order here, or I’ll get in a couple of patrolmen and heave the whole bunch of you out on your ears. Then I’ll call the Los Angeles News Bureau and give them a statement for all your papers, and leave you to explain why you couldn’t cover a story.”

  At once a flashbulb went off. I had an idea of how I looked, behind my desk, my damned gun in my hand. I said: “Whoever took that picture can hand me the film, or be thrown out of this police station, and for good.”

  They glared at me. Like most newspaper stringers, they doubled as both reporters and photographers; each had some sort of camera in his hand. There were four of them, though when they’d been shouting, they sounded like a platoon, instead of two very young men, a mannish girl of about twenty and a chubby guy in his forties whose straight hair straggled away from a bald dome.

  “Get yourselves chairs, and let’s talk this over,” I said. “I want to issue a statement – I badly need to issue a statement – but I’m not going to be stampeded into saying anything I don’t mean. Who took that picture?”